2034: A Novel of the Next World War(24)

She’d begun to think that the board of inquiry might never reach its conclusion when an optimistic note arrived in the form of a voicemail left by her old friend Rear Admiral John Hendrickson, in which he announced that he “happened to be on base” and asked if he could stop by for a drink. When he was a lieutenant on faculty at Annapolis, Hendrickson had volunteered as one of the softball coaches. As a midshipman, Hunt had been one of his star players. She’d been the catcher. And Hendrickson and the other players had affectionately nicknamed her “Stonewall” for the way she guarded home plate. On occasions too numerous to count, a runner rounding third would find herself flat on her back along the baseline, staring up at an expanse of sky, while Midshipman Sarah “Stonewall” Hunt stood triumphantly over her, ball in hand, with the umpire bellowing, “Ouutt!”

Sarah Hunt now stood in the checkout line of the commissary. She’d bought two six-packs of IPA, a jar of Planters mixed nuts, some crackers, some cheese. While she waited in line, she couldn’t help but feel as though the other sailors were eyeing her. They knew who she was, stealing glances while trying to pretend that they didn’t notice her. She couldn’t decide whether this reaction was awe or contempt. She had fought in her country’s largest naval battle since the Second World War. She was, at this moment, the only officer who had ever held command at sea during a peer-level naval engagement, her three subordinate commanders having gone down with their ships. As she worked her way through the checkout line, she wondered how the sailors at Pearl Harbor felt in the days after that iconic defeat. Although eventually they had been celebrated, were the veterans of that battle first vilified? Did they have to suffer through boards of inquiry?

The cashier handed Hunt her receipt.

Back in her room, she put the nuts into a plastic bowl. She laid the crackers and cheese on a plate. She popped open a beer. And then she waited.

It didn’t take long.

Knock, knock, knock . . . knock . . . knock . . . knock . . . knock, knock, knock . . .

Unreal, thought Hunt.

She called out for him to come in. Hendrickson opened the unlocked door, crossed the room, and sat across from Hunt at the small table in the kitchenette. He exhaled heavily, as though he were tired; then he took one of the beers that sat sweating condensation on the table, as well as a fistful of the salty nuts. They knew each other so well that neither had to speak.

“Cute with the knocks,” Hunt eventually said.

“SOS, remember?”

She nodded, and then added, “But this isn’t Bancroft Hall. I’m not a twenty-one-year-old midshipman and you aren’t a twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant sneaking into my room.”

He nodded sadly.

“How’s Suze?”

“Fine,” he answered.

“The kids?”

“Also fine . . . grandkid soon,” he added, allowing his voice to perk up. “Kristine’s pregnant. The timing’s good. She just finished a flight tour. She’s slated for shore duty.”

“She still with that guy, the artist?”

“Graphic designer,” Hendrickson corrected.

“Smart girl,” said Hunt, giving a defeated smile. If Hunt had ever married, she knew it would’ve needed to be an artist, a poet, someone whose ambition—or lack thereof—didn’t conflict with her own. She had always known this. That was why, decades before, she’d broken off her affair with Hendrickson. Neither of them was married at the time, so what made it an affair—because affairs are illicit—was their discrepancy in rank. Hendrickson thought after Hunt’s graduation from Annapolis they could be out in the open. Despite Hunt’s feelings for Hendrickson, which were real, she knew she could never be with him, or at least never be with him and have the career she wanted. When she explained this logic weeks before her graduation, he had told her that she was the love of his life, a claim that in the intervening thirty years he’d never disavowed. She had offered him only the same stony silence they now shared, which in that moment again reminded him of her namesake from those years ago—Stonewall.

“How you holding up?” Hendrickson eventually asked her.

“Fine,” she said, taking a long pull off her beer.

“The board of inquiry’s almost finished with its report,” he offered.

She looked away from him, out the window, toward the port where she’d noticed over the past week an unusually heavy concentration of ships.

“Sarah, I’ve read over what happened. . . . The Navy should’ve given you a medal, not an investigation.” He reached out and put his hand on her arm.

Her gaze remained fixed on the acres of anchored gray steel. What she wouldn’t give to be on the deck of any of those ships instead of here, trapped in this room, at the end of a career cut short. “They don’t give medals,” she said, “to commodores who lose all their ships.”

“I know.”

She glared at him. He was an inadequate receptacle for her grievances: from the destruction of her flotilla; to her medical retirement; all the way back to her decision never to have a family, to make the Navy her family. Hendrickson had gone on to have a career gilded with command at every level, prestigious fellowships, impressive graduate degrees, and even a White House posting, while also having a wife, children, and now a grandchild. Hunt had never had any of this, or at least not in the proportions that she had once hoped. “Is that why you came here?” she asked bitterly. “To tell me that I should’ve gotten a medal?”