The Winds of War

He drove back to the house. On the desk in his bedroom, a handwritten note was clipped to a wrinkled Western Union cable:

From: Janice.

To: Dad-in-law.

Subject: Miscellaneous.

1. In case anything comes up, am at the Gillettes with Vic. Home for dinner.

2. Warren phoned. Won’t be back. They sortie at dawn.

3. Yeoman from California delivered the attached. Says it’s been kicking around the base for days, and just came to their office on the beach.

4. Love.

He opened the cable.

DEAREST JUST THIS INSTANT HEARD ON THE RADIO OF JAPANESE ATTACK AM UTTERLY HORRIFIED FRIGHTFULLY WORRIED ABOUT YOU DESPERATELY ASHAMED OF THAT RIDICULOUS IDIOTIC LETTER WORST POSSIBLE TIMING FORGET IT PLEASE PLEASE AND FORGIVE HOPE YOURE SAFE AND WELL CABLE ME

LOVE RHO

He sat nodding grimly as he read it. Rhoda to the life! He could hear her telephoning it: “Am UTTERLY horrified, FRIGHTFULLY worried about you, DESPERATELY ashamed of that RIDICULOUS, IDIOTIC letter. Worst POSSIBLE timing…” Pug suspected it was a bone to the dog. He knew Rhoda’s bursts of contrition. She was never so sweet as immediately after some disgusting behavior. This saving grace had gotten her over many rough spots; and her impulse in sending the cable might well have been sincere. But the process of repair would be long, if indeed it was even beginning. Their marriage now was a salvage job like the California. He did not know what to reply, so he tossed the cable into the desk drawer, beside the letter for which it apologized.

That night at dinner, Pug drank a lot of wine, and a lot of brandy afterward. Janice kept pouring, and he gratefully accepted. He knew he would not sleep otherwise. The alcohol worked; he scarcely remembered turning in. At four in the morning, he snapped wide awake, and it occurred to him that he might as well watch the sortie of the Enterprise. He dressed quietly, closed the outside door without a sound, and drove to the overlook point.

The darkness was merciful to Pearl Harbor. The smashed battleships were invisible. Overhead a clear starry black sky arched, with Orion setting in the west, and Venus sparkling in the east, high above a narrow streak of red. Only the faintest smell of smoke on the sea breeze hinted at the gigantic scene of disaster below. But the dawn brightened, light stole over the harbor, and soon the destruction and the shame were unveiled once more. At first the battleships were merely vague shapes; but even before all the stars were gone, one could see the Pacific Battle Force, a crazy dim double line of sunken hulks along Ford Island — and first in the line, the U.S.S. California.

Victor Henry turned his face from the hideous sight to the indigo arch of the sky, where Venus and the brightest stars still burned: Sirius, Capella, Procyon, the old navigation aids. The familiar religious awe came over him, the sense of a Presence above this pitiful little earth. He could almost picture God the Father looking down with sad wonder at this mischief. In a world so rich and lovely, could his children find nothing better to do than to dig iron from the ground and work it into vast grotesque engines for blowing each other up? Yet this madness was the way of the world. He had given all his working years to it. Now he was about to risk his very life at it. Why?

Because the others did it, he thought. Because Abel’s next-door neighbor was Cain. Because with all its rotten spots, the United States of America was not only his homeland but the hope of the world. Because if America’s enemies dug up iron and made deadly engines of it, America had to do the same, and do it better, or die. Maybe the vicious circle would end with this first real world war. Maybe it would end with Christ’s second coming. Maybe it would never end.

But he was living in 1941. Below in the brightening dawn lay his own sunken ship and his own destroyed fleet. The professional sailors and fliers who had done this thing, and done a damned smart job of it, had obeyed orders of politicians working with Hitler. Until the life was beaten out of that monster, the world could not move an inch toward a more sane existence. There was nothing to do now but win the war. So Victor Henry meditated as the Enterprise moved down channel in the sunrise and out to sea under the escort of destroyers and cruisers, taking his firstborn son into battle.

Back at the house, he found Janice all dressed. “Hi. Going somewhere?” he said. “I thought you’d still be asleep.”

“Oh, it’s Vic’s cough. It hangs on and on. I’m taking him to the clinic down at the base for a checkup. You just missed a call from Captain Larkin.”

“Jocko? This early?”

“Yes. He left a message for you. He said, ‘She’s all yours.’”

Victor Henry dropped in a chair, with a blankly startled look.

“Good news, I hope?” Janice asked. “He said you’d understand.”

“‘She’s all yours’? That’s the whole message?

“That’s it. He said he wouldn’t be in his office till noon, but he thought you’d want to know right away.”

“I see. Well, it’s pretty fair news. Is the coffee on?”

“Yes. Anna May will make you breakfast.”

“No, no, coffee’s all I want, thanks. Look Janice you’ll be passing by Western Union. Can you send Rhoda a cable for me?”

“Sure.”

Victor Henry reached for the memo pad by the telephone and scrawled: LETTER COMING AM FINE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT.

Glancing at the little sheet he handed her, Janice curved her mouth in an indulgent female grin.

“What’s the matter with that?” Pug said.

“How about ‘Love’?”

“By all means. Thanks, Jan. You add that.”

When she left with the baby, he was on the telephone, trying to reach Commander, Cruisers Pacific. He responded to her farewell wave with a bleak preoccupied smile. Janice thought, closing the door on him, that nothing could be more like her austere, remote father-in-law than the little business of the cable. You had to remind this man that he loved his wife.