A Tidewater Morning Read Free Page A

special police revolver he wore on his hip in a luxurious cordovan leather holster so energetically spit-shined that once, collapsed down beside him during a training problem on a Saipan beach, I saw my face bulbously reflected in it, as in a fun-house mirror. Both the Jerry Colonna mustache and the revolver were nonregulation; mustaches were allowed but they should not be recherché, and the standard-issue sidearm was a .45 automatic. The automatic, it was commonly noted, was not really reliable, hard to aim (though once aimed it could pulverize an ox). But it was less for this reason that Halloran sported his more glamorous sidearm—and the flamboyant handlebar—than for their dash and style, to which his status as a legend entitled him. The Marine Corps is rigorous, even Prussian, in many of its fetishlike requirements, but there is something affectingly lackadaisical in its toler ance of reasonable eccentricities shown by favored oddballs; unlike the Prussians, the Marines, thanks to this good-natured view, have been helped in saving themselves from dementia.
    “So you think this Hobbes can help you devastate Marx when you get down to that book you’re planning to write?” Halloran asked.
    “Yes, sir, absolutely,” Stiles said. “A man whose evil has been so vast and pervasive has had to draw his ideas from many sources, and I don’t want to miss even a fragment of the thought that might have been provided by any of his predecessors.”
    “Well, as I say, I keep wishing you luck.” He paused again. “That fucking Marx sure brought us a shitload of trouble.”
    I rather hoped this part of the conversation would cease, since I’d heard it or its equivalent several times before. In the Marines, political talk among officers has traditionally been constrained by a lurking delicacy that makes it almost forbidden (it is forbidden in officers’ wardrooms, along with religion and sex); but the Bolshevik menace, I had discovered, could be fair game. Like most regular officers Halloran was a political dumbbell, and Stiles had become his mentor. As for myself, I was considerably less interested in politics than Stiles was, and his involvement could become annoyingly overheated. But suddenly and mercifully the matter evaporated. We watched for a moment while Halloran swabbed his cheeks with a towel, then patted on talcum powder. Shortly, I knew from past observation, he would carefully wax the mustache with something he called “twice-precious goo” from a jar he had acquired in San Francisco’s Chinatown. But even as he stroked his cheeks, exhaling in satisfaction, we heard over the churning of the ship’s engines a far-off booming sound, sensed an ugly vibration in the air; for an instant all three of us cocked our ears. Then we relaxed. It could have been anything, way out on the sea: a kamikaze obliterating a destroyer, a flattop like Intrepid or Essex being torpedoed, an ammo ship reduced to iron filings and vapor—anything. Halloran, still peering into the mirror, silently mouthed the words “Fuck it.”
    “Sir,” said Stiles, “what’s this scuttlebutt about the division going back to Saipan? Is it true that we might not ever make a landing?”
    “I can’t say for sure, Dougie,” Halloran replied, “but I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s all sorts of poop filtering down from G-2 that we won’t be needed. Now, please, don’t ask me why. But the word’s out that in Washington, or Pearl, or wherever such decisions are made, they believe our two divisions plus the dogface divisions will be quite enough. If this is so, it’s back to our old island and all that wild nightlife in Garapan.”
    “But Jesus, sir!” Stiles was on his feet, slamming his fist into his palm, all agitation and protest. “This is a farce! We didn’t come out here these thousands of miles to sit around that stinking little island and watch our hands and feet rot off. We were trained to kill Japs, for Christ’s sake! And