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Authors: John Boyd

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BOOK: Sex and the High Command
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Welcome aboard, skipper. If you see this before you see me, am gone to a very important meeting at Ensign Benson’s house. J.P. is out bowling with the girls. Fillet of sole dinner in the freezer. Instructions on the package. Oven light burning brightly. Instant coffee in pantry. Booze you know where. Keep kitchen shipshape or get gigged.

In haste,
Helga

From habit, he took his pen and initialed the note. Pouring a bourbon and water, he walked into the patio and looked across the beach to the ocean. Ensign Benson’s! Joan Paula out bowling with the girls! Joan Paula’s behavior he might understand. She was only seventeen, but she was a Navy brat. With her he had to stretch his understanding. But Helga’s absence was sheer dereliction of duty. He wheeled back into the kitchen and put his unfinished drink on the table. Her note had been pleasant enough, even facetious, but the situation was too unusual for his appraisal. After eighteen months, twenty-seven days—

Forgoing the instant coffee and fillet of sole, he walked into his trophy room—Hansenonian Institute, Helga called it—and looked around him at the mementos of four generations of Navy Hansens—the Bonnie Blue flag preserved by his great-great-grandfather who had served as an officer on the CSS
Alabama
, the midshipmen’s swords of succeeding generations of Hansens, the medals and citations. But he gained no peace from tradition, and lugged his disappointment into the master bedroom, undressed, showered, and donned his pajamas. Spreadeagled on his part of the single-headed twin beds, he firmly ordered himself not to yield to resentment. After forty-eight hours fighting Hannah, he was in no condition to take on Helga and Joan Paula.

Sleep came quickly but not deeply as was usual his first night ashore. Balanced on the edge of wakefulness, he slept as he slept at sea, with one ear next to an imaginary voice tube from the bridge. Thus, he was fully awake and reaching for his wristwatch when the door opened and his wife stood silhouetted in the glow from the blue battle lamp in the passageway. Flicking on the bedlamp, he said, “Helga.”

“Now, don’t get yourself wide awake, Ben.”

“After eighteen months, twenty-seven days, and eighteen hours, I can afford to lose a little sleep.” He swung himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and opened his arms to embrace her. She did not enter his arms. Instead, she extended her hand, palm down.

“You may kiss my hand,” she said, “for I’ve one of those dreadful summer colds that hang on and on and on.” As he pressed his lips to her hand and looked up into the calm Nordic beauty of her face, she added, “Besides, you parked in the driveway and blocked me. I had to park on the street and that right rear door doesn’t lock. Around here, in the summer, an unlocked car is a standing invitation for a love-in in the back seat. Also, I noticed you didn’t clean your glass and stow it. That’s three demerits.”

“Is the back of your hand all I’m getting?”

“I wouldn’t think of giving you this dreadful cold… You’re home early.” Her voice was almost reproachful. “Your telegram said 0200. It’s only 2355.”

“Is Joan Paula home?”

“Yes, but I’m tired. Let me get into something comfortable.”

She turned and went to her dressing room. Following her with his eyes, he chided himself for the resentment toward this woman of beauty and grace that he had permitted himself to feel simply because she had misread a telegram. His wire had said 2000. When she returned, her face smeared with cold cream and her hair in a net, she glanced at the lighted bedlamp as she fluffed her pillow. “Are you going to read in bed?”

“My only books are Helga’s looks,” he said as she crawled under the covers.

“As a poet, Ben, you have one thing in common with Shakespeare: Jonson said Shakespeare knew little Latin and less Greek.”

“I never heard Johnson say anything about Shakespeare.”

“You’re talking about Ralph Johnson,” she said. “If you aren’t reading, will you turn off the light?”

“Let me look at you for a moment.”

“I hope I look better than I feel. I just gargled almost half a gallon of extract of eucalyptus. Did you have a good voyage home?”

“Most of the way. Two days out, I caught the underside of Hurricane Hannah.”

“Why do they name hurricanes after women?”

“It’s an alphabetical designation of meteorologists.”

“I wonder,” she drawled. “Now, I just wonder. Ben, I think it makes a man feel better if he says, ‘My house was torn down by Hannah or Ethel or Ruth,’ because then he can blame a woman.”

“Enjoy your meeting at Ensign Benson’s house?” he asked hurriedly.

“Very disappointing, a political lecture for my club which was ruined by club politics. You know that cute little Sue Benson? Well, I’ll tell you about it, later. You must be awfully tired.”

“Not too tired, Helga. I rang our signal on the doorbell.”

“We’ve been having trouble with that bell lately, getting a disconnected buzz. It goes
rrrr, rrrr
, and then
phhht, rrrr
. Joan Paula’s been promising to rewire it for two months, but that girl defies me. She’ll work all day on a transistor radio but do you think I can get her to spend fifteen minutes rewiring a doorbell?”

“When a man’s been to sea for almost two years, Helga, he’s interested in more than doorbells.”

Drowsily she asked, “Give me a clue?”

“It’s something I haven’t had for eighteen months, twenty-seven days, and sixteen hours.”

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Animal!”

One eye closed, she squinted at him. “Sugar-easy-xray.”

“Now, you’re getting warm.”

“No, I’m not. And you’d better not either. You’re tired after forty-eight hours with that other woman, and I don’t want to give you this bad cold. I’m tired, too, after a disappointing meeting. I’m going to sleep in. If you have to get back to the ship, there’s bacon and eggs in the refrigerator.”

“Yes, I’ll leave early. Perhaps you and Joan Paula can lunch aboard tomorrow. It’s time she met some eligible bachelor officers.”

“Oh, Ben, she’s just out of high school. Besides, I want some eagle scouts in on the bidding…”

Helga was joking about Joan Paula but not about being sleepy. He reached over to stroke the curve of her hip. Even as he reached, he saw her eyes drift out of focus and her eyelids close. His arm continued its movement upward to flick off the bedlamp and he rolled over on his back.

Summer colds could be a nuisance, he admitted, but he was disturbed by her comparison of naval officers to eagle scouts. Hansen was fourth-generation Navy and named after an aircraft carrier whose fighting spirit had impressed his father during the battle for Okinawa in World War II. Under glass in the trophy room Helga had the telegram which his father had sent his then-pregnant mother in Richmond: “Have a boy. Name him after the USS
Benjamin Franklin
.” Only one American ancestor of Hansen’s had not died or been retired as an officer in the USN. Great-grandfather Boyle Hansen had been killed while serving aboard the CSS
Alabama
as an officer in the CSN. His own father, then a commander and the finest Virginia gentleman since Robert E. Lee in his son’s eyes, had figuratively gone down with his ship—literally up—when his destroyer was exploded by a North Vietnamese PT boat while patrolling, ironically, the Yankee Station.

Captain Hansen had nothing against eagle scouts, but a merit badge was not a Purple Heart.

Hansen awoke before six, dressed quietly, and eased out of the bedroom in order not to awaken Helga. In the hallway he noticed Joan Paula’s bedroom door ajar, and he went to peek at his sleeping daughter. She was not abed, although the bedclothes were rumpled. Her bathroom door was open and her bathroom empty. As of old, a teenager’s accoutrements littered her room, with the addition of a boldly stenciled sign above her bed: RESTRICTED AREA—LAUNCHING PAD.

“Papa, is that you?”

Her call came from the kitchen, where he found her rising from an unfinished roll and coffee to embrace him. If she had her mother’s cold, she was eager to give it to him, and he was eager to share it.

She was the same Joan Paula, a little taller, a little fuller around the pectoral area, but still lithe, energetic, laughing, and affectionate—almost. She pushed him away and looked up at him reprovingly. “Papa, where’s my penguin?”

“You never ordered a penguin.”

“That’s right! That’s why it would have been real neat for you to surprise me with one. But one thing I can depend on from my dad—no surprises.”

“Still my daughter.” He shook a dubious head.

“Until August, Papa. Say, how about a breakfast of charred toast, half-crisp bacon, and eggs straight up? Everything’s hot off the grill because I won’t use a frying pan.”

“Sounds good,” he said, sitting as she whirled to pour his coffee. “But why aren’t you my daughter after August?”

“I turn eighteen in August and go up for grabs.”

Turning to the stove, she moved with the efficiency of a fry cook, cracking eggs with her left hand as she separated bacon strips with her right, then she turned to the toaster, put in the bread, and with a minimum of effort, continued her movement downward to a cabinet from which she selected his favorite black marmalade. She had her mother’s wit, he decided, and her father’s efficiency.

“Where were you, last night?”

“Out bowling with my team. Big deal. We lost.”

“It surprised me to come home to an empty house.”

“Your telegram said two. When I came home and saw your jeep, I figured you had confused the telegraph girls again by using military time. You probably put 2000 and they dropped the last zero. I started to knock on your door but I heard you snoring.”

As she talked, she blotted the bacon, lifted the eggs, rolled his utensils into a napkin, flipped up the toast, turned, served him, and wheeled back to the griddle, scraping it down with a spatula. “I don’t mind cooking with the griddle,” she commented, “because I don’t have to clean any greasy pans.”

“You get a 4.0 for the meal,” he said, as she turned to sit down, “but how did you do in high school?”

“Very good, but mother’s giving me remedial reading, anyway.”

“Why?”

“She took adult courses in comparative literature and got hooked. She’s been force-feeding me. I’m up to my cowlick in Cowper.”

“What’s comparative literature?”

“You read all that stuff—German, French, Russian—then compare it.”

“Does your mother read Russian literature?”

“She flipped over that book about that Russian doctor.”

“I hope she isn’t reading Karl Marx.”

“He’s a German, Papa.”

He changed the subject. “Your mother was talking about a political meeting, last night.”

“Oh, she means that FEM thing. That’s a woman’s club for freedom, equality, and motherhood. They’re against war.”

“By heavens, is Helga putting me out of business?”

“You could sail a copra boat. I’d be first mate.”

“What about boys?”

“I like electronics. Boys are dumb.”

“Did you put that dishpan on my yardarm, young lady?”

“That’s a disk antenna, Papa. It concentrates television waves.”

“So, you think boys are dumb. I invited your mother and you aboard ship for lunch. Perhaps one of my young officers might say something that interests you.”

She looked over her raised coffee cup and shook her head. “Amapola, if you keep talking about boys, you’ll sound like a pederast. More toast?”

“No, thanks, J.P.” He glanced at his watch and got up. “Liberty expires at 0800, and the captain can’t be late.”

“Oh, gee!”

Arms akimbo, chin resting on palms, she was such a picture of dejection that he went around the table and patted her shoulder. “Don’t fret, honey. We’ll see each other again, at lunch.”

“But you’re leaving me with all the dirty dishes.”

“Maybe you’ll meet some future admiral, aboard, who’ll wash your dishes.”

She brightened. “I’ll walk you to the car, Papa, because I want to make a deal.”

For Hansen, it was sheer joy to walk down the hallway with this lithe and handsome girl who held his hand and swung his arm back and forth in a wide arc. “I want to go to college and study marine architecture, and if you’ll buy me a GE dishwasher you can keep the admiral dishwashers. Then, when I make enough money building ships to buy a copra boat, I’ll make you captain, because the scuttlebutt among the Navy juniors is that you’re the best ship handler in the Navy.”

“What’ll we do with your mother?”

“Stick her on the fantail and give her a book.”

She walked him to the jeep and turned to point up at her antenna. “Papa, it’ll get Baltimore on a quiet day. Must I take it down?”

He put his arm around her waist, considered her request with mock gravity, and grinned, “Child, for one-third interest in your copra boat, you can stick a weathercock up there.”

“Heavens no, Papa! With a rooster above the house, Dr. Carey would blackball mother.”

“Who’s Dr. Carey?”

“She’s a woman doctor, the president of the FEM’s, and she doesn’t care for men or roosters. She says automation and science has made them both unnecessary.”

“Is she crazy?”

“She’s a peace nut, but I wouldn’t call her crazy. She can prove what she says.” Suddenly, Joan Paula’s face brightened. “She teaches what she calls the New Logic, and I’m going to use New Logic on Mother. I’m going to leave your dirty dishes for her. She married you, and you’re her responsibility.”

She stepped back, saluted smartly, and said, “Carry on. Skipper.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

As he returned her salute and backed the jeep out of the driveway, Captain Hansen smiled. He’d take Helga aside when the two came aboard for lunch and plan a purchase to be kept secret from Joan Paula. He had been absent for over eighteen months, but he could still recognize a shrewd family campaign to get Papa to buy a dishwasher for the kitchen.

CHAPTER 2

When Hansen saluted aft and stepped aboard the
Chattahoochee
, he returned to a world he understood. Near the quarterdeck, the first division was mustering. Forward, the third repeater was fluttering down from the yardarm. As he climbed the ladder to the captain’s quarters, some instinct told him that this world was also wobbling slightly. Returning the salute of his orderly, he entered his cabin and smelled the aroma of coffee—his steward was aboard. His shore phone was connected, the Norfolk paper with the ship’s paper was on his desk, and his yeoman had brought in a fortnight’s accumulation of Navy bulletins. As the bosun’s “Turn to” was piped over the intercom, he settled at his desk, and Marcos brought in his morning coffee.

BOOK: Sex and the High Command
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