The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

As always, as the morning wore on, the feeling came to Canidy that rather than coming ‘‘home,’’ he was visiting a school he had long ago attended. Though there was a photograph of his mother on the table beside his father’s chair in the living room, it produced no emotional response. He didn’t really remember her. But of course, he corrected himself, he did. What he remembered was the horrible smell in the hospital room where she had taken so long to die.

His mind had mostly shut that out, he thought, and in doing so had erased everything, including the good memories. There must have been good times. It was just that he couldn’t remember her. It wasn’t until he saw him—touched his hands—that he remembered what a good man, what a good friend, his father was, and again became aware of the depth of his feeling for him.

He was also aware that he had to be sort of a disappointment to his father, although his father of course didn’t show it. His father would have been most happy had his son followed in his footsteps, if not as a priest, then as an academic.

But Canidy’s scholastic prowess was not the result of a love for scholarly things. He wanted to fly, and the price of that was academic success. He could not hang around Cedar Rapids airport, his father told him, while his grades were bad. The payment for his Saturday flying lessons was staying on the headmaster’s list. He had simply raised his grades and kept them at a commendable level by paying attention to what was asked of him. His father’s proud belief to the contrary, he had never really had to ‘‘put his nose to the grindstone and keep it there’’ nor had he ever demonstrated ‘‘remarkable self-discipline.’’

Canidy often wondered if a son’s duty to his father included doing what the father, who was presumably the wiser, wanted him to do with his life. If that was the case, he was the undutiful son. He wanted neither to mold the characters of young men, which his father had once told him he considered the highest of privileges, nor to care for other people’s souls.

The Reverend Dr. Canidy did not press the point when his son declined the opportunity to go to morning prayer. Canidy was almost immediately sorry, but by then his father had gone, and the smart thing to do was take a nap. His old room smelled musty.

He woke at lunchtime, nervous and hungry. He didn’t want to go to the dining room and have the boys gape at him, so he drove the Ford into Cedar Rapids and had lunch in a restaurant, then drove around town until it was time to go to the airport and wait for Bitter and the Devastator to appear.

Eddie Bitter was very respectful of the Reverend Dr. Canidy when they met, and perfectly willing to put on his white uniform and give a little talk about the Naval Academy and naval aviation to the boys of St. Paul’s at the evening meal.

After the evening meal, a dozen boys came to his father’s apartment to hear more about the life of a midshipman at Annapolis and of a naval aviator. While Ed entertained the boys, Canidy and his father retired to the comfortable leather chairs of the library.

‘‘Eric Fulmar sent me a lovely New Testament in Aramaic the other day,’’ Dr. Canidy said.

‘‘Eric Fulmar? My God! Where—and how—is he these days?’’

‘‘He’s in Morocco,’’ Dr. Canidy said.

‘‘Morocco? What’s he doing in Morocco?’’

‘‘Staying out of the war, or so he says. He tells me he’s living with friends there. And his father’s German, you know. They consider Eric a German, too. So he could be drafted.’’

‘‘If I know Eric, he’s up to more than hanging around with friends,’’ Canidy said, laughing softly.

Eric Fulmar was always up to something. Fulmar had gotten the two of them into trouble more times than he’d care to remember. When Canidy had moved into the lower school at St. Paul’s after his mother’s death, he and Eric had become fast friends. Like gasoline and a match, his father said—obviously useful, but explosive when put together without adequate supervision.

Eric’s mother was Monica Carlisle, the movie star who— happily for her career and income—looked considerably younger than her actual years. Her studio didn’t want it known that Monica, instead of the virginal coed she regularly portrayed on the screen, was the mother of a son to whom (if her studio biography was to be believed) she had given birth at age seven.

The only time Monica Carlisle had made her presence felt in her son’s life was to get him out of trouble. Canidy grinned to himself, remembering, while his father expounded on the finer points of the Aramaic Bible. One incident in particular stood out among all the scrapes he and Eric had gotten into.

Toy pistols were forbidden on campus, but they were readily available from Woolworth’s five-and-ten for twenty-nine cents. And wooden matches were easily obtained from the school’s kitchen. The matches, when shot from the pistols, ignited upon contact.

This was a great discovery, but what was more exciting was the potential of the white powder on the head of the match—removed from the wooden stick and piled in quantities, this stuff did great things. And later, even under the most severe of interrogations, Canidy and Fulmar steadfastly denied any knowledge of the rash of small, foul-smelling explosions that ruined the locks of the dormitory doors and terrorized the school for a week.

Then they were caught, literally with smoking guns, for a number of crimes all at once.

The day of the annual fall nature walk for the lower school, led by the biology instructor, seemed like the perfect time to test out some hypotheses concerning their tin guns and match heads. There were lots of tempting leaf piles along the street that led to the woods. First Canidy spoke earnestly with the teacher about chlorophyll while Eric, at the rear of the procession, gleefully let fly both guns. Canidy grinned as he remembered the small tussle they’d had when Eric hadn’t shown up at the appointed time to take his turn discussing things with the teacher. So Eric got all the leaf piles on the street, and Canidy didn’t get his turn until they reached the woods.

His first four were sadly disappointing. But the fifth was a beauty. There was a sharp crack, followed a moment later by a vulgar obscenity from the biology teacher.

‘‘Shit!’’ he howled. ‘‘Jesus Christ, I’ve been shot!’’

He dropped to the ground, pulling up his trouser legs. Blood oozed from a dime-size wound in his calf.

‘‘Fulmar did it!’’ one of the boys announced righteously. ‘‘He’s got the gun!’’

A nearby teacher instinctively scooped up Fulmar by the collar of his jacket, considered for a moment what to do about Canidy, then grabbed him by the collar and marched the both of them back to the stricken biology instructor. Just then a deep, low, roaring boom reverberated from the street. Fulmar’s work in the fall leaves had reached the gas tank of a Studebaker President four-door sedan.

The fire department, three police cars, and an ambulance rushed to the scene. In addition to the Studebaker, leaf piles for three blocks were on fire. The police knew a bullet wound when they saw one, and since the kid obviously hadn’t done it with his toy pistol, that meant there was some kind of nut out there with a .22 shooting at people. Hands on their revolvers, they fanned out looking for him.

The Reverend Dr. Canidy’s high reputation and considerable influence with

in Cedar Rapids did not keep Eric and Dick out of the Cedar Rapids Children’s Home, at least not for two days. The picture in the paper showed the two boys being collared by the police.