“And you acquired the jeep how, exactly?”
“Army pukes. They think they own the place. Leave the keys in their jeeps when they go to our O-club. Who the hell would steal a jeep, right? Couldn’t walk so well, so I drove. Here, this one’s for you. Didn’t spill a drop, even if I did drive on the grass a coupla times.”
“Mick,” she began.
“Beast,” he said. “Hate Mick. My CO calls me Mick. I’m gonna get fired, I think. Again. Not a team player, is what they’ve been saying. Even though I’m an ace. Twice over, in fact. Twelve Nips, gone to Jesus. Or Buddha, maybe. Yeah, Buddha. He’s the one likes Japs. Take your mai tai, for Chrissakes, my arm’s getting tired.”
She took the fragrant drink and set it down on the arm of her chair.
“An ace means you’ve shot down five enemy planes, yes? I seriously doubt they’d fire a pilot who’d managed that.”
“Twice,” he said, followed by a burp. “Damned rum. I can feel the hangover coming.”
“So maybe stop?”
He looked at what was left of his drink. “Stop? I never stop. Never. Isn’t a woman in the world who’s ever told me stop, stop.” He leered at her. “Not you either, Miss Glory of the heavenly breasts, legs—”
“Stop,” she said. “There—now it’s happened. Look at me.”
“All I want to do,” he mumbled. “Look at you.”
She thrust her left hand into his face. “See this ring?”
“Oh, God,” he said. “That’s your miniature?”
“Yes, it is, Mick. Still there, too. So you can quit with the masher routine. Why are you going to get fired?”
He finished his mai tai and threw the glass over his shoulder into the shrubbery.
“I lost two wingmen. Skipper says it’s my fault. Says I’m a glory hound.” He looked over at her for a moment and tried to leer. “He has no idea, actually,” he said.
“How do you ‘lose’ a wingman?”
“Wingmen,” he said. “Two of ’em. It’s all the rage these days. No more solo fighting. You go up in pairs. One guy’s the shooter, the other guy’s the wingman. Shooter’s job is to kill the Jap. Wingman’s job is to protect the shooter from all the Jap’s buddies. Statistics. Now it’s all about statistics.”
“I thought you were a bomber pilot?”
“I used to was,” he said. “Not much to bomb these days, so I transitioned to fighters. Big mistake. These people take everything seriously.”
“I take it you were always the shooter?”
“Oh, hell yes,” he said. “You gonna drink that?”
“No, I’m not, and neither are you.” She poured the drink into the bushes.
“Hey,” he said. “I paid good money for that hooch.”
“Too bad,” she said. “You’ve had quite enough.”
He leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh. He was enormous, she thought. She wondered how he fit into a cockpit.
“You’re supposed to talk, see?” he said. “You’re supposed to be a team. You always let your wingman know what you’re gonna do, so he can cover you.”
He took in a long breath and let it out. The scent of rum filled the air. “But that’s not me, okay? I’m a lone wolf. I do crazy shit in the air. Japs, they go by their rules, just like all our fighter jocks these days. Execute the approved doctrine. I show up, start my crazy-Beast shit, poor rigid bastards can’t figure out what’s happening, and then I smoke ’em.”
“How did this do in your wingman?”
“Wingmen,” he said again. “Two of ’em. Rookies, that’s how they start, flying wing on the more experienced guys. Show ’em how it’s done, okay?”
She nodded.
“Like I said, I do crazy shit. Drop my gear in the middle of a dogfight. Turn upside down. Go head-to-head. Nips can’t believe what they’re seeing. Then I start shooting. Hell, it’s not hard. Word is, they lost most of their best carrier guys at Midway. These land-based Japs are mostly all nuggets now. But it takes all my concentration. Can’t be worrying about a goddamned wingman.”
“So, what—they get left behind in the middle of one of your stunts? And then the Japs gang up on the rookie?”
He gave her a surprised look. “Yeah, babycakes, that’s exactly what happened. Twice, for my sins. Jesus, you’re too beautiful for words.”
“Mick,” she said, “your Irish is showing. This is the rum talking.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “I’ve carried the torch for you since boat school, ever since, well, you know. Ever since Tommy, too.” He put up a hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Tommy was the best. Best man, got the best girl. Okay. But that doesn’t mean a man can’t dream.”
“You’re out of bounds here, Mick. You need to get back to the ship, sleep it off. We’ll blame it all on the booze. Then we’ll forget about it.”
He seemed to relax into the chair, his huge frame going soft, his knees spread wide, and his hands hanging down. She was surprised to see a defeated expression creep over his face.
“I’m a case, Glory,” he said quietly. “I think I hit my peak at the Army-Navy game, first-class year. After that, I’ve been a professional fuckup. If the war hadn’t come along they’d have boarded my ass out a long time ago. Midway was my best day as a pilot. Now they want to send me to the amphibs. Backwater Navy. No more fleet carrier ops. All these big-deck skippers are on the make, heavy duty. No place, no time for a killer-diller like me, ace or no ace.”
“We all do our part, Mick,” she said gently. “You guys out there in WestPac, pushing the Japs back. Back here we do twelve on, twelve off, day in, day out, on this phony paradise island, putting the pieces back together. One day, we’re going to win, and then what?”
“Fucked if I know,” he said, “but I actually dread the thought of that. Peacetime? Guy like me? I’ll be lost. No, I’m gonna go out in a blaze of—hah—Glory!”
She smiled at him then, and he grinned back, removing the past decade from his face. She suddenly realized that that was what he’d come for.
“Marry me,” he said.
“What for?” she asked.
“Because I lo-o-o-o-ve you,” he cooed.
“Sure you do.”
“I do, I really do.”
“You want to marry me?”
“Yep.”
“Then give up booze, stay away from O-clubs, hew to the straight and narrow path of righteousness, and become a model naval officer.”
“Jee-sus, Glory,” he complained. “You sound like my wife already!”
They both laughed, and suddenly it was okay between them.
“You know who really does want to marry you, don’t you?” he asked.
“He drive a destroyer?”
“He does indeed. And he would give up the booze, hew to whatever the hell that was, and do anything else you asked. Brother Marshall’s been in love with you from the very beginning.”
“I know,” she said.
“But.”
“Yeah, but,” she said, wishing just now that she hadn’t thrown the mai tai into the bushes. “Let me try to put it all into words.”
“I’m all ears,” he said. “No, I guess that’s Beauty’s line.”
“You approach women like a caveman. Me hero, you wo-man. On your back, wo-man. Beauty? He stands off in the corner, the perfect gentleman, his heart on his sleeve, waiting for a woman to recognize that golden heart, right over there.”
“And Tommy?”
“Bastard.”
“He won the day, Glory. Only fair.”
“Tommy was the smart one. He never did make advances. He never put his arm around my shoulder and his hand on my backside. He just took my hand one day and said, ‘Come with me.’”
“Don’t say backside,” he said. “Say derriere. God, I love that word. The French know a thing or two.”
“I was talking about your hand, Beast.”
“That one doesn’t work so good anymore,” he said, holding up the black-gloved
right hand. “This one, however…”
“Mick,” she said.
“Glory Hawthorne,” he said.
“Glory Hawthorne Lewis,” she said.
“Not anymore.”
“Forever, Mick. Forever.”
He stared at her, and she saw a longing, a desperate longing. She would never have expected that, not from him. It startled her, and then aroused her, for the first time since that terrible day. She clamped down on that feeling, immediately.
“I have surgery at seven,” she said. “Time for you to go home.”
“Home.”
“Let me call you a taxi. Leave the stolen jeep. The shore patrol is probably already looking for it.”
“Glory, Glory, Glory. It must be hard being you.”
“Hard?”
“All these men, pressing in. Desiring you, lusting after you, loving you, approaching you, and lingering when nothing happens.”
“It happened once, Beast,” she said. “That was enough.”
“Never.”
“Always.”
He puffed out a breath. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I tried.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I’m going to die out there, you know that?”
“I hope not.”
“One way or another, I will. When I get into that airplane, strap in, taxi up to the midships hold line, and then give it full military power, release the brakes, gun that bastard down the centerline and right off the bow, dip down a little, scare the bridge while I kiss those green waves with the landing gear, that’s when I’m alive, Glory. Really alive.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“You let me love you,” he said. “You’ll get the picture soon enough.”
There was no answering that, she thought.
“Okay,” he said, after a moment. “I guess I’m officially a pumpkin.”
“Good night, Beastie McCarty. Fly low and fast, now.”
“Keep me in mind, beautiful lady. And remember, one Roman candle trumps a hundred sparklers.”
* * *
Beast walked away from the nurses’ quarters on unsteady legs, which he immediately attributed to having been at sea for a long time. Couldn’t be the booze, because he still needed another drink. When he got to the bar at the O-club, he found the staff putting chairs up on the tables. He sat down at the bar and ordered another mai tai.
“Sorry, boss,” the bartender said. “We closing up now.”
“You can make one more,” Mick said. “I know you’ve got them all premixed. Just add the rum, and I’ll be quiet.”
The bartender was a large Samoan, with a placid and friendly face. “No can do, boss,” he said. “I’ve closed out for the night. You’ve had plenty. Lemme call you a taxi.”
“I don’t want a fucking taxi,” Mick snarled. “I need another drink.”
The bartender just shook his head and moved away. The guys stacking chairs out on the floor were watching but not alarmed. They’d seen this a hundred times before. Tonight, though, when the bartender turned around, he found Mick behind the bar, rooting around for the mai tai mix.
“Hey!” the bartender shouted when Mick, who couldn’t find what he was looking for, began sweeping bottles onto the floor with a loud crash. The cleaning crew stopped working. There was entertainment.
“Stay out of my way,” Mick said. “You won’t make me a drink, I’ll do it myself.”
The bartender, who was as wide as Mick was tall, sized him up for a minute, then shrugged. “Hey, Benny,” he called across the room. “Call the HASP.”
Mick ignored him, poured a large amount of rum into a glass, added some mix, and then walked over to a table in the corner and sat down. Five minutes later, the Hawaiian Armed Services Police arrived in two of their distinctive jeeps. Four of them came into the bar area. One was an Army officer, the other three Navy enlisted. The officer was a diminutive, bespectacled first lieutenant who came up to Mick’s shoulders; he was wearing Army khakis and highly polished boots and sported a Colt .45 on a pristine white holster belt. The three sailors were all large, strong men. They wore plastic helmets and pressed dungarees with white leggings and carried batons in their gloved hands.
The officer approached Mick at his corner table. “Let’s see some ID, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Up yours, Army,” Mick said. “My uniform’s my ID, and I’m not bothering anybody.”
“ID, please,” the officer said again while his three military policemen spread out behind him.
Mick ignored the officer and examined the three big HASP policemen. “You guys want some action?” he asked, finishing his drink and gathering himself to get up.
“Love some,” said the largest of the three. “Or you can come with us, peaceable like. We’ll all go downtown, see the nice man at the Navy desk, do some paperwork, and then you can sleep it off in one of our officer rooms.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mick said. “With you or anyone else. So why don’t you pussies just beat it.”
The officer looked over his shoulder at the big man, who nodded and then slapped his baton against his thigh. The officer stepped aside as they moved in. Mick got up and started forward, fists ready, only to trip over the officer’s extended foot and fall flat on the floor. When he tried to get up, the HASP went to work on him with their batons, whaling on his upper arms, thighs, elbows, shins, and knees. When Mick stopped resisting, the big guy stepped in and tapped him once expertly behind the right ear, and Mick was out for the count.
* * *
The next morning, Mick found himself in the officer wing of the drunk tank at HASP headquarters in downtown Honolulu. He felt nauseous and badly hung over. His head throbbed with a vicious headache, and every one of his major muscles hurt from the baton workover. There was a large knot behind his right ear, and every time he tried to stand up he got dizzy. He finally stopped trying.
The steel door clanked open, and a HASP cop handed him a mug of black coffee. “Head’s down the passageway to the right. If you gotta puke, do it down there. You puke here, you clean it up. Use the head, then come back here and wait. Sir.”
Two throbbing hours later Mick was taken out front to the booking desk, where they gave him back his wallet, watch, and academy ring. Two more HASP cops were waiting. The desk sergeant told him he was going to take a ride back to Pearl, where somebody wanted to see him.
“I’ll just bet,” Mick said.
“Easy way or hard way, Lieutenant?” the sergeant, a middle-aged Marine, asked. The HASP cops, ever optimistic, had their hands on their batons.
Mick waved a hand. “I’m all done,” he said.
“Smart move,” the sergeant said. “Go with them, please.”
The two cops put him in the right front seat of a HASP jeep, with one of them driving and the other sitting right behind Mick. The fresh air felt good, but when they arrived at their destination, Mick groaned. They’d taken him to the naval base headquarters building. There were senior officers in there, and the last thing Mick wanted to see right now was a senior officer. His uniform was wrinkled and stank of booze. He had not shaved, and his head felt like a fermenting pumpkin. He figured he was probably black and blue all over, but the HASP guys knew where to hit a fella so that his uniform would cover the bruises.
The cops parked the jeep and escorted Mick into the building, where they took him to an office and told him to take a seat. The label on the office’s outer door read NAVAL BASE ADMINISTRATION. They then stood at a casual parade rest behind him until a yeoman came through from the inner office and said the commander would see him now.
Mick got up and followed the yeoman through some batwing doors into the inner office. There he confronted none other than Commander Hugo Oxerhaus, sitting in a wheelchair.
“Who says there’s no God,” Oxerhaus said, rubbing his hands together.
* * *
Mick spent the next three weeks temporarily assigned to the naval base headquarters as Comma
nder Oxerhaus’s brand-new personal assistant. He spent his nights in hack at the BOQ and took his meals in the naval station’s enlisted mess hall. He was forbidden to consume alcoholic beverages or to enter any of the island’s military officers’ clubs. Because of the HASP incident, Mick’s squadron had issued temporary administrative duty orders leaving him behind when the carrier sailed.
His days consisted of manning a desk in Oxerhaus’s outer office while dealing with an unending stream of personnel issues and the attendant mountains of paperwork. Once an hour Oxerhaus would yell for him to “get in here” and then chew him out for one administrative infraction or another. Oxerhaus was confined to a wheelchair after breaking his back on a ladder trying to escape the sinking Yorktown. He made Mick wheel him to the head when necessary and then stand outside until he was ready to be wheeled back to his office.
The other officers working at headquarters left Mick alone, being very much aware of Oxerhaus’s special ability to humiliate an individual all by himself. It took the full three weeks for Mick’s body to heal from the HASP beating, during which he learned that such beatings were standard operating procedure for the HASP when dealing with troublemakers. When he complained about it, the other people looked at him as if he were nuts: Everyone on the island, including civilians, knew not to mess around with the HASP, ever.
He also found out that being denied alcohol was its own special form of hell. For the first three nights of his confinement he was able to talk some transient aviators into bringing beer back from the club, but then Oxerhaus made him swear on his personal honor that he would not drink while in hack. Mick kept his word, but the transition from drinking man to abstinence made his nights worse than his days.
His right hand, which had been healing at a glacial pace since the incident on Guadalcanal, was now turning colors again, courtesy of a HASP baton. He worked to keep it out of sight as best he could, because he was sure that if Oxerhaus ever focused on it, he’d use it as a way to board him out of naval aviation. Mick did not want to spend the rest of the war at this naval station backwater. In his third week of BOQ restriction, however, Oxerhaus did notice the hand. He surprised Mick by sending him to see the senior flight surgeon over at Kaneohe Air Station. The doctor gave him a general physical exam and then sat down with him to talk about his hand. Mick explained how it had been injured and then reinjured.
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