by David Poyer
Leighty leaned back. His eyes followed Pedersen as the steward bent with the coffee server. “What do you think, Jay? Is this a major project? What exactly’s involved?”
Shit, Dan thought angrily. There he goes again, asking Harper.
Another day in the yard. They were in the wardroom, progress conference again, and in the middle of a wrangle about electrical repair benches. The Naval Safety Center had come out with new requirements, and the question was whether Barrett had to meet them now or wait till the next yard period. He tuned back in as Harper cleared his throat. “According to Ships Safety Bulletin, you got to insulate all vertical surfaces with eighth-inch plastic laminate. That means the knee knockers under the table, the ends of the workbenches, the back panel, the top shelf—”
“What about horizontal surfaces?” Leighty asked him.
“They’re already insulated. Then you got to cover the foundation with either rubber matting or more laminate, and check the hinges, door handles, and catches to make sure they’re nonconducting material.”
“What about the sign?”
“We can do the sign for you, Captain,” said the shipyard rep, doodling on his pad. “Not a problem. But all this laminate has got to be hand-measured, hand-cut, hand-fitted. That’s four, five mandays we’re talking, times three workbenches, and you’re pulling chocks out of here day after tomorrow.”
“I’m aware of when we get under way, Mr. Grobmyer.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
“But I’m not sure this is something we don’t need. Jay, how about it, do we need this?”
“No, sir,” said Harper. He tapped the message. “We’re grandfathered. Paragraph four. ‘Commands meeting specs of NAVAIR drawing sixty-three A one fourteen’—that’s us—‘may defer action until the next regular overhaul period.’”
“There you go, sir,” said Grobmyer. “Now, let’s go to the helicopter deck-edge net modifications—”
“Hold on,” said Leighty. “That’s not what I meant. This sounds like something that could protect our guys.” His eye snagged Dan’s and he blinked. “Uh, what’s your take on this, Lieutenant?”
“I tend to agree with the Chief Warrant, sir.”
“How many volts are they playing with on those benches?”
“There’s around twenty thousand volts on the CRTs, sir.”
“That’s a lot of juice.”
“The guys know it’s dangerous. They ground everything.”
“I’m sure they do. But what if we have to make repairs in a seaway and we’re rolling? I can see somebody losing his balance, falling.” Leighty turned to the civilian. “We’ll comply with the new directive, Mr. Grobmyer.”
Grobmyer doodled, then shrugged. “Your call, captain. But like I said, I got to get ship supe’s chop. An’ I don’t think I’m gonna get it for anything you get grandfathered for, like your chief warrant says.”
“How about this, then: Cut us three sets of the lucite, or whatever it is, and our guys will install it themselves. Can you do that for us?”
“That’s gonna take time, too, to do the measurements, do the cutting—”
“I seem to recall my men assisted yours on the reinstallation of the launcher guiderails,” said Leighty.
“Yeah, they did.” Grobmyer looked startled, then his jowls went bland again and he made a note. “Okay, sir. Can do. Okay, next issue. We got the nets rewired, put them on starting tomorrow. Crane’ll be here Thursday for the weight test … .”
Dan half-listened to the rest of the report. He wondered why Leighty was making such a big deal out of the workbench issue. Generally, if you had any leverage over the yardbirds, you saved it—there was always something critical they forgot to do or had to do over. But Leighty had just cashed in his chips.
A flicker of motion caught his eye. He looked at the bulkhead, then through it, through the porthole, to where the mast of a sailboat was tracing slowly across the circle of inch-thick glass.
He remembered Little Mary’s hands, firm and expert, her lips.
He still felt badly that she was married. But he hadn’t known. She didn’t wear a ring or anything.
Anyway, so what?
The captain got to his feet, and Vysotsky and the other officers jumped up. “Carry on,” Leighty said.
The meeting broke. The joiner door slammed as some officers left, and others who’d been waiting outside came in. One was Mark Deshowits. Dan nodded, noticing he still had his beard.
“I heard a good one,” said a voice behind him.
Dan swung. It was Lieutenant (jg) Van Cleef, the communications officer. He would have been movie-star material, but his jaw jutted too far, making his face seem deformed when you first met him. His nickname was “Cowcatcher.” “What’s that, Keon?” he said.
“There were these three gay guys in bed together, professional athletes, and they’re shooting the shit. And the conversation turns to what game’s the most fun. And the first guy says, ‘Basketball. It’s gotta be my game. I love it when you go up in the air and just rub up against all the other players.’”
Dan cleared his throat, glancing involuntarily toward a whiteuniformed back at the coffee urn.
“And the second faggot says, ‘Naw, it’s gotta be football. You can’t imagine how good it is in a huddle, everybody pressed together, and then—a pileup! I come every time it happens.’”
The other officers had gone silent. Was it his imagination or were their eyes making the same traverse … from Van Cleef to the man who stood, back still to them, at the coffee urn? “And then the third guy says, ‘You’re both full of shit. The best sport’s what I do. Baseball.’ And they both go, ‘What!’ ‘You’re putting us on, man! What’s so great about baseball? Shit, you play way the hell out in the outfield!’
“And the guy says, ‘Yeah, that’s right. And when a fly comes out my way and bounces and I catch it, and the guy’s tearing ass for second base, and I’m standing there tossing the ball up and down and looking where to throw, and there’s thirty thousand people yelling, “Throw it, you cocksucker!” See—I love the recognition.’”
A snigger ran around the wardroom, then stopped. Dan eased his head around.
The captain had turned around to face them, coffee cup lifted from the saucer, hanging in the air like one of those floating magnet toys for bored executives. He didn’t smile. And for that frozen second, Dan felt as if a door had come open, and he didn’t want to look inside. Beside him, Vysotsky began, “Look, you people—” but Leighty interrupted him: “Mr. Van Cleef.”
“Yes, sir?”
“What was the result of the classified-materials inspection? I don’t recall getting a report on that.”
“Uh, I sent it up via the XO, sir.”
“Have you seen it, George? What were the results?”
“Uh, there were some discrepancies.”
“Such as?”
Van Cleef stammered, “There’s a … a card supposed to be on the outside of all of our safes. That you initial who opened it every day, who closed it. A Form eight thirty-three. And—”
“And what?”
“And we needed to change some of the combinations—and the letters of access, we’ve got them being retyped—”
“What was your overall grade, Mr. Van Cleef?”
“Satisfactory, sir.”
“Not outstanding?”
“No, sir.”
“Not excellent?”
“No, sir, Captain.”
“Was there a number grade, Mr. Van Cleef?”
“Seventy-two, sir,” said the comm officer miserably.
“Barely satisfactory, I would say. I’d like to see a copy of the original inspection report, along with your section of the Fleet Training Center inspection guide.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll … I’ll bring it right up.”
Taking his time, Leighty finished his coffee, replaced the cup on the sideboard, and knocked twice on the sliding door. Pedersen’s face showed for a seco
nd before it and the cup disappeared.
“I’ll be in my cabin,” Leighty said. He went to the joiner door, opened it, and left.
The comm officer sat down. The other officers looked at him curiously, then, as if by tacit agreement, drifted away. Dan saw Harper sitting by the aft bulkhead, a copy of Navy Times on his lap.
Slowly, deliberately, the chief warrant winked at Dan.
THE rest of the day went by in a blur. There were dozens of things to be done to get ready for sea. A bright spot was the report from Chief Mainhardt. DS2 Williams had gotten Version Three of the ACDADS operating software to run over the weekend. Dan was glad to hear it. Without a running combat system, they couldn’t do the at-sea gun and missile shoot. But they had to in order to align systems before going to Gitmo, and they had to pass Gitmo before deploying overseas. Everything was scheduled so fucking tight, he thought. But now it was up.
So he was on a high, standing on the forecastle, actually feeling pretty good, when the police car and van shot past him on the pier and squealed to a halt by the brow. He went to the lifeline and leaned out to see around the bulge of the ship. Chief Glasser was on the quarterdeck. He said something to the petty officer of the watch, then strolled down the gangway. Glasser leaned into the lead car as behind it the doors of the van popped open and two uniformed base cops got out and went around to the back.
Dan put his hands in his pockets and drifted aft through the breaker.
It was Sanderling. The slight seaman looked as if he’d been washed too hot and dried on high. The husky cops, ex-marines probably, flanked him, made him look about ten years old. One was showing Glasser some paperwork. The chief bent to sign it, the cop tore it off and handed it to him, and Glasser nodded curtly to Sanderling.
Dan was waiting when they reached the quarterdeck. “What’s going on, Chief?”
“Morning, sir. Sanderling here, they caught him over in the Exchange shoplifting cassettes.”
“No, sir, that ain’t it at all.” A hot, unjustly accused face turned toward Dan. “They got it all wrong. I was getting some tapes for the captain. I was lookin’ at ’em, and I got six or seven. My hands was full, so I put two in my pocket. And they was watching me and they—”
“What are you doing in civvies in the middle of the day, Sanderling?”
“Captain told me to pick them up on the way in, take my time.”
“But it’s three hours after quarters—” Dan cut himself off; he wasn’t Sanderling’s division officer. “That the charge sheet, Chief?”
“Yes sir. Want to see it?”
“No. Get Mr. Harper up here.”
“Aye aye, sir. Flipper, pass the word: Chief Warrant Officer Harper, quarterdeck.”
“Sir, just ask the captain. He’ll tell you—”
“We’ll see, Seaman Sanderling. You’ll probably be telling him about it at mast, anyway.”
“Chief Harper, lay to the quarterdeck,” said the 1MC. Glasser closed his eyes in exasperation. “Stay here,” he grunted to Sanderling, and went inside the quarterdeck shack.
“Damn it, Sandy. You’re damage control team-trained, fire fighting—trained—we’re going to need every man in Gitmo. Didn’t you think about that?”
“But they got it all wrong, Mr. Lenson. Like I said—”
“Chief Warrant Officer Harper, quarterdeck.”
The phone beeped and the petty officer snatched it. “Yeah. One of your guys up here, base police just brought him back … Sanderling … . Yes, sir.” He hung up. “He’ll be right up, sir,” he told Dan.
Looking at the seaman’s hurt face, his torn pockets, he felt a momentary doubt. Then he remembered the mutterings in the computer room.
“I’m gonna talk to him a minute, okay, Chief?”
“Suit yourself, sir.”
When they were out of earshot, he leaned against the king post for conrep station number 3. “What’s the story on you and the captain, Sanderling?”
“What do you mean, sir? I been fixing his entertainment system.”
“Seems like it’s needed a lot of fixing lately.”
“It’s broke all the time, that’s why. It’s a shitty system; they bought low bid.” Sanderling’s eyes went still. “Or are you askin’ me something else, sir?”
“You seem to be friendly with him.”
“We talk. He’s okay.” The seaman’s eyes slid off Dan’s toward the pier. “What you want me to say, sir? He’s the captain. I’m a seaman second. Sometimes we talk about music.”
He couldn’t tell if the man was being evasive or just defensive. He thought for a second of asking him something along the lines of “Does he ever try to touch you?” But that sounded like something you’d say to a child. Anyway, what could Sanderling tell him? If he admitted something and Dan reported it, ship’s office would start discharge proceedings tomorrow.
So he didn’t ask. He just turned, and there was Jay Harper on the quarterdeck. “There you are, you little son of a bitch,” Harper said furiously. “I got him, Glasser. Sanderling, you little pansy thief. I ought to cut your nuts off.”
Dan said, “Report to me later and tell me what this is all about, Chief Warrant.” Then he walked aft, forcing himself to detach even as he heard Harper shouting.
HE picked Beverly up at her apartment and took her out to an Italian place. He felt her warmth against his back as they rode, arms wrapped around him, tightening every time he leaned into a curve. But dinner felt strained. He was tired and she didn’t have much to say, either. He kept catching her eye, but when he looked right at her, she dropped her gaze.
“How’s Billy?”
“He’s fine. He wanted to know if you were coming over tonight.”
“Yeah?”
“He wanted to stay up till we got back.” She smiled. “You’ve got a fan.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“You look tired.”
“I guess I am. We’re coming down to the wire on the availability.”
“That’s one of those weird Navy words that means something else, right?”
“It means being pierside at the shipyard—so they can fix stuff.”
“I see. Well, we don’t have to go to the movie if you don’t feel up to it.”
There it was again, her fucking agreeableness. “You wanted to see that one, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I can go anytime. I can see it with a girlfriend when you’re at sea.” She smiled faintly. “I’ll have plenty of free time then. Why don’t we just go home? You can lie on the couch. I’ll rub your neck.”
The sitter met them at the door, a finger to her lips. “Oh, he fell asleep?” Strishauser said, pulling off her linen jacket. “He wanted to stay up and see Dan. Here, is this enough? Thanks, Jennie.”
She turned to Dan. “Just let me look in on him. I’ll be right out. Wine in the refrigerator.” She went off and he strolled into the kitchen. A roach—no, he corrected himself dryly, in Charleston they were “palmetto bugs”—froze on the sink as he flipped the light on. The Lancer’s was in the fridge. He found glasses and poured two tall ones.
She came out in a pale flowered robe, not silk, but padded cotton. A housewife’s cover-up, he thought. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and her eyes blinked, making her look puzzled. They settled on the couch, and the quiet grew longer, till it was a living thing one of them would have to kill. Beverly finally did. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“I know how you feel about … your ex-wife. But don’t you think all this bitterness is hurting you more than her?”
“Bitterness?”
“Yes, I know, ‘What bitterness?’ I don’t think men know half of what goes on in their own heads. You’re full of anger, Dan. So full, it spills over on me. Sometimes it makes me mad. Most of the time, it just makes me sad.”
“Well … I’m pissed, yeah. I got hurt. She gets my daughter and two-thirds of my fucking paycheck. You call that fair?”
“Don’t yo
u think she might have been hurt, too?”
“She didn’t have to leave.”
“She must have felt she did.”
“I can’t control what people feel. We had a house, furniture, a car. A hell of a lot better than my parents ever had it. We had Nan. Betts was going to school part-time. She could have done anything she wanted. I’m not the most in touch with my feelings kind of person. I’m not spontaneous, but I was trying to change. I was changing. What does she do? Fuck some asshole she meets in a bar.” He tossed the last of the wine off, got up, and got another. She shook her head when he held up the bottle. “Her parents are rich. I couldn’t match what she grew up with. And then she got into this feminist stuff—”
“You know, I don’t drink very much—except when I’m with you. Then I always get up with a headache the next day.”
“Well, your cigarettes give me a headache, too.”
“You didn’t notice.” She sounded hurt.
“Notice what?”
“I haven’t smoked at all this evening. I thought you’d be pleased.” He couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he just felt guilty, then angry because she made him feel guilty.
“Did you ever ask her what she needed to be happy?”
“Who?”
“Your ex-wife.”
“I don’t know. Look, I really don’t want to talk about this stuff now.”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to help. I don’t see how you can—it’s hard to be happy when you keep all that bottled up inside you.”
“Now you sound like her.”
“Do I?”
“That’s what she was always saying—that I bottled everything up till my brains fizzed. She called it ‘rigid Academy bullshit.’ Hey, if it wasn’t for the Navy, I’d be back in Pennsylvania wiring houses.” He got up and went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. His bike was sitting at the curb, under the light. Shit, he thought, I got to get that turn signal fixed.
“I know,” she murmured.
“What do you know?”
“How it feels, having someone tell you what you’re like, belittle you. Carl made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right. He’d criticize me at every opportunity, tell me I was helpless, that I exaggerated my feelings. I hated myself because I believed what he told me. Then I found out about his affairs.”