He snapped awake and swung to the edge of the bunk.
“You shanty Mick,” I said. “You picked a fight between me and the M.P.s so you could save your own skin.”
“Jack, lad, you do me a grave dishonor. I was attempting to escape to get a writ of habeas corpus for you.”
“Habeas corpus? At a military hearing? . . . Come off the bunk. I’m going to habeas a piece of your corpus.”
I’ll say this for O’Hara: knowing right and might were on my side, he came down fighting. Before the turnkeys pulled us apart, our bruises were fairly balanced.
I relate this incident to show that O’Hara learned to respect my fists, and I truly believe that I had the only pair of fists on the continent that he did respect. But I also wished to demonstrate that his mind schemed in such a manner that his most spontaneous plots left him lines of retreat.
After justice was done, we sat on the lower bunk and held the shortest strategy conference in naval history. We were in custody, out of uniform and were lacerated and bruised. We had been arrested in an “off-limits” area for disturbing the peace. We had resisted arrest and I would be charged with assaulting a policeman. By now, a full report of the incident would be on the disciplinary officer’s desk at the Academy.
We decided to tell the truth, but Red seemed strangely optimistic. “Just leave it to me, Jack.”
At noon, the shore patrol hauled us back to the Academy under house arrest. Monday morning, we went before the mast, which was conducted by Commander Omubu, a Ghanaian who used the regional English of Afro-Americans as his status dialect. It took him twenty minutes merely to read the M.P.s’ report aloud, and then he leaned back, looking first at me and then at Red in disbelief, repugnance, awe, or sadness.
“Gentlemen, it seems from this report that you both are unfitted for this service. After you have been expelled, Adams, I suggest you join the Harrier Corps. There your fighting prowess would be welcomed. You, O’Hara, should be a mattress-tester for the Department of Home Appliances. . . . How say you both to these charges? Guilty or not guilty?”
“Guilty,” we answered.
“What say you to these charges?”
O’Hara stepped one pace forward. “Commander,” he sang out, “I’m just a dumb Irishman and my only excuse is ignorance, but I would like to say a word in defense of Midshipman Adams.”
“At ease, O’Hara, and tell it like it was.”
“Sir, as midshipmen of the United Space Navy, we are expected to behave as officers and gentlemen. Before an officer can be a gentleman, sir, he must first be a man. An insult offered to one midshipman besmirches the honor of the entire Navy, sir, your Navy and mine, sir, and that honor was at stake when the M.P. called Midshipman Adams a liar, sir.”
“Unless Midshipman Adams lied,” the Commander pointed out.
“That’s precisely the point, sir. Ipso facto, Midshipman Adams could not have lied, sir, since he uttered not one word to the M.P.s.”
“Is that right, Adams?”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t open my mouth, sir.”
“Expel us if you must, sir,” Red continued, “but do not expel us with dishonor, and particularly Midshipman Adams, who fought with valor against odds whilst I went to summon reinforcements. . . . With valor and against odds, sir, he fought to defend the honor of the USN, your honor and mine, sir.”
“Midshipman O’Hara,” the Commander said, “will you await the verdict in the anteroom while I recover from your speech?”
After Red left, Commander Omubu sadly shuffled the pages of the report into order and looked up. “At ease, Adams. Well, I can’t give you a medal. There are five charges against you and four against O’Hara. On the other hand, I can’t expel you. The transcript of the hearing is read by Admiral Bradshaw. If I expelled you after that speech, I’d be the worst mother in Academy history. But there’s one bit of advice I’d like to give to you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Man, there’s only one thing dumber than a dumb Irishman, and that’s a smart Alabaman.”
We were restricted to quarters for a month on half-pay and put on permanent probation for the remainder of our senior year, which meant that one demerit would expel us. But our confinement sent our grades soaring and my own soared somewhat higher than O’Hara’s since he played solitaire. When our confinement was lifted, we were in the best shape of our career to celebrate and the M.P.s were gone from in front of Madame Chacaud’s.
We arrived on Friday night at Madame Chacaud’s and left Sunday morning so broke we had to hitchhike back to the Academy in zero weather. We were walking through an area of cheap stores and pawnshops when the aroma of boiling coffee drifted through the March air. I sniffed again. It was coffee boiled with chicory, and nostalgia pierced me more deeply than the cold. Someone was making Alabama coffee.
We were passing an abandoned store building and I noticed a sign, crudely lettered, posted in the window:
SAILOR BEN’S HOLINESS MISSION
Come In and Pray . . . . . Free Coffee and Doughnuts
Inside, a service was in progress. I slowed O’Hara. “Red, could I treat you to some good old hellfire religion, Southern-style, plus a cup of coffee?”
“I could use a little of both.”
We entered and took a bench at the rear, not wishing to tempt the wine-soaked derelicts crowded near the pulpit with the odor of fine whisky on our breaths.
From the pulpit, Sailor Ben was preaching on the evils of drink, in the accents of my home. “Boys, I was soaking in booze till Jesus wrung me dry. I stunk so loud of moonshine it was a pure wonder the revenuers didn’t raid me for a still. I tell you, if I’da died and gone to hell, I wouldn’t have burned, I would have boiled.”
His voice dropped from a tone of braggadocio to one of reverent thankfulness. “But then I met the best woman God ever gave a sinner, boys. She was a dilly. She set me on course to Jesus, afore she died, leaving me with that little bundle of joy you know as Sister Thelma, and I been sailing a straight course, ever since. . . . Play, Sister Thelma.”
Brother Ben switched on a light which was beamed on a girl at an upright piano who had been lost in the shadows. She was dressed in a simple gray skirt with a white blouse and the light threw an aura around her ash-blond hair. Then I knew why the winos were crowding near the pulpit as she began to play “Shall We Gather at the River.”
The hymn is ordinarily a funeral song, but I felt it was appropriate for Brother Ben’s sermon and I rose to sing, in a quavering tremolo that raised the hackles on my own nape.
After a prayer, Sister Thelma took up collection. She was not more than eighteen, and she floated down the aisle with a sidewise sway to her hips that was both ethereal and feminine. She moved in serenity, her blue eyes glowing with spirituality, and when she came back to us and smiled at me, I felt an angel’s wing brush my cheek.
But I was embarrassed, both for myself and for Red, for we had nothing for the offering. When I glanced down at the plate that I handed over to Red, I was embarrassed for the girl. There was nothing in it but pennies, a few nickels and a rare dime.
Red seemed to hold the plate a long time, so long, in fact, I feared he might be following some obscure Irish-Catholic ritual and counting the take. When he nudged me with the plate, I handed it back to the girl without looking. I was astonished to hear her say, “Why, I thank you, Brother O’Hara.”
Brother Ben led us in a final prayer and invited us all back to the