“Don’t look as terrible as I thought it might,” Scaboo said.
“No, not from here. We’ll see about inside.”
Dick Wags had been on her once, five or six years before. The old ship steamed out of Norfolk docks, just down the James from Newport News and Fort Eustis, and Junior Davis was not the first Army maritime engineer to sail her. TheAgape —and her now-retired sister ship, long since sold for scrap—had a reputation; turnover was high in the engine room, and questions kept to a minimum, if asked at all. The contract skippers tended to like Army engineers because they weren’t too specialized like the Navy trained them. They could do more, in the engine room and on the bridge, too, if needed. More than one Waterborne snipe had found a bunk and small paycheck from the missionary ships after a quick—and, often, forced—exit from military service. When Dick Wags had still been a PFC he’d made a midnight drive down to Norfolk one night with Chief Valentine, a drunken dischargee in the backseat of the Chief’s Buick. The man had been a sergeant first class six days before—the ACE on one of the new LCU-2000s—and a married man with a passel of kids. Now he was a civilian via punching an officer, and on his way to divorced via the private he’d been sleeping with. They sat in a diner off Ocean Avenue most of the night, sobering him up with coffee, then made for the wharf at sunrise. Dick Wags hadn’t seen much of the ship then, but what he remembered was unlit, dirty, and smelled like a church basement. He’d helped the sarge carry his two duffels up to a small cabin in the ship’s house, then left him there, sitting on the bare bunk under a framed Jesus bolted to the bulkhead—a man in shock.
Dick Wags smoked on the pier now, remembering how silent Chief Valentine had been as they drove away, and how he’d finally said, “We take care of our own, Rick. Best we can, anyway.”
That was true, Dick Wags thought now; both parts of it. They did take care of their own, but there was a limit, too. There was a limit both to what you could do—as in the case of the sarge they’d packed off, and who knew what happened to him after that—and there was also a limit to what someone earned, what they deserved. Junior Davis case in point. Dick Wags and Scaboo might have different thoughts on the subject. Scaboo was loyal like a hound to his former roomdog. Dick Wags had an alternative perspective.
Scaboo took a last look atAgape ’s waterline, then flicked his cigarette into the bay. “You think he’s still onboard?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
Dick Wags tossed his own cigarette, then started up the missionary ship’s gangway. They passed a sandwich-board sign at the bottom, a chalkboard notice:SERVICE FOR THE LORD, 9AM TOMORROW! SOLDIERS AND HAITIANS ALIKE ALL WELCOME! There was a man at the head of the gangway. Tall, grizzled, he’d not been visible from the pier. His eyes set thin into the sun, lines carved deep on his face.
“Staff Sergeant Wagman, United States Army,” Dick Wags said quietly, stopping two steps below. “Permission to come aboard, Sir.”
McBride stuck out his hand, shaking with both soldiers. “C’mon in, then,” he said, turning and walking toward a hatch into the house. “I’m tired as hell and it’s too hot out here.”
The doors were propped open on the bridge of the LSV, a warm, sweet breeze pushing through from starboard to port. Mannino had changed into a pair of cut-off cammies and a gray T-shirt, sitting in his skipper’s chair with feet up on the forward rail. He’d left a cigarette burning unattended in the ashtray and was rifling through a stack of envelopes, resting them on his belly. A resupply chopper had stocked the Special Forces soldiers shortly before the LSV made port. Among the load was a locked mail sack Master Sergeant Rice had tossed through the pilot door at Xerox after the ship tied off. They hadn’t been in-country long enough to get personal mail yet, but the ship had been either under way or locked down for twenty-some days now—command and battalion communication had backed up.
Items not in sealed envelopes were almost sure to be irrelevant: notice of change in dining-hall hours for Fort Eustis permanent party, notice of increased random breathalyzer checks by the MPs at the post gate, monthly schedule for the movie theater—all of it routed to every unit whether they were home or in Istanbul. Most of the envelopes Mannino knew the contents before opening, even if he didn’t know who it pertained to. A thin white envelope with a Texas return address stamped AAFES would be bad news: a soldier who hadn’t paid his DPP credit bill at the PX. Mannino pulled the form out: Holan, the youngest private on the boat, a trainee in Dick Wags’s engine room. Two grand in debt, the money spent on Nintendo, cigarettes,Hustler, clothes, and CDs—no payment made in two months. Young Holan, Mannino knew, also had a shiny new Jeep, recipient of all his money.
“Top,” Mannino said, waving the paper in the air.
“Sir?” Top was standing just outside the door on the bridge wing, nursing a mug of tea.
“Where’s Holan?”
Top looked at his watch. “Engine room.”
Mannino held out the paperwork to him. “Go fuck him up.”
“Check.” Top glanced at the paperwork and headed down below.
There wasn’t much more. Battalion promotion scores, but Jersey and Scaboo had just been pinned sergeant and he wouldn’t be able to pin any new hard stripes for quite a while. One interoffice envelope contained a memo from the 7th Group XO: an individual packing list for possible deployment to Haiti; that merited a chuckle from Mannino and a break to take a few puffs from his forgotten cigarette. One item he saved for last because he didn’t know what it was. Thick, from the Office of Personnel, stamped as a copy of material sent to battalion command. This merited another smirk: the battalion commander was sitting in a warehouse in Port-au-Prince right now; Mannino doubted the colonel would be getting to his mail any time soon. The skipper finished his cigarette, taking a moment to look through the bridge window at Jacmel before him. They were scheduled to be here forty-eight hours, but Mannino was already thinking up reasons why they needed to stay longer. He opened the thick envelope.
It took him a few passes to figure out what he was reading, mostly because half the forms were medical and he’d never seen them before. The last few he knew, though—notices of change of deployment status and a blank authorization form for early discharge. He shuffled the papers and read them all again, in a different order this time, hoping a different read might elicit a different outcome. It did not. Mannino set all the paperwork carefully in his lap and lit another cigarette. It sat burning between the fingers of his right hand while he massaged his forehead with the fingers of his left. He read all the papers again.
When Top returned to the bridge ten minutes later Mannino was in the same position, staring out the bridge window. A slow talker, Top reported in: “Private Holan is appropriately scared. He’s going to—”
Mannino cut him off.
“Sergeant Harris went with the Red Cross?”
Top nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
Mannino bit his lip, thinking. Top stepped over to the skipper’s chair. He glanced down at the paperwork, but the warrant officer pushed it all together and flipped it face down in his lap.
“Where’s Dick Wags?” Mannino said. “Still with the Jesus freaks?”
Top nodded.
“All right,” Mannino said.
“Should I—”
Mannino stood, holding his hand up at his sort-of first sergeant. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Scaboo left Dick Wags and McBride at a table in the dining hall, the two hunched over a wish list of parts and supplies. The quick tour of the boat this old skipper McBride gave them made the Army’s generosity seem sort of pointless.Agape needed a lot of light bulbs, and the LSV could easily give them up, but as far as Scaboo could tell all it would accomplish was showing more brightly everything broken. He slipped away from the table and wandered the ship alone, slowly, opening hatches and peering around corners.
There were a lot of damn people on this boat. He didn’t know how they did it. He’d once sailed a training cruise on a Nav
y oiler and thought he’d pass out from the crush of bodies; this was a lot like that, except it smelled bad, too. In places, anyway. An unwashed stink. Smell of dirty clothes and sharp breath and he tried to breathe through his mouth so it wasn’t overwhelming. The church people seemed nice enough, everyone friendly and talkative, but there was a serious shortage of personal space on here, and quite obviously a shortage of potable water and soap. Scaboo was fastidious in his personal hygiene. This ship made him anxious.
He walked the length forward on the galley deck, went down one and came back aft. The ship had weathered a hard ride the night before, and there was a cabin-fever energy in the closed, stale air. Little kids zoomed through and around his legs, up and down passages, bouncing off bulkheads and one another. His uniform drew stares and he was glad to be visibly unarmed. Most at least smiled at him. A few stopped him to talk briefly. He was nervous, waiting for aPraise Jesus! but there was none. One older man was from Queens and that gave them something to talk about, though the man hadn’t been in fifteen years. Scaboo heard a lot of Southern accents. A mom yelling after running kids had a drawl on her mom voice, although Scaboo noticed it seemed to slip away when she talked quietly.
“You can take these guys outside, you know,” Scaboo said to her, pointing at the backs of the band of boys tearing down the passage. “It’s pretty nice. There’s a beach.”
The woman smiled and shrugged and that was the end of that.
He worked his way topside again. He thought he’d like to see the bridge—McBride’s sort-of tour had been all below decks, mostly engine room. Avoiding the dining hall, Scaboo picked his way up through and into the house and the direction he thought he ought to be going. This being an old cruise ship, the bridge would be forward.
An old brass plate on a door said Chapel and he turned the knob, looking in. A small empty room, no bigger than a cabin, with a large wooden cross. He’d seen where they did real church up in the dining hall; this must be the original ship’s chapel. Scaboo let the door close behind him and went to a knee, crossing himself. He slipped into one of the four benches bolted to the deck. Doing it made him think he was certainly the only Catholic on this ship—not counting Dick Wags, who hadn’t seen the inside of a church in ten years. He didn’t know what to do, sitting here, so he said the Lord’s Prayer, leaning against the bench in front of him, hands wrapped together. He sat another silent moment, then kneeled and crossed himself again and left the room.
It was quiet up here, no kids—no people at all. McBride hadn’t been joking about the light bulbs: there were none working. Not in the passages up here, anyway. Everything dark, just slivers of daylight poking in from outside.
Scaboo climbed another narrow steel staircase. The passage here ran across-ship, the old officer’s deck. He put his hands in his pockets then took them out again. It was there, a white index card taped to the cabin door in front of him:DAVIS.
Well.
They hadn’t really said anything in the engine room, just asked if the ship’s engineer needed to talk about supplies. They didn’t ask by name. McBride hadn’t volunteered the information, either, just said the ship’s engineer was quite sick. He’d written a list, though, and McBride pulled a piece of paper from deep in a pocket and handed it to Dick Wags, who glanced at it then passed it to Scaboo. Hydraulic oil, if possible; a fifty-pound can of heavy grease; rubber sheets for making gaskets—all clearly in Junior Davis’s logbook handwriting.
Scaboo stepped across the passage, raised his fist to the door, hesitated, lowered his arm, then quick raised it again and rapped twice. No response, though he thought he heard something. He knocked again. A voice, but unclear. He reached down and turned the knob, easing the door open.
The cabin was dark, curtain pulled across the round hatch window, one dim overhead light and deep shadows. Davis was in bed, sitting up, a sweatshirt on him.
“Roomdog,” Davis said, and it was too dark to see if he was smiling or not. The voice was almost a croak but unmistakably Junior; the body, on the other hand, seemed much thinner than Scaboo remembered.
Davis caught him looking. “Lost some weight.”
“Yeah.”
It was all Scaboo could think of to say.
“Come on in.”
Scaboo closed the door behind him and as he did the cabin’s other door opened, from the small head. A woman walked through, wet hair slicked back and a towel wrapped around her. She jumped, startled, seeing Scaboo, but made no noise. Junior nodded toward her.
“Roomdog, this is Lorraine, from the shower. Lorraine, this is Roomdog from the Army.”
Not knowing what else to do, Scaboo put his hand out. “Sergeant Scabliagni,” he said, voice cracking with nerves. He blinked. “Steve, I mean. Steve Scabliagni.”
Lorraine’s left hand clutched tight to the towel near her neck. She looked at Scaboo’s hand, saying nothing, and just when he’d decided to drop it she took his hand in hers, shaking once.
“Hi,” she said.
Chapter
26
A strange-looking pair of soldiers they were, tall black officer and small female sergeant, sitting high atop bags of grain on the back of the lorry—a slow and mostly uphill climb, nestled in the cradle of burlap around them, riding in bright afternoon sunlight. The two talked almost the whole way, absolutely alone in their world, any last pretenses dropped.
“Jacmel is the city of Carnivale, sort of like Mardi Gras.”
“Do they throw beads?”
“They throw a lot of things. It’s famous for masks.”
“Masks?”
“Big,” he said, and used his big hands to show. “Papier-mâché, oversized. Exaggerated.” He held his hands even wider, making a clown face, making her laugh. “Good for hiding anything you don’t want to show.”
People lined the road along their route, waving and sometimes singing as the convoy passed. Not thick crowds like Port-au-Prince, even as they drove through town. But a lot of people, a steady line, children running and calling out and curious men. The drivers of the lorries waved with all their might, enjoying their role in the parade. Tory waved to the children.
“What’s under your mask, Tory Harris?”
She watched a little boy running along the side of the road, desperately trying to keep up with the convoy. They passed him finally, and Tory looked at Marc. “Scratch the sergeant and all you’ll find is more sergeant.”
The city they climbed up through and around was completely unlike Port-au-Prince and unlike anything Tory had seen. She’d been to New Orleans once, on leave with Junior Davis, and there was a comparison to be made there, but Jacmel felt more intense. French colonial, close and narrow, bright Caribbean colors and, in places, what were clearly bullet holes splayed along a plaster wall or up a wooden shutter. There were actual plants here, trees, flowers, and an absence of the smog found in the dead Port-au-Prince basin.
“Like paradise,” Marc said.
She nodded.
“Papa Doc almost killed it. Tried to kill it.”
“Kill what?”
Marc waved his arm. “All of it. The city.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t vote for him. He was insulted.”
“That was a long time ago?”
Marc shrugged. “Not that long.”
Tory almost said something about the people here, how they looked not as poor, not as ragged. Then, as they climbed from the city, the buildings became less solid and the clothes less substantial. It was a change, a marked change, like moving through layers of water—all the same ocean, but different pressure, different temperature. And as they left the city the general goodwill directed at them increased five-fold, from happy curiosity to an almost hysterical relief. Here is where the wild cheers came, and some tears. As if emotion was in direct proportion to quality and quantity of clothing.
“These people lost their homes.”
“It must be a fairly regular thing,” she said, the maritime quarte
rmaster speaking. “They’re smack in the middle of hurricane country.”
Marc nodded. “Yes, I guess you’re right,” he said, somewhat clipped. He seemed not to like her observation. He seemed sad, and it was unclear whether he was sad for the Haitians or sad she’d made such an obvious remark. Tory got angry for a second, watching his face, watching him watch Jacmel go by. She reached for her canteen and took a drink and it had passed by then, whatever it was, and she was sure it was nothing anyway, her imagination, her nerves. For one split, irrational second she wanted to tell him everything, tell him how it was with her, tell him everything Dick Wags knew, make this man her new confessor. She opened her mouth but smiled instead of speaking, smiled through it, and when he looked over at her she was waving at a group of women, smiling but wistful, unknown and strange. They were rounding a sharp corner where for one moment the other trucks and the single Humvee behind weren’t visible. Marc reached over and took her free hand, held it tightly, squeezed. She looked at him, squeezing back, and she raised his hand and kissed it, pressing her lips to his warm skin, bowing her head slightly but keeping her eyes locked on his, pleased at the reversal.
The convoy moved, curved and bouncing, up and across the bowl aroundBaye Jacmel. In the rear, the LSV’s single Humvee followed, Specialist Pelton at the wheel. He’d thought to grab a bag of hard candies from the galley, and he reached into it as he drove, grabbing a few pieces now and then and tossing them at groups of kids as he passed. He tapped the top of the gearshift as he drove. Next to him, curled, Riddle slept—still breathing, still alive.
They split an orange, Marc Hall stripping the fruit in one long peel, digging his fingertips in and ripping it in half. Tory never ate oranges anymore—an unconscious aversion to all things uniform-staining—but she liked them. She popped her half straight into her mouth, squeezing teeth down slow.
“That’s a lot of orange,” he said, sectioning his half.
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