The Tribute of Tender Hearts

"You are 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 he felt himself teetering on the edge of the world, but the feel of her thick and fragrant hair between his fingers was simply intoxicating.

Even an innocent and unskilled 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 several 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 a 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.

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.

They had consumed the better part of the afternoon, and it was time to go to work. 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 barley caught the bus going down the hill to the boat landing, otherwise he would have had a half hour wait 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 be an attentive companion and an interesting conversationalist. Besides that, she was beginning to show herself to be a passionate girl as well. 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 headed for the boat as well, 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 machinist mate petty officers, maintenance and repair crew probably. They were all returning from time on the beach to their various duty stations; their minds were still on the beach, even if they 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 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 seemed very important to her, and her feeling of loneliness seemed to have 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 Pacific Fleet's 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, 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.

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 lifted her gently, thanked her again for lunch, their time together, 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 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, he had said. Her feelings tumbled over one 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!

•

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

"Hello?"

"Good evening, my little kitten."

"Oh, Jake, thank you for calling."

"How did work go for you this evening?"

"Just fine. 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 herself, 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 Katherine, and I asked Caroline to be my wife. Jake was just back from a short deployment to Wake Island and I was on the slate for a jaunt down to Johnson. Nevertheless, we were as determined as the three musketeers, and on the third Saturday of October the station chaplain married us in a triple ceremony in the station chapel.

Absolutely marvelous.

Besides that, two apartments in Kelani's building had become available. Caroline and I took one, Jake and Katherine 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 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 Katherine recalled one evening from that period. She finished at the library about 10:30 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 excited 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.

December was tragedy of the first magnitude, and more would follow. The attack that Sunday morning was an unthinkably horrible experience.

Over the months the three of us, I and Jake and Ken, 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, and the six of us took over the garden out back and cooked some fresh fish and sweet potatoes on the grating over the fire and just chattered away among ourselves a while, and then Ken took Kelani's hand and led her away quietly to their apartment.

That was our goodbye to him.

The telegram came just two months later. His PBY had been shot down someplace in the East Indies, and all the crew had been lost.

We cooked out again that evening in March, 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 Katherine went ahead of me, and 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 VB 5, the dive bomber squadron on the aircraft carrier YORKTOWN. That made for a little excitement around the place, but Kelani recovered 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 and the girls were all excited... and he was leaving the day after next in his PBY for Midway for operations like mine. In addition, YORKTOWN was in port briefly for repairs, and the neighbors were invited too.

It was a great 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 seemed to brighten a little, and Katherine and Caroline were each joyous and exuberant, and all the girls were beautiful beyond imagining.

The festivities lasted into the evening, but not too late. Kelani valiantly volunteered to clean up, but Katherine 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 Kit and get away, and he did.

That was really the last of the 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 at Ford Island, I saw many of the reports coming through from the garrison on the island. The Marines took a fearful beating, at sea YORKTOWN was sunk, VB 5 and several other air squadrons 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. 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 battle had exacted a fearful toll.

For some days nobody knew anything. Our guys were scattered far and wide, and the remaining PBYs at Midway out searching for survivors. They found several, even after seven or eight days; but not the two follows from VB 5, 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, distraught and frustrated at what I could see was coming. I pledged her to silence, even though I knew she and Katherine were practically like sisters and told each other everything. I told her there was still hope that one of the 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 radio, and that day the first of the wounded arrived at the naval hospital, and rumors as to who had survived and not survived circulated like wildfire. All the wives 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 Katherine went down to visit and found them in shock and too distraught for tears.

Two days later he was back and came to me first, since he and I had talked earlier, and together we went to Katherine's door. She knew the moment she opened it, and broke down in tears. Caroline and I spent the night with her. Until the early morning hours I was on the sofa with her in my arms and Caroline curled up at my side.

It was about 1 AM when she told us. Her throat was raw and her sobbing had drained her, but she found the strength from somewhere to tell us. She and Jake had known for about a week before he left. They were expecting a baby. She smiled in the dimly lit room, and seemed to recover a little. She and Caroline hugged and my wife asked me to carry her to her bedroom. The two girls stayed the night together and slept in late the next day.

The two girls in apartment #3 left that fall for the mainland and their families there. Kelani, too, had left for her family on the Big Island, so there were just two of us left... well, one and a half.

By early August Katherine was glowing with the beauty of a young girl carrying her husband's baby. One evening about then Caroline curled up next to me in the darkness and confided to me tenderly that she wanted my baby. There were a lot of words and thoughts left unsaid... but her eyes and her caress and her whimpers were full of love and hope and fear and wanting me never to leave her alone, and giving her a baby would help her keep me close.

By October the two mothers-to-be were both glowing and radiant, and enjoying the experience and their deep friendship for each other. Only one of them, however, had her husband close at hand.

Caroline was very conscious of her friend's loss, and willingly shared me with her sister. Kit was frequently at our place at Caroline's invitation. They sewed together, and almost always went shopping together. Caroline's more slender figure was a thrill to me beyond measure, even as the baby began to show, but Katharine's ever-prominent top hamper was always spectacularly beautiful. We would go out to dinner together, the three of us, and to movies, and other things. I knew where the boundaries were, and Caroline never questioned me. I often hugged them both and we would dance, and go for walks on the beach, and snuggle on the sofa and play board games together, but I knew that, even with many long and intimate conversations with Katherine, she herself had drawn a line. She was a one-man-woman, and it seemed only a technicality that he was not coming home... she kept him alive in her heart just the same. She was a remarkably steady and faithful girl in that regard; I was proud of her.

In early 1943 I was a father, twice over it seemed. The two little girls were born not quite three months apart. The two mothers supported each other with great kindness and affection, and both leaned on my shoulder. Still, when my squadron deployed in September for the South Pacific, Caroline was anxious and fearful, but just as brave and loyal as Kit had been that previous year.

•

That's been now several years ago. After the war I was transferred to the naval air station at Sand Point in Seattle. We found a duplex not far away, and now the two girls are in high school. Neither of their mothers seems to have aged much at all. They are remarkable women and an honor to the men they married. Once at a school event for the kids some fellow tried to put the make on Katherine. Caroline alerted me to what was happening and I was watchful. Katherine handled it just fine. Her magnificent top hamper was ever a draw, but she always dressed modestly. Some things, of course, a beautiful woman simply can not hide. She was pleasant and gracious, but he got the message.

I wish Jake could see his Kit now. She has never thought of herself as a 'Navy wife,' but is pleased always to acknowledge that her husband served their country in the Navy. I took the two out to dinner at a nice place last week, and I saw it again. The young waitress asked her about the little eagle-and-three-chevrons pin on her dress, and asked if her husband was in the Navy, explaining that her fiancé was a sailor at Sand Point.