Longing must have been naked on his face. Goodwin laughed and clapped him on the back. “Don’t look down your nose at a Texan. The Aussies use the ones they make for ground-attack planes and light bombers-Wirraways, they call ’em. And there’s even talk that they’ll build a version with a cleaner airframe and a bigger engine and use it for a fighter.”
That struck Joe as a desperation measure. Of course, Australia was in pretty desperate shape these days. With Hawaii lost, the USA had a devil of a time getting supplies over there. And the Japs ruled the skies above the northern part of the country. Everybody wondered when they were going to invade, though it hadn’t happened yet.
“Come on,” Goodwin said. “Let me buy you a beer. You’ve earned one, by God. Just remember, you’ve got to walk before you can run. Now that you’ve soloed, you’re not taking baby steps any more.”
“Yes, sir.” Every word of that was true, and Joe knew it. Even so, he ached to be where the action was. He ached for there to be action. “Sir, when are we going to try and take Hawaii back from the Japs?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Goodwin replied. “I’ve got no idea-and if I did, I probably couldn’t tell you anyway. You want to be along for that, don’t you?”
“You bet I do-more than anything,” Joe said. “That’s why I signed up for this. And after what those bastards did to my uncle and his family-”
“You still have a chance, I’d say,” Lieutenant Goodwin told him. “Come on-let’s see about that beer.”
“Okay.” Unlike some of his buddies, Joe didn’t do a whole lot of drinking. For one thing, he was still underage. For another, he didn’t like the taste of the stuff all that much. But this was a ceremonial occasion.
Goodwin sat him down at the bar in the officers’ club and bought him a Budweiser. A couple of stools over, two lieutenant commanders were still going on about the alligator hunt of a few days past. A pair of officers had poured down more than might have been good for them and gone out into the swamp not far from the base vowing to come back with an alligator. Some time later, they’d proudly returned with a deceased snapping turtle tied to a broomstick. They’d taken it to market in Pensacola and got eleven cents a pound for it-plus ribbing that wouldn’t quit.
“Here’s to you, Joe,” Goodwin said, hoisting his own bottle of Bud. “And here’s to giving the Japs what-for.”
“Thanks.” Joe sipped cautiously. Once, when he was a little kid, his old man had let him take a swig from a bottle of beer. It had tasted nasty then. Am I poisoned? he’d squeaked. His father had laughed like hell. He still wasn’t crazy about the stuff, but it didn’t make him want to get his stomach pumped any more.
The colored man behind the bar asked, “This here the gentleman’s first solo?”
“That’s right,” Goodwin told him.
He slid a dime back across the bar. “On the house.”
“Thanks.” The flying instructor stuck the little silver coin in his pocket. “See, Mr. Crosetti? You don’t just save the country when you learn to fly. You save me money, too, so you’re really a hero.”
“Right.” Joe felt silly. Part of him recognized that this was a piece of the celebration, too. The rest was embarrassed all the same. He worked conscientiously at the beer. He supposed one was okay. If he had more than one, he didn’t think he’d be able to see straight for his afternoon classes. He had enough trouble keeping up in navigation the way things were.
When he went to the mess hall for lunch, Orson Sharp all but waylaid him. “How did it go?” his roomie demanded.
“I got up,” Joe answered. “I got down. I’m still here. I bounced the landing a little, but I’m still here.”
“All right!” Sharp grabbed his hand and squeezed it and pumped it up and down. Like everything else about the Mormon, his enthusiasm was perfectly genuine. He’d soloed the week before; his competence was perfectly genuine, too. He seemed delighted to have company, even though Joe was competition for a precious slot on a carrier. “We may be the first room where both guys have soloed.”
“Yeah?” Joe hadn’t thought about that. “I guess maybe we are. Pretty neat. Maybe we’ll stay together when we switch squadrons, too.”
“I think we’re stuck with each other,” Sharp said. “We’ll probably make ace the same day.”
“Yeah!” This time, the word burst from Joe’s throat with savage enthusiasm. And then something else occurred to him. “When you soloed, did your instructor try to buy you a beer?”
“Sure.” Orson Sharp was anything but self-conscious.
“What did you do?” Joe asked.
“I had a glass of apple juice instead,” Sharp answered calmly. “He said it looked like beer from a little ways away, but that isn’t why I did it.”
“Why did you, then?” Joe inquired, fascinated by the way his roommate did what he thought he ought to do without worrying in the least about anybody else’s opinion. He wondered if he could have matched such self-assurance. He doubted it.
Sharp looked at him. “I like apple juice.”
Joe laughed out loud. “You break me up, buddy, I swear to God.”
“That’s nice.” No, nothing bothered Sharp. “Before too long, we’ll both be breaking up the Japs.”
“Yeah!” Joe said again.
THE LANDING CRAFT bobbed in the waves as it waddled through the Pacific toward the beach. Shells flew overhead. Lester Dillon remembered those freight-train noises only too well from the First World War. Along with the rest of the men in the clumsy landing craft, he bent down a little, as if that would help if one of those shells came down here instead of on the beach. Booms up ahead said the cruisers and destroyers doing the firing were rearranging the landscape pretty drastically.
Suddenly, the landing craft’s bottom grated on sand. The swabbies who were in charge of the ship as long as it was on the water unhooked the landing ramp at the bow. It thudded down, kicking up quite a splash as it did.
Captain Bradford was hitting the beach in this landing craft, too. “Come on, y’all!” he yelled, swarming forward. “Let’s go!”
“Move! Move! Move!” Dillon added, even louder. “The longer you hang around with your thumbs up your asses, the better the chance the Japs have of dropping one on a whole bunch of you.”
Marines raced out of the boat. Their boots thudded on the steel ramp. Clutching his rifle, Dillon ran for the beach, too. As soon as he got off the ramp, he went into the water more than halfway up to his knees. It was cold water, too. He swore as he splashed shoreward.
As soon as he got up onto the beach, he threw himself flat and aimed his Springfield, looking for targets. “Keep moving, men!” Braxton Bradford shouted. “Can’t let ’em pin us down here!”
Landing craft by the dozen were vomiting Marines onto the beach. All the officers and noncoms were screaming the same kinds of things. As Platoon Sergeant Dillon ran inland, he looked back over his shoulder. The destroyers and cruisers had ceased fire, but they were still out there, ready to drop shells on anybody who gave the leathernecks trouble.
Dillon caught up with the company commander. “How are we doing, sir?”
Bradford sprawled behind a bush going brown from lack of rain. “Well,” he drawled, “it’s a hell of a lot easier when they don’t shoot back.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” Dillon agreed. “This doesn’t look a hell of a lot like a Hawaii beach, either. Ocean’s sorta green, sorta gray, not blue like it’s supposed to be.”
“Damn near froze my feet when I went in, too,” Bradford said. “I remember the first time I went into the Pacific in California. Hell, it was a hot day, and there I was at the goddamn beach, so I charged right on into the water. A minute later, I charged right on out again, too. Damn near-damn near-froze my nuts off.”
“I believe it,” Dillon said. “Like you say, the weather can get hot, but the ocean never warms up.”