Loving Women

by Pete Hamill

  A weekend cruise.

  Yeah.

  Saturday was peaceful. I pulled a twelve to four and on Sunday morning I slept in. I remember lunch wunt half bad. Hamburgers and mashed potatoes. I couldn’t finish the potatoes, and in the next few days I thought about them uneaten potatoes a lot. A lot, sailor. In the afternoon I sat in the shade on deck while the green kids got cholera shots for the Philippines. In the afternoon, the weather changed. There was a haze on the sea now and a heavy chop. We were followin the normal zigzag pattern—normal that is in the Forward Zone, where you want to fuck up the other guy’s listening devices, just in case he’s around somewhere.

  I wished we had sonar.

  I wished we wunt alone.

  That night I had an eight to twelve. It was fuckin hot. I remember walking through the quarters when I went on duty and noticin a lot of watertight doors open. I wondered who in the fuck was in charge of them and I went up on deck, pissed off, needin a smoke, followin the smell of the coffee pot. The deck was disgustin. Sailors had pulled mattresses and cots on deck and were lyin around bullshittin and sleepin. Hundreds of them. There was only one air conditioner on board, down in sick bay, and the Captain didn’t give a rat’s ass where they slept, I guess. I saw some guys shootin craps in a compartment and told them to make sure the light dint show and kept thinkin: There’s too many doors open.

  I went up on the bridge and looked out for a while, standin on the side. For some reason, we had stopped the zigzag. We were going due west. The sea was pretty calm. There was a quarter moon. I smoked half a pack of Camels, goin up and down and around the ship, fore and aft, port and starboard. The guys on deck stopped their bullshittin and grabassin and went to sleep.

  And maybe cause it was quiet, maybe cause we wuz alone, I don’t know why: for the first tahm in years, I started thinkin about home.

  I had a wife back home once, married when we were both sixteen, and we used to talk all the tahm about gettin us a little house somewhere beside a lake so we’d always see a piece of water. I wondered what happened to that woman that was once mah wife, whether she married someone half decent, whether she had kids (we didn’t), whether some new fella gave her what I never could give her.

  You see, she was a good lovin woman. It wunt her fault we split. The truth was, I just couldn’t take her lovin. Somethin in me. Dont’ know what. Couldn’t take her huggin and kissin and lovin. And besides, I couldn’t stay put. I couldn’t stand the idea of plowin them Alabama fields every spring and every fall for the rest of mah fuckin life. I always felt that way. Saw them fields kill my daddy and my uncles and make my momma old. When I married that lovin woman, I thought I wouldn’t feel that way no more. But I did. The feelin just never went away. I’d see the dirt fields and feel already dead. Even now, close as we are to Alabama from Pensacola, I never go home. Never. Never want to see it again.

  So one night while my lovin woman slept, I packed a bag and took a bus to Mobile and joined the Navy and never seen that lovin woman again.

  But sometimes she’d come to me in the night. And out there on the Indianapolis, doing the eight to twelve, I wondered about her and whether she ever thought about me and I was tryin to remember all the details of her face and the way she smelled on them hot Alabama nights, rich as dirt, and what her hair felt like, and all the things about her body, I was thinkin all them things when the first Jap torpedo hit.

  The goddamn thing just tore the bow off the fuckin ship. Forty feet ripped right off, anchors, capstans and all. The niggers all lived up there, stewards and messmen, and not one of them lived. Thirty-two of em. And the fleet Marines. Thirty of them just died. The ship rose up in the air and fell hard with a bright red flash and a column of water as high as the bridge and I was holding on to a rail and then someone was screamin and then, maybe three seconds later, the second one hit.

  Midships.

  Right about where the bridge was on the starboard side, and that knocked me to the deck and then everyone started goin apeshit.

  I pulled myself up and grabbed a phone off the bulkhead, but it wasn’t working. Nothin electric was workin. No lights, no sound, and I thought: Please God make sure the radio aint hit, make sure Sparks is gettin out the location, make sure someone knows we been hit, cause we’re out in a great big fuckin ocean. I saw a kid run by bawlin and then knew we were still plowing ahead, eatin the fuckin ocean through that hole where the bow used to be and I immediately saw all them open doors in my head and knew that belowdecks sailors were dyin.

  There was gray smoke everywhere now, smellin like burnt paint. Then I saw Captain McVay comin at me through the smoke. He was ballsass naked, carryin parts of his uniform and tryin to get to the bridge. He didn’t say a word to me, but he looked at the sea and the green kids runnin all over and up ahead where the bow was already underwater and fire was runnin across the deck and I knew what he was thinkin: We’re gonna have to give her up.

  I felt us list a few degrees and heard some godawful noises from belowdecks and then the Captain was gone into the smoke and I could hear him yellin, shut the engines down, shut down the goddamned engines.

  While we kept plowin ahead.

  I pulled on a kapok life jacket and tied it tight and started moving aft. There were scared kids everywhere, not knowin what to do, where their battle stations were, but knowin, like sailors do, even green-shit recruits, that they were goin into the sea.

  I turned some of them around, told them to get to the fan tail, tie on life jackets, get ready to go. I tried to help some guys get the whaleboats out of the chocks, but then we listed another six or seven degrees, and one of the guys lost his grip and went into the sea and the boats were hanging beyond our reach. And I could see others jumpin in, some without life jackets, some just in skivvies, cause they’d been sleeping when the Japs whacked us. A guy sat on the deck, his whole body black and burnt. A corpsman was giving him morphine, but then we listed again, and the burned guy started slidin away.

  There were maybe five hundred sailors on the fantail, now, all half dressed. None of them had flashlights or guns or knives. And the ship was still driving forward. There were a lot of officers runnin around now, all the green shitbirds from the Academy, and they were all yellin about stoppin the ship, like it was a truck on a road someplace. They were useless. Most of em didn’t even know how to find the fuckin engine room never mind go down there and shut off the engines. A few kids started going off the fantail. I yelled to the others to get the floater nets ready, these great big nets with floats attached. Then there was a big jolt. The whole fuckin ship just twisted, and we went over another twenty-five degrees, the port side high up in the air, and kids were fallin all over the ocean. Along with equipment and bunks and all that loose gear that had littered the deck. The number 3 screw was still turnin and I saw two kids hold hands and jump off the fantail and get chopped to pieces by one of the propellers. The company bugler went into the sea, holding the goddamned bugle.

  It was a mess.

  A real fuckin mess.

  Then I started climbin up the deck. It was like the whole world turned on its side. What I used to walk on was now a wall and I had to get up the wall. I pulled myself over the top and found I was standin on the side of the ship. There was maybe a hundred other sailors doing the same thing. Later I learned we got hit at 12:02 and the ship went down at 12:18.

  Sixteen minutes.

  It seemed a hell of a lot longer than that.

  I stood on the port side, and then just walked straight ahead and stepped into the sea.

  I started swimmin hard, trying to get away from her, afraid of suction. I’m a good goddamned swimmer, but I could barely move in the water. And then I knew why. It was full of thick black fuel oil. I tried goin under the oil and made some time and came up and looked back. The Indianapolis was layin real low in the water. I could hear shouts. A few screams. And I thought I was still too close. That the suction would pull me down. I didn’t know. I’d never had to abandon a ship b
efore. But I looked back and all I could hear from her was the lappin of waves against the steel hull and then she just slipped away under the sea.

  No suction.

  No whirlpool.

  She was just gone.

  Then … hell, I aint afraid to admit I was scared. I was alone in the sea, covered with oil. I was afraid the SOS never got off the ship. I was afraid the Japs would come to the surface and shoot the shit out of us. I was afraid of being alone in the biggest goddamned ocean in the fuckin universe. I didn’t know if any rafts had been cut loose and I didn’t know how many others were in the sea with me and whether I’d find them.

  Then somethin hard bumped into me. I grabbed for it. A crate of potatoes. I held on to that and then a part of a desk floated by and I held that too, an arm on each one, just floatin, savin my strength. I could hear voices everywhere but I couldn’t see anyone. I heard a kid screamin for his momma. Someone was prayin too, the good old Baptist shit. Then a kid come along, swimmin, no life jacket. I told him to grab the piece of desk.

  It ain’t enough, he said. I ain’t strong enough.

  Grab the motherfucker, I said.

  And he did and drifted off. Later I found the desk but not the kid.

  I held on to that potato crate as long as I could. But the potatoes must’ve started takin on water and it started ridin lower. I tore a slat off and started dumpin the spuds, shoving a few inside my shirt. I didn’t think after that. I just floated for the rest of the night.

  In the mornin, I could see other sailors. Maybe a hundred and fifty of us, scattered all over the ocean. And not a raft among us. I learned later that about eight hundred went in the water and some of them had rafts, including the captain. But we were scattered over miles of ocean because the ship kept goin after she was hit. We were so low in the water we couldn’t see where the rafts were and nobody had flares. Nobody had food either. I saw an orange float by and grabbed it and shoved it in my shirt along with the two potatoes. I was looking for the rest of the potatoes when a guy bobbed right up to me. His face was black from the oil. And worse. He was fuckin charred, boy. His eyelids were burned off his eyes and he couldn’t see anything. He said to me, What is this?

  And slipped under the sea.

  In the daylight, it looked like a sea full of niggers. Everybody was covered with oil. Some guys were in uniform but others didn’t have shirts or even pants. We started movin toward each other. And I saw that some guys didn’t have life jackets either. The sun started risin, the biggest hottest most orange sun I ever saw.

  Then I heard a guy scream, looked over, saw him tear off his life jacket and go under. That was the beginning.

  I started yellin at them all: Don’t drink the sea water. Whatever you do, don’t drink it. I knew that drinkin sea water was death. First you go crazy and then you get sick and then you die. I told the ones closest to me to pass it on: Don’t drink the fuckin sea water. And then I started trying to calm the ones near me. Sure, I said, the wireless must’ve gone off. And if it didn’t, as soon as we don’t show on Leyte, they’ll come lookin for us. Don’t worry, I said. Stay calm, I said. Don’t use up your energy. Most of all, don’t drink from the sea.

  I gave two of them a potato.

  Then the strange shit started.

  First of all, guys started goin blind. Later on I heard this was called photophobia. Comes from the sun, the oil, the reflection on the ocean, all combined. I saw three guys screamin they couldn’t see anything. Then I thought about myself. With my skin, I wouldn’t last the day. I was covered with oil. But if I didn’t do something the sun would still get me. I saw a guy float by face down in the water. The back of his head was shredded. I unleashed his jacket and then tied it over my head like a bonnet. It didn’t work perfect. You see my skin here? You see these scars? You see where the nerve ends was just burnt off? Well, I didn’t get that jacket for a bonnet, it mighta been worse.

  Late in the afternoon that first day, Monday, the sharks came.

  We saw the fins, just like in a movie. Three of em. Circlin around us. The first thing they hit was one of the dead guys out on the edge of the group. Just smashed into him and pulled him under. But they wasn’t finished. One of the kids suddenly screamed, the goddamnedest bloodcurdlin scream I ever heard, and then he was gone. Blood mixed with the oil. The others started thrashin around, splashin and kickin, but I remembered somethin from some magazine saying the best thing was to just lie on your back very still. The shark sees you kickin and he thinks you’re already done for and you’re an easy kill. I told this to the ones near me and flopped over on my back. I felt somethin bump me and then go away and then another godawful scream and I just lay there for a long time.

  I was layin there when I saw the plane. Not too high. Maybe three, four thousand feet. Everybody else seen it too. And we start shoutin and yellin and beating on the oily ocean. But the plane just kept on goin. It never came back. And I thought: The SOS never left the ship. And I was scared. Never said a word to the others, never said that if the message got off, there’d be a dozen planes here, circlin in the sky. Never mentioned any of that. But knew it.

  The day was scaldin. I sealed my mouth, afraid of the sea water. Held it so tight my muscles hurt. The sharks must of been full. They didn’t come back either. We all lolled there in the water, just taking it. That night, we heard another plane. Then I saw star flares fired from somewhere on the ocean. That was the first time I knew for sure that there were others out there. And if they had flares they had Very pistols and if they had Very pistols then somebody had found a raft. The pistols were part of the gear on every raft. And I thought, the planes had to see that. Durin the day, maybe the ocean was like some big mirror if you looked at it from the sky. But at night, the flares meant that people were down here. They couldn’t miss us. Now they’d come for us. I bobbed in the sea and heard someone start to sing.

  Pardon me boy

  Is this the Chattanooga choo-choo …

  And someone else said, Track Twenty nine, and another, Well, can you give me a shine. They were happy. They’d seen the flare and heard the plane and they were sure now we’d be found. In the morning. As soon as it got light.

  But the plane didn’t come back in the mornin, or the mornin after that. And then people started going crazy. They must have been drinkin the sea water. Or if they wunt, the sea water was gettin into their mouths anyway and down their throats.

  The craziness came in waves. Some ensign said that there was an island only a mile away, with palm trees and freshwater streams and beautiful girls like Dorothy Lamour. He got a dozen guys to follow him and they all started swimmin away and we never saw them again. Another guy said that he could see the Indianapolis right below us, about thirty feet down, and there was fresh water down there, hundreds of gallons of it, and Betty Grable was on the deck and everything was beautiful. I told him that the bottom was 10,000 feet down. He said You’re crazy, man, said, Look, said, There it is, the ship! He stripped off the life jacket and started swimmin down and three other guys did the same and that was the end of them too.

  A lot of guys started fightin each other, they’d be punchin and thrashin around and beatin at the ocean and each other and then this brown shit would start burblin up from their mouths, and they’d be dead. Some guys had knives. They used them to keep the food for themselves. They used them to get fresh life jackets. They threatened officers with them. There was no discipline, no rules, no Navy regs, no feeling of being in this thing together. It was every man for himself, for four fucking days and nights. You think human beings are decent? You think human beings love their neighbors? Go out in the ocean with them sometime. Eight hundred guys went in the water when the Indianapolis went down. At the end, only three hundred were left.

  It went on and on. I ate the orange but was afraid of the salt water on the potato and threw it away. By the second night, the kapok lifejackets were gettin waterlogged. We were ridin lower and lower in the sea. I started playin mind games, t
rying not to go crazy, tryin to stay alive. What time was it? Yesterday today was tomorrow. Right this minute was yesterday’s future. Night will become dawn. But when does dawn become morning and what makes afternoon different from morning and when does it happen and why are we all here in this fuckin ocean which has no beginning and no end except when the fuckin sharks come to get us? I thought like that.

  Finally I thought if I didn’t want anything then it wouldn’t matter if I died. So I said to myself over and over, I don’t want anything, I don’t care for anything, I don’t love anything or anyone or anyplace. I’m nothin. I’m just here on the ocean. A speck. Bein alive, that was nothin. Dead, I’m nothin.

  And that way I was able to live.

  We saw more planes high in the sky and they never came back and that was nothin. We saw a squall in the distance comin across the ocean and we thought we’d have fresh water in our mouths and then the squall turned and the rain went away to the west without coming near us and that was nothin. I saw guys keel over and die and that was nothin. I saw a guy with a knife cut another guy’s throat for his life jacket and that was nothin. Prayin was nothin and day was nothin and singin was nothin and night was nothin.

  And then on Thursday, a PV-I flew over and circled and circled and finally landed on the water, bouncin, skiddin, hittin the tops of waves and settlin.

  We were saved.

  And even that was nothin.

  I couldn’t cheer. Only my nose was above water. I couldn’t get excited.

  I was saved.

  I was alive.

  Nothin.

  Only later, after we were picked up and taken to a can named the Doyle, only then did I want to live. They took us to Peleliu and the hospital. I drank too much water and puked and ate too much food and puked. I slept for eighteen hours. And when I woke up I knew that if I stayed in this man’s Navy, I wouldn’t ever again be in a place where green snotnosed kids panicked and died and got other people dead.