And then when Minter turned the controls over to Pickering and told him to go up, and then down, the first thing he thought was that he had a student who paid attention to what he was told. He did not overcontrol. And he had a gentle, sure touch on the joystick and rudder pedals.
The first time Pickering tried to make a 360-degree turn to the right, for instance, the needle on the vertical speed indicator didn’t even flicker. And when he came out of the turn and straightened up, he wasn’t more than two degrees off the course he had been on before he began to make the turn. The whole maneuver was smooth as silk.
Much too smooth for somebody trying it for the first time. Q.E.D., Pickering knew how to fly. Ergo, Pickering was a liar, for he had told the U.S. Navy that his PREVIOUS FLIGHT EXPERIENCE was “NONE.”
Viewed one way, it was an innocent little joke that Lieutenant Pickering was playing on the Navy and Lieutenant Junior Grade Allen W. Minter. Viewed another way, it was a serious breach of discipline. Pickering was a commissioned officer, and the code was quite clear: Officers told the truth. An officer’s word was his bond. An officer who knowingly affixed his signature to a document he knew contained an untruth was subject to court-martial and dismissal from the service.
In the beginning, Lieutenant Minter decided that he would give Lieutenant Pickering the benefit of the doubt. Pickering seemed to be a nice enough guy, and he hadn’t been in the service for very long, and he was young; and maybe he didn’t understand that what he probably thought of as a little joke was something that could get his ass kicked out of Pensacola. Minter had heard that officers dismissed for cause from the service no longer got to go home, but were immediately pressed into service in the ranks. Unless it was really necessary, he didn’t want to be responsible for sending Second Lieutenant Pickering to the Marine boot camp at Parris Island as a private.
When they landed, he conversed pleasantly with Pickering, told him that he had done remarkably well (which caused Pickering to beam), and gave him every opportunity to admit that he’d had at least a little pilot training before today. Pickering responded that Captain Carstairs had taken him for a ride when he’d first come to Pensacola, but that was it.
Minter then went over Pickering’s records very carefully. He could have made a mistake, he told himself. But he had not. The record said “NONE” in the “PREVIOUS FLIGHT EXPERIENCE” block. And Pickering had signed the form.
Minter next sought out Captain James L. Carstairs, who had the administrative responsibility for Pickering, as well as for the other Marine second john, Stecker. Minter did not like Carstairs, which was his natural reaction to the fact that Carstairs did not like him. Carstairs was a Marine. Not only a Marine but a regular, out of Annapolis. Carstairs was tall, good-looking, and mustachioed. A regular fucking recruiting-poster Marine.
As a class, officers like Carstairs did not particularly like people like Minter, who joined the Navy right out of the University of Ohio to get flight training, and who planned to get out of the service just as soon as possible to take a job with an airline. And who were, moreover, just a little plump, and who did not look like the tall, erect, blue-eyed Naval aviators in the recruiting posters.
But he made a point of finding Captain Carstairs at the bar of the officers’ club during happy hour.
“Hello, Captain,” he said.
“Well, if it isn’t Lieutenant Dumpling,” Carstairs said.
Minter let that ride. “I took your two second lieutenants up for the first time this morning,” he said, signaling the bartender to bring two beers.
“Did you really?”
“One of them, Pickering, seems to have a really unusual flair.”
“Does he really?”
“Either that or he’s got time, bootleg or otherwise,” Minter said.
“What does his record say?”
“It says no previous flight experience,” Minter said.
“Then we must presume, mustn’t we, that he has none,” Carstairs said.
“He tells me you had him up,” Minter pursued. “What did you think?”
“Nothing special,” Carstairs said. “He struck me as your typical red-blooded American boy burning with ambition to earn his wings of gold,” Carstairs said.
“You don’t know anything about him, except what’s in his records?” Minter asked.
Carstairs looked at Minter, and then over his shoulders, as if to make sure no one could overhear him.
“I have heard,” Carstairs said, confidentially, “that when Henry Ford runs a little short of cash, the first person he thinks of for a loan is Pickering. Is that what you mean?”
“Oh, come on, Carstairs, I’m serious,” Minter said impatiently.
For a moment, Minter thought that Carstairs was going to jump his ass for calling him by his last name. But instead, Carstairs flashed him a broad smile.
“But my dear Dumpling, I am serious,” Carstairs said. “You do know he lives in the penthouse of the San Carlos Hotel?”
“No, I didn’t,” Minter confessed, wondering if Carstairs was pulling his leg about that, too.
Carstairs shook his head in confirmation.
“If that’s so,” Minter blurted, “what’s he doing in the Marine Corps?”
“Why, Dumpling, he’s doing the same thing as you and me. Remembering Pearl Harbor, avenging Wake Island, and making the world safe for democracy. I’m really surprised that you had to ask.”
Minter, not without effort, kept his temper and his mouth shut, finished his beer, and left.
The next morning, when it was time to take Pickering up again, he was just about ready to call Pickering on lying about and concealing his previous flying experience. And then he decided, fuck it.
He still wasn’t sure whether or not Carstairs had been telling the truth in the officers’ club bar about Pickering being rich and living in the San Carlos penthouse. It was equally credible that Carstairs was pulling his leg, making a fool of him.
What really counted was that Pickering seemed like a nice kid; and the Marines needed good pilots. Despite the black-and-white code of conduct expected of officers, what was really important was what he had been ordered to do, which was to turn Pickering into a pilot of sufficient skill to be promoted to Squadron-2. Minter told himself that he was an instructor pilot, not an FBI agent, and that saying you had no previous flying experience when you did was not a sin of the first magnitude.
He flew with Pickering for two hours, and then with Stecker for two hours. When he dismissed them to have lunch before going to ground school during the afternoon, he thought that he had proof that he was teaching Stecker, but that Pickering was just going through the motions of learning something he already knew. But it didn’t seem important.
The next day, the two of them had ground school in the morning and flight training during the afternoon. Minter took Stecker up first, and spent two hours having him practice the skills necessary to get an aircraft off the ground, to make turns, and then to get it back on the ground again. He spent the last half hour with Stecker shooting touch-and-go landings, with Stecker following him through on the controls.
He did essentially the same thing when he gave Pickering his two hours, except that he devoted the last hour to touch-and-goes, and the last fifteen minutes of that to having Pickering actually make the landings and takeoffs.
But when the two hours were up, and he had permitted Pickering to taxi the Yellow Peril from the runway to the parking ramp himself, instead of ordering him to shut it down, he climbed out of the forward cockpit, knelt on the wing root beside the rear cockpit, and looked intently into Pickering’s face.
“I can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t take it up yourself, Pickering, can you?”
Pickering smiled. “No, sir,” he said.
“Then do so, Lieutenant,” Minter ordered, and got off the wing root.
Pickering had some trouble, Minter saw, taxiing the Yellow Peril back to the runway. And for a moment he really th
ought Pickering was about to collide with another Yellow Peril on the center line of the runway.
Just enough trouble to give Minter pause to consider that maybe he had done the wrong thing, that just maybe Pickering really didn’t have any experience, and that he should not be sending him up to solo with the absolute minimum of five hours’ instruction.
But then the tower flashed the green lamp at Pickering’s Yellow Peril, giving him permission to take off. The Yellow Peril began to move down the runway. The tail wheel came off the ground smoothly and when it should have, and a moment later, very smoothly, the Yellow Peril was airborne.
And Pickering followed the orders he had been given for his first solo flight: Take off, enter the landing pattern, and land. That’s all.
Except when he was in the line of Yellow Perils waiting for their turn to land, he swung the Yellow Peril from side to side. Just once. It was a gesture of joy and exuberance. Minter decided that he would not mention it once Pickering was back on the ground, as he was now ninety-five percent sure he soon would safely be.
The landing was as smooth as Minter expected it to be. But what surprised him was the look on Pickering’s face when he taxied to the parking ramp and shut the Yellow Peril down. It was the same look—mingled awe, relief, pride, and even a little disbelief—that Minter had learned to expect from other young men who had really just made their first solo flight.
And when he’d climbed down from the Yellow Peril he looked at Minter and said, “Jesus Christ, that’s something, isn’t it?”
“That really was your first time, wasn’t it?” Minter blurted.
“Yes, sir,” Pickering said. The question obviously confused him.
“Don’t let it go to your head, Pickering,” Minter said. “The University of California did a study that proved conclusively that any high-level moron can be taught to fly.”
(Two)
Gayfer’s Department Store
Pensacola, Florida
20 February 1942
Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, could see Martha Sayre Culhane two aisles away. She was standing before triple full-length mirrors as she held a black dress to her body and examined her reflection thoughtfully.
Martha wore a light brown sweater and a brown tweed skirt. A single coil of pearls around her neck had shifted so that it curled around her left breast. And she was wearing loafers and bobby socks.
She was, Pick thought, the most exquisitely feminine creature he had ever seen. Just looking at her made his throat tight and dry, and his heart change its beat.
She was across a two-aisle no-man’s land of ladies’ lingerie—glass counters stacked high with underpants and brassieres and girdles and slips. Headless-torso dummies had been placed here and there on the counters, dressed in more or less translucent brassieres and pants.
The intimate feminine apparel made Pick uncomfortable. And so did being where he was, and why. Without being aware that he was doing it, he closed his eyes and shook his head.
Martha nodded, as if making a decision, and then stepped away from the triple mirror and out of Pick’s sight.
He moved an aisle away and saw her enter a dressing room and close its curtain. “May I help you, Lieutenant?” a female voice said, behind him, startling him.
“No,” he said. “No, thank you. Just browsing.”
He looked at the counters immediately around him. He had moved to the expectant-mother section. The dummies here displayed nursing brassieres.
She must think I’m crazy! Obviously, I am.
The hem of the curtain over Martha’s dressing room was eighteen inches off the floor. He saw Martha’s tweed skirt drop to the floor. Then she stepped out of it and scooped it up. And then, over the top of the curtain, he could see her hands and arms as she pulled the sweater off over her head.
He could imagine her now, in his mind’s eye, standing behind the curtain wearing nothing but her string of pearls and her brassiere and her underpants.
He closed his eyes and shook his head again, and when he opened them he could see her hands as she stepped into the black dress and pulled it up.
And then a moment later, she came out and went back to the triple mirrors and looked at herself again. She had not zipped up the black dress, and he could see the strap of her brassiere stretched taut over her back.
And then he walked toward her, taking long, purposeful strides that shortened and grew hesitant as he came close.
“Surprise, surprise,” he said, as jovially as he could manage. “Fancy running into you here!”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised, Pick,” Martha said, looking directly at him. “You followed me from the air station.”
He felt his face color.
“I soloed today,” he blurted. “A couple of hours ago.”
“Good for you,” she said.
“Christ!” he said, furious and humiliated.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Martha said. “Congratulations, Pick. Really. I know what it means, and I’m happy for you.”
“I want to celebrate,” Pick said.
“You should,” Martha said. “It’s a bona fide cause for celebration.”
“I mean, with you,” Pick blurted.
“I was afraid of that,” she said.
“I thought maybe dinner, and then…”
She shook her head, and held up her left hand with her wedding and engagement rings on it.
“It sometimes may not look like it, Pick, but I’m in mourning.”
“You go out with Captain Mustache,” Pick blurted.
She laughed a delightful peal of laughter.
“Is that what you call him?” Martha said. “Marvelous! You better pray he doesn’t hear you. Jimmy is very proud of his mustache.”
“You go out with him,” Pick persisted.
“That’s different,” Martha said. “He’s a friend.”
“And I can’t be your friend?”
“You know what I mean,” Martha said. “Jimmy was our friend. He was best man at the wedding.”
“I’ll settle for being your friend,” Pick said.
“You don’t take no for an answer, do you?” Martha said.
“Usually, I take anything less than ‘oh, how wonderful’ for no,” Pick said.
“Well, Mr. Pickering,” Martha said, “I’m truly sorry to disappoint you, but not only will I not go out with you, but I would consider it a personal favor if you would stop following me around and staring at me like a lovesick calf.”
“Jesus!”
“I’m a widow, for God’s sake,” Martha went on furiously. “I’m just not interested, understand? I don’t know what you’re thinking—”
She stopped in mid-sentence, for Second Lieutenant Pickering had turned and fled down the aisle.
Martha told herself that there was really no reason for her to be ashamed of herself for jumping on him that way, or to be sorry that she had so obviously and so deeply hurt his feelings.
She was a widow, for God’s sake.
Greg, my wonderful Greg, was killed only two months and twelve days ago. Only a real bitch and a slut would start thinking about another man only two months and twelve days after her husband, whom she had loved as much as life itself, had been killed. And if that handsome, arrogant sonofabitch was any kind of a gentleman he would understand that.
Martha Sayre Culhane vowed that she would never again think of the terrible hurt look in Pick’s eyes when she told him off. It would not bother her, she swore, for she would simply not think about it.
Let him look at some other girl, some other woman, with those eyes. That would get him laid, and that, certainly, was all he was really after anyway. He had probably stood in front of a mirror and practiced that look.
Goddamn him, anyway! What did he think she was?
She went back in the dressing room and took the black dress off. She did not buy it.
She went from Gayfer’s Department Store to the ba
r at the San Carlos. She waited for Jimmy Carstairs to come in. By the time he came in, she was feeling pretty good.
When she woke up the next morning, she remembered two things about the night before. She’d had a scrap with Jimmy Carstairs, who had refused to let her drive herself home. And that once—or was it twice?—she had tried to call Pick on the house phone. He had had no right to walk away from her like that before she had finished telling him off, and she had been determined to finish what she had started.
There had been no answer in the penthouse, even though Martha remembered letting the telephone ring and ring and ring.
(Three)
San Diego Navy Base, California
21 February 1942
Although it was surrounded by a double line of barbed-wire-topped hurricane fencing, the brig at Diego was not from a distance very forbidding. It looked like any other well-cared-for Naval facility.
But inside, Lieutenant Commander Michael J. Grotski, USNR, thought as he waited to be admitted to the office of the commanding officer, it was undeniably a prison. Cleaner, maybe, but still a prison. Until November 1941, Lieutenant Commander Grotski had been engaged in the practice of criminal law in his native Chicago, Illinois. He had spent a good deal of time visiting clients in prison.
“You can go in, Commander,” the natty, crew-cutted young Marine corporal in a tailored, stiffly starched khaki uniform said as he rose from his desk and opened a polished wooden door. Above the door was a red sign on which was a representation of the Marine insignia and the legend “C. F. KAMNIK, CAPT. USMC BRIG COMMANDER.”
The “C,” Commander Grotski knew, stood for “Casimir.” He had come to know Captain Kamnik pretty well. They were not only two good Chicago Polack boys in uniform, but they had both once served as altar boys to the Reverend Monsignor Taddeus Wiznewski at Saint Teresa’s. Monsignor Wiznewski had installed a proper respect for what they were doing in his altar boys by punching them in the mouth when Mass was over whenever their behavior fell below his expectations.
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