a Pavlovian reaction—McCoy saluted the tall, stocky, erect, starting-to -bald man, who had a blond eight-year-old boy straddling his neck.
“Colonel,” he said.
“Goddamn, Ken, you of all people know me well enough to call me by my name.”
He walked quickly to McCoy, his hand extended to shake McCoy’s, then changed his mind and embraced him.
“It’s good to see you,” McCoy said.
“Come on in the house, Stanley’ll take care of the bags and the car. I think a small—hell, large—libation is in order. ”
He looked at his wife, who was coming around the front of the car with her arm around Ernie McCoy.
“Hey, beautiful lady,” he called. “Welcome to Charleston.”
“Hello, Ed,” Ernie said. “Thank you, it’s good to be here.”
They all went up the stairs as Stanley, the dignified black man, and a younger black man came down the stairs.
“I put the wine in the sitting room, Colonel,” he said to Banning.
“Just the wine?”
“No, sir,” Stanley said. “Not just the wine.”
“Good man, Stanley.”
“These glasses are . . . exquisite,” Ernie said, as Ed Banning poured champagne in her engraved crystal glass.
“They’ve been in the family a long time,” Mother Banning said. “We only bring them out for special people.”
“Thank you,” Ernie said.
“The general bought them in Europe before the war,” Mother Banning said. “On his wedding trip.”
Ed Banning saw the confusion on Ernie’s face.
“Mother refers, of course, to the War of Secession,” he said. “These glasses spent the war buried on the island, which always made me wonder if my great-grandfather had as much faith in the inevitable victory of the Confederacy as he professed at the time.”
“Edward, what a terrible thing to say,” Mother Banning said.
“Mother, as it says in the Good Book, the ‘truth shall make you free.’ ”
There was polite laughter.
“Speaking of the truth,” Banning said. “Let me get this out of the way before we get down to serious drinking. The general called—Ken’s and my general, Mother—and let me know what’s going on. We’re family, in my mind. . . .”
“And mine,” Luddy said. “This family wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for our savior.”
“Hear, hear,” Banning said. “Anyway, I want you both to know that what’s ours is yours, anything we can do to help, we will, and we can either talk about it or not. Your choice.”
“I’m going to cry,” Ernie said.
“Drink your booze,” Colonel Banning said, and then had another thought: “One more thing, Ken. Ernie Zimmerman, the best-dressed master gunner in the Marine Corps.”
“What about him?”
“I wanted to ask you before I asked him and Mae-Su down from Beaufort. You want to see him?”
“Wouldn’t that be an imposition?” Ernie asked. “Ken and I talked about going down there to see them on our way to California.”
“You weren’t listening, beautiful lady,” Colonel Banning said. He turned to the butler, who was in the act of opening a second bottle of Moët et Chandon extra brut. “Stanley, see if you can get Mister Zimmerman on the horn for me, will you?”
“Mae-Su is my sister, Ernie,” Luddy Banning said, in gentle reproof. “She is always welcome in our home.”
Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC, his wife Mae-Su, and their five children arrived at 66 South Battery two hours later. At Mae-Su’s insistence, the entire family was dressed in a manner Mrs. Zimmerman felt was appropriate to visit—as she described them privately to her husband—“the ladies in Charleston.”
The four males of the family—Father, thirty-four; Peter, thirteen; Stephen, twelve; and John, seven—were wearing identical seersucker suits. The three females—Mae-Su, thirty-three; Mary, six; and Ernestine, three—were wearing nearly identical summer linen dresses.
The dresses and suits had all been cut and sewn by the Chinese wife of another Parris Island Marine—this one a staff sergeant drill instructor—who had gone to the Shanghai Palace restaurant in Beaufort, South Carolina, hoping to find employment as a cook—for that matter, anything at all; she needed the income—on the basis that she had been born and raised in Shanghai.
The proprietor, Mae-Su Zimmerman, was not interested in a cook, but she was looking for a seamstress. The DI’s wife—who had met her husband in Tientsin, China, right after World War II—came from a family of tailors and seamstresses. After passing two tests, first making, from a picture in the society section of the Charleston Post-Gazette, a dress for Mrs. Zimmerman, and then, from the Brooks Brothers mail-order catalog, a suit for Master Gunner Zimmerman, Joi-Hu McCarthy went into business with Mrs. Zimmerman, who became a silent (40 percent) partner in Shanghai Custom Tailors & Alterations, of