The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  On one midwatch Farren, who had the quarterdeck, deserted his post to come down and drink coffee with Holman in the engine room. Farren talked about conditions. Holman did not know how frank he dared to be.

  “If it was one man acting that way, instead of a whole crew, I might figure he was smokestacking,” Holman said.

  They discussed the idea. The deckforce called it “gundecking.” It was a thing kids did. They came off liberty pretending to be drunker than they really were. Down in their living compartments they would flop and stomp and cry and curse the navy and the officers and all the petty officers they didn’t like. They could get away with it because they were drunk. After a reasonable time, long enough for the kid to get most of it out of his system, one of the seasoned older men would slap him and tell him to knock it off. The kid would quiet right down.

  “They ain’t drunk and they ain’t kids,” Farren objected.

  “I mean, some of it’s put on.”

  “No it ain’t. They really lost their military fear.” Farren slurped coffee. “So’ve I. I hate to think it, sitting here now. But if Bordelles and the chiefs came down to the main deck to kick us into line, I’m scared I’d go hermentile right along with the rest of ’em.”

  Holman pondered that. He was afraid to ask questions.

  “It’s a hellish bad kind of being scared,” Farren said. “The guys figure you ain’t with ’em. Not that way.”

  “I hope it never comes to anything like that.”

  Farren brightened. “I don’t think it will,” he said. “I think the skipper’s got something up his sleeve. He knows what he’s doing.”

  That might be true. The men seldom sneered about Lt. Collins. They saw him very seldom, but when they did they still saluted. They kept the quarterdeck fairly clean. They were not letting go altogether.

  “We just got to hang on till high water,” Farren said, leaving.

  Hell or high water, Holman thought. He wondered whether Farren had been sounding him out, and on which side. It was just that continuing respect for Lt. Collins that made him hope the crew was only smokestacking. On a destroyer the kids waited until they were across the quarterdeck and aft of number four stack before they let themselves go. That was why it was called smokestacking.

  Harris was clearly leader of the black gang. He would have them hoist out ashes when they got knee deep, and that was about all. The machinery was foul with rust and dust and grease. The bilges were usually awash with stinking black water. Lynch came down every day or so to bluster. Holman let himself be Lynch’s target. It was almost like a game, he thought. Lynch had a grudge at the world and he was smokestacking it off on Holman, because he knew it was safe. Then one day that turned out not to be so.

  The men were all sitting on or around the workbench. Lynch came down, bag-eyed and bloat-bellied and fruit-smelling of brandy. He squinted angrily around the engine room and began, as usual, on Holman. “God damn you, Holman—” Then he shifted his gaze to Harris, who was seated between Perna and Stawski on the workbench. “Harris, get that look off your face!” Lynch ordered.

  Harris curled his lips back to show two rows of big white false teeth.

  “I’m telling you, Harris!” Lynch’s voice rose. “That’s silent contempt! I’ll run you up for it!”

  He turned to face Harris directly. Only a commissioned officer could run a man up for silent contempt. Harris continued to look at Lynch with silent contempt. Lynch snapped his own teeth.

  “All right, by God, we’ll clean bilges!” he said. “Harris, get in the bilges. Right now!”

  Holman saw it coming. “I’ll pump the water out first,” he said. “Come over to the bilge pump, Chief. I want to check with you about the valve action.” He wanted to draw Lynch off.

  “Go start the pump. I’ll be right over,” Lynch said.

  Holman went around to the pump. Through the engine he saw Lynch still facing Harris, shoulders hunched and head thrust forward like a bull.

  “Harris, I give you a military order,” he said. “Now jump, damn you!”

  “Prong you and all your relations, Shitevitski,” Harris said. “All the way back to Peter the Great.”

  “What? What?” Lynch’s voice was like a bird squawk. “This is mutiny!” he squawked, slapping his pistol. “We been waiting for this!”

  “Get out of here, you drunk fool. Don’t come back,” Harris said.

  “By the sweet loving Jesus, I’ll kill you for that!” Lynch screamed.

  He drew his pistol. The men scattered off the workbench. “Stop that!” Holman yelled, racing around the engine. Lynch’s pistol went pop. He cursed and worked the slide by hand and it went pop again. Harris was coming with an axe and a face like hell with gray whiskers. Holman grabbed the pistol from Lynch and started him moving. Lynch ran, Holman after him. Holman felt the wind of the axe on the back of his neck.

  Lynch ran all the way into the CPO quarters. “It’s come, Becky! Warn the captain!” he yelled.

  Welbeck aimed a pistol at Holman. Holman stopped in the doorway. Lynch was fumbling in the CPO arms locker.

  “Stand fast, Holman! Drop that gun!” Welbeck snapped.

  Holman dropped it and half raised his hands. “Don’t let Lynch get a gun that’ll shoot, Welbeck,” he said urgently. “He’s gone crazy!”

  “Blast him down, Becky!” Lynch yelled. “Drop grenades down the skylight!”

  He was loading a riot gun. Franks pushed past Holman and over to Lynch. “Let me have it, Lynch-boy,” he said. He turned, holding the riot gun at waist level. “Now tell me what’s the score, Jake,” he said suspiciously.

  Holman told Franks all he knew about it. He stepped inside. Somehow Bordelles had gotten in there too, with a drawn pistol. They were all on a wire edge.

  “Who had a weapon, besides Harris?” Bordelles asked.

  “Only him I saw. It was all too fast to see much.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Holman shrugged. “Still down there.” He lowered his voice. “Lynch better not go back down.”

  Their eyes turned to Lynch. He was seated at the table, his face in his hands, and trembling so hard he shook the whole table.

  “Becky and me been seeing it coming,” Franks whispered. “We’ll lock him in the pilot’s room.”

  The pilot’s room was a cubbyhole next to the CPO head. They kept no pilot aboard, in port. Welbeck helped Lynch drink some brandy without spilling it and then led him around there.

  “You going to report this to the skipper, Mr. Bordelles?” Franks asked.

  “No.” Bordelles’ lips were pinched together.

  They talked it over with Holman present, as if they took it for granted that he was now one of the boat deck gang. He gathered that the captain did not want to know officially about things like that. He saw clearly how they were being a screen around Lt. Collins. As long as Lt. Collins did not have to lay his authority on the line, he would still have it. As long as he was untouched, none of what happened would have to go down officially on paper. When the ship reached Hankow the crew would be all right again and everybody would forget everything.

  “Three weeks, about, till she floods,” Franks said. He shook crossed fingers. “How about you, Jake? You going to be safe now, on the main deck?”

  “Better move into the sickbay, with Doc,” Welbeck urged.

  “I better stay on the main deck, like nothing happened,” Holman said. “That way I can still keep an eye on the machinery.”

  Holman knew they had him singled out after the Lynch episode. Hardly anyone talked to him. They lowered their voices and turned away when he came near. It was unpleasant. When the chance came to spend a day as armed guard on an oil company tug, Holman was glad to go.

  The day was warm but Holman wore blues, to save washing a white uniform. When the tug came alongside, he was delighted to see Scharf in the tiny pilot house. They headed upriver, to Siangtan. Scharf looked fit in fresh khaki and as happy as was possible for his long
, mournful face. His pale blue eyes twinkled as he greeted Holman. Except for the old Chinese quartermaster at the wheel, they were alone in the pilot house.

  “I thought you was long gone out of Changsha,” Holman said.

  “None of the Germans or their families have gone from Changsha. Nor from Hankow,” Scharf said. “There is no reason.”

  They had not suffered any hostility, he said. Having no unequal treaty rights, they could only be in China with Chinese consent. They were accountable to Chinese law for what they did and they could be sent home if the Chinese found them undesirable. The Germans in China would benefit from a strong, stable Chinese government. With mildly vindictive relish, Scharf recalled how America had pressed China to join the Allies and strip Germany of treaty rights.

  “You did us a favor,” Scharf said. “Now you need someone to do you the same favor.”

  Scharf was in a merry mood, for him. He had been hired to be resident agent for several British and American companies, after the treaty people left in April. Everything would be in godowns under consular seal, but they wanted a token white man to keep custody.

  “I am to stand before those sealed godowns like Arnold von Winkelried and gather the bayonets into my breast,” Scharf said, with a wide gesture. “Ach, yes. So nobly will I die for liberty.”

  Holman noticed with a slight shock how clean and green and new with spring the country was, along the river banks. The water swirled clear above white sand and scoured boulders. On the San Pablo they only had eyes for their own dirt and misery. Holman took the green countryside into his eyes. The day began feeling like a picnic.

  Scharf told him about Changsha. The worker-peasants had full control. The gearwheel officials in the city were only figureheads. Victor Shu had bribed his way out of prison and into some minor post with the worker-peasants, Scharf said.

  “That Shu. He is a smart one.”

  At Siangtan Scharf was busy getting the barge loaded and secured alongside. They were taking tinned kerosene down to be sealed in the main godown at Changsha. Holman left his rifle in the pilot house and strolled along the river bank. He dug his feet into the dirt. He plucked a spear of new grass and looked at it. He ate it. It tasted pleasantly green. He ate quite a bit of grass. Scharf called him back to the tug.

  A tiffin for two was spread in the small cabin. It was only pork fried rice with slightly cooked green onions cut up in it, but it tasted very good to Holman. He ate slowly with his chopsticks, to make it last.

  “This is good, George,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell you.”

  “The cook was afraid he would be punished for breaking the boycott if he made food for you.”

  “Jesus! I hope not!”

  “I told him you were really a German spying on the Americans,” Scharf said. “I swore it to him on the German flag.”

  Holman laughed. “Okay, George. I owe you one military secret,” he said. “What’ll it be?”

  Scharf pulled at his nose. “I will ask you when our nations are at war again,” he said, eyes twinkling. “We Germans are methodical. We prepare long in advance.”

  “Damned if I can see you in a spiked helmet, George. You think we’ll ever have another war?”

  Scharf shrugged. “I think I am becoming Chinese at last,” he said. He clicked his chopsticks expertly above his bowl. “Look, how my hand has become Chinese. My stomach is Chinese.”

  “They say you renew your body every seven years,” Holman said. “Hell, I’m all Chinese by now. I never thought of that.”

  “We do not renew our hearts,” Scharf said sadly. “The Chinese will permit one to become Chinese. They think it perfectly natural. The barrier is in our own hearts.”

  The joking mood was broken. They finished the meal in silence.

  The Siangtan coolies rode down to Changsha atop the loaded barge. They wore company armbands. The Changsha coolies were on strike, Scharf said, and the Siangtan coolies had been promised military protection. He did not expect any trouble.

  “But you must prance and look martial, Jake,” he said. “You are their paper tiger, to frighten away devils.”

  The thought struck sharply into Holman’s vague feeling that it was all a game. It was all a vast make-believe that had been going on so long people thought it was real, in the way machinery was real. They were trapped in it and they did not know it. They did not know they could refuse to play. They did not know they could change the rules without making the real world come to an end. He tried to tell Scharf what he thought.

  “We are guardian symbols,” Scharf said. “You and me and the consul’s seal on my godowns.”

  “We’re a couple of scarecrows!”

  “Ach, yes! Vogelscheuchen!”

  Scharf chuckled and pulled his long nose. It was a trick he had, when he was joking. The sky was a washed blue. The air was clean and fresh-smelling and the land was green along both banks. It felt to Holman like a holiday. He told Scharf that.

  “Everyone knows something is wrong on your ship,” Scharf said. “If we do not talk about it, then it is not so. Nicht wahr?”

  “I’m on the inside and I got to know it,” Holman said. “I want to ask you about something, George. You’re educated.” He wanted to know if it could be the effect of the constant watchers and the frequent hate parades on the bund. “Like with so many people hating them, they got thinking they might really be pretty hateful,” he explained. “Someone was forced to start being hateful.”

  “Do you feel hateful?”

  “No.” Holman was surprised. “I never felt like they was aiming any of it right at me,” he said.

  “Then they can’t hurt you.” Scharf smiled. “The Chinese have a legend of a prince who was so beautiful the people stared him to death,” he said. “It is a fascinating thought. But I think the people ashore are only practicing being national. They are learning to love each other by hating you. They had a better way in the olden time of China.”

  Holman leaned out across the rail, breathing in the air. “After that chow you give me, I can’t hate anybody,” he said. “Them green onions in it.” He rocked on his heels, breathing in the fresh air. “Something else I felt, in Hankow.”

  He told Scharf about the strange, sad, left-out feeling he sometimes had, walking the streets. Scharf’s manner changed. He looked concerned.

  “I withdraw what I said, that they cannot hurt you,” he told Holman. “What you feel is the revolutionary love the people bear each other. For those able to feel it, it can be dangerously seductive.” He was clearly not joking. “It is their revolution, not yours. They are making it against you,” he said. “You will have to give up your treaties and pull your gunboats back to your other colonies.”

  “Hell, I know that. I don’t care.”

  “I say this for your protection!”

  Scharf was very serious. He explained what he meant by revolutionary love. People together in a revolution felt that they were all friends. They turned that face to each other. When they knew someone well enough personally, they might find out that he was not a friend. While the revolutionary spirit lasted, each person had a small circle toward whom he was hostile or indifferent, and everyone else was his friend. Of course it could not last long.

  “But it is dangerously seductive while it does last,” Scharf warned. “Remember that it is not your revolution.”

  “All that stuff. Well, it’s just weird,” Holman said. “The hate parades. What’s happened to the guys. It’s just weird!” He struck the rail.

  “Tomorrow is International Women’s Day,” Scharf said. “You must be prepared for something very weird tomorrow.”

  He would not say what it was. He was back in his joking mood. “You must wait and see,” he said. They were just passing a farmers’ market on the right-hand bank, a few miles upriver from Changsha. Farmers’ sampans clustered at the foot of the stone steps that led down to the river. People were all around. Up on the bank were booths of matting and baskets overflowin
g with green stuff.

  “Jesus! Look at all that good fresh chow over there!” Holman said.

  “What do you eat on the ship?”

  “Beans and rice and corned beef. Say—” Holman looked from the market back to Scharf. “You suppose that might be what’s broke ’em down? No vitamins and stuff like that?”

  Scharf didn’t think so. “I think you may all have scurvy of the spirit,” he said. He would not be serious about it.

  It was after dark when Scharf came alongside to put Holman aboard the San Pablo. The web of stays and braces around the dogleg stack made a tracery against the night sky. The men were all aft on the fantail, probably watching a fight. Holman went in and undressed to go to bed, because he was going to have the midwatch.

  The men trooped in. Crosley had blood on his bearded cheek. Only Farren took any notice of Holman. He came over and sat on Holman’s bunk. Holman told him about Scharf and the Changsha Germans.

  “They can afford to be neutral,” Farren said. “What the hell they got to lose by it?”

  “What the hell have you and me got? That we ain’t lost already?”

  “That ain’t for us to ask. We’re under orders.”

  The fight had been between Crosley and Red Dog, Farren said. Crosley had fought like a devil. Red Dog had taken a terrible beating before he went down to stay.

  “Where’s Red Dog now?”

  “Sitting back there on the grating. He won’t let anybody talk to him or touch him.”

  Farren left and Holman stretched out to try to sleep. Footsteps sounded on deck outside the door.

  “Arf! Arf!” Red Dog said through the door. “Come out, Crosley! The Red Dog is ready!”

  Crosley cursed and jumped up and charged for the door. About half of the men went back to the fantail to watch it. After a while they came back in. Crosley was dabbing at his face with a dirty undershirt.