The U-19's Last Kill

by Jack Finney

  For four or five slow steps I was silent, thinking about what she’d said, and we crossed 48th Street. Then I smiled a little. “I don’t suppose I’ll last out the summer.”

  She nodded. “And that’s been your history for quite a while, Hugh. You were in the Navy, and you left it.”

  “I never did plan to stay. I had my time to serve in the military, that’s all.”

  She just glanced at me, shaking her head. “You were in the Forest Service and liked it, but you left that too. And every other job! You quit them all after a while! As you did your last job. and as you will this one. Why, Hugh?”

  “Well, last year I wanted to sail. Al; really learn how to sail a boat And I did; spent the whole summer at it. I was broke toward the end; actually hungry part of the time. But I learned how to sail a boat.” She sniffed angrily, and I said softly, “That sounds trivial to you, doesn’t it, Alice? You think it isn’t important. But it is; there’s nothing more important.”

  “More important than a job you could have had a career at?” She glared at me. “And what about this job? Are you going to quit because you want to learn to play the trombone?”

  “No, but if I did, that could be important too. Ah, we’re here.” I took her arm, and we went into the restaurant.

  It’s a small place, with half a dozen leather-padded booths along each wall and a tiny bar at the front. We took a table, ordered drinks, then sat awkwardly silent till they came. I tasted mine, then set the glass down and leaned forward toward Alice, across from me. I’d never put this into words before, but now I tried; it seemed necessary, even vital.

  “Look, Al,” I said gently, “what’s important and what isn’t? How long does a man live? Except for the lucky ones, seventy-odd years maybe, a terribly short time. And a third of it is already gone for me. And how many of those years are you young? Far fewer: so few it’s pitiful. So what’s eating me, Al; the freedom to live my life—as much of it anyway as I possibly can. Haven’t you ever thought of this? You have to sell your life—most of it, the best part of it—simply in order to stay alive!”

  She was staring at me, her glass in hand, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what have I done with the last five days, for example? Warm, sunny, beautiful days, the first we’ve had in months, and a part of the little handful like it I’ll ever have to be alive in. I sold them, Al”—I was leaning toward her, staring into her eyes, trying to make her understand—“each of them for less than a twenty-dollar bill! I spent them sitting at a desk, all six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds of me. And when they were nearly over. I got the fast bits of them, the tag ends, for myself. Once a week I get a couple days, or a day and a half, or not even that much, often as not. And once a year a two-week vacation. Is that all I get, Al, of my own life?” I nodded. “Almost! If I give in and accept that, if I keep on selling off my own life—all of it; all my youth and middle age!—why, I’ll finally be given the last few years of it that are left, as a sort of refund. Retire on a pension at sixty-five not even knowing any more what else there is to do with a man’s life except work it away.”

  She said, “I happen to know what they think of you at work. That’s what makes me furious with you: you’re in line for a promotion, and a good one.”

  I actually brought my clenched fists up and struck them against the sides of my head. “I don’t want to argue with you about it any more!” I said. “I know, I know! You’re right!” Then I brought my hands down and looked at her, slowly shaking my head. “But there must be some way to beat it, Al; there’s got to be.” I sighed, then my mouth quirked angrily, “You better find yourself a guy who can accept things as they are. I won’t; I can’t. I’m darned if I will.”

  “All right,” She nodded, “I can and I will. I’ll forget all about you, Hugh. It won’t be easy, and I won’t even try at first; I’ll just get through the time somehow. Monday I’ll ask for my vacation—just as soon as I can get it. I have three weeks coming, and could take another without pay. I’ll probably take a trip, someplace different and far away—South America, Hawaii, Europe. And maybe when I get back you’ll already be gone.”

  “O.K. Now, let’s order dinner, then have a little fun,” I said, and after a moment she smiled a little and nodded.

  As I say. I’d never before put into words what I’d just tried to explain to Alice. But now I had. It was clear and defined in my mind now, and I was ready—ripe—for what happened on Saturday morning.

  In a cab Saturday morning—another bright, sun-filled day—I sat watching the between-buildings glimpses of the Hudson River as we moved along the west side of Manhattan Island. On the oil-splotched gray water I saw a couple of tugs, some ferries, a red-bottomed tanker anchored far out in midstream, a bargeload of freight cars. As the cab slowed and stopped, the space between two of the docks slid into view, and I saw a sight that stunned me. Her prow not twenty-five feet from the open cab window, there lay an enormous ship towering over the street and dock beside her, so vast it was hard to take in.

  Far up on the ship’s bow, my eyes lifting to see it, hung one of her enormous anchors, small with distance; and above it and to the right, on a band of white, I saw her name in great golden letters, QUEEN MARY. I stepped out to pay the driver, onto a sidewalk thronged with people, standing in little groups, milling around, calling to each other over people’s heads, pulling luggage out of cabs and car trunks; and I grinned at the driver, feeling suddenly excited. Nodding at the crowd around me as he handed me my change, I said, “It’s an ordinary day everywhere else in New York, but this is like a carnival!”

  “Yeah,” he said as I handed him a tip. “For them, not for me.” Then I turned and made my way toward the line of swinging doors leading into the enclosed dock.

  I had far less trouble boarding the Queen Mary than the passengers did. They had to line up at one of the little wooden buildings on the floor of the pier, waiting their turns to have their tickets, passports and inoculation certificates examined, and their names checked off on the passenger lists. But as a visitor I simply walked aboard—up a canopy-covered gangplank to one of the enclosed decks.

  Then I was inside the Queen Mary, walking slowly across a wide, brightly lighted, spacious area. Wide corridors floored with thick marbled linoleum led off to other parts of the ship—both fore and aft—and clear down the length of the one nearest me, farther ahead than I could see, it was lined with widely spaced louvered doors, with people moving along it or into and out of the cabins. At the head of each corridor stood a steward in a white uniform, and I walked up to the nearest one and asked for directions to the cabin I was looking for.

  It was on the next deck above, he told me, and I walked up the stairs, past the huge photograph of Queen Mary and stepped onto another inside deck—MAIN DECK, it was labeled in black letters set into the cream-colored linoleum—and I was in a shopping area, full of separate little stores. It was a large area, the full width of the enormous ship, and the stores were magnificent, their fronts of polished wood, the showeases of curved glass.

  Then I was in a wide corridor lined with cabin doors, a great many of them standing open, the rooms crowded with people laughing, talking, holding glasses.

  A dozen steps farther on I found the cabin I was looking for; the door stood open, I heard voices I knew, and I stepped inside. Half the office force and a number of strangers were there, most of them holding champagne glasses, and I began making my way through them and across the room toward my ex-boss, who stood talking to a little group around him. There were maybe two dozen people here, but the room wasn’t really crowded; it was big, far bigger than I’d expected. Then I reached the boss, spoke to him and shook hands, and he introduced me to his wife. He turned to a linen-covered table on which stood glasses and several opened bottles of champagne in ice buckets, and poured me a big glassful. I saluted him and his wife with my glass, wishing them a good voyage; then several new people arrived. I didn’t know them and, as he spoke to them, I t
urned away to look around me.

  Someone pulled a cord at the far wall, and a set of curtains rolled back to show two large portholes-straight-sided ovals, their heavy inch-and-a-half-thick glass bound in brass frames. Through them I saw the roof of the dock just below us and, off across the roof, the clear blue sky and the Hudson River, and I heard a girl’s voice say the obvious, “It’s like looking into one world out of another.” But it was true. I stood talking to some of the people from the office for a few moments, but I was ready to leave, suddenly eager to see as much of this ship as I could.

  Out in the corridor I walked back the way I’d come, then stepped out onto the deck, busy with people just now, their steps sounding incessantly on the scrubbed white planking. I walked to the rail and stood wondering where to go and what to see first. Then just back of my left shoulder a voice said, “How about taking my watch for me tonight, Hugh? I’ve got a date in port.” I turned, and Vic DeRossier—I’d served in the Navy with him—stood grinning up at me.

  “You dead beat,” I said, “you owe me three watches already.” Then I grinned at him. “How are you. Vic?”

  “Good, good,” he said exuberantly, as we shook hands, and I was sure he was. Vic’s a little man with thick, straight, coal-black hair; handsome in a dapper way and full or life and energy. He was holding a pencil and a booklet in his hand, the booklet opened to a printed diagram of the ship, labeled MAIN DECK, the deck we were on.

  “What’re you doing here, Vic?” I said, and he grinned.

  “Come aboard the Mary any time she’s in New York these days, and you’re a cinch to run into me. I’m studying the ship.” Gesturing with the booklet, he grinned again, “I got this from the Cunard Line office, along with every other scrap of literature they have on the Mary. She’s an old hobby of mine I’m in love with her, and I come on board every chance I get. You seeing someone off, Hugh?”

  “Yeah, I just did. Now I’m looking around.”

  “Well, come on then,” he grabbed my arm eagerly. “I’ll show you the ship; I know her better now than half the crew.”

  “O.K., swell,” I said, and we walked forward into the ship.

  “Where you been keeping yourself?” Vic said. “I tried to phone you not long ago, but you’re not in the book.”

  “No, I live in a hotel; a little apartment hotel on Fiftieth, the Cliff.”

  He nodded and, walking along with him, I had time to wonder why Vic had wanted to phone me. It had been nearly three years since we’d finished a hitch in the Navy together, and while Vic DeRossier and I served on the same ship—we were in submarines—and I knew him well and liked him, we’d never been close friends. He’d been the dashing young naval officer when I’d known him last, twenty-two years old and busy every minute of every leave. He wasn’t the type to hunt up acquaintances just to sit around chewing over old times.

  I was glad I’d run into him now, though, and I glanced down at him—a dark, graceful little man walking briskly along beside me. He hadn’t changed, I thought. In a white shirt, dark-blue suit and tie he looked—except for the absence of gold braid on his sleeves—precisely as he had when I’d seen him last. He touched my elbow now—I’d been letting him lead the way as we toured the ship—and, turning into a short passageway, he led me through a set of paneled swinging doors, each inset with an oval pane of glass.

  “You’re right,” I said: we were leaning on a rail looking down at the unbroken green surface of the swimming pool. “You know your way around the ship.”

  “Yeah.” Vic nodded. “I’ve read all the literature, studied the photographs, the deck plans, and been aboard her as often as I could. Every once in a while I’ve dropped into a travel agency and discussed sailing dates and cabins as though I were thinking of sailing on her.” He smiled. “As I was—thinking about it, that is. And someday I will actually sail on a ship like this. First class. In a suite. And on the promenade deck, the best there is,” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s go,” he said, pushing himself erect from the rail, “You’ve got to see the promenade deck before it’s time to leave.”

  We walked completely around the ship on that deck, a distance of more than an eighth of a mile, Vic said, and I didn’t doubt him. To a Navy man, a submarine man especially, a ship is the most utilitarian of almost anything human beings build. Every last inch and fractional inch is jealously apportioned, and the human beings on board get only what space is left over after the machinery and equipment are in place. And especially on a submarine you may share a cramped bed with piping, electrical cables, even torpedoes. But here was a ship, the largest I’d ever even been near by thousands of tons, and it was utterly outside all my experience. Nearly every foot of all the enormous space we’d been through was designed and given over to human comfort—more than comfort, to absolute luxury. And even the decks, as we walked around them in the warm spring sunshine, were spacious.

  We heard chimes, and far ahead on the deck I saw a steward in white approaching, a set of hand chimes suspended from around his neck by a strap, and we heard him chant, “All ashore that’s going ashore.” We were a hundred yards or so from a covered gangplank, and we walked slowly toward it.

  We stepped off the gangplank presently, and as our feet touched the dock and New York again, Vic stopped, and I saw his fists clench. Looking up at my face, he said quietly, “Hugh, I want to be on a ship like that—not looking, but having; sailing on her first class!—more than anything else wanted in the world.” For a moment or so he stood staring at me, then he smiled suddenly, charmingly. “Silly, isn’t it?” he said, and I shrugged, not answering—there was nothing to say to that—and we began walking out toward the street.

  “What are you doing these days, Hugh?” Vic said then, as we walked on toward the line of doorways ahead. I told him, and he nodded. “Not married, are you?” he said, and I had the sudden feeling that this was more than casual conversation, that my answer was somehow important to Vic, and I glanced at him curiously as I shook my head no. For several steps then we walked along in silence, and I was aware that Vic was eying me speculatively. Then, his voice very casual, he said, “What are you doing right now; got time for a little lunch?”

  “Yeah, if you’re not too hungry; I had a late breakfast.”

  He said, “A sandwich will do fine.”

  We had lunch at a big drugstore on West 42nd Street; the lunch rush hour was just ending and most of the tables still were uncleared. “Quite a contrast,” I said, grinning at Vic; I was needling him a little, I don’t know why, but he simply nodded, his face abstracted and thoughtful. Glancing around the store, his eye was caught by a floor display a few yards away—a table piled with packaged airplane- and ship-model kits, the kind you put together yourself. Vic got up, walked over to it, and I watched him then, looking through the kits. Presently he came back, a package in his hand, and he smiled and shrugged as he sat down again. “I kind of like these things,” he said. “I get a kick out of putting them together,” and I didn’t believe him.

  I was certain, somehow, that it was a lie, and I looked at the colored illustration on the package in his hands; it showed a surfaced submarine, one or the later S types, her decks awash, plowing through a very blue sea. “Look good to you, Hugh?” Vic said, and I didn’t answer, wondering what he was getting at, and he pulled open a flap at one end of the package, “Let’s see what it looks like,” he said, sliding the plastic parts out onto the table. Then he picked up two long sections of gray plastic and fitted them together to form the slim, tapering hull of a miniature submarine. “Beautifully made little thing,” he murmured, holding it up, and I nodded.

  “Looks like a sub in dry dock,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Vic answered, smiling, “stripped down for repairs and refitting in a main yard.” He glanced up at me. “Like to be sailing on her, Hugh?”

  “Oh”—I smiled—“I wouldn’t mind; but for a few days, not a three-year hitch.”

  The waitress brought menus then, smiling do
wn at the little sub as she cleared the table and swabbed it off, and while we studied the menus I had time to wonder what Vic was up to. He was staging something. I felt; I was sure that if I hadn’t been with him he’d never have given the model display a second glance, let alone hunt out a submarine kit. Again I wondered why Vic DeRossier had tried to phone me, and, after I gave the waitress my order, I sat back in the booth, waiting for whatever he had to say.

  He lounged back and said idly, conversationally, “Be fun, wouldn’t it, if half a dozen guys, say, all ex-submarine men, got hold of an old sub?” He smiled thoughtfully. “I think I’d be tempted to take a little cruise some night. When there was no moon and no Coast Guard in sight. Just for old times’ sake, and not far—nice and slow and taking it easy.” He took a sip of water, glancing up at me over the rim of the glass as he swallowed. “And if that worked out”—he set the glass down—“I could even see us taking her down a little way,” My face must have shown something because Vic said softly, “I thought that might get you; and it does, doesn’t it, Hughie-boy?”

  I smiled a little and didn’t deny it. No one serves in a United States submarine unless that’s where he wants to be. Some men are there simply because they don’t mind the service and like belonging to an elite group; the extra pay is no objection either. But others are there because they love submarines. Most civilians—and plenty of Navy men—can see nothing pleasant, nothing that isn’t at least a little horrifying about a handful of men deliberately submerging a ship under the surface of the ocean, and continuing on down into the dark, silent cold. But I loved it when I was in the service, and now I smiled and said, “Beats weekend sailing, all right.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly, leaning forward over the table top toward me, “it will.”

  “Will?” I said after a moment.

  He nodded slowly—grinning, enjoying this—his narrowed eyes exuberant and alive again. “Yeah, Hugh,” he said gently. “We’ve got a sub—five of us. A little one—less than five hundred tons and the oldest you ever saw. But we think it’s just possible we might get her operating again, and then six men could man her.”