The Patriot

by Evan S. Connell

  “Twelve,” Melvin said absently. Then he sat erect with an embarrassed expression. “She’s thirteen. I just now remembered, she had a birthday a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Is that so? She’s quite a bit—ah, well, larger than I expected. I mean, she—ah—” Horne paused, scratched his head, and sighed. “Jesus O’Grady, what a long miserable trip,” he mumbled, and did not mention Leah again.

  They traveled all that day and through the night. A wind was blowing from the mountains. The coach swayed and rattled. At midnight the lights were dimmed and after a while Horne went to sleep, but Melvin sat up wide awake. A full moon appeared from behind a plateau, was reflected in the river, moved behind a farmhouse and some trees, and gradually seemed to grow lighter in color, higher in the windy, cloudless sky, and then, far to the south, the sun was rising.

  In Albuquerque they got off the train, formed into platoons without waiting for an order, and with Horne to one side hoarsely singing the cadence they marched up the hill toward the University of New Mexico. As soon as they came within sight of the football stadium Horne angled toward the fourth platoon and said, “Holy cats, what have we got here, the Alamo?” The stadium loomed over the pines, a deep adobe color. “And look!” he said, and pointed toward a gravel parade ground where several cadets wearing green garrison caps and hairy green mackinaws were practicing the manual of arms with wooden rifles.

  “All right, okay,” said Melvin. “I see them. Extra duty, so what?”

  “Wanted to make you feel at home,” Horne replied with a cheerful grin. He stepped away from the platoons and continued calling cadence until they were in front of the stadium. There he brought the company to a halt.

  “Right face!” he bellowed. “Isaacs, front and center!”

  Melvin stepped out of the ranks, marched up to him, clicked his heels, and saluted. “Aviation Cadet Isaacs reporting. Have you got a problem? Can’t you figure out where the chow hall is?”

  “Don’t get smart,” Horne remarked, blowing on his hands to warm them. “I’m liable to put you on report—insubordination, by God.”

  “That’ll be the day. Let’s get this show on the road, whatever you’re going to do. It’s cold.”

  “You want to go in with me to present the orders?”

  “Okay. I sure don’t want to stand out here in this wind.”

  “At ease!” Horne bawled to the company. Then, after looking around, he added just loud enough to be heard, “You people stand fast and don’t goof off because some creep officer is probably watching us. Come on, baby,” he said, gesturing for Melvin to follow, “let’s see what this roach trap looks like.”

  They walked between two squat naval guns which flanked the stadium entrance and stepped inside and found themselves at the foot of a wide gray staircase with a black iron railing in the center. At the top of the staircase an enlisted man was reading a magazine with his chair tilted back and his feet on a desk. To either side of the staircase was a long, dimly lighted corridor lined with plaques, knotboards, blackboards with colored chalk diagrams, and cutaways of naval vessels, from which came a dank subterranean odor as though there were a dungeon somewhere below. The seaman had gotten to his feet, the magazine out of sight; he had felt the draft of air they let in and was peering down the staircase to see who had entered.

  Next day they were issued green wool trousers, the green mackinaw, and a heavy green wool garrison cap with a blue and yellow V-5 insignia. They were notified that on liberty they would be required to wear the garrison cap; at all other times they would wear the canvas fatigue hat with the brim turned up.

  “What gives?” Melvin asked as soon as the formation had been dismissed. “All the time in Iowa we had to keep the brim turned down.”

  Horne didn’t know.

  “Well, why don’t you ask one of the officers?”

  “I should ask why? Are you out of your head?”

  “There’s got to be a reason for it.”

  “Whether there’s a reason, or whether there’s no reason, is absolutely irrelevant,” said Horne in exasperation. “How many times have I got to tell you that?”

  “Maybe it’s because Roosevelt wears his hat brim up.”

  “I don’t care if it’s because that little dog of his wears a hat with the brim up. All I know is, that’s the regulation and I’m not about to ask why. You go ask the skipper if you want to.”

  “It isn’t that important,” said Melvin.

  “I guess,” said Horne dryly.

  This was the only change in the regulations, and with the exception of flight lessons the daily program was almost identical to that in Iowa: they ran the obstacle course, did calisthenics and played football in the snow, and continued to attend ground school.

  On a mesa west of the city was the airport. Except for a few cottonwood trees around the hangars and along the arroyos the mesa was barren, sunny, and freezing cold, covered for miles in every direction with dry, glittering snow. The winter air was stable, without currents even on windy days; the wind when it did come sweeping over came like a deep river and the small airplanes that headed into it would stand motionless or would be blown backward.

  About an hour before dawn the company left the stadium and boarded an old Navy bus which rolled down the hill and came up the opposite side of the railroad underpass with a smoking exhaust and clashing gears, passed through the main street of downtown Albuquerque, and started the long grade to the mesa while the stars faded and the Sandia mountain peaks gradually became distinguishable against the sky. When the first rays of the sun struck the airport the cadets were warming themselves around the stove in the ready room and fat Rosa was at work in the kitchen. Fat Rosa had the restaurant concession and was convinced there was nothing so good for an aviation cadet as a plate of tortillas, tacos, enchiladas, and fried beans, together with a few green peppers.

  Since most of the Navy pilots were overseas the instructors at the War Training School were civilians; the only naval aviator at the base was a sullen old ensign named Ilstrup who had long, greasy hair and a big belly. He did not have much to do; he was the check pilot and spent most of his time asleep at a desk with a newspaper over his face. He seemed puzzled and vaguely resentful when a cadet could not learn to fly, and after each check ride he would recommend that the cadet be dismissed from flight training.

  The first cadet to have trouble was the Deacon; shortly before Christmas he was notified that after the holiday he would be scheduled for a check with Ensign Ilstrup.

  Melvin was surprised by this, and said to Horne, “When we were at Iowa I used to ask him about flying. You know how he’d build a plane out of some chairs and then sit in the middle of it with a broomstick? Well, it’s strange—do you know what I mean? He told me about crosswind and how to correct for drift, and about freezing to the stick during a spin. He taught me so much—all about wing loading and instrument lag and the emergency procedure.”

  “Knock off worrying about him and worry about yourself,” Horne answered. “He’s finished. He hasn’t got a prayer.”

  To everyone who assured him he would pass the check, the Deacon replied, “They can send me to Gr-Great Lakes, who cares?” and, sucking on his pipe, he usually added, “I didn’t ask for this frigging war. Everybody go to hell.”

  Christmas morning there was a telephone call for Melvin from Kansas City.

  “The packages, did you get the packages?” his father shouted into the telephone. “We sent packages! Christmas! Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas,” said Melvin. “Yes, I got the packages. Thank you.”

  “Here is your mother! Can you hear me? Now I’m giving the telephone to your mother! Say hello! Here she is! Merry Christmas! Everybody is thinking of you!”

  “Hello, Mother,” Melvin said.

  “You’re all right, Melvin?”

  “Yes, I’m all right.”

  “You sound unhappy. Is something wrong?”

  “No. I’m fine.”
<
br />   “You’re getting enough to eat, Melvin?”

  “I suppose so,” he said with indifference.

  “We miss you. This is your first Christmas away from home. Leah is right here and wants to talk to you.”

  “Hi! When are you coming back?” Leah asked.

  “I don’t know. When the war’s over, I guess.”

  “Can you fly an airplane?”

  “Oh, sort of. Not very well.”

  There was a pause, then his father was on the telephone again.

  The call was awkward; when it ended—he had promised to take good care of himself, to wear his overcoat on cold days, and to see the doctor if he felt ill—he returned to his bunk exhausted and depressed, and found that a special-delivery letter had arrived. It was from Becky McGee. He had not thought much about her since leaving Iowa; there had been too much to do, too many other things to think about, and, besides, she was a thousand miles away. The letter was militantly cheerful. He suspected she had rewritten it a number of times in order to give an impression of vivacity and sophistication. How was he getting along? she inquired. Very well, she was willing to bet. Had he lost his heart to one of those New Mexico girls? She hoped not. Would the Navy be sending him in her direction again? She certainly hoped so. If he could arrange to be in Omaha some week end she might be there, too. She knew of a marvelous little old Italian restaurant with candles and checkered tablecloths where the veal scaloppine was divine.

  By the time he had finished reading this letter Melvin had begun to feel guilty, for it implied he had committed himself; he did not think he had, but evidently she did. He could not make up his mind what to do. He thought he should write to her, but he did not want to. Finally he put the letter in the bottom of his locker, hoping it might somehow disappear.

  The next morning quite early, while the mesa sparkled in the winter sun and a few birds soared in the wind above the city and the river, Ensign Ilstrup put on his helmet, his sheepskin jacket, and his gloves, and with a clipboard beneath his arm he walked across the concrete apron in front of the hangar to a small red and black airplane where the Deacon stood at attention. They got into the cabin side by side and a few minutes later the plane taxied rapidly toward the downwind end of the field, the tail bouncing crookedly over the frozen ruts as though a child were pulling it along by a string.

  Soon it rose a few hundred feet into the air, rising almost vertically because of the wind, buzzing like a bumblebee, circled half around the field, and flew away to the west. Melvin, Horne, and several other cadets had stepped outside and were standing in a row against the sunny side of the hangar to catch what little heat was reflected; with their hands tucked in their sleeves and mackinaw collars turned up around their ears they stamped their feet and critically watched the vanishing plane.

  When the red and black Lycoming did not return by noon an instructor took off and flew toward the area where it had last been seen and he located it without much difficulty, he said, because it was the only brightly colored object on the entire mesa. It lay in an arroyo like a brilliant red T—so incredibly red that the snow all around, by contrast, seemed faintly yellow. Inside the cabin the two men hung head down from their safety belts. Their necks were broken. The officer’s left hand was speckled with blood and was frozen fast to the handle of the door, as though he had been trying to push it open as he died. His other hand, like both of the Deacon’s hands, reposed on the roof of the cabin a few inches below his head in the nonchalant finality of death, and there was no expression whatsoever on either face.

  When the Deacon’s body was removed from the cabin a stream of silver coins poured out of his pockets and showered into the deep snow. There had been a dice game in the barracks the previous night, Christmas night, but neither the station officers nor the instructors who flew the body in from the mesa knew about it, and they thought it extremely odd that he had been so fond of coins.

  Death had always seemed a trifle ludicrous to Melvin. Had not the Deacon himself given his impression of death one evening in the barracks?—clutching at his heart and sinking to the floor with a droll expression so that everyone laughed. And he smoked his pipe while he lay there with a dead look, his eyes rolled back in his head, and finally got up and dusted his trousers, for he had always been fastidious.

  “We ought to write his brother, don’t you think?” Melvin suggested that evening.

  Horne scratched his head and thought and at last said, “Go ahead. It suits me. You write the letter and we’ll both sign it. That’s a good idea.”

  “I was thinking you should write it. You’re the cadet officer.”

  “What is there to say?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You think we should write they had him rolled up in a piece of oily canvas—and he was nothing but a little bundle—and his shoes stuck out the end? What should I do? Write that in a letter to his brother? We better forget it. There’s nothing we can do. We might just make matters worse. Let’s go shoot some pool.”

  They put on their mackinaws, went down the long staircase, and began walking across the campus toward the recreation hall. The night was clear. The stars were very bright.

  “This seems like any other night,” Melvin said, and Horne turned on him swiftly.

  “What’d you expect—a flaming sword in the sky? Forget it, from now on! Get this through your head: nobody told us this was going to be a picnic. When you signed up for this outfit you knew it was going to be dangerous. You could have waited; you could’ve gold-bricked around till the draft finally got you, and chances are you could’ve got into the Supply Corps or some damn thing. So what are you doing here now? And another thing—what makes you keep saying you want to fly night fighters after you get commissioned? Those guys have got about the same life expectancy as a rat in a laboratory. Why do you think they get double flight pay?”

  “I know it’s dangerous,” Melvin said, feeling awkward and defensive, “so it’s something I ought to do.”

  Horne was apparently satisfied with this answer. He continued walking toward the recreation hall.

  “This program is rough and we got a long way to go. Stop complaining.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Melvin remarked irritably. “I’m just wondering. It’s different than I expected.”

  4

  In brogan shoes and khaki fatigues that were now slightly faded Sam Horne led the company through the winter at Albuquerque. Once more he received the highest grades and Melvin again ranked not far from the bottom. At the beginning of February the company mustered before the stadium.

  “Well done,” the commandant said. “Here are the orders, Mr. Horne. You will proceed without delay to the naval pre-flight school at Athens, Georgia. Good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir. I hope we never need it,” he replied with a grin. Confidently he saluted and turned around.

  “Right face!” he bawled. “Forward—harch!” and with another manila envelope in his hand he sang cadence as he led the way to the depot.

  “We could skip this next base,” Melvin said when they were on the train. “You could alter the orders and we could just go straight to primary. It’d take the Navy months, maybe years, to figure out what happened. We could get all the way through Pensacola before anybody discovered we never went to pre-flight. And that’s another thing: why do they refer to it as pre-flight when we’ve already learned to fly? That doesn’t make sense. Well, I’ll tell you,” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands, “we’re over the worst of the program and it ought to be no strain from here on. I’m sure looking forward to those wings!”

  “You must be off your rocker,” said Horne.

  “Not at all! Only one thing does puzzle me: when we signed up at the recruiting office—at least when I did—they said that within nine months of reporting for duty I could expect to be with a combat squadron in the South Pacific, but we’ve already been in the program about six months and we’re a long way from finished. I can’t figure it out.”r />
  “It’s no mystery. The Japs were running all over us when we signed up, and the Navy was throwing everybody out there trying to stop them. So now the Japs have been slowed down and the result is that we spend more time in training. It suits me. I don’t want to go up against those Zeros until I know everything there is to know.”

  “Their planes are flimsy. We have the best equipment in the world, and the best personnel.”

  “Will you please knock it off!” Horne said with disgust. “When are you going to grow up? Honest to God, talk about a babe in the woods! Don’t you know we’ve already been stuffed so full of propaganda it’s leaking out our ears?”

  “First you talk out of one side of your mouth and then the other. Right now you sound as cynical as you did six months ago.”

  “I’m realistic, which is more than anybody will ever be able to say for you. Those Japs are hot and the Zekes are better than the press lets on. I’m not afraid of them, I’m not afraid to fight, but I’m not going out there like a Boy Scout after a merit badge, and anybody who does isn’t going to come back. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “Maybe. Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. The whole business is so strange.”

  “It is, for a fact.”

  On a cold, rainy morning the cadet company reached Athens; but by noon the clouds had begun to lift, shafts of wintry sunlight reached down to the parade ground in front of the barracks, and suddenly the building in which they were unpacking trembled with a wild whistling roar. Windows rattled and dust sifted from cracks in the ceiling. The weird whistling roar was heard again and once more the windows rattled.

  “Corsairs!” somebody shouted.

  The building had again begun to vibrate; Melvin saw Horne shouting to him but was not able to hear anything and as the third plane passed overhead with a scream like a stricken animal he thought it was about to hit the barracks; he realized that he, too, was shouting but was not able to hear himself and had no idea what he had said. Then he was outside on the parade ground shading his eyes from the sun and looking up through the broken white clouds into the pale sky, seeing for the first time that winter was nearly over. The sky was mild and warm above the clouds. There was no sign of the airplanes.