"Is this a joke?" she asked her friend respectfully.
"Of course it's a joke!" Lorna cried.
"I don't get it, I guess," Melony admitted.
"How come Japs got squinty eyes?" Lorna asked. "Because they masturbate all the time." She paused.
"That's what I thought you said," Melony said.
"Because they shut their eyes every time they come!" Lorna said. "Their eyes get tired from all that opening and closing. That's why they can't open their eyes all the way! Get it?" Lorna asked triumphantly.
Still self-conscious about her teeth, Melony managed a tight-lipped smile. Anyone seeing the old women in the boardinghouse parlor would not have known exactly what filled them with fear and trembling: the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or Lorna and Melony.
And young Wally Worthington, who was so itchy to be a hero, danced out on the streets of Orono, where he heard the news. President Roosevelt would call it a "day of infamy," but that day meant more than infamy to Wally, whose noble and adventurous heart longed to fly a B-24 Liberator: a heavy bomber, four engines, used for bombing bridges, oil refineries, fuel depots, railroad tracks, and so forth. Somewhere, on that "day of infamy," there was a B-24 Liberator bomber waiting for young Wally Worthington to learn how to fly it.
People in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock always said that Wally had everything: money, looks, goodness, charm, the girl of his dreams--but he had courage, too, and he had in abundance youth's most dangerous qualities: optimism and restlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb
within him.
Wally enlisted in the Army Air Corps before Christmas, but they allowed him to spend Christmas at home. It would take the Army Air Corps more than a year to teach Wally the grim arts of aerial warfare.
"By that time," he told Olive and Candy in the kitchen at Ocean View, "all the fighting will probably be over. That would be just my luck."
"That would be lucky," Olive said. Candy nodded her head.
"Right!" said Homer Wells, from the other room. He was still thinking about being excused from his physical; Dr. Larch's account of Homer's heart history had sufficed. Physical examinations were given only to people who were Class I. Homer Wells was Class IV. According to his family physician, Homer had congenital pulmonic stenosis; Homer's "family physician" was Dr. Larch, whose letter to the local medical advisory board had been accepted as evidence enough for Homer's deferment--Larch was also a member of the local board.
"I asked her to marry me, but she wouldn't," Wally told Homer in their shared bedroom. "She said she'd wait for me, but she wouldn't marry me. She said she'd be my wife, but not my widow."
"Is that what you call waiting and seeing?" Homer asked Candy the next day.
"Yes," Candy said. "For years I've expected to be married to Wally. You came along second. I have to wait and see about you. And now comes the war. I have to wait and see about the war, too."
"But you made him a promise," said Homer Wells.
"Yes," Candy said. "Isn't a promise like waiting and seeing? Did you ever make a promise, and mean it--and break it?" Homer Wells's reaction was an involuntary cringe, as sudden and uncontrollable as if Candy had called him "Sunshine."
During Christmas dinner, Raymond Kendall, trying to relieve the silence, said, "I would have chosen submarines."
"You'd end up feeding lobsters," Wally said.
"That's okay," said Ray. "They been feeding me."
"You got a better chance in a plane," Wally said.
"Yes, a chance," Candy said scornfully. "Why would you want to be anywhere where all you get is a chance?"
"Good question," Olive said crossly. She let the silver serving fork fall to the meat platter with such force that the goose appeared to flinch.
"A chance is enough," said Homer Wells, who did not immediately recognize the tone in his own voice. "A chance is all we get, right? In the air, or underwater, or right here, from the minute we're born." Or from the minute we're not born, he thought; now he recognized his tone of voice--it was Dr. Larch's.
"That's a rather grim philosophy," Olive said.
"I thought you were studying anatomy," Wally said to Homer, who looked at Candy, who looked away.
They sent Wally to Fort Meade, Maryland, for the month of January. He was a faithful but terrible letter writer; he wrote his mother, he wrote to Homer and to Candy, and even to Ray, but he never explained anything; if there was a plan to what they were teaching him, Wally either didn't know it or couldn't describe it. He simply wrote in tedious detail about the last thing that had occupied his mind before beginning the letter; this included the pouch he had devised to hang from his bunk bed to separate his shoe polish from his toothpaste and the best-name-for-a-plane competition that dominated the imaginative life of Company A. He was also delighted that a cook sergeant had taught him more limericks than Senior, in his last years, had been able to remember. Every letter Wally wrote, to anyone, included a limerick; Ray liked them, and Homer liked them, but they made Candy angry and Olive was appalled. Candy and Homer showed each other the limericks Wally sent them, until Homer realized that this made Candy even angrier: the limericks Wally chose to send Candy were very mild-mannered compared to the ones Wally sent to Homer. For example, he sent this to Candy:
There was a young lady of Exeter,