was-“
“Your brother? Yeah, your brother thinks the war is wrong, immoral. Right?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. But what I was-“
“Did God whisper in your brother’s ear about the joys of living in Canada? Freedom comes a little cheaper there these days. Is he happy, listening to his stereo and smoking pot and feeling very moral? Or is he at Berkeley? Protesting the war between fixes and-“
Callie stood up and grabbed her purse. She leaned over the table and spoke deliberately. “I was about to tell you-before I was interrupted-that my brother lost both his legs in Vietnam. He wants desperately to believe that the war is morally right. But he can’t. And it’s eating him up.”
Callie turned to leave just as the waiter arrived with two cups of coffee. Jake said, “You’re not going to leave? Just like that?”
“Oh yes I am. Just-like-that.”
Jake stood up. “I didn’t know, I .
“You can be very cruel, Jake Grafton.” She put out her hand to stop him.
“I’d like to leave alone.”
The waiter stood holding his tray. He wore a puzzled expression. Callie walked around him and out of the restaurant.
Jake sat down and lifted his coffee, which sloshed out of the cup.
For a long time he stared at the full cup on the other side of the table. Then he paid the bill and left.
It was dark outside. He took a cab to the consulate where he looked across the street and saw a crowd at the tramway station. He looked up to the right and saw the outline of Victoria Peak, dotted with lights. Remembering where Callie’s apartment building was in relation to the consulate, he walked up Garden Road His emotions swirled like autumn leaves caught in a windstorm.
He found the building, finally, and explored the empty hallways, looking at name tags on each door. The sound of his footsteps echoed down the uncarpeted halls. He climbed to the third floor. On a tatter buff-colored tag below the peephole of the door was her hand-lettered name: “C. McKenzie.” He knocked and she opened the door. She was wearing a pretty yellow silk robe. Her eyes were puffy.
Jake spoke. “I’m very sorry about Theron. And I’m sorry about what I said.”
He watched Callie’s tight-lipped expression soften. “Thanks,” she said.
“Now I know the way I felt was right.” She drew him inside and closed the door.
TWELVE
They were having a riot at the Cubi Point Officers’ Club. At least that’s what it looked like to Jake and Sammy when they opened the door.
A wave of noise immediately broke over them. The rock ‘n’ roll band made up only part of the assault. Much of the din came from men’s voices raised in singing and shouting as the aircrews indulged in one last glorious hinge. The ship was scheduled to sail at eight the next morning.
One of the squadron’s pilots, Snake Jones, was drinking near the door.
“How was Hong Kong, guys?”
“Great,” Lundeen replied. “I’m going to live there during my next incarnation.”
“You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear a goddamn word.” Lundeen hollered, “Great.”
“Too bad you had to come back,” Snake said.
“By the way, you’ll have to fetch your own drinks. The waitresses were grossed out over an hour ago.”
“What happened?”
“Some A-7 jockey stood on the table and took off all his clothes.
Then he passed out. His buddies carrie him down to the Tailhook Room. He’s laid out down there on the bar.”
The two newcomers shouldered through the crush around the bar. “Happy Hour prices, boys,” the bartender said and collected a dime from each of them.
“What luck!” Lundeen said to Jake. “You can get skunk-drunk for four bits.”
Jake clinked his beer glass against Sammy’s and drank deeply. He replaced his glass on the bar and, while waiting for a refill, peered around the smokefilled room. At the far wall the fighter crews were carolling obscene songs and throwing their empty glasses into the fireplace. Fighting valiantly to hold his own in the decibel ratings, the lead singer was belting out a tune from a platform in the middle of the vast room. Between the band and the bar, dice players were running Klondike games at four tables.
The roommates made their way to the tables. Jake estimated that only a hundred dollars or so was in play at each table, but the night was young. He knew that when the evening had worn on and empty glasses had accumulated, as much as six or seven hundred would be riding on a single roll, and that just before the club closed-when checks were suddenly acceptable some men would lose a month’s pay. The same sports sat at the tables night after night, but the high rollers showed up only the night before the ship sailed. Then the real money was on the line.
Cowboy Parker presided over one table, fronted by a hefty pile of twenties. He nodded at Jake and Sammy, said something Jake couldn’t catch above the uproar, then refocused his attention on the game. Jake recalled that Cowboy once told him he had furnished a house from his winnings on his first WestPac cruise.
They spotted Razor Durfee and Abe Steiger with several other men at a table away from the band, below the bar, and cut a path through the human thicket to join them.
“Meet your new bombardier, Jake,” Razor said. The uniformed man beside Razor stood up and stuck out his hand. He was a couple of inches taller than Jake, with wide shoulders and sunbleached hair.
Cold, penetrating blue eyes looked out from a suntanned face. Under his wings he wore three rows of ribbons. The upper left one was the Distinguished Flying Cross with two gold stars.
“Virgil Cole.” Jake’s right hand was gripped in a firm handshake.
Sammy shook hands, too, then drifted off. Jake sat down to get acquainted.
Cole settled back, apparently content to let Razor do the talking.
Throughout the recitation of his resume, Cole only sipped his beer.
“And after two combat cruises, he was an instructor bombardier at VA-42. Now he’s joined our posse,” Razor concluded.
“He’s been in the navy eight years,” Steiger pitched in.
Razor leaned over to Jake and whispered in his ear, “Cole ain’t a big talker.” Grafton had formed that impression already. “And he ain’t a big smiler, either.
Jake directed several questions at Cole, asking him where he had grown up and where he had attended college. In reply Jake received, “Winslow, Arizona, and “Phoenix.”
Jake lapsed into silence while the hubbub swirled around him. As Razor introduced Cole to various people, Jake observed him carefully.
The hard blue eyes searched each new face.
The corners of his mouth remained turned up in a smile of sorts, but the smile never developed. Only the eyes moved in the mask that was Cole’s face. He projected an aura of amused superiority.
The new man’s reluctance to engage in conversation soon caused the talk to turn in other directions. No one mentioned the alligator pond incident so Jake assumed with relief that it had blown over, as Lundeen had predicted. The group discussed the two other new members of the squadron, a pilot and a bombardier, both just graduated from VA-128. The two had been flying every day and were now ready, Jake overheard, to requalify with six day and three night traps tomorrow when the ship was at sea. The pilot had carrier qualified in A-6s just a month before, but as Jake knew, he would have to do it again on the Shilo to satisfy Camparelli and the CAG.
Lundeen had returned to the fold in time to ask, “Where are these guys?”
Told they were in the Tailhook Bar, he motioned to Jake, who stood up.
“Come on, Cole,” Jake said. “Let’s go downstairs.”
The bombardier followed the two pilots down the hall to the side door. As they crossed the lawn toward a
