“I’m the captain. Stillwater.”
“You the captain.” Tony stalled while all his previous estimates whirled around in his head. He glanced down at the deck, momentarily helpless. He had never addressed a commanding officer before; the closest he ever came in the Yard was a severe passing nod to one or two in a corridor from time to time. The fact that this one had come out on deck to talk to him must mean that the repair was vital, and Tony found himself losing the normal truculence in his voice.
“Could I give yiz some advice, Captain?”
“Certainly. What is it?”
“We can’t do nuttn in this here weather. You don’t want a botch job, do ya? Whyn’t you take her into the Yard, we give you a brand-new pair rails, and yiz’ll be shipshape for duty.”
The captain half laughed in surprise at the misunderstanding. “Oh, we couldn’t do that. We’re joining a convoy at four. Four this morning. I can’t delay a convoy.”
The easy absoluteness shot fear into Tony’s belly. He glanced past the captain’s face, groping for a new attack, but the captain was talking again.
“Come, I’ll show it to you. Give me that light, Farrow.”
The sick watch handed him the flashlight, and the captain loped off toward the fantail. Tony followed behind. He was trapped. The next time he saw Charley Mudd . . .
The flashlight beam shot out and illuminated the two parallel steel rails, extending several feet out over the water from the deck. Two feet in from the end of the portside rail there was a bend.
“Jesus! What happened?”
“We were out there”—the captain flipped up the light toward the river beyond the slip—“and a British ship got a little too close trying to line himself up.”
“Them fuckin’ British!” Tony exploded, throwing his voice out toward the river where the Englishman must be. Caught by surprise, the captain laughed, but Tony pulled his hands out of his slit pockets and made a pleading gesture, and his face looked serious. “Why don’t somebody tell them to stop fuckin’ around or get out of the war!”
The captain, unaccustomed to the type, watched Tony with great expectation and amusement.
“I mean it! They the only ones brings cockroaches into the Navy Yard!”
“Cockroaches? How do—”
“Ax anybody! We get French, Norways, Brazils, but you don’t see no cockroaches on them ships. Only the British brings cockroaches.”
The captain shook his head with commiseration, tightening his smile until it disappeared. “Some of their ships have been at sea a long, long time, you know.”
Tony felt a small nudge of hope in his heart. “Uh-huh,” he muttered, frowning with solicitude for the English. Some unforeseen understanding with the captain seemed to loom; the man was taking him so seriously, bothering to explain why there were cockroaches, allowing himself to be diverted even for ten seconds from the problem of the rail, and, more promising than anything else, he seemed to be deferring to Tony’s opinion about the possibility of working at all tonight. And better yet, he was even going into it further.
“Some of those English ships have been fighting steadily ten and twelve months down around the Indian Ocean. A ship will get awfully bad that long at sea without an overhaul. Don’t you think?”
Tony put gravity into his face, an awful deliberation, and then spoke generously. “Oh yeah, sure. I was only sayin’. Which I don’t blame them, but you can’t sit down on their ships.”
Another officer and two more sailors had come out on deck and were watching from a distance as Tony talked to the captain, and he slowly realized that they must all have been waiting hours for him and were now wondering what his opinion was going to be.
With a nod toward the bent rail, the captain asked, “What do you think? Can you straighten it?”
Tony turned to look out at the damaged rail, but his eyes were not seeing clearly. The pleasure and pride of his familiarity with the captain, his sheer irreplaceability on this deck, were shattering his viewpoint. Striving to knit his wits together, he asked the captain if he could have the flashlight for a minute.
“Oh, certainly,” the captain said, handing it to him.
Leaning a little over the edge of the deck, he shone the beam onto the bend of the rail. That pimping, motherfuckin’ Charley Mudd! Look at the chunks of ice in that water—fall in there it’s goodbye forever. In the skyscrapers at his back, men tripled their money every wartime day, butchers were cleaning up with meat so scarce, anybody with a truck in good shape could name his price, and here he stood, God’s original patsy, Joe Jerk, without a penny to his name that he hadn’t grubbed out by the hour with his two hands.
More than a minute had gone by, but he refused to give up until an idea came to him, and he kept the light shining on the bend as though studying how to repair it. There had to be a way out. It was the same old shit—the right idea at the right moment had never come to him because he was a dumb bastard and there was no way around it and never would be.
“What do you think?”
What he thought? He thought that Charley Mudd should be strung up by his balls. Turning back to the captain now, he was confronted with the man’s face, close to his in order to hear better in the wind. Could it be getting even colder?
“Lemme show you supm, Captain. Which I’m tryin’ my best to help you out, but this here thing is a son of a bitch. Excuse me. Look.”
He pointed out at the bend in the rail. “I gotta hit that rail—you understand?”
“Yes?”
“But where I’m gonna stand? It sticks out over the water. You need skyhooks for this. Which is not even the whole story. I gotta get that steel good and hot. With this here wind you got blowin’ here, I don’t even know if I can make it hot enough.”
“Hmm.”
“You understand me? I’m not trying to crap out on ya, but that’s the facts.”
He watched the captain, who was blinking at the bend, his brows kinked. He was like a kid, innocent. Out in the dark, river foghorns barked, testifying to the weather. Tony saw the sag of disappointment in the captain’s face, the sadness coming into it. What the hell was the matter with him? He had a perfect excuse not to have to go to sea and maybe get himself sunk. The German subs were all over the coast of Jersey, waiting for these convoys, and here the man had a perfect chance to lay down in a hotel for a couple of days. Tony saw that the young man needed precise help, his feet placed on the road out.
“Captain, listen to me. Please. Lemme give you piece of advice.”
Expressionless, the captain turned to Tony.
“I sympathize wichoo. But what’s the crime if you call in that you can’t move tonight? That’s not your fault.”
“I have a position in the convoy. I’m due.”
“I know that, Captain, but lemme explain to you. Cut outa here right now, make for the Yard; we puts up a staging and slap in a new rail by tomorrow noon, maybe even by ten o’clock. And you’re set.”
“No, no, that’s too late. Now see here”—the captain pointed a leather-gloved finger toward the bend—“you needn’t true it up exactly. If you could just straighten it enough to let the cans roll off, that would be enough.”
“Listen, Captain, I would do anything I could do for you, but . . .” An unbelievable blast of iced wind squeezed Tony’s cheeks. The captain steadied himself, tilting his head toward the river again, gripping his visor with one hand and holding his collar tight with the other. Tony had heard him gasp at the new depth of cold. What was the matter with these people? The Navy had a million destroyers—why the hell did they need this one, only this one and on this particular night? “I’m right, ain’t I? They can’t hold it against you, can they? If you’re unfit for duty you’re unfit for duty, right? Who’s gonna blame you, which another ship rammed you in the dark? You were in a position, weren’t you? It was his fault, n
ot yours!”
The captain glanced at him, and in that glance Tony saw the man’s disappointment, his judgment of him. He could not help reaching out defensively and touching the captain’s arm. “Listen a minute. Please. Looka me, my situation. I know my regulations, Captain; nobody can blame me either. I’m not supposed to work unsafe conditions. I coulda took one look here and called the Yard and I’d be back there by now below decks someplace, because if you can’t do it safe you not supposed to. The only way I can swing this, if I could swing it, is I tie myself up in a rope and hang over the side to hit that rail. Nobody would kick one minute if I said I can’t do such a thing. You understand me?”
The captain, his eyes tearing in the wind, his face squeezing tight against the blast of air, waited for his point.
“What I mean, I mean that . . .” What did he mean? Standing a few inches from the captain’s boyish face, he saw for the first time that there was no blame there. No blame and no command either. The man was simply at a loss, in need. And he saw that there was no question of any official blame for the captain either. Suddenly it was as clear and cold as the air freezing them where they stood—that they were both on a par, they were free.
“I’d be very much obliged if you could do it. I see how tough it is, but I’d be very much obliged if you could.”
Tony discovered his glove at his mouth and he was blowing into it to spread heat on his cheeks. The captain had become a small point in his vision. For the first time in his life he had a kind of space around him in which to move freely, the first time, it seemed, that it was entirely up to him, with no punishment if he said no, nor even a reward if he said yes. Gain and loss had suddenly collapsed, and what was left standing was a favor asked that would profit nobody. The captain was looking at him, waiting for his answer. He felt shame, not for having hesitated to try, but for a sense of his nakedness. And as he spoke he felt afraid that in fact the repair would turn out to be impossible and he would end by packing up his tools and, unmanned, retreating back to the Yard.
“Man to man, Captain, can I ask you supm?”
“What is it?”
“Which I’m only mentionin’”—he was finding his truculent tone, and it was slowly turning ordinary again with this recollection coming on—“because plenty of times they run to me, ‘Tony, quick, the ship’s gotta go tonight,’ and I bust my balls. And I come back next day and the ship is sittin’ there, and even two weeks more it’s still sittin’, you understand me?”
“The minute you finish I’ll be moving out into the river, don’t you worry about that.”
“What about coffee?” Tony asked, striving to give this madness some air of a transaction.
“Much as you like. I’ll tell the men to make some fresh. Just tell the watch whenever you want it.” The captain put out his hand. “Thanks very much.”
Tony could barely bring his hand forward. He felt the clasping hand around his own. “I need some rope.”
“Right.”
He wanted to say something, something to equal the captain’s speech of thanks. But it was impossible to admit that anything had changed in him. He said, “I don’t guarantee nuttn,” and the familiar surliness in his tone reassured him.
The captain nodded and went off into the midship section, followed by the other officer and the two sailors who had been looking on. He would be telling them . . . what? That he had conned the fitter?
Hindu and Looey Baldu were coming toward him. What had he agreed to!
“What’s the score?” Hindu grinned, waiting for the delicious details of how Tony had outwitted the shithead captain.
“We straighten it out.” Tony started past Hindu, who grabbed his arm.
“We straighten what out?”
“I said we straighten it out.” He saw the disbelief in Hindu’s eyes, the canny air of total refusal, and he felt anger charging into his veins. “Ax a man for a wood saw and a hammer and if they got a wreckin’ bar.”
“How the fuck you gonna straighten—”
“Don’t break my balls, Hindu. Do what I tell you or get your ass off the ship!” He was amazed at his fury. What the hell was he getting so mad about? He heard Baldu’s voice behind him, calling, “I’ll get it!” and went to the gangplank and down to the pier, no longer understanding anything except the grave feeling that had found him and was holding on to him, like the feeling of insult, the sense that he could quickly find himself fighting somebody, the looseness of violence. Hindu had better not try to make him look like a jerk.
It took minutes for him to see again within the pier, where he walked about in the emptiness, shining the flashlight at random and finding only the bare, corrugated walls. Baldu came hurrying down the hollow-booming gangplank and over to him, carrying the tools. Another idiot. Son of a bitch, what did these guys do with themselves, jerk off instead of learning something, which at least he had done from job to job, not that it meant anything.
The flashlight found a stack of loading trays piled high against the pier wall. Tony climbed up the ten feet to the top tray. “What’s this for?” Baldu asked, reaching up to receive it as Tony tipped it over the edge of the stack. He came down without answering and gestured for the wrecking bar. Baldu handed him the saw, blade first, and Tony slapped it away and reached over and picked up the hammer and wrecking bar and set about prying up the boards until the two five-by-five runners underneath were free. “Grab one,” he said, and proceeded up the gangplank onto the deck.
He measured the distance between the two rails and sawed the runners to fit. It must be near eleven, maybe later, and the cold would be getting worse and worse. He cut two lengths of rope and ordered Baldu to tie the end of one around his chest, tied the other around himself, and then undid Baldu’s crazy knot and made a tight one; he lashed both ropes to a frame at the root of the depth-charge rails, leaving enough slack for him and Baldu to creep out onto the rails. He took one end of a wood runner, Baldu took the other, and they laid themselves prone on the rails, then moved together, with the runner held between them, across the open water. He told Baldu to rest his end inside the L of his rail and to hold it from jarring loose and falling into the water, and he wedged his own end against his rail just behind where the bend began. He told Baldu to inch backward onto the deck, and Hindu to hand Baldu one of the sledges. But the sledges were still on the truck. He told them both to go down to the truck and bring the sledges, bring two tanks of gas, bring the burning torch and tips, and don’t get wounded.
Baldu ran. Hindu walked, purposely. Tony sat on his heels, studying the rails. The sick watch paced up and down behind him in a dream. That fuckin’ Charley Mudd, up to the ceiling by his balls.
“Hey, seasick,” he said over his shoulder as the watch approached. “See if you can get me a tarp, huh?”
“Tarp?”
“Tarpaulin, tarpaulin. And step on it.”
Christ, one was dumber than the other, nobody knew nuttn, everybody’s fulla shit with his mouth open. What was the captain saying now, what was he doing? Had he been conned, really? Except, what could the captain get out of it except the risk of his life with all those subs off Jersey? If he had been conned, fuck it, show the bastard. Show him what?
Suddenly, staring at nothing, he no longer knew why he was doing this, if he had ever known. And somebody might fall into the water in the bargain once they started hitting with the sledge.
“Coffee?”
He turned and looked up. The captain was handing him a steaming cup and had two more in his other hand.
“Thanks.”
Now Baldu and Hindu were clanking the gas cylinders onto the deck behind them. Tony drank his coffee, inhaling the good steam. The captain gave the two cups to the others.
“Whyn’t you get off your feet, Captain? Go ahead, git warmed up.”
The captain nodded and went off.
Tony put down
his cup. The watch arrived, carrying a folded tarpaulin whose grommets were threaded with quarter-inch rope. Tony told him to put it down on the deck. He let Baldu drink coffee for a minute more, then told him to creep out on his rail and steady the wood runner while Tony hit its other end with the sledge to wedge it in tight between the two rails. Sliding the sledge ahead of him on his rail, he crept out over the water. At his left, Baldu, tied again, crept out wide-eyed. Tony saw that he was afraid of the water below.
Baldu inched along until he reached the runner and held it in the angle of the L tightly with both hands. Tony stood up carefully on his rail, bent down and picked up the sledge, then edged farther out on the rail to position for a swing. The water, in the light held by Hindu, was black and littered with floating paper. Tony carefully swung the sledge and hit the runner, and again, and again, and it was tight between the two rails. He told Baldu to back up, and they got the second runner and inched it out with them and wedged it snugly next to the first. Now there would be something to stand on between the two cantilevered rails, although it remained to be seen whether a man could bang the bent rail hard enough with so narrow a perch under him.
He unfolded the tarpaulin and handed one corner to Baldu, took the opposite corner himself, and both inched out over the rails again and tied the tarpaulin on the two runners so that it hung to the windward of the bend and might keep the air blast from cooling the steel. It might not. He backed halfway to the deck and told Hindu to hand him the torch and to grab a sledge and stand on the little bridge he had made and get ready to hit the steel.
“Not me, baby.”
“You, you.”
“What’s the matter with the admiral here?” Hindu asked, indicating Baldu.
“I wanchoo.”
“Not me, baby. I don’t like heights.”
Tony backed off the rail and stood facing Hindu on the deck.
“Don’t fuck around, Tony. Nobody’s payin’ me to get out there. I can’t even swim good.”
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