1Although the administration of Island 93 was half military and half civilian, the military, having charge of transportation, communication and provisions, often dominated the civilian administrators. So Coverly was called to the military communications office one early evening and handed a copy of a cable that had been sent by Lulu Breckenridge. YOUR FATHER IS DYING. “Sorry, fellow,” the officer said. “You can go to communications but I don’t think they’ll do anything for you. You’re signed up for nine months.” Coverly dropped the cable into the wastebasket and walked out of the office.

2It was after supper and the latrines were being fired and the smoke rose up through the coconut palms. In another twenty minutes the movies would begin. When Coverly had gone a little way beyond the building he began to cry. He sat down by the road. The light was changing and the light goes quickly in the islands and it was that hour when the primitive domesticity of a colony of men without women begins to assert itself: the washing, letter-writing and the handicrafts with which men preserve some reason and dignity. No one noticed Coverly because there was nothing unusual in a man sitting by the side of the road and no one could see he was crying. He wanted to see Leander and cried to think that all their plans had taken him to the flimflam of a tropical island a little while before the movies began while his father was dying in St. Botolphs. He would never see Leander again. Then he decided to try to go home and dried his tears and walked to the transportations office. There was a young officer there who seemed, in spite of Coverly’s civilian clothes, disappointed not to have him salute. “I want some emergency transportation,” Coverly said.

3“What’s the nature of the emergency?” Coverly noticed that the officer had a tic in his right cheek.

4“My father is dying.”

5“Have you any proof of this?”

6“There’s a cable at communications.”

7“What do you do?” the officer asked.

8“I’m one of the Tapers,” Coverly said.

9“Well, you might get excused from work for a week. I’m sure you can’t get any emergency transportation. The major’s at the club but I know he won’t help you. Why don’t you go and see the chaplain?”

10“I’ll go and see the chaplain,” Coverly said.

11It was dark then and the movies had begun and all the stars hung in the soft dark. The chapel was about a quarter of a mile from the offices and when he got there he could see a blue gasoline lamp above the door and behind the lamp a large sign that said WELCOME. The building was a considerable tribute to human ingenuity. Bamboo had been lashed into a scaffolding and this was covered with palm matting—all of it holding to the conventional lines of a country church. There was even a steeple made of palm matting and there was an air of conspicuous unpopularity about the place. The doorway was plastered with WELCOME signs and so was the interior and on a table near the door were free stationery, moldy magazines and an invitation for rest, recreation and prayer.

12The chaplain, a first lieutenant named Lindstrom, was there, writing a letter. He wore steel-rimmed GI spectacles on a weak and homely face, and he was a man who belonged to the small places of the earth—to little towns with their innocence, their bigotry and their devilish gossip—and he seemed to have brought, intact to the atoll, the smell of drying linen on a March morning and the self-righteous and bitter piety with which he would thank God, at Sunday dinner, for a can of salmon and a bottle of lemonade. He invited Coverly to sit down and offered him some stationery and Coverly said he needed help.

13“I don’t remember your face,” Linstrom said, “so I guess you’re not a member of my congregation. I never forget a face. I don’t see why the men don’t come here and worship. I think I have one of the nicest chapels in the West Pacific and last Sunday I only had five men at the service. I’m trying to see if I can’t get one of the photographers to come down from headquarters and take a picture of the place. I think there ought to be a photograph of this chapel in Life magazine. I have to share it with Father O’Leary, but he didn’t give me much help when there was work involved. He didn’t seem to care where his men worshiped. He’s over to the officers’ mess, playing poker right now. It’s none of my business how he spends his time but I don’t think a minister of the gospel ought to play cards. I’ve never held a playing card in my hand. Of course it’s none of my business, but I don’t approve of the methods he uses to get his congregation together, either. He had twenty-eight men here last Sunday. I counted them. But you know how he did it? There was a whisky ration last Saturday and he went down and pulled the men out of line and made them come to confession. No confession, no whisky. Anybody could fill up a church if they did things like that. I put out the stationery and the magazines and I painted the Welcome signs myself and whenever my wife sends me cookies—my wife bakes oatmeal cookies; she could make a fortune if she wanted to open a bakery—now when my wife sends me cookies I put them in a dish out here but that’s as far as I’ll go.”

14“I want some emergency transportation,” Coverly said. “I want to go home. My father’s dying.”

15“Oh, I’m sorry, my boy,” Lindstrom said. “I’m very sorry. I can’t get you emergency transportation. I don’t know why they send people to me. I don’t know why they do this. You can go and see the major. A man got some emergency transportation last month. At least that’s what I heard. You go to the major and I’ll pray for you.”

16The major was playing poker and drinking whisky at the officers’ club and he left the card table gruffly, but he was an amiable or sentimental drinker, and when Coverly said that his father was dying he put an arm around his shoulder, walked him over to the transportation office and got a clerk out of the movies to cut his orders.

17He left before dawn in an old DC-4, covered with oil and with a picture of a bathing beauty painted on its fuselage. He slept on the floor. They got to Oahu in the disorder of a hot summer dusk with more lightning playing in the mountains. He left for San Francisco in a transport at eleven the next night. There was a crap game and the un-insulated plane was very cold and Coverly sat in a bucket seat, wrapped in a blanket. The drone of the motors reminded him of the Topaze and he fell asleep. When he woke the sky was a rosy color and the flight clerk was passing out oranges and saying that he could smell the land wind. A solid cloud ceiling broke as they neared the coast and they could see the burned summer hills of San Francisco. A few hours after clearing military customs Coverly hitched a ride on a bomber to Washington and went from there to St. Botolphs on the train. He took a taxi from the station out to the farm in the middle of the morning and saw, for the first time, the signs on the main road on the elm tree, VISIT THE S.S. TOPAZE, THE ONLY FLOATING GIFT SHOPPE IN NEW ENGLAND. He got out of the cab and looking around he saw his father, searching for four-leaf clovers in the meadow by the river, and he ran to him, “Oh, I knew you’d come, Coverly,” Leander called. “I knew that you or Moses would come,” and he embraced his son and laid his head on his shoulder.