Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [23]
The music paused. The marching continued to a flourish of drums signaling the last maneuvers of the parade. Then the band crashed once more into Anchors Aweigh. Willie’s squadron wheeled toward the fence, preparing to make a flank march off the field. Willie stepped around the wheeling turn, his eye on the line, staying faultlessly in position. Then he fixed his eyes to the front once more, and found himself looking straight at May Wynn. There she stood behind the fence not twenty feet away in her black fur-trimmed coat. She waved and smiled.
“I take it all back. You win!” she cried.
“By the left flank-march!” bawled Roland Keefer.
At the same instant a squadron from Johnson Hall passed them and the leader shouted, “By the right flank-march!”
Willie, his eyes on May, his mind paralyzed, obeyed the wrong order; turned sharply, and marched away from his battalion. In a moment he was cut off from them by an oncoming file from Johnson Hall. He halted after prancing into a vacant patch of grass and realizing that he was alone. A row of newsreel cameras close by, all seemingly trained on him, photographed every move.
He glanced around wildly, and, as the last of the Johnson Hall file went past him, he saw his battalion marching away from him, far down the field beyond a stretch of empty brown grass. With each grunt of the tubas, each beat of the drums, Willie was becoming more and more alone. To get back to his place meant a solitary hundred-yard dash in full view of the admiral. To stand alone on the field another second was impossible. Spectators were already beginning to shout jokes at him. Desperately Willie dived into a single file of John Jay Hall midshipmen marching past him to the exit in the opposite direction from Furnald.
“What the hell are you doing in here? Beat it,” hissed the man behind him. Willie had landed unluckily in a group of the tallest John Jay men. He formed a distinctly unmilitary gap in the line of heads. But now it was too late for anything but prayer. He marched on.
“Get out of this line, you little monkey, or I’ll kick you bowlegged!”
The file jammed up at the exit and became disorderly. Willie turned and said swiftly to the big glaring midshipman, “Look, brother, I’m sunk. I got cut off from my battalion. Do you want me to get bilged?”
The midshipman said no more. The file wound into John Jay Hall. As soon as they passed the entrance the midshipmen dispersed, laughing and shouting, to the staircases. Willie remained in the lobby, staring uneasily at faded Columbia athletic trophies in the glass cases. He allowed fifteen minutes to pass, wandering here and there, keeping out of sight of the officer and midshipmen guarding the quarterdeck. The excitement of the review dissipated. The lobby became quiet. He screwed up his courage, and walked briskly toward the one guarded door. All the other exits were locked and bolted.
“Halt! Sound off.”
Willie drew up at the summons of the officer of the day, a burly midshipman wearing a yellow armband. A few feet away an ensign sat at a desk marking examination papers.
“Midshipman Willis Seward Keith, Furnald, on official business.”
“State business.”
“Checking on a lost custody card of a rifle.”
The OOD picked up a clipboard with a mimeographed form sheet on it. “You’re not logged in, Keith.”
“I came in during the foul-up after the review. Sorry.”
“Show your business pass.”
This was the spring-of the trap. Willie cursed Navy thoroughness. He pulled out-his wallet and showed the OOD a picture of May Wynn waving and smiling on a merry-go-round horse. “Take it from here, friend,” he whispered. “If you want, I bilge.”
The OOD’s eyes widened in amazement. He looked sidelong at the ensign, then straightened and saluted. “Pass, Keith.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie saluted and emerged into the sunlight, through the one loophole that military wisdom can never quite button up-the sympathy of the downtrodden for each other.
There were three