Mister Roberts

by Thomas Heggen

  Langston was awake and sitting dazedly up. "What the hell was that noise?" he mumbled.

  Roberts pulled the sheet up to his chin. "I didn't hear any noise," he said. And then he added, "But I do now." He could hear the screaming voice of the Captain, and the opening of doors, and the scurrying of many feet, as of quartermasters and messengers running down from the bridge. They were wonderfully pleasant noises. Roberts listened to them for several minutes, until he fell soundly asleep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Captain’s palm tree must have held for him a symbolism or complex sentimental value far exceeding that of its eye appeal, which was negligible. It must have, else how could you account for his reaction to its sabotage? The Captain's reaction was violent. It was roughly ten minutes past eight in the morning when he stepped out on the wing of his boat deck and discovered the loss. Immediately he let out a bellow for poor little Cornwall, his steward's mate. He pointed fiercely at the loose earth strewn about the empty overturned five-gallon can. "Don't touch that!" he shouted at the bewildered Cornwall. "Don't let anybody near that!" It is hard to say just what his purpose might have been: perhaps in the first minutes of his grief and righteous wrath the Captain thought to make a shrine of the scene of vandalism. At any rate, later in the day he made Cornwall sweep up the mess.

  Then the Captain bounded up the ladder to the bridge. His face was stained deep purple as he lurched toward the microphone of the P.A. system. He had a moment of furious trouble with the switches and buttons, and then his amplified and unmistakable voice startled the morning peace.

  Awakening was for the crew of the Reluctant an unusually gradual process. It began feebly at six-thirty when Chief Johnson held reveille. It continued at seven when a majority of the crew actually got up and began to move dazedly about. Usually it was ten o'clock or thereabouts when the process was completed. The Captain materially speeded things up this morning.

  His voice came to the crew like a douse of ice water:

  "All right now, goddamit, listen to this. Some smart son-of-a-bitch has been up here and thrown my palm tree over the side, and last night he was getting smart and pounding on my bulkhead. Now I'm telling you, by God, right here and now I'm going to find out who done that if I have to tear this ship upside-down doing it. By God, I'll do that if I have to! Bet your ass! There's going to be a general court-martial for the fellow who did that! Now if you know anyone who had anything to do with it, you better get up here and tell me. That's your duty, by God, that's your duty. I can tell you right here and now that there won't be any liberty on board of this here ship until I find the son-of- a-bitch who's been getting so goddam smart!"

  This was substantially the text of the Captain's ad- j3ress. The delivered version was actually longer, but then it tended toward repetition and, in the end, incoherence. The crew listened at first with shock, then with wonder, and finally with conspicuous joy. "Hey, did ya hear that?" they shouted at one another. "Somebody threw the Old Man's tree over the side!" All of a sudden it was a wonderful day, and every man on the ship was instantaneously wide awake. Down in the compartment men guffawed and slapped each other on the back. There was less evident rejoicing out on deck, under the Captain's eye, but it was there just the same. The threat of restriction depressed no one, for this was a crew of realists, all of whom knew that the ship wasn't going anywhere near another liberty port after Elysium. It would have been hard to give them anything nicer than the Captain's news.

  After addressing the crew, the Captain summoned Mr. LeSueur, the executive officer, and addressed him for fifteen minutes. The pitch and volume of Captain's voice were high. It was reported he told Mr. LeSueur that if he didn't find who threw his tree over the side and pounded on his bulkhead, by God, he'd put him, Mr. LeSueur, in hack for ten days! Bet your ass! He ordered Mr. LeSueur to send a boat ashore to dig up two small palm trees and return with them. He further ordered Mr. LeSueur to set a watch on the starboard wing of the boat deck from sunset until 8 a.m. The sole duty of the watch would be to guard the two palm trees, and God help them if they went to sleep!

  The Captain had a busy morning. After Mr. LeSueur he summoned and received a series of visitors. It was shrewdly noted that they were the very crew members consistently civil to him. Undoubtedly the Captain reasoned that civility constituted loyalty, and that these were his friends. All of these visitors reported the same thing: that he had tried to pump them for information. All of them told that the Old Man had cocked his head and coyly assured them that he had a damn good idea who it was and that, by God, he'd fix him. And all of them agreed that the Captain hadn't the foggiest idea which one of his hundred-and-seventy- odd enemies had struck.

  The Captain wasn't the only one who was curious. The entire ship's company was excited over this unrevealed hero in their midst. They were avid to locate him and do him honor. Little thoughtful groups gathered throughout the day, and among them every name on the ship's roster was carefully considered for motive and potentiality. The only man who was entirely free of suspicion was Whipple, the storekeeper, who lay in sick-bay with his broken leg hanging by weights and pulleys from the overhead. There was no agreement among the investigating groups, although certain names were mentioned more often than others. Dowdy's name was mentioned quite a bit, and so was Olson's. Schlemmer, the signalman, was one active candidate, and Dolan, the quartermaster, was another. These four were accused countless times during the day, but none of them, it was noted by the most perceptive, had the air of valorous achievement properly obtaining to the true culprit. Although there were several confessions, none were by credible people, and the crew was frankly baffled.

  The really smart boys in the crew figured it must have been an officer. An officer, they reasoned, had both greater opportunity and larger motive. These speculators were, of course, getting warm, but they never really got hot. They mentioned Lieutenant Roberts as a possibility, but they deferred him to Ensign Pulver and Lieutenant (jg) Ed Pauley. This was done because both Pulver and Pauley had a history of fierce and vocal threats against the Captain. Roberts never wasted his time that way. The smart boys finally settled on Pulver as their man, chiefly because he was so disarmingly unconvincing in denying his guilt. Ensign Pulver was flattered pink at the charge, and until the real one stepped forward he was entirely willing to be the interim culprit. He found it very agreeable. He went around all day being disgustingly coy.

  Dowdy and Olson and Stefanowski, the machinist's mate, met as usual that evening in the armory. They spent a very quiet, happy, and domestic time. For a long while they sat and digested the rich news of the Captain's misfortune. Then Dowdy and Olson settled down to an acey-deucey game and Stefanowski went over to the phonograph and played Gene Autry records. At midnight Dolan came in. He had just come off watch, and he had thoughtfully acquired some eggs from the galley on his way down. He got out the hot-plate, got out the frying-pan, and put the eggs on.

  Stefanowski looked up from his records. "I hear you threw the Old Man's tree over the side"' he greeted.

  "No, I didn't," said Dolan. He had a thoughtful look as he watched the eggs. "But I know who did," he added quietly.

  Both Dowdy and Olson looked up from their game. "Yeah?" said Olson.

  Dolan nodded slowly. "Roberts did it," he said. "Mister Roberts. I was on the bridge and I heard this splash and I saw him. He was just taking his time."

  Dowdy and Olson and Stefanowski looked at each other. "Well, 111 be damned," said Dowdy. "Are you kidding?"

  Dolan was dead serious. "No, I ain't kidding. I saw him." He added fiercely,, "Now, goddamit, that's just between the four of us. I ain't told nobody. You go spreading that around and you'll get him in trouble."

  "Yeah," agreed Dowdy, "we'll have to keep it quiet." He grinned suddenly and pushed back from the acey- deucey board. "Old Roberts," he said admiringly. "That's all right! By God, you might of known he done it!"

  Stefanowski smacked the workbench. "You goddamn right! He must be the guy
that pounded hell out of the Old Man's bulkhead too. Man, he done a good day's work!"

  Dolan said: "That is one good son-of-a-bitching officer. That really is." He looked to the others for agreement.

  Dowdy nodded with heavy authority. "I know I ain't never seen a better one." He turned to Olson. "How about you, Tom?" Dowdy and Olson were the two old- time Navy men on the ship and the final authorities on matters naval.

  "No, I ain't," said Olson. "I seen a lot of pricks, though."

  "Yeah, so have I," said Dowdy. "I've seen some awful pricks. And the funny thing is a lot of them were mustangs. Old enlisted men. I was with a first-class boatswain's mate once who was just a hell of a nice guy. Everybody liked him. Then they made him a- officer and right away he became the biggest bastard you ever saw. Everyone hated his guts after that."

  "That's right," Olson concurred. "I guess it's easy to be a nice guy when you ain't got any authority."

  'We got a pretty good bunch of officers on here," Stefanowski said. "On the whole, I mean."

  Dowdy looked at him a little coldly. "You know why, don't you?" he said superiorly, and then he went on: "Because they don't do anything, that's why. Because they just sit on their asses and don't give a damn about nothing. Hell, it's easy to be a nice guy that way, when you ain't trying to do anything. It's when you got work to be done, when you've got to turn to a bunch of guys, that you can really tell a good officer. Old Roberts," he said; "now there is really an officer. He gets out there and turns to himself and he turns everyone else to and, by God, they still like him. He's still a nice guy and that's the test. Just because these other bastards lie in their sacks and don't bother anybody, you say they're all right. How the hell do you know?"

  It was a strong rebuke, and Stefanowski felt it. "Yeah," he said penitently, "I guess that's right."

  "You goddamn right that's right!" Dowdy snapped.

  Stefanowski was quiet for a decent moment. Then he said: "Well, all I say is, Roberts ought to have a medal for what he did. That was sure a hell of a fine job!"

  "Hell, yes," said Dolan. "Any guy that would fix the Old Man up like that ought to have a medal."

  There was a little quiet moment while Dowdy eyed the other three strangely. Then he said with an air of decision: "All right, let's give him a medal."

  "What?" said Stefanowski.

  "Let's give him a medal."

  "Where you going to get it?" Stefanowski asked

  Dowdy said scathingly: "You got a lathe down there in the machine shop, haven't you?"

  "Yeah," said Stefanowski, and there was the dawn of excitement in his voice.

  "And you got plenty of sheet brass, haven't you?"

  Stefanowski got it now. "Yeah," he said excitedly. "Hell, yes!"

  "Well, all right!" Dowdy said triumphantly. "What more do you want? . . ."

  At four o'clock next afternoon, Lieutenant Roberts sat in his room talking with Lieutenant (jg) Langston, his roommate. It had been a busy day, unloading dry stores onto barges, and Roberts had been out on deck since six o'clock. He was very tired and he sat in the coaster chair and contemplated a shower while he half- listened to Langston describing a Texas snake-hunt. There was a knock on the jamb of the opened door and Dowdy and Olson and Dolan and Stefanowski stood in the passageway.

  "Come in," Roberts called. The four filed inside. Stefanowski was holding a small green box.

  Dowdy spoke: "Could we see you a minute, Mr. Roberts?" He looked significantly over at Langston.

  Roberts smiled. "Sure," he said. And in answer to Dowdy's look: "That's all right."

  Stefanowski passed the box to Dowdy. Dowdy shuffled a moment and looked again doubtfully at Langston. Then he went ahead. "Well, Mr. Roberts, we just wanted to give you this." He handed the box to Roberts.

  Roberts looked puzzledly at the box. He looked at the four awkward, embarrassed men. Then, smiling quizzically, he opened the box.

  It was a nice box, and it had been floored with cotton. On the cotton, very bright, lay a strange device It was a medal cut of shining brass in the shape of , full-grown palm tree with overhanging fronds. Fastened at the back of the medal was a piece of gorgeous silk, blue and red and yellow, secured at the other end to a safety-pin clasp. The palm tree was embedded in a rectangular base, and words had been painstakingly cut with a drill press into this base. Lieutenant Roberts read the words:

  Roberts looked at the medal for a long time. Then he smiled and passed the medal over to Langston.

  "That's very nice," he said to Dowdy, "but I'm afraid you've got the wrong man."

  He and Dowdy looked deeply at each other, and Dowdy grinned. "Yessir." Dowdy said. "We know that, Mr. Roberts, but we'd kind of like you to have it, anyhow, sir."

  The smile on Roberts's face was funny and tight. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "All right," he said, "I'll keep it. Thanks very much, all of you."

  All four were grinning proudly. "Oh, that's nothing," Dowdy said. "Stefanowski here made it down in the shop."

  "It's a fine job," Roberts complimented.

  "Yessir, we think it is," Dowdy said. The four stood awkwardly in the door. "Well . . ." said Dowdy. The four started out, and then Dolan turned in the doorway and blurted: "There ain't nobody that knows anything about this but us, Mr. Roberts. About the medal, I mean. Stefanowski, he didn't let anybody see it while was cutting it."

  "That's fine," Roberts said, 'Taut it doesn't matter." He wanted to say something else, something of appreciation, but before he could form the words the group was gone from the doorway.

  "Now I've got a medal to show my grandchildren," he said quietly to Langston.

  Langston passed the medal back. "Did you take care of the palm tree?" he asked curiously.

  "I must have," Roberts said softly; and he smiled again that funny twisted smile. He took the box in his hands, and looked at the medal and at the absurd ribbon, read again the words so painstakingly cut; and for the first time in perhaps fifteen years he felt like crying.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When coming off the Four-to-Eight watch, Bergstrom, the quartermaster, set out to find his friend, Thompson, the radioman, he knew exactly where to go. Thompson, he knew, would be sitting in the mess hall playing Monopoly. Nominally, at least, it was Monopoly, but it was a brand that the copyright owners would scarcely have recognized. Thompson and the rest of the faithful who sat down to play every night in port before the movies had renovated it startlingly. The way it was played in the mess hall, the object was no longer to amass the most property, but rather to pull off the greatest fraud. Loaded dice, sleight-of- hand, irregular counting practices, and various other forms of collusion were injected into that normally pallid game, with the result that it became no longer a game, but a spectacle played to a noisy but appreciative gallery of after-chow loungers. No player ever went into the contest armed with less than five thousand dollars of play money borrowed from another set, and nobody ever won; the game always ended when it narrowed down to two contestants of equally astronomical and ill-gotten wealth. It was a good show, and the kibitzers would demonstrate appreciatively whenever 'a particularly inspired piece of larceny was exposed. Thompson, because he demonstrated a talent for the game that bordered on genius, was their favorite; and the consensus was that once Thompson got on the outside he would abruptly become one of the world's wealthiest men.

  It was a matter of some importance Bergstrom wanted to see his friend about, having to do with borrowing a couple of dungaree shirts until the laundry came back. When he left the bridge, Bergstrom looked into the radio shack just to make sure that Thompson wasn't on watch, then he went infallibly on down to the mess hall. But Thompson wasn't there. The game was going on and the kibitzers were gathered, but it was a half-hearted performance because Thompson wasn't there cheating monstrously and laughing his head off. Bergstrom was quite surprised. For a few moments he watched the game and then he set out to find his friend. He looked in the compartment, where Thompson lived in the bunk
above him, and he looked in the heads and he looked out on deck. He finally found him in the yeoman's office.

  Thompson and their other great friend, Braue, the yeoman, were alone in there. Neither was talking, and both were sitting looking thoughtfully at the deck. Thompson had a kind of stare in his eyes.

  Bergstrom closed the door behind him. "How come no game tonight?" he started, and then he saw that something was wrong. "What's the trouble?" he asked more quietly.

  Thompson kept his eyes fixed on the deck. "This," he said. He handed over a crumpled dispatch blank and explained wearily while Bergstrom read it: "My kid died, drowned in the ocean. Eighteen months old. I never even saw her."

  Bergstrom read on: ". . . funeral Saturday please try to come all my love frances." He folded the paper and returned it. This was Wednesday. "Jesus, I'm sorry, Frank," he said.

  Thompson nodded in heavy acknowledgment. He raised his eyes and looked out the open porthole. "That son-of-a-bitch," he said tonelessly, as though it were something he had already said many times tonight.