Voyage of the Devilfish

CHAPTER 5

Sandbridge Beach, a small village of beach houses, fish restaurants, convenience stores and bait shops, was bathed in the moonlight of a cloudless night sky. The large beach houses were quiet in the off-season. A few were decorated with Christmas lights. As midnight approached, the lights of all but a few houses were off.

Michael Pacino’s old Corvette rumbled to a halt in the carport under a large three-story redwood house on stilts overlooking the water. He turned off the engine, brought back to the present by the silence, surprised that he had driven the forty miles from the base to the house without conscious thought or motion. Slowly, feeling like an old man, Pacino emerged from the cramped car, pulling a duffel bag from a cubbyhole behind the seat. He stood, watching the waves break on the beach on the other side of the property, then climbed to the second-floor entrance to the house.

Hillary had bought the beach house with her own money. Commander’s pay might afford a modest colonial in the suburbs but never a house on the water, not on Sandbridge. It had bothered him some, living here.

As he searched his pocket for his key the door opened. Hillary’s face was always a welcome sight after a long run on the boat. She had beautiful tanned skin, dark blue eyes over high cheekbones and perfectly full red lips. With long blonde hair, she was tall and thin. Her own complaint about herself was that her breasts were too small. He had no complaints. She was also a high-strung, thoughtful, at times brooding woman. On many nights after Tony was in bed she’d spend hours on the deck overlooking the beach, smoking cigarettes and staring out to sea, sometimes writing poetry in a notebook she never could bring herself to let Pacino read. When he was assigned ashore she would tend to come out of herself, laughing and talking more.

Frankly, she once told him, she was scared to death of losing him, and that fear was a live thing between them. She had tried to convince him to leave the Navy and come to work for her father, an executive for Dynacorp International, a defense contractor. Pacino couldn’t see it. Money meant little to him. He still drove his midshipman car, the beat-up ‘69 Corvette. To Pacino, resigning from the Navy was just unthinkable. He was a submariner, his reason for living was to poke holes in the ocean, to be where he was needed. Like his father. He understood her feelings, worried about them, but he couldn’t quit. And she was no cliched rich bitch who selfishly wanted it all her way. She had tried hard, as he had, but it hadn’t been easy… Tonight would be a repetition of the old conflicts, he suspected. Once through the door he found he was right.

“Michael, we waited on that pier for hours. Neither you nor squadron gave me any idea you wouldn’t be on the boat. I had to find out from Jon Rapier that you got called downtown. And now Julie Rapier calls and wants to know why you’re taking the boat out to sea for Christmas. My God, Michael, what’s going on?”

She trailed him upstairs as he pulled off his uniform, the khakis still smelling like a submarine, shrugged into an old black sweatshirt with the faded legend on the front reading “DEEP, SILENT, FAST, DEADLY — U.S. SUBMARINE FORCE.”

Once in his jeans he took the stairs down to the lodge room and headed for the bar. Once he found the Jack Daniel’s he splashed the gold liquid over four ice cubes in a highball glass and drained half of it in one gulp. How, he wondered, could he tell Hillary what he was about to do? If he could tell her, she might understand, but this trip was top secret.

“Hillary, please—” and stopped as he saw the tears. He was about to go to her when he heard Tony calling from the loft above. He hurried to the stairs, and as he climbed the risers saw Hillary going out on the deck. At the top of the stairs Pacino took Tony in his arms and carried the boy to his room, turning on the light, taking up the boy’s teddy bear and sitting down in the easy chair where they read together on the rare nights when he got home at a decent hour.

“Daddy,” Tony said, “mommy said you’re going away for Christmas. She said she doesn’t know when you’re coming back.”

“Tony, I have to go. I’m sorry but there’s something very important we have to do on the boat. I’m really sorry, Ace, but it has to be done now. I’ll be back soon, though, and when I’m home we’ll have our Christmas then. Okay?” Of course not okay. Tony’s tears proved it.

“It’s way past your bedtime, and I’ve got to pack. Let’s get you tucked in.”

As Pacino repeated the words of Tony’s prayer — “if I die before I wake, pray the Lord my soul to take” — his eyes seemed to get heavy. He hoped Tony wouldn’t notice. But Tony’s eyes were shut, and by the end of the prayer his son’s breaths were slow and deep. Pacino kissed Tony’s cheek and moved out of the room, shutting the door gently. Darkness. Hillary already in bed. A single dim light in the kitchen. Pacino went down the stairs, intending to try Hillary’s therapy of staring out to sea when the phone rang, making him jump.

“Pacino.”

“Duty Officer, sir.” Lieutenant Stokes. “You wanted a zero one hundred status report, sir. Are you awake?”

“Go ahead. Stokes,” Pacino said, forcing himself to concentrate on the needs of the Devilfish, to respond to the request to start up the reactor, to hear the package of data needed to plug himself into his ship from forty miles away and guide the actions of young Stokes.

“Station section three watches aft and start up the reactor,” Pacino ordered. “Divorce from shore power and get the squadron crane on the pier by six. When you’re ready take off the shorepower cables.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Stokes said, repeating back the order. “Sir, should I call for tugs and a pilot?”

“No tugs. Stokes, and no pilot. Devilfish will get under way on her own steam.”

“Aye aye, sir. Do you want a call when the reactor’s critical?”

“No. I’ll see you in a few hours. Make sure the coffee’s very damn hot.”

“Aye aye, sir. Good night. Captain.”

“Good night Stokes.” Pacino put the phone down slowly, moving in a sea of molasses, his eyes roving to the pictures on the wall, the wedding photographs, the crossed swords at the Naval Academy Chapel, Hillary kissing him under the swords of his classmates, Hillary holding newborn Tony, himself saluting on the deck of Devilfish at the change-of-command ceremony, his whites starched and shiny in the Virginia sunshine. So long ago. So very damn long ago. Finally his attention went to the one faded photograph of him and his father taken during his plebe summer, his father in dress whites with the three stripes of the rank of commander, looking so damned proud.

For the next two hours Pacino stood on the deck facing the Atlantic. He considered waking Hillary and talking it out but knew it was a dumb idea. Finally he went in to pack, washing his khakis, ironing some shirts, filling the duffel bag with his gear. After an hour he decided to write a note to Hillary and one to Tony. It occurred to him that if he didn’t return he wanted Tony to hear the story from him firsthand. He let it spill from his pen — not the specifics of the mission but that he was going especially because of his father. He tried to push a lifetime of fatherly advice and love into one twelve-page letter, remembering how he had searched his own father’s effects for some sign, some note. How there had been nothing.

He wrote a second letter to Hillary, telling her how he felt, trying to bring her back to the days when they were drunk with their discovery of each other… the first time they made love in her car, the windows steamed up on the parking strip of Halsey Field, and how the Jimmylegs security guard had pounded on the window with a flashlight, how she had giggled at him as he tried to get back into uniform, his shirttail hanging out, his hair a mess, lipstick all over his face from her kisses, how he’d told her about when he’d been placed on report for the infraction, a “Class A” offense for public displays of affection, and had been restricted to his spartan room in Bancroft Hall for six weeks.

After he had tried to evoke the good times, and a few of the bad, Pacino sealed the letter and inserted it into the coffee can in the freezer, where she was sure to see it in the morning long after Devilfish would have slipped away from the pier. Tony’s letter, intended to be read only if Pacino failed to come back from the OP, was placed in the file cabinet in the folder marked WILL, where Pacino knew it would be found if…

He checked his watch. The night had evaporated. He hurried into his khakis, put his bag by the door and went up the stairs to Tony’s room. For a moment he watched his sleeping son, so quiet and handsome in his sleep. He huched his hair, and left. Hillary was curled in a ball in the center of the bed, lying on her side, a pillow between her knees. Pacino walked to the head of the bed and kneeled down so his face was even with hers, kissed her lips and she sighed, and for a moment a trace of a smile was on her face. Pacino’s wristwatch alarm beeped — time to go. He looked at Hillary one last time, then left the room, shutting the door quietly.