‘Yeah, sure. But it was, uh, because of the unexpected, so much talk, y’know. Apprehension.’
‘Okay.’
‘Anyway, Murph really pushed hard, man, like seven days a week, day, night, around the clock, bad weather, night stuff, you name it. He was like, uh, crazy to get the war over with. Don’t get me wrong, he went out there just like everybody else. I’d guess Murph flew more individual sorties than any other man in the outfit..’
Hatcher’s mind wandered back to the night before and his meeting in Seattle with Hugh Fraser, Cody’s other wingman, who had quite a different impression of Cody. At first, Fraser had refused to talk to Hatcher. His crash had left him a pitiful cripple. He walked in a crouch, like an old man, and breath spray could not hide the sickening, end-of-the-day smell of vodka, nor could Visine wash away the broken blood vessels in his eyes. Because Fraser had refused to take Hatcher’s calls, Hatcher had waited for him in the parking lot of one of the small satellite buildings clustered around Seattle-Tacoma International where Fraser was vice president of a small charter airline. Hatcher felt sorry for the man. He had obviously aged considerably since his accident. He was vitriolic, like a grouchy old man, and in the conversation that was occasionally interrupted by one of the big commercial jets taking off, he lashed out with each question.
‘Would you like to hear what Fraser had to say?’ Hatcher asked Schwartz. He took a s nal1 recorder from his pocket and pressed the play button.
Fraser: I’m a busy man. You have five minutes.
Hatcher: I just want to talk a little about Murph —
Fraser: Who’d you say you were with?
Hatcher: Navy Review Board. We —
Fraser: God damn Navy.
Hatcher: — just want to close this thing out once and for all.
Fraser: So what can I tell you that you don’t know already?
Hatcher: You saw Cody go down, isn’t that—?
Fraser: I told you boys all this before.
Hatcher: One more time for the wrap-up.
Fraser: (Sighing) I was flying off his port side, half a mile behind him. I heard his Mayday and saw him barrel- roll in.
Hatcher: Any chance he got out?
Fraser: (Skeptically) C’mon. He set half the Mekong Delta on fire.
Hatcher: I got one report says he may — (there was a pause while a jet roared over) have got out of the plane and made a run for —
Fraser: Whoever told you that’s crazy.
Hatcher: How would you rate him? As an officer, I mean.
Fraser: First-class asshole trying to impress his old man. He loved war, a typical career officer. He ate it up with a spoon. He didn’t give a damn what happened to his men.
Hatcher: Oh . . . (the rest of the comment was obscured by another jet)
Fraser: (partially inaudible) . . . Army brat. Annapolis man, big-shot father. Never drank with the guys, never hung out. He had this hoochgirl, a real beauty. You know, perfect skin, perfect teeth, those limpid eyes you could take a swim in. She waited on him like a slave. When he wasn’t flying, he was laid up with this hoochgirl balling all day.
Hatcher: Well, hoochgirls were a dime a —
Fraser: This one was a real piece, I’ll tell you that. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen, sixteen. Eyes for him, nobody else. He treated that stinking slope like she was his wife, like family for Chrissake. God damn Nam hoochgirl.
Hatcher: What happened to her?
Fraser: When he bought it, everybody in the outfit moved on her — but she wasn’t having any. Next day, she was gone. Vanished. Like Puff the fucking Magic Dragon. (Pause) Listen, the son of a bitch got more men killed than the Vietcong.
Hatcher: You mean doing his job?
Fraser: There’s doing it and there’s doing it. He was a maniac, you ask me. ‘Get it in the gutter, get it in the gutter!’ he’d scream. Christ, we were . . . (Another pause while a jet took off) flying down tunnels as it was. Lost half our planes to ground fire. Shit, we blitzed some Charlie, burned some boats, whacked out some villages. Next day they were right back. Like stepping in a puddle, you take your foot out and never know it was there. All those guys gone for that.’
Hatcher: C’mon, nobody goes into combat expecting room service and the Holiday Inn.
Fraser: He was like all those military academy grunts. All they care about is looking good on the record so they’ll be sure to make admiral before they retire. Listen, do you think you’d be here now if Cody wasn’t a general’s son.
Hatcher: (Pause) No.
Hatcher snapped the machine off.
‘Well, hell, we were all crazy as loons after a few weeks on the line with him,’ Schwartz said. ‘I mean, we were dragging the gutter every time out. I used to come back with tree limbs stuck in my wings. But Cody didn’t like it, Hugh’s wrong, Murph wasn’t any war lover, quite the opposite. It ate him up, sending all those guys out there day after day. He knew most of us were jet pilots who hated fighting a ground war in those old De Havillands. They
