Call to Arms

Chapter Seven

(One)

The San Carlos Hotel Pensacola, Florida 8 January 1942

When Pick Pickering woke in the morning, he decided he would not go to the coffee shop for breakfast. It was entirely possible that Captain Mustache would be there. And Pick was not anxious to run into Carstairs again, not after the captain had eaten his ass out for being sloppy and unshaven. And there was a good chance that Martha Sayre Culhane would be there as well. He couldn't quite interpret them, but he saw danger flags flying in the territories occupied by the blond widow with the flat tummy and the marvelous derriere.

Discretion was obviously the better part of valor, Pick decided, if he decided to find some gentle breast on which to lay his weary head while he was in Pensacola, he would find one that did not belong to the widow of a Marine aviator who was not only the daughter of an admiral but who was also surrounded by noble protectors of her virtue. There was no reason at all to play with fire.

He called room service and had breakfast on his patio, surprised and disappointed that the orange juice had come from a can. This was supposed to be Sunny Florida-with orange trees. He tasted the puddle of grits beside his eggs and grimaced. There must be two Floridas, he decided, the one he knew and the one he was condemned to endure now. On Key Biscayne, which was the Florida he knew, the Biscayne Foster would not dream of serving canned orange juice or, for that matter, grits.

He called the valet and ordered them to press his uniforms, and then he dressed in the one least creased and rumpled. After that, he went down to the lobby barbershop for a haircut and a shave and a shoeshine. Then he got in the Cadillac (which, he noticed, had been washed and serviced) and put the top down.

Three blocks from the hotel, he pulled to the curb and put the top back up. Even in his green woolen blouse, he was cold. Obviously, there were two Floridas. This one was a thousand miles closer to the Artie Circle.

He drove more or less aimlessly, having a look around. After a while, he found himself on a street identified as West Garden Street. And then the street signs changed, and he was on Navy Boulevard. That sounded promising, and he stayed on it, driving at the 35-MPH speed limit for five or six miles.

Here were more signs of the Navy: hock shops, Army-Navy stores, and at least two dozen bars.

Then he heard the sound of an airplane engine. Close. He leaned forward and looked up and out of the windshield.

To his right, a bright yellow, open-cockpit, single-engined biplane was taking off from a field hidden by a thick, though scraggly, stand of pine, NAVY was painted on the underside of one wing.

Pickering slowed to watch it as it sort of staggered into the air, and he was still watching when an identical plane followed it into the air. Pick pulled onto the shoulder of the road, stopped, and got out. At what seemed to be minute or minute-and-a-half intervals, more little open-cockpit airplanes flew over his head, taking off.

He was awed at the number of airplanes the Navy apparently had here, until, feeling just a little foolish, he realized he was watching the same planes over and over. After they staggered into the air, they circled back and landed, and then took off again. There were really no more man a dozen or so, he realized, and they were using two runways.

He climbed back in his car and started up again, looking for a road he could take to where he could watch the actual takeoffs and landings. But no road appeared. Instead, he came to a low bridge across some water. On the other side of the bridge was a sign, UNITED STATES NAVY AIR STATION, PENSA-COLA, and immediately beyond that a guardhouse.

A Marine guard saluted crisply, waving him past the gate and onto the reservation. A few hundred yards beyond the Marine guard, he saw to his right a red, triangular flag. It bore the number "8," and its flagstaff was in the center of what looked like a very nicely tended golf green.

It had been some time since he had gone a round of golf. Much too long. He missed bashing golf balls. And then he remembered that he had found his clubs in the Cadillac's trunk when he had loaded his luggage in Atlanta. Were lowly second lieutenants permitted on Navy base golf courses? he wondered. Or was that privilege restricted to high-ranking officers? He would, he decided, find out.

He drove around the enormous base, finding barracks and headquarters and the Navy Exchange, and finally an airfield. He parked the convertible by a chain-link fence and watched small yellow airplanes endlessly take off and land, take off and land. He found this fascinating, almost hypnotic, and he lost track of time.

Eventually, his stomach told him it was time to eat; and his new wristwatch told him that it was ten minutes after twelve. Earlier he had driven past the Officers' Club. The question was, could he find it again?

The answer was yes, but it took him twenty minutes. He went inside, and for thirty-five cents was fed a cup of clam chowder, pork chops, and lima beans.

The hotelier in him told him that there was no way the Navy could afford to do this without some kind of a subsidy, and then he realized what the subsidy was. The building and the furnishings were owned by the Navy. There was no mortgage to amortize, and it was not necessary to provide for maintenance or painting. And the cooks were on the Navy payroll.

He drank a second cup of coffee and then left the dining room. Near the men's room was a map of the air station mounted on the wall. He studied it, and after a few moments he realized that with the exception of several off-the-main-base training airfields, he had covered in his aimless driving just about all of Pensacola NAS that there was to cover.

Next, he decided to leave the base, drive back into Pensacola, and ask Gayfer where he could find a good place to take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico. And then, after a swim and dinner, and maybe a couple of drinks, he would put his uniform back on and return out here and report in.

He didn't make it off the base. On the way out, he saw an arrow pointing to the officers' golf course and decided he would really rather play golf than swim. He recalled additionally that this was the arctic end of Florida and that mere would probably be icebergs in the water.

He found the clubhouse without trouble. There he asked a middle-aged Navy petty officer how one arranged to play a round. Shoes and clubs were available for fifty cents in the locker room, he was told, and the greens fee was a dollar.

"And do I have to play in uniform?"

"Uniform regulations are waived while you are physically on the golf course proper, sir," the petty officer told him. "You can take off your hat and blouse and tie."

Pickering fetched his clubs and a pair of golf shoes from the trunk of the convertible and then went to the locker room and paid the fees. After that he hung his blouse, hat, Sam Browne belt, and field scarf in a locker and went outside. A lanky teen-aged Negro boy detached himself from a group of his peers, offered his services as a caddy, and led him to the first tee.

A middle- aged woman was already on the tee. A woman who took her golf seriously, he saw. She was teed up, but had stepped away from the ball and was practicing her swing. He at first approved of this (his major objection to women on the links was that most of them did not take the game seriously); but his approval turned to annoyance when the middle-aged woman kept taking practice swings.

How long am I supposed to wait?

And then she saw him standing mere and smiled. "Good afternoon," she said.

"Hello," he said politely.

"I didn't see you," she said. "I'm really sorry."

"Don't be silly," Pickering said.

"I was waiting for my daughter," the woman said. And then, "And here, at long last, she is."

Pickering followed her gesture and found himself looking at Martha Sayre Culhane. She was wearing a band over her blond hair, a cotton windbreaker on top of a pale blue sweater, and a tight-across-the-back khaki-colored gabardine skirt. That sight immediately urged into his mind's eye another image of her. In that one she was in her birthday suit.

Martha Sayre Culhane's eyebrows rose when she saw him; she was not pleased.

"If you don't mind playing with women," Martha Sayre Culhane's mother said. "They really discourage singles."

"I would be delighted," Pick said.

"I'm Jeanne Sayre," Martha Sayre's Culhane's mother said. "And this is Martha. Martha Culhane."

In turn, they offered their hands. Martha Sayre Culhane's hand, he thought, was exquisitely soft and feminine.

"My name is Malcolm Pickering," he said. "People call me Pick."

"I thought your name was Foster," Martha Sayre Culhane said, matter-of-factly.

"Oh, you've met?" Jeanne Sayre asked.

"The desk clerk at the San Carlos, almost beside himself with awe, pointed him out to me," Martha Sayre Culhane said.

That's not true, Pickering thought, with certainty. She asked him who I was. She was curious.

"Oh?" her mother said, her tone making it clear that her daughter was embarrassing and annoying her.

"According to the desk clerk," Martha Sayre Culhane said, "we are about to go a round with the heir apparent to the Foster Hotel chain, now resident in the San Carlos penthouse."

"He told me about you, too," Pickering blurted.

Jeanne Sayre looked uncomfortably from one to the other. And then she looked between them, avoiding what she did not want to look at.

"But your name isn't Foster?" Martha challenged. "What about the rest of the story? How much of that is true?"

"Martha!" Jeanne Sayre snapped.

"Andrew Foster is my mother's father," Pickering said.

He saw surprise on Jeanne Sayre's face. But he didn't know what was in Martha Sayre Culhane's eyes.

"And what brought you to honor the Marine Corps with your presence?" Martha Sayre Culhane challenged.

"An old family custom," Pick snapped. "My father-my father is Fleming Pickering, as in Pacific Far East Shipping-was a Marine in the last war. Whenever the professionals need help to pull their acorns out of the fire, we lend a hand. I am twenty-two years old. I went to Harvard, where I was the assistant business manager of the Crimson. I am unmarried, have a polo handicap of six, and generally can get around eighteen holes in the middle seventies. Is there anything else you would like to know?"

"Good for you, Lieutenant!" Jeanne Sayre said. "Martha, really-"

"If there's no objection," Martha Sayre Culhane interrupted her mother, "I think I'll go first."

She stepped to the tee and drove her mother's ball straight down the fairway.

Whoever had taught her to play golf, Pickering saw, had managed to impress upon her the importance of follow-through. At the end of her swing, her khaki gabardine skirt was skintight against the most fascinating derriere he had ever seen.

"If you would rather not play with us, Lieutenant," Jeanne Sayre said, "I would certainly understand."

"If it's all right with you," Pick said, "I'll play with you."

She met his eyes for a moment. Her eyes, Pick saw, were gray, and kind, and perceptive.

"You go ahead," Jeanne Sayre said. "I'll bring up the rear."

Martha Sayre Culhane hated him, Pick was aware, because he was here. Alive. And her husband-the late Lieutenant Whatever-his-name-had-been Culhane, USMC-had died in the futile defense of Wake Island.

Pick was ambivalent about that. Shamefully, perhaps even disgustingly ambivalent. He was sorry that Lieutenant Culhane was dead. He was sorry that Martha Sayre Culhane was a widow. And glad that she was.

By the time they came off the course, there was no doubt in Pick Pickering's mind that he was in love. There was simply no other explanation for the way he felt when-however briefly- their eyes had met.

(Two)

Thirtieth Street Station Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1820 Hours, 8 January 1942

The weather was simply too cold and nasty for Ernie Sage to wait on the curb outside the Thirtieth Street Station as she had promised.

But she found, inside the station near one of the Market Street doors, a place where she could look out and wait for him. It was hardly more comfortable than the street: Every time the door opened, there was a blast of cold air, and she desperately needed to go to the ladies' room. But she held firmly to her spot; she was afraid she would miss him if she left.

And finally he showed up. Except for the path the wipers had cleared on the windshield, the LaSalle convertible was filthy. The bumper and grill were covered with frozen grime, and slush had packed in the fender wells.

Ernie picked up her bags and ran outside; and she was standing at the curb when he skidded to a stop.

She pulled open the door and threw her bags into the car.

"If they won't let you wait, go around the block," Ernie ordered. Then she ran back inside the Thirtieth Street Station to the ladies' room.

He wasn't there when she went back outside, but he pulled to the curb a moment later, and she got in.

She had planned to kiss him, but he didn't give her a chance, The moment she was inside, he pulled away from the curb. She slid close to him, put her hand under his arm, and nestled her head against his shoulder.

"Hi," she said.

"What's with all the luggage?" McCoy asked, levelly.

"I thought you'd probably be going through Harrisburg," Ernie said. "I thought I would ride that far with you, and then catch a train."

He looked at her for a just a moment, but said nothing.

"I'm lying," Ernie Sage said. "I'm going with you. All the way."

"No you're not," he said flatly.

"I knew that was a mistake," Ernie said. "I should have

waited until we were in the middle of nowhere before I told you. Somewhere you couldn't put me out."

"You can't come with me," he said.

"Why not? 'Whither thou goest…" Book of Ruth."

When there was no reply to that, Ernie said, "I love you."

"You think you love me," he said. "You don't really know a damn thing about me."

"I thought we'd been through all this," Ernie said, trying to keep her voice light. "As I recall, the last conclusion you came to was that I was the best thing that ever happened to you."

"Oh, Jesus Christ!"

"Well, am I or ain't I?" Ernie challenged.

"You ever wondered if… what happened… is what this is really all about?"

"You mean," she said, aware that she was frightened, that she was close to tears, "because we fucked? Because you copped my cherry?"

"Goddamn it, I hate it when you talk dirty," he said furiously.

Her mouth ran away with her. "Not always," she said.

He jammed his foot on the brakes, and the LaSalle slid to the curb.

"Sorry," Ernie said, very softly.

There was something in his eyes that at first she thought was anger, but after a moment she knew it was pain.

"I love you," Ernie said. "I can't help that."

He was breathing heavily, as if he had been running hard.

Then he put the LaSalle in gear and pulled away from the curb.

"I was afraid you were going to put me out," Ernie said.

"Do me a favor," McCoy said. "Just shut up."

When she saw a U.S. 422 highway sign, Ernie thought that maybe she had won, maybe that he even would reach across the seat for her and take her hand, or put his arm around her shoulder. U.S. 422 was the Harrisburg highway. If she got that far, if they spent the night together…

In Norristown, ten miles or so past the western outskirts of Philadelphia, he turned off the highway and pulled into an Amoco station.

A tall, skinny, pimply-faced young man in a mackinaw and galoshes came out to the pump. McCoy opened the door and got out.

"Fill it up with high test," McCoy ordered. "Check the oil. And can you get the crap off the headlights?"

"Yes, sir," the attendant said.

"Dutch around?" McCoy asked.

"Inna station," the attendant said.

McCoy turned and looked through the windshield at Ernie, and then gestured for her to come out.

By the time she had put her feet back in her galoshes, McCoy was at the door of the service station. Ernie ran after him.

There was no one in the room where they had the cash register and displays of oil and Simoniz, but there was a man in the service bay, putting tire chains on a Buick on the lift.

"Whaddasay, Dutch?" McCoy greeted him. "What's up?"

The man looked up, first in impatience, and then with surprised recognition. He smiled, dropped the tire chains on the floor, and walked to McCoy.

"How're ya?" he asked. "Ain't that an officer's uniform?"

"Yeah," McCoy said. "Dutch, say hello to Ernie Sage."

"Hi ya, honey," Dutch said. "Pleased to meetcha."

"Hello," Ernie said.

"How's business?" McCoy asked.

"Jesus! So long as we got gas, it's fine," Dutch said. "But there's already talk about rationing. If that happens, I'll be out on my ass."

"Maybe you could get on with Budd in Philly," McCoy said. "I guess they're hiring."

"Yeah, maybe," Dutch said doubtfully. "Well, I'll think of something. What brings you to town? When'd you get to be an officer?"

"Month or so ago," McCoy said.

"Better dough, I guess?" Dutch asked.

"Yeah, but they make you buy your own meals," McCoy said.

"You didn't say what you're doing in town?"

"Just passing through," McCoy said.

"But you will come by the house? Anne-Marie would be real disappointed if you didn't."

"Just for a minute," McCoy said. "She there?"

"Where else would she be on a miserable fucking night like this?" Dutch asked. Then he remembered his manners. "Sorry, honey," he said to Ernie. "My old lady says I got mouth like a sewer."

Ernie smiled and shook her head, accepting the apology.

She had placed Dutch. His old lady, Anne-Marie, was Ken McCoy's sister. Dutch was Ken's brother-in-law.

"Gimme a minute," Dutch said, "to lock up the cash, and then you can follow me to the house."

Anne- Marie and Dutch Schulter and their two small children lived in a row house on North Elm Street, not far from the service station. There were seven brick houses in the row, each fronted with a wooden porch. The one in front of Dutch's house sagged under his and McCoy's and Ernie's weight as they stood there while Anne-Marie came to the door.

She had one child in her arms when she opened the door, and another-with soiled diapers-was hanging on to her skirt. It looked at them with wide and somehow frightened eyes. Anne-Marie was fat, and she had lost some teeth, and she was wearing a dirty man's sweater over her dress, and her feet were in house slippers.

She was not being taken home by Ken McCoy to be shown off, Ernie Sage realized sadly, in the hope that his family would be pleased with his girl. Ken had brought her here to show her his family, sure that she would be shocked and disgusted.

Dutch went quickly into the kitchen and returned with a quart of beer.

Ernie reached for McCoy's hand, but he jerked it away.

To Dutch's embarrassment, Anne-Marie began a litany of complaints about how hard it was to make ends meet with what he could bring home from the service station. And her reaction to Ken's promotion to officer status, Ernie saw, was that it meant for her a possible source of further revenue.

In due course, Anne-Marie invited them to have something to eat-coupled with the caveat that she didn't know what was in the icebox and the implied suggestion that Ken should take them all out for dinner.

"Maybe you'd get to see Pop, if we went out to the Inn," Anne-Marie said.

"What makes you think I'd want to see Pop?" McCoy replied. "No, we gotta go. It's still snowing; they may close the roads."

"Where are you going?" Anne-Marie asked.

"Harrisburg," McCoy said. "Ernie's got to catch a train in Harrisburg."

"Going back to Philly'd be closer," Dutch said.

"Yeah, but I got to go to Harrisburg," McCoy said. He looked at Ernie, for the first time meeting her eyes. "You about ready?"

She smiled and nodded.

When they were back in the LaSalle and headed for Harrisburg, McCoy said, "A long way from Rocky Fields Farm, isn't it?"

A mental image of herself with McCoy in the bed in what her mother called the "Blue Guest Room" of Rocky Fields Farm came into Ernie's mind. The Blue Guest Room was actually an apartment, with a bedroom and sitting room about as large as Anne-Marie and Dutch Schulter's entire house.

And it didn't smell of soiled diapers and cabbage and stale beer.

"When you're trying to sell something, you should use all your arguments," Ernie said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" McCoy asked, confused.

"You asked your sister why she thought you would want to see Pop," Ernie said. "What did that mean?"

"We don't get along," McCoy said, after hesitating.

"Why not?" Ernie asked.

"Does it matter?" McCoy asked.

"Everything you do matters to me," Ernie said.

"My father is a mean sonofabitch," McCoy said. "Leave it at that."

"What about your mother?" Ernie asked.

"She's dead," McCoy said. "I thought I told you that."

"You didn't tell me what she was like," Ernie said.

"She was all right," McCoy said. "Browbeat by the Old Man is all."

"And I know about Brother Tom," Ernie said. "After he was fired by Bethlehem Steel for beating up his foreman, he joined the Marines. Is that all of the skeletons in your closet, or are we on our way to another horror show?"

There was a moment's silence, and then he chuckled. "Anyone ever tell you you're one tough lady?"

"You didn't really think I was going to say how much I liked your sister, did you?"

"I don't know," he said.

"I didn't like her," Ernie said. "There's no excuse for being dirty or having dirty children."

"That the only reason you didn't like her?"

"She was hinting that you should give her money," Ernie said. "She doesn't really like you. She just would like to use you."

"Yeah, she's always been that way," McCoy said. "I guess she gets it from Pop."

"Daughters take after their fathers," Ernie said. "I take after mine. And I think you should know that my father always gets what he goes after."

"Meaning?"

"That we're in luck. Our daughter will take after you."

There was a long moment before McCoy replied. "Ernie, I can't marry you," he said.

"There's a touch of finality to that I don't like at all," Ernie said. "What is it, another skeleton?"

"What?"

She blurted what had popped into her mind: "A wife you forgot to mention?"

He chuckled. "Christ, no," he said.

"Then what?" she asked, as a wave of relief swept through her.

"You've got a job," he said. "A career in advertising. You're going places there. What about that?"

"I'd rather be with you. You know that. And you also know that when it comes down to it, I need you more than I need a career in advertising… And besides, I don't think that's what is bothering you either."

"There's a war on," McCoy said. "I'm going to be in it. It wouldn't be right to marry you."

"That's not it," Ernie said surely.

"No," he said.

"I don't give a damn about your family," Ernie said.

"That's not it, either," he said.

"Then what? What's the reason you are so evasive?"

"I can't tell you," he said. "It's got to do with the Corps."

"What's it got to do with the Corps?" she persisted.

"I can't tell you," he said.

Now, she decided, he's telling the truth.

"Military secret?" she asked.

"Something like that," he said.

"What, Ken?"

"Goddamnit, I told you I can't tell you!" he snapped. "Jesus, Ernie! If I could tell you I would!"

"Okay," she said, finally. "So don't tell me. But for God's sake, at least between here and Harrisburg, at least can I be your girl?"

McCoy reached across the seat and took her hand. She slid across the seat, put his arm around her shoulders, and leaned close against him.

"And when we get to Harrisburg, instead of just putting me on the train, can I be your mistress for one more night?"

"Jesus!" he said. The way he said it, she knew he meant yes.

"I'm not hard to please," Ernie said. "I'll be happy with whatever I can have, whenever I can have it."

(Three)

Room 402

The Penn- Harris Hotel

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

0815 Hours, 9 January 1942

Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, was so startled when Miss Ernestine Sage joined him behind the white cotton shower curtain that he slipped and nearly fell down.

"I hope that means you're not used to this sort of thing," Ernie said.

"I didn't mean to wake you," he said.

"I woke up the moment you ever so carefully slipped out of bed," Ernie said. "It took me a little time to work up my courage to join you."

"Oh, Jesus, Ernie, I love you," McCoy said.

"That's good," she said, and then stepped closer to him, wrapped her arms around him, and put her head against his chest. His arms tightened around her, and he kissed the top of her head. She felt his heartbeat against her ear, and then he grew erect.

She put her hand on him and pulled her face back to look up at him.

"Well," she said, "what should we do now, do you think?"

"I suppose we better dry each other off, or the sheets'll get wet," he said.

"To hell with the sheets," she said.

When she came out of the bathroom again twenty minutes later, he was nearly dressed. Everything but his uniform blouse.

When he puts the blouse on, and I put my slip and dress on, she thought, that will be the end of it. We will close our suitcases, send for the bellboy, have breakfast, and he will put me on the train.

"Don't look at me," Ernie said. "I'm about to cry, and I look awful when I cry."

She went to her suitcase and turned her back to him and pulled a slip over her head.

"I'm on orders to Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy said, "for further assignment as a platoon leader with one of the regiments."

She turned to look at him. "I thought you were an intelligence officer," Ernie said.

"Early next month, the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy went on in a strange tone of voice, ignoring her question, "will be ordered to form the Second Separate Battalion. It will be given to Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson-"

"What's a separate battalion?" Ernie interrupted. "Honey, I don't understand these terms…"

"You heard about the English Commandos?" McCoy asked. Ernie nodded. "The Corps's going to have their own. Two battalions of them."

"Oh," Ernie said, somewhat lamely. She was frightened. Her mind's eye was full of newsreels of English Commandos. There were shock troops, sent to fight against impossible odds.

"Colonel Carlson is going to recruit then from Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy went on. "He has been given authority to take anybody he wants. He's an old China Marine. I'm an old China Marine. He's probably-almost certainly- going to try to recruit me. He is not recruiting married men."

"And that's why you won't marry me?" Ernie said, suddenly furious. "So you can be a commando? And get yourself killed right away? Thanks a lot."

"Carlson's a strange man," McCoy went on, ignoring her again. "He spent some time with the Chinese Communists. There is some scuttlebutt that he's a Communist."

"Scuttlebutt?" Ernie asked.

"Gossip, rumor," McCoy explained. "And there is some more scuttlebutt that he's not playing with a full deck."

Ernie Sage had never heard the expression before, but she thought it through. Now she was confused. And still angry, she realized, when she heard her tone of voice.

"You're telling me… let me get this straight… that you're going to volunteer for the Marine commandos, which are going to be under a crazy Communist?"

"You can only volunteer after you're asked," McCoy said. "My first problem is to make sure I'm asked."

"And then you can go get yourself killed?"

"I didn't ask for this job," he said.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nobody knows for sure whether Carlson is either a Communist or crazy," McCoy said.

"If there seems to be some question, why are they making him a commando?"

"When he was a captain, he was commanding officer of the Marine detachment that guards President Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia. He and the President's son, who is a reserve captain, are good friends."

"Oh," Ernie said. "But what has this got to do with you? Common sense would say, stay away from all of this."

"Somebody has to find out, for sure, if he's crazy, or a Communist, or both," McCoy said.

Ernie suddenly understood. Ken McCoy had told her the military secret he wouldn't talk about in the car. But it was so incredible she needed confirmation.

"And that's you, right?"

He nodded.

"They made up a new service record for me," he said. "It says that after I graduated from Quantico, they assigned me to the Marine Barracks in Philadelphia, where I was a platoon leader in a motor transport company. There's nothing in it about me being assigned to intelligence."

"And this is what you wouldn't tell me yesterday?"

He nodded. "I'm trusting you," he said. "Even Pick doesn't know. I don't know what the hell they would do to me if they found out I told you. Or what Carlson and the nuts around him would do to me if they found out I was there to report on them."

Ernie smiled at him. "So why did you tell me?" she asked, very softly.

"I figured maybe, if you're still crazy enough to want to drive across the country with me, that is, it would be easier to put you on the train once we get there if you knew."

"That's not the answer I was looking for," Ernie said. "But it's a start."

"What answer were you looking for?" McCoy asked.

"That you love me and trust me," Ernie said.

"That, too," he said.