Alan Craik was confused. He had not known his father well, he decided; was that his own fault? His father had let his mother and stepfather raise him; what did he owe his father’s memory, then? Had his father been a good man? A hero? A model? Where was Alan’s responsibility to his memory? And where was Alan’s part in his death?
“It wasn’t your fault!” Rafehausen had shouted at him. Alan had stood on the flight deck, the warm air of the Gulf washing over him, babbling, “It was my fault. I killed him. They should have had a real aircrewman up there. I killed my father—” Until Rafehausen had grabbed him and bellowed at him, “It wasn’t your fault! It wasn’t your goddam fault! You did everything you could!”
He replayed the last moments of his father’s life as the 747 put down. He saw the final gesture, that raised hand before the plane plunged to the water—had that been corny, or was it gallant? And what was he, Alan, in those moments? And where was grief, which, he thought, should have had him weeping, when actually he was alert and efficient and, after those moments of guilt, hard as a stone? Then he began to replay it all as a way of moving to the edge of his consciousness a question that wanted to intrude: With him dead, why am I staying in the Navy?
He was wearing civilian clothes and had only a knapsack. He came out into the arrival lounge, dodging other travelers who planted themselves wherever their welcomers waited, and Kim was standing at the far side, her back against a pillar, and he smiled automatically, as he did most things automatically just then. She was wearing a black dress and sunglasses and looked tragic and sexy, and it took him an instant to realize that he resented the way she looked, which seemed to require that he be Alan, Kim’s Lover, and not Alan, Mick’s Son. Or simply Alan.
“My poor love,” she whispered in his ear. “I am so sorry.” She held him just the right length of time and then let go. “Are you terribly hurt?” she murmured.
“I’m fine.”
They walked all the way to her car before she spoke again. She held his hand very tight; he knew he was supposed to feel support, love, comfort flowing from her fingers. In fact, he felt nothing. He knew he should not tell her so.
“We’re putting you in one of the cabanas,” she said across the roof of her Mercedes. “We’ll have to find someplace else for us.”
“I’ll be at my Dad’s house a lot. All his stuff—”
She accepted it. Still, driving out of the airport, she said, “I am going to see you, aren’t I?”
“Jesus, of course.”
“I’ve missed you so.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
He tried to blot the pictures from his mind and to think of something to say to her, and he said, “Thanks for the letters. They really kept me going.” She had sometimes sent him two a day, always short, not very literate, the envelopes stuffed with mementoes—a scrap of black nylon, something cut from a newspaper, a joke. He had been charmed by them, often aroused, then grew a little weary of their relentless, one-note sexual cheerfulness. They were like directives ordering the world to be happy and start fucking.
He let one hand rest on her thigh as she drove. The black dress was very short; under it was a black slip, then her bare, golden thigh.
“Want to go somewhere?” she said.
“Where?” He had slipped into thinking of his father’s death again.
“Don’t you want me?”
“I want whatever you want.”
She bit her lower lip. The sunglasses were as big as beer-can lids and hid half her face. After a long time, her voice level, she said, “I have something to tell you, when you’re ready to talk. It’s something wonderful, but you’re not ready yet and I don’t want to spoil it. Okay?”
“Okay.” He had been thinking about Rafehausen’s shouting at him.
She pulled into a motel, got them a room, and led him inside. Desire surprised him, its intensity like something that had been lying in wait. His lovemaking was humorless and driven, separate from his mind so that he was a kind of onlooker; yet there was physical relief, and the sense of pleasing her.
“You’ve changed,” she said. She cradled his head. “My poor lover. Want to share it with me?”
“What?”
Tears filled her eyes. “Don’t I mean anything to you?” She wept. “I can’t get through to you!” He saw that he was supposed to comfort her, tried, turned it to sex, and became again humorless and driven.
1600 Zulu. Tehran.
Franci will not remember that he is awake sometimes. He will remember things after the sixth day; this is only the fourth day. Yet, he already knows that he has lost one leg. He does not know how he knows it. In fact, a doctor stood by his bed and told another doctor; he has forgotten the event, but his mind has seized the fact. Already, his brain is working on being a different person—no longer young, no longer whole, no longer full of life and promise. He is deadened with drugs and he seems unconscious, but his brain is working on the proposition that a few seconds at the radar post, the flipping of a switch, somebody else’s callousness, have stolen his future. He has not yet been told that he is a eunuch.
1600 Zulu. Florida.
His father owned a house near Five Points in Jacksonville. Alan remembered it from visits after the divorce. His mother had waited a year and then married a nice guy from Iowa, and Alan had visited his father during two humid Florida summers. Then his father had had other duty stations, but he liked Florida and kept the house.
Part of it was rented to a j.g. from another squadron. When Alan’s father was there, they shared the house; when either was away, he locked his bedroom and that was that. A succession of such housemates had trooped through, leaving the house anonymous and male.
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