Chapter Six

(One)

U.S. Marine Corps Base San Diego, California 9 July 1941

The U.S.S. Charles E. Whaley was as miserable a pile of rust and rivets as McCoy expected it would be. Since she was not a man-of-war, there was no Marine detachment aboard, which translated to mean that he had hardly anybody to talk to. Sailors don't like Marines anyway, and there were six pigboat swab jockeys from SUBFORCHINA being shipped to Pearl Harbor, and they really hated China Marines. The only swabbie who gave him the time of day was a bald, hairy machinist's mate second class who quickly let him know that he didn't mind spending a lot of time at sea far from women.

Reeking of diesel fuel, riding light in the water, the Whaley took seventeen days to make Pearl Harbor-swaying and pitching even in calm seas.

There was plenty of time to think things over and conclude that he'd been handed the shitty end of the stick. Again. Like always.

Starting with Ellen Goddamn-the-Bitch Feller.

And getting sent home from China was also getting the shitty end of the stick, too. Christ, he'd practically given away the furniture in the apartment. And despite the efficiency report that was supposed to make him sound like Lou Diamond, even a bunch of dumb fuckers in a fucking truck company would smell a rat about somebody who was sent home from China just after he shipped over for the 4th Marines and got promoted.

And the new assignment stank, too. A goddamned truck company at the Navy yard in Philly. Philly was the last tucking place he wanted to go. It was too close to Norris-town. and he never wanted to go there again, period. And there was no question in his mind that he was going to walk into this tucking truck company in Philly and immediately be on everybody's shit list. There weren't that many corporal's billets in a Motor Transport platoon, and sure as Christ made little apples, the people in Philly had planned to give this billet to some deserving asshole of a PFC with hash marks (Oblong bars, one for each four years of satisfactory service, worn on the lower sleeve of outer garments) halfway to his elbow.

McCoy had been in the Corps long enough to know that Stateside Marines didn't like China Marines (The tales -amplified in the retelling- of houseboys to clean billets, of custom made uniforms, of exotic women available for the price of a beer, of extra retirement credit, et cetera, tended to cause some resentment toward China Marines among their Stateside peers) and here would be a China Marine, a corporal three months into his second hitch, showing up to fuck good ol" PFC Whatsisname out of his promotion.

When the U.S.S. Charles E. Whaley finally tied up at Pearl Harbor, there was a Master at Arms and two Shore Patrol guys waiting for him at the foot of the gangplank. He wasn't under arrest or anything, the Master at Arms told him (although he really should write him up for his illegal, embroidered to the sleeves chevrons). It was just that The U.S.S. Fenton was about to sail for Diego, and they didn't want him to miss it.

The U.S.S. Fenton turned out to be an old four-stacker destroyer that was tied up the other side of Pearl. Ten minutes after he was shown his bunk in the fo'c'sle. a loudspeaker six inches from where he was supposed to sleep came to life:

"Now Hear This, Now Hear This, Off-Duty Watch Stand to in Undress Whites to Man The Rail."

That fucking loudspeaker went off on the average of once every ten minutes all the way across the Pacific to Diego.

The only kind thing McCoy could think of to say about the U.S.S. Fenton, DD133, was that it made San Diego six days out of Pearl. She was carrying a rear admiral who didn't like to fly and knew that with his flag aboard nobody was going to ask questions about fuel consumed making twenty-two knots. It must have been great on the bridge, turning the tin can into a speedboat. But where he was. McCoy thought, he had trouble staying in his bunk. And his body was bruised black in half a dozen places from bumping into bulkheads and ladder rails when he misjudged where the tin can was going to bounce.

But Diego was next, and he would soon be on land again, and there was no reason he couldn't get a nice berth on the train from San Diego to Philly. The Corps probably wouldn't pay for it, but he could do that himself. In his money belt he had a little over three hundred dollars in cash: the hundred he'd started with, plus the hundred ninety he'd won-ten and twenty dollars at a time-from the pigboat sailors on the Charles E. Whaley and the ten he'd won in the only game there had been on the tin can.

Plus an ornately engraved "Officer's Guaranteed Checque" on Barclays Bank, Ltd., Shanghai, for $5,102.40. That came from the last crazy thing that had happened in Shanghai. When he'd gone to the apartment to sell his stuff, the "General" said he'd make it easy for him. He'd take everything off his hands for five hundred dollars American. McCoy had jumped at that. Then the General pushed a deck of cards at him and demanded, "Double or nothing."

McCoy cut the deck for the jack of clubs to the General's eight of hearts.

"Once more." the General demanded.

"Just so long as it's once more," McCoy said. "I'm not going to keep cutting the deck until you win and quit."

He got a dirty look for that.

"Once more," the General said. "That's it."

McCoy cut the five of clubs. The General smiled, showing his gold teeth… until he cut the three of hearts.

But he paid up, even though he had to go to the bank to get that kind of cash.

McCoy added the General's two thousand American to the money already in Barclays Bank and then asked for a cashier's check for the whole thing. After a moment they understood that what he w-anted was what they called an "officer's checque."

He made them make it payable in dollars. The Limeys were in a war, and he didn't want to take the chance that they'd tell him to wait for his money until the war was over when he went to cash it.

He could goddamned well afford a Pullman berth from California to Philly, even if they wouldn't give him credit for the government rail voucher and he had to pay for the whole damned thing himself.

McCoy had taken boot camp at Parris Island, and he'd shipped to China out of Mare Island, in San Francisco. So this was his first time in Diego. His initial impression of the place-or anyway of the part that he saw, which was the Marine Corps Recruit Depot-was that it was a hell of a lot nicer-looking, at least, than Parris Island, although he supposed that that didn't make a hell of lot of difference to boots. They probably had the same kind of semiliterate, sadistic assholes for DIs here that they did at Parris Island.

There was a bullshit legend in the Corps that after you finished boot camp, you would understand why the DIs treated you like they did, how it had been necessary to make a Marine out of you, and how you'd now respect them for it. As he watched a Diego DI jab his elbow in the gut of some kid who wasn't standing tall enough, or who had dared to look directly at the DI, or some other chickenshit offense, McCoy remembered his own Parris Island DI.

If I ever see Corporal Ellwood Doudt, that vicious shit-kicking hillbilly again, he thought, I'll make him eat his teeth, even if I have to go after him with a two-by-four.

McCoy found the Post Transportation Office without trouble in a Spanish-looking building with a tile roof. He set his seabags down and presented his orders to a sergeant behind a metal-grilled window, like a teller's station in a bank.

"You need a partial pay, Corporal?" the sergeant asked.

"Let it ride on the books," McCoy said. "I was a little lucky on the ship."

"Your luck just ran out," the sergeant said. "I hate to do this to you, Corporal, but you report to the brig sergeant."