Red Sky in Morning A Novel of World War II

by Patrick Culhane

  Now, in the fo’c’sle, darkness draped the racks of bunks filled with tired sailors, though only a few breathed with the regularity of sound sleep, and fewer yet snored.

  In a corner, Sarge sat on his lower bunk across from Big Brown, similarly seated on his own bunk, his big ass making a V for Victory out of the thin mattress.

  On the floor, his back resting against the bulkhead, arms encircling knees drawn up to his chest, perched Orville Monroe, the little fairy whose bunk was above Big Brown’s. Also on the floor, his back against Sarge’s bunk, sat Willie Wilson, in a slumped posture not unlike when he worked his sax. Against the upright between Monroe’s and Big Brown’s bunks leaned Hazel Ricketts, a tall, skinny kid from a farm outside Water Valley, Mississippi.

  Better part of an hour, the quintet had been shooting the shit about, well, nothing at all, really, except the subject on all of their minds: the final day of ammo loading ahead of them, and the Port Chicago explosion behind them.

  Orville was gazing up at country boy Ricketts. “How the devil you get a woman’s name, Hazel?”

  Coming from the effeminate Monroe, the question almost made Sarge laugh.

  Ricketts glared at Monroe, eyes gleaming in the darkness like a razor’s edge. “It ain’t only a woman’s name, you dumb sissy boy.”

  Orville ignored the insult; Sarge was well aware the little guy had learned to let a lot roll off his back here on the Liberty Hill.

  Orville was saying, “I only knew of females havin’ that name. I don’t mean no insult, man, just askin’.”

  “Well, mens have that name, too.” Ricketts frowned and shrugged. “And it’s, you know, also a big nut.”

  Sarge groaned to himself as he saw the elfin expression blossom on Orville’s pretty face.

  “How could yo’ mama know ahead of time,” Orville said, laughing, “that you’d turn out that way . . . ?”

  Not surprisingly, Ricketts started for the little man, but Big Brown rose halfway off his bunk and glowered up at the country boy, who retreated to his position against the bunks.

  “Just joshin’, buddy,” Orville said, but his smile had curdled some.

  “Mama name me Hazel,” Ricketts said, folding his arms, “ ’cause of my eye color. They’s hazel brown. Been that way since I was borned.”

  That put a dead-end sign on this conversational byroad. The five sailors sat thinking their own thoughts for a while, then Monroe gazed at Sarge, bright eyes glittering through the shadows.

  “Sarge,” Orville said, “why’d you up and join the Navy, anyways?”

  Sarge thought about that. He pretty much knew the answer, but he wanted to choose his words carefully.

  Before Sarge could respond, though, Ricketts asked Orville, “Why’d you, Orv?”

  Orville shrugged. “Didn’t have no money. Didn’t have no future I could see. For a fella with my, uh, artistical nature, N’awlins is a fine place, y’know. People are less likely to judge you. Still and all, I ain’t got no real job skills, and all the men was goin’ off to war, so people say, ‘Orville, why ain’t you servin’? Ain’t you a man?’ So I had to do something. I went in a line for the Army but they shooed me over to the Navy line. Nobody never said why.”

  Before Orville could start Chapter Two, Sarge said, “I joined ’cause I believed it when Mr. Roosevelt said he was going to let us fight ’longside the white boys. I thought, here’s a fella who believes we’re all flesh-and-blood men, who looks at me and sees I’m as good as any man, color be damned . . .”

  They were staring at him in pin-drop silence.

  “ . . . Now? Now, I don’t know what to think. Maybe I was a damn chump, believing Mr. Roosevelt; or maybe shit just runs downhill, I dunno. Guy like me, seen as much as I have on the South Side streets, shouldn’t fool so easy.”

  “Well,” Ricketts said, “it’s our war, too. That Hitler makes the worst cracker down south look like Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  Everybody laughed, even Sarge.

  But the mirth left Sarge’s face as he continued: “Anyway, damn fool that I was, I thought they’d let us be one Navy.”

  “Ain’t we been,” Orville asked innocently, “lately?”

  Actually, they had.

  In these last two and a half days, the crew of the Liberty Hill Victory had functioned like your proverbial well-oiled machine. They had been one unit, one entity, one color—Navy blue. And not only had they eaten together, they’d even consumed the same food—bacon and eggs replacing the oatmeal the Negro members of the crew had gotten every single other morning since arriving on this tub, and at lunch they had real turkey sandwiches, just like any other working man anywhere else.

  Well, Sarge corrected himself, like any white working man anywhere else.

  “We have been one Navy,” Sarge admitted. “But ’fore long, the CO be on board again, and I figure things’ll go back the way they was.”

  “Oatmeal and green meat,” Orville said with a shudder.

  Nods all around.

  Sarge shook his head. “To think I give up a good job in a city I loved, where I got friends and a woman willin’ to be my wife, should I be lucky enough to live through this shit. To think I give all that up, all ’cause of Mr. Roosevelt.”

  “You believed that ofay bullshit?” Willie asked, eyes flashing. “You really thought they’d let our black asses in the front door?”

  “Yeah, I did, you mealy-mouth motherfucker,” Sarge said pleasantly. “Just like you did.”

  Willie could only grin, and shrug.

  Sarge continued: “Just like we all did. We been called shif ’less niggers most our lives. And, hell, here was a chance to prove them bastards wrong. Or we thought there was, any-ways.”

  “Nobody ever called me shif ’less,” Ricketts said. “I’s a hard worker and has been since I was big enough to pick cotton on my tippytoes.”

  Orville studied the country boy through half-lidded eyes. “Hazel—ain’t you from Mississippi?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Ever see yourself a white man, ’fore you joined up?”

  Ricketts thought about it. “County sheriff, he was white— mean S.O.B. Town mayor, he was white, but I only really seen him onct or twice. We ’uns didn’t get to town much. Hell, I had to hitchhike all the way to Oxford to join up.”

  “How far’s that?” Sarge asked.

  “Near onta twenty miles.”

  “And you hitchhiked, huh?”

  Ricketts shrugged. “Ended up walkin’ most of it.”

  “All so’s you could join the Navy?”

  “Yup. Ma and Pa, they got too many darn mouths to feed. I figured it was a way to make life easier for ’em. I send ’em my pay every month, naturally.”

  “All of it?” Orville asked.

  Ricketts grinned. “What the hell I needs money for on the Liberty Hill? I gets meals, and more clothes than I ever got at one time in all my life . . . and we sure as hell ain’t gettin’ no liberty, anywheres.”

  Sarge looked at the skinny kid with new respect. “How much education you got, Hazel?”

  “Just what Mr. Connor and Mr. Maxwell been teachin’ us in them classes in the mess. By the time I was big enough for school, folks needed me to work the farm.”

  Finally Sarge turned his gaze on the taciturn Big Brown. “Okay—why’d you join up?”

  But Big Brown just shrugged.

  “You know,” Wilson said, and shook his head, grinning, “those white boys sang pretty good tonight.”

  “Why, ain’t you heard?” Sarge said.

  “What?”

  “They got natural rhythm.”

  Everybody laughed and their rowdiness got some grumbles from other bunks.

  So Sarge said, “Better get some shut-eye, children. Mornin’s comin’ real soon, and we got one more big day of not blowin’ up ahead of us. . . .”

  Sarge collapsed back onto his bunk, and Big Brown did the same while Monroe and Wilson climbed up to their perches and Ricketts amb
led off to his berth.

  Trying to lull himself to sleep, Sarge evened his breathing, listening to the men around him settle in for the night.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  The voice surprised Sarge, but so did the choice of words— “ironic” was not the kind of term bandied about among this crew. And here it was coming out of Big Brown, who before tonight hadn’t said ten words on the ship, most of those one-syllable.

  “What is?” Sarge whispered.

  Big Brown kept his voice low, too. “That we’re fighting the Axis for persecuting people—for instance, Jews like Mr. Connor.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And we’re fighting the Japs, who are slaughtering these island natives like animals, which turns the collective American stomach.”

  Where had that come from?

  “Yet in our own home, in our own damn country, which we’re defending . . . how many places are there where we can’t go, restaurants we can’t eat in, bars we can’t drink in . . . all because of the color of our skin? If that isn’t motherfucking ironic, I don’t know what is.”

  Sarge wondered if he was dreaming this. Big Brown’s words had been spoken so sotto voce that Sarge was pretty sure neither Monroe nor Wilson had even noticed them talking.

  “Yeah,” Sarge said, at last. “Motherfucking ironic for sure.”

  Silence draped the fo’c’sle now. Sarge stared at the mattress above, struck as much by how Big Brown had expressed himself as by the substance of what he said. This beer truck of a man was one quick, smart bastard, and Sarge now realized he needed to be more aware of those around him. Such knowledge might mean the difference between breathing and not breathing.

  The more Sarge tried to urge himself to sleep, the more he found himself thinking about home. Here he was, a thousand miles or more from Chicago, and tomorrow they’d be farther away still. And yet even though the ship had turned out to be a mostly Negro crew with a handful of whites in authority, he still believed what Mr. Roosevelt had promised.

  They would be one Navy, one congregation of men regardless of color; but (Sarge knew too damn well) even when the President of the United States himself ordered it, some things took time.

  fter a dawn breakfast, under a hot sun eased by a con

  stant breeze off the water, they were at it again—one

  pallet at a time, bigger shells today, these for howitzers, get

  ting taken off boxcars in canvas slings, moved to the pier where they were placed in racks on pallets, four to a layer, four layers to a pallet. Then the pallets were lifted by crane up aboard the ship and down into the holds, following the same pattern they had used yesterday.

  Sarge stayed on the dock, helping make sure that each shell was seated correctly in its rack, and each layer arranged correctly on the one beneath it. Sweat beaded off black skin like water flung on leather, but no one complained, no one slowed down. For several hours, all went as smooth as the inner thigh of a beautiful woman . . .

  . . . and then it went to shit.

  Orville Monroe was guiding a shell from the boxcar to the pier, the crane arm turning to the right, the little oiler using hand signals to direct the operator, as they moved the two-hundred-pound round. Orville had one hand on the shell and the other slowly waving up high, when the canvas sling suddenly shifted and the shell pitched forward, its pointed nose seeking the target that was the concrete pier.

  Sarge’s jaw dropped, but before he could otherwise react, someone else did, and decisively: Big Brown—his massive biceps exposed under the torn-off sleeves of a sweat-soaked shirt—materialized like an infielder charging to the outfield to snag a fly ball.

  And that was how nimbly the bald, bucket-headed sailor caught the shell, stopping it inches from the concrete.

  Then, on a dock gone as silent as the death that impended, Brown lifted the heavy steel bomb gently, as if it were a sleeping baby, and nobody wanted to wake this not-so-little fucker. . . .

  With slow steps but no apparent concern, Brown carried the thing over to where Sarge stood gaping, and put baby down for its nap in the rack.

  All action on the pier had ceased, sailors caught frozen in whatever they were doing, like the citizens of Pompeii when the lava hit, only this was fear out of what just almost happened.

  Sarge shut his yawning trap, swallowed, sighed hugely, then looked up into the soft dark eyes of the mountain in front of him.

  “Not a bad catch, Brown. But I’m gonna have to call it out.”

  Brown, face running with sweat rivulets, gave up a big grin.

  And Brown’s grin along with Sarge’s words cured the crew’s paralysis, though a murmur of relief quickly, nastily, turned into a sea of shouts.

  “Fucking shit!”

  “Jesus Christ, you see that?”

  “Mother-fucker!”

  “Orville! You dumb-ass queer! You damn near killed our asses!”

  Connor and Maxwell came running over, frowning.

  Mr. Maxwell demanded, “What the hell happened?”

  Sarge explained.

  But as he did, from the direction of the boxcar, came a shouted, “Orville, you dumb cocksucker . . .”

  Spinning toward the sound, Sarge said, “Shut the fuck up!”

  Clancy Mullins, a lanky Negro from Pittsburgh, jumped out of the boxcar like a wild man and came running toward Sarge with blood in his eyes, hands balled into fists.

  Maxwell and Connor tried to get in the middle, between the two sailors, but the crew swarmed forward, sweeping the officers out of the way, driftwood caught in an irresistible tide, indistinguishable yells and shouts erupting.

  “Out of my way, Sarge,” Clancy said, nostrils flaring. “I got to settle up with that little pansy, and you ain’t stoppin’ me.”

  “You turn around and get back to work, Clancy. I ain’t givin’ you a second chance. Just do it.”

  Mullins responded by sticking a hand in his pocket and coming back with something shiny. Even over the din of the circle of men, Sarge heard the snick as the switchblade flipped open.

  “Don’t do nothin’ stupid now, Clancy. . . .”

  “Fuck you!”

  And Mullins lunged, blade in his right hand catching sun and glinting.

  Sidestepping, Sarge heard the blade go by his ear, then pivoted and latched on to Mullins’s wrist while the man was still off-balance, and he twisted that wrist, hard. The wiry sailor screamed as he involuntarily followed his bent wrist and somersaulted onto the pier, the knife flung from popped-open fingers to skitter across the concrete, coming to rest against the pallet of shells.

  Wailing in agony and anger, Mullins tried to rise, but never got past his knees as Sarge threw down an arcing overhand right that caught Mullins on the jaw and silenced him, dropping him unconscious to the cement.

  Finally Connor pushed through the crowd. “Somebody call the goddamn Shore Patrol!” he shouted as he moved toward the fallen Mullins. “This man’s going to the brig!”

  Sarge watched as Mr. Maxwell picked up the knife and closed the blade. From Maxwell’s face, Sarge could tell both white officers were in agreement on this matter.

  “No need for that, sir,” Sarge said to Maxwell.

  But it was Connor who turned to Sarge, wide-eyed, astonished. “Are you serious, man? He just tried to knife you!”

  “Please, sir,” Sarge said, patting the air. “Clancy was just scared.”

  “He was scared?” Connor blinked. “Weren’t you?”

  Sarge almost whispered. “Sure I was. But, see—Clancy there, he was the one put the sling around that shell. It was his fault that bastard almost fell. He knew it . . . and he was ashamed, and it made him afraid.”

  The officers traded a look.

  Sarge played on his friendship with Maxwell, saying, “He almost got us all killed, Mr. Maxwell. That would scare the holy hell out of just about anybody.”

  Maxwell said nothing; but he was clearly listening, considering Sarge’s words.

  “Cla
ncy ain’t no bad-ass,” Sarge continued, “he just don’t want the rest of us blaming him—so he starts in on Orville, before anybody can start in on him.”

  “He should go to the brig,” Connor said, but without much enthusiasm now.

  Down on the concrete, Mullins was coming around, his eyes open but glassy. Groggily, he shook his head and tried to sit up.

  Bending down, Sarge put a hand on his shoulder. “You just sit there a minute, Clancy.”

  Mullins swallowed, nodded sheepishly, but otherwise did not move.

  “Orville!” Sarge called. “Get this man some water, will you?”

  Sarge might have been foaming at the mouth, the way Orville stared at him. “God damn, Sarge, that prick—”

  “Don’t argue with me, Orville,” Sarge said, quiet but intimidating.

  After a weight-of-the-world sigh, Orville went over to the water bucket, then brought back a well-filled ladle’s worth. He tried to hand it to Sarge, who nodded toward Mullins nearby. Clearly pissed off, but also smart enough not to act on it, Orville handed the water-brimming ladle to Mullins.

  “Thanks,” Mullins mumbled, hang-dog. He took a sip. He took another sip. Then: “Orv . . . look . . . I’m . . . sorry about that shit. I . . . I went off my damn head.”

  “Yeah,” Orville said, indifferently. “Sure. Okay.”

  Mullins rolled his eyes at Sarge and wiggled his jaw with a hand. “Man, Sarge—you got a better right than Joe Louis.”

  “I dealt with fools before,” Sarge said, with humor, helping the man to his feet.

  Maxwell stepped forward and held up the knife. “Big trouble, sailor.”

  The lanky sailor said nothing, chin dropping to his chest.

  “Mr. Connor,” Maxwell said. “What is called for in this situation?”

  Connor said crisply, “Court-martial for attempted murder.”

  Mullins’s eyes widened.

  “Hard time and dishonorable discharge,” Maxwell said, nodding. “Sarge here says that screw-up with the sling was your fault—not Monroe’s. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mullins said.

  “And yet you accused and attacked him.”

  “ . . . Yes, sir.”

  Maxwell’s chin came up, his eyes came down. “Sarge also says we should let it go. Just look the other way. What do you say to that, Mullins?”