"I'm thinking, Ernie, I'm thinking," McCoy said.
Then think of something.
"Does The General know about this get-rich-quick scheme of yours?" he heard himself ask.
"It's not a get-rich scheme, Ken-" Banning said, of-fended.
"Fuck you, Killer," Zimmerman interrupted...
"-and yes, he does. He said that whenever we're ready for an investment, to let him know."
"I apologize for the wiseass remark," McCoy said. "I don't know why I said that."
"Because you're a wiseass, and always have been a wiseass," Zimmerman said.
"And with that profound observation in mind, we for-give you," Banning said. "Right, Ernie?"
"Why not?" Zimmerman said.
[TWO]
"We have a small problem," Ernie McCoy said to her hus-band in the privacy of their room. "I couldn't figure out how to say `no' again."
"No to who, about what?"
"Apparently, Ernie and Ed are starting some kind of real estate development..."
"They told me."
"And Luddy thinks it would be just the thing for us when you get out of the Marine Corps."
"And?"
"They're going to propose at dinner that we go to the is-land-"
"Which island? I think there's two islands."
Ernie threw up her hands helplessly.
"-to look at it."
"General Pickering apparently did not tell them why I was sent home from Japan," McCoy said.
"I picked up on that," Ernie said. "I almost blew that too, honey."
" `Almost'?" he parroted.
"They don't know," Ernie said.
"Good. And we can't tell them, obviously."
She looked at him curiously.
"They would try to help," he explained. "Especially Ed Banning, and there's nothing he could do, except maybe get himself in trouble."
"So what do we do?"
"When Luddy proposes we go look at the island, we say, `Gee, what a swell idea!'"
"They're not talking about much money," Ernie said. "A couple of hundred thousand."
"You know how much I make in the Corps, made in the Corps. `A couple of hundred thousand dollars' is not much money."
"You sign the Internal Revenue forms, you know what our annual income is," Ernie said. "Not to reopen that sub-ject for debate, I hope."
They met each other's eyes for a moment, then Ernie went off on a tangent.
"What I was thinking, honey, is that we don't have any place to go when... if... you get out of the Corps. Not about going in with them, but this Hilton Head Island place. It might be a nice place to build a house."
"We could probably pick up a nice little place for no more than a couple of hundred thousand, right?"
She didn't reply, but he thought he saw tears forming.
"Baby, I'm sorry," he said.
"It's all right."
"I asked Zimmerman if he would go back to wearing stripes, and he said no, he wouldn't. I had already decided that I wasn't going to either, but it was nice to hear that I wasn't alone."
"I told you that was your decision," Ernie said.
"Yeah. I remember," he said.
"And I meant it," she said.
"I know, baby. But it wouldn't have worked. It just wouldn't have worked. For me, or for you."
She nodded but didn't speak.
"I don't know what's going to happen if I'm wrong," he said.
"About `the worst-case scenario'?"
He nodded.
"I hope I am wrong," McCoy said. "I hope that there is no war, that I get separated 30 June, that-"
"We could come back here and go in the real estate de-velopment business?"
"Either that, or to Jersey, and the executive trainee posi-tion your father offered me."
"He means well, sweetheart...."
"I know, and for all I know, I might find Personal Phar-maceuticals a real challenge."
"Ken, for the last goddamn time, that was Daddy's idea of trying to be a nice guy. If I had known he was going to propose that, I would have stopped him."
"You told me that, and I believe it," he said. "But to get back to the point, the worst possible scenario may be what happens. If I'm out of the Marine Corps should that hap-pen..."
"You're out, right? There's no way they can call you back in?"
"There was a light colonel, a nice guy named Brewer, in the G-1 `s office at Pendleton. He had me in his office, and he let me know that he thought it was a dirty deal to `involun-tarily separate' me just because I don't have a college de-gree. Anyway, I asked a couple of questions, and the answer to one was that the Navy Department has the right to call someone back into the service in a national emergency up to a hundred and eighty days from the date of their separation "
"Oh, God!"
"After that, the separation becomes permanent. The thinking is, I suppose, that after six months, you've forgot-ten everything you knew. But for one hundred eighty days, I'd be subject to recall."
"Maybe they wouldn't want you back."
"Because I'm a troublemaker, and got a final fitness re-port from Captain Edward C. Wilkerson, USN, using words like `irresponsible' and `lacking basic good judg-ment'? Probably not to intelligence duties-I don't even have a security clearance anymore. Did I tell you that?"
She shook her head, "no."
"But I would be a former Marine captain, presumed to have the basic skills of any Marine captain. I don't think they'd give me command of a line company, but the Corps always needs motor officers, supply officers..."
"That's so goddamned unfair!"
"This is the `worse' that priest was talking about when we got married, `for better or for worse.'"
"Oh, honey!"
"So what we're looking at, to try to start something new in our life, baby, is 1 December 1950, not the end of this month. Between now and then, we'll just have to hold our breath."
"We'll really be starting something new in our life about then," Ernie said. "If nothing goes wrong again this time."
"Nothing will go wrong this time," McCoy said, with a conviction he didn't feel. "And with that in mind, what the hell, why not, what's a measly couple of hundred thou-sand, why don't we look for a place on Banning's Island where we can build a house? We can't just sit around wait-ing for the other shoe to drop. And maybe we'll get lucky."
"Well, maybe not build a house," Ernie said. "Maybe just buy one, a small one, until we see what happens."
[THREE]
THE WILLIAM BANNING HOUSE
66 SOUTH BATTERY
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
1400 24 JUNE 1950
Stanley loaded the basket of fried chicken and "other munchables" Mother Banning had prepared so that Ken and Ernestine-Mother Banning could not force herself to refer to Mrs. McCoy as "Ernie"-would have something to eat on the road, in the middle seat of the Buick station wagon, and then went up the wide staircase to the house to an-nounce that everything was ready.
He had also loaded, in the back of the station wagon, two large, tall, cardboard tubes that The Colonel had pre-pared. One contained a plat of the Banning property on Hilton Head Island, showing the proposed subdivision, with a triple lot (A-301, A-302, and A-303) marked in red. The triple lot was on a high bluff over the Atlantic Beach- it would be necessary to construct a stairway to the beach, but what the hell, that was better than having the Atlantic Ocean come crashing through your living room in a once-in-a-century hurricane-and when the proposed golf course was built, would have a view of the fairways, far enough away from them to prevent golf balls from crash-ing into the house's windows.