She looked at me.
“Frank,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to a breakfast,” I said.
Part Four: The Fire
I need to tell you something about 1972.
I’ve never told anyone this story. Not Peg. Not my kids. Not even Danny.
Some things you carry by yourself.
In the spring of 1972, I was twenty-seven years old. A First Class Petty Officer. Aviation Boatswain’s Mate, Handling. I’d been in the Navy nine years.
I was stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam. We were launching strikes every day. Sixteen, eighteen hours a day. Planes going off the catapults every few
minutes. Planes coming back, some of them shot up, some of them on fire.
I worked on the hangar deck. The big enclosed deck below the flight deck where the planes are stored and repaired and refueled.
