by John Boyd
“Not too tired, Helga. I rang our signal on the doorbell.”
“We’ve been having trouble with that bell lately, getting a disconnected buzz. It goes rrrr, rrrr, and then phhht, rrrr. Joan Paula’s been promising to rewire it for two months, but that girl defies me. She’ll work all day on a transistor radio but do you think I can get her to spend fifteen minutes rewiring a doorbell?”
“When a man’s been to sea for almost two years, Helga, he’s interested in more than doorbells.”
Drowsily she asked, “Give me a clue?”
“It’s something I haven’t had for eighteen months, twenty-seven days, and sixteen hours.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Animal!”
One eye closed, she squinted at him. “Sugar-easy-xray.”
“Now, you’re getting warm.”
“No, I’m not. And you’d better not either. You’re tired after forty-eight hours with that other woman, and I don’t want to give you this bad cold. I’m tired, too, after a disappointing meeting. I’m going to sleep in. If you have to get back to the ship, there’s bacon and eggs in the refrigerator.”
“Yes, I’ll leave early. Perhaps you and Joan Paula can lunch aboard tomorrow. It’s time she met some eligible bachelor officers.”
“Oh, Ben, she’s just out of high school. Besides, I want some eagle scouts in on the bidding…”
Helga was joking about Joan Paula but not about being sleepy. He reached over to stroke the curve of her hip. Even as he reached, he saw her eyes drift out of focus and her eyelids close. His arm continued its movement upward to flick off the bedlamp and he rolled over on his back.
Summer colds could be a nuisance, he admitted, but he was disturbed by her comparison of naval officers to eagle scouts. Hansen was fourth-generation Navy and named after an aircraft carrier whose fighting spirit had impressed his father during the battle for Okinawa in World War II. Under glass in the trophy room Helga had the telegram which his father had sent his then-pregnant mother in Richmond: “Have a boy. Name him after the USS Benjamin Franklin.” Only one American ancestor of Hansen’s had not died or been retired as an officer in the USN. Great-grandfather Boyle Hansen had been killed while serving aboard the CSS Alabama as an officer in the CSN. His own father, then a commander and the finest Virginia gentleman since Robert E. Lee in his son’s eyes, had figuratively gone down with his ship—literally up—when his destroyer was exploded by a North Vietnamese PT boat while patrolling, ironically, the Yankee Station.
Captain Hansen had nothing against eagle scouts, but a merit badge was not a Purple Heart.
Hansen awoke before six, dressed quietly, and eased out of the bedroom in order not to awaken Helga. In the hallway he noticed Joan Paula’s bedroom door ajar, and he went to peek at his sleeping daughter. She was not abed, although the bedclothes were rumpled. Her bathroom door was open and her bathroom empty. As of old, a teenager’s accoutrements littered her room, with the addition of a boldly stenciled sign above her bed: RESTRICTED AREA—LAUNCHING PAD.
“Papa, is that you?”
Her call came from the kitchen, where he found her rising from an unfinished roll and coffee to embrace him. If she had her mother’s cold, she was eager to give it to him, and he was eager to share it.
She was the same Joan Paula, a little taller, a little fuller around the pectoral area, but still lithe, energetic, laughing, and affectionate—almost. She pushed him away and looked up at him reprovingly. “Papa, where’s my penguin?”
“You never ordered a penguin.”
“That’s right! That’s why it would have been real neat for you to surprise me with one. But one thing I can depend on from my dad—no surprises.”
“Still my daughter.” He shook a dubious head.
“Until August, Papa. Say, how about a breakfast of charred toast, half-crisp bacon, and eggs straight up? Everything’s hot off the grill because I won’t use a frying pan.”
“Sounds good,” he said, sitting as she whirled to pour his coffee. “But why aren’t you my daughter after August?”
“I turn eighteen in August and go up for grabs.”
Turning to the stove, she moved with the efficiency of a fry cook, cracking eggs with her left hand as she separated bacon strips with her right, then she turned to the toaster, put in the bread, and with a minimum of effort, continued her movement downward to a cabinet from which she selected his favorite black marmalade. She had her mother’s wit, he decided, and her father’s efficiency.
“Where were you, last night?”
“Out bowling with my team. Big deal. We lost.”
“It surprised me to come home to an empty house.”
“Your telegram said two. When I came home and saw your jeep, I figured you had confused the telegraph girls again by using military time. You probably put 2000 and they dropped the last zero. I started to knock on your door but I heard you snoring.”
As she talked, she blotted the bacon, lifted the eggs, rolled his utensils into a napkin, flipped up the toast, turned, served him, and wheeled back to the griddle, scraping it down with a spatula. “I don’t mind cooking with the griddle,” she commented, “because I don’t have to clean any greasy pans.”
“You get a 4.0 for the meal,” he said, as she turned to sit down, “but how did you do in high school?”
“Very good, but mother’s giving me remedial reading, anyway.”
“Why?”
“She took adult courses in comparative literature and got hooked. She’s been force-feeding me. I’m up to my cowlick in Cowper.”
“What’s comparative literature?”
“You read all that stuff—German, French, Russian—then compare it.”
“Does your mother read Russian literature?”
“She flipped over that book about that Russian doctor.”
“I hope she isn’t reading Karl Marx.”
“He’s a German, Papa.”
He changed the subject. “Your mother was talking about a political meeting, last night.”
“Oh, she means that FEM thing. That’s a woman’s club for freedom, equality, and motherhood. They’re against war.”
“By heavens, is Helga putting me out of business?”
“You could sail a copra boat. I’d be first mate.”
“What about boys?”
“I like electronics. Boys are dumb.”
“Did you put that dishpan on my yardarm, young lady?”
“That’s a disk antenna, Papa. It concentrates television waves.”
“So, you think boys are dumb. I invited your mother and you aboard ship for lunch. Perhaps one of my young officers might say something that interests you.”
She looked over her raised coffee cup and shook her head. “Amapola, if you keep talking about boys, you’ll sound like a pederast. More toast?”
“No, thanks, J.P.” He glanced at his watch and got up. “Liberty expires at 0800, and the captain can’t be late.”
“Oh, gee!”
Arms akimbo, chin resting on palms, she was such a picture of dejection that he went around the table and patted her shoulder. “Don’t fret, honey. We’ll see each other again, at lunch.”
“But you’re leaving me with all the dirty dishes.”
“Maybe you’ll meet some future admiral, aboard, who’ll wash your dishes.”
She brightened. “I’ll walk you to the car, Papa, because I want to make a deal.”
For Hansen, it was sheer joy to walk down the hallway with this lithe and handsome girl who held his hand and swung his arm back and forth in a wide arc. “I want to go to college and study marine architecture, and if you’ll buy me a GE dishwasher you can keep the admiral dishwashers. Then, when I make enough money building ships to buy a copra boat, I’ll make you captain, because the scuttlebutt among the Navy juniors is that you’re the best ship handler in the Navy.”
“What’ll we do with your mother?”
“Stick her on the fanta
il and give her a book.”
She walked him to the jeep and turned to point up at her antenna. “Papa, it’ll get Baltimore on a quiet day. Must I take it down?”
He put his arm around her waist, considered her request with mock gravity, and grinned, “Child, for one-third interest in your copra boat, you can stick a weathercock up there.”
“Heavens no, Papa! With a rooster above the house, Dr. Carey would blackball mother.”
“Who’s Dr. Carey?”
“She’s a woman doctor, the president of the FEM’s, and she doesn’t care for men or roosters. She says automation and science has made them both unnecessary.”
“Is she crazy?”
“She’s a peace nut, but I wouldn’t call her crazy. She can prove what she says.” Suddenly, Joan Paula’s face brightened. “She teaches what she calls the New Logic, and I’m going to use New Logic on Mother. I’m going to leave your dirty dishes for her. She married you, and you’re her responsibility.”
She stepped back, saluted smartly, and said, “Carry on. Skipper.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
As he returned her salute and backed the jeep out of the driveway, Captain Hansen smiled. He’d take Helga aside when the two came aboard for lunch and plan a purchase to be kept secret from Joan Paula. He had been absent for over eighteen months, but he could still recognize a shrewd family campaign to get Papa to buy a dishwasher for the kitchen.
CHAPTER 2
When Hansen saluted aft and stepped aboard the Chattahoochee, he returned to a world he understood. Near the quarterdeck, the first division was mustering. Forward, the third repeater was fluttering down from the yardarm. As he climbed the ladder to the captain’s quarters, some instinct told him that this world was also wobbling slightly. Returning the salute of his orderly, he entered his cabin and smelled the aroma of coffee—his steward was aboard. His shore phone was connected, the Norfolk paper with the ship’s paper was on his desk, and his yeoman had brought in a fortnight’s accumulation of Navy bulletins. As the bosun’s “Turn to” was piped over the intercom, he settled at his desk, and Marcos brought in his morning coffee.
Hansen reached first for the Bureau of Personnel’s all-Navy bulletins to see if any of his classmates had been appointed admiral—an eventuality he did not expect for another five years—but he did not start to read immediately. Tapping his fingers on his desk top, he gazed idly out of the porthole at a honey barge moving across the Roads. Everything was shipshape, too shipshape.
On the morning of the first liberty in Norfolk, a shore-patrol paddy wagon should have been on the dock, MP’s with brassards and billies on the quarterdeck, and bluejackets scurrying to catch the roll call. Ever so slightly, it seemed to Hansen, reality was out of focus.
Commander Reed, the ship’s executive officer, entered bringing the eight o’clock reports. All were present and accounted for but Commander Johnson.
“Probably fouled up in the Suffolk traffic,” the captain commented. “Send him to me when he reports in.”
Hansen sipped his coffee and turned his attention to the ship’s paper. A digest of the international news carried the item that the Red Chinese had dropped another practice missile, this one close to Johnston Island. In ten years they’d be lobbing them ashore at Crescent City, California. On the second page of the paper, he found an item he considered raw:
According to skirmish reports coming from the port watch, Norfolk is having a cold wave in August. Only CWT McCormick scored, as expected. Go it, starboard!
He’d have to speak to the recreation officer. This paper went into the homes of ratings who lived in the Norfolk area.
Again the captain was interrupted, by the officer of the day who entered, hat under arm, visibly shaken. “Captain, I’ve just got the word that Commander Johnson killed himself.”
“By heavens! Who told you that?”
“His wife, sir. I called his house and asked Anne where he was and she said he was dead. She said he shot himself because she was pregnant. Sir, I was shocked. I said, ‘What are you going to do, Anne?’ and she answered, calm as you please, ‘Why, I’m going to bury him.’ Captain, I thought she was crazy. So I called the Suffolk sheriff’s office and the poop checked out.”
“I would never have thought this,” the captain said. “Ralph Johnson was the Rock of Gibraltar. But it happened ashore, so it’s out of our hands. Notify Mr. Reed and the chaplain and enter it in your log.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Hansen sat down, far more upset than he had let the junior officer know. Improbabilities were happening faster than probabilities. Commander Johnson had been phlegmatic to a point where a dressing down or a “Well done” were all the same to him. It was inconceivable that Ralph could arouse himself to suicide. But if Hansen assumed that he had erred in his estimate of his navigator’s stability, there remained the wife’s infidelity.
Anne Johnson had been a visitor at his home, but he would have remembered her if he had seen her only once. Legs as uniform as pipe cleaners balanced a pelvis relatively forward of a spine which, fortunately for her balance, was not top-heavy except in appearance—she wore her hair in a bun. Her most commendable feature was the manner in which her eyes followed her husband, not the eyes themselves, which were gray and bulbous. She hung on Ralph’s words, though they were few and commonplace, and even clung to his silences.
Hansen felt that Anne was incapable of dalliance, even if she had been eager for it. He leaped to the idea that she might have been raped on a moonless night by a near-sighted sex lunatic, and as tenuous as the theory was, it was the only explanation of her pregnancy.
Helga’s flirtation with a peace movement was easily dismissed as a passing fad. His wife read books. But the cold wave in Norfolk was perplexing. He could see a statistical improbability falling on any given day in a port such as Hamburg, Marseilles, or, remotely, Vallejo, but Norfolk? No!
Hansen slowly shook his head. In his approach to his profession Hansen was practical, forthright, and logical. He analyzed ship movements with his viscera, and the problems of command had long ago been thought through, solutions found and tested. Extraneous problems he resented—if an officer came to him for guidance or advice on personal or domestic problems, Hansen would deliver a few homilies and ship the man out. Technical problems he delegated to specialists who were held responsible. Captain Hansen considered it his duty, as a naval officer, to be single-minded.
Now, these intrusions.
Very well, he would accept the improbable as probable and act accordingly. If he were standing on the bridge when Gabriel blew his horn, Hansen would come to attention and hold a hand salute until the last note died. By accepting the improbable as probable, he reasoned, he could maintain his sanity and, more important, his decorum as a naval officer.
Johnson was dead and the ship’s table of organization called for a commander as a navigator. Although the Chattahoochee was scheduled for dry dock and he was up for a tour of shore duty, the ship needed a navigator.
The name that came first to Hansen’s mind was Frank Hewitt.
Ten years before, Hansen had served as exec on the destroyer Calicot, and Hewitt, then a junior grade lieutenant, had been navigator. Frank should have his three stripes by now, and Frank was the son of Admiral Hunnicutt “Flank Speed” Hewitt, ComSowesPacPolSqua. As a floating science lab attached to the Southwest Pacific Polar Squadron, the Chattahoochee had been under Admiral Hewitt’s command. When Hansen went up for admiral, Admiral Hewitt would be a logical choice for the selection board.
Young Frank had been a fair navigator. If he requested Hewitt, and some brown-nosing aide to an admiral chose to use this request as an opener for small talk when Admiral Hewitt dropped by Washington, the request for the admiral’s son would not hurt Hansen with the admiral. Hansen picked up the phone and put in a call to the Bureau of Personnel, for Captain Harvey Arnold, aide to Admiral Darnell, Chief of BuPers. After one click, a Wave answered, “Captain Arnold’
s office. Lieutenant Byrd, hyo!”
Annoyed by her Britishism, Hansen said, “This is Captain Benjamin Franklin Hansen, of the United States Navy. Let me speak to Captain Arnold.”
“Th’nk yo’p!”
“Walloper, you old polar bear! How was the voyage?”
“Little chilly down south, Harvey, and we hit weather off Hatteras.”
“I’ve been fighting a cold wave in Washington. No pun intended.”
“Same trouble in Norfolk, according to the ship’s paper. Only one of my ratings made out. Harvey, I need help. I lost my navigator last night. Unexpectedly. He’s dead.”
“Sorry, Ben.”
“Yes. All hands are shocked by his death. But I’m looking for a replacement. Some years back. Admiral Hunnicutt Hewitt’s son, Frank, served under me on the old Calicot and I liked the cut of his jib…”
“Whoa there, Ben,” Arnold’s joviality skidded to a halt. “Maybe you were too far south for the scuttlebutt, but Frank Hewitt resigned three months ago for the good of the service.”
Oh, hailstones, Hansen thought, recalling his phrases “served under me” and “I liked the cut of his jib.” Now the request would get to admirals, as many as Harvey Arnold could talk to, but none of those admirals would be Admiral Hunnicutt Hewitt. “Well,” Hansen said, “I’ve been out of circulation for a long time.”
“Don’t let it worry you, Ben. I’m glad to head off the request before it got into official channels. Give my condolences to your crew over the loss of your navigator, and give my compliments to that rating… No, tender my respects to… what’s his name?”
“McCormick. Chief Water Tender McCormick.”
“He would be an Irishman… Well, Ben, next time you’re around the Pentagon, drop in and we’ll have a cup of Java. Over and out!”
Arnold’s phone clicked.
Improbabilities were killing him. Who would have thought it of Frank Hewitt? That boy, Hansen recalled, used to have females lined up three-deep at the dock every time the Calicot hit port.