Canidy drove his Ford convertible straight through from Florida, stopping only to catnap by the side of the road. Ed Bitter was Somewhat reluctantly flying the Devastator to Cedar Rapids himself. He wanted to see his father and had to get rid of his car, Canidy had argued, so driving his car home and selling it there seemed like a good idea. So far as their getting time in the Devastator was concerned, he would fly it back from Iowa.
"And what am I supposed to do with my car?" Bitter had protested.
"You really want a suggestion, Eddie?"
"Why don't I drive my car to Chicago, and you pick me up there?"
-we can make another trip if you like," Canidy said. "But it would make more sense to leave your car here and then turn it over to The Plantation."
"Why do I feel I am somehow being screwed?"
"After you really screw somebody one day, you'll be able to tell the difference," Canidy said. "In the meantime, don't rock the boat."
Canidy arrived in Cedar Rapids just after five in the morning and was afraid that he would disturb his father. But when he got to the campus, there was a light on in the apartment's tiny kitchen. His father was awake, shaved, and dressed, except for the tweed jacket he wore over his clerical dickey.
They shook hands. His father's hand felt soft and gentle in his.
Gentle and old.
The Reverend George Crater Canidy, Ph.D., D.D., headmaster of St. Paul's School, long widowed, lived in a small apartment in the dormitory between the chapel and the Language Building, where he had his office. It was inconceivable that he would live off campus. For in a very real sense, the Rev. Dr. Canidy and St. Paul's School were one and indivisible.
Canidy told his father that he was being released from the Navy to go to China and work in the fledgling Chinese aircraft industry. With his engineering degree, that was credible. He did not want to tell his father that he had been given a job where bonuses were paid for the number of people killed.
The Reverend Dr. Canidy was pleased. He quickly concluded that his son was going to China as a practical missionary, to bring to its downtrodden masses the Godgiven miracles of Western technology. It wasn't quite the same thing as his son going to spread the Christ, but it was far better than his being gospel of the Lord Jesus a sailor in the Navy. It would do no harm to let his father believe that, Canidy decided.
As always, as the morning wore on, the feeling came to Canidy that rather than coming "home," he was visiting a school he had long ago attended. Though there was a photograph of his mother on the table beside his father's chair in the living room, it produced no e emotional response. He didn't really remember her. But of cours ', he corrected himself, he did. What he remembered was the horrible smell in the hospital room where she had taken so long to die.
His mind had mostly shut that out, he thought, and in doing so had erased everything, including the good memories. There must have been good times. It was just that he couldn't remember her. It wasn't until he saw him-touched his hands-that he remembered what a good man, what a good friend, his father was, and again became aware of the depth of his feeling for him.
He was also aware that he had to be sort of a disappointment to his father, although his father of course didn't show it. His father would have been most happy had his son followed in his footsteps if not as a priest, then as an academic.
But Canidy's scholastic prowess was not the result of a love for scholarly things. He wanted to fly, and the price of that was academic success. He could not hang around Cedar Rapids airport, his father told him, while his grades were bad. The payment for his Saturday flying lessons was staying on the headmaster's list. He had simply raised his grades and kept them at a commendable level by paying attention to what was asked of him. His father's proud belief to the contrary, he had never really had to "put his nose to the grindstone and keep it there" nor had he ever demonstrated "remarkable self-discipline."
Canidy often wondered if a son's duty to his father included doing what the father, who was presumably the wiser, wanted him to do with his life. If that was the case, he was the undutiful son. He wanted neither to mold the characters of young men, which his father had once told him he considered the highest of privileges, nor to care for other people's souls.
The Reverend Dr. Canidy did not press the point when his son declined the opportunity to go to morning prayer. Canidy was almost immediately sorry, but by then his father had gone, and the s1nart thing to do was take a nap. His old room smelled musty.
He woke at lunchtime, nervous and hungry. He didn't want to go to the dining room and have the boys gape at him, so he drove the Ford into Cedar Rapids an d had lunch in a restaurant, then drove around town until it was time to go to the airport and wait for Bitter and the Devastator to appear.
Eddie Bitter was very respectful of the Reverend Dr. Canidy when they met, and perfectly willing to put on his white uniform k about the Naval Academy and naval aviation to and give a little tal the boys of St. Paul's at the evening meal. a dozen boys came to his father s apartafter the evening meal ment to hear more about the life of a midshipman at Annapolis and ed the boys, Canidy and his faof a naval aviator. While Ed entertain e library. ther retired to the comfortable leather chairs of th "Eric Fulmar sent me a lovely New Testament in Aramaic the other day," Dr. Canidy said.
"Eric Fulmar? My God! Where-and how-is he these days?"
"He's in Morocco," Dr. Canidy said.
"Morocco? What's he doing in Morocco?"
"Staying out of the war, or so he says. He tells me he's living with friends there. And his father's German, you know. They consider Eric a German, too. So he could be drafted."
-If I know Eric, he's up to more than hanging around with friends," Canidy said, laughing softly.
Eric Fulmar was always up to something. Fulmar had gotten the two of them into trouble more times than he'd care to remember. When Canidy had moved into the lower school at St. Paul's after his mother's death, he and Eric had become fast friends. Like gasoline and a match, his father said-obviously useful, but explosive when put together without adequate supervision.
Eric's mother was Monica Carlisle, the movie star who--happily for her career and income-looked considerably younger than her actual years. Her studio didn't want it known that Monica, instead of the virginal coed she regularly portrayed on the screen, was the mother of a son to whom (if her studio biography was to be believed) she had given birth at age seven.
The only time Monica Carlisle had made her presence felt in her son's life was to get him out of trouble. Canidy grinned to himself, remembering, while his father expounded on the finer points of the Aramaic Bible. One incident in particular stood out among all the scrapes he and Eric had gotten into.
Toy pistols were forbidden on campus, but they were readily available from Woolworth's five-and-ten for twenty-nine cents. And wooden matches were easily obtained from the school's kitchen. The matches, when shot from the pistols, ignited upon contact.
This was a great discovery, but what was more exciting was the potential of the white powder on the head of the match-removed from the wooden stick and piled in quantities, this stuff did great things. And later, even under the most severe of interrogations, Canidy and Fulmar steadfastly denied any knowledge of the rash of small, foul-smelling explosions that ruined the locks of the dormitory doors and terrorized the school for a week.
Then they were caught, literally with smoking guns, for a number of crimes all at once.
The day of the annual fall nature walk for the lower school, led by the biology instructor, seemed like the perfect time to test out some hypotheses concerning their tin guns and match heads. There were lots of tempting leaf piles along the street that led to the woods. First Canidy spoke earnestly with the teacher about chlorophyll while Eric, at the rear of the procession, gleefully let fly both guns. Canidy grinned as he remembered the small tussle they'd had when Eric hadn't shown up at the appointed time to take his turn discussing things with the teacher. So
Eric got all the leaf piles on the street, and Canidy didn't get his turn until they reached the woods.
His first four were sadly disappointing. But the fifth was a beauty. There was a sharp crack, followed a moment later by a vulgar obscenity from the biology teacher.
"Shit!" he howled. "Jesus Christ, I've been shot!"
He dropped to the ground, pulling up his trouser legs. Blood oozed from a dimesize wound in his calf.
"Fulmar did it!" one of the boys announced righteously. "He's got the gun!"
A nearby teacher instinctively scooped up Fulmar by the collar of his jacket, considered for a moment what to do about Canidy, then grabbed him by the collar and marched the both of them back to the stricken biology instructor. Just then a deep, low, roaring boom reverberated from the street. Fulmar's work in the fall leaves had reached the gas tank of a Studebaker President four-door sedan.
The fire department, three police cars, and an ambulance rushed to the scene. In addition to the Studebaker, leaf piles for three blocks were on fire. The police knew a bullet wound when they saw one, and since the kid obviously hadn't done it with his toy pistol, that meant there was some kind of nut out there with a.22 shooting at people. Hands on their revolvers, they fanned out looking for him.
The Reverend Dr. Canidy's high reputation and considerable influence within Cedar Rapids did not keep Eric and Dick out of the Cedar Rapids Children's Home, at least not for two days. The picture in the paper showed the two boys being collared by the police.
This picture, more than anything else, brought in Monica Carlisle's young lawyer, Stanley Fine. Fine bought a new Studebaker President in exchange for an agreement not to press charges. In court, he argued for the Reverend Dr. Canidy's exemplary reputation for dealing with boys, and the presiding judge of the juvenile court turned the malefactors over to the Reverend for rehabilitation. The real rehabilitation was administered by the physical-education instructor, who used a wide leather belt, which stung like hell and left red welts, but which did no real damage. Fine returned to Hollywood, leaving behind him two shiny silver dollars that were immediately traded in at Woolworth's for two more tin guns.
The question of expelling Eric came up, but it was dismissed. The two kids were in their last year at St. Paul's Lower School. In the fall, Canidy would be sent to St. Mark's School in Southboro, Mass., and Dr. Canidy recommended to Monica Carlisle that a military school might be perfect for her son's high-school education. The two friends believed they would never see each other again after they graduated from St. Paul's.
But when Canidy arrived in Southboro, Fulmar was waiting for him. And grinning.
"It took two full weeks of tantrums," he announced, doing a little joyful jig. His just-a-little-too-long blond hair kept flopping over his eyes, but he was too happy to notice. "But they finally caved in. What is this place, anyway? You know how hard it was to get me in here?"
They had not quite two years together at St. Mark's; then Fulmar was sent to stay with his father in Europe, where he was to continue his education.
They exchanged the usual letters for a while, but eventually stopped. Still, in Canidy's mind, Eric Fulmar was one hell of a guy.
Canidy focused his attention back on his father in time to catch the tail end of his discourse on the Bible.
"It is a lovely book, Dad. When you write to Eric again, make sure you tell him I said hello."
"I've kept him abreast of your activities," his father said. "He's asked about you."
"Well, tell him I said hello," Canidy repeated. He was not actually surprised that Fulmar had succeeded in duckin the German draft. If nothing else, Fulmar was resourceful. Even as a little boy, he had had to learn to take care of himself, for with the exceptions of the Reverend Dr. Canidy and the lawyer, Stanley Fine, who had gotten them out of the arson episode, no adult had ever really given a damn about him.
In the morning, the Reverend Dr. Canidy drove them to the airfield in Dick's car.
He insisted on offering a prayer for their safe journey, and they stood for a moment with their heads bowed beside the Devastator.
As he looked up at his father after the prayer, Canidy was surprised that his eyes were watering and his throat was constricted.
0930 Friday mornthe parade for the graduating pilots was held at ing. The prescribed uniform for the staff (the IPS) was dress whites, with swords and medals. Neither Canidy nor Bitter had any medals yet, but the brass, particularly the older brass, had rows of them. From the World War, Canidy thought. The last World War.
The swords were absurd. No naval officer had ever used a sword in the last war, and now they were getting ready for another war, and they still wore them. He was amused that he would be taking the sword (because he had forgotten to pack it with the things he had taken to Cedar Rapids and didn't know what else to do With it) to China.
The parade was over at I 100 hours. They put their swords in the trunk of Bitter's Buick, where they had previously packed overnight bags, and left the base in their dress whites. They took off their uniform caps as soon as they were out of Pensacola, put the roof down, and headed toward Mobile. e upper end of Mobile Bay, and as they ap proached Mobile, they came to the Mobile Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. A dozen ships-cargo ships, tankers, and what looked like the hull of a light cruiserwere on the ways in various stages of construction.
"My cousin Mark works there," Bitter said. "He'll be at The Plantation. He's the assistant superintendent of construction."
That was not how Chesty Whittaker had described Mark Chambers's role at the shipyard. Chesty said he owned it.
"I'm impressed," Canidy replied.
He feared again that he was opening some Pandora's box by go-ing where Sue Ellen was.
But then he decided to hell with it. What he would do would be the perfect gentleman, faithfully pretending that he had never seen her before. If that made her a little uncomfortable, that was probably an appropriate punishment for a married woman who went around screwing strange sailors.
The deeper the Crescent moved into the Deep South, the more convinced Sarah Child felt that the trip was a mistake. Sarah was slight, with dark eyes, light complexion, and black hair; she was nineteen years old, a Bryn Mawr sophomore, and a New Yorker. Her father, a banker, was the grandson of a banker who had been sent from Frankfurt am Main to open a New York branch. The grandfather and his son, and Sarah's father, had been more successful in the New World than anyone in Frankfurt had dreamed. Frankfurt was thus now considered one of several overseas branches of the New York bank.
Her best friends at Bryn Mawr, Ann Chambers and Charity Hoche, were what Sarah thought of as "healthy" (that is, taller, heavier, and larger-bosomed), blond, fair-skinned, Southerners and Protestant Christian.
Bryn Mawr was one thing, and entertaining the girls at the Child apartment on East Sixty-fourth Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan was one thing, but coming south with them to a "plantation" was another.
Sarah could not put her finger on precisely why she was scared and uncomfortable, but that didn't change anything. Partly, she knew, it was because her mother (a woman with what was calledto be nice-a nervous condition) was opposed to her coming down here, and partly it was because Sarah hadn't really had much experience with these kinds of people. Her first night at Bryn Mawr had been the first time she had been separated from her parents overnight. And then later Ann and Charity had become the first friends she'd ever made who weren't Jews.
They got off the Crescent in Montgomery, Alabama ("Heart of Dixie ' " a sign proclaimed. "See the first capital of the Confederate States of America"), at 5:20 Pm. on Thursday. An enormous, very black man named Robert met them with Ann Chambers's mother's Lincoln. Ten minutes later, they were driving out of town down a narrow, winding macadam road at seventy-five miles an hour into a seemingly endless forest of pine trees. An hour and a half later, the Lincoln stopped before the white columns of a huge house.
The Chamberses had held dinner for them, and they'd
eatenoff fine china, with ancient silver, served by servants in aprons-in a huge dining room under the portrait of a man in a Confederate colonel's uniform.
Afterward, they sat on rocking chairs on the veranda of the mansion while hordes of noisy insects battered themselves against a hanging light.
Ann's mother announced there were some boys coming down from the university with Ann's brother Charley tomorrow afternoon.
"And your cousin Eddie, Ann Jenny Chambers told her daughter. "He and his friend from the Navy will be here for the weekend."
She went on to say that Ann's older brother and his wife would also be coming up from Mobile. Sarah knew perfectly well what that meant. There would be two simultaneous parties at The Plantation. One for "the young people," she, Charity, Ann, and the young men being imported for them by Charley Chambers, who was twenty-one and an Alabama senior. And a second party for everybody elseeverybody who'd be older and more interesting.
At half past ten, Sarah went to her room. It was furnished with antiques, another oil portrait of a Confederate officer, and a bed with a canopy.
W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes Page 7