Nonfiction
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THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Robert McNamara and Five Years of a Lost War
By Paul Hendrickson
Alfred A. Knopf, 408 pages
Prologue
A Story Out of Time
September 29, 1972. The easily recognized and semifatalistic man standing in the luchroom of the M.V.Islander as it crossed Vineyard Sound that rainy Friday evening could not possibly have known — could he? — that a murderous rage was climbing up inside the throat of someone just feet away from him. Certainly, had Robert S. McNamara been aware, he would not have set down his drink on the metal counter, wouldn't have said to his companion, "Excuse me a minute, I'll get this and be right back," would never have turned and followed a short, bearded stranger in tennis shoes out into the darkness. But wouldn't almost anybody have done the same thing? you ask. Probably, although the assailant himself is still puzzled, even if his ambivalence and periodic shame about that night, over how trusting his victim seemed, how willing to comply. It was almost as if McNamara had long been waiting for such a moment and understood implicitly it was now here. Listen:
"He just stopped in the middle of his conversation and nodded and followed me right out. I've never really understood that part of it. I must have been pretty convincing, that's all I can think. I remember he was leaning up against the counter of the snack bar, laughing and talking. . . . He had on these sporty weekend clothes. I don't know, the two of them just seemed above everything around them, maybe that's part of what got to me. Anyway, I walked right up to him and said, 'Mr. McNamara, there's a phone call for you. Please follow me.' I didn't even know what I was going to say. I swear the words just came out. It's not like I told myself, okay, this is it, you're gonna take the guy outside and throw him off the goddamn boat."
The M.V. Islander, a serviceable old tub built in 1950 by the Maryland Drydock Company, is a "double-ender" in her design, which means that either end can serve as stern or bow, depending on the direction the boat is headed — to Martha's Vineyard or back to the mainland at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The lunchroom, which is about the size of a living room, sits up on the ferry's top deck, just behind the pilothouse. During night crossings, and especially when the weather is bad, this small, brightly lit area of the vessel is nearly always packed and noisy, a kind of lantern against the sea's roughness. Nobody pays much attention to famous faces in the lunchroom; famous faces are a lot of what Martha's Vineyard is about in the first place. The trip across Vineyard Sound takes forty-five minutes and covers seven miles of open water. Mostly it is a boring transit, something you have to put up with to get from here to there.
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