W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

Ernest Sage often privately thought that if he compiled a list of undesirable suitors for his daughter's affections, right at the top of that list would be a Ma-rine officer with an unpleasant family background-they didn't have a dime, was the way he thought of it-with only a high school education, whose only prospects were the near certainty of getting himself badly maimed in the war- or more likely killed.

It deeply disturbed him, but didn't really surprise him, when Ernie told him that thirty minutes after she met Ken McCoy she knew she wanted to marry him.

Adding to his difficulties was the fact that he not only admired McCoy but rather liked him. He could not even console himself with the thought that McCoy was after his and his daughter's money. Ernie would marry him at the drop of a hat, he knew, either with his permission or without it. McCoy refused to do that. He thought it would be unfair to leave her a widow, or obliged to spend the rest of her life caring for a cripple.

Since Ernie almost always got what she wanted-because she was willing to pay whatever the price might be-one of the unpleasant possibilities that Ernest Sage was forced to live with was that she would get herself in the family way, either as a bargaining chip to bring McCoy to the altar, or-and with Ernie, this was entirely possible-simply because she wanted to bear his child.

He had discussed this subject with Ernie, and she had pointed out that any illicit fruit of their union would not wind up on public assistance, the annual income from her trust funds being three or four times as much as she was paid by J. Walter Thompson, Advertisers.

Since they were sleeping together-perhaps not here, tonight, because McCoy would object to that; but everywhere else, including a three-month pe-riod when they cohabited on a yacht at the San Diego Yacht Club while he was training for what had become the now famous Makin Island raid-the problem of her becoming impregnated was a real one.

He had come to understand that the only reason she did not allow herself to become pregnant was that she was afraid of Ken, or else respected him too much to go against his wishes. And this of course meant that Ken McCoy was doing what he was unable to do as her father, guiding the course of her life.

McCoy came into her life, perversely enough, through the young man Er-nest Sage and his wife had hoped for years would become, in due time, her husband. If one ignored his current role as a Marine fighter pilot, with odds against his passing through the war unscathed, or alive, this young man would have headed a list of desirable suitors. He came from a splendid family. His mother, who had been Ernie's mother's roommate and best friend at college, was the only daughter of Andrew Foster, of Foster Hotels International. His father-an old friend whom Ernest Sage could never completely forgive for arranging for the yacht in San Diego, knowing full well what Ernie wanted it for-was Fleming Pickering, now wearing a Marine general's uniform, but previously Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Pacific and Far East Shipping.

Ken McCoy and Malcolm S. "Pick" Pickering met and became buddies at Officer Candidate School at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. On their graduation, Pick was sowing a few wild oats in a penthouse suite at the Foster Park Hotel on Central Park South-his one semi-disqualifying character-istic as the perfect suitor was his proclivity for wild-oats sowing.

Though Ernie unfortunately regarded Pick as a troublemaking brother, she somewhat reluctantly, at her father's urging, went to the party after he told her she was duty-bound to congratulate Pick on his second lieutenant's bar, and to wish him well in pilot training. There she met Ken McCoy, sitting on a ledge, his feet dangling over Fifty-ninth Street.

Fifteen minutes later, they left the penthouse in search of Chinese food in Chinatown.

One of the first things Ernie told her father about McCoy was that he spoke Chinese like a Chinaman.

"Well, they look pretty clean," McCoy said, handing Mr. Sage the shotgun barrels. "But what you really need is some Hoppe's Number Nine. I'll get some for you."

"When he sold me that stuff, the man at Griffin and Howe said it was the best barrel cleaner available," Ernest Sage heard himself say.

Why couldn't I have just said "Thank you" ? Am I looking for an excuse to fight with him?

"The best barrel cleaner is mercury," McCoy said matter-of-factly. "Next is Hoppe's Number Nine."

Mercury? What the hell is he talking about, mercury?

"Mercury?"

"You stop up one end of a barrel, fill the barrel with mercury, let it stay a couple of minutes, and then pour it out. Takes the barrel right down to the bare metal. I guess it dissolves the lead, and the primer residue, all the crap that fouls a barrel."

Unfortunately, I suspect he knows what's he's talking about. I will not challenge him on that. There probably is some chemical reaction, vis-a-vis steel, copper, lead, and mercury.

And then he heard himself say, "What you're saying is that the man at Griffin and Howe doesn't know what he's talking about?"

"Not if he said that stuff is best, he doesn't."

"Daddy," Ernie said. "Ken knows about guns. Why are you arguing with him?"

"I wasn't arguing with Ken, honey. I was just making sure I understood him correctly." He fixed a smile on his face. "The next step in the sacred traditions of hunting around here is the ingestion of a stiff belt. How does that sound, Ken?"

"That sounds fine, Sir."

Ernest Sage put the side-by-side Parker 12-bore together, and then put it in a cabinet beside perhaps twenty other long arms. He turned and smiled at his daughter.

I've been around guns all my life, but your Ken knows about guns, right?

"Into the library, honey? Or shall we go in the kitchen and watch your mother defeather the birds?"

"The library," Ernie said. "Mother hates plucking and dressing birds; al-ways prays that you'll never get any pheasant."

"I've never eaten a pheasant," Ken McCoy said.

"Really?" Ernest Page said.

They went into the two-story-high library. The front of what looked like a row of books opened, revealing a bar, complete to refrigerator.

Sage took two glasses and started to put ice in them.

"Yes, Daddy," Ernie said. "Thank you very much, I will have a drink. Whatever you're having."

"Sorry, honey," her father said. "Excuse me. I'm not used to you being a full-grown woman."

"Make her a weak one," McCoy said. "One strong drink and she starts dancing on tabletops."

Sage turned in surprise, in time to see Ernie sticking her tongue out at McCoy.

"Don't believe him, Daddy."

He made the drinks and handed one to each of them.

"What shall we drink to?" he asked. "The fallen pheasants?"

"What about Pick?" McCoy replied. "I feel sorry for him."

"Why do you feel sorry for him?" Sage asked.

"He's going on display on the West Coast right about now."

"I don't understand."

"A War Bond Tour. All the aviation heroes from Guadalcanal. Modesty is not one of his strong points, but I suspect the War Bond Tour will cure him of that."

"Pick is a hero?"

"Certified. Got the DFC from the Secretary of the Navy himself last week."

"I hadn't heard that."

"For doing what he did with you?" Ernie asked. It was a challenge.

"For being an ace. More than an ace. I think he has six kills. Maybe seven."

"What did she mean, Ken, 'for doing what he did with you'? You saw Pick in the Pacific."

"Yes, Sir. I saw him in the Pacific."

"If he got a medal, why didn't you?" Ernie demanded.

"Because I didn't do anything to deserve a medal."

"Huh!" Ernie snorted.

"What exactly is it that you do in the Marines, Ken?" Ernest Sage asked with a smile.