by Sloan Wilson
She kissed him, then brought him a tiny cup of tea.
“I can get coffee if you would prefer it.”
“This is fine.”
“Breakfast will be out on the terrace. Do you want a swim first?”
“If you’ll go with me.”
“I think we make love here. A gardener is out there now.”
A gorgeous butterfly shedding its wings, she took off the kimona and hung it in a closet.
“Syl … do you have any special requests this time?” She knelt by the bed.
“Just that I’d like to make love, not just sex, although I’m not complaining …”
“When you make love well you must not create pain,” she said, lying beside him, cupping his scrotum in her hand and squeezing slightly. “Almost pain is good, but no one wants to be really hurt.”
She rubbed the inside of his upper thigh lightly with her sharp fingernails, pressing them into the most sensitive spots.
“Don’t you like this?”
“I want to say good-bye. That’s what this really is, isn’t it? Things won’t be the same when we get back, no matter how long I can stick around.”
“This is the best way to say good-bye. No butterfly kisses … No Poor Butterfly. I give you what I can, you give me what you can. No tears, Syl …”
And all the while saying this she manipulated his body in such a way that he gasped with pleasure, but her face was as dispassionate as a physician’s. In a way appropriate … what she was doing was curing his body … Still, he put his arms around her and pulled her face down next to his own, but her lips were taut against his.
“No butterfly kisses,” she whispered, and as he released her she stroked his forehead. “Come now, it’s time we settle down to earth.”
Before starting back to Manila he emptied two of the jerry cans into the tank of the jeep. The smell of gasoline brought the Y-18 so vividly back to his mind that he almost felt the steel decks under his feet, heard the creak of her mooring lines and Cramer shouting, “All right, move it, move it …” He stood staring at the shadows of the gas fumes swirling in the bright sunshine on the driveway, like the ghosts of a tangle of snakes.
During the long drive back to Manila he could not get the men of the Y-18 out of his mind. When another jeep passed him, driving fast, a thin pinch-faced man at the wheel looked exactly like Simpson … No sooner had he recovered from this delusion than he seemed to see Sorrel, a young blonde sailor hitchhiking by the side of the road, and the man who sat on a suitcase next to him was Cramer. A young corporal directing traffic on the outskirts of Manila became Hathaway, and old Wydanski walked a dog across the street when Syl stopped for a red light. Suddenly the whole city seemed to be full of mirror images of his crew, or their ghosts …
If the Y-18 was lost, how long before Commander Patterson would be informed of it? Days could go by, even weeks, before sinkings were officially reported to personnel officers. The loss of a ship as insignificant as the Y-18 would never make the broadcasts or newspapers. But if the Y-18 reached Okinawa safely a dispatch would be sent and he’d be on his way back to her. That could happen in the next three or four days …
But Patterson had wanted to send him home to a new LST. How much time would it take for the commander to get a decision from headquarters? Priority dispatches could flash back and forth from Manila to Washington in a few hours, and maybe the question of who was to command a ship would be considered important enough for quick action. Syl felt a need to see the commander, to ask him where he stood. If he hurried he could get to the commander’s office before it closed.
Driving fast, he arrived at the Coast Guard office with a half hour to spare. He left Mary in the jeep and ran in. Patterson was putting papers in drawers when Syl came in. He glanced up, smiled.
“How was Baguio?”
“Great, but I can’t help wondering about my orders …”
“I think I’ve resolved the matter. I told you there’s no point in sending you back to the Y-18 if you’re just going to make trouble with the army, insist your ship isn’t seaworthy and refuse to sail her in the open sea. They need skippers for the landing ships, the new ones rate a lieutenant commander. I told you all this.”
Syl sat down on the metal chair in front of the desk. “I know, sir, but has headquarters agreed? I still feel—” Oh, shut up, hero. If they order you home, they order you home …
“I sent them a strong recommendation, a very strong one. I doubt they’ll bother to overule me. I told them that you’re a fine seagoing officer but you make trouble with the army. Nobody upstairs wants that. By the way, those landing ships work with the navy. The only army you’ll see will be passengers.”
Syl only nodded, not trusting himself to say anything.
“Do you still wish I’d sent you back to your tanker?”
“Yes and no, sir. I can’t honestly say more than that … Have you heard anything from the Y-18?”
“No, and I’m not likely to. She’s out of my jurisdiction when she leaves Manila Bay.
“I just hope she makes it—”
“It’s out of your hands. Mr. Simpson has a hell of a lot more experience than most skippers … Well, it’s just about five o’clock. How about a drink?”
“Thank you, sir. I’d like that.”
Opening a desk drawer, Patterson took out a bottle of Jack Daniels—Buller’s favorite—and two paper cups. After pouring both half-full he got up and handed one to Syl.
“Here’s to your old command, and your new one,” he said.
Feeling uneasy, even theatrical, Syl touched the rim of his paper cup to the commander’s and drank.
“Do you know where my new ship will be?”
“They’re building a lot of landing ships clear up on the Great Lakes. If you’re lucky you’ll get one of them. By the time you take any leave due you and bring her down through the Mississippi you might be just in time to get back out here for the biggest show of them all, the invasion of Japan. Now you wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”
With a wry grin the commander poured Syl another drink. “That one’s really going to be something.”
Syl gulped down the drink. “Sir, one of my officers, Buller, didn’t understand why we just don’t starve ’em out with a naval blockade. It never seemed very likely to me, but I’d like to know your thoughts.”
The commander sat down and refilled his cup. “It might work, eventually, but even if it did it would take too much time, maybe a year, maybe more. Who’s going to wait for that? And in the meantime, they’d get more and more desperate. They’d throw every man, woman and child against us. It could be worse than an invasion.” He drained his cup. “Well, good luck to you, captain. You can pick up your orders here in about forty-eight hours. You got a girl who’ll keep you busy until then?”
“Yes …”
“Don’t take her home with you. Filipino girls are real lookers, but they don’t do too well in our climate. If you know what I mean.”
“My girl does.” And so did he, and he didn’t like it.
“So check back with me Thursday morning. I’ll try to arrange air travel home for you. Those troop ships take forever.”
“Thank you.”
Outside the office Syl paused by a water cooler, too full of emotion even to want to see Mary at this moment. The Y-18 was gone from his life … he would never see that rusty hull again. He probably would never see Buller, Simpson, Wydanski or any of the others again, even if they survived the war. Chances were he would never hear a word about the Y-18, no matter what happened to her. The three other ships he’d served on had disappeared from his life the moment he left them, as completely as though they had sunk, though they were probably still sailing the seas. The service was like that … even close shipboard friendships, or enmities, almost always evaporated as soon as the men were separated. He had such mixed feelings about everyone aboard the Y-18, and yet he felt devastated now, as though he had lost a whole family …
It was ridiculous, he felt like crying, yet if those orders were changed and he was sent back to the tanker he would hardly be celebrating. What the hell did he want? He was going home, for thirty days leave at least, and maybe the whole damn war would be over before he ever got back to the Pacific. Why wasn’t he running out to whoop it up …?
He drank three cups of warm water, turned and slowly walked back to his jeep, where Mary was waiting.
“What happened?” she said.
“I got orders to go home and get a new ship.”
“That must be good news for you. They say those who bring good luck deserve to get some.”
“Yes, it’s good luck, all right …”
“What do you want to do to celebrate it?”
And Syl said something which greatly surprised him. “I’d like to find a church,” he said. “I … just want to sit there and think …”
CHAPTER 35
THE CHURCH SHE took him to was an ancient Spanish cathedral with one wing burned out, but it stood as it had for centuries, imperturbable in the midst of chaos. The roof arched so high and was so dimly lit that there was no visible ceiling. In a smaller room off the nave short thick candles glowed. Syl had never before been aware of the guttering flame of a small tower of wax as the perfect symbol of life. The tiers of candles shining in the shadows drew him toward them. As a Protestant he was uncertain of procedures in a Catholic church, but he knelt in front of the candles and tried to remember a prayer.
He was not good at this. The Lord’s Prayer, which he had memorized long ago in Sunday School, didn’t seem to have much to do with the chaos inside him now, despite its stately cadences. He knelt in silence, thinking of Simpson, his love of rectitude, and of Buller, his hunger for the men’s love … two kinds of passion that flickered as precariously as the candles. He thought of Wydanski and his broken dream of going back to Brisbane and his girl after the war to start life over again. And of Hathaway, Grinelli, Murphy and Sorrel, and felt ashamed because he had never come to know the enlisted men well, could hardly remember some of their names even though he’d lived within a hundred and eighty feet of them for so long. Even in civilian life he’d tended to live under a glass bell, had never managed the easy communication with others that had seemed to come so easily to, say, Buller. Well, in his fashion he mourned his own loss of the ragged crew of the Y-18. Yes, damn it, in his way he guessed he had loved them. Kneeling on the cold marble floor, he tried to pray for them, and for himself.
Sensing his need for privacy, Mary knelt in a nearby pew, saying her own prayers.
They walked out of the church silently and did not talk as they returned to her room. He sat down on the cot, rubbed his face and realized that his time in Manila was over. He took hold of Mary’s hand. “You’ve helped me, God knows. Now I want to do my best for you. Where are these papers you want this colonel to sign, and what’s his name? Where’s his office?”
After studying the papers and making a plan he said, “Now what else can I do for you before I leave? How about food?”
“Supplies are always hard to get for the restaurant these days, and I am supporting a lot of people …”
“How many?”
“Seven members of my family work for this restaurant, mostly cousins and aunts. We have five children all together, some of them still very small …”
He suspected that at least one of the children was hers and she didn’t want him to know because it was a part of herself she still needed to protect. Well, it was none of his business. She sat looking down at her hands, softly rubbing one against the other, as though reassuring herself.
“What kind of food do you need?” he said. “Make me a list.”
“How can you get it?”
“The Y-18 has sailed but she can still draw stores.”
“You’ll get in trouble—”
“Mary, my ship’s”—his ship? no more—“is so unimportant, nobody even knows where the hell she is. In the madhouse out here nobody’s going to check requisitions against a list of sailings. On paper I’ll still be permanent commanding officer of the Y-18 until I get new orders. I can draw stores.”
“Will this make you feel bad when you think about it?”
“I guess it’s stealing, all right … I used to lecture Mr. Buller about that, but those army warehouses are full of stores that will probably rot, now that the fighting is over here. Stores are piled up all over the wharves because they’ve got no places to put them. If I divert some to your restaurant and your family, I won’t lie awake nights, I guarantee you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and touched his face with one of her lovely hands.
He knew she did not want to make love that night. She could not stand more farewells. She poured him a drink. “Would you like to have dinner with me downstairs?”
It was a nice little restaurant, only a few tables in the back of the bar, and there was not much of a menu, but the rice and hot meat sauce were very good. When the kitchen door swung open he saw a middle-aged woman who looked a little like Mary’s great-aunt working at a stove, a young girl washing dishes and two small children playing on the floor.
“This isn’t the way the restaurant used to be,” she said. “There are four big rooms we haven’t fixed up yet.”
“I bet that won’t take long. Do you need building materials?”
“White paint, plaster and nails, all kinds of nails …”
He added those items to the list she had given to him.
“I’m pretty tired,” he said. “I’ve got a big day coming up. If I stay at the BOQ and drop in at the officers club I might even meet some guys who could help me to do business tomorrow.”
“What’s a ‘BOQ’?”
“Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. They’re not much, but I’m so beat that I won’t even know where I am tonight.”
“Thank you,” she said, and touched his face again.
His sense of so many kinds of loss had brought him close to a breaking point. The impersonal atmosphere of the barracks was a comfort. After taking a shower he walked to the officers’ club and sat at the bar, nursing a Scotch and water.
He was going home, and he still did not quite know what that meant. He had more accumulated leave than he could count, but maybe he would still get to some landing ship being built on the Great Lakes. Somehow, though, he felt in his bones that the war would be over before he had time to get back to the Pacific. No matter how it worked out, he was pretty sure that Buller had at least been right about one thing … Japan couldn’t stand against the entire world for long.
So it was all but over. It had been an interlude, like Sally had once said, and now … now what? Would they really just go on for the rest of their lives as though it had never happened? He couldn’t believe that, didn’t want to … He couldn’t imagine a domestic bliss made up of a kind of endless shuttle run between home and office. The worst thing he could do was to return to Sally and breed a few children. But how could he keep a decent woman waiting all through the war and then announce that he was leaving her as soon as he came home? It was a question he hadn’t allowed himself to think about during the long months on the Y-18. Now he had to face it, but he had no answer for it. Maybe because there was no answer. They’d both been trapped into early marriage, there was no way to escape without pain …
At least he should tell her the kind of life he wanted to lead and give her a chance to say yes or no … he had no doubt that her family would be indignant, accuse him of bad faith, and being an impractical dreamer. Who could say they’d be wrong? Of course, surviving the war was also statistically improbable, but here he was, on the eve of going home. And suddenly all his conflicts seemed unimportant. He was alive, and the hand that held his glass was still unburned, his flesh still covered his bones, and as he put down the glass and flexed his fingers he could feel the blood coursing through them. Instead of worrying about the future, he should thank God that he had one.
Tomorrow he wo
uld sign vouchers to draw food in the name of a ship that was still in great danger far away and give it to a few people at hand who had suffered more in this war than most soldiers or sailors. He would do his best to cut the red tape preventing Mary’s family from picking up the thread of their lives. In some cases, he was sure, from just surviving.
A Pacific interlude … well, he guessed he’d done his bit. He had saved thirty-three men from a burning tanker. He realized that by the grace of God he still could say that no man had ever been killed aboard a ship he commanded—poor Rhinehart had died on another vessel.
He had lived a quarter of a century, about a third of his life, if he was lucky. The precious horde of days given to him at birth was perhaps two-thirds intact, still in his pocket to be spent one penny at a time. The lives of all those men aboard the Y-18 were still on a gaming table, ready to be tossed into a murderous game at any moment, but there was no longer anything he could do about that. He’d at least tried to join them. His own treasure was still gripped tight in his fist, and he was about to leave the gambling casino. This one, anyway.
In a corner of the officers club a group of lieutenants led by a tall sardonic-looking man with a clear tenor voice actually began to sing “Bless ’Em All.” He listened for a while, reminded of Mostell, then walked to the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. The barracks were empty except for a few men who were sleeping heavily. One man snored fitfully, as Simpson often did after kneeling to say his prayers. Syl felt a strange compulsion to get on his knees by his bed, and after glancing around the room he did. He shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool sheet. This time the Lord’s Prayer came to his mind, not as a passage he had memorized and recited by rote in his childhood, but as something from the heart.
The next morning he thought for a moment he was still aboard the Y-18. When he opened his eyes and saw the sunlight streaming in the barracks window he felt an overwhelming sense of both gratitude, and aching loss …
Before starting out to take care of business for Mary he strolled down to the nearby waterfront. At the fuel docks he was startled to see a Y-tanker that from a short distance alway looked exactly like the Lucky Eighteen, but when he hurried closer he saw that she was a new ship that must have only recently arrived from the States. Her crew was disconnecting her cargo hose, and Syl stood watching while she got underway. As she backed into the harbor she gave three short blasts on her air horn, the very voice of the Y-18, as was the heavy beat of her Diesel. Her boatswain’s mate shouted while the crew coiled up her lines and a young officer climbed to the flying bridge to con her out of the harbor.