Sweet Reason (9781590209011)

by Robert Littell

  A V-wedge of Phantom jets, their twin tail pipes spouting orange flames, roared low overhead. The sound hammered against the bridge like a thunder clap. The planes were headed for a predawn strike on the mainland, flying at masthead level to keep under the enemy radar screen.

  “MOTHERFUCKERS,” screamed Angry Pettis — but his voice was lost in the storm of sound.

  “Sons of bitches,” yelled Jefferson Waterman.

  “Bastards,” muttered Ensign Joyce, the Ebersole’s tall, thin, hollow-eyed communications officer. Joyce had earned a degree in English Literature at Princeton and had set his sights on graduate school. Then, to everyone’s amazement, he had joined the navy (going through Officer Candidate School at Newport) to get off what he called “the academic treadmill.” In his spare time he wrote poems that he kept pressed, like forgotten flowers, between the pages of The Complete Works of William Blake. Aboard the Ebersole, Joyce was universally known as the Poet. It was a nickname that gave him more pleasure than pain.

  “Why bastards?” Lustig asked his junior officer of the deck. “They’re doing what they’re ordered, same as us.”

  “Jesus, Larry,” Joyce said, “that’s almost a political remark. You really want to open that bag?”

  Lustig laughed. “You know the drill, kid — an officer can talk about anything on a man-o’-war except religion, sex or politics.”

  “Which is why the only thing anybody talks about anymore is how True Love clogs the XO’s urinal all the time.”

  “Which is why,” agreed Lustig. “What time does reveille go today?”

  The Poet took a folded plan of the day out of his pocket. “Reveille’s at o-six-thirty, star time is o-seven-o-one, sunup is o-seven-sixteen. I heard all the shore fire assignments out here are at sunup. Is that true?”

  “Most of ’em, yeah. It puts the sun behind us shining right into their eyes that way,” Lustig explained. “Makes it hard on their gunners if they want to counter fire.”

  “That’s the way the Japs used to attack during World War Two — out of the rising sun,” Joyce said, remembering the comic books with the Japanese Zeros silhouetted against a yellow ball. “Funny how we’re brought up to think it’s treacherous to attack out of the rising sun when all the time it’s just good tactics.”

  “I guess,” Lustig said noncommittally. The longer he was on the Ebersole the more noncommittal he seemed to become. It was his protective coloring. A graduate of the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy, Lustig had only recently decided to make a career out of the regular navy rather than switch to the merchant navy when his three-year hitch was up. He could make more money on merchantmen, true. But money wasn’t everything The regular navy had glamour and status. (During the Ebersole’s last few weeks in Norfolk, Lustig had taken to wearing his dress blues, with their tarnished gold lieutenant junior grade stripes, on dates instead of civilian clothes.) The ticket to a successful career in the navy, as far as Lustig was concerned, was to offend as few people as possible. Which was why he turned a noncommittal face to the world and kept his quips, including the few he could think of in time to get them into a conversation, locked up in afterthoughts.

  Switching on his flashlight with the red filter, Lustig glanced at his wristwatch. “Half-hour to reveille. Shit, the minutes really drag. What else’s on the plan of the day?”

  “The usual note from our erstwhile executive officer about taking coffee cups off the mess deck. He’s escalating. This one says quote personnel failing to comply with the above and who are caught will be held accountable unquote. Then he has a parenthetical note quote this means turned over to the supply officer for two hours’ extra duty unquote. Did you ever notice how every other sentence out of the XO’s mouth is enclosed in parens. With him, parens are almost a life-style.”

  Lustig didn’t have the slightest idea what Joyce was talking about, but he nodded agreeably. “Any other goodies on the plan of the day?” he asked.

  “The second-class exam is scheduled for next Wednesday. And here come the parens again. Note colon the careers officer will hold a career information seminar in the after wardroom for all interested hands at sixteen-thirty. Jesus H. Christ, I’m the Careers Officer, and I go on watch again at fifteen-forty-five. Doesn’t the XO read the watch bill before he schedules —”

  A burst of static came from the squawk box and the red light next to “CIC” winked on and off. Lustig flipped down the lever and yelled: “I can’t make out a word you say on this contraption. Use the voice tube.”

  An instant later a voice, metallic and surprisingly clear, came floating up the tube. “Mister Lustig, sir, I think we got land on radar bearing three one zero, range about thirty miles or so.”

  Lustig flicked his radar repeater over to a longer scale. On the next sweep the outline of a land mass — thousands of electronic pinpricks that brightened and then faded as the antenna swept past — appeared in the upper-left-hand corner of the scope.

  “I guess that’s the enemy,” Lustig said.

  The voice tube spoke again. “Mister Lustig, sir, you know the skunk we been tracking on a parallel course all night? Well, it’s changed course now.”

  “Changed course? In what direction?”

  “As a matter of fact, it seems to be heading straight for us.”

  Tevepaugh Wakes the Captain

  Tevepaugh took the steps two at a time and knocked softly at the Captain’s cabin, one deck below the bridge.

  “Enter.”

  Tevepaugh opened the door, stepped inside and spoke into the darkness. “The Officer of the Deck sends his respects, Captain, sir. He got the Commie coast on radar at thirty miles.”

  “Thirty miles, eh? What bearing?”

  “What bearing?” Tevepaugh repeated.

  “That is correct. On what bearing, which is to say in what direction, has the enemy coastline appeared at thirty miles?”

  “Mister Lustig didn’t tell me nothin’ ’bout bearing, Captain.”

  “Mister Lustig didn’t tell you, eh?”

  “No sir, Mister Lustig didn’t say no word ’bout bearing. He jus’ told me to tell you the Officer of the Deck sends his respects ’n’ says he got the Commie coast at thirty miles.”

  Captain Jones switched on his night reading lamp and propped himself up on an elbow. Directly over his head was a framed motto on the bulkhead that read: “Give me a fast ship for I intend to go in harm’s way.” Under the motto was the signature: “John Paul Jones.” “That’s all he said — the Commie coastline on radar at thirty miles?”

  “Also that there was a skunk on a parallel course which ain’t on a parallel course no more but’s heading straight for us.”

  “How far away is this skunk?”

  “Mister Lustig didn’t tell me that either, Captain,” Tevepaugh said in a low voice.

  “Very well, son. Now hightail it back to the bridge and tell Mister Lustig that the Captain sends his respects. Tell him to call the ship to General Quarters if the skunk is less than ten miles from us. You got that?”

  “Yes sir, GQ if the skunk is under ten miles.”

  As Tevepaugh turned to go, the Captain added: “I know you — you’re Taylor, the guitarist.”

  “No sir, Captain, I’m Tevepaugh the guitarist.”

  “Ah yes. Tevepaugh. Well, on your horse Tevepaugh the guitarist.”

  The Ebersole Sounds General Quarters

  Ten minutes later Lustig strode across the pilot house to the three color-coded alarms on the bulkhead (red for general, yellow for chemical, green for collision) and pushed down the red handle. Instantly an electrifyingly persistent DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG reverberated through the Ebersole. As it faded Ohm put his mouth so close to the microphone of the public address system it looked as if he intended to bite into it, and yelled: “This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Now all hands, man your battle stations. Now set condition one Able throughout the ship.”

  The Eugene F. Ebersole, a relic of another e
ra and another war, emerged from its stupor. Men grabbed their shoes and dungarees and raced off toward their battle stations. Doors, some of them presumably still watertight after more than two decades of sea duty, clanged shut, their teeth biting into the bulkhead like some medieval portcullis. In the wardroom, Doc Shapley, a hospital corpsman second class who tended to become faint at the sight of blood, laid out packets of surgical instruments and tapes on the green felt dining table, then stretched out on the couch and dozed. Chaplain Rodgers came into the wardroom, pushed aside the surgical instruments and began playing solitaire. At each of the five-inch mounts sailors in battle dress — helmet on, dungarees tucked into socks, shirt collar buttoned — depressed the guns and took out the tampions that were screwed, like corks, into the tips of the barrels to keep out seawater. On the bridge Lustig passed the watch over to the ship’s engineering officer, a thin-lipped, nasal Naval Academy graduate named Moore. “We’re on course two nine zero, speed ten knots, all four boilers with superheats on the line, but since you put them on the line you know more about that than I do.” Lustig smiled at his own joke. “You got it, John?”

  “Got it, Larry,” said Lieutenant junior grade Moore, who didn’t like bridge watches and wasn’t supposed to be up there during general quarters except the Ebersole was so shorthanded there was nobody else free to do the job. In a loud, formal voice, Moore went through the ritual of taking over the watch. “Very well, sir, I relieve you,” he intoned.

  Helmsman Carr and Bo’s’n Mate Ohm raced off down the port ladder as soon as they saw their reliefs coming. Angry Pettis, the signalman, waited around long enough to soul-slap the palm of his black relief as if he were passing the baton in a relay race. Then he started down the ladder — just as a white sailor started up. The two stopped short and glared wordlessly at each other; then the white had second thoughts and backed slowly down. Angry Pettis coyly cocked his head and continued on his merry way.

  Four minutes after GQ sounded Captain Jones stepped onto the bridge. His nonregulation Adler elevators were spit-shined to a mirror finish. His khaki trousers and khaki shirt were creased in all the authorized places. The silver oak leaves on his collar and the gold braid on his blue baseball cap (with the “Swift and Sure” emblem on it) gleamed. Even his double chins, freshly shaven and pink, glistened. Except for a small patch of toilet paper clotting the blood on a shaving nick, J. P. Horatio Jones looked like a figment of his own military imagination.

  “Now the Captain is on the bridge,” Tevepaugh yelled into the ship’s loud speaker system.

  For an instant Jones stood on the threshold of the pilot house savoring the moment. For thirty years he had dreamed of commanding a ship. Now the dream had come true. Jones pressed his eyes shut and saw himself standing next to the helm of a full-rigged fifty-gun ship-o’-the-line, saw himself casting an experienced eye on the trim of the sails, saw himself demanding a slight alteration in the mizzen topgallant staysail from the XO, who barked at Lustig, who put a megaphone to his lips and sent the half-naked seamen scurrying up the halyards.

  It was the XO who snapped the Captain out of his reverie. “Six minutes twenty seconds,” he said, punching a stopwatch when the Officer of the Deck slammed the inboard door to the pilot house and drove home the teeth with a whirl of the wheel. “Not bad, Skipper.” Holding his stopwatch and smiling broadly, the XO could have passed for an astronaut — clean-cut, crew-cut and crisp. He was wearing work khakis now, but in his starched white uniform he looked like a sail waiting to see which way the wind would blow.

  “Not bad,” the Captain agreed.

  “Not bad at all,” Lustig chimed in from the other side of the open bridge where he had taken up his general quarters post as gunnery officer. (“You could have timed this with a calendar,” he came up with later.)

  Suddenly there was a loud knock on the bulkhead door leading from the inboard ladder to the pilot house.

  “My god, what in Christ’s name is that?” asked the XO.

  “It would appear, XO, that the ship is not cleared for action after all,” the Captain said dryly. “I suggest that somebody open it.”

  Tevepaugh, who was the messenger of the watch during general quarters also, sprang to the door and spun the wheel, disengaging the teeth from the bulkhead. Then he pulled open the heavy door.

  In stumbled Wally (The Shrink) Wallowitch. He was dressed in cowboy boots, skivvy shorts and a tennis sweater and wore a sword strapped to his waist. Mumbling about how it was “impossible to get any sleep in this hotel,” Wallowitch made his way past the Captain and climbed up to his battle station in the main director.

  Wallowitch’s Curriculum Vitae

  “I swear to God I thought she said ‘pecker,’ ” exclaimed the Shrink, whose nickname came, albeit illogically, from the fact that almost anytime he wasn’t on watch he could be found stretched out on the wardroom couch.

  “Bullshit,” said the Poet.

  “No, no, I swear, really. Listen, it was a natural mistake. There we were on the back porch of the sorority house. Sort of cuddling together to keep warm, right? And she, being a political science major, is holding forth on the single most important thing that Capitalism and Communism have in common. ‘They both have a pecker order,’ says she. Well, I naturally thought it was one of those newfangled sexual theories, but just to make sure I says ‘pecker as in prick?’ ‘Not pecker,’ she says, red in the face, ‘p-e-c-k-i-n-g order.’ Like I said, it was a natural mistake. And anyhow, it broke the ice.”

  The Poet laughed appreciatively. “Shrink, you are a man without a conscience.”

  Wallowitch flailed his arms over his head. “Conscience is crap,” he said excitedly. “You know what Mencken said about conscience. Conscience is that little old inner voice that warns you somebody is looking. Only me, I give ’em something to look at.” Here Wallowitch went into the spastic routine that he swore almost got him out of NROTC — bending his wrists back as far as they would go to make it look as if his hands were deformed, craning his neck, twitching one ear, letting his lower lip hang slack until saliva ran down his chin.

  Stretched out on the wardroom couch, his cowboy boots propped up on some books to keep the blood rushing to his head (one of his medical theories was that this increased potency), Wallowitch cut a ridiculous figure. He had a large, bulbous nose, a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed when he talked, body odor, shaggy hair and a loose fitting uniform that looked like a hand-me-down from another war. Only much later, when the Poet pointed it out, did everyone become aware that the constant flow of jokes formed a moat around Wallowitch, keeping everyone at arm’s length. Nobody could say for sure what the Shrink thought about anything or anyone; he was the wardroom clown who lived in terror of being caught in the act of holding a serious conversation.

  From the moment he reported aboard the Ebersole (at which time, according to legend, he took one turn around the rusting deck and put in a formal request for transfer to a “ship”), the Shrink kept dipping into a seemingly inexhaustible well of humor. Very early on he started making up the names of knots; “take a turn on that bollard,” he’d order some seaman, “with a double crossover sheepshank half-hitch double-bitch, okay?” In one of his milder escapades, egged on by a klatch of junior officers, he honed his ceremonial sword to a razor’s edge and shaved with it on the fantail in full view of half the Atlantic destroyer force. Another time he suckered Chaplain Rodgers into a theological discussion.

  “Does God have sperm?” the Shrink asked innocently.

  “I’d imagine so,” the Chaplain said thoughtfully.

  “And if he has sperm, do you think he jerks off?” Wallowitch pursued.

  “Now come off it, Shrink, that’s not one single bit funny.”

  “But Chaplain, the question has serious implications. If he has sperm and a sex drive and jerks off, we have nothing to worry about. But if he doesn’t relieve the tension somehow, it’ll build up until we have another immaculate conception. And we all know how muc
h trouble the last one caused.”

  Then there was the time Keys Quinn lost the tip of his middle finger at Iskenderun; it was sliced cleanly off when a mooring line whipped taut while the Ebersole was tying up alongside the burning tanker. With everyone around staring in wide-eyed horror, Quinn casually strolled away to find the Doc. At which point Wallowitch scooped up the digit and went racing down the deck after him. “Hey, Keys,” he yelled, “let’s not leave personal belongings lying around the deck.”

  Now and then one of the Shrink’s sallies got him into hot water with the Captain. The first time that happened was when Otto Rummler was riding the Ebersole on an antisubmarine exercise in the Caribbean. Rummler, a former German U-boat skipper who was about to become captain of a destroyer that the Americans had donated to the West German Navy, was extremely well liked by J. P. Jones, who considered him a thoroughgoing professional, “the kind of man a country can count on when the chips are down.”

  One night in the wardroom Rummler was politely discoursing on “ze great American poze — zat you dizlike vaws und fight zem mit reluctance.” “On ze ozzer hand,” Rummler went on, “vee Chermans come across az eager beafers, a reputation vee hardly dezerve conzidering ze reluctance of ze Cherman Staff to follow Hitler into Czechoslovakia in zirty-nine. Ach, mein friends, ze world it haz a miztaken notion of uz Chermans; vee are not vaw criminals but careerists, pure und zimple careerists. Zat is ze joke.”

  Rummler exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke, which wafted into Wallowitch’s face and made him cough. Wallowitch screwed up his face as if he were wearing a monocle and, enunciating each word precisely, said: “Az all ze world knowz, ze Cherman joke iz not a laughing matter!”

  Captain Jones sensed instantly that the Shrink had insulted his guest and insisted that Wallowitch apologize then and there, which Wallowitch did.

  “No offenze intended,” he muttered.

  “None taken,” Rummler said quickly.

  Frantic that Rummler would report the incident anyhow Jones apologized again later, and Rummler, charming as always, told him that as far as he was concerned the affair was closed, besides which Germans had to put up with that sort of thing all the time and he, Rummler, was used to it.