Wingmen (9781310207280) (10 page)

Car engines
started outside the house. The front door closed and they were
alone. Jack closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Eleanor was
back, kicking off her shoes, sitting on the rug at his feet and
resting an arm across his knees.

“Jack, is
something wrong?”

Jack looked up
at the wall of living stone. “I know what that wall needs,” he
said. “A fireplace.”

“In Hawaii?
Come on.” Jack said nothing and presently Eleanor spoke again.
“Jack. I’m wealthy, attractive, and single.”

“Widowed.”

“It’s still a
winning combination.”

Jack thought
for a moment and said, “I considered you and Stan to be two of my
closest friends.”

“Stan is gone.
Now we can be more than just friends. Stan would understand.”

“I’m not
worried about that.”

“Are you
worried about making me a widow twice?”

Jack’s eyebrows
arched in surprise at her offhand reference to marriage. “You never
talk about Stan any more,” he said.

“He’s been gone
for over a year. What’s there to say?”

“A year ago
next August.”

“But he shipped
out several months before that.” Eleanor took her arm off his knees
and massaged the back of his calf with her hands. “Where did you
first meet Stan?”

“On the
Lexington
in
’36. We were both boot ensigns.” Jack smiled. “The
Lex
is gone now,
too.”

“Jack, how was
Stan’s ship lost?”

She was
certainly direct tonight, Jack thought to himself. Yet something in
Eleanor’s tone told him she was more interested in listening to him
talk than in hearing how her husband died.

“I see
intelligence reports. Talk to people who were there. A lot of what
happened was never released to the papers.”

“Tell me,” she
said.

“It was a
surface engagement. Not a very long one, but in half an hour we
lost four heavy cruisers and they didn’t lose a ship. Savo Island
they call it now.” Jack’s cigarette had burned out, and he dropped
it into an ashtray on the carpet near the end of the love seat.

“I’m sure they
had their reasons for not telling the papers. There’s such a thing
as public morale.”

“We’re going to
win this war. I’ve never doubted that. But how long will it take?
How much will it cost?”

“You worry
about things you can’t do anything about.” Eleanor stood up. She
sat down next to Jack and placed a hand on his thigh. She
waited.

Jack kissed her
then, but only because he knew she wanted him to. His hand caressed
her ribs. His thumb touched her breast. He ran his hand down her
leg, along the outside of her thigh.
This is for you, not for me
, he was saying
to himself.
It does
nothing for me.
Suddenly he stopped, pulled away. He knew
she had felt his reluctance.

“The war
touches everybody,” she said.

He searched her
face, then looked away. “And it affects everyone differently,” he
said. “I may have to look for someone else, Jack,” she said
seriously.

“That’s your
decision, Eleanor.” Jack pulled her two hands into his lap and
covered them with one of his. He glanced at his watch.

“I guess it’s
time you got back to the squadron,” she said.

Fred Trusteau
was sitting on the little concrete bench outside the door of the
BOQ when a car carrying two people stopped at the curb opposite
him. The engine was left running, but the couple (the woman was
driving) sat inside talking quietly for several moments. The two
kissed lightly, suddenly, and the man left the car on the far side
and waited while it pulled away. Fred realized in a second that it
was the skipper walking toward him. A twinge of emotion he couldn’t
identify cut through him. But he didn’t have time to think about
it.

“Mind if I join
you?” asked the skipper.

“Not at all,
sir,” said Fred, moving down to give him room.

“How come
you’re sitting out here all by yourself?” Jack fished in his pocket
for a cigarette, then accepted one from the pack Fred offered
him.

“Just enjoying
the fresh air.” Fred offered Jack a light and was pleased when the
skipper cupped his hands around his own to shield the flame. The
brief contact sent shivers up and down his spine.

“How’s the
Diary coming?”

“Just fine,
sir. No problems there at all.”

“Good.” Jack
collected his thoughts, trying to think of something to talk about
that wasn’t connected to flying or the management of men. “I guess
I didn’t tell you, but I sure enjoyed the bridge game we had last
week.”

Fred laughed.
“We won. It was a new experience for me. We’ll have to do it again
sometime.”

“You can count
on it.”

They stopped
talking. Jack drew deeply on his cigarette and expelled the smoke.
The night air was deliciously cool after the stifling humidity of
the day.

“Fred,” said
Jack suddenly, leaning closer and putting his arm behind Fred on
the back of the bench, “do you mind if I ask you a personal
question?”

“Not at all.
Fire away.” It felt good to be called by his name.

“It may not
seem important, but when you’re—” Jack wanted to say “commanding
officer” but changed it at the last moment—”in my position, you
don’t always hear what’s going on, what’s really happening with the
men in the squadron. I was just wondering why they call you what
they do.”

“Trusty?” Fred
laughed a little. “I don’t care for it.”

“And the
Seventeen-minute thing. What do they mean by that?”

Fred scuffed at
the ground, looked away, leaned over, ground out his cigarette on
the sidewalk, and dropped the butt into his shirt pocket.

He’s embarrassed
,
thought Jack, watching closely.

“You know, sir,
when you’re with these guys you get trapped into doing things that
you don’t really feel like doing. Sometimes I get the feeling only
a few of the guys here are really acting the way they would
normally, and the rest are just along for the ride. Do you know
what I mean?”

“You don’t want
to tell me, do you?”

Fred sighed.
“They call me Trusty because I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
without using my hands.”

“You can?”

“It’s just a
bar trick I picked up somewhere on the way to becoming an aviator.
I’ll show you sometime.”

“What about the
seventeen minutes?”

“I’m not
completely sure, but if it’s what I think it is, it’s pretty
personal and no one’s business but my own.”

Jack shrugged
and flicked his smoldering butt in a long arc through the air and
into the street. The little shower of sparks at the end of its
flight reminded him of the bounding tracers of a predawn attack on
the Japanese airstrip at Buka. He had lost a wingman there and
burned two planes on the ground.

“You know,
Fred,” he said, after a moment, “we all wear the same uniform and
do the same things most of the time. If you were an enlisted man,
you’d go to bed at night at the same time and get up in the morning
at the same time as everyone else. In the military, especially
during wartime, it’s tough to be a good navy man and still retain
some portion of your real self.” How had Eleanor Hawkins phrased
it? “The war changes everyone it touches, but if you’re able to
make that change a good one, then…” Then what? “I guess you’re a
better man for it.” It felt strangely good to say something like
that, even to an ensign. He felt that out of all the pilots of
VF-20, Fred would probably understand it and keep it to
himself.

“You know,
Skipper,” said Fred, “I’m glad as hell they transferred me to this
group.”

Jack laughed
and clapped Fred on the knee. He stood up, stretched hugely, and
said, “I don’t know about you but I’m going to hit the sack. It’s
been a long week.”

“That sounds
like a good idea,” said Fred, and the two turned toward the
darkened BOQ.

As they trudged
up the steps, the skipper threw his arm around Fred’s shoulder and
said, “Fred, I’m glad as hell you like it here.”

“What’s the
matter, darling?” the woman asked.

Duane Higgins
stood at the window and watched as Jack and Fred left the bench and
headed up the walk. The woman in the bed kept calling him “darling”
and “honey,” and it irritated him mightily. And it was perplexing
to see that Jack had not spent the night, or even an hour, with
Eleanor Hawkins. He must have been crazy not to have seen how hot
she was for it. Everyone else could see it.

“There’s
nothing wrong.” He let the curtain fall into place and turned back
to the narrow bed. He sat down on the edge and pulled the sheet
back to uncover her body.

“You devil,
you,” she said.

Duane ran his
tongue around one of her nipples, gloried in his own excitement,
and thought, I don’t know about Jack but I’ll be damned if I’ll
ever outgrow the need for a good piece of ass.

One night
during the week following his conversation with the skipper outside
the BOQ, Fred had a wet dream. It was memorable only because he
hadn’t had one since he was sixteen years old. In the dream, he was
at home in San Jose, in his father’s hardware store. Strangely
enough, he was playing bridge on the front counter where he had
worked during the summers. His ejaculation came for no apparent
reason, as one of the players casually bid six hearts. The
irresistible surging overwhelmed and, moments later, woke him.
Since most of Fred’s dreams were hard to understand and frequently
even bizarre, he rarely remembered them long after he had them. A
week later, during a briefing in which the skipper announced the
first sailing date, Fred remembered the dream and who the player
was who had bid six hearts. In a totally unnerving flash of insight
he realized his feelings for the commanding officer were a lot more
than admiration.

8 July 1943
: Squadron VF-20
today participated in Operation Boondoggle, a training exercise
involving all of Air Group 20 as well as elements of the Hawaiian
Area Air Defense Force (Army) flying from Bellows Field. In this
operation, the entire Air Group effected a predawn rendezvous
fifteen miles south of the island of Oahu, carried out a mock
attack on the aforementioned Bellows Field, and correctly
intercepted a moving Point Option north of the island. During the
attack, fighters of this squadron carried out an offensive sweep of
the airfield prior to the arrival of the torpedo and dive bomber
squadrons, which then carried out simultaneous high- and low-level
attacks with good coordination. Army P-47s engaged members of this
squadron but were notably unsuccessful in carrying out attacks on
the other two squadrons. Despite early difficulties in the predawn
rendezvous, the training mission has been judged a success.