Tommy

by William Illsey Atkinson

  Mitzuk nods. Yessir! Ran a power station back’n Poughkeepsie!

  How fast do your turbines run!

  Oh sir, it’s amazin’! Hunn’ed times a second, six thousan’ rpm! When they’re up they fairly scream! Need lotsa oil!

  But ship’s screws don’t go that fast!

  You drive a car, sir? Has a gearbox, right? So does Bataan! Only our gearbox is bigger’n a house!

  Can we see it!

  Nossir, too dangerous! Show you if you order me, but none too safe over in the gear room! Got to know your way around! Hate to see you an’ the loot’nant here catch a bit a clothin’ an’ get chewed ta soup!

  Tommy nods vigorously. We’ll take your word for it!

  Come back when we’re down for maint’ce, sir! Main reduction gear’s twelve feet wide an’ machined ta half a thou’! World’s biggest wristwatch! Worth seein’!

  Where do you get your water!

  Use seawater, sir! All we need’s right next to us! Cubic miles a’ the stuff!

  You distil it, right?

  Mitzuk frowns, turns his head, cups an ear. Sir?

  Purify it! It must be full of crud in its natural state!

  Nossir! Pull it through a pipe is all!

  But the algae! I thought you’d need a still!

  Well, sir, I admit some gunk gets through! Mitzuk is shaking with laughter.

  How do you handle it! Keep it from clogging the system!

  Clean ’em out, sir!

  Clean what?

  Th’ intake tubes!

  How often!

  Twice a month! ’S why the downtime!

  How do you clean them!

  You’ll think I’m spinnin’ tales, sir!

  Tell me!

  We shoot bullets through the intake tubes, sir!

  Bullets?

  Rubber bullets! Only way to open up the tubes! Ya get some grubby moppin’ up the receivin’ end!

  Where the bullets come out of the tubes, you mean!

  Yessir! Not just algae comes out, neither!

  What else?

  Fish guts, sir!

  What?

  Liquid fish guts! Makes ya smell like a cheap diner for a week’na half!

  Shaking, shaking.

  Well, Tommy says, thanks for the tour. You’re right, I needed the eye-opener. But no more for now, okay?

  It’s a clear day on the flight deck. Tommy has never so appreciated sea air and sunlight. The roar of a radial engine seems as sweet as birdsong.

  Captain Schaeffer did say to orient you, sir, but he didn’t say all at once. So yes, sir, we can pause.

  At this point Feathers’ face takes on an expression Tommy has never seen: it’s serious. What do you think of Kraweski? he says.

  Tommy looks sour. Commander Kraweski? My jury’s out.

  No, it isn’t. He’s a prick, sir.

  Tommy locks eyes. Nods.

  Bataan does have emergent properties. Tommy’s encountering them now. What has just emerged is last night’s dinner, and what emerged ten minutes ago was yesterday’s lunch. About to emerge are his front molars and Tuesday’s midnight snack.

  Tommy has run out of curse words. He has never known such misery. Nothing helps — not seeing Feathers effortlessly shrug off every swoop, lurch, and slew that their gale-torn ship throws at them; not looking out his pint-sized porthole at a teeter-totter horizon; not not looking out the porthole. Not remembering that Lord Nelson got seasick every time his ship set sail and, on one famous occasion, spewed when his ship was in harbor. Tommy feels sorry for the old guy and even sorrier for himself. He’s 2icnav on an eleven-thousand ton rollercoaster, a multimillion-dollar midway ride.

  Feathers looks in. Bucket change, sir!

  Tommy groans. Not full, he says.

  Has to be two-thirds empty or ship’s motion slops it. Release the bucket, sir. Just for a moment. Loosen your knuckles . . . Yes. Aha. Feathers waits while Tommy heaves up another quart of deep-green bile.

  Right, here’s the swap . . . Let go, sir. Excellent! I’ll be back in a bit to check on you again.

  Feathers? How come you’re not . . . Tommy flaps a hand.

  No telling, sir. Luck of the draw. Some are susceptible and some are not.

  Your perfection, Tommy croaks, is annoying at times.

  You wound me, sir. I thought it was annoying all the time. Feathers pops a finger on his hat brim and leaves.

  Bataan’s been underway eighteen hours. Yesterday they got their planes, three squadrons of Air Group Fifty’s brand-new F6F Hellcats. The fighters have supercharged engines and are designed from the tires up to kill Zeroes. Two days ago Tommy thought he’d see his first landings, but instead a Diesel winch lifted the fighters onto Bataan’s flight deck from flatcars alongside. The planes’ wings were folded and their engine nacelles were shrouded; protective film covered their canopies and their props were unattached. They looked as menacing as Christmas toys. The shakedown will change all that. On New Year’s Day, Bataan will be in the middle of Chesapeake Bay practicing launch and recovery. By then the Hellcats will have had ninety-six straight hours of fitting, polishing, and testing.

  Too bad the fitters can’t fix his guts.

  The Chesapeake is calm, the dawn is cloudless, and Tommy and his innards are again on speaking terms. Brit! sings Feathers, appearing with a tray.

  You’re American, Tommy says. I’m American.

  No, sir, the food. Banana-Rice-Toast. All bland, all made for the Oregon farmer’s alimentary canal. Eat it, you need it.

  I will not touch a banana, Feathers. I took a solemn vow.

  Then toast and rice, sir. Something for your void. I put jam on the toast.

  Tommy’s skeptical, but he takes a bite. It’s wonderful.

  Don’t wolf it, sir. Take your time.

  How come — God, this is good — how come you’re looking after me and not med?

  I volunteered, sir.

  Kraweski let you?

  I didn’t ask him.

  So how?

  I approached the captain and argued ship’s efficiency, sir. med is as raw as the rest of us, and most of them are sicker than you. If you hurry, you’ll have time to shower. Captain wants us on deck in ten.

  At oh-eight hundred it’s not just Tommy’s guts that have mended, it’s the Hellcats. He looks down from the bridge and can hardly believe the change. The half-finished objects swayed aboard five days ago are now as menacing as vipers. One by one they launch, and each launch is perfect.

  Tommy glows with pride. It’s silly, it’s idiotic, he hasn’t had a thing to do with designing or building or flying the things, but satisfaction sloshes through him like an intoxicant. Bataan is his, the mailed fists of its Hellcats are his, and he and they are going to war together.

  The last Hellcat roars away through a cloud of engine smoke and catapult vapor. Deep silence descends on the ship. Suddenly Feathers, standing to Tommy’s left, points ten o’clock high. Twenty Hellcats, four vees in chevron, flash overhead at mast height. Tommy realizes he’s saluting, as are Feathers and the Captain. So is everyone on the bridge. Even the teenaged helmsman salutes, gripping his wheel with one hand and one elbow. Tommy’s blinking fast. The Zekes and Judys are about to get the shock of their lives.

  After combat air patrol maneuvers, it’s time for landings. This is where the rubber meets the road, except the road is wood-topped steel. Tommy’s throat is dry: his reading has convinced him that most carrier accidents happen here. He salutes the captain and the xo, scrambles down the midships ladderway to the flight deck, stands inboard of the island, and pulls up the collar of his Navy greatcoat against the stiff north wind.

  Despite his fears, recovery after recovery is textbook. The last one has the grace of white ballet. The tail-end Charlie comes in high, drops fl
aps and almost stalls, falls like a stone till just abaft ship’s stern, revs his propeller super-high, and plummets deckward at ten feet per second — stupid fast, nearly freefall. But the pilot has timed his plunge to coincide with Bataan’s descent into a wave trough, which gives his deck-relative sink rate the gossamer weightlessness of a dandelion seed. Cable finds tailhook, wheels touch deck, just as the ship surges skyward on a wave. If the pilot had misjudged by fifty milliseconds he would have totaled his plane. Tommy’s been treated to the impossible sight of a three-ton Hellcat levitating.

  The pilot’s walking across the flight deck with his prop still turning, unwinding his scarf and pulling off his helmet, when Tommy beckons him over.

  What’s your name, Ensign?

  Sir! Ander, David G., fe2 grade, usmc. The kid stiffens slightly, though far below rulebook. Tommy ignores the lèse-majesté; it’s common knowledge that aircrew are relaxed. Ander’s half-slouch has the same significance as a Marine’s crisp snap to attention.

  Stand easy, says Tommy unnecessarily. That was the prettiest landing I’ve ever seen, Ensign. How old are you?

  Nineteen, sir!

  Where did you learn to fly?

  Chisolm Field, sir. Up to Oklahoma.

  You didn’t have to learn, did you? You just . . . knew.

  Well, sir, I gotta admit flyin’ come natural-like. Didn’t hafta think ’bout it. Like goin’ with a girl. He pronounces it gel.

  Tommy smiles. Carolinas, Ensign?

  Georgia, sir.

  Then rule the air for Georgia, Ensign. Carry on.

  Sir! The kid strolls away. Tommy returns the easygoing salute unnoticed.

  Maybe it’s due to the child his wife’s about to bear, but Tommy has taken to Bataan’s kids: they’re fresh-faced and full of bounce and remind him of his UMich students. Accordingly, he’s posted notes on the crew’s corkboards offering to teach navigation twice a week beside the con island. Today is Lesson One and he’s gratified by the turnout — six Marines, all pilots. One of them is David Ander, whose aw-shucks demeanor, Tommy suspects, conceals a stellar mind.

  Morning, gentlemen! We’ll begin with latitude and longitude. Know those two numbers and you’ll know your position anywhere on Earth. First we’ll consider latitude. That’s how far you are north or south of the equator.

  Tommy holds up a globe he’s taken from the officers’ library. The pilots come close and peer at it as if they’ve never seen anything like it before. There’s an odd hush; no one’s called them gentlemen before.

  The equator is the Earth’s centerline, Tommy says. Every point on it lies the same distance from both poles. Ensign Ander? What’s latitude again?

  Sir! Latitude’s how far north’r south y’all are from the ’quator, sir!

  Correct. Now here’s the Earth, Tommy says, jiggling the globe, and here’s the sun. He holds up a fist. Say you’re at the equator, at noon. Noon’s the time when the sun is the highest it gets all day. Where is the noon sun when you’re right at the equator? Yes, Ensign?

  ’S ov’head, sir. Right up top.

  Yes, more or less. Now imagine you move away from the equator — north or south, it doesn’t matter — say, north. Tommy slides a finger from the equator up to the Tropic of Cancer. What happens to the sun? To its apparent position in the sky?

  Deep quiet. Off to starboard a fitter crew is testing the catapult. Whish, boom, bang. Profanity from an angry crew boss.

  Well, says Tommy, look at the sun now. We’re well north of the equator and it’s close to noon. Will our sun ever get right overhead, the way it does down south?

  Heads shake hesitantly, then with greater certainty.

  No, says Tommy, this far north it never gets that high. As you move away from the equator you back away from the sun, round the shoulder of the world. The sun hasn’t moved, it’s still in the same place, but you’ve moved. And the farther north you go, the lower the noon sun sinks. Anybody want to guess at a rule here? No one? Think it through. Yes, Ensign.

  Farther y’all get from the ’quator, Ander says, lower sun’s at noon.

  Tommy beams. He realizes how Dr. Gibb felt teaching him.

  Say it again, Ensign, good and loud.

  Sir! Ander repeats his rule.

  Ensign Ander is precisely right, Tommy says. Here on the Chesapeake, this close to the winter solstice, the noon sun’s fairly low. If we sailed south toward the equator, every noon we’d find it higher. If we went in the opposite direction, toward the North Pole, every noon it would be lower. So remember Ander’s Law: the farther you are from the equator, the lower the sun. Put another way, the noon sun’s height reveals your latitude.

  Here’s how we apply that rule. At noon exactly, we measure how high the sun is above the horizon. We call this shooting the sun. We use something called a sextant. I’ll show you how next lesson. Then we take this book — Tommy holds up his dog-eared Navy ephemeris — and find the table that corresponds to the day of our shoot. Within that table, we locate the solar height we measured. We run down the height column and read off our latitude accurate to degree, minute, and second.

  Sir? says Ander. Seconds an’ minutes is time. What’s they do with position?

  Navigators use them to measure parts of circles. Tell me, Ander: what’s the shape of the equator? Its geometric shape?

  Circle, sir. Big circle.

  Correct. And how do we measure circles? How do we record how much of a circle there is when we don’t want to measure the whole thing?

  Don’t rightly know, sir.

  We use degrees, Tommy says. Ever heard of those? A circle has three hundred and sixty of them. Remember that figure, we’ll come back to it.

  Tommy turns to his left. Ensign McAllister! You’ve hidden in that hatchway all lesson. What’s the Earth’s circumference? How many miles around is it?

  Silence.

  Come on, you must know this. How big is the world?

  ’Bout . . . twenty-four thousand miles, sir. I think.

  Close enough. And how long is the equator?

  Sir?

  The equator goes right round the world, right? So how long is it?

  A light snaps on. Same distance, sir! Twenty-four thousand miles!

  Correct. Well done. Now, gentlemen, it’s time for calculations.

  Tommy smiles at the moans; evidently they’ve dreaded this.

  Sir? says McAllister, in a last-ditch stand. We’ve got no paper ’n’ pencils.

  Then we’ll calculate in our heads. Louder groans. Tommy smiles wider.

  There’s no court martial if you get it wrong. Here’s what we want to work out. The equator is a circle. It has three hundred and sixty degrees. Its length is the Earth’s circumference, twenty-four thousand miles. When you fly or sail along the equator, then, how many miles to each degree?

  Long, long silence.

  Break it down, Tommy says. What’s the fraction here? What’s being divided by what?

  Still silence. Miles per degree, prompts Tommy. McAllister?

  Twen-ty-four thou-sand, McAllister says, each syllable torn from him. Twen-ty-four thou-sand . . . ’vide by . . . three hun-dred an’ . . . sixty.

  Right! The group relaxes as its collective intelligence is shown to exceed idiocy.

  And what, adds Tommy, is the result?

  Silence again.

  I won’t torment you. At the equator, each degree takes up sixty-six and two-thirds standard geographical miles. That’s only one three-hundred-sixtieth of the whole equator, but it’s still a long chalk. A ship that distant is over the horizon. An island that distant is beyond the range of a battlewagon’s biggest guns. Now, assume I find Bataan’s position accurate to one degree. I go to Captain Schaeffer and say, Sir! We are at Christmas Island! And the captain looks around and sees open ocean. Where’s the land, Mr. Atkinson? he ask
s. And I tell him, Sir! It’s somewhere within sixty-seven miles! What’s the captain say to me then?

  That you’re in deep shit, sir, says Ander.

  Tommy laughs with the others. Correct! So we have to calculate positions to less than a degree. That’s where minutes and seconds come in. In navigation, a minute is one-sixtieth of a degree and a second is one-sixtieth of a minute. So here’s our next calculation. One second is what fraction of a degree? Anyone? McAllister?

  Ensign McAllister shakes his head.

  One part’n three thousan’ six hunn’ed, sir, Ander says. Sixty times itself.

  Tommy smiles at him. That’s right. And what’s one three-thousand-six-hundredth of sixty-six and two-thirds miles, Ensign? How big, how long, is one second of arc at the equator?

  Ander stares at him, through him. Well, says Tommy, it’s a compli —

  Ninety-seven foot, sir. An’ nine inches.

  Tommy gapes. Good God, he says. Did you know that beforehand?

  Nossir. Worked it out.

  How?

  Mile’s fifty-two hunn’ed eighty foot, sir. Sixty-six miles is three hunn’ed an’ fo’ty-eight thousand, fo’ hunn’ed eighty foot. Add t’that two-thir’ mile, which is three thousand fahv hunn’ed twenty foot, get three hunn’ed fifty-two thousand foot. Divide that by thirty-six hunn’ed, you get ninety-seven foot nine inch ’n’ a bit.

  Long pause. Then: Ander? How far did you get in school?

  Grade fo’, sir. Had to work on a farm.

  Jesus Christ Almighty. I have known tenured professors less intelligent than you.

  Sir! Thank you, sir! May I make a request! Ander stiffens, as if he’s nerving himself.

  Tommy blinks. Go ahead.

  May I request the Loot’nant C’manduh not take our Lord’s name in vain!

  Tommy nods. Request granted, Ensign. You must find it hard to be in the Navy at times. The apostasy, the profanity.

  I do, sir, sometimes. ’Preciate it.

  What the fuck is goin’ on here, says a deep voice.

  Tommy turns. Kraweski.

  Navigation class, Tommy says. Captain Schaeffer approved it.

  Kraweski stares a hard question. Sir, says Tommy.

  Kraweski disregards him, looks past him to the youngsters. Ya learnin’ shit? he says. Any a’ya learnin’ shit from this’r fella?