Movius and Holworthy were assigned to cabins smaller than Rensselaer’s and large enough only for a bed and shallow closets and lockers. Dressing and undressing, they banged into the locker doors, the base of the bed, and sometimes even the ceiling. At least in their tiny retreats they had privacy and the white noise of highly efficient ventilation. They didn’t suffer the comings, goings, snorings, and thuds of sailors in racks above and below them, but could get a secure and undisturbed sleep in Athena’s cradle endlessly rocking.
With the North Star to port over a gently rolling sea, Holworthy retired to his cabin, more than pleasantly exhausted. He shed his clothing, hanging it on hooks placed high enough so that they would not gouge the scalp of even the tallest sailor scrambling to dress in the dark. As he often did, he ran his hands over his arms, pinched his sides at the waist, and lifted his right arm to feel the tense musculature at the shoulder. He passed inspection, and no wonder, as he had done twice as much exercise as those in the two PT groups he had led that day, and run not six miles but twelve. He never let himself go.
Rensselaer was like this, too, but decades older, no match for Holworthy, who figuratively was forever cocked with a round in the chamber. SEALs had downtime. Not Holworthy. Even when he first joined, the SEALs had nothing to teach him in regard to readiness.
Unless he has the discipline to will himself to oblivion, it is hard for someone never unprimed for battle to fall asleep. Almost every night, Holworthy had to get himself past certain memories and speculations that monopolized the dark. He had tired himself out. The roll of the sea was conducive to sleep. The steady whoosh of cool, fresh air made the tiny cabin seem unconfined. He switched off the light, reclined, pulled his cotton blanket comfortably up to his sternum, felt his nakedness against the sheets, and closed his eyes.
He knew, however, that sleep would come only after hours of turning and thrashing over and over again in his mind the dominant memories, images, and emotions that had been with him almost all his life. A problem without an answer can repeat its questions and tortures without end. He tried, as always, to banish it, and, as always, he failed.
*
Amid West Texas fields still khaki and beige, trees budded but unleaved, and streams almost winter-cold, a schoolhouse sat in the warmth of bright sun as a spring wind whipped the flag and knocked its halyard and metal buckles against an aluminum pole. The wooden building without an ounce of steel was sheathed in worn shakes as brown as a horse’s coat. It was two storeys high, with a sloped, shake roof. Since the 1920s, it had held classrooms for grades one through five, and was fronted by a playground and flanked by a patch of woods leading down to a brook.
On the second floor, the third-grade classroom was reached by a windowed stairway that led directly outside. Among the eight-year-olds sitting attentively at their desks were the Holworthy twins—Holworthy and his sister, Alice. Like Holworthy, she was blonde and blue-eyed, and as lovely as a child can be. Miss Daniels was their teacher. At age eight they wouldn’t have known, but she was sixty-seven. She had straight, unkempt, almost shoulder-length white hair, thick glasses, and hands strong enough so that in her frequent and inexplicable flashes of temper she was capable of picking up Holworthy, carrying him to the back of the classroom, and throwing him into a closet, with the command to stay put until he was sorry for what he had done, which most of the time—if not all of the time—was nothing.
Miss Daniels, who always wore a tweed suit with a brooch, seemed to have it in for the Holworthys, who didn’t know why, and, in the way of children, never told their parents of her obsession. But all the children were aware of her dazed, confounded look, and that sometimes she would trail off in lessons and stare straight ahead, mouth slightly open as if she had caught sight of something terrible. She would yell at them for no reason, especially at Alice. And no one knew why, perhaps not even the teacher herself, although when she lost her temper and screamed at Alice, sometimes charging at her desk, she would suddenly stop herself and retreat into her look of terror and confusion.
On a spring day that Holworthy would never forget, their father was going to pick them up after school and take them fishing. Because it was windy, and because to get to the river they had to walk through burs and brambles, their mother had put Alice’s hair in a single gold braid, which fell to the middle of her back. When Alice came into class that morning, Miss Daniels had said only, “A braid.” The way she said it was disapproving. But this was how she was.
After lunch, when the children had returned from sandboxes and swings, they had reading. When it was Alice’s turn to read a paragraph in an old book about taking a sleeping-car journey, Miss Daniels asked, “Why did you braid your hair?”
“My mother did.”
“All right, why did she braid your hair?”
“We’re going fishing.”
“You’re going fishing,” Miss Daniels repeated, her anger rising. “What does braiding your hair have to do with fishing?”
Frightened of what might come, Alice said, “By the river.”
“By the river. By the river. Yes,” Miss Daniels now almost shouted, “we know that fish live in water. I asked you why you braided your hair!”
“My mother did!” Alice shouted back, her voice rising in fear. Holworthy piped in, “It’s because—”
“I didn’t ask you! I asked Alice. Now. . . . ” She was standing directly in front of Alice’s desk. “Why . . . did . . . you . . . braid . . . your . . . hair!” She banged her right hand on the desk, and then drew back, shocked at herself.
By this time, Alice was crying uncontrollably, but still seated. Miss Daniels returned to the front of the class, stood in silence for more than just a moment, and then looked at Alice with such fear, confusion, and sadness that Alice stood, pushed back her chair, ran to the French door that led to the stairs, hesitated, and then the only sound was that of her feet on the steps, and the outside door opening and shutting.
Five minutes passed in silence as the students uncomfortably tried to read in the books opened before them. Agitated and not knowing what to do, Holworthy turned in his chair and was about to go after Alice, when Miss Daniels took a few steps forward, seized his shoulder, and shoved him down in his seat.
Eventually she resumed the lesson, and then started on the next one. He had no idea what it was about, and as Alice failed to return, the hours passed in an agony of indecision. She was probably sitting on a swing or in a sandbox, and certainly she was upset. He should comfort her. But he couldn’t leave. Though Miss Daniels wasn’t at all big, compared to him she was a giant. At three o’clock, his father would arrive and take him and Alice fishing, and everything would be all right.
What if Alice were not all right? He oscillated between determination to go after her and what he felt was his cowardly fear of running out of class in open defiance of Miss Daniels, who had not only thrown him into the closet but more than once lifted him from the floor by his ears, and swatted him as she threw him. And, he thought, what would it look like if the two Holworthys had misbehaved that day? They might be thrown out of school, and his parents would be very angry.
*
The bell rang at three o’clock. Without retrieving his lunch box and his jacket, he ran down the sunny, wooden stairs. Smiling and totally unaware, his father was waiting. Holworthy scanned the empty playground.
“Where’s Alice?” he asked, obviously alarmed.
“What do you mean? She hasn’t come down,” his father asked. “Isn’t she up there?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
In tears, Holworthy told his father what had happened. His father quickly scanned the playground, and then charged upstairs, Holworthy close at his heels.
“Where’s my daughter?” his father demanded, so threateningly that it froze the room.
“She ran out of class.”
“When?”
“After lunch.”
“You didn’t go after her?”
“I called out.”
“No you didn’t. You’re a liar,” young Holworthy said.
His father grabbed the teacher by her tweed suit so hard that the brooch fell to the floor. “You call the police immediately and assemble the teachers to search for her. If you don’t,” he said, trembling with anger, “if you don’t. . . .”
Then he broke away and flew down the stairs, Holworthy following.
“Where might she have gone?”
“I don’t know. I thought she would be in the playground.”
“She’s not. We’ll look there,” his father said, already breaking toward the woods. “Two and a half hours! Keep me in sight.”
Calling her name continuously, they entered amid the trees. Holworthy remembered that Alice’s hair had been braided, and he thought it was good that she wouldn’t have tangled it in the newly greening briars. It was even somewhat exciting to be on this mission, helping his father, who had decisively taken command. If his father were there, nothing was to be feared. It was even more exciting when he heard the siren of a police car. Miss Daniels would be scolded. His father would see to that. It was great that she had been so afraid of him.
To the rear, teachers and police entered the woods, calling for Alice. It echoed and echoed. As he approached the stream and saw her, he heard his father and the others calling out. Her dress and underclothes were on the ground nearby, a corner of the dress caught on a bramble vine as if hung deliberately. Her skin was white as he had never seen it, her body bruised and bloody, her eyes and mouth open as she lay on her back as if staring at the sky.
He could have saved her. He didn’t.