The Patriot

by Evan S. Connell

  “Horne.”

  “That’s right. Horne. He’s good material. Then those other two boys are fair enough. They’ll shape up. I don’t concern myself with those four. They belong. But right now, Isaacs, I’m going to tell you: naval and Marine aviation is the wrong place for you.”

  “Why is that, sir?”

  “Because I am convinced you are unable to kill.”

  “You’re washing me out,” said Melvin quickly. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No. I am sending the five of you to pre-operational at Saufley. None of you will have any trouble there. The syllabus is nothing but a formality. Consequently, Isaacs, you will be commissioned. Now, that is not the end of your career; it is the commencement. You will later be assigned to a combat squadron and ultimately you will find yourself in the war. There will come a time when your existence will depend not only on your ability to fly, but upon your willingness to destroy other men. What your decision will be when that time comes I believe I can predict. Even so, you have chosen this course. Ostensibly you are succeeding. It is not for me to exceed the limitations of my duty, therefore I will allow you to continue. May God help you.”

  “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No. That is all.”

  Melvin saluted, the captain returned the salute, and they walked rapidly away from each other.

  Horne was in the barracks, stripped to the waist but still wearing his garrison cap. The room stank of perspiration; it was evident he had been exercising, and Melvin, noting this, was astonished because he himself was exhausted and fell face down on the bunk and lay there without moving. He could not remember when he had ever been so tired; he was so overcome with fatigue that he felt no desire to go to sleep.

  “What’s the trouble?” Horne asked without showing much concern.

  “I don’t know,” Melvin said. “I have a tired, run-down feeling and I have a nagging backache. I lie awake nights and suffer from loss of appetite.”

  “Want an asprin?” said Horne. He danced around the room, aiming swift blows at the furniture.

  Melvin didn’t answer.

  Horne continued to box; he feinted, ducked his head, and jabbed at the gooseneck lamp that stood on the desk. “What you need is a big, fat—ugh!—juicy broad!” he grunted. He slapped himself on the chest and rotated his powerful, sweating shoulders. Then he paused. “You’re always getting sick,” he said, and the more he thought about this the more irritated he became. “Honest to God!” he cried hoarsely, “if it isn’t cat fever it’s the Aztec two-step or some other stupid thing! You don’t eat right,” he decided, although the two of them always ate together and had no choice about what they were served.

  “Maybe so. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “Of course it’s so!” Horne declared. “You don’t eat a balanced diet and you drink too much coffee. You’re always drinking coffee,” he added righteously, somewhat pacified by this idea.

  Melvin rolled over on the bunk and said without opening his eyes, “What’s the word on this Saufley pre-operational? Teitlebaum says he’s sending us on.”

  “You hear the same scuttlebutt I do. We’re winning the war, not so many losses in the Pacific, so the program slows down. We got to lard around Saufley Field till somebody feels like giving us a commission. Fly a few hops in some old beat-up dive bombers, play basketball, good chow, no strain. Cole says a buddy of his who’s over there now says they treat cadets almost the same as officers. I believe that when I see it. Even then I won’t.”

  “What did you think of the flight today? How did it go?”

  “Great! I sincerely mean that. You did a good job.”

  “I thought it was good, too, except for that first bomb run of mine.”

  After a pause, during which he seemed baffled and at a loss, Horne remarked, “I complimented you, didn’t I? You did a good job, I said so. What more do you want?”

  Melvin looked at him in bewilderment.

  “You hit the peg,” Horne went on. “Everybody saw it. You never did it before in your life and you’ll never do it again, but you did it today and you couldn’t have picked a better time. You blew the center right out of the goddamn target and that Army officer probably dropped his marbles when he saw it. Teitlebaum was so happy he was about to kiss you, I know for a fact. It was the last thing in the world he expected to happen. Now, is that enough? Are you satisfied? Or do you want me to get down on my knees and salaam?”

  Melvin had been listening without comprehension; he understood the words, and he could tell Horne was not joking, but for a little while he could not believe what he heard. The bombs were so small, they weighed only a few pounds and had no more explosive power than a hand grenade. To have blown a stake completely out of the water the bomb must have struck within a few feet of it. He jumped up and began to walk excitedly around the room, gave a curious little skip, and seated himself on the edge of the desk with his arms crossed. But he could not sit still. He sprang off the desk and resumed pacing around the room with a mischievous frown, his hands thrust in his pockets. “Here’s the thing,” he said, attempting to control his excitement. “I hit the target, see? But it was luck. Pure luck!”

  “I know it was luck. You know it was luck. Everybody, including Teitlebaum, knew it was luck. The only one who didn’t was that Army pilot. He thought you did it on purpose.”

  “Yes! Exactly! But I did! That’s what’s remarkable, don’t you see? Did I or didn’t I? How can you say? Because I did precisely what I was trying to do! I was aiming for that peg—aiming right at it—but the fact that I hit it was an accident.” He stopped, pinching his lip in concentration. “Now, should I receive credit, or not? Don’t you think that’s queer? Or suppose you take similar circumstances in another situation entirely—don’t you see how unreal it could become?”

  “It’s queer enough. I’ll queer myself if I hang around you much longer. They should’ve locked you up months ago.”

  “Do you think I should explain to Teitlebaum that it was a mistake?”

  “That what was a mistake?”

  “Why, hitting the target, of course. I don’t want to be credited with a hit unless I’m entitled to it, any more than I’d want to be blamed for a thing if I wasn’t guilty.”

  Horne had been tapping his fingers on the desk; all at once he jumped up in exasperation and shouted, “What’s the matter with you? Just tell me!”

  Melvin gazed at Horne blindly and did not even know he had spoken; he was thinking of what Teitlebaum had said. The day, which had started so well, seemed unaccountably shattered.

  12

  Melvin continued to think about what Captain Teitlebaum had said. From Barin Field the company was transferred to Saufley, and as the days went by it seemed more and more important to know if the captain had been right. Graduation was not far off. Every once in a while some cadet who had been in a battalion ahead of him would reappear on the station as an ensign or a Marine lieutenant and the enlisted men would salute. Several times Melvin saw this happen, and was filled with such emotion that he felt congested and a little dizzy. Soon he himself would be a naval aviator. He would be assigned to operational training and after that, in all probability, he would be ordered to the Pacific.

  One evening after supper as he and Sam Horne were strolling across the base he said, “I’ve been trying to recall if I’ve ever known any Japanese, but I don’t think I have.”

  Horne stiffened and took a deep breath. “All right,” Horne said, obviously struggling to control his voice. “You don’t know any Japs. Neither do I.”

  “I just think it’s curious, that’s all,” Melvin said.

  “I want to tell you something,” said Horne, looking straight ahead. “We’ve been cadets a long time, right?”

  Melvin agreed this was so.

  “And it ain’t been easy, right? All right! So we’re coming to the end of the road. Let’s enjoy it.” Then he added vehemently, “This is t
he best base we’ve ever been at! For once we’re getting a fair shake. The Navy’s all right. I don’t want to hear you knocking it, not at this moment.”

  “I’m not arguing. This is a good base,” Melvin said.

  Most of the rumors about Saufley Field had turned out to be true. The food was served on plates instead of aluminum trays, and the mess attendants used ladles instead of ice-cream dippers. The food was not only of better quality and properly cooked, but was made to look appetizing: breaded veal cutlets, for example, were attractively arranged in the pan, and there was hot gravy to go with them, whereas at every other base they had been stacked high and dry like cuttlefish in a Chinese delicatessen. At breakfast the beans were hot, toast was well buttered, and the eggs were fresh rather than dehydrated. Furthermore, they ate at a table with a tablecloth instead of at a bench, each cadet was given a cloth napkin, and when they had finished the meal they left their plates on the table instead of scraping them over a barrel.

  Even the military officers, as distinguished from the flight officers, were not unreasonable. There was a junior grade lieutenant in charge of the barracks: when they reported to him for the first time he smiled and shook hands with each member of the company, and remarked on the length of the cadet program.

  The company had a good deal of leisure, and it was spring. The great rains of winter were over. Flowers bloomed and trees burgeoned and small red-tailed hawks soared in the Gulf wind.

  On a grassy elevation in full view of the hangars and runways was the swimming pool. Here the cadets often gathered during the warm, sunny afternoons and long twilight hours. When the wind blew from a certain direction the traffic circle passed directly above the pool; then they would look up at the sputtering, smoking dive bombers; their eyes followed the landing pattern with intent, calculating, professional approval while the stubby little bombers came coasting around the final turn and plopped on the runway with a languid informality that characterized the entire station.

  “All we got to do here,” Sam Horne commented late one afternoon as a group of cadets was sauntering toward the barracks, “is keep from falling asleep.”

  “You’ll never wake up if you go to sleep in an SBD,” someone said.

  “I could fly an SBD blindfolded,” Horne replied. “Even Dilbert here,” he added, thrusting an elbow into Melvin’s ribs, “won’t have any trouble.”

  Hundreds of the old dive bombers were parked on the field. Not many of them were used. They had been ferried back to the United States from the war in the Pacific and were tied down wherever there was room at Pensacola. On the ground or in the air they could be distinguished by the hoarse, thudding roar of the engine, and by the flaps on the trailing edge of the wing. These flaps split like the beak of a bird in order to decrease the speed of the airplane and provide greater stability during a bombing run. The flaps were perforated and these perforations could be seen almost as far away as the plane itself. In comparison to the trainers the SBD Dauntless was a ponderous, decisive machine—the first actual combat plane the cadets had flown.

  There was a rumor that these particular SBD’s had been condemned because of their age and because most of them had been shot up in the war; nobody proved or disproved this rumor, nor would it have affected anything anyway, but Melvin, after various calculations, wrote home that he was expected to risk his life for eleven cents an hour.

  He had expected a week or so of dual instruction before attempting a solo in the Dauntless. He got only one brief ride in the gunner’s ring while an ensign, who appeared to be about his own age, showed him the area around the base and nonchalantly displayed a few characteristics of the airplane. The ensign took the Dauntless up, pushed over into a shallow dive with the flaps split wide apart, and then decreased the angle of the flaps. The bomber immediately plunged vertically and almost irresistibly toward the earth.

  When at last they came swooping out of the dive the officer looked into the mirror with a benign smile and asked if there were any questions. Melvin had no questions—the demonstration had been sufficient warning—so they returned to the base.

  The runways at Saufley Field were long, but they were uneven, with ripples and depressions sufficiently pronounced to cast shadows in the early morning or late afternoon. The ensign pointed to one runway that had an abrupt rise at the beginning. Melvin noted this carefully. He had heard about it. Several pilots unfamiliar with the field had struck this hump, lost control, and crashed.

  The ensign did not bother to mention a number of blackened swaths through the cornfields outside the fence, apparently because no mention was necessary. The swaths had been cut by planes that never quite managed to get into the air for one reason or another, or, if they did, came right down again; the engines detonated constantly, which gave the peculiar thudding noise heard from the ground, and occasionally stopped functioning altogether.

  Later that afternoon Melvin went out for his first solo.

  The taxi strip was crowded with torpedo bombers from a carrier that had dropped anchor off the coast during the night, and there was a landing signal officer in a fluorescent orange vest at the end of the runway to expedite the traffic.

  When the last torpedo bomber had lifted sluggishly into the air and hung there, spraddle-legged, magically diminishing within a haze of acrid smoke, the LSO beckoned Melvin into position and twirled his hands overhead. Melvin pressed down on the brakes and eased the throttle forward. The handle felt thick, a large cool bulb on a metal stalk. The Dauntless began to tremble and dance. The LSO—leaned forward, watching intently—suddenly spun around like a ball player and threw toward the far end of the field. Melvin lifted his toes and the shuddering old dive bomber trundled forward, grinding like a tractor, faster and faster.

  In a few seconds he felt the tail wheel leave the concrete and the plane began to push against him, but he held it down, and forced it to stay down until he knew it was ready, and when he finally let it up it came up firm and powerful like the neck of a bull.

  He flew straight ahead, scanning the instruments and listening to the engine. When he passed over the fence he started climbing. The control stick was heavily rigged to the cables and felt solid and squat and anchored deep inside the corpulent body. The finger grip was plump; it was pleasant to squeeze. In an SNJ the stick was a slender aluminum pipe that banged about in the cockpit like an old-fashioned automobile gear shift.

  He flew the bomber up until he could distinguish the curve of the earth, and there he rode around, maneuvering cautiously but with increasing confidence, studying the instruments, listening, testing the way in which the Dauntless stalled and fell off to the side; and he gazed somewhat idly toward the Gulf twenty miles distant. The Gulf was hazy and devoid of much color. He slid open the canopy and the wind roared. He lifted his goggles and let them rest on his forehead. He dipped one wing and then the other, going nowhere, rocking along as though sunning himself on a raft. It was a fine warm afternoon. By his ears the high wind rushed and the engine thundered like the surf.

  Presently he noticed a vee of basic trainers from Ellyson Field. They were about a mile below him. He spiraled down for a closer look, throttled back so as not to overrun them, and followed them a few minutes. He looked with amusement at the familiar turquoise rudder and at the squadron markings on the wing. It seemed long ago that he had been in basic training at Ellyson. He remembered that they used to call that plane the Vibrator because it rattled all the time, and at this he smiled. He remembered, too, that one day not unlike this day he had looked up and had seen a Dauntless high overhead, and had stared at it with envy and admiration. Since then much had happened and he was aware that he no longer felt the same.

  The period was over, so it seemed, before he had fairly begun; regretfully he floated down on Saufley Field, radioed the tower for permission to land, and after permission was granted came in easily, guiding the tough stubby bomber as though he had flown it for years.

  A few days later he was scheduled to lead a
navigation flight. He had been expecting this, for it was part of the syllabus at every base, but he had not been expecting to lead anyone except cadets; now he discovered that two of the five men behind him would be officers. One was a senior grade lieutenant and the other was a commander. He asked if this was a mistake, very hopeful that it was, but it was not; the officers had returned to Pensacola for what was known as a refresher course.

  The commander, an erect, white-haired gentleman about fifty years old with a crew cut, and a blue tattoo on the back of one hand, accepted Melvin’s instructions for the rendezvous as though he found nothing the least extraordinary in the situation. Neither did the lieutenant find it incongruous.

  When it was time to go to the planes Melvin did not know whether he was supposed to salute the officers or not, and decided to pretend—if they called him on it—that he had forgotten. Neither of them said anything as he walked away.

  The flight went very well, except that the commander flew a loose wing position. The cadet on the opposite wing flew extremely close, as they all had done at Barin Field; and the second vee, which was led by Ostrowski, drifted around, appearing now on the left, and above, now on the right, but always symmetrical. The commander was the only one out of position. Melvin considered signaling him to pull in closer, but, after all, there was not much to be gained and there was, perhaps, quite a bit to be lost. The result was that they traveled the course properly, if not in perfect formation, and returned to the base on time, having had a pleasant and uneventful ride.

  Melvin radioed in the usual manner: “Saufley tower. Saufley tower. This is Navy five-zero-five. Request landing permission. Six SBD’s. Over.”

  An impersonal voice responded, advising him of the direction and velocity of the wind and giving the number of the runway which was in use at that time. They entered the pattern, circled the field halfway around, and settled on the runway one after another.