by Herman Wouk
“All right, we’ll try again,” he heard the captain shout, “and if there’s any more doping-off by the line-handling parties it’ll be too goddamn bad for a lot of people!”
Queeg tore in toward the dock at fifteen knots, swung the ship hard right, and backed the engines, in an apparent attempt to duplicate his historic red-hot landing alongside the fuel dock in Hawaii. But luck or skill did not favor him with the same hair-raising success this time. He backed down too late. The Caine came crashing into the wharf at an angle of about twenty degrees, still going fast. A hideous splintering din arose, mingled with shrieks of the lady spectators scurrying to the other side of the wharf.
“Back down emergency full! Emergency full!” squeaked the captain, as the destroyer, its bow imbedded in the dock, quivered like an arrow shot into a tree trunk. The Caine pulled clear in a moment, with more tearing and banging, leaving a monstrous shaving several feet thick and twenty yards long gouged out of the pier.
“God damn this current, why don’t they have a goddamn tug standing by when a ship has to go alongside?”
Willie shrank out of the captain’s sight, and flattened against the charthouse bulkhead, as he had often seen the signalmen do. With his girl almost within his grasp, and an infuriated captain loose, it was time to be invisible.
“Kay, we’ll try once more,” announced Queeg, as the old ship backed into open water, “and this time we’d better make it, for the sake of all hands, that’s all I’ve got to say!- All ahead two thirds!”
The Caine shuddered and started forward again.
“Right full rudder! All engines stop!”
Willie cautiously came up to the bulwark and saw that the Caine was slipping fairly into position alongside the dock, except that the bow was closer than the stern.
“Kay, let’s get that stern in now! Port back one third.”
“Port, sir?” said Jellybelly at the engine telegraph, in a surprised tone.
Queeg screamed, “Yes, port, and ring it up, God damn it! ... Kay! Get those lines over!”
Ensign Keith caught another good look at his sweetheart’s face. He was dizzy with love and longing.
“What the hell is the matter with that after line-handling party?” screeched Queeg, and on the instant came the pop of the line-throwing gun. But the current, and Queeg’s unfortunate mistake of backing the wrong screw, had swiveled the stern too far out, and the line fell into the water again. Meantime the men of the forecastle, with desperate speed, had gotten one manila line over to the dock, where the waiting sailors had secured it to a bollard. By this one tether the Caine now hung precariously, swinging out so that it was perpendicular to the wharf.
As the ship swung so, the starboard wing came in view of the dock again, and to Ensign Keith’s ears came a cry of a very familiar voice: “Will-EE! Will-EE darling!” His mother stood near the manila line, waving a handkerchief!
Queeg came bolting through the wheelhouse and almost knocked Willie down as he dashed for the rail. “Mr. Keith, get out from underfoot! Signalman, signalman, raise that tug!”
With the help of the passing tug, the ship’s stern was pushed in toward the dock. The ladies on the dock sent up a derisive cheer, not unmixed with hoots, and catcalls, and inquiries as to whether the ship belonged to the Chinese Navy, when the Caine was finally secured. Queeg came into the pilothouse, his face white, his forehead crawling with wrinkles, his eyes glaring out at nothing. “Officer of the deck!”
Lieutenant Maryk followed him through the door: “Officer of the deck, aye aye.”
“Kay,” said Queeg, with his back to Maryk, rubbing the steel balls in his fingers so that they made a loud rasp. “You will pass the following word: ‘Due to the lousy seamanship of the after line-handling party, the entire crew is deprived of two days’ leave.’ ”
Maryk stared at the captain, his blunt face showing disbelief and disgust. He did not move. After a few seconds the captain whirled. “Well? What are you waiting for, Mr. Maryk? Pass the word.”
“Pardon me, Captain, if I’m talking out of turn, but that’s kind of rugged, sir. After all, there wasn’t much the guys could-”
“Mister Maryk, let me remind you that I am captain of this ship! If I get another word of back talk from you I will triple the penalty and include all the officers as well. You pass that word.”
Maryk wet his lips. He went to the squawk box, pressed the lever, and said, “Now hear this. Due to the lousy seamanship of the after line-handling party, the entire crew is deprived of two days’ leave.” The snap of the lever, as he released it, echoed in the wheelhouse.
“Thank you, Mr. Maryk. And let me tell you that I don’t appreciate your grandstand play in the presence of the bridge watch in a matter of discipline. I consider it conduct unbecoming an officer, amounting to insubordination, and it will be reflected in your fitness report.”
Head down, the captain hurried from the wheelhouse and trampled down the bridge ladder. All over the ship, and on the dock, where the announcement had been clearly heard, faces were drawn with shock and dismay-young faces of sailors, weary faces of chiefs, pretty faces of sweethearts, and old faces, such as the face of Willie Keith’s mother. Mrs. Keith did not yet have the consolation of realizing that Ensign Keith was an officer and therefore exempt from the penalty.
When the gangplank was put over, Willie was one of the first to disembark. He saw no escape from his situation; it would simply have to be faced. Mrs. Keith was standing at the foot of the gangway; and May, her expression a touching mixture of confusion, gladness, and fear, had placed herself directly at the mother’s elbow. Mrs. Keith embraced Willie wildly as he set foot on United States soil once more-if a wharf, that is, can qualify as soil. “Darling, darling, darling!” she exclaimed. “Oh, it’s so wonderful to have you close again!”
Willie disengaged himself gently, smiling at May. “Mother,” he said, taking her hand and May’s hand, “I’d like you to meet-ah-Marie Minotti.”
PART FOUR
SHORE LEAVE
CHAPTER 16
Shore Leave
Willie and May were huddled together in the moonlight beside a tall pine on the floor of the Yosemite Valley, in front of the Ahwanee Hotel. Their cheeks touched; their breath mingled in a cloud of white vapor. They heard a deep masculine voice call, in long-drawn tones echoing between the sheer valley walls, “Let the fire fall!” From the peak of a cliff a red cascade of embers came tumbling straight down through the darkness, a glowing, floating fiery column a mile high. Somewhere in the gloom cowboy musicians began a melancholy little love song. Willie and May turned to each other and kissed.
After a while they walked arm in arm into the hotel. Through the bright lobby decorated with multicolored Indian hangings, and skins, and horns, they strolled to the red-lacquered elevator. They rode up three floors and got out together. It was all of a long winter night before Willie returned to his own room, and sank into an armchair in an excess of stupefied pleasure, still thinking with joy of his last glimpse of May, enchanting in her simple white nightdress, with her red hair tumbled on her bare shoulders, smiling up at him as he closed her door. It was a perfectly satisfying picture, and he had no way of knowing that in her room below May was crouched in a chair, shivering and crying.
It was the familiar story: the young man back from the war, eager for his love, impatient of the cautious rules of peacetime; his girl no less eager for him, and ready to do anything to make him happy; and so, good-by rules! Willie had never tried to force May to yield to him. He had feared the entanglement more than he wanted this last intimacy, and their relationship had been full of sweetness without it. Nor did he force her this night. It happened; and it happened the more easily because they had both read lots of books which dismissed the rules as pretty primitive taboos and asserted that all morals were relative to time and place. Willie, floating in a daze of well-being, was certain at this moment that the books contained true wisdom. May, for some reason, wasn’t so sure.
Anyway, the deed was done.
A couple of hours later, after May had telephoned him and both had confessed that they were wide awake, they sat at a table in the dining room, eating breakfast in a flood of white sunshine. Through the tall cathedral-like window they could see the nearby towering cliff, and pine forests dark green against the snow, and, far away, the everlasting white peaks of the Sierras; an especially agreeable contrast for a table set with a fine cloth, and fresh flowers, and fragrant bacon and eggs and hot coffee. They were both very gay. Willie leaned back and said with a luxurious sigh, “Well, it cost me a hundred and ten dollars, but it was worth it.”
“A hundred and ten dollars? For what? Two days in this place?”
“No, no. That was the ransom I paid to get off the Caine.”
He told May about the lost liquor crate, and described how, when he had requested a seventy-two-hour pass, Captain Queeg had hemmed and hawed, and finally said, “Well, now, Willie, it seems to me you’ve still got that fiasco with the crate on your record.” Whereupon the ensign had quickly answered, “Sir, I accept complete responsibility for my stupidity, and will try never to repeat such a bad performance. The least I can do, sir, is reimburse you for a loss which was my fault, and I hope you’ll permit me to do so.” At this Queeg had turned very pleasant; and, after a few gracious remarks to the effect that an ensign wouldn’t be an ensign if he didn’t make mistakes, he had agreed to let Willie go.
May was flabbergasted. She began to question Willie about his life on the Caine, and became more and more appalled as he talked, the Stilwell narrative shaking her most of all. “Ye gods, this Queeg, he’s a-he’s a monster, a maniac!”
“Well, more or less.”
“Is the whole Navy like that?”
“Oh, no. The skipper before Queeg was a grand guy, and damned capable, too.” The words were out of his mouth before it occurred to him to smile at his change of heart about De Vriess.
“Can’t you do anything about him?”
“But what, May?”
“I don’t know. Report him to an admiral. Write a letter to Walter Winchell. Something!”
Willie grinned, and put his hand over hers. They were silent for a while. Then May patted her lips with a napkin, opened her purse, and began repainting her mouth skillfully and quickly with a small brush which she dipped into a little black pot of rouge. Willie hadn’t seen such a cosmetic technique before, and he found it a bit glaring and over-professional, but he pushed the distaste from his mind with the thought that a night-club singer must carry with her a trace or two of her trade. The hope flitted across his mind that May wouldn’t bring out the brush if ever they dined with his mother. Lovers are supposed to come near the telepathic state; perhaps for this reason May gave him a keen look as she put away the brush and said, “Nice of your mother to let you run off like this.”
“Well, I pretty well do as I please, darling-”
“I know-but after she came across the country, and all-you just leave her flat-footed-”
“I didn’t ask her to come. She surprised me. Anyway, she’s going to stay on, and you have to go back. It’s only natural. She knows the score.”
“I wonder,” said May, with a little rueful smile. Willie pressed her hand, and they both colored a little.
“What does she think of me?” asked May, as forty billion poor girls have asked in their time.
“She thinks you’re swell.”
“I’ll bet she does- Really, what did she say? I mean the very first time she had a chance, when I walked off the pier and went back to the hotel? What were her exact words?”
Willie reviewed the awkward triangle scene on the wharf in his mind, the lame exchanges, the forced smiles, May’s deft withdrawal in a few minutes, and his mother’s remark, “Well, well. My Willie is keeping secrets from his old mother, eh? She’s remarkably pretty. Model, or showgirl?”
“Her exact words, as I recall them,” said Willie, “were, ‘There goes a very beautiful little girl.’ ”
May snorted delicately and said, “Your memory isn’t so hot, or you’re a liar. Little of both, I guess- Ow!”
A large blond young man in skiing clothes, walking past the table and chatting lovingly with a girl in a bright red ski suit, had cracked May’s head with his elbow. There were apologies, and the young couple went off, fingers interlaced, swinging their arms and laughing into each other’s eyes. “Goddamn honeymooners,” muttered May, rubbing her head.
“What do you say, would you like to try skiing?” Willie said.
“No, thanks. I like my spine the way it is.” But May’s eyes brightened.
“Look, they have slopes that your grandmother wouldn’t get hurt on-”
“I have no clothes, no skis-neither have you-”
“We’ll buy ’em or rent ’em. Come on!” He sprang up and tugged at her hand.
“Well, just to be able to say something if anybody asks me what I did in Yosemite-” She rose. “I’ll tell ’em I skied.”
There were few people on the trails, and often they seemed to be playing by themselves in a white mountain world. Now and then Willie caught himself wondering whether the U.S.S. Caine really existed: the cramped little wheelhouse, the clip shack, the dreary gray-green wardroom with its tattered copies of Life and Esquire and its smell of old coffee boiling too long, the rust, the obscenity, the nagging little man who rolled steel balls in his fingers and talked with his eyes fixed on empty air. He felt he had wakened into health from a fever dream-except that he knew that the dream lay in a San Francisco drydock, real as a stone, and that in two days he would have to close his eyes and re-enter the nightmare.
They stopped in the Badger Pass ski lodge, warmed themselves by a great log fire, and drank hot buttered rum. May took off her ski cap and shook out her hair over her green woolen jacket; and there was no man in the room who did not stare, and few ladies who could resist a brief annoyed appraisal. Willie felt most colossally pleased with himself. “What do you see in me, I wonder?” he said, halfway through his second hot buttered rum. “A glorious girl like you? What is there about me that’s worth crossing the country for?”
“First you answer a question for me. Why did you introduce me to your mother as Marie Minotti? You haven’t used that name since the day we met.”
Willie stared at the red smoky flames in the fireplace, and searched his mind for a pleasant answer. He had wondered himself at the impulse that had brought May’s real name to his tongue, and had discovered an unpalatable reason for it: the fact that, underneath all his powerful desire for May, he was ashamed of her. The thought of her origin, of the Bronx fruit store, of her grimy illiterate parents, had possessed him in the presence of his mother. At that moment, May had been Marie Minotti. “I don’t know,” he said. “It just seemed right to tell Mom your real name, and start off on an honest footing. I didn’t think much about it.”
“I see. May I have another hot buttered rum? The last. I’m a little dizzy. Possibly from all this fresh air.”
“If you want,” she said, when Willie returned and handed her the drink, “I can tell you what a glorious girl like me sees in you.”
“Fine. What?” Willie nestled complacently beside her.
“Nothing.”
“I see.” He buried his nose in his glass.
“I mean it. I’ve been trapped. In the beginning you seemed so fumbling and harmless to me, I just let myself enjoy your company, thinking nothing would come of it. And then they dragged you off to Furnald Hall, and with you carrying all those demerits I felt sorry for you, and it seemed patriotic to cheer you up, and furthermore I swear you must have appealed to my mother instinct-although I never thought I had one. Well, the whole thing just went on and on, and got to be a habit, and now here we are. I was a damn fool to come out here, and I’m going straight home day after tomorrow. I don’t like what’s happening. I feel as though I’d slipped and broken a leg.”
Willie said lazily, “You’re fascinated by my
mind.”
“Just remember, pal,” said May, “I’ve had freshman English now. And I’ve done a hell of a lot of reading. I can talk about Dickens all you want, and probably top you. Go ahead, say something. What do you think of Bleak House?”
“Never read it, matter of fact,” said Willie with a yawn. “That’s one I missed. Nice and warm by this fire, you know?”
“Let’s get out of here,” said May, slamming down her unfinished drink.
“In a minute,” said Willie. “You know what I think? It’s chemistry. You and I just have a chemical affinity, like sodium and chlorine.”
“I’ve heard that line so often,” said May impatiently, “it makes me want to throw up. How do you explain the fact that almost every guy in the night-club business has felt this chemical affinity for me, while I look on them as so many hogs?”
Willie smiled with such naked male smugness that May jumped to her feet, resisting an impulse to throw her glass at him. “I’m roasting, I want to go.”
The firefall that night seemed less thrilling, somehow, though in every way the scene was unchanged except that the moon was fuller and brighter. The hidden musicians played the same nostalgic lament, and Willie kissed May again; but an odd feeling that he had better do so replaced last night’s fervor. May felt the difference in his lips, and her own remained coolly prim. Instead of going upstairs, they danced for a while. At last they went to May’s room, but Willie found everything different. May sat in an armchair in a position that made it hard for him to approach her, and she chattered in the most matter-of-fact way about Hunter College, Marty Rubin, and the clubs where she had sung. Willie became bored and exasperated, and at the same time found May looking more and more provokingly beautiful. At last he rose, went to the armchair, and, while she talked on, attempted an affectionate gesture. May, with a slight neat turn of her shoulder, deflected his hand. “What’s eating you, friend?” she said.