September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I kept shooting, concentrating on the fishermen with the most hate in their faces.

  I never dropped any bombs on your family.

  Something big and black whisked by, just over their heads, a dark Lincoln motorcar at full speed.

  The Lincoln, in fact a helicopter painted black, stopped abruptly and turned around.

  “Gyrenes,” Tom said casually. “That’s one of their Black Hughs—Huey painted black. No one seems to know what they do with them.”

  It didn’t take the Marines in the copter long to analyze the situation. They turned again to head south.

  Abandoned.

  The copter banked again and raced toward us and the fishing boats. Ah, so they hadn’t betrayed us. They flew in over us and fired automatic weapons on the boats, not hitting anyone, but scaring the life out of them. The fishing boats turned tail and ran. The Black Hugh trailed after them, like a dog dismissing a bunch of tomcats he had found in his master’s front yard.

  Then it banked back in our direction and hovered above us, maybe fifty feet in the air. The door opened and an American glanced down. He waved and grinned, and then went back into the cabin.

  “Third Marines, not the Seventh Cavalry,” Tom said exuberantly. “It must have been the rosary.”

  Rosary, Typhoon Rosie, Rosemarie my wife.

  I did the obvious thing for Chuck O’Malley to do. I began to sing.

  The Marine appeared again at the door and threw a rope ladder down at us.

  I stopped singing.

  “What’s that for?”

  “To climb up to their craft. You first, Chuck. Captain is the last to leave the ship.”

  The ladder swayed back and forth in the downdrafts created by the copter’s engines. No way, no way in the world I would climb up that thing. I couldn’t even catch it.

  Commander McCarty, who was at least a half foot taller than me, snagged it on its second pass over us and handed it to me.

  “Up you go, Chuck. They’ll be very careful.”

  Absolutely not, no way, out of the question.

  So I thought of my wife, and, singing about Rosemarie my love, I began to pull myself up the ladder.

  I’m sure I looked ridiculous—an all-purpose coward hanging on for dear life to a problematic ladder which now spun back and forth over the Pacific Ocean. The gyrene in the doorway grinned at my efforts. As well he might.

  How many times did I think I was going to fall as I pulled myself up? Only once, but it lasted the whole trip up. I was astonishingly near the Marine, who was holding his hand out to me.

  Then the wind caught us again and swung me around toward the front of the vehicle—as Tom had called it.

  I knew I was going to plunge into the ocean. What an ignominious end to Charles Cronin O’Malley!

  Then the rope swung back toward the door. I must have scurried up a couple of bars, because this time I was right at the door. The kid, no older than Kevin, reached out and pulled me into the darkness of the vehicle. We both fell on the floor.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir,” I said with an attempt to salute.

  “Welcome aboard!”

  He was laughing, as were the other two crew members.

  “You never did this before, sir?” the kid asked as he picked me up.

  “Elderly civilian,” I said.

  “You were great,” he lied. Another Chuck legend was emerging.

  “Navy plane?” he asked me.

  “Kittyhawk!”

  “Good thing,” the pilot said over his shoulder. “If you were Air Force, we might have to throw you back in.” More general laughter.

  “You better sit down and fasten your seat belt, sir,” my rescuer said, “while we bring up the other personnel. Name?”

  “He’s Commander Thomas Joseph McCarty, CO of VF 111.”

  “Big catch,” he said, tossing the ladder back down to the raft. “Now we can’t throw you back in. I meant your name.”

  “O’Malley, Charles C., Staff Sergeant First Constabulary, Army of the United States. Retired.”

  He thought that was funny too.

  Tom scurried up the ladder with ease and composure. I got a picture of his grinning face just as it appeared

  “Your vehicle arrived just in time,” he said to the pilot, after he was directed to the seat next to him.

  “Glad to be a help, SIR. Semper Fidelis, you know.”

  “Roger that … Can you take us back to the Kittyhawk?”

  “Negative on that, SIR. Our base is Tonsunhut as quickly as we can. That typhoon is moving more rapidly than anyone expected that it would.”

  “Typhoon Rosie,” I murmured

  “Yes, SIR.”

  “You were coming from North to South,” Tom McCarty said.

  “Were we, SIR?”

  Black Hugh indeed.

  “Do you gentlemen have names?”

  “No, SIR.”

  He heard my camera click and turned around quickly.

  “Sorry, Captain O’Malley, SIR. No photos please.”

  I told him that I was a Staff Sergeant at best.

  “You want the film?”

  “No, SIR … Please refrain from taking any more till we are on the ground at Tonsunhut.”

  “Okay,” I said, since I didn’t know how a putative Captain was supposed to address a pilot with no name.

  Then I remembered.

  “Sorry I didn’t ask permission first, son.”

  “No problem, SIR. Please refrain from taking any more till we are on the ground at Tonsunhut.”

  I thereupon did the sensible thing, given all my ailments. I curled up and went to sleep. I dreamed, naturally, of my poor, long-suffering wife.

  Then suddenly we were on the ground. Tom was already out of the plane, uh aircraft.

  “Thanks for the lift, son,” I said as I took a very careful step to the ground. “Great limo service.”

  They waited till we were safely away from the rotor blades and then quickly left the ground and raced toward the control tower on the other side of the base.

  “Spooks,” I said.

  “Super spooks. It may not be as secret as they would like to make it. Still they are first rate Marines. I’ll see that the word gets to their CO.”

  “Where are we?”

  “That building across the street is the headquarters of the naval attaché here. It’s a job which requires no work at all. Glen Edmonds, one of my classmates, is in charge. He is, ah, a unique character.”

  “So long as he doesn’t tell General Westmorland that I’m back in country.”

  “No danger of that.”

  Commander Edmonds, in a tailor-made white navy dress uniform—with epaulets—greeted us at the door of the house. He was a big, handsome guy with blond hair that was a little too long for the Navy rules, a crinkling smile, and a touch of what my mother the good April would have called the gombeen man about him.

  “Welcome to both of you,” he saluted us. “Great to have you both aboard … Tom, I figured that I had to really dress up to greet you. You’re looking great, none the worse for wear. I’ll try to make you feel at home here until Typhoon Rosie blows through … And Dr. O’Malley, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Actually we have a couple of your volumes in the house. Nice to have a Pulitzer prizewinner aboard … You sure have been raising a lot of hell around here.”

  “Just so long as General Westmorland doesn’t know I’m back.”

  “The General and I are not on speaking terms, I regret to say.”

  We were shown to our rooms by a tiny Vietnamese girl who spoke excellent English.

  “Get yourselves cleaned up, have a little rest, and then we’ll have a bit to eat and talk about Typhoon Rosie.”

  “Can we get a call to the United States from here?” I asked.

  “Usually, but not just now with this typhoon messing up communications. We’ll try to get a line, however.”

  The house, a big, luxurious remnant of French colonialism, complet
e with a gallery running around both floors, was furnished, not to say overfurnished, with expensive modern furniture.

  “Glen,” Tom whispered, “was the top of our class. He’s a genius and an operator. Too bright, too clever, too ingenious to please the big brass. They may make him an admiral someday and then retire him the next day. In the meantime they let him do pretty much what he wants, because he’s going to do it anyway. You get a picture of this place?”

  “Navy money?”

  “Not a penny of it, I’m sure. He’s too smart to steal. He does very little around here. But what he does he does well. So both the Air Force and the Navy brass are content to have him here. At least they know where he is … And by the way, Chuck, thank you for leading the rosary. I’m sure it helped.”

  “Minimally, it didn’t hurt.”

  I woke up about nine-thirty, tried to figure out where I was and why. Then I realized I was hungry and that Commander Edmonds had promised us food.

  I looked in the closet. Sure enough. A white tropical-weight suit, just my size.

  I showered again, put lotion on my face, dressed and ambled downstairs and into the parlor in which the president of France must have stayed if ever he came out here. A stunning woman in a white pantsuit, expensive, put aside a coffee table book, stood up with graceful ease, and extended her hand.

  “Squadron leader Emily Dawson, Dr. O’Malley, I do liaison work for our people here. Glen is trying to get through to lines in America,” she said in a remote approximation of English that had to be Australian. “I must say, this is a fascinating book.”

  It was my Bamberg collection.

  “I was a lot younger then.”

  Chucky is not very good at first encounters with lovely and sexy women. He needs time to put his masks on.

  Commander Edmonds, still in his dress whites, rushed in. “I think we are getting through to your house, Dr. O’Malley. Would you pass on this number to your wife so she can call Carrie, Tom’s wife? We couldn’t get their line at Miramar.”

  “O’Malley residence,” you said with your usual cool self-possession.

  “That’s where I live!”

  “Chucky, where are you?”

  “In a gorgeous house being waited on by beautiful women.”

  “You’re supposed to be missing in action!”

  “I assure you, my love, that I was never missing. I knew where I was all the time.”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Just had a great nap and am preparing for a huge supper. The noise you hear in the background is the wind from Typhoon Rosie, which is just coming through.”

  “I’m sure it will make a lot of noise,” you said dryly. “Regardless … You are absolutely, positively certain that you’re not missing?”

  “How can I be missing if you’re talking to me on the phone?”

  You thought it over and admitted, “That’s a good point. And you’re not injured or hurt or anything?”

  “Too much sun, nothing more.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that you should wear a cap when you go out!”

  “Actually I had one, but it went down with the plane, uh, aircraft … Rosemarie, will you call this number at Miramar, California, talk to Mrs. Carrie McCarty, and tell her that her husband Tom is not missing either, no matter what the Navy says. He will be in touch with her as soon as we can get a line through. Your typhoon namesake is raising hell with communications.”

  “Okay … We were afraid you were out on the ocean in the typhoon.”

  “Would I do anything that stupid?”

  “I wouldn’t bet against it … You’re on dry land now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you’re all right?”

  “Just fine.”

  “I love you, Chucky.”

  “I love you too …”

  And then the connection was cut.

  You didn’t seem too angry at me. In fact you didn’t seem angry at all. However, I must be careful not to push my luck when I return to Chicago.

  The cuisine that night was Vietnamese French, whatever that is. My appetite thoroughly restored I ate everything in sight. I limited my champagne to three glasses because I will never forget the humiliation of our wedding night. Never having tasted champagne before, I loved it and drank a lot more than three glasses. When it came time to drive to our wedding retreat at the Lake, I was thoroughly soused. Rosemarie drove us up there and then put me to bed. No consummation that night. You’d think a woman would have enough respect for her husband not to tell everyone about it.

  So my drinking since then has been limited to an occasional glass of wine at dinner. However, here in the tropics, in a Joseph Conrad atmosphere, with no place to go for a couple of days, I thought I could renew my acquaintance with sparkling French wine. Glen Edmonds’s champagne was much better than what we had served at the wedding.

  Glen and Tom talked about their days at Annapolis. Tom observed that he would retire after he was made Captain and had twenty years of pension credit. No more sea duty. Glen said he’d hang around until they were forced to give him an Admiral’s star. The subject then turned to my work. Emily asked many questions about the German book which I think I answered intelligently. Like everyone else, she was fascinated by Brigita and Trudi.

  “Is one of them your wife now? Well, this one can’t be because you said she waited for her husband till he finally came home.”

  “I married the girl down the street after I came home. Let me see, I have a picture of her in my wallet, not too damaged by the water of the South China Sea.”

  I showed them, of course, the picture of my wife and daughter in their swimsuits. There were a number of highly favorable comments, which I will not repeat.

  Well, Emily did say something about how sexy you were. I said something like when Rosemarie is in the room all the men and some of the women, fantasize about taking her clothes off.

  Then I probably—and you must remember I had several glasses of champagne—made a remark which conveyed something to the effect that every time I undressed my wife it was like the wedding night all over again.

  “No wonder you were in such a rush to get through to her!” Glen observed.

  “Was she angry at you for being lost at sea?” Emily wondered.

  “Didn’t seem to be.”

  That was the truth, but I didn’t quite understand why.

  They listened with rapt interest to my story of the German pilot who ran a photo shop.

  “He really flew one of those ME 262 planes?” Glen asked.

  “First operational jet fighter. Scared the hell out of us. If Hitler had put more money into it, things might have been very different.”

  “What did it look like?” Emily asked.

  Was she his mistress? I wondered. Probably, but it was hard to tell for sure.

  “Kind of like a traditional fighter aircraft (I didn’t say “plane” despite the champagne) with two jet engines, one under either wing. Not much aerodynamically but unbelievably fast. We didn’t have anything like it till we developed the Saberjet.”

  After dinner we sipped cognac (only one snifter for Chucky). Emily played the piano. It will come as a surprise to no one that I began to sing. I was sensational.

  I slept well all night long. I can’t remember quite who was in my dreams.

  Rosie, the typhoon that is, tore at Tonsunhut the next two days. Tom and I continued to enjoy lives of well-deserved luxury. Finally, when the tropic sun broke through the clouds Glen, now in spotless Navy khaki, dashed in to announce that he had secured passage for both of us—a Marine courier plane would take Tom to Subic and an American Airlines commercial plane would bring me to Hawaii, where I would rendezvous with American 841 from Fiji to go on to Chicago.

  I took pictures of everyone. Tom and I promised that we’d meet again with our wives to celebrate our own little comic St. Crispin’s Day. Emily hugged me and advised me to tell my wife that she was a lucky woma
n.

  Which, of course, I would never do.

  “We’d better move now,” Glen urged us. “The Air Force MPs are looking for you two.”

  “Why?”

  “The Navy thinks you are both still missing in action.”

  As we drove down the little street in front of Glen’s mansion, a jeep with MPs in it turned the corner and rolled up to it.

  “Beat them!” Glen exulted.

  We dropped Tom first at the Marine courier plane, one of whose propjet engines was already turning over. My 707 was ready to leave too. The door was shut as soon as I boarded. I barely had time to fasten my seat belt (in first-class, by myself, and with three cabin attendants to take care of me) before the aircraft, uh, plane, began to move out toward the runway. I saw an Air Force MP jeep pull up to the terminal building just as we took off.

  Indeed we had beaten them.

  I had no idea why it was necessary to beat them. I figured I shouldn’t ask. It was a semicomic ending to a journey into tragedy.

  It’s been a long ride. I’ve spent it working on this final tape, which I will give you when I return. I took time off intermittently to eat, drink wine, and take pictures of the cabin attendants.

  Even now as we vector over Lake Michigan and Chicago glows in the rising sun, it seems that none of these things ever happened.

  15

  Those who know more about these things than I do tell me that when a man comes home from war or from a great adventure or from grave danger to a woman he has not screwed for a long time, he wants instant sexual gratification. He thinks, they say, he’s earned it because he has endured so much. No messing around. Right now!

  Insofar as I expected anything from my husband on his triumphal return I figured it would be that. Silly me. All these years with Chucky Ducky and I didn’t really know him yet.

  Anyway we had a solemn high greeting for him at the airport—all the O‘Malleys and their clan: the Antonellis and the Rizzos and the McCormacks and the Conways and all their children too, at least twenty of them counting babes in arms. Everyone brought their musical instruments too. The elder O’Malleys and Father Ed were there for the sake of gravitas. We also brought along a six-man contingent of the Shannon Rovers Irish War Pipe Band (with their drummers of course), who had played at our wedding.