by Wayne Grady
When the Chief finally marched them out, it was close to oh seven hundred, still too dark to see the music on their lyres. They played from memory, Sousa’s “Salvation Army,” which he’d been playing since Sea Cadets. Rain beaded on his horn and froze, collected on his cap and ran down his neck. Thank God he could play the trombone with gloves on, and that he’d coated it with cold cream to keep the rain off the brass. A handful of locals maybe walking to work stopped to wave or shout a word of encouragement. School kids ran along the sidewalk beside them, throwing pebbles at the bass drum.
When they reached the Navy docks, something broke in the routine. Instead of splitting them into two parallel lines so the band could play as the men continued up and onto the ship, the Chief marched the band straight up the gangway and onto the foredeck, where they looked about them like a bunch of cats that had just been dumped out of a sack. HMCS Assiniboine. Destroyer escort, like he’d thought, but what the fuck were they doing on it? The band was formed into six lines and stood at ease, feet twelve inches apart, instruments ready at their sides.
“We’re going to sea,” someone behind him said quietly. Sounded like Seddidge.
“No we’re not,” Frank said. “Some bigwig just wants a show.”
“We are.”
“We can’t be,” Jack said.
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because that’s why I joined the band, so I wouldn’t have to go to sea.”
There were sniggers among the ranks, but Jack was serious. The Chief turned and glared. A low rumbling sound, like kettle drums tuned to E, and tremors coming up from the metal deck through the soles of their boots. The ship’s engines had started; the deck crew was getting ready to cast off. Jesus, they hadn’t prepared him for active duty. A few fire drills in the Armouries in Toronto, a lecture on chain of command. If a gunnery rating tells you to get out of the fucking way, get out of the fucking way. If a ranking officer tells you to get out of the fucking way, jump overboard. Officers wore caps with scrambled egg on their visors: salute it. The Chief was a non-commissioned officer, promoted from the ranks, one of the boys. Don’t salute him and don’t call him sir. Ordinary seamen were nothing, useful for holding hoses and clearing clogged scuppers. Four ways you could be killed in the Navy: aircraft from above, U-boat from below, destroyer from in front, cowardice from within. What about stupidity? Stupidity was cowardice. Ignorance, ditto. And how many ways to make it out alive? One: luck. And if you were a bandsman standing on the deck of a ship in wartime in the snow in the dark holding a frozen trombone, you were one unlucky son of a bitch.
Except it wasn’t completely dark anymore. Jack could see across the Assiniboine’s foredeck to the harbour, where a dozen other ships lay at anchor. Two huge grey hulks crawling with ants: troopships. Some of the names on the warships he could make out through the rain. HMCS Shawinigan, corvette. HMCS Esquimalt, HMCS Clayoquot, minesweepers. Half a dozen merchant vessels: M/V Bay D’Espoir. M/V Connaught. Fucking escort duty, then. Maybe they’d be escorting the merchantmen to Halifax, two days each way, or possibly to New York, a week. They’d lost three ships to U-boats on that run last month. You didn’t notice the empty bunks in the barracks anymore, except you did. Above the ships’ radar antennas the black headland of Cape Spear, a thin line of white froth barely swelling at its base, shielded them from the open sea. Beyond that was nothing, water, black and cold and unimaginably deep, with lots of corpses in uniform at the bottom of it.
When the ship cleared the harbour gates the Chief dismissed them and the boson piped them below to the mess deck. Their kitbags were already there, neatly stowed beside their instrument cases and a pile of curious-looking cloth batons that turned out to be rolled-up hammocks. Twelve men to a mess, one mess for each of the trades: signalmen, firemen, gunnery mates, stokers. Jack, Frank and some of the other bandsmen fell in with the gunnery mates. They slung their micks over steam pipes, vent housings, odd hooks, wherever they could find a billet. Below them, metal tables and lockers were bolted to the decks and the bulkheads. Nothing was made of wood. When a torpedo struck, one of the gunnery mates told them, wood splintered and flew through the air, killing more ratings than compression or drowning. Metal just buckled and melted. “Fucking slave ship,” Frank muttered. Jack laughed, but his hands were shaking and they’d barely left port. He looked for a porthole but there wasn’t one, they must be below the waterline, a half inch of steel between them and oblivion. Knowing he was underwater made him feel as though he were drowning. Over the intercom they were ordered to bring their instruments to the forward hold, D Deck, to be stowed under rope netting until needed. Soft, red light in the passageways, couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. “Blacker than Toby’s arse down here,” Jack said. You had to claw your way back up the gangway to C Deck for chow. By then, the ship was well underway. The tremor he’d felt earlier became a full-fledged shudder as they listed slightly into the open sea, the engines rising to maybe F-sharp. Standing in line for chow he could see the flat, grey, foam-flecked ocean and smell fresh air through an open scuttle. He took in huge draughts of it, as though he’d been holding his breath against a smell. A dozen merchant ships through one scuttle, another dozen through the next. A huge convoy.
Frank came back from a reconnaissance mission among the regular sailors ahead of them in line.
“We’re not going to Halifax,” he said. “We’re on the Derry Run, escort duty across the North Atlantic. Fifty ships. We hand the merchantmen over to the British at the MOMP, the Mid-Ocean Meeting Point, somewhere off Iceland. Then it’s R and R,” he said, grinning.
“Oh good, rest and relaxation.”
“No, refuel and return. Three fucking weeks at sea. Maybe longer.”
Jack’s stomach tightened and his ears buzzed. “Why us? We’re not combat, we’re bandsmen.”
“They send us to sea every six months to dry us out.”
“What, no rum on board?”
“I didn’t pack any, did you?”
“Fucking hell.”
The crew worked four-hour watches: the first from oh eight hundred to twelve hundred hours; the middle watch, twelve to sixteen hundred; and the morning watch, sixteen to twenty hundred, then the first again. A day was four hours on, eight hours off, then four on and eight off. Everything done by bells. Goddamned bells rang every half-hour: one bell, two bells, up to eight bells, change of watch. Jack pulled the twelve-to-sixteen-hundred and midnight-to-oh-four-hundred: hell’s bells. He spent his first noon watch on the boat deck, manning Fire Station H, portside boat deck, with petty officer second-class Spoonerman or Spoonerson, and two other ordinary seamen, Trilling and Sinclair, neither of them bandsmen. Salt water freezing to the rails. He could already feel the beginnings of seasickness, the slight dizziness, the weakness in the knees. He’d sometimes felt light-headed on the Detroit ferry, but that trip lasted only half an hour, and he’d put it down mostly to booze. This was something else. This went deeper.
The four of them spent the watch either sitting on the hose locker or standing in the lee of a lifeboat, smoking and telling lies about the girls they’d left behind. They called the women “parties.” Jack thought about Vivian. He’d phone her when he got back, but she’d probably have someone else by then. Sweet little party like that, it was a wonder some officer hadn’t got his hooks into her already. What did she see in a guy like him? He held on to the ship’s rail with one hand, keeping the other in the pocket of his greatcoat, staring out at the ocean, unable to go forward, afraid to go back.
His stomach began to feel worse when they lost sight of land. He spent the eight hours between watches lying in his hammock, trying not to throw up. He thought he’d be all right as long as he didn’t eat, but at twelve hundred hours he went above decks, emerging from the blood-red light into the sudden, silent starlight, and was sick. It was like being drunk, only all the time.
One relatively calm night, Spoonerson told them about taking his survivor’s leave in Ireland a
fter the Ottawa, a sister destroyer escort, went down. He’d been billeted in a castle beside a pub and had fucked a barmaid named Cathleen every night for two weeks, or so he said. When his leave was up she tried to cut her wrists with a broken wineglass. Jack leaned his elbows on the taffrail and watched the way the moon lit up the spit left behind by the props. This was all bullshit, he thought. Who would be fool enough to kill herself over Spoonerson?
“The Ottawa was a beautiful destroyer, though,” Spoonerson said after a while. “Went down right about where we are now, thirty-two merchantmen in the ring, except it was a Sunday and not so fucking cold. Thirteenth of September, 1942. Out on a hunt, wolfpack caught her. Sixty-five survivors from a crew of a hundred and seventy-eight.” Spoonerson leaned over the rail and spat into the propwash, a tribute to all drowned seamen. “First torpedo came through the fo’c’sle on the port side, into the signalmen’s mess where thirty men were sleeping. Rudder smashed all to shit, and when the sub’s commander saw she couldn’t manoeuvre, he angled off and torpedoed her again, this time hitting her amidships on the starboard side, right in the boilers. She went down like a stone, captain with her. Me and a few others was picked up by the Arvida, took us all the way to Londonderry.”
Jack looked at Spoonerson’s ribbons. He might have been telling the truth. But then why was he still a second-class PO doing fire duty? No one was who they said they were.
On his fourth day out he was worse but thought if he tried to eat something he would get his sea legs, so just before noon he climbed up to the mess for chow. The sea had become rougher if anything, not stormy exactly but moody, as though on a slow burn, biding its time, and the clouds on the horizon were always low and dark. Someone said they were over the Grand Banks, where the water was shallow and easily rucked. As soon as he entered the mess, the smell of frying sausages sent him running for the side. After that, all he could think of was the ship’s heaving, the deck slowly rising under him, and just when he thought the ship was about to flip over it would begin to go back down. A pause, as though the ship were lowering itself for him to jump into the sea, and then the whole thing would start again the other way. Jesus, the sweat running down his rib cage, the roaring in his ears. Rolling home … He felt hollow and filled with sound, like a cave in a windstorm. Or maybe like a horn. Thank Christ he didn’t have to blow one now. He stood at the rail for the entire watch, feet sliding on the slick metal, wishing the ship would just keep canting for once and dump him over the side. He didn’t report to sickbay, although he knew plenty who did. Sickness was cowardice. Next worse thing to deserting your post. Frank told him to eat, keep something in his guts, so he went up to the mess for mid-rats before his night watch and what did he see? Two pumpkin pies set out on the table. At first he thought they were walnuts on top, then they moved. Cockroaches. He puked all down his uniform front, inside his tunic. Seamen stepped around him. “Christ, Lewis, get the fuck down to sickbay.”
He had to crawl on his hands and knees, couldn’t stand up his stomach hurt so much, he just wanted to lie down in it and die, but he made it to the hatch, through the blackout cheaters and out onto the fantail, where he lay on his stomach clawing at the deck mat with his fingernails to keep from sliding over the stern. Couldn’t move another inch. Fuck it, let them put him on charge, let a sniper see him. But it was Sinclair and Trilling who found him.
“Well, look at this sorry excuse for a seaman,” Sinclair said. He stood wavering on the deck, as though trying to keep his balance. “He don’t look human at all. He couldn’t be drunk, now, could he?”
“No,” said Trilling. “We’re drunk, and he looks worse’n us.”
Jack tried to speak but he had no breath. All his stomach could do was tighten and heave. I’m all right, boys, he thought, leave me alone, I’ll be fine.
“I think he is, though.” Sinclair leaned unsteadily over Jack and nudged him with his boot. “Drunk, I mean.”
“Maybe we should give him some water,” Trilling said. “Whaddaya say, Jack, ol’ boy? You wanna cold shower? Sober you up a bit?” Sinclair was unfurling the three-inch hose from its housing on the afterdeck. “That’s the ticket!” shouted Trilling, and together they turned the water on him, a jet so strong it took both of them to hold it, laughing so hard they nearly washed him overboard. Jack wrapped his arms around a stanchion as his legs swung over the side, and he stared down at the propwash glowing phosphorescent in the glowering sea, still puking, through his nose, now, from terror. His cap filled with water and the chin-strap started to choke him, then it broke. He looked up into the white faces of his tormenters and screamed. What had he done to deserve this? Why did they hate him? What did they know?
When they shut the hose off and left him, his greatcoat froze to the deck. He didn’t know if he was still hugging the stanchion or if his coat was the only thing keeping him on the ship. His last thought before passing out was that his mother would look into her tea leaves in the morning and see a floating cap with his name stencilled on it. She would tell his father he had drowned.
Their ghostly faces were still leering at him when he came to, and it took him a long second to realize he was in sickbay, lying on a metal cot. Pipes hissed above his head. Orderlies scurried about, the ship rolling more than ever, but he felt better, no, he felt numb, they must have given him something. He lay for a long time afraid to move, hearing the kettle drums’ pulse through the sides of his cot. His hands were wrapped in bandages.
A man wearing a white smock came up to him. He was older, probably an officer but the smock covered his pips. He looked more like a businessman to Jack, like he was going to sell him insurance or something: hair neatly brushed, nails cut short and filed smooth.
“Ordinary Seaman Jack Lewis,” the man said, reading his clipboard.
“Sir.”
“I’m Surgeon Captain Barnes, chief medical officer on board. You’re a lucky man.”
“Am I, sir?” Barnes. Dr. Barnes. It couldn’t be. Jack felt his palms sweat under their bandages.
“Your mates thought you were drunk.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I’ve determined that. Worse case of seasickness I’ve ever seen. Where’re you from, anyway? Saskatchewan?”
“No, sir. Windsor.”
“Nova Scotia?”
“No, sir. Ontario. Across from Detroit.”
The man looked amused. “I know where Windsor is,” he said. “I’m from there myself.”
Jesus. It was Dr. Barnes. “Wish I was there now, sir.”
“Hmm. Well, you’ll have to stay where you are for a bit. Until your hands improve and we can take those bandages off. Couple of days. They were pretty badly frozen. We should be into the storm good and proper by then. Think you can manage?”
“No, sir.”
“Good man,” he said, and left.
Jack stared after him. Doc Barnes, Peter’s fucking father. The one man in the whole goddamned Navy who had reason to kill him. Had Peter written to him? He felt his stomach and chest start to go and he thought about calling for a bedpan. Whatever the doc had given him was either taking hold or wearing off. Half an hour went by and no one came to his cot. Maybe Barnes had poisoned him and was waiting for him to die. Eventually, an orderly padded up and placed a bottle of pills on the metal bedstand.
“The MO says you’re to take these for seasickness.”
“I already have seasickness,” he said.
“Take one every four hours. Every time you hear eight bells, take a pill. Got that?”
He nodded and the orderly left. He looked at the bottle. “Pill #2-183,” but no name on the label. The pills were pale yellow, like powdered piss. How the fuck was he supposed to take them with his hands wrapped in bandages? But of course he wouldn’t take them anyway, in case Barnes had recognized him. A chief medical officer could get away with anything, even murder.
He’d never met the doc in Windsor because he’d gone off to war before Jack had joined the All-Whites, but
he remembered the photograph in Peter’s house, on a small table under a lamp with a fringed shade. It was always early evening when he’d visited Peter and Peter’s mother, Della. He and Peter would stand by a window in the upstairs parlour, blackout curtain askew, looking down onto the street through the leaves of a giant chestnut. Black smoke over Detroit, Jack’s own face reflected in the glass, hollows where his eyes should have been and his pale ears sticking out. He looked like a frightened raccoon. Were his cheekbones too high? Della was behind them, knitting. He watched her reflection in the window as she crossed her legs, swinging her foot in time to the needles, the little pucker of concentration making her lips look poised for a kiss. He turned his head for a better look at his own profile in the window. A little too high? He’d kiss her if she ever gave him the chance.
“They threw a woman off the Belle Isle Bridge.”
What woman? Who were “they”?
When he woke up, Frank Sterling was standing beside his cot. “Hello, Jack,” he said. “I hear they had to chip you off the deck with ice scrapers.”
Jack held up his bandaged hands. “I could have died, the bastards.”
“They’re being disciplined,” Frank said happily.