Men Die

by H. L. Humes

  Sulgrave was used to Dolfus' fulminations. Every Saturday it was the same. He grinned. “How can you have a whole half-day, Skully?”

  “Learn some elementary Group Theory and find out, Rover Boy. Did my whites come back?”

  “Mother-in-Trouble brought them herself. I hung them over your foot locker.”

  Dolfus looked at Sulgrave a moment longer. “You say the old woman brought them, not Arielle?”

  “NotArielle.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She said she had trouble washing them, trouble ironing …

  “Nothing about Arielle, though,” Dolfus stated imperatively.

  “No.”

  Without another word, Dolfus went to change. He was running the shower when it came time for Sulgrave to start up to the Commander's. Skully would just have time to make it down, but he'd still be sweating when they got there.

  The inspection was routine up to the point of the surprise fire drill. Sulgrave, in the press of the moment, could only assume that the Commander had hatched his plot the previous Saturday upon having noticed that the men, in dressing up the pier, had disconnected the fire hoses so that they could be more prettily coiled. Nothing had been said at the time, nothing thereafter. In fact Hake said nothing even to Sulgrave until they were walking down the path just prior to the start of inspection.

  “I want a fire drill today, Mister Sulgrave.”

  “Yes, sir. I'll tell the petty officer on watch.” He raised his clipboard, pencil poised. “At what time, sir?”

  “You'll tell no one, Mister Sulgrave. If you tell one, you tell all of them. Those blacks have a grapevine that works in all seas and all weathers. We've never had a fire drill that they didn't know about in advance, almost before I had made up my own mind.”

  “Then you want me to have Lieutenant Dolfus …”

  The Commander ignored Sulgrave, went on. “When we are halfway through the personnel inspection, you will wait until we reach the end of a rank and separate yourself from the inspection party, leaving your clipboard with Lieutenant Dolfus. You will then proceed inconspicuously to the pier, and without alerting the pier guard of your intention, will then sound the alarm. I will give permission to break ranks. After the drill, you will enlist Mister Dolfus' aid in re-forming the ranks, and we'll finish our inspection.”

  Sulgrave was incredulous. “A fire drill in the middle of inspection, sir?”

  “Precisely, Mister Sulgrave.” The Commander's tone was suddenly icy with reprimand. “You have captured my thought precisely.”

  Sulgrave snapped back to regulation protocol. “Aye, aye, sir!”

  They walked the rest of the way in silence.

  Dolfus joined them, and the inspection of facilities went quickly for once and without a hitch. But not once was Hake out of earshot, and Sulgrave had no choice but to contain the Commander's secret, although he mightily wished he could tip off Dolfus so someone could be planning ahead. Finally, resigned to it, he simply concerned himself with the inspection.

  When they were halfway through the ramrod ranks of men, he excused himself and handed the clipboard to Dolfus. Dolfus looked quizzically at Sulgrave; the Commander said stiffly, “You have my leave, Mister Sulgrave.” He walked away feeling Dolfus' eyes on his back, and feeling something like a betrayer. Dolfus would get the chewing-out if the fire drill was slower than standard.

  As he passed the foot of the pier, the seaman guard saluted smartly and said, “Mornin', suh,” in a rich Alabama roll. Sulgrave returned the salute and the greeting and walked around behind the master-at-arms' shack, where up a short ladder on a raised platform stood the hand-crank siren. He climbed up and stood for a moment, out of sight and alone, listening to the wave-lapped silence he was about to rupture. Then, feeling like a conspirator lighting a fuse to a bomb, he leaned his full weight into the slow-moving crank: first a rush of wind, then, as the handle slowly yielded under his weight, a low growl. The growl rose to a rising snarl, then to a steady, full-chested wail. One thought obscured all others: he was aghast at all the noise he was making.

  Pushing the siren was hard work, and when he at last stepped back and let the handle coast he was sweating. Then he descended the ladder to the siren's dying wail, and turned the corner of the M. A.'s shack to await uneasily the results of his furtive errand.

  In reconstructing later what happened, one thing was clear: that the men had nearly panicked. Dolfus himself felt partly responsible for this, because as he said, “They could see in my face that I wasn't expecting any drill.” After the first astounded instant, Dolfus forgot all about the Commander and gave an order: “All right, you men know what each man's supposed to do and where he's supposed to be. Now let's get there!”

  The Commander pressed a button on his stop watch and stood like a rock in the torrent of men that swirled past him, each man thinking of the tons of explosives that had passed through his hands from ships to the dock, from the dock to the rubber-tired dollies, from there to the bunkers and storage tunnels. Even more they thought of the tons of destruction for which there had been no room in underground storage, and which lay stacked under tarpaulins in the open near the dock. Each man ran toward his post wondering where hell would erupt; until the fire brigade got their equipment out no one knew where to imagine the fire.

  Sulgrave went directly to the dock, and saw for the first time the disconnected hoses. The full extent of the panic wasn't clear to him then, and he turned back to rejoin the Commander without telling the pier guard that it was a drill. But before he covered twenty yards, he was met by the running shouting flood from the parade ground. For a moment, as he saw their faces, he was perplexed, then astonished; of course it wouldn't occur to them that it was a drill! Who but a madman would schedule a fire drill during inspection? That was the one time when everything was put aside in dedication to the holy rites of spit and polish; nothing came before inspection, not even sick call. Sulgrave stopped one man, a squad leader with a coxswain's rating: “It's only a drill,” Sulgrave shouted, “That's not what ‘Tenant Skully says,” and before Sulgrave could argue, he was out of his grasp and gone.

  He was standing, wondering at the vague feeling of apprehension he felt, when the Commander came into view. He was walking slowly, alone. Dolfus would be off to the fire brigade.

  The Commander must have seen worry in Sulgrave's face, for the first thing he said was, “It won't hurt them to feel a little urgency in these matters of fire prevention. I've noticed they've been getting careless lately. Perhaps this will cure it.”

  At the pier, the men worked with a kind of frantic relief: frantic because they knew they were at the mercy of chance should an explosion come elsewhere; relieved that the fire at least was not in their sector. The Commander stood with Sulgrave at the foot of the dock as the narrow, high-pressure hoses were snaked out and laid flat along the dock. Precious time was consumed as the hoses were turned onto their connecting standpipes; but worse, the close timing of the drill was thrown off. Each hose man had to first connect his hose and then run out the dock to the nozzle. From somewhere behind the M.A. shack the heavy chug of the sea-water pumps had already begun, and Sulgrave had only a split second to realize what might happen, when it happened:

  The last man to get the wrench was still tightening his hose connection when someone at the pumphouse opened the valve that sent pressure to the dock standpipes. Since the last hose man couldn't be in two places at once, the twenty-pound brass nozzle lay at the end of his hose untended. When the pressure hit, the hoses stiffened for an instant, then spurted, coughed, then full-streamed The last hose man dropped his wrench and ran for his nozzle, but it was too late.

  Instantly two men were knocked flat by the wildly flailing hose, but they kept control of their hoses. Like a hissing serpent twisting in the throes of death, the hose rose writhing over the heads of the men, then slammed its nozzle onto the heavy planks. The whole dock boomed like a drum. Men were running out onto the dock, shou
ting, trying to help capture the runaway hose. Other hose men tried to edge backward out of the range of the flailing nozzle but the wild hose seemed to follow them; several were caught in the confused crossfire of high-velocity streams and went down in a slither of spray and water and twisting bodies. From the beginning, the Commander was shouting, “Close that valve! Get that damned valve closed!” Two men were frantically twisting the valve which would cut off the water at the foot of the dock, but chaos had already outrun their efforts.

  Suddenly there were more shouts from the pier, shouts of real pain this time; the wild hose was standing over a felled tangle of men and whipping in slow fury at their huddled backs. Other hoses would soon be let loose if the men couldn't get clear of the demon pounding at them; it was suddenly clear to Sulgrave what had to be done.

  In the full instant of necessity and revelation, Sulgrave turned without hesitation and had the Commander's cutlass out of its scabbard. Instantly perceiving his intent, the Commander nodded vigorously—”But be careful of it!” he shouted, as Sulgrave scuttled forward amid the tangle of hoses trying to pick out the one that ended in the untamed nozzle. Two enlisted men saw what he was doing and traced it from the standpipe, sliding it along in their hands as they ran toward him, bringing the dragon to St. George. There the three of them cleared a space and laid the hose down. Sul-grave went down on one knee, sword upraised, as the other two men prepared to restrain the hose after it was cut. Then the cutlass flashed down and the whole tableau vanished in a magnificent eruption of water.

  The sudden geyser completely blinded Sulgrave and nearly knocked him off balance and he couldn't see to take a second whack; he couldn't find the hose, no less the cut he'd made in it. Feeling blindly he found the hands of the other two holding the hose and traced by feel to the cut. Then, eyes shut, unable to breathe for the blinding welter of salt water, he tried to saw the blade into the cut and nearly had it whipped out of his hand by the force of the blast. He tried several times before giving up for fear the blade might strike one of the other men; he knew they were next to him but he couldn't see them. One of them was shouting, “Hold ‘im, man! Don't let loose!” Then, “How you doin’, Lieutenant?” He opened his mouth to say Lousy, and was nearly drowned. He was sitting on his heels despairing of ever cutting the hose all the way through, when the force of the stream suddenly abated, the furious hissing softened to a whisper, and the fountain dwindled to a dribble in his hands. As he opened his eyes he felt the rock-hard hose soften and go limp—someone had finally closed the valve—but a heavy impenetrable curtain of water was still falling all around the three of them. For a split instant he was at a loss, until he grasped that this was the same water coming down that a suspended moment before had been geysering up.

  That was the picture revealed to the astounded onlookers as the last of the geyser's great stage curtain fell about their feet, leaving the three drenched and dripping actors alone and bewildered on a cleared stage. There was silence for a moment, and Sulgrave could still hear the hissing in his ears when laughter and cheers went up from the men at the foot of the dock.

  Miraculously, no one had been seriously hurt, although several of the men nursed severe cuts and bruises from the drubbing they had taken. From weary, frustrated despair, Sulgrave's mood changed to secret elation when he found out that his first blow had been enough. The gash in the hose had relieved just enough pressure at the nozzle to bring it to earth; it had fallen as though exhausted, convulsing feebly until someone straddled it and brought it under control. Sulgrave rose to his feet and acknowledged the cheer with a weary ragtag wave of the sword. One of the two enlisted men who had helped him clasped his hands over his head and did a little sparring dance like a victorious boxer; the other one merely eyed the evil hose with suspicion, leaned down and examined the gash with his finger. “Lieutenant,” he said, “this thing ain't dead yet—it only wounded.” Sulgrave laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

  Dolfus had arrived in time to see the final action, but said nothing as Sulgrave came off the dock. White-faced with fury, he was giving orders for the cleaning up of the twisted shambles on the dock, when an enlisted man came up and handed him Sulgrave's water-logged hat. He passed the hat to Sulgrave, said, “Here's your hat”; nothing more. Sulgrave said, “I didn't know about it in time to tip you off, I swear it. He didn't tell me until we were coming down the hill.” Dolfus looked narrowly at him, as though to see if he were telling the truth, then softened. “I should have known,” he said. Then he added a wry smile. “Why didn't you bust his goddamned pig-sticker off at the hilt while you were at it?”

  “Damned if I didn't try,” Sulgrave said, shaking water off it.

  “Mister Sulgrave, would you come here a moment?” It was the Commander.

  “The Admiral wants his boarding iron back,” Dolfus said. “Why don't you give it to him in the ribs?”

  The Commander, who had also received a wetting, was standing with a group of petty officers as Sulgrave approached; he said, “I want you to find the man who left that main valve open and place him on report.”

  “That valve is usually left open, sir. To save time in an emergency. Also, if it were to freeze up or jam, it would be better for it to jam open.”

  “Then whom do you find responsible for that fiasco?”

  “Ordinarily, each man is on his hose before the pump is started, sir. There should be valves at the standpipes, perhaps, but there aren't. The hoses were disconnected today for inspection.”

  “Is that how you explain that disgraceful performance?” It was the first time Sulgrave had ever seen Hake bluster, but he was perilously close to coming apart now. Dignity hung in the balance.

  “It was an accident, sir. I'll see to having proper valving installed on the …”

  “Mister Sulgrave”—the Commander was suddenly icily in control—”that was not an accident, it was stupidity. A man might have been killed. There is no room for accidents or excuses on this kind of operation. I'll have no accidents, and I'll have no excuses” The hated word was hissed through clenched teeth. “Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You may carry on, Mister Sulgrave.” The Commander turned and walked away toward the path up the hill.

  Unthinking, Sulgrave called out after him, “Shall I secure the inspection, sir?” The Commander ignored him, gave no answer. Sulgrave watched him walk away, and realized that he couldn't have asked a more tactless question. He felt he needed Dolfus, and turned about to find him. Only then did he realize that his hat felt soggy on his head, and that he had the Commander's ceremonial cutlass still in his hand.

  They drove through the November landscape in silence for a time. Then suddenly Vanna said, “I didn't know those men were prisoners.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Uncle Bemis. He was furious over their being there.”

  “Why?”

  “He said they were mutineers. Is that true?”

  “One of your husband's last official acts was to draw up specifications on a charge of mutiny and send it off.”

  “Are they guilty?”

  “I suppose so. It didn't have to be a mutiny charge, though. I think that was a mistake.”

  “Oh, that bastard. He would never make it easier if he could make it worse. He wasn't always like that, you know.”

  Sulgrave said nothing.

  “Did you like him?” she asked, after a moment.

  “I think so,” Sulgrave said, not hiding his uncertainty. “It's hard to know what you feel sometimes.”

  “I loved him,” she said, grimly. “I loved him and was ambitious for him, but I failed him. At least that's what I used to think. Now I'm beginning to think he failed himself. That was Ben's theory all along.”

  “Ben?”

  “Lieutenant Dolfus. He was a good friend to us. He didn't have to go down to that island—Severn put in for him, but he didn't have to go. He went of his own accord.”

  Sulgrave accepted thi
s in silence, wondering if she suspected that he hadn't known until this very day that she and Dolfus had anything but the most casual acquaintance.

  She returned to her earlier reminiscent tone. “Something went sour in him after Sevie died. First, it was just a subtle irritation with life, but later it seemed to gnaw at him. Our marriage couldn't satisfy him. His job couldn't satisfy him. Everything had been going so well up to then. He was on his way to flag rank, for a certainty. But after Sevie died, he couldn't get along with himself. He had trouble with his men—that's why he wanted Ben to be his Exec this time—Ben knew my husband and understood him. And of course Ben understood what Sevie meant to him, and what a terrible thing his death did to him. Ben was a sort of father confessor to Sevie when Ben was teaching at his school. That's all we heard for the first few months—all about this wonderful teacher named Dolfus. And when Sevie was drowned, it was almost as hard on Ben as it was on us. But it was never the same after that—I suppose it never can be—I wanted another child, but …”Sulgrave noticed that she was looking out of the window at nothing, and that her tone was rambling. He couldn't follow her in everything, but it didn't seem important that he follow, just that he understand and listen and let her talk herself out. “… and then came the business of running aground, and the inquiry … then it was … was … oh, he would drink too much … and little things, too. Sometimes, oh a lot of times, I'd be in bed with him, and wish it was like it was before … when he could … could… I tried to help him, but I couldn't. I failed him. You can't know what it's like to love a man, and want to … be a wife to him, be a wife in bed and make him feel like … like a … You don't know what a heartbreaking kind of love that is… you're too young to know how to love someone and hate them for not being able to love you as much … want you as much in return. He just went sour inside. First the destroyer going aground, now he's dead … and mutiny. Do you understand what I mean when I say he went sour? Do you?”