The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  “No. We’re together.”

  They came slowly, like a moving wall. Victor Shu was in the center. He wore farmer’s clothes and he was thinner, but he still had a belly.

  “Run, Jake!”

  Holman shook his head. Banger stepped forward, solid and unafraid. He sank his left to the wrist in Shu’s belly and slammed a right to the jaw with a sound like a maul on teakwood. Shu dropped. The wall stopped moving.

  “Now run for it!”

  Banger dragged Holman along. Holman’s legs unlocked and he ran. They just made it clear in the motor sampan. Stones splashed water around them and the stone steps were crowded with people shrieking curses.

  When they were safe out in mid-channel, Banger sadly shipped his flag again and they put on their hats. All the glow of the rum was gone. Holman felt sickly sober. They chugged downriver in silence.

  “You meant to go right on, to leave from there, didn’t you?” Banger said finally.

  Holman nodded.

  “I know what you mean now. You’re right about it,” Banger said slowly. “But it’s still no good, what you’ve a mind to do.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was a stupid thing I did,” Banger said. “It was a bloody, stupid, paper thing to do. I spoiled it all proper, didn’t I?”

  “It’s all right, Banger,” Holman said. “We got what went before. We know we ain’t paper.”

  They did not talk any more on the way back to the San Pablo. Holman was remembering the farm girl in the market, and how she had smiled at him. He had left his baskets of food behind, but he had brought away that memory. He began feeling that the memory was a better thing to bring away than six baskets of food. Food you ate once and it was gone. Memories you could keep.

  41

  Holman said nothing about his adventure. He still meant to desert. The resolution made it easier to bear the nasty feeling in the ship.

  That was worse than ever. The men had a new, edgy restlessness. They would flop down and shift positions and get back up again. They prowled the main deck. They talked incessantly about the parade of naked women and prayed obscenely for another.

  They talked about other things also. News and rumors came aboard. The gearwheel was nearing Shanghai and the big showdown. The U.S. Marines were in Shanghai, still aboard the transport Chaumont. Missionary influence kept them from coming ashore. The three new cruisers ordered to China were being held at Pearl Harbor by missionary influence. Once things such as that would have sent the Sand Pebbles into a fury of cursing, Holman thought. Now they did not care.

  They did not want to fight. They just wanted to get safely down to Shanghai. They talked most about the scare rumors. A Chinese secret society was supposed to be offering a thousand dollars for every white man’s head delivered to them. The gearwheel was supposed to be mounting ten-inch guns at the Chenglin narrows, which the San Pablo would have to pass to get to Hankow. Offsetting those rumors was the slow, steady rise of the river, brownish from early rains. The flood was not far off. The San Pablo did not draw as much water as the Duarte, and she could probably get out before the full flood stage.

  “Why the hell we got to wait for them Die Hards, anyway?” Ellis asked. “Let’s shag ass out of here soon as there’s water enough for just us.”

  “Every ship for itself!” Crosley agreed.

  The long winter siege was almost over. They could hardly wait the last few days. In their talk, they were practically ashore in Shanghai already.

  They all manned the rail for the hate parades. They were afraid they might miss something good. Several days after the market incident the San Pebbles were all on deck and a batch of new signs showed up on the bund.

  EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL! one said. Behind came two more: MURDERER KNOX TO PEOPLE’S JUSTICE! and GIVE UP MURDERER HOLMAN!

  It struck them dumb, at first. It struck Holman dumbest of them all. He knew what it had to be. He felt all their eyes on him. They gathered around him in silence, staring accusingly.

  “How come, Jake? What about it?” Farren asked.

  Holman told them the bare outline. He said he had been trying to get fresh food for the ship and he had gotten it, before the trouble over the pig came up. All their faces remained hostile.

  “Maybe Shu died,” Holman finished. “That’s all I can figure.”

  “If it was Banger hit him, then you’re clear,” Farren said.

  “Oh no he ain’t!” Perna yelled. “He’s still some kind of excessery!”

  “We want the ship clear, you stupid wop!” Harris told Perna.

  “Well, then, I guess he’s clear,” Perna said grudgingly.

  Lt. Collins and Bordelles had both been called to the consulate. The men assumed it was about the pig fight, as they at once began calling it. They argued furiously about it, as if Holman were not present. They were afraid it would interfere somehow with the ship’s getting down to Shanghai. They would not stand for that.

  The full, terrible meaning of it begin to hit Holman. He could not desert now. He would have to go with the ship, down to Shanghai or wherever. It tore him inside to think that. He could not accept it. He went down into the stink of the engine room to get away from the hateful sound of their voices.

  He heard Lt. Collins announced on the quarterdeck. Shortly after, Franks called down the skylight.

  “Yeah! What do you want?” Holman yelled back.

  “Lay up here, on the double!”

  Holman went up. “Skipper wants to see you,” Franks said curtly. He took Holman into the cabin. Lt. Collins and Bordelles were seated at the green table with papers in front of them. Holman stood at attention. Franks stood to one side. It was like being at mast. All their faces were stern and angry.

  “Holman, did you and a British sailor go ashore at that market upriver a few days ago?” Lt. Collins asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Holman told him the bare facts. He made it clear that going there was his own idea and not Banger’s. They seemed to want him to say more.

  “Victor Shu was a gangster and squeeze merchant, the same like they been killing themselves,” he said. “Why can’t they just call it good riddance?”

  Lt. Collins’ lip curled. “Shu is not dead. He is their witness to identify you,” he said. “They have invented a farmer whom you killed.”

  “We didn’t hurt any farmers!”

  “Tomorrow they will hold a funeral procession for the murdered farmer,” Lt. Collins went on. “They are inflaming the people and making this into a major incident. They are demanding that you and Knox be turned over to their People’s Court.”

  Holman stood there. He felt sick with dismay.

  “Of course they have no jurisdiction over any American. That is the so-called grievance they are trying to dramatize, with this new lie.” Lt. Collins’ contemptuous anger seemed to include both Holman and the worker-peasants. “You need not worry, of course. We won’t give you over to them,” Lt. Collins said. “Even the Japanese agree on that. If we have to fight our way out of Changsha, it will be as an allied flotilla.”

  “I don’t … will it come to a fight, sir?”

  “Rather than give you and Knox over, we will die to the last man!”

  His voice rang. It was all too fast for Holman to take in. He did not know how to say what he felt.

  “I don’t want anybody to die to the last man on my account,” he said. “I don’t think Banger would, either.”

  “Neither of you is worth it personally,” Lt. Collins agreed, with clear distaste. “Not even to the Chinese. You are only worth it as symbols of your countries.”

  Scarecrows! Holman wanted to shout. He knew his face was red. He clamped his teeth and kept silent. Bordelles took over the talk.

  “This has to be reported to Comyang,” he said. “Tell me your story again, in detail.”

  Holman told it. Bordelles made notes. Holman did not know how detailed to be. He told about the Chinese girl
smiling at him.

  “Was it the demonstration that morning that made you go there?” Bordelles asked. “Were you looking for a woman?”

  “I don’t think in the way you mean, sir.”

  “It’s a plausible motive. I want your motive. Why did you go there?”

  Holman knew he could not explain that. It struck him suddenly that a man could feel real for a few minutes on top of a woman. That was probably why American sailors in China seemed to need women so much more than the other foreign sailors did. He was tempted to tell Bordelles that he was looking for duhai after all and let it go at that. But instead he made up a theory about lack of vitamins affecting the crew’s mind. He stressed that he had bought eggs and onions and would have gotten them back to the ship, except for the trouble about the pig.

  All their lips tightened when he mentioned the pig.

  “Has your own mind been feeling strange?” Bordelles asked.

  “Just how everybody’s been feeling, sir. Banger and me got to talking about it.”

  Bordelles pursued with questions. He pinned Holman down. He wanted word-for-word all Holman and Banger had said to each other. In the end, he pried quite a bit of it out of Holman. Lt. Collins listened closely.

  “After Hankow fell, it seemed like all the water ran out from under our keels,” Holman said. “I told Banger the Woodcock was a paper ship with a paper flag and we were both scarecrows in uniform. So we went to the market to prove we wasn’t paper.”

  “Stop that talk!” Lt. Collins slapped the table. “Our flag is not paper, as long as we keep our own faith in it!” His eyes glowed and his voice turned low and bitter. “Let the Chinese sneer at our flag. They’ll find out it’s a sleeping tiger, not a paper one. They feared it once and they’ll fear it again.” His voice became a hoarse whisper. “Only we can make our flag a paper tiger. And if we do, we do not deserve to live!”

  He was pale and trembling. He frightened them all. Bordelles stood up and motioned Franks to take Holman out of there.

  “Wait.” Lt. Collins held up his hand. He was struggling to control himself. “Holman, God alone knows what consequences your insane action is going to have. It has already seriously embarrassed the United States Government,” he said coldly. “In my report to Comyang I am going to recommend you for a general court-martial. That is all.”

  His eyes were like gun muzzles and his lips were two white lines. Franks pulled Holman outside. Franks seemed more hurt than angry.

  “You knew the ship was hanging by a thread. We thought you was one guy we could count on,” he told Holman. “Jake, why the hell did you have to go do that?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t explain,” Holman said miserably.

  Franks looked at Holman, shaking his head. His manner was changing. He drew away slightly.

  “Well, you’re a GCM prisoner now. I suppose you’re willing to be prisoner-at-large?”

  “Yeah. Where the hell would I run to now?”

  Franks had the special manner that sailors always put on when they were around a general court-martial prisoner. It was something like being in the presence of the dead.

  All next day the ship had the same tense feeling as during the opium crisis in Hankow. Lt. Collins and Bordelles were ashore again. Farren and Ellis and Vincent took a ship’s boat downriver to take soundings across the shoal stretch north of the city. The river was still damping and nibbling slowly higher on the sand flats. The hate parade that morning stopped for a full hour opposite the San Pablo. They had a dozen signs about the murderers Knox and Holman. They had a Chinese coffin and a band of mourners shrieking and flinging around in white robes. They made quite a show of it.

  The men all kept apart from Holman. Not even Duckbutt Randall would talk to him. But they watched him obliquely and talked about him and sometimes meant him to overhear. What seemed to throw them was the pig. He heard many bitter remarks about somebody being sorry for a pig.

  “A pig, God damn it! But who the hell’s sorry for us?”

  After dinner Welbeck came aboard with more disturbing news. The Hunan Commissioner of Foreign Affairs had declared the treaties null and void in Hunan Province. The worker-peasants were saying no gunboat could leave Changsha until the murderers were given up. It set off a storm of talk. The Sand Pebbles glared and gestured and grimaced through their beards.

  “They can’t do that, on the treaty. We got to agree.”

  “So do they got to agree. What do we do if they don’t?”

  “Get the hell down to Shanghai, that’s what!”

  “Yeah, Shanghai! Let ’em have this stinking place!”

  “But they won’t let us go.”

  “How can they stop us? We’ll just go.”

  “How about them ten-inchers at Chenglin?”

  “Jesus, yes! They’d stop a cruiser!”

  They talked about the rumored ten-inch guns at Chenglin and still older rumors about an electric minefield at that place. They recalled the old story of how the gearwheel had turned Wu’s gunboats back at Chenglin by floating massed fire rafts at them. By the time Farren came back with his boat party, they had themselves convinced that no gunboat could get past Chenglin without gearwheel permission.

  “Another foot and we can get across the shoals,” Farren said cheerfully. “The blokes can get across now. Crosley, Bordelles wants you on the bridge. He wants to signal that to the Woodcock.”

  “The blokes won’t get past Chenglin,” Crosley said.

  “That’s crap about guns at Chenglin,” Farren said.

  “No, it ain’t either crap!”

  They all jumped on Farren. He had not had the buildup.

  “Well, maybe there’s something to it,” he said at last, unhappily. “I thought I was bringing good news.”

  Holman stayed clear of them as much as he could. At supper he ate the lumpy corned beef with his eyes on his plate. The thing began coming to a head. The remarks became more pointed and direct.

  “I hear Ho-mang’s a short timer.”

  “He’s got his seabag packed.”

  “He wants to stay here. He’s a Chink lover, anyway.”

  “Pig lover!”

  “He’s gonna be guest of honor at a neck-chopping party.”

  Holman raised his head and looked directly at each one in turn. None of them except Harris could quite look back at him. Holman stood up to leave.

  “Hold on, Ho-mang,” Harris said. “Was you ever right close up to a head chopping?”

  “I don’t go for that stuff, Harris.”

  Harris grinned. “The knife goes cr-r-runch!” He rabbit chopped his own neck. “The blood spouts in two streams.” He moved his forefingers in twin parabolas past his bearded chin. “The head hollers, but it can’t make noise come out.”

  For ten seconds Harris screamed silently at Holman. His mouth gaped and his eyes squinted. His gray hairs bristled. He was a mask of all the hellful hatred and cruelty in the world since time began.

  “That’s what it’s like to die, Ho-mang,” he said.

  Holman leaned across and slapped the gray-bristled chops once and backhand.

  “Don’t get your gun quite yet, you son of a bitch,” he said. “I ain’t dead yet.”

  Harris bared the teeth in his slash mouth. The compartment hushed.

  “If I fight you, Ho-mang, I won’t come alone,” Harris said.

  Chairs scraped. All the men were quiet and tense. Holman backed up against his locker.

  “Bring all your friends and relations,” he told Harris. “Here. Now. And come to kill. Because I’ll kill you.”

  He wanted them to come. He felt in himself the true and crazy strength to break their bones and snap their necks like cornstalks. He wanted to do that.

  “Come on!” he said. “Come on, Harris!”

  Harris looked around. Nobody was getting up. But every eye was on Jake Holman and not one was friendly.

  “I’ll get you, Ho-mang,” Harris said. “You got to sleep.”

&nb
sp; Holman waited a moment longer. Then he rolled up his mattress and bedding and carried it outside. He took it to the engineers’ storeroom, above the gratings on the starboard side, and laid it out on deck. He closed the steel door and worked out a way to wedge it closed from inside. He lay down, very weary. The fire was going out of him. But for a little while in there, he was thinking, he had felt very real indeed.

  42

  Holman did not eat at the mess table again. He ate out of a pie plate in the galley, helping himself from the pan on the range while Duckbutt Randall pretended not to see him. He sat in the storeroom most of the day. He felt better there, cased in steel.

  He was sitting there in late afternoon when Lt. Collins was called to the Duarte. He was still there when the startling news came by blinker from the Duarte. Through his porthole Holman heard them talking about it on the quarterdeck. Gearwheel troops had taken Nanking and they were looting and raping and killing the treaty people. British and American warships had been shelling the city since three o’clock. The lid was off at last.

  Several … hundred … white … civilian … men … and women … still … trapped … in … city, they relayed the message about the decks as fast as Crosley received it on the flying bridge. Until … further … notice … consider … Plan … Red … now … in … effect….

  Plan Red! Plan Red!

  To Holman’s ear, their voices put small joy into the words. Some of the men tried to get angry.

  “Looted our consulate! Ripped down our flag!”

  “We can get the Fleet at the bastards, in Nanking!”

  “How about the Japs? Why ain’t they in it?”

  “Yeah! Their consul got killed!”

  “The Japs are still trying to outchrist us Christians,” Harris said.

  “Well, how about us now? We’re like rats in a trap.”

  “Here comes the gig. The skipper’ll have all the dope.”

  “San Pablo … boarding!” Franks shouted.

  “All hands aft,” Lt. Collins’ crisp voice said a few moments later. “I have important news to announce.”