Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  Ensign Number One pulled them out of his reach. “It’s Italian!”

  Twitch heaved an aggravated sigh, but continued working.

  At last Garret saw what they were looking at. He could see a mast, a tiny grey picket against the skyline. The hull was only just becoming visible.

  “It’s British. Bellerophon class,” argued Ensign Two.

  A scraper hit the deck with a clang. Twitch had thrown it down. He stalked over to the two ensigns and held out his hand. “It’s not a Bellerophon,” he said. “I can see from here that the foremast isn’t a tripod.” He motioned to the binoculars. “Gimmie.”

  The ensigns blinked at him, but the one holding the binoculars gave them to Twitch, with the normal sanctimonious admonition to be careful with Navy property.

  “She’s British. Lord Nelson class,” Twitch said flatly after less than two seconds of looking. “Old, but not as old as us.”

  “It’s not a—” Ensign One began, but Twitch cut him off.

  “Mast, funnel, funnel, then mast,” Twitch said impatiently. “That’s a Lord Nelson. Bellerophon’s have their masts and funnels bunched together in pairs.” He handed the binoculars back and rejoined Garret and company. Twitch’s face guarded, but he dropped to his knees without saying anything and started working again. The ensigns moved on down the deck, darting a couple irritated glances back at Twitch.

  Garret, Theo, and Fishy also knelt. Together they stuffed oakum, pried putty, and darted glances at Twitch who was working quickly and automatically, his face set.

  “What are you thinkin’ Twitch?” Fishy asked from the corner of his mouth.

  “Nothing,” Twitch said.

  “Come on man,” Fishy prodded. “You’ve been stewing for two days. Tell us.”

  “Stern watch,” Twitch said.

  Theo looked questioningly at Garret. It was Garret’s turn to shrug.

  “It’s always covered,” Fishy said.

  “Covered? It’s always doubled,” Twitch said. “We barely have enough guys to keep Kearsarge running, but Captain Maxwell’s kept a double stern watch since we left Delaware Bay.”

  Garret squinted at Twitch.

  Twitch saw him do it and heaved another aggravated sigh. “Why, Lover Boy? Why double the stern watch?”

  Garret shrugged. “I don’t know. So nobody sneaks up behind us, I guess.”

  “Who would be coming up behind us? We just left American waters.”

  Fishy sat back on his haunches. “Man, I don’t think that’s…”

  “Another American ship,” Twitch said. “You tell me who else would be coming up behind us.”

  Fishy opened his mouth, closed it again. “I…” he lowered his voice to an embarrassed whisper, even though there was nobody close enough to hear. “You know what you’re saying.”

  “I’m saying our own Navy is hunting us,” Twitch said while prying unnecessarily hard at a tough knot of putty. “Or at least the Captain is afraid they are.”

  “I think he’s right,” Theo said softly. When he talked, which was rare, he did it in an open, childlike way, and he rarely addressed anybody other than Fishy.

  “Why?” his older brother asked.

  “I saw Commander Sharpe the other day,” Theo said. “He was angry with Lieutenant Bartram. They were planning something, but Commander Sharpe didn’t want to do it because he’d have to go behind Captain Maxwell’s back. Commander Sharpe loves Captain Maxwell.”

  Everyone stared at Theo.

  “When were you gonna tell us that?” Fishy demanded, spreading his hands.

  Theo shrank a little, shrugged, and turned back to his work.

  Fishy suddenly stared out towards the ship they had sighted. His face had paled a shade. “The Brits are our allies, right?”

  Twitch yanked savagely at a strand of glue-encrusted oakum without replying.

  “Right?” Garret prompted.

  “They’re United States allies,” Twitch replied. Then, in a burst of temper that surprised them all, he slammed his scraper on the deck, glared at the conning tower, and snarled, “This had better not be what it looks like.”

  “I can only see one mast,” Garret blurted. “Battleships have two, right? Maybe it’s not a—”

  Twitch glared up at him, or glared at something and Garret happened to be in the way. Garret looked down and felt stupid for questioning Twitch. Twitch knew everything about ships. He knew everything about everything.

  Twitch replied, “You can only see one mast now because she was turning when I had the glasses. Her masts are in line with your line of sight. And with good foam at her bows, her skipper’s running her guts out.”

  Twitch went angrily back to work, but Fishy translated quietly. “As soon as she saw us, she turned to an intercept course, and she’s running as fast as she can go.”

  W

  The smoke from their cigarettes hung around them because it didn’t have anything better to do. For the first time in days, neither did they.

  “Do you think she looks much like Kearsarge?” Garret asked speculatively, eyeing the HMS Agamemnon. She was floating a hundred yards off their starboard flank. The British captain was climbing up the gangway to parlay with Captain Maxwell, but both captains had given their crews an unexpected smoking lamp, so they were lounging around, signal-flagging and cat-calling each other. The big battleships seemed to be resigned to the immaturity of their crews. They floated side by side, ignoring one another, their main batteries pointed ahead and astern.

  Sweet Cheeks stood a few feet away from the group, translating the signal flags, or “wig-wagging” on the stern of both vessels. Spelling out anything by flag took a while, but despite that handicap, the crews had somehow managed to get into an argument over the relative breast sizes of American and British women.

  Curtis, who was sprawled on the deck as far from Pun’kin’s loud mouth as he could get, frowned at Garret’s question and said around his cigarette, “It’s a battleship. So what?”

  Twitch was leaning against an air intake, engrossed in a copy of the Kearsaga, the ship’s newspaper. Theo didn’t answer Garret’s question because he still had his bowl of ice cream. The rest of them had finished theirs ten minutes ago. Theo’s had become white soup, but he was savoring every spoonful with dedicated relish. The electric ice cream maker in the galley may or may not have been a gift from Captain Maxwell, but it was definitely a gift from God.

  “It’s kinda different,” Fishy said non-committally to Garret, dragging on his cigarette and not taking his eyes off his checkers game with Velvet.

  Curtis smoked because his dad smoked. Velvet smoked because he said it “agreed with him.” Theo smoked because Fishy smoked. Fishy smoked because he was Fishy and he did whatever he felt like doing. Neither Twitch nor Sweet Cheeks smoked.

  Garret secretly wanted to smoke so he’d fit in better, but Molly detested the habit. Once in bootcamp, he’d bummed a cigarette at midnight, but no sooner had he put it between his lips than he felt Molly sit up in bed and glare at him across hundreds of miles of Appalachian hills. He didn’t do it again.

  Someone said something to Garret.

  “Huh?” he replied. The question had come from Burl, too quiet to hear, as usual.

  “Speak up Burl!” Curtis roared around his cigarette.

  Garret wanted to smoke just so he could learn how to yell around a cigarette without spitting it halfway across the ship. It looked manly.

  Burl quailed, but then squeaked a little louder, “How big are her big guns?”

  “Twelve inchers,” Twitch said into his paper.

  “Haha,” Fishy chuckled. “We’ve got thirteens.”

  Silence lapsed for a second before Fishy burst out laughing. “British guys do have little guns!” He jumped up off the deck and walked to the rail. “Hey ladies,” he yelled at Agamemnon’s crew. “Let us see you load your little guns! Wait a second, I’ll need binoculars!”

&
nbsp; Garret couldn’t imagine how they could have heard Fishy at that distance, but they must have gotten the gist, because a forest of middle fingers was the reply.

  Fishy put his hands to his face and used his British accent. “Oh my, God save the queen.”

  Sweet Cheeks smiled, but said nothing.

  “King,” Velvet corrected across the game he was losing. “God save the king.”

  Garret glanced at their checkers board. He’d never seen Sweet Cheeks lose a game, no matter what it was.

  Fishy shaded his eyes to look at the rows of middle fingers. “At least they’re learning to speak proper American English.”

  Garret was relaxed but still studying the Agamemnon. She just didn’t look as much like USS Kearsarge as Garret would have expected. Both of them were sleek, heavily armored battleships. Both were older. Both had gigantic gun barrels protruding everywhere like obscenely intimidating appendages.

  “A king?” Pun’kin asked loudly. “So ol’ Victoria finally kicked the bucket?”

  Velvet laughed. “She’s been dead for years. Where did you go to school?”

  Garret ignored his friends as he compared the ships. Agamemnon had a different air than Kearsarge. Kearsarge felt like a rough-and-ready old girl, looking for an excuse to pick a fight with a ship twice her size. Agamemnon looked more refined, definitely more reserved. Much like her captain, who had just stepped onto Kearsarge’s deck. Garret sat up and craned his neck.

  Pun’kin was defensive. “I ain’t no bumpkin! I just thought she was still kickin’, that’s all.”

  Fishy joined Velvet’s laughter. “Jesus, Victoria’d be like, a hundred and fifty by now.”

  “I told you not to take the Lord’s name insane like that!”

  “‘In vain,’ you Alabama hick!” Fishy laughed.

  The British captain and Maxwell moved to Kearsarge’s stern, along with a group of twelve men who had come aboard from the British launch. They were wearing greyish green uniforms Garret didn’t recognize. They were all holding their hands in front of them, wrists together in an awkward way.

  Pun’kin and Fishy rolled past Garret’s feet, fighting.

  Garret frowned at the stern, curious. The two captains were parlaying on the Kearsarge’s deck, but there was no pomp. There had been no greeting party, no other officers, either American or British. There hadn’t even been a proper salute, other than a quiet one between Maxwell and the British Captain.

  Agamemnon had drawn abreast not long before dinner. Instead of any of the usual fanfare, Maxwell had ordered the meal to be served early, ordered ice cream to be served after, and ordered the stern deck cleared. Nothing more.

  Garret glanced around at his buddies. Velvet, who had lost checkers again, was glowering at the board and moving checkers around as if trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. Curtis had gone to sleep. Theo was licking out his bowl. Pun’kin and Fishy were locked in a grunting, cursing tangle of legs and arms. Neither seemed to be making any headway.

  Twitch was watching the parlay, his paper laid aside as if he hadn’t been reading it at all.

  Garret didn’t want to look stupid, so he thought about it for a second before he said to Twitch, “Is he… Captain Maxwell, I mean, wanting us to ignore that?”

  On a ship, there would be no way to keep the crew from finding out about a parlay with a commanding officer from another ship, and if Maxwell had tried to keep it a secret, if would have only fueled the crew’s curiosity about the purpose of the meeting. Maybe the best way to hide it would be to downplay it.

  Twitch’s lips and face were tight, as if the outcome of the parlay would somehow have effect on him personally, but he did not respond to Garret’s question.

  Garret watched the captains and tried to act like he was getting as much out of it as Twitch seemed to be. In reality, Garret didn’t have a damn clue. They were half the length of Kearsarge away from the captains. That made it hard enough just to see them. Hearing what they were saying was out of the question.

  “Why are they holding their hands like that?” asked Burl who had crept up noiselessly into Garret’s ear. Garret flinched.

  “They’re not holding them,” Twitch answered shortly. “They’re cuffed.”

  Only then did Garret catch the gleam of steel around a few wrists.

  “If they’re prisoners, where are the guards?” Velvet pointed out. The rest of Garret’s buddies, except Curtis, who was still asleep, were gathering. Velvet finished, “Four other men in the cutter, but no guns. If they were prisoners, the Captain wouldn’t have steamed over here by himself without guards.”

  Twitch spoke, but as if talking to himself. “So they came aboard of their own free will, even though they’re cuffed.”

  Fishy looked expectantly at Twitch.

  Before anyone could say more, the British Captain shook hands with Maxwell, turned to the nearest prisoner and unlocked his cuffs. The prisoner, who now looked more like a soldier, turned to his closest companion and did the same. In a few seconds, all twelve of them were free.

  The British captain said a few more words to Maxwell, and Garret though he caught a shake of the British Captain’s head. Maxwell crossed his arms. Are they arguing? The British Captain turned quickly and walked away from Maxwell without a salute. The breech of protocol made everyone blink. The British Captain recrossed the deck. The purposefulness of the man’s stride was evident. As was his desire to be off the Kearsarge.

  Maxwell said something to the soldiers, then turned to the nearest hatch and went below decks. Commander Sharpe appeared and motioned to the soldiers. They followed him without question. They weren’t marching, nor were they even in any sort of formation, but they moved with an eerie level of coordination. It was less like watching twelve soldiers walk than it was like watching one organism made of twelve different parts. It was like a snake moved down the deck, all its coils pushing together. It was unsettling.

  Garret and his buddies watched the soldiers approach on the main deck until the edge of the upper deck hid them from sight.

  “I don’t recognize the uniforms,” Fishy said. “Who do you think they are?”

  Twitch shrugged, sat back down, and picked up the Kearsaga. He stared at the page, but he didn’t seem to be reading it.

  W

  June 7th, 1914. Twenty-one days to Vidovdan

  “God, he’s getting annoying,” Velvet remarked as he drove a nail down crooked, then just pounded it down sideways, driving shank, head, and all flat into the wood.

  On the forecastle stood Curtis, still in his underwear as the chief had found him, but now with a battered trumpet in one hand. Curtis was marching in place and yelling at the top of his lungs, “I love the boatswain’s whistle, yes I do!” Then he blew the trumpet, but he didn’t have any idea how to use the damn thing, so all that came out was a loud honking.

  “I love the boatswain’s whistle, yes I do! HOOOOOONNNNK!”

  “Velvet,” Pun’kin protested, gesturing to the nail Velvet had just butchered. “That ain’t gonna hold nothin’. You didn’t even get it down into the other piece of wood.”

  “I love the boatswain’s whistle, yes I do! HOOOOOONNNNK!”

  Garret and the rest of the gun crew again watched Curtis in respectful silence for a moment before Fishy grinned. “The one time he tried to say something smart.”

  Twitch laughed. “I didn’t see the Chief either.”

  “I did,” Sweet Cheeks said, grinning wickedly.

  Fishy burst out laughing.

  Velvet’s mouth fell open. “You just let him say that in front of the Chief? That’s cold, buddy.”

  “I love the boatswain’s whistle, yes I do! HOOOOOONNNNK!”

  Sweet Cheeks shrugged. “I didn’t know what he was going to say.”

  Fishy deepened his voice to sound like Curtis, “If the bo’sn blows that whistle one more time I’ll shove it…”

  Sweet Cheeks furrowed his brow
and crossed his arms in a perfect imitation of Chief Greely, and said, “No, go on son, I’m very interested to know where you’re gonna shove it.”

  “I love the boatswain’s whistle, yes I do! HOOOOOONNNNK!”

  “How many times do you think he’s said that this morning?” Velvet mused, snubbing out the cigarette he wasn’t supposed to be smoking on the wooden frame he wasn’t supposed to snub it out on.

  Twitch yawned and shrugged, then set another nail with a few taps. “He’s supposed to be singing it anyway, and if he doesn’t start, the Chief will think up something worse.”

  Pun’kin nodded with eyes wide and said in his thick southern draw, “The Chief’s got a scary imagination.”

  Another respectful silence went around, this time for the chief. They punctuated it with hammer blows. “What are these things anyway?” Sweet Cheeks asked, looking down the forty foot length of the wooden cradle they were building.

  Garret pulled another nail out of the box that he and Theo and Sweet Cheeks were sharing. He rolled the shank between his fingers. The nail had been made in a factory somewhere, probably in a matter of seconds. Working with his hammer and anvil, it would have taken Garret twenty minutes of painstaking labor to make a nail shank so perfectly smooth and uniform.

  People used to look up to blacksmiths, Garret thought. My Grandfather said we had been around since the first man needed to cut down the first tree. He said we’d never die, because the community was built around us.

  But then, as a boy, Garret had never thought his Grandfather would die either.

  He looked down the length of Kearsarge, taking in her steel bulkheads and steel beams and steel turrets and the steel guns behind him. All of it had been made right about the time he was born. If people can build things like this, what use am I with a hammer and an anvil? He’d been living in a dream. He’d been a leftover, a relic for his whole life, and he hadn’t known it. And just like that, Garret’s last source of personal pride and meaning began to evaporate.

  Twitch pointed from the wooden cradle to the barrel of the nearest thirteen inch gun, behind him. “It’s about the same length,” he said, “and there are four of them.” He pointed to the three other teams building cradles on the main deck. Two of the cradles were smaller, about the length of the eight inch barrels.