“If you were to slug me, I would probably lose control, and we would be killed in a flaming crash,” Pickering said.
McCoy looked at him curiously.
“I mention that because I have something to say to you. Some things—plural, two; and I want you to understand the risk you would be running by taking a poke at me.”
“You can say anything you want,” McCoy said. “God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.”
“Ernie Sage really got to you, huh?”
“How do you know her name?” McCoy demanded, suspiciously.
“I followed you,” Pickering said. “When you met her in Grand Central, I was lurking behind a pillar.”
“You sonofabitch!” McCoy said. But he wasn’t angry. “I hope you got an eyeful.”
“Very touching,” Pickering said. “Romeo and Juliet.”
“She’s really something,” McCoy said.
“I realize this is none of my business—”
“Then don’t say it,” McCoy interrupted.
“—but since you seem to put such weight on such things, I feel obliged to tell you something about her.”
“Be careful, Pick,” McCoy said, and there was menace in his voice.
“Ernie is named after her father,” Pickering said. “Ernest Sage. Ernest Sage is chairman of the board of American Personal Pharmaceutical.”
“So what?” McCoy said. “I never even heard of it.”
Pickering recited a dozen brand names of American Personal Pharmaceutical products.
“In other words,” McCoy said, finally catching on, “she’s like you. Rich.”
“The rich say ‘comfortable,’ Ken,” Pickering said.
“I don’t care what they say,” McCoy flared. “Rich is rich.” There was a moment’s silence, and then McCoy said, “Oh, goddamn!”
It was a wail of anguish.
“As I have tried to point out, being rich is not quite as bad as having leprosy,” Pickering said. “I’m sure that if you put your heart in it, you could learn to like it.”
“She lied to me, goddamnit. Why did she do that?” McCoy asked. Pickering knew he hadn’t heard what he had told him.
“There is a remote possibility that the lady finds you attractive,” Pickering said. “Marines have that reputation, I’m told.”
“She made a fucking fool out of me!” McCoy said. “God-damnit, she got me to tell her all about Norristown.”
“Norristown?”
“About why I went in the Corps. About my father. Even about my slob of a sister.”
“If she wanted to hear about that, then that means she’s interested in everything you are. What’s wrong with that?”
“Just butt out of this, all right?”
“Now I’m sorry I told you,” Pickering said.
“If you hadn’t, I would have made an even bigger fucking fool of myself!” McCoy said, adding a moment later, “Jesus!”
“As I said,” Pickering said, “there is a remote possibility that Ernie likes you—”
“She doesn’t like to be called Ernie” McCoy said.
“—for what you are. Warts and all,” Pickering continued.
“Jesus, you just don’t understand, do you? this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. All she wanted was a stiff prick. Marines have a reputation for having stiff pricks.”
“I think you’re dead wrong,” Pickering said.
“Fuck what you think, I know,” McCoy said.
“You told me that you”—Pickering paused and then went on—“were the first.”
“So what?”
“That means something to women, from what I’ve seen. They can only give it away once. Ernie chose to give it away to you.”
“She decided to get it over with, and I was available.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“She lied to me, you dumb fuck! A whole line of bullshit, about this being her first job, right out of school, and I thought she meant high school, and how they were paying her eighteen fifty a week, and that’s why her apartment was such a dump.”
“That’s all true,” Pickering said.
“You know what I mean,” McCoy said.
“She had to lie to you, you dumb fuck,” Pickering said. “You have this well-developed inferiority complex, and she was afraid you’d crawl back in your hole.”
“Do me a favor, Pickering,” McCoy said. “Just shut your fucking mouth!”
“Ken, I want to keep you from—”
“Shut your fucking mouth, I said! The subject is closed.”
Pick Pickering decided that under the circumstances, the only thing to do was shut his fucking mouth.
(Two)
The last week of training in Platoon Leader’s Course 23–41 went just as rapidly as the previous weeks had, but far more pleasantly.
In the words of Pick Pickering: “It’s as if the Corps, having spent all that time and effort turning us into savages, has considered the risks they’d run if they turned us loose on an unsuspecting civilian population and is now engaged in recivilizing us.”
There were several lectures on the manners and deportment expected of Marine Corps officers, and lectures on “personal finance management” and the importance of preparing a last will and testament. There was a lecture on insurance, and another on the regulations involved in the travel and transfers of officers.
They were even taken to the Officers’ Club, where the intricacies of officer club membership were explained in a hands-on demonstration. They were ushered into the dining room, allowed to order whatever struck their fancy from the menu (which Pickering and McCoy found somewhat disappointing), and then shown how to sign the chit. Commissioned officers and gentlemen do not pay cash in officers’ clubs.
Afterward, before they marched back to the company area, a lance corporal at a table outside the dining room permitted them to redeem the chits for cash.
But they got the idea. And they had their first meal as gentlemen—if not quite yet officers-and-gentlemen—and were thus free, since they had paid for it, not to eat it if they didn’t like it. Corporal Pleasant had not even marched them over to the officers’ club (Platoon Leader Candidate McCoy had been ordered to do that) and there was thus no risk that any of them would be ordered to slurp it up.
And they were given liberty at night during the last few days, from retreat to last call. Pickering and McCoy went to the slop chute, where a pitcher of beer and paper cups were available for a quarter. McCoy put away a lot of beer; but neither he nor Pick Pickering got drunk or reopened the subject of Miss Ernestine Sage.
On Wednesday afternoon, in time for the retreat formation, most of the officer uniforms were delivered. The uniform prescribed for the retreat formation was a mixture of officer and enlisted uniforms. They could not be permitted to wear officer’s brimmed caps, of course, because they were not yet officers. But they wore officer’s blouses and trousers, without officer-type insignia, because the primary purpose of the formation was really to see if the uniforms would fit on Friday, when they would be sworn in.
Platoon Leader Candidates Pickering and McCoy did not have their officer’s uniforms on Wednesday afternoon. When this was discovered by Corporal Pleasant, it afforded him one last opportunity to offer his opinion of the intelligence, responsibility, and parentage of two of his charges. But even after that, they were not restricted to the barracks for the evening. They got the LaSalle one last time from the provost marshal’s impounding lot and went off the base so that Platoon Leader Candidate Pickering could make inquiries of Brooks Brothers.
It was a lot of trouble to make a lousy phone call, but there were few pay phones available on the base, and these generally had long lines waiting to use them. And they had to get the car from the Impounding Compound rather than take a bus, because the MPs checked passes on buses. McCoy’s properly stickered car and campaign hat got them past the MP at the gate without inspection.
On Thursday
morning, as the platoon was preparing to march off to rehearse the graduation and swearing-in ceremony, a blue Ford station wagon drove into the company area. A large black man emerged from it, and addressed Corporal Pleasant.
“Hey, Mac!” he called out. “Brooks Brothers. I’m looking for Mr. Pickering and Mr. McCoy.”
Even Pleasant seemed amused.
“The asshole with the guidon,” he said, “is Mr. McCoy, and Mr. Pickering is the tall asshole in the rear rank. Wave at the nice man, Mr. Pickering.”
The man from Brooks Brothers cheerfully waved back at Mr. Pickering, and then began to unload bag-wrapped uniforms, cartons of shirts, and oblong hat boxes from his station wagon. He stacked everything on the ground, and then sought out Mr. Pickering and Mr. McCoy to get his receipt signed.
After the rehearsal, as they were unpacking their uniforms and preparing their enlisted men’s uniforms to be turned in, Corporal Pleasant entered the barracks.
“Attention on deck!” someone bellowed.
“Stand at ease,” Corporal Pleasant said. And then he went to each man and handed him a quarter-inch-thick stack of mimeograph paper. It was their orders.
There were three different orders, or more precisely, three different paragraphs of the same general order. The first sent about half of Platoon Leader Class 23–41 to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, “for such duty in the field as may be assigned.” The second sent just about the rest of 23–41 to San Diego, California, “for such duty in the field as may be assigned.”
There were only two names on the third paragraph of the General Order. It said that the following officers, having entered upon active duty at Quantico, Virginia for a period of three years, unless further extended by competent authority, were further assigned and would proceed to Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., “for such administrative duty as may be assigned.”
“What the hell does this mean?” Pickering asked, when Pleasant had left.
McCoy had a very good idea what it meant so far as he was concerned, but he had no idea what the Corps had planned for Pickering.
“It means while the rest of these clowns are running around in the boondocks, you and I will be sitting behind desks,” he said.
At 1245 hours, Friday, 28 November 1941, Platoon Leader Candidate Class 23–41 fell in for the last time. They were wearing the uniforms of second lieutenants, U.S. Marine Corps, but Corporal Pleasant took his customary position and marched them to the parade field.
The first order of business was to give them the legal right to wear the gold bars on their shoulders. They raised their right hands and swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders of such officers who were appointed over them, and that they would discharge the duties of the office upon which they were about to enter to the best of their ability, so help them God.
“Detail commander, front and center, harch!” Corporal Pleasant barked.
McCoy, to his surprise, had been appointed to this role. He marched from his position at the left of the rear rank up to Corporal Pleasant.
Pleasant saluted.
“Take the detail, sir,” Pleasant said.
“Take your post, Corporal,” McCoy ordered.
They exchanged salutes again. Pleasant did a right-face and marched off to take a position beside the gunny and the first sergeant, just to the right of the reviewing stand.
McCoy did an about-face.
“Right-face!” he ordered, and then, “Fow-ward, harch!”
He gave them a column right, and then another, and when they got to the proper position relative to the reviewing stand, bellowed, “Eyes, right!” and raised his hand to the brim of his new Brooks Brothers $38.75 Cap, Marine Officers, with the cord loops sewn to its crown.
At the moment he issued the command, the Quantico Band, which had been silent except for the tick-tick beat of its drummers to give them the proper marching cadence, burst into the Marine Corps Hymn.
And the moment Second Lieutenant Pickering, USMCR, snapped his head to the right, he saw two familiar faces on the reviewing stand. His father and his mother.
On the goddamned reviewing stand; not with the other parents and wives and whoever had showed up for the graduation parade. On the goddamned reviewing stand!
The officers on the reviewing stand returned McCoy’s hand salute.
“Eyes, front!” McCoy ordered when he judged the last file of the formation had passed the reviewing stand. He marched them back to where they had originally been.
The officers marched off the reviewing stand, in order of rank. When the colonel got to McCoy, McCoy saluted.
“Put your detail at rest, Lieutenant,” the colonel ordered.
“Puh-rade, rest!”
They moved their feet the prescribed distance apart, and put their hands and arms rigidly in the small of their backs.
“Congratulations,” the colonel said to McCoy. “Welcome to the officer corps of the U.S. Marine Corps.”
He shook his hand and simultaneously handed him a rolled-up tube of paper, which contained his diploma and his commission. Then, leaving McCoy at parade rest, the colonel, trailed by his entourage, went down the ranks and repeated the process, exactly, for each man.
Finally, the entourage returned to the reviewing stand.
“Lieutenant,” the colonel called. “You may dismiss these gentlemen.”
McCoy saluted, did an about-face, and barked, “Atten-hut. Dis-missed.”
23–41 just stood there for a moment, as if unwilling to believe that it was actually over and that they were now in law and fact commissioned officers and gentlemen of the United States Marine Corps.
And then one of them yelped, probably, McCoy thought, that flat-faced asshole from Texas A&M who was always making strange noises. That broke the trance, and they started shaking hands and pounding each other on the back.
Captain Jack NMI Stecker walked off the reviewing stand, and then across the field to McCoy. As he approached McCoy, Pickering started for the reviewing stand. McCoy wondered where the hell he was going, but with Stecker advancing on him, there was no chance to ask.
He saluted Stecker, who offered his hand.
“Despite what some people think of China Marines, Lieutenant,” Stecker said, “every once in a while some of them make pretty good officers. I think you will.”
“Thank you, sir,” McCoy said.
“I thought you might need a ride to the Impounding Compound,” Stecker said.
“I got the car last night, sir,” he said.
“Then in that case, McCoy, just ‘good luck.’”
He offered his hand, they exchanged salutes, and Stecker walked away.
McCoy saw that most of 23–41 had formed a line by the reviewing stand. Corporal Pleasant was saluting each one of them. They then handed him a dollar. It was a tradition.
Fuck him, McCoy decided. Pleasant had been entirely too willing to kick him when he was down. And he wasn’t even that good a corporal.
I’m not going to give the sonofabitch a dollar to have him salute me. He’ll head right for the NCO Club with it and sit around making everybody laugh with stories about the incompetent assholes the Corps had just made officers.
And then he saw that Pick Pickering was not in the line. He was standing with a couple, the man well dressed, the woman in a full-length fur coat. Obviously, Pick’s folks had come to see their son graduate. McCoy started to walk back to the company area.
Pickering ran after him and caught up with him.
“I want you to meet my mother and dad,” Pick said.
“Wouldn’t I be in the way?”
“Don’t be an asshole, asshole,” Pick said, and grabbed McCoy’s arm and propelled him in the direction of the reviewing stand.
“I didn’t see you giving Pleasant his dollar,” Pickering said.
“I didn’t,” McCoy said. “Just because we’re now wearing bars doesn’t make him any
less of a vicious asshole.”
“My, you do hold a grudge, don’t you, Lieutenant?” Pickering said.
“You bet your ass, I do,” McCoy said.
Fleming Pickering smiled and put his hand out as they walked up.
“I knew who you were, of course,” he said.
“Sir?” McCoy asked, confused.
“One Marine corporal can always spot another, even in a sea of clowns,” Fleming Pickering said, pleased with himself.
“Flem!” Mrs. Pickering protested. She smiled at McCoy and gave him her hand. “You’ll have to excuse my husband, his being a Marine corporal was the one big thrill of his life. I’m pleased to finally meet you, Ken…I can call you ‘Ken,’ mayn’t I?…Malcolm’s written so much about you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” McCoy said.
“I would like nothing better,” Fleming Pickering said, “than to sit over a long lunch and have you tell me how you shepherded the lieutenant here around the boondocks, but we have a plane to catch.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” Pick said.
“This time tomorrow, we will be high above the blue Pacific,” Fleming Pickering said. “Bound for sunny Hawaii. I was originally going by myself, but then some scoundrel told my wife about the girls in the grass skirts.”
“I wasn’t worried about the hula-hula girls,” Pick’s mother replied. “What concerned me was the way you behave on a ship. If they serve eight meals a day—and Pacific-Orient does—and I wasn’t along, you’d eat all eight of them, and they’d have to take you off the ship in a wheelbarrow.”
“You’re coming back by ship?” Pick asked. “I thought you were flying both ways.”
“No,” Pick’s father said. “I put off the meeting in San Francisco until the twentieth. That way, we can board ship in Honolulu on the tenth and still make it back in plenty of time.”
Pick nodded his understanding.
McCoy finally figured out what they were talking about. He had been a little impressed that Pick’s parents would come all the way to Virginia just to see him get sworn in. But, so far as they were concerned, that was like a trip to the corner drugstore for cigarettes. They were about to fly to Hawaii. The only thing that had surprised Pick about that was they weren’t going to fly both ways.
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