Sweet Reason (9781590209011)

by Robert Littell

  Boeth looked quizzically at Joyce. “To tell you the honest to God truth, Poet, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Joyce smiled self-consciously. “If it’s any consolation to you, neither did I.”

  The bo’s’n’s whistle shrilled over the ship’s loudspeaker system, piping down the midday meal.

  Boeth nodded and then shrugged. Joyce shrugged back at him and the two smiled at each other.

  Boeth asked, “Does he still jerk off his phallus-flashlight?”

  “He still plays with it,” the Poet said, “but he’s a lot more complicated than we thought.”

  “And Sweet Reason,” Boeth asked, “what do you think of him now that he’s pulled off a mutiny?”

  “From what I can see,” the Poet said, “Sweet Reason didn’t have all that much to do with it.”

  The XO Makes a Discovery

  The Executive Officer made his way through the chow line that snaked aft along the inboard passageway. The white sailors who blocked his path he pushed aside with the back of his hand; the black sailors he said “Excuse me” to and then pushed. They gave ground, or so it seemed to the XO, with a slowness bordering on insolence.

  As he moved aft, the XO caught snatches of conversation.

  “… with this midget, see, it was like getting laid to a …”

  “… pull in eighty dollars a day in tips plus room and board. Shit, man, I know a guy soaked away …”

  “… this cop gets sick, right, he asks me to collect for him, right, so I pick up fifty cents here, a buck there, you get it, so when the cop kicks the bucket I don’t tell no one he kicked the bucket, I just keep on collecting …”

  The XO was almost at the midship’s passageway when he sensed the change in atmosphere. Men were milling in front of the Doc’s office, gesturing, craning, arguing; everyone seemed to be talking at once.

  “Who the fuck he think he is, putting one of those things up just when chow is going down?”

  “Lemme see, lemme see.”

  “Forget the mother and let’s eat.”

  “He’s sure got guts, he has.”

  “He’s got his nerve, that’s what he has.”

  “Read it a-loud, will you?”

  A sailor who felt the XO pushing on the flat of his back turned on him belligerently. “Watch who the fuck you’re —” When he saw who it was, the sailor backed off. “No offense intended, sir.”

  “What’s going on here?” the XO demanded. The talking subsided into a sullen silence. Finally Angry Pettis Foreman, a toothpick jutting from his lips, nodded toward the laminated mouth-to-mouth resuscitation chart screwed to the door.

  “What the —” exclaimed the XO, and he peeled off the piece of paper taped to the chart the way someone rips off a bandage, in one rapid motion so there will be as little pain as possible.

  “I found it taped to the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation chart forward of the midship’s passageway,” the XO told the Captain a few minutes later. “I think I got it before too many of them saw it.”

  Jones sat in front of his desk, his shoulders hunched, toying with the food in his tray. The XO offered him the leaflet and when the Captain made no move to take it, the XO asked, “Do you want me to read it?”

  Jones nodded grimly.

  The XO coughed nervously. “It starts with this darned ‘comrades in arms’ business again,” he said. He expected the Captain to say something and when he didn’t the XO said, “Bleeding heart Bolshevik expression if I ever heard one.” Still no response from the Captain.

  Without looking up between sentences, the Executive Officer began to read the leaflet.

  “Today we have demonstrated what men of conscience can accomplish when they listen to reason. The officers and men of the Eugene Ebersole refused to obey the racist pig captain when he ordered them to pull the trigger. This morning, the most elerquent sound in the entire world was the silence of men who refused to kill. It is this silence that will drown out the generals and admirals of the Pentagon.

  The Voice of Sweet Reason”

  For a long time after the XO finished reading Jones didn’t say a word. Finally he spoke in a dead voice. “It’s him —” He brought a palm up to his jaw to stop the quivering. “It’s him or me,” he said. “Do you read me, XO? It’s him or me. The navy’s not big enough for both of us.”

  “You told me Proper still had something up his sleeve, Captain — something about some spaces he didn’t search yet. Should I get him up here?”

  “No,” Jones said. “Just give him Quinn’s keys. He knows what they’re for. Don’t want to see him again until he’s found this —” Again the Captain racked his brain for an expression he could freight with the contempt he felt for Sweet Reason. “This —” Again he failed to come up with one.

  “About the leaflet,” the XO said, holding it toward the Captain. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  But Jones had turned back to pick at the cold food in the compartmented tin tray on his desk.

  Jones Catches Sight of Another Everyday Occurrence

  “Now the Captain is on the bridge,” Ohm growled into the loudspeaker system, but the sound seemed to melt away in the wind whistling past the ship.

  Squinting into the sunlight, which was hard and hurt his eyes, Captain Jones shuffled onto the open bridge. He usually wore sunglasses topside but he had forgotten them this time, and there were large white circles under his eyes where the sun hadn’t tanned the skin. He had abandoned his Adlers for green felt bedroom slippers, and the change left him several inches shorter. His khaki trousers were creased in all the wrong places and bagged at the knees. He wore a nonregulation gray sweater with brown leather elbow patches knit by an older sister who lived in Wichita. His eyes seemed to have difficulty focusing, his features still had the blurred quality of melted wax. As he bent over the starboard pelorus peering through the telescopic alidade at the carrier racing into the wind, he looked like an old man fumbling with a key in a lock.

  “Congratulations, Captain,” de Bovenkamp called, saluting smartly with one hand and pressing his hat to his head with the other to keep it on in the wind. He had been waiting an hour for the Captain to come up on the bridge. “This is one heck of a red-letter day for you.”

  His hair flying, Jones hissed at de Bovenkamp: “Must you chew that goddamn gum all the time?” Without waiting for an answer he shouted: “We’re four degrees off station. Supposed to be broad on the port beam of the carrier for flight operations. Who’s the Officer of the Deck?”

  The faint whoosh-thump of the steam catapults echoed across the thousand yards of ocean that separated the giant aircraft carrier from the Ebersole, and four F-4 Phantom jets leapt into the sky for a strike against the mainland.

  “I am, Captain,” Lustig yelled.

  “You’re four degrees off station, Mister Lustig.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Lustig said. He ducked into the pilot house to adjust the revolutions per minute so that the Ebersole would drift back on station.

  Whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump — four more Phantoms leapt into the bright sky, wheeled into formation and banked through a wisp of a cloud toward the mainland.

  A supremely calm, dulcet-toned voice came over the primary tactical radio circuit from the carrier. “Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera, immediate execute, nine turn, I say again, immediate execute, nine turn, stand by, execute, over.”

  Lustig picked up the radio-telephone and said, “This is Elbow Room, roger, out.” Then he called to Carr, who was the helmsman: “Left standard rudder.”

  Lustig’s order was carried off in the wind, and Carr turned to de Bovenkamp, who was sulking next to the radar repeater. “Mister Lustig said left, didn’t he?”

  Preoccupied with trying to catch the Captain’s eye, de Bovenkamp nodded, and Carr spun the rudder over and brought the Ebersole round ninety degrees to the left, a maneuver that put the destroyer a thousand yards ahead of the carrier. The wind immediat
ely died down.

  “Why’d the carrier change course?” the Captain asked.

  “Her Foxtrot flag’s dipped, Captain,” Lustig explained. “She’s still got a flight of Phantoms to recover but they’re not due in for another few minutes. She’ll turn back into the wind when they show up.”

  Jones sat back in the captain’s chair on the starboard wing of the bridge and beckoned to the Executive Officer, who had just come topside. “All right, XO, now fill me in on what Filmore’s up to, eh?”

  “Well, it seems as if your silver star’s come through, Captain — the one we recommended you for after we sank the patrol boat the other morning. Filmore’s going to have Congressman Partain personally pin it on you right smack in the middle of the carrier’s flight deck. I guess he thinks the ceremony will produce some pretty good footage to sort of wind up the Congressman’s visit. They want us alongside to high-line you over as soon as they recover the next flight of Phantoms.”

  “Goddamn, that is news,” Jones brightened. Some of the color had seeped back into his face and it made his features more distinct. With mounting enthusiasm he began to go over the details.

  “Let’s see, I’ll have to get rid of this sweater and put on a tie, eh? And get True Love up here with my campaign ribbons and my shoes, will you, XO? Oh, and my blue baseball cap. They film these things in color, don’t they? Yes, don’t forget my blue baseball cap with the ‘Swift and Sure’ emblem on it.” Jones pivoted in his chair and looked back at the carrier, riding like the Rock of Gibraltar in the swells of Yankee Station. “She’ll probably come around to this course again when flight ops are over, which will put us dead ahead of her. Hmmmm. I guess the best bet would be to come right and make a full circle and come up from her starboard quarter for the highline transfer, wouldn’t you say so, XO?” Jones squinted at the sea, trying to judge how the wind and waves would affect the approach to the carrier.

  “Coming right sounds as if it should do the trick, Skipper,” the XO said. Both men were feeling pretty good now. “I’ll get True Love up here in a jiffy.”

  The Captain had already put Band-Aids over his bleeding cuticles and was lacing up his Adlers when the dulcet voice came over the primary tactical circuit again. “Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera, immediate execute, turn nine, I repeat, immediate execute, turn nine, stand by, execute, over.” Lustig acknowledged the order and brought the Ebersole back into the wind, putting it once again on the port beam of the carrier.

  “Her Foxtrot’s two blocked,” Lustig said by way of explanation.

  A flight of sixteen Phantoms peeled off into a racetrack pattern that took them low over the Ebersole and around the far end of the track toward the carrier, where one by one they settled like ducks onto the flight deck. The seventh jet in line had had its landing gear shot away and belly-whopped down, skidding to a stop a few feet from the edge of the flight deck. Instantly dozens of men in brightly colored jerseys swarmed over the wounded airplane. Through binoculars Jones could see them lift the pilot out of the cockpit by his armpits, lay him on a stretcher and dogtrot off toward the island that jutted from the flight deck. A yellow tractor pulled the Phantom clear and the rest of the jets, still circling overhead in the racetrack pattern, came on it.

  “Her Foxtrot flag’s down, Captain,” Lustig yelled into the wind. “She’s finished flight operations. Ah, there it goes, there goes the Romeo flag — she’s getting ready to receive us alongside.”

  “Very well, Mister Lustig,” Jones called, standing near the pilot house door. “I’ll take the conn.”

  “The Captain has the conn,” Lustig yelled to Carr on the helm.

  “Aye aye, the Captain has the conn,” Carr repeated.

  The primary tactical circuit came to life again. “Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera, immediate execute, nine turn, I say again, immediate execute, nine turn, stand by, execute, over.” Lustig picked up the radio-telephone and acknowledged the order.

  “Did you get that, Captain?” he yelled.

  Jones nodded, then turned toward the pilot house and called into the wind: “Left standard rudder.”

  Inside the pilot house Carr looked at de Bovenkamp, who was leaning dejectedly against the radar repeater. “The Captain said left, didn’t he, Mister de Bovenkamp?”

  “Right,” de Bovenkamp said, nodding rhythmically and unwrapping another stick of gum.

  Carr hesitated for an instant, then shrugged imperceptibly and spun the rudder over right.

  Just as the Ebersole began to respond to the helm there was a commotion at the top of the inboard ladder leading to the pilot house, and Proper burst through the pilot house onto the open bridge clutching a typewriter to his chest. A huge ring of keys hanging from a lanyard around his neck jingled as he ran. “I found it,” he shrieked, thrusting the typewriter into the Captain’s hands. “I found the mother, I found it, I told you I’d find it and I found it. And I know who Sweet Reason is!”

  Every eye was riveted on Proper.

  “You know who Sweet Reason is?”

  Proper nodded excitedly. The Captain looked dumbly at Proper, unable to believe his luck, to believe the whole Sweet Reason business was over, then he glanced down at the typewriter in his hands, then back at Proper, then at de Bovenkamp, who was sliding a stick of gum into his mouth, then at the Executive Officer, but the Executive Officer wasn’t looking at the Captain or Proper or the typewriter, the Executive Officer was staring out past the Captain, out to sea with a look of depthless horror in his eyes, then Proper was staring in the same direction as the Executive Officer with the same look in his eyes, and the Captain followed their gaze, knowing all the time what was there, followed it out to sea and saw the aircraft carrier turning into the Ebersole, looming over the Ebersole. From somewhere behind him came a moan of terror. Pressing the typewriter to his campaign ribbons, nodding as if what he saw merely confirmed what he knew, Captain J. P. Horatio Jones tilted his twitching head and watched the carrier come on the way he had watched, on more occasions than he liked to remember, the sun come up over the horizon.

  Richardson Gets a Little Something for His Troubles

  Two decks below the bridge, in the supply office, Richardson finished counting the last stack of bills, checked his total against his ledger, found he was ten dollars over and smilingly slipped the extra bill into his wallet.

  Tevepaugh Strikes Up the Single Solitary One-man Band

  Facing aft on the torpedo deck in his folding canvas captain’s chair, Tevepaugh felt the Ebersole heel over and assumed that they were going alongside for the highline transfer. Cradling his red electric guitar in his arms, he reached down, plugged in the amplifier, and tried a few tentative chords. There was a howling feedback from Tevepaugh’s guitar — an unbearable shriek of fear from the ship itself! Then the 70,000-ton carrier, four city blocks long, plowed into the 2200-ton destroyer, climbed up and over the smaller ship, hammered down on the smaller ship, shattering it on the anvil of the sea.

  Commander Filmore Composes the Epilogue

  At sunset Commander Whitman Filmore dispatched his lackey Haverhill to shore by helicopter. Haverhill carried with him a satchel containing the film clips of Congressman Partain’s visit to Yankee Station and a news release describing the tragic collision at sea, during flight operations, between one of the greyhounds of the fleet and an aircraft carrier. The destroyer, which sank within minutes of the collision, had unaccountably turned in the wrong direction, putting itself directly in the path of the onrushing carrier. One hundred and fifty-three of the destroyer’s crewmen survived the sinking. Among the 102 dead or missing were Captain J. P. Horatio Jones, the XO, Chaplain Rodgers, Richardson, Lustig, Moore, de Bovenkamp, Boeth, McTigue, Tevepaugh the guitarist, Ohm, Carr, Doc Shapley, Saler the cook, Proper, Czerniakovski-Drpzdzynski, DeFrank, Duffy, Angry Pettis Foreman, Jefferson Waterman, Keys Quinn, the Poet, the Shrink, True Love and Sweet Reason.

  Endit.

  Robert Littell, Sweet Reason (9781590209011)