A Heart's Tender Tribute

When we got off watch that night Jake wanted to talk.

He had to talk.

He had had lunch with her that afternoon, and his excitement was such that he had to tell somebody.

"She was distressed about something," he launched right into telling me about being with her that day, "and I hugged her lightly. I hadn't done that before, and I didn't want to scare her; and then suddenly she started to cry. She told me about how angry Bobby had been when she moved out of the other apartment.

"'And then she screamed at me,' she sobbed."

He paused. Her outburst has surprised him.

"In between her tears her voice cracked, and I could feel her heart wrenching inside her as she sat up again and looked at me.

"Then, she said, Bobby yelled at her that just because she was 'stacked' she thought all the boys would chase after her, and then that she didn't think that at all. There was a look of chagrin on her face, embarrassed, I think, that she was even telling me about what had happened. Then that sweet blush of hers flooded her countenance and she didn't know what to do with herself.

"It was easy to invite her to snuggle close to me again and I wrapped her in my arms to soothe her hurt a little.

"I had not had any idea that girls could be quite so vicious with each other, especially ones who were supposed to be friends. What could I say?"

He just shrugged his shoulders; he wasn't really asking a question of me, I could tell.

"I don't have near the experience with girls that some of the other fellows do. Of course," he added wistfully, "some of their 'experience' I figure I can do without."

This was very uncommon for him, to open up like this.

"As to the four girls, it appears to me that whatever friendship has been between them is now shattered and gone. How can Kathrine go back to the other girls who have spoken so hurtfully? What I mean, though, is what kind of response would be helpful at the moment? I was not at all sure."

Jake was in no hurry, and chose his words carefully.

"Only as I held her in my arms, and allowed myself to begin to really think of her as 'my girl' did the fog clear. I think I was quiet for a long time, and her sobs gradually eased as she relaxed with me. We have become close friends, perhaps not as close as brother and sister, but friends who can talk with each other and discuss things. I liked her the first time I saw her, Charlie. Neither of us really fit with the others... chance just sort of tossed us together."

Jake had been on a liberty downtown Honolulu, had sort of fallen in with three other sailors for a while that evening on Waikiki, and the four of them had met these four girls. The others were all heavy party animals, but Jake and Katharine struck a different note together, were more inclined to normal conversation, and enjoyed ideas. Of course, her natural good looks didn't hurt anything at all, and that was a very strong draw. Jake admitted that to me right off, but his comments about her told me that he was more serious about her than I had ever seen him. She wore her hair long down her back, he added with a wistful note and a casual wave of his hand, and it fell about her pretty face in a very attractive way, he said, even when she used a ribbon to tie it back, his thoughts wandering at the recollection.

It was almost as were he talking to himself, reliving his time with her. I had never seen him so wrapped around the axel over a girl.

One very obvious and impressive feature about her, which I noticed later when we met, was her very statuesque figure. She was only to my shoulder high, but she was... well, 'stacked' as Bobby had said, but this night after watch Jake only mentioned that Kathrine carried a her share of 'top hamper.' That is an older metaphor used by some sailors, with reference to a full-rigged sailing ship running before a fresh breeze with all sails set, and filled by the wind. Filled so, one might say that a beautiful ship's 'top hamper' -- the wind-filled canvas -- made for an image very attractive and inspiring to a sailor. In my mind the use of the metaphor was a very respectful recognition of a lady's beauty.

To judge from Jake's subtle comment, his thought was not unlike mine. I could tell by his manner, Kathrine carried her share of 'top hamper' and he appreciated her beauty; simple as that.

Not too much, though. Her figure was not out of balance, but very finely tuned, and, in my judgment, she carried herself well, with grace and reserve. Some girls might have flaunted themselves for the attention they could surely garner.

Kathrine did not.

That frustrated the other girls, he ventured in explanation, made them jealous, probably. "Whether she flaunts it or not," and I heard some distress in his normally confident voice, "her 'top hamper' is a major attraction for the fellows."

Yes, I could understand that without further explanation. There was a long pause in the darkness that night as we sat on the seawall together, and I just waited for him to go on. I thought I could hear his teeth grinding together in anger at the other fellows.

"The other three guys have commented," he continued slowly, "when away from the girls, that she makes their hands itch...." His nature was such that he didn't even have to complete the thought, and I knew what he meant. Normally he never let any of his frustration show outwardly, but that night I could sense in his tone his disgust at such. From the time we had been friends I knew he did not look at a girl in that way, even though he appreciated a pretty girl just as we all did.

Basically, we had both talked about girls some, and so now I could detect the subtle changes in his feelings. In just a couple of dates, of which he had told me essentially nothing, this girl had somehow touched his heart and called forth something quite special.

"I have found that I have to be choosy and selective; and only on our previous date had I begun to feel I could, well, exert my own personality a little.

"When she told me this afternoon what Bobby had said to her, my blood heated up. I was so angry with Bobby and the other girls for their insensitivity and crudeness, and I spoke out almost before I had thought through what I was saying."

He was quiet for a moment, as were he stuck somehow.

"I told her that she was not 'stacked,' like that... which to me is a cheap label for a girl."

Clearly, there was more, and he was trying to get it out, but had to struggle. He paused, but it was one of those pauses where only silence fits.

I just listened.

"She asked me what that meant, and her voice was innocent and sweet. I guess she didn't know; but she must have guessed something cheap from Bobby's tirade."

And... I waited for him in silence.

"I said I thought she carried more 'top hamper' than some girls, and that she did it very nicely."

He was wandering now as he remembered. He had explained that to her and she had thanked him for telling her about that.

"Her smile, Charlie... her sweet, simple smile is just heavenly!"

Well, so....

"I spoke without thinking, and told her she had the most beautiful... figure I had ever seen. I had been running on open and caught myself."

He stopped, looking out over the dark water past the battleships moored right in front of us to the lights in the shipyard across the harbor, then his head drooped and he shook it like a condemned man, and his voice cascaded into the depths as if he were reliving the experience. 'Running on open' is radioman jargon for the teletype printing out random characters during an idle period; essentially, 'mouth connected while brain disengaged.'

"What will she think of me now? How dumb can a guy be, really! The words were out, and she could easily finish the sentence without any problem. She stirred in my arms and began to sit up next to me carefully, and I closed my eyes wishing myself into some crack in the earth to be swallowed up forever.

"I opened my eyes and found her looking into my face intently... your know how a girl looks sometimes, and you haven't got a chance of guessing what they're thinking. Then, with the wheels still turning in that pretty head of hers, do you know what she said to me?

"'Thank you,' she said to me, 'Thank you for the compliment, Jake. That's the nicest thing any fellow has ever said to me.'"

He turned then to me in the dim light, as were he asking me whether such a girl could be real.

That's how he related the story to me, in the first person like that. We were sitting together in the cool of the night on the seawall behind our barracks, with the Pacific Fleet's battleships right in front of us. We had just been relieved off watch, it was after midnight, and he was all wound up and needed to talk. We knew each other well enough that we could listen to each other without comment. On this occasion he was just overwhelmed at his experience over the last week or two, and especially that afternoon with Kathrine.

I don't think he had mentioned her to me by name more than two or three times, though I knew he had made the acquaintance of somebody that meant something very special to him. Now, finally, I was getting the low down, though I knew him well enough to know that the intimate details would not be forthcoming.

That was not Jake.

He was particularly touched by her sweetness. She had thanked him for his compliment, and I could hear it in his tone as we talked that night that just the memory of their intimate conversation on the sofa that afternoon almost caused him to loose his train of thought altogether.

Well, girls can do that to a fellow. I know; Caroline had done that to me, and I loved it.

I'm Charlie, and I'm relating the story to you as I heard it over a period of time, from him during those first days of their acquaintance as we stood radio watches together at the Naval Air Station Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, and on some occasions from her, only much later. I'll try to fill in some details and make it interesting.

-- --

The few days just before that had been very difficult for her, and that in the light of the fact that her entire life had been hardship and anxiety. This was not so uncommon in that day. Growing up is a challenge, doing it in a rural setting during the Depression years was perhaps as rough a road as there is.

She was borne Kathrine Anne, fourth and youngest child to a family struggling to succeed on their San Joaquin Valley farmland through an extended period of economic trials that seemed endless and unrelenting. Homemaking and farm chores were demanding, but she could see the need for much cooperative effort and worked willingly and with increasing skill and initiative. Her father and her older brothers were protective, especially as she approached womanhood. She felt the changes in her own being through her high school years, and the sometimes penetrating stares of older boys, the seasonal farm workers, and even her brothers, though their protection sheltered her from much of the world around her.

Her mother might have been a greater support to her, but her attitude seemed at odds and unavailable. In fact, slender and even skinny in her figure, her mother was probably reeling inside herself at her husband's reproach at her deficiencies. Her daughter's blossoming in her junior year opened the distance between her and her daughter. I am guessing here, since Kathrine was never really able to speak of it to me, and Jake's comments were very brief. Envy, questions that have no answer, recriminations with no resolutions meant that Kathrine was left alone much of the time on a farm remote from other social contacts that might have assisted her in accommodating the challenges of adolescence and approaching adulthood.

Her last two years of school did bring some meaningful changes. Her father brought his daughter into the office to keep better tabs on the finances and the shipping movements. This introduced her to bookkeeping and numbers, and strengthened her organizational skills, but also exposed her to truckers ever alert for an easy liaison and the crudeness of their comments. She realized that her breasts had developed to be larger than were those of many other girls, and that this brought on much attention from men, yet the lack of feminine contact left her with a very unbalanced and insecure sense of self. She was by nature shy and reserved, made sure her dress was modest, neat, and clean, kept her glorious chestnut hair long, brushed out, and tied with one of her small collection of bright ribbons. These were, I think, simple standards of grooming she set for herself. They added to her natural beauty and, on their own merit, especially against the contrast of the itinerant laborers all around, including women, many Mexicans, and the sweat and dirt and even squalor of the farm in the summer's heat, made her stand out like a beacon of desirability. She was too innocent and naïve, I think, to have recognized her situation for what it was.

She felt her father's protective influence when he set her up in the office with a Dutch door, over which all the paperwork passed, her youngest brother being responsible for tallies and counts of the outgoing shipments just outside. This put a barrier and a little distance between her and the many loose hands prone to grope and grasp. Her sense of well being was shattered, however, when she deduced from her own observations that her father and older brothers were often involved with 'meetings' with some of the work force, most often a single Mexican girl about her own age. Something broke inside her at the realization of what was happening, and in her mind there was no setting it aright and no one to whom she could turn. The world beyond not only beckoned, it was now for her also a refuge from a home by then no longer a haven.

She graduated from high school in the spring of 1941, very near the top of her class, and having done well in English. She answered a newspaper add for dining room and housekeeping staff for the Matson Lines vessels sailing between the west coast and the Hawaiian Islands, and was thrilled when they accepted her. In June she sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu, and the sharp and dramatic break with her past was as much revelation as it was refuge.

Among the several younger staff aboard were three other girls in a very similar situation. All were from farms in the Valley, looking for something better. Bobby had sailed once before, and could kind of clue the others in to how things went. Tony's hair was short and coal black, and she was a bubbly, outgoing girl, pleasant and fun. Brenda's hair was almost fire engine red, and from the first, she went by the nickname 'Red.' She was talkative, clever, and a little mouthy for Kathrine's taste, but that was fine. Not everyone was the same, she reasoned.

They bunked in a stateroom for four, and after a second day at sea, hearing the constant talk of all kinds of new things swimming through her head, Kathrine had a moment to herself in the bathroom after her shower. Bobby had left her dressmakers tape measure hanging over the clothes hook. The other girls' conversation about boys and sex and measurements and figures and such stopped her cold.

She had never talked so openly about such things, nor had the opportunity to do such a thing, but now found herself checking her own body carefully. Long hours of farm work, lots of walking, and a diet skimpy on sugars and fats left her with a very trim and well toned figure, but she was surprised at herself: her breasts -- she already knew she was fuller than were the other girls. She was surprised at how much fuller. Was she too big; too big to be pretty? She sensed that height played into the equation, and she was as tall as Bobby was at 5-8. Tony and Red were several inches shorter, or more. But what did that mean? The question bothered her deeply. Was she too big to be pretty?

Intuitively she felt the other girls would be no help, and there was no one else she felt she could ask.

That in the off hours and the rest times the male crew members flocked to her seemed to tell her nothing. Their attention was like the men she had experienced on the farm; banter, small talk, crude jests, and casual suggestions that left her unmoved and aloof. She had learned that they offered her nothing of enduring value, and by instinct she knew to brush them away like flies.

Kathrine's particular blessing... well, from a man's point of view it is a blessing, but she didn't know what to do with it... was that she had the physical attributes, the very nicely developed attributes of a young girl with extraordinary charm, and the looks of an innocent little pixie fresh from some story book. She was really quite a looker. Her gray-green eyes were bright and playful, but full of sweetness and sincerity. Her facial features were classic and youthful, and complemented her flashing eyes and imp-like exuberance for life. Her hair was a light chestnut, as I said, and the sunshine in Hawaii soon brought out rich streaks of reddish blonde. She wore it long, and down almost all the time, and it often fell across her face and needed her to whisk it away. Her efforts to control it that way were an unconscious study in delightful and uninhibited femininity. Almost always it splashed down onto her shoulders in cascading disarray.

Some might have thought it artless and untended; for an appreciative gentleman, it was, in a rustic and free-spirited way, breathtakingly beautiful. That was Jake's assessment, and he acknowledged to me by his attitude that she had him in her spell.

She had always dressed very conservatively. Jake told me this later as I got to know them better. She had been very concerned that she was not pretty, that -- he explained carefully -- her breasts were too big to let her be really attractive to a man. She had always dressed comfortably and without much attention to style or shape. That changed gradually after they became close, and she gained more confidence in herself.

In relating her earlier experiences to me, Kathrine spoke well of her family, and her older brothers, but there was a piece she seemed always to overlook, consciously or otherwise. Something hindered her having a more confident feeling about herself. She was very private with me, but Jake mentioned once when we spoke of her, that she had told him about her mother's aloofness and the Mexican girl, and these things had created a barrier for her.

In their own way, I thought, they also must have contributed a particular strength. You had to get to know her a little and watch her. Although she had the body and the face of a temptress, and the personality of a playful seductress, she was always reserved, gracious, poised, and respectful, never cheap or sexually suggestive. She was quite a remarkable girl. Also, she had both the integrity of person to seek for what she wanted, as well as the innate savvy and intuition not to be led astray by cheap flattery from any fellow who tried to cajole her. Polite and friendly, she could nevertheless dismiss a fellow's come on with a sweep of her hand, and he knew it was over.

At a dinner party at their apartment just a week after we three couples were married in October, I had the chance to ask her directly, in a brief private moment, what it was she saw in Jake that attracted her. We were good friends by then and she teased me often about my questions to everybody, as were I, she taunted playfully, a writer gathering material for a novel, and giggled. Still, very seriously, she bounced right back with her answer. He was a man, a gentleman, she said, and her simple, forthright declaration spoke a great deal about her as a lady. He was very intelligent and interesting, she added, and treated her as if she were too, and as a worthy companion. Left unspoken, but clearly obvious from her manner, was that she had found no other man who had ever been up to those standards, not even close. As cute as she was, she was still human and had her faults, but she knew her own mind and heart.