“No,” Blake said. “My mom asked me not to drink when I enlisted, so I don’t.” He drained his glass of milk. “You know, I kind of like the idea of having a bowl of fresh fruit on the table for breakfast. Back home in Kansas my mom thought you had to have meat and potatoes and vegetables and even pie for breakfast before you went out to work in the fields.”
“You grow up on a farm?”
“My pop has six thousand acres of wheat,” Blake said. “The harvest crews, some of the men, used to drink pretty heavy, and maybe that’s why my mom asked me not to.”
“What’s a harvest crew?” Flanagan asked.
“People who come around every year at harvest time. They have their own equipment, big stuff. They’re something like submarine men, Chief. Real professionals. They stick together. They go from farm to farm during harvest — all through the wheat belt, all the way up to the Dakotas. My mom used to go over to the other farms when they’d be working those farms and help with the cooking. The other farmers’ wives would come to our farm when the harvest crew was at our farm. If you think a submarine feeds good you should see what a farm puts on the table for the harvest crew!” The waitress walked up to the table.
“You feel like food this morning, Chief?”
“Bring me about four eggs, sunny-side up, please. And a stack of toast.” He reached into the bowl of fruit on the table, took a passion fruit, cut through the tough outer skin, and scooped out the mass of purple seeds.
“What are you doing with your time?” he asked Blake.
“I’ve done a lot of sightseeing,” Blake said. “I’ve been to a couple of movies. The Australians call movies ‘flicks,’ did you know that? And the girl who works with the Red Cross, the one I met when we were in port last time, she left a note for me. I took her to lunch a couple of times and to a movie, and this afternoon we’re going out to her house for dinner with her folks.”
“Makin’ out, huh?” Flanagan asked.
Blake blushed, the crimson line crawling up his boyish face to his blond hair.
“She’s a nice girl, Chief. Her folks took my picture last time and sent it to my folks, and now I guess they’re writing to each other.” He rose as Steve Petreshock and Jim Rice came up. “See you fellas later,” Blake said. Rice and Petreshock sat down.
“What’d we do, scare the kid away?” Rice asked.
“You’d scare away a bear with that beard and those eyes,” Flanagan said. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”
“You hit it, Chief,” Rice said happily. “A regular wildcat got me yesterday afternoon. I was standin’ on a corner near St. George’s Square, and this nice looking broad walked up to me and asked me how long it’s been since I had a good home-cooked meal. I allowed as it had been quite a time, and she invited me to go home with her and she’d cook me a good dinner.
“Hell, I thought maybe I was going to meet her old man and her kids. You know how nice these Aussies are, always trying to feed you or buy you beer or do things for you.
“But she doesn’t have any kids and her old man’s been missing in action in Crete or someplace for about a year or more. She cooked me a damned good meal and then she just damn near dragged me into the bedroom by my beard, and once we got into the sack she turned out to be a regular wildcat! Man, I ain’t had anything like that in my whole life! I told her I had to get back here early this morning. A man’s got to regroup and reload after a night like that, but I’m sure as hell going back and see if her convoy needs another torpedo attack.”
“Convoy?” Flanagan said. “I’ve heard that thing called all sorts of names but I never heard it called convoy.”
Rice grinned. “She didn’t have a shower at her house so I got in the tub and she got in with me and she saw old Herman at attention in the suds and she started to laugh and told me it looked like a torpedo. Which I had to admit is about right. So we started playing a game. She was the convoy and I torpedoed her.” He drained a tall glass of milk the waitress had put in front of him. “Man, that was some night!”
“What’s your excuse?” Flanagan said to Petreshock.
“Who needs an excuse? I walked into a joint called the Silver Slipper and there was a bunch of wounded Aussies in there. They were trying to big-deal the bartender into giving them each a beer and he wasn’t budging. From what they said they’d busted out of the hospital and they didn’t have a florin between them. So I popped for a few beers. I don’t remember comin’ back to the hotel, don’t know how I got here, but when Jim walked in and woke me up this mornin’ I checked my wallet, figured they’d take me for every damned pound in it, but as far as I can tell there ain’t a sixpence missing.”
“Aussies are good people,” Flanagan said. “I looked at the security logbook this morning. They checked you in at twenty-three hundred hours. Shore Patrol brought you back to the hotel.”
“Any charges against me?” Petreshock’s face was suddenly concerned.
“No charges.”
“Nice people,” Petreshock said. “Not like the Shore Patrol back in Pearl. Those bastards will hammer you on the head with a nightstick and then write you up on charges of damaging the club.”
Paul Blake walked out of the hotel into the early morning heat. He smiled to himself. Everything was backward in this country. They ate eggs for supper, on their steak. It was January and full summer. He looked at his wrist watch. He had several hours to kill before Constance Maybury would be off duty at the Red Cross. The zoo was down the avenue, he remembered. He began to walk, smiling broadly at the people hurrying to work, all of whom smiled at him. As he walked he saw the open door of a church, and without thinking he turned and went inside. He stood in the cool gloom at the back of the church. Then he knelt on the padded kneeling board that was fastened to the back row of seats.
Listening to the words of the Twenty-third Psalm that had been sent by the sonar operator on the U.S.S. Mako as that submarine sank slowly into the 30,000-foot depth of the Philippine Trench had driven into Paul Blake’s consciousness the fact of his own mortality, a recognition that few 22-year-olds know. He bowed his head as he knelt, and he wondered how it would feel to know you were going to die very soon, that there was no way to avoid death or delay it? How would it feel to wait, as the men of the Mako had waited, for their ship to sink deeply into the sea, until the terrible pressures of the sea crushed the ship like an eggshell? He said an awkwardly phrased prayer under his breath, rose to his feet, and saw the Anglican priest standing near the door. The clergyman’s eyes went from the blue submarine insignia on Blake’s right sleeve to the silver Submarine Combat Pin he wore above his breast jumper pocket.
“You are welcome, any time,” the clergyman said.
“Thank you, sir,” Blake replied. “Is the zoo down this street?”
“Four blocks to your right as you go out the door. You’ll see the entrance to the park, and the zoo is inside, to the left.” Blake nodded and stepped out into the morning sunshine, squaring his white hat carefully on his head. The clergyman watched him walk away.
“So young,” he said to himself. “So very young.”
Flanagan made his way to the Chief Petty Officers’ Club shortly before noon. He walked down the long graveled path to the two-story building on the riverfront and climbed the white stairway outside the building to the dining room and bar. He found a table overlooking the Swan River.