Herman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny

by The Caine Mutiny(Lit)

  Willie looked around at the boat. The gray paint was blister-ing 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 sil-houette 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 back. 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, hang-ing 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 cab-bages 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, frag-ments 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.

  "God knows where you go," said Rabbitt. "There are no more bunks in the wardroom."

  "The exec will think of something," said Paynter.

  "Okay, Keith, you're logged aboard," said Rabbitt. " Paynt, will you take him down to the exec?"

  "Sure. Follow me, Keith."

  Paynter led Willie down a ladder and through a dark stifling passageway. "This is the half deck." He opened a door. "This is the wardroom."

  They passed through an untidy rectangular room as wide as the ship, mostly filled by a long table set with a stained cloth, silver, boxes of breakfast cereal, and pitchers of milk. Maga-zines and books were scattered on the lounging chairs and black leather couch. Willie noted with horror several secret publications among comic-strip books, leg-art magazines, and frayed Esquires. Leading forward from the middle of the ward-room was a passageway of staterooms. Paynter entered the first room on the right. "Here's Keith, sir," he said, pushing aside the curtain in the doorway. "Keith, this is the executive officer, Lieutenant Gorton."

  An enormously fat, husky young man, nude except for tiny drawers, sat up on a raised bunk, scratching his ribs and yawn-ing. The green bulkheads of the room were decorated with colored cutout pictures of girls in flimsy underwear. "Greet-ings, Keith. Where the hell you been?" said Lieutenant Gorton in a high voice, and swung mammoth thighs out of the bed. He shook Willie's hand.

  Paynter said, "Where do we put him?"

  "Jesus, I don't know. I'm hungry. Are they bringing some fresh eggs off the beach? Those eggs we got in New Zealand will dissolve your fillings by now."

  "Oh, here's the captain, maybe he has an idea," said Paynter, looking off into the passageway. "Sir, Ensign Keith has re-ported aboard."

  "Collared him, did you? Nice work," said a voice full of irony and authority, and the captain of the Caine came to the doorway. Willie was even more startled by him. The captain was absolutely naked. In one hand he carried a cake of Life-buoy soap, in the other a lighted cigarette. He had a creased old-young face, blond hair, and a flabby white body. "Wel-come aboard, Keith!"

  "Thank you, sir." Willie felt an urge to salute, to bow, in some way to express reverence for supreme authority. But he remembered a regulation about not saluting a superior when he was uncovered. And he had never seen a more uncovered superior than his commanding officer.

  Captain de Vriess grinned at Willie's discomfiture, and scratched his behind with the soap cake. "I hope you know s
omething about communications, Keith."

  "Yes, sir. That's what I've been doing for CincPac while-while waiting for the ship, sir."

  "Good. Paynter, you're an assistant engineering officer again as of now."

  "Thanks, sir." Paynter's gloomy face was suffused with fleet-ing happiness. He sighed like a horse having a saddle taken off. "Got any idea, Captain, where we stash the new communi-cator?"

  "Did Maryk put a bunk in the clipping shack?"

  "Yes, sir. That's where we've stuck this other new one, Harding."

  "Well, tell Maryk to hang another bunk in there."

  "Pretty damn crowded in that clip shack even for one, Captain," said the exec.

  "War is a terrible thing. I've got to shower, before I curdle." Captain de Vriess puffed his cigarette, ground it' out in an ash-tray on the desk made of a three-inch shell, and walked off. The fat lieutenant shrugged, and drew on a pair of tent-like trousers.

  "That's it," he said. "Take him to the clip shack, Paynt."

  "Sir," said Willie, "I'm ready to get to work any time."

  Gorton yawned, and regarded Willie with amused eyes. "Don't burn out any bearings. Just mosey around the ship for a couple of days. Get used to it. It's going to be your home for a long, long time."

  "Suits me, sir," said Willie. "I'm due for some sea duty." He had resigned himself to a stay of six months to a year. It was his year in the wilderness, the ordeal of which his father had written, and he was ready to face it.

  "Glad you feel that way," said the exec. "Who knows, maybe you'll beat my record. I got sixty-seven months on this bucket, myself."

  Willie divided by twelve and quailed. Lieutenant Gorton had been on the Caine for five years.

  "There's something about the DMS outfit," went on Gorton cheerfully, "that makes the Bureau reluctant to shift person-nel. Maybe the file is lost back in Washington. We got two chiefs aboard with more than a hundred months. Captain de Vriess has seventy-one. So you'll get your sea duty-Well--glad to have you aboard. Take it easy."

  Willie stumbled after Paynter to the clipping shack, a metal box on the main deck about seven feet high, six long, and three wide. A doorway was the only opening. A shelf ran along one side, waist-high, piled with empty clipping belts for machine-gun bullets and cases of ammunition. Ensign Harding was sleeping on a bunk which had been recently welded into the wall close to the deck; the weld was still bright and angry--looking. Sweat was pouring off Harding's face, and his shirt was dark with wet streaks. The temperature in the shack was about 105 degrees.

  "Home sweet home," said Willie.

  "This Harding has Caine blood in him," Paynter said. "He's starting off right- Well, there'll be some transfers any day. You guys'll be down in the wardroom right soon." He started to go.

  "Where can I find Mr. Keefer?" said Willie.

  "In his sack," said Paynter.

  "I mean later in the day."

  "So do I," said Paynter, and departed.

  Willie wandered around the Caine for a couple of hours, poking his nose down ladders and hatchways and into door-ways. He was ignored by the sailors as though he were invisible, except when he faced one in a passageway. Then the sailor would flatten automatically against the bulkhead, as though to allow a big animal to pass. Willie's sight-seeing tour confirmed his first impression. The Caine was a pile of junk in the last hours of decay, manned by hoodlums.

  He drifted down to the wardroom. Overhead the metal scrapers pounded loudly. The long table was covered with green baize now, and the magazines and books had been shelved. The room was empty except for a very tall skinny colored boy in sweaty white undershirt and trousers, who was listlessly dabbing at the deck with a mop. "I'm the new officer, Ensign Keith," said Willie. "Might I have a cup of coffee?"

  "Yassuh." The steward's mate put down the mop, and sauntered to a Silex on a metal bureau in the corner.

  "What's your name?" said Willie.

  "Whittaker, suh, steward's mate second. Cream and sugar, suh?"

  "Please." Willie glanced around. A tarnished brass plaque on the bulkhead informed him that the ship had been named for one Arthur Wingate Caine, commander of a destroyer in World War I who had died of wounds received in a gun battle with a German submarine. Above the plaque on a shelf among a lot of naval books was a leather-bound loose-leaf volume, Ship's Organization, USS Caine, DMS 22. Willie took it down. The steward's mate set the coffee before him.

  "How long have you been on the Caine, Whittaker?"

  "Fo' months, suh."

  "How do you like it?"

  The Negro backed away, his eyes bulging as though Willie had whipped out a knife. "Bes' ship in de whole Navy, suh." He grabbed the mop and ran out the door.

  The coffee was lukewarm and muddy but Willie drank it. He needed stimulation badly. One hour of sleep had allowed him little recovery from the luau. He read the statistics of the Caine blearily. It had been built in 1918 in Rhode Island ("Be-fore I was born," he muttered). It was 317 feet long and 31 feet wide and could make a flank speed of 30 knots. Upon conversion for minesweeping one of its four stacks and a boiler had been removed to make room for more fuel tanks, thus increasing the cruising radius.

  Overhead the clanking became louder; another work party was starting to chip paint. The air in the wardroom was grow-ing hot and foul as the sun rose higher. The mission of the high-speed minesweeper, Willie read, is primarily to sweep in enemy waters ahead of invasion or bombardment forces. He dropped the book on the table, laid his head on it, and groaned.

  "Hullo," said a voice, "are you Keith or Harding?" The speaker stumbled sleepily past him toward the Silex, dressed in nothing but an athletic supporter. It occurred to Willie that the conventions of modesty aboard the Caine were simpler than those among the Iroquois Indians.

  "Keith," he answered.

  "Fine. You work for me."

  "You're Mr. Keefer?"

  "Yes."

  The communications officer leaned his back against the bureau and gulped coffee. There was little resemblance to his brother in the long lean face. Tom Keefer was over six feet tall, small-boned and stringy. Deep-set blue eyes with much white showing gave him an intense, wild look. His mouth like Roland's was wide, but the lips, far from being fleshy, were narrow and pale.

  Willie said, "Sir, I know your brother Roland. We were roommates in midshipmen's school. He's here in Pearl now at the BOQ."

  "Really? We'll have to get him down here." Keefer coolly put down the coffee cup. "Come into my room and tell me about yourself."

  Keefer lived in an iron cubicle crisscrossed with pipes at the head of the passageway. There were two bunks installed against the curving hull, and a desk piled three feet high with books, pamphlets, wire baskets full of papers, and registered publi-cations in a scrambled heap, on top of which was a stack of freshly laundered khakis, socks, and underwear. There was a prone naked figure in the upper bunk.

  While the communications officer shaved and dressed, Willie described his days at Furnald Hall with Roland. His eye rambled around the stuffy room. In shelves welded over the desk and along Keefer's bunk were crammed volumes of poetry, fiction, and philosophy. The collection was impressive; it was like a college list of the Hundred Best Books, somewhat heavy on the modern side with the works of Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Proust, Kafka, Dos Passos, and Freud, with several books on psy-choanalysis and a few that bore Catholic publishing house im-prints. "You've really got the books," said Willie.

  "This life is slow suicide, unless you read."

  "Roland told me you're a writer."

  "I was trying to be one before the war," said Keefer, wiping lather off his face with a wet ragged towel.

  "Get to do any writing now?"

  "Some. Now, about your duties-we'll make you custodian of registered pubs, and of course there'll be coding-"

  The steward's mate Whittaker inserted his face through the dusty green curtain. "Chadan," he said, and withdrew. The mysterious word resurrected the figure in the upper b
unk; it rose, thrashed feebly, jumped to the deck, and commenced dressing itself.

  "Chadan?" said Willie.

  "Chow down, in steward patois-lunch," said Keefer. "The name of this vegetable with a face is Carmody. Carmody, this is the elusive Mr. Keith."