W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

He called the valet and ordered them to press his uniforms, and then he dressed in the one least creased and rumpled. After that, he went down to the lobby barbershop for a haircut and a shave and a shoeshine. Then he got in the Cadillac (which, he noticed, had been washed and serviced) and put the top down.

Three blocks from the hotel, he pulled to the curb and put the top back up. Even in his green woolen blouse, he was cold. Obviously, there were two Floridas. This one was a thousand miles closer to the Artie Circle.

He drove more or less aimlessly, having a look around. After a while, he found himself on a street identified as West Garden Street. And then the street signs changed, and he was on Navy Boulevard. That sounded promising, and he stayed on it, driving at the 35-MPH speed limit for five or six miles.

Here were more signs of the Navy: hock shops, Army-Navy stores, and at least two dozen bars.

Then he heard the sound of an airplane engine. Close. He leaned forward and looked up and out of the windshield.

To his right, a bright yellow, open-cockpit, single-engined biplane was taking off from a field hidden by a thick, though scraggly, stand of pine, NAVY was painted on the underside of one wing.

Pickering slowed to watch it as it sort of staggered into the air, and he was still watching when an identical plane followed it into the air. Pick pulled onto the shoulder of the road, stopped, and got out. At what seemed to be minute or minute-and-a-half intervals, more little open-cockpit airplanes flew over his head, taking off.

He was awed at the number of airplanes the Navy apparently had here, until, feeling just a little foolish, he realized he was watching the same planes over and over. After they staggered into the air, they circled back and landed, and then took off again. There were really no more man a dozen or so, he realized, and they were using two runways.

He climbed back in his car and started up again, looking for a road he could take to where he could watch the actual takeoffs and landings. But no road appeared. Instead, he came to a low bridge across some water. On the other side of the bridge was a sign, UNITED STATES NAVY AIR STATION, PENSA-COLA, and immediately beyond that a guardhouse.

A Marine guard saluted crisply, waving him past the gate and onto the reservation. A few hundred yards beyond the Marine guard, he saw to his right a red, triangular flag. It bore the number "8," and its flagstaff was in the center of what looked like a very nicely tended golf green.

It had been some time since he had gone a round of golf. Much too long. He missed bashing golf balls. And then he remembered that he had found his clubs in the Cadillac's trunk when he had loaded his luggage in Atlanta. Were lowly second lieutenants permitted on Navy base golf courses? he wondered. Or was that privilege restricted to high-ranking officers? He would, he decided, find out.

He drove around the enormous base, finding barracks and headquarters and the Navy Exchange, and finally an airfield. He parked the convertible by a chain-link fence and watched small yellow airplanes endlessly take off and land, take off and land. He found this fascinating, almost hypnotic, and he lost track of time.

Eventually, his stomach told him it was time to eat; and his new wristwatch told him that it was ten minutes after twelve. Earlier he had driven past the Officers' Club. The question was, could he find it again?

The answer was yes, but it took him twenty minutes. He went inside, and for thirty-five cents was fed a cup of clam chowder, pork chops, and lima beans.

The hotelier in him told him that there was no way the Navy could afford to do this without some kind of a subsidy, and then he realized what the subsidy was. The building and the furnishings were owned by the Navy. There was no mortgage to amortize, and it was not necessary to provide for maintenance or painting. And the cooks were on the Navy payroll.

He drank a second cup of coffee and then left the dining room. Near the men's room was a map of the air station mounted on the wall. He studied it, and after a few moments he realized that with the exception of several off-the-main-base training airfields, he had covered in his aimless driving just about all of Pensacola NAS that there was to cover.

Next, he decided to leave the base, drive back into Pensacola, and ask Gayfer where he could find a good place to take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico. And then, after a swim and dinner, and maybe a couple of drinks, he would put his uniform back on and return out here and report in.

He didn't make it off the base. On the way out, he saw an arrow pointing to the officers' golf course and decided he would really rather play golf than swim. He recalled additionally that this was the arctic end of Florida and that mere would probably be icebergs in the water.

He found the clubhouse without trouble. There he asked a middle-aged Navy petty officer how one arranged to play a round. Shoes and clubs were available for fifty cents in the locker room, he was told, and the greens fee was a dollar.

"And do I have to play in uniform?"

"Uniform regulations are waived while you are physically on the golf course proper, sir," the petty officer told him. "You can take off your hat and blouse and tie."

Pickering fetched his clubs and a pair of golf shoes from the trunk of the convertible and then went to the locker room and paid the fees. After that he hung his blouse, hat, Sam Browne belt, and field scarf in a locker and went outside. A lanky teen-aged Negro boy detached himself from a group of his peers, offered his services as a caddy, and led him to the first tee.

A middle- aged woman was already on the tee. A woman who took her golf seriously, he saw. She was teed up, but had stepped away from the ball and was practicing her swing. He at first approved of this (his major objection to women on the links was that most of them did not take the game seriously); but his approval turned to annoyance when the middle-aged woman kept taking practice swings.

How long am I supposed to wait?

And then she saw him standing mere and smiled. "Good afternoon," she said.

"Hello," he said politely.

"I didn't see you," she said. "I'm really sorry."

"Don't be silly," Pickering said.

"I was waiting for my daughter," the woman said. And then, "And here, at long last, she is."

Pickering followed her gesture and found himself looking at Martha Sayre Culhane. She was wearing a band over her blond hair, a cotton windbreaker on top of a pale blue sweater, and a tight-across-the-back khaki-colored gabardine skirt. That sight immediately urged into his mind's eye another image of her. In that one she was in her birthday suit.

Martha Sayre Culhane's eyebrows rose when she saw him; she was not pleased.

"If you don't mind playing with women," Martha Sayre Culhane's mother said. "They really discourage singles."

"I would be delighted," Pick said.

"I'm Jeanne Sayre," Martha Sayre's Culhane's mother said. "And this is Martha. Martha Culhane."

In turn, they offered their hands. Martha Sayre Culhane's hand, he thought, was exquisitely soft and feminine.

"My name is Malcolm Pickering," he said. "People call me Pick."

"I thought your name was Foster," Martha Sayre Culhane said, matter-of-factly.

"Oh, you've met?" Jeanne Sayre asked.

"The desk clerk at the San Carlos, almost beside himself with awe, pointed him out to me," Martha Sayre Culhane said.

That's not true, Pickering thought, with certainty. She asked him who I was. She was curious.

"Oh?" her mother said, her tone making it clear that her daughter was embarrassing and annoying her.

"According to the desk clerk," Martha Sayre Culhane said, "we are about to go a round with the heir apparent to the Foster Hotel chain, now resident in the San Carlos penthouse."