"Please explain."
"All right," Margaret said. "Do you remember the Saturday I watched Hannah?"
"Yes," Claire said.
"Well, I did more than watch your daughter."
"Oh?"
Margaret nodded.
"I went through some of your personal papers shortly after a woman at Dr. Johnston's office called about Hannah's appointment. I wanted to write the information down, so I looked around the house for a pen and paper. I eventually found what I needed in David's desk, along with several letters and documents that raised a lot of questions."
"Did you read the papers?" Claire asked.
"I'm not sure 'read' is the right word. I mostly glanced at them."
"So you didn't examine them?"
"I didn't have the chance," Margaret said. "You and David came back from the concerto minutes after I discovered them."
"What questions did the papers raise?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes," Claire said. "I do."
Claire did too. Even though she had long suspected that Margaret had gone through David's desk that afternoon, she did not know what she had seen or what she had made of her discoveries. Finding out now might be a good way of putting this matter to bed.
"I guess the biggest question was, 'Who are you?'" Margaret said. "I used to think that only spies and outlaws kept papers like that in places like that."
"I see."
"Then there were the letters from South America," Margaret said. "I thought it was odd that you corresponded with people thousands of miles away and never mentioned it."
"People do write letters."
"I know. That's why I dismissed them as harmless. I didn't give them a second thought until Mr. Galloway told me about your arrest and asked me to help you in any way I could."
"Are you still confused about our guilt or innocence?" Claire asked. "Because if you are, I would be happy to set the record straight."
"If you don't mind, please do."
"We brought the papers with us because we thought we would need them to adopt a baby in Tennessee. We kept them in David's desk because his desk was the only one with a drawer we could lock. Obviously he did not lock it that day."
"You needn't say more," Margaret said. "I believe you."
"That's good because I want you to believe me," Claire said. "We're not spies, Margaret. We're not outlaws. We're victims of circumstances. That's why I'm confident the charges against us will be dropped long before this case goes to trial."
"I am too."
"Thank you."
Margaret gazed at Claire for a moment, as if fully processing their awkward exchange, and then glanced at her watch. She looked again at her neighbor.
"I should go," Margaret said.
"Do you have to be somewhere?" Claire asked.
Margaret nodded.
"I told some ladies at church this morning I would return by noon to help them prepare a potluck. We're welcoming a new pastor to the congregation."
Claire resisted the temptation to look at her watch.
"What time is it now?"
"It's eleven twenty," Margaret said.
Claire sank in her chair as the magnitude of the moment set in. Unless Ron had managed to get off the Indianapolis in Guam, he was either trapped on a sinking ship or floating in a shark-infested sea. She closed her eyes and brought her hands to her head.
"Is something wrong?" Margaret asked.
Claire dropped her hands and looked at her friend.
"A lot of things are wrong."
"Can I do anything to help?"
"Yes. I think you can."
"Just tell me," Margaret said. "I'll do it."
Claire took a breath.
"When you go to church, say a prayer for Ron. Ask your friends to do the same."
"OK. I will," Margaret said. "Is there a particular reason why?"
Claire nodded.
"There is. There's a big reason."
"What's that?"
"He's going to need it."
CHAPTER 59: RON
Philippine Sea – Monday, July 30, 1945
As Sunday turned to Monday in the Philippine Sea, Ron carried a thin mattress onto the fantail of the USS Indianapolis, looked for a place to put it, and finally settled on a spot near the turret with the eight-inch guns. It wasn't perfect or private, but it was sufficient.
When a fellow seaman had relieved him a half an hour early at eleven thirty, Ron hadn't needed an excuse to go topside. With temperatures inside the ship exceeding ninety degrees, he knew the only way he would get even a smidgeon of sleep would be to do what hundreds of other sailors had already done. So he did.
Not that he actually expected to get some sleep. Since reading Claire's cryptic letter, he had done little except stay awake, stay alert, and stay as close to the deck as possible. By sleeping under the stars, he was merely taking things to the next level.
Ron knew that the attack, if it came, would come in the next eighteen hours as the Indy completed its 1,300-mile voyage from Guam to Leyte. Though the ship moved through the choppy sea at a brisk seventeen knots, it remained vulnerable. It followed a predictable course and traveled without an escort. If an enemy sub lurked in this backwater of the Pacific Ocean, the cruiser, carrying 1,196 men, would be a sitting duck.
Ron plopped his mattress on the deck, lay down on his makeshift bed, and tried to think of things besides sinking feelings and paradises lost. He had to give his remarkable wife credit. Only Claire Rasmussen could think of something as inventive as a reference to a movie that maybe five people in this world had ever seen.
He closed his eyes and thought of his beautiful family. As he did, he asked himself the usual questions. What were they doing? How were they coping? Had they heard from the Bells? Had they contacted the Bells? Had they traveled to San Francisco?
Claire had not answered any of those questions in her correspondence. She had instead used the letter to send a warning and had masked that warning with the kind of news that soldiers, sailors, and airmen received from home every day.
Ron opened his eyes, checked his wristwatch, and then turned on his side to get a better view of his slumber party. More than eighty of his peers tossed and turned on blankets, mattresses, and even cots as they struggled to sleep in the stifling tropical heat.
Ron was no different. He found the fantail as ideal for rest as the top of a hot tin roof. Even so, he couldn't complain. He was better off than the sleepers without bedding and far better off than the poor schmucks working the midnight-to-four watch below decks. In the grand scheme of things, he was having a pretty good evening.
He had also had a pretty good day — a mellow, relatively relaxing day that had begun with a Protestant church service on the fantail; continued with a dinner of chicken, potatoes, and strawberry shortcake; and ended with a quiet shift in the main mess. He had even caught the front end of a movie at seven on the starboard hangar deck.
At twelve oh five, though, all Ron wanted to do was sleep. He flipped onto his back, closed his eyes, and began to count sheep. He got as far as twenty when he heard a violent explosion, felt the ship shake, and rolled off his mattress.
Along with nearly every one of his not-so-sleepy mates, Ron jumped to his feet and directed his eyes toward the distant bow, where flames shot high into the night sky. Unlike some of his bewildered peers, he did not have to guess what had happened.
Within seconds, sirens blared, officers shouted, and sailors ran. Some ran to their designated stations. Others just ran. Confusion and chaos set in.
Then it got worse. A second torpedo, launched from who knows where, slammed into the Indy's starboard side, just below the bridge, sending the ship upward.
Though Ron had seen this coming, nothing prepared him for the drama that followed the chain-reaction explosions or the sights, smells, and sounds that assaulted his senses. In less than a minute, all hell had broken loose on a six-hundred-foot ship.
&nb
sp; Ron ignored the chaos and moved swiftly to an open locker. He grabbed a kapok jacket, put it on, and rushed to the starboard rail. He hoped to find survivors or even a purpose but found only debris in a burning sea. Mattresses, desks, chairs, books, and papers poured out of the gaping hole in the ship's midsection as black, oily water rushed in. Bodies and body parts mingled with the debris and gave the scene a horrifying edge.
Through it all, the Indy, incredibly, continued to move. Even listing badly and missing most of its bow, the ten-thousand-ton ship chugged through the water at cruising speed.
Seeing an opportunity to contribute, Ron ran to help three others liberate a canvas-covered, balsa-wood life raft from the starboard side of the turret. When he finished freeing that raft, he raced around the turret to the port side and helped his mates free another.
As he worked on the raft, Ron noticed that the acrid smoke had thickened, the explosions below his feet had intensified, and the number of men streaming from the bow to the stern had increased. Like the passengers scrambling for safety on the HMS Titanic, sailors moved in droves toward the back of the ship. Some wore life preservers. Others did not. Nearly all wore expressions that revealed fear, anxiety, or hopelessness.
Ron also noted something he didn't see. He didn't see officers barking orders or hear the captain offer guidance over the ship's public address system. If the chain of command on this mortally wounded vessel was still intact, he did not see it.
As Ron watched others try to launch one of two motor-launch whaleboats, mounted near the stern, he began to think less about assisting others and more about ensuring his own survival. Though he wanted to do his duty and help save lives, he also wanted to return to Claire, Hannah, and David and the relatively simple life he had left behind.
At twelve eleven, six minutes after the first torpedo tore off the bow, that goal became problematic. The foundering ship rolled suddenly and violently to sixty degrees, sending men and materiel hurtling toward the starboard rail.
Objects big and small slid across the deck and threatened anyone in their path. A storage container toppled a sailor as he raced toward the stern. A twenty-six-foot whaleboat shifted and crushed its handlers. Boxes, crates, rafts, and other equipment tumbled into the sea. More than half the ship, now immobile, was fully submerged.
Ron looked first at the starboard whaleboat as a means of escape. When he saw it had been damaged, he looked for a life raft and then a lifebuoy. He made his move when Tony Giordano, a person he had not seen for hours, grabbed one of the life rafts and started over the rail.
"Tony!"
The New Yorker turned around.
"Ron?"
The time traveler gestured to Tony to wait and then made an effort to join him. Still clinging to the port side of the turret, Ron scurried around the gun emplacement, placed his hands at his sides, and carefully slid down the fantail deck to the starboard rail. He caught up with his friend just as the ship rolled again, this time to ninety degrees.
"Where have you been?" Ron asked.
"I just came from the radio room," Tony said. "The power was gone. I'm not sure the guys got a message out. I'm not sure they got anything out."
"It doesn't matter now. We have to get off this thing."
Getting off the Indy, at the point, was not an issue. The starboard rail was now level with the ocean itself, allowing many to enter the water without even getting their hair wet.
Ron and Tony grabbed opposite ends of the raft, went over the rail, and lowered themselves into the oily sea. Once fully in the water, they shoved off, paddled away from the ship, and looked for something bigger or better to hold on to.
Even before hitting the water, Ron could see and smell the black fuel oil that continued to flow from the Indy's ruptured hull. He tried his best to keep the thick substance out of his mouth, nose, and eyes, but that task proved difficult in the two-foot swells.
The friends paddled hard until they cleared the most concentrated fields of debris and then stopped to look at their ship. At twelve fourteen, the Indianapolis looked more like a twisted wreck than a mighty ship of war. Only the stern, which had been pulled by the submerged bow into a nearly vertical position, was visible in the dwindling light.
Knowing that the ship itself was doomed, Ron shifted his focus back to saving lives. He welcomed two seamen to his raft and helped another put on his kapok jacket. In the next minute, he assisted no fewer than six of his peers in various ways.
Ron could not help those still aboard the ship. At twelve sixteen, all he could do was witness their misery from about a hundred yards away.
This was the worst part, he thought. No matter what he said or did now, he could not possibly help those who had either waited too long or never had a chance. Some men, hanging from the rails, released their grip and dropped into the dark abyss. Others fell onto parts of the ship and bounced like lifeless dolls between unforgiving plates of steel.
All around the dying ship, oil burned, debris floated, and men swam to safer locations. Some sailors made it to rafts and jackets. Others did not. Many banded together in groups. A few floated away like leaves on a pond. In barely eleven minutes, the USS Indianapolis had gone from a fighting ship to a fiery hell.
Unable to look away, Ron watched in horror as several sailors, the final actors in a nightmarish drama, scrambled over the stern rail and joined others on the back of the ship. A few stood on a stilled propeller like ants on the petals of a massive flower.
Each remained motionless as the great vessel, a veteran of numerous operations and campaigns, finally settled into a vertical position. All maintained their tragic postures as the ship slowly slid downward and pulled them and countless others to a watery grave.
CHAPTER 60: RON
When the sun rose, just before six, Ron eyed the two newest arrivals to his saltwater domain. One he welcomed. The other he did not.
Ron welcomed Tom Pennington, who had joined his party around two thirty. Though Tom was the only officer among the eight men gathered around the raft, he did not act like one. He greeted the others as peers, asked questions of his subordinates, and yielded to the majority when the group voted to place its weakest member inside the tiny boat.
Ron did not welcome the six-foot shark that had appeared just after dawn and hung around the neighborhood. He feared it was only a matter of time before the fish or one of its larger relatives shifted into feeding mode, but he did not dwell on the matter. There was little he could do now to change his circumstances.
Clinging to the soggy rope that ringed his raft, Ron turned away from his group and gave his surroundings their first daylight inspection. He saw what he expected to see: hundreds of bobbing heads, several rafts, and assorted debris.
Concerned that his party might drift away from a larger group, Ron had tethered his raft to others with a fifty-foot cord shortly after the sinking. He figured that he or someone else could actually tie the rafts together in the morning — after a night of needed rest.
Though most in his group still reeled from the sinking, all were hopeful of a quick rescue. They were confident that when the Indy did not arrive in Leyte Tuesday morning, searchers would immediately scour the shipping lanes between Guam and the Philippines. For that reason alone, they felt comfortable carrying on light conversations and talking about the things they wanted to do when this traumatic experience was behind them.
When he was done inspecting the ocean around him, Ron returned his attention to the people in his party. He knew all by name and at least a few by reputation.
To his right, he saw Jeff Baines, a ranch hand from Cheyenne; Walt Kowalski, a meatpacker from Duluth; and Al Rossi, a bartender from Brooklyn. To his left, he saw the estimable Mr. Giordano; Victor French, a waiter from Fresno; and Pennington, who planned to study law after the war. Tim Bates, a recent high school graduate from Tampa, convalesced in the raft with second-degree burns to both arms.
Ron focused first on Al, the most cynical of the lot, and noticed
that he seemed to stare a lot at Tony. He wondered if his interest in the coffee vendor had anything to do with the fact he was a fellow Italian American from New York City.
"Why you smiling over there?" Al asked Tony. "I see nothing worth smiling about."
Tony grinned.
"I'm thinking about my girl."
"What's her name? Maybe I know her."
"Her name's Carla — Carla Romano."
"I don't know no Carla," Al said. "Is she pretty?"
Tony nodded.
"Yeah, she's pretty. She looks like Rita Hayworth."
Al smiled.
"Now I know you're lying. No way Rita Hayworth hangs out with you."
A few of the men laughed.
"What's the matter, Al?" Ron asked. "Don't you have a girl back home?"
"I do," Al said. "She looks like Betty Grable."
The men laughed again.
"How about the rest of you?" Ron asked.
Walt stared at the questioner.
"I have a wife. Does that count?"
Ron smiled.
"Yeah, that counts. For what it's worth, I have a wife too."
"You have any kids?"
Ron paused before answering. He thought the question was odd given that most men in the 1940s had children. Then he remembered the age of the men around him. With the exception of Tony and Tom, who were each twenty-six, everyone else in his party was between eighteen and twenty-three. At thirty-four, Ron was an old man among kids.
"I have a daughter," Ron said. "My wife and I adopted a baby girl just before I left for boot camp."
"Is she pretty?" Walt asked.
"She's gorgeous — and smart and charming."
"Good for you."
Ron turned to his left.
"What about you, Lieutenant? Are you married or engaged?"
Tom nodded.
"I'm engaged to a teacher from Tennessee."
Ron grinned.
"She wouldn't happen to be a stunning blonde named Margaret Doyle, would she?"
"What the hell?" Tom asked. "How do you know that?"
Ron chuckled.
"She's my neighbor."
Hannah's Moon (American Journey Book 5) Page 25