Monday Morning With The Admiral

*****

The Admiral was also doing homework. He was more concerned than either Mitch or Cat imagined. The assumptions and the tone of the meeting at the Country Club had upset him considerably. He felt himself in a three-way squeeze, caught between the pressures of his family and Academy traditions, the civilian expectations of him, and his own sense of duty.

He had been impressed by his review of the service and fitness reports of Taylor and Wye. He thought it unfair, for example, that Mitch's uncanny excellence in anti-submarine warfare during the climactic months of the wolf-pack attacks had retarded his advancement by confining him to one kind of duty. And he had the best safety record of any training station.

With somewhat less generosity he acknowledged that Cat's performance in four island invasions had earned him the rare consideration for a field promotion, the Silver Star, and placement in his class's pool for the top positions.

-- Some jealousy there, Admiral. Or just wishing you'd started out in a war.

Then he allowed with no reservations that the Lieutenant, and his classmate, were excellent young fliers.

-- Hell, the best in the program.

Other matters, however, entered into his ruminations that would produce a policy decision. He clipped and lit one of his Havana panatellas.

-- Damn those arrogant civilians.

He banged instead of tipping the cigar in the ashtray, and exposed red.

-- Relax, Breckinridge.

He knew the roots of the tension between himself as a carrier pilot, a skipper, and now as friendly policeman for the crowd at the Country Club. The fact that he wore the Distinguished Service Medal did not ease his mind. He knew that he had earned it, and was not disturbed that he thus ranked between Taylor and Wye. The trouble was the secret in his soul. It was like the rumble of anchor running free-always closing one's mind to keep it from twisting back on itself in the chain locker and killing men and tearing a hole for the sea in the bow.

-- Damn, damn, damn. We're back with slavery and losing that war.

The cigar had restored its ash. He drew gently and inhaled deeply. It settled him. He could now face the contradiction. The Admiral had inherited his ancestral distinction between house slaves and field slaves. Slaves who revealed intelligence and displayed a sense of place were taught various skills and given sometimes extensive degrees of trust, quasi-independence and material rewards. That kind of discrimination based at bottom on merit and performance was a crevice in the granite of racism. It sometimes flaked off a piece of freedom. Breckinridge remembered his grandfather arguing that, if the North had left them alone, Southerners would have produced wage labor and share-cropping capitalism in Dixie without a million deaths.

The Admiral checked his chronometer. Time enough. He warmed another cigar between his palms and poured bourbon into the old man's crystal shot glass. The old gent had a point, and just maybe it might happen that way this time.

Table of Contents

• Introduction

1. Maggie and Mr. Hank
2. The Reverend
3. Squalls Along the Flight Line
4. Flying Home to Church
5. A Visit with The Judge
6. Communion
7. Afterthoughts
8. Monday Morning With The Admiral
9. Into the Dining Room
10. On Toward Walking the Streets
11. Glimpses of An Election
12. The Dream and The Reality of Violence
13. The Admiral Loses More Than a Few Good Men
14. Down That Lonesome Road

• Cast of Characters
• Credits and Acknowledgements