They informed him that while they appreciated the offer of hospitality, they had finished their training and were about to leave Pensacola.
Then Second Lieutenants Pick Pickering and Dick Stecker walked to Pickering's car and got in. As Pickering pushed the starter button and got the Cadillac running, Stecker spoke:
"Even though I'm aware of the scriptural admonition to 'judge not, lest ye be judged,' why is it that I have the feeling that you dragged me over here more in the interests of your sinful lusts of the flesh than to offer thanks for your buddy coming through all right?"
"Fuck you, Dick," Pickering said, cheerfully.
"What made you think she'd be there? And if she had been, what makes you think she would have rushed into your arms?"
"I saw the picture of her father in the base newspaper. He's a vestryman. It was worth a shot."
"You're desperate, aren't you?" Stecker replied, half mockingly, half sympathetically.
"You're goddamn right I am. We're leaving here Tuesday."
"You're nuts, Pick," Stecker said, not unkindly.
"I'm in love, all right? People in love are allowed to be a little crazy."
"What you need is a piece of ass," Stecker said. "It has amazing curative powers for crazy people. Let's go back to the hotel and commit every sin-except worshipping graven images."
"Let's go sailing," Pickering said.
"Let's do what?"
"Sailing. Boats, sails. You have been on a boat?"
"How are we going to do that?"
"Trust me, my son," Pickering said solemnly. "Put thy faith in me, and I will work miracles."
Five minutes after they passed the Marine guard on the Pensacola Navy Air Station, Pickering turned off Navy Boulevard. Five hundred yards beyond he passed between two sandstone pillars.
"You did notice the sign?" Stecker asked, dryly.
"The one that said 'Pensacola Yacht Club'?"
"The one that said 'Members Only.'"
"Oh, ye of little faith," Pickering said.
"You really think she's going to be in here?"
"There was another story about her father," Pickering said, "in the Pensacola newspaper. In addition to being an admiral, he's the vice commodore here."
"Jesus, you are desperate."
"It also said they serve a buffet brunch, starting at ten," Pickering said. "Admirals have to eat, just like human beings. Maybe he brought his daughter with him."
"And what if he did? Presuming we don't get thrown out on our asses, what are you going to do, just walk up and say, 'Hi, there'?"
"Why not?" Pickering said, smiling at Stecker as he parked the car and pulled the emergency brake on.
A portly, suntanned man in a blue blazer with an embroidered patch on the pocket walked up to them as they entered the lobby of the yacht club.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he said. "Meeting someone?"
"Gee," Stecker said, under his breath, "we lasted a whole ten seconds before we got caught."
"No, we thought we'd try the buffet," Pickering said.
The man in the blazer looked uncomfortable, making Stecker think that he disliked throwing servicemen out of his yacht club, even if that was precisely what he was about to do.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I'm afraid this is a private club-"
"But you are affiliated with the American Yachting Association?" Pickering asked, as he took out his wallet.
"Yes, of course," the man said.
Pickering searched through the wallet and came up with a battered card and handed it over.
"Welcome to the Pensacola Yacht Club, Mr. Pickering," the man said, smiling, and handing him the card back. "I won't have to ask, will I, what brings you into our waters?"
"Our Uncle Samuel," Pickering said.
"Well, let me show you to the dining room," the man said. "If you don't think it's too early, the first drink is traditionally on me club."
"How nice," Pickering said.
The corridor from the lobby to the dining room was lined with trophy cases and framed photographs.
"Well, there's a familiar face," Pickering said, pleased, pointing to a photograph of a large sailboat with its crew. They were standing along the port side, hanging on to the rigging, and they were obviously delighted with themselves.
A thin strip of typewritten legend on the photograph said, "FAT CHANCE, 1st Place, Wilson Cup, San Francisco-Hawaii 1939."
"That was the 'thirty-nine Wilson Cup," the man from the yacht club said. "Jack Glenn, one of our members, was on her."
"Fat Jack," Pickering said. "But please note that splendid sailor about to fall off the bowsprit."
Stecker looked. It was Pickering, as obviously drunk as he was delighted with himself, holding on firmly to the bowsprit rigging.
"That's you," Stecker accused.
"Indeed," Pickering said.
From the look on the man from the yacht club, Stecker decided, the Pensacola Yacht Club was theirs.
"God is in his heaven," Pickering said solemnly. "Prayer pays. All is right with the world."
"What the hell?" Stecker asked, and then looked where Pickering was looking.
A rear admiral, a woman obviously his wife, and Martha Sayre Culhane were coming down the corridor.
"Well, hello, there," Mrs. Sayre said, offering her hand to Pickering. "It's nice to see you again, Lieutenant. You're a sailor, too?"
"Quite a sailor, Mrs. Sayre," the man from the yacht club said. He pointed to the photograph. "He was on the Fat Chance with Jack Glenn."
"Good morning, Martha," Pickering said.
"Hello, Pick," Martha said.
She did not seem nearly as glad to see Pickering as Pick was to see her.
"Since no one seems to be about to introduce us, gentlemen," Admiral Sayre said, "I'll introduce myself. I'm Admiral Sayre."
"How do you do, sir?" Pickering said politely.
"Jim, this is Lieutenant Pickering," Mrs. Sayre said. "I'm afraid I don't know this-"
"Stecker, ma'am," Stecker said. "Dick Stecker."
"We're here for the brunch," Mrs. Sayre said. "Why don't you join us?"
"We wouldn't want to intrude," Stecker said.
"That's very kind, thank you very much, we'd love to," Pickering said.
"I'd like to thank you for doing this, Dick," Mrs. Jeanne Sayre said to Stecker. "Ma'am?" Stecker asked. They were in the cabin of the Martha 111, a twenty-eight-foot cruising sailer, now two miles offshore, and heeled twenty degrees from the vertical in nasty choppy seas. Jeanne Sayre had boiled water for tea on a small stove. Stecker had welcomed the opportunity to get out of the spray by helping her. When he had come below, Martha was with her father in the cockpit, and Pick was way up front, just behind what Stecker had earlier learned (looking at the photo in the yacht club) was the "bowsprit."
"I'm sure you and Pick had other plans for this afternoon," Jeanne Sayre said.
"This is fine," he said. "I'm glad to be here."
"Even though you're going to have to have your uniform cleaned, if it's not ruined, not to mention buying shoes, which have already been ruined?" she asked, smiling tolerantly.
"I've never had a chance to do something like this before," Stecker said.
"My husband too rarely gets the chance to do anything like this," Jeanne Sayre said. "He really works too hard, and he's reluctant-he's really a nice guy-to ask his aides to 'volunteer' I saw his eyes light up when he heard Pick was a real sailor. I didn't have the heart to kick him under the table when he asked if anybody would like a little sail."
"Pick's having a fine time," Stecker said, smiling.
He'd be having a much better time, of course, if it wasn't for you, the admiral, and me; and it was just him and your well-stacked daughter sailing off into the sunset on this goddamned little boat.
The boat at the moment started to change direction. Stecker's eyes reflected his concern.
"We're turning," she said. "I guess my husband decided we're far enough offs
hore."
The Martha III came to a vertical position, and then started heeling in the other direction.
"Man overboard!" a male voice, obviously the admiral's, cried.
For a moment, Stecker thought it was some sort of joke in bad taste, but then he saw the look on Mrs. Sayre's face, and knew it was no joke. Obviously, Pick, playing Viking up front, had lost his footing and gone into the water. There was a quick sense of amusement-serves the bastard right-quickly replaced by a feeling of concern. The water out there was
choppy. People drowned when they fell off boats, particularly into choppy water.
He followed Jeanne Sayre as she went quickly to the cockpit. He looked forward. Pick hadn't gone overboard. He was halfway between the bow and the cockpit. And he had taken his blouse off.
Pick ripped a circular life preserver free and threw it over the side; and then, in almost a continuous motion, he made a quick running dive over the side. He still had his socks on, Stecker saw, but he had removed his shoes.
Stecker looked over the stern. Surprisingly far behind the boat, he saw Martha Sayre Culhane's head bobbing in the water, held up by an orange life preserver.
Mrs. Sayre had taken her husband's position at the wheel, and while she watched both her husband (who was lowering the mainsail) and her daughter behind her in the water, she was trying to start the gasoline auxiliary engine.
The moment it burst into life, Admiral Sayre lowered the sail all the way.
"Bring her around!" he ordered, and then pushed past Stecker to get a boat hook from the cabin.
Stecker felt both useless and absurd.
He searched the water and found first Martha and then Pickering. Pickering was swimming with sure, powerful strokes to Martha, towing the life ring behind him on its line.
It seemed to take a very long time for the Martha III to turn, but once she was through the turn, she seemed to pick up speed. When Stecker saw Martha again, Pick was beside her in the water.
It took three minutes before the Martha III reached them. Mrs. Sayre expertly stopped the boat beside them, and then Stecker and Admiral Sayre hauled them in, first Martha, and then Pickering. They were blue-lipped and shivering.
"Take them below, and get them out of their clothes," Admiral Sayre said. "There's still some blankets aboard?"
"Yes," his wife said.
The admiral looked around the surface of the water, located a channel marker, and pointed it out to Stecker.
"Make for that," he ordered. "I'll relieve you in a minute."
"Aye, aye, sir," Stecker said, obediently. And for the first time in his life he took the conn of a vessel underway.
When he went to the cabin, Admiral Sayre-seeing that his wife had already stripped their daughter of her dress and was working on her slip-faced Pickering aft before he ordered him out of his wet doming. Pick stripped to his underwear, and then Admiral Sayre wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
"I'll hang your pants and shirt from the rigging. You'll look like hell, but it will at least be dry," the admiral said.
"Thank you, sir," Pick said.
"Why the hell did you go over the side?" the admiral demanded.
"I thought maybe she was hurt," Pick said.
"Well, I'm grateful," the admiral said. He looked down the cabin. "You all right, honey?" he asked.
"A little wet," Martha said.
"I'll do what I can to dry your clothes," her father said. "Jeanne, you go topside and take the helm."
"Aye, aye, Admiral, sir," his wife replied, dryly sarcastic.
Now wrapped, Martha and Pick looked at each other across the cabin.
And then Pick crossed the cabin to her.
"You want to tell me what that was all about?" Martha asked.
"If I had a bicycle, I would have ridden it no hands," Pick said.
She walked past him to the ladder to the cockpit, and turned and walked in the other direction.
"It was a dumb thing to do," Martha said. "You weren't even wearing a life jacket. You could have drowned, you damn fool."
"So could you have," Pick said slowly. "And if you were going to drown, I wanted to drown with you."
"Jesus," she said. And she looked at him. "You're crazy."
"Just in love," he said.
"My God, you are crazy," she said.
"Maybe," Pick said. "But that's the way it is. And this was my last chance. We're leaving Tuesday."
"Jim Carstairs told me," Martha said, and then: "Oh, Pick, what are you doing to me?" she asked, very softly.
"Nothing," he said. "What I would like to do is put my arms around you and never let you go."
Her hand came out from under her blanket and touched his face. His hand came out and touched hers, and then his arms went around her, as he buried his face in her neck.
This served to dislodge the blankets covering the upper portions of their bodies. Martha had removed her brassiere, and was wearing only her underpants. As if with a mind of its own, Pick's hand found her breast and closed over it.
"My God!" she whispered, taking her mouth from his a long, long moment later. "My parents!"
They retrieved their blankets.
When Admiral Sayre came into the cabin no more than a minute later, they were on opposite sides of the cabin, Martha sitting down, Pick leaning against a locker.
But maybe it wasn't necessary. They had color in their faces again. Martha's face, in fact, was so red that she could have been blushing.
"You two all right?"
"Yes," Martha said.
"Couldn't be better, sir," Pick Pickering said.
Postscript
Kwajalein Island 16 October 1942
The following is factual. It is taken from "Record of Proceedings of a Military Commission convened on April 16, 1946, at United States Fleet, Commander Marianas, Guam, Marianas Islands," under the authority of Rear Admiral C. A. Pownall, USN, the Commander, Marianas Area, to deal with the cases of Vice Admiral Koso Abe, Captain Yoshio Obara, and Lieutenant Commander Hisakichi Naiki, all of the Imperial Japanese Navy:
Early in October, a Lieutenant Commander Okada, who was a staff officer of the Central Japanese Headquarters, visited Kwajalein in connection with an inspection of Japanese defense fortifications. While he was there, Vice Admiral Abe, Kwajalein commander, solicited Commander Okada's assistance in securing transportation to Japan of nine prisoners of war, Marine enlisted then who had been captured following the Makin Island operation and brought to Kwajalein. The Imperial Japanese Navy had been unable, or unwilling, so far to divert a vessel to transport the prisoners.
Commander Okada replied to Vice Admiral Abe that "from now on, it would not be necessary to transport prisoners to Japan; from now on, they would be disposed of on the island [Kwajalein]" or words to that effect.
On October 11, 1942, Vice Admiral Abe delegated the responsibility of disposing of the prisoners to the Commanding Officer, 61st Naval Guard Unit, Imperial Japanese Navy, Captain Yoshio Obara, IJN, a career naval officer and a 1915 graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. The Marine prisoners of war were then being held by the 61st Naval Guard unit.
Vice Admiral Abe's orders to Captain Obara specified that the executioners, as a matter of courtesy to the prisoners of war, hold the grade of warrant officer or above.
There was a pool of approximately forty warrant officers (in addition to officers of senior grade), none of whom was initially willing to volunteer for the duty. When prevailed upon by Captain Obara and Lieutenant Commander Naiki, however, three warrant officers stepped forward, as did an enlisted man, who would serve as "pistoleer."
Lieutenant Commander Naiki proposed to dispose of the Marine prisoners on October 16, which was the Yasakuni Shrine Festival, a Japanese holiday honoring departed heroes. This proposal received the concurrence of Captain Obara and Vice Admiral Abe.
A site was selected and prepared on the southwestern part of the island.
Captain Obara ordered that the evenin
g meal of October IS, 1942 for the prisoners include beer and sweet cakes.
On October 16, the Marine prisoners were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind them. They were moved from their place of confinement to a holding area near the disposal site and held there until Vice Admiral Abe and Captain Obara arrived, in full dress uniform, by car from activities in connection with the Yasakuni Shrine Festival.
W E B Griffin - Corp 02 - Call to Arms Page 43
