A Heart's Tender Tribute

His strong hand behind her head soothed her somehow, and when he gently pulled her close she felt his warm mouth on hers, tender, light, inviting, caressing... stirring the very depths of her being, and drawing her out of herself to him. She had no way of knowing the difference, but it was no boy's mouth; it was a man's mouth, powerful, provocative, plundering. The wonder of the new experience quickly swelled within her, spilling over easily to wash away all fear of him, and he emerged in her imagination as the man of her dreams to whom she could give herself totally and without the slightest reservation.

The swirling, mind-boggling experience of his hot kiss forced all else from her awareness and she melted in his embrace, as submissive, compliant, and trusting as any maid could possibly be. Time for breathing seemed an unacceptable interruption to their passion, and she looked up at him, wondering as he gave her a moment to catch a breath if she had done something wrong, and why was he stopping?

"Oh, Katharine," she heard his strong voice and felt it vibrating deep in his chest, "you are a very special girl. Thank you for a very special kiss."

Was he going to stop now? He continued to hold her close, and being in his embrace was like heaven to her. She watched his mouth move closer to hers again and then felt the tingle inside her as he nibbled on her lip, then, as she opened to him, he claimed her lips again with a demanding pressure that catapulted her into richly romantic realms of which heretofore she had had not the faintest concept.

The entire external universe slipped away to irrelevance and they explored the little world they had created between them.

He had suspected from watching her that she was not just very innocent, but had very little or no experience with a man, and these were qualities that, together with her quick intellect, cheerful personality, and striking physical beauty, rated her exceedingly high on his own personal scale of values.

"You are..." he paused briefly, holding her close, "a very special person to me, Katharine. In my book, a special person... a special girl, one very close to my heart, who returns my kiss with such tenderness and feeling, deserves a special name. Can I call you 'Kit?' You look and feel in my arms like that ought to be my secret name for you."

He had not ever done such a thing with a girl, and felt like he was way out on a limb. He waited for her response, not at all sure what she would say, and felt himself teetering on the edge of the world as he waited. The feel of her hair as he waited for her, silky and fragrant between his fingers, was simply intoxicating.

Even an innocent and inexperienced girl can, when her heart is tender and open, sense great shifts in the geometry of the world about her. Her feelings of being alone in the world were already receding as her friendship with Jake grew stronger, but this little gesture, following as it did the fervency and heat of his kisses, made it clear to her that he was drawing her into his orbit and wanted her company and companionship. Their kissing had caused a throbbing and a tingle throughout her entire body, and having him give her a pet name was the most wonderful and unexpected thing... this man, this man whom she thought so gallant and mature, that this man should be the one to notice her so was more thrill than any girl could endure.

As he watched for her reaction, hoping beyond hope that she might agree to another date together, he saw the bright twinkle in her eyes, the fresh roses in her cheeks, then her sweet smile for him as she nodded her head again.

He thought her beautiful smile just priceless!

He felt firstly the majesty of victory over his own reticence to risk his heart in the quest for companionship, then the closely associated magnificence of the girl's acceptance of his tentative overture. Then, on the heels of that amalgam, that something had to be determined to draw them closer together; he felt feelings of desire and hope emerging from deep within him. He felt territorial; he wanted that no other fellow should be allowed to savor this sweet girl's charms. He wanted her just for himself. He had to think that over, but this girl had stepped in to fill a place in his heart that he had only vaguely sensed was vacant... had only vaguely sensed existed at all.

They had consumed the better part of the afternoon, and it was time to go to work. Another bite of pineapple, and then he kissed her again at her doorway, promising to come again in a few days when his work schedule again allowed him a free day. "Thank you, Kit! You are a delight to my heart!"

He left her tingling all over and her heart sailing in the clouds.

He just barely caught the bus going down the hill to the boat landing; otherwise he would have had a long walk and been late to work. Once through the Naval Supply Center gate he could see the launch at the pier waiting for them. He would make it fine. That question resolved, his thoughts immediately returned to her.

She was beautiful, he thought, and very shy with him, but he could feel her draw close to him even so. Without the other three, and the much more frivolous and party atmosphere all the time, she had relaxed to become an attentive companion and an interesting conversationalist. Besides that, she was beginning to show her feelings for him, he thought. She had been afraid when he first kissed her, that he could tell easily. Very soon, as he kissed her the second time, more demanding and purposeful, she had begun to make that cute little whimpering sound in her throat. That sounded so very sweet to him. Delightful! He felt a satisfied smile break across his face as he alighted from the bus and made for the launch.

There were about a dozen other fellows as well, all headed for the boat out to Ford Island, all probably watch standers for the evening watch, 4 PM till midnight. Jake knew some of them, the two radiomen well, but they were from another squadron, and three others were aviation machinist mate petty officers, maintenance and repair crew probably. They were all returning from time on the beach, and their minds were still on the beach, even if their bodies were in the boat. It was only about half full and, sitting apart from the others, his mind continued to focus on her.

It felt so very nice to be with her. Being together was a thrill like he had never known before. He had kissed her for the first time that afternoon. He had planned that, wanted that, worked toward that... but the actual event was a surprise and moreover, surprising in its wonder and intensity.

For Kit, the afternoon in the apartment with Jake had been earthshaking. She no longer thought of herself entirely as Katharine; the idea of Jake giving her a nickname, a secret name just for her as his darling, was more thrill than her being seemed able to absorb.

She was ecstatic.

That was a Monday afternoon, and she too had to think now about getting ready to go to work, but not before considering when he would come again. His watch schedule, he had told her, would mean he would come again Thursday for lunch at noon. How to dress and do her hair for him seemed very important to her, and she jotted herself a couple of notes for a shopping list. All her feelings of loneliness had fled.

For Jake it was not all that much different, and it was that evening that we talked... well, he talked... about her, the girl who had turned his life upside down. We were sitting on the seawall in our dungarees, the battleships right in front of us, and the lights of the shipyard across the water. He talked about her... her beauty, her sweetness, the wonder of talking with her about all kinds of things, their lunch together, and... It took him a long time to tell me that he had kissed her that afternoon, and, when he did, it was as were he describing some kind of sacred ritual.

He was already in love with her.

-- --

It was lunch time the following Thursday.

The time before he arrived passed all too slowly, and their time together was an absolute delight. He brought two ripe mangoes for desert and, she thought, as he peeled them after lunch and cut them up into pieces, his banter and story-telling kept her in stitches. He used her big butcher knife and fed the pieces to her on the point as she imagined a pirate might do, and made her giggle. She had never tasted anything so wondrously delicious. They chatted some about things they had studied in school, and then, of course, he kissed her again, just as she hoped he would.

The results were predictable.

Never in her life had the clock seemed so very much like an enemy. Their afternoon had passed swiftly, if in a haze. When he decided they simply had to move on and only a few precious minutes remained, he thanked her again for lunch, their time together, and for her gift of self to him. Each word from his lips was like a love-bearing breath of acceptance in the springtime of her life, and she could not manage anything but an adoring smile of appreciation. Then he kissed her on the tip of her nose and slipped out the door to catch his bus.

She leaned her back against the door after she had closed it, dreamy and lost in her highly aroused emotional state. It was wonderful to be with him, and he said he wanted her to be his girl and not go out with other guys. He found her beautiful, he had said, and her breasts were not too big. He had said so. He had said they were perfect for her figure, and that she was beautiful... she could hardly believe now that she had found the answer to her concern, and that he was so pleased with her.

That was the first time she had ever felt confident that she was pretty. She was now pleased with her body and herself because he was pleased. Yes, a gift, she thought. He had called her a gift to him, and thanked her for her gift of self. She thought of him as a gift to her, and her feelings tumbled one over another as she tried to sort out all that had happened to them that afternoon.

What needed no sorting or analysis was that she was supremely happy, and she knew why. Jake thought she was pretty and wanted her as his girl... and, she decided, his girl she would be!

The next day, after a long wait the telephone company had installed service to their apartment. She called his office where she could leave a message for him, just as he had asked. He was so clever, she thought. Jake had worked out a simple code so she could leave her phone number for him and nobody else would recognize it as such. He added some extra numbers -- 'nulls' he called them -- and then did some 'false addition' and assured her that, since only the two of them had the 'key' no one else would ever figure out the code. He was so smart, she thought, to be able to do things like that. He told her that radiomen did that kind of stuff, worked with codes. She had no idea about such things and was impressed.

Still, it caught her entirely off guard when the ring shattered the late evening's quiet just minutes after she got home.

"Hello?"

"Good evening, my little kitten."

"Oh, Jake, thank you for calling."

"Thank you, Kit, for leaving me your number. You did the encoding perfectly. How did work go for you this evening?"

His complimenting her that she had encoded her phone number correctly excited her. It was a small enough thing, but she was pleased with herself that he was pleased. "Just fine," she responded to him, happy that he would call her. "I just got home a few minutes ago. I like my job, actually. It's always interesting, and getting to help people is a nice benefit."

"Would you help me a little?"

Help him? How could she possibly help him late in the evening when he could not be there with her? But, she felt it inside that she wanted to help him. "What can I do, Jake?"

There was a long silence on the other end, and she wondered what he was thinking.

"Come, Kit. Come and climb up on my lap and snuggle into my arms and purr for me."

His voice sounded deep and masculine, and the memory of his fingertips on her face, her throat, his soft, warm kisses, his holding her so gently soothed away the weariness of the day.

"Sweet dreams, my Kit."

-- --

In October 1941 we all made some earth shattering decisions. Without any real coordination, Ken asked Kelani, Jake proposed to Kathrine, and I asked Caroline to be my wife. Jake was just back from a short deployment to Wake Island with the squadron, and I was on the slate for a jaunt down to Johnson. Nevertheless, we were as determined as were the three musketeers, and on the third Saturday of October the station chaplain married us in a triple ceremony in the Ford Island chapel.

Absolutely marvelous.

Besides that, two apartments in Kelani's building had become available. Caroline and I took one, Jake and Kathrine the other. We could not have been happier, and we three fellows felt ten feet tall, absolutely bulletproof, and on top of the world.

None of the three of us were really ones to talk about our girls. Jake spoke more about his Kit that night on the seawall than he ever did later. It was just sort of off limits all around; something special each of us kept to ourselves. Little snippets do get out, just the same. It was months later on the sofa with Caroline, and Kathrine recalled one evening from that period. She finished at the library about 9:30 and got home about twenty minutes later. Jake (and I) had the evening radio watch until midnight, and got home about a quarter till 1. He found her asleep on the sofa, waiting for him, and she dreamed about him loving her as he let his fingers play in her curls behind her ear where she had admitted to being so very sensitive. She told us how thrilled she was that night to wake up and find him there with her, and then she blushed and wouldn't say anything more.

A fool's paradise, perhaps.

Well, not really.

Life has to be lived one day at a time in many ways, and days of joy and togetherness accepted as they come even though the future schedule is indistinct.

November was wonderful. Though we worked and worked some more, every off moment was with our girls... picnics, cook outs, beach parties, shopping and playing house in a thousand ways, enjoying each other and in love.

December was tragedy of the first magnitude, and more would follow. The Japanese attack that Sunday morning was an unthinkably horrible experience. The girls were safe in the apartments, but Ken and I had duty that morning, and Ford Island was a total disaster.

Over the months the three of us, Jake and Ken and I, had deployed with our squadrons to various places for patrols; Wake Island, Midway Island, sometimes down to Johnson Island. War in the Pacific brought changes all around. Ken's squadron was ordered to Australia and the Netherlands East Indies in mid-December, and right after the New Year they were gone.

The squadron threw a big party before leaving, but Ken and Kelani just wanted to be with us that evening. The six of us took over the garden out back again and cooked some fresh fish and sweet potatoes on the grating over the fire, just chattering away among ourselves, and then Ken took Kelani's hand and led her away quietly.

That was our goodbye to him.

The telegram came just three months later. His PBY had been shot down by enemy fighter planes someplace in the East Indies, and all the crew had been lost. Fortunately the three girls were together when the messenger came... Kelani was just crushed.

We cooked out again that evening in April, to try and sooth the moment for her. Kelani was just nineteen and one of the sweetest girls I had ever known. She was numb, didn't eat hardly anything, and then broke down in sobs again in the garden. Caroline and Kathrine went ahead of me, Jake picked her up and carried her to her bed, and the three girls stayed together that night to try and console her a little.

The following week, two other girls moved into the fourth apartment together. They were both wives of sailors in Bombing FIVE (VB 5), the dive bomber squadron on the aircraft carrier YORKTOWN. That made for a little excitement around the place, but Kelani was recovering very slowly from her loss. She was not a superficial person by any means.

In mid May, the tempo of operations on Ford Island, already at a fever pitch, somehow became even more intense. My plane made a two week deployment to augment patrols from Midway, so I was gone for a while, but back about the 29th. When I got back Jake met me on the seaplane ramp. There was a cook-out that night in the garden and the girls were all excited, and he was leaving the day after next in his PBY for Midway for long range patrol operations like mine. In addition, YORKTOWN was in port briefly for repairs, and the neighbors were invited too.

It was a grand evening. The two fellows from the carrier were both back seat radiomen/gunners in dive bombers, and they had been in on the sinking of a Jap carrier in the Coral Sea battle down south, and were all full of enthusiasm. Everything seemed very upbeat and positive. The fish was great, Kelani's cooking skill made a wonderful dinner and she seemed to brighten a little. Kathrine and Caroline were each joyous and exuberant, and all the girls were beautiful beyond imagining.

The festivities lasted late into the evening, but not too late. Kelani valiantly volunteered to clean up, but Kathrine and Caroline would not hear of it, knowing that to leave her alone then would be emotional disaster, so we all chipped in.

Jake was leaving soon, so I told him to take his Kit and leave the rest to us, and he did. It was something to see how he did it. In the kitchen he took the dishes from her, with a napkin wiped away the little bit of sauce on the fingers of her one hand, then raised her hand to his lips and said something to her quietly... and with a soft smile she left all the rest of the entire world to follow him.

That was, though we couldn't see it then, the last of the really fun times together.

The Battle of Midway was fought between 3 and 6 June. A more fierce and bloody few days' battle I could not imagine. On watch in radio on Ford Island, I saw many of the reports coming through from the Marine garrison on the island and from the aircraft carrier task force at sea. The Marines on the island took a fearful beating and at sea YORKTOWN was sunk, VB 5 and several other Army, Navy, and Marine air squadrons were decimated. Torpedo EIGHT in carrier HORNET was wiped out... 15 for 15 shot down over the target. Jake's plane was one of the several PBYs that did not return from their long and very dangerous patrols scouting the enemy fleet at sea. Little consolation that our boys sank four Japanese carriers and the battle turned out a decisive victory for the United States; in our little fourplex on the hill over Pearl City the dark angel had demanded a fearful toll.

For some days nobody knew anything. Our guys were scattered far and wide, and the remaining PBYs at Midway out searching the ocean for survivors. They found several, even after seven or eight days and more; but not the two fellows from Bombing FIVE, and not anyone from Jake's crew.

I was not sure how to handle the information I had. I talked to Caroline one night after dinner, feeling distraught and frustrated at what I could see was coming. I pledged her to silence, even though I knew she and Kathrine were practically like sisters and told each other everything. I told her there was still hope that one of the searching PBYs might find Jake. I think she knew that my confidence level was low, but she hung on. That was my Caroline.

On the evening of the 11th the news began to appear on the local commercial radio station, and that day the first of the wounded had arrived at the naval hospital. Rumors were flying as to who had survived and who had not, circulating like wildfire. All the wives and girl friends were, of course, frantic with worry. The chaplain from the station arrived about 7:30 the next evening for the two girls in VB 5 with the news of their husbands. Caroline and Kathrine went down to visit and found them in shock and emotionally too distraught for tears.