“Two o’clock,” someone said, and he turned half around and looked again. There were the Corsairs high above the administration building spiraling slowly out of sight.
“You never see one before?” asked the cadet who had spoken. His name, Melvin knew, was Roska. He was the oldest cadet in the battalion and had been an enlisted man for several years before he transferred to the pilot training program.
“No, but I recognized them right away—you can’t miss those gull wings and that fuselage. And the way they sit in the air! They go like they were sliding on tracks!” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and shook his head in admiration.
Roska was grinning. “You’re the eagerest cadoodler that ever was, I do swear.”
“They came over so fast!” Melvin exclaimed. “Why, for a minute I didn’t know what happened. I thought it was an earthquake, or somebody had dropped a bomb. I wonder how fast they were moving. Four hundred at least, don’t you think?”
“Sounded that way.”
After a pause Melvin said, “I hear you were at Pearl Harbor when the Japs attacked.”
“I was,” Roska said, “and I like to got my can blowed off.”
“Why did you transfer to this outfit?”
“I wish I knowed. I wish I’d had sense enough to stay put.”
“I have a feeling the program gets easier from now on.”
“It don’t figure to get no easier for me, Isaacs. I never made it through public school and all this here book crap is killing me. This aerology and aerodynamics, boy, I’m in deep.”
“Well, at least there isn’t much new at this base. I talked to somebody in the battalion ahead of us who said about the only thing is a course in relaxation. If that means what it sounds like, I’m all for it.”
“This Navy sure is changing,” said Roska.
The purpose of the course in relaxation was to teach the cadets to minimize muscular tension. At Pensacola and later with the fleet they would be in the air for long periods of time; so each afternoon at one o’clock the company returned to the barracks and got ready for the class. Each cadet removed his shoes, loosened his belt and necktie, and lay flat on his bunk with his hands at his sides and his eyes closed. The instructor then moved quietly from one bunk to another, murmuring suggestions and praising those who appeared to be the most relaxed.
Melvin grew to love this class. He would lie on his bunk exactly as he was supposed to, and with a tranquil smile on his lips he awaited the wonderfully soft and reassuring pressure of the instructor’s hand on his shoulder and for the beginning of that mellifluous, kindly, and hypnotic lecture; and while he lay there digesting his lunch and listening it seemed to him that the abrasive, jarring world in which he lived from dawn till noon, and all afternoon and half the night—this wretched, fearful world of militant savages somehow disappeared in a whorl like water down the drain. So much at ease was he, so unutterably relaxed and secure, that one especially balmy afternoon he fell asleep while the instructor was talking to him.
That evening, seated on a bench outside the recreation hall with Sam Horne, he explained what had happened.
“What did he say when you woke up?” Horne asked. He was eating a pint of ice cream as he customarily did after finishing supper.
“Well, he was mad, that’s the funny part of it,” Melvin said. “He wrote down my name and told me to report to the administration building.”
“What did they say over there?”
“Nothing much. Just another ten-and-four is all.”
Horne finished the ice cream, crumpled the carton in his fist, and threw it at the trash can. “I don’t think you’re going to make the grade, not at this rate.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Melvin. “By the way, what’s that piece of machinery they’re installing in the pool?”
Horne didn’t know; he thought it had something to do with life-saving. The device consisted of a scaffold on which was mounted the fuselage of an airplane. The fuselage was fastened by chains to a length of narrow-gauge railroad track which inclined steeply into the water.
A few days later an announcement was made over the public-address system that a course in survival procedure had been instituted.
The first step in survival when forced down at sea was to escape from the sinking airplane. Each cadet, fully dressed in flight clothing, climbed a ladder to a platform on top of the scaffold and there was strapped into the cockpit, after which the airplane was turned loose and went screeching down the track, crashed into the water, submerged, and turned over on its back as it continued sinking. A few seconds later the cadet was supposed to bob to the surface, take off his shoes, and swim to the shallow end of the pool as rapidly as possible. An officer stood by with a stopwatch and a clipboard on which the time was recorded. Meanwhile a winch was in operation, dragging the fuselage to the surface and hauling it back up the track while water spouted from the seams and rivet holes.
Occasionally a cadet did not break the surface when he was expected. Then, quite suddenly, there would be absolute silence, broken only by the lapping of water at the sides of the pool. The man at the winch looked expectantly at the officer while the seconds ticked away. Finally the officer would nod, and the fuselage came out of the water with the cadet struggling frantically, choking and gasping for air, tangled in the harness, or with a radio cord looped around his wrist; or, at times, unconscious.
Escaping from the plane was the first step toward survival. Reaching shore was second. Third was finding enough to eat once you had reached the shore, and fourth was getting home again. So it was that one Sunday evening approximately a month later, while the cadets were cleaning up their quarters for Monday-morning inspection, the barracks echoed from top to bottom with the familiar voice of Iron Mary, the public address system. Melvin was on his knees waxing a section of the floor for which he was responsible. Horne, whose bunk was across the aisle, was polishing a pair of shoes.
“Now hear this. Now hear this. Second Battalion. First Company. Platoons Able and Baker. Platoons Able and Baker muster on the parade ground in ten minutes in front of the Wasp prepared for survival trip.”
“Now hear this! Now hear this!” Melvin exclaimed as soon as the loudspeaker fell silent. “I’m sick of listening to that thing! All we do is muster! Platoons Able and Baker fall out for muster in five minutes in PT gear. Platoons Able and Baker muster in five minutes for church. Muster for special instructions, muster for personal inspection, well I’m fed up! Yesterday they gave us four minutes to muster for chow and then what happened? It was thirty-six minutes until we got inside out of the rain. Oh, and then what? What did they serve us? Beans and powdered eggs again. Survive, hah! After what they feed us here I could survive anything.”
“Save your breath, you’re going to need it,” Horne remarked briefly.
Late that night a Navy bus went bouncing along a country road a good many miles from the base and at intervals of fifteen minutes slowed down just long enough for one cadet to jump out. Melvin got out of the bus about three o’clock in the morning. He was already hungry and tired and somewhat depressed, having had nothing to eat during the long ride. Horne and Roska and several of the others had rushed over to Ship’s Service to buy candy bars and malted-milk tablets which they stuffed into their pockets before mustering, and he wished he had done the same. A light rain was falling and he had forgotten to bring his overcoat. He was dressed in the daily work uniform of brogans, khaki pants and shirt, necktie, and a dark blue cotton jumper with a plastic name tag pinned to the breast. On his head, pulled well down over his ears, was a knitted cap. He was no sooner outside the bus than the cap and jumper were saturated; he could feel his head growing wet inside the cap, which was a disgusting experience, so he pulled off the cap and threw it away. He stood in the middle of the road and gazed unhappily at the diminishing tail light of the bus. He had no idea where he was. The windows of the bus had been painted black and this had annoyed him, although he did not know exactly
why. He had a map and a compass, a canvas-covered canteen of water hooked to his belt, K rations, a sheath knife, and a waterproof box of matches. He could not see anything at all, it was so dark. He took out the matches with the intention of lighting one and having a look around, but the box slipped through his fingers and splashed into a puddle at his feet and he could not find it. For a while, then, he stood by the side of the road unable to think of anything to do. He was sorry he had joined the Navy; it was not at all the way he had thought it would be. He had expected everyone would look up to him because he was an aviation cadet, but nobody cared.
He began to wish for his father, who knew no more about the woods than he did himself and could not possibly be of any help; in fact, his father’s presence here would only make matters worse—they would start arguing about something. All the same it would be nice to have him around.
Melvin sighed. He squinted, leaning forward a little in an effort to see something, anything, but he could not even see the branch into which he pushed his face. There was a strong odor of turpentine and of moldering vegetation. He squatted down, holding up his arms for protection, and turned around several times, breathing shallowly through his mouth because he had begun to smell a putrid odor; there was either a dead animal or a swamp nearby, but he could not tell where it was. He thought about walking up the road to meet Sam Horne, who was still on the bus, but he knew Horne would do what the Navy expected him to do; as soon as he got off the bus he would take a compass bearing and then begin to study the map. In a minute or so he would have made up his mind how to go about reaching civilization and he would plunge into the forest. Horne had grown up in the country and it did not frighten him. He would be out of sight and hearing almost immediately. Even if they did meet each other on the road, Melvin suspected Horne would ignore him because they had been ordered to find their way back to the base individually.
But then he thought of Roska, who had gotten off the bus just fifteen minutes ago. Roska was a reasonable sort. Furthermore, he had been in the Navy a long time and ought to know what to do in a situation such as this.
Melvin took a sip of water from his canteen, screwed the cap on again, tightened his belt, and started walking back in the direction from which he had come, but he had not gone more than a few yards when he stepped into a hole and fell. He landed on the box of K rations. It was as hard as a brick, and he thought at first he had fractured his leg. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth and rolled over so that he lay on his back in the middle of the road with one foot still in the hole, which brimmed with stagnant water. The road was slimy, the rain came pattering down. Some loons were calling in the woods.
After a while the pains stopped shooting through his leg, so he sat up and pulled his foot out of the hole and then reached for his sheath knife in case an animal or an Indian should attack him, but the sheath was empty. Despondently he groped around in the mud, but the knife was gone.
For a long time he remained where he was with his head bowed, but finally got up and went limping along the road, or what he thought must be the road; he could not see it, so every once in a while he stooped and explored with his fingertips, and while doing this he touched what felt like a snake. Instantly he sprang high in the air and came down among a clump of ferns, and after that he was not able to find the road again. He went stumbling through the forest, holding his arms in front of his face, and eventually he came to the shore of a lake. He could not quite see it, but he could hear the water and he could smell it, and he knew, besides—whether from the breeze on his cheek or through some other sense—that he had come to a lake. He tripped over a log and fell down again, got up, and then, feeling exhausted, he sat on the log and crossed his legs.
After meditating for a while he decided to smoke a cigarette; he was relieved to find that he had not lost his cigarettes, and they were dry, but the matches were damp and crumbled away. He was struck by the fact that after losing the waterproof matches he had not until this moment thought of these paper ones—but the implications, whatever they might be, all at once seemed tiresome, so, after putting the cigarettes back in his pocket, he rested his chin on his hands and did not move for a long time.
It occurred to him that all his life he had been expected to do something, and he decided he was sick of doing things, sick of every possible kind of activity; he remembered that when he was a child he had read somewhere about a pioneer who was wounded and who crawled inside a hollow tree and whose skeleton was found there many years later, and he now considered crawling inside this log. Nobody would ever learn what had become of him; the Navy would simply inform the family that he had perished on a survival hike. Quite probably there would be such a public outcry when the newspapers got hold of the story that there would be a Congressional investigation, and the base would be closed, and then finally, many years later, some hunter would find this skeleton.
Melvin sighed, blinked, and peered around. He was not sure which side of the road he was on because he could not recall in which direction he had jumped. He took out the compass and by holding it close to his eyes, tilting and squinting, he was able to see the needle, which was slightly phosphorescent. The compass must be correct, but he was positive somehow that the needle pointed south; he tapped it with his fingernail, shook it vigorously, held it away from his belt buckle, stood up. Still it pointed south. He thought about studying his map but decided the night was too dark to read it, and then too, even if he could see it, he did not think he would be able to figure out where he was.
Finding nothing else to do at the moment, he decided that he might as well eat. He took out the package of K rations, scratched through the wax paper and tore off a flap, and got hold of an envelope full of powder. He was uncertain whether it was supposed to be taken dry or mixed with water; he thought of emptying it into the canteen, but then of course if it tasted bad he would not have anything left to drink, so he tilted his head back and tapped the powder into his mouth: it was grainy and crystalline, with a tart lemon taste, and he thought it was probably meant as a dessert. Next he tried a biscuit, which was completely tasteless and so uncompromisingly hard that it hurt the fillings in his teeth; he threw it away. Next he found a packet of tiles. He could not tell by sniffing at them, or by feeling them, just what they were, but undoubtedly they were very nourishing; quite probably a single one of these strange little objects contained as many proteins and vitamins as a turkey dinner. He tried to break one of the tiles, but found he was not strong enough, so he licked it; it had a chalky taste, like cement or plaster, and he did not want it, but, reminding himself that if he intended to survive he would need some nourishment, he slipped it between his teeth and began sucking it, meanwhile shaking the rest of the K rations out of the box. There were three cigarettes, which he added to his own supply; some gum, which he also kept; a cube of sugar that he popped into his mouth; and a flat round tin can with a key soldered to the top. He opened the can and tasted a little. In the darkness, not knowing what to expect, it was difficult to identify, but he thought it was some sort of dehydrated and compressed ham and eggs. After a few minutes he began to feel bloated, though he had not eaten much, and in a sudden fit of temper he threw the rations in the lake and relapsed into a state of aggrieved rumination.
He considered the months he had spent in the Navy, the many hours he had spent studying such things as celestial navigation; now he was lost in the woods, seated on a rotten log in the middle of a forest without the slightest idea as to where he was or what to do. Perhaps this made sense, but he was too depressed to care. He felt betrayed and vaguely sacrificial.
The rain had turned into a drizzle and finally began dissipating into a cool pre-morning mist. The foggy clouds were beginning to lift and to give a sense of motion, and here and there a bird chirped. Melvin was able to distinguish the ground and the foliage. He thought about getting up, but it was too much trouble. Dully he contemplated the misty lake. He supposed there might be fish in the lake. But even if ther
e were he would not be able to catch them. He noticed a few V-shaped ripples near the shore and recognized them as being made by snakes swimming around on some God-forsaken business; he considered throwing rocks at them, yet even this seemed barely worth while. Apparently the sun had risen, because the clouds were discernible, and the air was growing warmer. He noticed that one of his ankles was swollen and mottled, and as he examined it he became uneasy. There were no fang marks, however, and the ankle was neither painful nor especially stiff, so he concluded it was poison ivy or poison sumac, or whatever poisonous shrubs they had in Georgia; it was either that or a spider bite, and, having smeared it with mud, which was what primitive people always did in the movies, he forgot about it.
The breeze was becoming stronger, blowing the mist from the lake; it looked as though the sun would be out before long.
Gradually, as he sat there waiting, he became conscious of a certain odor. He sniffed. It was sweet and acrid. Vapors were still rising from the lake, but above them he saw what looked very much like a plume of smoke. He sniffed again and stood up but immediately fell down because his legs had gone to sleep. He lay on the ground slapping his legs and sniffing without taking his eyes from the smoke, and after a while, with the assistance of a stick, he got up and went hobbling eagerly along the shore.
The smoke was farther away than he had estimated, but after crashing through the brush for about an hour he heard voices. It occurred to him that they might be officers. He had not done anything wrong, unless it was being attracted to human voices; even so, if they were officers, he did not want to be seen. He crept forward as cautiously as possible, placing one foot carefully ahead of the other and bending at the waist, for he had a vague recollection of someone in The Last of the Mohicans doing this; he climbed over a fallen tree with hardly a sound, but was then somewhat taken aback to find himself at the entrance to a privy. The wooden door was open, a swarm of flies hung about, there was nobody inside, nothing but that round, convincing hole and a cardboard box labeled PEACHES which was half-filled with corncobs. It was all so final somehow, so decisive and incontestable, that he could not move. He thought about making use of the facilities, did so, and continued on his way. A worn path led through the trees. He took this path and before long he caught sight of a clearing in the forest.
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