Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

“My name is the wind,” she said, and laughed.

“Tell me.”

“I wish you would kiss me,” she said. “Please kiss me.”

Still holding her face, feeling the hard line of her jaw beneath his fingers, he lowered his mouth, and her lips parted, and he closed his eyes and held her very tight. In that instant all the romantic visions of his youth, all the fantasies he had drawn on the nighttime ceiling of his room, the imagined legends of tall, gallant men and beautiful, delicate maidens, came alive in this girl whose name he did not know. The willows hung like teardrops caught by time.

And with this girl, with this gentle girl who lay softly cradled in his arms by the edge of the river, there came purpose and resolve. He was suddenly brimming with plans; ambition rose within him like a tower. Holding her in his arms, he spun a golden thread of reveries, whispering lest the night be shattered by sound, until at last she sighed and said, “I must go.”

“I’ll take you home,” he said softly. “Where do you live?”

“I live in the air,” she answered, and again she laughed.

“No, seriously.”

“I’ll find my way alone. I want you to stay here.”

“I want to come with you,” he said, puzzled.

“Kiss me again.”

He held her to him and kissed her again, but there was an unfamiliar panic rising within him. He did not want to let her go. Fiercely he clung to her.

“Don’t go yet,” he said. “Please.”

“I’m going. I must.”

“No. Please...”

“Do you love me?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes, but...”

“Then love me,” she said, “and let me go.”

He was frightened all at once. Suddenly he was afraid that if he insisted he would lose her completely. He nodded bleakly in the darkness. “Yes,” he said. “All right.”

She rose and brushed her skirt, her long, thin fingers moving silently in the darkness.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes, tomorrow,” she said.

“Here?”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

She kissed him suddenly and swiftly and then slipped out of his arms and ran up the grassy bank. He could hear her laughter trailing behind her.

“I love you!” he called to the night.

She did not come the next day. He waited until it was dark, and then beyond that, and then he simply sat on the river’s edge, no longer waiting, and stared deep into the black waters.

He looked for her all that summer.

The songs they were playing in 1937 helped to perpetuate the dreamlike quality of that night by the river. Every note he heard echoed of faraway places, any one of which she might have vanished to: “Blue Hawaii” and “The Moon of Manakoora” and “Twilight in Turkey.” Every sad lyric seemed to have been written expressly for him, contrived to remind him of events that somehow never happened: “In the Still of the Night” and “I See Your Face Before Me,” and especially “Where or When,” which was all mystery and magic in the guise of déjà vu. He asked about her everywhere. “Long blond hair,” he would say, “and brown eyes, and she was wearing a pale-blue dress and dust-covered sneakers. She’s the most beautiful girl who ever lived.” And he heard conflicting reports about her. Someone said Yes, he had seen her, she was visiting from California, staying with a cousin on South Twelfth — but he checked the address and the cousin did not exist. And someone else said he thought she worked for the carnival, a sort of shill — but the next time the carnival came to town, she was not with it. Hitler was about to march into Poland; the world was poised for war; but all he could think of was the girl with the long blond hair.

In the early part of 1942 the area of his search was enlarged. He went into the Navy, and the Navy took him to the Great Lakes Training Center and Chicago, and then to radar school in Fort Lauderdale, and the opportunity to search Miami and Miami Beach, and then Norfolk for a training course with the assembled crew of his about-to-be-commissioned ship. He went as far as Richmond looking for her, and then Boston to commission the destroyer, and Guantanamo for a shakedown cruise, and the Panama Canal and a quick, one-night search of Colon, and then San Diego, and Pearl Harbor, searching, always searching — and then the ship went into action, and he stopped looking because then there was nothing to see but death.

His best friend aboard ship was another radarman named Clyde Morrow. He often told him about the girl with no name, and he speculated for the first time about what might have happened if he hadn’t said “Yes” to her request. Would she have vanished so completely if he hadn’t agreed to stay there by the river? The idea was a nagging one. Discussing it with Clyde on the fantail of the Fancher , he recognized his acquiescence as a committed error. But he did not yet know it would become a trend, and then a habit, and * eventually a trap. He was, after all, an enlisted man in the United States Navy, subject to commands, becoming more and more accustomed to saying, “Yes, sir.” As the years passed, as the Fancher miraculously survived battle after battle, the mandatory “Yes, sir” became second nature to him, the ship became his home, his crewmates became the only community he knew. He had never had any brothers, and now Clyde Morrow, mild and unassuming, quietly understanding, became a brother to him. In November of 1948 he said “Yes” to his brother, and lost him, and became frightened.

The Fancher had got under way at dusk, part of a force escorting the four transports and two cargo vessels out of Ironbottom Sound on their way to Espíritu Santo to the southwest. The action itself, the very fact that the transports and cargo ships had been ordered away from Guadalcanal, was an ominous one. Even if there had not been the heavy Japanese air attack that afternoon, the men would have known instantly that something was in the wind. He was not surprised when the chemical alarm shrieked its warning through the ship a little after midnight. Automatically he swung his legs over the side of his bunk, pulled on his trousers, and slipped his feet into his shoes. He was putting on his chambray shirt and running for the ladder when Clyde called to him.

There was something curiously compelling in his voice. Turning, he looked into Clyde’s eyes and saw something there he had never seen before.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Behind them, the speaker on the bulkhead blared, “General Quarters! All hands, man your battle stations! General Quarters!”

“What is it, Clyde?”

Sailors were rushing past them, scrambling up the single ladder leading out of the aft sleeping compartment, pulling on clothing as they ran.

“What is it, for God’s sake?”

“I can’t go up there again.”

“What?”

“The bridge,” Clyde said. “I can’t.” He shook his head. “Can’t,” he said again.

“What do you mean? Clyde, that’s General Quarters. We’ve got to...”

“Listen.”

“What?”

“Listen. I... I can’t go up there.” Clyde’s fingers tightened on the pale-blue sleeve of his shirt. “I... I could see the pilot’s face. This afternoon. When the... when the plane dove at the bridge, I could see his face. And... and flames were dropping from the fuselage... on... on... some dropped on my helmet.” Clyde paused and swallowed. “I can’t go up there again. I don’t care. I can’t go up.”

“Well... well, what...?” He looked around him in panic. The compartment was almost clear now. They stood together by the ladder, the chemical alarm still shrieking, Clyde’s hand tight on his sleeve.

“Switch with me,” Clyde said abruptly. “Take my place on the bridge.”