“Did what? I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
Cole crossed his legs, shaking the trousers up so that his knees would not ruin the crease, and then rested his chin in his hand while he appraised Melvin in a cool, knowing way. “Yes,” he continued softly, and seemed to be amused. “What a shame that in every other respect you’re mediocre. If I had what you have, say, or if you had what I have, there’d be the holy devil to pay. But the motivation, the motivation! You wrecked that SBD on purpose, you imbecile. Why didn’t you talk to me first? I tried to get hold of you once before. Now it’s too late.” His eyes still fixed on Melvin, he straightened up and drew a cigarette case from his breast pocket; then, conscious of being in a hospital, he replaced it. “Why are you threatening the Romans?” he asked, and laughed shortly. “Because when you do that you threaten me as well. The paradox is that you are not even conscious of the extent of your revolt.” He made no effort to say anything further. He began to examine his fingernails.
“Do you have any idea what kind of duty you’ll get?” Melvin asked finally.
“Primary instructorship.”
“You sound so positive.”
“Why shouldn’t I be positive? It was arranged six months ago. Commodore Lehigh and my father have been close friends for thirty years.”
Melvin had never heard of Commodore Lehigh. “So you go first to New Orleans to the instructors’ college, is that it?”
“That’s right. Then I’ll be assigned to the primary station at Glenview.”
“Where’s that?”
“Right outside Chicago. I’ll have my car there. I’ll be able to drive home every night. The base is about twenty minutes from my home.”
“That’s been arranged?”
“Yes.”
“Well, all I can say is, you’ve sure got the gouge on this program.”
“You and your suicidal independence,” Cole murmured. He was still cleaning his nails.
The nurse stepped into the ward to announce that visitors must leave. At the far end of the room was an elderly couple; they and Cole were the only visitors. He stood up and without saying good-by he sauntered away.
A few minutes later the nurse came to Melvin’s bed. She asked how he was feeling.
“Let me show you,” he said and again reached for her knee, but she was alert; she dodged, and her eyes flashed. He was not sure whether she was angry or just exceptionally vivacious. Then he realized that she was holding a hypodermic. He was alarmed by this and started to sit up; she slapped one hand against his chest and shoved him down so vigorously that he bounced.
“Now, listen here,” he said, “I’m sick! You can’t treat me that way. I don’t feel good.”
“You jus’ flip ovah and close them luscious big brown eyes,” the nurse said without a smile. She pulled the sheet away from his chin, but Melvin caught the sheet and held on.
“I don’t need a hypodermic,” he said. “The commander didn’t say anything about giving me a hypodermic. And even if he did, that needle’s big enough for a horse. I don’t want it. I won’t take it, see. I refuse!”
“Cadet, I don’t care whether you want this or whether you don’t. You’ll take it one way or another.”
“I want to talk to the commander,” Melvin said, hoping that he had secured for the night, but as soon as she placed the syringe on the table and started for the door he waved his hands and muttered, “Okay, okay.”
“Roll over and make it snappy,” she ordered. He turned on his stomach, she pulled up the nightgown.
“No Southern girl would do a thing like that,” he said.
“Hereaftah, lovah man,” she remarked as she swabbed him with alcohol, “you have mo’ respec’ fo’ yankee ladies,” and with that she inserted the needle.
Melvin grunted. “Now, about us,” he resumed when the needle was withdrawn, “What time do you get off duty?”
She pulled down the nightgown, drew the covers up to his chin, and after collecting the equipment on the table she left the ward.
He meant to stay awake and talk to her further because he did not believe she was as uninterested as she pretended, but then he discovered it was morning. The other patients were waking up and there was an elderly nurse on duty. Seeing that he had come to life she walked over and slipped a thermometer in his mouth. A few minutes later she stopped by to read it, and after giving him his breakfast she brought his clothes.
Outside it was clear and warm with a fresh Gulf breeze, and Melvin was struck by the splendor of the day; he paused on the steps of the dispensary to look around. He felt rested and confident, more certain of himself than he had ever felt before. It seemed to him as he emerged from the shadow of the ward that a great change was coming over him and that he would never be the same. He drew a deep breath and started walking across the base.
Horne sat on the front steps of the barracks playing with a pair of gold wings. He was holding them up to the sun and trying to shine the reflection on his breast.
“What kept you?” he asked, squinting at the cloudless sky. “I figured you’d be out of there at dawn. Sick bay gives me the creeps. I can’t stand to be sick. You feel okay?”
“All right,” Melvin said. “Except I’m stiff.”
“I ran into Kennedy. He wanted me to tell you he hoped you weren’t spooked.”
“Who’s Kennedy?”
“That moldy lieutenant at Whiting, the peanut-eater. The instrument check pilot.”
“Yes, I remember him now. What’s he doing here?”
“Search me,” Horne answered. “He was walking out of the ad building with a WAVE and recognized me and said he’d heard about the wreck.”
“Is he still teaching instrument at Whiting?”
“I don’t know. I don’t run around poking my nose into an officer’s business.”
“I’d like to have seen him.”
“I don’t know where you think you are!” Horne cried, jumping up. “You certainly don’t act like you were in the Navy. The Green Hornet! What in God’s name is the matter with you?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me. Not any more.”
“Oh, no? Suppose we take a trip to the hangar. There’s something you might like to see.”
“Well, now, ah don’ mind if’n I do,” Melvin said, and he whistled cheerfully through his teeth as they walked along.
Already the swimming pool was crowded, beach towels spread on the grass embankment. On the basketball court a few officers and some cadets were choosing sides for a game; it would be a leisurely game. Overhead an echelon of SBD’s was breaking up—one after another spiraling down with the plump black wheels unfolding and acrid blue smoke streaming from the exhaust; he watched them coast out of sight behind the administration building and felt the shadow as one passed between him and the sun.
“You must have looked gorgeous,” said Horne in a hostile, embittered voice. He shook his head in disgust.
“Like a bird,” said Melvin, grinning.
“Nick told me he spotted you two miles away. What were you doing near the Gulf?”
“Joy-riding. How did he recognize me two miles away?”
“By the smoke, of course,” Horne said, stopping to look at him. “He thought you were a stove.”
“Smoke? What smoke?”
“What smoke,” said Horne, rolling his eyes. “Baby, they could have seen you from Mainside.”
“Was there that much? I thought it was just in the cockpit. Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“What would you have done if somebody did tell you?”
“I don’t know. Bail out, maybe.”
“You have any idea how low you were?”
“That’s right. I was fairly low.”
“And besides,” Horne went on, “they took up ten of those parachute packs the other day and threw them out and four of them didn’t open.”
“Really? I bet those girls in the loft caught hell.”
“Have you seen wha
t you came home in? Were you conscious when they pulled you out?”
“No,” Melvin said. “It was still in the air the last I remember.” And he added, thoughtfully, “It’s probably sort of beat up after that landing. I did the best I could.”
“Beat up,” said Horne. “They had to scoop it up. They unloaded it in the hangar. You want to look, or not?”
“I don’t care. I guess so. Why not? Sure, let’s have a peek.”
A rope had been strung around the SBD to keep everyone away. Both of the wings had broken off; the second one had fallen off while the wreckage was being dragged across the mat. The stack of metal was twisted and oily and scorched. The paint of the fuselage was blistered and the tires were punctured, and one blade of the propeller was bent at right angles to the other two. The entire hangar smelled of gas and burnt rubber.
“Listen,” Horne said after a while, “I don’t know what frequency you’re on, but nobody else is tuned in. But nobody! Nick asked me the other day what was eating you. Look, I haven’t asked too many questions. Maybe you’ve got problems at home; maybe you’re worried about letting your father down. It’s none of my business, only it seems like you’re up on a cloud somewhere twiddling your thumbs and observing the situation. Did any of us hurt your feelings?”
“No.”
“Then what gives?”
“Nothing.”
Horne took a deep breath.
“I hate to tell you: the squadron commander phoned the barracks. You’re to appear before him at two o’clock this afternoon.”
Melvin was standing with his hand on one of the posts that supported the rope and he was looking intently at the ruined airplane. It seemed incredible that yesterday he had been five miles above the earth in that pile of blackened junk.
“I’ll be there,” he said at last, lifting his hand from the post, turning away from the wreckage. “Tell the commander not to worry. I’ll be there at two o’clock.”
“What’s the matter?” said Horne. “Tell me.”
Melvin smiled at him, and suddenly understood how a woman some day would fall in love with him. He wanted to put his arms around Horne and for a little while to hold him close.
“Nothing,” he said. “Why should anything be the matter? Don’t be miserable. It’s me, not you who’s in trouble. Next week you’ll be an ensign. You’ve done it, don’t you realize? You beat the program. You’re a success.”
Horne was angry and puzzled. “Sure, I beat the program. Except I got beat in the process. I’ll be an officer, but still I’ll be afraid of officers. I don’t understand what they’ve done to us.” He was fondling the gold wings, nervously turning them over and over and squeezing the clasp. “Listen, there’s a chance you can talk your way out of it this afternoon. Try, will you? For almost two years I’ve been looking forward to the day when we’d march up those steps, one right after the other, and get those wings and have the old man hand us a diploma. You don’t know how much I’ve wanted that. I don’t think you ever really cared about it, not the way I did. But up until the war I never got much fun out of life. I lived on a farm and bred pigs. You don’t know anything about that. You’ve lived in a city all your life, but on Saturdays my brother and I’d get dressed up, all gussied up, and we’d drive to North Platte to raise hell. You can’t raise much hell in North Platte. You just can’t. Once in a while we’d take out for Lincoln or Grand Island. Twice in my life I got as far as Omaha. Baby, you don’t have any idea what kind of a life I had. When you and I went through Kansas City on the train I was twenty years old and that was the first time I’d ever seen skyscrapers. But now—and I’m not fooling—I’m going places! I’m a naval aviator and there’s nobody better. You think you sweated it out? Didn’t you ever wonder about me? You thought because my grades were higher that I didn’t have trouble? There were nights you sawed wood for eight straight hours while I sat up in the sack wringing my hands and trying to figure out why I goofed on some recognition exam, or on some instrument pattern. But I got through, and I’ve got the right to wear those wings, and I’m going to wear them. I never worked so hard for anything in my life. Because I never spoke about the Deacon getting killed at Albuquerque, or about Elmer, you thought I’d forgotten? Run through that one again, baby.”
Horne was trembling with emotion. He pointed at the ruined SBD. “There’s no excuse for that! You dove that hulk too fast. You should have known better. These planes are old but they won’t fall apart at normal diving speed. How fast were you going?”
“I forgot to look,” Melvin grinned. “I was moving, though.”
“I guess! And I’ll tell you another thing: some enlisted men were offering six to five odds you’d blow up. Ostrowski heard them.”
“Is that so? I wish I’d been there.”
“Why?”
“I’d have given a lot better odds than that. I didn’t think I had a Chinaman’s chance.”
Horne threw the wings violently against the floor of the hangar and turned on him with a ferocious expression. “Don’t talk to me like that!” he shouted. He stopped and waited until he had recovered himself, then continued in a strained voice, clenching and unclenching his fists, while perspiration trickled down his face. “Listen, who are you talking to? Don’t you recognize me any more? I’m your old buddy, Sam Horne. We’ve been together a long time. We understand each other, don’t we?”
“Sure,” Melvin said.
“Talk to me!”
“What about?”
“Just let me know what’s eating you, that’s all. Maybe I can help a little bit.”
“I’m fine,” Melvin said.
“You’re lying,” Horne said gently. “You’re lying, that’s what beats me.” He took another look at the devastated airplane and turned away quickly, hitting his palm with his fist. “I hate to say this, baby, but you’re through. You haven’t got a prayer. You don’t have one single prayer.”
16
Melvin telephoned his father that it would be better to have lunch earlier than they had planned because he had to be back on the station by two o’clock. After this he showered, dressed in his cadet blues, and started toward the gate. Near the administration building he saw Lieutenant Caravaggio.
“Isaacs!” the officer called, hurrying down the steps, “I must talk to you!”
“I have to meet my father in Pensacola,” Melvin answered without stopping, and without saluting.
Caravaggio skipped along beside him. “Will you talk to me when you get back? I could make this an order, you know.”
Melvin shook his head.
“What’s this accident? I hadn’t planned on that. You’re confusing me, damn you!” He stopped, breathing heavily, and Melvin walked on.
“Good-by!” he called.
Melvin did not answer. At the gate he glanced back, afraid Caravaggio would be watching, but the officer was nowhere in sight.
On the bus he took from his wallet some snapshots of his friends. He looked at them while the bus rolled along the highway to Pensacola. There was a picture of Horne grinning, posing with truculent confidence in front of a Dauntless; in the same picture, crouched like an Indian in the shade of the wing, with his chin strap dangling and his head almost touching a propeller blade, was Nick McCampbell; on the opposite wing stood Roska. Cole was supposed to be in that picture, too, but he had become bored, Melvin remembered, because there had been some difficulty with the camera, and had walked away and had not come back. There were snapshots from Ellyson and Whiting and Barin. And when he came to a photograph of Elmer in the cockpit of an SNJ it seemed to him that a great deal of time had passed since then, though it had only been a few months. Elmer had been killed the day after the picture was taken; Melvin remembered how reluctant he had been, because of this fact, to get the films developed.
And while the Navy bus rolled on and on through the deep pine forest, bursting into the bright noon light and into the shadows again, he fell to thinking of all he had experienced. So much ha
d occurred so inexplicably, too rapidly, yet no one worried; it was as though they had tacitly agreed to participate in a play which had no beginning and no climax, which was so mysterious that no one understood the plot.
Now that it was over he could reflect on it with something like pleasure, which was not quite pleasure, really, or satisfaction, or pride; he did not know, in fact, just how he did feel about it all, but he knew he would not forget what he had seen and what he had done. He would not forget his friends, though he might never meet them again after they received their wings; or the nights of liberty in Mobile; or the particular nature of each station—the light filtering through the trees, the shape of the barracks, the muggy, long summer nights or the dry, cold winter nights, the sounds and odors of the mess hall, the bulletin boards, moving pictures, the billiard tables, the public-address systems and the auditoriums and the textbooks. But most of all, and with a feeling as near to gratitude as to anything, he thought he would not be apt to forget what it was like to fly—to be a flyer.
It seemed to him that he was able to hear once more the steady reassuring tremble of the engine and to feel on his ankles the warm, constant breath of the heater, so like a cool morning on the beach, standing barefoot at the water’s edge and listening to the faraway thunder of the breakers while the Gulf eddied and washed along the sand with a soft gurgling and lapping. The sky, the sea, and the splendor of the earth—these he would not forget. These could not be taken from him no matter how humbly he was dressed, or how menial the services he performed. He did not think he would ever quite forget the awesome flash of the green and white course lights illuminating the night sky like an electrical storm, or the coughing, barking engines like sea lions somewhere in the darkness, while fumes drifted through the hangar on a sweet evening breeze, and the screech of tires far out on the landing mat. If he listened he could hear, and if he looked diligently he could still see the moon behind the long-legged water tower, the water tower with its absurd Chinese hat. A tire fell from the sky and it had come bouncing toward him while a great diagonal flame shot up and the dull boom reverberated over bloody Barin Field, and he remembered the crash that preceded the boom like the grinding clash of trays in the mess hall and the way his heart was palpitating as he raced for the safety of the barracks while smoke boiled up in the sky and obliterated the stars.
The Patriot Page 26