Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  Back in F Division's compartment, Boats Homewood and Jack Peterson sent his bravado crashing to the deck. "You are in deep shit," Homewood said.

  Flanagan struggled to regain his defiance. "I don't give a damn," he said. He told himself he meant it. He remembered how upset he had been when he went to Captain's Mast the day after they left California. How he had worried about what his father would think if he was convicted. Now he did not give a damn what his father thought. His father was ten thousand miles away. Frank Flanagan was a different person now. A sailor.

  He was dismayed to discover Jack Peterson agreed with Homewood. Jack also took it very seriously. "It's my fault. I should have stayed in my fuckin' director," he said.

  "That's exactly right," Homewood said. "You're going to have to risk your fuckin' rating to tell that to the captain."

  "Don't worry. I'll do it. I'll tell him exactly what I think of that bastard Kruger."

  "No you won't," Homewood said. "When you get a shipmate in this kind of trouble, you got to eat shit, Jack."

  The boatswain's mate glowered at Flanagan. "We can get the chaplain lined up. And Lieutenant West and maybe Lieutenant Mullenoe. They'll say a good word for you. But you're still in deep shit. You threatened to kill an officer. That's mutiny. In the mood the captain's in, it'll be a miracle if you beat brig time."

  "I can take it,” Flanagan said.

  "It ain't that bad," Jack Peterson said.

  "Shut up!" Homewood said, jamming his index finger into Jack's chest. "You ain't here to give this kid advice. You ain't in a position to give anyone advice about anything. You've fucked up your own career so bad I get drunk every time I think about it.”

  He returned to lecturing Flanagan. "Brig time goes on your record. It follows you everywhere. What if you decide maybe the Navy ain't a bad deal and you want to go to Annapolis? You won't get there with brig time in your file unless you win the fuckin' Navy Cross or the Medal of Honor.”

  "If I ever go to Annapolis it'll be to blow up the fucking place," Flanagan said.

  "Hey, wait a minute, you hot headed mick asshole. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Annapolis puts out good men. I wouldn't be in this Navy if I didn't believe that. Kruger ain't Annapolis. He's a fuckin' eightball who couldn't get to be an officer in a million years if we wasn't fightin' a war. But he's got the stripes and you got to treat him as if he's the real thing. That's the way the system works. You can't run a ship on the idea that an eighteen-year-old wise guy can decide who he's gonna respect and obey and who he isn't. When you get down to the bottom of it, you got to buy the system, even when it don't work perfect. Otherwise we're all in deep shit."

  What the hell was happening? There were tears in Homewood's eyes. Flanagan suddenly remembered an argument he had had with his father when he was sixteen. He had sided with his mother, who had remarked in her artless irritating way that most cops were crooks. His father had choked up the same way and roared that they did not know what they were talking about.

  Flanagan looked at Jack and saw mockery, cynicism in his blue eyes. Jack did not believe a word of what Homewood was saying. Jack did not believe in much of anything. He refused to take anything seriously except getting laid. But Jack did not have the nerve to talk back to Homewood. Was it because he was afraid of getting broken in half? Or was it because Homewood had been trying for ten years to be his father?

  And Flanagan's father? His Navy father?

  "I'm sorry, Boats. I'm sorry I messed up."

  Homewood took a deep breath, part exasperation, part relief.

  "We'll get you off. We'll talk up them Jap planes you bozos blew away. That'll go down good with the old man. He'll give you a lot worse hell than I just did, but we'll get you off."

  "Seaman Flanagan," Captain McKay said. "I find you guilty of one of the most serious offenses a man, can commit aboard a U.S. Navy ship. You defied a commissioned officer and threatened him with bodily harm. You are hereby reduced to seaman second class and sentenced to ten days in the brig on bread and water, sentence to be executed immediately."

  Montgomery West could not believe his ears or his eyes. The dismay on Boats Homewood's face was painful to behold.

  Even Robert Mullenoe looked shocked. Homewood, West and Mullenoe had testified that Flanagan, except for this one outburst, was a good sailor, a kid who had proved his courage — and incidentally his skill — on the forty-millimeter guns. Chaplain Bushnell, who looked even more upset than Homewood, told how Flanagan has rescued him from the blazing sick bay after they had been torpedoed in Ironbottom Sound.

  None of this had made the slightest impression on the captain. He had seemed bored by their recital of Flanagan's virtues. He had listened far more attentively to Lieutenant Kruger's absurd claim that Flanagan had threatened to kill him by swiveling his mount around and firing on main forward. Lieutenant Commander Moss, proving himself once more an asshole of unique proportions, had insisted this was a serious threat to his life and limbs too.

  As the captain went on about the need for discipline and respect for authority aboard the Jefferson City, Montgomery West suddenly felt a shock of recognition. Those voice tones, rising to the top of the captain's throat, the way he was clipping off the ends of his sentences. It did not even sound like Arthur McKay's slow, deliberate style of speech. Yet it was familiar. Why?

  Captain Arthur McKay was turning into Captain Winfield Scott Schley Kemble.

  Night Work

  "Coco will light his pipe."

  There was not the glimmer of a star, not a trace of light on the silent waters of Kula Gulf. In the inky blackness, the voice of Admiral A. Stanton Merrill came over the TBS like a message from outer space.

  "What the hell does that mean?" quavered Commander Daniel Boone Parker.

  "Your head grows more sievelike by the hour, Mr. Parker," Captain McKay said. "It means we will fire star shells the moment we get to the mouth of Blackett Strait."

  "Are we close?"

  "We'll be there in five minutes if we don't rip out our bottom on a reef that isn't on the charts," said Navigator Marse Lee.

  Blackett Strait was a body of water whose reefs and shoals were unknown to civilized nations, except the Japanese.

  The Jefferson City was steaming at eighteen knots. Ahead of her and behind her two more cruisers maintained the same modest pace. At that speed they left no wakes for patrolling Japanese airmen to see. Out on their flanks four destroyers probed for danger below and above them, their sonars pinging, their radars whirling.

  On Kula Gulf's northwest shore loomed Kolombangara, a circular island bristling with Japanese shore batteries. On the southeast was the island of New Georgia, with a lofty shoulder called Visuvisu Point. That too was thick with Jap guns. On both islands, dive bombers and torpedo planes squatted in camouflaged hangars, their nearby pilots dreaming of American warships under their wings at dawn.

  Guadalcanal had finally fallen to the foot soldiers of the U.S. Army. To the men afloat, the victory had only added a new dimension of risk and fear to their lives. Now the rest of the Solomon Islands had to be conquered. While the Japanese fought for Guadalcanal, they had built a network of bases and airfields on the other islands along the four hundred miles of narrow waters known to sailors as the Slot. It was the Navy's job to soften up these bases for invasion. Night after night, cruisers and destroyers raced up the Slot to bombard one of them.

  Every officer and man aboard every ship knew survival depended on speed and darkness. If they were caught in these waters in daylight, they would be pounded to flotsam by enemy guns and planes. Always there was the possibility that the Japanese would risk their still formidable fleet in a night battle, hoping to give the Americans the sort of unpleasant surprise they had encountered when they came down the Slot to bombard Guadalcanal.

  "How many japs do you think we'll find sitting under that star shell, Mr. Parker?" Captain McKay asked.

  "I don't know, Captain.”

  "It cou
ld be half the Combined Fleet.”

  Two hours ago, CIC Officer Montgomery West had reported a radio message from Guadalcanal warning that patrol planes had spotted at least two heavy Japanese warships heading in their direction. Swirling around the ship, the news had swiftly grown into twenty-two destroyers, cruisers and battleships, all crowding into Blackett Strait to welcome them with salvos of shells and swarms of torpedoes.

  A captain should not lend credence to such a rumor on his bridge. Arthur McKay knew this. But he was no longer speaking or acting solely as the captain of the Jefferson City. McKay welcomed the tension, he savored the danger of these night missions, because each one sapped Commander Daniel Boone Parker's resistance a little more. Each one moved them closer to the moment when Parker would confess his act of cowardice. Then Win Kemble would be safe from disgrace. Arthur McKay could regain control of himself; he would resume command of his ship.

  The captain knew and yet did not know the damage he was doing to the Jefferson City. He willed not to know it. He was like the ship itself, plunging down a tunnel of darkness, hoping he could navigate his way to safety again through uncharted waters.

  In the Combat Information Center, Montgomery West was getting a stream of reports from the four destroyers attached to Cruiser Division 12. He did not relay most of them to the captain. As usual the radarmen were going bananas trying to figure out what they were seeing on their screens. In mountain-ringed waters such as Kula Gulf, the electromagnetic waves bounced off all sorts of natural obstacles and turned into weird blips that might be anything — or nothing.

  His radarman, Whizzer Wylie, started jumping up and down in his seat. "We got something this time, Lieutenant. Two ships. I'm sure it's two ships." Simultaneously, Radio Central reported identical sightings from the lead destroyers.

  "That sounds like the real thing," West said.

  He spoke over the voice tube to the bridge. "Captain, West in Combat. We've got two targets on our radar, bearing one one zero, range nine thousand yards. We've got to presume they're enemy.”

  "Are you sure they're not our destroyers?"

  "Our destroyers are reporting the same thing on their radars."

  "Tell main plot to start putting together a solution."

  At General Quarters, the captain was still the same calm, steady presence. For a moment Montgomery West tried to tell himself nothing had changed — that the Jefferson City was still the same proud if battered ship that had stood into Sydney Harbor last December.

  "What the hell is eating your captain, anyway?"

  "What? Nothing. As far as I know."

  The questioner was a new face on the Jefferson City. Desmond O'Reilly was a reporter, one of three the Navy had decided to allow aboard ships in the Solomons now that the Americans looked like winners. A short florid-faced man who had been covering the war on various fronts since it began, O'Reilly was instantly popular with the officers and crew. He brought them news — good news — of what was happening in Europe and North Africa and Russia. He even seemed to have some straight dope on General MacArthur's inch-by-inch progress in New Guinea.

  Naturally, O'Reilly had asked the captain if he could be on the bridge when they went into action. McKay had abruptly refused and banished him to the GIG. That only made O'Reilly suspicious and not a little surly.

  "Why the hell won't he let me on the bridge? I know how to stay out of the way."

  "Maybe he thought you'd get a better idea of what's happening here. The CIC's a new idea. All the action comes through here."

  It sounded lame and West knew it.

  "Why's he on the exec's ass all the time?"

  "I have no idea."

  "The exec's not Annapolis, is he?"

  "No."

  "Is that it? How do you get along with the Annapolis types? From what I hear, they specialize in making the reserves feel like shitheels." O'Reilly lit a cigarette. "I'm a Democrat myself"

  "I get along with them."

  "They probably kiss your ass. You're a celebrity."

  “They didn't at first."

  “Oh?”

  He found himself telling O'Reilly the way Mullenoe and others had treated him. "West!" snapped the captain over the voice tube. "Plot says they haven't heard a word from you. What the hell are you doing down there? This isn't a movie script with a guaranteed happy ending, you know."

  "Sorry, Captain."

  "He's a real winner," O'Reilly said.

  Down in the forward fire room, Marty Roth stared at the steam gauge on the number one boiler. The water level kept dipping for no apparent reason, then returning to the middle of the gauge. Below him on the deckplates, Amos Cartwright was adjusting the valves and shutters feeding oil and air to the boiler. As he returned to the upper level to check the purity of the water, Roth asked him to look at his erratic gauge. "I don't like the way this thing is behaving."

  "I don't either," Cartwright said.

  He picked up the telephone and asked Oz Bradley to come over to the fire room from his station in the forward engine room to take a look, at the gauge. Number-one boiler was their biggest worry. It had been showing signs of serious deterioration. Cartwright peered through the glass window at the network of pipes. Even a pinhole break in one of these conveyors of steam at six hundred pounds per square inch would cause a disaster.

  Bradley arrived on the double. Cartwright told him what was happening to the water gauge. "I think we ought to shut this mother down, Commander."

  Bradley shook his head. "We've been told to stand by for flank speed to get the hell out of here after we bombard. I'm afraid number two won't be able to handle the extra load."

  Number two boiler was almost as sick as number one. From his top watch platform Roth looked down at the white sheet-metaled monsters. There was enough steam in there to roast the entire ship's company — or blow the armored deck off the Jefferson City.

  "We've got to sweat it out, Amos. That's all we can do," Bradley said.

  "Sweatin's one thing a nigger's good at, Commander. We been doin' it for two hundred years. But I don't know about this Jewboy here. He'd like to have a reason for riskin' his ass down here."

  "So would I."

  "Captain's still haywire, huh?"

  "I've told him about these boilers five times. I've warned him one of them could go anytime. I think he flies the reports off the bridge for twenty-millimeter target practice. Or shoves them up Parker's ass. He's shoving everything but the main battery director up there, I hear. Did he ever act this way when you served under him before?"

  "No, sir."

  "Typical deck officer bullshit. They probably got into an argument about passing a buoy or forgetting to kiss some admiral's ass with the right salute."

  "He's still a great captain in my book. But even a great captain has troubles, Commander. And the way things is set up, his troubles are our troubles."

  Commander Bradley thought about this gem of wisdom for a moment. "Watch that goddamn gauge, young fellow. If you see that water drop out of sight, hit the alarm."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Marty Roth said.

  Frank Flanagan stood beside his gun director listening to the deck apes on the mount below him arguing about the captain. Some of them said he had gone crazy and they ought to lock him up. Others said the executive officer was the one who was crazy and he was turning the captain zooey. "I heard Wilkinson tellin' a guy last night that someone ought to put one of them over the side."

  "Hey, that's mutiny. Ain't that right, Flanagan? You're our expert on mutiny."

  "Yeah, Flan. Whyn't you and Tarzan here jump ship and head for the jungle. He's lookin' for a pal to go with him."

  "Yeah, but Flan's too tall to play Cheetah."

  "Maybe he can play Jane."

  "Nah. Semple's got that part."

  "Mi no save," Flanagan said.

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "`I don't know.' It's pidgin for 'I don't know,'" said Crockett Smith, the Tennessean who still believed i
n Tarzan. He had asked Flanagan to teach him pidgin.

  Flanagan's ten days in the brig had added to his celebrity status, even if his experience had not lived up to the myth. Sadistic Marines had not tortured him. They had made him scrub his narrow cell with soap and water twice a day. But that was regulations. Most of the time his Marine guards had told him their troubles. The captain was persecuting their captain. Being a Marine on a ship was like being a boxing instructor in a girls' school. To pass the time, a Marine who had been wounded on Guadalcanal and transferred to the Jefferson City had taught him pidgin.

  "Jif i no letem," Flanagan said. 'Xi wan pijin is."

  "The captain won't let us go. The captain's a bird," Crockett Smith translated.

  "Mitufala i sutum of pijin ia."

  "Maybe we'll shoot the old bird."

  "Seaman Second Class Flanagan! What the hell kind of gobbledygook are you putting on this line," roared Lieutenant Herman Kruger in main forward.

  Flanagan put his hand over his mouthpiece and said, "Man ia won kokonas is."

  "Kruger's got a head like a coconut," Smith translated. The whole mount guffawed.

  "It'll be a month in the brig this time, Flanagan," Kruger said.

  "Just practicing my pidgin, sir. In case we get shipwrecked."

  "No one's going to get shipwrecked if you do your job."

  "Wow. I didn't know I was that important, sir."

  "Shut up. I don't want to hear another sound from you."

  "What if he sees a torpedo comin' at us?" Jack Peterson asked. He was on the same gunnery circuit.

  "You shut up too, Peterson!"

  "All of you shut up," shouted Lieutenant Commander Moss.

  "We've got targets out there. Enemy ships!"

  Tomorrow Boats Homewood would give Flanagan hell. He spent ten hours a week trying to straighten him out. But Flanagan refused to realign any part of himself. He had decided Jack Peterson was right about everything. The Navy was organized for the benefit of the officers, and any sailor who did not talk back to them whenever he got a chance would wind up a sad sack like Daley. You had to be tough to survive as a sailor, and that was not a bad thing, because if you made it into the ranks of the tough you stopped being afraid of getting killed. You still might get killed, but you would go down fighting. You would die like a man, not like a scared altar boy.