Emancipation Day

by Wayne Grady

  “For what? Attempted murder?”

  “Naw, unauthorized use of firefighting equipment. An hour’s rifle drill every morning at oh six hundred. I’ve been reassigned to your station, me and Merrifield.”

  This was good news. He liked Frank, although he didn’t trust him all that much. He was older, twenty-three or four, came from a posh town somewhere near Toronto, father a lawyer or something, Frank was always vague about what. Jack could smell money, and Frank had the smell in spades. He was built like a prizefighter, buzz cut, heavily browed and bull necked, but he didn’t have a boxer’s stance. Stood with his feet apart. Doing his bit for the country but not taking it too seriously. Lots waiting for him when the war was over, in it for some kind of lark, the lawyer’s boy who could have been an officer or maybe even ducked the war altogether, but joined the ranks instead and befriended people like Jack. You couldn’t trust someone if you didn’t know their motives. But maybe he and Frank weren’t so different after all: they both wanted to see how the other half lived.

  “Any action yet?” Jack asked.

  “No. Quiet as a mouse. Bad weather keeps the U-boats under, apparently. But we’ll soon be crossing the Pit, said to be swarming with the enemy. If we get one on the ASDIC we could be out for a long time.”

  Jack groaned. He’d heard of ships that had stayed out for months, their crews not even getting shore leave for over a year. He looked at the bottle of pills. “You getting seasick at all, Frank?”

  “Yeah,” he said, touching his stomach. “Been feeding the fish all morning.”

  “You should take these pills,” Jack said. “I don’t need them anymore.”

  “Really?” Frank picked up the bottle and read the label. “Thanks, bud,” he said, spilling a few into his hand and putting them in the pocket of his dungarees. “Mighty white of you.”

  Jack looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t mention it.”

  After three days the orderly cut Jack’s bandages off with a pair of scissors. The skin beneath them was as pale as skimmed milk and he marvelled at it, the black hairs on the backs of his hands lying flat, like grass after a flood. On the fourth day he was back on watch, this time with Frank and Merrifield, but he still felt like death on a plate. Merrifield was an easygoing Nova Scotian who’d been a bosun’s mate on any number of whaling and sealing ships, according to him, before joining the Navy. Jack picked up a new cap from ship’s stores, but it had HMCS Assiniboine on it instead of HMCS Avalon, the Navy base in St. John’s that was his posting, and he didn’t like it. It felt like a transfer, like he’d never get back on solid ground. And they didn’t have his size: the strap dangled comically under his chin. The weather had calmed but the fog was so thick he could barely see the width of the ship, the sea a vague menace, something alive but unseen, forgotten for long stretches until suddenly remembered and dreaded, like a debt.

  He was still regularly sick, but he didn’t take the pills; he wouldn’t have kept them down long enough, anyway. He wondered how Frank was doing with them. He ate his salt cod (which they called sewer trout), or chipped beef on toast (shit on a shingle), then ran to the side to send it all over the rail. Chipped beef came out looking like a chocolate milkshake. Creamed corn cut a lovely golden arc through the fog. Every smell set him off. Soap, aftershave, cigarette smoke, burning coal. But he wouldn’t go back to Dr. Barnes.

  He was mustering for noon watch when the fog lifted, as though someone had raised a blackout curtain. Jesus, the sea was big. High overhead, a lone gull’s muted cry cut through the wind whistling through the rigging. Then the alert sounded: Action stations! U-boat off the port bow. They had both been cruising through the fog, the Assiniboine trailing behind the convoy and the U-boat waiting just below the surface for stragglers. Radar apparently hadn’t picked it up in the ground clutter. PO Spoonerson stood at the rail under the companionway, calmly smoking and calling back to Jack and Frank to remain at their post. “She’s that close we can’t get our big guns down low enough,” he said. “Cripes, Lewis, if her hatch was open you could puke your lunch right down into her. She’s trying to get far enough away from us to dive. Can’t dive this close or we’d be on her in a minute with the depth charges.”

  “We’re chasing her?” Jack yelled. He was standing beside the PO.

  “Bloody right we’re chasing her,” Merrifield called back.

  “What if it’s a trap? What if the U-boat captain’s the same one who blew the Ottawa to hell?”

  “We’re going to ram her,” the PO shouted.

  Oh Jesus, thought Jack, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He and Frank ran to the rail to have a look. Spoonerson told them to get back to the hose locker, but he didn’t push it so they stayed. Jack had never seen a U-boat before, hadn’t seen anything of the enemy at all. He realized that the war, up to this point, had been a rumour, news of something happening somewhere else. German planes didn’t fly over St. John’s. Torpedo netting kept the U-boats out of the harbour. The sub was longer than the Assiniboine but only half as wide, and with green water streaming along her glistening flanks she looked sleek as a giant fish, a whale or a leviathan, something mysterious and black and dangerous. Something biblical. He saw that the sub was not fleeing but manoeuvring for position—he knew it!—attempting to put some distance between the vessels so she could turn and launch a torpedo, and that the Assiniboine’s captain was trying to stay with her in case she submerged. They’d be sitting ducks.

  Staccato gunfire erupted from the Assiniboine’s foredeck: the gunners were firing on the submarine to keep the Germans from getting a crew to their own deck-mounted artillery. Jack couldn’t see many of the Assiniboine’s crew, a few at the rail like him and Frank, the rest at their action stations or behind baffles. What must it have been like in the U-boat? Jack realized with a start that there were men inside the submarine, that this wasn’t them against a machine or a monster from the depths, it was them against other men. Their own deck guns were ineffective, and the sub soon had its half-inch swung around and trained on the Assiniboine’s bridge.

  “Get back to your stations!” Spoonerson shouted, and Jack and Frank scrambled behind the fire station baffle. As soon as he lost sight of the ocean, he started feeling sick again. His head tried to lift itself from his shoulders. He heard a sharp budda-budda, a snare drum beaten on its rim, and an almost simultaneous clangour from above and behind them, followed by a searing roar. The Germans had hit a stack of gasoline cans stored under a tarp on the upper deck, fuel for the lifeboats and runabout, stupid place to put them. Jack could feel the heat from the flames on his face. Liquid fire began running along the boat deck, then towards them down the gangway and into the scuppers as the ship’s bow rose into the chase. He remembered what flames could do to flesh. He froze. Then Merrifield shoved him aside and began paying out the three-inch. “Take it!” he shouted, and Jack gripped the hose’s nozzle and ran with it towards the advancing flames, Frank following. “Don’t bother trying to put it out!” Merrifield called after them. “Just wash it over the side before it hits the companionway and goes below. Show a leg, now!”

  The hose stiffened in his hands as Merrifield opened the hydrant, and he and Frank grappled along the deck towards the flames. Crews on the upper decks were washing down fire, some of it landing on the lifeboats and some of it on them. Jack and Frank hosed off the boat canopies first, then washed the main fire into the scuppers, where it spilled into the sea and hissed like molten metal. He was sweating despite the spray blowing back into his face. He wanted to rip off some part of his uniform but didn’t dare take his hands off the hose. Frank turned to him and was about to speak when the ship gave a violent shudder and listed strongly to port, throwing both of them against the fo’c’sle. They were going down. Jack cried out, dropped the hose in panic, and it snaked away from him, spitting water in all directions.

  “Why the fuck did you do that?” Frank yelled, spittles of fire spilling around his head from the upper deck, and at that moment Jack hated h
im, hated the look of fear in his eyes mirroring his own. It was as though Jack had shared some private part of himself he had not meant to reveal. But they were all sinking, what did it matter? He didn’t belong here, he was a Windsor boy; his father had been right, this wasn’t their war. Merrifield saw the writhing hose, ran over and stepped on its brass head, stilling it. The ship righted.

  To avoid looking at Frank, Jack grabbed the hose from under Merrifield’s boot, then leaned over the side to search for the U-boat. She’d gone down and was slowly bobbing back to the surface, a long, silver gash showing on her portside.

  “We rammed her!” Frank said.

  The Assiniboine cut throttle and came about in a tight arc while, on the foredeck, the artillery crew lowered the forward Y-gun into position. Flame burst from the gun’s muzzle and Jack watched the black dots appear along the U-boat’s hull. They seemed unnecessary, for the U-boat was obviously finished. Still, you never knew. Air was bubbling out of her through the shell holes. Her nose lifted from the green water as though she were sniffing the air for the scent of land, and in seconds she began sliding backwards and was gone. It was over, his first kill. He realized he’d been gripping the rail so hard his gloves had frozen to it and his hands were numb. He heard the pipe to lower boats, and then the sound of davits and winches. It wasn’t over.

  “Get those boats in the water!” the bosun yelled. “Look sharp to it!”

  When he looked down at the sea again, he saw the oil slick, like the blood of the sunken U-boat, shimmering in the pale winter sunlight, spreading in a calm circle above the vanished sub. Then, within the slick’s circumference, objects floated to the surface. At first Jack thought they were just clothing and blankets. Then he realized he was looking at men. Some of them waved their arms and started swimming through the oil towards the ship, but many were unmoving, churned to the surface by underwater turbulence. Their blackened bodies emerged momentarily from the darkness, twisted and rolled and then vanished back into the depths. Islands of flame from the Assiniboine floated in the water between the ship and the living men. He watched as the little fire patches attached and grew into larger islands, then into bright continents, until the whole slick was a vortex of black, acrid smoke. The ship’s cutters were in the water now, their crews rowing hard towards the inferno. The few survivors, the mere handful who had managed to swim clear of the oil, were hauled up into the boats.

  Some of the men lying on the bottom of the open cutters wore German uniforms, but others were soot-stained men in civilian clothing—pinstriped suits, camel overcoats and street shoes. It was as though the exploding sub had torn a hole in the ocean, sucked up bodies from Windsor and Detroit and was now spewing them to the surface. He had seen this before, seen fire floating on water, seen bodies blackened by flame. He tried to turn away, but instead found his eyes searching the boats for the one dark face he had come this far to forget.

  Within a week he was back in sickbay. He hadn’t kept food or even water down for days. He stared up at the ceiling, imagining he was a bird flying over a snow-covered expanse of solid ice, looking for land. The orderly told him his fever was 102 and rising. On the cot next to his, an accident case sat, brown and gaunt, propped against a pillow, with a bandage over his right eye and forehead.

  “Fell down the aft companionway,” he said, “carrying a tray of wineglasses up to the officers’ mess. I’ll get a medal for it.” He grinned. His hair stuck out at odd angles from under the bandage. “What you got?”

  Just then Doc Barnes came in.

  “Have you been taking the pills?” he asked Jack.

  “Yes, sir,” Jack replied. Taking them and giving them to Frank.

  “Every four hours?”

  “On the bell, sir.”

  “Hmm. We’ll try upping the dosage. They’re new. Dr. Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill developed them. Navy’s trying them out for him. Makes you a kind of guinea pig, Lewis. I’ll give you some more, and this time, take them as required. Whenever you feel nausea coming on. Got that?”

  “I’ll be eating them like candy, sir.”

  “Try to keep track. If we can establish the proper dosage for you chronic cases it’ll be a big step forward.”

  Jack decided to risk it. He hadn’t detected any signs of recognition from the doc, but not knowing for sure was eating him up. “You’re Peter’s father, aren’t you, sir,” he said, trying to make his face look innocent.

  “You know my son?” the doctor said, frowning.

  “We were in the Sea Cadet band together. The All-Whites.”

  “Ah. Small world, isn’t it.” He stood peering at Jack as though trying to place him, then appeared to give it up. “In any case,” he said, “we’ll keep you here until you’re rehydrated.” At the door he turned. “We have to get you back to Windsor in one piece, don’t we?”

  Now what the fuck did that mean?

  Still, it sounded as though he didn’t mean to kill him. Maybe Peter hadn’t said anything, after all. You couldn’t trust anyone to do the obvious. He took two pills and felt all right for an hour, and when the icefield above his cot began heaving and breaking up again he took two more. He lay under the sheet in a cold sweat, unable to close his eyes, remembering the writhing bodies in the water, the strangers in the lifeboats. They must have hit some kind of weather system, the ship was bucking swells fore and aft as well as rolling from side to side. The bulkhead was being wrenched one way while the deck under him torqued in another. The war hero next to him was asleep. Jack took two more pills and, when he could close his eyes without getting sick, he fell asleep, too.

  When he woke up, Surgeon Captain Barnes was sitting on a chair at the foot of his cot, writing something on his clipboard. Jack stared at the silver snake on his cap badge. The ship was so steady he thought they must have docked. And the air smelled fresh. Someone had sluiced the scuppers. What a relief. There was a glass of water with a straw in it on his nightstand, and he sat up and took a sip. He looked over at the next cot and saw not the war hero but two gasoline pumps with his father’s truck parked beside them. The driver’s door was open but there was no driver in sight. Through the open door he saw a woman in the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette and showing a lot of leg.

  “Della?” he said.

  Dr. Barnes eyed him. “What was that, bandsman?”

  “Nothing, sir. How much do I owe you?”

  “Owe me?”

  “For the gas, sir.”

  Jack had to distract the doctor. Barnes must not look behind him and see his wife in Jack’s truck. Jack heard the Dodge door slam and saw that someone had climbed into the driver’s seat. It was his brother, Benny. Benny and Della? “You son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Find your own party!” Benny started the truck, drove it across the street and parked in front of the Ambassador Motel. Jack tried to get up and run but he was strapped into his cot.

  “Steady on, bandsman,” the doctor said. “How many of those pills have you taken?”

  Behind the doctor’s back, Frank Sterling and Ken Bradley were setting up their music stands. Rory Johnston came in carrying a bass drum with W. H. Lewis & Sons, Plasterers painted on the head and he began assembling the hi-hat and snare. Jack’s father was standing at the microphone and Frank waved Jack up to the bandstand. Christ, couldn’t he see he was sick? The doctor, still scribbling away, seemed unconcerned that behind the King’s Men a huge hole had opened in the ship’s side and a German U-boat was nosing its way into sickbay, sniffing for the Assiniboine’s boilers.

  “Are you hallucinating, bandsman?” asked the doctor, standing up and facing him. “Are you seeing things?” In his hand he held a key chain in the shape of the Ambassador Bridge.

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “How many people are in this room?”

  Jack looked around. Della and Benny had disappeared into Unit Six.

  The doctor made a note. “Who were you talking to just now?”

  “Mys
elf, sir.” It was true.

  “You seem to be in some distress.”

  “Not really, sir.” But seeing Della again, the line of her nylon stocking slightly askew, her skirt swinging as she walked towards the motel with Benny, who wouldn’t be distressed? If the doc could see what he saw, he’d be in some distress himself. If there was a doc.

  What was in those fucking pills? He looked at the band. They had changed into tuxedos and were smearing their faces and hands with black greasepaint. “Down Where the Swanee River Flows.” No, not Al Jolson, he hated Al Jolson. And Dixieland, they burned people down in Dixie. A hatch opened in the U-boat and Hitler began climbing down a Jacob’s ladder into sickbay. As the Führer stepped onto the deck the rope ladder became a hose, and then a noose around his father’s neck, and Frank and the band struck up a Dixieland version of “St. James Infirmary.” Jack twisted against the restraints in his cot, calling out in terror, but not loud enough to drown out Della’s screams of pleasure coming from the motel.

  VIVIAN

  Mary Parsons was right, he looked so much like Frank Sinatra it took your breath away. Triangular face, curly black hair plastered to his forehead, a grin like a fox who knows where the chickens are kept, that was Jack Lewis, Newfoundland’s newest singing sensation, as they called him on the marconi. Except he wasn’t from Newfoundland, was he. Mary Parsons said every time she saw him she had to bite her knuckles to keep herself from screaming, but Mary Parsons was Catholic and Catholics were given to hysterics. Vivian’s family was Church of England, solid as a rock. He did look like Frank Sinatra, but when that American sailor took her to see Step Lively at Fort Pepperrell, she hadn’t liked Sinatra at all. Too brash. Jack Lewis thought he looked brash, but he wasn’t quite pulling it off. Something about his eyes, well, they weren’t blue for one thing, but it wasn’t just that, there was a kind of pleading behind them, a coaxing, like they were saying, “Go along with me on this.” Like even before tonight they’d been in something sinful together. She’d once found Mary Parsons smoking a cigarette in school, and Mary had given her a look like that: “Don’t tell Matron.” And she hadn’t.