Outerbridge Reach (32 page)

“What's wrong with you?” Strickland asked. “Daddy's girl. We'll want to see that.”

“Jesus,” Hersey said, looking around the grounds as they headed for the gate, “it's all so fascist!”

“Think so?” Strickland asked.

“Certainly.”

“I don't find this place particularly fascist,” Strickland said. “I mean, resist the obvious. The Guggenheim Museum is fascist. This is about something else.”

“Yeah? What?”

Strickland eyed the athletic fields and the statue of Chief Tecumseh.

“Virtue. Republican virtue. Republican virtue in the water.”

“I don't get it,” Hersey said.

“Your generation is blessed,” Strickland told him.

Ahead of them, Anne and Maggie stopped for a moment on the walk. Anne folded her arms, took a deep breath and looked around.

“It was very glamorous,” she explained. “To have a boyfriend at the Academy was, oh, just enormously prestigious. It was to die for.”

“There are still girls who would go for it,” Maggie said.

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“Like greasers,” said Maggie, who was in some obscure rage, “who like athletes. Or cops and uniforms.”

Anne declined the bait.

“Well, it was considered very desirable,” she said. “They were beautiful, you know. We were proud of them.”

It made her wonder if her daughter would ever learn what being proud of a man entailed.

“If you went out with a guy at the Academy,” Maggie said, “it must have been hard not to marry him. In those days.”

“The girls wanted the guys to marry them,” her mother agreed. “They were a great catch.”

“And did the guys not want to get married as much?”

“I think they probably did.”

“I know you and Dad really did.”

“Oh yes,” Anne said. “Of course, the Vietnam War was on and there was a certain fatality about things.”

“Really,” Maggie agreed.

“By then, of course, there was a lot of antiwar stuff around too. You had to take a lot of guff some places.”

Maggie looked dark. “Did you get like really angry?”

“Some of it was silly,” Anne said. “Some of it I'll never forgive the people of this country for.”

At the Duke Street gate, Anne directed Strickland and Hersey to Hubie's to feed themselves, with directions to telephone after four. They were not, she explained, to interfere in any manner with the Wards' dinner.

“You probably don't like turkey anyway, right? Hubie's has great crab cakes. You'll enjoy them.”

“Would you tell your friends,” Strickland said, “that we would appreciate some daylight for our work?”

“I'll tell them,” she said. “And Owen's calling in at six, got it? And you be respectful to Commander Ward and Mrs. Ward. Or you'll be sorry.”

“Sure thing,” said Strickland.

“Jawohl,”
said Hersey under his breath.

At the Wards' house along the Severn, Anne made a quick call to Duffy to get the position reports from the other entries. Then she and Maggie were introduced to Lieutenant (jg) and Mrs. Benny Conley, Jr., who were their fellow guests at dinner. The lieutenant was a tall Afro-American, dark-skinned, with a formal bearing and an open adolescent face. His wife was small, blond and extremely shy. Buzz poured champagne for all the ladies, Maggie included. For himself and the lieutenant, he poured out a measure of Wild Turkey. In the wood-paneled parlor everyone stood for a toast.

“Our ships and men,” Buzz intoned. “And women,” he remembered to add.

They all, even Maggie, repeated it.

“You must be really excited, Mrs. Browne,” Lieutenant Conley said to Anne. His wife, beside him, nodded vigorously in his support. Her name was Joan.

“Yes,” Anne said. “And petrified.”

“Petrified, hell,” Buzz said. “She wishes she was out there.”

“Well,” Anne said, relaxing, “not right now. I'm happy where I am.”

“How about you?” Lieutenant Conley asked Maggie. “Are you a sailor too?”

Maggie's face assumed the scarlet tones of which only her circulation seemed capable. Anne was sorry for her. Teased about blushing, Maggie had once declared, “I wish I could have my blood removed.”

She shook her head and looked at the floor. “Not yet, sir. Just an apprentice.”

“Well answered,” said Mary Ward. Anne saw that Mary had gone almost completely gray. She looked plump and prim, sweetfaced and serene, a prairie preacher's wife. She wore her hair back with a turquoise clip.

When the next round was poured, Anne put her hand over her champagne glass. “Be a sport, Buzz. Give us a shot.”

Buzz made much of it.

“I should give her a beer-and-a-ball. That's what these New York Irish girls like,” he declared. “A beer-and-a-ball,” he repeated, attempting the New York pronunciation. They drank to absent friends.

The Wards had a way of ordering the events. It fell out that Mary took Maggie into the kitchen to assist with the preparations while Buzz, Anne and the Conleys remained in the living room.

“Do you sail?” Anne asked the lieutenant. It was the best she could do at the moment.

“No, ma'am,” Lieutenant Conley said.

“Where Ben comes from,” Buzz said, “there was neither wind nor water.”

“But frequent tornadoes,” the lieutenant said. His wife laughed fondly.

He was from Texas, it developed, a pilot like Buzz, assigned to a squadron aboard the USS
Ticonderoga.

“They both fly,” Buzz explained to Anne. “Young Joan, she's no slouch in the cockpit. She's a first officer with Air Chesapeake.”

“Well, good for you,” Anne said. “You'll be in space together.”

It proved the right thing to have said, and they relaxed with her. Joan Conley, who did not at first appear a likely first officer of anything, turned out to be a gravely serious young woman. Her laughter was nervous rather than humorous and she had a dark fanatical frown with which to discuss matters of principle. Her husband was black and gorgeous, with the manner of a rural Christian athlete, which was what he was.

They must have prayed together, Anne thought. It was easy to picture them doing it. Kneeling, holding hands in front of that Anglo-Saxon-Protestant bookstore Jesus. Should we do it, Lord? Will you bless our love? Are we ready? Is the Navy? How about America? Apparently they had got the word to proceed.

When the turkey was carved and everyone seated Buzz said grace.

“O Lord, for Thy bounty make us truly thankful, these things we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.”

While everyone's head was duly bowed, Anne had a quick look at the company. The Conleys were where she expected to find them, deep in prayer. Maggie was sneaking a peek at the lieutenant. Buzz was in his
pontifex maximus
trance. Anne found herself eye to eye with Mary Ward, whose gaze had also been prowling the table. She winked. Mary looked fond.

During dinner, troublesome topics kept emerging and having to be put aside. They began by talking about a series of accidents that had been occurring in the fleet over the past year. Then, since there were three pilots at the table, the question of aviation safety came up. There were carrier-landing stories and stories of stunts gone wrong. Buzz recited his list of commercial airlines one must never, under any circumstances, fly. Then he talked a little about the battles over the Dragon Jaw Bridge. The missiles were the worst, he said, the most devastating antiaircraft weapons in history. But there were a few MiGs too.

“I'm boring you,” Buzz said to Anne. “You've heard all this before.”

“You're mistaken,” Anne said. “You've never talked about it. Not to me.”

“Well, I've heard it,” Mary said.

“Who flew the MiGs?” Lieutenant Conley asked. “Russians? Koreans?”

“Maybe at first. After a while I think they were all Vietnamese.” Buzz took a sip of wine. “You know, you can teach those people to do anything.”

The furies of comparative racism threatened to issue forth. “From plebe year on,” Benny Conley said, “I've noticed that trigonometry is culturally biased toward Asian people.”

For a moment no one laughed. Then everyone did, except Joan Conley.

“Really?” she asked.

“There are a lot of Vietnamese midshipmen here,” Buzz said, to complicate the topic. “Revenging their daddies.”

“On whom?” Anne asked.

Urged by some other spectral presence at the feast, Lieutenant Conley brought up
Challenger,
the space shuttle flight that had killed the pretty schoolteacher and all on board.

“Terrible,” Mary Ward said calmly.

“Ben and I got into a literary argument after that,” Buzz said. “Didn't we, Ben?”

“It was the only time I've known him to be wrong,” Conley said.

“Buzz wrong?” Anne asked. “Tell us about it. That's a side of him we've never seen.”

“When the accident happened,” the lieutenant told them, “I was shocked like everyone else. Then I read about it and I was proud.” He pronounced the last word with an almost imperceptible roll of black passion. “Because it was everyone up there. Everyone.”

“A black man,” Joan Conley explained when he did not go on, “a Jewish woman, a Japanese American, a white Protestant male.”

“It was a terrible moment,” Conley said, “but a great moment too. I mean an inspirational moment.”

“And Ben was much taken,” Buzz Ward said, “with the then-President's quotation.”

“I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,” young Conley recited, “and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.”

Anne watched the young officer who believed in inspirational moments and found it difficult not to weep drunken tears over him. His wife sat rigidly, lips pursed.

“That poem helped me decide to be a pilot,” Conley said. “But my old professor there”—he pointed at Buzz—“insists it's not a good poem.”

“I'm afraid it's not,” Buzz said. “The pilot in me rejoices. But the English teacher insists it's not a good poem.”

“Come on, Buzz,” Anne said. “It's a perfectly lovely poem. It's beautiful.”

Buzz only shook his head.

“But it's so moving,” Anne said. “It is
too
a good poem.”

“Negative,” Buzz said.

“How can you arrogantly sit there,” Anne asked, “with people so moved by a poem and insist it's no good? You really
are
an English teacher.”

Suddenly she realized she was disproportionately angry. No one seemed able to tell. They had risen from the table when the telephone rang. It was not Owen but Strickland, asking to shoot in the last of the light. Mary Ward told him to come ahead. Together they cleared the table.

Everyone retreated back to the dining room when Strickland and Hersey arrived. Anne, still slightly drunk, made a mess of introducing the film makers. The project and their presence embarrassed her. Everyone simply exchanged nods.

Addressing the group, Strickland fell into his stammer.

“Why don't you all sit down at the table?” he said finally.

The Wards, the Conleys, Anne and Maggie all resumed their seats. Strickland studied the composition.

“If you all held hands,” he said to Anne, “this would look like a seance.” He said it directly to her, looking at no one else.

“Come on, Ron,” Anne said brusquely, “get on with it.”

Immediately she regretted the sound of her own words. She had sounded imperious and familiar. The Wards exchanged looks.

“I'll get some port,” Mary said.

“Good idea,” said Buzz. “So we'll get a drink while we're looking pretty.”

Strickland filmed Buzz's naval toast and the passing of the port. Maggie briefly giggled. Everyone, Anne was convinced, was as strained and stilted as could be and would surely emerge on film that way. Strickland and Hersey spoke softly to one another.

At six o'clock, at what Anne had a feeling must be dead midnight Greenwich mean time, the telephone rang and it was Owen. Mary put his call on the speaker.

“All at home, this is sailing vessel
Nona.
Over.”

“Ask him to say it again,” Strickland said, “to see if we have sound.”

“Whiskey Zulu Zulu one Mike eight seven three, say again, over,” Anne said, and he repeated it. Strickland nodded the O.K.

“Our present position,” Browne reported, “is six degrees forty minutes south, twenty-one degrees twenty minutes west. Over.”

“Well hurray, then,” Anne said, “because you're still leading the division.”

She read the list Duffy had given her but Browne did not acknowledge.

“I'm going to recite Scripture,” he declared.

Nearly everyone laughed. Hersey strained to catch the sound.

“Except the Lord build the house,” Browne declared, “they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman watcheth but in vain.”

A few people at the table applauded. Anne glanced at Strickland and noted his cold polite smile.

“That's my Thanksgiving message to the Republic!” Browne announced. He sounded exhilarated.

“How are you, Owen?” Anne asked. “How is everything?”

“Sublime,” he said. “How do you like my Thanksgiving text?”

“It's fine,” she said in confusion. It had frightened her.

“Tell him it's a worthy text,” Buzz said. “But word for word pretty expensive at the going rate.”

“Buzz,” Anne reported to her husband, “says it's a worthy text. Over.”

Anne and Ward looked at each other, grinning uncertainly.

“Are you getting religion out there?” Anne asked brightly.

“I'm getting the southeast trades,” Owen said. “They'll do until religion comes along. Over.”

Her spirits rose. She told him who was present. She noticed then that Maggie had left the room.