W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

Dick Stecker made a circling motion with his index finger at his temple.

"He’s nuts about her," he said. "She’s a widow. Did you know?"

Pickering nodded.

"He’s really got it bad for her. And she won’t give him the time of day."

"You think that’s maybe what it is? That she’s not interested? That his Don Juan ego is involved?"

"No. I wish it was."

"What do you think of her?"

"I don’t know what to think," Stecker said. "Maybe it’ll pass when we graduate and get the hell out of here. But I don’t know."

"OK. Thank you. Subject closed."

They ate in the hotel dining room, which was crowded with men in Navy and Marine Corps uniforms.

Over their shrimp cocktail, Fleming Pickering told them he was headed, via Washington and the West Coast, for Hawaii.

"When are you coming back?"

"I don’t know," Pickering said. "Captains, like second lieutenants, go when and where they’re told to go."

That was not true. Although he was still traveling on the vague orders that Captain Jack NMI Stecker had described as "awesome," permitting him to go where and when he pleased, no questions asked, he now had specific orders from the Secretary of the Navy:

Stay at Pearl Harbor as long as you want, Flem; learn what you can. But the President is going to order MacArthur out of the Philippines and to Australia. I want you there when he gets there. I want to know what he’s up to. Haughton will message you wherever you are when Roosevelt orders him to leave, if you‘re not already in Australia by then.

Lieutenants Pickering and Stecker laughed dutifully.

There was a stir in the room while they were eating their broiled flounder. Pickering followed the point of attention to the door. Rear Admiral Richard Sayre, a woman almost certainly his wife, and a beautiful young blond woman almost certainly the widowed daughter, followed the headwaiter to a table across the room. Moments later, a Marine captain, a Naval Aviator, walked quickly to join them.

"That’s Admiral Sayre, Captain," Dick Stecker said. "He’s number three at Pensacola. And his wife and daughter."

Fleming Pickering was aware that his son was looking intently, perhaps angrily, at Stecker.

"And Captain Mustache," Stecker added.

"Captain ‘Mustache’?" Pickering asked.

"He’s one of our IPs . . . Instructor Pilots," Pick said.

"Oh," Pickering said.

"And like a lot of people around here, he’s got a crush on the Admiral’s daughter," Stecker said.

"She’s a beautiful young woman," Pickering said.

"Yeah," Pick said. "She is."

That was all he had to say about Martha Sayre Culhane. But he kept looking over at her. And when Fleming Pickering looked in that direction, more often than not, Martha Sayre Culhane was surreptitiously looking in their direction.

Chapter Nine

(One)

Aboard the Motor YachtLast Time

The San Diego Yacht Club

San Diego, California

7 March 1942

Ensign Barbara Cotter, USNR, and Miss Ernestine Sage were alone aboard the Last Time. Ensign Cotter was barefoot; she wore the briefest of white shorts, and her bosom was only barely concealed beneath a thin, orange kerchief bandeau. Miss Sage was wearing the briefest of pale blue shorts and a T-shirt, beneath which it was obvious she wore nothing else.

Although it was nearly noon, they were just finishing the breakfast dishes. They had been up pretty late the night before; there had been a certain amount of physical activity once they had gone to bed. After breakfast, they’d waved bye-bye to Lieutenants Joseph L. Howard, USMCR, and Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, as they departed for duty. Then Miss Sage had suggested to Ensign Cotter, "To hell with the dishes, let’s go back to bed," and they had done just that, rising again only a few moments ago.

Barbara Cotter did not go home to Philadelphia on her overseas leave. She had called her parents and told them she was being shipped out; and no, she didn’t know where she was going, and no, she wouldn’t be able to get home before she left.

It was the first time she had ever lied to her parents about anything important, and it bothered her. But the choice had been between going home, alone, and staying in San Diego with Joe for the period of her leave. She was perfectly willing to admit that she was being a real shit for not going home, and then lying about it, but she wasn’t sorry.

And in Ernie Sage she had found both a friend and a kindred soul; it was no time before Ernie offered Barbara and Joe the starboard stateroom for as long as they wanted it-just because they felt so close so quickly. Both of them were nice, Protestant, middle-class (in Ernie’s case, maybe upper-class) girls who had gone to college and had bright futures. And both of them were shacked up with a couple of Marines.

And were completely unashamed about it.

In no time they were both sharing deep, mutual confidences:

The first time they had laid eyes on Joe and Ken, they had known in their hearts that if they wanted to do that, and they hoped they would want to do that, they were going to let them.

It was the first time either of them had really felt that way, although in Ernie’s case there had been a poet from Dartmouth, and in Barbara’s case a gastroenterologist, who had made them feel almost that way.

And they talked, seriously, about why those things were going on. Barbara’s theory was-that Mother Nature caused the transmitters and receptors to be turned on in the interests of propagation. And Ernie’s tangential theory was that Nature wanted to increase pregnancies in time of war.

And they talked of getting pregnant, and/or of getting married. They both reached the same conclusion: they weren’t going to get married, not right away, anyhow. Because Joe and Ken thought they were probably going to get killed-or worse, crippled-in battle, both men refused to consider marriage. Yet Barbara and Ernie both agreed that what they really wanted, maybe most in the world, was to make babies with Joe and Ken. If they did, Joe and Ken would be furious-for the same reason they didn’t want to get married. And further, since it was really better to have a baby when the baby was wanted, it was probably really better to wait until The Boys Came Home.

And in the meantime, they played housewife, and they loved it. They either prepared elaborate meals in the Last Time’s galley, or they went out for dinner to the Coronado Beach Hotel dining room, or to some hole-in-the-wall Mexican or Chinese restaurant. They carried their men’s uniforms to the laundry, sewed their buttons on, and bought them razor blades and boxer shorts and Vitalis For The Hair. And loved them at night. And refused to think that it couldn’t last forever-or, in Barbara and Joe’s case, not later than the time her orders gave her, 2300 hours 16 March 1942. She was supposed to report to the Overseas Movement Officer, San Diego Naval Yard; and for her the Last Time would turn into a pumpkin.

Ernie told Barbara that after she was gone, and after Ken McCoy had shipped out, she was going back to New York City and back to work. She promised to visit Barbara’s family in Philadelphia then, and tell them about Joe. She would confirm what Barbara was going to write them about him once she was on the ship headed nobody would tell her where.

The telephone rang, and Ernie Sage answered it, then held up the phone to Barbara.

"It’s somebody from the Navy Yard," she said.

Lieutenant Joe Howard, ever the dedicated officer, had advised her that if she wasn’t going home, she was required to let "the receiving station" (by which he meant the Navy Yard) know where she was and how she could be reached.

"Ensign Cotter," Barbara said to the telephone.

"Ma’am, this is Chief Venwell, of Officer Movement, at the Navy Yard."