She hardly seemed to have heard me. “You’re the tour guide.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.” She snapped herself back to attention. “I’d love to see some copper mines. Really.”
With that decision, everything else that would happen was already determined.
CHAPTER 8
SO WE LURCHED TOWARD OUR DESTINY ACROSS THE DESERT under the scorching sun, sometimes in clouds of dust so thick they reminded me of the morning fog over the Sea of Japan.
In those days, US 89 was paved all the way from Tucson to Phoenix and Arizona 77 was blacktopped from Oracle Junction to the San Manuel Mine behind the Santa Catalina Mountains. But the rest of the picturesque trip through the Dripping Springs Mountains up to Superior and US 60 was on a “macadamized” road—an uneven mixture of treated gravel and dirt (the sort of highway in whose existence my children resolutely refuse to believe).
I was emotionally exhausted from my fight with Andrea King. I’d flown by the seat of my pants, the way I had often returned from combat missions in bad weather. My instincts had guided me pretty well in both sorts of bad weather, but Andrea could obviously turn into heavy weather without warning. Barbara would never have been so angry at me; but then she would never have delighted in my kisses the way Andrea had.
The Sonora Desert is a weird place—saguaro (giant cacti with arms raised to heaven in prayer), ocotillos (trees which produce leaves only after rain, but after every rain), palo verdes (trees with their chlorophyll in the bark), rattlers, sidewinders, scorpions, Gila monsters, tarantulas, an occasional herd of mountain sheep, and once in a great while (so my guidebook said) a solitary bobcat or mountain lion or perhaps even a very rare Mexican jaguar.
Andrea’s moods changed as dramatically as did the scenery. In the barren desert north of Tucson she frowned with disapproval and informed me that she thought the yucca tree with its single skinny finger reaching skyward was “insane.”
“Take that up with God. He made it.”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“Thanks for reminding me. I forgot.”
“Was it the second Navy Cross which kept you awake last night?”
“Not so much kept me awake. I had no trouble falling asleep. Indeed I had some pleasant memories of behavior just before I went to bed. To tell the truth I can’t remember them.…”
Poke in the ribs, very gentle and affectionate poke.
“But then I woke up. Want to hear about it?”
“If you want to talk about it.”
“I do, Andrea. I do.”
But it wasn’t my own men that I told her about.
We were still for a few moments as I looked for a way to begin.
“It was toward the end of the war … did you ever hear of the Yamoto?”
“Wasn’t that the Japanese admiral who planned the raid on Pearl?”
“That was Yamamoto. We killed him in the islands. Someone broke the Japanese code, so we knew he was coming. The Army had P-38s waiting for him. So Pearl was avenged, for whatever that was worth. Poor bastard, he was against the war too.”
“The Yamoto was a ship?”
“Biggest battleship in the world. Probably the biggest that will ever be. Sixty thousand tons, eighteen-inch guns. Pretty useless in a modern war, but awesome like a dinosaur. It also proved that the Japs could build better battlewagons than we could, not that it made any difference so long as we could build more carriers and train more air crews. We put its sister ship under the waves during the battle of the Philippine Sea. I wasn’t there. Bill Halsey led us on a wild-goose chase up to the north. We sank four carriers, which were decoys because they didn’t have any air crews to man them. Am I boring you with all this history?”
“Certainly not.”
“In the last year of the war the Japs turned to suicide raids, kamikazes, or ‘Divine Wind,’ they called it. They crashed planes into a lot of our ships and we had a hard time figuring out how to stop them. It was hard for us even to understand them. They had lost the war, why kill yourself when it’s not going to change anything? But then, why start a war with the United States anyway?
“So someone decided to send the Yamoto out on a Divine Wind raid. One morning our scout planes reported that it had sortied out into the Sea of Japan and was coming our way. There were no escorts, no air support because we had wiped all of that out. Just one big old battlewagon taking on the whole American Navy. Our group wasn’t close enough to join the shoot-out the first day. But the boys who were put enough bombs and fish into it to stop it dead in the water. They had fired most of their ammunition too. We were supposed to finish it off. Proverbial duck in a shooting gallery.”
“Poor men.”
“Us or them?”
“Both.”
“Yeah, I agree. Well, our task group put five hundred planes into the air—TBFs, F6Fs, SB2Ds—a cloudless run up to the Sea of Japan. My squadron was to fly top cover for the bombers, just in case the Japs found a few aircraft to put up against us. Nothing but a grandstand seat for killing. The CAG’s plane experienced some mechanical problems. Then the second in command had to turn back. The word came from the admiral that the senior officer of our air group was to take charge. That would not ordinarily have been me, but the group commander had been grounded the day before with a sore throat. So it was my show.”
“You were twenty-two then?” The compassion in her voice made my throat tighten.
“I think the admiral about died when he found out that he had a kid my age as CAG for five hundred planes. He couldn’t complain because I didn’t make any mistakes. I might just as well have been a quarterback against the Little Sisters of the Poor. Most of my classmates—the ones who were still alive—thought I was a lucky SOB to have the opportunity of a lifetime.”
I pulled the car to the side of the road. “Do you mind if I stop until I finish? I can barely see the highway.”
“I’d drive if I could.”
“Someday soon I’ll teach you how. So, I sat up there at ten thousand feet and directed in wave after wave of bombers. The Japs were still firing their eighteen-inch guns from the bow of the ship. It wasn’t likely that they would hit anything, but I told the TBF groups to come in from the rear of the ship and then turn at the last minute. It was like gunnery practice. The CIC people claim we put eighteen fish into her. I thought she’d never sink.
“I had plenty of fuel because we were only a hundred miles away. The admiral, still not knowing he had a brat—”
“Spoiled River Forest brat …”
Perfect moment for comic relief. I squeezed her hand, which I discovered was holding mine.
“He told me to stay there and direct the next waves which were coming in. Finally—it seemed like it took forever—this big ship, the biggest one I’d ever seen, not counting the Queen Mary, started to heel over. Real slowly, the rust-colored underside began to appear. Then the strangest thing happened.…”
“Yes …?”
“The crew swarmed up to the decks. They filled every inch topside. I circled down low so I could see what was happening. I told Air Control that I thought they were about to abandon ship. There was nothing much we could do about it. We didn’t have any craft in the area. Then I saw that every one of them was wearing dress blue, like they were going to the annual Christmas ball or whatever they had. I remember shouting on my radio, ‘They’re all saluting.’
“ ‘Saluting?’ the guy in Air Control said, like he thought I’d lost my sanity. ‘Who the fuck they saluting?’
“ ‘God, the emperor, how the fuck should I know?’
“Then the ship turned over and they began to fall off, little navy dolls falling into the water off a toy ship. Most of them managed to hang on till it slid under with a big whoosh of water. I flew over the oil slick, maybe a hundred and fifty feet over the water.
“ ‘CAG One to Air Control. CAG One to Air control.’ ” I was back above the Sea of Japan, a football field over the
waves. “ ‘The Yamoto has just sunk with all hands. They went down saluting.’
“ ‘Repeat, CAG One. Repeat. Do you read me? Please repeat. Over.’
“ ‘Roger. This is CAG One. The Yamoto has sunk. I see no survivors. Do you read me? Over.’
“ ‘Roger, CAG One. We read you. Did you say they went down saluting? Over.’
“ ‘The whole crew. Topside. In dress blue. Recommend recall of all our aircraft.’
“So they recalled all of us. I was the last one to leave, as a CAG should be. I overflew the oil slick—it was getting bigger by the minute, a rotten egg spreading on the blue ocean—several more times. I don’t know why. Even if I saw one of those navy-blue dolls, I couldn’t have been any help to him.”
“And he wouldn’t have wanted help.”
“Wouldn’t he? Maybe not. Who can say? Anyway, the admiral shook my hand, took the Navy Cross ribbon off his own uniform and pinned it on mine, told me I was a fine, brave young man. I said it was like hunting bison with Buffalo Bill. His frosty eyes glinted like maybe he understood. He asked me about the salute and the dress blues. I confirmed it. ‘Strangest thing ever,’ he said. I agreed. They had pictures from our observation planes developed in a couple of hours, so they knew I wasn’t around the bend.”
The Yamoto business was so surrealistic in its horror that I could hardly believe it had actually happened. My voice was dry and cold.
“You stack the deck against yourself.” Could she possibly be kissing my fingers? “You know that, don’t you? You excuse the Japanese because their culture encourages them to kill prisoners, but you don’t excuse yourself when their culture encourages them to think mass suicide is something beautiful.”
“It was beautiful, Andrea. That’s the weird part of it. It was beautiful. A terrible beauty.”
“I think a poet named Yeats wrote that about Ireland. One of their crazy revolutions. But don’t you see, you’re tormenting yourself for other people’s decisions?”
“That’s what my head tells me. That’s what the chaplain on the Big E told me. He said maybe I was too sensitive to be an air-crew commander. I don’t think he understood me. I was a good commander. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I think so, poor dear man.”
“What? I’m not sure myself.”
Now I was kissing her hand. The desert oven in which we both were steaming was becoming hotter. The sun devils were spinning all around us. There was no sound but that of our voices. I had the feeling, to be repeated many times in the next two days, that we were the only humans left in the world. The surrealism of the Sea of Japan merged with the surrealism of the Sonora Desert.
“You love people so much you don’t want to see them hurt, even when they’re hurting themselves. You want to stop all the hurts. You’re not strong enough to do that, though you are strong. And sweet besides”—she patted my cheek—”and you’re angry at God because He is strong enough and He doesn’t stop the hurt.”
I watched a sun devil leap up on the other side of the road. It might take a lifetime to ponder the wisdom in those sentences. The wisdom and the devastating criticism.
“That’s an A plus.”
“And you haven’t figured out that it must hurt God even more than it hurts you.”
“Where did you get that theology?”
“I don’t know.” She laughed lightly. “I just thought it up, but it seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”
“Are you willing to apply it to yourself?”
She frowned. “I don’t want to, but unless I’m a hypocrite I’ll have to, won’t I?”
I released her hand and started the car, now entirely drained.
“You’re a good listener, Andrea King, a great listener.”
“You’ve only made a beginning, Jerry Keenan.”
“Grade on my beginning, please.”
“Serious response, for a change. B plus.”
“I’ll take it.”
We both laughed uneasily and I pushed my patient Roxy back on Arizona 77.
With the impressive wisdom of hindsight, I see now that the two of us were basket cases. Vulnerable, sensitive kids whom chance and circumstance had pushed to the breaking point and a little bit beyond.
It was not merely that we felt love, love driven by the fierce engine of sexual attraction. Not merely that we were obsessed with one another, although we surely were obsessed that morning long ago in the Sonora Desert. We both had been seized by titanic compulsions that, even if they were mostly within us, had become imprinted on the wild, barren, deadly environment around us.
We’d known each other for a day, an intense, roller-coaster day. But we’d linked our psyches with potent forces that were independent and automatic—energies, currents, chemistries. I was an open book to her. Her moods caused instant resonance in me.
The desert depressed and frightened my pretty, and now suitably attired, waif. She hardly listened to my lectures, but rather sat, schoolgirl-straight, next to me and tried to be polite while her daydreams wandered thousands of miles away.
But in the mountains she twisted in every direction to marvel at the spiral peaks, the occasional Mormon irrigated farm (“like a beautiful green carpet”), and the indifferent cattle grazing near a wash that provided enough moisture for grass and a stand of cottonwood or oak. (“Aren’t they cute?”)
I played the tour-guide role, explaining the formation of the mountains, the history of the Mormons, the reasons that the desert and the grass country often existed side by side, the terrible conflicts between the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) and the copper-mining companies.
“You know everything.” It was a statement of fact, neither criticism nor compliment.
“You know more about literature and music.”
“Much good that does.”
Then in the hills between Oracle and Mammoth, beyond the San Manuel Mine, Roxy became contentious. First she sputtered and coughed, then she heaved and wheezed, next she kind of buckled and slowed down. Finally she quit completely.
“Roxinante stopped.”
“No kidding.”
“She’s tired. Not enough sleep last night. Too many dreams.”
“You think it’s funny?”
“No, Commander, it’s not funny. But you are. Wonderful, but still funny.”
“Do you want to roast inside,” I said as I opened the door and climbed into the furnace, “or bake outside?”
“I think I’ll stretch my pretty legs while you’re playing with Roxy.”
“Pretty?”
“I anticipate your flattery.”
She kissed me.
“Is that a reward for losing our mount here in the desert hills?”
“A reward for being you. Now fix the car, please. And let the Grand Duchess know when you’re done.”
“Why don’t you take your Russian buddy and the blanket in the backseat and go sit under one of the oak trees over by that wash.”
“That what?”
“Wash.”
“You talk funny. It’s a wash, not a ‘warsh’.”
“You’ll have to get used to the way we Chicagoans talk.” I propped up Roxy’s hood. “Now get out of my hair.”
She climbed into the backseat, unstrapped her suitcase, added the packages from Steinfeld’s to its neatly organized piles, removed her novel, and reached for the blanket.
“Be careful of the wine bottle.”
She already had it in her hand. “Wine for lunch?”
“And thou under the bough.”
She sniffed disdainfully as a Grand Duchess should and strolled down to the stand of oak trees. Meanwhile I turned my attention to Roxy.
There was a time, children, when cars did not have automatic chokes. The manual choke was not merely an aberration of the early VWs. Roxy’s problems seemed to involve her choke. I would wait till I was sure the carburetor was no longer flooded, open the choke, step on the pedal, close the choke quickly, pump the ped
al again, and pray that my mount would cooperate. She would sputter into life, hesitate as though considering the possibilities, and then die.
I worked on her for at least an hour and abused her with the best navy swear words I knew. All wasted.
And not a single car came from either direction. I might be marooned permanently in the steaming desert with two box lunches, a jug of wine, and a ghost girl under the bough.
Why did I think “ghost girl”?
She was sweet and appealing and lovable, but still uncanny, still not quite a creature of my world.
At that point even, halfway through a fateful day, I had some grip on my sanity.
Then she scared the living daylights out of me.
“Can’t start the car?”
I didn’t turn around. “Brilliant observation. Go back to your Russian.”
“I fell asleep.”
I looked up at her. The bookmark was halfway through Crime and Punishment. She read quickly. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
“Not much. Same for you?”
I nodded. “Bad influence on each other.”
“Maybe … Do you know that you look funny with grease on your face?”
Wrench in hand, I advanced on her. “You’re risking your life, woman.”
“Get away.” She backed off, taunting me. “I don’t want any grease on my expensive new clothes. I’ll have to pay enough for them.”
“This car is not a laughing matter.”
She ducked around my make-believe swing and peered into the Chevy’s innards. “Mysterious.”
“Not if you know anything about cars. Do you?”
“Certainly not. But it’s that funny little black part that isn’t working.”
“What funny little black part?” I bent over next to her, my “uncanny” gauge shooting up.
“That one there. It needs cleaning.”
“The distributor.”
“I don’t know what silly name you call it. But it does need cleaning.”
I removed the distributor cap and, sure enough, it did need cleaning. My fingers trembling, I scrubbed it out with an old rag. “I’ll probably have to buy a new filter when we get to Superior.”
The Search for Maggie Ward Page 9