Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  He waited. The door again. Soft footsteps on the stairs. Slow, a little hesitant. “Shy” was a better word, for they did not hesitate.

  She came down the steps barefooted, on tiptoe, heels high above the floor. Her luxuriant black hair hung down on the left side of her face. She wore a light cotton bathrobe several sizes too large for her.

  He was trembling, holding himself quiet under the sheet. Easy, said the inner voice. Take it easy. She is doing something she has to do. Don’t rush her.

  He closed his arms about her. Her lips parted softly when his touched them. Her quivering mouth was a refuge. He felt himself disappearing into it. All other motion in the world stopped. Beneath the cotton robe was only Joan.

  -3-

  The ride from Fort Shafter to the submarine base after leaving off Joan and Cordy would have been pleasant, Richardson decided, if only old Blunt had not been so talkative.

  The first phase of the morning’s excursion, in the early light—the hour after sunrise was always the loveliest—had been quiet, but it, too, in its own way, had been unusual, vaguely uncomfortable. Richardson’s pulse was no longer leaping. Everything was matter-of-fact. From the look on Joan’s face one would have thought nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing had.

  He was unable to guess what was going on in her mind. Had she any conception of the turmoil, the emotional crisis in his which she had helped assuage? His extra self, that part of his brain which seemed to function of its own, more objectively, more cool than he was himself, was telling him that everyone, Admiral Small and Captain Blunt included, had been conspiring to help. Keith and Buck and Al Dugan—all the crew of the Eel, in fact—had done so too. Each in his own way, as it came to each to understand. Even the admiral’s driver had tried—how did he know? Was the story of the lifeboats all over the base?

  Last night Joan had seemed intuitively to understand more than anyone. She had been wanton, had deliberately given herself. It had been a deeply generous, totally personal effort to lift him from the purgatory into which he was drifting. And yet—of this he was sure—there had been something driving her, too. But could the explosion of feeling with which he had responded be called a cure? Or was it merely a compound of too much to drink—that, too, kindly intended by his friends—and the natural reaction of the sailor, just ashore?

  The warm sensuousness of night was gone. During day, one retreated into convention, into formality. Maybe this was the barrier. Last night he thought he knew her. Today he was not so sure.

  The Eel—complicated, intense, an example of man’s genius, pound for pound the most complex instrument modern technocracy and cleverness could devise—was simple by comparison. With the Eel he felt safe. Once you had mastered her, learned her needs and capabilities, Eel was always predictable. You could use her, play upon her, exploit her strengths and protect her from the consequences of her weaknesses. She was a comfort, because she was always the same. But why had sailors, from time immemorial, always personified their ships as female? Ships were not enigmas. Women by contrast were. He had no idea what Joan was thinking, or even if she was thinking at all, behind the restraint imposed by the morning.

  They kept conversation alive because it was what you did. It meant nothing, had no sequence. Whatever the sentry at the entrance to the Shafter compound may have thought, his expression betrayed nothing. Richardson climbed into the front seat of the jeep beside Blunt. They set out for Pearl Harbor, driving a little faster than before.

  Blunt’s mood had changed, or it might only have been suppressed earlier. He was ebullient, talkative, almost effervescent. Mired in his own thoughts, Richardson at first paid only enough attention to respond when response was necessary. He wished Blunt would stop, or at least shift to professional matters.

  “You sure are a lucky man, Rich,” Blunt was saying, slapping the steering wheel of the jeep for jovial emphasis. “Half the guys I know would have given a year’s ration of tax-free booze to be in your shoes last night!”

  Startled, Richardson could think of no answer appropriate to the remark. Something unknown, unexpected, had grated across his consciousness. This was, at the very least, out of character for the Captain Blunt he had known! Uncertainly, he gave him a searching look, did not reply.

  Blunt took no notice. “She’s supposed to be the best piece on the island, but nobody knows who’s getting any of it. They say there’s some airdale in Lahaina—and then you come along, and your first night ashore . . .”

  Maybe if he pretended not to hear what Blunt was saying he would get off this kick. A deep uneasiness clutching at him, Richardson managed to find something of interest in a rocky field off to the right. There was something strange, a different quality, almost a babbling note, to the incisive familiar tones. It was the last thing he would ever have expected to hear in that voice!

  “When this story gets out, Rich, you’ll be more famous around here than if you sank two Bungo Petes!”

  This could not be allowed! A burst of rage flooded to Richardson’s brain. In growing unease at the trend of Blunt’s conversation, he had been about to make another spare, noncommittal comment. A depth of anger which startled even himself boiled to the surface instead. “Commodore, if I hear one word about last night from anybody, I will punch you in the nose! Publicly!”

  Blunt, about to say something more, stopped, took a long look at Richardson. The fury in his junior’s eyes was all too evident. He surrendered.

  “Oh, hell, Rich, you didn’t think I’d go around telling about this little soiree we just had, do you? After all, I was in on it too, remember. That Cordy Wood, now, she’s really something. You know she’s a damn good wrestler. Slippery as an eel, and quick as greased lightning . . .”

  But Richardson had found something else of interest in the area of sand and scrub bushes the jeep was now passing. His disquietude was complete. Surely Blunt had not intended to imply that he might boast about the previous evening! Yet he had done exactly that. And the balance of his remarks had been equally uncalled for. This was a side of his character which Richardson had never seen and could not, even having seen and heard, bring himself to believe was a part of the man he had so admired for so many years.

  The old Joe Blunt was deeply sensitive, deeply understanding of his men and junior officers—and of their wives or girls as well. Richardson would never forget Sam Fister, his immediate superior in the Octopus, and what Blunt had done for him. When Sam’s girl wrote frantically that she was in trouble as a result of the submarine’s unscheduled stop in San Francisco, Sam had had the good sense to go right to his skipper. The letter was received in Cavite weeks after it had been mailed, as Octopus moored following a month-long simulated war patrol. No matter that Sam’s supervision was needed for the upkeep to be performed at Cavite, or that nearly six months remained before the prewar navy regulations allowed him to marry. Joe knew his way around, and he called in a good many of his I.O.U.’s that night. Next day, Sam was designated courier to Washington, and boarded the Pan-American Clipper with priority two orders. In three weeks he was back, a married man and ready to give his soul for Joe Blunt.

  Later, purely by accident, Rich was present when Admiral Hart, Commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, told Blunt that someone’s wife had written her suspicions to someone else’s wife. Hart was justly feared as one of the toughest officers the navy had ever produced. Richardson, completely forgotten by his two superiors, stood marveling as Blunt laid his own career on the line to block investigation of Sam’s putative violation of regulations. He marveled even more when Admiral Hart agreed, somewhat unwillingly, but agreed nevertheless, that until he received official notice—as he would if Sam claimed quarters allowance for his bride—he had no obligation, at this time of increasing tension, to inquire into officious rumors that concerned neither the battle readiness of the Asiatic Fleet nor the safety of the United States.

  Blunt, a model of rectitude himself, had always been tolerant of people and their problems with one s
ingle exception: when they hurt his ship or the navy. Although, through their men, women sometimes interfered with the smooth operation of Octopus, Richardson had never heard him speak of a woman in other than chivalrous terms. Yet this morning he had been callous, even degrading, in his comments about the two girls with whom they had just spent the night, and for no reason.

  No doubt, in the course of her time at Pearl, Joan had given herself to more than one man. Certainly, she must have to Jim. It was probably true that there were many, for there could not be a man who, meeting her, did not want to possess her. Emotions and pressures of war affected both the male and the female, and considering the differences in their wartime roles, it probably affected them about equally. Joan, far more than most women, was actually participating in the war, and her outlook, correspondingly, might well be more like a man’s. Her job, obviously, had something to do with breaking down enemy coded messages—though this was his own intuitive deduction and could not be discussed. Doubtless, such employment must have its pressures.

  Yet, how could you figure out a girl like Joan? Their lovemaking had been swift, fierce, and unrestrained, each seeking something for himself, or herself, at the same time as each gave to the other with the most unselfish and vulnerable completeness. Once, when both were for the moment sated, she murmured that she had planned how they would finish the evening from the instant she had seen him. He was different from the others, she said (astounding how frank she was!), for while they also had the drive of the war and of the risks and the fighting, none had so clearly, so plainly, needed that little thing she could do for them. Rich had never thought of a girl in quite this way. Joan was totally feminine, totally desirable. A very private person, yet completely honest about herself. In her own very womanly way, she was as aggressive as any man, but unfeminine she clearly was not; completely the opposite. Promiscuous, his instincts flatly denied. Free, most certainly; but his every apperception told him the freedom was hers, not that of others. Many men would campaign for her and fail—and some would salve their egos by groundless leers and innuendos.

  A woman like Joan, despite her natural privacy, would generate gossip from disappointed men and jealous women alike. But to know Joan was to realize that those who had been allowed to feel the real abandon of which she was capable would not be the kind who would lend themselves to gossip. While Jim was drunk, Rich remembered, he had once—and that was the only time—nearly alluded to his relationship with her. But the inferences had all been Richardson’s. Jim had actually said nothing, had never actually mentioned her, had only scourged himself for some unstated failure regarding Laura.

  Rich had a warm feeling at the thought that at first sight Joan had trusted him. Blunt’s extraordinarily crude comment, when he expressed surprise at Rich’s “success” his first night ashore, had been far more right than he would ever appreciate. Then Rich remembered that Jim had (her own words) spoken highly of him.

  Oddly, the inner glow remained. Perhaps both he and Joan were brutalized by the war. He had killed Nakame in defiance of the still honored code of the sea, which prescribed forbearance for men in lifeboats. He had also violated the code which his father, the preacher, had so thoroughly inculcated. It should be degrading to think of himself as only one among many in Joan’s life, but in a seldom visited corner of his soul he felt cleansed of something. Somehow, the thought that Joan was not and perhaps never could be for him alone made no difference. It made no difference at all.

  He would have to be grateful for her favor, to be one of those she admitted to her private inner circle. He could not hope to be the only man to be with her. Certainly, she would not sit alone while Eel was at sea! But she had done a lot for him, could do a lot more. After last night, he had hopes that he might also be able to do a little for her.

  The rest of the trip was in silence, for which Rich was at first grateful and, gradually, a little concerned. Perhaps Blunt had been hurt, perhaps angered. Perhaps it had all been a game. It would not be the first time Blunt had acted a part to get someone’s goat. That must, on second thought, be the explanation! Almost, Richardson convinced himself; but in the back of his mind there lingered something unsatisfied, something unexplained. Probably it would eventually go away. The strain of the just-finished patrol must have made him overquick to react.

  The realities of the night before receded more and more as the gate to the navy compound at Pearl Harbor approached. In their place, the harder realities to be faced during the day—the war and the submarines—once again reasserted their predominance over Richardson’s thoughts.

  The chief of staff, no doubt, had a desk covered with papers and messages accumulated during the night watch.

  For his own part, Richardson wanted to read the daily file of dispatches from submarines on patrol which was maintained in a room off the Operations Office. He needed to see Eel’s refit started; and he wanted to investigate any new devices or technical improvements which might be applied during the two-week repair period. Particularly, he resolved, he must look into that new radar periscope.

  By the time Blunt stopped the jeep at the head of the pier where Eel now lay—she had been moved late the previous afternoon—the old relationship seemed almost restored. “Rich,” said Blunt as they shook hands, “will you come to my office about 10 o’clock? There’s some things we should talk over.” With relief Rich promised, saluted, walked down the pier and across the narrow working gangplank to his ship.

  Already, much work was going forward. The shattered Target Bearing Transmitter on the bridge, he noted, had been removed during the night. This was a vitally important instrument. Consisting of a specially waterproofed (and pressure-proofed) pair of binoculars, mounted permanently in what amounted to a set of gimbals so that they could be trained on any bearing, it very accurately sent this information to a set of dials near the Torpedo Data Computer in the conning tower. Thus the “TBT” permitted torpedoes to be aimed from the bridge as accurately as the periscope could aim them when the submarine was submerged.

  Walrus had a much smaller and less accurate TBT in which the OOD’s own binoculars had to be fitted into a bracket to send the bearings to the conning tower. The new design, bulkier but much more precise, also had the convenience of a built-in buzzer—to give the “mark”—in one handle. Being solidly attached to the ship’s structure, it additionally gave physical support to the man using it in bad weather—a matter for which Rich had been most grateful a few weeks ago. Tateo Nakame had destroyed Eel’s forward TBT (there was one forward and one aft, necessitated by the periscope supports which obscured all-around view). It was good to see that its replacement had high priority.

  Among the items Richardson had requested in his refit book, submitted on arrival, was installation of an additional five-inch gun on the main deck forward to match the one Eel already had aft. To go with it, Buck Williams had suggested a rudimentary fire control system, making it possible to use the TDC for coordinated control of both guns from the bridge during gun action. An aiming system could easily be devised if the submarine base could be persuaded to mount the two TBTs side by side, port and starboard, instead of fore and aft.

  But moving the TBTs would be quite a job, involving moving electrical connections and making structural changes to the heavy steel plating of the bridge bulwarks. Rich could show the desirability of the new system, but strong arguments would be needed to get the submarine base to alter the standard arrangement. It would require his personal and primary attention.

  There would be a conference later on today, at which Keith and the other officers would all be present, to review and plan the refit work. Most critical of the repairs was the matter of the ship’s hydraulic system. During the latter stages of the previous patrol the frequency of its recharging cycle had nearly doubled. This presaged trouble; a thorough overhaul was mandatory. Eel had many more hydraulic devices than the old Walrus. Her torpedo tube doors were hydraulically operated, for example, and her periscope hoist mechani
sms had long, thin hydraulic hoist rods in place of Walrus’ electric motors and wire hoist cables.

  In response to the increased demand for hydraulic power, the hydraulic plant in the newer subs had been redesigned and enlarged. But the load was twice as great. Maybe the plant still wasn’t big enough. . . .

  Eel was a refuge, his home, his occupation. All he had in life, really. But she also carried memory, especially of the past three weeks. Fortunately there were many new faces in the relief crew performing various tasks about the ship. That made a difference. The boat herself also indefinably felt different alongside the dock instead of at sea. His own stateroom, untouched by any of the work going on, and yet so constricted, so crammed with memories of tormented hours, and so alien with the ship in port, was where it was worst.

  He could feel the brownout closing back down upon him. Joan Lastrada’s ministrations the night before had been extraordinarily successful, but no woman, hours in the past, could compete with the here and now of the tiny metal-walled chamber in which he had for so many days sat in front of his desk or lain brooding in his bunk. Nor could any woman compete with the great steel hulk of congested machinery which he had used to smash the lifeboats.

  Half an hour after he stepped aboard, he was ashore again, reading the message files.

  At ten he was in Blunt’s office, a sparsely furnished, white-walled room in the bomb-proof building constructed for the ComSubPac headquarters. It was exactly as he remembered it, except for the addition of a large bookcase with glass doors. On its shelves, instead of books, was an assemblage of mementos, some of which Richardson recognized as dating from Octopus days. The majority, however, were new, evidently recent acquisitions. The single large window, deep set in heavy concrete walls, looked out toward the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. Immediately below it, Pier One, now empty, was ready for the next submarine to come in from patrol. Blunt’s desk was in front of the window, the back of his chair exactly in front of the glass.