by Herman Wouk
“Yes, even Queeg, poor sad guy, yes, and most of them not sad at all, fellows, a lot of them sharper boys than any of us, don’t kid yourself, best men I’ve aver seen, you can’t be good in the Army or Navy unless you’re goddamn good. Though maybe not up on Proust ‘n’ Finnegan’s Wake and all.”
Greenwald stopped, and looked from side to side. “Seem to be losing the thread here. Supposed to be toasting the Caine’s favorite author. Well, here goes, I’ll try not to maunder too much. Somebody flap a napkin at me if I get incoherent. Can’t stay for dinner so I’m glad you called on me to make a toast so I can get it over with. I can’t stay because I’m not hungry. Not for this dinner. It would in fact undoubtedly disagree with me.”
He turned to Maryk.
“Steve, the thing is, this dinner is a phony. You’re guilty. I told you at the start that you were. Course you’re only half guilty. F’ that matter, you’ve only been half acquitted. You’re a dead duck. You have no more chance now of transferring to the regular Navy than of running for President. The reviewing authorities’ll call it a miscarriage of justice, which it is, and a nice fat letter of reprimand will show up in your promotion jacket-and maybe in mine-and it’s back to the fishing business for Steve Maryk. I got you off by phony legal tricks-by making clowns out of Queeg and a Freudian psychiatrist-which was like shooting two tuna fish in a barrel-and by ’pealing very unethically and irrelevantly to the pride of the Navy. Did everything but whistle Anchors Aweigh. Only time it looked tough was when the Caine’s favorite author testified. Nearly sunk you, boy. I don’t quite understand him, since of course he was the author of the Caine mutiny among his other works. Seems to me he’d of gotten up on the line with you and Willie, and said straight out that he always insisted Queeg was a dangerous paranoiac. See, it would only have made things worse to drag Keefer in-you know all about that, so as long as he wanted to run out on you all I could do was let him run-”
“Just a minute-” Keefer made a move to get up.
“ ’Scuse me, I’m all finished, Mr. Keefer. I’m up to the toast. Here’s to you. You bowled a perfect score. You went after Queeg and got him. You kept your own skirts all white and starchy. Steve is finished for good, but you’ll be the next captain of the Caine. You’ll retire old and full of fat fitness reports. You’ll publish your novel proving that the Navy stinks, and you’ll make a million dollars and marry Hedy Lamarr. No letter of reprimand for you, just royalties on your novel. So you won’t mind a li’l verbal reprimand from me, what does it mean? I defended Steve because I found out the wrong guy was on trial. Only way I could defend him was to sink Queeg for you. I’m sore that I was pushed into that spot, and ashamed of what I did, and thass why I’m drunk. Queeg deserved better at my hands. I owed him a favor, don’t you see? He stopped Hermann Goering from washing his fat behind with my mother.
“So I’m not going to eat your dinner, Mr. Keefer, or drink your wine, but simply make my toast and go. Here’s to you, Mr. Caine’s favorite author, and here’s to your book.”
He threw the yellow wine in Keefer’s face.
A little splashed on Willie. It happened so fast that the officers at the other end of the table didn’t know what he had done. Maryk started to get up. “For Christ’s sake, Barney-”
The lawyer shoved him back into his chair with a shaking hand. Keefer automatically pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his face, staring dumfounded at Greenwald. Greenwald said, “If you want to do anything about it, Keefer, I’ll wait in the lobby for you. We can go someplace quiet. We’re both drunk, so it’s a fair fight. You’ll probably lick me. I’m a lousy fighter.”
The other officers were beginning to mutter to each other agitatedly, glancing sidewise at Keefer. Greenwald strode out of the room, stumbling a little near the door. The novelist stood up. There was a thick, ugly silence, as though someone had just shouted a lot of dirty words. Keefer glanced around and uttered a laugh. No eye met his. He dropped back in his chair. “The hell with it. Poor guy is just crazy drunk. I’m hungry. He’ll be around to apologize in the morning. Willie, tell them to bring on the chow.”
“Okay, Tom.”
The meal was eaten rapidly in a clinking quiet, broken by an infrequent low remark. When Keefer cut the cake there was a brief dismal scattering of handclaps. The party broke up immediately after the coffee. There were five unopened bottles of champagne still standing on the littered table.
Willie curiously scanned the lobby when he came out of the private dining room, but the pilot was gone.
PART SEVEN
THE LAST CAPTAIN OF THE CAINE
CHAPTER 38
The Kamikaze
Of all the people Willie encountered during the war Captain Queeg loomed largest in his memory, forever after. But there was another man who had an even greater influence on his life and character; a man whose face he never saw and whose name he never knew. The day after he encountered this man-it was late in June 1945-Willie Keith wrote an eight-page letter to May Wynn, begging her to marry him.
He was a Kamikaze pilot who destroyed himself in order to set the rusty old Caine ablaze at Okinawa.
Keefer was captain, and Willie was exec. The able trouble shooter, Captain White, had spent five months restoring order on the anarchical minesweeper and had passed on to his interrupted career in big ships. The four-pipers were falling into the hands of young reserves. Willie had become a senior-grade lieutenant on June 1; some of the old minesweepers even had jg’s as execs.
The Bureau of Personnel had evidently decided that scattering the Caine’s officers and crew was the best way to dissolve the bitterness of the Queeg days. Fully three quarters of the sailors were replacements. Farrington was the only other officer left from the mutiny time. Maryk had been detached from the ship a week after his acquittal, and sent to command an LCI, a humiliation which spelled the end of his naval hopes. Nobody knew what had become of Queeg.
Willie was running the ship. Keefer had retired into an isolation like Queeg’s-except that he worked on his novel instead of solving jigsaw puzzles. Luckily for Willie, Captain White had taken a liking to him and had put him through intensive training, two months as engineering officer, two months as first lieutenant; he had been gunnery officer when the dispatch came elevating him to the executive post. In all that time Keefer had been executive officer, a sullen, seldom-seen figure around the ship. He had never completely wiped from his face the yellow stain Barney Greenwald had thrown on it, The new officers and sailors all knew the story. The mutiny and court-martial were endless topics for gossip when Keefer and Willie weren’t present. The general feeling on the Caine was that the novelist was untrustworthy and extremely queer. Willie was better liked, but for his part in the mutiny he was also regarded askance.
In the rare times when Keefer took the conn he was nervous, impatient, and harsh, and much given to pounding stanchions and yelling for instant execution of his orders. He wasn’t a good ship handler; he had gouged the sides of oilers and tenders a dozen times. It was freely said that that was why he allowed Mr. Keith to do most of the conning.
Keefer had the conn, however, when the Kamikaze hit.
“There she comes!”
Urban’s yell on the starboard wing was almost gay. But there was no mistaking the fright in Keefer’s voice, the next second: “Commence firing! All guns commence firing!” At the same instant, not in response to the captain’s order but spontaneously, came the popping of the 20-millimeters all over the ship.
Willie was in the charthouse, marking bearings along the course line. The Caine was rounding the southern end of Okinawa en route to Nakagusuku Wan to pick up mail for the mine fleet. There had been no air-raid warning. It was ten o’clock in a gray cloudy morning. The sea was calm and lonely.
He dropped his pencil and parallel rulers and went scampering through the wheelhouse to the starboard wing. Pink curved dotted lines of tracer bullets pointed to the Kamikaze, about a thousand feet up, well forward of the bow, b
rown against the clouds. It was slanting straight for the Caine, wobbling clumsily as it came down. It was a small, flimsy, obsolete-looking machine. Its wings seemed to be stretching outward as it drew near, and the two red balls were plain to see. There were four streams of bullets converging on it; the plane was absorbing them all and floating down placidly. It was now quite big; a teetering, flapping old airplane.
“It’s going to hit!” Keefer and Urban threw themselves to the deck. The plane, only a few feet away, tilted sidewise. Willie caught a glimpse of the goggled pilot through the yellow cockpit bubble. “The crazy fool,” he thought, and then he was on his knees, his face to the deck plates. He thought the plane was coming right at him.
It seemed like a very long time before the Kamikaze hit, and Willie experienced a race of vivid clear thoughts as he crouched with his face to the cold blue-painted deck. The important point-the fact that changed his life-was that he felt an overpowering tearing regret at not having married May. Since jilting her he had been fairly successful in pushing thoughts of her out of his mind. When he was tired or upset they had come crowding back, but he had fought them off as products of weakness. This mighty feeling of longing for lost joy that possessed him now was different. It had the clang of truth. He thought he was done for, and above all his paralyzed terror towered the regret that he would never see May again.
The plane hit with the sound of cars colliding on a highway, and a second later there was an explosion. Willie’s teeth grated as though he had been punched in the face, and his ears rang. He staggered erect. He could see a puff of blue-gray smoke curling up from behind the galley deckhouse, where the gun crew still sprawled in individual gray lumps.
“Captain, I’ll call away GQ and then lay aft and see how it looks-”
“Okay Willie.” Keefer rose, brushing himself with trembling hands, his unhelmeted hair hanging in his eyes. He had a dazed, vacant air. Willie ran into the wheelhouse and pressed the lever of the p.a. box. The helmsman and quartermaster watched him with frightened eyes. “Now hear this,” he said loud and quick, “we have taken a Kamikaze hit amidships. Set condition Able throughout the ship. Away forward and after fire-fighting and damage-control parties-” Blue bitter smoke came wisping into the pilothouse. It stung his lungs like a dry cigarette. He coughed and went on, “Make your damage reports to the bridge. Turn on foam, sprinklers, and carbon dioxide as needed. Stand by magazine flood valves-ugh, ugh-but don’t flood until ordered-”
He jerked the red GQ handle, and went out on the wing as the clanging began. He was amazed by the billow of smoke and blast of heat that struck his face. Tall orange flames were leaping as high as the mast behind the galley deckhouse and lapping forward toward the bridge-the wind was astern. Smoke in clouds boiled from the flames and rolled over the wing. “I thought you were going aft,” Keefer shouted peevishly, his form dim in the smoke. He and the bridge gang were putting on life jackets.
“Aye aye, sir. Just going-”
Willie had to use elbows and shoulders to make his way down the well deck and the passageway through milling, yelling sailors dragging hoses, snatching life jackets, or just running. He broke through to the main deck. There was less smoke here than on the bridge; it was all blowing high and forward. Red flames, thick as oak trunks, were roaring out of an immense jagged hole in the deck over the after fireroom. Blackened sailors were stumbling out of the narrow hatch of the air lock. Pieces of the plane’s wings were scattered on the deck. The gig was on fire. Hoses were tangled around on the deck and the fire-fighting parties, white-faced, helmeted, in life jackets, were fussing with fire-main connections or dragging red toy-like handy-billies toward the hole. They uttered thin little shouts drowned by the banging of the GQ gong and the roaring from the exposed fireroom. The smell was of burning-burning oil, burning wood, burning rubber.
“What’s the dope?” the exec yelled at a sailor staggering out of the air lock.
“Whole plane is down in there, sir! Whole goddamn place is on fire. Budge told us to get out. He’s trying to shut off the main fuel valve-I don’t know if he can get out any more- I turned on the foam system before I came out-”
“How about the boiler?”
“I don’t know, sir, the place is all steam and fire-”
“Do you know how to open the safety valves?” Willie screamed above the noise.
“Yes, sir-”
“Okay, blow ’em off-”
“Aye aye, sir-”
An explosion threw a round puff of white flame out of the fireroom. Willie staggered back. Fire was wriggling up the side of the galley deckhouse. Willie pushed through running sailors to Bellison, who was twisting a fire-main valve with a wrench. “Are you getting pressure on your main?”
“Yes, sir-looks like one hell of a fire, sir-are we going to abandon ship?”
“Hell, no. Put that fire out!” Willie yelled.
“Okay, sir. We’ll try-” Willie slapped the chief’s back and fought through the thronged passageway, stumbling over hoses. Coming to the bridge ladder, he was startled to see Keefer pop out of his cabin, carrying a lumpy gray canvas sack.
“What do you say, Willie? Have we got a chance?” Keefer said as Willie stepped aside to let him up the ladder first.
“I think so, sir. What’s the sack?”
“Novel, just in case-” Keefer dropped the sack by the flagbag and squinted aft, coughing and clapping a handkerchief to his nose. The gun crews on the deckhouse were scrambling through smoke and fire, untangling hoses and swearing in screeches. The bridge sailors-radarmen, signalmen, soundmen-and three of the new officers pressed around Willie, their eyes wide open and staring.
“Captain, it doesn’t look too bad yet-just one fireroom-” Willie began to describe the damage. But he had a strong feeling that Keefer wasn’t listening to him. The captain was staring aft, his hands on his hips. Smoke streamed past his face. His eyeballs had an opaque yellowish look and were rimmed with red.
Clouds of screaming steam burst above the deckhouse. Keefer glared at Willie. “What went up then?”
“I told them to lift the safeties on number three, sir-”
On the galley deckhouse there was a sudden rattling explosion. A fireworks shower of flame-white, yellow, and streaking red-went shooting in all directions. Sailors tumbled down the ladders, yelling. Bullets whistled and pinged against the bridgehouse. “Oh, Jesus, there goes the AA,” shouted Keefer, dodging for shelter. “This ship’s going up, Willie. It’ll be in the magazines in a minute-”
All three stacks boiled over with yellow dirty smoke like vomit. The vibrating of the main engines stopped. The ship glided, slowing, wallowing. The flames amidships cast an orange glow on the gray sea. “Water in the fuel lines.” Keefer was gasping. “We’ve lost suction. Pass the word for all hands to-”
Three-inch shells began exploding in the ready box on the deckhouse with terrifying CRACKS! and sheets of white fire. Keefer screamed, staggered, and fell to the deck. Reeking waves of gunpowder smoke swathed the bridge. Willie crouched beside the captain, and saw several blue-dungareed legs climb up on the rail and leap overboard. Keefer said, “My arm, my arm,” holding his shoulder and kicking at the deck. Blood welled between his fingers and dripped.
“Captain, are you all right? The men are beginning to jump-”
Keefer sat up, his face twisted and sick. “Let’s pass the word to abandon ship-Christ, my arm feels like it’s coming off-I think I took a piece of a shell-”
“Sir, I swear I don’t think we have to abandon yet-”
Keefer got up on one knee and staggered erect. He stumbled into the wheelhouse, and grabbed at the public-address level with a bloody hand. “This is the captain speaking. All hands abandon ship-”
Willie, at the doorway, heard only the captain’s weak voice in the wheelhouse, and no answering boom in the loudspeakers. “Sir,” he shouted, “your p.a. is dead-”
The bridge sailors were huddled against the bulwark, like cattle seeking warm
th from each other’s bodies. “What do you say, Mr. Keith? Can we jump?” Urban cried.
“Stay where you are-”
Keefer came lurching out of the wheelhouse. A fresh explosion in the smoke on the deckhouse sent a rattle of metal against the bridge and a blast of heat. “This ship won’t live another five minutes!” Keefer ran to the rail and peered aft. “Look, they’re all jumping back there. The whole goddamn main deck must be going up.” He dived through the bunch of sailors and clutched the canvas sack. “Let’s go! All hands over the side-”
The sailors and officers began yammering, and jostled each other like subway riders in their eagerness to climb the rail. They bumped and pressed Willie, who was leaning out, trying to see aft through the stinging fumes. “Captain, nobody’s jumping back aft-those guys in the water are all from the bridge!” One after another crewmen and officers were leaping off the wing into the water. Keefer had one leg over the bulwark. He clasped the canvas sack in his uninjured arm. He was climbing with methodical care, favoring his bloodstained arm. “Captain,” Willie shouted at him, “they’re not jumping back aft-they’re not-”
Keefer paid no attention whatever. Willie seized him by the shoulder as he leaned out to jump. “Captain, I request permission to stay aboard with volunteers to try to get the fire under control!”
A flicker of understanding appeared in the novelist’s glazed eyes. He looked vexed, as though Willie had said something particularly stupid. “Hell, Willie, if you want to commit suicide I can’t stop you!” Keefer leaped out far, his skinny legs flailing the air. He fell into the water on his stomach and began pulling himself away from the ship. Heads bobbed all around him. Only Ensign Farrington remained on the bridge, leaning against the flagbag, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Willie said harshly, “What’s holding you back?”