Pulling on his helmet, the ensign set his red-bearded jaw with a youthful obstinacy that reminded Warren strongly and sadly of Byron. “I’m just tired of not earning my pay.”
“You earn it when you fly.”
The wind had now shifted to the west. Smoothly, swiftly, McClusky— back in action despite his injuries — led the group off to the attack. Bone-weary as the aviators were, Warren could see they were getting better and better at join-ups. Combat was the school, no doubt of that.
Over the horizon, after half an hour’s flight, smoke pointed down at the victims. McClusky had three surviving torpedo planes in his group, but orders were to use torpedoes only if no AA was still firing. Seen through binoculars from ten thousand feet, the two vessels were unbelievably smashed up — guns askew, bridges dangling, torpedo tubes and catapults hanging crazily, amid drifting smoke and jumping flames. The Hornet fliers had reported them as battleships, but to Warren they looked much like a pair of ruined Northamptons. Both ships were putting up meager little squirts of AA tracers and a few black explosions.
“Well, that lets out the TBDs.” McClusky’s voice came in clearly. He assigned the dive-bomber sections to the two cruisers, and the attack began.
The first section, led by Gallaher, did a businesslike job: at least three hits sent up smoke and flame in billows, and the AA fire died away. As Warren prepared to lead his section down to the fiery shambles far below, he looked back at Peter Goff, and held up a palm outward, in a last friendly admonition to take it easy; then he pushed over in the familiar maneuver, straightened into a dive, and there was the blazing cruiser squarely in his telescope sight.
When he had dived about a thousand feet through sporadic and feeble AA, Warren’s plane was hit. At the alarming jolt, and the grinding, gruesome noise of tearing metal, and the queer sight of a ragged piece of his blue wing flying away, with cherry-colored fire licking out of the stump, his first feeling was stupefied surprise. He had never thought he would be shot down, though he had known the risks. With his death sentence before his eyes he still could not believe it. His future stretched before him for so many years — so well-planned, so real, so important! But he had only a few more seconds to pull off something miraculous and even as these vertiginous thoughts whirled through his shocked brain and he jerked futilely at the controls, the fire flared all along the broken wing, and in the earphones he heard Cornett screaming something frightened but incomprehensible. The plane fell sideways and began to spin downward, shaking fearfully, with fire shooting from the engine. The blue sea turned round and round before Warren’s eyes, framed in flames. He could see white breaking wave tops not far below. He tried frantically to open his canopy, but could not. He called to Cornett to jump, with no response. The cockpit grew hotter, and in the intense heat his rigid body hanging there in his straps struggled and struggled and struggled. At last it involuntarily relaxed. There was nothing more to do, after all. He had done his best, and now it was time to die. It was going to be tough on old Dad, but Dad would be proud of him. His last coherent thought was this one, of his father.
The water was thrusting up toward him in tossing revolving foamy waves. All over already?
Horrible pain seared Warren as fire leaped across his face, blinding his last living moments. The crash into the water was a terrific blow in the dark. Warren’s final sensation was a soothing cooling one: the sea, bathing his scorched face and hands. The plane exploded, but he never knew that, and his torn body began its long slow descent in peace to its resting place on the bottom of the trackless sea. For a few seconds, a thin black smoke plume marked the place where he fell. Then like his life the plume melted into the wind and was gone.
O my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!
PART THREE
Byron and Natalie
33
IN mid-July, still recovering from the terrible news, Rhoda left Washington by train for the West Coast. Madeline was in Hollywood and Byron was attending a submarine attack school in San Diego, so whenever he got leave, they could at least be together. Train journeys, even in wartime, were cheering, and just packing for this one relieved her agony. Her first dining-car meal woke a sluggish flow of life in her chilled veins. She knew that her black linen suit, dark hat, and dark stockings looked smart. After dinner men in the club car eyed her. A bemustached, beribboned Air Force colonel tried his luck at buying her a drink. What rotten taste! Couldn’t the man see she was in mourning? She quenched him with one sad glance.
Bedding down between crisp heavy Pullman sheets, she was a long time dropping off. The clacking of the wheels, the rhythmic sway of the berth, the chugging and wailing of the locomotive, the old train smells in the upholstery and the green curtains, the vibrating roll through the night, bathed her in nostalgia. So she had lain as an engaged girl of nineteen, aquiver with love and with erotic visions, riding down to Charleston to visit Pug; so they had lain together in a lower berth, on their brief rapturous honeymoon; so she had lain as the mother of one infant, then two, then three, as the family dragged from one duty station to another. Now again she lay alone, on her way to the two grown-up children left to her.
Oh, Warren’s wedding day, and the songs and the champagne in the car on the way to the Pensacola airport! Oh, that last glimpse of him, that last reunion of her little family to all eternity! He had looked so handsome driving the big Cadillac and singing along as the whole family, crowded in with his blonde bride and Byron’s dark Jewish girl, were harmonizing
Till we meet, till we meet,
Till we meet at Jesus’ feet…
Rhoda accepted the death of her son as a personal punishment. An excruciating, cleansing catharsis of remorse had been racking her for weeks. She was determined to cut her misconduct out of her life like a cancer. This resolve was turning the death of her firstborn son into a redeeming experience; she was spending much time and pouring out many tears in church. Like most service wives and mothers, Rhoda had thought herself steeled against bad news, but the ringing doorbell at seven in the morning a few days after the Midway battle had frightened her, and the words on the yellow telegraph form had blasted her soul. Warren! The winner, the best, always carrying off prizes and top grades, going to the right schools, marrying the right girl, rising in the Navy faster than his father had — Warren, gone! Dead! Her firstborn son, lost to her, lying somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific, miles down, in the wreckage of an airplane! Would a funeral, and a last look at him in a coffin, have been easier or worse than this dry notification that her son, out of her sight for two years, was dead? She could not tell. The funerals of her mother, her father, and her older brother had not hit her like this. A funeral was a release of a sort, a vent for grief. Her only release had been one wild long flood of tears over Pug’s letter.
She had meant to schedule an overnight stop in Chicago to break with Kirby, but he was away from his office, so she would have to do it on the way back. In the majestic shadow of her son’s death, their middle-aged amour seemed not so much soiled and wicked as ridiculous. They had both needed it, or had thought they did, and so they had accommodated each other. That was the reality. The rest had been romantic illusion. Now it was finished. She was Pug’s till death. He might be too good for her, his magnanimity might be crushing, but she hoped to become more worthy of him in the years that remained.
Buried under all this wholly sincere repentance was an intuition that the Kirby thing had peaked anyway. Forbidden fruit has its brown spots, but these are not seen in the dusky glow of appetite; one has to bite and taste the unpleasant mush. Her civilian lover had turned out not so very different from her military husband. He had less excuse for neglecting her, yet like Pug he had shut her out and absented himself for weeks at a time. Answering her fatal divorce letter, Pug had warned her that Fred Kirby was too much like himself for the thing to work. Wise old Pug! In fact, Palmer rather despised her. She knew this, though only with Wa
rren’s death had she squarely faced it. If she forced the issue he might marry her, but it would be a mere entrapment. When all was said and done, she had been a fortyish fool. It happened to lots of women, and it had happened to her. All she wanted now was to end the thing and save her marriage. Around and around this pivotal resolve her thoughts circled, chasing each other until she dozed off in the rocking berth, to the sad hoots of the whistle and the rhythmic clatter of the wheels.
Young men in white and khaki uniforms swarmed through the tumultuous mob in the sweltering Los Angeles terminal, three days later. Rhoda kept looking for a red beard as she wandered here and there, followed by a sweating porter with her bags.
“Here I am, Mom.”
The shock when she turned and saw him so weakened her that she sagged into her smooth-shaven son’s arms. He wore dress whites with a splash of campaign ribbons, his gold dolphins looked much like gold wings, his face had filled out, and a cigarette slanting from his mouth completed a frightening resemblance to Warren. They had never looked much alike to her, but this stern-faced tanned apparition was a shivery blend of the two. She buried her face against the starchy uniform and cried. When she could control herself she choked out, wiping her eyes, “I received the most beautiful letter from Dad. Have you heard from him?”
“No. Let’s go. I’ve got Madeline’s car.”
At the wheel he slouched in a Byron-like way, and smiled with a mouth shape unchanged since infancy. “You’ve lost weight. You look very pretty, Mom.”
“Oh, what does it matter how I look?” Her eyes overflowed again, and she put her hand on his. “It’s so hot here, I’m perspiring like a NIGGER. I haven’t had a proper bath in three days, Byron. I feel SLIMY.”
His smile broadening, he leaned over and kissed her. “Old Mom.” And he drove out into a brightly sunny avenue lined with palm trees and tall buildings; and into the thickest traffic jam she had ever seen.
“What news of Natalie?” Rhoda tried to sound naturally affectionate. Her Jewish daughter-in-law’s name did not come easily to her tongue.
He took from an inside pocket and passed to her a long wrinkled airmail envelope half-covered with purple rubber stampings. “From that fellow Slote. I may have to go to Switzerland.”
“Oh, Byron. SWITZERLAND? HOW can you? In wartime, and you under orders!”
“It’s possible. Not easy, but possible. I can cross unoccupied France by train, or fly to Zurich from Lisbon. When this torpedo course finishes I’ve got thirty days’ leave coming.”
“But even so, dear. Once there, THEN what?”
Byron’s face obstinately hardened. “Nobody cares about Natalie and that kid as I do. I can go there and see.” When he looked like that, it was time to drop the subject, though his mother thought he was out of his mind. Slote’s letter was a confused mess about exit visas and Brazil which she couldn’t follow.
Rhoda had never before been to Hollywood. Walking through the lushly green hotel garden splashed with flowering hibiscus and bougainvillea she saw a real film star, Errol Flynn, sitting in swim trunks by the pool with a beautiful young girl, no doubt a starlet. She could not help being excited. “Before I do ANYTHING,” she said as Byron carried her bags into the roomy villa Madeline had rented for them, “I must shower. I mean this SECOND.”
“Where’s Dad’s letter?”
“You want to read it right now?”
“Yes.”
The envelope was scuffed, the creases in the sheets of U. S. S. Northampton stationery were wearing through. Byron crouched in an armchair over the pages, written in his father’s familiar firm clear Navy hand with heavily crossed t’s and plain capitals.
Dearest Rhoda:
By now you have the official word. I tried a couple of times to place a call to you, but it probably was for the best that I didn’t get through. It might have been painful for both of us.
Our son made it through the worst of the battle. He would fly over my ship and rock his wings, coming back from sorties. Warren scored a direct bomb hit on a Jap carrier. He’ll probably get a posthumous Navy Cross. Rear Admiral Spruance told me this. Spruance is a controlled person, but when he spoke of Warren there were tears in his eyes. He said that Warren turned in a “brilliant, heroic performance,” and Raymond Spruance uses such words sparingly.
Warren was killed on the last day, on a routine mission of mopping up enemy cripples. An AA shell caught his plane. Three of his squadron mates saw him spin down in flames, so there’s no hope that he ditched and is afloat on a raft, or cast up on some atoll. Warren is dead, we will never see him again. We have Byron, we have Madeline, but he’s gone, and there will never be another Warren.
He came to see me just before the battle and gave me an envelope. When I found out he’d been killed (which wasn’t until we got back to port) I opened it. It contained a rundown of his finances. Not that Janice had to worry, but he wasn’t counting on his rich father-in-law. He’d arranged to transfer your mother’s trust fund to her, and there’s an insurance policy that guarantees Vic’s education. How about that? He exuded confidence and cheer before the battle. I know he expected to make it through. Yet he did this. I can still see him standing in the door of my cabin, with one hand on the overhead, one foot on the coaming, saying with that easy grin of his, “If you’re too busy for me, say so.” Too busy! God forgive me if I ever gave him that impression. There was no greater joy in my life than talking to Warren, in fact just resting my eyes on him.
It’s been awhile since I’ve heard from you, and almost six months since Madeline last wrote. So I feel sort of cut off, and don’t know what to advise you. If you can stay with her in New York for a while, it might be a good idea. That girl needs somebody, and this is no time for you to be alone on Foxhall Road. Janice is behaving well, but she’s kind of smashed up. Byron will probably mask his feelings as usual, but I’m worried about him. He worshipped Warren.
I’ve just written my ship’s battle report. It’s one page long. We never fired a gun. We never saw an enemy vessel. Warren must have flown a dozen search and attack sorties in three days. He and a few hundred young men like him carried the brunt of a great victorious battle. I did nothing.
Somewhere a character. in Shakespeare says, “We owe God a death.” Even if we could roll time back to that rainy evening in March 1939, Rhoda, when he was on leave from the Monaghan, and he told us he was putting in for flight training — in his typical fashion, just like that, no fuss, confronting us with the fait accompli— and even if we knew what the future held in store, what could we do differently? He was born to a service father. Boys tend to follow their dads. He chose the best branch of the Navy for effectiveness against the enemy; certainly he proved that! Few men in any armed force, on any front, will strike a harder blow for their country than he did. That was what he set out to do. His life was successful, fulfilled, and complete. I want to believe that, and in a way I truly do.
But ah, what Warren might have been! I’m a known quantity. There are a thousand four-stripers like me, and one more or less doesn’t matter that much. I’ve had my family; you might say I’ve had my life. How can I compare to what Warren might have been?
Yes, Warren’s gone. He won’t have any fame. When the war’s over, nobody will remember the ones who bore the heat of combat. They’ll probably forget the names of the admirals, even of the battles that saved our country. I now feel that despite all the present discouraging news we’ll eventually win the war. The Japs can’t recover from the shellacking they took at Midway, and Hitler can’t lick the world by himself. Our son helped to turn the tide. He was there when it mattered and where it mattered. He took his life in his hands, went in there, and did his duty as a fighting man. I’m proud of him. I’ll never lose that pride. He’ll be in my last thoughts.
Other things will have to wait for a different letter. God keep you well.
Love,
Pug
Emerging from her room in a silk robe, Rhoda said, “Isn??
?t it a beautiful letter?” Byron did not reply. He sat smoking a cigar, staring emptily, his face wan, the letter on his lap. Disturbed by his silence and his look, she chattered cheerily, combing her hair at a large mirror. “I’m saving it. I’m saving everything — the telegram, the letter from the Secretary of the Navy, all the other letters, even the invitation from the Gold Star Mothers, and the story in the Washington Herald. It’s a nice write-up. Now what is this party again, Byron? Isn’t she working for Hugh Cleveland any more? I’m all confused, and — oh, to HELL with this hair! There’s no light, and no time, and I don’t care, anyhow.”
“She is working for him. This party’s something else, a volunteer thing.” Byron got up, took a red and yellow circular from a pile on the coffee table, and handed it to her. “It’s a buffet before this wingding starts.”
AMERICAN COMMITTEE
FOB
A SECOND FRONT NOW
Hollywood Division
MONSTER RALLY
AT
THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL
There followed a large alphabetical list of participants: film stars, producers, directors, writers.
“My goodness! What a star cast. And Alistair Tudsbury, too, HE’S here! Why, this is a very distinguished group, isn’t it, Byron? ’Madeline Henry, program coordinator!’ My heavens! If that little snip hasn’t come up in the world.”
At this moment Madeline burst in. “Oh, Mother!” The intensity of the exclamation, and the clutching embrace that went with it, bridged their shared grief. She wore a dark wide-shouldered dress, her dark hair was elegantly styled, and her talk was cyclonic. “I’m so GLAD you came! Shoot, I hoped you’d be ready, but I’ll just go, I guess, and then send Hugh’s limousine back for you. Oh, God, there’s so much to talk about, isn’t there, Mom! This insane clambake will be all over tonight, thank Heaven, and then I can draw breath.”