The Passage

by David Poyer

  Bitter at heart, he slammed the door on the way out, knowing Vysotsky would remember it, but not caring. Christ, he thought. What a petty, asinine two-bit order. What a petty, asinine organization.

  Suddenly, he needed a drink.

  10

  Thirty Miles North of Charleston

  “ACCURIZED that baby myself. National Match barrel, handlapped to the muzzle bushing; recoil buffer; Bo-Mar sights; hand-tuned trigger,” Harper said as Dan wrapped his hand around the grips of the .45 Colt automatic.

  The blast rolled back from the pines of the Francis Marion National Forest. “Not bad,” said Harper, bending to a spotting scope. The chief warrant was in civvies today—a khaki bush jacket with shoulder tabs, twill pants, shooting glasses. “You’re flinching, though. Go on, fire off the clip. I brought plenty of ammo.”

  “Thanks, once is enough.” Dan laid it gingerly on the shooting bench, massaging his hand as Harper showed him the next gun.

  “Now, this is an AK-forty-seven, Chinese-made. We can’t fire it full auto, not with these rangers around.”

  “Isn’t that illegal? Where’d you get that?”

  “Took it off a dead gook. I was walking down this trail and there he was. I got a long piece of bamboo and poked him. Then I went through his pockets. Then I took out my Ka-Bar and cut his nuts off.”

  “You cut his—Why?”

  “To eat,” said Harper, then threw back his head and cackled. “Joke, shipmate. I bought it off a guy when we put in to Saigon, delivering helos.”

  Dan cleared his throat and looked away, around him. The morning sun fell through the pines and glittered off hundreds of spent cartridges littering the ground. Saturday morning, and the first thing Harper wanted to do was hop into his red jeep and go shooting.

  No doubt about it, the chief warrant was a marksman. The .45 automatic was notoriously hard to handle, but he’d put six rounds offhand into the black bull’s-eye. “Out of practice,” Harper had said, pulling the punctured target down and stapling another up. “The National Match, Camp Perry, I was chewing the guts out of Tommy Ten-ring.”

  “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

  “On the Navy-Marine Corps Pistol Team. Would have gone to the Olympics, but fucking Carter pulled us. Can you believe it? The one time Jim boy stands up to the Reds, and who has to pay? The people who trained for years to beat ’em. What a clown.”

  “You like Reagan, huh?”

  “Ronnie’s a politician, too. There’s not a lot of difference, just what brand name.”

  “So what are you?”

  “A libertarian. There’s only one person knows what’s best for you.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Funny. Yourself, shipmate. The government’s not going to solve our problems. What can government do? Only two things: redistribute wealth or take away rights. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “So they do. The fucking Democrats got the welfare sluts and all the fucking liberal bureaucrats standing around with their hands out. The Republicans, their fat-cat banker buddies are three deep at the trough. And funny, no matter who’s running things, the government keeps getting bigger. I think government is the problem.” He held up the rifle. “Mao Tse-tung: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ A fucking Commie, but on that he was right on the money. They take these away from us, God help America.”

  “The range is clear,” someone yelled, and Dan stood back as Harper slapped in a magazine and the pop and roar swelled into a rolling rumble of gunfire as sand dust and pine needles spurted off the embankments.

  WHEN they were through, Harper suggested they stop at his house on the way to the marina. They pulled off at the Mount Pleasant exit, and a few miles on left the pavement for a gravel drive that wound toward a brick ranch. Water glittered beyond dogwood and forsythia. The garage door was up; a Triumph and a late-model wagon were parked inside. Harper braked and swung down. “Hungry? Let’s grab a sandwich. Maybe see what game’s on.”

  “What are all these flowers, Chief Warrant?”

  “Red salvia, uh, coneflowers, I think—the pink and white in the shade, that’s impatiens. You into flowers?”

  “Not really, but they’re pretty.”

  “Yeah. Bonnie does that,” Harper said, unlocking the door and holding it for him.

  The living room had a big fieldstone fireplace with glass doors. “Hell of a place,” Dan said, looking around.

  “Four percent VA mortgage. I borrowed everything I could. Wasn’t hard to figure where inflation was going after Vietnam. Plus, I don’t know if I told you, I own a bar in Subic and one in San Diego. Bought ’em when I was stationed there. Bonnie! Come on out here. This is my department head, Dan Lenson.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” The heavy woman in the apron was carrying a tray with beer and pretzels. Harper waved at armchairs in front of the TV and Dan let himself down as Mrs. Harper set out the glasses. Harper went through several channels till he found a game. “Hey, get the girls down here, meet Mr. Lenson,” he said to his wife. She left, and Dan heard her calling. A few minutes later, she ushered in two quiet, pretty teenagers. “Emily, Shannon, Mr. Lenson works with me on the ship,” Harper said.

  They smiled and said hello politely. Harper let them each have a sip from his beer, then patted their behinds. “Okay, now let the men watch some ball, okay?”

  Dan watched them go. “You got two well-behaved kids there.” “Bonnie’s done okay, considering how much I been gone. She’s turned kind of sloppy, though. Doesn’t take care of herself. Hey! How about fixin’ us something to eat, sandwiches or something?”

  “BLTs, Jay?”

  “Yeah, that’s good. Pack some chips and stuff. The lieutenant and me are going out for a sail.”

  “Are you coming, Mrs. Harper?”

  “Naw, she’s no good on a boat … . I took her diving once. Got her the tank and regulator and everything. And she got twenty feet down before she figured out she forgot to turn her air on. Is that stupid or what?”

  Dan felt uncomfortable. Harper talked as if his wife wasn’t ten feet away, in the kitchen, where as far as he could tell, she could hear every word. To change the subject, he said, “This is a beautiful house.”

  “I’d like deeper water, but it’s okay. I sure couldn’t afford it now, I’ll tell you that.”

  “You’ve been in Charleston how long?”

  “Three tours. They offered me a job in D.C., but I turned it down.” Harper shrugged. “I’ll retire out of here. Do some serious sailing then. Hey! Oki-san, touchi-ne!”

  As his wife brought another drink, Dan felt envious. Harper had a nice house, polite daughters; nothing flashy, but it was a home. Maybe he didn’t treat his wife very well, but at least she was here.

  Harper hoisted himself out of the chair. “You done? Had enough? Let’s di-di out of here and do some sailing.”

  HARPER kept his boat at the base. They stopped at the beverage store, then pulled into the marina. “There she is,” Harper said.

  Dan looked out over the jostling rows of sailboats and motor cruisers. He couldn’t see which one Harper meant, but it was a beautiful day, clear and sunny, with a good wind. Engines rumbled as a sportfisherman slid away from the ramp. He pulled a case of Bud out of the back, tucked it under one arm, grabbed a ten-pound block of ice with the other—his shoulder was okay, unless he reached above his head—and followed Harper’s slouch down the pier to a kelly green-hulled yawl. The chief warrant looked around as if searching for someone, then hauled in on a bow line. As the boat rolled to his weight, two heads showed at the companionway.

  “Come on, come on, they won’t bite.” Harper waved him aboard. “This here’s Big Mary, and this is Little Mary. Girls, Dan works with me on the ship. Hell, he lives on the damn ship. Had to pry him off like a damn barnacle.”

  Big Mary was a green-eyed blonde with skin like old leather from too much time in the sun. Older than Dan would usually stare at, but she
was built. Little Mary was Filipina, small and slim and brown. They were in bikinis and thongs, both smoking, and they’d helped themselves, apparently, to whatever liquor was aboard; he smelled rum and coconut suntan lotion. Suddenly, they both pulled out guns. They squirted him and then each other, laughing and scuffling in the cockpit.

  Harper hadn’t said anything about women. Dan felt embarrassed, tried not to stare. He looked at the boat instead—not new, but she seemed well-maintained. He put a hand on the boom. It was a solid, heavy light-colored wood under the varnish.

  “Sitka spruce, that boom.” Ice crashed as Harper, down below, threw it into the icebox. “You like her?”

  “What is it?”

  “Alberg. Thirty-five-footer.”

  “What’s the hull? Wood?”

  “Fuck no, fiberglass. All bronze fittings, though. Stainless rigging. Lead keel.”

  “Buy her new?”

  “I don’t buy much new stuff, Hoss. You can get a lot of used boat for not too much, and the nice thing is, taxes are next to nothing.” A whine came from below their feet, then the engine fired, sending a puff of black smoke milling over the pier. “I reengined her, brand-new Westerbeke—now I got a boat that’d cost you a hundred grand new. Okay, I’m in command now, Lieutenant. Hands off those girls! Get forward and cast us off.”

  HARPER motored them out into an easterly wind, then gave Dan the tiller. He unfurled the jib and sheeted the main tight. When they came right, the boat heeled and began slicing her way through the water. “Cut the engine,” he yelled from the bow, and Dan was still groping when Big Mary reached between his legs and did it for him. The sudden quiet was a shock. He leaned back, holding the sun-warmed wood of the tiller while one by one the piers slipped past.

  “There’s Barrett.” She looked different from seaward. Already her paint looked slightly faded. Faint lines bled down from her scuppers. He’d always thought of her as new, but he suddenly realized she wouldn’t always be. One day, she’d be as old as Ryan, that last cruise … .

  “Cut in toward her,” Harper said, coming back from where he’d been making up lines, and Dan put the tiller over. As they went by, they waved to the men on deck. They were looking disconsolately out over the water, the duty section. One raised a finger.

  “Where to?”

  “Wherever you want, Mr. L. We could head for Fort Sumter, maybe duck out to sea for an hour or two.”

  “Sounds good to me, Chief Warrant.”

  “Hell, call me Jay. Long as we’re on the boat.”

  “Okay, Jay.”

  “Is he senior to you, Jay? I thought you told everybody what to do aboard your ship.”

  “We work together,” Dan told Big Mary.

  Harper took the tiller, and for a while the only sounds were the cries of seabirds and an occasional flutter from the sails. Dan put his arm over his eyes. The sun came bright through his skin, red and warm. Then he felt a hand on his leg. “Want a cigarette?” said Little Mary. She shook out a match and flicked it overboard.

  “No thanks.”

  “I like your beard.”

  “Feast your eyes, babe. That chin fuzz is going the way of the dodo.” Harper chortled.

  “What does he mean?”

  “I have to shave it off. Just got the word.” Resentment stirred beneath the sun sleepiness. “Can you believe it? It’s ‘unmilitary.’”

  “That’s too bad. I like it,” said Little Mary, petting it.

  “They don’t. And they own me, not you.”

  “I don’t wear one, but I know how you feel.” Harper’s voice came from the red warmth. “I mean, when you join up, you realize you might have to put your life on the line some day. I saw my friends fuck up and die. But that’s not enough; they got to unload chickenshit on you, too.

  “Way I figure it, you can’t expect loyalty from an organization, any organization. Ask the guys it owes the most … poor bastards stuck in the VA hospitals … ask them.”

  Dan said, “It’s not a big deal, but damn it, if you don’t happy happy aye aye first time you hear it, you’re some kind of disgruntled asshole.”

  “That’s the Navy—rigid adherence to the cosmetic bullshit, and no attention to the important stuff.”

  “What important stuff?”

  “The really important stuff. Like, you heard about this strategy, where all the carriers go up to Norway, right down the Russkies’ throats. What’s it called—”

  “The Maritime Strategy.”

  “Right. Right. Crazy as hell.”

  “It makes sense to me. Bottle up their subs north of the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap—”

  “I’m going to get some sun,” said Big Mary, sounding bored. “You dump me in the water again, Jay, so help me I’ll skin you, you hear?” Without waiting for an answer, she went forward around the cabin. Little Mary looked at Dan, then got up and followed her.

  Harper said, “It’s crazy, that’s why. Say we go up there, steam four carriers and all the cruisers and destroyers and shit, and there’s this huge all-out battle. The Reds lose, then what? They’re out nothing; they’re still rolling their wagons across Europe. But we lose four carriers, we’ve lost the fucking war. What if the admirals dick it up?”

  “I don’t know. They probably modeled it—”

  “Sure, but what I’m saying, they don’t know everything. Everybody thinks he’s gonna win, or there wouldn’t be a battle, right? But somebody’s gotta get his butt kicked. All I’m saying, maybe we ought not to go sticking our dick into the pencil sharpener.”

  “Well, you might be right—”

  “Fucking right I’m right. And then, Christ, we go and publish it in the papers, tell them exactly what we’re gonna do—so they can have everything ready when we show up.”

  “Maybe it’s a trick. Get them set up for an attack around the Kola Peninsula, then hit them from the Pacific, or through the Med.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think we’re that smart.” Harper looked aloft, then aft, and put the helm over. Dan ducked as the boom came around; the boat heeled, then steadied on the opposite tack. “What I think, it’s all theoretical. There isn’t gonna be any war … . Hey! Mary! Better tuck those in. You’re gonna fall out—Oh shit!” He folded, laughing, as Little Mary waved her top at a passing boat full of fishermen. Their heads snapped around, beers spilling, faces gaping at Blow Job, where Big Mary, too, was pulling her top down, breasts rolling out like white cannonballs into the sunlight.

  DAN shook his head and came awake with a start. But when he sat up, nothing had changed—except that a half-nude Little Mary was steering now, a beer in one hand and a Salem dangling from her lips. Pointed breasts swayed, pale with a hint of saffron, reminding him of his ex-wife’s. Harper and Big Mary weren’t around. He sat up, started to ask where they were, then looked down into the cabin.

  Later they came up, flushed, and Harper took the helm again. He and Dan chatted while the girls basked like cats. The brick battlements of Sumter slipped by. They were west of the main channel, with wooden poles sticking up marking, Dan assumed, shallows. Harper didn’t have a chart, just glanced at the compass once in a while.

  “Having fun yet?”

  “This is great … Jay.”

  “So how come you don’t have one? It’s sick to live here and not have a boat.”

  “Can’t afford it.”

  “Your paycheck’s bigger than mine.”

  “Not after alimony.”

  “How long you been divorced, Dan?” Little Mary asked. She had a sweet voice.

  “Not long enough.”

  “How much you get shafted for?” Harper asked him. “I thought they knocked that off … women liberated and all.”

  “Well, we went to the hearing. The judge said, ‘Mr. Lenson, I’m giving your wife eleven hundred dollars a month.’ And I said, ‘Okay, Judge, maybe I’ll kick in a couple dollars, too.’”

  Harper laughed, then the women. “Funny. But eleven hundred? A month? Shit, she raped you, man
. For how long?”

  “Permanent, till she remarries. Get this: The judge was a woman.”

  “Yeah, she filleted you and put you on the table.” Harper looked up at the rigging, then said to Big Mary, “Get me another brew, okay, bitch? And bring up that cheese stuff.”

  “Don’t call me that, Jay. I’m not your wife.”

  “I’ll call you what I fucking like on my boat. Get the beer, bitch.”

  She passed one up for Dan, too. He sucked deeply, knocking his head back against the coaming. He was exaggerating, inviting their sympathy. Six hundred of the eleven hundred was child support. And there’d be a review after five years. But still, Harper was right: It didn’t leave much.

  “Which is why you’re livin’ on the ship,” said Harper, chiming in uncannily with his thoughts. “Yeah, I can see where you’d be pissed.”

  THEY picked up the tide around two. Sullivans Island slid by and they headed between the jetties, out to sea. Harper crossed the channel and hugged the port side as containerships and trawlers plowed past. Blow Job began pitching as she passed buoy Romeo 14, rusty bell clanging dolefully. The sun glared off the water in a million scintillating points. Little Mary asked Dan to sunscreen her back, then turned, offering her breasts. He felt dizzy and his bladder was full. “There a head aboard?” he asked Harper.

  “Below and forward. Hey, and long as you’re down there, bring up a towel. Should be some in the V-berth.”

  He let himself down the companionway gingerly. It would be smoother outside the bar, but right now she was going up and down so hard, he felt queasy.

  Belowdecks, the Alberg was roomier than he expected: a deep main cabin with settees and a galley; gimballed lamps and a hatchway that he guessed accessed the engine. “Beer in the icebox,” Harper shouted down from the blue cutout of sky, and Dan remembered the head. He went forward and found it. It was small but had everything he needed, and he sagged into the teak, closing his eyes as he drained used beer.

  He was in the V-berth looking for the towels when the door closed behind him. He whipped around in the sudden dimness, feeling himself grow heavy, then light, almost floating, as the bow reared up and then dropped away.