Wingmen (9781310207280) (48 page)

“Oh, I don’t
know. I sort of lost track.”

“Really?”

“Were you at
Midway?” asked Anders.

“Sure was. Flew
wing on the skipper over there.” Duane pointed over his shoulder;
then he saw the skipper was gone. He glanced around the patio
trying to find him, but was unsuccessful.

“Are all those
things they say about his wingman really true?” asked Anders.

“You mean
Killer?” He looked and saw Bagley cut in on Trusteau and the Wave,
and he smiled.

“Did he really
get three Japs in one pass?”

“At night?”

“Not in one
pass,” said Higgins. “Only two in one burst. But it was dark you
know, and he couldn’t really have been trying for both at one
time.” He flicked ashes to the floor as he talked, took another
drink from his bourbon. “The last one put up a fight and nearly
took him out with him.”

“Geez, wish
that had been me. I’d have shown those Japs.”

“Sure you
would, Tiger,” said Duane. The two kids were really kind of fun,
naive though they were. If they survived the first week in a combat
zone, they might develop into halfway decent pilots. Duane laughed
to himself, finished off his drink, and turned to check on Trusteau
and the two Waves. The two Waves were still there, one dancing with
Bagley, the other sitting with Hammerstein and Levi. But Killer
Trusteau was nowhere to be seen.

At ten o’clock
Fred could wait no longer. He had left the patio bar before eight
and wandered around on the beach killing time, trying to calm his
racing emotions. It had done no good whatever. His stomach was tied
in knots, his knees were weak and trembling. He thought about the
bottle of Scotch the skipper had brought him, thinking that that
might help him slow down a little. The three drinks he’d had for
dinner certainly had no effect on him now. Leaving a little grove
of palm trees bordering the beach, he made his way through the soft
white sand, past some patrolling MPs, and up the steps to the first
wing of the Moana. He went in an entrance separate from the lobby
and the bar and met no one he knew. When he reached the room, Jack
Hardigan was there, sitting in the dark.

“Hello, there,
Killer,” said Jack.

“Hi, Skipper.”
Fred quietly pulled the door closed behind him; then he went over
and sat on the edge of the bed near the chair the skipper
occupied.

“Been waiting
for you.”

“I’m
sorry.”

“You’re early.
I’m glad.”

The wind
rustled the open curtains. Fred thought of his last two hours on
the beach. “I ran out of things to do,” he said. “Just thought I’d
come on up.”

Jack said, “I’m
glad you did. I don’t like sitting alone in the dark.”

“Well, now I
can keep you company,” said Fred, feeling stupid.

“I was hoping
you could do a lot more than that.”

The easy,
gentle way he said it made Fred swallow hard. Before he could think
of anything to say, Jack said, “I’m about ready for that drink if
you are.”

Fred looked for
the bottle, saw it standing where he had left it on the desk. Two
short glasses stood beside it. He stepped over Jack’s legs to reach
the desk, broke the seal on the bottle, removed the cap, poured the
two glasses a third full. Jack stood to take his, sipped at it,
which surprised Fred, because he was sure the Skipper was going to
offer a toast like, “Here’s to us,” or “Here’s to better times.” He
took a sip, too.

“You can always
tell a good Scotch,” said Jack, “by how smooth it is without ice.”
He sat, almost casually, on the edge of the desk.

“It’s very
good,” said Fred.

“Come over here
beside me,” said Jack.

Fred swallowed
hard again, then moved in the half-dark to the skipper’s side.
Then, simply and naturally, Jack slipped his arm into the crook of
Fred’s elbow and left it there.

Fred felt a
little of the Scotch spill onto his fingers. His heart was thudding
so loud he was sure the skipper could hear it.

“You know,”
Jack was saying, “I really thought we’d lost you once back
then.”

“At Wake?”

“Before that.
When you came down on the
Essex
. It was not knowing that was hard to take. And
the thought of getting along without you…”

“I, I…” Fred
stammered.

“You mean a lot
to me,” said Jack quietly. Fred felt his arm stiffen slightly as he
said it.

There was a
noise in the corridor. Someone crashed heavily into the wall, then
loud voices broke into song. Pulling his arm away, Jack went
quickly to the door and stood there, listening, while the drunks
made their slow progress down the hallway. Jack turned the
lock.

“No more
interruptions,” he said, coming back to Fred. He stopped right in
front of him. “We won’t get very many chances like this one to be
alone, so I guess we better take advantage of it.” He set his glass
down on the desk, slipped his hand underneath Fred’s arm and
prompted him to his feet.

Awkwardly, as
though he weren’t quite sure how to do it, Jack embraced Fred,
clasping him so tightly Fred could feel his shirt buttons press
into his own chest.

“Relax now,”
Jack said, “it’s all right.” Fred realized he was still holding his
glass of Black Label Scotch, turned to set it on the desk, and
returned to Jack’s arms.

It seemed to
Fred that they stood there for a long, long time, but he lost track
of the minutes as he gloried in the closeness of the big man. Jack
seemed to have a dozen different scents—the Scotch, tobacco, sweat,
a tantalizingly faint after-shave lotion. He felt the expansion of
Jack’s chest as he breathed, the roughness of his beard against his
neck, and knew that this was what he had wanted all along.

At
eleven-thirty, Duane Higgins came noiselessly down the hallway and
stopped outside the door he knew to be Jack Hardigan’s and Fred
Trusteau’s. He listened carefully for the sounds of anyone coming
down the hall, then for any sounds coming from the room on the
other side of the door. Nothing. He waited for almost a minute,
listening. Then he carefully reached down and tried the doorknob.
It was locked.

Duane went
softly down the corridor to the head of the stairs and found a spot
where he could stand and see the stairs and the entire hallway
where the squadron was berthed. Then he leaned against the wall,
lighted a cigarette, and waited. For most of the night, he
waited.

At two o’clock,
Fred woke beside the skipper, jarred out of sleep by Jack’s
snoring. He lay on his back and timed his breathing to that of the
other man’s, pleased by the sound of it. After a few minutes, fully
awake, he reached over to the night table and looked at his watch;
the luminous hands showed the time. He got up and looked around for
his shorts, found them, put them on. Then, as quietly as he could,
he gathered up the rest of his uniform and arranged it neatly over
the back of the chair. He found Jack’s shirt and trousers and hung
them on a hanger in the closet—resisting the temptation to try on
the shirt to see how a lieutenant commander’s shoulder boards felt.
Then he took the two glasses into the bathroom and left them on the
back of the sink. He replaced the cap on the bottle of Black Label,
turned down the sheets on his bed, and as quietly as he could,
released the lock on the door. He thought about going to bed but
wasn’t really tired.

The curtains
over the open glass doors ballooned into the room on a sudden gust
of ocean air. Fred went to close them, then changed his mind. He
stepped out onto the veranda. A thick cloud cover had moved in. It
smelled like rain. Below him, the sea rolled sonorously in and out.
Fred breathed deeply, feeling more alive, more exhilarated than he
ever had before. It was suddenly very good to be alive, here at
this particular time, in this particular place, with Jack asleep on
the bed behind him. After several minutes it began to rain, and he
left the veranda, pulling the door shut, closing the curtains. He
climbed into the other bed and fell asleep immediately.

Duane Higgins
unabashedly pounded on the skipper’s door, then opened it, and went
in. The drapes were drawn against the sunlight, so he dropped the
packages he was carrying on the bed nearest the glass doors and
threw them open with a single sweep of his arm.

“Rise and
shine, men,” he called, cheerfully. He looked around. Both beds
were occupied. Trop whites were put away or hung over the chair.
But who had unlocked the door? And when?

“What happened?
What’s the matter?” Jack Hardigan sat up suddenly, a look of alarm
on his face. Then, remembering where he was, he sank back down
under the single sheet that covered him and closed his eyes. “What
do you want?” he muttered.

“Merry
Christmas,” said Duane. He picked up the two packages and tossed
one onto each bed. “Mail came last night. Nearly everybody got
something.”

Jack sat up and
picked up the small package. He was still half-asleep. “What time
is it?”

“Nine o’clock.”
Duane went over to Fred Trusteau’s sleeping form and shook him
roughly by the shoulder. “Come on, Killer. Santa Claus came last
night.”

Fred rolled
over and looked at Duane with one eye, then closed it, and pulled
the sheet over his head.

“Don’t you ever
sleep?” asked Jack.

“Not on R and
R. I been up all night bringing cheer and happiness to the boys in
blue.”

“Ho, ho, ho,”
said Fred, from beneath his sheet.

“Come on,” said
Duane, “they stop serving breakfast at ten.”

He noticed that
Jack would not get out of bed and was keeping the sheet over the
lower half of his body. He had never known the skipper to sleep in
the raw.

“It’s from my
sister in Ohio,” said Jack. He began to tear the paper off the
battered little package.