Jack was right about women too. Getting laid regularly was the most important thing a tough sailor could do, and it was a waste of time to feel sorry for the women whose hearts you broke. He had stopped writing to Teresa Brownlow and Annie Flood and cheerfully composed letter after letter to Martha Johnson for Jack, each dripping with romantic bullshit. no gat wan sainting long pies Flanagan said.
"Two bits there's nothing out there," Crockett Smith translated.
The five-inch gun boomed. Up up up mounted the star shell. It exploded over the mouth of Blackett Strait, spraying the inky waters with unreal phosphorescent light. Beneath its glare, along the shore of Vila Stanmore, the Japanese base on Kolombangara, steamed two enemy warships. Jack Peterson trained the main battery range finder on them.
Radar had already targeted them. "Range five zero zero zero, bearing one one five confirmed," Jack shouted. "Looks like a cruiser and a destroyer."
"Commence firing," said Commander Moss.
The Jefferson City's main battery boomed. As usual, the concussion flung the ship sideways. Again and again and again the guns thundered and the ship slewed under the thrust of their recoils.
"Check your course, Mr. Parker. What is it?" McKay said.
"Zero five zero," Parker said, his voice trembling. Lately, every time a gun went off, he started to shake.
"What's your heading, helmsman?" McKay shouted as the main battery continued to pour salvo after salvo at the Japs.
"Zero four eight, Captain," the helmsman said.
"You're off two degrees, Parker. What the hell kind of a sailor are you? Do you want to pile us onto a reef? Quartermaster, note in the log Mr. Parker's criminal negligence in allowing the ship to go off course while we are engaging the enemy."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
"Look at that bastard burn," crowed Boats Homewood, whom McKay had made boatswain of the watch at General Quarters, severing Parker from Wilkinson. American radar fire control was getting better and better. Shells from all three cruisers had turned the bigger of the two Japanese ships into an exploding pyre.
"Torpedo off the starboard bow bearing zero four five," cried the newest telephone talker.
The sailor from Tennessee had gone back to his forty-millimeter mount. Not many youngsters could handle the tension on the bridge, even under ordinary circumstances. The captain's war with the executive officer raised the stress to unbearable levels for everyone.
"Torpedo off the port beam bearing two seven zero," cried the talker.
Torpedoes were coming from both directions.
"There must be a sub out there!" Parker cried. "What should I do, Captain?"
"Left full rudder and pray," McKay said.
"Helena is hit," the port bridge lookout shouted.
Ahead of them, flaming oil leaped into the dark sky as the light cruiser Helena took a torpedo amidships. Another one tore into her bow. She lurched drunkenly to port and went dead in the water, flames roaring up her mainmast.
"Shift targets, Moss. Get that Japanese destroyer," McKay said. "You should have had him before he got off a single torpedo."
"Did you give me such an order, Captain?" Moss said.
"Get him before he gets us, you punctilious fool," McKay snarled.
"Torpedo amidships!" the talker cried.
Everyone braced himself for the impact. Nothing happened.
"It went right under us," the talker said.
"I had a feeling it might run deep," McKay said.
"We still got some good joss left, Captain," Homewood said.
"On target," Peterson shouted over the gunnery circuit. The main battery had found the second Japanese ship. She was zigzagging desperately under a hail of shells, flames spouting as high as her funnels. There was a tremendous explosion and she vanished.
"Helena's going down," Supply Officer Tompkins said. He was on the port wing of the bridge, still giving the black gang and the damage control parties below decks a running account of the action.
"Oh, my God!" Parker cried.
The water ahead of them leaped into spectacular phosphorescent fountains. Those were five-inch shells. Pinpoints of light speckled the coast of Kolombangara.
"Shore batteries. I was afraid we'd wake them up," McKay said.
Admiral Merrill ordered the two remaining cruisers and four destroyers to form a bombardment column, with the Jefferson City in the lead. A shell came hissing out of the night and passed less than three feet in front of the bridge to explode off the port bow. "Can't we zigzag?" Parker cried.
"Quartermaster," McKay said, "record in the log that the executive officer attempted to make an unauthorized maneuver that can only be attributed to cowardice."
Explosions hurled water skyward on both sides of the Jefferson City. They were bracketed. The next salvo could be on target.
"Gunnery Officer, can't you silence those batteries?" McKay snapped.
"I can't stand it. I can't stand it," Parker screamed. "I told you I can't stand it. Why are you doing this to me?"
"Quartermaster, record Commander Parker's cowardly behavior in the log."
"You son of a bitch," Parker screamed. He lunged past Homewood and tore the telephone headset off the talker.
"Do you hear me, men? We've got a captain who's a son of a bitch. An Annapolis son of a bitch who's trying to kill me, kill all of us."
"Boatswain, get that telephone away from him. Call two Marines and put Commander Parker under arrest," McKay said.
He was amazed by how utterly calm he felt. Was it disdain? Or despair? Parker was reducing his ship to a shambles. Homewood had to wrestle the talker's headset away from him. Parker backed out on the port wing of the bridge, shouting incoherently for the admiral, the chaplain. Lieutenant Tompkins stood there goggle-eyed while the executive officer's ravings went below decks over his telephone circuit.
Ashore on Vila Stanmore, an explosion sent flames leaping five hundred feet into the night. Their shells had found an ammunition dump. Dazed by the blast, the Japanese gunners' next rounds were wide. Parker continued to rave, most of his words obliterated by the relentless thunder of the guns. It was almost as if this madness on the bridge was irrelevant. Like a huge impersonal machine, the Jefferson City continued to fling destruction at the enemy. The helmsman kept her on course. West in CIC reported that the black cats, the PBY observation planes flying above them said their shooting was "perfection."
Two Marines appeared and dragged Parker off the bridge. "Help me, help me," he screamed. "They're gonna put me over the side."
Admiral Merrill ordered his squadron to countermarch and give the Japanese another dose. Captain McKay asked Navigator Marse Lee to act as officer of the deck. He quietly gave the orders to the helmsman, and the Jefferson City came about and resumed bombarding on the new course.
"Captain," Boats Homewood said, "I been in the Navy twenty-nine years and I never seen nothing like that before."
McKay heard the reproach in his words. It was not insubordination. It was closer to a plea for an explanation. But Captain McKay could not explain himself to Boatswain's Mate First Class Homewood or to anyone else.
"It's almost over, Boats. Almost over," he said.
"Bridge is ordering flank speed," shouted the talker in the forward fire room.
Checkman Marty Roth watched his bobbing water gauge as the chief boiler tender began lighting off all the burners beneath number-one boiler. Amos Cartwright was down on the deckplates beside him checking the purity of the oil. It was essential no water was mixed with the oil that was fed into the burners.
Roth felt the vibration as the Jefferson City's engines surged to flank speed. It sent a shiver of pleasure through his body. He could visualize in his mind's eye the high-pressure steam whirling the blades of the turbines to produce the horsepower needed to turn the eight-foot-wide reduction gears and the gigantic propeller shafts. It was beautiful. He felt a part of this magnificent ship in a way no deck-division sailor would ever know. They were mere
passengers. He was one of the few who understood the inner secrets of her speed and power.
Still he depended on those idiots above deck to cone and fight the ship through the night. Neither he nor anyone else in the black gang could believe the obscenities and accusations that had poured over the phone circuit from the bridge a half hour ago when the executive officer went berserk. It was unnerving, demoralizing, especially with those near misses from Japanese shore batteries pounding against the hull and the main battery blasting away, straining valves and gaskets with each salvo.
But they had survived again. Now if they could hold these boilers together for the return trip down the Slot, they could look forward to a day on the beach at that garden spot of the Solomon Islands, Purvis Bay, where the temperature never went below ninety, and the humidity below a hundred.
Sweat drenched Roth's body. He took a salt pill and gulped warmish water from a nearby fountain. Under his arms and between his legs, a fiery itch began to torment him. Almost everyone in the black gang had some kind of crud. The deck apes had it too, but it was harder to endure in the fire room's 120-degree heat.
Next week, he would take an examination for watertender third class. Amos Cartwright had been tutoring him for the past two months. If he passed, he would be the first man from his boot camp draft to win a rate. That would shake up the high IQ's like Flanagan and his friends in F Division. Roth wondered if his weary brain could retain the complexities of boiler technology. Terms such as waterside corrosion, acronyms like BTU's for British Thermal Units and DFM for Diesel Fuel Marine wandered through his head. These runs up the Slot, with everyone at General Quarters all night, made it impossible to get more than four hours sleep a day.
The talker, an Italian kid from Brooklyn, handed Roth a leg of fried chicken. It was delicious. The deal they had worked out with the mess stewards gave the black gang a steady supply of such goodies. The chow was some consolation for the constant fear of having a boiler explode in your face. The chief boiler tender, who liked seconds on everything, had summed up their philosophy. "Why shouldn't we eat as good as those bastards in the wardroom? We know ten times as much as they do about the inside of this ship." Even Amos Cartwright, although he had fussed a little about harassing the mess stewards, had gone along.
A piece of chicken stuck in Roth's dry throat. "Hey," he said, "any cranberry?"
The talker brought over the toolbox in which the chicken was hidden. One of the scoop compartments in the top was full of cranberry. Roth spooned some into his mouth. The chicken went down. He gulped down the rest of the meat on the leg and looked at the water gauge.
Blank. It was empty. There was no water in the gauge. No water! The goddamn water was not just dropping. It had disappeared. "Water out of sight," he shouted.
Amos Cartwright whirled. The chief boiler tender backed away from the firebox. Roth flinched before the glare on Cartwright's black face. He had fucked up. How could that water have disappeared so fast?
Cartwright was coming up the ladder toward him. The chief was back at the firebox frantically turning the burner handles. In a low-water casualty, they had about sixty seconds to shut down the boiler before the steam melted the pipes.
"Cross connect number-two boiler," Cartwright shouted.
Cartwright had painted candy stripes on the valves to be turned when this emergency operation was required. It would enable the pounding turbines to continue to receive steam from this reserve boiler—if the surge in demand did not pull that one apart too.
As Roth and the telephone talker raced to the valves, a sound they had never heard before erupted below them. It was like the roar of a hundred subway trains coming straight at them. With it came a scream of agony from the chief boiler tender.
Roth looked down and saw the chief whirling in a cloud of superheated steam, his arms above his head like a dancer in a nightmare ballet. It was a flareback. The superheated steam was boiling out of the firebox into the fire room.
"Run," Cartwright yelled. "Get your asses out of here!"
As Roth stared in disbelief, Cartwright plunged into that cloud of deadly steam to seize the chief. Flinging him over his shoulder, he staggered toward the ladder. But he could not get his foot above the first rung. The steam was destroying all the oxygen in the air. Roth ran to the ladder and started down to help him.
"Run. I told you run!" Cartwright roared.
Roth ran. They all ran for the ventilation trunk, the only way out at General Quarters, when all the hatches were secured. Frantically they clawed their way up to the hatch on the main deck that Amos Cartwright had prepared for such an exit. In the lead, Roth shoved his palms against it and it popped open.
They scrambled out onto the deck. "Casualty in the forward fire room. Boiler out of control," he yelled.
Then it hit him. Amos Cartwright was dying down there. He had lost his best friend aboard the Jefferson City. "Amos," he screamed down the dark ventilation shaft. "Amos."
Only the pounding engines and the roar of escaping steam answered him.
"Two good men. I've lost two good men. Because you wouldn't listen to me, Art. Because you turned into a typical fucking deck officer in front of my eyes. What the hell is happening to you? Why is reaming Parker's ass more important than the safety of this ship?"
Oz Bradley raged up and down the captain's sea cabin. Arthur McKay stared at his painting of a Chinese sage coming down a mountain. He had moved it to the sea cabin because he spent almost all his time in this cubicle now
"We had orders, Oz. That Buord scientist."
"I'm not talking about him. That was three months ago. I've been sending you reports about those fucking boilers ever since we started these high-speed runs up the Slot. Why in Christ didn't you send them to the admiral? He might have detached us for a week in Noumea. That's all we needed. A week alongside a repair ship with the right equipment, a couple of good boiler specialists."
"I don't think he would have spared us. We're the only cruiser division left in this game."
"I thought you'd take losing Cartwright a lot harder. The guy practically worshipped you, Art."
"He was a good man. But I've got other things on my mind, Oz. Good night."
Bradley stamped out muttering. Captain McKay poured himself a half glass of Bull Halsey's bourbon. He drank it in one continuous swallow, and stepped onto the bridge. They were out of Kula Gulf, heading down the Slot toward Guadalcanal and safety. The Jefferson City was able to maintain twenty knots, which satisfied Admiral Merrill. McKay did not report Oz Bradley's anxiety about the strain on the three remaining boilers. It was not the admiral's job to worry about the internal problems, mechanical or personal, aboard individual ships.
"I'm going below to see Parker," he told Officer of the Deck Marse Lee.
Preceded by his Marine orderly, he descended to Officers' Country. At the door of Parker's cabin, two Marines came to attention. "How is he?" McKay asked.
"Chaplain's with him, sir. Seems to have quieted him down."
"I want to see him."
The door opened and Emerson Bushnell stepped into the passageway. His reaction to McKay was a glare. "What do you want, Captain?" he said.
"I want to see Commander Parker."
"I don't think that's advisable."
"That's for me to decide, not you."
"It is for me to decide, Captain. In my official capacity as the man responsible for the spiritual condition of this ship."
"It's about time you've taken some responsibility for it. But your authority doesn't supersede mine, Chaplain, and it never will."
"You put yourself above charity, above compassion, Captain?"
"I put myself above you, Chaplain. It's very clear in the chain of command. Get out of my way."
He pushed the chaplain aside and stepped into the room. Daniel Boone Parker was lying in his bunk. It occurred to McKay that he had never visited this man in his cabin before. On the bulkhead above the bed was a portrait of his wife and five chil
dren. The wife was a plump square jawed woman who looked into the camera with a faintly puzzled expression on her face. She was familiar. McKay had seen her at a hundred church picnics in Kansas. A good-hearted, forthright woman, baffled by what life had done to her. The children, three girls and two boys, were dressed in Sunday clothes. All wore formal expressions imposed on them by the photographer.
Parker said nothing. He just stared at McKay.
"I'm here to tell you that you can get off this ship tomorrow, Commander. If you'll sign the statement I've drawn up for you.”
Parker shook his head. "I'll be off this ship tomorrow anyway, Captain. I've had a nervous breakdown, thanks to you. That's Dr. Cadwallader's diagnosis."
He spoke slowly, thickly. McKay realized Cadwallader had probably given him a sedative. "I'll decide whether you've had a breakdown or are simply trying to escape combat."
Parker began to weep. Fat babyish tears trickled down his cheeks. "You fucking bastard. You fucking Annapolis bastard."
Captain McKay returned to the bridge and asked for a report from the engine room. The runaway boiler had been secured. Feed pumps and turbines were functioning satisfactorily. In the sea cabin, McKay poured himself another half glass of bourbon and telephoned sick bay. "Do you have Cartwright's body?" he asked Dr. Cadwallader.
"Yes."
"I want to see him."
He descended to the second deck and the dim silent sick bay. "It isn't pretty," Cadwallader said.
"He was an old friend," McKay said. "Let me sit with him for a while."
Cadwallader untied the shroud in which Cartwright was lying. They had had to sew two of them together to fit him. McKay looked down at the black face. The skin hung in loose folds where the steam had scalded it. What had he accomplished by giving Amos Cartwright a chance to prove he could learn as much about a fire room as a white man?
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