Service Dress Blues (22 page)

She heard a metallic
snick
followed by a click and swiveled to look back at the door. It didn't open. Instead, the credit card went up and started laboriously back down.

“Almost got it that time,” Carlsen said, his voice no longer agitated. “This one should do it. You've got maybe twenty seconds.”

That sounded about right to Melissa. She opened the refrigerator. She wasn't sure what was in there, but she knew it had to include cans of Miller Genuine Draft. If nothing else, she could fling those at her assailants and hope for the best. She was getting ready to grab a couple when a sound from her very recent past came back to her.

Thonk!

She looked back toward the rear wall. Three t-shirt cannons stood there. Devices that had hurled tightly rolled t-shirts weighing perhaps half-a-pound eighty or ninety feet.

She grabbed the nearest one and looked feverishly at the breech. A handle, a CO-2 canister, and a trigger. She turned back to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of beer. She was afraid that the can would be too heavy for her weapon, but that looked like the only ammunition she had available. Then something cold and hard hit her wrist and fell to the floor.

It was three Klements Bratwurst, still frozen solid together. Someone had stashed them on top of the beer cans. She grabbed the chilly trio and dropped it down the muzzle of the t-shirt cannon.

Snick!

She pulled the sliding handle back to its lock point.

Click!

“Got it!” This came from outside the door.

The door started to open. Melissa leveled what was now a brat cannon at the moving door. Carlsen suddenly filled the doorway, eyes avidly lit and Fox's pistol gripped in his right hand.

“Yes!” he yelled triumphantly.

Melissa pulled the trigger. She heard an emphatic
whoompf
. Carlsen had eight-tenths of a second to look utterly baffled before three frozen Klements Bratwurst hit him flush on the mouth and nose. He flipped backward as if he'd been mule-kicked and his back and head smacked the concrete.

“What did you do?” Fox wailed. “You killed him!”

“Probably not,” Melissa said. “That would be a wurst case scenario.”

Fox reached for the pistol while Melissa reached for beer. Hearing Frank's taunting reprimand from more than twenty years before—“
Don't throw like a girl!
”—she cocked the first frosty can behind her right ear and hurled it directly overhand.

The can hit Fox on her collarbone with enough force to burst a seam (on the can) and send sudsy liquid spewing all over her face. Fox shrieked and reflexively retreated. A respite but no more than that, for Fox was still within twelve inches of the Glok something-or-other that was undoubtedly loaded with ordnance more lethal than sausage.

Melissa picked up a second can and, with more confidence this time, chucked it like she was trying to put an old-school, 'sixties era, National League, dead-red fastball right down the middle. It caught Fox squarely on her adorable surgically-improved nose and her Botox-enhanced lips.

She didn't make a sound. She just keeled over rather dreamily and collapsed, lying motionless while spilling beer soaked her golden hair.

Melissa hustled to retrieve the pistol, then retreated with it back into the room. She wasn't altogether sure what to do next. Fox and Carlsen were
dehors le combat
for the moment, but their bodies were blocking the door and it would be awkward if either of them came to while she was trying to pick her way past them. On the other hand, she had no confidence in her ability to use the handgun she'd just grabbed. She had only fired one pistol shot in her life, and it had missed the target by eight feet.

The sound of rapidly running footsteps in the hallway resolved her dilemma. A few seconds later, two security guards came racing up, filling the doorway with their bulk. One of them was the guy who had let Melissa back into the prep room.

“What's going on here, professor?”

Melissa gave him the short version.

“You mean these two were trying to kidnap you and you shot the male perp with frozen bratwurst?”

“Yes.”

The guard looked down at Carlsen, cackling with glee.

“Welcome to Milwaukee, flatlander!” (Chicagoans—“flatlanders” in Milwaukeean—didn't deserve this association with Carlsen, a pure-bred dairy-stater. All Milwaukee cops, however, presume that bad guys come from Chicago.)

The other security guard examined Fox's broken face and, almost tenderly, picked up the can of Miller Genuine Draft still leaking malty liquid onto the floor near her head. His eyes looked forlorn as dew-like, anguished tears pearled the tops of his cheeks.

“What a waste of premium lager,” he moaned.

Chapter 28

Friday, May 22, 2009

On September 12, 1857, United States Navy Captain William Lewis Herndon went down with the ship he commanded, the
SS Central America
, when it foundered in a storm off North Carolina. After making every effort to save the doomed vessel, he firmly ordered that women and children be saved first in the available lifeboats, and then in disregard of his own safety stayed at his post when the lifeboats returned to pick up what remaining passengers they could. In recognition of his heroism, a gray obelisk about twenty feet high, called the Herndon Monument, stands on the grounds of the Naval Academy.

On May 22, 2009, Rep, Melissa, and Lena Lindstrom moved away from Tecumseh Court in front of Bancroft Hall at the Academy, where they had watched morning formation, and found a shady spot about thirty yards from the Herndon Monument. Several hundred other civilians milled about in the same general area. Attached firmly by sealing tape to the top of the monument was a plebe's cap—circular, with an upturned brim around its entire circumference, derisively referred to as a “Dixie Cup.” A thick coat of viscous grease covered the monument from top to pediment.

“Nine-fifty-nine,” Lena said. “Harald said he'd be the one in a white t-shirt and blue shorts, with short hair.”

At precisely ten
A.M.
, a signal cannon boomed over the Severn River, less than a quarter- mile away. A collective shout nearly as deafening as the gun's report erupted from T-Court, and the pathway from there to the Herndon Monument filled with plebes racing for the greasy obelisk. There were more than a thousand of them. They all wore blue shorts and white t-shirts and they all had short hair.

Mass confusion seemed to reign for the first few minutes. Then a group of plebes ringed the monument, arms locked and facing outward. Other plebes stripped off their t-shirts and, boosted by classmates, climbed on the shoulders of the group around the base. They began wiping grease off the monument, throwing sodden t-shirts back to the crowd and catching fresh t-shirts thrown to them by those still at ground level.

As they cleared more and more grease from the monument, a second ring formed on the shoulders of the grimacing lower group. This one was less organized and much shakier than the first. A couple of lithe plebes took a stab at clambering up the second tier, and for a tantalizing moment it looked like the whole thing might be over in twenty minutes. But that didn't happen. A grasping hand would get within five or six feet of the Dixie Cup, but then the improvised human pyramid would crumble under the strain and give way.

This continued for well over an hour. Surge, hope, failure, and re-formation in a continuing and ever more tantalizing cycle as new bodies replaced the exhausted ones on the first and second tiers, and voices barked frustrated instructions: “All right, let's get organized. A line of people between one-hundred-seventy and one-hundred-ninety pounds here! Now!” The signal gun boomed at the hour, in case anyone was napping. The cycle continued.

The climax seemed to come without warning. The same things happened, but this time the base held and the fresh plebe climbed a little higher. He came within fingers' reach of the Dixie Cup. He loosened most of the tape holding it to the top before he fell back, cascading down the mountain of bodies. Almost immediately a second plebe made his way nearly to the summit of the now greaseless monument. This one pulled the Dixie Cup off. He raised it triumphantly above his right shoulder, shouting something Rep couldn't make out. Then he replaced the Dixie Cup with a visored officer's cap. A hoarse chant went up from the group.

“Plebes no more! Plebes no more! Plebes no more!”

The chant eventually died down as a group escorted the plebe who had gotten the caps changed over to the chapel steps, where the superintendent was waiting for him.

“What's his prize?” Rep asked.

“An honorary pair of admiral's shoulder boards,” Melissa said. “Tradition has it that the plebe who grabs the cap will be the first in his class to make admiral.”

“How many times has that happened?”

“It has never happened. But tradition is impervious to fact.”

A bare-chested plebe with dirty sweat crusted on his torso came pelting up to them. He hugged Lena.

“Well, Harald, it's over, I guess,” she said.

“I guess it is.”

“It's good to see you.”

“You too.”

These long-winded Scandinavians
, Rep thought, shaking his head, through about ten seconds of ensuing silence.

“Well,” Harald said, “I've gotta shower and change, and then we can get to lunch.”

“You can shower and change a little later,” Lena said firmly. “There are some things I need to tell you right now.”

Rep and Melissa moved discreetly away. Fifty feet or so on the other side of the walkway, they found relative privacy.

“What do you suppose they're talking about?” Melissa asked. “Laurel Fox and Gary Carlsen competing to see who can sing loudest?”

“I think it probably has something to do with Ole Lindstrom being killed because he tried to prevent the corruption of a corrupt system from corrupting him. He spent his entire life practicing politics as an honorable profession. He died for honor.”

“Well, that's something that bears telling, I guess—as Lena might put it. By the way, speaking of Ole and his death, how did Walt know to contact stadium security and have them start looking for me? I was lying to Fox about pushing re-dial. That was just a bluff.”

“Walt told the guards he thought he heard someone say something threatening in the background, and he heard fear in your voice.”

“But he couldn't have. Laurel hadn't said anything, and I hadn't even seen the gun yet. I was worried that she'd overheard his comment because I had the phone turned up so loud, but I wasn't terrified yet.”

“Yeah, he was just kidding the guards about all that. Like the cops in the O.J. Simpson case saying they thought they saw blood through the window. What really bothered him was that he couldn't imagine your not wanting to talk right away about the forty-nine-star business. Plus, he knew you were at the stadium but he couldn't hear any stadium noise in the background. He couldn't tell the guards he was playing a hunch, so he made some stuff up.”

“Well I'm glad he did. The rescue squad came at a very opportune moment.”

“Although they didn't actually rescue you,” Rep noted. “You'd already won the battle by turning it into a food fight.”

“Thank you for pointing that out, dear. Ironically, when I was fifteen I got a Saturday detention for doing basically the same thing.”

“Irony is where you find it,” Rep said. “By the way, speaking of detentions, Professor Pennyworth, is there anything you'd like to say?”

“Oh, yes. That.” Melissa lowered her eyes demurely and bowed her head in a suggestion of contrition.

“Yes. That.”

She raised her head and squared her shoulders.

“After threatening to hit you hard enough to knock your glasses off if you recklessly rushed headlong into mortal peril, I proceeded to do exactly that myself. I shouldn't have threatened to hit you. It was quite wrong of me.”

“Indeed.”

“Headstrong.”

“True.”

“Misguided.”

“Correct.”

“Inexcusable.”

“Right again.”

“I humbly apologize.”

“I accept your apology—with all my heart.”

Melissa sighed. Through hooded eyes she glanced hopefully at her husband's features, looking for an upturn in the corners of his lips. She didn't see it. Her beloved spouse had the moral high ground and seemed determined not to surrender it. She spoke again, with just a whisper of apprehension.

“One must be careful about what one says.”

She re-squared her shoulders, closed her eyes, and held out her right hand, palm down. Rep waited for three seconds. Then he gripped her fingers tenderly and gently raised her hand.

“What you did was reckless, willful, misguided, headstrong, inexcusable—and magnificent.” He kissed the back of her hand. “I hope you're still threatening to hit me once in awhile fifty years from now.”

“That's the most romantic allusion to spousal battery that I've ever heard,” she murmured as she fell into his embrace.

“You didn't really think I was going to slap your wrist, did you?” he asked.

“Of course not, dear,” she said. But she kept her right hand tucked safely behind her back, just in case.

Afterword

The Stafford Flour advertisement discovered in the course of the story by Gary Carlsen actually appeared in print in the United States during the 1930s. A complete depiction of the advertisement can be found in All-American Ads – '30s, Jim Heiman (ed.), (Taschen GmbH 2003).

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