Cradle (9 page)

An overpowering hunger attacked Vernon and Joanna. They put on their jackets and walked
out into the cold December air to find something to eat. Arm in arm they paraded down
the suburban street, finding a convenience store that was still open about half a
mile from their motel. They bought Cokes and potato crisps, packets of sweets and
chocolate. Joanna opened the crisps while they were still in the store. She put one
in Vernon’s mouth and they ‘Mmmed’ while the checkout clerk laughed with them.

Vernon could not believe the taste of the crisps. He ate the entire packet while they
were walking back to their room. When he was finished, Vernon burst spontaneously
into song, singing the Beatles’ ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. Joanna joined in vigorously
on the chorus. She reached up with the side of her fist and playfully banged on the
top of his head. Vernon felt jaunty, liberated, as if he had known Joanna forever.
He put his arm around her and kissed her ostentatiously as they turned into the driveway
leading to their motel.

They sat on the floor with their snacks spread out in front of them. Vernon turned
on the radio. It was tuned to a classical station in the middle of a symphony. Vernon
was mesmerized by the sound. For the first time in his life, Vernon could actually
hear the individual instruments of the orchestra in his head. He visualized a stage
and saw the musicians pulling their bows across the violins. He was fascinated and
excited. Vernon told Joanna that all his senses were alive.

To Joanna Carr, it seemed that Vernon was finally opening up. When he leaned over
to kiss her, she was more than willing. They kissed sweetly but deeply several times
while the symphony was playing. During a momentary break, Joanna tuned the radio to
a rock and roll station. The music changed the pace of their kissing. Driving, jangling
sounds increased the tempo and their kisses became more passionate. In his ardour
Vernon pushed Joanna down on the floor and they kissed over and over again as they
lay side by side, still fully clothed. They became enthralled by the strength of their
arousal.

The radio now started playing ‘Light My Fire’ by the Doors. And Vernon Allen Winters
of Columbus, Indiana, third year midshipman at the US Naval Academy, was no longer
a virgin by the time the long song was over. Vernon had never lost control of himself
before in his entire life. But when Joanna stroked the outline of his swollen penis
underneath his jeans, it was as if a giant wall of steel and concrete suddenly gave
way. Years later Vernon would still marvel at the raw passion he showed for two, maybe
three minutes. The combination of Joanna’s insistent kisses, the grass, and the driving
rhythms of the music pushed him over the edge. He was an animal. Still on the floor
of the motel room, he pulled vigorously on Joanna’s jeans several times, nearly tearing
them as he managed to free them from her hips. Her briefs half-followed them. Vernon
grabbed them roughly and pulled them down the rest of the way while he was squirming
out of his own jeans.

Joanna tried in a quiet voice to slow Vernon down, to suggest that maybe the bed would
be better. Or at least it would be more pleasant if they actually took off their shoes
and socks and didn’t make love with their trousers around their ankles restricting
their movement. But Vernon was beyond listening. Years of restraint left him no ability
to deal with his own surging desire. He was possessed. He crawled on top of Joanna,
a look of frightening seriousness on his face. For the first time she was scared and
her sudden fear heightened her sexual excitement. Vernon struggled for a few seconds
to find the right spot and then entered her abruptly and forcefully. Joanna felt him
drive once, twice, and then shudder all over. He was done in maybe ten seconds. She
intuitively knew that it had been his first time, and the pleasure of that knowledge
outweighed her bruised feelings about his lack of finesse and gentleness.

Vernon said nothing and quickly fell asleep on the floor next to Joanna. She went
to the bed, pulled the bedspread off, cuddled into Vernon’s arms on the floor, and
wrapped the spread around them. She smiled to herself and drifted off to sleep, still
a little puzzled by this cadet lying next to her. But she knew that they were now
special to each other.

How special Joanna would never really know. When Vernon woke up the middle of the
night, he felt an overpowering sense of guilt. He could not believe that he had smoked
dope and then virtually raped a girl he hardly knew. He had lost control. He had been
unable to stop what he was doing and had clearly crossed the bounds of propriety.
He winced when he thought about what his parents (or worse, Betty and Reverend Pendleton)
would think about him if they could have seen what he had done. Then the guilt gave
way to fear. Vernon imagined that Joanna was pregnant, that he had to leave Annapolis
and marry her (What would he do? What kind of job would he have if he were not a naval
officer?), that he had to explain all this to his parents and to the Pendletons. Worse
still, he next imagined that at any minute the motel would be raided and the police
would find the butt of the joint. He would first be kicked out of the Academy for
drug abuse,
then
find out that he had made a girl pregnant.

Vernon Winters was now really scared. Lying on the floor of a motel room on the outskirts
of Philadelphia at three o’clock on a Sunday morning, he began to pray in earnest.
‘Dear God,’ Vernon Winters prayed, asking for something specific for himself for the
first time since he asked God to help him on the day that he took his school exams,
‘let me get out of this without harm and I will become the most perfectly disciplined
naval officer you have ever seen. I will dedicate my life to defending this country
that honours you. Just please help me.’

Eventually Vernon managed to fall asleep again. But his sleep was fitful and disturbed
by vivid dreams. In one dream Vernon was dressed in his midshipman’s uniform but was
on stage back at the Columbus Presbyterian Church. It was the Easter pageant and he
was again Christ, dragging the cross to Calvary. The sharp edge of the cross on his
shoulder was cutting through his uniform shirt and Vernon was aware of anxiety that
he might not pass inspection. He stumbled and fell; the cross cut deeper through the
uniform as he had feared and he could see some blood running down his arm.

‘Crucify him,’ Vernon heard someone shout in the dream. ‘Crucify him,’ a group of
people in the audience shouted together as Vernon tried vainly to see through the
klieg lights. He woke up sweating. For a couple of moments he was disoriented. Then
again his emotions went the cycle from disgust to depression to fear as he played
through the events of the night before.

Joanna was tender and affectionate after she woke up but Vernon was very distant.
He explained his attitude by saying he was worried about his coming exams. A couple
of times Joanna started to talk about what had happened the night before, but each
time he rapidly changed the subject. Vernon suffered through brunch and the drive
back to College Park to Joanna’s sorority house. Joanna tried to kiss him meaningfully
when they parted but Vernon did not reciprocate. He was in a hurry to forget the entire
weekend. Back in the privacy of his own room in Annapolis, he contritely bargained
again with God to let him escape unscathed.

Midshipman Vernon Winters was true to his word. He not only never talked to Joanna
Carr again (she called and failed to reach him a couple of times, sent two letters
that were unanswered, and then gave up), he also gave up dating altogether during
his final eighteen months at Annapolis. He worked very hard on his studies and attended
chapel, as he had promised God, twice each week.

He graduated with honours and did his initial tour of duty on a large aircraft carrier.
Two years later, in June 1974, after Betty Pendleton had completed college and obtained
her teacher’s certificate, Vernon married her in the Columbus Presbyterian Church
where they had played Joseph and Mary a dozen years earlier. They moved to Norfolk,
Virginia, and Vernon believed that the pattern of his life was set. His life would
be going out to sea for long stretches and then coming home for short stays with Betty
and any children they might have.

Vernon regularly thanked God for keeping up His part of the bargain and he dedicated
himself to being the finest officer in the US Navy. All of his fitness reports praised
his dependability and thoroughness. His commanding officers openly told him that he
was admiral material. Until Libya.

Or more specifically, until he returned home after the Libyan action. For the entire
world changed for Vernon Allen Winters during the few weeks after the American attack
against Gaddafi.

Carol and Troy were sitting in deck chairs at the front of the
Florida Queen
. They were facing forward in the boat, toward the ocean and the warm afternoon sun.
Carol had removed her purple blouse to reveal the top of a one-piece blue bathing
suit, but she was still wearing her white cotton slacks. Troy was shirtless in a white
surfing outfit that came most of the way down his legs. His body was lean and sinewy,
fit but not overly muscled. They were talking casually and animatedly, laughing often
in an easy way. Behind them underneath the canopy, Nick Williams was reading
A Fan’s Notes
by Fred Exley. Every now and then he would look up at the other two for a few moments
and then return to his book.

‘So why didn’t you ever go to college?’ Carol was asking Troy. ‘You clearly had the
ability. You would have made a fantastic engineer.’

Troy stood up, took off his sunglasses, and walked to the railing. ‘My brother Jamie
said the same thing,’ he said slowly, staring out at the quiet ocean. ‘But I was just
too wild. When I finally did graduate from high school, I was hungry to know what
the world was like. So I took off. I wandered all over the US and Canada for a couple
of years.’

‘Was that when you learned about electronics?’ Carol asked. She checked her watch
to see what time it was.

‘That was later, much later,’ said Troy, remembering. ‘Those two years of wandering
I didn’t learn anything except how to survive on my wits. Plus what it was like to
be a black boy in a white man’s world.’ He looked at Carol. There was no noticeable
reaction.

‘I must have had a hundred different jobs,’ he continued, looking back at the ocean.
‘I was a cook, a copyboy, a bartender, a construction worker. I even taught swimming
lessons in a private club. I was a bellman in a resort hotel, a greenkeeper for a
country club…’ Troy laughed and turned again to see if Carol was paying attention.
‘But I guess you’re not interested in all this….’

‘Sure I am,’ Carol said, ‘it’s fascinating to me. I’m trying to imagine what you looked
like in a hotel uniform. And if Chief Nick is right, we still have another ten minutes
to pass until we reach where we’re going.’ She dropped her voice. ‘At least you
talk
. The professor is not exactly social.’

‘Being a black bellhop at a southern Mississippi resort hotel was an amazing learning
experience,’ Troy began, a smile spreading across his face. Troy loved to tell stories
about his life. It placed him centre stage. ‘Imagine, angel, I’m eighteen years old
and I luck into a job at the grand old Gulfport Inn, right on the beach. Room and
board plus tips. I’m on top of the world. At least until the chief bellman, an impossible
little man named Fish, takes me out to the barracks where all the bellhops and kitchen
staff live and introduces me to everybody as the “new nigger bellhop”. From bits of
discussion I can tell that the hotel is in some kind of trouble because of possible
racial discrimination and hiring me is part of their response.

‘My room in the barracks was right behind the twelfth green on the golf course. A
small bunk bed, a dresser built into the wall, a desk or table with a portable lamp,
a sink to brush my teeth and wash my face—that’s where I lived for six weeks. Down
at the other end of the building was the great community bathroom that everyone left
whenever I showed up.

‘In my high school in Miami virtually the entire student body was Cuban or black or
both. So I knew almost nothing about white people. From books and television I had
this fantasy image of whites as handsome, competent, educated, and rich. Ha. My fantasy
quickly vanished. You would not have believed the crew that worked in that hotel.
The head bellman Fish smoked dope every night with his sixteen-year-old son Danny
and dreamed of the day he would find a million dollars left in somebody’s room. His
only other goal in life was to continue screwing the chef’s wife, Marie, in the supply
closet every morning until he died.

‘One of the other bellmen was a poor, lonely soul whose real name was Saint John because
his brilliant parents thought that ‘Saint’ was a given name. He had only six teeth,
wore thick glasses, and had a giant tumour underneath his left eye. Saint John knew
that he was ugly and he worried all the time about losing his job because of his personal
appearance. So Fish exploited him unmercifully by giving him all the shittiest assignments
and forcing him to pay kickbacks with a portion of his tips. The other bellmen also
ridiculed Saint John at every opportunity and made him the butt of their practical
jokes.

‘One night I was sitting quietly in my room reading a book when there was a soft knock
on the door. When I answered it, Saint John was standing there. He looked confused
and distracted. He was holding a small box in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the
other. I waited a few moments and then asked him what he wanted. He looked nervously
in both directions and then asked me if I knew how to play chess. When I told him
yes and added that I would enjoy a game, Saint John grinned from ear to ear and mumbled
something about being glad that he had taken a chance. I invited him in and we played
and talked and drank beer for almost two hours. He was one of nine children from a
poor, rural Mississippi family. While we were playing, Saint John casually let slip
that he had been a little reluctant to ask me to play because Fish and Miller had
told him that niggers were too dumb to play chess.