At the Midway

by J. Clayton Rogers

  Still, the marine could not push him off. Nearly twenty years as a fireman had made Gilroy's biceps thick as bandirons. He was only freed when another marine came up from behind and low‑leveled a punch to Gilroy's kidneys.

  "Clear the deck! Clear the deck!"

  Sailors leapt out of the way as the fire control parties shot down the bowels of the ship‑‑and Amos Macklin was caught out of place at the worst possible time. In the pocket of his white steward uniform was a flask of gin for Seaman Gilroy.

  It was the look the stoker had given him the night before that undid him. Passing in the shadow of the lifeboats‑‑the blackout would not begin until midnight‑‑his eyes had shown with peculiar whiteness. Piercing eyes. Evil.

  But most unsettling, eyes without recognition. Gilroy had stared right through him, ghosting past Amos as if he were a wall to be pierced and left behind. His face was as black as the night beyond the arc lamps. Turning, Amos could just make out the form of Dr. Singleton. Gilroy went up to him. They exchanged words, but Amos could not hear them above the racket of the work crews.

  The noise, oddly, increased the sense of isolation. Whistling in the dark en masse. The lights carved out a stark cave of loneliness. Come midnight, when the blackout went in force, it would be merely emphasis of their remoteness.

  Gilroy was about to do something crazy. Of that Amos was sure.

  He'd been relieved when the stoker stopped pestering him for liquor. He assumed it was a brief respite, that Gilroy had picked up a few bottles in San Francisco and would resume his nagging once they were consumed.

  The look he gave Amos seemed to confirm just that. He was dry. Time to own up, or Gilroy would report him to Ensign Garrett. The steward would not have given in to what he perceived as an unspoken command. Gilroy looked so gaunt and haunted Amos felt he was only a few steps short of death. If the stoker died, a good chunk of the steward's worries would go with him.

  One more pint just might do the job.

  He had tried to get some sleep. Like almost everyone else on board he found the prospect of battle on the morrow pounding his temples, making even a light doze impossible. Swaying in his hammock, he wondered if Gilroy lay awake also. If so, he was probably waiting for Amos and scheming his vengeance if Amos did not come. The attempt to sleep was pointless when thoughts like this preyed on his mind. Sneaking into the galley, he unlocked the liquor cabinet and filled a pint flask with gin.

  He was passing one of the dynamo rooms when the fire alarm was raised. As men poured through the hatches, he had the fleeting impression they were after him. But they only wanted him out of the way. He waited a full minute after they were gone before allowing himself a sigh of relief. A sigh that was throttled when he saw two marines hauling a man up the corridor. There was no mistaking the grimy attire and complexion. The man was a stoker. As they came close, he recognized Gilroy. Obviously injured, but the Leathernecks were not treating him gently. Holding him up by the armpits, they banged his shins painfully as they dragged him across the coaming.

  Before reaching the spot where Amos stood they dodged to the side, disappearing into the warrant officers' mess. Empty this early in the morning, they could only be going in for privacy. Amos wanted nothing to do with it. When he heard a cry of pain, he knew he should run back to the liquor cabinet and return the gin to its clear glass bottle. It was not so much sympathy as curiosity that prompted him to edge in the direction of the hall. And annoyance. No sailor took kindly to marines mistreating a mate.

  "So who paid you off? The Japs in California? Where was it? San Diego? San Francisco? They pay you with dope, you fucking‑‑"

  The sentence ended with a loud slap.

  "Don't kill him. The Navy'll do that for us."

  Amos' scalp went cold when he heard the next voice. It was Gilroy‑‑yet not Gilroy. A heavy timbre weighed the voice, shale sliding across shale. A devil in a sideshow. "Navy? You're Navy!"

  "Hey, what's that?"

  "You fucking jugheads don't think you're Navy. Well, you are! You got more saltwater up your ass‑‑"

  There was a harsh, dull echo.

  "What's that again, grease monkey?"

  "Sea‑boy sailors, green as the Seven Seas."

  "Hell, leave it. He set fire to the ship. He'll hang sure enough."

  The man speaking did not seem convinced. Amos guessed his main concern was that they might be held culpable if they accidentally murdered the stoker. He peeked into the mess.

  And was horrified when Gilroy instantly saw him and shouted, "There's the black bastard at fault. Goddamn nigger put me up to it!"

  The marines exchanged skeptical glances, but one of them nodded at the steward. "Come over here, boy."

  "That's the one fought Hensley the other day. You're a helluva fighter, boy. But don't try any tricks with us, or we'll finish you."

  A wild fire of terror raced through Amos' vitals. He could not believe his own stupidity. The Leathernecks could do almost anything they wanted to him and not one man would care. If they discovered the flask in his pocket they would have all the moral justification they needed‑‑not that they needed any. They could fuck him up proper and he'd be only one more bloody nigger.

  "Don't dawdle. Come here. We just want to ask you about this shit shoveler."

  Amos found himself unable to meet their faces. He gazed out over the galvanized tables of the mess, gleaming with nickel dullness, like morgue slabs. The warrant officers' mess. He'd worked here any number of times since their departure from the Capes.

  No. He had slaved here.

  And he was about to act the slave again. He knew it. He felt it crawling up inside him, a body of nausea.

  "What do you say? You put this greaser up to setting the paint locker on fire?"

  "And mind you, it's murder, too. I heard the screams."

  "Couldn't miss the smell," the first marine added.

  "Amos Macklin's his name," Gilroy slurred through his bloody mouth. The black man could now see one of the reasons for the stoker's strange tone: One of his front teeth flapped back and forth like a toppled saloon door as he spoke. "You take him down like you're taking me, he'll tell you. Goddamn nigger was‑‑"

  He let out a howl as one of the marines punched him in the spine.

  "Shut up, greaseback! All right, boy. What've you got to say for yourself?"

  Dignity abandoned him. The instant he opened his mouth his voice, normally a rich baritone, became an inarticulate whine.

  "I don't know nuffin', marse. Please, suh, I don't know why he's sayin' doze things."

  "Marse!" the marines erupted. They pointed at each other. "Marse! Never been called master before!"

  Amos took advantage of their hilarity by begging to be let go. The flask felt like a burning cross in his pocket. Even the whites on board were severely punished for carrying unauthorized liquor. He could only expect worse. Far worse. Any moment, he expected it to fall out and crash to the deck, guilt and accusation in one liquid flaming form. His behavior was no longer voluntary. The sheer necessity for survival caused the slave to hop out, to break into a cringing song and dance. Amos Macklin, amazed critic, watched from somewhere else as the chattel bowed, pleaded, shuffled, and all too quickly convinced the marines of his harmlessness.

  "Don't let him go!"

  His screech earned Gilroy another rough tap from his captors. As Amos backed out of the mess hall, he heard one of the marines comment, "That boy don't know shit, grease monkey. You're a self‑made nigger, you are. And a murderer."

  "And a traitor."

  0545 Hours

  "Where's Grissom? Goddammit, where's my exec?"

  Captain Oates was racing down one of the aft passageways when he finally spied the lieutenant trotting towards him. Seeing Oates, he raised both hands and nodded.

  "It's under control...." He stopped to catch his breath. He'd been in the thick of the fight against the blaze. Face and forearms covered with soot, he looked like one of the black crew. His
collar had become a crust of smoke and sweat. "We lost two men.... They were trapped in the locker. Ten more were overcome by the smoke and fumes… and something else."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There's a couple of them I don't think'll pull through."

  "But it's under control."

  "Yes." The lieutenant girded himself against Oates' inevitable response to his next words. "It was sabotage, sir."

  "What!"

  "And murder, I believe. That's what the captain of the marines thinks." He relayed what the marines had learned from Gilroy. Unquestionably, they had employed their own quick, brutal method of forcing a confession from the stoker. But the exec did not bother telling Oates of his suspicion. After all, the Florida was his ship. He would probably have approved.

  "You said we lost men to the fumes… and something else?"

  "Aye. I heard a story once about a warehouse fire. In one of the treaty ports. There was opium stored inside. When they tried to put out the fire, they started seeing things...."

  "Hallucinations? My God, are you saying‑‑"

  Grissom braced himself against the corridor wall. He had inhaled some of the fumes himself.

  The captain was not a man who kept his peace when angry or flustered. "Have you confirmed this? Have you?"

  "The stoker fell asleep soon after. No one's been able to wake him. That's what the marines tell me, at least."

  "Wake him! Dammit! Wake him! I'll see to it! He'll know there's a God in Heaven and Hell when I finish with him! Dammit, what if he's a Jap spy? We've got to know!"

  Turned out by the bugle calls echoing madly through the corridors, sailors had darted to the hatchways to see what was happening‑‑only to be shoved back by the watch as the damage control parties and marines raced aft. Baffled and fearful, they wondered if a battle had already been fought and lost. A concern that was trebled when they saw injured men being carried to the infirmary.

  "Hell if I'm going to wait to find out," Ensign Garrett told some of the others in forecastle. In bare feet and boxer shorts, he started to follow the stretcher bearers. Then he thought twice, and went back to don a cotton undershirt. He had no desire to put his colorful abdomen on display. That done, he caught up just as the injured men were being taken through the infirmary door.

  The surgeon had been preparing as thoroughly as any gunner on board. His bandages, unguents and extra beds were set in order as if to tempt patients, while surgical instruments were laid out in all their cruel gleaming sharpness as if to chase them away. But these early injuries came as a surprise, the more so because of the peculiar symptoms some of them evinced, a profound lassitude verging on death.

  There was no mistaking what had happened to Gilroy, however. The curious sailors gathered outside the infirmary took one glance at the fireman as he was carried in and knew immediately the marines had fallen in love with him.

  "Here's the bastard," they said, dumping him on one of the extra cots. No sense giving him one of the softer beds.

  "What happened to him?" the surgeon asked.

  "He fell asleep."

  "Fell on his face, too, it seems."

  "This is the grease monkey that started the fire."

  Gilory was not one of the engineer's mates. However, the marines on the Florida used the derogatory term, nearly as old as steam engines themselves, for anyone who worked near the ship's power plant.

  "How do you know that?" the surgeon asked them.

  "He told us."

  The surgeon raised his hand in frustration. "Then why bring him here? Take him where he belongs!"

  Exchanging grins, the marines hefted the unconscious stoker and carried him out. Garrett could not resist the urge to follow. The way the Leathernecks were acting, they were as likely to toss him overboard as into the brig. Along the way the ensign heard details of what had transpired below. He was incredulous. All his indifference fell away. One of their own had tried to destroy the ship. His ship. The twelve‑inch gun Garrett had invested so much intellectual and emotional energy upon might have been sent to the bottom by some idiotic, drug‑intoxicated stoker. The opprobrium would have been endless, the shame eternal. The Maine was remembered for being sabotaged by the Spanish. The Florida would have been ballyhooed as the battleship sunk by a dope fiend. Next to that, the possibility that they all might have been killed was secondary.

  There were angry murmurs among the bluejackets, but the marines held them back. They were jealous of their victim. No one else would be allowed to beat up on him. But there was one sailor they could not stop.

  Captain Oates roared up, cursing and spitting hotter than memory served. The bluejackets squeezed back against the walls, appalled by the apparition. Even when they had been posted in the observation ward, the captain had not looked this mad. A rabid land‑going shark. With no concern for formality, received or returned, he bowled over several sailors and followed hard on the marines carrying Gilroy into the brig.

  "Wake him! Wake the son of a bitch! Get him on his feet. Set fire to my ship, will he!" He knocked the marines aside and grabbed the stoker, shaking him like a doll. No one had suspected such strength in the old man. It soon became obvious Gilroy would not open his eyes again any time soon. Frustrated, Oates turned on the gawkers at the door. He immediately spied out the nosegay of bruises that comprised Ensign Garrett's face. "You! What are you doing away from your station? Out of uniform!"

  "Sir, I--"

  "Mr. Garrett, what the hell are you doing running around in your shorts?"

  This stunned them all, since half the men present were in their shorts. Those further back in the corridor began slipping silently away, hoping Oates had not and would not spot them. Those in front had no such hope, Garrett least of all. Facing Oates in this temper was as bad as staring down the throat of a typhoon. The ensign went blind with embarrassment. He turned sideways, like a man in a lopsided duel praying the marksman's bullet would only glance him. The captain came forward. The end of the ensign's career seemed at hand.

  And then an angel appeared‑‑in the guise of Lieutenant Grissom. Slipping between the captain and the sailors, he put on a breathless air and whispered, "Sunrise, captain. And we can't raise Midway."

  0610 Hours

  Brought up short, Oates blinked, as if a matador had disappeared before his eyes. "Nothing at all?"

  "HH told us he would signal at first light. We've received nothing."

  Oates contemplated the implications a few moments, then looked from his exec to the men trying to make themselves invisible in the passageway. "All right. You men in shorts--stay in them. You men in uniform. Strip. There's going to be some hot work today, I guess. We'll do it like Dewey in Manila Bay. I was there, in case you didn't know. Down to our skivvies and giving hell to the Spanish. Gather the men on the gun deck and give them the word."

  The crew gathered at the gun deck and Grissom read out from the Articles for the Government of the United States Navy.

  A cheer, ragged but heartfelt, burst from the sailors. Hot hell and glory!

  1030 Hours

  "Battle stations!"

  The men scattered, their bare feet pounding a martial tattoo. The C-clef staccato of bugles spread rapidly through the ship, frantic hammers of sound waking the few men not already awake, putting delight and fear of the future into those who were.

  "Clear for action!"

  Davits, boats, ventilator funnels and flagstaffs disappeared from the decks. Preprinted labels that said 'Overboard in Action' were attached to items that might get in the way. More than one bluejacket alleviated the suspense by surreptitiously tagging the backs of mates racing past.

  The first lieutenant excused himself from the bridge and went below to Central Station.

  Pulling open the hatch to the twelve-inch turret, Ensign Garrett studied the smooth milkline of dawn to the east as he waited for the gun crew to arrive. The captain's rebuke stung bitterly. He had been ready to die for the sake of the Florida. Now he was half i
nclined to die with her. His last day on earth‑‑possibly. A line of clouds curdled. So be it.

  In they came. Plugmen, pointers, gun captain, the rest. Last to arrive was Beck. The man who had taken a beating and the man who'd inflicted it stood together as they pulled on the cumbrous hatch. Their eyes did not meet. Beck was looking ahead to avoid embarrassment. Garrett held his gaze on the deck, looking for loose powder.

  He had no intention of stopping if he saw any.

  Part Two

  Battle

  XXIII

  0000 - 1238 Hours

  Ziolkowski had posted guards around the compound, then positioned himself in the middle of the quad. He'd averaged three hours of solid sleep every twenty-four hours. Yet he was not exhausted. He'd served in enough campaigns to have learned the art of sleeping in brief snatches. Leaning against his Rexer, he closed his eyes in fleeting moments, dozing, yet ready to snap awake at the least sign of enemy activity. Around midnight came the plaintive song of the creatures.

  "Tooo... nel...."

  "Henderson! Enderfall! I think they're headed towards the warehouse."

  "I don't know, Top," came a worried voice. "There's something moving out this way, too."

  It seemed the nadir of military form not to leave sentries out. But Depoy and Kitrell preyed on his mind. Ziolkowski saw no point in suffering more casualties at the listening posts now that the Florida was due in the morning. So, with the creatures prowling Sand Island, he had to decide on one more retreat.

  "To hell with it. Back to the bunker, everyone!"

  The guards raced back, their hands on the guide ropes that led them straight to the bunker's entrance. Ziolkowski stayed put until Enderfall shouted all were inside. Then, grabbing a rope, he dashed across the quad. He had just made out the dim light behind the bunker's blackout curtain when a loud hot chug charged the air behind him. His blouse billowed out, then clung.