The Intruders (4 page)

She shouted that last sentence, then fell silent. When she spoke again
her voice was cold, every word enunciated clearly:

“It will be a miracle if Jake Grafton ever walks through that door
again. So I’m serving notice on you, Wallace, here and now. your
arrogance almost cost me my son. If it costs me my daughter, I’m
divorcing you.”

Before Callie could move from her seat on the steps, Mrs. McKenzie came
striding through the study door. She saw Callie and stopped dead.

callie rose, turned, and forced herself to climb the stairs.

After a MISERAbLE NIGHT IN A MOTEL NEAR O’HARE, JAKE got a seat the next
day on the first flight to Seattle. Unfortunately, the next Harbor
Airlines flight to Oak Harbor wasn’t for two hours. So he had two hours
to kill.He headed for the bar and sat nursing a beer.

The war Was over, yet it wasn’t. That was the crazy thing.

He had tried to keep his cool in Chicago and had done a fair job until
the professor goaded him beyond endurance.

Now he sat going over the mess again, for the fifteenth time, wondering
what Callie was thinking, wondering what she felt.

The ring was burning a hole in his pocket. He pulled It out and looked
at it from time to time, ” to shield It in his hand so that casual
observers wouldn’t think him weird.

Maybe he ought to throw the damned thing away. It didn’t look like he
was ever going to get to give it to Callie, not in this lifetime,
anyway, and he certainly wasn’t going to hang on to it for future
presentation to whomever. He was going to have to do something with it.

He had been stupid to buy the ring in the first place. He Should have
waited until she said Yes, then taken her to a jewelry store and let her
pick out the ring. Normal guys got the woman first, the ring second. A
fellow could avoid a lot of pitfalls if he did it the tried-and-true
traditional way.

Water under the bridge.

But, God! he felt miserable. So empty, as if he had absolutely nothing
to live for.

He was glumly staring into his beer mug when he heard a distant voice
ask, “Did you get that in Vietnam?”

Jake looked. Two stools down sat a young man, no more than twenty-two
or -three. His left hand was a hook sticking out of his sleeve. The
interrogator was older, pushing thirty, bigger, and stood waiting for
the bartender to draw him a beer.

“Yeah,” the kid said. “Near Chu Lai.”

“Serves you right,” the older man said as he tossed his money on the bar
and picked up his beer. He turned away.

Jake Grafton was off his stool and moving without conscious thought. He
laid a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around. Beer
slopped from the man’s mug.

“You sonuvabitch!” the man roared. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You owe this guy an apology.”

“My ass!” Then the look on Grafton’s face sank in. “Now hold on, you
bastard! I’ve got a black belt That was all he managed to get out,
because Jake seized a beer bottle sitting on the bar and smashed it
against the man’s head with a sweeping backhand. The big man went to
the floor, stunned.

Grafton grabbed wet, bloody hair with his right hand and lifted. He
grabbed a handful of balls with his left and brought the man to his
feet, then started him sideways. With a heave he threw him through the
plate-glass window onto the concourse.

As the glass tinkled down Jake walked out the door of the bar and
approached the man. He lay stunned, surrounded by glass fragments. The
glass grated under Jake’s shoes.

Jake squatted.

The man was semiconscious, bleeding from numerous small cuts. His eyes
swam, then focused on Grafton.

“You got off lucky this time. I personally know a dozen men who would
have killed you for that crack you made in there. There’s probably
thousands of them.”

Slivers of glass stuck out of the man’s face in several places.

“If I were you I’d give up karate. You aren’t anywhere near tough
enough. Maybe you oughta try ballet.”

He stood and walked back into the bar, ignoring the gaping onlookers.
The ex-soldier was still sitting on the stool.

“How much for the beers?” Jake asked the bartender.

“yours?”

“Mine and this gentleman’s. I’m buying his too.”

“Four bucks.”

Jake tossed a five-spot on the bar. Through the nowempty frame of the
window he saw a policeman bending over the man lying on the concourse.

Jake held out his hand to the former soldier, who shook it.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah I did,” Jake said. “I owed it to myself.”

The bartender held out his hand. “I was in the Army for a couple years.
I’d like to shake your hand too.”

Jake shook it.

“Well,” he said to the one-handed veteran, who was looking at his hook,
“don’t let the assholes grind you down.”

“He isn’t the only one,” the man murmured, nodding toward the concourse.

“I know. We got a fucking Eden here, don’t we?”

He left the bar and introduced himself to the first cop he saw.

It was about four o’clock on Monday afternoon when a police officer
opened the cell door.

“You’re leaving, Grafton. Come on.”

The officer walked behind Jake, who was decked out in. a blue jump suit
that all prisoners wore several sizes too big. He had been in the can
all weekend. He had used his one telephone call when he was arrested on
Saturday to call the squadron duty officer at NAS Whidbey.

,You,re where?” that worthy had demanded, apparently unable to believe
his own ears. -The King County Jail,” Jake repeated.

“I’ll be damned! What’d you do, kill somebody?”

“Naw. Threw a guy out of a bar.”

“That’s all?”

“He went out through a plate glass window.”

“Oh.”

“Better put it in the logbook and call the skipper at home.”

“Okay, Jake. Don’t bend over to pick up the soap.”

This afternoon he got into his civilian clothes in the same room in
which he had undressed, the same room, incidentally, in which he had
been fingerprinted and photographed.

when he was dressed an officer passed him an envelope that contained the
items from his pockets.

Jake examined the contents of the envelope. His airline tickets were
still there, his wallet, change, and the ring. He pocketed the ring and
counted the money in the wallet.

“Don’t see many white guys in here carrying diamond rings,” the cop said
chattily.

Grafton wasn’t in the mood.

“Dopers seem to have pockets full of them,” the cop continued “And
burglars. You haven’t been crawling through any windows, have you?”

“Not lately.” Jake snapped his wallet shut and pocketed it.

“Bet it helps you get laid a lot.”

“Melts their panties. Poked your daughter last week.”

“Sign this receipt, butt hole.”

Jake did so.

They led him out to a desk. His commanding officer, Commander Dick
Donovan, was sitting in a straight-backed chair. two more pieces of
paper thrust at him by the desk sergeant- One was a promise to appear in
three weeks for a preliminary hearing before a magistrate. Jake
pocketed his copy.

“You’re free to go,” the sergeant said.

Donovan came out of his chair and headed for the door.

Jake trailed along behind him, At the Parking lot Jake got into the
passenger seat Of Donovan’s car. Donovan still hadn’t said a word. He
was a big man, easily six foot three, with wide shoulders and huge feet
He was the first bombardier-navigator (BN) to ever command the
replacement squadron, VA-128.

“Thanks for bailing me out, Skipper.”

“I have a lot better things to do with my time than driving all the way
to Seattle to bail an officer out of jail. An officer involved in a bar
room brawl. I almost didn’t come. I shouldn’t have. I wish I hadn’t.”

sorry.

“Don’t shit me, Mister. You weren’t even drunk when you threw that guy
through that window.

You’d had exactly half of one beer. I read the police report and the
witnesses’ statements. You aren’t sorry and you’ve got no excuse.”

“I’m sorry you had to drive down here, sir, I’m not sorry for what I did
to that man. He had it coming.”

“Just who do you - think YOU are, Grafton? Some comic book Superhero?
Who gave you the right to punish every jerk out there that deserves it?
That’s what cops and courts are for.”

“Okay, I shouldn’t have done it.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“Thanks for bailing me out. You didn’t have to do it. I know that.”

“Not that you give a good goddamn.”

“It really doesn’t matter.”

“What should I do with you now?”

“Whatever YOU feel You gotta do, Skipper. Write a bad fittie, letter Of
reprimand, court-martial, whatever. It’s your call If YOU want, I’ll
give you a letter of resignation tomorrow.”

“Just like that,” Donovan muttered.

“Just like that.”

“Is that what you want? Out of the Navy?”

“I haven’t thought about it.

“Sir!” Donovan snarled.

Donovan fell silent. He got on 1-5 and headed north. He didn’t take
the exit for the Mukilteo ferry, but stayed on the freeway. He was in
no mood for the ferry. He was going the long way around, across the
bridge at Deception Pass to Whidbey Island.

Jake merely sat and watched the traffic. None of it mattered anymore.
The guys who died in Vietnam, the ones who were maimed … all that
carnage and suffering … just so some asshole, could insult them in
airports? So college professors could sneer? So the lieutenants who
survived could fret about their fitness reports while they climbed the
career ladder rung by slippery rung?

June … in the year of our Lord 1973.

In Virginia his dad would be working from dawn to dark.

His father knew the price that had to be paid, so he paid it, and he
reaped the reward. The calves were born and thrived, the cattle gained
weight, the crops grew and matured and were harvested.

Perhaps he should go back to Virginia, get some sort of job. He was
tired of the uniform, tired of the paperwork, even . . . even tired
of the flying. It was all so absolutely meaningless Donovan was guiding
the car through Mount Vernon when he spoke again. “It took eighty-seven
stitches to sew that guy UP.

Jake wasn’t paying attention. He made a polite noise.

“His balls were swollen up the size of oranges.” The skipper sighed.
“Eighty-seven stitches is a lot, but there shouldn’t be any permanent
injuries. Just some scars. So I talked to the prosecutor. There won’t
be a trial.”

Jake grunted. He was half listening to Donovan now, but the commander’s
words were just that, words.

“The prosecutor walked out from the Chosin Reservoir with the Fifth
Marines,” Donovan continued. “He read the police report and the
statements by the bartender and that crippled soldier The police file
and complaint are going to be lost.”

“Humpf,” Jake said.

“SO You owe me five hundred bucks. Two hundred which Posted as bail and
three hundred to replace that window You broke. You can write me a
personal check.,’

“Thanks, Skipper.”

“Of course, that jerk could try to cash in on his eighty-seven stitches
if he can find a lawyer stupid enough to bring a civil suit. A jury
might make you pay the hospital and doctor bill, but I doubt if they
would give the guy a dime more than that. Never can tell about juries,
though.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“YOU can Pack your bags,” Donovan continued ,I’m sending you to the
Marines- Process servers can’t get you if You’re in the middle of the
Pacific.” With a growing sense of horror Jake realized the import Of
Donovan’s words. 4-The Marina?”

“Yeah. Marine A-6 outfit is going to sea on Columbi ri Eney don’t have
any Pilots with carrier experience. BUP ‘The Bureau Of Naval
Personnel’- are looking for line Navy volunteers to go to sea with them.
Consider, yourself volunteered.”

“I was just on a cruise five months ago.” He was tongue-tied as the
implications Of this disaster pressed in upon him Shore duty was the
Payback, the flying vacation from two combat cruises, the night cat
shots, the, night traps, getting shot at, shot up and shot down. Those
night rides down the catapults … sweet Jesus how he had hated those.
And the ones made in terrible, weather, sometimes in a shot-up arcane,
with never enough fuel. It made him want to puke just thinking about
that shit. And here was Tiny Dick ])or*van proposing to send him right
back to do eight or nine more months of it!

It just wasn’t fair, “The 900ks damn near killed me over North Vietnam a
dozen times. It’s a miracle I’m still alive. And now you feed me a shit
sandwich?”

That just popped out. Dick Donovan didn’t seem to hear.

It dawned on Jake that the commander probably couldn’t be swayed with
sour grapes.

In desperation, Jake attacked in the only direction’remaining. “The
jarheads maintain their planes with ball peen hammers and pipe
wrenches,” he roared, his voice beyond its owner’s control. “Their
planes are flying deathtraps”

When Donovan didn’t reply to this indisputable truth, Jake lost the
bubble completely. “You can’t do this to me!”

“Wanna bet?”

There were three staff instructors seated at stools at the bar nursing
beers when Jake walked into the O Club. The afternoon sun streamed
through the tall windows. If you squinted against the glare you could
see the long lazy reach of Puget Sound, placid in the calm evening, more
like a pond than an arm of the sea. If you looked closely though, you
could see the rise and fall of gentle swells.

Jake broke the news that he was on his way to the Marine squadron going
aboard Columbia. He could see by the looks on their faces that they
already knew. Bad news rides a fast horse.

Heads bobbed solemnly.

“Well, shore duty gets old quick.”

“Yeah. Whidbey ain’t bad, but it ain’t Po City.”

Their well-meaning remarks gave Jake no comfort, although he tried to
maintain a straight face. Not being a liberty hound, the whores and
whiskey of Olongapo City in the Philippines had never been much of an
attraction for him. He felt close to tears. This was what he wanted
more of–the flying without combat, an eight-thousand-foot runway
waiting for his return, relaxed evenings on dry land with mountains on
the horizon, the cool breeze coming in off the sound, delicious weekends
to loaf through.

The injustice of Donovan’s decision was like a knife in his gut. It was
his turn, yet he was leaving all the good stuff and going back to sea!

“Lucky you aren’t married,” one of the barflies said. “A little cruise
in the middle of a shore tour would drive a lot of wives straight to the
divorce court.”

That remark got them talking. They knew four men who were in the
process of getting divorces. The long separations the Navy required of
families were hell on marriages. While his companions gossiped Jake’s
thoughts turned morosely to Callie- She was a good woman, and he loved
her. He could see her face, feel her touch, hear her voice even now.

But her rather That jerk! A flash of heat went through him, then
flickered out as he surveyed the cold ashes of his life.

“Things happen to Marines,, Tricky Nixon was saying when Jake once again
began paying attention to the conversation.

Tricky was a wiry, dark, compact man. Now his brows knitted. “Knew a
Marine fighter pilot once. Flew an FA He diverted from the ship into
Cecil Field one night. Black night. You guys know Cecil, big as half
of Texas, with those parallel runways?”

His listeners nodded. Tricky took another swig of beer.

After he swallowed and cleared his throat, he continued:

“For reasons known only to God, he plunked his mighty Phantom down
between those parallel runways. In the grass.

Hit the radar shack head-on, smacked it into a million splinters.”

Tricky sighed, then continued: “The next day the squad ron maintenance
officer went into Cecil on the COD, looked the Plane Over Pretty good,
had it towed outta the dirt onto a taxiway, then filled it with gas and
flew it back to the ship.

It was a little scratched up but nothing serious. Things happen to
Marines.”

They talked about that-about the odds of putting a tactical jet with a
landing weight of 45,000 pounds down on grass and not ripping one or
more of the gear off the plane.

“I knew a Marine once,” Billy Doyle said when the conversation lagged,
“who forgot to pull the power back when he landed. He was flying an
F-4, His listeners nodded.

“He went screeching down the runway with the fires smoking, went off the
end and drove out across about a half mile of dirt. Went through the
base perimeter fence and across a ditch that wiped off the landing gear.
Skidded On across a road, and came to rest with the plane straddling a
railroad track. He sat there awhile thinking it Over, then finally shut
down and climbed out. He was standing there looking it over when a
train came along and Plowed into the wreck. Smashed it to bits.”

They sipped beer while they thought about forgetting to pull the
throttle to idle on touchdown, about how it would feel sitting dazed in
the cockpit of a crashed airplane with the engine still running as the
realization sank in that YOU had really screwed the pooch this time.
Really screwed the pooch. Things happen to Marines,” Billy Doyle added.

“Their bad days can be spectacular,” Bob Landow agreed in his bass
growl. He was a bear of a man, with biceps that rippled the material of
his shirt. -Marine F-8 pilot was transpacing one time, flying the
pond.”

He paused and lubricated his throat while his listeners thought about
flying a single-seat fighter across the Pacific, about spending ten or
twelve hours strapped to an ejection seat in the tiny cockpit.

Landows growl broke the silence. “The first time he hit the tanker for
gas, the fuel cells overpressurized and ruptured. Fuel squirted out of
every orifice. It squirted into the engine bay and in seconds the Plane
caught fire-At this point our Marine decides to eject. He pulls the
face curtain. Nothing happens. But not yet to sweat, because he has the
secondary handle between his legs. He gives that this ecta a hell of a
jerk. Nothing. He just sits there unable to move. Sitting in this
burning aircraft with fuel flowing out of every pore over the vast
Pacific. -This is turning into a major-league bad day. He Yanks on the
handle a couple more times like King Kong with a hard on. Nothing
happens. Gawdanit, he’s getting excited now. He tries jettisoning the
canopy. Damn thing won’t go off. It’s stuck. This is getting
seriouser and seriouser.

“The plane is burning like a blowtorch by this time and he’s getting
really excited. He pounds and punches at the canopy while the plane
does smoky wingovers. Finally the canopy departs- Our Marine is greatly
relieved, He unstraps and prepares to climb out. This is an F-8, you
understand, and if he makes it past that tail in one piece he will be
the very first. But he’s going to give it a try, He starts to
straighten up and the wind just grabs him and Whoop. Out-free-falling
toward the ocean deep and blue.

thank God, “He falls for a while toward the Pacific thinking about
Marine maintenance, then decides it’s time to see if the Parachute
works. It wasn’t that kind of a day, Damn thing streams.

“NoV, several of his listeners groaned in unison.

“I shit you not,” Bob Landow replied. He helped himself to more beer as
his Marine fell from an indifferent sky toward an indifferent sea with
an unopened parachute streaming behind him.

“What’s the rest of it?” Tricky demanded.

Landow frowned- There is a certain Pace to a good sea story, and Tricky
had a bad habit of rushing it. Not willing to be hurried, Landow took
another sip of beer, then made a show of wiping his lips with a napkin.
When he had the glass back on the bar and his weight lifter’s arm
crossed just right. He said, “He had some Marine luck there at the end.

Pulled strings like a puppeteer and got a few panels of the rag to
blossom. Just enough. Just enough.”

He shook his head wearily and -settled a baleful gaze on Jake Grafton-

“Things happen to Marines. You be careful out there, Jake.

“Yeah,” Jake told them as he glanced out the window at the reflection of
small puffy clouds on the limpid blue water.

Jake GRAfton WAS dressed IN KHAKIS AND WEARING HIS leather flight jacket
when he stepped onto the catwalk around the flight deck. The sun was
out, yet to the west a layer of fog obscured the higher buildings of San
Francisco and all of the Golden Gate Bridge except the tops Of the
trees.The gentle breeze had that moist, foggy feeling. Jake shivered
and tugged his ban cap more firmly Onto his head The pier below was
covered with people. The pilot rested his elbows on the railing of the
catwalk and stood taking it all in, listening to the cacophony of
voices.

Sailors, Marines, officers and chiefs stood surrounded by their
families. Children were everywhere, some clinging to their mothers,
others running through the crowd chasing One another, the Smaller ones
being passed from hand to hand by the adults.

A band was tuning up on Elevator Two, which was in the down position and
stuck out over the pier like a porch too.

Even as Jake watched, the conductor got the attention of his charges and
whipped them into a Sousa march.

On the pier near the stern another band was assembling.

No doubt that was the Naval Air Station band, which tooted for every
ship’s departure. Well and good, but Cohimbia had a band too and
apparently the ship’s XO thought there couldn’t be too much music.

Above Jake’s head the tails of aircraft stuck out precariously over the
edge of the Bight deck and cast weird shadows on the crowded pier.
Occasionally he could see people lift their gaze to take in the vast
bulk of the ship and the dozens of aircraft. Then the people turned
their attention back to their loved one.

Last night he had stood in line at one of the dozen phone booths on the
head of the pier. The rain had subsided to occasional drips. When his
time for the booth came, he had called his folks in Virginia, then
Callie. It was after midnight in Chicago when she answered.

“Callie, this is Jake.”

“Where are you?”

“On the pier at Alameda. Did you get my letters?”

“I received three.”

He had written the letters and mailed them from Oceana, where he had
been sent to do field carrier qualifications with a group of students
from VA-42. He had completed his field quals, of course, but didn’t go
to the ship. There hadn’t been time. He would have to qual aboard
Columbia after she sailed. He needed ten day and six night traps
because it had been over six months since his last carrier landing.

“Another letter is on the way,” he told Callie, probably a superfluous
comment. “You’ll get it in a day or two.”

“So how is the ship?”

“It’s a ship. What can I say?”

“When do you sail?”

“Seven-thirty in the morning.”

“So when I wake up you’ll be at sea.”

They talked desultorily for several minutes, the operator came on the
line and Jake fed in more quarters, then he got down to it “Callie, I
love you.”

“I know you do. Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry your visit was such a disaster.”

“I am too. I guess these things just happen sometimes. I wish And he
ran out of steam. A phone booth on a pier with dozens Of “Hors awaiting
their turn wasn’t the place to say what he wished

“-you be careful,” she said.

“You know me, Callie. I’m always careful.”

“Don’t take any unnecessary chance&” –I want you to come back to me.”

Now Jake stood watching the crowd and thinking that. She wanted him to
come back to her. so He took a deep breath and sighed-

“life is strange. just when everything looks bleakest a ray of sunlight
comes through the clouds, Hope, He had hope. She wouldn’t have said
something like that unless she meant It, not Callie, not when he was
going On an eight-month cruise.

He was standing there listening to the two bands Playing different times
at the same time, watching the crowd, watching sailors and women engage
in passionate kisses, when he saw the Cadilla,_ A pink Cadillac
convertible with the top down was slowly making its way down the pier.
People flowed out of its way, then closed in behind it, like water
parting for a boat.