Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  Christiansen's lolling head, his trailing arms had to be lined up with his body. Homewood wrapped the canvas around him, ran a rope through a series of eyelets and tied it at the top. "What kind of a knot is that?" he asked.

  "Clove hitch?" Flanagan guessed.

  "It's a double bend. I can see it'll take me a while to make a real sailor out of you."

  For a moment Homewood gazed sadly at Christiansen in his canvas sack. Then he spun around and bellowed, "What the fuck are the rest of you doin' just standin' there? Do you like inhalin' this stink?"

  "Yeah," Lieutenant West said. "Let's get it over with."

  Flanagan realized Homewood was the only man in the working party who felt the kind of emotion the dead deserved. He was grieving for them. They had been his shipmates. Flanagan was only beginning to understand the power of that word.

  Daley joined Flanagan, and two other sailors functioned as a second team, carrying the bodies to the computer, where Homewood laced them into their shrouds. As he performed this task, he talked to them in a low angry voice. "We'll get even, we'll get even with them yellow sons of bitches, wait and see. Just give us a chance," he said.

  He was talking to these dead men as if they had power. Was it possible? Flanagan believed that the dead survived in the next world, and if they had lived holy lives they could intercede with God for those they loved on earth. But Homewood was invoking a darker, harsher power, an older, gloomier faith.

  By this time Flanagan knew that the Jefferson City had survived a battle in the Solomon Islands in which she had taken an eight-inch-shell hit that had killed these men. Everyone seemed to feel she had failed to fight back. To Flanagan and the other new men, the carnage in main plot seemed reason enough. Did the Navy expect a wounded ship — or wounded sailors — to go on fighting indefinitely?

  As soon as a body was laced up, it was handed to the men on the ladder, who passed it up a human chain that ran through the Marine compartment to the quarterdeck. In ten minutes, the compartment was empty. The only sound as Flanagan and Homewood went up the ladder was the gush of the sea that had killed the fire controlmen and the hungry sucking sound of the salvage pump that drank it up as fast as it came in. But the odor of death remained thick and ugly in the damp air.

  "Jesus Christ," Homewood said, "they must have drowned by inches. Like in a fuckin' sub."

  On the quarterdeck, dawn was graying Long Beach Harbor, which was little more than an indentation on the coast, protected by breakwaters. The water around them was like a sheet of black glass. The land was a dark mass, with a speckle or two of light. In the distance, long low hills loomed against the pale sky. There were about a dozen other warships anchored between the Jefferson City and shore. A square-bowed landing craft, which Flanagan would soon learn to identify as a Higgins boat, churned toward them over the black water. As it pulled alongside the accommodation ladder, someone called, “Attention," and everyone snapped erect. Captain Kemble stepped out of the shadows and gazed at the bodies lying in three rows.

  "I think you men deserve an explanation of why we're removing these bodies at this time, in this way. We're trying to keep secret the details of the battle in which they died. It was a serious defeat for us, for ... the Navy. We don't want to reveal that to the enemy — for the time being. But these were still brave men. They died heroically, serving their country and their God."

  Bullshit, Flanagan thought, remembering the man who dangled from the overhead pipe. The captain was full of it. Defeat had been sickeningly visible down there in main plot. But words like country and God did not connect to those swollen fishy faces. Neither did apostrophes to bravery and heroism. Whatever had happened aboard the Jefferson City short-circuited those words. Captain Kemble was putting on an act, and it convinced no one. His noble sentiments sputtered meaninglessly in the dawn.

  I Relieve You Sir

  A totally unhappy marriage is as rare as a totally happy one.

  Captain Arthur McKay jotted this epigram in the small notebook he kept at his bedside. On his first summer cruise as a midshipman at Annapolis, he had wandered into a bookstore in Marseilles and picked up a copy of La Rochefoucauld's Maxims. Their pithy wisdom had delighted him. Ever since, he had used the form to condense his thinking and feeling about life as he encountered it.

  In the twin bed on the other side of the room, Rita slept face down, her hands clutched into fists, like a five-year-old. Her tousled hair, the squeezed mouth added to the little-girlish impression. He could see his wife in the big house at Patapsco, dreaming of commanding a battleship. She was a hard woman to love, but he managed it most of the time.

  Arthur McKay was a strong believer in learning from experience. He did not take many ideas on faith. In marriage, for instance, he had decided that a certain amount of unhappiness was not necessarily a disaster. Unhappiness stirred up the status quo. It made the children want to improve on their parents' performance. Growing up, McKay had been bombarded by his mother's exhortations to "get off this damn farm, out of this damn county, this flat boring state, and see the world.” That sort of propaganda, plus enlistment posters guaranteeing that opportunity to those who joined the U.S. Navy, had prompted him to take the examinations for Annapolis in 1912. He found them surprisingly easy, and their local congressman happened to be his mother's second cousin. That was how Arthur McKay showed up with his cardboard suitcase at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1913.

  His unorthodox opinions about love and marriage had had a lot to do with Arthur McKay's proposal to Rita Semmes as he took her home from her sister Lucy's wedding He knew Rita had been bitterly disappointed by her failure to attract Win Kemble. That knowledge stirred in Arthur McKay a wish to comfort her, a feeling he had often had when he saw his mother on the porch or at the window of their farmhouse, gazing wistfully across the brown wheat fields at the unreachable horizon. There was also Win Kemble's strenuous advice to make the offer. "That girl can do you a hell of a lot of good in the Navy, Mac."

  There was a clear implication, of course, that Win Kemble did not need that kind of help and Arthur McKay did. That was all right, because in 1922 it certainly looked that way. Everything about McKay still said hayseed, from the way he parted his hair straight down the middle to the awkward way he sat in company, both hands on his knees.

  So he had put his arm around Rita in the back of the taxi and said, "I'm not sure if you're in love with me, but I'm in love with you and I know you're in love with the Navy, so that's a pretty good start. What do you say we repeat that performance?"

  She had kissed him with wild, tearful enthusiasm. "I do love you," she said, admitting with the hesitation that the words were manufactured for the moment. "I'll be the best damn wife to you that the Navy's ever seen, Arthur."

  Most of the time, Rita was still trying to keep that promise.

  McKay got up and shaved. When he emerged from the bathroom, Rita was awake, sitting up in bed, her hair combed. She gave him a look straight out of her father's repertoire of glares. But she did not take the offensive. She had found out a long time ago that tantrums and harsh words had no impact on Arthur McKay.

  "Did you sleep well?" she asked.

  "No," he said.

  "I did."

  "Good. Sorry about not being in the mood last night."

  "That's all right. You know where I'd really like to do it."

  One of Rita's favorite thrills was making love aboard the ships on which he had served. It had not been difficult in the peacetime Navy, when wives were frequently invited aboard for parties. It was easy to slip away for a half hour. But McKay had never enjoyed it. There were no locks on the doors of junior officers' staterooms. Even when he was captain of the destroyer Stacy Wright and had a lock on his door, he had objected to the idea on some deep level of his self.

  He decided to try diplomacy. "I wish we could," he, said. "But the crew watches every move a new captain makes. It could lead to all sorts of smutty jokes."

  “Who cares what a bunch of
raunchy swabbies think?"

  I do, Arthur McKay thought. He wondered if Rita secretly liked the idea of 1,300 sailors imagining themselves in bed with her.

  No. That was too crude. It was all part of her passion to share his career, which she had done so much to shape, to be with him in heart and mind as he commanded this capital ship. He let silence be his final answer, and Rita accepted it.

  They breakfasted alone. They knew from previous visits to the Kemble household that Lucy never emerged from her room before ten. It was a habit she acquired from her mother. Rita, on the other hand, was like her father. Up and ready to go even if reveille was 5:30 A.M.

  Rita seized the morning's copy of the Los Angeles Times and gave him a rapid summary of the war news. The Germans were still devouring the Russians, but at a slower pace. MacArthur was still sitting on his hands in Australia. The situation on Guadalcanal and in the sea around the Solomon Islands remained critical. "If Guadalcanal goes down the tube, Ernie King will go with it," she said. "If the landings in North Africa fizzle, George Marshall will go too. They'll bring MacArthur home and make him commander-in-chief of everything in sight, including Roosevelt."

  "Too much grand strategy for me."

  "It pays to think ahead. MacArthur would favor people with Asiatic Fleet duty. He's big on the Oriental mind. You can bet Win is thinking ahead. He's praying for Guadalcanal to collapse. Getting rid of King is his only hope."

  "I'm sure he's got a few other hopes. Don't we all?"

  "I want a blow-by-blow of the ceremony."

  "Agreed. If you promise not to give Win a going-over tonight at dinner."

  "He'd give you one — in his hypocritical condescending way.”

  "Let's not start that again. Keep your mouth shut for Lucy's sake. She's not stupid. She suspects something's gone wrong."

  "Why not tell her the truth? She's forty-seven years old. She ought to find out a lot of truths about her hero."

  "Maybe. But I don't think you ought to tell her. In fact, I'm giving you an order not to."

  Rita's jaw jutted. She did not get many orders from her husband. But she had learned it was a mistake to disobey them. "You take half the fun out of life with your goddamn conscience," she said.

  The maid appeared in the doorway. "Your car is here, Captain."

  The Marine driver sat behind the wheel of a battered-looking 1936 Ford. It had to be the worst car in the motor pool. George Tomlinson, the admiral in command of the Terminal Island Naval Base, was not a devotee of Ernest J. King. Tomlinson had been plans deputy on the staff of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. His career was in shreds, along with Kimmel's.

  "Think this thing will make it to Terminal Island?"

  "Don't know, Captain," the Marine said.

  "How do you like shore duty?" McKay said.

  "Better than the fleet. But I'd rather fight Japs than the chippies on the Long Beach Pike."

  "That's the spirit."

  "How come the Navy left the Marines on the beach out there in Guadalcanal and just sailed away, Captain?"

  "Where'd you hear that?"

  "It's basic scuttlebutt all through the Corps, Captain."

  "It isn't true. I'm taking a ship out there in two weeks, if the yardbirds do their jobs on schedule. We're going to give it everything we've got."

  "Good to hear, Captain."

  At the Terminal Island headquarters building, McKay spent a half hour reading magazines before an ass-wiggling yeoman led him into Tomlinson's office. Still built like the All American guard he had been in 1908, the admiral mashed his hand and waved him to a seat. McKay had been a lieutenant under him aboard the heavy cruiser USS Pensacola in 1930. But Tomlinson did not even mention it; he was not the nostalgic type.

  "What the hell are you hotshots in COMINCH going to do to save your skins after Savo Island?" Tomlinson sneered.

  "I have no idea, Admiral."

  "Do you know what the fuck happened? Can you at least tell me that?"

  "We got our asses kicked."

  “Why did you put a fucking Limey in command? They haven't won a sea battle since Trafalgar, for Christ's sake."

  He was talking about Admiral Victor Alexander Charles Crutchley, commander of His Majesty's Royal Australian Squadron. He had issued the orders that resulted in the slaughter at Savo Island.

  "He did everything wrong that a fucking admiral can do, in one place at one time," Tomlinson said.

  "Hard to contest that one, Admiral."

  "I'm not supposed to know what happened. I'm only a shipyard foreman. But this is what I hear."

  Tomlinson whipped out a piece of paper and swiftly drew a round circle several inches from a wavy hump. "Here's Savo Island and Guadalcanal," he said, pointing to the circle and the hump. "Here's our cruisers." He drew two lines to the north of Savo Island and three more on the south. He scratched in a few more lines on the edge of the page. "Picket destroyers."

  Obviously, Admiral King's silence on the disaster at Savo Island had not prevented the news from traveling through the Navy at close to the speed of sound.

  "Crutchley divides his force in half instead of concentrating it. He doesn't give anybody a battle plan. Then he sails away and leaves the boy wonder Kemble in command."

  The admiral drew a line around the lead cruiser in the southern division.

  McKay winced at the term boy wonder. Win Kemble had made a lot of enemies by always being the first man in his class to be promoted.

  "He had no business commanding a cruiser, much less a fucking cruiser division at the age of forty-seven," Tomlinson said. "Personally I don't think he's fit to command a destroyer. A goddamn glory hog, like his grandfather."

  "He was my roommate at the Academy, Admiral."

  "You've got my deepest sympathy."

  The admiral glowered at his drawing. “So what happens? The Jap comes up from Rabaul. He hits the southern division first. He blows HMAS Canberra out of the water and comes around Savo and does the same thing to the Quincy, the Vincennes and the Astoria. Meanwhile, where the fuck is the Jefferson City? From what I hear, after taking a shell that flooded a couple of compartments, the boy wonder sailed west, away from the Jap battle force as fast as his fucking engines could take him. He never even broke radio silence to let the other three cruisers know the Japs were in range. That's why you're here with orders to relieve him, right?"

  Arthur McKay took a deep slow breath. Keep your temper, he told himself. They are all watching you to see how you are reacting to this situation. "That's not a bad description of the debacle, Admiral," McKay said. "But it leaves out one or, two things. Such as the fact that Kelly Turner, who was in overall command, didn't seem to know what the hell he was doing either. He approved Crutchley's dispositions. Then in the middle of the night he orders him and his ship to withdraw from the danger zone and steam twenty miles to confer with him on what they should do the next day. Turner seems to have made the fundamental boner we were warned against in our first week at the Naval War College — basing your actions on what you assume the enemy is going to do."

  A deep magenta crept up Admiral Tomlinson's thick neck. Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner had been his classmate at Annapolis and was a close friend. He was also Tomlinson's best hope of getting sea duty again.

  "McKay," he growled, "there's such a thing as being too smart for your own good."

  "Do you think you can get the Jefferson City ready in two weeks, Admiral? They need her out there in the Solomons mighty bad."

  "Two weeks? Two months is more like it. We've got to replace a lot of her fire control equipment, add four of those new forty-millimeter Bofors mounts and this new SC radar. Do you think we're fucking magicians?"

  "Admiral King said he wanted it done in two weeks. Shall I call him and tell him it's impossible?"

  "No!" snapped Tomlinson. "If he wants it in two weeks, he'll get it in two weeks. But it's going to bring everything else in the yar
d to a fucking dead stop."

  "I'll tell him that."

  "No you won't. I will, Captain McKay."

  Arthur McKay let the muzzle heat from that blast subside and asked, "Are you coming out to the Jefferson City for the change of command, Admiral?"

  "Yes. I don't get many chances to go aboard ships that aren't in a fucking dry dock these days."

  Admiral Tomlinson's five-passenger 1940 Cadillac beeped its way through swarms of workmen arriving for the 8 A.M. shift. In the drydocks, welding torches glowed around the hulls of a half dozen ships, one of them a carrier. "A couple of near misses at Midway played hell with the Enterprise's steering gear," the admiral said. "I still think we're betting too much on those floating eggshells. What we need is more battleships. If we'd had some at Midway, we could have ended the war then and there. Instead, Spruance had to run for his life after he knocked out their carriers."

  The admiral was a battleship sailor. He had bet his naval career on the pre-eminence of those floating gun platforms, capable of hurling 2,300-pound shells over twenty miles. He and his friends had spent the previous decade sneering at carriers as "the hooligan navy." Pearl Harbor had sunk his career along with the battleship's reign as monarch of the ocean. But Tomlinson could not bring himself to admit it. That was understandable. A man does not like to admit a mistake that big.

  As Tomlinson and McKay boarded the admiral's black-hulled barge, Tomlinson pointed to a Higgins boat tied up at the dock, its flat bottom slapping in the slight swell from a passing harbor tug. "Do you know what that is?"

  "No idea."

  "A fucking morgue. We took fifteen bodies out of the Jefferson City's main plot before dawn. Captain Kemble said he was afraid if they were taken out while the ship was in dry dock it would make the newspapers. Wouldn't that be terrible?"

  "He's just obeying orders, Admiral. Cominch wants a lid on Savo Island."

  Tomlinson grunted contemptuously. But he would keep his mouth shut. He was a Navy man.

  "What's the biggest ship you've commanded, McKay?"