"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 rather 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 then 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.
Chapter Eight
(One)
U.S. Navy Air Station Pensacola, Florida 9 January 1942
Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stacker, USMC, was an eager-faced, slightly built young man of something less than medium height who looked even younger than his twenty-one years and who was wearing a uniform that looked ev
ery 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.
"You've been over to Aviation Training Reception?" the staff sergeant asked.
"And they sent us here," Stecker said.
"We only billet permanent party here, Lieutenant," the staff sergeant said.
"Far be it from me, a lowly second lieutenant," Stecker said, "aware as I am that there is nothing lower, or dumber, in the Corps, to suggest that either you or the commander who
sent me here doesn't know what he's talking about, Sergeant, but that would seem to the case, wouldn't you say?"
Pickering chuckled. Stecker looked at him and winked.
"Just a moment, please, sir," the staff sergeant said, and went back into the detachment commander's office. In a moment, a captain came out.
Pickering and Stecker came to attention. Pickering winced inwardly. He had met the captain before... unpleasantly, in the San Carlos Hotel. His name was Carstairs... Captain Mustache.
And obviously, from the way the captain looked at him, he remembered the incident, too.
"As you were," the captain said, and picked up the orders and glanced at them.
"The both of you were sent here from Aviation Reception?" the captain asked.
"Yes, sir," Pickering and Stecker said, together.
The captain looked for a number in a small, pamphlet-sized telephone book and dialed it up on the phone.
"Commander," he said, "this is Captain Carstairs at the Marine detachment. I have two second lieutenants here with orders for flight training who tell me that you sent them here for billeting."
Whatever the commander replied, it took most of a minute, after which Captain Carstairs said, "Aye, aye, sir," and hung up. Then he turned to the sergeant. "Put them somewhere, two to a room."
Finally he turned to them.
"Gentlemen," he said, "when you are settled, I would be grateful if you could spare me a few minutes of your valuable time. Say in forty-five minutes?"
"Aye, aye, sir," Stecker said, popping to attention. Pickering was a half second behind in following his lead.
Captain Carstairs walked out of the room.
The sergeant consulted a large board fixed to the wall. When Pickering looked at it, he saw it represented the assignment of rooms in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters.
"Put them in one-eleven-C," the sergeant ordered, and then he walked out of the room.
The corporal took a clipboard from a drawer in his desk and then said, "Please follow me, gentlemen."
They followed him out of the building over to what looked to be a brand-new, two-story frame barracks building. Inside he led them upstairs and down the corridor, stopping before a door.
He ceremoniously handed each of them a key.
"There is a dollar-and-a-quarter charge if you lose the key," he announced.
He waited for one of them to unlock the door, Stecker was the first to figure out what was expected of him.
Inside they found that the room was not finished; unpainted studs were exposed. Between them could be seen the tar-paper waterproofing and the electrical wiring. The floor was covered with Navy gray linoleum.
Otherwise, the place was furnished with two bunks, two desks, two upholstered armchairs, two side tables, and four lamps, one on each of the desks and side tables. A wash basin with a shelf and mirror shared one wall with a closet. A curtain, rather than a door, covered the closet entrance, but a real door led to a narrow room equipped with a water closet and a stall shower.
The corporal walked around the room, touching each piece of furniture as he announced, "One bunk, with mattress and pillow; one desk, six-drawer; one chair, wood, cloth-upholstered; one table, side, with drawer, and two lamps, reading, with bulb. There are two curtains on the closet, you each sign for one of them."
He handed Stecker the clipboard and a pencil. Stecker signed his name on the receipt for the room's furnishings and handed it back. The corporal then handed the clipboard to Pickering, who did the same.
The corporal nodded curtly at them and left them alone.
"What do you think?" Pickering asked, glancing around the room.
"I think I'm going to find someplace off base to live," Stecker said, "and leave you to wallow in all this luxury all by yourself."
"Can you do that?"
"I think I have figured out what's going on around here," Stecker said.
"Which is?"
"Let me ask you a question first," Stecker replied. "How come you're going to flight school?"
"I applied, and they sent me," Pickering said.
"You get passed over for first lieutenant?"
"Excuse me?"
"You're supposed to have two years' troop duty before they send you to flight school," Stecker said. "If you had two years' service, unless you really fucked up, you'd be a first john." .
"I was commissioned just after Thanksgiving," Pickering said.
"I was commissioned second January," Stecker said.
"Last week?"
"Right."
"Quantico?"
"Actually, at West Point," Stecker said.
"I thought West Point graduated in June?"
"Not this year," Stecker said. "They needed second lieutenants, so they commissioned us right after the Christmas leave. Six months early."
"I have no idea what this conversation is all about," Pickering confessed.
"We are discussing how and where we are going to live for the next six months," Stecker said.
"That implies there is an alternative to this," Pickering said, gesturing at the bare studs and the crowded room. "One that we can legally take advantage of."
"I think there is," Stecker said. "Would you care to hear my assessment of the situation? I have reconnoitered the area, and carefully
evaluated the enemy's probable intentions."
Pickering chuckled again. "You remind me of my buddy at Quantico," he said. "He knew his way around, too. He'd done a hitch as an enlisted man in China before they sent him to the Platoon Leader's course."
W E B Griffin - Corp 02 - Call to Arms Page 16
