by Mark Joseph
Sorensen threw back his head and poured down half a bottle of beer.
Fogarty looked around. It was a large L-shaped room with sawdust on the floor and a high ceiling obscured by smoke. Several of his shipmates were lying in the sawdust, some in puddles. Others were dancing to the thumping tempo of Crosstown Traffic. Here and there in booths and tables clusters of Spanish men and women aloofly watched the action. Gypsies meandered through the crowd selling switchblades and watches.
Halfway down the bar a crowd of sailors broke into a cheer. Sorensen and Fogarty edged through the crowd A spring-loaded rat trap rested on the bar. Buzz cocked it and set it in front of Willie Joe.
"Place your bets."
"Double or nothin'," someone shouted.
"Ten he makes it."
"Five he don't."
"Place your bets, let's fade the main. Ten down and five to go."
The game was simple. All Willie Joe had to do was reach in, trip the spring bar and get his fingers out of the way before they were mangled and broken.
With no hesitation Willie Joe stuck in his fingers, touched the metal bar and jerked his hand away.
Buzz cocked the trap and put down ten dollars. "All right, who's next?"
Willie Joe looked around and spotted Fogarty. "Hey, sailor, let's see if you have any guts."
"You think it takes guts to do this, Willie Joe? All it takes is stupidity—"
"You chicken?"
In a flash Fogarty had reached into the trap with his hand turned palm up and tripped the lock, caught the guillotine bar in mid-air and crushed the trap to bits in his fist. He brushed the pieces of pine and steel onto the floor.
"Willie Joe," Fogarty said, "when you can do that, I'll teach you a few moves."
Buzz wailed, "Hey, hey, you can't do that. Where am I gonna get another trap like that? That was my big money maker."
Fogarty smiled and pushed the ten-dollar bill across the bar. "I'm sure you'll think of something."
Sorensen laughed so hard he spilled his beer. "Besides," he said to Buzz, "you should be ashamed of yourself. My people can't do their jobs with busted fingers."
Fogarty went in search of the head. Sorensen popped another pill, ordered another beer and scrutinized the whores, most of whom were frumpy Englishwomen from Gibraltar. There were also a few Scandinavians, Germans and Gypsies.
"Hey there. Ace."
From across the room Lopez waved his hat. A gaudy overstuffed Gypsy perched on his lap, and two torpedo-men slumped over his table, passed out. Lopez lifted one off his chair and dropped him in the sawdust. Sorensen sat down.
"I wanna buy you a drink, hero," Lopez said.
"Why aren't you in the CPO club, boozing it up with all the other old men?"
"Because that's what they are is a bunch of old men. Hey, baby..." He grabbed at a passing barmaid and ordered, "Dos cervezas."
"You gonna get a new bug. Chief?"
Lopez crossed himself and mournfully shook his head. In rapid Spanish he told the whore the tale of the lost scorpion. She made a face and stuck out her tongue.
"Chief, what do you know about Russian torpedoes?"
"They kill you dead."
"If it's a wire-guided fish and the wire breaks, what happens?"
"I dunno. With ours, the fish dies. Motor stops and she sinks. Can't have a torpedo run wild, no no no."
"You think theirs are the same?'
"The Russians aren't stupid."
"I dunno, Chief. We're alive, they're—"
"Yeah, they're dead."
The beers arrived. "Here's to all the suckers," Sorensen toasted, "on both sides of the curtain." He wouldn't correct Lopez about the Russian sub, not until he was one hundred percent certain. Why spoil his leave?...
"Oh, que guapo guerito," said the whore, flirting with Sorensen.
"You like?" Lopez said "Take her. I give her to you as a present. You saved the fucking ship. You deserve it."
"Thanks, Chief. Maybe later."
Lopez spotted Fogarty walking back through the bar, and asked, "That the kid who did the number on Davic?"
"That's him."
"You never reported it."
"I didn't see it. There was nothing to report. Seems like you found out anyway."
"I'm chief of the boat, Sorensen."
"Did you tell Pisaro?"
"No."
"All right."
"But I will next time."
Lopez buried his face in the whore's neck and spoke into her ear. Daintily, she climbed off his lap and Lopez stood up. "Time for business," he said.
Arm in arm, Lopez and the whore headed for the door.
Sorensen waved Fogarty over to the table and ordered another beer.
"Nice party, hey, kid?"
Fogarty nodded. "It's all right."
Sorensen laughed. "Relax, Fogarty. Throw all that heavy shit out of your mind and have yourself a time. Grab one of these Brits and fuck her brains out."
"I never did a whore before."
"Bully for you. You're not queer, are you?"
"I wasn't the last time I checked."
"You're not going to ease up, are you?"
Fogarty shrugged and drank some beer.
"Fogarty, you're a good boy, aren't you? All your life you've been a good boy. I'd bet anything that you've never been in trouble. I mean, real trouble. With the police, knock up a girl, burn down the house, like that."
"No."
"You've never done a mean thing in your life, right?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"You know karate, or whatever it is, but I'd bet you never really beat anybody up."
"You'd lose."
"No kidding. Who'd you mess up?"
"My brother."
"Okay. That's not too hard to figure out. Like he beat up on you for years, so you went out and learned how to fight, then one day he picked on you and pow! Right?"
"Something like that. Pretty close."
"But you never went out on the street and kicked ass. You're not that kind of guy. You're a good boy. You believe in peace, love, all that shit."
"I don't have to prove that I can break a few bones, if that's what you mean."
"How about a few Russian bones, Fogarty? Would you break them if you had to?"
"I hope I don't have to."
"So do I, kid, and don't forget it. But the question is, what are you going to do if and when the shit comes down? Maybe deep down you didn't really want to join the navy. Maybe you wanted to stay in school. Maybe you wanted to be an electrical engineer. Am I getting through to you?"
Fogarty nodded.
"What happened? You run out of money? You flunk out, what?"
"It was the money, partly."
"Yeah, I thought so."
"I joined the navy to see the world."
"There's lots of ways to see the world, and the Submarine Service is at the bottom of the list." Sorensen smiled, pleased at his turn of phrase.
Fogarty shrugged.
"Fogarty, I'd say you're all fucked up."
"That's what I like about you, Sorensen, your delicate way of putting things... But I guess you're right. Sure, I'm all fucked up. Ditto the navy, and the world, for that matter..."
"Hey, belay that shit. You're not drunk enough yet. It'll look a lot better later. Whoa, what's this?"
Cakes Colby was headed for their table. Thumbs in his belt, hat tipped down low on his forehead, he planted himself in front of Sorensen. "There's nucs and there's pukes, and then there's you, Jack. You want some reefer?"
"What would an old Tom like you know about reefer?"
"Son, how do you think I made it through twenty-five years of fixing coffee for snotnosed officers? Everybody has to get over one way or another."
18
Hotel Pennsylvania
The decrepit Hotel Pennsylvania was built around a covered central patio with three floors stacked like doughnuts. The single sofa in the lobby was threadbare; the green tile on th
e floor was chipped. Dirty windows looked onto the narrow Calle de Pescaderos, a side street off the Avenida de Sevilla.
A boyish red-haired clerk stood behind the front desk, which was cluttered with dictionaries and notepads, the paraphernalia of self-taught English.
"Welcome, Americans sailors. Bery welcome to you and you and you." The clerk nodded to Sorensen, Fogarty and Cakes in turn, exposing a set of gold teeth behind a fixed grin.
"You are wanting three rooms, jes? For the privation. We are very accommodate you here at El Hotel Pennsylbania. I am Rodrigo to help you in all things."
"How much are the rooms?"
"Ten dollars Americans in advance and three nights the liberation. Is bery resonant, no?"
"This guy has got beri-beri," Sorensen said.
"One night, Rodrigo," Cakes told the clerk.
"Four dollares the singular night."
He asked for their military IDs, copied the numbers and gave them keys to adjoining rooms on the third floor. As they were signing the registration forms he asked, "You want girls? Muchachas? Nice girls. Clean. Speaking English girls from Hibraltar. Liquores? Booze, you say? This is the correct idiot? I got Him Beam."
"You got him beer?"
"Sure. What kind you like? I got Herman, Dutch? It is the next door a bar for all drinkings."
"I don't care as long as it's cold. Two six packs."
"Para servirle, senor." Rodrigo went through a curtain into the bar and returned with a dozen bottles of San Miguel and stuffed them in a paper bag.
They went up to Sorensen's room. It was plain and clean with cheap prints of bullfighters on the walls. Sorensen opened beers, threw open the windows and stepped out on the balcony. Fogarty flopped on the bed, commenced guzzling beer. Cakes rolled a joint, twirling it under his nose, lit it and sucked mightily, then passed it to Sorensen, who took a hit.
"This is good shit, Cakes. You always have the best dope." Sorensen passed the joint to Fogarty.
"Ain't you got no sounds, man?" asked Cakes.
Sorensen shoved a Miles Davis tape into his recorder and turned it on.
"This is your last cruise, Cakes?"
"Yep. This is it."
"What're you gonna do?"
"I got me a lunch counter in Harlem. I've had it for years. My boys run it. I'm gonna sit in the backroom and watch the dough roll in."
"Sounds like you're set up pretty good."
"I make out."
Cakes rolled another joint. Fogarty said, "I can't get used to the idea I'm in Spain. It's like a foreign movie with no subtitles."
"This isn't Spain," Sorensen told him. "This is Rota. This is just a pit stop for horny sailors. Spain is over there across the bay."
Through the balcony doors they could see over the rooftops and across the water to Cádiz, shimmering like a fantasy five miles away.
"Why can't we go to Cádiz?" Fogarty asked.
"Ever hear of Palomares?"
"Palomares? No."
Cakes said, "It's where the Air Force lost an H-bomb."
"That's right," Sorensen said, "it's about a hundred miles from here. One day a couple of years ago a B-52 loaded with hydrogen bombs collided with the tanker that was refueling it and dropped its load on this diddlysquat village named Palomares. One of the bombs fell in the ocean, and the Air Force couldn't find it—"
"Yeah," Cakes put in, "it took the Navy to save their ass. We found it with Trieste."
"Right," Sorensen said. "Before Palomares nobody in Spain ever heard of a hydrogen bomb. When six of them fell on a village and scattered hot plutonium all over the school, the marketplace, the church, the cows and the chickens they got educated. Their country had been turned into a nuclear arsenal. There were bombs all over the place, including Rota, on the boomers. Vallejo, tied up to the dock down there on the waterfront, has sixteen Polaris missiles. Tick off the sixteen largest cities in the Soviet Union and that's what that one ship can do. The Spanish don't want any part of it. The Andalusians are not like the Neapolitans, who don't give a shit about anything. These people don't like being a target, and they don't like us. Over in Cádiz there've been demonstrations and a few scuffles. A white hat in Cádiz is an invitation to a fight. So it goes, so it goes. See, Fogarty, not everybody is like us, fearless nuclear warriors."
"I think I'm getting high."
"It's decent weed."
"Nuclear warriors," Fogarty repeated with a bland smile.
"Fearless nuclear warriors."
"Bum ba bum bum. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all nukes are created equal. Boom ba boom boom. Ain't that right, Cakes?"
Cakes stood up, swaying to the music, holding the joint with all his fingers like a big stogie.
"I," he said, drawing out the word in a deep baritone, "I am the nigger of the apocalypse. I am death in the deep. I am the end. I am your worst nightmare. I am General... Electric!"
Fogarty looked amazed. Sorensen whooped and hollered and rolled on the floor. Cakes sat down with a big chuckle and sipped his beer. They listened to Miles wail into the night.
"How long you been on Barracuda, Cakes?" Fogarty asked.
"Same as Jack, here. Since before she was commissioned, nine years."
"Oh, yeah, Fogarty, me and Cakes know each other's dirty little secrets. Cakes was there the day we invented Cowboys and Cossacks."
"Oh, baby, them Ivans ain't never going to forget us."
"What happened?"
"It was during the Cuban missile crisis. Barracuda was on station in the Carribean when we got orders to patrol one sector during the blockade. The Russians were ninety miles from our shores, and the only thing between them and Miami Beach was us, Barracuda. Now, that kind of situation shoots a lot of adrenaline into your blood. We had this macho president who was just like us. You want to talk about belief? We believed in John Kennedy, every last man. He left no doubt as to what would happen if the Russians didn't back down. Man, we had our tubes flooded and guidance systems locked-on the whole time. We were ready to die."
Cakes was nodding his head in agreement. Sorensen went on, "We would have died for Kennedy without a second thought. As it was, nobody died. It was suddenly ridiculously easy to kick the Russians out of our ocean. We made these wild runs under the Russian ships. They had a couple of diesel-electric subs and we blew their ears out. They took one look at us and split. When we got back to Norfolk you'd have thought we'd just won the Battle of Midway. At that moment, Fogarty, I'm telling you, the world was perfect, as perfect as it will ever be. Hell, in March 1963, I reenlisted. Kennedy was in the White House, America was number one, Barracuda was number one. We were invincible... And then the world fell apart. First, the Thresher sank. It was like the Titanic all over again. The perfect invincible nuclear sub imploded during sea trials. That was a mind-fuck. Then Kennedy gets assassinated and the world turns upside down. On that day I learned about perfection. In the five years since Dallas the reality has been exploding in our faces. Race riots, Viet Nam, mass murderers, you name it, we got it. So next year my reenlistment comes up again and I'm thinking maybe I've had enough of this shit. But I ask you, Fogarty, how many civilian sonar operators do you know? The truth is, I don't know if I can live in the real world any more. I don't have a lunch counter in Harlem like Cakes. All I have is Barracuda, so I just do my job. I like my job. I'm very stoned."
Sorensen walked out on the balcony and looked down into the dirty street. A pair of Guardia Civil policemen sauntered past the hotel, machine pistols slung over their backs. To his right he could see the sea wall and a slice of bay. A slice of an imperfect world. Dirty. Radioactive. He looked up at the sky, hoping to see stars. He saw clouds.
What do whales talk about? What is it like to live on dry land and have kids?
Inside, Fogarty was saying to Cakes, "I guess you've seen a lot of changes in the navy in twenty-five years."
Cakes blew smoke around the room. "Some things are different, some ain't. Now we got white boys smokin'
dope, that's different. We got crazy Stanley, that's a whole lot different. There ain't nobody shootin' at us no more. I like that part, but otherwise the navy hasn't changed in two hundred years. We got nuke boats and all that shit, but it don't mean nothin', nothin' at all. You go to sea and you come back to the same place you started. It's all one big circle. It's all right with me."
"What do you think of the Russians?"
"Who gives a fuck? I don't never think about them. I like their vodka."
"What about the sub that went down?"
"You mean them dudes that sank?"
Sorensen said nothing. The Russian sub was alive. She never sank, and he had the proof on tape. The torpedo wasn't a torpedo at all, it was the sub itself. The implosions were faked. Now wasn't the time to tell them...
"Yeah. What do you think about them?"
"Nothin'. There ain't nothin' to think about. It was their tough luck. I'm glad it was them and not us."
"Were you scared?"
"Listen, I'm always scared. I'm scared right now, smoking this dope with you, but that don't stop me none. What are you talkin', man? Scared. You don't know what scared is until you been depth-charged." Cakes stood up. "I'm going back to the bar and screw one of them fat whores until she yells uncle. Uncle Sam, that is. How 'bout you boys?"
As Cakes was reaching for the door, there was a knock.
Sorensen opened the door an inch. Rodrigo stood outside. "He is down the stair to see you, a sailor Americano."
Stepping into the corridor, Sorensen saw Willie Joe drunkenly climbing the stairs, a ten-gallon Stetson propped on his head.
"It's okay, Rodrigo. He's a friend." He slipped the clerk a dollar. Willie Joe flopped on the bed.
"Anybody got a drink?"
Fogarty passed him a bottle of beer.
Finally Cakes said, "Well, I'm still going to party."
"Let's do it," said Sorensen.
They stood up to go back to the bar, all except Willie Joe, who mumbled, "Battle stations, battle stations, pussy off the port bow..." closed his eyes and passed out on Sorensen's bed. They left him snoring in a dreamless sleep.
* * *
The party in the Farolito was still going full blast. Buzz was pouring cognac for a dollar a shot.
