Herman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny

by The Caine Mutiny(Lit)

  "Holy cats," he muttered, "I thought sure you was Mr. Maryk."

  "I'm Mr. Keith," said Willie, "and what's your name?"

  "Fuller."

  "Well, Fuller, if I ever find you off your feet again on watch you get a general court-martial, do you hear?"

  "Sure," said Fuller affably. "Say, are you from the Academy like Mr. Carmody?"

  "No." Willie returned to the quarterdeck. Mackenzie was asleep on the life jackets again, and Engstrand was sitting on a hatch, smoking a cigar. He rose hastily when he saw Willie.

  "Sorry, sir. Just taking a blow."

  "Oh, God," exclaimed Willie. He was exhausted, enraged, and sick at the stomach. "And you a first-class petty officer. Three cheers for the good ship Caine. Look, Engstrand, you can sit, lie, or drop dead, for all I care, but keep this horizontal bastard on his feet for the rest of the watch, or I swear I'll put you on report."

  "Get up, Mackenzie, ¯ said Engstrand, in a dry crisp tone. The sailor sprang off the life jackets, walked to the rail, and leaned against it, staring sullenly. Willie went to the desk and opened the Watch Officers' Guide with trembling hands, wait-ing for Mackenzie's next move. But the sailor stood in the same place for ten minutes, and seemed to find no difficulty at all in standing. At last he spoke up.

  "All right with you, Mr. Keith," he said, with no rancor, "if I smoke?" Willie nodded. The sailor offered him a pack of Luckies. "Use 'em yourself?"

  "Thanks."

  Mackenzie lit Willie's cigarette, and then, to seal the good-fellowship thus established, he began to tell the new ensign about his sex career in New Zealand. Willie had heard some pretty frank talk late at night in college bedrooms, but Mackenzie's explicitness was something new. Willie was first amused, then disgusted, then fiercely bored, but there seemed no way to turn off the sailor's cloacal drone. The sky paled, and a dull streak of red appeared on the horizon. Willie was pro-foundly grateful when Lieutenant Adams came out of the ward-room hatchway, rubbing his eyes. "How's it going, Keith? Any strain?"

  "No, sir."

  "Let's inspect the lines."

  He walked around the ship with Willie, kicking the manila ropes that tied the Caine to the next destroyers. "This number--three line needs chafing gear, the chock is rubbing. Tell Eng-strand."

  "Yes, sir- Mr. Adams, frankly I had a hell of a time keeping the guards and the messenger from flaking out."

  Adams grinned wryly, then his face became long and stern. "That's damned serious."

  "They didn't seem to think so."

  Adams pursed his lips, and stopped to light a cigarette, leaning against the life lines. "Tell you what, Keith. You've got something to contend with. This ship has been in the for-ward area since March '42. It's been through a lot of action. The men are all Asiatic. They probably think a fantail watch in Pearl Harbor is foolishness. The trouble is, the skipper thinks so, too. It's the port director's orders, so we post the guards. You've just got to bear down."

  "What actions were you in, sir?"

  "Hell, about everything. Marshalls raid, Coral Sea-first Savo, second Savo-Rendova, Munda-"

  "What were you doing-minesweeping?"

  "Who ever heard of a minesweeper minesweeping? Mostly we ran av-gas for the marine fliers at Henderson Field. Ran torpedoes up from New Zealand. That was a happy deal, live torpedoes lashed all over the deck and getting strafed. Ran dogfaces up to relieve the marines on Guadal. Ran convoys all over the ocean. Supply scow, troop transport, screen, mail carrier, or what dirty job have you? That's the Caine. So if she's a little run down, you know why."

  "A little run down is putting it politely," said Willie.

  Adams straightened up, glared at him, threw his cigarette into the water, and walked aft. Over the loudspeaker came the chirp of the boatswain's pipe, then the words, "Reveille for all hands. Reveille." Adams snapped over his shoulder, "Check reveille in the after crew's quarter, Keith. Make sure they're all out of their sacks."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Willie decided that he had better guard his mouth. Adams and the other officers had been aboard the Caine so long, they must be blind to the fact that it was a filthy wreck. They might even be proud of the ship. He swore to himself that he would be different. He would keep perspective, and he would never rest until, one way or another, he had gotten himself off the Caine. He set six months as his limit. After all, there was an admiral who was fond of him.

  A narrow round hatchway and a steep ladder led to the after crew's quarters. Willie put his face to the opening and peered down. It was dark as a cave inside, and the smell was like a very hot and dirty gymnasium. Willie lowered himself through the hatchway and shouted, trying to use a fierce tone, "All right! What the hell about reveille, here?"

  A light snapped on in a far corner, revealing tiers of shadowy bunks full of sleepers. "Aye aye, sir," spoke a lone voice, "I'm the master-at-arms. I'll get 'em up. We didn't hear reveille called away, sir. Come on, you guys-up! There's an officer here."

  A few naked sailors rolled out of the bunks, but the response was sluggish and small. The master-at-arms turned on a bril-liant central light, and went from one tier of bunks to another, shaking, poking, pleading. The sailors were stacked like corpses in a mausoleum. Willie was ashamed of intruding on their wretchedness. The deck was as nasty as a chicken yard with butts, papers, clothing, and moldering scraps of food. The fetid air sickened him.

  "Hurry it," he said. He fled up the ladder.

  "How's it going back there?" said Adams when he returned to the quarterdeck. The sun was shining, and boatswain's pipes and loudspeaker's calls were filling the air in the repair basin. Barefoot sailors were hosing down the deck.

  "They're getting up," said Willie.

  Adams nodded satirically. "Excellent. You may secure now. Lay below and get yourself some eggs and coffee."

  "Aye aye, sir." Willie took off the gun belt, and his haunches felt pleasantly light.

  In the wardroom the officers were already at breakfast. Willie fell into his chair and ate what was placed before him, not knowing or caring what it was. He wanted to fill his gnaw-ing stomach and return to the clip shack and stay there for the day, stack gas or no stack gas.

  "Say, Keith," said the communications officer, buttering a roll, "I saw Roland last night. Says he's coming out here later today to pay us a visit."

  "Swell," said Willie.

  "We've gotten kind of stacked up on messages, by the way," added Keefer. "How's about decoding for a couple of hours after breakfast?"

  "Love it," said Willie, a little desperately.

  Captain de Vriess looked up at him from under thick blond eyebrows. "What's the trouble, Keith? Saddle bothering you?"

  "No, sir!" exclaimed Willie. "I'm glad to have something to do."

  "Fine. Ambition becomes an ensign."

  An hour later, as Willie toiled over a decoding device spread out on the wardroom table, the letters suddenly became a blur. The wardroom jerked back and forth, and began to rotate gently. His head fell on his hands. The fact that Lieutenant Maryk was reading official mail at the table beside him made no difference. He was done in.

  He heard the opening of a door, and then the captain's voice: "Well, well. Siesta time for Ensign Keith."

  He did not dare raise his head.

  "Sir," he heard Maryk say, "that clip shack is no place to sleep. The kid is shot."

  "Kind of ripe in port, but it'll be fine under way. Hell, Maryk, this boy's had four months' temporary in Pearl. Like to know how the hell he arranged it. He ought to have soaked up enough sleep to go without for a month."

  The captain's voice was mocking and cruel. It filled Willie with rage. What right had De Vriess to be so damned red hot? De Vriess was the man who permitted all the filth and sloth of the Caine, for which he deserved a court-martial. He seemed to reserve all his energies for baiting ensigns. Willie's accu-mulated resentment, weariness, and disgust coagulated at that moment into hatred of Captain de Vriess. The ship was the measure
of the commanding officer. He had fallen into the hands of a bullying stupid sloven. He gritted his teeth, and as soon as De Vriess was gone he pulled himself erect and re-sumed decoding with new energy released by hate.

  There was an enormous pile-up of coding traffic. He had to keep working until lunch time, and then for an hour after that. At last it was done. He dropped the decodes on Keefer's cluttered desk, went aft to the clipping shack, and fell asleep instantaneously.

  It was Adams again who shook him awake. "Keith, you have visitors in the wardroom-"

  "Huh-visitors?"

  "Keefer's brother, and two of the prettiest nurses I've ever seen. Lucky boy-"

  Willie, sat up, suddenly refreshed. "Thank you, sir. Sir, what's the procedure for getting off the ship?"

  "You check out with the senior watch officer-me."

  "Thank you, sir. I'd like to check out." Willie reached for his clothes.

  "Sure. Just let me have the assignment."

  Willie had to search his memory. Through the cloud of re-cent happenings came a dim recollection of the officers' quali-fication course. "I haven't had time to touch it, sir."

  "Sorry, Keith. Better clear with the skipper, then. Orders are that assignments must be up to date prior to any shore leave."

  Willie dressed and went down to the wardroom. He found the captain, in smart tropical khakis festooned with campaign ribbons, chatting with the nurses and the Keefer brothers. He disliked begging permission like a schoolboy in the presence of the girls, but there was no help for it.

  "Pardon me, Captain."

  "Yes, Keith?"

  "I request permission to go ashore."

  "Of course. I wouldn't think of depriving you of such charm-ing company," said the captain with elephantine gallantry. The nurses giggled. Miss Jones said, "Hi, Keither."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I presume you've checked out with Adams?"

  "Well, that's it, sir. That's why I'm checking with you." The captain gave him a quizzical look. "See, there's an assignment in my qualification course I haven't completed. It was handed to me yesterday and I've been on the go every second since and-"

  "Every second? Seems to me I've seen you at rest once or twice. What were you doing just now?"

  "I-I plead guilty to about three hours of sleep in the past forty-eight, sir-"

  "Well, why don't you sit down and bat that assignment out now? It won't take long. The girls will wait. I'll do my best to amuse them."

  "The sadist," said Willie to himself. Aloud, "Thank you, Captain, but-"

  "I'll give you a ti-ip," said De Vriess, in a teasing singsong. "The sketches you need are right up there in the ship's organiza-tion book. All you have to do is trace them. That's all I did in my day." He resumed his chitchat with the girls, who seemed fascinated by him.

  Willie took down the book and found the sketches. He cal-culated that it would require three quarters of an hour to trace the diagrams and copy the names of the spaces.

  "Pardon me, Captain."

  "Yes?" said De Vriess pleasantly.

  "This being a purely mechanical chore, as you say, would it be acceptable to you if I promise to turn it in prior to 0800 tomorrow? I can do it tonight."

  "No telling what shape you'll be in tonight, Keith. Better do it now."

  The nurses laughed, and Miss Jones said, "Poor Keither."

  "Use my room, Keith," said the communicator. "There's a ruler and tracing paper in my upper right-hand drawer."

  Blushing, seething, Willie bolted from the wardroom. "War is hell," he heard the captain say, and the girls gurgled. Willie made the sketches in twenty minutes, grinding his teeth each time he heard feminine laughter from the wardroom. With the papers in his hand he climbed up on deck through a scuttle to avoid the captain and the girls, and went looking for Adams. But the senior watch officer had left the ship. There was no help for it; Willie had to go below and, his cheeks flaming, hand the sketches to the captain. De Vriess inspected them carefully while the girls cooed and whispered. "Very nice," he said after a long, humiliating pause. "A little hasty, but under the circumstances, very nice."

  Brief giggle by Nurse Carter.

  "May I go now, sir?"

  "Why not?" said the captain magnanimously. He rose. "May I give you people a lift? I have a station wagon."

  "No, thank you, sir," Willie growled.

  The captain raised his eyebrows. "No? Too bad. Good-by, Miss Carter-Miss Jones. Very pleasant having you aboard." He walked out, putting on his hat with a self-satisfied tilt.

  The party that followed was a dampened one. Willie covered his fury with a dull silence. The girls found little to say. In Honolulu they picked up a third nurse earmarked for Tom Keefer, an extravagantly stupid, beautiful blonde. She dis-played a marked and instant liking for Roland. Tom retreated into long drunken quotations from Paradise Lost and the poems of T. S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins while Ro-land and the blonde carried on a boisterous flirtation. This was during dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Willie drank more than he ever had in his life. They went on to a Danny Kaye movie at CincPac, which he saw blurrily, as through a rainy window. He fell sound asleep in the middle of it; and never really woke, though he walked obediently wherever he was led, until he found himself riding in a taxi with Tom Keefer.

  "Where are we? What time is it? Where are the others?" he grumbled. His mouth tasted sickeningly of rum and Chinese food.

  "We're on the way home, Willie. Home to the Caine. Party's over."

  "The Caine. The Caine and De Vriess-"

  "Afraid so."

  "Mr. Keefer, am I wrong, or is De Vriess a complete lout and moron?"

  "Your estimate is a little generous, otherwise correct."

  "How does such a man get command of a ship?"

  "He isn't commanding a ship. He's commanding the Caine."

  "He's made the Caine what it is."

  "Very likely."

  "Say, where's Roland?"

  "Out getting married to the blonde. I hope so, anyway. He ought to make an honest woman of her after what they were doing at that movie."

  "He sure cut in on you."

  "Roland isn't responsible," said Keefer, "for the deeds that his thyroid puts him up to. It's a classic instance of what Kant calls arbitrium brutum. You recall the passage, no doubt."

  "Of course," said Willie, and fell asleep again.

  Keefer led him aboard the Caine and dumped him into the clipping shack. Willie was only half aware of what was happen-ing. An hour later he was being shaken out of his sleep. He opened his eyes and looked into the face of Paynter. "Whassa-matter now?" he mumbled.

  "Message to be broken, Keith."

  "What time is it?"

  "Quarter past three."

  "Jesus, can't it wait till morning?"

  "Nope. Caine is information addressee. Any message where we're an addressee is busted at once. Captain De Vriess's orders."

  "De Vriess," snarled Willie. "De Vriess. Why doesn't the Navy send him back to high school to mature?"

  "Come on, Keith."

  "Pal, let someone else break it. I'm too tired to see."

  "Assistant communicator always handles these night breaks," said Paynter, "as I know only too goddamn well. Come on, Keith, I've got to get back to the gangway."

  Willie slid out of the bunk and descended to the wardroom, leaning heavily on bulkheads and railings. He propped his spinning head on one arm and set about decoding. The message was addressed to the aircraft carrier Brandywine Creek for action. Halfway through the message Willie jumped up and uttered a cry of joy. He poured himself a cup of sludgy coffee, drained it, and raced through the rest of the decoding. With the penciled message he ran up to the quarterdeck, threw his arms around Paynter, and kissed him. The dour engineer pushed him away in distaste. "What the hell?"

  "Look, friend, look. Tidings of comfort and joy."

  Paynter took the slip of paper to the light over the desk. Shielding it from the side glances of the w
atch, he read: Lieutenant Commander Philip F. Queeg USN detached. Pro-ceed to Anti-submarine Warfare School San Francisco for training. Upon completion proceed to relieve Commanding Officer Caine DMS 22.

  Paynter looked mildly pleased.

  "Well," said Willie in a low tone, standing beside him, "aren't you going to kiss me back?"