O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [38]
“After my last birthday, I realized that given another year or so, I’d be sworn into the Corps. If I can’t go up a ship’s mast, I can’t be a Marine, Da. I’d disgrace you, and the Corps as well.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me!” Paddy growled.
“For the plain and simple reason that I saw how you came down on men who were afraid, because you were the one man in the world who had no fear. And you couldn’t stand fear in others.”
“Oh, Jaysus,” Paddy moaned. He signaled for a bottle of Irish whiskey. “That is my game in life, Son. Do you have any idea how many times I confessed battle fear to the priest? Fear is the monster that has to be stilled at birth and you never had the comfort of your mother’s breast. Flies hanging from the flypaper are filled with fear. Violets bending to the sun are frightened, to say nothing of the rats in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“I’ve never known you to be afraid.”
A hardy shot of whiskey slowed Paddy and he rounded up the nerve to pat his son’s hand and stare, his eyes looking a different way.
“We are all riddled with fear. It is how you are able to cope with it which makes you the manner of man you become.”
“You were scared at Sumter?”
“I’m still scared of Sumter,” Paddy said, and his son understood that his da wasn’t telling him this in order to make him feel good.
“You’ve always handled yourself so well, Zach, I thought it was you who had whipped fear. Small fucking wonder you dream of falling. I had the same kind of nightmares.”
“Did they ever go away?”
“Aye, when I went into the Corps. I knew that if I fell, some Marine would grab my hand and help me get up.”
“Did prayer help?”
“I never had much luck with the Virgin. She probably figured I was too rowdy. All right, then, let’s sleep on it.”
Zachary knew his da’s inner wheels were grinding, but unless he warned his da that he couldn’t make it as a Marine, it would all become too shattering later.
The next day Zachary made himself scarce, walking the neighborhoods till after dark. When he returned to the saloon, one of the bartenders told him Paddy was waiting down on the river at Pier Four, where a worthy schooner, the Beatrice K, was docked. The skipper, Mike Ryan, was a longtime patron of the bar.
A moment of terror came upon Zachary as he approached the ship. That would be Paddy O’Hara’s way of solving things, like those night marches through the dark swamps, daring anyone to fall. Zach looked up the mast and fought off a surge of vomiting. His da met him at the top of the gangplank.
“Must be a hundred feet to the crow’s nest.”
“A hundred and twenty-two,” Paddy said sans mercy.
“It’s no use, Da.”
“I’m not ordering you to go up the mast, but I’m saying words you must hear or carry a stone in your guts the rest of your life. I cannot make you do what you can’t do, but before you can’t do it, you are going to have the benefit of my advice.”
“I’m a coward!” Zach cried.
“Having said that, listen up. This moment is here, now. It can’t be changed. It will never go away. The ship’s mast is going to tell you where you are going to settle on the human scale. No matter what you do, you are still my son.”
“In name only.”
Paddy wanted to kneel and plead, but it was beyond his way of doing things. “I’ve enough lead in me to forge an anchor. I can handle another wound. It is the wound you will have to endure that frightens me.”
Please God, Zach prayed, make this moment never have happened! Please God, make it go away! But it didn’t.
“You are the advance scout for your platoon,” Paddy began, “and your men are entering a blind ravine. There are sheer rocks up there that you have to climb to get observation, the only place from which you can spot an ambush. You have to climb up to be able to warn them or they are dead meat marching in—”
“Stop it, now. I’ve seen the sergeant-major tricks.”
“NOW . . . HEAR . . . THIS. There is no greater glory than the moment a man makes his decision that death is preferable to yielding to fear!”
Paddy backed away, somewhat