Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  Harold loved the atmosphere. It was so exotic. The miles of white piping, the brooding bulk of the boilers, the incredible heat. It was made to order for sweaty sailor love. He gazed at a huge black man, whom Roth said was a watertender, which meant nothing to Semple. He wondered how he could get him down here alone some night. He was sure he could teach him to be tender to something more important than water. The black man did not seem to like him very much. "Take your buddy over to the engine room and then let's get to work on this motherfuckin' boiler," he said.

  In the engine room, there was another ingredient. Sound. The roar of the turbines was like a perpetual storm, a terrific churning full of power and terror. Roth explained how the turbines sent the power into the reduction gears, which transferred it to the propeller shafts. He showed him the huge shafts that drove them through the sea. It was tremendously exciting to Harold. The sight, the thought of those enormous revolving rods aroused him all over again.

  "What the hell's goin' on?"

  Roth introduced him to Chief Machinist's Mate Calvin Clark.

  He was a wide burly man with a soiled face. Not dirty, but spiritually soiled. Harold had grown very discerning about such things.

  It occurred to him that Clark might be dangerous. But that only made him more interesting. Maybe Harold also welcomed the danger because he knew he was going to disappoint Edna and he deserved some sort of punishment.

  "You wanta switch to the black gang?" Chief Clark asked with a grunting laugh. Nobody ever switched to the black gang. It was like asking to be transferred from a local jail to Alcatraz.

  "Could I work in here?" Harold said. "I don't think the noise would bother me. I'm fascinated by those propeller shafts. I never knew they were so big."

  "Now I know he's nuts," Roth said cheerfully.

  "Come see me in my cabin," Clark said. "We'll talk it over."

  Captain Jekyll Meet Captain Hyde

  It was a South Pacific sunset to remember. Thick banks of clouds in the south and west were tinted red and gold and purple as twilight gathered on the almost glassy sea, ninety miles south of Guadalcanal. In the Jefferson City's Combat Information Center, just below the bridge, Lieutenant Montgomery West was not in a mood to admire the spectacle. All afternoon he had been getting reports from his radar operator and from lookouts that there were unidentified planes snooping along the horizon. Sightings of hostile submarines added to his tensions. As CIC officer he was supposed to evaluate this information and pass it along to the Captain.

  These days he was never sure whether he was going to get a thank you or a curt grunt from Arthur McKay. Something strange had happened to him in the week West had spent away from the ship. Gone were the kindness, the wry sense of humor, the inner serenity he had admired. The captain seemed aloof, arbitrary. No one knew what he was going to do next. The wardroom swirled with rumors and theories to explain his change of style. No one could explain why the captain kept Daniel Boone Parker around if all he planned to do was torment him. That seemed to everyone an unnecessary exercise in sadism. A lot of people, especially among the reservists, were starting to feel sorry for the exec.

  "I'm getting eight, nine, ten bogeys out there," insisted his radarman, Whizzer Wylie. When he wasn't spotting bogeys, Wylie jived. He hummed nonsense swing tunes like "Hut Sut Rawson on the Rilla Rah" and executed lindy steps while he sat there. He personified the word jitterbug.

  "They could be our Combat Air Patrol withdrawing for the night. Check with the radio boys," West said.

  The talker contacted Radio Central. Affirmative. The Combat Air Patrol was withdrawing to Guadalcanal as twilight came down. But no one had a clue where they were. The admiral had ordered strict radio silence. The blips on the radar screen might be the CAP — or they might be Japanese snoopers.

  "They're not going anywhere," the radarman said. "They're just hanging out there. I think we ought to go to General Quarters."

  "Wylie, how many times do I have to remind you that you're not the captain of this goddamn ship?"

  "Sorry, sir," Wylie said, blinking through his thick glasses. He was only nineteen, but he thought that he knew more about radar than anyone in the Navy.

  West telephoned the captain, who was in his sea cabin. He told Arthur McKay about the unidentified planes lurking behind the clouds. "Maybe we should go to General Quarters, Captain."

  "We'll be going to sunset GQ in fifteen minutes. Just keep your eye on them," McKay snapped.

  Ho-hum. No doubt aboard the other five cruisers in Task Force 18, other conscientious CIC officers had just been told that they were idiots by their captains. At first, West had been delighted by his new job. It had a lot more responsibility than he had had in main plot, where he was mostly a nursemaid to the Mark VII computer. He had looked forward to working closely with the captain. Now he was beginning to wish he was back in plot, with nothing to worry about but controlling his claustrophobia and getting the ranges straight.

  His basic loyalty to Arthur McKay remained unimpaired. How could he be disloyal to a man who had given him five days of rapture with Ina Severn in Sydney? His mind drifted to one of those afternoons. They had gone to Bondi Beach, just across the harbor. Gwen was wearing a two-piece bathing Suit

  "Hey, Lieutenant. What the hell's going on?" asked the lookout on the compartment's port wing.

  A plane had emerged from the clouds and was flying parallel to the task force about a mile away. Through his binoculars, West could see black objects tumbling from its belly into the water. The lookout on the starboard wing summoned him to watch a similar performance on that side of the formation. The black objects turned out to be flares. Suddenly the task force was steaming between two rows of burning lights, like a parade of trucks along a brilliantly lighted highway.

  "The bridge wants to know what you make of those planes and flares, sir," the talker said.

  Lieutenant MacComber was the officer of the deck. Like other OOD's, he found the GIG a wonderful way to cover his ass. If CIC said all was well, and it all turned out to be unwell, it was not the OOD's fault.

  "Tell him to notify the captain," West said. Let MacComber get his head snapped off this time.

  Ten seconds later, the General Quarters bugle blasted through the ship. "Air raid, air raid," boomed the PA system. "All hands man your battle stations."

  "Radar, where are the planes? What are you getting?" West shouted.

  "They're all over the place," the talker gasped.

  "Lookouts report planes on every goddam bearing on the chart."

  "They must have come in under our radar," Wylie cried, glaring at his screen as if it were a woman who had two-timed him.

  West dashed out on the port wing again. The talker was right. Japanese torpedo planes, big two-engined Bettys, were roaring through those burning flares on both sides of the task force.

  "Combat," barked Captain McKay, "don't you have even a rudimentary grasp of Japanese night-fighting tactics? Don't you remember they used flares at Savo Island?"

  "Engine room, stand by to give us flank speed," cried Daniel Boone Parker, as the five-inch guns boomed and the forty- and twenty-millimeters hammered away at the weaving torpedo planes.

  "Belay that order," snarled Captain McKay. "Don't you remember what I told you about the condition of number one and two boilers, Commander? We will only go to flank speed when I give permission."

  "Aye, aye, Captain," Parker said.

  It would only take a few more thrusts of the knife, perhaps one or two more air attacks or a night battle to finish this man, McKay told himself. Then he could return to being the kind of captain the Jefferson City deserved. It was almost terrifying, the effect of what he was doing on the men — and on himself. He was becoming a martinet who snapped and snarled at everyone.

  McKay found himself wishing Parker was more defiant. He would have enjoyed a struggle with the truculent man he had met when he came aboard the Jefferson City. That would have been a contest of strength against strengt
h. But this man already knew he was beaten. He was merely waiting for the coup de grace. It made tormenting him repulsive, almost reprehensible.

  Over the gunnery circuit he heard Lieutenant Robert Mullenoe tell Lieutenant Commander Moss, "We can't see a goddamn thing up here against those flares. I'm going down on deck to find some targets."

  "You will do no such thing," Moss said.

  "You have my permission, Mullenoe. Get moving," McKay said.

  "We're going to take one!" shouted Parker. "Right full rudder!"

  A burning Betty was coming straight at them, its torpedo still glistening beneath its big belly. If they did not turn, it was going to crash into the bridge. But a hard right turn would give the dying pilot six hundred feet of ship to aim at. It only proved that Parker would invariably choose any kind of dishonor to save his despicable carcass.

  "Left rudder twenty degrees, you fool," McKay said. "Mullenoe, get that planer.”

  A twenty-degree turn gave the five-inch and forty-millimeter guns on the starboard side a chance to fire at the flaming death machine. For a split second the two Japanese pilots were visible in the cockpit, their faces twisted into grimaces of pain or horror or both as the flames swirled around them. Then two five-inch shells smashed them and the plane to pieces. Burning fragments drifted past them on the water.

  "Good shooting, Mullenoe," McKay said.

  "Thank you, Captain."

  "Thank God we have someone on this ship with some guts and brains."

  "Dive bombers coming down, Captain," said the new bridge telephone talker, a solemn-faced kid from Tennessee.

  The son of a bitch, Frank Flanagan thought as fragments of the exploding Betty flew around him and the captain's sneering remark came over the gunnery circuit. What does he know about guts and brains? What good does either one of them do you in this floating bedlam?

  As usual, the five-inch guns were tearing his head apart, caving in his chest. A tremendous crash and a shrapnel-filled geyser to starboard signaled the arrival of dive bombers whose aim was likely to get better at any moment. Exhausted from sixteen hours a day in the broiling galley and sleepless nights in F Division's airless compartment, Flanagan could barely focus his eyes on a target.

  All the courage, the caring, the love he had accumulated from Annie Flood in Sydney was disappearing. The good feelings were being obliterated by the heat, his rage against Kruger, and now the old familiar fear of extinction. He found himself wondering why he had not jumped ship in Sydney. Ten or fifteen members of the crew reportedly had vanished.

  The smart ones. Even if they got caught and died before a firing squad, it was better than dancing in flaming gasoline or being shredded by shards of a thousand-pound bomb.

  "Flan, Flan. Get that son of a bitch."

  It was Jack Peterson, pointing to another Betty streaking past them in a run on the Chicago, off their port beam. Where did Jack get that unquenchable love of combat? He was born to fight. He and Homewood. His Navy big brother and his Navy father. Fuck them both. He hated the Navy. He hated Kruger. Maybe he even hated the captain.

  But he locked the Betty in the center of his sight and pressed the trigger. The four Bofors barrels under his control spat shells. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see the deck apes on the mount cramming packs of shells into the loaders. Work your brainless arms off! He even hated them, stupid automatons, idiotic extensions of the guns.

  He had the yellow son of a bitch. His shells ravaged the Betty's guts. But the Japanese pilot was a brave bastard. He kept his plane on course even while Flanagan was hammering him to pieces. The torpedo splashed and the Betty exploded simultaneously.

  Jack vaulted over the rail of the main forward deck and landed beside Flanagan. He pounded him on the back. "Great shootin'! That's the best you've done yet, kid."

  Maybe it did not matter what you thought or felt. Maybe he was just an extension of the guns too. A finger on a trigger, a pair of eyes in a director.

  A sickening thunk came across the water, beneath the crash of the five-inch guns and the boom of the thousand-pound bombs. They looked to port and saw the, torpedo had hit the Chicago amidships. A moment later another torpedo buried its murderous nose in Chicago's hull a hundred feet aft.

  "Jesus," Flanagan said. It always hurt to see another ship get it.

  "Peterson! What the hell are you doing down there? That's not your GQ station."

  It was Herman Kruger. He had come out of main forward. He was practically foaming at the mouth.

  "Somebody told me Flanagan'd been wounded. I came down to see if he needed a tourniquet or maybe a transfusion," Peterson drawled, grinning up at their beloved division officer. "The main battery ain't shootin' at nothin'. You know that betterin’ me."

  The battle was still raging all around them in the last of the twilight. Dive bombers corkscrewed down on them, bombs exploded to port and starboard. Flanagan could not believe Kruger was pursuing him even here, on the brink of extinction. Before he got shredded or drowned, he would tell this Nazi bastard what he thought of him.

  "Did you shoot down any of these planes, you fucking excuse for a human being? Go back in there and suck Moss's ass and mind your own fucking business. We're getting killed out here while you're inside that armored fucking tower, you fucking Nazi freak."

  "You're on report for insubordination," Kruger screamed.

  "Make it mutiny," Flanagan shouted. "I wish I could turn these fucking guns around and blow you off that platform."

  Kruger wheeled and vanished into main forward. "Jesus Christ, are you out of your mind?" Jack Peterson said. "That's brig time, kid."

  "I don't give a goddamn. We're all going to get killed anyway.”

  "Not if I can help it," Jack said. He pushed Flanagan aside and started blasting at a dive bomber that was making a strafing run on the crippled Chicago.

  Kruger emerged on the platform with Lieutenant Commander Moss. "Flanagan, you're under arrest," Moss shouted. "Report to the master at arms as soon as we secure from General Quarters. Peterson, get back to your battle station."

  The dive bomber exploded into a fireball that scattered flame across a quarter mile of sea. "Aye, aye, sir," Jack said.

  It was almost dawn. Captain McKay was in his cabin writing a letter to his wife.

  The Jefferson City had spent most of the night trying to tow the crippled Chicago. It had been a harrowing twelve hours. Snoopers droned overhead, submarines prowled the depths. The Japs knew they had hit a big ship and they wanted to make sure she went down.

  Now the admiral had decided to cut his losses, as admirals were wont to do. He had left the Chicago with a Navy tug and a screen of destroyers and headed south with the rest of the task force, out of range of the Japs' land-based planes. Everyone knew the Japs would be back at sunrise and the Chicago's chances were not good. She had taken a horrible beating already. Both engine rooms flooded, almost everyone in the black gang drowned.

  Captain McKay had had no sleep for twenty-two hours. Yet he felt incredibly fresh.

  Dear Wife:

  I've decided not to take your advice. I have to do something to prevent a terrible injustice from being perpetrated. Do you really want a completely spineless slob for a husband, albeit wearing admiral's stripes? Are we so completely exteriorized? I don't believe you are. I know I am not. There are values that transcend promotion — maybe even transcend winning this idiotic war.

  "Captain," his Marine orderly said, "Commander Parker would like to see you."

  "Let him in."

  Parker trudged into the cabin. His belly bulged, his shoulders slumped. His eyes darted back and forth. "Can I sit down, Captain?"

  "You may."

  He sat on the edge of the chair. "Captain, I want to get off this ship. I'll make a deal. I've got five kids. I just want a deal that will let me hang on until I get in my thirty years. You can say anything you want about me in my fitness report. I'll tell you everything that's wrong with the ship. Where the gamblers, the l
oan sharks are. The way Tompkins and the chief steward have cooked the books. The deal is, you won't mention any of that in the fitness report. You can say I'm a lousy leader, I was an unsatisfactory exec, but leave out the court-martial stuff. You can clean up the ship after I'm gone. What do you say?"

  "You know that's not what I want, Parker."

  "What do you want?"

  "I want you to confess what you did on August ninth, 1942. want you to admit in writing that you betrayed Captain Kemble and this ship at Savo Island."

  A frantic shake of the head. As if he had reached out and punched Parker in the face. "No. I didn't. That's a bum rap, Captain. I swear it is. I knew Kemble would tell you that. But I didn't do it."

  "Then who did?"

  "Kemble. He was on the bridge. He made the decision. So help me God, Captain. I was out of it. I can't handle myself under fire. I don't know why. I want to, but I can't. My nerves can't take it."

  "You're a fucking coward and you conned this ship away from the enemy that night. Admit it!"

  "I didn't. Jesus, Captain, you've got to believe me. That's a general court-martial. That's the kind of disgrace I don't want my kids to have on their heads for the rest of their lives. I'm trying to get out of this with a few shreds of... of honor."

  Parker began to sob. Arthur McKay sat there watching him, feeling not a shred, not a quiver of pity. Cold, he was utterly cold, the way Win Kemble had always maintained an officer should command men. With the cold clear vision of a superior being.

  "You're a talented actor, Commander. But until you admit the truth, you're going to stay on this ship. You're going to be on that bridge every time we go to General Quarters."

  As Frank Flanagan slung hash on the trays, he discovered he was a celebrity. Everyone on the ship had apparently heard about him threatening to blow Lieutenant Kruger away with his forty-millimeter guns. A lot of people congratulated him. They told him they wished they had his nerve. By the end of the meal, Flanagan was almost ebullient.