Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  In Norristown, ten miles or so past the western outskirts of Philadelphia, he turned off the highway and pulled into an Amoco station.

  A tall, skinny, pimply-faced young man in a mackinaw and galoshes came out to the pump. McCoy opened the door and got out.

  “Fill it up with high test,” McCoy ordered. “Check the oil. And can you get the crap off the headlights?”

  “Yes, sir,” the attendant said.

  “Dutch around?” McCoy asked.

  “Inna station,” the attendant said.

  McCoy turned and looked through the windshield at Ernie, and then gestured for her to come out.

  By the time she had put her feet back in her galoshes, McCoy was at the door of the service station. Ernie ran after him.

  There was no one in the room where they had the cash register and displays of oil and Simoniz, but there was a man in the service bay, putting tire chains on a Buick on the lift.

  “Whaddasay, Dutch?” McCoy greeted him. “What’s up?”

  The man looked up, first in impatience, and then with surprised recognition. He smiled, dropped the tire chains on the floor, and walked to McCoy.

  “How’re ya?” he asked. “Ain’t that an officer’s uniform?”

  “Yeah,” McCoy said. “Dutch, say hello to Ernie Sage.”

  “Hi ya, honey,” Dutch said. “Pleased to meetcha.”

  “Hello,” Ernie said.

  “How’s business?” McCoy asked.

  “Jesus! So long as we got gas, it’s fine,” Dutch said. “But there’s already talk about rationing. If that happens, I’ll be out on my ass.”

  “Maybe you could get on with Budd in Philly,” McCoy said. “I guess they’re hiring.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Dutch said doubtfully. “Well, I’ll think of something. What brings you to town? When’d you get to be an officer?”

  “Month or so ago,” McCoy said.

  “Better dough, I guess?” Dutch asked.

  “Yeah, but they make you buy your own meals,” McCoy said.

  “You didn’t say what you’re doing in town?”

  “Just passing through,” McCoy said.

  “But you will come by the house? Anne-Marie would be real disappointed if you didn’t.”

  “Just for a minute,” McCoy said. “She there?”

  “Where else would she be on a miserable fucking night like this?” Dutch asked. Then he remembered his manners. “Sorry, honey,” he said to Ernie. “My old lady says I got mouth like a sewer.”

  Ernie smiled and shook her head, accepting the apology.

  She had placed Dutch. His old lady, Anne-Marie, was Ken McCoy’s sister. Dutch was Ken’s brother-in-law.

  “Gimme a minute,” Dutch said, “to lock up the cash, and then you can follow me to the house.”

  Anne-Marie and Dutch Schulter and their two small children lived in a row house on North Elm Street, not far from the service station. There were seven brick houses in the row, each fronted with a wooden porch. The one in front of Dutch’s house sagged under his and McCoy’s and Ernie’s weight as they stood there while Anne-Marie came to the door.

  She had one child in her arms when she opened the door, and another—with soiled diapers—was hanging on to her skirt. It looked at them with wide and somehow frightened eyes. Anne-Marie was fat, and she had lost some teeth, and she was wearing a dirty man’s sweater over her dress, and her feet were in house slippers.

  She was not being taken home by Ken McCoy to be shown off, Ernie Sage realized sadly, in the hope that his family would be pleased with his girl. Ken had brought her here to show her his family, sure that she would be shocked and disgusted.

  Dutch went quickly into the kitchen and returned with a quart of beer.

  Ernie reached for McCoy’s hand, but he jerked it away.

  To Dutch’s embarrassment, Anne-Marie began a litany of complaints about how hard it was to make ends meet with what he could bring home from the service station. And her reaction to Ken’s promotion to officer status, Ernie saw, was that it meant for her a possible source of further revenue.

  In due course, Anne-Marie invited them to have something to eat—coupled with the caveat that she didn’t know what was in the icebox and the implied suggestion that Ken should take them all out for dinner.

  “Maybe you’d get to see Pop, if we went out to the Inn,” Anne-Marie said.

  “What makes you think I’d want to see Pop?” McCoy replied. “No, we gotta go. It’s still snowing; they may close the roads.”

  “Where are you going?” Anne-Marie asked.

  “Harrisburg,” McCoy said. “Ernie’s got to catch a train in Harrisburg.”

  “Going back to Philly’d be closer,” Dutch said.

  “Yeah, but I got to go to Harrisburg,” McCoy said. He looked at Ernie, for the first time meeting her eyes. “You about ready?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  When they were back in the LaSalle and headed for Harrisburg, McCoy said, “A long way from Rocky Fields Farm, isn’t it?”

  A mental image of herself with McCoy in the bed in what her mother called the “Blue Guest Room” of Rocky Fields Farm came into Ernie’s mind. The Blue Guest Room was actually an apartment, with a bedroom and sitting room about as large as Anne-Marie and Dutch Schulter’s entire house.

  And it didn’t smell of soiled diapers and cabbage and stale beer.

  “When you’re trying to sell something, you should use all your arguments,” Ernie said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” McCoy asked, confused.

  “You asked your sister why she thought you would want to see Pop,” Ernie said. “What did that mean?”

  “We don’t get along,” McCoy said, after hesitating.

  “Why not?” Ernie asked.

  “Does it matter?” McCoy asked.

  “Everything you do matters to me,” Ernie said.

  “My father is a mean sonofabitch,” McCoy said. “Leave it at that.”

  “What about your mother?” Ernie asked.

  “She’s dead,” McCoy said. “I thought I told you that.”

  “You didn’t tell me what she was like,” Ernie said.

  “She was all right,” McCoy said. “Browbeat by the Old Man is all.”

  “And I know about Brother Tom,” Ernie said. “After he was fired by Bethlehem Steel for beating up his foreman, he joined the Marines. Is that all of the skeletons in your closet, or are we on our way to another horror show?”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then he chuckled. “Anyone ever tell you you’re one tough lady?”

  “You didn’t really think I was going to say how much I liked your sister, did you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I didn’t like her,” Ernie said. “There’s no excuse for being dirty or having dirty children.”

  “That the only reason you didn’t like her?”

  “She was hinting that you should give her money,” Ernie said. “She doesn’t really like you. She just would like to use you.”

  “Yeah, she’s always been that way,” McCoy said. “I guess she gets it from Pop.”

  “Daughters take after their fathers,” Ernie said. “I take after mine. And I think you should know that my father always gets what he goes after.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That we’re in luck. Our daughter will take after you.”

  There was a long moment before McCoy replied. “Ernie, I can’t marry you,” he said.

  “There’s a touch of finality to that I don’t like at all,” Ernie said. “What is it, another skeleton?”

  “What?”

  She blurted what had popped into her mind: “A wife you forgot to mention?”

  He chuckled. “Christ, no,” he said.

  “Then what?” she asked, as a wave of relief swept through her.

  “You’ve got a job,” he said. “A career in advertising. You’re going places there. What about that?”

  “I’d r
ather be with you. You know that. And you also know that when it comes down to it, I need you more than I need a career in advertising…. And besides, I don’t think that’s what is bothering you either.”

  “There’s a war on,” McCoy said. “I’m going to be in it. It wouldn’t be right to marry you.”

  “That’s not it,” Ernie said surely.

  “No,” he said.

  “I don’t give a damn about your family,” Ernie said.

  “That’s not it, either,” he said.

  “Then what? What’s the reason you are so evasive?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s got to do with the Corps.”

  “What’s it got to do with the Corps?” she persisted.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said.

  Now, she decided, he’s telling the truth.

  “Military secret?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “What, Ken?”

  “Goddamnit, I told you I can’t tell you!” he snapped. “Jesus, Ernie! If I could tell you I would!”

  “Okay,” she said, finally. “So don’t tell me. But for God’s sake, at least between here and Harrisburg, at least can I be your girl?”

  McCoy reached across the seat and took her hand. She slid across the seat, put his arm around her shoulders, and leaned close against him.

  “And when we get to Harrisburg, instead of just putting me on the train, can I be your mistress for one more night?”

  “Jesus!” he said. The way he said it, she knew he meant yes.

  “I’m not hard to please,” Ernie said. “I’ll be happy with whatever I can have, whenever I can have it.”

  (Three)

  Room 402

  The Penn-Harris Hotel

  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

  0815 Hours, 9 January 1942

  Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, was so startled when Miss Ernestine Sage joined him behind the white cotton shower curtain that he slipped and nearly fell down.

  “I hope that means you’re not used to this sort of thing,” Ernie said.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

  “I woke up the moment you ever so carefully slipped out of bed,” Ernie said. “It took me a little time to work up my courage to join you.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Ernie, I love you,” McCoy said.

  “That’s good,” she said, and then stepped closer to him, wrapped her arms around him, and put her head against his chest. His arms tightened around her, and he kissed the top of her head. She felt his heartbeat against her ear, and then he grew erect.

  She put her hand on him and pulled her face back to look up at him.

  “Well,” she said, “what should we do now, do you think?”

  “I suppose we better dry each other off, or the sheets’ll get wet,” he said.

  “To hell with the sheets,” she said.

  When she came out of the bathroom again twenty minutes later, he was nearly dressed. Everything but his uniform blouse.

  When he puts the blouse on, and I put my slip and dress on, she thought, that will be the end of it. We will close our suitcases, send for the bellboy, have breakfast, and he will put me on the train.

  “Don’t look at me,” Ernie said. “I’m about to cry, and I look awful when I cry.”

  She went to her suitcase and turned her back to him and pulled a slip over her head.

  “I’m on orders to Fleet Marine Force, Pacific,” McCoy said, “for further assignment as a platoon leader with one of the regiments.”

  She turned to look at him. “I thought you were an intelligence officer,” Ernie said.

  “Early next month, the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific,” McCoy went on in a strange tone of voice, ignoring her question, “will be ordered to form the Second Separate Battalion. It will be given to Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson—”

  “What’s a separate battalion?” Ernie interrupted. “Honey, I don’t understand these terms….”

  “You heard about the English Commandos?” McCoy asked. Ernie nodded. “The Corps’s going to have their own. Two battalions of them.”

  “Oh,” Ernie said, somewhat lamely. She was frightened. Her mind’s eye was full of newsreels of English Commandos. There were shock troops, sent to fight against impossible odds.

  “Colonel Carlson is going to recruit men from Fleet Marine Force, Pacific,” McCoy went on. “He has been given authority to take anybody he wants. He’s an old China Marine. I’m an old China Marine. He’s probably—almost certainly—going to try to recruit me. He is not recruiting married men.”

  “And that’s why you won’t marry me?” Ernie said, suddenly furious. “So you can be a commando? And get yourself killed right away? Thanks a lot.”

  “Carlson’s a strange man,” McCoy went on, ignoring her again. “He spent some time with the Chinese Communists. There is some scuttlebutt that he’s a Communist.”

  “Scuttlebutt?” Ernie asked.

  “Gossip, rumor,” McCoy explained. “And there is some more scuttlebutt that he’s not playing with a full deck.”

  Ernie Sage had never heard the expression before, but she thought it through. Now she was confused. And still angry, she realized, when she heard her tone of voice.

  “You’re telling me…let me get this straight…that you’re going to volunteer for the Marine commandos, which are going to be under a crazy Communist?”

  “You can only volunteer after you’re asked,” McCoy said. “My first problem is to make sure I’m asked.”

  “And then you can go get yourself killed?”

  “I didn’t ask for this job,” he said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Nobody knows for sure whether Carlson is either a Communist or crazy,” McCoy said.

  “If there seems to be some question, why are they making him a commando?”

  “When he was a captain, he was commanding officer of the Marine detachment that guards President Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia. He and the President’s son, who is a reserve captain, are good friends.”

  “Oh,” Ernie said. “But what has this got to do with you? Common sense would say, stay away from all of this.”

  “Somebody has to find out, for sure, if he’s crazy, or a Communist, or both,” McCoy said.

  Ernie suddenly understood. Ken McCoy had told her the military secret he wouldn’t talk about in the car. But it was so incredible she needed confirmation.

  “And that’s you, right?”

  He nodded.

  “They made up a new service record for me,” he said. “It says that after I graduated from Quantico, they assigned me to the Marine Barracks in Philadelphia, where I was a platoon leader in a motor transport company. There’s nothing in it about me being assigned to intelligence.”

  “And this is what you wouldn’t tell me yesterday?”

  He nodded. “I’m trusting you,” he said. “Even Pick doesn’t know. I don’t know what the hell they would do to me if they found out I told you. Or what Carlson and the nuts around him would do to me if they found out I was there to report on them.”

  Ernie smiled at him. “So why did you tell me?” she asked, very softly.

  “I figured maybe, if you’re still crazy enough to want to drive across the country with me, that is, it would be easier to put you on the train once we get there if you knew.”

  “That’s not the answer I was looking for,” Ernie said. “But it’s a start.”

  “What answer were you looking for?” McCoy asked.

  “That you love me and trust me,” Ernie said.

  “That, too,” he said.

  VIII

  (One)

  U.S. Navy Air Station

  Pensacola, Florida

  9 January 1942

  Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC, was an eager-faced, slightly built young man of something less than medium height who looked even younger than his twenty-on
e years and who was wearing a uniform that looked every bit as fresh off the rack as it in fact was.

  It was not surprising, therefore, that the Marine corporal behind the desk at the Marine Detachment, Pensacola Naval Air Station, imagined that he was dealing with your standard candy-ass second john who couldn’t find his ass with both hands.

  “Yes, sir?” the Marine corporal said, with exaggerated courtesy. “How may I be of assistance to the lieutenant, sir?”

  “They sent me over here for billeting, Corporal,” Stecker said, and laid a copy of his orders on the desk.

  The corporal read the orders, and then looked at Stecker, now more convinced than ever that his original assessment was correct.

  “Lieutenant,” he said tolerantly, “your orders say that you are to report to Aviation Training. This is the Marine detachment. We only billet permanent party.”

  “An officer wearing the stripes of a full commander told me to come here,” Stecker said. “Do you suppose he didn’t know what he was talking about?”

  The corporal looked at Stecker in surprise. It was not the sort of self-assured response he expected from a second lieutenant. The tables had been turned on him; he was being treated with tolerance.

  And then he saw the door swing open again behind the slight, boy-faced second john, and another Marine second lieutenant walked in. Taller, larger, and older-looking than the first one, but still—very obviously—a brand-new second john.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the corporal said to Stecker, then: “Can I help you, Lieutenant?”

  “I was sent here for billeting,” Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, said.

  “Be right with you,” the corporal said, then left his desk and went into the detachment commander’s officer.

  “Hello,” Pick said to Stecker. “My name is Pickering.”

  “How are you?” Stecker said, offering his hand. “Dick Stecker.”

  “Have you been getting the feeling that you, too, are unexpected around here?” Pickering asked. “Or, if expected, unwelcome.”

  “We are screwing up their system,” Stecker said. “I think what’s happened—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence as the corporal returned with a staff sergeant, who picked up the copy of Stecker’s orders and read them carefully. Then he raised his eyes to Pickering, who understood that he was being asked for a copy of his orders. He handed them over.