Pfitz had Lydecker transferred from aircraft crew to catapult maintenance, one of the worst details on the ship. It meant hours on the exposed bow of the carrier as it steamed full speed into the wind for a mission launch. Lydecker’s new job was to shackle the planes on to the towing block that protruded from the indented track of the catapult. He wore a huge goggled helmet with bulging ear protectors that made him look like some insect-headed alien or demented astronaut. It was a cheerless, companionless job. The rush of wind made his bright nylon coveralls crack like a pennant in a hurricane, and conversation of any kind was impossible due to the shattering roar of jet engines driven at full thrust As the plane was moved into take-off position, Lydecker would run forward with the cumbersome steel-cable towing strop. He would secure each end of the strop to pinions in the undercarriage bay or just below the leading edge of the wings, and slip the middle over the angled blade of the towing block. He then darted out from beneath the plane, giving a thumbs-up to the catapult officer. If everything was in order the officer held five fingers up to the pilot of the plane, who saluted his acknowledgment Then, like some ardent coach cheering on his team, the catapult officer dropped to one knee, swept his arm forward, and a seaman on a catwalk across the deck pressed the launch button. The catapult would be released, hurling the plane, on full afterburn, along the narrow expanse of deck and into the air. The cable, too, would be flung out ahead of the carrier, dropping away from the climbing plane to splash forlornly into the sea in a tiny flurry of spray. The next plane was then towed into the take-off position, ghostly wreaths of steam hissing from the length of the catapult track.
Some strange impulse made Lydecker keep the beer can Pfitz had thrown at him. It stood on a small shelf above his bunk beside his electric razor and a creased Polaroid snapshot of the movie usherette. For a week after the incident he had worn adhesive tape on his forehead; then the scab had sloughed off, leaving a paler stripe on his already pale skin. Lydecker found that he unconsciously kept touching the thin scar, repeatedly running his forefinger over it, as if he had to keep reminding himself of its presence, like a teenager with his first moustache.
Denied the satisfaction of working on a plane, Lydecker’s life became one of routine mindless boredom. There were long periods of inactivity or futile chores. There was the deadening monotony of the catapult maintenance crew; the endless scurrying beneath screaming jets with the heavy cable, the grease thick on his gloves as he fought with recalcitrant pinions. Sometimes the frequent malfunctioning of the Chester B.’s old steam catapult brought tedious afternoons of stripping the mechanism down, searching for faults and elusive defects. The pressure that was required to fling tons of lethal weaponry into the air caused valves to blow back, bearings to jam and gauges to crack and leak. There were many accidents. Planes, given insufficient lift from the catapult, belly-landing in the sea; a tardily raised blast deflector had caused a parked helicopter to be flipped overboard; combat-dazed pilots had misjudged their landings and ploughed off the end of the carrier. Once a deck-tractor had momentarily stuck in reverse and backed a Skyhawk into the ocean — just like kicking a pebble off a dock.
Throughout this time Lydecker appeased his tired and numb body by hating Pfitz. The man came to obsess him. His throat would be thick with emotion and fury as he forced the launching cable onto the Crusader’s grips. Sometimes he would wander over to the plane when the crew were working on it, but he was invariably met with insults and told to stay away. Slowly he came to feel that Pfitz had deliberately set out to deprive his life of the little meaning and satisfaction it had, and for some reason the only solace he found, the only way he knew of combating this emptiness, was to replace it with his hatred. The emotion gave his life a structure of sorts; it became something he could rely on, constant and unwavering, like a picture he had once seen of Saint Paul’s cathedral in the London blitz. Lydecker’s hatred was a familiar comfort; it had done able service from his earliest days. It had sustained him as he had lain in bed and listened to his father batter his frail mother in a frenzy of crapulous rage. It had provided support when Werbel took him off cars and put him on the pumps and had then restricted him to cleaning the rest rooms and sweeping the concrete apron. As he had freed plugged drains or picked sodden cigar butts from chill pools of oil, listening to the laughter and banter of the mechanics in the warm garage, all that had kept his mind from tilting over into twitching insanity was his passionate hatred. It was this and the knowledge that no matter what Werbel made him do, no matter how he was debased by him, the hate lived on — secretly firing and fueling his spirit. He was grateful to the Navy for allowing the hate to subside for a while. He still had no friends, was still one of the few despised and ignored that figure in any large company, but his ability with machinery was recognized and his self-esteem inched up from ground zero. He found his reward in the perfect roar of an engine, the smooth retraction of an undercarriage, or the clean function of an aileron. Never having asked for much, he needed nothing more, and his life reached a plateau of tolerance which was as close as he’d come to happiness. Until Pfitz had lost his Phantom.
Working away from Pfitz’s immediate sphere of influence, Lydecker became more aware of the man’s other obsession. Pfitz’s fascination with napalm was the subject of bemused reflection among the members of the catapult maintenance crew. “Hell, there goes Fireball Pfitz,” one of them would remark, and there would ensue some discussion about the “poor fuckin’ gooks.” Lydecker didn’t pay much attention at first. He had never been to Vietnam, even though he’d been on the Yankee Station for four months. The fleet made an endless patrol, usually just over the horizon from the coast, rarely steaming into sight unless cruisers or destroyers were called to bring their large guns into play. But gradually Lydecker came to see that Pfitz hated Vietnam as much as he loathed Lydecker himself; and he felt an involuntary sympathy start up in his body as Pfitz lovingly recounted, to the wide-mouthed audience of his ground crew, the devastation eight canisters of napalm had wrought in a straw village. The Rose Train climbed the gradients into the sky weighted with seething latent fire like some modern archangelic predator. Lydecker would watch it go, his head a confused muddle of thoughts and sensations.
And each night, exhausted, he would gaze at the slightly buckled beer can as if it were some icon or idol of his hate. In the distorted planes of its surface he seemed to see a vague metallic template of Pfitz’s bullish features. He would stroke the scar on his forehead and think about Pfitz and the men he had known like him — his father and Werbel — and the intensity of his hatred brought his flesh up in goose pimples. He would clutch the sides of his bunk and screw his eyes tight shut as if in the grip of an acute migraine attack. Men like that shouldn’t be allowed to go about unhindered, he would think distractedly; something should be done to them.
Then one day Pfitz had an engine cut out as Lydecker was shackling the expendable wire bridle to the nose wheel of the Crusader. The air vibrated with the idling jets of planes waiting in line and the hot gases of the exhausts made the crowded deck of the carrier shimmer and dance in the haze. Pfitz had to be towed off line and there was some delay as Lydecker fought to free the cable from the stiff nose-wheel clamps. Pfitz had raised his cockpit canopy and as Lydecker stood up, the cable finally released, he saw Pfitz’s purple enraged face screaming inaudible obscenities at him through arcs of spittle. It was as if Lydecker had been responsible for the cutout, as if his particular touch on the nose wheel had mysteriously spooked the functioning of the jet. And in the waves of Pfitz’s anger, Lydecker was disturbed by the sudden realization that Pfitz was a hater, too; that, like him, he needed his hate, needed his malice to beat the world.