The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  “That satisfy them?”

  “I guess. For the ones who’ve secure about the race bit, that rang a bell. For those who’ve still figuring out where they stand, well …”

  Brian got up. “I didn’t mean to pry,” he said. “This whole race issue is such a raw nerve, everyone’s afraid even to talk about it, call a spade a spade.” Then Brian realized what he had just said, but Jackson was grinning at him. “So to speak, Mr. Holcomb?”

  “Aw, shit, Chief—”

  Jackson laughed and waved off Brian’s apology. “I know what you’re saying—if you weren’t colorblind, you wouldn’t have used that expression. Sometime we ought to talk about this.”

  “But it’s going to get in the way of your investigation, isn’t it, Chief?”

  “Yeah, it might. Depends on how much I let it.

  Wouldn’t be the first time I lit a fuse that ‘everybody’ would rather I hadn’t. But in reality, it pisses me off.

  These guys were given an opportunity they didn’t deserve.”

  It was Brian’s turn to laugh. “I may know more about that position than you’d think. I’m going to finish my rounds. Then I’m going to get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow night, I want you to know I’m going on the beach with Godzilla himself.”

  Jackson grinned. “The bosun? Get lots of sleep, Mr. Holcomb.”

  “I will, but I’m going to make another round about twenty-three-thirty, see what it’s like when the liberty party returns.”

  “I’ll be doing the same thing, sir.”

  “Well good. Why don’t you meet me on the quarterdeck at twenty-three-thirty.”

  San Diego

  Maddy lay in bed at 2:30 on a Friday morning and tried not to cry. Brian had finally phoned from Subic Bay, and it had just about been a complete disaster.

  First, they had been disconnected. She had picked the phone up, awakening from a troubled sleep, and not recognized who it was until the static diminished and the connection suddenly cleared.

  “Brian, is that you? Oh, I can’t believe it!”

  “Hey, Maddy,” he had said, using the traditional Georgia salutation.

  “Brian, where are you—what time is it—oh, I’m confused.

  I’m not awake.”

  “Sorry, babe, I’m lucky even to get a line. I—”

  And then the line had gone dead, his voice replaced with a roar of static. She had groaned, sworn, and hung up. He had told her this might happen; now the trick was for him to get his operator back without losing his place in line. She had waited, rubbing her eyes, afraid to leave the phone even to go to the bathroom. He had come through again ten minutes later, and, after an incompre hensible exchange with a Filipino operator that she had finally recognized was a request for a collect call, Brian was back.

  He had asked how she was doing and she had said, “Fine, good as can be expected. I miss you. Do you miss me?” He had told her about the big foreign-exchange building and that he was going to get himself a stereo and her a surprise present. She asked how he was doing in Hood and he said that he had seen the special fitness report, and that, if they sent it, it looked good for promotion, even though there were some things about the Hood that were not … well, he’d tell her about it later.

  “What do you mean, if they send it? Why wouldn’t they send it?”

  He had demurred at first, but she had pressed, and then he had started talking around the drug problem, trying to disguise what he was talking about because all the phone lines from Subic were monitored by a Navy security group. He had told her of his somewhat anomalous position vis-a-vis the exec and the captain on what happened to people caught with drugs aboard ship, how his future fitness reports would depend on going along with the ship’s system, and how he was having trouble coming around to doing it their way.

  “Brian, is that smart?” she had asked. “I mean, the whole point of taking this ship, this damned deployment, was to get to lieutenant commander, wasn’t it? Maybe you’re just going to have to go along, get through it, and get off the ship as soon as your tour is up.”

  “But Maddy, this isn’t right, what’s going on here. I mean, it may be politically the right move, and there are guys like Austin who think that is exactly how we should play it, but I hate the thought of some pothead with his fingers on the missile radars. Look, we should probably stop talking about this, okay?”

  “Okay, but Brian, don’t throw away this whole deployment.

  I mean, I hate your being gone, and I’m … I’m probably not doing a terrific job adjusting to this side of the Navy, but please, don’t let it all be for nothing.”

  “Maddy, you don’t understand. As a department head, I’ve got a responsibility to the ship, not just to the political interests of the CO and the XO to keep their drug problem under wraps. I’m just not sure how long I can go along with this stuff.”

  “Brian, think about it, okay? Just think about it. It’s only for this one tour of duty. You said that, remember?

  That we had to go through this to get well and to get you back on track for lieutenant commander? Once you’ve got that, you have a shot at being an XO yourself; then you can call the shots and run a ship the way you think you should. This is what you told me, remember?”

  “Yeah, I know. But there’s so much happening out here—things I can’t talk about, operational stuff. Everything’s a whole lot different from what I expected. And this port-and-starboard business, I’m just barely getting back to normal after almost two days in port.”

  “Okay, honey, I know. Angela told me what that was all about. Just get some rest there while you’re in port.

  But Brian? Don’t be a crusader. I don’t think the Navy likes crusaders.”

  Brian had been silent for a moment. She almost thought the connection was gone again when he spoke.

  “Maddy, I’m going to have to play this one by my conscience. If the Navy is going this route with druggies, then maybe I don’t want to be a lieutenant commander.

  But I don’t think it’s the Navy. The Navy’s policy is pretty clear. I think it’s this ship, this command. There’s something going on with the captain, and I can’t figure it out.”

  None of this had sounded very good at all to Maddy.

  For the first time during the conversation, she wondered whether he had been drinking. Brian tended to get very serious, almost morose, if he had been drinking. He had almost no capacity for liquor.

  “Brian, Brian, just hunker down and do your job.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Maddy—doing my duty as an officer and not as some kind of flunky who’s desperate to get promoted. I thought you’d support that notion.”

  “Not if it means we’re going through this deployment for nothing, Brian.

  That doesn’t make sense. I know there’s a lot I don’t understand, but just remember why we’re putting up with this … this hateful separation.”

  “Well, I’ll try, Maddy. Look, there’s a big line here—”

  There had been some pain in his voice, and Maddy recognized that she had somehow said the wrong thing.

  But she hadn’t really known what to say. She fell back on something reliable.

  “I love you, Brian. Tell me more in your letters so I can understand it better. I didn’t mean to sound selfish.

  It’s just that I need you here.”

  “I know, Maddy, I know. And I love you, too. Things aren’t that bad. I may be all wrong about this, but I don’t think so. I guess I do need to fill you in some more so you’ll understand. I can’t really talk on this open line.”

  “Okay. I’m really glad you called. Just do what they want and hurry home.”

  “You surviving all this?”

  “Fair, Brian. Just fair. Thank God for the job at the bank, or I’d be out of my mind. I know this much, wherever we do go after this tour, I’m going to have to have a job, a career even, if you’re going to deploy some more.”

  “If I go to a ship, I’
ll deploy. That’s kind of what we do.”

  “I know, and I hate it.” That last had popped out without a lot of thought, and she had cringed when she heard his reply.

  “Well, Maddy. Maybe I should have drawn a clearer picture when we got married.”

  “Oh, Brian, let’s not fight. You’re way over there and I’m here. We can’t do anything about it, so let’s just grit it out. Which is why I think you ought not to fight the system on whatever it is about the ship that’s bugging you.”

  “Well, like I said, I’m going to have to sort this one out by myself, I guess. I thought you’d—well, never mind. I’m getting some looks, taking up the phone. I love you, and I’ll write soon. Bye-bye.”

  And he had gone, just like that. She had hung up the phone and lain back on the bed, sudden tears stinging her eyes, trying to recall her exact words, wondering how in the hell she had managed to say precisely the wrong thing on what was probably the one and only phone call she would get during the whole cruise. She drummed the mattress with her fists. It was so damned hard, with all their communications compressed into little scraps of paper that were weeks old when you got them, and a five minute phone call every three months. What the hell kind of marriage was this? And if he does real well, they’ll let him do it again. Maybe right away.

  Wonderful. One of the other wives had even said that Hood might have to deploy again next year. Brian was assigned for two years.

  She really didn’t think she could do this again.

  But Brian had been trying to tell her something, something going wrong in the ship, some kind of mystery about people using drugs. This was news. His letters had mentioned that there was some kind of drug problem, but there had been no hint that Brian might be getting himself sideways with the captain and the exec. Most of his letters had been entirely routine, the mirror images of her own weekly reports on the home front. The captain’s wife had made a big deal about not filling her letters with the “poor me’s,” as she called it. Maybe the captain or that big commander, the executive officer, had made the same point to the officers—tell the home front everything’s just fine; that way, we don’t get the girls all upset.

  God. Two sets of people, both desperately wanting to reach out and touch, to communicate, to be with one another, if only in letters and phone calls, and both playing by a set of rules that makes real communication almost impossible.

  She turned the bedside light off and stared out the top half of the apartment windows at the late-fall overcast, illuminated by a city full of rose-colored streetlights. She could never get used to the way it looked like rain every morning, only to have that perpetual overcast burn off into a gloriously clear, sunny day. Every day. She was sick of perpetually beautiful weather. She missed the seasons, whether at home in Atlanta or in New England.

  It had been such fun with Brian when they were approaching engagement and marriage. But since then, while in the Navy had settled into one long wait. She could understand why some of the other wives had opted early for children, if only to so fill their daily lives that missing Daddy was a pastime that could be confined to the long hours after midnight.

  Or they found jobs, a career of their own, and maybe somebody else to share them with.

  Which brought her to Autrey. Autrey the campaigner.

  She could now well believe that he was a skilled stalker, patient in the woodscraft ways of a hunter. She didn’t feel threatened in any way—it wasn’t as if he were menacing her. But she felt like the white men in the Western movies who look around from time to time and see distant figures on the hills around them. Autrey was campaigning, in the sense that he was—how had he put it?—putting himself in the way of love and hoping. Quiet, persistent, projecting a lot of sex appeal without being a macho idiot about it, and making it very clear that he was attracted to her, that he wanted her. Nothing complicated, not marriage, not a love affair, not their life stories.

  He just wanted her, desired her, a man wanting a woman and being strong enough, unafraid of rejection, to tell her so. She smiled. If men only knew what a powerful force that was, no marriage would ever be safe.

  And every time she had broken it off, he had gone along with grace and a smile. And then he had appeared up on those hills again with the same grace and smile, the same focus and direct awareness of her, even when she did something outrageous like wearing the high school cheerleader outfit to Parker’s Place. All he had done was look and smile and then up the pressure a few notches by telling her he was shipping out. And then saying, with that insouciant grin, that the news was absolutely a ploy to win her heart. Three months ago, she could never have even speculated about an Autrey, and now she was living in two well-developed spheres of imagination, one in which she loved her husband, yearned for his return, and wondered about their future and a second where she sometimes yearned just to call Autrey on the phone and tell him to get over here. Call him on the phone? She didn’t even have his home phone number. She was tempted to turn on the light and look him up in the book. Under what—Crows? Catches Crows? She realized she knew nothing about him, not where he lived, not his phone number, not his domestic habits. Which is one of the reasons he is so attractive—you haven’t seen him on a Monday morning.

  She was almost shocked to hear rain against the windows.

  She listened hard. It never rains in Southern California, But how did that song go? It never rains in Southern California. It just pours. Oh yes, sometimes it just goddamn pours.

  Brian followed Chief Martinez off the gray Navy shuttle bus in front of the main gates. It had been a hot and sweaty ride from the pier area out to the east side of the base. Brian had met the boatswain near the base telephone exchange, after his phone call home to Maddy. He had expected to feel good after calling home, but instead he was … well, disappointed. She had missed the whole point about his dilemma in Hood, about whether or not he should do the right thing. All she could talk about was how miserable she was, how lonely, and how depressed at the thought of more deployments to come. Of course there would be more deployments—that’s what the hell successful officers did, take their ships to sea. But underneath his professional indignance, he feared that his wife was beginning to orbit that question that hung like a dark star in the night sky of every Navy marriage. One day, you may have to choose: a married life with me or a career in the Navy. She hadn’t said it in so many words, but, listening to her tonight, she sure as hell was beginning to think it. Thank God I have a job. And I’m going to keep it. I hate the idea of more deployments. And I hate you for bringing them on our heads. No, no, she hadn’t said that at all. Bet she thought it, though. But there’s been nothing like this in her letters. Of course not, you don’t put that in a letter. So when do you talk about it? When you’re not deployed, dummy. He sighed, realizing that what he really needed was a sailor’s liberty.

  He had the sudden urge to get drunk and howl at the moon. And from the looks of this crowd, he’d be just one more coyote.

  Stepping off the bus, they were enveloped by a noisy crowd of American Navy men, sailors, chiefs, and officers, the officers wearing slacks and sport shirts; the enlisted, jeans and Tshirts, with even an occasional sport coat in view. The main gates at Subic reminded Brian of the starting chutes at a racetrack: There were actually a dozen gates opening through a fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence stretched across one end of a broad bridge. Each gate was guarded by an armed Marine who checked the ID cards of the officers and chiefs, the ID and liberty cards for the other enlisted, and everybody’s overnight bag if he had one. It was fully dark at 2030, but the day’s heat had not yet broken.

  Everyone perspired freely in the humid night air, especially the Marines in their fatigue uniforms. Both sides of the liberty gates were illuminated by spotlights mounted on top of the high fence. The spots actually appeared to sputter because of the clouds of insects swarming around the fixtures. The curfew hours, arranged by pay grade, were posted on signboards beside each gate.

&
nbsp; The chief carried a small overnight bag, but Brian went empty-handed. He had no intentions of staying over in the town. Warned about thieves and pickpockets, he had left his wallet and rings on the ship, carrying only fifty dollars’ worth of pesos and his ID card. As they neared the sweating Marine checking cards and bags at their gate, Brian could see the edges of Olongapo across the bridge. The town was a blaze of colored neon lights that stretched down an unpaved main street teeming with people and wildly decorated vehicles, known locally as jeepneys. The street resembled a frontier town, false fronts emblazoned with neon signs giving way to ramshackle corrugated-iron roofs crouching in the darkness beyond.

  Once through the gate, they walked toward the bridge, which spanned stinking mudflats and a canal that appeared to run completely around the town like a moat.

  As they crossed the bridge, Brian glanced down into the canal to confirm what his nose was already telling him.

  The chief began his instruction as they crossed over the bridge amid a happy throng of boisterous sailors.

  “This here’s called the Shit River; yer nose’ll tell you why. It’s kind of a benjo ditch for the whole town. See them kids?”

  Only then did Brian notice a collection of naked Fili pino urchins perched in the weeds under the bridge. The scrawny boys jumped up and down, yelling in their piping voices, trying to get the sailors’ attention. When they succeeded, some of the sailors would toss coins into the malodorous stew and the kids would dive in to retrieve them, creating a brown maelstrom of stagnant water, sewage, and bare legs kicking in the air as the boys probed the muck at the bottom for the coins.

  “I can’t believe they jump into that,” Brian said.

  “Yeah, but watch what happens when they git it.”

  As the chief spoke, one child scrambled back onto the muddy banks, a shiny coin held high in his hand, while the sailors cheered. In the next instant, a teenaged boy stepped forward from the shadows under the bridge, cuffed the smaller boy on the side of the head, and took the coin. The boy complained in a gibber of Tagalog, but the teenager ignored him and melted back into the darkness to wait for the next success.