The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

He handed a snifter to Canidy and raised his own.

‘‘Love, Lieutenant Canidy,’’ he said.

‘‘Love, Lieutenant Whittaker,’’ Canidy said.

The Plantation Bibb County, Alabama June 17, 1941

Ann Chambers had known since she was fourteen that she had inherited her father’s character and his brains and that her brothers Mark and Charley had gotten from their mother their charm and their tendency to see things as they wished they were, rather than as they really were.

They were considered charming and pleasant—and they were. Ann was considered assertive and aggressive—and she was. In fact, she had a masculine mind, she thought. She much preferred the company of men to women. And she felt she understood men in ways her girlfriends didn’t . . . couldn’t; Sarah, for instance, didn’t. Sarah had gotten itchy britches from Ed Bitter the moment she had seen him, and she had done everything but back up to him like a bitch in heat.

Ann didn’t think that was going to get Eddie Bitter to make a play for Sarah. Eddie was the Boy Scout type, who would be frightened away if a girl made herself readily available to him. All Sarah had succeeded in doing was to make him uncomfortable. As a general rule of thumb, Ann Chambers believed that the more desirable a man was, the less responsive he was to feminine wiles.

She had, she admitted, itchy britches for Dick Canidy. She had been able to face this fact from practically the moment she laid eyes on him. It had been almost immediately apparent to her that Canidy was cut from the same bolt of cloth as her father. And she knew that they hadn’t made very much of that particular material.

Even Sue-Ellen had seen this special character, whatever it was, in Dick Canidy. Ann had seen Sue-Ellen looking at him, and she wasn’t looking at him with the eyes of a ‘‘nice’’ wife and mother. Ann had heard rumors that Sue-Ellen was playing around on her husband, and Ann’s reaction was that her damned-fool brother should have known better than to marry a woman who was smarter and stronger than he was. Ann was reasonably sure that, given the opportunity, Sue-Ellen might very well have made a play for Dick Canidy.

There had been no opportunity for that, of course. Too many people around and nowhere to go.

Too many people around had been her problem, too. Canidy would not have responded to staring soulfully at him, the way Sarah had stared at Ed Bitter, and staring soulfully was the only card Ann could have played in a house full of people. If she had given him the goofy looks, Ann was sure Canidy would have pegged her as a college tease, just a fool kid.

The way to snag Dick Canidy was to make him come to her. She thought she had already made the first correct step in that direction: she had discussed flying with him. And he had been genuinely surprised to learn that she wasn’t cooing at him like a schoolgirl who simply was thrilled by aviators, but that she had her private license, two hundred fifty hours, and had flown the Beech solo cross-country to San Francisco.

When he had time to turn that over in his mind, he would get the idea that she was something special and come after her. She would elude him until he was snared. She would become first his friend, and then give him the sex that all men were after. What more could he ask for?

Dick Canidy was the man she wanted to marry. The proof that she made a sound judgment about him was that her father really liked him. And her father had a favorite saying when he was with his friends: ‘‘The best thing about being my age, and in my position in life, is that I no longer have to suffer fools.’’

Dick Canidy was the first young man she ever saw her father seeking out because he was genuinely interested in what he had to say.

There wasn’t much time. She was going to have to move fast, to set her hook in him before he went swimming in distant waters.

Sarah and Charity stayed five days, until June 17, and then Ann and her mother drove them to Montgomery and put them on the train back up north. On the way back to The Plantation, Ann asked her mother if it would be all right if she asked Eddie and Dick Canidy to come for another weekend.

‘‘Well, of course,’’ her mother said. ‘‘You liked him, didn’t you?’’

‘‘I’m going to marry him,’’ Ann said.

‘‘This weekend, or after he comes back from China?’’ her mother replied dryly.

‘‘I may get unofficially engaged this weekend,’’ Ann said, ‘‘but we’ll wait until he comes back from China to get married. ’’

‘‘You seem very, very sure of yourself,’’ Jenny Chambers said. ‘‘What are you going to do if he has other plans for the weekend?’’

‘‘He wouldn’t dare!’’ Ann said.

She called Pensacola Naval Air Station the moment she got back to The Lodge. She asked for Canidy, and when the operator rang the number, another operator came on and said that number was no longer in service. Then she asked for Ed Bitter’s number. It was the same number she had been given for Dick Canidy.

‘‘Let me talk to the base public information officer,’’ Ann said. Her mother walked into the library in time to hear and raised her eyebrows.

‘‘Public information, Journalist Anderson speaking, sir.’’

‘‘Ann Chambers,’’ she said. ‘‘Nashville Courier-Gazette.’’

Jenny Chambers’s eyebrows rose even higher and she shook her head.

‘‘What can the Navy do for the Courier-Gazette?’’

‘‘I’m trying to run down one of two sailors,’’ she said. ‘‘Two lieutenants, one of them named Bitter, Edwin, and other one named Canidy, Richard.’’