“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Well, there’s gonna be a little, ah, get-together. Fourteen hundred
hours, 0-1 deck aft of the hangar bays, across from the paint locker. I
know it’s kind of unusual, but some of the boys told me they’d be
honored if you could come. Unofficial, like.”
Tombstone leaned back in his swivel chair, considering Weston’s
invitation. The big man appeared almost embarrassed, something
Tombstone had never seen as long as he’d known him.
He also knew now what this was all about. “My nose is already blue,
Master Chief.”
“I know, sir. But it’d help morale if you could come. A lot.”
“You think so?”
“One airman told me this morning, ‘Hey, COB! We gotta invite Captain
Magruder. He’s the best officer on the boat!'”
Tombstone smiled. “I’m flattered.”
“Between you and me, CAG, morale on the Jeff just struck bottom. This
business with having women on board, well, it’s got the whole crew
pretty damned tight. Especially since the word is we’re likely to see
combat soon.
Now, this shindig this afternoon’ll be strictly contra-regs, but I can’t
see that it’ll hurt anything. And having some of the officers there’ll
let the guys know the brass hasn’t just decided to torpedo them.”
“I can’t get away right this moment, COB.” He waved at the paper
protruding from the platen of the IBM Selectric resting on his desk. “I
have these quarterly personnel evaluations to finish, my XO’s on CAP,
and the skipper’ll keelhaul me if they’re not on Commander Parker’s desk
this afternoon. But save me some cake. I’ll come down the second I’m
free.”
Weston grinned back. “That’d be fine, sir. Thanks.” He reached for the
door, then hesitated. “Oh … just one thing. I’m afraid this here do
will not be squared away on the Papa Charlie front. Do you take my
meaning?”
“Perfectly. I’ll be down … oh, make it fifteen-thirty.”
“Good enough, sir. See you there.”
He left.
Tombstone stared after him for several long moments, and wondered how it
had come to this. “Not squared away on the Papa Charlie front” meant
not PC, not “politically correct.” No women. And there was a damned
good reason for that.
Sometime during the night, the Jefferson, continuing on course toward
the northeast, had crossed the Arctic Circle. The fact had been duly
recorded in the ship’s logs, of course, and announced over the carrier’s
closed-circuit television, but not officially celebrated as time-honored
custom demanded.
Tombstone was well aware that there’d been grumbling all day, and that
morale, within the air wing and the ship’s company both, had plummeted.
The immediate cause of the gloom, it appeared, was the peremptory
official cancellation of the initiation ceremony to the ancient and
honorable Noble Order of Blue Noses.
Long seafaring tradition had established and perpetuated certain
shipboard ceremonies. Most famous, of course, was the Order of Neptune,
conferred on officers and sailors alike the first time they crossed the
equator. There were other fraternities, less well known to landlubbers:
the Domain of the Golden Dragon for crossing the 180th meridian; the
prestigious Order of the Golden Shellback for crossing the equator at
the 180th meridian.
And there was the fraternal Order of the Blue Nose for men crossing the
Arctic Circle for the first time.
That was the problem. Men crossing the Arctic Circle. The attendant
ceremonies consisted of some fairly grotesque hazing of the “cherries”
being initiated, usually on the flight deck with all free hands in
attendance.
Tombstone well remembered his own initiation. He’d seen frat parties
that were worse … but a gathering of several hundred men, shivering
in their skivvies and with their noses painted blue, kneeling one by one
before the Chief of the Boat in his guise as King Neptune as they swore
to do various improbable and usually obscene tasks, then bobbing for
green apples in tubs of ice water and blue-colored whipped cream, was
not exactly a ceremony Navy women could be expected to attend.
At least that was the thinking back in the Pentagon, where the CNO
himself had issued an order suspending all such festivities aboard ships
with mixed crews.
It wouldn’t do, Tombstone thought glumly to himself, to let the women