Wingmen (9781310207280) by Ensan Case Page A

day.
    “Fred,” said
Jack suddenly, leaning closer and putting his arm behind Fred on
the back of the bench, “do you mind if I ask you a personal
question?”
    “Not at all.
Fire away.” It felt good to be called by his name.
    “It may not
seem important, but when you’re—” Jack wanted to say “commanding
officer” but changed it at the last moment—”in my position, you
don’t always hear what’s going on, what’s really happening with the
men in the squadron. I was just wondering why they call you what
they do.”
    “Trusty?” Fred
laughed a little. “I don’t care for it.”
    “And the
Seventeen-minute thing. What do they mean by that?”
    Fred scuffed at
the ground, looked away, leaned over, ground out his cigarette on
the sidewalk, and dropped the butt into his shirt pocket.
    He’s embarrassed ,
thought Jack, watching closely.
    “You know, sir,
when you’re with these guys you get trapped into doing things that
you don’t really feel like doing. Sometimes I get the feeling only
a few of the guys here are really acting the way they would
normally, and the rest are just along for the ride. Do you know
what I mean?”
    “You don’t want
to tell me, do you?”
    Fred sighed.
“They call me Trusty because I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
without using my hands.”
    “You can?”
    “It’s just a
bar trick I picked up somewhere on the way to becoming an aviator.
I’ll show you sometime.”
    “What about the
seventeen minutes?”
    “I’m not
completely sure, but if it’s what I think it is, it’s pretty
personal and no one’s business but my own.”
    Jack shrugged
and flicked his smoldering butt in a long arc through the air and
into the street. The little shower of sparks at the end of its
flight reminded him of the bounding tracers of a predawn attack on
the Japanese airstrip at Buka. He had lost a wingman there and
burned two planes on the ground.
    “You know,
Fred,” he said, after a moment, “we all wear the same uniform and
do the same things most of the time. If you were an enlisted man,
you’d go to bed at night at the same time and get up in the morning
at the same time as everyone else. In the military, especially
during wartime, it’s tough to be a good navy man and still retain
some portion of your real self.” How had Eleanor Hawkins phrased
it? “The war changes everyone it touches, but if you’re able to
make that change a good one, then…” Then what? “I guess you’re a
better man for it.” It felt strangely good to say something like
that, even to an ensign. He felt that out of all the pilots of
VF-20, Fred would probably understand it and keep it to
himself.
    “You know,
Skipper,” said Fred, “I’m glad as hell they transferred me to this
group.”
    Jack laughed
and clapped Fred on the knee. He stood up, stretched hugely, and
said, “I don’t know about you but I’m going to hit the sack. It’s
been a long week.”
    “That sounds
like a good idea,” said Fred, and the two turned toward the
darkened BOQ.
    As they trudged
up the steps, the skipper threw his arm around Fred’s shoulder and
said, “Fred, I’m glad as hell you like it here.”

    “What’s the
matter, darling?” the woman asked.
    Duane Higgins
stood at the window and watched as Jack and Fred left the bench and
headed up the walk. The woman in the bed kept calling him “darling”
and “honey,” and it irritated him mightily. And it was perplexing
to see that Jack had not spent the night, or even an hour, with
Eleanor Hawkins. He must have been crazy not to have seen how hot
she was for it. Everyone else could see it.
    “There’s
nothing wrong.” He let the curtain fall into place and turned back
to the narrow bed. He sat down on the edge and pulled the sheet
back to uncover her body.
    “You devil,
you,” she said.
    Duane ran his
tongue around one of her nipples, gloried in his own excitement,
and thought, I don’t know about Jack but I’ll be damned if I’ll
ever