Red Sky in Morning A Novel of World War II

by Patrick Culhane

  Mullins turned toward Sarge. “He said . . . what?”

  “That we should cut you some slack on this one, Mullins. What do you think your punishment should be?”

  “I . . . I don’t really know, sir. Something bad?”

  Maxwell got nose to nose with him. “Fuck up again, sailor, and it will be bad. This knife will come out of my safekeeping and so will a report on your misconduct. Understood?”

  “Aye, sir,” Mullins said.

  “One tiny fuck-up, Mullins—I mean anything.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mullins said, perhaps a bit hastily.

  Maxwell took a step back, then held up the knife for Mullins to see; the sailor glanced at it, then looked away.

  “Look at it,” Maxwell ordered.

  Mullins did, and so did the circle of sailors all around.

  Then Maxwell said, “Anything, Mullins—dirty underwear, bunk not perfect at inspection, cigarette butt on deck, any goddamn thing that rubs me wrong. . . . Do you understand?”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Maxwell pocketed the knife. “Good. Back to work, then— everybody! Back to work! We’re behind schedule, and we don’t want to give the captain any reason to dislike Negroes and college boys any more than he already does.”

  A score of smiles blossomed.

  Mullins said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Maxwell nodded, his eyes softening slightly. “And for Christ’s sake, Clancy, be more careful in future.”

  “Yes, sir, you don’t have to tell me twice, sir, I . . .”

  “Stow it, sailor.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Maxwell drew a deep breath, let it out, then said, “Now shake hands with Sarge, and get back to it.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The two men shook and Mullins said, “I feel like a god-damn fool, Sarge. And here you always been—”

  Sarge squeezed the hand tight until Mullins turned mute. “Next time you pull a knife on me, Clancy, you don’t get cut slack, you just get cut.”

  Mullins nodded and swallowed, and when Sarge finally released his grip, Mullins stumbled off toward the boxcar shaking his hand, probably trying to get some feeling back in it.

  From the deck above, Driscoll yelled, “What in the hell is going on down there? Bob Hope stop by on his USO tour?”

  Maxwell glanced toward Sarge, then up at Driscoll. “Just taking a smoke break, sir. We’re on top of it.”

  “Try not to smoke around anything that’ll smoke you back,” Driscoll yelled, then disappeared.

  onday morning dawned bright and warm, and Sarge felt more like a sailor than he had since the day he enlisted, when he was still full of hope and naive notions. He was up on deck having a smoke before breakfast when he saw Captain Egan come back aboard. The son of a bitch actually seemed a little disappointed that the Liberty Hill and its crew were still there; a rubble pile like what was left of Port Chicago might have suited him just fine.

  Instead the salty old skipper was stuck with a ship fully loaded and ready to sail.

  But Sarge’s smugness didn’t last long. By the time they were on their way to Pearl Harbor, with Egan firmly in command once again, Sarge saw these friendly, fair, harmonizing junior officers as the basically powerless people they were. The menu, for example, was back to oatmeal for breakfast, slop for the other two meals, too.

  In the fo’c’sle, the steward’s mates would come back after their shifts and bitch about the chicken, steak, bacon and eggs the officers got for their meals. This return to second-class citizenship was having an effect on morale: Sarge was hard pressed to find any residual sign of the elation and spirit the crew had felt after loading the Liberty Hill.

  He would find the right time to bring this subject up to Mr. Maxwell, though right now he wasn’t sure the young officer could really do anything about anything. But Sarge had to try. . . .

  He lay in his bunk late morning, trying to sleep the four hours remaining before his shift on radar, the fo’c’sle bunks otherwise mostly empty, and was just drifting off when he felt the presence of someone near him. His gift for radar went beyond the gizmos themselves: it came also in the form of a personal warning bell forged by years as a Chicago cop.

  With the speed of a striking snake, Sarge snatched the wrist of the hovering figure.

  And before his eyes could focus, a simpering whimpering told him Orville Monroe had come calling.

  Sarge let go at once, and whispered harshly, “Orville, what the hell, man? You could get killed, sneakin’ up on a body like that.”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” And Orville whimpered some more.

  Sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of his bunk, Sarge said, “Be cool, Orville. You want these boys to hear you? . . . Why, did I hurt you?”

  The little man shook his head. Even in the shadowy fo’c’sle, Orville’s ironed hair shone, and his eyes were wide with obvious fear.

  “You got a problem, son?” Sarge asked.

  “I surely do,” Monroe said, a tremor in his barely audible voice.

  “Tell you what—we’ll go up on deck and have a smoke.”

  “No! No. Best not.”

  This got Sarge’s attention: Orville was a chainsmoker, who normally grabbed any opportunity to catch a smoke, which on an ammunition ship wasn’t that often.

  “So what’s on your mind, Orv?”

  Standing there like a school kid in front of the principal’s desk, his eyes downcast, Orville wrung his hands one second, tugged his uniform the next, as if trying to adjust the fit. “You know me, Sarge, I mean, you know how I am. . . .”

  Jumpy as a shithouse rat is how you are, Sarge thought, but said nothing.

  “What I’m tryin’ to say is, I don’t go out with women so much. I have my . . . you ever hear the word ‘predilections’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, a fella told me once that that’s what I got: predilections.”

  “Okay. Not that I give a shit.”

  Orville managed a small smile. “I know you don’t, Sarge. That’s why I like you.”

  “Whoa, Nelly!”

  “No, no, no,” Monroe said, alarmed, hands up as if surrendering. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean, you don’t hold it against me, my predilections. You treats me fine, like we’s friends. I mean, you is my friend, ain’t you, Sarge?”

  Sarge thought about it, momentarily, then said, “Sure, Orv. Far as it goes.”

  Suddenly Orville sat next to him on the bunk. “ ’Cause, see, I’m bustin’ inside, to tell somebody, Sarge.”

  “Tell somebody what?”

  “I . . . I been doing sex-type acts.”

  Oh Christ. “Here on the ship, you mean?”

  “Here on the ship.”

  “Well, if it’s between you and some other guy with . . . predilections, I don’t wanna know about it, ’cause you could get tossed out on your ass, and whoever you’re predilectin’ with, too . . . and me, for not tellin’.”

  “It ain’t that way, Sarge . . . ain’t that way at all.”

  “What way is it?”

  “It’s somebody makin’ me do these sex-type acts . . . somebody I don’t wanna do these sex-type acts with.”

  “Shit, man, you mean . . . raping you?”

  “No. Yes. I mean . . . it’s just, I’m particular. I got to be in love, at least I gotta think I am at the time, even if it’s the liquor talking? Otherwise, it’s just, you know . . . dirty.”

  Sarge’s eyes were wide and he couldn’t seem to close them. “Well, now, you wouldn’t want to do nothin’ dirty, Orville.”

  “No,” Orville agreed, Sarge’s sarcasm eluding him.

  “If some bastard is raping you, Orv, you won’t get in trouble—he will. A hundred damn kinds of trouble.”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t force me, not . . . not that way.”

  “What way does he force you?”

  “I dunno, it’s just . . . he’s a big man. Powerful man. I can’t stop him.”
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  “Sounds like force to me, Orv.” Sarge shifted on the bunk, put a hand on Orville’s shoulder. “Who’s doing this, son?”

  “I best not tell you. I already said too much.”

  “I’ll help you, son. I got an understanding with Mr. Maxwell. And he’ll—”

  “No!”

  And Orville got off the bunk and was shaking his head, saying, “Forget I said nothing. Forget I said nothing at all.”

  Then Orville bolted down the aisle and on his way out damn near collided with Captain Egan himself, coming in the hatchway.

  “Watch where you’re going, sailor!” the captain snarled, and Orville said, “Yes, sir,” and squeezed by and hurried out.

  Egan, shaking his head in apparent disgust, came over to where Sarge was now on his feet, by his bunk. “What’s up that boy’s ass? He ran out of here faster than Jesse Damn Owens.”

  “Nothing, sir,” Sarge said. “He’s jumpy around any white officer, and seeing the captain must’ve really goosed him.”

  “That boy is frightened of his own captain?”

  “Very likely, sir. Used to happen all the time when I was a cop in Chicago. Perfectly honest man would up and cross the street when he saw me coming. Authority figures make some men jumpy.”

  Egan frowned, his unruly eyebrows twitching. “It’s silly. Not the kind of behavior we expect from a sailor.”

  “No, sir. But we don’t see you down here much, sir.”

  “You are Washington?” Egan asked, Orville forgotten.

  “I am.”

  “Good. You’re who I’m looking for.”

  “I am, sir?”

  “I understand you showed great leadership these past few days. You did the job of a petty officer and helped us get loaded under tough conditions. I came down to say you have my thanks.”

  “Well, thank you, sir.”

  Egan nodded. “As you were.”

  And the captain strode out.

  Obviously Maxwell had put in the good word, and Sarge wondered if a promotion was a real possibility—an officer, a colored officer. That would make Sarge’s war, all right.

  But in the meantime, he’d grab some sleep, and leave that waking dream behind, Orville’s nightmare forgotten.

  For now.

  Chapter 8

  AUGUST 26–28, 1944

  At full speed, empty, and running for her life, the Liberty Hill Victory could manage seventeen knots or just a shade under twenty miles an hour. In the safe waters between San Francisco and Pearl Harbor, they did not run her at top speed. Even so, averaging a steady twelve knots, the fully loaded ship covered the twenty-one hundred nautical miles to Hawaii and docked at Pearl in a week.

  Pete Maxwell hadn’t seen a box score since they’d left San Francisco and, with the pennant race in full swing, felt left out completely. He had hoped to get a newspaper so he could get caught up with the baseball season while they were in Pearl, but no such luck. They had arrived late in the day, refueled, then joined a small convoy headed to Tarawa, first thing next morning.

  The best part about the brief stopover was the waiting bundle of V-mail from Kay. Just as he wrote her daily, she did the same, but their correspondence arrived in clumps, and consisted on both their parts of lots of redundant but no less precious talk of love and missing each other and a rosy if hazy future.

  Pete had restrictions on what he could share with her— which is to say, next to nothing—but Kay’s letters were filled with both sentiment and incident, the girls at Western Union, her silly boss, her funny aunt, even movies she’d seen (he could tell her about movies he’d seen, too, but there wasn’t much you could say about the sixth time you saw the same Hopalong Cassidy picture).

  He kept hoping she’d deliver the big news, namely that they had indeed managed to start a family in those last few days together; but nothing, in this batch of letters, even hinted at that. In his bunk, he would stare at photos of her—unlike some of the guys, he did not reduce his wife to a pin-up, these were private to him—and talk to her and she would talk to him.

  Some guys prayed, but Pete talked to his wife. It was a kind of prayer at that, he supposed, a prayer that one day soon he would not have to imagine the sound of her voice, or her touch or her kiss, but have her right there with him in the wonderful flesh.

  You did the right thing, she told him. That sailor Mullins was just scared, like your friend Sarge said.

  It could come back to haunt me, he said to her. What if Mullins lost his head again and hurt somebody?

  He won’t.

  How can you be sure, baby?

  I’m sure because your friend Sarge is sure. You’ve always had good instincts about people, Pete. Trust them.

  Pete knew writing daily letters to a wife or sweetheart wasn’t unusual on this (or any other) ship. One of his English students, a kid from Kentucky named Baldwin, begged Pete to teach him enough “so’s he could write home to the little woman.” Pete did, and Baldwin soon displayed with pride the following letter:

  “I loves you baby I loves you baby I loves you baby I loves you baby . . .” and so on, filling two sides of a sheet.

  When you got right down to it, that was a hell of a letter home, and not so different from what Pete wrote Kay.

  The Liberty Hill Victory and her convoy of two destroyers and another cargo ship averaged fourteen knots, speeding for a little over three and a half days to cover the twelve hundred nautical miles southwest of Hawaii to Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, nearly to the equator.

  The islands of the Pacific served as stepping stones to Japan, the brass knew, and even though it was over four thousand miles east of Tokyo, Tarawa had been the Allies’ first step in the march to defeat the Japs. Captured after ferocious fighting in November of last year, the island now served as a fuel and supply station on the trip west.

  This close to the equator, the heat pummeled them. White or black, officer or enlisted man, equality found them at last as they all suffered in the sweltering humidity, under an unrelenting sun. Even Orville Monroe—lately a wispy wraith rarely showing himself beyond the engine room and the mess—came out on deck looking for the tiniest hint of a breeze.

  Orville, like everyone else aboard, found only disappointment. Had they been part of an earlier exploration, sailing ships moving under wind power, their trip would be stalled for God only knew how long. Pete thanked that same God he’d been born in the present: the idea of sailing around the world depending only on the force of the wind to move your ship seemed a nightmare.

  And in the 1640s, as opposed to the 1940s, a wall-mounted electric fan wouldn’t have awaited him in his cabin when his shift finally ended on a sweltering evening like this. The tiny contraption lent small solace, but stirring up the hot air seemed preferable to the deathly stillness and insufferable humidity on deck.

  Right now, however, his chief concern was the Higgins boat headed their way from the shore. Technically a Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP), the craft was more commonly referred to by the surname of its inventor, Andrew Jackson Higgins. The Higgins boat—used to deliver infantrymen from ships to beaches at not only Tarawa, but Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Saipan—now would hold supplies for the next leg of their journey.

  In the Higgins boat were three sailors—a pilot, another enlisted man keeping an eye on the cargo, and a round-faced ensign whose pasty complexion said the guy was a replacement who hadn’t been on Tarawa more than a day or two. Of the three, only the pilot didn’t wave as they neared, focused on getting next to the Liberty Hill Victory without banging into her hull.

  The boat eased up alongside, Pete on deck looking down at the crates of meat stenciled MUTT ON , BEEF and PORK. He could see the officer and enlisted man gazing up at the colored crew and commenting to each other, but with the engine noise and the activity aboard his own ship, Pete couldn’t hear them. Where their approaching visitors had been smiling and waving a minute ago, they now stopped, faces serious, smiles gone.

  As the en
listed man tied off the boat, the ensign looked up at Pete. “Welcome to Tarawa,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Thanks,” Pete said.

  “Permission to come aboard?”

  “Granted.”

  The ensign threw a foot into the cargo net hanging over the side and climbed the thick rope onto the deck. He saluted the flag, then turned to Pete and saluted again. “Ensign Jerry Randle.”

  Returning the salute, Pete gave the man his name and rank.

  “I’ve got some supplies for you, Lieutenant,” Randle said. “Meat, as you can see. Watch out for the mutton, though—it’s a little ripe.”

  Pete nodded as he looked at the manifest—in fact, 90 percent of the meat on the manifest was mutton.

  “Just a moment, Ensign,” Pete said. “This sheet says almost all we get is mutton.”

  Randle nodded back.

  “What about the beef and pork you’ve got there?”

  Fidgeting a little, stealing a glance at the enlisted man down in the Higgins boat, standing guard on the cargo, Randle said, “Well, that’s . . . spoken for.”

  “Spoken for by whom?”

  Randle pointed to a freighter anchored nearby—nearby enough so that Pete could make out the white men moving on deck.

  “I see. And how much mutton are they getting?”

  “They’re, uh, getting their share, sir.”

  “How much, Ensign?” Pete asked, his voice sharper now.

  “ . . . Ten percent, sir.”

  “Ten percent. Sounds like that freighter’s getting our share of everything else.”

  Randle hesitated for a good ten seconds. Finally, in a near whisper, he said, “Orders, sir. The quartermaster said you officers could feed the mutton to the . . . to the niggers, sir, and, well, keep the good stuff for yourself.”

  Pete drew in a breath. He let it out. Then: “He said that to you personally? Are you approximating his words or did he in fact say ‘feed it to the niggers’?”

  “Yes, sir. He said that, sir.”

  Pete studied the pale, puffy-faced ensign whose expression was that of a child whose bladder would burst if Daddy didn’t stop at the next gas station.