to Mare Island when they were through with him with a letter of commendation from a goddamned Navy captain.
“Makes you sound like John Paul Jones, Garvey,” Chief Ellis had told him. “I know, ’cause I wrote it.”
The next time the promotion board sat, he was probably going to be the only radioman second going for first with a letter of commendation like that. He had already taken the radioman first examination, and he’d made 91.5. If he just kept his mouth shut, he was going to make radioman first, and a little later, he would make chief radioman.
But that was no longer good enough. He didn’t want to sit out the war in the commo section at Mare Island. He wanted to get into the war. When somebody asked him, later, what he’d done in the war, he didn’t want to have to tell them he’d been at Mare Island, period.
And he thought he had figured out what to do about it.
“Fuck it!” Radioman Second Joe Garvey said aloud, which made the bartender look at him strangely.
Then he got off the bar stool, shrugged his arms into his peacoat, put his hat at a jaunty angle on his head, and walked, somewhat unsteadily, out of the bar of the petty officers’ club.
He didn’t stop to pick up his Liberty Card. He was afraid the master-at-arms would smell the beer on him and not give it to him. He had been given an “any hour in and out” duty card, which would get him past the Marine MP at the gate.
As he went through the gate, a taxicab rolled up and an officer got out. Joe Garvey saluted and got in.
’’Q Street, Northwest,” he ordered. “I’ll show you where.”
On the way, he fell asleep, and the cabdriver had to stop the cab and reach in the back and shake him awake when they were on Q Street.
“Further down,” Joe told him, and the cab drove slowly down the street until Joe recognized the brick wall.
“Right there,” he said, and handed the cabdriver a five-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
He had almost made it to the door in the gate when a large man in a heavy overcoat appeared out of nowhere.
“Hold it right there, sailor!”
“It’s all right,” Garvey said. “I’m to report to Chief Ellis.”
“You missed him, then,” the man said. “He left an hour ago.”
Another, equally burly man appeared.
“What have you got, Harry?” he asked.
“I got me a drunken sailor,” the first man said. “The sonofabitch can barely stand up.”
“Fuck you,” Joe Garvey said.
“I got me a belligerent drunken sailor,” the man said, laughing. He put his hand on Garvey’s arm.
“What the hell do we do with him?”
“I’ll take him inside and ask the duty officer,” the first man said. “He says he’s supposed to report to Ellis.”
“Kid,” the second man said. “I think you just fucked up by the numbers.”
The first man, firmly gripping Garvey’s arm, propelled him a hundred yards farther down the street, then through the automobile gate to the property, then up the drive, and finally into the kitchen.
Joe Garvey recognized the two men in shirtsleeves sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. As well as he could, he came to attention and saluted. “Sir,” he said (it came out “Shir”), “Radioman Second Class Garvey, J., requests permission to speak to the captain, Sir.”
“What have we here?” 1st Lt. Horace G. Hammersmith, Signal Corps, U.S. Army, asked, smiling.
“He just got out—fell out—of a cab,” the burly man said.
“Garvey, my boy,” Capt. James M. B. Whittaker said, “if one didn’t know better, one would suspect that you have been communing with John Barleycorn.”
“You know him?” the burly man asked.
Whittaker nodded.
“Sir, I wish to volunteer,” Garvey said, very thickly.
“Volunteer? For what?”
“You’re going into the Philippines,” Garvey said. “I want to go with you.”
“So much for the big secret,” Lt. Hammersmith said, chuckling.
“You’re drunk, Garvey,” Whittaker said.
“No, I’m not,” Garvey said righteously.
“I’ll take care of Garvey,” Whittaker said. “Thank you.”
“I don’t know, Captain,” the burly man said. “I think I better see what the duty officer has to say.”
“Hey,” Whittaker said, smiling, but with a layer of steel just beneath the surface. “I said, I’ll take care of Garvey.”
“Not only am I a much faster operator than the lieutenant, ” Garvey said, “but you’ll be working a Navy net—”
“Garvey!” Whittaker said, sharply.
“Shir?”
“Sssshhhh,” Whittaker said.
“Yes, shir,” Garvey said obediently. Hammersmith laughed. Garvey looked at him with hurt eyes.
“That will be all, thank you,” Whittaker said to the burly man.