Wingmen (9781310207280) (55 page)

“Why?” asked
Fred. “How could it be?”

“One of us
could be gone tomorrow.” Jack held him by the shoulders and looked
searchingly into his eyes.

Fred stretched
and peeled off his damp T-shirt, dislodging Jack’s hands for a
moment. He tossed the jersey into the chair. “Then let’s enjoy it,”
he said. “We may not have another chance.” He reached over and
pulled Jack’s T-shirt out of the top of his pants. He felt the
moist, hairy skin beneath it with the palm of his hand.

Jack pulled him
close, hugging him crushingly, desperately. He said nothing.
Presently, pressed for time, they finished undressing and climbed
into the narrow bed.

Duane Higgins
left his hot little room at a few minutes after ten. He was mildly
drunk but wide awake, restless. He had called Eleanor Hawkins and
arranged a date for the next evening. Not knowing exactly what he
wanted to do now, Duane wandered down the line of rooms until he
came to the one with the party going on inside. He wasn’t
especially eager to face the other pilots, but the thought that
there was free booze inside drove him to open the door and slip in.
From the way the men suddenly quieted, he knew they had been
talking about him.

He noticed
right away that Trusteau was not there. After helping himself to
the last of the bourbon, he asked Levi where Trusty Killer the Hero
was. Levi said that Fred had disappeared an hour or so ago. Duane
got an idea and decided to check it out.

Leaving the
party, Duane made his way to the skipper’s room and listened at the
venetian-blinded window in the door. It was dark inside. He could
distinctly hear the sound of an oscillating fan. For a second he
though he heard low voices, but the fan and the sighing wind
prevented his being sure. He went back down the concrete steps to
the lawn below, found a spot on the grass where he could watch the
Skipper’s door without attracting attention, and settled to the
ground with a cigarette and his last drink of the evening. He
didn’t have long to wait.

A single drop
of sweat formed on Jack’s chin and dripped onto Fred’s neck. The
bed was so small that they couldn’t lie side by side, but Fred
didn’t mind. Jack’s hairy, solid bulk pressing against him was far
from unpleasant. A big electric fan whirred on the floor near the
bed, wafting stale but cool air over them. The unseen occupant of
the bathroom had long since finished his bath. Only silence came
from that quarter.

“Five kills,”
said Jack. “It’s hard to believe.”

“A few more
missions and I’ll catch up with you,” Fred joked. He wanted a
smoke, but knew he shouldn’t. They had to be as unobtrusive as
possible.

“That’ll be the
day.”

“Like you said,
they’ll give me a squadron of my own.”

“Take my word
for it. You don’t want one.” Jack shifted his weight to relieve a
tingling arm.

“I’ve been
thinking about when you said we should be writing down the history
we’re making.”

“Yes?”

“Well, that’s
what I’m doing. I mean, after I started doing the Diary again I
realized it. Here I am, writing down the history of Fighter
Squadron Twenty fighting the Japs and winning glory.”

“I haven’t seen
the glory part yet.”

“It’ll come.
Till then you’ve got the background for your own book. Just copy
down the War Diary and you’ve got it.”

“My own
book?”

“Why not?” said
Fred, but Jack cut him off by squeezing his arm sharply and
shushing him.

They lay in
tense silence for a full minute. More sweat dripped from Jack to
Fred. He reached up and wiped the sweat from Jack’s chin. “I
thought I heard something,” Jack said. “Someone outside the door.”
He relaxed but didn’t let go of Fred’s arm. “I guess not.”

“The other guys
are talking about what you did to Mister Higgins,” whispered
Fred.

“What I did is
none of their damn business.”

“He
was
wrong,
wasn’t he?”

Jack thought
for a moment, running his hand up and down Fred’s arm. “Yes,” he
said finally. “And I was too easy on him. We agreed not to mention
the fact that he hadn’t slept that night. I didn’t want the poker
game to be brought up.”

“He’s a good
friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, I guess.
But lately…” He stopped, thought. “We shouldn’t talk about it. It
doesn’t concern you.” This he said without harshness.

“I know,” said
Fred. He put his hand on Jack’s chest and felt his heart beating
beneath the flesh, the ribs. “Any idea where we’re going next?”

“Does it
matter?”

“No, I guess it
doesn’t.”

“One goddamned
Jap island is just like any other,” said Jack. He settled onto Fred
until the full lengths of their bodies were touching, “They’ll be
finished with the repairs on the ship in three or four days.”

“That
soon?”

“They
deballasted. Put a list to starboard so the port side damage would
be out of the water. When it was done they discovered it wasn’t
nearly as bad as they thought. A fuel tank got ruptured. Most of
the blast was taken up by the blister at the water line. We were
really lucky.”

“We sure were.”
Fred knew all about the deballasting, but he liked to hear Jack
talk.

“I’ve never
seen so many men working on such little damage before. They’re
really pushing to get her finished and out again.”

“So we’re
headed somewhere important.”

“That would be
the obvious conclusion…”

“Hmm.”

“There’s more.
The task groups aren’t coming back to Pearl anymore. They’ve taken
a lagoon near Kwajalein called Majuro. It’s big enough for the
whole damn fleet and they’re staying there now instead of coming
all the way back here.”

“That’s
interesting.” Fred rested his chin in the hollow of Jack’s neck and
felt the movement of his jaw as the older man spoke. He was
thinking that he loved Jack very much but would never find the
time, the place, or the words to tell him so.

“Now we’ll be
closer to the fighting, all the time. We’ll never have another
chance like this again,” Jack said.

Fred squeezed
Jack as hard as he could.

“We shouldn’t
have done this,” said Jack.

At 11:15, Duane
started from a doze and looked around. Something had arrested his
attention. The grass was wet with dew. A nearly full moon was
rising. It was impossibly still and quiet. And someone was coming
out of Jack Hardigan’s room. It was a man, in uniform. Completely
dressed. Trusteau.

The moonlight
was sufficient for Duane to see Trusteau walk the length of the
second-floor landing, hands in his pockets, and stand and look out
at the moon and the sleeping air station. No lights came on in the
skipper’s room. Trusteau looked into space for two or three
minutes, then with no apparent haste, made his way down the steps
and to a room on the lower floor into which he vanished. Duane was
alone once more, half-asleep, half-drunk, wondering what he could
do with this information.

“Dear Jack: Just a
short note to say hi and see how you are doing these days. It’s
been ages since we talked, or at least it seems that way, and I
thought maybe you and I could get together some afternoon soon and
recount some good, old times. Please give me a call, Jack, I’d
really like to see you again. Yours, Eleanor.”

The day after
the arrival of Eleanor Hawkins’ note and two days before they were
due to sail again, the
Constitution
began running its own boats between the
naval station at Pearl and the air station on Ford Island. Jack
took advantage of the situation to make a call to Eleanor and
arrange to meet her at the Royal Hawaiian. Her note implied that
she had something specific in mind. He had no idea what that could
be. And almost as an afterthought, on the afternoon he was to
leave, he invited Fred to accompany him. He cleaned up at the BOQ,
put on a fresh white uniform, and met Fred at the landing. They
made the pleasant boat trip with a number of other pilots, caught a
bus to the naval station gates, and a taxi to the Royal Hawaiian.
Fred had never been there before.

“I spent a week
here once,” Jack told Fred as they walked through the elegant,
high-ceilinged lobby toward the bar.

“When was
that?”

“July of
’42.”

“After
Midway.”

“Right after.
It was the first time I ever stayed in a really fine hotel. I was
expecting a bellboy, room service, all that.”

“There
wasn’t?”

“When the Navy
took it over they threw out all the nonessentials. No more room
service.”

“Carry your own
luggage?”

“That’s all we
are anyway—” Jack spotted Eleanor sitting at a table in the rear of
the lounge and waved to her. “—glorified bellhops.”

Eleanor met
them in the middle of the big, padded bar. She was dressed in a
summery dress and carried a wide-brimmed hat. Her hair was fixed in
layers of tight curls close to her head. “It’s a good thing you
came when you did,” she said. “I’ve refused eight drinks, four
dances, and two proposals of marriage.” Jack laughed. “And that was
from just one stranger.”

“I’d like you
to meet one of my pilots,” said Jack. He pulled Fred forward by the
arm. “Eleanor Hawkins, Fred Trusteau.” Fred shook her hand.

“Well,” she
said, sitting at the bar. “I ask for one but I get two very
handsome escorts. This is a pleasure.”

Fred glanced
quickly at Jack and caught a signal. “You two must want to be
alone…”

“Do you mind
terribly?” asked Eleanor smilingly. Her voice had an underlying
note of seriousness that piqued Fred’s curiosity.

“Not at all,”
he said and turned to go, but Jack caught his arm again.

“Thirty
minutes,” he said. “Check back with me in thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Miss
Hawkins.” He nodded to Eleanor and left them, going back through
the bar and into the lobby.

“He seems like
a nice man,” said Eleanor.

Jack pulled
himself onto a stool, thinking that they should sit at a table but
not wishing to tell Eleanor that it wasn’t polite for a lady to sit
at the bar. “He is,” Jack said. He signaled the bartender and
ordered a Scotch and water for himself, a Tom Collins for Eleanor.
When the drinks came, they sipped together and he said, “You look
well, Eleanor.”

“Thank you,”
she said. “So do you.” She touched a ribbon on his left chest.
“You’ve added a few new ones since we last saw each other.”

“Nothing
important. Good conduct.” He eased back onto his stool so that no
part of them touched and watched her face. How long would it take
her to come to the point?

“Thirty
minutes,” she said, smiling that smile that was obviously something
more. “Is that all the time you can spare for me?”