Leon Uris (51 page)

“What attracts you?”

“I never understood why the Irish, with our own desperate and tragic history, don’t have a penny’s worth of compassion for black people.”

“Indeed, Zach, keeping the niggers down is a high priority. It is going to remain that way until our people feel they are first-class
Americans and not threatened. Maybe one day down the line, when we’ve made our way in as equals, our fears will diminish.”

Zachary knew what was coming and felt trapped and horrified. Burke flipped his notepad closed.

“If that is your story, then there will be a formal inquest, son testifying against father. The penny press will distort this into a monumental scandal. It is not even August yet and this city will boil over. We can’t pass it off as a common barroom brawl. Paddy O’Hara is a great hero to us. His Congressional Medal of Honor tells the Irish they can rise and achieve and be proud and respected as Americans.”

In that moment, Zachary thought of running without stopping, clear to the Mississippi.

“Paddy’s had a hard life, what with the famine and digging his family into the ground and the butchery of the Civil War, and just as he was looking at a moment’s peace, he lost your mother.”

“They say I look like her.”

“Aye, that’s true.”

“And I’ve seen him look at me a thousand times and in that instant he saw her, but it was only me, who had killed her.”

“So here we are,” Burke said. “Your father is a great man with common flaws. He lost his head for one moment of his life, because he has the cancer.”

The unspeakable word had been spoken.

“How can you know that! No doctor has told him.”

“I’ve seen too much of it, Zach. He’s a powerful man, but he’ll have to give in and learn it from a physician soon enough. They’ll juice him up and keep him going for a year or two.”

“He shouldn’t have!”

“But he did,” Burke said. “Consider the race riots. Consider the rest of your own life after you send your da to die in prison. You hear me, boy. The fall of such a hero will humiliate the United States Marine Corps, forever, and the Irish community will never live it down.”

“I want to see a priest!”

“No. Either way you choose, you’ve a burden on you for the rest of your life. What will it be, Zachary? You either bury the lie in old Henry’s coffin or you rat on your father.”

As Gunny Kunkle related the story and Zachary told the ending himself, he felt a lovely lightness coming over him as the demon fled his body.

Tobias Storm and Ben Boone were chalky numbers, close-eyed, ashamed.

“I was allowed to join the Corps underage so my da could live to see me sworn in.”

“I gravely misunderstood,” the Gunny said. “Paddy was near gone when he told me and I should have come to you a long time ago, but you were already an elegant Marine while he was still alive. When we were on post together in Florida, I never saw a young lad cut his corners so square, so sparkling, so smart and on top of things as you. Even as a private, I knew you were heading for the top, so I let it ride, never realizing your terrible burden for eight years.”

Zach was calm, his face whipped by the winter winds of Nebo, his eyes bright.

“The lie wasn’t buried in old Henry’s coffin and didn’t have to wait till Halloween to come out of the graveyard,” Zach said. “I had the obnoxious grace to attend Henry’s funeral. And I believed the only way to get it out of my system was to become a Marine’s Marine. But it doesn’t go away. The more perfect I tried to become, the more I realized I was feeding the lie. I felt I existed mainly to keep the lie fed.”

“Paddy loved you. You’ve got to know that. I was at his side when you were born.”

“Da loved me when I was born and I loved him the moment he died. It was all the time in between that was the problem. I loved
the Corps and that’s all I’ve wanted from life. When I lived in Hell’s Kitchen, I longed for the Corps. But then the lie dragged my soul down so badly I was never at ease inside the Corps. I had two masters and one of them was killing me and not letting me serve how I wanted to serve.”

Tobias got enough of a grip on himself to awkwardly extend his hand.

Zach shook it.

“We all go off with some secret or lie never properly attended to,” Tobias said. “But this is not your burden to carry alone, anymore. It’s a matter I share with Amanda and you and the Gunny. It’s my responsibility as well, and you have to know you did the only thing you could do. Paddy and the Corps owe you.”

If Ben Boone knew of tears, he would have spent them now.

“I didn’t believe my own words when I chewed you out,” Ben said.

“I know.”

“I always had the fear of you leaving the Corps, and when you told us, it broke my heart.”

“We’re fine, Ben,” Zach said.

“Your old man laid it on you and so did I. I saw the way you handled the project and I made you feel you had to be our savior, the indispensable man, and I wrung ‘Random Sixteen’ out of your guts. You are more than free to resign, but don’t get tangled up with any guilt. There are many good men who can take the mission and get it done. Lieutenants Kirkendahl and Maynard from your AMP class. Captain Coleman and Captain Ward are real works in progress.”

“Go off with your lady love. You need to be free,” Tobias said.

“Aye,” the Gunny agreed.

“Why the hell didn’t Paddy ask your forgiveness?” Ben asked.

“Of course he did. Or at least that’s what he wanted to do. Maybe that’s why he followed me to Nebo. Paddy wasn’t much for passing out affection and my aunt Brigid was much the same.

“I was never close to a family. The Barjacs were astonishing,
but I wasn’t or couldn’t be part of them. Every evening in Nebo, I’d quit my little job at the boatyard, wash up at the pump, and cross the duckboard bridge to Veda’s.

“And she was there waiting, standing in the door, and wouldn’t let me in without paying her a hundred kisses. That’s what people do, kiss each other at the door.

“And morning came without the sound of reveille. And I’d listen to the first birds of the morning chatting it up. I could go through an entire day, taking orders from no one. I never felt a weight of orders and discipline because the Corps was my life, but then I found there is another life. How wonderful to hold Amanda through the night. What a wonderful way to live.

“One day, near the end of my furlough, she wasn’t waiting at the door. She was up asleep in the loft, and when I didn’t see her, I panicked. She knew and she demanded that my da and I have it out, there and then.”

“So you’re going to build the navy a few ships, are you?” Tobias said.

“No, and as far from it as we can get,” Zach answered. “As soon as I get my discharge, we are booking a boat for England and staying with her brother until we can collect our wits. From there, the Channel ferry and then through France by barge and rail to Italy, then Greece, and an old slow freighter around the Mediterranean to Egypt, then through the Suez Canal to the Orient, and in a year, more or less, we plan to debark in San Francisco. California will surely have something that will appeal to us.”

Zach took the captain’s bars from his pocket and offered them to Ben. “Put these on the right pair of shoulders,” he said.

“Keep them. Show them to your grandchildren, someday.”

•
46
•

From her room upstairs, Amanda could see Zach enter the hall, and she was waiting at the top of the stairs. No dainty stuff here now. They came together like two hot winds. He kicked the door open and tossed her into the deep, inviting feather bed and leaped on her. She tickled him and he crashed onto the floor and crawled away and she caught his foot and he went flat and she pounced.

Circled, they did, around the bedposts, panting and grabbing enough clothing to tear off each other.

She doused him from the water pitcher and he wrestled her, using quite a bit of strength now, and pinned her to the floor and she screamed and swung at him and whacked him good. Mr. Prichard was starting to wonder if they were not engaged in an all-out naval battle. As the purveyor of Marine farewell parties and one-night stands, he knew to furnish his rooms with tasteful but
party-worthy furnishings. A total bash-in would cost a Marine not more than ten or twelve dollars.

She tickled him again and tried to crawl off on all fours, and that’s how he caught her.

“Take your boots off, you savage!”

They locked in, the pair of them, till even the Marine boy’s strength was gone and they both keeled over quivering.

He helped her back onto the bed as best he could and collapsed beside her.

“Oh God, that was wonderful!”

“You are hereby declared a Wart-Hog,” he said.

After a time.

“I resigned.”

“How did they take it?”

“Very bad at first. The Gunny had always known about that night. My da told him before he died. The Gunny told them today and they sent me off with Godspeed.”

“Poor baby, you must be done in,” Amanda said.

“Don’t fret, I’ll catch you again later.”

“How long before we’re free to go?”

“They’ll push it through. No more than a week or so. The commander at Quantico has granted me nightly leave off the base. We’re well set up here.”

“I went to the shipping office. I’ve a list of all the spring sailings. We’ll book a grand ship and marry at sea in the captain’s cabin and have a huge wedding party in the ballroom with two hundred total strangers.”

Zach propped on his elbows, put a pillow against the headboard, and sat against it, sullen.

Amanda realized immediately. She closed her eyes and recited firmly: “We will not let my money come between us. I have instructed my mother and the Blanton family lawyers to sell back all my stock in Dutchman’s Hook to my uncles. The funds will go into a trust for that future girls’ school, and I’ll establish it in a place where black girls can study as well. There is some Blanton money,
enough for a blowout of a journey and to start up a life in California. I want you to handle the money together with me.”

Zach mumbled.

“Then we’ll burn the damned stuff and take a train to California,” she said.

“You make me love you so much,” he whispered. “We’ll go by boat.”

Well into the night, after the bar closed downstairs, Amanda slept, at last, but there was no sleeping for Zachary. He marveled at what he saw in the dim light, traced over her body so that she smiled in her sleep.

That was the last of Zach’s memory.

Grumph. Captain O’Hara’s pillow was wet with his sweat as though his face had been caught in drying cement. “On your feet, goddammit, Marine,” Zach grunted to himself. He dragged himself up, whereupon he supported two of the four bedposters.

His memory failed as to who had collapsed from lovemaking first. There was still half a night left and she was even more beautiful than before.

The immediate situation called for fresh air and a rasher of bacon. Zach followed himself down a set of swaying stairs. Mr. Prichard nodded almost bashfully as Zach bumbled his way outside, attaching himself to the fence. Between gasps of pain and gasps of wonderment, Zachary O’Hara near broke into tears at the thought of his new life. For the hundredth time, he assured himself that in order to purge his da’s secret, he had made an honorable decision to leave the Corps. Yet something annoyed him. Perhaps it was just touchiness. She seemed to have things so well planned out—where they would sail, where they would land, and how they would live thereafter. He’d given it all to her, but somehow a bit of a nasty urge crept in from Amanda’s vibrancy.

A distant sound.

Zach heard something from the direction of Quantico. The horse Marines were not in a class with the army cavalry, but, by God, they had their own prance and smell. The oils and liniment
they mixed were different from the army stuff and . . . What the hell, I don’t smell anything.

Colors! Little Zach O’Hara was whisked from his feet to his da’s shoulders as the color guard lowered the standard and that certain stillness followed by an instant of grace. Da’s eyes met those of his son. They said nothing, but Zach always remembered the smell of saddle soap and the liniment on Da’s hands as the last of the horsemen trotted by.