The Ambassador's Son Page 19

  “I don’t know about the balloon, but I’d say the Raiders are headed up the Slot in what Colonel Burr would say is toot sweet,” Ready answered. Even as he spoke, a group of helmeted Raiders gathered along the shore, rifles slung over their shoulders, preparatory to boarding one of the slab-sided LCI’s. “Swing over there, Mister Kennedy. I know that slub at the tiller.”

  Kennedy eased the gunboat over as directed. The “slub” was a stocky young Coast Guardsman in denim pants, faded blue shirt, and a tub hat shoved to the back of his head. “Hey, Ready, what you got there?” he asked, his big grin not enough to mask a massive overbite. “Man oh man, lookit all them guns. And them fancy torpedoes. What do you call her?”

  “She’s a gunboat, Sully,” Ready answered proudly. “She not only can raise hell, she can go so fast, she blows the hair right off your head. How’s life in the real Coast Guard?”

  “Pref near perfect if it wasn’t for carrying these jarheads hither and yon.”

  The Raiders all perked up at the insult and jeered in unison, calling the driver a “puddle pirate.” “Pipe down, you gravel-grinders!” Sully yelled, and they did, although with much muttering through the tobacco chaws stretching their cheeks. Before long, they were singing:

  Bless ’em all, bless ’em all,

  The long and the short and the tall,

  Bless all the sergeants and corporals, too,

  Bless all the privates and above all bless you.

  Then, just for fun, the Raiders changed the lyrics to substitute a not very nice word for “bless” that rhymed with “truck.” It made them laugh, which Kennedy supposed was the reason they did it.

  “Where you headed?” Ready asked the LCI Coast Guardsman.

  “Today, just over to Florida Island. Training exercise. Next day or two, though, we’re headed somewheres real. Not sure where. Up north, prob’ly.”

  Ready conducted a scan of the harbor. “I don’t see our Catalina.”

  Sully looked around and agreed that there was no seaplane in evidence. “You supposed to meet up?”

  “That was the plan.” Ready turned to Kennedy. “It ain’t like Mister Phimble not to be where he said he was going to be. It’s right worrisome, that’s what it is. And I reckon if Captain Thurlow was here, he’d have spotted us coming across Iron Bottom Bay and be here to greet us.”

  Kennedy eased the Rosemary alongside the dock, just kissing the bumpers. All the boys, except Ready, immediately jumped off the boat and headed inland. “They’re going to our cave to collect a few things for the trip,” Ready advised Kennedy. “But I still can’t figure why Mister Phimble and Captain Thurlow ain’t here. What do you think we ought to do, Mister Kennedy?”

  Kennedy sat down on the engine hatch and tried to think his way through it. After considerable thought, he reached his conclusion. “I don’t have any idea,” he said.

  Ready’s disappointment showed on his wide face. “There you go again, sir.”

  “When are you going to learn that officers don’t always have the answers, Ready?” Kennedy demanded.

  “That ain’t the point, sir. The point is you have to decide even when you ain’t certain. You know, like you decided which direction we should go back at Santa Cruz.”

  “And you saw how wonderful that turned out,” Kennedy replied. “We got lost.”

  “At first, we did,” Ready confessed. “But we got where we was going, didn’t we? That’s what counts, to get where you’re going, even if you’re not sure where that is.”

  Kennedy’s head was spinning from Ready’s logic. “You are vaahstly too deep for me, Bosun.”

  “Well, let me put it this way. If you quit trying, people are liable to say, ‘There goes a quitter.’ You don’t want them to say that about you, do you, sir?”

  “I don’t much care what they say,” Kennedy lied.

  A Raider sergeant appeared at the dock. “Lieutenant,” he said, “Colonel Burr wants you to report in on the double.”

  “Who is Colonel Burr?” Kennedy asked.

  “Monkey Burr, sir,” Ready interjected. “The meanest bastard in the South Pacific, excuse me, Sarge, for saying so. You’re his clerk, ain’t you?”

  “I am, Bosun, and you’ll get no argument from me about him being a mean bastard. Hurry now, Lieutenant, or we’re both gonna get yelled at.”

  “Why would Colonel Burr want to see me? How does he even know I’m here?”

  “Well, dang, I forgot to ask.”

  “Your sarcasm is observed,” Kennedy sniffed.

  “Hey, Sarge, you ain’t seen Captain Thurlow around, have you?” Ready asked.

  The Raider clerk took on a hangdog look. “Got some bad news for you, there, Bosun. Best we know, Captain Thurlow is likely dead. Your Ensign Phimble, probably, too.”

  Ready’s jaw dropped. “Dead? How can that be?”

  “Well, that’s quite a question,” the sergeant said, and took on a philosophical expression. “I guess the general answer is dying is what we do out here in the Solomons, and your captain and ensign ain’t no exception.”

  “It just can’t be true!” Ready cried, a tear already carving through the salt on his cheek.

  “Take it easy, Ready,” Kennedy said. “We need details, Sergeant. Do you know any?”

  “A few. Monkey gets all the hot skinny, and sometimes I can’t help but hear what’s said. That coast-watcher Whitman finally got a radio working. He told us Jap is still crawling around up there on New Georgia where he’s at. He also said Thurlow was probably captured or killed by Jap, which is the same thing. As to your Ensign Phimble, Cactus got a call from his radioman last night. They were flying their Catalina up the Slot and spotted what they thought was one of our landing boats on fire. Nobody’s heard nothing since. The flyboys found a burned-out LCI this morning, but it was adrift, and everybody killed aboard it. All we know for sure is there were a slew of Rufes flying around last night. Most likely they shot down your Catalina.”

  “But nobody knows whether Thurlow or Phimble is dead for certain. Is that correct?” Kennedy asked.

  The Raider clerk shrugged. “Ain’t been no bodies found, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Is a search being conducted?”

  “Flyboys over on the Canal been told to keep their eyes open. That’s about it.”

  “Ready, I’m going to see the colonel,” Kennedy said, after a moment of reflection.

  “Tell him we want to go look for them, sir!” Ready cried. ‘Tell him it ain’t right to leave the skipper and Mister Phimble out there all alone without nobody looking for them!”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him,” Kennedy replied with a hard edge. “I happen to have some experience at being abandoned.”

  27

  Kennedy followed the sergeant-clerk to the Raider headquarters and sat on the veranda for the better part of two hours waiting for Colonel Burr to receive him. He didn’t mind the wait, as it gave him a chance to rest his back in a wicker chair. An observer of people by nature, Kennedy took note of the nervous body language of the various Raiders as they approached the old planter’s house and went up its stoop and into Burr’s office. Officer and enlisted man alike would approach with their heads up, shoulders back, all filled with the piss and vinegar that came naturally to the marines, only to have their swagger falter as they climbed the steps and crumble entirely as they approached the open double doors that led into the inner sanctum. The clerk, sitting behind a typewriter that he pounded with two fingers, sometimes solved their problem, whatever it was, and they ran off in obvious relief. But when they were told to go in to see the colonel, each instantly whipped off his headgear, helmet or utility cap, and walked inside as if treading on fresh eggs. Soon afterward, Burr’s voice, nearly always at full bellow, rattled the pictures on the wall. One by one, the visitors fled, sustaining a fast pace until they were out of shouting distance. A lot of men were feeling the colonel’s wrath this day.

  The clerk apparently received some sort of sile
nt signal and called to Kennedy, “Your time has come, Lieutenant.” He made his advisement in much the regretful voice a guard might use to alert a prisoner that they had fixed the problem with the short circuit on the electric chair.

  Kennedy slowly unbent his frame. He’d sat for too long. His back was stiff, his knees like concrete, and the coral wounds on his feet stabbed at him like needles. He stood, teetering, sweat breaking out on his forehead, until he came to terms with the pain. The clerk gave him a quick onceover, as if looking for fleas, then ushered him inside, where he was left standing before the ugliest desk Kennedy supposed he had ever seen, a big gray metal thing heaped with stacks of papers and charts. Behind the desk sat Monkey Burr, as ugly as the desk. His head snapped up from the papers and charts. “Well, Lieutenant, are you going to just stand there and continue staring, or are you going to properly report?”

  Kennedy stood in as near a state of attention as his body would allow, while mumbling, “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

  Burr stared hard at him for a long second, then directed Kennedy to a chair, which he took gratefully. He was in agony but still managed to ask the colonel a question. “Can you tell me what you know of Captain Thurlow and Ensign Phimble?”

  “Do I look like a briefing officer to you, son?” Burr asked, in a quiet though thoroughly menacing voice.

  “Their boys need to know, Colonel,” Kennedy replied.

  “All they need to know is their gravy train is off its rails!” Burr snapped, with obvious satisfaction. “I shall see them packed off to the regular Coast Guard within a day.”

  “What about Lieutenant Armistead?”

  “That mission no longer concerns you,” Burr replied. “In fact, I was astonished when I heard Thurlow had recruited you, considering your situation.”

  “My situation?”

  “The loss of your PT boat.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re famous, son, and that can work for you, and it can work against you. Ever since you left Lumbari, your command has been trying to find you. Very soon, a launch from Guadalcanal will pull up to my dock, and in it will be a naval intelligence officer. I believe you know him. A Lieutenant Byron White.”

  Kennedy straightened in his chair, wincing from the pain it caused. “Whizzer White?”

  “If he has a nickname, I’m not aware of it. But if that’s the man, and he’s a friend of yours, then maybe he can help you. Your court-martial has been moved up, and White’s been appointed as the investigating officer.”

  Kennedy’s head swam. “Why has it been moved up?”

  “It is my understanding Admiral Halsey made the decision.”

  Kennedy understood the situation now. His father had been in the forefront of the America First movement, an organization that existed entirely to keep the United States out of the war. Halsey probably blamed Pearl Harbor on men like Joe Kennedy. Now the ambassador’s second son had given the admiral the opportunity for revenge. Numbed, Kennedy asked, “What of my new boat?”

  “Your squadron is sending down another officer and crew to bring it back to your Lumbari base in Rendova. Just leave the paperwork with my clerk.”

  “There is no paperwork. We stole it.”

  Burr’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “We stole the PT boat that’s tied to your dock. Actually, she’s not a PT boat anymore. We converted her into a gunboat. Her name is the Rosemary.”

  “No, it’s not. Nothing you just related ever happened. You may have forgotten the paperwork, but you did not steal a boat, nor did you illegally convert her. Do you require anything else, Lieutenant? A place to stay the night? Just let my clerk know your needs. You will find him remarkably amenable.”

  Kennedy stood, feeling as if the slightest breeze might blow him over. “Thank you, Colonel,” he said dully.

  “Good luck, Lieutenant,” Burr said, in a surprisingly kind voice. “It sounds as if you could use some.”

  Kennedy nodded, saluted, and walked out of Burr’s office. A familiar voice hailed him. “Jack, old man. There you are!”

  It was indeed Byron “Whizzer” White, as Kennedy had surmised. Before the war, he and the Rhodes scholar had made an automobile tour across Germany together. Along the way, they’d managed to roll the automobile and later were stoned by a group of Nazi thugs. It had all been quite the adventure. Whizzer had gone on to become a professional football player and was now studying to be a lawyer. He had always been a sincere young man, with a blocky jaw and an expression of perpetual honesty. Kennedy supposed Whizzer was just the kind of man the ambassador wished had been his second son, rather than the screw-up he’d actually sired. Kennedy shook hands with him while White beamed his block-jaw sincerity.

  White was carrying a briefcase and treating it as if it were the most important object on Melagi. “I want to go over everything that happened from the moment you left Lumbari until your rescue,” White told him, in most urgent tones. He opened the briefcase and withdrew a document. “I won’t sugarcoat your situation, Jack. It looks bad for you, very bad. This is the order from Admiral Halsey establishing your immediate court-martial. You’re pretty much guilty, based on your own report, but perhaps your actions after you lost your boat until you were rescued will serve to ameliorate the blame. I think we might get the dereliction of duty charge reduced to simple inattentiveness. There’d be a comment on your record, but you wouldn’t lose your commission. You’re finished out here, of course, but maybe we can get you a desk somewhere back in the States to finish out your time.”

  Kennedy stared at White, and something snapped inside him. He wasn’t certain why, but all of a sudden he felt free. “I was not rescued,” he said while squaring his shoulders. “I saved myself.”

  White rubbed his jaw. “I don’t think it would be wise to say it exactly that way,” he advised. He looked over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “Jack, please understand me. If you are to have any chance of avoiding a finding of guilty on some very serious charges, you must cooperate from this moment on. It is especially important that you not criticize any of your superior officers.”

  “My superior officers abandoned me. Don’t you understand?”

  “As your friend, I understand very well, but as your legal counsel, I have to tell you it doesn’t matter.”

  Kennedy smiled, then walked away.

  “Where are you going?” White called after him.

  “To my boat,” Kennedy said. “Don’t follow me, Whizzer. Just wait right here. I’ll be back.”

  “When?”

  Kennedy did not reply, just kept walking until he reached the dock where Ready sat on a piling, his face in his hands. All the other boys had returned and were also sitting around the dock in various stages of moping. Looking at them, Kennedy thought about a number of things in swift succession, all the while feeling a fluidic strength seep into his bones. It was like electricity because he had decided what he was going to do, and it was as glorious as it was audacious. A man should occasionally do a glorious, audacious thing, he thought. Or else he isn’t really a man.

  “Ready,” he said, and patiently waited until the bosun lifted his tear-streaked face. “Did the boys bring everything they need?”

  “Yes, sir, only of course now it don’t matter, Captain Thurlow and Mister Phimble and Fisheye and Stobs and Dave being dead and all. And we got told to report to Colonel Burr’s clerk for reassignment, toot sweet.”

  Kennedy stepped aboard the gunboat named after his eldest sister. “Boys, listen up. There’s a chance that Captain Thurlow and Ensign Phimble and Fisheye and Stobs and your megapode aren’t dead after all.”

  One by one, Thurlow’s boys raised their eyes.

  “I want you to know something else,” Kennedy continued. “Just like you, I’ve been ordered off this boat. My squadron’s sending down a new skipper and crew.” He climbed into the cockpit and put his hand on the throttles. “Well,” he said, “if you’re waiting for a formal invitation, this is the be
st I can do. This is our boat. We stole her fair and square. I’m going to take her and go north. Who’s going with me?”

  28

  Penelope’s lap-lap danced fetchingly before Josh’s eyes as she led him through the tangled bush to a place where she said they would be safe. He confessed to himself that he was quite taken with the girl all in all, even though she had demonstrated a tendency to cut off the heads of men who didn’t atone to her standards. He suspected his father would make a fool of himself over her, too, if he ever got the chance. After all, the Keeper had made a habit of bringing home to the lighthouse more than a few fancy ladies from Morehead City, some even a third his age, and capering around with them. His activities had simultaneously appalled the Killakeet women and earned the secret admiration of most of the island’s men.

  “Women are both God’s blessing to men and also His curse,” the Keeper had told Josh years ago when he’d been so foolish as to ask his father for advice about a difficult girlfriend. “To keep the blessing and avoid the curse, I have memorized these words: You know, my dear, now that I have given it some thought, you are absolutely right. No matter the woman, no matter her consternation over some foolishness I might have perpetrated, those few and quite magical words have usually saved me. Don’t ever forget them, my boy, and I predict a rosy future for you with the female class.”

  Josh had not forgotten the words, but he guessed he’d forgotten to use them often enough, especially with Dosie, his once and now gone forever love. He thought about Dosie as Penelope’s very nicely turned rump danced before his eyes, and he reflected that he was having some difficulty recalling exactly what Dosie looked like, although he was certain that his heart must still be broken over her.

  Then he thought that the only thing certain about his situation was that he surely must be an idiot, perhaps even a dangerous idiot. Here he was, stealing his way through the bush on New Georgia, likely surrounded by a thousand or more Japanese soldiers who would be happy to use him for bayonet practice or worse, and all he could think about was women. You’re an odd duck, Josh Thurlow, he said to himself and knew it was true, for sartain, but he was blamed if he could figure out what to do about it, or if he should do anything at all.