Thin Air (3 page)

"Have you ever been to the Navy Yard at Philadelphia, Hammond?"

"Yes."

"So have I. But only once that I can be sure of. The Korean War ended in July of 1953. I recall we took a destroyer up from Newport News the year before to mount new guns. We didn't berth until noon, and our whole crew left the same night, back to Virginia by train. And the day was sunny and clear." He looked right at Hammond as if that had great import.

"I don't follow what you're trying to tell me, Mr. Fletcher. Can you be more specific?"

Fletcher exhaled and brushed away ashes he'd spilled on the tablecloth. His eyes bored into Hammond. "If yon believe my discharge papers, Commander, I was never stationed in Philadelphia."

"Certainly if you were there only one day, it wouldn't show up here." He tapped the forms.

"I was there for more than a day," Fletcher said slowly. "I was there over two years! Those papers are not right!"

Hammond swallowed and checked the forms again. He threw a glance at Jan: she had shrunk back into her seat, listening but staring at the table.

Fletcher licked his lips. "Look," he continued, "I can remember a few things about Newport News, but why should I get these flashes about a long tour of duty in Philadelphia? I'm positive I served there!"

"When?"

"Right around the time of the Korean Armistice. And I stayed there until my discharge. I never went back to Newport News!"

Hammond glanced again at Jan. Tears welled up in her eyes. She brushed them away quickly, her face a frozen mask.

"What reason would the Navy have for falsifying your discharge, Mr. Fletcher?" he asked with incredible patience.

"I don't know. That's what I'd like you to find out."

Fletcher paused while the waiter served lunch. Jan picked at her salad, her face still drawn but the tears under control. Fletcher dove into his sandwich while Hammond watched. How could the man eat with all this torment boiling inside him? Hammond couldn't.

"What does your doctor think of this Philadelphia business?" '

"He says I'm wrong."
      

"I see."

"Do you, Hammond?" He smiled coldly.

"Tell him the rest, darling," Jan said.

Fletcher finished the sandwich. He wouldn't look at Hammond. "I don't see any purpose, honey. He wouldn't believe it."

"Try me," said Hammond, pushing away his untouched plate.

Fletcher stared at the table a long time, and then said flatly, "It's a dream."

"Jan told me that this morning."

Fletcher nodded, then continued. "Usually I can't remember it when I'm awake." He stared at his hands.

"Just a minute," said Hammond. "You think your records are false because all this business about Philadelphia happens in a dream?"

"A nightmare," insisted Fletcher. "You ever have any?"

"Once in a great while."

"How fortunate. I've lived with mine since 1955."

This was getting sillier by the second. "Is that why you see this Dr. McCarthy?" Hammond asked.
      

Fletcher took a deep breath. "Yes. I started having problems as soon as I got out of service. I'd have one bad night and that would start a whole series of them. I'd wake up knowing I'd had a nightmare, but I wouldn't remember any of the details. I thought I was heading for a crack-up. Then all of a sudden I got a call asking me to come in for a routine post-separation checkup."

"Routine?" Hammond said. There was no such thing, unless..."Were you in the Reserves?"

"No. Full and complete discharge."

Hammond let it go by. "What did they do with you?"

"Introduced me to Dr. McCarthy. He put me on the couch and talked to me for a long time...then I went home. He told me the nightmares might recur, and if they did to get in touch with him as soon as possible. And that's how it went from then on. All I ever had to do was call him and he'd see me, usually within a day. He took care of everything, and I learned to live .with my problem. Twenty-three years...My first wife passed away some time ago....Six years ago my company sent me to Los Angeles. I panicked....I was going to lose McCarthy. I suffered some bad nights without calling him, just to see if I could do it. I couldn't....I flew back to see him."

It must have been a great moment of weakness for him: Fletcher sagged in shame.

"That was the last time you saw him?" asked Hammond.

"No." Fletcher looked up as if Hammond had missed the point.

"McCarthy got a transfer," said Jan. "To Long Beach."

California?" said Hammond. "How obliging of the Navy."

"He got caught in a big cutback," said Fletcher. "They closed a bunch of hospitals and moved around a lot of staff. It was pure coincidence."

Hammond found that hard to believe, but he kept his skepticism to himself.

"I was getting along fine. I met Jan last year and we got married and she...she started questioning what was wrong with me."

"Did you meet with McCarthy?" Hammond asked her.

"He refused to see me."

"A psychiatrist refused to see his patient's wife?"

She nodded, unable to conceal bitterness.

"I've stopped going to him," said Fletcher.

Jan started to cry. "It's my fault, Nicky. I made him stop. And it's just gotten worse."

Fletcher put his arm around her for comfort. She cried silently, cupping a hand to her face. "Let's go back to the apartment, honey," Fletcher murmured.

For the first time since sitting down, Hammond sensed love between these two, and it depressed him. Clearly, Fletcher without his "problem" would be without his hostility as well, and was probably a warm, affectionate husband.

"Come on, Jan." He was trying to get her to her feet. She shook her head, took the handkerchief he offered, and dabbed at her eyes.

"Not until you tell him the rest," she said. "You've got to tell him the rest!"

Fletcher released her and lit another cigarette. My God, thought Hammond, the man's a human smokestack.

"How good are you at remembering people? Or places you've been to?" Fletcher asked.

"As good as the next person, I guess. Why?"

"Because when I'm awake, there's a two-year chunk missing out of my life. I can remember it only during the nightmare. I see faces I recognize...I hear names. They call out to me, talk to me, then...then I go through hell with them."

"Mr. Fletcher, didn't you say you weren't able to recall details?"

Jan responded. "Since he stopped seeing McCarthy, a lot of it stays with him."

Hammond nodded. "What kind of hell?" he asked.

Fletcher's breathing became shallow. "It always starts with us in a circle...on the forward deck."

"Aboard a ship?"

"Yes. A destroyer...no, a destroyer escort, an old DE."

"What's the name?"

"I can't remember...." He looked dejected.

"Go on," said Hammond, preparing to ride this out.

"We have to hold hands. The skipper's very firm on that"

"Is this part of a drill?"

Fletcher nodded. "It must be. We've done it before, but this time it's for real...and it's early morning...heavy fog. I can just make out some people standing on the dock. I don't know them as well as the men I'm with...but they're watching us. We move away from them....He went pale and his eyes closed intermittently. "Tugs are pulling us out into the river."

"If it's foggy," said Hammond, "how can you be sure you're in Philadelphia?"

Fletcher's eyes popped open. "Because I know what the yard looks like—in fog, in rain, in sunshine. I recognize these giant cranes...and I know these men. I've worked with them. None of us are part of the crew. We're volunteers. We've trained for this for six months, drilled every day, taken every precaution they could think of...but the way it
worked
was so frightening....We're mdving out to the middle of the river. We stop...then the humming starts. And the vibrating. First through the feet, then my whole body."

Fletcher's hands were half-raised over the table, his fingers gripping imaginary somethings. "It was an experiment More than that—a big Navy project. In those days, if the Navy said squat, all you could ask was how long. If the Navy brass said, 'We're gonna run an experiment on you and you're gonna come out of it okay,' we figured they were telling the truth. We all wondered what they were using us for, but we knew why they couldn't tell us.

"So we're told we're going to feel disoriented. That's all they say. But it's worse than that. The deck goes away...dissolves...disappears. We're still standing there....I can feel it under my feet, but I can see through it, right down to the water....The man across from me is gone. All that's left is his leg—"

He made a jerking motion with his arm, then shivered at the memory. He sucked in another breath. "I watch them disintegrate with the ship. We all go with it. It's like falling into a dark hole, then it gets light again. It's sunny, the fog is gone. We're not on the river anymore—a bay. Someone breaks the circle. Hess shouting for us to look....Then the vibrations start again. We try to get back into the circle, but the blackness is all around....The man who's shouting the loudest tries to jump overboard. He...he's
blown apart...."

He stopped and shook his head, forcing away the image. "We come back to the fog, and...that's all I can remember."

He reached for his drink. Hammond stared at him. Even for a nightmare, the story was wild, and it made no sense. It was a full minute before he realized how anxiously Jan was looking at him.

Tentatively, he asked Fletcher, "You think some of that actually happened to you?"

"Oh, God," moaned Fletcher. "I don't know what to think!" He was shaken by a burst of sobbing. Jan calmed him, caressing his face and whispering in his ear.

Hammond felt another wave of depression. He couldn't take much more. "If I get your personnel records and see if they correspond with your discharge papers, you think maybe that will put this to rest?"

"I don't know." Fletcher pulled himself together. "It's all so damned
real!
I could see their faces in the dream, but for years I would wake up unable to recall anything about them! It was like they'd been wiped out of my head."

Or were never there, thought Hammond. He looked at Jan and sighed. "Okay," he said, "I'll run the files down for you." He waved the discharge papers. "Mind if I keep these?"

Whatever strain the Fletchers were under began to dissipate. It was as if their lives hung on Hammond's willingness to help.

"Thank you, Commander," "Fletcher finally said. "I really appreciate this."

"Wait a minute," Hammond cautioned. "I don't know what I'm going to find or how long it will take. Will you be in Washington a while?"

"Jan is leaving for New York tonight to visit her mother, but I'll be here three more days. If you can't reach me at the apartment, just leave word with the Tri-State office."

Hammond took the card, glanced at the number, and put it in the envelope with Fletcher's discharge papers. He stood up, smiled at Jan, and had his hand gratefully pumped by Fletcher.

"Thanks for letting me bend your ear, Hammond."

Hammond regarded him quizzically. The man was as changeable as a chameleon. Jan's eyes gleamed with gratitude.

He left them still sitting in the booth, his head spinning from the emotions they had let loose.

It seemed an easy matter to clarify: he would make a comparison of the discharge records in Fletcher's possession to the ones in his permanent file. From his office, Hammond used the WATS line to St. Louis, Missouri, contacting the National Personnel Records Center maintained by General Services Administration. The 601 files on all retired or discharged personnel were kept there. He gave Fletcher's name, serial number, and date of discharge. They promised to call back within half an hour.

While he waited, Hammond studied Fletcher's discharge. It consisted of two papers: DD Form 214, Report of Separation from Active Duty, and his "Page 5," a History of Assignments. There was nothing out of the ordinary in either of them. Fletcher had been a run-of-the-mill enlistee, his duty assignment limited almost exclusively to service at Newport News. There was no mention of an assignment to Philadelphia.

The Center returned his call. They had no records on any Harold Fletcher of that serial number. Hammond hesitated. "I have the man's discharge right in front of me," he said.

"Yes, sir. All I can think of, sir, is that certain records were destroyed in a big fire we had here a few years back and his may have been among them. Lost a lot of microfilm then, sir."

A fire. Hammond vaguely recalled it. A lot of valuable records gone forever. "What about the originals?"

"Well, sir, you can try BUPERS or the Manpower Center at Braintree, Maryland. But don't hold your breath."

Hammond thanked the clerk and hung up. BUPERS was right over at the Arlington Navy Annex. He decided to walk.