Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  Suddenly aware he was the only one speaking, that he was being loquacious, he stopped, momentarily embarrassed. There was a ring of attentive, eager faces around him. He had set down his drink, was illustrating the maneuvers with his hands. Even the steward, a blue embroidered submarine insignia conspicuous on his starched white jacket and three blue hashmarks on his sleeve, lingered unobtrusively within earshot. Admiral Small, his eyes alight with interest, forced him to continue.

  Stafford had switched the sonar from earphones to loudspeaker. Everyone in the conning tower had heard the torpedo running, had heard it merging with the enemy sub’s propeller beats and machinery noise, had unconsciously held his breath waiting for the explosion. It came with startling loudness, eight seconds after the computed running time of the torpedo. Everyone heard the grim results: the water hammer within the doomed hull, the frenzied speeding up of the motors, the blowing of tanks, the bubbling escape of the precious air. All heard the sudden cessation of the propellers, thought they heard but more likely imagined the violent arcs of electricity as sea water shorted out the motors or their controls. The last clearly identifiable sound was the crunch as the now overweighted hull crashed into the bottom. There was no hope for any of the Japanese submariners; the depth of water was too great for escape even if they had escape gear. Admiral Small shook his head solemnly; they had no such equipment, according to the best intelligence reports.

  Richardson’s description was followed by a rush of questions. What depth had he set on the torpedo, and how had he made the determination? The submarine had seemed to be about the same size as the Eel herself, and he had simply set the torpedo for what he thought would be the best setting had Eel been the target. Did he know the Japanese submarine periscopes were slightly shorter than those of United States submarines, and that he should have set the torpedo a little more shallow? No, he had not. The few feet involved would have made no difference anyway, provided the torpedo ran at the intended depth which now they all uniformly did.

  Why had he not fired a spread of three torpedoes at the submerged submarine instead of only one? Because three torpedoes would be three times as noisy as one. They might have alerted the submarine, given it time to maneuver. Three explosions would undoubtedly have alerted Bungo if all three had hit, or if those which missed had exploded when they reached the end of their runs, as they still so frequently did.

  There was no talk about the lifeboats at first, and Richardson had already finished his second drink, or perhaps it was his third, when suddenly the subject was raised. The drinks had been very strong. Already he was feeling their effect, knew he would feel it more. He glanced uneasily at the women.

  “It’s all right, Rich,” said the admiral. “Everybody in this room has read your dispatches and your patrol report. The three girls here have a higher clearance than you do.” Mrs. Elliott looked startled. Rich was sure that he caught a sharp glance from her directed at Admiral Small.

  The dinner was delicious, the wine warming. Richardson realized that he had been garrulous, had fully described his decision to ram and sink the lifeboats. He had not intended to describe this part of the fight. Suddenly there was release in speaking of it, justifying what he had done. The battle had taken place only a few miles from the coast of Japan. If Nakame had been allowed to return to port, with his primary personnel and their precious expertise, he would have been back in action almost immediately. Measured against the value of Bungo’s services, even with the growing shortage of ships because of the war losses, replacement vessels would not have been a large problem. Merely sinking the Akikaze and the other two ships he was employing that day could have practically no effect on his long-range campaign against U.S. submarines. It would have been a minor setback, nothing more, and he would have come back more dangerous than ever.

  Why had Richardson not captured them, taken them on board the Eel? Not possible. The sea was too heavy. It would have been impossible even with maximum cooperation from the Japanese—not to be expected under the circumstances. Nakame still had his rifle, and he had not given up. The Japanese were superior in numbers. They were so close to shore. Picking them up would have exposed Eel’s crew to unacceptable hazard, even assuming, in the storm then raging, they could have been gotten aboard.

  The others were nodding agreement. Rich found his highball glass refilled yet another time. It was after dinner. “Time for the movie,” said the admiral. The same steward who had opened the door, served the drinks, and then put on the dinner, now busied himself with rigging a movie theater in the living room of the house. At least, it had been a living room, but it was apparent that Admiral Small had been using it for an office. The room had no rug, but there were a couch and sufficient comfortable chairs. A screen was set up in the entrance hallway, and a small projector was mounted on the top of the admiral’s desk. And now the steward showed himself to be a movie operator in addition to his other talents.

  Four people had to sit on the couch intended for three, shoved in front of the desk. Automatically, Richardson was sitting beside Joan. The euphoria induced by drink and the obvious importance which everyone attached to his words throughout the evening had had their effect. The crowding was not uncomfortable.

  The movie was a silly story with all the love-conflict clichés. It had no relation to anything that anyone present in that room had been doing for the past several years, received all the more attention because of it, and gradually Rich became more and more conscious of Joan’s thigh pressed close against his as they watched the convoluted situation unfold to its predictable conclusion.

  His palms were sweating. Nervously he wiped them dry along the crease of his trousers, felt the backs of his fingers traveling along the smooth softness of Joan’s leg under her light skirt. She was not offended. His hand groped for hers. She returned the tentative pressure of his fingers.

  The movie ended. The normally efficient steward seemed to have trouble finding the light switch. During the delay there was a slight bustle from the other two people who had shared the couch, Captain Joe Blunt and First Lieutenant Cordelia Wood.

  Admiral Small was looking at his watch, suggested another drink. Mrs. Elliott and the two staff officers refused politely, swiftly bade their adieus, and were gone. The efficient steward appeared again at Richardson’s elbow with yet another very dark highball. But this time, knowing that he had already drunk far too much, and that very possibly it had been the admiral’s and Captain Blunt’s deliberate intention to get him tipsy, he took perverse pleasure in refusing it. Probably the plot had been kindly intended. He was, after all, the submarine skipper home from the wars. In addition, his host might just possibly have divined some of the inner tensions which still possessed him. Joan was standing very close to him, had been since the movie.

  “Maybe we had better call it an evening too, Admiral,” Blunt said. “No need to call your driver. Rich and I will take the girls home in my jeep.”

  “Okay, Joe,” said Small. “But remember, you’re not so much younger than I am!” The admiral’s smile was genial, but Richardson suddenly sensed something else in it, some reserve. There was an unspoken warning in it, a measure of disapproval. But it was not directed at him. Blunt’s quick, eager grin in response seemed a little strange, out of place. Richardson’s intuitions were not working. The expression on Blunt’s face was not quite the right one. Something lay just beneath the surface, out of reach, some tension of which he was unaware.

  There was some difficulty in opening the door. The light-lock, a jerry-built structure of boards and heavy painted canvas, intended to prevent light from showing outside when the door was open, would permit only two to pass through at one time. To facilitate getting through, Joan took Richardson’s arm as a matter of natural course. She did not release it as they passed into the dark outside, instead hugged it to her a little tighter and strode out with him. He could feel her hip against his thigh as they walked toward the street.

  The back seat of a wartime j
eep will hold two people if they sit very close together. It is high and hard, with only a padded board for a backrest. It is a lot more comfortable if one puts his arm around the girl. Joan curled against his shoulder.

  Blunt started the motor. “My quarters are right on the way,” he said. “Why don’t we stop there for that nightcap?” Nobody said anything.

  There was a sentry box at the foot of the hill. The curfew sentry was already there. Perhaps it was later than Richardson had realized.

  Driving slowly with lights out—in fact, there were no headlights at all on the jeep—Blunt braked to a near-stop. A grin, with a clear trace of envy, showed on the sentry’s face as he saluted and waved them on.

  Captain Blunt’s house, like all the others in the general housing area, had been built before the war as quarters for married personnel. The largest houses were on Makalapa Hill, and they ranged on down to near barrackslike triplexes and quadruplexes, ranked row upon row, in the enlisted men’s area on the flat some distance away. Blunt’s house was smaller than Admiral Small’s and there was no steward in evidence. It was even more sparsely furnished.

  In conformity with the blackout regulations, there was a light-lock arrangement at the entryway to permit passage without showing light outside the house. Inside, as in the admiral’s house, all the windows had been covered with heavy black paper.

  “Rich, you and Joan make yourselves comfortable while Cordy helps me in the kitchen.” Instantly Joan was in his arms.

  The man standing inside Richardson’s body who had always been the dispassionate and detached observer, was unaccountably missing. All Richardson’s senses were concentrated on feeling the hard outline of Joan’s hips, the soft tips of her breasts against his chest. One of her hands caressed his ear. Her mouth was partly open, soft, inviting.

  This would not do. The others were only in the next room. They would be coming back in a moment. Joan seemed to anticipate his mood. Her tongue flicked the edges of his lips as she swung away.

  There had been no sound from the kitchen. “Yoo-hoo,” called Joan.

  This brought results. Noise of sudden movement. Ice clattered into glasses. Liquid poured.

  The living room contained a slip-covered day bed made up as a sofa with pillows along the wall, and a single overstuffed armchair. Blunt and Cordelia Wood arranged themselves side by side on the day bed, backs to the wall.

  Rich found himself seated in the overstuffed chair, with Joan perched on its broad arm. A single dim light burned in a corner. All four were quiet. The other couple was out of Rich’s view, off to the right beyond Joan, whose thigh stretched tight the fabric of her skirt, and whose bronzed legs, unfettered by stockings, dangled and occasionally touched his own.

  “Rich,” said Joan softly, “you know I knew Jim?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that I know how terrible you feel about those lifeboats?”

  This he could not answer. He had tried to be matter-of-fact, to avoid being defensive, as he described the action. Obviously he had not fooled Joan.

  “You had to do it, Rich. There was no other way.”

  Curiously, Richardson felt no objection to Joan’s probing. She held her drink in her right hand. Her left arm rested on the back of the chair, and now he could feel the tips of her fingers gently touching the back of his neck, gently rubbing behind and below the ear, softly stroking. “Jim used to talk about you some, you know, and little by little I came to know how much he admired you. The last time I saw him, he said you were his best friend.” Rich said nothing.

  The tapering fingers on his neck stopped, then resumed their gentle stroking. “You haven’t asked me about my job, and please don’t, but what the admiral said is true. I knew about Captain Nakame and how much it meant to you to get even for what he did to the Walrus and the Nerka, and all the others.”

  “It wasn’t just to get even . . . .” Rich began.

  Imperceptibly, the stroking fingers pressed a little harder. “Hush up, Rich, of course not. It was for Pearl Harbor, and the war, and the Octopus, too. But some of it was for the Walrus and for Jim, and for your old crew. You know that.”

  The fingers were doing their work. He felt an ease he had not known for weeks, since that fatal battle with Bungo Pete.

  “You’re probably thinking about that German submarine in the Indian Ocean that machine-gunned survivors a couple of years ago. They were merchant seamen, noncombatants. The German skipper did it out of just plain fear for his own skin if they got back to port with the news that a submarine was in that area. Maybe there was some sadism in him, too. With you it was different. The men you ran down were all navy men, combatants, specialists in fighting submarines. You were fighting them, not just their ships. They had not stopped fighting you.”

  “Yes,” said Richardson.

  His sensuous reaction to Joan’s near presence was as great as ever, but a feeling of relaxation was spreading over his body. The tightness in his mind was subsiding.

  “Probably I shouldn’t tell you this, but we know all about what happened to the Walrus. Nakame was riding the submarine that day. His other two ships stayed in port for some reason, so he sent out an old tub of a freighter for bait. It was night, and after Jim sank it, he hove to among the survivors to pick them up. There were only six men on the whole ship, and he had their life raft alongside when the torpedo hit. Everybody on it was killed, too.”

  Again the faintly increased pressure of the fingertips, the message of surcease.

  Joan said no more, allowed her fingers to speak for her. So this had been Jim’s undoing! An errand of mercy, perhaps an expiation of that time so long ago when the blood lust was on him, and Richardson wrestled his gun away!

  There had been no quarter at Pearl Harbor. No quarter for the Yorktown at Midway. No quarter in two wars for submarines of either side. Nakame had even sacrificed his own men.

  The fingers continued their restorative work. He did not need the drink, had not touched it. There was no indignation, no despair, no further sorrow. The silence continued: easy, comfortable, warm, intimate. Blunt’s voice broke it. “My God, it’s already past curfew!”

  Richardson had forgotten about the curfew, but no one seemed much upset. He had heard that in one form or another this situation happened not infrequently. The rule forbade traveling after 10 P.M. If you were not home by curfew, you simply spent the night where you were.

  “I’ve got a spare bedroom upstairs with two bunks in it for you girls. Rich, you can sleep on the couch down here in the living room. We’ll have to make an early reveille, though, and start for Shafter right after daybreak.”

  Rich was surprised—perhaps he should not have been—to see that Cordelia had twisted around so that she lay almost in Captain Blunt’s lap. Her arm was around his waist, her skirt hiked up carelessly above her knees, her face flushed. Blunt’s mouth and cheek seemed fuller and redder than usual. There had been no attempt to shift back to a more conventional pose. Neither Blunt nor the girl appeared at all disturbed over missing curfew, and suddenly Rich realized that this was not new to them. Indeed, the whole situation might well have been premeditated. Joan appeared not the least disconcerted. Her fingers had not interrupted their soothing massage.

  Stripped to his undershorts, Richardson lay under only a sheet. With lights out he had dared to open a window at the foot of the day bed, but this did little good in the sultry subtropical climate. His body tingled where Joan had last touched him. He knew what must happen, what was going to happen. There was no hurry. He could hardly wait, and yet he could wait. It was her move. There had been no words exchanged, but she would come. He would not rush her. Time did not matter. He could wait for her. She would come when she was ready.

  Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had also lain sleepless, in the narrow bunk of his stateroom in the Eel, reliving the battle with the lifeboats. A combination Bungo Pete and Sammy Sams, cursing, had fired a machine gun at him. Tonight Bungo Pete was gone. Again he was sle
epless and uneasy, tingling, acutely conscious of his hands and his feet, and the tiny nipples of his chest where the sheet touched them.

  But his uneasiness was for an entirely different reason. He could remember solitude, camping in the mountains. Youthful plans formed by a dominant father, suddenly diverted into a new and more exciting world, still disciplined, but beset with bigger priorities. Until Laura, girls were not a serious thing. But Laura was forever unattainable. . . .

  It was a warm night. No breeze, but perfumed. The distant murmur of never-ceasing industry, barely miles away, presided over by the Pearl Harbor odor: crude fuel oil mixed with water and earth. Flowers outside the window vainly sending their fragile aroma into an unheeding world. Ozone from the ever-flashing electric arcs. Hard flux burning, flowing off the welding rods, carbonizing, melting steel plates, joining them, urgently forming them into new and unexpected shapes. Tortured machines, dismantled, revitalized, restored for future torture. Joan’s lingering, subtle fragrance. The gentle pressure of her fingers, that spoke so many words.

  The crew of the Eel. The workers in the Navy Yard and Submarine Base shops. The driven—and the common drive that drove them. Reek of old sweat burned into uniforms and work clothes. . . .

  The only life he had known. Ultimately, he would follow Jim, Stocker, even Tateo Nakame. This was what everything had aimed him for. He had expected to lose himself in the intense concentration of it all. The huge machine covered half the earth. It had not been made for the parts to have anything for themselves. That was not what it was for. The parts were intended only for the whole machine to work better. . . .

  Soft footsteps on the floor above. Sound of a door opening, then shutting. Sound of another door softly clicking shut.