Part 68 (2/2)
[ONE].
ROOM 39A, NEURO-PSYCHIATRIC WARD U.S. NAVAL HOSPITAL SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 0830 30 OCTOBER 1950.
The room a.s.signed to Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, was furnished with a hospital bed, a white cabinet to the left of the bed, a white table to the right, a plastic-upholstered chrome armchair, and a folding metal chair.
When the door swung open, Major Pickering was sitting in the armchair with his slippered bare feet resting on the folding chair. He was reading Time Time magazine. magazine.
He glanced up from the magazine and started to get to his feet.
”As you were,” Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, a tall, tanned, thin, sharp-featured forty-year-old, said, and reinforced the order by making a pus.h.i.+ng motion with his right hand.
Major Pickering ignored both the order and the signal and stood up.
”Good morning, sir,” Pick said.
Dawkins smiled, turned, and waved another officer, a captain, festooned with the regalia of an aide-de-camp, into the room.
”Captain McGowan,” General Dawkins inquired, ”looking at that ugly, skinny officer, would you believe he had half the Marines in Korea looking for him?”
”Sir, I understand there's a shortage of pilots,” Captain Arthur McGowan, a tall, slim twenty-nine-year-old, who wore the ring of the United States Naval Academy, said with a smile.
Dawkins saw Pick's face.
”Not funny?”
”No, sir.”
Dawkins nodded.
”How are you, Pick?” he asked, putting out his hand. ”It's good to see you.”
”It's good to see you, sir,” Pick said, shaking it.
”That doesn't answer my question.”
”Sir, as of today, I have been promoted to Loony Category Two, which means I no longer have to give the nurse a list of what I need from the s.h.i.+p's Store. And they are going to give me a partial pay.”
”You look like h.e.l.l,” Dawkins said. ”But your legendary fast lip is obviously still functioning well.”
”No disrespect was intended, sir.”
”I wish you'd sit down,” Dawkins said.
”Aye, aye, sir,” Pick said, and sat down.
”Art,” Dawkins said as he turned the folding chair around and sat backward in it. ”Flash your smile at the nurse and see if you can't get us some coffee.”
”Yes, sir,” McGowan said. ”How do you take yours, Major?”
”Black, please,” Pick said.
McGowan left the room.
”Billy Dunn tell you I was here?” Pick asked.
”Actually, the news came from a little higher up in the chain of command. How is Billy?”
”He was fine, the last time I saw him. More than a little disgusted with me-and justifiably so-but fine.”
”I have no idea what you're talking about, Pick,” Dawkins said.
”Just before the bosun's chair moved me from the Badoeng Strait Badoeng Strait to the destroyer to the destroyer Mansfield-” Mansfield-”
”You mean while you were under way?” Dawkins asked.
”Yes, sir.”
”I've seen that, but I've never done it,” Dawkins said. ”I don't like the notion of being dangled over the ocean like that. How was it?”
”Not very pleasant, sir. Sir, may I go on?”
”Sorry, Pick. You were saying?”
”I was saying that Colonel Dunn told me what he thought of me,” Pick said. ”What he said was that I was a self-important s...o...b..ating sonofab.i.t.c.h whose current troubles were my own fault, that I had put the necks of a lot of good people at risk because of my s...o...b..ating, and that I have never really understood that I'm a Marine officer.”
Dawkins looked at him for a moment in surprise.
”My first reaction is that Billy must have had a very bad day,” Dawkins said.
”Just before I got in the bosun's chair, Billy handed me a letter to mail from j.a.pan he'd written to the wife-correction, the widow-of one of his guys who had just plowed in,” Pick said. ”d.i.c.k Mitch.e.l.l. Writing those letters is always tough for Billy. But that wasn't what was bothering him.”
”What was?”
”Me. Everything he said about me was absolutely true.”
”You want to explain that?”
”What I was doing when I went in was shooting up locomotives, ” Pick said.
”So what?”
”I was doing this because it amused me,” Pick said. ”I thought it would be amusing to become the first Marine Corps locomotive ace in history.”
Dawkins looked at him without saying anything.
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