sir? Yes, sir.”
“I know he served ably on staff,” Schick continued, “but sea duty is a different matter. Do you have enough confidence in him to place him in charge of training for a few days?”
What was this? “Admiral,” Jack said levelly, “if I didn’t have confidence that he could take command of Manta, should anything happen to me, I would ask for his transfer at once.”
“Good. I thought you’d say that.” The admiral looked down at his desk, suddenly ill at ease. “There’s no easy way to say this, McCrary,” he said at last. “I’ve had word from Washington. Your father is in Bethesda Hospital with a severe case of pneumonia. The doctors are not hopeful. I’m sorry.”
“I see.” Jack searched his mind for thoughts, emotions, memories, anything, but he was trapped in a flat calm. Nothing stirred, and it seemed to him that nothing would stir again, that it had all ended and he had not noticed. It was time to be practical; detail added to detail would rebuild a sort of world. “Do—” He cleared his throat and started again. “Do they say when…”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve told you as much as I know. My yeoman has secured a berth for you on the night express, leaving New London at 2240. I expect you will want to brief Lieutenant Hunt and pack.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Jack stood up and hesitated. He wanted to say something else, but there was nothing else to say.
Like every train Jack had seen in his months Stateside, the Washington Express was jammed to overflowing. Servicemen on their way to new posts, war workers looking for a shipyard or aircraft plant more to their liking than the ones they had left, businessmen hoping for war contracts, wives and children off to stay with relatives for the duration—it seemed that every person in the country had some reason to go to some different section of the country than the one he found himself in. As a Navy brat Jack had moved around, or been moved around, a great deal as a child, and he felt none the worse for it. But he had always known that he was an oddity. Most Americans grew up, lived, worked, and raised their families in the place they were born. Now the war was giving people an excellent excuse to escape, and from the looks of this train, a great many of them were seizing it.
After wriggling through the packed aisles of four coaches and lurching precariously across the equally packed vestibules between them, Jack found his Pullman car. The berths were already made up. Coming from the crowded, noisy, and essentially cheerful coaches, he found almost spectral the long, empty aisle flanked narrowly by swaying green curtains and lit by dim antique ceiling fixtures. He was not a very imaginative man, but he would not have been terribly surprised to see a bloody dagger emerge from behind the curtains. The heavy air of secrecy created by the twin walls of baize cried out for melodrama.
The cry went unanswered. The porter showed Jack to his berth—a lower, thank goodness—and promised to wake him fifteen minutes before they arrived in Union Station. Pocketing Jack’s quarter, he added that he would bring a cup of coffee, or what they were calling coffee these days, and wished him a good night. Jack untied his shoes, buttoned the curtains closed, and changed to pajamas. Only a submariner would have thought the berth spacious, but the fact was, it was nearly as large as the captain’s stateroom on the Manta, and that had to hold a desk, cupboard, and safe as well as a bunk. Here he could really stretch out.
He propped up the pillows and raised the curtain over the window. As he watched the darkness rush by, he allowed himself, for the first time all evening, to remember the reason for this journey. His father was dying. The man who had once carried him on his shoulders, who had held him on his present course since he was in short pants, was quietly slipping away—perhaps was gone already. Jack was no stranger to death; he had seen shipmates and friends and even his own brother die, and his torpedoes had carried death to uncounted hundreds of the enemy. This was different, not the artificial hazards and chances of war, but something as basic as the revolutions of the earth or the restless to-and-fro of the tide. This—not his twenty-first birthday, or his first drink, or his first screw—was the real coming of age. He recalled buying a piece of apple pie in the Automat across from Grand Central Station, on his last trip to New York. As he opened the little glass door and removed the pie, the machinery hummed and another piece of pie, apparently identical, appeared in its place. Now Fate was taking away his father and moving him noiselessly into place. It was time he thought of having a son, to be waiting in the wings.
A jolt, and lights outside the window. He looked out. The train was in Penn Station, changing engines for the New York to Washington stage. He must have fallen asleep sitting up. He idly watched the passengers on the platform, dividing his attention impartially between men in Navy uniform and women in almost any costume. The women of the East, at least those who were likely to ride the night express to Washington, were managing to look quite elegant in spite of war-caused shortages. The girl over there, for example, saying good-bye to an Air Corps major: silk hose with carefully straight seams, a hip-length fur coat, a pert pillbox hat with jaunty veil atop recently waved shoulder-length hair. She obviously believed in giving the boys something worth fighting for; he would not mind fighting for a piece of that himself.
The girl turned to board the train, and the blood drained from his face, then rushed back. It was his sister Helen. She must be on her way to Dad’s side, too. Jack started to spring up, then stopped himself. He could not imagine pursuing her through a crowded train in his pajamas. He would catch her on the platform in the morning. Remembering the casual lust of his thoughts moments earlier, he flushed with an embarrassment that soon turned to anger. Why should he kid himself about Helen? By now he must be the only submariner around who had not had her. Still, he was convinced she was a good kid at heart, if she would just outgrow her wildness and find the right man. In any case they were past the age where he had to play big brother and lay down the law, getting nothing but defiance and resentment for his trouble. But where, he wondered as he drowsed off, had Helen got that fur coat?
The porter awakened him as promised, and he was one of the first passengers onto the platform when the train stopped moving. Even so, Helen got by him in the crowd and he had to rush after her. He caught up to her in the middle of the enormous barrel-vaulted concourse. “Helen,” he said insistently. “Helen!”
She turned, and her face lit with delight. “Jack! What on earth…” She sobered. “You’ve heard, then?”
“Yes.”
“It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
He nodded grimly and took her arm. “Come along. With this mob we’ll be lucky to get a cab before lunch time.”
“That’s all right. Bunny said he’d meet me with his car. Bunny Wilkinson,” she added, noting his blank look. “I know him from Cambridge. He’s something with OWI or OPA or OSS, one of That Man’s alphabet-soup agencies.” Helen had picked up the habit of calling President Roosevelt “That Man” from some of her diehard Republican society friends. For Jack, who thought of the President (when he thought of him at all, which was not very often) as his commander-in-chief, it had a nasty jarring sound. He debated saying something about it, but decided not to; Helen already tended to think of him as a little stuffy and old-fashioned. Compared to her maybe he was.
“That’s very kind of him,” he said cautiously, “but we shouldn’t take advantage of him. He may need his gas coupons for more important purposes.”
Helen laughed. “Not Bunny! I don’t know how he did it, but he has an X card. He can get all the gasoline he wants. That’s one reason I thought of him. You can’t imagine what the war has done to this city; it’s just impossible. Come on.”
They made their way outside. A shouting crowd clustered around the taxi dispatcher, and there were long, dispirited
