"And I will reply by endorsement that since officers who live in quarters on the post can go from the flight line to their quarters in their rompers, I thought I could go directly to my quarters so attired. And that if I have sinned, I am prepared to weep, beat my breast, pull out my hair, and in other ways manifest my shame and regret."
"You can get kicked out of here."
"Oh, bullshit! We're nearly through this fucking course. They might throw us out for showing up on the flight line drunk, or something else serious like that. But so much time and money has been invested in us, and they need pilots so bad, they're not going to throw anybody out for wearing rompers off base."
And he was right, of course.
Lieutenant Stecker had spent three hours that afternoon between six and ten thousand feet over Foley, Alabama. He had been at the controls of a Grumman F4F-3 wildcat, engaged in mock aerial combat with an instructor pilot.
The Wildcat had been rigged with a motion picture camera. The camera was actuated when he activated the trigger that would normally have fired the six.50-caliber Browning machine guns with which the Wildcat was armed.
The film was now being souped, and they would look at it in the morning. Dick Stecker knew that in at least four of the engagements, the film from the gun camera would show that he had successfully eluded his IP and then gotten on his IP's tail and "shot him down."
It had been almost-not quite, but almost-pleasant tooling around at six, seven thousand feet with the twelve hundred horsepower of the Wright XR-1830-76 moving the Wildcat at better than three hundred knots. And, although he had consciously fought getting cocky about it, it had been satisfying to realize that he had acquired a certain proficiency in the Wildcat. The odds were that in about two months, certainly within three, he would be flying a Wildcat against the Japanese.
When the training flight was over, however, it was not at all pleasant. He opened the canopy before he had completed his landing roll at Chevalier Field. By the time he had taxied to the parking ramp, the skin of the aircraft was too hot to touch, and he was sweat-soaked. The temperature had been over one hundred degrees for three days, and the humidity never dropped out of the high nineties.
He actually felt a little faint as he walked to the hangar, carrying a parachute that now seemed to weigh at least one hundred pounds. His IP came into the hangar red-faced and sweat-soaked, and went directly to the water cooler, where he first drenched his face in the stream, and then filled a paper cup and poured it over his head.
The post- flight critique was made as brief as possible. Then the IP had walked to his car in his rompers and drove off. That left Stecker with a choice: He could be a good little second lieutenant who obeyed all the rules. Or he could do what he ended up doing. What he did was get in his car and drive through the woods to the Foley Highway and then to the hotel.
He parked the car behind the hotel and entered through the basement. He planned to use the service elevator, but it wouldn't answer his ring, so he had to summon a passenger elevator.
With my luck, he thought, the elevator will stop in the lobby, answering the button-push of the base commander, who will be accompanied by the senior Marine Corps officer assigned to Pensacola.
But the elevator rose without stopping to the top floor, and there was no one in the small foyer when the door opened. Stecker crossed quickly to the penthouse door, put his key in, and opened it. A wave of cold air swept over him. The basement of the building was not air-conditioned, and the allegedly air-conditioned elevators seldom were.
Stecker emitted a deep, guttural groan of relief.
Then he worked the full-length zipper on the rompers to its lower limit and spread the sweaty material wide. When the cold air struck his lower chest, he groaned appreciatively again.
Then he walked into the penthouse and found it was occupied.
The occupant was a female. The female was clothed in brief shorts and a T-shirt decorated with a red Marine Corps insignia. And she was smiling at him. Not a friendly smile, Stecker quickly realized, but a "see the funny man, ha ha" smile.
"What am I expected to say in reply to your groans?" Ernie Sage asked. "You Tarzan, me Jane?"
"Not that I really give a damn," Dick Stecker said, "but how did you get in here?"
"I told them I was Pick's sister," Ernie said. "Where is he?"
"I'm Dick Stecker," Dick said.
"How about this to start a conversation, Dick Stecker?" Ernie said. '"Your fly's open.'"
"Oh, Jesus," he groaned and dived for it.
"To quickly change the subject, you were telling me where Pick is," she said.
"He took off about an hour after we did," Stecker said. "He should be here in about an hour."
"Took off for where?"
"Local," Stacker said. "Training flight. Mock dogfights."
She turned and went to the bar, returned with a bottle of beer, and handed it to him.
"You look like you could use this," she said. When she saw the surprise on his face, she added, "Yes, 1 did make myself right at home, didn't I?"
"You didn't say who you were?"
"Just another Marine camp-follower," she said. "Mine has gone overseas, so I figured I'd better latch on to another."
"Ah, come on," Stecker said.
"I'm Ernie Sage," she said. "I'm the closest thing Pick has to a sister."
"Oh, sure. The one he's always talking to on the phone. In California."
"Used to," she said. "My second lieutenant's gone. Now I'm back in New York."
"I'm Dick Stecker," Stecker repeated.
"I know," she said. "I know your father. I like him; Pick likes you. Our acquaintance is off to a flying start."
"What brings you here?" Stecker asked.
"I have been holding Pick's hand about the Sainted Widow for months. Now it's his turn to hold mine for a while."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Can you miraculously transport me to Camp Catlin?"
"I never even heard of it," Stecker said.
"That's surprising," Ernie said. "According to Pick, you're a walking encyclopedia of military lore."
"Where is it?"
"It's in- on?-Hawaii. And if you can't miraculously transport me there, why don't you take a shower? I can smell you all the way over here."
"Do you always talk like that?" Stecker asked, shocked but not offended.
"Only to friends," Ernie said. "And any son of Captain Jack NMI Stecker, any friend of Pick's, et cetera et cetera…"
"I'm flattered," Stecker said.
"And well you should be," Ernie said. "Go bathe; and when you come out, you can give me a somewhat more accurate picture of the Sainted Widow than the one I got from Pick."
"How do you know the one you got from Pick isn't accurate?"
"No one, not even me, is that perfect," Ernie said. She pointed toward one of the bedrooms. "Go shower."
Stecker took a shower, and put on a khaki uniform. When he came out, Ernie Sage was leaning on the glass door leading to the patio.
"How much further along are you than Pick?" she asked, smiling at him.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You're wearing wings," Ernie said. "I thought you got those only when you're finished training."
"When you finish the school," he said. "We got rated the first of the month."
"Then you're finished?"
"Yes, we are. Now we're getting trained in F4F-3s."
"I thought-Pick told me-they were going to send you to Opa-something for that?"
"Opa- locka," Stecker said. "Farther down in Florida. They usually do. But they have some F4F-3s, and qualified IPs here… and Pick and I make up a class of two, so we stayed here."
"Congratulations," Ernie said.
"Excuse me?"
"On being a Naval aviator," she said.
"Oh," Stecker said. "Thank you."