by David Poyer
A. I had taken part in the search the evening before. I knew what had been found, yes.
Q. Did you know there were problems before that time?
A. No.
Q. Are you acquainted with Seaman Recruit William T. Lassard?
A. He was in my department. I did not know him well.
Q. What is your evaluation of his performance?
A. As far as I know, he is a typically effective seaman.
Q. You have heard the questions raised as to the movements of the ship’s motor whaleboat after RYAN went down. What can you tell us about such movements?
A. I don’t remember anything that happened between talking to Mr. Lenson and coming back to consciousness aboard USS TALBOT. Shortly thereafter, we were transferred by helicopter to KENNEDY.
Cross-examined by counsel for Lieutenant Evlin.
Q. Mr. Norden, as a watch stander and a department head, how well did you know Lieutenant Evlin?
A. Pretty well.
Q. What is your evaluation of him? As an officer and a watch stander?
A. I agree with Commander Bryce’s description of him.
Q. Please elaborate.
A. He was not dependable.
Q. Do you believe he was ever under the influence of drugs?
A. [Witness paused.] It’s not impossible.
Neither the counsel for the Court, the Court, nor the parties desired further to examine this witness. He resumed his seat.
* * *
WILLIAM Theodore Lassard, seaman recruit, USN, was called as a witness. He was duly sworn and was examined as follows.
Examined by the counsel for the Court.
Q. State your name, rank, and branch of service.
A. William Lassard, seaman recruit, U.S. Navy.
Q. How long have you been on active duty?
A. A little over six years, sir.
Q. How long have you been attached to RYAN?
A. Four years.
Q. State your duty station at 0200 on 25 December.
A. On the bridge.
Q. Port lookout?
A. We swapped around. Believe he was the lookout then.
Q. Who was the lookout?
A. I was.
Q. Please state to the best of your recollection the location of the ships around RYAN at that time.
A. The lookouts don’t know the position of the ships. That’s the officers’ job.
Q. Is it not your duty as lookout to keep abreast of the situation?
A. Lookouts just report what they see. It’s up to the officers to figure out what it is.
Q. Please state what you saw, then.
A. It was dark. There weren’t any ships on my side. There was one almost dead ahead, way off; you could only pick it up once in a while. There was some others off on the other lookouts’ sides. To starboard.
Q. The one ahead would be the CALLOOSAHATCHEE, and the ones to starboard KENNEDY and GARCIA?
A. Told you, we didn’t know what they were. Just lights.
Q. You have heard Ensign Lenson’s testimony that he found you asleep on the wing shortly before the collision. Is that true?
A. I wasn’t asleep or anything like that. I was standing a proper watch.
Q. Did he make any remarks to you?
A. Yes.
Q. What did he say?
A. Mr. Lenson made remarks every time he saw me. Didn’t matter what he—what I was doing at the time, he would jump me. I tried to shrug it off and just do my job.
Q. What in fact did he say this time?
A. Said something about putting me on report.
Q. Why?
A. Like I said, he had this idea that I was [expletive deleted] off. I wasn’t. He was just always on my [expletive deleted].
Q. To what do you attribute his attitude?
A. Don’t know. Slick—I mean, I never did anything to him.
Q. He has testified that you used drugs and were furnishing them to other members of the crew.
A. That’s not true, sir.
Q. Is it true that you were previously rated to third-class boatswain’s mate on RYAN, and broken for unauthorized absence and fighting?
A. Yeah, but I was never busted for drugs. You can check my record. Or you can ask the XO.
Q. Let us go on to when the captain came out onto the bridge, apparently just a few minutes after Mr. Lenson talked with you. Please recount what happened then.
A. The captain came out and leaned over the alidade. Then he went back in.
Q. Did he say anything to you?
A. No, nothing.
Q. Did he notice that you were there? Nod, or acknowledge you at all?
A. No, sir, I don’t think he was thinking about me; I don’t think he even noticed me.
Q. He did not ask you, for instance, where the carrier was?
A. No sir.
Q. Where was the carrier at that time?
A. We were coming around, I think, and you could see it around the corner of the deckhouse.
Q. Think back carefully. When the captain looked through the alidade, was he looking in fact at the carrier? Or somewhere off to the left?
A. His back was to me. I couldn’t see the alidade.
Q. Could you tell by the position of his head what he was looking at?
A. No. I was scanning with my binoculars, like I was supposed to.
The Court then informed the witness that he was privileged to make statements covering anything he thought related to the subject of the inquiry that had not been brought out in previous questioning.
The witness stated that he had and the Court instructed him to proceed.
WITNESS: I wanted to talk about after the collision—what happened after that.
COUNSEL FOR THE COURT: Go ahead.
WITNESS: After it hit us, the officers was freaking out, running around the bridge and shouting. I stayed put on the wing. When things quieted down, I went into the pilothouse. There was nobody there, so after a while I went out on the starboard wing. The captain was there alone.
COUNSEL FOR THE COURT: Go on.
WITNESS: Well, he looked at me, sort of not seeing me, and I stood there beside him for a while. He kept looking aft at the fire. Finally, to make conversation like, I said, “Ay, what happened, Captain?” And he said, after a minute, “Somebody [expletive deleted] up, Slick.”
So I stood there with him for a couple of minutes and we watched the fire, and the men jumping overboard.
Then I was thinking I better get back to my boat and get her in the water. I asked the captain, “Sir, we better get off this bucket.” And he shook his head and he said, “You go ahead and abandon.”
She was listing bad then, so Slick, he decided to go. So he was going down the ladder when the old man leans over and calls him back. He goes up a couple steps, and he hands him something and says give it to his son. So Slick sticks it in his pocket and here it is.
COUNSEL FOR THE COURT: Let the record show the court has received a gold ring for transfer to Commander Packer’s son.
WITNESS: That’s all I got.
Neither the counsel for the Court, the Court, nor the parties desired further to examine this witness. He resumed his seat.
The Court then, at 1653, took a recess until the next day at 0900.
* * *
LENSON followed the afternoon of testimony with close attention. He felt supercharged, unaffected by the codeine. When the court broke for the day, he hoisted himself to his feet and followed the others out to the E-ring and down the ramp into the mall. It would be nice to get Susan something. Perfume? Candy? He glanced in the window of Dart Drug and saw Norden standing in front of the greeting cards.
“Rich. Hey, Rich!”
Norden flinched, raising startled eyes. He looked pale, thin, like smoke from a hot fire. Rusty freckles stood out on white skin.
“We’re not supposed to talk.”
“To hell with that. What is this bullshit you’re giving them about Al? He never
used drugs. He didn’t even smoke! You’re the one told me about Lassard, what a fuckup he was. Where are you going? What happened in that boat, Rich?”
But Norden was walking away, then jogging, too fast for Dan to follow. The clerk called after him. He wheeled, threw the card back at her. It fluttered to the floor. Then he was gone, sucked into the crowd of Army and Marine green, Air Force and Navy blue, and civilian employees pushing toward the Metro entrance.
Dan stared after him like a man overboard watching his ship disappear over the horizon of the sea.
* * *
THE little toy MG was waiting, idling in a handicapped space. Susan had on a violet tam today. It looked familiar. Then he recognized it. She used to wear it when he visited her at Georgetown. “How’d it go?” she asked as he eased himself in, hissing as his shoulder brushed the corner of the door.
“Not so good.”
“You had the stand again?”
“All morning. Then they had Bryce on, Norden, some of the other guys. What’d you do?”
“Went to a lecture at American U, then got tired and came back. I read a little. Then I just thought.”
“This is for you. You like pecans, right?”
“Thanks.… What’s happening down there, Dan? You look mad as hell. Or scared as hell.”
“They were on me hard today.”
“Who?”
“The lawyers. Bryce. It’s not going real well.”
“Tell me what happened. I want to know. I ought to know.”
“I told you, I can’t discuss it, Susan.”
“You could tell me something.”
He turned his face to the window and watched the Potomac speed by, gray and sullen under its white mantle. “Okay, Mr. Spock,” she muttered, flooring the gas. “Warp speed to the hotel.”
He had two drinks while they were waiting to order. He was too angry to care about mixing them with the pills. After dinner they took the elevator to the sixth floor. She fumbled in her purse for the key. He knew she was angry, too, but he pretended not to notice. He didn’t want a scene. He hated scenes. They reminded him of his parents’ all-night-long screaming arguments.
As soon as the door closed, she began speaking to the wall. “You know, it’s not exactly fun for me, being alone all day, worrying about you. I’d like to know what’s going on. It affects my life, too.”
“Maybe later.” He fell on the bed. The scotch made his head vibrate. “Can you get me a drink of water, please?”
He held the glass and watched as she undressed, facing the mirror. Her hair came free and swung down, tangling in the catch of her bra. Her back was crossed by a white line, though summer was long gone. She undressed quickly, without looking at him, and went into the bathroom. A moment later the shower roared.
He pulled himself up and peeled off his blouse. His shoulder burned, but the drug held it separate from him. He took off his shirt and trousers and underwear. They were soaked.
In the bathroom her body glowed behind translucent plastic. The water roared like flames. He shouted, “Want company, Babe?”
“Come in if you need help.”
When he stepped in she was soaped up, hair lathered, her body slick with foam like waves in a gale. She helped him wash briskly and efficiently, keeping the dressings dry, not touching him unnecessarily. When they were done, she stepped out and helped him towel. Her face in the mirror was blank as she dried his back. It was like being bathed by a nurse.
He sat on the bed and watched her sort through her clothes. There was a faint, high whistling in his head. He watched the sway of her breasts, large-nippled, heavier than they’d been when he last saw her; funny how they changed color month to month, like a slide show. The outward curve of her belly; her legs, strong and tapered, still brown. Then he considered himself. He was thinner, white, bruised the color of cheap wine. His arm dragged like a dug-in anchor. Part of him wanted to sleep, to check out of this fucking planet for a few hours. Another wanted not so much to make love as to possess, to reassert his ownership over her. It seemed like centuries since he’d seen her naked.
“Feeling better tonight?” he muttered hopefully.
She came out of the closet, holding her old-fashioned blue flannel nightdress. “What?”
“Want to make love?”
“I thought we went over this last night.”
“This is tonight.”
“Well, I’m still tired,” she said, spreading out her nightdress and bending over the bed. “Exhausted, in fact.” Her breasts swayed forward, half-covered by her damp hair. Her scent flowed out from her, lavender and lemon and some musky spice he didn’t have words for. He caught the dismissal but refused to accept it; in fact, it determined him. He took her shoulder with his good arm and pulled her down gently.
She lay quietly on her side as he kissed her nipple, feeling it erect under his tongue. A little fluid seeped out, thin and insipid.
She didn’t resist when he slipped his hand between her thighs. Nor did she cooperate. Apprehension touched him. At another time he would have felt himself, made sure he was ready, but supporting his weight on one arm this was impossible. Her pubic hair grated dryly against him.
He came halfway to attention, and wedged it in quickly, before it could reconsider. There seemed to be no sensation in him, as if he were covered with a huge condom. He ground away for several minutes, lying half above her, half beside.
Gradually, in the motion, he lost track of himself.
He thought suddenly of the dead. They’d never touch a woman again. Never return to the ones they’d loved. Guilt and terror gripped him like a cat gripping a mole. Guilt, at living. Terror, at the unimaginable endlessness of absence, of ending, of termination.
He remembered how they’d screamed, out beyond the firelight, how neither he nor anyone else could help them.…
The memory opened out then, suddenly, and he was no longer remembering but there in the water, gripped by the icy pincers, watching floating flame close in on him. Trying to swim in the blackness without air. The sea choked him, battered him, numbed him, then caught fire. His hands when he raised them were black with oil. A man screamed beyond the wall of flame, and his throat closed. The screaming man was himself; he was still screaming, and he would never stop.
When, sweating and rigid, he forced his eyes open, hers were closed. “Do you have to put all your weight on me?” she said.
He shuddered, unable to speak through a throat soldered shut with horror. His erection had died inside her. Her vagina expelled him. He rolled away, desperate for air.
“Dan, what is it? Are you all right?”
“Nothing,” he gasped.
He heard her getting up. The soft, heavy pad of her feet. Her nightdress whispered.
He lay rigid, listening. He knew now what he’d wanted. Not sex, but reassurance he was still alive. The bed creaked and he glanced over. She lay motionless, staring away from him at the clock on the nightstand.
“What’s eating you? Are you mad at me?”
“I’m just tired of this.” She stared at the clock. “I’m tired of not knowing, tired of Navy secrets, just tired. And yes, I’m mad at you. I’m very angry.”
“What for? Do you think the collision was my fault?”
“Fuck the collision, Dan! I’m glad you got out. I said that! But it was—when you went away like that, just a phone call and you were gone, I was all alone in Newport. I didn’t know anybody, not one person I could call for help. I know it’s not your fault. But God knows the Navy doesn’t care, so I’m mad at you. It may not be logical, but damn it, that’s how I feel.”
He did not see at all. “Yes,” he said.
“And another thing, I’ve been thinking about it now, I don’t like being fucked when I’m not ready. I don’t like it at all.”
“I didn’t hear any major objections.”
“I thought I might want to once you started. Anyway, I said I wasn’t interested. What am I supposed to do, scream?”
Her voice rose. “Don’t ever do that again. I’m your wife, not a goddamned piece of meat with a convenient hole in it!”
“I see,” he said. The need for sympathy slid away and something cold as the sea took its place. “I don’t think that’s a very constructive attitude. My friends died, I almost died, and I wanted you. You’ve treated me like a crippled stranger since I got back. You don’t know what we went through.”
She stared at the clock silently.
“Being left alone like that, like you say—You knew what being a Navy wife meant. We discussed it before we got married. You said, as I recall, that you wouldn’t mind being by yourself from time to time. That it would give you time to work on your degree.”
“It’s different doing it. Maybe it’s different after years of it. I haven’t … we haven’t spent a week in the same house. I’m eight months pregnant, but I don’t feel married yet. I feel closer to Moira than I do to you.”
Moira, he remembered with an effort, was her ex-roommate. “That’s a great thing to say.”
“It’s true. You bottle everything up, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear your brains fizzing. That rigid Academy bullshit … I don’t know if I can go on with you if you’re so … so cold. With the baby coming … Jesus, I feel so alone.”
“You know,” he said slowly, “when I was in the water, when I thought I was going to die, I was praying. But I wasn’t praying to God. Maybe it sounds blasphemous, but I was praying to you, that you would help me. And when that guy held me up, and I thought I might live another few minutes, I thought you had answered me.”
She put her hand over her eyes. “Jesus,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, Susan. I do love you, so much.”
The wrenching sound of her breathing told him she was crying. He groped to his blouse and handed her his handkerchief.
In the dim light from the window, from the city, she got up from the bed. She stumbled away. Then she turned, awkward and huge and swollen, and came back to him. He held her tightly, ignoring the scream from his burned shoulder. They clung to each other angrily, despairingly, hopelessly, like castaways in a stormswept sea, not knowing whether there is rescue ahead or only the last and final darkness.