and massive from this per- spective. Endless rows of windows. It also looked gray under this overcast.
Admiral Dunedin was in conference. Jake didn’t get in to see him until almost 3 P.M. He got right to it. “I went to West Virginia yesterday to see what I could find out about Harold Strong’s death. On the way back here I passed one of the people from my shop heading the other way.”
“Who?” said Dunedin, apparently genuinely curious.
“Smoke Judy.”
“How about that,” Dunedin muttered.
“Admiral, I’m a little baffled. Vice Admiral Henry briefed me on some of the events surrounding Strong’s death, but this morning when I mentioned this incident to him, he didn’t even ask who it was from my office that passed me. I get the distinct impression I’m being mushroomed.”
Dunedin lifted an eyebrow, then apparently thought better of it and went back to deadpan. He apparently knew about mushrooms: you kept them in the dark and fed them shit. “I guess everyone is a little baffled,” he said carefully. “Strong’s death was a tragedy. Nothing we can do about it, though.”
“Well, I could sure use a little more infor—“
“Who couldn’t? But I don’t have any information I can share with you. Sorry.” His tone made the apology a mere pleasantry. Before Jake could reply, he said, “There’s a meeting at sixteen- thirty hours in the Under Secretary of the Navy’s office on next year’s budget. We’ve got a billion dollars for ATA buried in there under carrier modernization and enhancement You go to the meeting and represent me. If they try to cut that line item or slice it down in any way, you call me.”
“Yessir.” The admiral selected a report from his in basket and began to read. Jake left.
After he told the secretary that he was going to a meeting, he walked to the officer personnel office, where he had to wait until two other officers had finished before he could talk to the chief petty officer. “Do you have my service record in here?”
“Last four digits of your social security number, sir?”
“0h-six-oh-seven.”
It took the chief just half a minute to pull it from the drawer.
“Chief, how about you ginning up a request for retirement for my signature?”
The chief yeoman’s eyes showed his surprise. “Okay, sir, if that’s what you want. It’s gotta be effective on the first day of a month between four and six months from now.”
Jake eyed the wall calendar. “September first. When can I sign it?”
“Monday okay?”
“See you then.”
“Any particular reason you want stated, sir?”
“The usual. Whatever you usually say.”
Dashing the four blocks to Dr. Arnold’s office after her eleven o’clock class on Friday was always a hassle for Callie. A student or two usually buttonholed her to clarify a point or comment made during class and it took several minutes to satisfy them without being rude. Then came the four-block march which crossed two avenues hub to hub with noon traffic.
She was perspiring slightly when Arnold’s receptionist nodded at her. Two minutes early. Of course, a few minutes late wouldn’t hurt, but Arnold ended the sessions precisely at ten minutes before the hour and the fee was $105 regardless. She sank onto the couch and once again tried to decide if the fifty minutes was worth the cost.
Forget the money. What are the important things to discuss during this session? She was trying to arrange her thoughts when the door opened and Dr. Arnold beckoned. He was of medium height, in his late thirties, and wore a neat brown beard. “He looks like Sigmund Freud before he got old and twisted,” Jake had grumped once. Above the beard this morning was a small, thoughtful smile.
“Good morning, Callie.” He held the door open for her. “Hello.” She sank into the stuffed armchair across from him, the middle of the three “guest” chairs. When he used to come Jake always sat on her left, near the window, while she always used this chair. For a brief moment she wondered what Arnold made of her continued use of this chair although Jake wasn’t here.
After a few preliminary comments, she stated, “Jake went back to work this Monday,” and paused, waiting for his reaction. Arnold prompted, “How has that gone this week?”
“He seems enthusiastic, and somewhat relieved. They have him working on a new airplane project and he hasn’t said much about it. If that’s what he’s working on. I think he’s disappointed, but it doesn’t show. He’s hiding it well.” She thought about it. ‘That’s unusual. He’s always been stoic at work — his colleagues have told me that he usually shows little emotion at the office — but he’s never been like that at home. I can read him very well.”
Dr. Arnold, Benny to all his patients, looked up from his notes. “Last weekend, did you threaten him?”
Callie’s head bobbed. “I suppose.” She swallowed hard and felt her eyes tearing up. She bit her lower lip. “I never did that before. Never again!” She moved to the chair near the window, Jake’s chair, and looked out. Trees just budding stood expectantly in the pale spring sun. Jake had sat here all winter and looked at the black, bare, upthrusted limbs. And now spring was finally here.
She should never have said those things, about leaving him. She could never do it. She loved him too much to even consider it. But it was so hard last fall, after she thought him dead and her life in ashes. When she heard he was still alive the euphoria swept her to heights she didn’t believe possible. The subsequent descent from rapture to reality had been torturous.
An officer from the CNO’s office had escorted her to Bethesda Naval Hospital the morning after Jake was flown back from Greece. She had expected — thinking about it now, she didn’t know just what she expected. But her hopes were so high and the officer who drove her tried gently to prepare her.
His face was still swollen and mottled, his eyes mere slits, his tongue raw from where he had chewed on it. His eyes — those piercing gray eyes that had melted her a thousand times — they lay unfocused in the shapeless mass of flesh that was his face as IVs dripped their solution into his arms. A severe concussion, the doc- tor said gently. Jake had taken a lot of Gs, more Gs than any man could be expected to survive. Capillaries had burst under the tre- mendous strain. And he was grossly dehydrated, unable to take water. Slowly Callie began to understand. Brain damage. Bleeding in the frontal lobe, where memory and personality resided. Oh, she assured herself a hundred times that he would be the same — that life would never play them a dirty, filthy trick like that, that God was in his heaven, that the man who loved her and she loved with all her soul would get well and … He had gotten well. Almost—
He’s quieter, more subdued, as if he’s someplace else … or thinking of something he can’t share.
“Do you think he has forgotten?”
The words startled her. She had been musing aloud.
“I don’t know. He says he can’t remember much about it, and that’s probably true. But he stops there and doesn’t say what he does remember.”
Arnold nodded. For three months in this office Jake had said nothing of the flight that led to his injury. “What of his decision to die?”
Callie stared at the psychologist. “You think he made that deci- sion?”
“You know he did.” Arnold’s eyes held her. “He decided to ram the transport. The odds of surviving such a collision were very small. Jake knew that. He’s a professional military aviator; he had to know the probably outcome of a ramming” The doctor’s shoul- ders moved ever so slightly. “He was willing to die to kill his enemies.”
After a moment Callie nodded.
“You must come to grips with that. It was a profound moment in his life, one he apparently doesn’t wish to dwell on or try to re- member. The complex human being that he is, that’s how he chooses to live with it. Now you must come to grips with his decision and you must learn to live with it.”
“Don’t many men in combat come to that moment?”
“I think not.” Benny tugged at his beard. “The literature — it’s hard to say. Most men — I suspect — most men facing a situation that may cause their death who do go forward probably do so without thought. The situation draws them onward, the situation and their training and their own private concept of manhood. But in that cockpit — Jake evaluated the danger and saw no other alter- native and decided to go forward. Willingly. To accept the inevita- ble consequences, one of which would be his death.” He continued to worry the strands of hair on his
