The Trinity (14 page)

“Freeman,” she says. “Petty Officer Freeman, but on mids, you can call me Karen.”

“Fairbanks, Seaman Apprentice Fairbanks,” Chris replies.

“I know. I saw your orders a week ago. We didn’t expect you so soon.”

She proceeds to explain all the pieces of equipment in their small and cramped and poorly lit working area, which consists of two desks, a row of four teletype printers and four or five computer monitors with black backgrounds and green characters that Chris will spend many hours staring into, retyping messages that he rips off the printer. The workspace is flanked by two offices, one for Division Chief Lassiter and one for the division officer. A division as small as this requires only the lowest ranking officer; it is the same ensign who welcomed Chris to Lutherkirk.

After an hour or so of explanations and demonstrations of how their job is done while a few messages trickle in and are retyped, Chris gets the idea, sees how the work flows, and is amazed at the simplicity.

Freeman leaves Chris on his own. She picks up a book, and he stares at her in disbelief.

She understands the stare and explains: “It’s a mid, and no one is around. The chief doesn’t care as long as everything gets done. Some mids are busy, but if there are no exercises and the Russians are being quiet, then we just kind of sit here, so why not? You can do the same, as soon as you get the hang of what we do here. Days are different; the chief and Ensign Hughes are around. He’s a little son-of-a-bitch, and we usually work non-stop, but mids… It’s hard to stay awake sometimes.”

Chris merely nods and continues to stare at the printers, waiting for messages to arrive. An hour goes by and then two, but all is quiet. He is desperately trying to stay awake. He drinks coffee after coffee from the older-style percolating coffee machine inside the chief’s office.

The hours between midnight and 5 a.m. are brutal as Chris tries to stay awake and the printers remain silent. Karen continues to read and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and Chris taps his fingers and thinks about home and how he would much rather be on a ship than chained to a desk with nothing to do in the middle of the night, stuck inside a dark room in the middle of a windowless building surrounded by antennas and satellite dishes. The work is not as intriguing or stimulating as he had hoped or imagined it would be.

Again, it is Friday. Snow flurries spend the day flying through the air in no particular direction and never seem to touch the ground, which is perpetually shiny and white from frost.

The end of the working day is preceded by an uneventful sunset. Father Crowley drives home after locking the chapel, just before Seamen Hinckley and Rodgers eat a hurried dinner in the galley and meet a cab outside the gate and proceed to Crowley’s house.

The two young men have donned black garments underneath their pea coats: black jeans and black sweatshirts and their Navy-issue black watch hats. The cab driver regards them with suspicion as he drives them in silence across the back roads in between Lutherkirk and the A92, but forgets about them as soon as he drops them in front of Crowley’s house. He decides their appearance has something to do with the general oddity of those from across the ocean.

They enter Crowley’s house through the back. The small kitchen is the only room lit in the house. From outside, the two can hear a scratchy recording of Wagner, though they don’t know the composer. The music is heavy and loud and bombastic and it reinforces the feeling that they are about to take part in a very grave ceremony.

Crowley is not dressed unusually at all. He has on typical Scottish middle-aged garb: gray trousers, a pale blue oxford shirt underneath a burgundy v-necked sweater. His tam is at the ready on the kitchen table next to his bottle of Boer wine along with several tins of beer for the boys. He enjoys the affluence that a naval officer’s salary brings, far exceeding that of a parish priest.

“Welcome, welcome.” Crowley embraces the two and kisses them each on the cheek, giving Rodgers the shivers and irritating Hinckley. “Something to eat?” He points to a pot on the stove containing what appears to be canned franks and beans. Rodgers refuses, but Hinckley grabs a bowl from a cluttered cupboard and a spoon from the dish rack alongside the faded porcelain sink.

“I think we should do this later rather than sooner,” says Hinckley. “People are gonna be more drunk, you know, and move a bit slower.”

“Quite right, quite right,” agrees the priest, staring at a corked bottle of wine on top of the fridge. He decides to take it down and open it up.

Hinckley grabs a beer from the refrigerator. Rodgers is about to do the same, but Crowley stands in front of the refrigerator and wags his index finger in front of the thin man’s face.

“No,” he says. “We can’t afford stray bullets. You have to be as sober as, well, a priest.” He laughs heartily, so heartily that his double chin starts to shake.

Rodgers looks dejected, more hurt than angry. In an attempt to boost his morale and to make sure he stays a part of the team, Crowley becomes conciliatory.

“Look, after it’s over, we can come back here and you can have all the beer you want. You can take a bath in it, for all I care, but for now, you of all people have to be clear headed and focused. Brad and I will just have one drink, okay?”

“Okay.”

One side of
Das Rheingold
is complete and Crowley hurries into the living room to flip the record before the needle works itself to the center of the disc and travels across the paper label in the middle. He returns to the kitchen as the scratchy preamble of the needle working its way to the music concludes and the bursting and heavy music again fills the house and the air outside.

“No American composer could ever hope to compare,” Crowley says, nursing his glass of wine. Hinckley’s beer is long gone and he is tense and fidgety, as he wants another, needs another, the one beer not even lightening his mood in the least. But the priest said one, and he isn’t about to challenge Crowley. He lights a cigarette and leans against the kitchen counter, trying to ignore his craving.

Rodgers is also smoking, sitting on the dirty kitchen floor, staring down between his knees, trying to figure a way out of this situation. He decides that after the shooting, he will ask the chaplain to send him home. He is elated at the thought of returning to Missouri. The memories come in waves: the sight, sound and smell of him driving his truck, listening to the radio, a girl—any girl—sitting next to him on the seat driving towards the sunset over the hilly roads on a late summer evening as the sun turns the sky orange after a good day of working in the fields.

Crowley talks about race, about history, about the smiling gods of the North, about the closeness of their Valhalla, about the future, but neither young man really listens. Hinckley is too wrapped up in his craving for another beer, and Rodgers is trapped in a daydream of Missouri, chain-smoking all the while.

A few hours pass. The clock strikes eight, and Crowley allows himself another glass of wine and Hinckley another beer. The priest offers Rodgers a beer, too, but Rodgers is indifferent. He refuses by pretending to be noble; he will wait until his task is complete.

Another half hour passes and out of restlessness, they decide to go. Hinckley hands the note he has composed to the priest, who reads it while smiling broadly. Rodgers checks the gun, making sure it’s loaded. He puts the safety on before he tucks it into the front of his pants between the waistband and his undershirt.

They are silent as they drive to Dundee. None of them are drunk. They are not familiar with one another sober, only inebriated or suffering from a collective hangover.

After an eternity, they find themselves in Dundee. The city is not as empty as it was on that Saturday morning a week before; the sidewalks are crowded with couples lost in adoration and groups of young men and women banded together by age.

This does not deter them. They drive in front of their chosen club several times and circle the city center, discussing their plans, recalling the previous week’s rehearsal.

They decide that Rodgers will hide behind the same headstone and wait, no matter the minutes or the hours that elapse. Hinckley will wait in the alley behind the cemetery and cover Rodgers’s back. Father Crowley will park on the opposite street, in front of the same pub. They drive until the space becomes available, circling and circling the block until nearly an hour passes; the congested street shows no sign of lessening its density of cars or people. They decide that Crowley will circle the block and watch for the arrival of the young men in black, Hinckley on one corner and Rodgers on the other.

Crowley drops Rodgers off in front of the nightclub, which looks less like a church in the evening than it did in the daytime. The music from inside can be heard from the sidewalk and all the way into the heart of the cemetery. Rodgers enters the cemetery unnoticed and takes his post behind the tallest of the headstones, a faded white marker bearing the name Rammage, born in 1822, passed away in 1873.

Crowley drops Hinckley off at the end of the block. He stealthily walks down the narrow alley, where he assumes his position, turning his collar up to soften the cold wind, stuffing his gloveless hands into his pockets. There will be no smoking no matter how long he stands. There will be no evidence save the shell of the discharged bullet and the note, claiming responsibility and letting the people of Scotland know that they, this alliance of disparate souls, are fighting on their behalf.

On his way to the alley, Hinckley tacks the note inside an envelope to the trunk of a large and ancient oak tree. Its branches cover the entire cemetery, the evidence of its leaves still on the hard and frozen ground. He places the note at eye level, ensuring that someone will see it. It is addressed to the Tayside Police.

Crowley assumes his route of circumnavigating the block. He is not nervous at all; in fact, he is tapping his fingers to a tune, a silly children’s tune that he recalls from his youth. He doesn’t remember the words, just the melody, just the rhythm.

He smiles broadly underneath his tam, and he feels as giddy and excited as the morning preceding his first communion.

An hour passes slowly for Rodgers, who is watching the comings and goings from the club, people running up the steps, people staggering down. Not one black person so far, not even an American, as far as he can tell; the stature and the dress and the gait of most indicate that they are Scottish.

“Fucking blokes, get out of the way,” he thinks to himself.

The time goes even slower for Hinckley; he has nothing to divert himself, nothing to really concentrate on. He stands in the shadows on the edge of the graveyard, looking down the alley, and occasionally studies the silhouette of Rodgers’s thin and bent-over frame, his head appearing to cap the gravestone.

His thoughts turn to football and the news he read in the recent
Stars and Stripes
and the
USA Today
. Nebraska losing in the Fiesta Bowl to Michigan, 27 to 23. He pictures his grandfather in Omaha wheezing in his armchair, cursing at the television, and it is one of the few times he has ever been homesick.

Crowley drives, staring at the people, comfortable in his small car, the window slightly open with the night air refreshing his face, the coolness tempered by his automobile’s cabin heater set on high. He enjoys the scenery, the collection of pale faces walking underneath the streetlights on wide sidewalks in front of very old buildings with detailed architecture, carvings set in stone in every facade, done in a way he would never see in Houston, and especially not in rural Minnesota.

Eventually, as the hour nears eleven and the night is starting to thin of pedestrians and cars, three young black men walk out of the club with what appear to be three Scottish girls. Lee recognizes the tallest of the three black American sailors. He is a petty officer third class, one of those communications types that he despises so much. He can’t recall the name, but he remembers the payday of November 15
^th
, this same petty officer called him stupid through the windows into the disbursing office because he handed him a check belonging to an officer on the base with the same last name. Rodgers has always felt especially awkward when chastised even in the slightest, and he felt that all the people in line waiting for their checks were laughing at him because of his mistake. He fumbled around for the rest of that morning, passing out checks without looking anyone in the eye.