Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [24]
Bill never saw human dignity in the letters he read. They all fell into the slightly ridiculous, largely naive classification: Dear Mom, You tell Joe that if he wants to go through with it and join the Navy he had better get used to handling his temper cause the first time he lets go at a chief or an officer he's going to learn what for and it aint going to be like flying off the handle at me because in this mans Navy they play for keeps. You tell Joe that and it will save him a lot of trouble.
The officers were no better. The crash boat skipper was a moron. Thank heavens no pilot lost at sea had to depend on him! The operations officer came from some hick town in Kentucky, and the engineering officer was an apple-knocker from upstate New York. Only Dr. Benoway was of any interest, and he was largely ineffectual. Harbison thought of Benoway as a mild-mannered, unsuccessful small town doctor who had joined the Navy as the easy way out of financial difficulties. "Probably makes more now than he ever did before!" Bill reasoned.
If it were not for sports Bill might have lost his sanity. But on the diamond or basketball court he was superb. Enlisted men loved to watch him play or to play with him. They put two men on him in basketball, and still he scored almost at will. They played on an open concrete court which Bill helped them to build. Even on its rough surface Bill could dribble and pivot so easily that he got away for one basket after another. In a way, it pleased the men to see him score against their own team mates. "Boy," they would write home. "Have we got a smoothie on our staff? He was All-American and set Long Island U on its ear last year in the Garden!"
Unlike most naval officers in the South Pacific, Bill kept in fine condition. There was no fat on his stomach muscles. He kicked a football half an hour a day, played an hour of basketball, went swimming for two hours in the morning, and usually found time for some badminton in the afternoon. But it was volleyball that captured his enthusiasm!
At first Harbison ridiculed the game. Wouldn't play it. But that was before he was inveigled into a match against the old hands. He played on a green team. Against him were the Old Man and Benoway plus four other officers. Bill smashed the round ball furiously, but he found to his surprise that the fat Old Man usually popped it into the air right where Dr. Benoway could tap it out of reach. This went on all afternoon, and Bill said to himself, "Say, there's something to this game!"
From then on he studied it in earnest. He found a place on the Old Man's team. He played on one side of the skipper and Benoway played on the other. Patiently and with great skill the Old Man would push the ball high and near the net. Bill would smash it for a point. He thought he was getting pretty good until one day the Old Man couldn't play. A stranger took his place, and that afternoon Bill missed most of his shots. He thought at first he was off his game. Then he realized with astonishment that the Old Man was unbelievably good as a "setter-upper." >From then on he, Benoway, and the Old Man formed an invincible team. "Have we got a fine volleyball team?" the men wrote home. "Usually we play the officers, and mostly they win. But when we get a game with some other team, we have a mixed team. We haven't lost yet!"
Shortly after Bill learned to play volleyball, he made junior grade lieutenant, automatically. He was chagrined at the promotion, especially when he read in a letter from home that Lenore's brother Eddie, who had joined the Army, was already a captain! The news made Bill restless. He wanted to be doing something. There was great activity in the air. Things were happening in the world, and he was sitting on Efate, sunning himself, becoming a volleyball champion.
Tormented by the inchoate