“Nothing—at least for now. Don’t worry, Philip. I’m not going to humiliate him, although he deserves it. I don’t want anything to do with him, because I don’t trust him. Perhaps we could simply keep the secret as our ace in the hole, should there ever be a problem about you and me together.”
“My sentiments exactly, but what about him being familiar with you? I’ve had some time to think it over and you were very clear you wouldn’t tolerate it, but what if you hadn’t been? We don’t know what he might have said or done. What if he tries it with some other woman on the ship who can’t handle it like you did? Do you think you should go talk to somebody?”
“Not yet, but I have everything documented if I need it. He can’t have gotten in trouble for it before. The Navy’s firing COs right and left for that kind of thing. He’s not stupid, although he didn’t act very smart around me. I found out a little about his wife and that he has three sons. That kind of blew me away. Philip, I have three half-brothers somewhere. Anyway, nothing else was new and we didn’t find any complaints about him. I’ll be vigilant and just play it by ear for the time being. Let me get over him being Rick first and who knows? I may decide to go have a little chat with him at a later date. But there’s no reason to confront him yet.”
“But you have every right to be angry about everything. How are you going to deal with that?”
“I’m going to do what I’ve always done with shit in my life. I’m going to turn it into something good. Somehow. I’ll find a way to find the bright side. There has to be a reason this happened.”
His mouth curled up in a wry manner. “You mean like calling it fertilizer and making things grow from it?”
“Good one. I like that idea.” She reached out and took his hand. “You know, girls with good fathers grow up and marry someone just like Daddy, and girls with bad fathers often do the same or they’re smart enough to figure out what they don’t want.”
“Like?”
“Like you, Philip. Maybe this is not about me finding out how bad he is, but appreciating how good you are. Do you have any idea how many flashy aviators have tried to hit on me since the first broadcast?” He didn’t want to know. “If I hadn’t had this experience with him and my mom, I might have fallen for that.”
“Hallie, you don’t know how hard it is to hear the guys talking about you and I can’t do anything about it. I know you love me, but I worry about you being treated like that. We’ve got to figure a lot of stuff out here tonight. Like what we’re going to do about the rest of the cruise. I mean, today was magical—the best day of my life—well, maybe except for a certain day on a sailboat.” His voice trailed off and he kissed her mouth, her nose, her forehead, her ear.
“But we have to go back to the ship tonight and I don’t know how I’m going to handle it—after this.” He gestured to the room, the bed, and her. “After loving you again. It’s so difficult knowing you’re on board when I can’t see you or touch you or even talk to you. And it’s really hard to listen to men talking about you when I want them to know you’re spoken for. But you know we can’t meet on the ship. And we can’t sneak around either. We need to figure this out and set some ground rules. We need a plan and I think…”
Hallie grinned, propped herself up on her elbows, and jumped in with both feet. “Okay, here’s our plan of attack. We walk out of this hotel and go back to the ship. We steer clear of each other and we don’t communicate for the rest of the cruise.”
Did she want to break up?
Then why was she smiling?
“Except maybe for letters—pleeease, let there be letters. We act like every other person on board who’s separated from the ones they love for the duration. We focus on our work and the mission. We remember the code: Ship, shipmate, self. The ship comes first. We do our jobs graciously and we smile inside, because we know we’re loved. I have to have that, Philip. Come on. Every girl in a foxhole needs to have a guy to think about. A good man to come back to.”
Philip’s mouth tipped up at the corners. He liked where this was going.
“But we don’t forget about each other and we don’t forget promises we make today. We remember every detail to keep us warm until the ship pulls back into Mayport, or if I have to wait, until I get out of the Navy next March. And I mean it. I don’t think we should even see each other in liberty ports any more. It’s too dangerous.”
He couldn’t believe she was taking the words right out of his mouth.
“But there’s nothing in the UCMJ that says you can’t love a subordinate or a superior, just that you can’t fraternize with them. Nobody can take away our thoughts and our feelings, not even the Navy. My mom told me that before I left for boot camp, ‘Just remember, Hallie, when you get there, think whatever you want—say what you have to say in your head—just don’t say it out loud. If you’re standing at inspection and some chief is in your face and she’s reading you the riot act, you can think ‘Screw you, Chief!’ But just look straight ahead and say, ‘Ma’am, yes, Ma’am!’”
Philip fell back on the pillows, shaking with laughter.
Hallie was on a roll now. “So we go through this charade—by the way, somebody told me I’m pretty good at pretending—so we do this for the next hundred and fifty-nine days, or two hundred and seventeen if you’re going to make me wait until I’m a civilian. Trust me I’ve counted them.” His laughter fed her fire. “And then we’ll be free to do whatever we want. So when we’re ready, we get married and, as Trixie would say, we live happily ever after fucking our brains out!”
Philip could hardly catch his breath, laughing so hard at what could only have come from a sailor’s mouth. But his heart was sending rapid-fire messages to his brain that she was putting into words everything he’d wanted to say. Was she proposing to him?
“That’s when we’re not on the nightly news or fixing engines or changing diapers once we settle down in some Navy town and start popping out the babies. You know after Suzanna and little Philip and Billy Gates Junior come along, which is going to be hard because I’ll have finished school by then and I’ll be thinking about New York and how they probably won’t want some pregnant mama on the national news anchor desk, but I’ll find a way to get to New York. I just haven’t quite worked the bugs out of that part yet, but I will.”
God, he loved her spirit. And now she was talking about babies. His babies.
“And the children know nothing about Grandpa Blue Eyes, but they do know Mommy is never sad because she doesn’t give a crap about Grandpa Blue Eyes. She just loves Daddy and they do too because he’s such a good daddy, who coaches their swim team and teaches them how to throw a baseball and how to sail and he shows them what a gentleman is. And so the whole Johnston clan lives happily ever after. How do you feel about that for a plan!”
Still smiling broadly, he took her hands in his and pulled her close.
“Excuse me, Petty Officer McCabe, but did you just propose marriage to me?”
She saluted. “Affirmative, sir. And your answer?”
“Positively affirmative, McCabe. I don’t suppose you had any idea I was planning to say the exact same things. Well, maybe not the ‘fucking our brains out’ part, but I like the idea of it.” He kissed her, then squeezed her hands, and looked into her dancing blue eyes. Then he picked up her dog tags off the bedside table and leaned back against the pillows. He unhooked the chain, took off his Naval Academy ring, and slipped it onto the chain next to them.
“Does this mean we’re going steady, sir?” Hallie asked with a good-humored grin.
“No, it doesn’t mean we’re going steady, McCabe.” After clicking the chain closed, he walked around the bed, knelt by her side, hung the chain around her neck, and took her hands in his. “It means we’re engaged. If you’ll marry me, McCabe, Hallie L. 023-71-7048?”
“Oh, that’s an affirmative back atc
ha, sir.”
Philip loosened her robe, took the two most beautiful breasts in the entire world and squeezed them together around the ring and the dog tags. “Keep it warm for me,” he said, “for the next hundred and fifty-nine days.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” She pressed her lips together tightly to keep from smiling and saluted again. “It’s not fair though. You at least get to see me on the news every night. But I’m going to die if I don’t get to see your cute little ass once in a while. So I’m letting you know I’ll be going to the gym each evening after the newscast.” And then she winked to get her point across. “And if you care to join me, just wear your BCGs because then nobody would suspect us of being a couple, because nobody in BCGs fools around and nobody fools around with guys who wear them.”
He agreed to work out after the news when he could, but told her again how difficult it was to watch her on TV. “It’s hard to listen to the guys talking about you, but I guess knowing you’re promised to me will help. And I have to watch the news after chow, since I don’t get a chance to check CNN during the day. I really want to know what’s going on, especially as we get deeper into the Middle East. You’re really good, by the way. Have I told you that lately?”
“So you’re just watching me for the news?” A little smile played on her lips. “You mean you care more about al-Qaeda than you do about me?”
“Yes. Because I trust you, Hallie. I don’t trust them.”
Hallie melted. A tiny whimper escaped. “You trust me? Philip, that’s more important to me than knowing you love me.” Unshed tears shined in her eyes.
“I do.” He felt tears at the backs of his own eyes. He cleared his throat and said, “I trust you. And I forgive you. A wise woman once told me that sometimes you have to forgive the people you love so you can move on with your life.”
Hallie pulled off her dog tags and laid them on the table, then turned and slid into his arms. This last lovemaking would need to hold them for at least five months. More importantly, it would be the first time Hallie felt she truly belonged in his arms.
As they were dressing to leave, she turned to him and said, “You know, when you picked up my dog tags? I thought you were going to give me one of yours and you were going to take one of mine. Like going steady.”
“That’s not funny, Hallie. We’re going into a hot zone. I hope you never need your dog tags, but promise me you’ll always have them on you at all times. Just in case.”
“Yes, sir.” She popped tall and saluted him, while wearing nothing but his favorite lavender lace thong and bra—and a chain with two silver dog tags and a ring on it. And for the first time she thought about her dog tags as more than just a cool thing people in the military got to wear. She thought about their purpose and she felt a shiver go up her spine.
Leave one to identify the body and turn the other in when reporting the casualty.
It was the first time she really thought about why her blood type and religion were stamped into it too. In case she needed a transfusion, or last rites. Then the fact that they’d be transiting the Suez Canal in a few days on their way to the Persian Gulf wracked her with another shiver.
Hallie wished she had something to give Philip, to hold her promise until the end of the cruise, and beyond. And then she got an idea. A couple of ideas. “Philip, thank you for entrusting me with your ring. And now I’d like to entrust you with something. Some very valuable information. This is Wednesday, right? See my underwear? I know they’re your favorites, so now you’ll be the only man on the ship who knows I’m wearing my lavender lace skivvies on the broadcast every Wednesday night until the end of the cruise. And then, I’m wearing them at our wedding.”
“Don’t most brides wear a dress?”
She smacked him with a pillow.
“No, seriously. I’m honored. It’s enough to keep a guy in a foxhole going for at least five months. Particularly on Wednesdays. Knowing his girl back home is going to marry him wearing nothing but lavender lace skivvies.”
Philip sent her out first to catch a cab back to the ship. “I love you, Hallie. Never forget that and always wear those dog tags.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll wear them at all times. I love you too, Philip.” She blew him a kiss and walked down the empty hallway.
When Philip checked out of the hotel, the concierge handed him an envelope with his name on it. He opened it in the cab on the way back to the ship and had to swallow the lump in his throat.
Dear Philip,
That thing about Wednesdays will be fun, but I wanted to leave you with something you could see and touch every day—just like I can do with your ring. I want you to know I belong to you and you alone. I promise.
I love you, Hallie
Only Hallie could manage to put a promise in an envelope. Now Philip, and only Philip, would know that Hallie McCabe’s heart belonged to him.
He knew it when he looked in the envelope and found the golden tendril.
Chapter 24
With the camera rolling, the USS Blanchard made its way through the Suez Canal. MC2 McCabe stood on the flight deck and shared the history of “the Ditch.” Many of the crew would not be able to get topside during the one-hundred-twenty-mile transit and she wanted them to see what they were missing. She also wanted the tape for her portfolio. What an historic moment for her. Talk about “Join the Navy and see the world.” How she wished she could share the footage with her mom and felt herself tearing up at the thought.
Hallie regained her composure and continued with the piece. “Although the land appears sandy and barren, life definitely abounds near the water. Besides high rise apartment buildings, there are oil refineries, power plants, and factories, many of which process Egyptian cotton, one of their biggest exports, along with oil and fish. The domed buildings you see are mosques and the tall towers flanking them are the minarets, from which prayer is called five times a day.”
She paused in her report as the ship approached a cable-stayed bridge that spanned the canal, spreading its fingers skyward. There were no words to describe the feeling as the Blanchard slid smoothly underneath on her journey toward the Red Sea.
“You can tell there’s plenty of traffic in the canal.”
The camera panned to tankers and merchant vessels piled high with boxcars gliding by in the opposite direction. And it made Hallie more than a little nervous to see ordinary fishing boats, barges, and pleasure boats floating freely around and in between the destroyers, the frigates, and the cruiser that accompanied the Blanchard.
What had Philip told her the day they’d met? “What we worry about are ordinary fishing boats that just happen to be floating bombs.” Her eyes glanced around at the lookouts posted around the roof, each manning a weapon, trigger fingers at the ready. What good would they do if one of those dhows just happened to get too close?
No, she had to trust that the Carrier Strike Group would keep them safe, even though she felt claustrophobic in the canal. All she knew was, she would breathe a sigh of relief once they exited the southern hub and got through to the Arabian Sea. Right. Then all they had to worry about were Somali pirates. And further along the trail? Iranians. But this was what Hallie McCabe had signed on for. And today it was her job to bring the Suez Canal to those below decks who could not get topside to see it.
The longer she stood there, the more she appreciated what the flight deck crews endured on a daily basis. Here it was mid-August at only 1000 hours, and the temperature was already one hundred degrees. Once they entered the Arabian Sea, when they would again launch aircraft, the afternoon heat combined with jet afterburner heat, would often rise to one hundred thirty degrees.
She closed her report with that thought. “So shipmates, remember we are now officially and literally in a hot zone. I have a new perspective about working conditions above decks. Control your own temperature by drin
king lots of water to avoid dehydration. And to those of you who haven’t endured these conditions? Those who remain below in the air conditioning? Don’t forget to thank our Engineering Department for keeping the A/C up to speed. This is MC2 Hallie McCabe saying, stay safe and be cool.”
It warmed Philip’s heart to hear the shout-out to the engineers who brought them air conditioning. He wasn’t able to witness the Suez Canal, and he appreciated the information she brought to the crew. Hallie was exceptional at what she did. For some of these young men, hearing the news from Hallie was like having their own moms as their link to the outside world, all wrapped up in a super model’s persona. He understood why every guy on the ship was in love with her. He began to notice the men paying her more respect as her show became successful. They were finally realizing Hallie McCabe wasn’t just a pretty face. Although that didn’t hurt. She truly had become what Captain Amerson had called her, the Blanchard’s head cheerleader.
And she was his. No way could he have let her go.
If the guys on the ship only knew that “Bill Gates” was the proud owner of the now defunct golden tendril. It had fallen loose one other time since the first broadcast and now there were bets going on in every department about when it would fall again on camera. Only Philip knew the answer was never.
He sat at dinner and thought about the golden tendril in a ziplock bag in his wallet, in his back pocket. Right next to the pictures she’d finally given him. The tendril was the very essence of her. Beautiful and cohesive, but just a little misbehaved. He took it out every night when he returned to his stateroom. Smelled it, touched it, and curled it around his finger, while he read her daily letter, before scribbling out a response, and tucking in for a few hours of sleep.
Forgive & Forget (Love in the Fleet) Page 20