Battleship

Besides which, there were always tacos. And enchiladas.

They swam and kissed under the full moon, and concerns about her father departed from his mind to become problems for another day.

“Hopper.” It was Sam’s voice, and there was a shaking. She was shaking him. He didn’t want to be shaken. He wanted to sleep some more. “Hopper!” she said, more insistently this time, shoving him around so violently that he felt as if there was an earthquake underneath the sand…

The sand? We’re still on the beach? If we’re on the beach, why is it so bright out…?

That was when his mind began to piece together the truth. They had fallen asleep on the beach, wrapped in the overlarge blanket. Night was gone and the sun was much higher in the morning sky than it had any right to be, considering he was supposed to be elsewhere at this very moment.

“This is bad,” he said.

Instantly they scrambled to their feet, gathering their belongings, stumbling in the sand as they did so. At one point Hopper lost his footing, tumbled against Sam, and they both wound up falling down onto the sand again.

“You better get it together, Hopper!”

He nodded in hurried agreement as he pulled on his shirt. Sam was hastening to get into her shorts and succeeded in shoving both of her legs into the same pants leg, cursing like—appropriately enough—a sailor as she extracted her left leg and started over, bouncing on her right foot as she endeavored to maintain her balance.

With all this frantic hurrying and the fact that he was probably going to be late as a result, Hopper had to think that perhaps the timing of the intended request for the hand of the admiral’s daughter might leave something to be desired. “Maybe we should put it off till next month?” he ventured.

He didn’t have to explain to her which “it” he meant. “No way,” she said. By this point she had managed to get all her body parts into the proper sections of her clothing and was sprinting toward the Jeep they’d driven out there. He caught up with her and then passed her effortlessly. Hopper leaped into the driver’s seat, yanked out his keys, fumbled for a moment with them before shoving the right key into the ignition and turning it. For a moment the engine failed to catch. Dead, dead, I am so dead. Then it miraculously turned over. He gunned it, tearing out of the parking lot so quickly he nearly left Sam behind. As it was she barely had time to leap into the passenger’s side before the Jeep took off.

Just another day in Paradise, he thought.

PEARL HARBOR

It was unusual for a Navy band to preform a full version of “To the Colors,” the haunting bugle piece that was typically played at times such as the flag being lowered at the end of the day on a base. However, it was occasionally played in circumstances where there were going to be honors to the nation more than once. At least Hopper supposed that would be the case here as the Jeep Hopper was driving hurtled into the parking lot adjacent to the USS Missouri. The Jeep screeched to a halt and Sam and Hopper clambered out. One would never have guessed that, barely two hours ago, they’d been two disheveled people on a beach. Yet now here they were, one hasty plane ride from Honolulu to Oahu later, after changing and primping en route while squished into the island jumper, much to the amusement and entertainment of the pilot.

Hopper was looking every inch the Navy officer, attired in his crisp white uniform. As for Sam, she was exquisitely attired in a black Chanel dress, her hair as coifed as she could make it under the circumstances.

The Missouri, sometimes referred to as “Mighty Mo” or “Big Mo,” was a proud Iowa-class battleship with an impressive history stretching back to the Second World War. She had been involved in such naval endeavors as the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa before eventually being decommissioned in the 1990s and transformed into a museum ship. She overlooked the remains of a vessel that hadn’t been fortunate enough to serve in the Allied efforts—the Arizona, a Pennsylvania-class battleship that had performed ably during World War I, but was sunk years later during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. When the vessel went down, she took eleven hundred lives with her. Her remains were still at the bottom of the harbor, but a memorial had been built in her stead, straddling her hulls.

As Hopper and Sam moved as quickly as her high heels would let her, they passed a cheesy gift shop outside the entryway to the Missouri, selling every battleship-themed souvenir that anyone could imagine. Hopper considered the fact that before joining up—even with the Navy background of both his father and brother—he wouldn’t have given a crap about the relentless merchandising of a proud vessel. Now it bugged the hell out of him, but there wasn’t much of anything he could do about it.

There was a skinny, bespectacled tour guide lecturing a group of tourists who were studying the various gifts, some of them expressing annoyance that they weren’t being allowed to take the usual tour on the vessel, arguing that—after all—that’s what it had been built for. The tour guide, who was wearing an unspeakably tacky hat in the shape of a foam battleship (available for $5.99 in the gift shop), was busy explaining that, first of all, the Mighty Mo was reserved today for a special ceremony, and second, yes, the ship was now a museum, but that wasn’t what it had been built for. Hopper rolled his eyes at the stupidity of some people. He started to slow and, as if she were reading his mind, Sam pulled on his hand to make sure he didn’t get dragged into the middle of something.

“The USS Missouri was the final battleship to be completed by the United States,” the guide was telling them, “before being decommissioned and replaced by a more modern fleet of vessels, known as destroyers.”

“What’s the difference between the two?” asked a kid.

“Well, destroyers are lighter and faster and fire different weapons.”

Whoa, what—?!

Hopper stopped short, jerking Sam to a halt as well. Before she could do anything such as, for instance, talk sense into him, Hopper pulled away from her and turned to the guide. “That’s what you’re telling ’em? That’s bullshit!”

Sam visibly blanched, as did a couple of old women. The men looked surprised, and a grin split the face of the kid, probably because he liked hearing grown-ups curse.

“Hopper—!” said Sam warningly.

“I’m coming,” he said, but it was perfunctory, his attention entirely on the boy. “Battleships: dinosaurs. Destroyers: awesome!”

Sam put her hands on her hips in a manner that indicated he wasn’t going to be getting any anytime soon… if ever. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“I’m coming.” He didn’t mean it any more the second time than he had the first, and he continued addressing the kid, grabbing tiny gray plastic models of the two types of boats from the souvenir stand. He held up a little battleship in his left hand. “Battleships: designed to take hits like a floating punching bag.” Then he held up the right. “Destroyers: designed to dish it out like a freakin’ Terminator!” He thrust the small destroyer toward the kid, whose eyes were round and goggled. “We’ve got Tomahawk cruise missiles, sea-skimming Harpoons, torpedoes like there’s no tomorrow…”

“Awe-some…!” said the kid.

“Yeah,” said Hopper, nodding, feeling much like a kid himself. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Hopper!”

The kid glanced toward the annoyed Sam. “Your girlfriend’s hot.”

“Get your own,” said Hopper. “Gotta go.”

He hurried over to Sam, who glared at him as they started running. “Everyone’s waiting and you’re talking about boats?”

“We were also talking about how hot you were.”

“You were not!”

“Swear to God.”

“Oh. Well… okay, then,” she said, slightly mollified.