"What can we do for you, Colonel?" the small one continued. It came out, "Whut kin we do foah you, Cunnel?"
"You can follow me inside, if you will, please, gentlemen."
"I'll be damned, it's Captain Mustache," the tall one said, more than a little thickly.
"What did you say, Lieutenant?" Colonel Porter snapped.
"This officer is known to me, Sir," Captain Carstairs said; he wore a perfectly trimmed pencil-line mustache. "The last name is Carstairs, Lieutenant... as you might have recalled under more favorable circumstances. You are apparently confusing me with Captain Mistacher."
"Whatever you say. How have you been?"
Captain Carstairs gave the tall Lieutenant a tight, sharp-edged smile. And Colonel Porter took that as a sign of disapproval.
They were now inside the lobby of the Officers' Club. A large, oblong table was in the center of the room.
"Step up to the table, please, Lieutenant," Colonel Porter said. "As you unload the contents of your pockets, Captain Carstairs will record exactly what you have jammed in there."
"Little Billy," the tall one said. "I think we are on the Colonel's shit list."
"You are an officer, presumably-" Colonel Porter said icily, only to be interrupted by the smaller, younger one.
"I was getting that feeling myself, Pick," he agreed solemnly, in his slurred Southern drawl.
"-and I don't like your language."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering said, and saluted. Officers of the Naval Service do not salute indoors.
"You are drunk, Lieutenant!"
"I would judge that an accurate assessment of my condition," Pick said, carefully and slowly pronouncing each syllable.
"Close your mouth! You will speak only when spoken to!"
"Excuse me. I thought you were talking to me."
"You unload your pockets," Colonel Porter said to Lieutenant Dunn.
The brown bag turned out to contain gin, not whiskey.
"What is your unit, Lieutenant?" Colonel Porter asked as Dunn put his hand back in his pocket.
"Suh, ah have the distinct honah and priv'lidge of serving with VMF-229, Suh," Dunn said, trying his best to stand to attention.
Dunn laid an oblong, four-by-six-inch blue box on the table; then two more identical boxes. And then he reached for other items.
No wonder he was about to burst the seams on that pocket. Holy God, they look like medal boxes!
Colonel Porter picked one of them up and opened it. It was the Distinguished Flying Cross.
"Is this yours, Lieutenant?"
"No, Suh. That one belongs to Lieutenant Pickering. He left it on the airplane, and I picked it up for him."
Porter opened another of the boxes. It held another DFC. He opened the third box, which contained the Navy Cross.
"Is this yours or his?" Colonel Porter asked softly.
"Those two are mine, Suh," Dunn said. "Mr. Frank Knox, hisself, gave them to me yesterday."
"What are you two doing here?" Porter asked.
"Just passin' through, Cunnel," Dunn said. "We came in on the courier flight. And just as soon as I kin find a telephone, ah'm going to call mah Daddy and have him come fetch us. Ah live over on Mobile Bay."
"Captain Carstairs," Colonel Porter said, "you will assist these gentlemen in any way you can. I suggest that you offer them coffee and something to eat. You will stay with them until they have transportation. If that turns into a problem, you will arrange transportation and accompany them to their destination."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Captain Carstairs said.
"That's right nice of you, Cunnel," Bill Dunn said. "Could I offah you a small libation?"
"Thank you, no. Good afternoon, gentlemen," Colonel Porter said, and marched out of the Officers' Club.
"Nice fella, for a cunnel," Bill Dunn said.
"I know who you are," Captain Carstairs said, with a sympathetic shake of his head and the tight, small smile that Colonel Porter noticed earlier; but there was a warm glint in his eye. "You're Dunn. I saw your picture in the newspaper this morning."
"God-damn!" Dunn said. "Pick, didn't I tell you that was going to happen?"
"Well, you're going to have to change your attack. Try pinning the goddamn medals on. Maybe that will work."
"You think so?" Dunn asked hopefully.
Captain Carstairs grabbed each officer by the arm and propelled them away from the bar and toward the dining room.
[TWO]
Live Oaks Plantation
Baldwin County, Alabama
1205 Hours 31 October 1942
Mrs. Alma Dunn walked into the large kitchen and sat down at the table, then picked up a biscuit and took a bite. She pointed to glasses sitting in front of her son; they were half full of a thick red liquid.
Lieutenant William C. Dunn, wearing a khaki shirt and green trousers, was sitting across the table from Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, who was similarly attired. The table was loaded with food, none of which seemed particularly appetizing to either of them.
"Is that tomato juice or a Bloody Mary?" Mrs. Dunn asked.
"Bloody Mary," her son answered.
"Kate, would you fix me one, please?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Kate said. Kate was a tiny black woman; she looked to Pick Pickering to be at least seventy, and to weigh about that many pounds.
"I hope you both feel awful," Mrs. Dunn said. "You were pretty disgusting when you rolled in here last night."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Dunn," Pick said.
"You should be," she said matter-of-factly.
Bill Dunn's mother did not look at all like Pick's mother, Mrs. Patricia Pickering. Mrs. Dunn was a large, young-looking woman, whose sandy blond hair was parted in the middle and arranged in a kind of pigtail at the back. She was wearing a tweed skirt and a sweater, with just a hint of lipstick. And her only jewelry was a small metal pin, which showed three blue stars on a white background. Mrs. Patricia Pickering, in contrast, was svelte and elegant; Pick could never remember seeing her, for instance, without her four-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring. Yet she, too. wore a similar pin, with two blue stars. The number of stars on the pins signified how many members of the wearer's immediate family were in the military or naval service of the United States.
But they're the same kind of women, Pick thought. They'd like each other.
"God is punishing us, Mother. You don't have to trouble."
"What was the occasion?"
"It isn't every day you get to meet the President of the United States," Bill Dunn said.
"The President? When you came in here, you said you got your medal from Mr. Knox. And you're in hot water about that, too, by the way. The Senator called your daddy."
"Senator Foghorn's mad they gave me a medal?"
"Don't be a wise-ass, Billy. He saw your picture in the Washington papers. Senator Whatsisname from California..."
"Fowler, Mrs. Dunn," Pick furnished.
"... Senator Fowler was in the picture. Senator Chadwick called your daddy to tell him he'd have been there himself if he'd known about it. And your daddy is mad that you didn't call the Senator and tell him what was going on."