“My thought, sir, is that if McCoy doesn’t take leave, he’ll be paid for it when he’s separated. Whether he leaves the Corps or reenlists, I’m sure that he’d like to have—is really going to need—a month’s pay in cash.”
Lieutenant Colonel Brewer considered that a moment, first thinking that it was really nice of Macklin to take an interest like this—he didn’t seem the type—and then considering what he was asking for.
The Eighth & Eye TWX had said McCoy “should be offered the opportunity” to take leave; it didn’t make it an order.
“Sure,” Lieutenant Colonel Brewer said. “Why not? Have him inventory supply rooms or something. There’s always a need for someone to do that.”
“And, sir, with your permission, I’d rather not have him get the idea we’re doing this out of—what . . . pity, I suppose, is the word.”
Brewer considered that for a moment.
“Handle it any way you think is best, Macklin.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. With your permission, sir?”
Lieutenant Colonel Brewer gave Major Macklin permission to withdraw with a wave of his hand.
Major Macklin returned to his office quite pleased with himself.
“Killer” McCoy getting himself booted out of the Corps was really no surprise. The miserable little sonofabitch should never have been a commissioned officer in the first place. I’m only surprised that he lasted as long as he did.
Having him assigned here, under my command, for his last twenty-nine days as an officer is really poetic justice. I owe him.
An officer and a gentleman would never have done to a brother officer what that lowlife sonofabitch did to me. And got away with.
Until now.
The next twenty-nine days are mine.
It’s payback time.
As he sat behind his desk, he had another thought that pleased him even more:
If he does accept whatever stripes Eighth & Eye decides he’s worth, and enlists—and how else can he earn a living?—maybe I could arrange to have him stationed here.
“Reduced to the ranks”? I’d like to see the sonofabitch busted down to PFC.
And with a little luck, I might be able to do just that.
[TWO]
THROUGH WITH ENGINES NEAR CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA 0905 7 JUNE 1950
As Trans-Global Airways’ Flight 637, Luxury Service Between Tokyo and San Francisco, began the last (Honolulu-San Francisco) leg of the flight, Fleming Pickering had taken advantage of Ken McCoy’s visit to the rest room and had brought up the subject of Through with Engines to Ernie Sage McCoy.
Through with Engines was the more-or-less 110-acre Pickering estate near Carmel. On it was a large, rambling, but not pretentious single-floor house, designed to provide as many of its rooms as possible with the best possible view of the Pacific Ocean; a boathouse; a small airplane hangar; a small cottage for the servants; and a shedlike building used to house the grass-cutting—and other estate—machinery and a garage. None of the buildings—or the Pacific Ocean—could be seen from the road.
The land, which at the time had held only what was now the servants’ cottage, and the boathouse had been the wedding gift of Andrew Foster to Patricia, his only daughter, on her marriage to Fleming Pickering. The house—actually the first four rooms thereof; eight more having been added, often one at a time, over the years—had been the gift of Commodore Pickering to his son Fleming on the occasion of his successful passage of the U.S. Coast Guard examinations leading to his licensing as an Any Ocean, Any Tonnage Master Mariner, his right to call himself “Captain,” and his first command of a Pacific & Far East vessel.
It was originally used by the young couple as somewhere they could go for privacy when he returned from a voyage, and Patricia had almost immediately pointed out that, since there were no street numbers, and nothing could be seen from the highway, the place needed a name. And it also needed signs to inform the public that it was private property.
Patricia Foster Pickering had thought her husband’s suggestion of “Through with Engines”—the last signal sent from the bridge to the engine room at the conclusion of a voyage—was rather sweet, and told him she’d see about having a sign made.
“You’ll need a lot more than one sign,” he had replied. “I’ll take care of it.”
She thought that was sweet, too, until, on her next visit to what she thought of as “the beach place,” she found the road lined at 100-yard intervals with four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood signs, painted yellow, red, and black, reading: