The Intruders

1

The huge ship towered above the pier that projected into the bay. The rain falling from a low, slate-colored sky made everything look dark and wet — the ship, the pier, the trucks, even the sailors hurrying to and fro.

At the gate at the head of the pier stood a portable guard shack where a sailor huddled with the collar of his pea coat turned up, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. There was no heater in the wooden shack so the air here was no warmer than it was outside, but at least he was out of the wind. Raw and wet, the swirling air lashed at unprotected flesh and cut like a knife through thin trousers.

The sailor looked yet again up at the projecting flight deck of the great ship, at the tails and wing butts of the aircraft sticking over the edge. Then his eyes wandered back along the ship’s length, over a thousand feet. The gray steel behemoth looked so permanent, so solid, one almost had to accept on faith the notion that it was indeed a ship that could move at will upon the oceans. It looked, the sailor decided, like a cliff of blue-black granite.

Streams of water trickled from scuppers high on the edge of the flight deck. When the wind gusted these dribbles scattered and became an indistinguishable part of the rain. In the lulls the streams splattered randomly against the pier, the camels that wedged the hull away from the pilings, and the restless black water of the bay.

The sailor watched the continuous march of small swells as they surged against the oil containment booms, swirled trash against the pilings, and lapped nervously against the hull of the ship. Of course the ship didn’t move. She lay as motionless as if she were resting on bedrock.

Yet she was floating upon that oily black wet stuff, the sailor mused. This 95,000 tons of steel would get under way tomorrow morning, steam across the bay and through the Golden Gate. All of her eighty aircraft were already aboard, all except the last one that was just now being lifted by a crane onto the forward starboard elevator, Elevator One. This past week had been spent loading bombs, bullets, beans, toilet paper — supplies by the tractor-trailer load, an endless stream of trucks and railroad cars, which were pushed down tracks in the middle of the pier.

Tomorrow.

Carrying her planes and five thousand men, the ship would leave the land behind and move freely in a universe of sea and sky — that was a fact amazing and marvelous and somewhat daunting. The carrier would be a man-made planet voyaging in a universe of water, storms, darkness, maybe occasionally even sunlight. And on this planet would be the ants — the men— working and eating, working and sleeping, working and sweating, working and praying that somehow, someday the ship would once again return to the land.

And he would be aboard her. This would be his first cruise, at the age of nineteen years. The prospect was a little strange and a little frightening.

The sailor shivered involuntarily — was it the cold? — and looked again at the tails of the planes projecting over the edge of the flight deck. What would it be like to ride one of those planes down the catapult into the sky, or to come across the fantail and catch one of the arresting gear wires? The sailor didn’t know, nor was it likely he would ever find out, a fact that gave him a faint sense of disappointment. He was a storekeeper, a clerk. The aviators who would fly the planes were officers, all older and presumably vastly more knowledgeable than he — certainly they lived in a world far different than his. But maybe someday. When you are nineteen the future stretches away like a highway until it disappears into the haze. Who knows what lies ahead on that infinite, misty road?

The sailor wasn’t very interested in that mystical future: his thoughts turned glumly to the here and now. He was homesick. There was a girl at home whom he hadn’t been all that serious about when he joined the Navy after high school, but the separation had worked its insidious magic. Now he was writing her three long letters per week, plus a letter to his folks and one to his brother. The girl…well, she was dating another guy. That fact ate at his insides something fierce.

He was thinking about the girl, going over what he would say in his next letter — her last letter to him had arrived three weeks ago — when a taxi pulled up on the other side of the gate. An officer stepped out and stood looking at the ship, a lieutenant, wearing a leather flight jacket and a khaki fore-and-aft cap.

After the cab driver opened the trunk, the officer paid him and hoisted two heavy parachute bags. One he swung onto his right shoulder. The other he picked up with his left hand. He strode toward the gate and the guard shack.

The sailor came out into the rain with his clipboard. He saluted the officer and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I need to see your ID card.”

The officer made eye contact with the sailor for the first time. He was about six feet tall, with gray eyes and a nose that was a trifle too large for his face. He lowered the bags to the wet concrete, dug in his pocket for his wallet, extracted an ID card and handed it to the sailor.

The sailor carefully copied the information from the ID card to the paper on his clipboard as he tried to shield the paper from the rain. LT JACOB L. GRAFTON, USN. Then he passed the credit-card-size piece of plastic back to the officer.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Okay, sailor,” the lieutenant said. After he stowed the card he stood silently for several seconds looking at the ship. He ignored the falling rain.

Finally he looked again at the sailor. “Your first cruise?”

“Yessir.”

“Where you from?”

“Iowa, sir.”

“Umm.”

After a last glance at the airplanes on the flight deck above, the officer reached for his bags. He again hoisted one of the parachute bags to his right shoulder, then lifted the other in his left hand. From the way the bags sagged the sailor guessed they weighed at least fifty pounds each. The officer didn’t seem to have any trouble handling them, though.

“Iowa’s a long way behind you,” the lieutenant said softly.

“Yessir.”

“Good luck,” the lieutenant said, and walked away down the pier.

The sailor stood oblivious to the rain and watched him go.

Not just Iowa…everything was behind. The ship, the great ocean, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia — all that was ahead. They would sail in the morning. Only one more night.

The sailor retreated to the shack and closed the door. He began to whistle to himself.

An hour later Lieutenant Jake Grafton finally found his new two-man stateroom and dumped his bags. His roommate, a Navy pilot, wasn’t around, but apparently he had moved into the bottom bunk.

Jake climbed into the top bunk and stretched out.

Just five months into his first shore tour — after three years in a fleet squadron with two combat cruises — his tour was cut short. Now he was going to sea again, this time with a Marine squadron.

Amateur hour! Jarheads!

How had he gotten himself into this fix anyway?

Well, the world started coming unglued about three weeks ago, when he went to Chicago to see Callie. He closed his eyes and half-listened to the sounds of the ship as it all came flooding back.

“Do you know Chicago?” Callie McKenzie asked.

It was 11 A.M. on a Thursday morning and they were on the freeway from O‘Hare into the city. Callie was at the wheel.

Jake Grafton leaned back in the passenger’s seat and grinned. “No.”

Her eyes darted across his face. She was still glowing from the long, passionate kiss she had received at the gate in front of an appreciative audience of travelers and gate attendants. Then they had walked down the concourse arm in arm. Now Jake’s green nylon folding clothes bag was in the trunk and they had left the worst of O‘Hare’s traffic behind.

“Thank you for the letters,” she said. “You’re quite a correspondent.”

“Well, thank you for all the ones you wrote to me.”

She drove in silence, her cheeks still flushed. After a bit she said, “So your knee is okay and you’re flying again?”

“Oh, sure.” Unconsciously Jake rubbed the knee that had been injured in an ejection over Laos, six months ago. When he realized that he was doing it, he laughed, then said, “But that’s history. The war’s over, the POWs are home, it’s June, you’re beautiful, I’m here — all in all, life is damn good.”

In spite of herself Callie McKenzie flushed again. Here he was, in the flesh, the man she had met in Hong Kong last fall and spent a bittersweet weekend with in the Philippines. What was that, seven days total? And she was in love with him.

She had avidly read and reread his letters and written long, chatty replies. She had told him she loved him in every line. And she had called him the first evening she arrived back in the States after finishing her two-year tour in Hong Kong with the State Department. That was ten days ago. Now, here he was.

They had so much to talk about, a relationship to renew. She was worried about that. Love was so tricky. What if the magic didn’t happen?

“My folks are anxious to meet you,” she said, a trifle nervously Jake Grafton thought. He was nervous too, so nervous that he couldn’t eat the breakfast they had served on the plane from Seattle. Yet here with her now, he could feel the tension leaving him. It was going to be all right.

When he didn’t reply, she glanced at him. He was looking at the skyline of the city, wearing a half-smile. The car seemed crowded with his presence. That was one of the things she had remembered — he seemed a much larger man than he was. He hadn’t changed. Somehow she found that reassuring. After another glance at his face, she concentrated on driving.

In a moment she asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Oh, getting there.”

“I thought we’d go downtown, get some lunch, do some sightseeing, then go home this evening after my folks get home from the university.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“You’ll like Chicago,” she said.

“I like all American towns,” he said softly. “I’ve never yet been in one I didn’t like.”

“You men! So hard to please.”

He laughed, and she joined in.

He’s here! She felt delicious.

She found a parking garage within the Loop and they went walking hand in hand, looking, laughing, getting reacquainted. After lunch with a bubbling crowd in a pub, they walked and walked.

Of course Callie wanted to hear an account from Jake’s own lips about his shootdown and rescue from Laos, and they talked about Tiger Cole, the bombardier who had broken his back and was now undergoing intensive physical therapy in Pensacola.

When they had each brought the other up-to-date on all the things that had happened to them since they last saw each other, Callie asked, “Are you going to stay in the Navy?”

“I don’t know. I can get out after a year in this shore tour.” He was a flight instructor at Attack Squadron 128 at NAS Whidbey Island, Washington, transitioning new pilots and bombardier-navigators (BNs) to the A-6 Intruder. “The flying is fun,” he continued. “It’s good to get back to it. But I don’t know. It depends.”

“On what?”

“Oh, this and that.” He grinned at her.

She liked how he looked when he grinned. His gray eyes danced.

She thought she knew what the decision depended on, but she wanted to hear him say it. “Not finances?”

“No. Got a few bucks saved.”

“On a civilian flying job?”

“Haven’t applied for any.”

“On what then, Jake?”

They were on a sidewalk on Lake Shore Drive, with Lake Michigan spreading out before them. Jake had his elbows on the railing. Now he turned and enveloped Callie in his arms and gave her a long, probing kiss. When they finally parted for air, he said, “Depends on this and that.”

“On us?”

“You and me.”

The admission satisfied her. She wrapped her hands around one of his arms and rested her head on his shoulder. The gulls were crying and wheeling above the beach.

The McKenzies lived in a brick two-story in an old neighborhood. Two giant oaks stood in the tiny front yard between the porch and the sidewalk. After apparently struggling for years to get enough sunlight, most of the grass had surrendered to fate. Only a few blades poked through last autumn’s leaf collection. Professor McKenzie appeared to be as enthusiastic about raking leaves as he was about mowing grass.

Callie introduced Jake to her parents and he agreed that he could drink a beer, if they had any. The professor mixed himself a highball and poured a glass of wine for each of the ladies. Then the four of them sat a few minutes in the study with their drinks in hand exchanging pleasantries.

He had been in the Navy for five years, liked it so far. He and Callie had met in Hong Kong. Wasn’t this June pleasant?

Callie and her mother finally excused themselves and headed for the kitchen. Jake surveyed the room for ashtrays and saw that there weren’t any. As he debated whether he should cross his legs or keep both feet firmly on the floor, Callie’s father told him that he and his wife taught at the University of Chicago, had done so for thirty years, had lived in this house for twenty. They hoped to retire in eight years. Might even move to Florida.

“I was raised in southwestern Virginia,” Jake informed his host. “My Dad has a pretty good-size farm.”

“Have you any farming ambitions?”

No, Jake thought not. He had seen his share of farming while growing up. He was a pilot now and thought he might just stick with it, although he hadn’t decided for certain.

“What kind of planes do you fly in the Navy?” Professor McKenzie asked.

So Callie hadn’t mentioned that? Or the professor forgot. “I fly A-6s, sir.”

Not a glimmer showed on the professor’s face. He had a weathered, lined face, was balding and wore trifocals. Still, he wasn’t bad looking. And Mrs. McKenzie was a striking lady. Jake could see where Callie got her looks and figure.

“What kind of planes are those?” the professor asked, apparently just to make conversation.

“Attack planes. All-weather attack.”

“Attack?”

“Any time, anywhere, any weather, day or night, high, low or in the middle.”

“You…drop…bombs?” His face was blank, incredulous.

“And shoot missiles,” Jake said firmly.

Professor McKenzie took a deep breath and stared at this young man who had been invited into his house by his daughter. His only daughter. Life is amazing — getting into bed with a woman is the ultimate act of faith: truly, you are rolling cosmic dice. Who would have believed that twenty-five years later the child of that union would bring home this…this…

“Doesn’t it bother you? Dropping bombs?”

“Only when the bad guys are trying to kill me,” Jake Graft on replied coolly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, maybe I should take my bags upstairs and wash my face.”

“Of course.” The professor gestured vaguely toward the hallway where the stairs were and took a healthy swig of his highball.

Jake found the spare bedroom and put his bags on a chair. Then he sat on the bed staring out the window.

He was in trouble. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that. Callie hadn’t told her parents anything about him. And that look on the old man’s face! “You drop bombs?”

He could have just said, “Oh, Mr. Grafton, you’re a hit man for the Mafia? What an unusual career choice! And you look like you enjoy your work.”

Jesus!

He dug in his pocket and got out the ring. He had purchased this engagement ring last December on the Shiloh and carried it with him ever since, on the ground, in the air, all the time. He had fully intended to give it to Callie when the time was right. But this visit…her parents…it made him wonder. Was he right for this woman? Would he fit into her family? Oh, love is wonderful and grand and will conquer all the problems — isn’t that the way the songs go? Yet under the passion there needs to be something else…a rightness. He wanted a woman to go the distance with. If Callie was the woman, now was not the time. She wasn’t ready.

And he wasn’t if she wasn’t.

He looked disgustedly at the ring, then put it back into his pocket.

The evening sun shone through the branches of the old oak. The window was open, a breeze wafted through the screen. That limb — he could take out the screen, toss down the bags, get onto that limb and climb down to the ground. He could be in a taxi on the way to the airport before they even knew he was gone.

He was still sitting there staring glumly out the window when Callie came for him thirty minutes later.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, rising from the bed and stretching. “Dinner ready?”

“Yes.”

“Something is wrong, isn’t it?”

There was no way to avoid it. “You didn’t tell me your Dad was Mr. Liberal.”

“Liberal? He’s about a mile left of Lenin.”

“He looked really thrilled when I told him I was an attack pilot.”

“Dad is Dad. I thought it was me you were interested in?”

Jake Grafton cocked his head. “Well, you are better looking than he is. Probably a better kisser, too.” He took her arm and led her toward the stairs. “Wait till you meet my older brother,” he told her. “He can’t wait for the next revolution. He says the next time we won’t screw it up like Bobby Lee and Jeff Davis did.”

“How would you rate me as a kisser?” she asked softly.

They paused on the top stair and she wrapped her arms around him. “This is for score,” he whispered. “Pucker up.”

That night when they were in bed Professor McKenzie told his wife, “That boy’s a killer.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Wallace.”

“He kills people. He kills them from the air. He’s an executioner.”

“That’s war, dear. They try to kill him, he tries to kill them.”

“It’s murder.”

Mary McKenzie had heard it all before. “Callie is in love with him, Wallace. I suggest you keep your opinions and your loaded labels to yourself. She must make her own decision.”

“Decision? What decision?”

“Whether or not to marry him.”

“Marriage?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know what was going on?” his wife said crossly. “I swear, you’re blind as a bat! Didn’t you see her at dinner tonight? She loves him.”

“She won’t marry him,” Professor McKenzie stated positively. “I know Callie!”

“Yes, dear,” Mrs. McKenzie muttered, just to pacify the man. What her husband knew about young women in love wouldn’t fill a thimble. She herself was appalled by Callie’s choice, believing the girl could do a whale of a lot better if she just looked around a little.

Callie was inexperienced. She didn’t date until college and then couldn’t seem to find any young men who interested her. Mrs. McKenzie had hoped she would find a proper man while working for the State Department — apparently a futile hope. This Grafton boy was physically a good specimen, yet he was wrong for Callie. He was so…blue-collar. The girl needed a man who was at least in the same room with her intellectually.

But she wasn’t going to say that to Callie — not a chance. Pointed comments would probably be resented, perhaps even resisted. In this new age of liberated womanhood, covert pressure was the proper way, the only way. One had to pretend strict neutrality—“This is your decision, dear”—while radiating bad vibes. She owed her daughter maternal guidance — choosing a mate is much too important to be left to young women with raging hormones.

Secure in the knowledge that she was up to the task that duty had set before her, Mrs. McKenzie went peacefully to sleep while her husband stewed.

At breakfast Professor McKenzie held forth on the Vietnam War. The night before at dinner he had said little, preferring to let the ladies steer the conversation. This morning he told Jake Grafton in no uncertain terms what he thought of the politicians who started the war and the politicians who kept the nation in it.

If he was expecting an argument, he didn’t get it. In fact, several times Jake nodded in agreement with the professor’s points, and twice Callie distinctly heard him say, “You’re right.”

After the senior McKenzies left the house for the university, Jake and Callie headed for the kitchen to finish cleaning up.

“You sure handled Dad,” Callie told her boyfriend.

“Huh?”

“You took the wind right out of Dad’s sails. He thought you were going to give him a bang-up fight.”

She was looking straight into his gray eyes when he said, “The war’s over. It’s history. What is there to fight about?”

“Well…,” Callie said dubiously.

Jake just shrugged. His knee was fairly well healed and the dead were buried. That chapter of his life was over.

He gathered her into his arms and smiled. “What are we going to do today?”

He had good eyes, Callie thought. You could almost look in and see the inner man, and that inner man was simple and good. He wasn’t complicated or self-absorbed like her father, nor was he warped with secret doubts and phobias like so many of the young men she knew. Amazingly, after Vietnam his scars were merely physical, like that slash on his temple where a bullet gouged him.

Acutely aware of the warmth and pressure of his body against hers, she gave him a fierce hug and whispered, “What would you like to do?”

The feel and smell and warmth of her seemed more than Jake could take in. “Anything you want, Miss McKenzie,” he said hoarsely, mildly surprised at his reaction to her presence, “as long as we do it together.” That didn’t come out quite the way he intended, and he felt slightly flustered. You can’t just invite a woman to bed at eight-thirty in the morning!

His hand massaged the small of her back and she felt her knees get weak. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then said, “I’d like to take you to meet my brother, Theron. He lives in Milwaukee. But first let’s clean up these dishes. Then, since you so coyly suggested it, let’s slip upstairs in a Freudian way and get seriously naked.”

When Jake’s cheeks reddened, Callie laughed, a deep, throaty woman’s laugh. “Don’t pretend you weren’t thinking about that!”

Jake dearly enjoyed seeing her laugh. She had a way of throwing her head back and unashamedly displaying a mouthful of beautiful teeth that he found captivating. When she did it her hair swayed and her eyes crinkled. The effect was mesmerizing. You wanted her to do it again, and again, and again.

“The thought did flit across my little mind,” he admitted, grinning, watching her eyes.

“Ooh, I want you, Jake Grafton,” she said and kissed him.

A shaft of sunlight streamed through the open window and fell squarely across them in the bed. After all those months of living aboard ship, in a steel cubicle in the bowels of the beast where the sun never reached, Jake thought the sunlight magical. He gently turned her so their heads were in the sun. The zephyr from the window played with strands of her brown hair and the sun flecked them with gold. She was woman, all warm taut sleek smoothness and supple, sensuous wetness.

Somehow she ended up on top and set the rhythm of their lovemaking. As her hair caressed his cheeks and her hands kneaded his body, the urgency became overwhelming. He guided her onto him.

When she lay spent across him, her lashes stroking his cheek, her breath hot on his shoulder, he whispered, “I love you.”

“I know,” she replied.

Theron McKenzie had been drafted into the Army in 1967. On October 7, 1968, he stepped on a land mine. He lost one leg below the knee and one above. Today he walked on artificial legs. Jake thought he was pretty good at it, although he had to sway his body from side to side to keep his balance when he threw the legs forward.

“It was in II Corps,” he told Jake Grafton, “at the base camp. And the worst of it was that the mine was one of ours. I just forgot for a moment and walked the wrong way.” He shrugged and grinned.

He had a good grin. Jake liked him immediately. Yet he was slightly taken aback when Theron asked, “So are you going to marry her?” This while his sister walked between them holding onto Jake’s arm.

Grafton recovered swiftly. “Aaah, I dunno. She’s so pushy, mighty smart, might be more than a country boy like me could handle. If you were me, knowing what you know about her, what would you do?”

Both men stared at Callie’s composed features. She didn’t let a muscle twitch. Theron sighed, then spoke: “If I were you and a woman loved me as much as this one loves you, I’d drag her barefoot to the altar. If I were you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“And what about you, Sis? You gonna marry him?”

“Theron, how would you like to have your throat cut?”

They ate lunch at a sports bar around the corner from the office where Theron worked as a tax accountant. After a half hour of small talk, Theron asked Jake, “So are you going to stay in or try life on the outside?”

“Haven’t decided. All I’ve got is a history degree. I’d have to go back to school.”

“Maybe you could get a flying job.”

“Maybe.”

Theron changed the subject. Before Callie could get an oar in, Theron was asking questions about carrier aviation — how the catapults worked, the arresting gear, how the pilots knew if they were on the glide slope. Jake drew diagrams on napkins and Theron asked more questions while Callie sat and watched.

“God, that must be terrific,” Theron said to Jake, “landing and taking off from an aircraft carrier. That’s something I’d love to do someday.” He slapped his artificial legs. “Of course, I can’t now, but I can just imagine!”

Callie glowed with a feeling approaching euphoria. She had known that these two would get along well: it was almost as if they were brothers. Having a brother like Theron was hard on a girl — he was all man. When you have a real man only a year and a half older than you are to compare the boys against, finding one that measures up isn’t easy.

Jake Grafton did. Her cup was full to overflowing.

“Is he going to stay in the Navy?” Mrs. McKenzie asked her daughter. They were in the kitchen cutting the cherry pie.

“He hasn’t made up his mind.”

Grafton’s indecision didn’t set well with Mrs. McKenzie. “He probably will,” she said.

“He might,” Callie admitted.

“The military is a nice comfortable place for some people. The government feeds and clothes and houses them, provides medical care, a living wage. All they have to do is follow orders. Some people like that. They don’t have to take any responsibility. The military is safe.”

Callie concentrated on getting the pie wedges from the pan to the plates without making a mess.

“Would he continue to fly?” Mrs. McKenzie asked. “If he stayed in?”

“I suspect so,” her daughter allowed.

Mrs. McKenzie let the silence build until it shrieked.

When Callie could stand it no longer, she said, “He hasn’t asked me to marry him, Mom.”

“Oh, he will, he will. That’s a man working himself up to a proposal if ever I saw one.”

Callie told her mother the truth. “If he asks, I haven’t decided what the answer will be.”

Which was, Callie McKenzie suspected, precisely why he hadn’t asked. Jake Grafton was nobody’s fool. Yet why she hadn’t yet made up her mind, she didn’t know.

I love him, why am I uncertain?

Mrs. McKenzie didn’t know much about Jake Grafton, but she knew a man in love when she saw one. “He’s an idiot if he throws his life away by staying in the Navy,” she said perfunctorily.

“He’s a pilot, Mom. That’s what he does. He’s good at it.”

“The airlines hire pilots.”

“He’s probably considering that,” Callie said distractedly, still trying to pin down her emotional doubt. Had she been looking for a man like Theron all this time? Was that wise? Was she seeking a substitute for her brother?

Her mother was saying something. After a moment Callie began to pay attention. “… so he’ll stay in the Navy, and some night they’ll come tell you he’s crashed and you’re a widow. What then?”

“Mother, you just announced that some people stay in the military because it’s safe, yet now you argue it’s too dangerous. You can’t have it both ways. Do you want whipped cream on your pie?”

“Callie, I’m thinking of you. You well know something can be physically dangerous yet on another level appeal to people without ambition.”

Callie opened the refrigerator and stared in. Then she closed it. “We’re out of whipped cream. Will you bring the other two plates, please?” She picked up two of the plates and headed for the dining room.

She put one plate in front of Jake and one in front of her father. Then she seated herself. Jake winked at her. She tried to smile at him.

Lord, if her mother only knew how close to the edge Jake lived she wouldn’t be appalled — she would be horrified. Jake had made light of the dangers of flying onto and off of carriers this afternoon, but Callie knew the truth. Staying alive was the challenge.

She examined his face again. He didn’t look like Theron, but he had the same self-assurance, the same intelligence and good sense, the same intellectual curiosity, the same easy way with everyone. She had seen that in him the first time they met. And like Theron, Jake Grafton had nothing to prove to anyone. Perhaps naval aviation had given Jake that quality — or combat had — but wherever he acquired it, he now had it in spades. He owned the space he occupied.

He was like Theron! She was going to have to come to grips with that fact.

“The most serious problem our society faces,” Professor McKenzie intoned, “is the complete absence of moral fiber in so many of our young people.”

They had finished the pie and were sipping coffee. Jake Grafton let that pronouncement go by without bothering to glance at his host. He was observing Callie, trying to read her mood.

“If they had any sense of right and wrong,” the professor continued, “young men would have never fought in that war. Until people understand that they have the right, nay, the duty, the obligation, to resist the illegal demands of a morally bankrupt government, we will continue to have war. Murder, slaughter, rapine, grotesque human suffering, for what? Just to line the pockets of greedy men.”

After the prologue, the professor got down to cases. Jake had a sick feeling this was coming. “What about you, Jake? Were you drafted?”

Jake eyed the professor without turning his head. “No.”

Something in his voice drew Callie’s gaze. She glanced at him, but his attention was directed at her father.

“Wallace,” said Mrs. McKenzie, “perhaps we should—”

“You volunteered?”

“Yes.”

“You volunteered to kill people?” the professor asked with naked sarcasm.

“I volunteered to fight for my country.”

The professor was on firm ground here. He lunged with his rapier. “Your country wasn’t under attack by the Vietnamese. You can’t wrap the holy flag around yourself now, Mister, or use it to cover up what you people did over there.”

Now the professor slashed. “You and your airborne colleagues murdered defenseless men, women and children. Burned them alive with napalm. Bombed them in the most contemptible, cowardly manner that—”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Gentlemen, let’s change the subject.” Mrs. McKenzie’s tone was flinty.

“No, Mary,” the professor said, leaning forward with his eyes on Jake. “This young man — I’m being charitable here — is courting our daughter. I think I have a right to know what kind of man he is.”

“The war’s over, Mr. McKenzie,” Jake said.

“The shooting has stopped, no thanks to you. But you can’t turn your back on all those murdered people and just walk away. I won’t allow it! The American people won’t—”

But he was orating to Jake Grafton’s back. The pilot walked through the doorway into the hall and his feet sounded on the stairs.

Mrs. McKenzie got up abruptly and went to the kitchen, leaving Callie alone with her father.

“You didn’t have to do that, Dad.”

“He’s not the man for you, Callie. You couldn’t live with what he did, he and those other criminal swine in uniform.”

Callie McKenzie tapped nervously on the table with a spoon. Finally she put it down and scooted her chair back.

“I want to say this just right, Father. I’ve been wanting to say this for a long time, but I’ve never known just how. On this occasion I want to try. You think in black and white although we live in a gray world. It’s been my experience that people who think the dividing line between right and wrong is a brick wall are crackpots.”

She rose and left the room with her father sitting open-mouthed behind her.

In the guest room upstairs Jake was rolling up his clothes and stuffing them into his folding bag. The nylon bag, Callie noticed listlessly, was heavily stained. That was the bag he had with him in Olongapo last autumn.

“I’ve called a cab,” he told her.

She sagged into a chair. “My father…I’m sorry…why do you have to go?”

Grafton finished stuffing the bag, looked around to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, then zipped the bag closed. He lifted it from the bed and tossed it toward the door. Only then did he turn to face her.

“The people I knew in the service were some of the finest men I ever met. Some of those men are dead. Some are crippled for life, like your brother. I’m proud that I served with them. We made mistakes, but we did the best we could. I won’t listen to vicious slander.”

“Dad and his opinions.”

“Opinions are like assholes — everybody has one. At his age your father should know that not everyone wants to see his butt or hear his opinion.”

“Jake, you and I… what we have might grow into something wonderful if we give it a chance. Shouldn’t we take time to talk about this?”

“Talk about what? The Vietnam War? It’s over. All those dead men! For what? For fucking nothing at all, that’s for what!” His voice was rising but he didn’t notice. “Oh, I killed my share of Vietnamese — your father got that right. They are dead for nothing. Now I’ve got to live with it…every day of my life. Don’t you understand?”

He slammed his hand down on the dresser and the photo on top fell over. “I’m not God. I don’t know if we should have gone to Vietnam or if we should have left sooner or if the war was right or wrong. The self-righteous assholes who stayed at home can argue about all that until hell freezes. And it looks like they’re going to.

“I took an oath. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. So I obeyed orders. I did what I was told to the absolute best of my ability. Just like your brother. And what did it get us? Me and your brother? You and me? Jake and Callie — what did it get us?”

He took a ragged breath. He was perspiring and he felt sick. Slightly nauseated. “It isn’t your father. It’s me. I can’t just forget.”

“Jake, we must all live with the past. And walk on into the future.”

“Maybe you and I aren’t ready for the future yet.”

She didn’t reply.

“Well, maybe I’m not,” he admitted.

She was biting her lip.

“You aren’t either,” he added.

When she didn’t answer he picked up the folding bag and carry-on. “Tell your mom thanks.” He went out the door.

She heard him descend the stairs. She heard the front door open. She heard it close.

Then her tears came.

Almost an hour later she descended the stairs. She was at the bottom when she heard her mother’s voice coming from the study. “You blathering fool! I’m sick of hearing you sermonize about the war. I’m sick of your righteousness. I’m sick of you damning the world from the safety of your alabaster pedestal.”

“Mary, that war was an obscenity. That war was wrong, a great wrong, and the blind stupidity of boys like Grafton made it possible. If Grafton and boys like him had refused to go, there wouldn’t have been a war.”

“Boys? Jake Grafton is no boy. He’s a man!”

“He doesn’t think,” Professor McKenzie said, his voice dripping contempt. “He can’t think. I don’t call him much of a man.”

Callie sank to the steps. She had never heard her parents address each other in such a manner. She felt drained, empty, but their voices held her mesmerized.

“Oh, he’s a man all right,” her mother said. “He just doesn’t think like you do. He’s got the brains and talent to fly jet aircraft in combat. He’s got the character to be a naval officer, and I suspect he’s a pretty good one. I know that doesn’t impress you much, but Callie knows what he is. He’s got the maturity and character to impress her.”

“Then she’s too easily impressed. That girl doesn’t know—”

“Enough, you fool!” said Mary McKenzie bitterly. “We’ve got a son who did his duty as he saw it and you’ve never let him forget that you think he’s a stupid, contemptible fascist. Your only son. So he doesn’t come here anymore. He won’t come here. Your opinion is just your opinion, Wallace — you can’t seem to get it through your thick head that other people can honorably hold different opinions. And a great many people do.”

“I—”

His wife raised her voice and steamed on. “I’m going to say this just once, Wallace, so you had better listen. Callie may marry Jake Grafton, regardless of our wishes. In her way she’s almost as pigheaded as you are. Jake Grafton’s every inch the man that Theron is, and he won’t put up with your bombast and supercilious foolishness any more than Theron does. Grafton proved that here tonight. I don’t blame him.”

“Callie won’t marry that—”

“You damned old windbag, shut up! What you know about your daughter could be printed in foot-high letters on the head of a pin.”

She shouted that last sentence, then fell silent. When she spoke again her voice was cold, every word enunciated clearly:

“It will be a miracle if Jake Grafton ever walks through that door again. So I’m serving notice on you, Wallace, here and now. Your arrogance almost cost me my son. If it costs me my daughter, I’m divorcing you.”

Before Callie could move from her seat on the steps, Mrs. McKenzie came striding through the study door. She saw Callie and stopped dead.

Callie rose, turned, and forced herself to climb the stairs.