“Chief Halloran,” he said.
His voice was hushed. Almost a whisper. Nothing like the voice he’d used at the podium.
“An aircraft carrier,” he said. “In the Gulf of Tonkin. 1972.”
I stood up from my folding chair.
It took a minute. My knees lack their old strength. I put one hand on the table to push myself up.
I stood at attention. As best I could. Eighty-one years old.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He was quiet for a long moment.
The whole gymnasium was silent. Two hundred people holding their breath.
“Chief,” the admiral said quietly. “Do you recall a nineteen-year-old seaman apprentice? Who panicked and froze? During a fuel fire on the hangar deck?”
I looked at his face.
The gray hair. The lines around his eyes. The heavy jaw. Seventy years old.
And underneath it all, I saw it.
A skinny kid from Ohio. Behind the wheel of a tow tractor. His hands locked on the wheel. His eyes wide open. Staring at a wall of fire.
