Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  Tell me you're as lonely as I am. Gwen

  Dear Robert:

  Fairy Hill is blooming, but I hardly look at the place these days. I spend most of the time reading the war news and corresponding with real estate agents in your state of Virginia. There seem to be plenty of places available, if we can get a decent price for Fairy Hill.

  Your son is sitting up in his cradle, studying the world with your aggressive American eyes. I'm not sure I want him to be the star of the Annapolis football team in 1964, but we can argue about that some other time. My sister Laura says he is going to be one of those hulking ocker types, who consume immense quantities of beer and talk sports from dusk to dawn.

  She's just jealous. She's been misbehaving with a lieutenant colonel in your Air Force, but he's not about to marry her. In fact, she's just found out he has a wife and two children at home. You can imagine what my mother is saying about it all.

  You've driven the Japs so far from our shores, I have no hope of seeing you until you get to Tokyo. What fun it would be to have tea with you in the Imperial Hotel there — if it's still standing. I fear you are going to have to reduce the whole country to rubble before they surrender.

  With much love, Christine

  Harold darling:

  I'm back in London, but I want you to know I haven't forgotten our happy hours together in Australia. If you ever get to England, and I think you will — someone with your gifts is destined to see a great deal of the world — ring me up.

  Fondly,

  Charles

  Boarding Party

  Ensign Herbert J. Brownmiller, Columbia V-12 '43, known to the crew as Ensign Brownnose for his obsequious style with his superior officers, paced the quarterdeck of the Jefferson City off Saipan. The island had been pronounced secured after four weeks of ferocious resistance by the trapped Japanese defenders.

  "Oh, Christ."

  Brownmiller pointed over the side. Another Japanese body was floating toward them. At the close of the battle, hundreds of civilians had committed suicide by leaping into the sea from the island's cliffs. This body was a woman. She floated on her back, a mass of black hair streaming around her face.

  "Call the motor whaleboat to tow her away," Brownmiller said to Homewood, the boatswain's mate of the watch. "I can't stand looking at her."

  It was not a chore that the motor whaleboat crew relished. It was the fourth time Brownmiller had required them to perform it since he came on watch. A disgusted Homewood blew the signal on his pipe and called the whaleboat to the accommodation ladder. Brownmiller pointed to the woman. The equally disgusted sailors looped a line around her body and towed her out to sea.

  Brownmiller retreated to the OOD shack and contemplated the overdone hamburger and mashed potatoes the crew was being served for lunch. "Christ, I can't eat this slop now," he said.

  A Higgins boat churned toward the ship and began discharging passengers at the accommodation ladder. "People coming aboard, sir," Homewood said.

  The first face to appear at deck level was the dour visage of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Cominch himself. After him came Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Cincpac. After him came Admiral Raymond Spruance.

  "Bosun," gasped Brownmiller, "get me thirty-six side boys and the ship's band."

  "Too late for that, sir," Homewood said. "Just salute your fuckin' arm off."

  "Homewood," King said, after performing his ritual salutes to the flag and the petrified OOD. "How the hell are you? I haven't seen you since we were on the Lexington together."

  "Got off that flattop a week after you left, Admiral. Never did like them floatin' airports."

  "How many hash marks have you got on that sleeve, Homewood?"

  "Not as many as you, Admiral. You just don't have to admit it."

  King turned to Nimitz. "If we could make carbon copies of this guy, we'd be in Tokyo the day after tomorrow. Then God help the Japs when they all got liberty."

  Ensign Brownmiller goggled at Homewood, whom he had heretofore regarded as an ignorant Alabama cracker. "What should I do now, Bosun?" he said in a tone be usually reserved for the executive officer.

  "You might notify the captain. He'd like to know he's got the three top admirals in the Navy aboard."

  "I've got nothing to say to you professionally, McKay," Admiral King said. "But I've got a message from your wife."

  They were in Admiral Spruance's cabin, which King had commandeered for this interview.

  "I'm listening, Admiral."

  "She doesn't want to hear from you. Not another sniveling hypocritical line. Is that clear?"

  "I suppose so, Admiral. Did she tell you why?"

  "You know goddamn well why. Everybody in the Navy knows you spent your last layover in Pearl fucking the brains out of Win Kemble's wife. Your sister-in-law. Jesus Christ. Isn't that forbidden in the Bible or something?"

  "I don't know, Admiral. I can only tell you it isn't true."

  "Don't tell me what isn't true. I had it checked out by Naval Intelligence, for Christ's sake!"

  "Those same bright lights who warned us of Pearl Harbor?"

  Cominch gripped both arms of the chair he was sitting in. "McKay, I left you on this ship only because you were married to Rita. That's no longer a factor, except in the legal sense. You'd be on the beach tomorrow if you didn't have a son who's probably going to get a DSC for what he did on Saipan. I don't want to burden a kid like that by telling the whole world he's got a crumb for a father."

  "You can do anything you damn please to me, Admiral. I never asked to hide behind my wife — or my son."

  Cominch growled like a frustrated grizzly. "Nobody wants this fucking ship anyway. It's got Jonah written all over it. I told Spruance he's nuts to use it as a flagship. If he'd been aboard anything else, he'd have deep-sixed the whole goddamn Jap fleet last week and the war'd be over."

  King squirmed in his chair like a man sitting on hot coals. "I know what you're thinking, wise guy. He hates my fucking guts so much he'll go on sailing with you until somebody sinks you. I hope it's soon."

  That night, Captain McKay sat alone in his cabin writing a letter.

  Dear Lucy,

  I keep thinking of you and the awful way we parted. I keep thinking of Win and what you told me about him. My mind keeps revolving around and around him and you and the love we shared. That love, as I tried to tell you that night, Lucy, will never die. It should never be regarded as wasted. Nothing you could ever tell me about Win would alter my friendship with him. You can't tear up those kinds of roots.

  But I can't change my mind about what Win did at Savo. It was wrong. It was a betrayal of himself, his men, his ship. A spiritual betrayal. Physically, he was their savior. At the risk of sounding very Japanese, the spiritual is more important, Lucy.

  There is another dimension here that I am only beginning to enter. How and why the spirit fails, the heart breaks, the lifeline unravels and the sea swallows us. When I see how hard, how uncaring some men feel they have to make themselves in order to command, I understand part of it. When I think of a man burdened with an impossible task, I understand a little more. When I encounter real loneliness for the first time in my life, I understand a little more.

  Love,

  Art

  Volunteers

  The big crane lifted the new main battery director high above the Jefferson: City and lowered it into position in the superstructure. Shipfitters and electricians and fire control experts swarmed around it, connecting it to the ship's circuits, restoring eyes to the big guns.

  They were back in Pearl Harbor, no longer a flagship. Admiral Spruance had gone ashore, and the command of the fleet had passed to Admiral Halsey. They were to rejoin the armada as soon as the gun director was in place. Every ship afloat in the Pacific was needed for the invasion of the Philippines.

  Boats Homewood squinted up at the new director. "Who the hell are we goin' to get to man it?"

  “I’ll do it," Flanagan said. "Jack taught me how to
operate the range finder."

  "I was kind of hopin' you'd say that."

  Finding other volunteers was not easy. No one wanted to go anywhere near the rotating coffin. Homewood gave lengthy lectures on the metaphysics of luck. He argued that this was now the safest assignment on the ship. Lightning never struck twice in the same place. Still no takers. Flanagan finally solved the problem by offering the job to members of his forty-millimeter gun crew. Delighted to get into F Division, where working parties were few and deck swabbing was limited to several small compartments, they were so eager that the winners had to be chosen by pulling high cards from a deck.

  The next day they steamed from Pearl, and Flanagan crawled into the director for gunnery practice. The moment he took Jack's seat, sweat oozed from every pore in his body. His heart pounded, his breath was shallow. Was he afraid of dying? Or was he afraid of becoming Jack? He concentrated on explaining the equipment to the newcomers, who were not thrilled to discover they could see nothing but a couple of dials in front of their faces. Flanagan soothed them with tales of his fictitious orgies in Australia. They decided maybe listening to his malarkey was better than staring at the water worrying about torpedoes.

  Three were from small towns in Texas. Flanagan christened them the three mesquiteers. The gun director became the Alamo. Flanagan claimed he was a direct descendant of Davy Crockett, who had not died in the battle. He had joined the Mexican Army and later became a Jesuit. Baptists all, his team did not even know what a Jesuit was. "They work for the Pope," Flanagan said. "I used to be one myself. But I got tired of eating spaghetti."

  When they began firing at targets towed by an escorting destroyer, Flanagan started sweating again. In the range finder the yellow square of canvas bobbing along on floats seemed too small to hit. What makes you think you can match my stuff, kid? Jack sneered. Flanagan's hand was all thumbs on the dials; he stuttered and sprayed spit all over the lens as he gave the ranges to main plot. Their first salvo was a straddle that brought congratulations from Lieutenant Commander Mullenoe but did not cheer Flanagan in the least. He hated the thought of firing shells into the sea, Jack's resting place. He could see Jack floating inside the old director, fishes nibbling at his sightless cat's eyes. Daley was there too, clutching his rosary. Camutti and the Radical were drifting languidly around them in the cold dark water.

  Jesus! Flanagan was finding out that a vivid imagination was not always an asset. When the gunnery drills ended at 1900 hours, he was a dishrag. He wandered down to the main deck and stared out at the empty ocean. Jack was down there. His best friend. The hiss of the sea against the hull, the darkening water began disconnecting his mind from his body.

  The sea seemed to be telling him something. It was sad and terrible. But he did not understand the language. Maybe he was afraid to understand it. Then a voice in his head started to translate the words.

  Come, the sea whispered. Come. Get it over with. You're going to end up in my arms anyway, sailor. Get it over with. Slip quietly over the side. No one will notice.

  Why not? There was something religious about it. Maybe he was offering himself up as a sacrifice for his shipmates. It would be so peaceful down there. No more worries about Teresa Brownlow, Martha Johnson, his father — no more anxieties about being a man, about losing his nerve. Maybe Jack had been glad as the dark water filled his lungs. Flanagan remembered the night Jack went berserk and beat up Sally in Honolulu. It doesn't work any more, he had cried. For Jack it had never really worked. Maybe it never really worked for anybody who figures out that the church, the navy, the government, including President Roosevelt, were all full of shit.

  A huge hand clamped his shoulder. "What the fuck are you doin'?" Homewood growled.

  "Nothing— I was thinking about Jack."

  "You want to do that, go below and lie in your rack. Don't do it here. Not lookin' into that fuckin' ocean."

  "Why not?" Flanagan said, feebly defiant.

  "It talks to you. But it don't have nothin' good to say. You got to talk back to it like a man. It's so goddamn big, that ain't easy. But you got to do it. You don't know how."

  "I'm not scared of dying, if that's what you mean."

  "That's not what I mean," Boats said. "You were thinkin' of takin' a dive. I've seen it happen before. Especially to guys like you with too much goin' on in their heads. It's awful temptin' when you're feelin' sorry for yourself or your nerves is shot from bein' at sea too long. Don't ever do that again, do you hear me?"

  "I hear you," Flanagan said.

  "Come on down to main plot. We're throwin' a little party to welcome your boys into the division."

  About a third of the division was jammed into main plot. Their new division officer, Lieutenant Wilson Selvage MacComber, had contributed some of his family bourbon, and somebody else had purloined some medicinal alcohol from the sick bay. The baker had produced a cake in the shape of a gun director.

  Several hours and numerous drinks later, Flanagan was giving them a demonstration of Irish clog dancing as practiced in Gaelic Park in the Bronx. Boats Homewood beamed at him. "That kid's gonna be an admiral some day. I'm predictin' it here and now. He's gonna go to Annapolis after the war and go right to the top."

  "Annapolis," said Lieutenant MacComber with a hiccup, "is a place to which innocent boys are sentenced for four years and spend the rest of their lives committin' crimes."

  No one paid any attention to him. "Is that true, Flan?" asked one of the mesquiteers. "You goin' to Annapolis?"

  "Sure," Flanagan said.

  Why not keep Homewood happy for a while? Flanagan was never going to Annapolis. He was going to die. They were all going to die. That was what the sea had been saying to him.

  Jack was dead, but his hoodoo was very much alive.

  The Divine Wind

  As the moon waned over Surigao Strait, a narrow passage between the islands of Mindanao and Leyte in the Philippines, sheet lightning flickered across the water. Thunder rumbled from the nearby hills. The Jefferson City was in a column of five cruisers that had been plodding back and forth at the mouth of the strait, using stopwatches and radar to tell them when to turn and countermarch. A few miles behind them a column of six battleships was doing the same thing.

  The Japanese were coming through Surigao Strait to try to smash up the beaches and transports where General Douglas MacArthur's soldiers were landing to make good on his famous promise that he would return to the Philippines. The Jefferson City was now in the Seventh Fleet, which was known as Mac-Arthur's Navy.

  Only a few of the cruisers, such as the Minneapolis and the Columbia, had been with them in the Solomons. How would the others react to a night battle? The pessimists aboard the Jefferson City predicted disaster. The battleships would shell them, not the Japanese. In the main battery director, the three mesquiteers were in a panic. Flanagan calmed them down by telling them the cruisers could handle the Japanese without the battleships. He had no idea whether this was true, of course. But it worked. The Texans stopped whimpering and hunched before their dials while he probed the darkness with his range finder.

  On the bridge, Captain McKay and Commander Tombs listened to radio reports of the Japanese approach. Swarms of American PT boats attacked them at the western end of Surigao Strait. Squadrons of destroyers spewed more torpedoes at them. Some hits were reported, but the Japanese kept coming.

  "It's Tsushima in reverse," McKay said to George Tombs, pointing to the plotting board on which he had been sketching the positions of the two fleets. "They're sailing right into our `T.' Admiral Togo must be spinning in his grave."

  The two lines of American heavy ships formed the top of the "T." The Japanese column was the vulnerable stem. From CIC and main plot came reports of a perfect fire control setup. Almost every ship in the American fleet was now equipped with Mark VIII radar, a vast improvement over the primitive equipment they had had in the Solomons. The Japanese column was a clearly defined line of blips on the green scopes.

>   "All ships. Commence firing!"

  The order came blasting over the TBS from the flagship Louisville. One second later, the night exploded with salvo after salvo of eight-inch and fourteen-inch guns. Flames erupted from a half dozen ships in the Japanese column. In the lenses of his range finder, Flanagan saw the pagoda mast of a burning battleship crumble like a sand castle in the tide.

  "On target," he shouted. Jack Peterson could not have been more exultant.

  For the next fourteen minutes the rain of steel continued, the arc of red-hot shells looking like a line of railroad cars going over a hill. The stunned Japanese barely fired a shot in return. The salvos only stopped when another shout came from the flagship: "Cease fire. Cease fire. We're hitting our own destroyers!"

  At dawn, the flagship ordered the Columbia and the Jefferson City to proceed up the strait in search of enemy survivors.

  In the rotating range finder, Flanagan peered wearily into the gray light as the lenses swept back and forth across the narrow funnel of water. They passed an American destroyer under tow, with a twenty-degree list and smoking badly. Suddenly there was a Japanese destroyer at six thousand yards, dead in the water with its bow blown off. The sight stirred memories of the Jefferson City in Ironbottom Sound.

  Flanagan barked the range and bearing to main plot. With defiant courage, the Japanese captain fired a salvo at the oncoming Americans. It did not even come close. The two cruisers' main batteries boomed. The destroyer writhed in a hail of hits and near misses. Like a dying animal, she rolled over on her side. Flanagan could see tiny figures leaping off her as more shells exploded on the hull and in the water around her. Two more salvos and it sank "It's gone," he said. "You can cease firing!"

  "What did you say, Admiral Flanagan?" Lieutenant Commander Mullenoe asked.