“Ease her down.”
“Ease her bow around a little to one side so she doesn’t nose directly into them—”
“Watch her revolutions and compass to see she’s still steering—”
All the while the Stubbins bucked like a horse.
…On another day (he had by now given up a regular tracking of Time), under clear skies, in moderate seas, they rounded Cape Horn…. Recalling the pages of Melville’s White Jacket, he thought of the hazards of sail in older days and marveled at how the alarms and frights of life had kept pace with the change from canvas to steam…. He was on the Stubbins’s flying-bridge, port side (the captain having said he’d be welcome), straining his eyes for a glimpse of the Cape’s famous nub. “It’s out of range, Shurtliff,” the captain said: “We’re too far south of it. You’ll have to imagine it.” Which is what he did, sufficiently well to cause in his mind a flicker of amazement that he, Morgan Shurtliff, was in such proximity to it as to have become, for a few hours, a part of its continuing, legendary past.
…The liquid wilderness between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope (lengthened further by an increased amount of zig-zagging done to thwart the hunt of enemy submarines) began to seem as eerily infinite as the very universe…. The twenty-fifth of December came and went, a barely observed Christmas spent in the limbo of a time-zone that queered any bridging thoughts of celebrations at home. Ditto the thirty-first, as, at midnight, it was quietly noted by the men on watch that a year had passed: that it was now 1943.
He wrote letters (whose fate as to if, when, and where they might be mailed, he had no idea), the several packets of which, held together by the elastic embraces of rubber bands, he kept on the top shelf of his locker. Mostly, they were short communications telling of some diversion supplied by nature that caused in his mind a vivid recall of a contrasted or analogous memory:
…We see a lot of flying fish. They rise up out of the water, shoals of them sometimes, and glide along just over the water’s surface. Their “wings” are two elongated side fins, attached to their bodies behind the gills. They make me think of the big flocks of grackles that fly up in a body from a harvest field and skim over the stubble of corn stalks.
…It rained all day. I thought of that flowery umbrella you like so much, and of how it becomes a big, gay bouquet when you open it.
Et cetera, et cetera.
In such lingerings, there was clearly nothing for a pale, glassy-eyed censor to get excited about.
He would oversee his gun crew at their diurnal tasks of oiling and polishing and checking the lethal workings of the Stubbins’s weaponry, and wonder if his face, like theirs, bore the look of a dog owner who loves his animal overmuch, and in a continuum of infatuated concern obsessively grooms and otherwise cares for it: the men bent so over the guns, frowning, palming and stroking the gleaming steel, almost, it seemed, in a petting way…. Once, as he observed a couple of gunners so engaged, he fantasized the weapons as kinds of dogs: the twenty-millimeter Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns as sleek, intelligent greyhounds; the three-inch, fifty-caliber cannon as blood-thirsty, feral mongrels; the lighter machine guns as feisty terriers.
…There was one gunner, Malkerson, who was called “Owl” by the rest of the gun crew, and referred to at large as “the Owl.” He was a West Virginian, a hill man: a near-illiterate, sublimely unworldly, free-spirited, immensely likable youth who told Morgan early on that he “fancied” night-duty, it being his claim that he could only sleep in the daytime.
“Why is that, Malkerson?”
The boy had a beaming smile. “I’m used to taking to the woods at night,” he drawled. “To hunt, sir.”
“Ah—”
“Let the sun go down and I’m off with my dog for the night,” he went on. “It’s my gift to see in the dark. My daddy passed it on to me.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
Malkerson’s grin broadened. “Ain’t one girl, sir. Only eight boys. My ma says the Lord ordained it so.”
“What do you hunt?”
“Anything you can eat. Possum, pig, deer, squirrel. Any kind of pot bird. My daddy, he can sniff out game a mile away and name you what it’ll be. He’s a wonder,” said with an active pride. “You ever eat possum, sir?”
“No. Maybe I will someday.”
“You should. It’s best stewed, with turnips and carrots and taters and strong onions throwed in.” Malkerson’s smile suddenly disappeared. “It makes me sorry just to think of it.”
For Owl the Devil was real; he told of a man he knew who had the print of the Devil’s hoof “set” on his right arm. “He kilt a man in rage,” was his explanation of this avowed phenomenon. “My daddy has a nose for the Devil, too. He says the Devil smells like squirrel-moss, real damp and spoiled, like a haunt.”
“I’ve never heard of squirrel-moss. What does it look like?”
“Kind of an ailed brown, sir. You can’t never dry it out. There’ll be a long spell of dry weather, leaves all crisped out in the woods so’s you have to step whole-footed not to scare game, and there’ll be a plot of squirrel-moss wet as that”—pointing off to the surround of sea—“drops of water on it big as hawberries.”
“How did you ever end up in the Navy? Did you volunteer?”
The Owl flashed a confiding smile: “Hell, no.” He turned red: “Sorry for the oath, sir…. The sheriff sniffed me out. Came to our place one day with a paper in his hand and told me my time’d come. I didn’t hardly know about a war’s being on. Next thing I knew, they put me in it.” He ran his hands shoulder to hip over his Navy blues: “My ma’d laugh at me, dressed up like this.”
Owl had two songs he sang softly on the night watches; one, secular: “Take Me Back and Try Me One More Time” the other, a gospel hymn: “In the Sweet By and By”—crooned low, in a believer’s voice. The crew treated him with a gentleness devoid of the least condescension: in the truest of protecting ways, they had made him their mascot. One gunner in particular—Sutter, by name—a tough, city-bred, casual cynic, was, ironically, the greatest appreciator of the Owl’s touchingly foreign immaculateness: it was Sutter’s often-made assertion that the Stubbins was kept afloat by what he referred to as “the Owl’s faith.”
…Sarkis was the first mate. He was a middle-aged, tight-mouthed, relentlessly conscientious man with fast, noticing eyes. The captain’s working relationship with Sarkis fascinated Morgan for the reason that, as with two ascetics bound together in the service of the same deity (in this case, the sea), communication between them was conducted in the main by means of a kind of doppelgängerish intuition: a nuanced glance, an eyebrow raised just so, or a shaded gesture whose subtlety of import was instantly understood and, accordingly, acted on.
…With Crawford, the chief engineer, the captain’s relationship was more complex, the Stubbins being their in-common body: the captain, her brain; Crawford, her pulse—the measure of her well-being dependent, therefore, in equal part on each. In the hierarchy of command, Crawford of course was the deferrer, yet from his person, like the lingering smell of grease and oil that marked his presence, there exuded a whiff of personal autonomy which occasionally irked the captain (or so Morgan thought). There was no doubting, though, the magnitude of respect they bore for one another. It was the sense each had of his absolute importance that made them, to the degree they perceived themselves to be, rivals of the Stubbins’s destiny.
…The captain continually showed wisdom in the way he discharged what by law was an absolute, god-like authority over the lives of the Stubbins’s men, the rendered manner of which won him an across-the-board respect and loyalty (and, incidentally, scattered to the winds Morgan’s first apprehensions about him). His faults, if such they might be called—occasional displays of impatience, a steamy intolerance for sloppy work, that maddening curiosity about the personal lives of those around him—proved to be minor faults in an otherwise estimable character whose greatest virtue was that of a sentient decency.
> (Of all the men under whose jurisdiction of command chance might have thrown him, Morgan was by now convinced of his good fortune in having Rupert Wilkins as his captain.)
Even in Eternity, time passes.
In mid-January of 1943, they put in to Cape Town, South Africa….
As the Stubbins was being refueled, the captain and Sarkis went ashore to be briefed about how best to proceed on the next lap of the voyage. Scuttlebutt had it that in the waters between Cape Town and Aden, enemy subs thrived like cockroaches…. The question arose: would they depart Cape Town and, from the tip of Cape Agulhas, head a bit east, then north, through the Mozambique Channel, up the African coast to the Gulf of Aden? Or, from Cape Agulhas, would they hold to a longer-lasting course, leaving the island of Madagascar to port, seeking by this farther means the greater obscurity, perhaps safer reaches of the Indian Ocean before turning north?…On the captain’s and Sarkis’s return to the ship, Morgan was summoned to the bridge. He arrived at the same time Crawford made his appearance. The captain greeted them; Sarkis settled for a nod to each. “We’ve been warned against the Channel,” the captain began: “I’m just as glad. I don’t like the tight passages…. We’ll take the longer course…. Either way, though, I have to tell you there’s no lack of submarines around. There’ve been eight sinkings between here and Aden in the last three days. We’ll go steady, at the best speed you can give me—” This last remark was aimed at Crawford, who stood, grave-faced, with the bulk of his weight resting on his right leg.
Crawford’s response was quick in coming, and firm: “I’ll see you get it, sir.”
“Shurtliff—”
Morgan met the captain’s eyes: “I get the message, sir.”
“Good…We’ll leave tomorrow morning.” The captain made one of his movements of dismissal: of having said all he had to say, except that, from the way he looked at Sarkis, Sarkis knew to remain.
And so again, nakedly, the Stubbins put to sea.
Everyone knew this lap of the voyage posed the greatest threat, and the ship’s company rose to the challenge by exercising its individual fears in the best though not always the most usual of ways: by an increase in civility, simple in kind, but the properties of its gentling influence benefited morale. Morgan credited the captain for setting the style of conduct.
(One good hen, two ducks, three cackling geese…. There were nights composed of such intense anxiety that he knew Miss Sly’s incantation could not possibly induce sleep: at such times he did not attempt to invoke it, feeling that to put it to such an unreasonable test would be to play false with what he deemed to be the affectionate, original facets of its usually undoubtable, albeit obscure, power.)
By luck, or God’s will—whatever—they made it through to Aden…. There, where in ancient times the then-world met in exotic commerce, word was given out—qualified by some pithy remarks about venereal disease—that the crew would have a twenty-four-hour general liberty. In the way crazed lemmings are said to quit the land and rush headlong into the sea, the released men, in a reversal of the lemmings’ scurry, rushed ashore to Aden’s famous red-light district. Morgan watched them go. The Owl went with Sutter, who told Morgan: “We’ll have a walk around, then I’ll bring him back, whole.”
That night, the captain stopped by Morgan’s stateroom. He was carrying a pint bottle of bourbon and two glasses. “Do I disturb you, Shurtliff?”
“Not at all, sir. I’ve just finished a letter to my wife…. Sit here. The bunk will do for me.”
“I feel we owe ourselves a drink.”
“It sounds a grand idea.”
The captain’s face was jubilant. “We’ve all but got it made. The Red Sea’s safe; and the Suez. From now on, it’s only a matter of time.”
Morgan took the offered drink and raised his glass: “So here’s to Port Said, and to you for getting us there.”
“It’s good of you to put it that way, Shurtliff. I appreciate it…. When we get there, I’m going to take a couple of days off and go into Cairo. After the cargo’s unloaded, of course. You’ll have time off too. Would you care to join me?”
The attraction of the unexpected invitation took Morgan by such surprise that he lingered over it, which lingering brought from the captain: “You may have other plans for yourself,” said blandly, as an avenue for a negative reply.
“I’d like very much to join you.”
“Good. We might take a ride out from Cairo to see the pyramids.”
“Ah…the tombs of the pharaohs!” Morgan said. “Imagine our doing that!…I can’t tell you the number of times in the last weeks when I’ve wondered if I’d ever set foot on land again.”
The captain kept his gaze on Morgan’s face. “You sound a bit low…. It’s the let-down of being safe. That, and—well, the fact that Port Said’s only the half-way point; that we’ll have to turn around and do it all over again. But,” he leaned a little forward, “when we get back to the States, you’ll have a long leave. A real stretch of time with your wife and daughters.”
This man, Morgan thought, knows all about me…. Then, though, it struck him afresh that in personal degree, he knew little about the captain. Nothing really, beyond the fact that he was not now, nor ever had been, married (which bit of information Sarkis had once let slip). Still, Morgan supposed, he must cherish someone and in turn be cherished. Yet he had never intimated of any such attachment and in temperament seemed ungiven to any such bond as would form the basis for sustained and ardent reveries. There was no question, though, that he understood in others the call and case of love—which understanding his last perceptive words had demonstrated…. A direct inquiry would be imprudent. Morgan took the indirect approach: “And you, sir: I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a long leave than yourself.” The remark, as Morgan heard it back, took on the suspense of a put question.
The captain fairly rushed to say: “I don’t do well on land, Shurtliff. I’ll have a week or so with my mother and that’ll do for me…. She’s on my mind. It’s going on two years now since I’ve seen her.”
“Where does she live?”
The answer was given in a dry voice: “You won’t ever have heard of it. Suffern, New York. In the house I was born in. The same house with the backyard my father died in…. I told you about that…. ‘Struck by lightning while he was raking leaves’: I was brought up on those words. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard them I’d be a rich man.” The captain refreshed their glasses.
“Does your mother live alone?”
“She does. But she has a cousin who lives next door, so she’s got close company. The cousin’s married to one of those men who never stops complaining about his health, but he’ll bury us all. You know the type. You name it and he’s got it: everything from chronic dyspepsia to a permanent migraine. He wears out chairs, sitting and whining.”
“Has the town changed much over the years?”
“I wouldn’t say so. Oh—it’s more sprawled out than it was when I was growing up, but it still has the same feel to it. Small. Limited…. I never liked it; couldn’t wait to get out of it”—said with a verbal thrust that invited elaboration.
Morgan was quick. “How so?” he asked.
The captain smiled: “It’s a long story.”
“If you don’t mind telling it, I’d like to hear it.”
“Stop me if you get bored.”
“Don’t worry.”
“To say I didn’t like it and couldn’t wait to get out of it is a half-truth…. I won’t say anything negative about my early childhood. I owe too much to my mother. Can you feature what it must have been like for her, widowed at twenty-three, left with a two-week-old boy to rear on her own?…. If she ever felt sorry for herself, she never showed it, at least not to me…. It wasn’t until I got to be twelve or so that I began to get restless. It was my grand-father—my father’s father—who drove me up the wall. He owned a store in town: Wilkins Feed, Grain and Hardware, it was called. My father’d worked
in it…. When my father died, my grand-father shouldered the care of my mother and me. God knows he didn’t lack for sorrow in his own life: he’d lost his wife at a fairly early age—I never knew her—then his son, so my mother and I were all he had left…. He was a well-meaning man, but cautious and careful beyond all reason. Timid. Fussy to a point that drove me crazy. You could walk twice around the block in less time than it would take him to itemize and add up a bill of sale. To begin with, he’d check his arithmetic three times, then go about dotting every i and crossing every t of every item purchased. It used to embarrass me to watch customers waiting around while he did his paperwork.” The captain raised an agitated hand: “You know me, Shurtliff. I’m a stickler for details. You can’t captain a ship and not be. What I’m talking about is the spirit behind a task, the attitude. Energy. You know what I mean. It’ll do to tell you my grand-father sighed a lot…. It sounds like I’m talking against him. I don’t mean to. He was a well-meaning man at heart. It was the rote of his life I couldn’t stand. The way he tethered himself to habit…. The hell for me was that starting when I was twelve, I had to work for him every Saturday at the store. I say I had to: I mean I was expected to by him and by my mother. They used to tell me the store would be mine someday and wasn’t I lucky to have my future cut out for me like that…. The summers were the worst because with school out, I was required to be at the store every day. But the summer I turned fourteen everything changed for me, and believe it or not, by my grand-father’s doing…. Are you hearing more than you bargained for?”
“On the contrary.”
“Here: let’s have a splash more.” Then: “How old are you, Shurtliff?”
“Thirty-two.”
“A babe. I’m fifty-three. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out when I was born. 1890. Add fourteen years to that and you’ll get the year 1904, which is when, as I said, my life changed…. I don’t know what got into my grand-father to do it, but that summer he took it into his head that he and my mother and I should go on what he called ‘a week-end junket’ to the New Jersey shore…. It was the most daring thing I’d ever known him to consider doing. It meant his breaking routine and stirring himself to buy the railroad tickets and arranging somewhere for us to stay overnight. When he sprang the idea of the trip on my mother and me, I didn’t know how to feel about it. The farthest away I’d ever been from home was ten miles or so outside of town, and that on my bicycle or by horse and buggy…. The tracks of the Erie Railroad ran right through Suffern, but I’d never ridden on a train and I really wanted to. But my grandfather’s everlasting tendency to fuss and worry cast a long shadow over the plan, as far as I was concerned. I knew in advance what it’d be like: how he’d sweat over every possibility of what could go wrong, that his wallet might get swiped, or the store catch on fire in our absence, and harping on me every second to sit up straight and look smart, and asking my mother every third minute if she was comfortable and if she was, fretting that in five minutes time she might not be…. Just to think of how it would be made me squirm.” The captain paused, then, with vigor: “God, Shurtliff, I must be drunk, going on like this.”
Matters of Chance Page 8
