Canidy’s running warfare with Crookshanks had obviously resulted in his being left behind, as a wiseass, with the other guiltyby-association wiseass, while the rest went off to start their training.
Bitter kept his mouth shut until they were in an ancient Ford taxicab, enroute to downtown Rangoon.
“You realize, of course,” he said, “that you’re the reason I’m doing this with you.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Eddie,” Canidy mocked him. “You can put something extra in my stocking at Christmas.”
“The fuckups got left behind, as usual,” Ed said. “The trouble is that I’m not fucked up.”
“And you’re not too bright, either,” Canidy said. “The other guys are being loaded on a train for that place with an obscenesounding name. They’re going to be put up in old, and I mean old, English Army barracks, and General Chennault is going to read them his book, aloud, until the planes get there.” ru19 LAST NER098 147
“And what are we going to be doing?”
-We’re going to lie in bed in a hotel, and with just a little bit of luck, not alone, until CAMCO gets the airplanes put together. And then we’re going to test-fly them. When they’re ready, we’ll fly them up to Fongoo-”
“Toungool” Bitter corrected him. He recognized “Fongoo” as some sort of Italian dialect obscenity.
“Wherever the other dummies are,” Canidy went on, “and then come back for more. We’re going to have a lot more time in those airplanes than anybody else. I intend to test them very, very carefully.”
He was right, Bitter realized.
“How did you pull this off?”
“The chief went to Crookshanks and told him that he happened to know that you and I were damned good test pilots.”
“We’re not, for God’s sake!”
“Nobody I met on the ship was any better,” Canidy said reasonably.
S As they were having breakfast the next morning in the hotel dining room, John B. Dolan came in and sat down with them. There was no fouled anchor insignia pinned to the collar points of his khaki shirt, and there was no brimmed uniform cap perched cockily atop his head, but with those exceptions, he looked no less a chief petty officer of the United States Navy than he had at Pensacola NAS.
Dolan motioned with his finger for a cup of coffee and helped himself to a sugared bun from a basket on the table.
“CAMCO’s got a house for use,” Dolan said, “with its own mess and laundry. Right now there’s only Finley and me and an ex — chief radioman named Lopp. You’d probably be more comfortable there than here. Interested?”
“Fascinated,” Canidy said immediately.
Bitter felt uncomfortable sharing quarters with ex-enlisted men, even if they were now, as civilians, technically social equals. Dolan and Canidy immediately made him even more uncomfortable.
“There’s more,” Dolan said. “They sent me down to the wharves to pick up a car. There’s a whole godown full of new Studebaker Commanders. All you have to do, I think, is walk in, sign a chit, and ride out with one the way I did.”
“All they can do is tell me to give it back, right?” Canidy said.
“Who owns the cars?” Bitter asked.
“CAMCO,” John Dolan replied. “What we need is spare engines and assembly racks, and stuff like that, which we don’t have, instead of Studebakers, but what the hell, use what you do have, right? No sense in letting them just sit in the warehouse.”
“Isn’t the group going to need them?” Bitter asked.
Dolan gave him a patient look.
“The way it is, Mr. Bitter,” he said slowly, with more than a little disdain, “is we need all this stuff in China, which is the other end of the Burma Road. And we can’t get it there, at least right now, you understand?”
“Yes, of course,” Bitter said. He was uncomfortable that he had been treated like a fool.
“I’ll go change,” Canidy said, and got up and walked out of the dining room.
“I guess I’m a little surprised that an old salt like you and Mr. Canidy could be friends,” Bitter said.
Dolan gave Bitter a tolerantly contemptuous look.
“Let me put it this way, Mr. Bitter,” Dolan said. “There’s three kinds of officers. At the bottom are the really dumb ones. That’s maybe two percent. Then there’s most of them, say ninety-six percent. They do their job, and most of the time they don’t cause anybody any trouble. Then there’s the last two percent. You learn to spot them, and if you’re smart, vou really take care of officers like that, because you know that they’ll take care of you. Not only when that’s easy for them, but when you really need taking care of and it costs them.”
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