The Eleventh Man (25 page)

"Good for you."

So it went, those days of pounding the beach side by side with Prokosch. Bit by bit Ben absorbed the feel of the continental coast, the inevitable linkage of the Pacific to national destinies.
The ocean named for peace now rims the widest war in history,
his piece would begin.
The circumference of war takes in even those who lived farthest from the muster of the surf.
And Prokosch himself he liked in the way you like an oddball cousin met up with at a family gathering. Let him be vigilant against raft rats, quite possibly more imagined than real; it put a human boulder into place out here among the shore rocks, Ben could attest to that. For once he felt he was writing about duty without bloodshed hanging over it like a red cloud about to burst. Prokosch's modest odyssey, a saltwater watchman on watch, suited the coastal subject with the ease of a hearthside tale. So he thought.

"Lefty?"

On the last day, patrol nearly over, the hut within welcome distance, Sig had halted. He kicked at the sand, a sign Ben recognized. Then came out with it:

"I want to get up north. The Aleutians."

The grimness of a chronicler whose storyline had abruptly veered off the page took Ben over.
You and Jones. That makes two of you out of the entire human race, maniacs for the Ablution Islands.
He knew that a rain-quiet snuggery in which to read the Bible was not Sig's reason. He asked anyway:

"Why there instead of here?"

"Better chance to actually see what a Jap looks like before the war is over," Sig reasoned thinly as if still rehearsing this. "Instead of just their turds." He looked at Ben with gathered determination. "Sea duty on a patrol frigate, is what I'm thinking. Wondered if you could help any on that?"

"There's real war up there," Ben argued. The newsreel of the Japanese bombing of Dutch Harbor, smoke boiling above Alaskan soil, brought that home to America; he wondered if it had missed Prokosch. "Coast Guard service, though, that's still considered home waters, right? Won't bring you any overseas points toward discharge."

"Naw, it's not that." The unblinking gaze stayed on Ben. "I want to get back at them some for the other guys." O'Fallon, Havel, Friessen, Rennie. Three fellow linemen and everyone's favorite backfield teammate. The outsize loss that preyed on those who were left. The mortal arithmetic that nullified reason. The war did this to people.

Two men and a dog, they stood there in the surf sound, its grave beat upon the shore. Finally Ben said, "Sig, I don't have that kind of pull." Fully aware of his unsureness whether he would use it in this instance if he had it.

"You ever get some, Lefty," came the stolid reply, "keep me in mind."

"I hate it when I'm late. What's on the menu here besides you, good-looking?" Scooting in across from him in the booth, Cass shot him a smile with the teasing little slot between the teeth like a central promise of mischief later.

Ben just sat there taking her in. The crush hat, pilots' cachet in its rakish touch of crumple and scuffed visor brim; only veterans of the air were permitted to wear it without the loop band in the top that way. Her hair casually cut to mid-length but nice as ever. The army-tan tie knotted just so, spacing the twin silvers of captain's insignia on her collar tabs. Standard-issue trench coat worn against the Seattle damp, over her light khaki dress uniform, both trimly tailored to the snug body he knew so well. This was essential Cass to him, managing to look both proficient and snazzy, and the smile added to it as she eyed him back. "What are you so busy grinning about?"

"You. And how baboon lucky I am to be with you."

"Hey. I'm not so sure I'm a lucky charm." Shedding the crush hat and coat with dispatch, she took in the weathered waterfront atmosphere of the eating establishment. "More like a busted-flush flier trying to wind down. What's to drink?"

"Beer by the pound." He indicated the generous golden schooner in front of him.

"Mmm, tempting." A little beat of deliberation before she said: "I need something stiffer than that, though, after fighting off the MPs."

"That's not funny, you know."

"I know."

No, the military police were not a kidding matter. Besides whatever "fighting off the MPs" meant.
Where did this come from, Captain Standish? Only one night together for who knows how long, and something already is in the way.
Resolutely he flagged down a gray-haired waitress built along the lines of an old workhorse, who creaked off to fetch a scotch for Cass.

"So tell me," he could not keep the apprehension out of his voice, "what introduces you to the MPs?"

"The uniform," she answered bitterly. "Those idiots didn't know what a WASP is." Recounting it riled her up to the degree of combustion the military policemen must have faced. "They stopped me down the street. I don't know what they thought, that I'd rolled some soldier for his getup or I was a streetwalker ready to play games or what. It burns me up, Ben. I've been in this damn war as long as anybody, and so have plenty of other women. And we still get chickenshit treatment like that. Why should we?"

He took a chance and gawked off in the direction where it had happened. "I hope there's not a couple of MPs bleeding in the street out there."

It raised her mood. "Close," she laughed. With a mock air of insouciance she touched the captain's bar on her collar. "It ended up I had them calling me 'sir.'"

Relieved, he signaled for another round of drinks in tribute to that. With lifted spirits, they locked onto what the rest of the evening promised. The waitress decided they were worthy of menus, and they teased each other into ordering oysters. Angels on Horseback, he picked out, how could he pass up a chance at something so grandly named? She would go him one better, she growled in her best poker-player guise, Oysters Rockefeller. The shambling restaurant was situated above the harbor, tacked onto the arcade and stalls of the public market, and out on Puget Sound ferryboats found their way back and forth with navigation lights that shimmered on the water. Seattle these nights had a military bearing, sailors in from the Bremerton fleet, soldiers unwinding from training at Fort Lewis, pilots from anywhere, and he and she for once sat comfortable as could be in the anonymity furnished by the surround of so many uniforms like theirs. The rouseful smells of things grown in the earth and things harvested from the sea clung to the old set of structures hosting the market. The two of them imbibed it all, wanting to be nowhere else and in no other company.
Why can't it be like this,
they shared the thought without having to say so,
on and on?

Catching up on their weeks apart, Ben told of his time with Prokosch on coastal patrol. "I hope to hell he's imagining those rafts," he finished up, "and keeps his finger off the trigger. He's kind of like a jumpy sheepherder with a lot of gun. Spending all his time with himself can do funny things to a guy."

Cass in turn recited the latest twists and turns of keeping Lieutenant Maclaine in the air. "Last time up to Edmonton she was next thing to an ace, and this time we had to go on instruments and she was ready to quit by the time she found the ground. That's Della for you."

He sat back, reflective. "So you have one you're trying to keep in the war, and I have one I hope never gets near it."

"There are times life doesn't cooperate worth a damn. How's that, newspaper guy?"

"I'll pass that right along to my father for filler. Guess what, we pay off in angel morsels." He speared his last oyster wrapped in bacon and held it across for her, and she leaned in and royally ate it off his fork. They traded a gaze of love well-flavored with lust. Or was it the other way around?

"Christ, Cass, I'm glad you showed up." The mention of flying blind in Canadian weather reminded him he hadn't asked her about getting here. "Any trouble cutting loose from East Base for this?"

"No, I flew a hospital ship over," she tossed it off along with a gulp of scotch.

The startled expression on Ben said if that wasn't a definition of trouble, he didn't know what was. An aircraft flown back to the factory with something internally wrong was called that because the hospital was where you might end up from flying it. He helplessly studied this woman he wanted so bad it made his ears ring and who came with all manner of peril attached. First the MPs, now this news. He always had to be aware Cass was a good deal more complicated than anyone gave her credit for. However, he would gladly do without further surprises along this line tonight. "Don't give me that look, you," she fended, trying for innocence. "I'm not the one who cracked up a floatplane in high-and-dry Canada, am I. The hospital crate didn't give me any trouble. The engine didn't conk or anything."

He resisted saying what a good thing that was, inasmuch as P-39s had the reputation of gliding like a brick. "I'm no authority," he graveled out, "the only damn thing they let me fly is a mahogany desk. But I don't want you risking your neck for me, Cass."

"Look who's talking." She said it lightly enough, but there was stiff meaning behind it. "If I remember right, you're the one with the scar—"

"The wound was only skin-deep, that isn't anything like—"

"Don't give me that, hero. Skin is deep enough, when it comes to a bullet. You got that scar from following your football buddies around to places where people mainly get shot at. And you're about to do a bunch more of it."

"Only partly. The next one I go to is having as nice and safe a war as anybody can." Omitting
the one after that isn't.

If Cass was reassured by the semi-alibi, she didn't show it. Cocking her head, she looked across as if needing to memorize him. "So how long do I have to get along without you?"

"Until summer sometime," he came out with it. "Teepy Weepy keeps feeding more stuff between the Supreme Team stories. I'm going to be all over the Pacific."

Cass smiled differently. "Next you're going to say, 'Write to me.

"Took the words right out of my mouth, grabby." Ben put his own best face on it. "I'll be a moving target, but letters—"

She reached over and flicked a blunt-nailed finger against one of his knuckles hard enough that it smarted. "I'd just as soon you didn't call yourself that."

Shaking the sting out of his hand, he made a bid for truce. "Before I get any deeper into trouble, how about we have another drink and I show madame to our room?"

Playing along, she leaned her arms way out onto the table of the booth and propped her chin on her hands before purring: "And will the accommodations be up to madame's expectations?"

"I'll have you know," he gave back haughtily, "the hotel room, the last one available in Seattle, is actually larger than a closet. By a foot or two, at least. It even has a special feature. A Murphy bed."

She hooted. "One of those that folds down out of the wall? Genius, what's to keep it from folding back up into the wall just when things get interesting?"

"Murphy the bed has experience longer than a flatfoot's lunch hour," he gave it the tough-guy treatment, "at such matters as this. The first time Murph lays his mattress-button eyes on the likes of you, he's gonna say, This is a lollapalooza I could happily fold away with forever—"

"See!"

"—but she is too classy to do that to. No, I'm gonna keep my frame on the floor for her, just to show my respect. The second I seen her I says, Murph, this dame takes the icing—"

"That's Captain Dame to you and Murph," she snipped in, "or I'll call my buddies, the MPs."

"—and like I was saying, it ain't many femmes in the land of Murphy that's also an officer and a gentleman, in a manner of speaking. No, I tell you, Murph the bed has seen his share and then some, and this woman is like the royal jewels shined up. Like the Taj Mahal in a skirt. Like—"

"Like a lunatic about to be with the guy for the last time in a blue moon," she took over the formulation, voice husky.

"That, too," he conceded wistfully. "Let's make this drink a quick one."

Out in the night the ferries came and went, shuttles on the dark loom of water. The port city in its nightspots and unbuttoned privacies settled to the business of such places down through time, harboring lovers and warriors.

Why have I never been able to stand Danzer? Let me count the ways. On the team, there was no love lost between the Dancer out there at right end grabbing glory with his jersey clean and the rest of the linemen beating their brains out throwing blocks for him with never any thanks. The only good word he ever had in the huddle would be for Moxie. "Good call, Stomp," I can still hear it, as if a Stamper-to-Danzer pass play didn't take the other nine of us to make it work. Jake used to say Danzer was so stuck on himself he had gum in his fur.

That was football, only a game, supposedly. Games have any number of outcomes, though, personal scores that are not settled. If the ground of chance that brought us together had been in England, no doubt I'd be remembering a cricket match with Danzer in the whitest pants—and it still would be called only a game and count as eternally as if the score was being kept in the Doomsday Book.

"You're sure this is the only way to get there, Chief?"

Ben arrived alongside the USS
McCorkle
to find a chasm of disturbed gray-green seawater between it and him, with canyon walls of ship steel on either side. Consistently the swell of the open ocean lifted the destroyer, across there, atop a foaming crest while wallowing the oil ship he was aboard in the trough of the wave. The ships then would dizzily trade elevations. Between the rising and falling hulls stretched the pulley rope that was supposed to carry him across. The line looked to him as thin as spiderspin.