The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  “I know what you mean,” Lt. Collins said.

  “I mean, that kind of guy, he can learn new things by himself, figure out troubles, look ahead, not like old Chien—”

  “Chien was a good old man, Jake. Don’t blacken his name,” Lynch broke in, frowning. “This coolie of yours, he’s too new aboard to take charge of a repair gang. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “I been training him on steaming watches and he already knows a lot, sir.” Holman’s manner was becoming animated. “I’d like to take personal charge of the repair gang for a while, to train Po-han, train ’em all. I was hoping I might get excused from drills and topside watches for a while, sir, to do that.” His eyes pleaded.

  Lt. Collins shook his head. “No one may be excused from his military duties, Holman.”

  He would have to reassess Holman’s effect on the ship, he thought. There was the coffee mess he had started in the engine room, to split the black gang off from the unitary crew. Was that conscious? How much of his motivation in this repair gang scheme was conscious? Yet it was a plausible scheme, and the only doubtful element was Holman himself. The sullen aura was surrounding the man again, like a cloak.

  “Yes, sir. I’d like to try anyway, sir, what time I can find, do the best I can, anyway,” he said, his face expressionless once more.

  Make me feel guilty, will you? Lt. Collins thought. I neither like nor trust you, Holman. I’m afraid of what you might do to San Pablo. He stood up, to signal an end of talking. Holman and Lynch jumped to their feet.

  “I’ll talk to Shing about it,” Lt. Collins said.

  Outside by the tall stack, Holman asked Lynch, “Chief, why’s he got to ask Shing about a repair gang? Don’t he run this damn ship?”

  “Well, old Lop Eye sort of runs the coolies,” Lynch said. He was looking up at the bund. “Here they come to get Chien’s ghost,” he said.

  A dozen of them in loose gray or yellow robes came down to the pontoon, surrounding a red sedan chair. Lop Eye Shing came out to meet them with deep bows. They had beads around their necks and some wore skull caps and some had bare, shaven heads with scars on them. The holiest one of all, in the sedan chair, wore a kind of peaked cap, and his skin was like yellow-waxy paper plastered tightly over his face bones. Lop Eye Shing bowed very low to him.

  Holman joined the other Sand Pebbles on the main deck, to watch them come aboard. The old holy man was named Wing and he starved himself every other month, Clip Clip told them solemnly. The old man walked feebly. Two younger ones helped him up to the quarterdeck and down into the engine room. Two more came behind carrying a bronze urn with carvings on it. The others had gongs and drums. It was a wholly Chinese affair. They were alone in the engine room for nearly an hour, gonging and clanging and singing and popping firecrackers, and a strong blue haze of burning joss sticks came up. The Sand Pebbles were impressed. They knew something pretty big and mysterious was going on down there. When the party left the ship, some of the Sand Pebbles thought they had Chien’s ghost in the bronze urn. Oh Joy said no, the urn was only to burn joss sticks. A Chinese ghost was not something you could put in a box, he said. What they had done was to break the ghost up into little pieces that the wind would blow away.

  Holman and the other engineers went below. The engine room smelled strongly and strangely of incense and powdersmoke. Bits of red paper from the firecrackers flecked the oily machine parts. The coolies were back on the job and Ping-wen seemed to be in charge. He was a thin old man, much like Chien, but with a sly, merry look. Wilsey kept turning and looking around and working his arms and shoulders as if he were trying the fit of a coat.

  “You know, it feels like nothing ever happened down here,” he said. “It feels just like it used to. It feels all right again.”

  “It sure enough does,” Burgoyne agreed.

  Holman could feel it too. There was something to that joss pidgin, he thought. He did not see Po-han, and wondered where he was. “I’ll make us a pot of coffee, to celebrate,” he said.

  Yen-ta opened the door for Lop Eye Shing. Lt. Collins stood to greet him, with repeated slight bows, and offered him a covered bowl of tea with both hands. Shing propped his stick against his gray gown and took the bowl in both hands. He had to support both his left hand and the bowl with his good right hand. Very carefully, he pivoted to set the bowl on the table and, at Lt. Collins’ repeated invitations, seated himself.

  They talked about each other’s health and the weather. Shing seemed at ease, but Lt. Collins was not. It was something like conferring with a warlord, but there were no treaties and body of diplomatic correspondence in the background to structure the situation. Shing had no legal existence in San Pablo. Yet when Lt. Collins worked out something new with him they were, in a sense, writing unwritten laws. It was not comfortable.

  Neither man touched his tea. Lt. Collins could not read Shing’s feelings. The sagging left side of Shing’s bold face gave him a leering, sardonic look that seemed to belie his words and smuggle sinister import into the blandest phrase. In due time they got around to Chien. There was no precedent for handling a coolie death. Lt. Collins was afraid that Shing was going to demand an indemnity, which could not legally be paid. He explained very carefully about Chien.

  “It was Chien’s own fault, you see, because he did not inspect those keys,” he finished.

  Shing nodded, leering amiably. “Chien, Ho-mang make fight,” he said. “Ho-mang kill Chien. Mei yuh fah tzu.” It was a verbal shrug.

  “What do you mean, Holman killed Chien?”

  With some difficulty, Shing made it clear that it was a spiritual fight. The engine had intervened to decide it in favor of Holman. All the Chinese were taking the engine’s judgment as final, Shing indicated. The Chinese mind, Lt. Collins thought. Who will ever civilize them? But he felt relieved.

  “Any man say Ho-mang belong teach-man,” Shing went on. “He have got plenty face. Oh, just now, too much face! Any Chinese man say fight-man bu hao, teach-man moh bettah.”

  Lt. Collins frowned. Chinese values, he thought. It was hard to think of Holman as a teacher, that sullen, indrawn man. But it was a title of respect in China and the way was open to suggest Holman’s idea of a separate repair gang. Shing did not accept the idea readily. He did not want the coolie Po-han to be boss of it. Lt. Collins tried to explain what was special about Po-han, and it seemed to be the very reason Shing was opposed. Finally he gave in, but very delicately he demanded a balancing concession in Lt. Collins’ sphere of authority. He wanted a promise that Holman would be transferred before Lt. Collins himself was relieved of command.

  Lt. Collins thought about that. Would he lose face, set a dangerous precedent, if he agreed? He wanted to agree. Did Shing, too, sense an undefined menace in the man Holman? He asked Shing for reasons. Shing was evasive.

  “I think bye-m-bye Sampabble moh bettah, suppose Ho-mang go Shanghai moh fah,” was all that he would say.

  “All right,” Lt. Collins said at last.

  Shing smiled, as well as he could. His sardonic, permanent half wink seemed to make them fellow conspirators. Lt. Collins resisted an urge to squirm. The tea was still untouched. Shing, as guest, had the initiative. Lt. Collins looked pointedly at the tea bowls. Shing took up his bowl in both hands and drank, and the visit was formally ended.

  When he had bowed Shing out, Lt. Collins found that he was sweating. “Phew!” he said, shaking his head, and went into his bathroom to wash his face and hands. When he came out, he called Yen-ta.

  “Tell Holman to come up here,” he ordered, in a voice firm and sure again.

  Holman, still in dungarees, sat woodenly in the same place, across the green-topped table. There was no coffee. Lt. Collins told him it was all set for Po-han to head a special repair gang. Holman’s face did not change.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he said. “That’s good.”

  “I’m going to relieve you of topside watches for the time being, until you can get the gang o
rganized and trained.”

  The face became alive and friendly. “Yes, sir! I’ll work with ’em, to fix everything that’s wrong now. Then they can keep it up to snuff by themselves.” He actually grinned.

  “That pleases you?” Lt. Collins smiled. “Is it getting to the machinery, or getting away from military duties?”

  “Well, sir … both, I guess.” Holman’s voice was guarded. “I wouldn’t mind the military duties so much, if I knew everything was all right down below.”

  “But you still wouldn’t like them?”

  “Well, they still wouldn’t come quite natural, I guess. But I’d carry ’em out, good as anybody, sir. If I knew things was okay below.”

  “I want to make us both clear on your attitude to military duty, Holman,” Lt. Collins said. “I want to go back to something you said this morning, about the Chinese learning machinery monkey-see monkey-do. How do you know you haven’t learned military life that way? How do you know military life is not all of a piece, all connected sense, if you could only understand it?”

  “I’ve tried, sir. If it made that kind of sense, I’d have it doped out by now. But it don’t.”

  “Hmmm. It doesn’t, eh?” Lt. Collins thought a moment. “All right, what’s the derivative of pv with respect to t?”

  Holman shook his head dumbly. His face was wooden.

  “It’s part of understanding machinery, but you’d have to have a couple of years of college math and physics before I could begin to explain it to you. Does it make sense to you now?”

  Holman scowled. “If I knew it, what could I do down below that I can’t do now?”

  “You could design new machinery.”

  “If I could’ve gone to school, I’d know that! I’d know ten times more’n that by now, and things nobody ever knew before!”

  Obviously, it was a sore spot. Lt. Collins held up his hand.

  “All right, Holman! All I’m trying to say is that somewhere along the line every man must accept his limitations. I am no exception, and neither are you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Holman said. “Sure, I’m stopped on machinery, and I know where. But on this other stuff, I’m stopped before I even start.” His face was suddenly clear and open. “If it makes sense, can you give me just a start on it?”

  “Think of it this way.” Lt. Collins steepled his fingers. “The crew of a ship must be designed, just like the machinery which powers the ship. Captains before me designed San Pablo for the very special job we have. But the human spirit will not hold a permanent shape, like steel or brass. Our design is process, dynamic, like a pattern of juggling eggs.” He made juggling motions. Fascinated interest marked Holman’s face. “We have to refit ourselves into the design every day.” Lt. Collins went on. “That is the purpose of our military ceremony and all that we do in San Pablo. Does it make a glimmer of sense to you now?”

  “I can’t see how it works. Can you show me just a little bit how it works?” Holman was leaning forward in a strained anguish of curiosity.

  “You saw it work here in Paoshan, two days ago. But I’ll give you a textbook example. Last year at Wanhsien, in the gorges, junkmen rioted and killed an American. H.M.S. Cockchafer was in port. Her captain ordered the warlord to behead two junkmen on the bund and to walk himself in the American’s funeral procession, in full uniform and on foot while the white people rode in chairs. The warlord obeyed. It was a terrible loss of face, and he took it out on the junkmen later, but there will not be any more trouble in Wanhsien.”

  “I heard about that, down in Manila,” Holman said. “I wondered if the two they beheaded were the ones that did the actual killing.”

  “Who could know? Presumably they were part of the mob.”

  “They’d know. But that’s off the track.” Holman was searching for words. “I don’t see any connection between that and … and salutes and colors and stuff. The quarterdeck stuff.”

  Lt. Collins clasped his hands. “Consider this. The warlord had ten thousand soldiers ashore, to Cockchafer’s fifty men. He had field artillery to outgun her twenty to one. He would never have surrendered face to another Chinese, with odds like that in his favor.”

  “He was scared of what would come after. All England. The Royal Navy. Marines.”

  “No. No.” Lt. Collins shook his head. “Wanhsien is above the rapids. He knew all the treaty powers together couldn’t get enough force up there to match him. But he obeyed.”

  “He was bluffed? You mean—”

  “Not bluffed!” Lt. Collins slapped the table. “That warlord obeyed a certain moral authority that is really in the British flag, do you see? The kind of virtue we maintain in our flags by our military ceremony, by the way we live our lives.” He paused, gazing keenly at Holman. The man was chewing his lip and straining to comprehend. His spread, blunt fingers clawed gently, unconsciously, at the green baize. Black grease outlined the fingernails. “Moral authority,” Lt. Collins repeated. “Like the power of a man’s eye over a dog’s eye.”

  The hands made fists. “The warlord wasn’t a dog. He should’ve told them Limeys to go to hell!” Holman said.

  Lt. Collins stifled a surge of anger. You fool, to try explaining, he told himself. It was the man’s eagerness to know, and his own urge to communicate this thing he felt, that had betrayed him.

  “I guess the warlord had military fear,” Holman said heavily.

  That was an enlisted man’s phrase. It meant moral authority which the man obeyed unwillingly, sweating and tongue-tied and radiating unconscious hostility in the presence of officers. You could not help despising such a man, because he was despising himself. But when the man accepted moral authority, he found his pride and self-respect, and relations were easy and pleasant. It was easy and pleasant with all of the Sand Pebbles except Holman. Enlisted men did not have a phrase for the good feeling, but you might almost call it military love.

  Abruptly, he looked directly into Holman’s gray eyes. Holman dropped his eyes, and the square face went impassive. The sullen aura spread across the table.

  If they did not break his gutter spirit in the big ships, we can’t break it in San Pablo, Lt. Collins thought. Shing was right. Well, wrap it up now. Break off this misguided effort.

  “Holman, no man alive understands the mechanics of how we put moral authority into our flags,” he said slowly. “Mechanics is not the word for it. No word has been coined for it. I can perhaps follow a causal chain more deeply into that mystery than you can, but I reach my own limits.” He was trying to keep the distaste he felt out of his voice, and to keep the corners of his mouth up. “I accept my limitations, as you must, as all men must. In the end, I have to take it monkey-see monkey-do. But a nicer word for it is faith. You will be a much happier person when you learn to have faith.”

  “I want to know,” Holman said. “I can’t stand feeling like a monkey.”

  Lt. Collins stood up, feeling his face flush. Holman scrambled clumsily to his feet. Lt. Collins made his voice officially impersonal.

  “I am not in the habit of justifying myself to enlisted men, Holman. You may know this much: the esprit of the marines is partly due to the fact that they can all be fighting men, because the navy handles their logistics. In San Pablo, the Chinese boatmen handle our logistics, and I insist that we must all be fighting men. That is all the reason you have any need or right to know.” He was lashing the man with his flat, impersonal voice. “San Pablo is not a Fleet ship. As long as we move and smoke boils out our stack, we will make the impression I wish on the Hunanese. Engineering is going to remain coolie work in San Pablo. It is going to remain work done by second-rate, inferior men of whom no courage or honor is expected. You may do such work for as long as it takes you to train your man to replace Chien, but you must not glorify what you do, and when you have it done I will transfer you back to the Fleet.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” the man said thickly, flashing teeth.

  He put on his white hat and saluted, clumsy as a bear, and
almost bolted out the door. Lt. Collins relaxed his fists. He had not realized they were closed. He rang for Yen-ta and ordered coffee.

  He poured another cup. They all lived it without having to think about it, he thought. Even Tom Bordelles, who would go far with the blind, straight, wordless drive he had. There was no one to talk with about these thoughts. Except, incredibly, the man Holman, who wanted to know. Lt. Collins wryed his mouth. Holman’s analytical tools were a sledge hammer and a cold chisel. He could only destroy the thing he wanted to take apart. But even the finest tools, the most subtle mind, would destroy it. The act of observing altered unpredictably the thing observed. It was wrong to try to look.

  That was the flaw in Holman. Only I must look out the eyes, Lt. Collins thought. And I look at it and it squiggles away. From me alone it squiggles away.

  You had to take the world as you found it. When San Pablo first came to Hunan, China was still an empire. What hurt one part hurt all. The memory of the Boxer Suppression was painfully fresh. They had good physical reasons, when they saw the flag on the Hunan rivers, to tremble and obey. Now China was a crazy-quilt turbulence of big and little warlords, but they still obeyed. It was old custom. They obeyed the moral authority of the treaty power flags.

  Coldly, alone at his table, he faced it. As a fighting machine, San Pablo was a joke. In a genuine battle he could not whip even General Pan’s ragtain army, let alone forty million Hunanese. He was a man with a kitchen chair in a cage full of tigers.

  But in another part of his mind he knew that Chinese could not fight a genuine battle. Bordelles and the Sand Pebbles had a blind faith in that. It was justified. Chinese made pariahs of their armed men. No people who believed so could win any battles, except among themselves. Once we commission the new flotilla building in Shanghai, he thought, we can bring a thousand men to Paoshan. We can bring enough gunpower to pulverize the city. I have to hold the fort until then.