Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  “I thought — I know this sounds stupid — but I thought it was a fairly harmless thing to do. I always thought of the Navy as fairly safe, compared to the Army. I even told myself I was doing you a favor. Your uncle was ruining you. You were never going to find a director who might make you act up to your potential, because no one respected you. I didn't blame you for it. This town would corrupt an angel.

  "Then, a week or two after you'd joined up, I got the news about Pa. That made me feel awful enough. But when I thought about you, I almost couldn't bear it. I still can't, in a way. That's why I'm telling you this. So you can throw me out of here and—"

  Montgomery West seized her arms and kissed her. "I've heard that's the best way to stop a woman from talking too much."

  She still refused to look at him. "No," she said. "It won't work. You'll remember what I just told you when you're out there dodging torpedoes."

  "Listen to me," he said, turning her face to him. "I thought the Navy was safe too. And I was so goddamn glad to get away from Uncle Mort, I would have paid you a fee if I knew you were in on the scheme. All that's irrelevant. I've spent the last nine months thinking about you four or five hours a night. I ... I love you, Ina."

  Amazement, not doubt, caused his hesitation. He had said those magical words in rehearsals and before cameras a thousand times. He had said them almost as often in back seats of cars in Connecticut and in boudoirs in Beverly Hills. This was the first time in Montgomery West's life that he meant them.

  After a kiss that lasted at least five minutes, she whispered, "Don't call me Ina. My real name's Gwen. Gwendolyn Pugh. Isn't that godawful?"

  Gwendolyn Pugh, daughter of a gunner's mate? She had not grown up in one of England's more stately mansions surrounded by "every imaginable luxury," as Uncle Mort put it in one of his press releases. To Montgomery West's delight, he did not give a damn.

  "Meet Joseph Lyman Shuck," he said. "My mother's Jewish."

  "Mine's Irish."

  They started kissing again. After a while they went upstairs and spent most of the next two days there.

  Dry-Dock Sailors

  "Wakey wakey, rise and shine; you've had yours and I've had mine.

  Show a leg, show a leg; let's go, let's go.

  The cook's in the galley, the fire's below.

  Show a leg, show a leg; let's go, let's go."

  The metallic notes of the reveille' bugle had barely stopped hurtling through the ship when Boatswain's Mate First Class Ernest Homewood began bellowing this refrain in a basso that shook the racks of F Division's compartment. Frank Flanagan opened one eye and discovered he could not see much out of it. He let his tongue curl cautiously over his upper lip and found that it was swollen to twice its ordinary size.

  "Hey, how's the Bronx Bomber?" Jack Peterson asked from his middle rack across the aisle. He lit a cigarette and smiled up at Flanagan. "You're okay, kid. Not many guys would have waded into those bastards to help a shipmate."

  "I thought that was the general idea,” Flanagan said.

  "Like a lot of general ideas, it only gets lip service if the odds don't look good."

  Flanagan dropped to the deck and seized his toilet kit and towel from his locker. Boats Homewood grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. "I hope the other guys look a lot worse," he said.

  "You ought to know. You inflicted most of the damage on them," Flanagan said.

  "I don't remember a goddamn thing. I was drunk."

  "You can't believe the message they've put out on us," Jack Peterson said. "Half the numbers in my little black book wouldn't even talk to me because I'm on the Jefferson City. I wound up gettin' loaded in Shanghai Red's. On the way back to the Navy yard I see some of my old shipmates from the California. They're on that tin can the Reuben Davis. They give me that yellow stripe stuff and I went after them. It was three against one and they were kickin' the shit out of me until Flanagan here waded in.”

  "It was easy," Flanagan said. "I was the only sober guy in sight."

  Boats Homewood beamed at him. "I figured someone with an Irish name could fight as good as he thinks."

  Unfortunately Flanagan and Peterson had gotten nailed by the Shore Patrol and denounced by a somewhat frantic officer of the deck, who told them they were the seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth members of the crew to be returned to the ship under arrest that night.

  "What happens now?" Flanagan asked Jack Peterson as they stood in the chow line.

  "You got put on report. That means Captain's Mast if you're a first offender. I'm liable to get a summary court-martial. That's what old God and Country Kemble told me the last time I was up. I don't imagine his pal McKay will be any different."

  Boats Homewood disagreed. "The scuttlebutt on McKay is pretty good. I talked to a couple of guys who was with him on the Augusta. They said not to underestimate him — or try to pull any clever shit on him. He's a lot smarter than he looks or acts."

  Flanagan was fascinated by the way everyone in the Old Navy — the one that existed before the world crisis began expanding the ranks at exponential rates — seemed to know everyone else, from admirals to enlisted men.

  "Why did you join the Navy, Boats?" he asked Homewood.

  "You wouldn't ask that question if you saw the house I grew up in. It was one room and we had twelve people sleepin' in it. That was luxury for a sharecropper in Alabama in 1913. The Navy was three square meals a day, son. That's why I joined."

  "How about you?" he asked Peterson.

  "I grew up in a Navy town — Bremerton, right across the sound from Seattle. My father was a Navy man, so my mother told me. I never saw him. I had a stepfather who used to call me the little bastard when he came home drunk. One day he called me that, but I wasn't little any more. I decked him and headed for the nearest recruitin' station."

  After breakfast, they mustered on deck in the California sunshine. The formations were sloppy and there was a lot of chatter in the ranks. They were all feeling strange, with the ship in the middle of a Terminal Island dry dock. Around them civilian workers were swarming over the Jefferson City. Thick electric cables snaked in all directions. The acrid smell of acetylene torches drifted in the humid air. "Goddamn yard birds," Homewood groused. "It'll take us two weeks to clean up this ship."

  Captain McKay was nowhere to be seen. Instead they get a lecture from him via the executive officer. "The captain has directed me to say that he is extremely perturbed by the number of men in the crew who are being returned to the ship by the Shore Patrol. If the numbers continue to be as large as they were last night, all liberty will be canceled. Do I make myself clear? All liberty will be canceled."

  "Not for Daredevil Dan Parker," Peterson said. "I hear he's got Monty West to line up his Aunt Mae for him."

  "Silence in the ranks," barked Ensign Herman Kruger.

  "Up yours, Herman," muttered Peterson.

  Jack Peterson — and Boats Homewood — despised Kruger for becoming an officer. They considered his switch on a par with treason. For them, there was a gulf between officers and the enlisted ranks that a man could only cross at the risk of losing his soul. Kruger, who had a scowl on his face eighty percent of the time, seemed more in danger of losing his mind. He flew into tantrums over a man wearing his hat at the wrong angle and similar trifles.

  Dismissed, Flanagan followed Jack Peterson up the ladders to their duty station, main forward, high in the ship's superstructure. In this compartment, which resembled the conning tower of a submarine, were auxiliary computers and radar screens to back up the machines in main plot. On the deck outside was the main battery gun director, a huge tin can crammed with more computers and a telescopic range finder. Jack Peterson operated the range finder, one of the most important jobs in the division.

  The other three sailors assigned to main forward straggled in. First to arrive was Leo Daley, who gave Flanagan a look of shocked reproach for flirting with Protestanism. Next came Jim Booth, a small silent Midwesterner of about twenty-f
ive, with the face of a disappointed weasel. Booth was known as the Radical. When the war began, he had joined the Navy to start a revolution.

  According to him, the Russian Revolution had started in the Russian Navy aboard the cruiser Potemkin. The Germans had had a revolution in 1919 that started in their Navy. Booth was convinced that when average Americans saw the way the capitalist officers lived in the Navy, they were certain to revolt when the war ended. He wanted to be on hand to lead the uprising aboard the Jefferson City.

  So far, the Radical had made very few converts. Peterson laughed at him. Homewood had threatened to break him into several pieces. Daley had written to Father Coughlin, the famed radio priest and foe of Communism, hoping he would tell his friend J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, about Booth.

  Last to arrive was Louis "the Mutt" Camutti, a huge incredibly ugly Philadelphian who claimed his father ran the best Italian restaurant in the country. Camutti had a massive head, shaped remarkably like Frankenstein's monster's, a mouth full of yellow teeth and a face pockmarked by a childhood bout with smallpox. The Mutt did not let these defects prevent him from being one of the Navy's great lovers. He had an infallible technique, which he demonstrated to Flanagan on his first day in main forward. He pulled up his undershirt and revealed a chest that was a mass of scars. "I got that manning a twenty-millimeter aboard the Arizona at Pearl," he said. "I give a chick one look and it's all over. I got her in bed within the next five minutes."

  Impressed, Flanagan had mentioned Camutti's heroism to Peterson. "That fuckin' eightball was washin' dishes in his old man's restaurant last December seventh," Peterson said. "He's only been in the Navy six months longer than you."

  "Where'd he get the scars?"

  "I think his father tried to drown him in scalding dishwater when he saw how ugly he was."

  While Flanagan swabbed the eight-by-ten compartment, Camutti regaled them with details of his latest conquest. As usual, she was a blonde, a waitress at the Brown Derby in Hollywood, where one of his father's cousins was a chef. "Gloria, I said. In two weeks, I'm gonna be sailing back into hell. That's what it is out there in the Solomons. Hell, Gloria. Can you give me something to take with me? The scars keep me awake at night, Gloria. I want to have something, someone, to think about."

  "If you're telling even ten percent of the truth, Camutti," Leo Daley said, "you should be locked up as a menace to public morals."

  "Say a rosary for me," Camutti chortled.

  Flanagan dry-mopped the compartment and retreated outside, where Peterson was checking out the director with one of the shipyard engineers. "Camutti scored again," he said.

  "I'll believe that when this fuckin' director sprouts wings and can take off to correct the ranges from five thousand feet," Peterson said. "What did you do on liberty, kid?"

  "Not much."

  "You must have met Teresa. That's how you wound up in that church."

  "Do you know her?"

  Peterson grinned. "All the sailors know Teresa. She's quite a girl. You can't push it with her. You've got to let her make the first move."

  Flanagan was baffled by this remark. How did you make a move with a girl who sang "Every Day With Jesus"?

  Jack Peterson was in a nostalgic mood. "It took me six months to get laid after I joined up. I grew up in a Baptist atmosphere. Every six months my mother found Jesus and swore off the booze. In the Old Navy, you couldn't stay cherry and get any respect. I went to a whorehouse in Frisco. I thought it was strictly from hunger. It's all over in ten seconds and you're out five bucks. I realized you got to find your own women. Sailors' women. I've found a few. One of them's comin' down from Seattle. The next liberty, you call Teresa for a date and we'll hit the beach together."

  Flanagan almost told him to forget it. He could not imagine him and Teresa hanging around with Jack and his sailor's woman. How could someone who grew up next door to the Navy Yard in Bremerton understand New York Irish Catholicism's fanatic insistence on sexual purity? Not that Flanagan was indifferent to women. He thought about them constantly. He could not go through the cheesecake sections of Life or Look without getting an erection. But yielding to the desire was unthinkable.

  "Do you like women, kid?" Peterson said.

  Flanagan thought that was a peculiar question. "Sure," he said. His two sisters were brats, but he liked them. He liked his mother when she wasn't driving him crazy with silly worries and demands to know all about every move he made.

  "I mean really like them. Most sailors don't. Half the guys in the Old Navy were running away from some dame — or from all dames. Not that you can blame them. Most women specialize in drivin' guys nuts. You got to take that into account. You got to understand that most of them get an even shittier deal than sailors."

  Flanagan did not know that most women got a shitty deal. His father devoted most of his off-duty hours to trying to keep his wife happy. Kitty Flanagan always wanted some part of the house painted or repapered. There was always a new coat or a new hat or a new car she wanted to buy. Flanagan suddenly remembered the last thing his father said as they drove downtown to the recruiting station. "If you get mixed up with a woman, just remember one thing. Don't get married. You marry someone, that's the ball game."

  At breakfast the following day, Jack Peterson reported that his Seattle girlfriend had arrived. At 1300 hours, they hit the quarterdeck in dress whites, shoes spitshined, hats at regulation two inches above the eyebrow. Ensign Kruger was the officer of the deck. "If you get arrested again, Peterson, I swear to Christ I'll take that rate away from you. You'll be a goddamn second class seaman."

  "Message received, Herman," Flanagan said.

  "What did you call me?"

  "Message received, sir."

  The minute they stepped off the ship, Peterson shoved his hat to the back of his head and thumbed his nose in Kruger's direction. "He and I were fire controlmen aboard the California," he said. "He was a no-good Prussian prick then too."

  Outside the Terminal Island gate, a woman in tan slacks and a white blouse waved to Jack Peterson. Her face was narrow, with intense green eyes, a haughty, almost pointed nose. Her dark hair was shoulder length, parted to the left and held in place by a silver barrette. She was tall and slender, with no more than an average figure. But there was something unusual about the way she stood — very straight, her head up, her shoulders almost braced. She looked sure of herself and surprisingly intelligent. Flanagan had expected a languid, luscious. Hedy Lamarr type with a brain the size of a pea. Or a bubbly ingenue.

  Jack strolled toward her with his best sailor's swagger. She did not wait for him to kiss her. She threw her arms around him and kissed him boldly, firmly on the mouth. It lasted a full minute, then Jack held her at arm's length. "Jesus, you look like Christmas and my birthday rolled into one," he said.

  He waved Flanagan over and introduced him. "Flan, this is Martha. I think her last name's Johnson. You got a friend for my buddy if he can't get a girl? He's new on this beach. But he's got one possible to call."

  "Let's call her instead of just talking about it. Tell her we can pick her up wherever she's hanging out."

  Peterson stopped, astonished. "Where the hell'd you get a car?"

  "It's my father's."

  "You're speakin' to him again? Where'd you get the gas?"

  "The black market. Are you going to report me to the FBI?"

  "You bet I am. Don't you know there's a war on? How do you think our brave boys in the fleet are gonna win the fight against the yellow peril if they don't have enough fuel?"

  "The only kind of fuel you lugs care about doesn't run engines."

  "Flanagan's old man's a cop. He'll turn us in for sure."

  "My father's an LAPD," Martha said. "I moved to Seattle to get away from him. Are New York cops ballbreakers too?"

  "More or less," Flanagan said, shocked at her language.

  They headed down the street to a telephone booth. Flanagan called the Advent Church in San Pedro and got Te
resa, who said she would be delighted to go out with him and his friend Peterson. He did not mention that Jack was the sailor who demolished her father's window. They walked another block to a blue 1938 or '39 Chevrolet, with no treads on the running boards and big rust spots on the doors and fenders. "Are you sure this thing hasn't been condemned for scrap?" Jack Peterson asked.

  "It runs," Martha Johnson said, getting behind the wheel. She gestured Frank Flanagan into the back seat and pulled away from the curb in a racing start that inspired a lot of beeping from a Cadillac that almost ran into them. "Good Christ, I think that's the admiral," Jack Peterson said.

  "What are my chances of getting a job in his shipyard?" Martha said.

  "Zero if you drive like that. Anyway, we're puffin' out in two weeks. It won't be worth it, babe."

  "Two weeks?" Martha glared at Jack, her face full of pain. "Shit," she said, and looked back at the road just in time to stop for a red light. "You told me it would be two months."

  "That's what I figured from the damage they had to repair. But the yardbirds're workin' triple overtime. They're crawlin' all over us like a goddamn ant colony."

  Martha sighed and accepted the bad news. "I heard Bernie Mapes got killed at Pearl," she said.

  Peterson nodded. "He tried to get a wounded buddy down from a twenty-millimeter mount, and a strafes riddled him with a burst."

  "I liked Bernie a lot," Martha said. Her voice darkened. Flanagan sensed a meaning in "a lot" that went beyond admiration. Jack Peterson said nothing for a moment. Was he glad Bernie Mapes was dead?

  "We lost a lot of friends at Pearl," he said. "And a lot more at Savo Island."

  "What's Savo. Island?" Martha asked.

  Peterson told her in his most vivid Navy language what had happened at Savo Island. "Joe Hanrahan went down with the Astoria. Bill Boyd on the Quincy. What it's done to us is almost as bad. We're goddamn pariahs. The ship that ran away," he said.

  "How come Savo hasn't been in the newspapers?" Martha asked.