The radio now started playing “Light My Fire” by the Doors. And Vernon Allen Winters of Columbus, Indiana, third-year midshipman at the U S. Naval Academy, was no longer a virgin by the time the long song was over. “The time to hesitate is through, no time to wallow in the mire, try now you can only lose, and our love become a funeral pyre . . . Come on baby, light my fire . . . Come on baby, light my fire.” Vernon had never lost control of himself before in his entire life. But when Joanna stroked the outline of his swollen penis underneath his jeans, it was as if a giant wall of steel and concrete suddenly gave way. Years later, Vernon would still marvel at the raw passion he showed for two, maybe three minutes. The combination of Joanna’s insistent kisses, the grass, and the driving rhythms of the music pushed him over the edge. He was an animal. Still on the floor of the motel room, he pulled vigorously on Joanna’s slacks several times, nearly tearing them as he managed to free them from her hips. Her underpants half followed the slacks. Vernon grabbed them roughly and pulled them down the rest of the way while he was squirming out of his own jeans.
Joanna tried in a quiet voice to slow Vernon down, to suggest that maybe the bed would be better. Or at least it would be more pleasant if they actually took off their shoes and socks and didn’t make love with their pants around their ankles restricting their movement. But Vernon was gone. Years of restraint left him no ability to deal with his own surging desire. He was possessed. He crawled on top of Joanna, a look of frightening seriousness on his face. For the first time she was scared and her sudden fear heightened her sexual excitement. Vernon struggled for a few seconds (the music was now in the frenzied instrumental part of “Light My Fire”) to find the right spot and then entered her abruptly and forcefully. Joanna felt him drive once, twice, and then shudder all over. He was done in maybe ten seconds. She intuitively knew that it had been his first time and the pleasure of that knowledge outweighed her bruised feelings about his lack of finesse and gentleness.
Vernon said nothing and quickly fell asleep on the floor next to Joanna. She gamely went to the bed, pulled the bed-spread off, cuddled into Vernon’s arms on the floor, and wrapped the spread around them. She smiled to herself and drifted off to sleep, still a little puzzled by this Hoosier lying next to her. But she knew that they were now special to each other.
How special Joanna would never really know. When Vernon woke up in the middle of the night, he felt an over-powering sense of guilt. He could not believe that he had smoked dope and then virtually raped a girl he hardly knew. He had lost control. He had been unable to stop what he was doing and had clearly crossed the bounds of propriety. He winced when he thought about what his parents (or worse, Betty and Reverend Pendleton) would think about him if they could have seen what he had done. Then the guilt gave way to fear. Vernon imagined that Joanna was pregnant, that he had to leave Annapolis and marry her (What would he do? What kind of job would he have if he were not a naval officer?), that he had to explain all this to his parents and to the Pendletons. Worse still, he next imagined that at any minute the motel would be raided and the police would find the butt of the joint in the roach clip. He would first be kicked out of the Academy for drug abuse, then find out that he had made a girl pregnant.
Vernon Winters was now really scared. Lying on the floor of a motel room on the outskirts of Philadelphia at three o’clock on a Sunday morning, he began to pray in earnest. “Dear God,” Vernon Winters prayed, asking for something specific for himself for the first time since he asked God to help him on the day that he took the SATs, “let me get out of this without harm and I will become the most perfectly disciplined naval officer that You have ever seen. I will dedicate my life to defending this country that honors You. Just please help me.”
Eventually Vernon managed to fall asleep again. But his sleep was fitful and disturbed by vivid dreams. In one dream Vernon was dressed in his midshipman’s uniform but was on stage back at the Columbus Presbyterian Church. It was the Easter pageant and he was again Christ, dragging the cross to Calvary. The sharp edge of the cross on his shoulder was cutting through his uniform shirt and Vernon was aware of anxiety that he might not pass inspection. He stumbled and fell, the cross cut deeper through the uniform as he had feared and he could see some blood running down his arm. “Crucify him,” Vernon heard someone shout in the dream. “Crucify him,” a group of people in the audience shouted together as Vernon tried vainly to see through the klieg lights. He woke up sweating. For a couple of moments he was disoriented. Then again his emotions went the cycle from disgust to depression to fear as he played through the events of the night before.
Joanna was tender and affectionate after she woke up but Vernon was very distant. He explained his attitude by saying he was worried about his coming exams. A couple of times Joanna started to talk about what had happened the night before, but each time he rapidly changed the subject. Vernon suffered through brunch and the drive back to College Park to Joanna’s sorority house. Joanna tried to kiss him meaningfully when they parted but Vernon did not reciprocate. He was in a hurry to forget the entire weekend. Back in the privacy of his own room in Annapolis, he contritely bargained again with God to let him escape unscathed.
Midshipman Vernon Winters was true to his word. He not only never talked to Joanna Carr again (she called and failed to reach him a couple of times, sent two letters that were unanswered, and then gave up), he also gave up dating altogether during his final eighteen months at Annapolis. He worked very hard on his studies and attended chapel, as he had promised God, twice each week.
He graduated with honors and did his initial tour of duty on a large aircraft carrier. Two years later, in June of 1974, after Betty Pendleton had completed college and obtained her teacher’s certificate, Vernon married her in the Columbus Presbyterian Church where they had played Joseph and Mary a dozen years earlier. They moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and Vernon believed that the pattern of his life was set. His life would be going out to sea for long stretches and then coming home for short stays with Betty and any children they might have.
Vernon regularly thanked God for keeping up His part of the bargain and he dedicated himself to being the finest officer in the U.S. Navy. All of his fitness reports praised his dependability and thoroughness. His commanding officers openly told him that he was admiral material. Until Libya. Or more specifically, until he returned home after the Libyan action. For the entire world changed for Vernon Allen Winters during the few weeks after the American attack against Gaddafi.
7
CAROL and Troy were sitting in deck chairs at the front of the Florida Queen. They were facing forward in the boat, toward the ocean and the warm afternoon sun. Carol had removed her purple blouse to reveal the top of a one-piece blue bathing suit, but she was still wearing her white cotton slacks. Troy was shirtless in a white surfing outfit that came quite a way down his beautiful black legs. His body was lean and sinewy, clearly fit but not overly muscled. They were talking casually and animatedly, laughing often in an easy way. Behind them underneath the canopy, Nick Williams was reading A Fan’s Notes by Fred Exley. Every now and then he would look up at the other two for a few moments and then return to his book.
“So why didn’t you ever go to college?” Carol was asking Troy. “You clearly had the ability. You would have made a fantastic engineer.”
Troy stood up, took off his sunglasses, and walked to the railing. “My brother, Jamie, said the same thing,” he said slowly, staring out at the quiet ocean. “But I was just too wild. When I finally did graduate from high school, I was hungry to know what the world was like. So I took off. I wandered all over the U.S. and Canada for a couple of years.”