Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  “Can anybody else hear their bones creaking?” Sweet Cheeks whispered.

  Far down over the side of the ship, water from the bilge pumps pattered lightly back into the sea. The Atlantic Ocean slapped gently against the hull. It was quiet enough for Garret to hear himself think.

  The crew collectively relaxed when the captain finally opened his mouth. His voice was firm and clear.

  “I am Captain Maxwell. You have probably not heard a captain speak to his crew as I will speak to you now,” he looked toward Garret’s pack of seamen, third class, “but we have no time for formality.”

  The brusqueness of his introduction was relaxing. It was the first normal thing they’d experienced in the last twenty-four hours.

  Captain Maxwell lowered his voice long enough to speak to his XO, his second in command. The Executive Officer listened dutifully, but stiffened in surprise. Captain Maxwell folded his hands behind him and waited, the picture of composure and posture.

  Whatever order he’d given was passed quickly and Garret strained to see from the corner of his eyes as a petty officer began barking orders to a few seamen first class within his division. They scrambled, and even from the tail of his vision, Garret could see that they moved with a fast, integrated efficiency. Garret wondered if he and the guys with him would ever reach that level of coordination.

  A whir, which Garret had come to learn was an electric motor in operation, came from over his shoulder. A shadow passed slowly over the formation. One of Kearsarge’s two deck cranes was being used to swing a large launch out over the water. It should have taken a few moments to unlash the boat first, but it didn’t. Whatever this was, the Captain had planned it in advance.

  The motor continued to whir, and the launch dropped until it was level for boarding out from the upper deck. The men had already gathered a small load of supplies, brown paper packages, tins, etc. and were loading them into the boat.

  The captain waited while they finished. Within one minute, they had fully provisioned the boat and returned to their rank and file.

  Sometime during the boat-loading, Maxwell had evaporated from the flying bridge and reappeared on the upper deck in front of formation, on their level. Maxwell stood straight as a fire poker as he spoke. Garret felt himself standing straighter, too.

  “This is the day you decide what kind of man you want to be.” Maxwell said. “You’re going to have that choice because I’m going to allow it, even though I can’t afford it. You know we’re short-handed,” he said.

  Twitch was right again. Garret thought.

  Maxwell continued. “But what you may not know is how severely short-handed we are.” He didn’t try to hide the irritation on his face. “Kearsarge’s crew complement is five hundred and fifty-eight hands. She needs them—needs us—every one. We have four hundred and twenty-one men aboard, officers included. We have nothing to spare, not a second, not an ounce of powder, and certainly not a man, but I need something even more than I need your hands—I need your absolute, unquestioning, instantaneous obedience.”

  The ranks began to relax more. This sort of talk, Garret and his buddies understood. Again, it also reinforced the class difference. Though the reminder was abasing, it was also comforting. Garret and his friends had come to accept it as the simple order of things. Maxwell was an officer, which meant he was wealthy and well trained. His syntax and even his pronunciation rang of high education. Garret and his friends were the labor. They were uneducated and poor. They were trained to work hard, because that was what they’d spent all their lives doing.

  Impossible orders, more work than a thousand men could do. What’s it gonna be? He’s probably going to tell us we have to clean the whole ship four times a day. Maybe stand on our heads while we do it.

  But that was not what he said at all.

  “Men, we have been ordered to wireless silence for the duration of this mission, and I have been ordered to complete my directives, no matter what the cost or the measures required. It will take us three weeks to reach our destination, and before we do, some of us will likely be dead. Gentlemen, there is nothing, not my life, not yours, not all of our lives, that is more valuable than what we have been sent to do.

  “If we succeed, our loved ones back home will never know what we did, or the sacrifices we will have made. They will never know they owe us their lives. No one will tell them that we died defending them . But they will live out their lives safely, and at peace. I will stop at nothing to make sure they have that chance. Will you?”

  He let it hang.

  Oh shit, Garret thought. We ain’t playin’.

  “Bye bye bootcamp,” Fishy muttered.

  “About face!” the Captain barked.

  All of them turned towards Kearsarge’s stern, still at attention. The bulk of Kearsarge stretched out in a long ellipse of dark grey metal and wood. Her aft turret, all four long black barrels, pointed out over the open sea. At the distant horizon, land was visible as a blue-grey thread of beach. It was all that Garret could see of the United States. His home in the Appalachian’s was there too, somewhere, far over the horizon. Or rather it had been his home. It wasn’t now. It could never be again. Mercifully, Maxwell resumed before Garret had any more time to think about it.

  “That,” Maxwell said, “is Cape May, and Delaware Bay beyond. You may return there with no black mark on your military record. Face front!”

  They did. Captain Maxwell had begun walking down the rows of men.

  “If you stay,” he said as he strode among them, “I will give you orders you will not understand. I will give you orders that won’t make sense, so you stop right now, look inside yourself, and if you see the smallest chance that you might not be able to follow them,” he pointed to the boat with a ramrod-straight arm. “Then get on that launch.”

  Maxwell passed by on Garret’s left, two rows down, prowling through their ranks. Garret watched him go.

  Jesus, he moves like a wild cat.

  “A day might come,” Maxwell said flatly, “when I have to give you orders that appear to contradict Navy regulations. If there is any possibility you will fail me, then leave.”

  Maxwell rounded the front man and began coming down Garret’s row. It was the first time the Captain had been close enough for Garret to recognize him.

  Holy-shit-holy-shit, that’s the man who was shoveling beside me. I was shoveling coal with the Captain. Garret racked his brain. Did I say anything stupid? Was I disrespectful? I hope I worked hard. Christ, I probably said something stupid, I usually do. Oh my God, he’s going to have somebody drown me.

  Maxwell looked from left to right as he descended the row. Some of the men shrank under his eye. “If you think for one second that you’re going to stay here with your buddies and then fold on them when the time comes for you to stand and fight, then get off my ship.”

  Maxwell stopped right beside Garret so that Garret could only see him from the corner of his eyes. “I may have to give you an order that will result in your death, trading your life to save others.” Maxwell’s voice rose and cut the morning air, “If you, for one moment, think you might not be able to obey that order, then get on the goddamn launch!”

  Garret felt about six inches tall, but for some ridiculous reason, all he could think was, Are captains allowed to say “goddamn”?

  “Because,” Maxwell continued without pausing, “if that moment comes, and you don’t obey, and you endanger my ship and the crew under my care, there will be no captain’s mast, no deck court. You will be thrown overboard.”

  His voice dropped again back to a quieter menace. He walked onward, and his voice receded from Garret. “Trust will take time between us, but there must always be honesty. If you lie to me here, gentlemen, then when the iron and smoke and blood start flying, I’m going to know you lied. And if that happens, not even God will be able to save you from me.”

  He’d said it quietly, but it rang through the morning. Garret
was so tense his back was starting to hurt. From the corner of his vision, Garret saw wide eyes everywhere. Nobody dared to move.

  Garret had lost sight of Maxwell, so the Captain’s voice seemed to float around as if disembodied, a spirit on the air, burning away in the rising sun.

  “This, gentlemen, is what the United States Navy has ordered me to do. I will see it done. Your Chiefs say you are good men, and I trust them. I have handpicked them, and they have handpicked you. But that doesn’t mean you are ready, and on this voyage, I can’t have men who are not ready. You can’t buckle or falter. You cannot. Because if we fail, no one will know that either. Our friends and family will only know that we died. They will never know that our failure is the reason they suffer for generations to come.”

  His voice softened, though the steel beneath it did not. “All men doubt themselves sometimes. The secret to being an honorable sailor is learning how to overcome that doubt, and how to help others overcome theirs. If you question your ability to take orders and follow them, even if you suspect you may falter in so doing, then I will, for the first time in my life, directly violate my orders. I will allow you to leave.

  “This is where you’re wanting me to tell you that you’re made of sterner stuff. That you’re sailors and officers and men of the United States Navy, and you have iron in your spines. In reality, more than twenty-five percent of men fail to perform their duty during their first combat experience.”

  Garret could feel Twitch twitching, waves of naval pride billowing from his small frame. Garret was glad there wasn’t an enemy gun around for Twitch to throw himself down the barrel.

  “So the truth is,” Maxwell said, “I don’t know if you have iron in your spines or not. You trainees think you’ve been tested in basic. You haven’t. Others of you think you’ve been tested on a cruise or two. You haven’t. That’s not the Navy. So now you have to make one of the most important decisions of your life based on partial information. And that, gentlemen, is the Navy.”

  Maxwell had returned to the head of the formation. “Lieutenant Pickens!” he barked. A young officer bounded in front of the captain like a blue and gold jackrabbit, and snapped to attention.

  “Aye, Captain!”

  “Get on the launch,” Maxwell said.

  The air became ice all across the formation. The lieutenant blanched, opened his mouth. “Sir?”

  “Get on the launch. You’re going home.”

  The lieutenant looked like the captain had just stabbed him in the chest. “Sir, I… I want to be here. I know the risks. I would never fold on you. I volunteered to help.”

  “I know you did Tony,” the Captain said. “You’re going to help me by doing one of the hardest jobs of all. Someone has to go first. I need you to take some of these boys home and make certain that my orders on their fair treatment and honorable reassignment,” he handed the lieutenant some papers, “are followed.”

  The lieutenant was desperate, humiliated. “Sir!”

  “That is an order, Lieutenant.”

  The lieutenant went, walking towards the boat as if fighting his way upstream in a raging river. Garret caught sight of the XO again, standing on the flying bridge. The man was wound so tight that he looked like he was about to sprain something.

  Maxwell effortlessly raised his voice to the entire formation again. “I know this isn’t what they offered you when you signed on. Neither is this how you pictured yourself a hero. There is no shame in leaving. Neither will there be any glory in staying. But if you are what your chiefs believe you to be—what I believe you to be—then together we have a chance, a small one, but a chance to succeed. But be sure of this, gentlemen; on this cruise, men will die. You have two minutes to decide.”

  With that, the captain simply walked away. Just before he disappeared from sight into the conning tower, he stopped and turned back. His voice was different this time.

  “But if you stay… then welcome home, men.”

  Captain Maxwell was gone.

  For a protracted moment, nobody breathed.

  The XO found his tongue lying around somewhere. “At ease,” he yelled.

  Nobody moved.

  “At ease, gentlemen,” the XO called again. Around and in front of Garret, enlisted men began to relax one muscle at a time. Garret breathed out. There was a lot of staring and blinking going on around him.

  The XO and all the rest of the officers still stood expectantly. Suddenly the XO barked, “If you’re leaving, then you have one minute and forty-two seconds to get your clothes, your ditty boxes, and your asses on that launch!”

  The familiarity of a tersely barked order snapped the spell. Even though the daze was gone, some of the men stood in place, confused. A few stood resolutely. One or two of the determined ones even snapped back to attention as if Taps was playing. A few hurriedly collected their earthly possessions from the deck and headed for the launch. Some did it with looks of shame, others with worry.

  Garret was lost. What just happened? Are we going to die? I can’t die. I have to send money back to Molly and the baby.

  The thought of his son stabbed him like a hot iron. Jesus, what have I done?

  Garret’s throat tightened. He tried to distract himself by turning his attention to the fray around him. Muster usually broke up like a pack of ants scattering into the grass with a single mind to find food or shelter. This time, the ranks fell apart like a fast rotting corpse. Most of the men stayed on the deck. Some weren’t sure what to do. Theo had sidled up to Garret. Fishy, Pun’kin, Floyd and the rest of their gun crew were unconsciously gathering around Curtis, who stood like a pillar in the morning sun. Except Twitch and Sweet Cheeks, who were standing stock still, almost shoulder to shoulder, conferring tersely. Curtis crossed his arms and stood his ground, letting smaller men scurry around him.

  Is Curtis sure we should stay? Garret wondered. He looks like he’s sure. I don’t care about dying. And it was true, he didn’t. His life wasn’t worth much on its own. But I have to send money for my family. But Captain Maxwell said that if we left, the Navy would give us some other job.

  On the other hand, if Garret was killed in action, Molly would get a larger check than he could earn in many months, then her wealthy family would take care of her better than he ever could anyway.

  Garret’s head dropped under the weight of the thought. So maybe I’m worth more to my family if I’m dead.

  Theo brushed Garret’s hand. Garret wasn’t sure if it intentional or not. There they stood, on the deck of a battleship, sworn to die in service to their country if necessary, and the kid was close enough to give him a hug. Garret didn’t push him away. Theo was too gentle to treat that way.

  Theo should leave, Garret realized. But he’ll never go if his brother stays.

  “Hey Lover Boy,” Curtis yelled at Garret. “You’re not going to chicken out are you? Get back here with us.”

  “And bring your girlfriend!” Pun’kin added loudly. It was the first time anyone had laughed at something Pun’kin said.

  The launch was loaded with men. Garret wasn’t sure how many, but several dozen. There were still a few seats available, though, so everyone who wanted to go ashore was going to get their wish. Garret stared at the XO on the flying bridge. He was issuing orders to a few petty officers. Garret looked around at the confusion.

  “Are you leaving?” Theo asked quietly. His cover was tilted to one side, knocked askew by a passing man who had paid no attention to him. No one paid Theo any mind.

  Am I leaving? No. Garret knew he wasn’t. He felt the crushing weight of despair. What would be the point? I can’t ever go home.

  Lieutenant Pickens stood at the front of the launch, one foot on the bottom of the boat, the other atop the keel. Pickens’ embarrassment was gone. It was all anger now. “Last call!” he yelled. “If you’re leaving, get aboard!”

  A man ran past Garret, hitting Garret’s shoulder on the way by. Garret stumbled and cur
sed in irritation. The man fairly dove onto the boat. He looked to be about Garret’s age, a little bigger, with blonde hair. Garret could plainly see his hair color because it shone in the morning sun. His cover was gone. He’d either dropped it or gotten it knocked off somehow. He apparently didn’t care. He pushed his way into the boat and hid with his head down in the middle of the pack.

  His blonde hair shone anyway. Garret had never met the other guy, but suddenly Garret despised him for leaving. You don’t have a baby who needs you, do you? You’re just a coward.

  Instead of yelling an order or giving hand signals or anything else he probably should have done, Lieutenant Pickens shot a last hateful glance at the conning tower into which Maxwell had disappeared, and then sent a piercing whistle through his teeth towards the men on the deck crane.

  They got the message and the launch began to lower over the side, accompanied by the whirring sound of a heavy electric motor, and a squeaking pulley somewhere in the tackle. Normally, the sound of the something squeaking would have brought Twitch running, oil can and grease rags in hand, but he was still standing on the deck, staring at the conning tower with a grim expression. Sweet Cheeks was walking quickly away from him, though in the opposite direction of the launch.

  Garret watched the men in the launch disappear down over the side. Most of them stared at the bottom of their boat, or fiddled intently with their clothes bags as if they were doing something. A few stared back at their friends on the Kearsarge. Their facial expressions ran the gamut: guilt, worry, fear, relief.

  Lieutenant Pickens stared daggers at the conning tower, and if he’d had his way, Garret felt sure Maxwell would be lying by the wheel, bleeding out. With a final soft squeak and a slap of water, the launch was gone over the side.

  A breathless moment passed on the upper deck, in which snappy commands from Lieutenant Pickens mingled with the first few oar strokes. Then the bo’sn on the flying bridge piped. All eyes turned to the bridge. The XO was leaning on the rail, looking down on them.