“You’re sick. You’re in a nervous state,” he said. “I’m only doing my duty.”
“I know. I’m government property,” Holman said. “I’m on your Title B cards, ain’t I?”
“You have to eat and rest. I’m responsible for you.”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No. If I did, I’d bring men down to overpower you for your own good,” Jennings said. “Prove you’re not, by coming up with me.”
“Well, I am crazy, Doc. It’s a great feeling and you ought to try it yourself,” Holman said. “Maskee, I’ll come up. But you tell them bastards to keep clear of me. Tell ’em not to cross my bow.”
“Nobody will bother you, Jake.”
No one was in the washroom when he took his shower. He shaved himself, for the first time in many months. His face had fierce red eyes and hollow cheeks and a puckered scar on the left cheek that was tricky to shave around. He could not shave there as smoothly as Clip Clip could. Wong put a big plate of meat, rice and vegetables in Holman’s place, and a pitcher of coffee. The Sand Pebbles were all at the other two tables, pretending to watch a couple of acey-deucey games and keeping their voices down. The food stuck in Holman’s throat, but he drank a cup of the coffee. Then he sat on his bunk.
They all wanted to help him and he hated them. He hated them for being alive. He hated himself for being alive. That was crazy. It was all right, being crazy. If you killed somebody, it wasn’t murder. That was why they were afraid of you. They didn’t know who you’d kill next. Yen-ta came in and whispered to Burgoyne. Burgoyne came over.
“Jake, the skipper would like to talk to you.”
“I don’t need any of his moral courage right now.”
“It ain’t an order,” Burgoyne said. “You don’t have to go.”
“Then I’ll go,” Holman said.
It was clear and dark and warm topside, with all the stars out. Lt. Collins looked pale and tired. He tried to explain about Po-han: the orders to shoot only to save American lives; how the not-shooting was what had really saved the American lives, women, children; it would have been another Wanhsien fight; Comyang’s neck was out for their even being at Paoshan; the big lie the gearwheel would have made; the propaganda harm to America and to the navy. Holman would not sit down, but he listened quietly. He knew it all already. The raw edge in him seemed dulled at last. He did not want to lash out.
“All that’s true. Po-han’s still dead,” Holman said. “I killed him.”
“I know,” Lt. Collins said.
That was all. Outside, Holman stopped by the rail, the same place where he had talked to Miss Eckert. He looked at the dots of light, fishing sampans, shrimp trappers, all over the far dark water like fallen stars. He listened to the buzzing behind his ear. Sometimes he could almost make words out of the buzzing, like seeing faces in clouds. Two dark figures came forward, past the engine-room skylight, and the bearded shape of one of them was Craddock. They stopped, facing Holman, and the woman was Miss Eckert.
“Mr. Holman,” Craddock said. Holman just looked at him. “Our mission is to all burdened spirits,” Craddock said. “We can help you find peace. Please let us help you.” His voice was deep and dark as the night over them.
“Didn’t they tell you I’m crazy?” Holman said. “Ain’t you scared?”
Craddock’s hands wrestled with each other. “It was God’s merciful hand acting through you. By prayer you can know that in your heart and forgive yourself.”
Holman thought about Craddock’s rain prayer of the past summer. His head felt cool and clear and crazy and his ear buzzed.
“All God is on this ship is a word to swear with,” he said. “What I want to know I want to know in my head. Why Po-han? Why Po-han?”
“God’s ways are unsearchable. We are all His instruments and we must not question Him.” Craddock intoned the words.
“Because he don’t know the answers?” Holman laughed bitterly. “From the way he takes care of his tools, I wouldn’t let him run an engine room, let alone the world.”
The girl just stood there. Craddock stiffened. “No matter how blasphemous your words, no matter how ugly and vicious the life you lead, you cannot forfeit one atom of the great love God bears you,” he said coldly. “You need only fall on your knees and repent and you will find a joyous peace you cannot even imagine.”
He said a lot more, wrestling his hands and cracking his knuckles.
“You came to me. I didn’t send for you,” Holman said. “You despise me, don’t you? You want to smear God on me the same way you’d smear blue ointment on a chancre, don’t you?”
The beard jutted. “I hate the sin and love the sinner.”
“People are what they do. The sinner is the sin,” Holman said. “I’m a murder, not a murderer. You can’t hate ideas, you can only hate people. The thing you kill is people.” He laughed again, coldly crazy. “I hate you too, Craddock. You’re phony as brass and glass. I ain’t your kind and never want to be.”
“Say what you will, you are still God’s child! You cannot escape His love!” Craddock pronounced it like a sentence to the gallows, with fierce relish.
“Tell my father next time you see him that I said to stow all missionaries in the double bottoms of hell.”
Craddock turned his back. “Come away, Miss Eckert,” he said harshly. “We can do no good here.”
She followed the old man obediently for a few steps and then halted. After a moment, she turned back. Holman relaxed his fists. She was about the only person alive he did not want to hurt.
“He was trying to help you in the only way he knows,” she said softly. “We feel guilty. If we had not stayed behind—”
“I already iffed all the ifs. Po-han’s still dead.”
“Yes. Talking won’t change that.” She leaned on the rail and he turned to lean beside her. “Many Chinese Christians have been tortured and killed this past week,” she said. “One of our Chinese pastors was tortured and killed, when the news from Wanhsien came.”
“Po-han wasn’t a Christian.”
“He was off your ship. They make no distinction.”
“Craddock does. Why didn’t they kill Craddock? Why Po-han?”
“China is becoming a nation.”
“I heard that before. I don’t know what it means.”
“It means being Chinese in the same way you are an American.”
“I don’t know that either.”
“I’ll tell you how Cho-jen understands it.”
Cho-jen was her brilliant student. Her Po-han. He said China’s weakness was in believing that all men were brothers. In a true nation only your fellow citizens were brothers and everybody else was fair game if they could not defend themselves. The Christian God was really a set of tribal deities, one for each treaty power flag. Christianity denationalized the Chinese by making them feel American and despise China. But they were barred absolutely from America as an inferior race, so they were being taught to despise themselves. Yet any American who wished might come to China and live there outside of Chinese law under the protection of his own armed forces. Cho-jen said China had to become a nation in self-defense.
“Nationalism is a deep, intense feeling,” she said. “Can you see how the sight of foreign flags and gunboats, so long taken for granted, can be suddenly infuriating?”
“I guess I can. It don’t help a bit about Po-han.”
“Not your grief. But you said you wanted to know in your head.”
“I don’t know. Why Po-han? Why not old Craddock?”
“Mr. Craddock is only their enemy. But Po-han, and all like him, are suddenly traitors in the new light of nationalism.” She looked out across the water. “Think of a Japanese gunboat at St. Louis, in defiance of our wishes. And an American who worked aboard it, caught ashore….”
“Yes.”
“In my home town, during the war, they killed dachshunds.”
“Yes.”
“I thy Fl
ag am a jealous Flag, and thou shalt have no other flags before Me. Cho-jen is fond of saying that.” Her voice was very sad. “Cho-jen says treason is the modern sin against the Holy Ghost. He says the Chinese must become the Chosen People of their own tribal god, if they are to survive in the modern world.”
“I understand now,” Holman said. “It don’t help a bit.”
“Not your grief. I wish I could share that with you.”
She moved nearer. The night was warm and dark around them. The only noise was the buzzing in his ear. He wanted to touch her hands, beside his on the wooden rail. As if she knew, she put her left hand on his and he put his other hand on top of it. He felt her warm, unjudging nearness and the iron clamp around his chest eased up.
“It ain’t that I shot Po-han, my finger on the trigger,” he said at last, haltingly. “It ain’t only that.”
She said nothing.
“I knew our orders,” he said. “I’m an American. I could’ve run down there and made it legal to save us both.” His throat was tight. “I was afraid,” he whispered. “I stayed aboard.”
She was silent. Her hand lay warm and unflinching between his hands. The strident buzzing back of his ear softened. He swung his head against her shoulder.
“All the time I was being glad it wasn’t me,” he whispered.
Her free hand came up and pressed his head against softness under the rough texture. Afterward he could not remember how long it was they stood that way. The cold craziness and the red-hot hurt beneath it and all the shame and hatefulness of everything drained out of him into her and he could breathe without the ache in his throat. The buzzing behind his ear stopped. They stood that way a long while and parted at last without saying anything more.
27
When he woke up in the morning, it felt like coming off a drunk. He could remember all he had done and said, and he was ashamed of most of it. The only part of it that he wanted to remember was that with Miss Eckert. He was not ashamed of that.
The men avoided him in the washroom. At the mess table they spoke in low voices and did not look at him. He did not like it.
“How long till we get to Hankow?” he asked Farren.
Farren looked surprised and pleased. “Three days, if you give us the turns,” he said.
“We’ll give you the turns,” Holman said. “Won’t we, Frenchy?”
“Sure enough! We sure will, Jake!” Burgoyne said, grinning.
“Want me and Perna to take the first watch?” Wilsey asked.
“Yeah, will you? I want to flake out again,” Holman said. “I still got a headache to sleep off.”
He half slept for several hours. Then he got up and had Clip Clip shave him and he felt pretty fair. He was able to shoot the breeze casually with the men drinking coffee. He stopped by the galley and had a bowl of tea with Big Chew. Nobody mentioned Po-han.
In the afternoon he and Burgoyne took the steaming watch and at first it went pretty hard. Chiu-pa was oiler. Holman heard a tiny steam blow start down the air pump rod. Chiu-pa was wiping over by the feed pumps and he did not move. The steam blow became louder. It rasped Holman’s nerves. He began hating Chiu-pa for a stupid idiot.
Po-han would have heard it instantly and been over there to set up on the gland and swab the rod. Many a time he had done it, grinning happily … holding his head so … reaching in so…. Suddenly a rivering sense of loss surged at Holman and just as suddenly it seemed to pass him. He had a feeling of Miss Eckert in the darkness and how friendly everyone had been all day.
“Chiu-pa!” he called. “Catchee air pump gland!”
After that he tried not to listen to the small things. Chiu-pa was a good man and he would catch anything before it became serious. At the end of the hour Crosley called down hesitantly for the readings. He did not say up and down, up and down.
“Sixty-two, up and down, up and down,” Holman shouted into the voice tube. “More to spare, if you want ’em!”
“Gotcha, Jake!” Crosley said.
What it took was not paying very close attention to the machinery. By the end of the watch he had the hang of it. It was going to be all right.
Each day after that it was easier. Holman stayed on the main deck. He caught glimpses of Miss Eckert on the boat deck, but he did not try to talk to her. He would not have known how to behave. That talk in the dark had changed things between them, but he did not know just how. He did not know how she felt about it.
Often she was with one of the men missionaries who Lynch said was named Gillespie. He was a well-set-up man of medium height with a strong chin and a sure, pleasant look about him. The men missionaries bunked in with the chiefs and Lynch had all the dope on them. Gillespie was the only one Lynch respected. Lynch said Gillespie came from a rich family and he was only being a missionary for the fun of it.
All hands manned the rail when the San Pablo steamed into Hankow. They were excited. They passed the native city first, to port, the bund six deep in junks and boiling with people. The gearwheel flag floated from every high place. It was worse than Changsha. Across the river the walled city of Wuchang was under siege. General Wu’s five-barred flag floated from a hilltop inside the walls. On Pagoda Hill back of Wuchang a gearwheel battery was firing into the city. They fired about one shell every five minutes and a smoke haze hung above the gray walls.
The big white stone Customs House marked the beginning of the foreign concessions. That bund was wide and tree-bordered, with pontoons for steamers. Treaty power flags and company house flags flew in profusion from every building, as if they were trying to match the gearwheel show in the native city. But what outmatched the gearwheel was the long gray line of warships down the middle of the river. They were sited so that their big guns could fire straight up the streets. As the San Pablo passed each ship, the sailors along the rail saluted in unison to bugled signals. The Sand Pebbles stood proudly and they snapped their salutes. They passed H.M.S. Cockchafer, shot full of holes and covered with glory, and they waved their hats and cheered.
To Holman everything looked scaled up. The destroyers looked like cruisers and the cruisers like battleships. Once Hankow had looked pokey to him, after Shanghai. Now, after Changsha, it looked like New York City.
“God, ain’t they pretty?” Duckbutt Randall kept asking, as they passed each warship. “That gearwheel. Huh! It ain’t a fart in a typhoon!” He spoke for them all.
The San Pablo anchored off the ex-Russian Concession. Sampans came out to take off passengers. Holman knew that refugees were being funneled down to Shanghai. He did not expect ever to see Miss Eckert again and he had to say at least good-bye. He pushed through the crowd on the quarterdeck.
“Good-bye, Miss Eckert,” he said.
She smiled and said good-bye. That was all they could say. Sailors and missionaries both stared, as if it were wrong and unheard of. Only Gillespie did not look upset about it.
All the ships had landing force ashore. There was no liberty. Lynch went ashore on special liberty. He said he was going to get his money back from that Russian woman or know the reason why. He was gone all night. He came back in the morning drunk and happy.
“That teashop’s got rooms topside and in back,” he told them in the CPO quarters. “She’s got ’em all rented to rich slopehead refugees. She’s even got the passageways rented.”
“Making money, you mean?”
“Almost three hundred Mex a day,” Lynch said happily.
Welbeck whistled. Franks stood up and walked a circle around Lynch, grinning and sniffing.
“Becky, he smells just like a rose,” Franks said.
“I got me a gold mine, boys,” Lynch agreed.
He told them about it. The gearwheelers were shooting landlords and moneylenders out in native territory. Thousands of them with their families and money were jamming into the concessions for safety. They would pay almost anything for a place to stay while they tried to bribe their way aboard a treaty-flag steamer to Shanghai. Chinese passages
on those steamers already cost ten times as much as saloon passages, Lynch said, which were still reserved for white people.
“Stand by for me, Becky. I got to go back over tonight,” Lynch said. “She needs a man there. All she’s got is a pimple-faced kid cousin named Valentine.” He slapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Come visit us, when liberty starts again,” he said. “Harbin Teashop, on Rue Krassof. There’ll always be an open bottle, boys!”
“We’ll do that, Lynch-boy!” Franks said. “Say hello to Looby for us.”
“Her name’s Liuba.” Lynch looked annoyed. “Lee-oo-bah. It means love in Russian.”
Franks’ landing force section took the first week ashore. Red Dog went over every day for mail and he brought back newspapers and scuttlebutt. Maily had not shown up at the Green Front, he said. Coolies from the dockyard came aboard and measured to make armor flaps for the bridge and all the superstructure windows. Ping-wen brought the floorplates back to the engine room. All the white paint had to be scraped off them. The coolies worked very slowly at it.
“Pappy Tung’s coolies are dogging off, too,” Farren told Holman. “It’s all them signs and propaganda.”
Sampans with big signs went up and down the river. They tried to come close enough to harangue the ship coolies in Chinese. The ships kept fire hoses led out, to wet down and swamp the sampans if they came within range. One sampan went round and round H.M.S. Cockchafer all day long. Its sign read: DAMN EYES KILL BABY BRITISHER, GO HOME!
The line of warships made a brave show all day. Signal flags fluttered from yardarms, power boats shuttled back and forth, bosuns’ pipes and bugles shrilled and blared. Commands rang out for battle drills. For colors every morning all hands on a mile of warships stood at hand salute while the bands on the two cruisers played their way through five national anthems.
The chief pastime aboard was watching the siege of Wuchang. One day two Wu gunboats came upriver to shell Pagoda Hill. They were small, white and rusty and they steamed up and down behind the screen of treaty power warships with their deck guns barking. The ships went to battle stations. People ashore crowded rooftops along the bund to see the show. They all cheered when Wu’s popguns raised dust on Pagoda Hill.
The Sand Pebbles Page 39