Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (8 page)

“I heard you put up a battle,” Byrnes said the next morning when Wolfe walked up to the tractor on which he sat. Wolfe nodded. It had taken all three crews to subdue him. The mechanics had laughed but offered no assistance. “Told you not to fight back, didn’t I? Well, let’s see the damage,” Byrnes said. He had not participated in the ritual. Wolfe pulled up his shirt. His chest and stomach were bright red, with hints of blue and purple outlines of fingers in places. Byrnes gave Wolfe’s stomach a quick backhand slap, eliciting a grimace but no sound from Wolfe. Involuntary tears filled Wolfe’s eyes. He turned and walked away from the tractor and toward his duty station.

With flying operations suspended as
Oriskany
rendezvoused with the hospital ship USS
Repose
to offload injured and then follow
Forrestal
to Subic Bay, Byrnes pulled Wolfe from his duty station. He began instructing Wolfe on how to drive a tractor that afternoon. He and Wolfe hitched two tow bars to the tractor, one after the other, first on the rear of the tractor, then on the front. Wolfe practiced following Byrnes’s directions. The second tow bar took the place of an aircraft. After about an hour, they parked the tractor, Wolfe stayed in the driver’s seat. Byrnes sat on the tractor’s front deck next to a pile of tiedown chains.

“Not bad, Wolfe,” Byrnes said. “You’ll make a decent driver with a little more practice. I want everyone in the crew to know how to do every job. Makes us more efficient. We can divide into two smaller crews if necessary. Once you can drive and have more experience under the aircraft, I’ll teach you about being a safety watch. Any questions?”

Still angry about the pink belly and Byrnes’s late insult, Wolfe shook his head. Byrnes laughed. “Still pissed?” Byrnes asked. Wolfe nodded. “You’ve worked hard. We still have some time. Let’s BS a while.” Byrnes waved off some of the hangar bay crew, when they began to cluster around the tractor. “Back to work, you slackers,” Byrnes laughed. “I’m working with Wolfe today. You already know this stuff. The boot needs more training.”

The crew wandered away laughing. “Suck ass,” was the nicest comment Wolfe heard anyone direct at him.

“What do you want to know that you don’t know already?” Byrnes asked.

“There’s no such thing as a left-handed padeye wrench, is there?” Wolfe said.

Grinning, Byrnes shook his head. “Padeyes are welded to the deck. No right-handed wrenches or ignition keys for choppers either.”

Turning personal, Wolfe asked the airman yellowshirt, “What nationality are your ancestors? You could pass for American Indian, Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino.”

“My mother is Japanese,” Byrnes said. “My father is from Ohio, European, mainly Irish. He flew Hellcats in World War II, was one of the first Americans to occupy Japan.”

“Navy family, or draftee?” Wolfe asked.

“Long line of sailors, all the way back to John Paul Jones if you believe my grandfather. He was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. My father graduated from the Naval Academy in 1942, flew off carriers during the war.”

“Is he still flying?” Wolfe asked, beginning to like the Japanese-American sailor.

“No,” Byrnes said, changing the subject abruptly. “Time for chow. Tell you what, I’ll buy.” Byrnes grabbed the whistle that hung on the lanyard around his neck and blew it. The remainder of the crew gathered around the tractor parked near the starboard elevator opening. He spoke to the elevator operator. “Tell hangar deck control we’re going to chow,” he said. “You, too.”

After communicating through the sound powered phones, the operator gave Byrnes a thumbs up. The crew headed for the chow line. Usually one or two men went to chow at a time, so as not to handicap the crew while working. Infrequently did the whole crew manage to eat together. With air operations cancelled, the crew would not be missed.

CHAPTER 11

Wolfe sat at his dining room table talking on his cell phone. It felt warm in his hand, the lithium ion battery having had a workout. The charging cord ran across the table and into the transformer next to the buffet. “You have my deepest sympathies,” Wolfe said to the person on the other end of the call. “And I will relay your condolences to Mrs. Clemons.”

He heard the front door to his house open and a quiet voice say, “Dad? Dad? Are you home?”

Quietly, he closed the spiral loose-leaf notebook, after scribbling himself a quick note. He laid Chief Clemons’s black book on top of the notebook. “In here, KayLan,” he said. He rose to his feet, stiff knees and back joints painful. He had been sitting far too long.

“Wow!” she said, entering the room. “What happened to the man-cave, bachelor pad? The curtains are open, sunlight is streaming in. No piles of dirty laundry. No dirty dishes in the sink. You’ve even showered and shaved. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Wolfe said.

“Nothing?”

“Well, I found a project. Kind of,” he said and shrugged. He placed one arm around her shoulder and planted a kiss on her forehead. “How’s my baby girl?”

“No longer a baby, as you well know. First week of the second summer session was a bitch, though,” Kayla Anne said. She slipped into the kitchen and rummaged through the pantry. Not finding anything appetizing in the pantry, she opened the freezer side of the refrigerator. Eyes widening, she pulled a Nutty Buddy ice cream cone from the fridge and began to unwrap it. “Mind if I eat this? You must have twelve in there. Mom know?”

“Your mom’s not here. And she refused to make desserts while she was. Thought I would follow the same diet. Fat chance! Wanted to maintain her figure, she said.”

“And yours.”

“I don’t have a figure. I’m a man,” Wolfe said.

“Sure you do, Pops. It’s a zero.”

Wolfe shook his head. He worked at maintaining his weight by exercising, when not depressed. Unfortunately, gaining weight made him depressed. “You came home to pick on me?” he asked.

His daughter sat in the chair across from his, munching on the ice cream cone in one hand. He sat in front of his notebook. “No,” she said. “I want to borrow the car for the weekend. A friend and I want to go to Cumberland Island and Savannah.”

“Serious friend? And he doesn’t have his own car?” Wolfe teased.

“
Her
family is local, too. They don’t let her have a car at school, either. Like my parents. Too strict, you know?” She picked up Clemons’s black notebook and thumbed through it with one hand before Wolfe could stop her. He reached for it, but she leaned backward out of his reach. “A lot of women’s names in here, Dad. Is this your little black book?”

“That’s private,” he said, leaning farther forward and pulling it from her hand. “Belonged to a recently deceased navy chief. His wife lent it to me.”

Intrigued, Kayla asked, “Why?”

“She wanted me to contact the people in it and tell them her ex-husband had died. She took care of him while he was sick, but she can’t stomach the idea of calling his ex-girlfriends and navy buddies who helped break up their marriage.”

“So, was this guy a friend of yours, or one of your patients?”

“We had mutual friends on one of the carriers I was on, eons ago,” Wolfe said.

“Ancient history. Still using Roman numerals back then, I suppose,” Kayla said.

“Too funny.” Wolfe reached into one back pocket and retrieved the key to the Prius. Leaning farther forward, he pulled his wallet from his other back pocket, drew out a twenty-dollar bill, and handed that and the key to Kayla Anne. “It needs gas. Drive carefully.”

“That’s it? No lecture about studying hard over the weekend. About summer school being so much harder than a regular semester? What’s going on, Dad?”

Absently, Wolfe said, “Nothing.” He opened the notebook and leafed through several pages. His daughter tried to read what he had written, but the notebook was upside down to her, and her father’s handwriting, like most physicians, was indecipherable. “Have a good time.”

Kayla’s eyes widened. She pouted and said, “You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you? Maybe I should stay home today and tomorrow. I’ll cook meals for you. Keep an eye on you, like Mom wants me to.”

Wolfe stood. He walked around the table and gently pulled her out of her chair by the elbow. “Dad,” she said, startled. Silently, he walked her through the laundry room and opened the door to the garage. Tenderly directing her into the garage, he pressed a button on the small black box on the wall. The garage door began to open. “You won’t need the car?” she said.

“I’ll drive the van if I have to go anywhere. Good-bye,” he said. “Have fun. Drive carefully. Be back by 6 p.m. on Sunday.” Without waiting for her to respond, he closed the door. He locked the deadbolt and walked to the great room. On his way to the dining table, he flipped the deadbolt on the front door, also. With his jet engine induced severe tinnitus, he didn’t hear the car start or the garage door close, but he knew they had because Kayla did not reappear. Sitting at the table, he forgot about his daughter.

***

“Thanks for letting me interrupt your weekend, Chief,” Wolfe told Noble. The two men sat on the metallic bench near the Bridge of Lions. To their right a boisterous crowd of middle school-aged kids played miniature golf. A sea breeze cooled them while palm trees shaded them from the tropical sun. At seventy-five degrees, the morning temperature seemed perfect. The smells of the ocean and sight of sea gulls nearby reminded Wolfe of being onboard the carrier.

“No problem,” Noble said. “Always available for a friend, night or day, weekday or weekend. Anytime.”

“Wife still smothering you?” Wolfe asked, smile on his face.

“Like a wet blanket in a car wash,” Noble said. He laughed. “I really don’t like you, Doc, but I’ll do anything to get away from that woman, except divorce her. That would be expensive.”

Wolfe laughed, “And here I thought you loved me, Chief.”

“You can call me Maurice,” Noble said, grinning at his own joke. “Haven’t I told you that before?”

“Yeah, but I find it difficult to do. Old habits are hard to break. Besides, if I called you anything other than Chief, I expect
Smoke
might slip out. Did you resent that nickname? I apologize if it bothered you.”

“Different time, different place, Doc,” Noble said. He leaned his head back and scanned the sky, pointing. An E-2D from the Grumman factory flew low overhead, approaching the St. Augustine airport and the Grumman hangar where it had been assembled.

Wolfe nodded, seeing the new navy aircraft. The turboprop engines and their curved propeller blades whined as the aircraft glided overhead. The giant radome on top of the fuselage made its silhouette distinctive. He squinted through the sunlight at the modern version of the earlier E-2s he had moved around on aircraft carriers forty years before, “Always brings back memories,” he said.

“There weren’t many black sailors then,” Noble said. “We put up with what we had to, in order to survive. Hell, when I joined at the end of the Korean War, the services had only been integrated for about five years. Truman did that in 1948. I thought I was going to be forced to be a cook, or worse, some admiral’s orderly.” Noble paused, evidently mentally rehashing a poignant moment. Wolfe watched him swallow hard, grit his teeth, then relax. “So, what do you want to know?” he asked Wolfe.

Wolfe pulled Chief Clemons’s black notebook from the side pocket of his cargo shorts. He handed it to Noble. “You were on
Oriskany
the same time as Clemons. Do you know anyone in this book?”

Noble opened the book. Slowly he thumbed through the pages, mumbling to himself. “Yeah, Akers. Geez, she was such a whore. Anderson, V-2, catapults. Andrews, what an ass. Carter,” he laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Wolfe asked.

“This guy Carter. Second-class, engine mechanic. Black dude. White wife. Always in trouble with the captain. He’d go out to sea. His wife would max out his credit cards. We’d come home after a cruise. The captain had to have disbursing hold his pay until the credit cards were paid off. The poor s.o.b. had to work a second job in order to eat. He’d get the cards paid off in five to six months and make up with his wife. Then we’d go on another cruise. And she’d do the same thing all over again.” Noble laughed. “Wish I knew how that turned out.”

“I’ll ask if I get in touch with him. Know anyone else?”

Flipping pages slowly, Noble scanned the book some more. “Freeman. Black cook. Whenever anyone asked him if he was going to re-up, he’d say no. He told everyone he had an offer to work on the railroad in Thailand. Someone would always ask him, ‘Doing what?’ He’d say, ‘Laying Thais.’ He died from AIDS in Bangkok in 1990. So I guess he got the job.”

Wolfe grimaced. As a physician, he knew more than he wanted to know about AIDS and HIV. He waited. Noble turned the pages slowly.

“Well, even you know this bastard,” Noble said. He leaned toward Wolfe on the bench, tilting the book for Wolfe to see more clearly. “Deke Jameson. Thief. Liar. He had a posse. Haven’t seen their names in here yet, though.”

“Look on the last page,” Wolfe said. “There’s a list of names there. They aren’t alphabetical. Couldn’t figure that out. Five of them have asterisks by their names.”

Nodding, Noble turned to the last page. After scanning the list, he said, “And there they are, the unholy posse: Jameson, Andrews, Gregg, Carr, Montgomery, Little. Yep. The names with the asterisks are guys who are dead. Montgomery died in Kuwait. A drunk driver killed Holden in a head-on collision in Puget. This is Jameson’s posse, all right, if you include Clemons. They were tight. No one else ever joined their clan, or clique, I guess. We used to debate what they saw in one another, finally laughed it off. Someone suggested they had found a treasure map and each man kept part of it. After they retired they were going to piece it back together and dig up the gold.”