Sons (24 page)

“Nothing in town,” he said to me, “and nothing here, either. What’s a man supposed to do?”

“I’m
going to sleep,” I said, and started to take a step around him. “No, hold it,” he said, and gestured with a slight jerk of his head to where a girl sat alone on the side of the room. “The chaperone,” Ace said. “A sweet young mother. Come on.”

She was sitting some thirty-five feet from where we stood near the entrance doors, a blond girl wearing a white pique dress and brown-and-white spectator pumps. Her long legs were tanned, and she kept them primly crossed, but one foot was jiggling in time to the music. She looked to be about seventeen or so, and I could not understand how Ace had figured her to be a mother, young or otherwise. Besides, a revised quick count of the available nookie had downgraded my original estimate to perhaps forty girls in all
(including
the blond in the white dress) meaning that the odds tonight were approximately three to one, more than I felt like coping with after a hard day’s flying. But Ace Gibson clapped me on the shoulder, which I didn’t like, and burst into a chittering sort of expectant laughter, which I also didn’t like, and then hooked his arm through mine and led me over to where the girl was sitting.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said to her, “my name is Ace Gibson. This is my buddy...” and paused.

“Will Tyler,” I said.

“How do you do?” she said. “Ah’m Hattie Rolfe.”

“Hello, Hattie,” Ace said, “would you mind if we joined you?”

“Ah’m not permitted to dance, you know,” she said. “Ah’m one of the chaperones.”

“Well then,” Ace said, as I stared at him in amazement, “we’ll just sit and chat, if that’s all right with you, ma’am.”

“Thet’d suit me jes’ fine,” she said, and smiled.

Up close, I was beginning to notice a few things about her that Ace must have spotted immediately from the doorway. She was definitely not seventeen, though how he had been able to tell that from a distance of thirty-five feet was beyond my understanding. Could he have seen the crow’s feet around her eyes, could he have possibly noticed the wedding band and small diamond ring on her left hand, could he have detected from such a distance that the knitting in her lap was a partially completed khaki-colored sleeveless pullover. (Was there a soldier husband overseas someplace, Rooms for Rent, the possibility of a permanent-party arrangement with an experienced woman of at least twenty-seven or — eight years old?) How could he have surmised all this from thirty-five feet away? I looked at him appreciatively. He was now telling the girl that he had spent some time in Mississippi before coming here to Columbus, having taken his Basic Training in Biloxi, and suddenly he asked me where
I’d
gone through Basic, and almost before I could say, “Nashville,” he turned again to Hattie and said, “Not much of a crowd here tonight, is there?”

“Well, it ain’t much to holler about,” Hattie said. “I’ll allow that.”

“Will and I were hoping for something a bit more gaysome,” he said, which I assumed was a southern expression because Hattie reacted just as though he’d served her a heaping full platter of chit’lins and pone, laughing helplessly, and all but slapping him on the knee. They were certainly off to a fine roaring start. So promising, in fact, that I decided to go back to the barracks, and was waiting to make my break, when Ace brought me into the conversation again. I realized all at once that the inclusion was deliberate. He truly wanted me to stay. He was not using me as a straight man, the way some guys did while they worked their points with a chick. I felt suddenly and oddly touched.

“Will and I both like Columbus a lot,” he said, “but it’s really difficult, you know, to get to understand a place, isn’t that right, Will?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “it’s really difficult.”

“Especially when we get into town so infrequently, huh, Will?”

“We don’t get in too often,” I said to Hattie, and grinned stupidly, entirely mindful of how little I was contributing to the discussion, and grateful for Ace’s efforts, and hopeful that he would not think I was a moron.

“Though Sundays are usually free,” he said.

“Unless there’s a cross-country scheduled,” I said.

“Yes, they conic up every now and then,” Ace said.

“Yes,” I said.

“What do
you
do on Sundays?” Ace asked Hattie, and nodded almost imperceptibly to me, signaling that
this
was where we were supposed to lead the conversation, get it, Will? Around to where we could find out what this delicious piece of pecan pie did with her Sundays, get it?

“Oh,” I said, and Ace smiled and raised his eyebrows approvingly at the coming of the dawn.

“I work on Sundays,” Hattie said.

“What kind of work do you do?” I asked.

“She must be a movie star,” Ace said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

“No, I’m not,” Hattie said seriously.

“Of course not,” Ace said. “She’s a fashion model.”

“Not that either,” she said.

“A designer?” I said, and looked at Ace.

“Of what?” Ace asked.

“Dresses?” I said.

“Ladies’ dresses?” Ace said.

“Third floor,” I said, and he burst out laughing.

“No, no,” Hattie said, shaking her head.

“Well, I give up,” Ace said.

“So do I,” I said.

“I’m a waitress,” Hattie said, and shrugged.

“Days or nights?” Ace asked immediately.

“Days. I go on at eight in the morning, and I’m off at four.”

“Look at this little girl,” Ace said. “Slaves all week long in a restaurant...”

“A diner,” Hattie said.

“... a diner, and then comes here on her own free time...”

“I’m off Mondays,” Hattie said.

“... to do her part for the war effort by providing a little bit of cheer for servicemen far from their homes and their loved ones.”

“I’m only here by accident,” Hattie said. “We had to have six chaperones for the girls, and they called me yesterday because one of the women supposed to come got taken to the hospital.”

“Oh, the poor woman,” Ace said.

“What was wrong with her?” I said.

“Nothing,” Hattie said. “She was pregnant, and it got to be her time.”

“Do you know what we’re going to do this Sunday when Hattie leaves the diner?” Ace asked.

“Yes,” I said. “We’re going over to the hospital to visit that poor little old woman who was supposed to chaperone tonight.”

“Wrong,” Ace said. “We’re going to wait on Hattie.”

“You’re going to
what?”
Hattie said.

“Wait
on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re going to buy a big steak, and then me and my buddy here...”

“Will Tyler,” I said.

“... are going to bring that steak over to your place, Hattie — you
do
live in Columbus, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “but...”

“... where we’ll cook it and serve it and clean up the kitchen and do the dishes afterwards, without your having to lift a finger all night long. How does that sound to you, Hattie?”

“Okay, I guess, but...”

“No buts, Hattie,” Ace said.

“Well, I guess he wouldn’t mind too much.”

“Who?”

“My husband.”

“I’m sure he’d be pleased to know you’re being so well taken care of,” I said.

“Oh yeah, it isn’t that,” Hattie said.

“Then it’s settled,” Ace said.

“It’s just that he’s usually so tired,” Hattie said.

“Tired? Who?”

“My husband.”

“Tired?” I said.

“When he gets home at night.”

“Home?”

“My husband.”

“Home?” Ace said. “Home from where?”

“He’s a sergeant in the Medical Corps. He’s stationed at Northington General in Tuscaloosa. He gets home every night about six o’clock. Unless there’s an epidemic or something.”

“I take it there is no epidemic right now,” Ace said.

“No,” Hattie said.

“Nor one expected for Sunday.”

“No. I really don’t think he’d mind, though, if you fellows came over. He likes steak.”

“Might be difficult to find an open butcher on Sunday,” I said.

“Mmm, yes, hadn’t thought of that,” Ace said. “And what about ration coupons?”

“What about that Lycoming radial?” I said.

“What about it?” Ace said.

“That faulty horse. Supposed to be two ninety-five,” I said.

“He’s talking about the Curtiss AT-9,” Ace explained to Hattie. “Oh,” Hattie said.

“We’re supposed to check the red-line entry,” I said.

“There’re these two Lycoming radial engines, each two hundred and ninety-five horses.”

“Oh,” Hattie said.

“One of them’s missing,” Ace said.

“One of the horses,” I said.

“Dangerous to fly her that way.”

“Have to tend to the horses.”

“Supposed to do it before tomorrow morning.”

“Almost tomorrow morning now,” I said.

“Better be going,” Ace said, and rose. He executed a courtly bow, lifted Hattie’s left hand with the wedding band and small gleaming diamond to his lips, brushed a gentle kiss against it, and said, “Until next time, Hattie.”

“Goodnight, Hattie,” I said.

“Charmed,” Hattie said.

Outside the mess hall, Ace took off his hat, wiped the sweat band, and replaced it on his head at a precariously jaunty angle, but not before I’d noticed that his thatch of brown hair was already beginning to thin at the crown. On the way over to the EM’s Club, he told me he would be nineteen years old in a few months, and that his real name was Avery Gibson. The nickname, he explained, had nothing whatever to do with his flying prowess. It was instead the result of an inventive WASP father who, in fine
Saturday Evening Post
tradition, had bestowed “Ace” on Avery at the age of three, and “Skipper” on his older brother Sanford. The older brother was now in the Pacific with a PT-boat squadron, his rate being Gunner’s Mate/Third, his nickname apparently causing no end of conflict with the lieutenant (j.g.) who commanded the boat. Ace said he hated his own nickname because it gave him all the renown of a Western gunslick; everyone was waiting to shoot him down long before they met him. But I noticed that he walked with a cocky rolling gait, as though he were carrying an invisible swagger stick in one clenched fist, and he wore his uniform with all the authority of an already commissioned officer.

In the club, we sat drinking beer and talking.

Ace was from Reading, Pennsylvania, where his father, Stuart Gibson, was a stockbroker. His mother, Miriam, whom everyone called “Mims,” kept horses. Six horses. Ace hated horses, an aversion directly attributable to the fact that he had been thrown from the saddle at the tender age of ten and then dragged, foot caught in the stirrup, for some twenty feet before Mom-Mims caught the horses bridle and brought the beast to a stop. His father kept a forty-four-foot ketch on the Schuylkill, and he could be found out on the sailboat most good weekends, though it was Ace’s estimate that he was lucky if he got to use it twenty days all summer. It was apparent from what Ace said that he had as little love for boats as he had for horses.

Surprisingly, I said out loud, “Don’t you like your parents?”

“Do you like
yours?”
he asked.

“My mother’s dead,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“She died last year. I liked her, though. I think I liked her.”

“What about your father?”

“He’s okay,” I said, and shrugged. “He sure gave me a lot of static about joining up.”

“Mine was eager to get me out of the house,” Ace said, and smiled.

“It’s just he’s so
dumb
about some things,” I said. I guess I felt a little guilty saying it; he was, after all, my father. So I quickly told Ace how much I respected a man who had started as a lumberjack in Wisconsin and had gone on to become a very important man in the paper industry. I sketched in his early days as a trainee at Ramsey-Warner, relating the story the way I’d heard my father tell it so many times at the dinner table, and then explained how he had taken a job as salesman for the Circle Mill after he’d lost his first job, and how after fifteen years of tough in-fighting he had become Executive Vice President, from which position he was finally able to challenge the company’s president, an older party who was slowly becoming incapable of making tough business decisions. The challenge had involved two vital points, and perhaps my father would have lost the battle if he hadn’t convinced the board that he was right about both. One was a takeover offer from Ramsey-Wamer, the company he’d once worked for, and the other had something to do with wallpaper, either with severely cutting production of it, or increasing production, I’d forgotten which. But the board sided with him. and almost eighteen years to the day he’d started at Circle, my father became president of the company, which was certainly something to admire. Ace admitted that it was certainly something to admire and then, probably shamed by his own earlier references to old Stu, told me how
his
father, too, had been an uneducated man who took it upon himself to learn the workings of the market and then had amassed a fair fortune playing with stocks, which was certainly nothing to sneeze at. It certainly wasn’t anything to sneeze at, I agreed. Thus having coped with our separate heresies, we went on to discussing more pleasant matters, namely Ace’s brother Skipper, of whom he seemed genuinely fond, and whom he described as “a really handsome guy, Will, the original golden boy.” I told him a little about Linda then, and what a great crazy kid she was.

We finished our beers and walked over to the flight line, where the planes sat in a moonlit row, ready for the morning (light. Ace told me he couldn’t wait to begin flying that old P-38, which was only the best damn fighter plane ever built. I told him that the way the war was going, we might not get over there in
time
to fly one, and he said, “Don’t you worry, Will. This war ain’t going to end till
I
get there to end it,” and then laughed his cluttering little laugh, which I still found annoying.