The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

This picture, more than anything else, brought in Monica Carlisle’s young lawyer, Stanley Fine. Fine bought a new Studebaker President in exchange for an agreement not to press charges. In court, he argued for the Reverend Dr. Canidy’s exemplary reputation for dealing with boys, and the presiding judge of the juvenile court turned the malefactors over to the Reverend for rehabilitation. The real rehabilitation was administered by the physical-education instructor, who used a wide leather belt, which stung like hell and left red welts, but which did no real damage. Fine returned to Hollywood, leaving behind him two shiny silver dollars that were immediately traded in at Woolworth’s for two more tin guns.

The question of expelling Eric came up, but it was dismissed. The two kids were in their last year at St. Paul’s Lower School. In the fall, Canidy would be sent to St. Mark’s School in Southboro, Mass., and Dr. Canidy recommended to Monica Carlisle that a military school might be perfect for her son’s high-school education. The two friends believed they would never see each other again after they graduated from St. Paul’s.

But when Canidy arrived in Southboro, Fulmar was waiting for him. And grinning.

‘‘It took two full weeks of tantrums,’’ he announced, doing a little joyful jig. His just-a-little-too-long blond hair kept flopping over his eyes, but he was too happy to notice. ‘‘But they finally caved in. What is this place, anyway? You know how hard it was to get me in here?’’

They had not quite two years together at St. Mark’s; then Fulmar was sent to stay with his father in Europe, where he was to continue his education.

They exchanged the usual letters for a while, but eventually stopped. Still, in Canidy’s mind, Eric Fulmar was one hell of a guy.

Canidy focused his attention back on his father in time to catch the tail end of his discourse on the Bible.

‘‘It is a lovely book, Dad. When you write to Eric again, make sure you tell him I said hello.’’

‘‘I’ve kept him abreast of your activities,’’ his father said. ‘‘He’s asked about you.’’

‘‘Well, tell him I said hello,’’ Canidy repeated. He was not actually surprised that Fulmar had succeeded in ducking the German draft. If nothing else, Fulmar was resourceful. Even as a little boy, he had had to learn to take care of himself, for with the exceptions of the Reverend Dr. Canidy and the lawyer, Stanley Fine, who had gotten them out of the arson episode, no adult had ever really given a damn about him.

In the morning, the Reverend Dr. Canidy drove them to the airfield in Dick’s car.

He insisted on offering a prayer for their safe journey, and they stood for a moment with their heads bowed beside the Devastator.

As he looked up at his father after the prayer, Canidy was surprised that his eyes were watering and his throat was constricted.

3

The parade for the graduating pilots was held at 0930 Friday morning. The prescribed uniform for the staff (the IPs) was dress whites, with swords and medals. Neither Canidy nor Bitter had any medals yet, but the brass, particularly the older brass, had rows of them. From the World War, Canidy thought. The last World War.

The swords were absurd. No naval officer had ever used a sword in the last war, and now they were getting ready for another war, and they still wore them. He was amused that he would be taking the sword (because he had forgotten to pack it with the things he had taken to Cedar Rapids and didn’t know what else to do with it) to China.

The parade was over at 1100 hours. They put their swords in the trunk of Bitter’s Buick, where they had previously packed overnight bags, and left the base in their dress whites. They took off their uniform caps as soon as they were out of Pensacola, put the roof down, and headed toward Mobile.

They crossed the causeway at the upper end of Mobile Bay, and as they approached Mobile, they came to the Mobile Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. A dozen ships— cargo ships, tankers, and what looked like the hull of a light cruiser—were on the ways in various stages of construction.

‘‘My cousin Mark works there,’’ Bitter said. ‘‘He’ll be at The Plantation. He’s the assistant superintendent of construction. ’’

That was not how Chesty Whittaker had described Mark Chambers’s role at the shipyard. Chesty said he owned it.

‘‘I’m impressed,’’ Canidy replied.

He feared again that he was opening some Pandora’s box by going where Sue-Ellen was.

But then he decided to hell with it. What he would do would be the perfect gentleman, faithfully pretending that he had never seen her before. If that made her a little uncomfortable, that was probably an appropriate punishment for a married woman who went around screwing strange sailors.

4

The deeper the Crescent moved into the Deep South, the more convinced Sarah Child felt that the trip was a mistake. Sarah was slight, with dark eyes, light complexion, and black hair; she was nineteen years old, a Bryn Mawr sophomore, and a New Yorker. Her father, a banker, was the grandson of a banker who had been sent from Frankfurt am Main to open a New York branch. The grandfather and his son, and Sarah’s father, had been more successful in the New World than anyone in Frankfurt had dreamed. Frankfurt was thus now considered one of several overseas branches of the New York bank.

Her best friends at Bryn Mawr, Ann Chambers and Charity Hoche, were what Sarah thought of as ‘‘healthy’’ (that is, taller, heavier, and larger-bosomed), blond, fair-skinned, Southerners and Protestant Christian.

Bryn Mawr was one thing, and entertaining the girls at the Child apartment on East Sixty-fourth Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan was one thing, but coming south with them to a ‘‘plantation’’ was another.

Sarah could not put her finger on precisely why she was scared and uncomfortable, but that didn’t change anything. Partly, she knew, it was because her mother (a woman with what was called—to be nice—a nervous condition) was opposed to her coming down here, and partly it was because Sarah hadn’t really had much experience with these kinds of people. Her first night at Bryn Mawr had been the first time she had been separated from her parents overnight. And then later Ann and Charity had become the first friends she’d ever made who weren’t Jews.

They got off the Crescent in Montgomery, Alabama (‘‘Heart of Dixie,’’ a sign proclaimed. ‘‘See the first capital of the Confederate States of America"), at 5:20 P.M. on Thursday. An enormous, very black man named Robert met them with Ann Chambers’s mother’s Lincoln. Ten minutes later, they were driving out of town down a narrow, winding macadam road at seventy-five miles an hour into a seemingly endless forest of pine trees. An hour and a half later, the Lincoln stopped before the white columns of a huge house.

The Chamberses had held dinner for them, and they’d eaten—off fine china, with ancient silver, served by servants in aprons—in a huge dining room under the portrait of a man in a Confederate colonel’s uniform.