The Circle

by David Poyer

  Lenson had to cup his hands around his mouth. “Some of it … yes, sir.”

  “Then you recognize most of this.” Norden stabbed his finger rapidly around them. “You’re on what’s called the boiler flat. Over there’s reserve feed-water tank and fresh-water tank. On the boiler, steam drum, economizer elements, soot blower heads, safety valves, checkman’s glass, et cetera. These are M-type boilers with separately fired superheaters. You’ll want to memorize superheat and speed combinations: two boilers, twenty-two knots without, twenty-seven with; four boilers, twenty-eight without, thirty-two with, so on, so forth. Now for the lower level.”

  Dan followed him along a shoulder-wide catwalk. He could see no relation between the diagrams he’d studied in Isherwood Hall and this roaring insanity. Some agoraphobic engineer had taken a thirty-by-forty sauna and crammed it with machinery, webbed it with dripping pipes, roofed it with I beams, and stuffed every remaining cubic inch with asbestos sheathing. The air burned his skin when he moved. Ahead of him, the lieutenant veronicaed around a steam-hissing valve stem and slid down a ladder, all one motion, his boots dangling in space until they slammed into the deck plates. He followed clumsily, feeling as if he was sinking through boiling liquid.

  On either side, the boilers roared steadily, looming out of sight above. A tornado of white flame whirled behind a blue-tinted sight glass. Beneath his feet, through open steel grillwork, he could see oily water eddying between deep frames as the ship rolled. A black fireman in a T-shirt cut off at armpit level twisted past, not looking at them, carrying a clipboard, flashlight, and rag. His face was closed, his knotted belly sheened with sweat.

  Norden paused under a blower. The blast of air from topside was icy. Dan shivered at the sudden transition, tropical Brazil to New England winter. “You’ll qualify down here later,” the lieutenant shouted. “Just wanted to show you Ed Talliaferro’s sneak preview of hell.”

  “He’s the engineering officer?”

  “Right. Now we’re going to Number One engine room. To get there, you’ve got to go up to the main deck, aft in the passageway, and down again. There isn’t any direct access from the other waterline spaces. That way, if she takes a hit, we might stay afloat long enough to get off a message.”

  The engine room was almost as hot and even noisier. The air was murky with oil fumes and flaking insulation. Men glanced at them from a central control station, then returned their attention to gauges and handwheels. He ducked his head under pipes and barked his elbows on valves as Norden pointed out the main steam lines from the firerooms, the low- and high-pressure turbines, the main electrical switchboard, and the number-one turbogenerator, evaporator, deaerating feed tank, and main reduction gearing, along with assorted lube oil heaters, pumps, purifiers, and test stations. A spinning shaft sixteen inches thick, slick and gleaming under brilliant overheads, led out a weeping seal aft to its propeller. “Twin screws,” he bawled into Lenson’s ear over the tooth-chattering hum of gears and the tappa-tappa of air compressors and the steady whispering drip of steamy water from taped-up couplings. “And the engine rooms are completely separate. They built two of everything into these. As long as we can float, we can probably limp back.”

  Down another ladder, and he was lost now as he was introduced to the main condenser, two main feed pumps, and the auxiliary condenser. The lieutenant’s arm traced a bronze casting like an oak growing up through the deck plates. “This here’s the main intake. Goes right through the bottom of the ship. Crack in this guy, engine room’d flood in about a minute.”

  Dan stared. A rivulet wormed downward from what looked like a hasty solder job. He turned, checking the location of the ladder up, then, realizing Norden was watching him, jerked his eyes back. He searched a suddenly vacant skull for a question to ask. “What’s the, ah, operating pressure?”

  “Of the steam plant? Standard. Six hundred pounds. Like I said.” Norden squinted at him.

  “Oh. Sure.”

  They climbed out of the engineering spaces, past the glances of pimpled messmen stirring soup, out onto the weather decks. He sucked cold air gratefully, looking around as Norden dogged the door behind them. He had to look hard to make out the land, now only a violet line astern. Shearwaters scaled across the waves on rigid dark wings. To the southeast, ahead, the sea was a mass of gold. Ryan had increased speed, slicing through light seas with a hissing burble.

  The weapons officer led him forward, leaning into the wind. “Forward five-inch mount,” he said. “Got a new fiberglass shield on it, testing it out.”

  “Right.”

  The deck narrowed as they approached the bullnose. They stepped over massive chains toward the ground gear. He recognized some of it from the books. Pelican hooks, chain stoppers. The rest was just rusty iron to him.

  “Okay, we get to your shit now,” Norden said. He crouched, putting the capstan between him and the wind. Dan bent, too. “You’ll be in charge up here during sea detail. You got two stockless anchors, five ton and seven ton. Five hundred fifty fathoms of chain, five-inch diameter, thirty tons breaking strain.… Don’t you have a wheel book?”

  “Uh, not yet.”

  “Get one.” He pulled a green notebook from his back pocket and slapped it. “Can’t remember everything. You’ll be responsible for a lot of gear. So write it down! Wildcat and brake. Electric drive, ten thousand foot-pounds of torque.…”

  They finished the forecastle and headed aft. Dan, his head busy scrambling numbers, glanced up at the bridge as they passed beneath its windowed gaze. Someone was staring down at them. It was the captain. “Torpedo tubes here, port and starboard,” said Norden, reclaiming his attention. “And up there, aft of the stack, the Asroc launcher.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Boat deck to starboard. The whaleboat’s yours, too.”

  Dan nodded. They continued aft, under a portico formed by an overhang of the helicopter pad; Norden called it a “Dash deck.” The weapons officer looked about with a critical eye as they passed kneeling men in dungarees and jackets. Hand irons clattered. The sailors glanced up, sweating despite the cold, then bent to work again. Norden stopped at each fire-fighting station and underway replenishment point. He pointed out corroded nozzles, frayed hoses, patches of bare primer, rusted scuppers, missing fittings. His voice edged toward reproach. It was as if, Dan thought, their condition was already his fault. His stomach tightened.

  Two-thirds of the way aft, the lieutenant paused, looking over the lifeline into the sea. Then he put his foot on the scupper. Dan hesitated. You weren’t supposed to lean on lifelines. After a moment, he put his hand on it, not trusting it with his weight.

  “Now that you’ve seen her, what do you think?”

  “Things look … worn.”

  “Very diplomatic. She’s a piece of junk.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is a wartime class. They built them to last five, ten years. They’ve been steaming for thirty. They put a lot of gear on the weather decks. It rusts. Even the interior spaces are going. Machinist’s mate on Ault dropped a ball peen in the engine room and it went right through the bottom. Fortunately, they were in dry dock at the time. Everything aboard’s been rebuilt fifteen, twenty times. Half the time when you order parts, the company that made them’s out of business.”

  “She seems to steam okay.”

  “Oh, Ed does miracles down below. But she’s wearing out. The main condensate pump casing cracked last year off Cape Henry. No spare for that—nobody expects a casing to crack. But metal fatigues.”

  He nodded. Norden went on. “On top of that—well, the war’s been sucking cash and men to Westpac for six years. They keep saying withdrawal on the news, Vietnamization, but we’re not seeing it yet. We’re on a short string for operating funds. And we’re undermanned—especially in the deck gang.

  “I suppose the XO already told you this, but first lieutenant’s no strawberry-pie billet. Not on Ryan. You’re in charge of preservation and painting of everything
topside, plus all the deck evolutions—anchoring, underway replenishment, mooring, towing, operating boats and winches. You can see the kind of shape the weather decks are in. We were supposed to get a complete blast to bare metal and repaint in the yard, but they pulled us out halfway through overhaul. Just ran out of money. The chief got a coat of red lead on the worst places, but basically we got to strip it and do the preservation ourselves before we get north of sixty.”

  “Sixty?”

  “Degrees latitude. It’ll be too rough to paint after that.” Norden rubbed his chin, frowning.

  “How much longer has she got?”

  “What, in commission? I don’t know what they’re planning long-term. Squadron staff was saying when I came aboard that us and Bordelon—we’re the only Gearings left on this coast—were slated for decommission and scrap. But that was two years ago.” Norden shrugged; his face darkened. “She’s like an old clunker nobody bothers to fix anymore or cares about. You just keep adding ten-weight till it craps out, then take the plates and leave it by the side of the road. Bloch, that’s your boatswain’s mate chief, he’s good. But you’re going to have to exercise leadership. We got some hard cases—guys been busted in rate, brig rats, that kind of shit. Anybody can’t hack it in the other division, they shitcan them to you.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t mean to turn you off. We can use some youthful enthusiasm. But I want you to go in with your eyes open. You’ll get a lot of sob stories from the deck apes. But our job’s to keep this ship running somehow.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “I know that. Just wanted to give you the straight skinny.”

  “I appreciate that—Rich.”

  They walked aft, around the turn of the deckhouse, into a knot of shouting men. Dan caught one of the voices: “… don’t got a fuckin’ clue what’s really going down—”

  “Whoa,” said Norden into sudden silence. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, sir,” said several voices. The shouters moved apart warily, then drifted aft. The one who remained put his fists on his hips and looked expectantly at Norden. He was the man Dan had watched on the forecastle.

  “Ensign Dan Lenson, meet Boatswain’s Mate Chief Harvey Bloch.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Chief.”

  “Welcome aboard, sir.”

  Dan looked at him eye-to-eye, but height was the only dimension he matched this man in. Bloch seemed as thick as he was wide. His bare head was bald, whether naturally or shaved, Dan couldn’t tell. His stomach bulged, turning the waistband of his trousers, and a nest of black hair showed at his neck. A knot of keys was clipped to his belt. He looked exhausted and angry.

  “You our new division officer, sir?”

  “That’s what they tell me, Chief.”

  “Mr. Sullivan’s not coming back?”

  “No, he’s gone for good,” said Norden. “He really stepped on his crank this time.”

  “Too bad,” said Bloch, looking off to sea. “I liked him.” His left hand slapped a chipping hammer into his right. It disappeared when he wrapped his fingers around it. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. Dan stared at a blurred Betty Boop in a sailor cap, skirt lifted and bodice open, showing purple breasts larger than her head. On the other arm, a scroll—the letters too seeped and faded to read—disappeared under the sleeve.

  “D’we come up with those anchor stoppers, Chief?”

  “Yessir. Some dickhead storecreature sent ’em down to the snipes.”

  “And did we get the pump covers, and the new garbage chute before we got under way?”

  “Rousted ’em out of the tender last night.”

  “Good. How about introducing Ensign Lenson here to some of his men?”

  “No problem.” The chief bellowed downwind, “First Division! Front and center! Yeah, you!”

  The men he addressed, the ones he’d been shouting with a few minutes before, dropped brushes into cans and ambled toward them. One straightened a paint-stained white hat; another slowly tucked in a ragged shirt. The others simply strolled up and stopped, swaying to the slow roll of the deck. “This here’s our new division officer,” said Bloch. “Straighten up, Gonzales, for Christ’s sake! That’s Greenwald. Hardin. Jones. Williams. This here is Coffey. And this prize pupil is Seaman Recruit Lassard.”

  The last named was older than the others. His face was handsome but spoiled by his hair. It was cut to the quick, boot camp—style. His pale hands were flecked with white paint. Seaman recruit, Dan thought. You couldn’t get lower in the Navy. Most enlisted were third class, even second, at this man’s age.

  Lassard returned his stare with a faint, absent smile. His blue eyes were slightly bloodshot. He looked intelligent, but Dan had the feeling he wasn’t really there with them, on the open fantail of USS Ryan, standing out to sea.

  “Ay, four-oh to meet you, man,” he said softly. “You can call him Slick. Everybody does. You Flamer’s replacement?”

  “Lassard, that fuckin’ mouth of yours—”

  “That’s all right, Chief,” Dan said. It looked like a chance to establish quick rapport. He took a step forward and extended his hand. Lassard took it with the same dreamy look. Dan felt the callus, the hard muscle beneath.

  The grip tightened, forcing his knuckles together. Dan hissed in surprise and pain before he remembered his father’s old cop trick. When his left thumb found the paint-smeared web of Lassard’s, the remote eyes widened, just a fraction, and then the seaman let go and stepped back.

  “Ay, man, you got soft hands there.”

  He felt something sticky on his palm, and stopped himself from wiping it on his uniform pants. His hand hurt now, but he ignored it and shook hands with the others, too, trying to match names with faces. Gonzales, short and dark, grinned and slid his feet around when he was introduced. Greenwald was thin, with a face like an accountant’s unexpectedly but not without reason accused of fraud. Coffey’s was rigid as carved teak, his hand dry and neutral. He wore a shoelace braided around his wrist.

  “Okay, back to work,” said Bloch. The men ambled aft again. He turned to Lenson. “The most useless set of cats’ assholes in the division. No. In the ship. They call themselves the ‘kinnicks.’”

  “‘Kinnicks?’”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care, sir. I just know I could get twice as much done around here without ’em.”

  “Discipline problems? Or just lazy?”

  Bloch uttered a fearsome blasphemy. “This is the worse division I seen in twenty-eight years in the Navy, sir. Half of ’em come in to dodge the draft. I got three new transfers—not these, these are the bright boys—Cat Five. That means IQ under eighty. You got to show them which end of a swab to hold on to. Every time. But they’re not the ones give you trouble. Lieutenant here’ll back me up—”

  As he talked, Dan watched the men. Lassard was painting a white diamond around a pad eye. Each time he lifted his brush from the pot, he paused, staring out at the passing sea. As the paint drooled downward, the wind spun streamers of it out over the gray deck. “Just pretend I’m not here, Chief,” said Norden. “Give it to him straight.”

  “All right.” Bloch rubbed his hand over his head. “We got short-sheeted on the last overhaul. XO cut my budget again last month. We ain’t even got enough paint—I had to cumshaw twenty gallons haze gray off a master chief on the Sara. I could make do if I had good men. But we’re short a lot of hands, and like I say, there’s major problems with the ones we got.”

  “How about petty officers?”

  “Two of ’em are okay. One just made third. My first-class…”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  Bloch looked at the deck but didn’t answer.

  “I’m just showing him around the ship now, Chief. You two can get together for record review later.”

  “Well, nice meeting you, Chief.”

  “Welcome aboard, sir.” Bloch hesitated. “Don’t get me wrong, sir. These o
ld cans are the cat’s nuts.”

  “The what?”

  “The best. We got problems, but I’d ten times rather be aboard here than the cookie tins they’re building now. Aluminum! Single-screw! I done my whole career on these. When they go, that’ll be time for me, too.” He turned away, leaving it unclear who had dismissed whom, and began shouting again.

  Dan followed Norden forward again, catching up with him amidships. The whaleboat loomed above them, cradled in steel arms. “He seems pretty much on top of things,” he said tentatively.

  “Yeah, Bloch’s good. Most of his twenty-eight’s sea time, except for two years at Great Lakes pushing boots. Divorced. Lives aboard. Got a little marine surveying business he does part-time in port.”

  “That about manning, and budget, that doesn’t sound so good.”

  “Well, don’t let us gloom and doom you too much. We aren’t the only ship in the fleet with problems these days. That reminds me, this is your first tour; you get to pick where you go. How come you aren’t on your way to Nam?”

  “We, uh, you know, choose according to class rank. When they got to me, it was this or a tanker.”

  “Well, nice to know we’re a notch above somebody.”

  “How about you? How come you’re not somebody’s aide, or—”

  “Or in some high-powered staff billet? My great-granddad started out on the deck plates. I wanted to, too. I just told the detailer, send me where anybody of my rank and age would go if his name was Smith.” Norden grinned boyishly and slapped his shoulder. “And they thought I was serious! Maybe next time I’ll wise up! Ready for lunch?”

  “Sure,” said Dan, grinning, too. Somehow he couldn’t help it.

  Ryan’s wardroom was smaller than an average living room. It looked worn but clean. The only furniture was a threadbare couch, bolted to the deck through worn gray carpet, and a table. On the bulkhead hung an oil of a stern-looking man with high collar and rear admiral’s stripes; in the background, a four-piper destroyer thrust its bow out of a malachite sea. A dozen men stood around the table, leaning on their chairs. They perked up as Norden introduced Lenson, reaching to shake his hand. “Mark Silver you know … This is Ralph Weaver, the comm-oh; Ken Trachsler, damage control; Aaron Reed, sonar; Barry Ohlmeyer, guns, our bull ensign and duty bachelor; Ed Talliaferro, chief engineer; Al Evlin, operations and senior watch officer; Tom Cummings, disbursing and acting supply. You’ll be relieving him as junior ensign, also known as George, also known as Shitty Little Jobs Officer. He’ll get with you later about turning over the mess accounts. Right, Chow Hound?”