The Magical Stranger (3 page)

But Tupper didn't fly a Hornet. Like my father, he had been assigned to the EA-6B Prowler. The Prowler had no HUD display; its basic airframe was designed a half century ago for the long-discontinued A-6 Intruder attack bomber. There's a refueling hook on the nose of a Prowler, so Tupper had to peek out and to the left of his cockpit window when lining his jet up on final approach while simultaneously watching the meatball, an infrared spotlight flashed from the carrier's deck. If he was on course, the lights flashed green. Too low and the light went red, telling him to pull up before he plowed into the back of the carrier.

Tupper would then drop his tailhook and try to catch one of the four wires—actually thick cables—stretched across the carrier's deck that would bring him from 150 miles per hour to zero in a second. An old Prowler joke was that the only thing scarier than landing the Prowler on a carrier at night was to be one of the three other guys along just for the ride. The up-front navigator at least could see what was ahead and offer some muttered advice. The two electronic countermeasure officers in the back just hung on—listening to the beep of the radar altimeter warning of low altitude—cursing and praying into their masks.

On deck, relief came for Tupper only after he caught the wire, preferably the two or three. (One meant you came in too low and risked smashing into the back of the boat; four meant you were too fast and nearly overshot the carrier.) He'd power down the Prowler's twin Pratt & Whitney engines. Only then did the stress release from his body, a furious adrenaline drain that sometimes caused his back and arms to spasm, making parking the jet on the edge of the carrier's deck a dicey final move. Tupper consoled himself after a bad landing with a shrug and a “Well, at least I didn't kill someone. I survived.”

And that's the best Tupper could say about his time as XO—executive officer—of VAQ-135 under Doogie Breining. Tupper had survived and Breining had not killed anyone. Beyond that, Doogie's tour had been a shit show.

Dining-out follows a strict protocol and order borrowed from the early British Royal Navy. This was particularly appropriate tonight since Breining was about as popular with his men as Captain Bligh had been with the sailors on the
Bounty.
He was a smart man—his call sign came from the NBC show starring Neil Patrick Harris as an adolescent doctor—but socially awkward, something Tupper and Beth picked up on while dining with the Breinings after joining the squadron a year earlier. Attempts to make small talk were met with smaller talk and then long, uncomfortable silences.

Ware and Breining were contemporaries, but Tupper couldn't remember ever seeing Doogie out for a beer at the officers' club or socializing with other aviators at the Brown Lantern, a Navy watering hole in Anacortes. In the workhard, fly-hard, set-your-hair-on-fire world of naval aviation, being a loner was a professional flaw. You didn't need to be a boozer, although that helped, but you needed a sense of humor, which Doogie Breining didn't have.

Breining's social awkwardness had not gone unnoticed, but he was well connected. He did a tour at Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, where he held a mouthful of a job, flying hour program chief. He did a bang-up job managing flight hours and sorties for the base's pilots. An impressed general wrote a rave recommendation, and he screened for command.

Tupper didn't play the angles like Doogie. He prided himself on his tunnel vision when it came to flying.
“Concentrate on what's in front of you. Can't worry about yesterday's pass or tomorrow's flight.”
It was a useful tool as a carrier pilot but a crushing liability as an officer trying to negotiate a career. He screened for command in 2008, and his personnel officer asked if he'd have a problem serving as Doogie Breining's executive officer, his second-in-command. This was a common courtesy afforded commanders in a small community like Whidbey. Except for a forward-deployed squadron in Japan and a Marine detachment in Cherry Point, North Carolina, the entire active Prowler community was based on Whidbey. Hoping to head off pairing officers who despise each other or fought over a woman a decade ago, officers were given an unofficial right of first refusal when being assigned to a squadron as a commander. Breining's reputation was an open secret, but somehow Tupper was clueless. If he'd heard the stories, he'd forgotten them. He told his personnel officer he was fine with the pairing. Pals told him he'd made a grave mistake. They were right.

As Doogie's XO, Ware was Breining's Biden, charged with supporting the front office no matter what, but he did it with increasing dread. He bit his lip as Breining screamed at officers over minor mistakes. And he watched as the power of being CO went to Doogie's head. Coming back to the
Nimitz
after a port call, Breining didn't want to submit his bag to a routine search, claiming a commander's prerogative not to be searched. It was Breining's right, but senior officers rarely invoked it. It caused a scene as sailors gawked from down the gangplank, wondering what was causing the holdup. Tupper defused the situation with the
Nimitz
's MPs, but he seethed inside.

Down the chain of command, the squadron's junior officers cringed as Doogie sent routine paperwork back with WTF and SEE ME scrawled across the front. One lieutenant commander had the misfortune of having an office near the CO, and his hands would begin to shake whenever Doogie yelled his name. A star junior pilot told Tupper he was thinking of quitting flying to get away from Doogie. Tupper talked him out of it; three years later the pilot was chosen for the Blue Angels.

On it went. Then there was the holiday fiasco. The entire base was off on a federal holiday, but Breining made his squadron report that morning so they could catch up on the paper he wanted pushed. There was just one officer missing: Doogie. Word was he was skiing with his family. His junior officers struck back in a way only testosterone-filled twenty-seven-year-old men can: they swiped Doogie's rarely used beer mug from the officers' club, pissed in it, and returned it to its place of honor without a wash.

All of this left Tupper feeling like a passenger in a car driven by a drunk who refused to give up the wheel or use his brakes. He knew that VAQ-135 had become a mess he would eventually have to clean up, but there wasn't a lot he could do about it. It was a dilemma that stretched back to Bligh and Fletcher Christian. Unless there was a grave dereliction of duty, the XO simply did not contradict the commanding officer.

Tupper at least still had the solace of flying. But even that got messed up. A few months earlier, the Black Ravens were returning from a six-month cruise on the
Nimitz
in the Persian Gulf. With Doogie's management style—small screwups got junior officers routinely grounded—the cruise had seemed never ending. Even the port calls were lame. Finally, after 182 days, the
Nimitz
was just off the coast of San Diego, flying range from Whidbey. It was time to go home.

One of the highlights of a skipper's command is the fly-off, when he leads his planes in tight formation—wings nearly touching—over his home airfield before landing and reuniting with the families. In the Pacific Northwest, cloud cover can make this a dangerous move. The men did a preflight brief on the
Nimitz
, as they did for every flight. It was agreed that the squadron's four jets would rendezvous above Smith Island, just a few miles from Whidbey. If the skies were clear, they would fly their four jets into Whidbey in formation. If not, they'd go in separately at five-minute intervals. Doogie was the flight's mission commander, the officer responsible for the briefing and for executing the flight plan, but, in theory, once in the air it wouldn't be Doogie's call. He was a navigator—the pilots would decide.

By the time the planes arrived over Smith, the skies were overcast, with multiple layers of thick clouds. Now was the moment for Tupper or another pilot to speak up. But no one dared cross Doogie. The Black Ravens headed to Whidbey in formation, the clouds so thick Tupper couldn't see the other jets just a few feet away. He was the second jet of a four-plane formation, boxed in by Prowlers on both sides. He had nowhere to go if something went wrong. A slight jerk of the stick or some turbulence and wings could touch. People might die, ten minutes from home. In his head, Tupper kept repeating the same thought.

“This is a mistake. This is a mistake.”

The Prowlers broke through the cloud cover a mile short of Whidbey. The Black Ravens flew by in formation, put on a show for the home folks, and then landed safely. They taxied to a stop, popped open their canopies, and climbed down. Five minutes later, Tupper ordered everyone except Doogie into the squadron ready room. He screamed at his aviators.

“That was seriously fucked. Unsat. I don't care if it was the goddamned CO's fly-in. That was unsafe. We will not do that on my watch.”

Later, Doogie saw that Tupper was pissed. He asked him what was the matter. Tupper considered letting him have it, but he didn't.

“We didn't fly the flight that we briefed, sir. We didn't fly the brief.”

But that was all in the past. Doogie would be gone in the morning. Finally, Tupper would be able to place his own stamp on the squadron. He only had sixteen months and there was so much he wanted to change. Tupper and Beth made their way into the restaurant. Someone remarked they had not seen Tupper smile that much since he arrived in the squadron eighteen months ago. Everyone knew the reason.

The future was now in Tupper's hands. There was just tonight's dinner to get through. Alcohol would help.

Chapter Four

I
made my way to the same dinner by a different route. Off the ferry, Alix and I drove past lush farmland converted into weekend estates for Microsoft millionaires. Signs pointed the way to artists' colonies. But Whidbey Island is thirty-five miles long. By the time you reach Oak Harbor, pickups with blue base stickers replace VW Bugs and “Co-Exist” decals. We quickly drove through town, and I gawked at box stores that now filled once-open fields. The Roller Barn was still there, outsized and bright red. My old neighborhood was just a mile away, but there was no time.

We checked into a motel and changed into our formal wear—Alix in a black dress, me in a too-tight borrowed tuxedo—and headed down to the lobby. A matronly front-desk clerk interrupted us and asked where we were headed.

“It's a Navy thing, right?”

I said yes. Before I could provide any more information she launched into a monologue about her Navy life. Her husband was recently retired, but now her daughter was overseas, serving on a cruiser. Times were tough, but she loved—loved!—the Navy. I'd forgotten the cut-to-the-chase nature of military conversations. No wasting time with pleasantries while waiting for secrets to spill out over time. Someone could be shipped overseas tomorrow. You got down to whatever crosses you were bearing quickly.

“So why are you two here?”

I helped myself to some lobby popcorn and gave the clerk a sketch of my backstory, including Dad's accident. Her smile vanished. After thirty years, I still didn't know when to disclose my dad's death. When a new acquaintance asked me about my parents, I usually joked, “And now we have hit the sad portion of the conversation” before coughing up the particulars. Rationally, I knew the best time to talk about my dad's death was never; it wasn't a stranger's business. But another part of me relished dropping the tragedy on anyone who seemed on the verge of breaking into Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the U.S.A.”

The exchange made me dread tonight's dinner even more. We arrived early and pulled into the gravel parking lot. I turned off the engine but didn't budge. I told Alix the whole trip was a really bad idea. She insisted we actually get out of the car before fleeing.

“We'll stay just a little while and then we can leave.”

There was a nerve-calming walk around the parking lot and then we headed inside. The inn was a regular Navy hangout with the added benefit of not being on actual base property. The sun bounced off the sea and through the windows. We were early and the dining room was empty except for a gray-haired man and his wife. Breining had invited former squadron skippers in the area to the dinner. Only one couple took him up on the offer. They clung to each other tenderly as they stared out at the water. I took a breath and tapped the man on his shoulder. He turned around slowly, and I reached out my hand.

“You're Zeke Zardeskas, right?”

Surprised, the old man sized me up. My hair was too long to be active Navy, and I was a tad young to be an old CO returning to the scene of long-gone triumphs.

“Yes, I am. How did you know? Have we met?”

“We have, a long time ago. My name is Stephen Rodrick, Pete Rodrick's son.”

His wife gasped.

“Oh my God.”

The couple looked like they had seen a ghost. They had in a way. Zachary “Zeke” Zardeskas had been Dad's XO. It wasn't as bad as Doogie and Tupper, but the two were not close. They tolerated each other, but their wives didn't get along at all. Mom thought Diana was a drama queen. She said Diana panicked at minor problems and passed on rumors of the squadron's comings and goings to the other wives, creating confusion and fear.

But it was the Zardeskases' actions after my father's accident that left a permanent mark on my mother. Zeke had taken the command pin off Dad's spare uniform before shipping his effects home. This was both understandable—it could take weeks for a command pin to be shipped from the States to an aircraft carrier—and loathsome—if you needed a pin to show authority, you'd already lost—and it broke Mom's heart. Back home, Diana suffered a meltdown after the accident. She wasn't exactly a calming influence for Mom; my aunt ordered her out of our house after the memorial service because of her wailing.

Now Zeke and Diana stood in front of me, senior citizens. We caught up quickly. He had made captain, served in Washington, and then returned to the area for retirement. They talked of their kids. I could feel jealousy about the life my family never had creeping up my throat. But I just smiled. I didn't have time to process everything because the room soon filled with close-cropped young men in dress whites, all with shiny wives or girlfriends on their arms. (And they were almost all young men. About 10 percent of Navy aviators are now female, but VAQ-135 only had one at the time.)

The officers looked at Alix and me with a distant curiosity. They nodded politely and then steered their dates onto the restaurant's terrace for pictures. Clad in white uniforms and aviator glasses, they looked impossibly young. I wondered if they knew how quickly their moment would pass.

Breining and his wife, Nicole, didn't join in the photos. I thanked him for inviting us, and we made awkward, stilted conversation. He was a compact man—his wife was almost a full head taller—and smiling seemed like an act of will for him. Making small talk is a basic job skill for me, and I can usually find common ground with anyone. It shouldn't have been difficult with Doogie: he was a flier like my father, holding the same rank and job, but it still felt like we were speaking past each other with a seven-second delay.

Mercifully, we were seated a few minutes later. The head table was made up of Alix and me, the Breinings, the Zardeskases, and Commander Vincent Johnson—the squadron's new executive officer—and his wife, Marci. Two seats remained empty.

Then, an older officer, his cap in the crook of his arm, emerged from a scrum of other officers. He held a chair for his wife and then reached his hand across the table.

“I'm Tupper and this is Beth. I'd like to apologize in advance for whatever damage tonight does to your view of the United States Navy.”

Everyone laughed, except for Doogie.

A
few minutes later, a short, squat young officer wheeled in a cart holding a boom box. His call sign was Oompa because of his stature and he was the Vice, aka the master of ceremonies. He shouted into the room.

“Officer's call!”

Everyone stood at attention. Oompa pushed play and “Anchors Aweigh” sifted out of the tinny speakers. Then someone shouted, “Parade the beef.” A tray of steaks was carted around the tables. There was a series of toasts. Most were lighthearted but formal. Breining said, “To the Commander in Chief” and everyone shouted back “To the Commander in Chief.” “To the wives!” “To the wives!” And so on. But then, for a moment, things turned solemn.

“To missing comrades,” said Commander Breining. He looked at me for a moment.

Every movement at a dining-out—going to the bathroom, taking off a jacket—requires formal permission. Do anything without prior approval and you are guilty of an infraction. Your punishment is drinking out of the grog bowl, a mixture of whiskey, gin, wine, and Tabasco sauce. Soon, Doc, the squadron's female flight doctor, declared a desire to urinate.

“Mr. Vice, I request that table four be allowed to use the facilities.”

Oompa answered.

“Doc, your request is denied. Drink from the bowl of grog.”

Doc did as she was told, but then she started rifling rolls at the Vice. In a few seconds, rolls were bouncing off my head, much to Doogie's consternation. I fired one back. Tupper gave me a thumbs-up. Dinner staggered on for another two hours. Eventually, the tables were allowed to use the bathroom. Doc clutched my arm and smiled at me crazily.

“Who are you and why are you here?”

I didn't know what to say. A few hours later, Doc passed out in the gravel driveway of another officer's home while looking for her car keys. By then, I was back in my motel room staring at the ceiling, still trying to answer her question.

N
ames and faces long past swirled through my head that night. One of them was Timmy Newman. Timmy was my best friend when I was five. He was a curly-haired boy whose dad was also a pilot. We met in Monterey the year I fell out of the car. There were play dates with Hot Rods and whispers across blue mats during kindergarten naptime. Our friendship was typically Navy, intense and sporadic. After kindergarten, his dad was sent off somewhere and my father to NAS Alameda outside of San Francisco. Timmy just disappeared one day. That's how it went.

Three years later, I found myself in Mrs. Hunt's third-grade class at Clover Valley Elementary, a quarter mile from NAS Whidbey's gates. We had just arrived in town. It was the first day of school, and, as usual, I knew no one. I sat down at my desk and stared at a dog-eared Matt Christopher book that I carried with me everywhere. A finger tapped me on my shoulder. I spun around. There was Timmy Newman in a white turtleneck.

His dad was flying Prowlers too! For little boys, our reunification was a profound miracle, too fantastic to contemplate. We became inseparable, chattering over cheese pizza, CCD, and Cub Scouts. Nothing could part us.

Then, one damp January morning, Timmy came to school late. His father's Prowler received a weak catapult launch off the
Constellation
in the Mediterranean. Not having enough power to maintain altitude, Commander Roger Newman and his crew ejected from their plane. Tim's dad survived, but a crewmember drowned. Timmy told me about it while we played four square at recess.

We were eight.

We remained best friends over the next five years, riding bikes and belting each other with his dad's old boxing gloves. Then came Dad's accident. A month or two after the crash, Tim and I joined some other kids on a school trip to Mount Baker for a day of skiing. The bus wound its way over the Deception Pass Bridge and Tim reluctantly handed me a copy of the local paper. There was a small headline about Dad's crash.

The story reported that after an investigation the Navy ruled nothing was mechanically wrong with Dad's Prowler and the probable cause of the crash was pilot error. There were no real details. I read it twice and then handed it back to Tim. I stared out the bus window, not wanting him to see the tears in my eyes. He waited a moment and then spoke quietly. I could barely hear him above the screaming of our classmates.

“I didn't know if I should show you this.”

“No, I'm glad you did.”

That was a lie. We moved from Whidbey Island a few months later. I never saw Tim Newman again.

S
ince then, I've lived with the fact that Dad was responsible for his own death and that of his crew. What exactly he did wrong was never fully explained. I remember grown-ups whispering about flying low without a radar altimeter. But none of it mattered. The mishap was ruled pilot error. Dad was the pilot. Simple as that.

It was a wound that never healed. My father, everyone said, was a straight arrow, a grinder who worked eighteen hours a day. He'd won mathematics prizes and been promoted ahead of his peers. On the carrier, he briefed, he flew, he debriefed, and then he went to Mass. That was it. He was not a cowboy. Yet the Navy maintained it was his mistake that created a riptide of tragedy that destroyed four families.

I didn't talk about this with anyone. (I didn't know if anyone else in my family had read the story.) In my world, no one spoke about Dad except in hushed, reverent platitudes. I possessed dangerous information that could destroy that. It was my dark secret. I kept quiet and avoided Whidbey Island for three decades. How could I not? What if I ran into someone who remembered him? I carried his sin. And that's what I thought it was: a sin. Dad's Catholicism had soaked me good. No action that killed four men could be a mere mistake.

A
few miles away, Tupper tried to get some sleep as well. He'd come home to his dad freaking out. Two drunken men had started banging on the door about an hour before Tupper and Beth made it home. His dad wondered if he should call the cops. Tupper laughed and told him not to worry. He had an idea who it was. He checked in on his girls and loosened the collar on his uniform. Then he checked his voice mail.

There were multiple calls from his buddy Roast, a friend from his younger Prowler days in VAQ-134, the Lancers. Tupper and Roast had led the Gutter Rats, a motley assortment of junior officers who flew hard and partied harder. They'd flown over Iraq together and spent hundreds of hours with their thumbs up their asses while the squadron was deployed at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia for Operation Enduring Freedom. Roast was a great pilot who tired of the bullshit. He got out, took a straight job, and flew part-time for the National Guard out of Omaha.

“Hey Tupper, I've flown cross country for a Gutter Rat reunion. You fucking pussy, where the fuck are you? You better let us in before one of us takes a shit in your driveway.”

Tupper laughed. There was no sign of Roast or Flounder, another Gutter Rat. They must have circled back into town for more provisions.

A few minutes later there was pounding on his porch. Tupper cursed with a smile and opened the front door. There were Roast and Flounder, gang-tackling each other. Tupper invited them in, and they tiptoed as quietly as drunk men can tiptoe onto the back porch. A bottle of whiskey appeared. Cigars were lit. For a few hours, Tupper was back in an old scene.

M
aybe it was a natural rebellion against fatherhood, the stress of the cockpit, and finally being freed of the shackles of the academy and flight school, but once Tupper became a Navy pilot he decided he wasn't going to take shit from anyone. He built a reputation as the guy who always pushed the joke a little too far. The tradition actually started in his final days at the academy when—with graduation assured—he posed for a photograph on the roof of Bancroft Hall, the academy's dormitory, as “the Secret Ninja,” wearing only a black mask and black socks. That made him a minor legend, but other actions had the opposite effect. He went to a Prowler tactics school and started bullshitting with a much older Marine instructor. But when the Marine ripped on Tupper and Tupper came back with the classic “That's not what your daughter said last night,” the Marine had to be held back from popping Tupper in the mouth.