Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 08 - In Dangers Path

What is she now, twenty-three, twenty-four? And a goddamn widow! Goddamn it! Did they have a kid?

She came halfway down the walk to him as he walked toward the door.

«Well, look what floated in with the tide,» she said.

«Don't I get a hug?» he asked.

She hugged him. He was uncomfortable when he felt the pressure of her breasts against his abdomen, and quickly broke away.

«Mother said I wasn't to ask you how you were, or comment on your appearance,» Martha said. «So I won't.»

«I'm fine, thank you for asking.»

«You look good,» she said. «God, Jimmy, I'm glad to see you.»

«I didn't know about Greg, until just now,» he said. «Jesus Christ, I'm sorry.»

«Let's go in the house,» Mrs. Sayre said, coming up behind them. «There's no champagne, but 1 think we should have a drink.»

A dark-skinned man in a crisply starched white cotton jacket stood just inside the door.

Christ, he's a Filipino messman. We let them join the Navy, but only as messmen. They're our Little Brown Brothers, not good enough to serve as real sailors.

«Good morning, sir,» he said.

»

Buenos dias

,» Weston said.

«Pedro, would you roll the bar onto the patio?» Mrs. Sayre asked. «Despite thehour, we are going to have a drink. Possibly two. You remember Captain Weston, don't you? He's a dear friend of the family.»

«Yes, ma'am,» the messman said.

Does that mean he remembers me? I don't remember him.

«That being the case,» Martha said, as they walked through the house and onto the patio, «dear friend of the family, why didn't you call and tell us you were coming? For that matter, why didn't you call and just tell us you were alive?»

He met her eyes, and noticed how blue they were.

«I don't know, Martha,» he said. «The last couple of weeks have been really hectic.»

They sat down on upholstered white metal lawn furniture. The way she was sitting—innocently, of course—Weston could see a long way up her cotton skirt. She was not wearing hose, and he remembered Janice telling him that silk stockings were almost impossible to find.

Pedro wheeled a bar loaded with whisky bottles onto the patio, then stood, obviously waiting for orders.

«What would you like, Jim?» Mrs. Sayre asked.

Among the nearly dozen bottles on the bar, there was a bottle of good scotch, scotch too good to be diluted with water. Without thinking about it, Weston asked, in Spanish, for «some of the good stuff, a double, please, ice but no water.»

«That's new,» Martha said. «When did you learn to speak Spanish?»

«Ninety percent of U.S. forces in the Philippines are Filipinos,» Weston said, as much to the messman as Martha. «You either learn to speak Spanish, or you don't get much done.»

«Permission to speak, sir?» the messman asked.

«Of course,» Weston said.

«Sir, there was a story in the newspaper. It said there were guerrilla forces operating on my home island of Mindanao.»

«Yes, there are,» Weston said.

«Sir, and you were there?»

Weston nodded.

«Just a minute, Pedro,» Jean Sayre said. «Make the drinks. I'll have whatever Captain Weston is having.»

«Good scotch, ice, double, no water, ma'am.»

Weston felt anger well up within him.

«With a little water. Fix a single for Miss Martha.»

«Yes, ma'am.»

Weston was surprised at his fury at her treatment of the Filipino.

«Then make yourself whatever you want, pull up a chair and sit down with us. Captain Weston's going to start at the beginning and tell us everything.»

«Yes, ma'am,» the messman said. «Thank you.»

Christ, I should have known better. She's what an officer's lady is supposed to be.

He sensed Martha's eyes on him, and knew somehow that she had seen his reaction.

«Pedro's been taking care of us for a long time,» Martha said. «He was Daddy's steward on the

Lexington

. When Daddy made rear admiral and came ashore, Pedro came with him. You don't remember him?»

«I thought you looked familiar, Pedro,» Weston said.

That's bullshit. If he was here the last time I was here, he was simply part of the furnishings. I was as bad then about our Little Brown Brothers as I thought Mrs. Sayre was now.

Pedro made the drinks, handed them around, then took a Coca-Cola for himself and pulled up a chair.

«The last we heard, Jim, you'd been sent to a Navy Catalina Squadron at Pearl… Wait a minute. What should we drink to?»

«Greg,» he blurted without thinking.

«Greg,» Mrs. Sayre said softly, raising her glass.

Martha, looking at Jim, raised her glass but didn't speak.

«You were at Pearl, Jim?» Mrs. Sayre said. «How did you get to the Philippines?»

«I flew a Catalina into Cavite on December eight,» Weston began, and related, over the next hour, his experiences in the Philippines. He left out, of course, the less pleasant aspects. But he did tell them, in some detail, about Sergeant Percy L. Everly, USMC—now First Lieutenant Percy Everly, U.S. Army Reserve—and about how Brigadier-General Wendell W. Fertig came to be a brigadier general.

«That was very clever of him,» Mrs. Sayre said, «wouldn't you say so, Pedro? No one would pay much attention to a reserve lieutenant colonel, would they?»

«I am afraid not,» Pedro said. «He apparently knows Filipinos.»

«And admires them,» Weston said, hoping it would please the messman. His face showed it did.

«I wonder if I could not be useful there,» Pedro wondered out loud. «I have sixteen years in the Navy and Mindanao is my home.»

«The problem we had with Filipinos when I left, Pedro,» Weston said, «was not finding recruits, but sending them away because we didn't have arms for them.»

That, too, pleased Pedro, and that pleased Weston.

«And taking care of the Admiral is important, Pedro,» Mrs. Sayre said. «I don't know what he would do without you. And he, too, would rather be over there than here.»

The door chimes went off.

«That's probably Daddy,» Martha said. «He doesn't know how to open a door by himself. I'll go, Pedro.»

Without meaning to, Weston got another look up her dress as she lifted herself out of the chair.

It was not Admiral Sayre, it was a Marine major, short, lean, and suntanned, in a blond crew cut. «Afternoon, Mrs. Sayre,» he said. «The Admiral asked me to call at 1530.»

When Weston politely rose to his feet, he felt a little dizzy. As long as he'd been talking, he managed to remember, Pedro had quietly freshened up his glass whenever it had dropped below half empty.

Christ, I'm half in the bag!

And then he remembered that Pedro had freshened up Martha's drink several times, too. He looked at her. Her face seemed a little flushed.

Mrs. Sayre glanced at her wristwatch.

«Well, if he said half past three, he'll be here at half past three,» she said. «Major Williamson, this is a dear friend of the family—«

«So dear that he didn't even call up to tell us he was alive,» Martha said.

Jesus, is she plastered too ?

Martha's mother ignored the interruption, and went on: «—Captain Jim Weston.»

«How do you do, sir?»

«Weston,» Major Williamson said, with no cordiality whatsoever.

I

think he senses I have been at the sauce in the middle of the afternoon

.

«Can Pedro fix you something, Major?» Mrs. Sayre asked.

Major Williamson gave it perceptible thought before replying, «A light scotch, Mrs. Sayre, would be very nice.»

«Captain Weston was my late husband's best man when we were married. He's been telling us of his experiences as a guerrilla in the Philippines,» Martha said.