Mister Roberts

by Thomas Heggen

  Carney replied with a geniality that sharply excluded Billings. "Frank," he said, "I think that's a fine idea. Let's you and I have one."

  Pulver thought it was some kind of game. "Ain't you going to give old Alfy here one?" he said thoughtlessly.

  Carney snorted. "Hell, no! Let the son-of-a-bitch buy his own!"

  Billings said immediately: "Who the hell wants your cokes, you silly bastard?"

  "Who wants them?" Carney said sweetly. "You do. You'd give your left leg for a coke right now."

  "The hell I would." Billings turned to Pulver, who was sitting very much surprised at this sharp and sincere exchange. He had never known the two to talk like this. "Jesus," said Billings scornfully, "did you ever hear such a petty son-of-a-bitch? He's got his cokes locked up in that closet! Afraid somebody's going to get one of them!"

  "I'm not afraid you're going to get any," Carney sneered. "That's for sure."

  Billings continued to address the bewildered Pulver. "That is the cheapest son-of-a-bitch I ever knew. You could count on your fingers all the money he's spent since he's been on this ship. Mooch!—all the bastard does is mooch. He hasn't bought a cigarette since he's been on here. He's the penny-pinchingest, mooching- est bastard I ever knew!"

  "Wouldn't you like a coke?" Carney taunted, but his face by this time was flushed red.

  "Jesus, what an ass!" Billings was saying. "What a petty no-good bastard! Sits on his ass all day and does these stupid paintings. Have you ever seen any of his paintings?—a five-year-old moron could do better!"

  Carney couldn't keep the anger out of his voice now. "Look who's talking! The sack-king himself! That son-of-a-bitch spends so much time in there he gets sores on his back. Actually!" He turned to Billings. "Why don't you get up in your sack where you belong?" he sneered.

  "Why don't you put me there?"

  "I think that's a good ideal"

  "I'd like to see it!"

  It was a bad moment. Both roommates were on their feet ready to swing. Ensign Pulver, normally a rather ineffective young man, suddenly arose to greatness. He got between them and he made it a joke. "Boys, boys, boys," he soothed. "Take it easy or Stupid'll be running down here." He pushed Carney down in the chair and then he got Billings to sit down again on the bunk. For a moment they sat glowering at each other. Then Carney picked up the quarrel.

  "Talk about petty," he said to Pulver. "Do you know what that guy did today? Actually did? He locked up little tiny slivers of soap so I couldn't use them! So small you could hardly see them, and he locked them up!" Carney shook his head. "Boy, that beats me."

  "Nothing beats you," Billings shot back, "when it comes to pettiness. You're the world's champ!"

  "And not only that," Carney went on to Pulver, "but the other day he was up banging ears with the Old Man again. He tells us he hates him and every chance he gets he sneaks up there and bangs ears. That's a nice guy to have around!"

  "You wish you could get up there yourself, don't you, you son-of-a-bitch!"

  Carney swung around in the chair. "Better watch your language," he said tightly.

  "Why should I?" Billings challenged. "Can you tell me why?"

  Pulver stepped into the breach again. "All right, goddamit," he said sternly. "Knock it off. It's too hot for such crap. Now knock it off, both of you." Pulver probably surprised himself, but he was certainly effective.

  Billings stood up and stretched elaborately. "Yeah," he said, "you're right, Frank. It's getting boring in here. Let's you and I get out."

  "That's a fine idea," said Carney. "Not you, Frank," he added.

  Billings ignored this. "Yeah, let's go visit our friends," he said. "The company's getting stupid in here." He threw an arm around Pulver and led him toward the door.

  "Yeah, go visit your friends," Carney sneered. "Billings has so many of them."

  Billings nodded knowingly to Pulver. "Come on," he said. Pulver hesitated in the doorway, obviously glad enough of an excuse to get out. "I'll see you later, Louie," he said impartially to Carney. Then he and Billings went out.

  That was all, then; the thing was over. Billings sat for three hours with Pulver in the wardroom playing acey-deucey, and he lost every game but two. Ordinarily Pulver couldn't take a game from him, but tonight Billings was so gorged with anger that he couldn't see straight. His mind wasn't on the game, his mind was trying to figure some way to get at Carney, but he couldn't think of a thing. Finally at midnight they quit. Billings went in to go to bed. The room was dark, and Carney was already in bed. So, in the process of undressing, Billings turned all the lights on and slammed the door to the head as loudly as he could.

  Then he climbed into his bunk. He was just about asleep when all the lights flashed on and the head door slammed like ah explosion. It was Carney retaliating.

  That night it rained, and all night long it rained. Next morning it was still raining, a chill, shifting, continuous tropical rain. Both Carney and Billings awoke at eight, felt the rain, pulled a sheet about them, and went snugly back to sleep. At eleven, in co-ordination, they awoke again, and both felt fine. A lovely cool breeze was coming in the porthole, and outside the rain was smoking on the water, so dense that Billings, looking out, couldn't even see the hated island. He yawned, stretched happily, and carelessly dropped an arm over the side of the bunk. Before he remembered and caught himself, Carney almost told him to get back in there. After a while Billings got up and dressed. "Jesus," he said, "rain." He said it with just the right impersonal inflection, that didn't necessarily invite a reply. "Yeah," said Carney. He said it just right, too; not too coldly, not too cordially; just right. That was all the conversation until noon.

  All the officers were in good spirits at lunch. The rain made them feel good, and besides, there was the news that an extra stevedore gang was being assigned the ship, which meant they'd be out of here in four days after all. Not only that, but there was a good movie- Rita Hayworth—scheduled for tonight, and it was only six months old.

  Billings felt so good that he went up to the radio shack and did some work. As he worked, his glow of general and diffused mellowness concentrated itself into a beam of good feeling directed at Carney. He thought what a good roommate Carney was. He thought over the events of the previous day and how foolish, really, the quarrel had been. He resolved to go down and start patching things up.

  In the room Carney was painting at the desk again. Billings went over to the washbasin and scrubbed his hands and scrupulously examined his teeth. Then, as he started out the door he said informatively, casually, and as though it had just occurred to him: "Oh, say, the exec was looking for you." Carney looked up and said politely: "Yeah, thanks, I saw him." Billings went back to the shack then and finished his work. He felt that they were ready now for a full reconciliation. It was about three o'clock, Coca-Cola time, when he returned to the room.

  He stood peering attentively over Carney's shoulder. The work in progress was that of a red stone building of an architecture possible only for a courthouse or a schoolhouse, set in the center of a public square. The square had a lawn of bluish tint, and there were several improbable-looking trees scattered about. Atop the building was what was evidently intended for a cupola, but with its upcurved corners looked more like a pagoda.

  "Where is that?" Billings asked respectfully.

  Carney looked up and smiled. "That's Osceola," he said. "The courthouse at Osceola, the county seat of Clark County."

  Billings continued to study the picture seriously. "What's that?" he said, pointing to the pagoda-like structure.

  "That's the cupola," Carney said. He cocked his head at the picture and grinned. "Those curves represent the Chinese influence on my work."

  Billings stroked his chin and with a perfectly deadpan face he asked: "Are you sure they don't represent the Asiatic influence?"

  And then both of them were laughing easily together, and Carney, still laughing, was waving his hand and saying carelessly: "Get the ice."

  O
ver the cokes, they sat back and examined the work critically. "I think it's my best work," Carney said. "What do you think?"

  "I think it is," Billings agreed. He turned his head this way and that. "You're getting good on sidewalks," he noted.

  "Yeah," said Carney. "I'm good on sidewalks. Those are pretty good trees, too, don't you think?"

  Billings nodded. "Fine trees," he said positively.

  They finished the cokes and Carney leaned back in his chair and yawned and stretched. "Well," he said. "I've done enough work for today. I think I'll knock off."

  Billings yawned and stretched, too. He scratched his head. Very casually he said: "Feel like getting your ass whipped?"

  Carney cocked an eyebrow at him. "Think you're man enough?"

  "I think so," Billings said.

  "Okay." They stood up and Carney led the way to the wardroom.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The anchoring itself was accomplished without incident. The anchor chain banged and rattled in the hawse pipes and the ship shuddered as it stampeded out. The word, "Secure the special sea detail," was blatted over the P A. system and five seconds later the engine room called the bridge for permission to secure the main engines. The Captain made the appropriate reply, "Goddamit, they'll secure when I get good and ready to let them secure," but he did it without enthusiasm, and he only muttered for perhaps two minutes about those bastards down there who sit on their tails waiting to secure. It was a very hot, sweaty day, about three in the afternoon, and it seemed just another island: so nobody's heart beat very much faster at being anchored.

  The port routine commenced, a matter of loosening the ship's belt a notch or two. The gun watches stayed on, but the lookouts were secured and ran below to find the crap game. A boat was lowered to go over and get the mail. Back on number four hatch the canvas screen was rigged for the night's movie. Stuyzuiski, a seaman in the third division who wouldn't get out of his clothes under way, took a bath; and at chow everyone remarked on how much better he smelled. Ensign Pulver mixed himself what he called a Manhattan—a third of a water-glass of brandy, a splash of vermouth, and a couple of ice cubes—and lay in his bunk and sipped it admiringly. The crew leaned on the rail and looked around incuriously at the little bay and the naval base ashore. Becker, a seaman received on board in the last draft, was moved to remark to Dowdy: "This ain't a bad place, you know it?" Dowdy said something obscene without even turning his head. Becker bumbled on : "No, I mean it ain't as bad as most of the places we been to. It's kind of pretty."

  Becker was right, though; it was kind of pretty; it was really a rather lovely little bay. The water off the reef was terribly blue, a showy light-ink blue. The bay was enclosed by a chain of islands, and instead of the usual flat barren coral these were green with lush and heavy foliage, and on two sides of the anchorage they ran up to impressive hills that were remote and purpling in the late afternoon sun. And the channel at the end of the bay wound away into the deep shadow between the islands and reappeared flashing in the secret and smoky distance. The crew, lined along the rail, began to feel obscurely good at being here; and even Dowdy was probably aware that, aesthetically, this was quite a superior place.

  Its intrinsic and most spectacular virtue fell to Sam Insigna to discover. (Although if Sam hadn't found it one of the other signalmen would have soon enough.) Sam was a little monkey of a man, not quite five feet tall, long-armed and bow-legged like a monkey, with a monkey's grinning, wizened face, who had achieved considerable fame aboard the ship by once attacking, unprovoked and with the intention of doing physical violence, a six-foot-four-inch marine. Sam was up on the flying bridge with the other signalmen and he was idly scanning the beach through the ship's telescope, a large, mounted glass of thirty-two power. The ship was anchored perhaps two hundred yards from the beach, and just off the starboard bow, die way she was heading now, there was a base hospital. The hospital flag was flying over three rows of Quonset huts; there was well-trimmed grass between the huts, and straight neat coral paths that looked like sidewalks. Farther off to the right was the rest of the naval base; clapboard buildings and Quonsets scattered between coconut palms, and down at the waterfront there was a long wooden dock where a Liberty ship was unloading. Dead ahead, right on the point, was the interesting thing, though, the really amazing thing. It was a house, easily identifiable as a house; an authentic civilian house. It was a wooden, two-story house, painted yellow; long and low, with a veranda running the entire length. There was a swing on the veranda and several cane chairs, there was a fine green lawn running down to the beach, and there were two green wooden benches on the lawn under the trees. It was an old house, obviously long antedating American occupation of the island; it was a formless, bleak, and even ugly house; yet, in these surroundings, in the middle of the Pacific, it seemed to the signalmen a thing of great magnificence.

  "It must have been the Governor's house," Schlemmer explained.

  Sam swung the telescope around to have a look at this. At first he trained it carelessly around the grounds, then he turned it on the house. For perhaps a full minute nothing happened, and then it did. Sam had been leaning with one elbow on the windshield; all of a sudden he jerked upright, sucked in his breath and grabbed at the glass as if he were falling. The idea flashed through the mind of Schlemmer, standing beside him, that Sam had been hit by a sniper.

  "Holy Christ!" Sam said. He seemed to have difficulty in speaking.

  "What is it?" Schlemmer said, and he grabbed for a long-glass.

  There was only reverence in Sam's voice. "Holy Christ! She's bare-assed!"

  One of the many anomalies of our ponderous Navy is its ability to move fast, to strike the swift, telling blow at the precise moment it is needed. There were accessible in the wheelhouse and charthouse seven pairs of binoculars; on the flying bridge were two spyglasses and two long-glasses, and the ship's telescope; and on a platform above was the range-finder, an instrument of powerful magnification. Within a commendably brief time after Sam had sounded the alarm, somewhere between fifteen and twenty seconds, there were manned six pairs of binoculars, two spyglasses, two long-glasses, of course the ship's telescope, and the range-finder. The glasses were all on the target right away, but the range-finder took a little longer, that instrument being a large unwieldy affair which required considerable frantic cranking and adjusting by two men in order to focus on a target. Through a rather surprising sense of delicacy, considering that two quartermasters and the talker were left without, one pair of binoculars remained untouched; the ones clearly labeled "Captain." In future scrutinies, it was found necessary to press all glasses into service, exempting none.

  Sam's discovery was basically simple, natural, reasonable. He had discovered that nurses lived in the long, yellow house. He had discovered two large windows in the middle of the second-story front, and that these windows had none but shade curtains, retracted. He had discovered (the telescope is a powerful glass and the room was well illumined by sunlight) that the windows belonged to the bathroom. It is, of course, redundant to say that he had also discovered a nurse in the shower stall in the far left-hand corner of the room. All of this would seem to be a model of logic, of sweet reasonableness: what could possibly be more logical than that there be a hospital at this base, that there be nurses attached to this hospital, that these nurses lived in a house, that this house have a bathroom, that this bathroom have windows, that these nurses bathe? Nothing, you would think. And yet to these signalmen and quartermasters (who had last seen a white woman, probably fat, certainly fully clothed, perhaps fourteen months ago) this vision was literally that, a vision, and a miracle, and not a very small miracle, either. Like Sam, they were stricken with reverence in its presence, and like Sam, their remarks were, reverent; those who could speak at all. "Holy Christ!" a few of them managed to breathe and "Son-of-a-bitch!" That was all. Those are the only legitimate things a man can say when suddenly confronted with the imponderable.

  The word spread fa
st, although how it is difficult to say: certainly no one left the bridge. The four-to-eight signal watch, Niesen and Canappa, never known to relieve before the stroke of the hour, appeared at three thirty and met an equally incredible thing; a watch that refused to be relieved. "Get the hell out of here," Sam told the newcomers. "We're staying up here till chow." There was some bitterness and much indignant insistence by the oncoming pair of their right to relieve the watch, but the old watch, firmly entrenched at the glasses, stayed by them until chow was piped. There was a splendid run of bathers. The shore station blinked for half an hour trying to rouse this ship, a bare two hundred yards away; and, finally succeeding, sent out a nasty message about keeping a more alert signal watch. Accordingly, the glass of the striker Mannion was taken away from him and he was detailed to watch for signals. It seemed that Sam had just gone below for supper when he was back again, demanding and getting his telescope. He and the rest of the watch stayed on until after sunset, when lights went on in the bath* room and the curtains were pulled chastely down for the night; all the way down, leaving not the merest crack.

  That first day was chaotic, comparable perhaps to the establishing of a beachhead. It was ill-organized; there was duplication and wasted effort. The next day went much better. A system and a pattern appeared. The curtain was raised at 0745 and was witnessed by Sam, Schlemmer, Canappa, Mannion, Morris, Niesen, three quartermasters, and the officer-of-the-deck. For perhaps forty-five minutes there was a dazzling crowd of early-morning bathers; almost a surfeit of them, sometimes three or four at a time. Then there was a long slack period (no one in the room) that extended to ten o'clock. Sam organized for the slack period. It is fatiguing to stand squinting through an eyepiece for long periods, so Sam arranged that one man, by turns, keep the lookout during the off-hours and give the word when action developed. But he refused to let

  Mannion take a turn. "That son-of-a-bitch watched one strip down yesterday and didn't open his mouth," he accused.