by Herman Wouk
Well, Willie, it’s 3 A.M. by my old leather-covered desk clock. A waning moon is shining through the library window, and my fingers are stiff from writing. My toe is giving me the devil, too. Sleeping pills and bed for me. Thank God for barbiturate.
Take care of your mother if she lives to be very old, and be kind to her if you come back from the war with enough strength to break away from her. She has many faults, but she’s good, and she has loved you and me very truly.
Willie began to sob. He read the last paragraphs through a blur of tears.
Think of me and of what I might have been, Willie, at the times in your life when you come to crossroads. For my sake, for the sake of the father who took the wrong turns, take the right ones, and carry my blessing and my justification with you.
I stretch out my hand to you. We haven’t kissed in many, many years. I liked to kiss you when you were a baby. You were a very sweet and good-natured child, with wonderful large eyes. God! Long ago.
Good-by, my son. Be a man.
DAD
The ensign rose, wiping his eyes, and hurried downstairs to the telephone booth. He dropped a coin into the box. “I want to call the United States-”
“Sorry. Private calls only at Central Building with censor’s permission. One week delay on them,” said the operator with a Hawaiian accent.
Willie ran out into the naval base and went from building to building until he found the telegraph office. How is Dad? he cabled, and paid the urgent rate, giving the office as his return address. Next morning at eight when the office opened Willie was waiting outside. He sat on the steps smoking until eleven-thirty, when the answer was brought to him. Dad died three days ago. Sent you his love in last words. Please write. Mother.
Willie went straight to the office of Captain Matson, who greeted him cordially.
“Have they put you to work yet, Keith?”
“Sir, on reconsidering, I’d like to fly out to look for the Caine, if I may.”
The captain’s face fell. “Oh? What’s the matter? They give you some rugged coding detail?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ve already told the admiral you’re set here. He was extremely pleased.”
“Sir, if I may say so, it just doesn’t seem like fighting the war-playing piano for the admiral.”
A hard distant look came over the captain’s features. “There’s plenty of work to do in this establishment. You’ll find that a shore billet is as honorable as any other.”
“I don’t doubt it, sir-”
“You were placed in the officer pool at your own request.”
“Yes, sir, I know, but-”
“Your orders have been put through and sent to the Bureau. I see no reason to countermand them. Your request is denied.” The captain picked up a paper before him and put on his glasses.
“Thank you, sir,” said Willie, and left.
And so Willie stayed at Pearl Harbor, decoding messages which told of great actions around Rendova and Munda, of the victorious night battle at Vella Lavella, and of huge preparations for further invasions. Often he came upon the name of the Caine in dispatches showing her in the thick of the operations. And across the world the Allies smashed into Sicily and Italy, and Mussolini fell. Meantime Willie played piano for the admiral.
CHAPTER 7
The Caine
But the soreness over his father’s death lessened gradually, and Willie began to enjoy Pearl Harbor. His coding duties involved eight hours a day of drudgery in a cement vault underground, and this hardship soothed his conscience. He avoided the girls and the liquor for a couple of weeks, but then the admiral had another party, and Willie got drunk, and soon he was back at the old round. Honolulu was full of easy pleasures. The climate was soft, the sun brilliant, the moon beautiful, the air perfumed by ever-blooming flowers. Except for the curfew and the blackout and some barbed wire along the beaches the war caused little inconvenience. Willie went on many picnics with the nurses. He acquired a rosy tan and became plumper.
He continued writing tremendously affectionate letters to May. The plan for dropping her was discarded. Willie had decided that May was not too old to waste a year or two. He might marry her, he might not. But their relationship was too valuable an “experience” to be cut short. May’s letters were all that could be desired: long, loving, cheery, and usually containing good news. She was enjoying college, though she felt like a grandmother, she said, among the freshmen. Her marks were high, and the language in her letters improved each month.
The roommates lay on their cots, reading newly arrived mail one sultry July afternoon. Flies buzzed at the screens, though there was no attraction inside the room but the smell of hot dry wood. Keefer lolled on his side, naked except for white shorts, his hairy stomach bulging over the waistband. “Christ on a bicycle!” he exclaimed, rising on one elbow. “What’s the name of your ship again-Caine, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” said Willie, absorbed in a letter from May.
“Well listen, boy, I think my brother Tom is on that ship!”
Willie glanced up in surprise.
“I think it’s the Caine,” said Keefer. “Never can make out my pap’s doggone handwriting. Here, how do you read this?” Willie peered at the word indicated by Keefer’s thumb. “Caine all right.”
“Sure enough. They sent him there from communications school. Whaddya know!”
“Fine. It’s a lucky break. It’ll be like having a relative on board. Does he like the ship?”
“Hell, no. He wrote Pap it’s the foulest bucket in the Navy- But that don’t mean nothing,” he added quickly, seeing Willie wince. “Hell, don’t take anything that Tom says too serious. Tom’s queer as a three-dollar bill. The Caine’s probably a great ship if he don’t like it.”
“What kind of guy is he, Rollo?”
“Well, you try to figure how different from me a guy can get-and that’s Tom. See, he’s only my half brother. I’ve seen very little of him. His mother was my dad’s first wife-Catholic. They got married Protestant, and it didn’t last long, and she hauled off home to Boston where she come from, with Tom.”
Keefer put aside the letter, lit a cigarette, and lay back with his arms under his head.
“Tom’s a high-brow, pretty much, writes short stories, plays-had some stuff in magazines. Gets real dough for them. I got to know him a little bit at William and Mary. He was a senior when I was a freshman. But he ran around with that literary crowd, you know, reading poetry by candlelight, with a few dames around for when the candles went out-that kind of Shinola. I guess he figures me for a moron, he’s never bothered with me a damn. He’s not a bad guy. Pretty witty and all that. You and him will probably get along good, with you reading all that Dickens and all.”
It was the first of September when Willie and Keefer staggered into the BOQ at four in the morning, full of hog meat and whisky which they had consumed at a hilarious luau arranged by the nurses. They fell on their beds still giggling and singing ribald parodies of Hawaiian songs. Soon they were heavily, happily asleep.
Next thing Willie knew, he was being shaken, and a strange voice was whispering loudly, “Keith? Keith? Are you Keith?”
He opened his eyes. Day was just dawning. In the dim light he saw a short, swarthy ensign in shapeless frayed khakis standing over him.
“Yes, I’m Keith.”
“Better come along. I’m Paynter, from the Caine.”
“The Caine?” Willie sat up. “She’s here?”
“Yep. We’re shoving off at 0800 to do some target towing. Get your gear together.”
Willie sleepily reached out for his trousers. “Look, I’ll be glad to report aboard, Paynter, but I’m still attached to the officer pool here.”
“No, you’re not. That’s all fixed. We’ve got a visual despatch detaching you. We’ve been waiting for you a long time, Keith.”
He said it pleasantly, but Willie felt obliged to defend himself. “I did what I could. Missed you by a few hour
s back in May when you shoved off. They stuck me into the officer pool-”
“Hell, I wouldn’t blame you if you never showed up,” said Paynter. “I hate to be the guy who does this to you. Can I help you with your gear?”
All this talking was in low tones. Keefer snored obliviously. As Willie emptied drawers of the bureau into his wooden foot locker, he said, “Do you have an officer aboard named Keefer? Tom Keefer?”
“My department head,” said Paynter.
“That’s his brother.” Willie pointed to the sleeper. Paynter looked at Keefer dully. Willie, more wide awake, noticed that the Caine officer was slumping with fatigue.
“How screwy is he?” said Paynter.
“Why? Is your department head screwy?”
“I didn’t say that. Better bear a hand, Keith. The boat’s waiting on us.”
“Are we leaving Pearl for good?”
“Why?”
“If we are I’ll wake up Roland and say good-by.”
“No. We’re not leaving for good. At least not according to orders.”
“Fine.” Willie finished packing and dressed in silence. He shouldered his foot locker and stumbled out through the door. Paynter followed with his two bags, saying, “But don’t be surprised if we take off west and never see civilization for a year. It’s happened before.”
Outside the BOQ in the chill misty morning stood a small gray Navy dump truck. “Not very classy,” said Paynter, “but that’s all I could get at five in the morning. Pile in.”
They rattled down the road toward the fleet landing. Willie’s luggage jumped and lunged around in the back as though trying to escape. “Where’s the ship?” said Willie, wondering at the dour silence of Ensign Paynter.
“Moored to a buoy in the stream.”
“Are you regular Navy?”
“No.”
“Are there any regulars aboard?”
“Three.”
“Are you V-7?”
“Yes.”
“Deck?”
“No, engineering.”
“What are your duties on the Caine?”
“Communications.”
Willie was startled. “Isn’t that a queer assignment for an engineer?”
“Not on the Caine.”
“I take it you don’t like the Caine.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What’s the ship like?”
“You’ll see for yourself.”
“Seen a lot of action?”
“Yes and no.”
“You been aboard her long?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you call long.”
“I call a year long.”
“I call a week long sometimes.”
The truck pulled up at the head of steps leading down to the fleet landing. Paynter honked. Three sailors lying in a half-canopied greasy gray boat alongside the dock rose wearily and mounted the steps. Their blue dungarees were ragged, and the shirttails hung outside the trousers. They loaded Willie’s gear into the boat while Paynter turned the truck in to a car pool a few yards down the road. The two officers stepped into the boat and sat on cracked black leather seats inside the canopy.
“All right, Meatball, shove off,” said Paynter to the coxswain, a fat sailor dressed in amazingly dirty rags, with a pure-white new hat tilted forward almost to his nose.
A bell clanged in Willie’s ear and he jumped. His head was no more than an inch from the bell. He shifted to another cushion. The boat engineer started up the motor, after several failures which he commented on with filthy epithets delivered in an indifferent monotone. He was perhaps nineteen, small and gaunt, with a face blackened half by stubble and half by grease, and covered with pimples. Long, coarse black hair fell over his tiny squinting eyes. He wore no hat. He was addressed by the other sailors as. “Horrible.” As soon as the boat chugged away from the landing he took off his shirt, exposing a monkey-like growth of hair.
Willie looked around at the boat. The gray paint was blistering off the wood, and ragged patches showed where new paint had been daubed over old without scraping. Two of the three portholes of the canopy had cardboard in them instead of glass.
“Mr. Paynter,” shouted the engineer over the racket of the motor, “can we stop off and pick up a movie?”
“No.”
“Christ, we ain’t seen no movie forever,” whined Horrible.
“No stopping.”
Horrible thereupon blasphemed and cursed for a couple of minutes. Willie, appalled at his freedom of language in the officer’s presence, expected Paynter to bring him up short. But the stream of gutter talk appeared to trouble Paynter no more than the lapping of the water. He sat immobile, his fingers folded in his lap, his eyes closed, chewing a rubber band that protruded from his lips.
“Say, Paynter,” Willie shouted, “what duties do you suppose I’ll get aboard ship?”
Paynter opened his eyes. “Mine,” he said, with a brief happy smile, and closed them again.
The gig rounded a point of Ford Island and headed into the western channel. “Hey, Mister Paynter,” called Meatball, standing tiptoe on the stern thwart, leaning on the tiller, “the ship’s gone.”
“You’re crazy, Meatball,” said Paynter. “Look again. She’s in R-6, forward of the Belleau Wood.”
“I’m telling you, sir, the buoys are empty. For Christ’s sake, take a look.”
He clanged the bell with a pull cord. The boat slowed, and wallowed in the waves. Paynter climbed out on the gunwale. “I’ll be damned. She is gone. Now what the hell?”
“Maybe she sank,” said the sailor crouched on the bow, a small baby-faced youngster with a highly obscene tattoo on his chest.
“No such luck,” said Meatball.
“Could be,” said Horrible. “Chief Budge had ’em scraping bilges in number-two engine room. I told him there wasn’t nothin’ keepin’ the water out but that rust.”
“What do we do now, Mister Paynter?” said Meatball.
“Well, let’s see. They wouldn’t put out to sea without the gig,” said Paynter slowly. “Probably they’ve just shifted berths. Look around.”
Horrible killed the motor. The boat drifted gently in dead quiet past a bobbing red channel buoy. From the water rose an effluvium of fuel oil and rotten vegetables. “There she is,” said Meatball, and clanged the bell.
“Where?” said Paynter.
“Repair basin. Right there starboard of the St. Louis-” The coxswain thrust the tiller over. The boat swung about.
“Yeah.” Paynter nodded. “Guess we get our alongside period after all.” He dropped back under the canopy.
Willie, staring in the direction Meatball had been looking, could see nothing that resembled the Caine. The repair basin was crammed with ships of every shape except the DMS silhouette which Willie had memorized from pictures. “Pardon me,” he shouted to Meatball, “can you point the ship out to me?”
“Sure. There.” The coxswain jerked his head meaninglessly.
“Do you see her?” Willie said to Horrible.
“Sure. She’s in that nest of cans in C-4.”
Willie wondered whether his vision had gone bad.
Paynter said, “You can’t see nothing but the trucklight from here. You’ll see her soon enough.”
It humiliated Willie not to be able to recognize his ship by the trucklight. He punished himself by standing up and taking spray in his face for the rest of the ride.
The gig came alongside a limp chain ladder hanging over the side of a new destroyer, the outer ship of four in the repair berth. “Let’s go,” said Paynter, “the Caine’s the one inboard of this. The men will bring your gear.”
Willie went up the jingling ladder, saluted the smart OOD of the destroyer, and crossed the deck. A tarry plank laid between the ships over four feet of open water led to the Caine. Willie got no distinct impression of his ship at first glance. He was too concerned about the plank. He hung b
ack. Paynter mounted the board, saying, “This way.” As he crossed, the Caine rolled and the plank wobbled violently. Paynter jumped off it to the Caine deck.
It occurred to Willie that if Paynter had fallen from the plank he would have been crushed between the two ships. With this picture bright in his mind Willie set foot on the plank and pranced across like a circus acrobat. Halfway, hanging over the open water, he felt the plank heave upward. He leaped for life, and landed on the Caine in the arms of the OOD, staggering him.
“Ho! Don’t be so eager,” said the OOD. “You don’t know what you’re jumping into.”
“Rabbitt, this is the long-lost Ensign Keith,” said Paynter. “So I gathered.” Lieutenant (jg) Rabbitt shook Willie’s hand. He was of middle size, with a narrow face and an air of rustic good humor. “Welcome aboard, Keith. Say, Paynter, this Ensign Harding showed up too, half an hour ago.”
“All kinds of new blood,” said Poynter.
The focus of Willie’s mind widened beyond the plank now and took in the quarterdeck of the Caine. It was a place of noise, dirt, bad smells, and thug-like strangers. Half a dozen sailors were planking at the rusty deck with metal scrapers. Other sailors were walking past, cursing under crates of cabbages on their backs. One man in a welding mask was burning a bulkhead with a crackling sour-smelling blue flame. All around were patches of new gray paint, patches of old gray paint, patches of green prime coat, and patches of rust. A tangle of snaky hoses, red, black, green, yellow, brown lay all over the deck. The deck was covered with orange peel, fragments of magazines and old rags. Most of the sailors were half naked and wore fantastic beards and haircuts. Oaths, blasphemies, and one recurring four-letter word filled the air like fog.
