by Andre Dubus
Now, swagger stick in hand, he climbed the Captain’s ladder; the Marine Detachment waxed its green decks and polished its brass handrails daily: that was supposed to be an honorable duty, but Dan resented using Marines to please a Navy captain’s eye. At the Captain’s cabin the Marine orderly saluted Dan, then announced him and held the door open as he went in. Captain Howard sat behind a large polished wooden desk; he had a pen in his hand and there was a stack of papers before him. He told Dan to have a seat and Dan sat in a leather armchair.
“Sir, I came to tell you why Freeman’s not on duty today.”
“I was wondering about that.”
Captain Howard was a tall man with a lean face which perhaps several times had been deeply tanned; now, after nearly a year aboard the Vanguard, whose crew rarely went above decks, he still wasn’t pale. His face appeared rather young, but not as young as the eight-by-ten photograph of him: it had been taken by the ship’s Photo Officer, then touched up to remove the wrinkles, making him look thirty years old, and distributed about the ship to be hung on bulkheads.
“I locked him up this morning,” Dan said. Captain Howard screwed the pen into its desk stand. “What for?”
He seemed to frown as he screwed in the pen, but Dan couldn’t be sure; like the silver eagles on the khaki lapels beneath it, his face usually showed inscrutable authority, and nothing more.
“He talked back to a corporal during morning clean-up.”
“So you locked him up.”
“Yes, sir. Three days bread and water.”
Captain Howard slowly turned his swivel chair until he was profiled to Dan and staring at the bulkhead. Then he said quietly:
“Don’t you think that’s a stiff punishment for talking back to a petty officer?”
“An NCO, sir.”
Captain Howard did not seem to hear the correction.
“I have never put a man on bread and water,” he said. “The book gives us other ways to deal with our men. An effective commander can do much with calm admonishment.”
The Captain was still turned away from him and Dan was looking at his parted dark brown hair, his left ear, his face with its tan left over from earlier days.
“Well, sir, we’ve found that bread-and-water squares a man away.”
Again the Captain did not seem to hear.
“It took me a long time to learn judgment,” he said. “Because, as you know, most junior officers in the Navy are not given the responsibility of handing out official punishment. Maybe as a young officer I might have let my emotions override my judgment and I might have gone around putting men on bread and water for minor offenses.”
“Sir,” Dan said too loudly, and the Captain looked at him, so he lowered his voice before going on: “I don’t consider Freeman’s offense minor. I don’t think any Marine officer does. I’ll give a man a second chance on almost any other offense—but not insubordination or disobedience. The corporal that Freeman sounded off to would lead a fire team or even a squad in combat and all those troops have to learn to respect chevrons.”
The Captain was watching him calmly, even a little distracted. Now he looked at the bulkhead again.
“Mister Tierney, I’m aware of all that; I’ve served with Marines before. But you don’t seem to be reading my message. So far, I’ve allowed the Marine Detachment on this ship to handle its own disciplinary cases. That is a privilege which I don’t have to grant, and I can take it away at any time. Now, if you don’t want your Marines to come to me for punishment, I suggest you exercise more mature judgment and make your punishments more in accordance with my own feelings.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Dan stood up, and Captain Howard swung the chair around and looked at him.
“And next time you want to lock up one of my orderlies, I would appreciate being informed beforehand. I might just know more about my orderlies than you do. Freeman, for instance, is a fine boy and I should think a pat on the wrist would have been sufficient.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but not for that offense.”
“Mister Tierney, that will be all.”
Dan came to attention, clicking his heels, said “Aye aye, sir,” and about-faced and strode out.
He went quickly down the Captain’s ladder, slapping his thigh with his swagger stick, remembering affronts and conflicts from the past three and a half months: there was the time Commander Craig, the Gunnery Officer, had decided to assign Captain Schneider and Dan as boat officers: the officer in charge of a liberty launch which took the crew to and from the beach when the Vanguard was anchored in port. It was a duty which usually fell to junior pilots, because pilots did not stand bridge watches at sea and this in-port duty was a settling of accounts. And it was bad duty: responsibility during a half- hour boat trip for eighty or so sailors, drunk, sleeping, or fighting, as they returned from liberty. So Captain Schneider had gone to see Commander Craig and had read him the passage in Navy Regulations which states that no Marine officer shall have command of a vessel at sea. If that liberty boat sinks, Captain Schneider had said, and I’m in charge of it, I wonder who an investigation would find responsible. Commander Craig had scowled, then grinned, and said: All right, Marine, no boat duty.
There were other incidents like that, but the one Dan thought of now as he descended the ladder was the honors ceremony of only three days ago, the last day the Vanguard was moored at Yokosuka. Captain Schneider had already gone to the hospital, so Dan had been in charge of the Marine honor guard: the troops dressed in blues, chrome-plated bayonets fixed to their rifles; Dan wore his sword. The Admiral’s Band was to the right of the Marines. The Vanguard was a flagship and had an admiral aboard, but he did not concern himself with the affairs of the ship, and Dan rarely saw him.
At nine o’clock in the morning the Japanese government officials had arrived and Captain Howard had led one of them to the Marines on the hangar deck; Dan presented the guard, then led the Japanese official and the Captain through the ranks while the band played the “Marines’ Hymn.” Then Captain Howard took all the Japanese up to his cabin. That afternoon Dan had coffee in the wardroom with Alex Price, who had smiled and asked him how his Fascists had performed at the honors ceremony.
“With their usual beauty and precision,” Dan had said.
Alex was a lieutenant junior grade, one of those rare young officers who, having no commitment to the service—in fact detesting much of it—perform as conscientiously as the most fervent career officer. His face was nearly always calm, as were his voice and manner (Dan once accused him of a total lack of passion); he had a crew cut which showed the top of his scalp and he had recently grown a wide moustache which had a reddish hue, though his hair was brown.
“Question is,” Alex said, “can there be any beauty—”
The bosun’s pipe sounded over the loudspeaker system and Dan turned to the speaker on the bulkhead; the piping ended, there was a pause which seemed to Dan somehow dramatic, as if with over three thousand men staring at speakers all over the ship, a voice was about to announce: “At fifteen hundred today Russian bombers—“ but instead came the quiet voice of Captain Howard which had disappointed Dan when he first joined the Vanguard and, by now, annoyed him; for he thought a ship’s captain should growl, or at least be hoarse from dissipation ashore and bellowing commands at sea:
“This is the Captain. As you know, our chief concern today has been with the visit by Japanese dignitaries. That visit was a success, and I want to personally express my gratitude to all the officers and men of Vanguard for their outstanding cooperation and performance throughout the day. And for the honors ceremony, I want to particularly give my personal thanks to the Gunnery Department and the men of the Admiral’s Band.”
Then he said that tomorrow Vanguard would go to sea for day and night air operations and, after two weeks, they would go to Iwakuni. Dan struck the table with his palm.
“Goddammit, I’m going to see him,” he said.
“What for?�
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“Ask him if it’d break his jaw to compliment my troops sometime.”
“Maybe he thinks you should feel included when he says Gunnery Department.”
“I don’t care what he thinks. If he’s that stupid, why doesn’t he at least say the Marines of Gunnery Department. When he knows Goddamn well there wasn’t one Gunnery sailor on that hangar deck—Hell with it: I’m going to see him.”
He stood up.
“You can’t,” Alex said.
“Why not? I’ve got legs, don’t I? I’ve got a tongue, don’t I? So I’ll go ask him what’s wrong with his tongue.”
“Did you ever walk in on a Marine colonel and chew him out?”
Dan hesitated. He noticed three lieutenants looking at him from across the wardroom. Then he sat down.
“Maybe I should write him a letter.”
“Make it original and three. Via the Gunnery Officer, via the XO—copy to each of them. Original to the Captain, and the other copy for you.”
“So I’ll remember what I said.”
“Now you’re learning.”
That had been three days ago. Now, leaving the Captain’s ladder, he crossed the hangar deck: a large space directly below the flight deck, crowded with jet bombers and fighters and the smaller propeller-driven A4D’s which, in Korea, the Marine infantry had loved; for it was said that they came slow and close over those ridges and could drop a bomb on a poncho. The wings of all the planes were folded upward and they sat quiet and unmoving, ominous as perched death.
Across the hangar deck he went down another ladder and turned aft, heading toward the barracks. In the passageway Hahn and Jensen were coming toward him. He stood waiting. They stopped talking when they saw him and he watched them coming, Hahn over six feet tall, the biggest man in the Detachment, and he used his size there as he must have used it all his life: the corporals were afraid to give him an order and he was never seen with a mop or rag in his hand unless Tolleson went and found him and gave the order himself. Jensen was shorter, but he fought often, anywhere, with anyone, and the troops—except Hahn—were afraid of him too. Or they would be, if Jensen had wanted that. But as far as Dan knew, Jensen wasn’t the bully that Hahn was, and Dan felt if it weren’t for Hahn, he might be a good Marine.
Now they reached him and saluted and, since Dan stood in their way, they stopped. He returned their salute, then spread his legs and folded his arms on his chest, looking at their faces which showed not guilt but concealment.
“Where are you two going?” he said, sending out his voice the way he used to make the throw from deep in the hole at shortstop: as the ball left his hand he would watch it with anticipation, hoping he had put enough behind it to get there chest-high and straight. Now his voice failed him; it wasn’t harshly ironic like Tolleson’s or paternally angry like Captain Schneider’s: it was soft, almost querulous, and he thought he sounded like a timid high school teacher trying to scold a sullen football player.
“To chow, sir,” Hahn said. He stood loosely, comfortably, at attention, and looked calmly down at Dan, whose eyes shifted to Jensen, then back to Hahn—or to the mole on his cheek—and said:
“You’re in the off-duty section, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And there’s a class going on for that section, isn’t there?”
“Yes, sir,” Hahn said, with that secrecy in his eyes again.
“Then I suggest you two go back to class.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Hahn said.
His voice and face were calm and courteous and false, showing no more concern than if Dan had merely stopped him to ask how he liked the chow aboard ship; and Dan knew that only the certainty of a court-martial kept Hahn from pushing him aside and going on to eat a late breakfast. He also suspected that Hahn and Jensen had missed the regular breakfast because they had stayed in their bunks while the other troops got up and cleaned the barracks and went to chow. He was thinking all this and hoping his face did not show it, when they saluted. He returned the salutes and they about-faced and walked back down the passageway, talking.
He would tell Tolleson he had caught them going to chow during the map-reading class, and Tolleson would probably give them some extra work to do, but that wouldn’t bother them. Maybe he should have done something, reprimanded them loudly and profanely on the spot, though he knew that was useless, for they didn’t care whether or not he admired them, and they were not concerned with promotions. He could have charged them with being absent from their place of duty and locked them up; but last summer, for beating up two sailors, they had gone to the brig for thirty days and it hadn’t changed them. Hahn had probably done well in the brig: assigned to the lightest work details, given cigarettes by the Marine turnkeys who would be afraid to enforce the regulation allowing only one cigarette after each meal—or, worse, who would not enforce it because they wanted Hahn to like or tolerate them. They were all too young for the job, especially the corporals, who did most of the direct troop handling. They had been promoted quickly and, because they had been in high school only two years ago, too many of them still believed that big men rule.
He walked aft, through the mess deck and up a ladder, then another, and out a hatch onto the sponson deck. He blinked at the sunlight. The ocean was calm and dark blue, the sky lighter, a destroyer tiny and grey against it on the horizon. He went to the guardrail and looked down at the ocean, holding his swagger stick before him in both hands.
The ship began a slow turn to starboard, into the wind. The sponson deck where he was standing jutted out from the side of the ship and, looking up, Dan could see part of the flight deck. Sailors in yellow sweatshirts and pilots in orange flight suits were moving around, then he saw the nose of a jet fighter coming slowly toward the edge of the deck above him; it turned and he saw the cockpit and silver wing and fuselage as it moved onto the catapult. He looked away, at the destroyer on the horizon.
If he were an enlisted man, he thought, it would be different. The first time Hahn pushed him, he’d go after him with a nightstick. And that was it: nonphysical as it was, their relationship still had the elements of a fight or a Western movie showdown. Someday he and Hahn would probably have to face each other in his office and one man was supposed to emerge the winner. The silver bars on his collars wouldn’t do it for him, and words wouldn’t either: Hahn seemed invulnerable to both.
The jet engine started above him, roaring, and he turned quickly and left the sponson deck, pausing at the hatch for a last look at the sea and sky, but they were altered by that incredible roaring; he went inside and down the ladder. He was going to the brig to see Freeman.
It was his duty to inspect the brig daily and check the prisoners, and that was one reason for his going now. But he had two other motives and he wished he were not aware of them: he had never confined a man before and he wanted to look at Freeman, with that possessive curiosity of a hunter picking up a fallen bird; he also wanted to reassert himself, to regain his dignity. With Freeman he could do that.
2
LIKE ALL Marine officers, Dan Tierney had spent his first eight months of duty as a second lieutenant at the Basic School in Quantico, Virginia. Toward the end of that eight months there was a mess night, a formal stag dinner, the second lieutenants wearing blues and senior officers wearing evening dress: short jackets and cummerbunds and boat cloaks. The evening had begun with martinis and manhattans, then during the meal there was wine with each course, and by the time the guest speaker—a lieutenant- general from Headquarters Marine Corps—made his speech, Dan was drunk. He sat stiffly, his tight blouse and high collar adding to his nausea, and stared at the general. He heard only one line of the speech, and he remembered it: during the rest of the night while they drank beer from silver mugs, and while he leaned over a toilet and vomited without unclasping his collar or soiling his uniform, and he still remembered it when he got to his room at five in the morning. You hear what that general said? he told his roommate. He said—he
said: The career of a Marine officer is living the lie and making the lie come true.
He never forgot that.
He remembered it when he left the sponson deck and went to see Freeman in the brig, and he recognized the lie in his own manner: stern yet paternal, when he felt neither. He also recognized the lie of Freeman’s punishment: knew that Freeman did not deserve bread-and-water and no cigarettes and isolation in a cell for three days. But he knew Freeman had expected it; because on the Vanguard, sailors were never put on bread and water, while Marines often were. And the Detachment as a whole—if not the particular Marine who was locked up—prided itself on this severe discipline. Beyond this, Dan recognized the essential lie: as he and Freeman faced each other in the cell, Dan saying that as far as he was concerned Freeman would start over with a clean slate and Freeman assuring him that he would be a squared-away Marine in the future, each of them believed they were somehow better men than any sailor or Naval officer on the ship. They both felt that moments like these, spent in a cell below decks, prepared them for that time when they might be called upon to continue the brave traditions of the Chosin Reservoir, of Tarawa, of Belleau Wood.
On his way to the barracks he stopped at the dispensary to see Doc Butler, who was a lieutenant-commander and the senior medical officer on the Vanguard. Since early in the cruise, Dan had called him Major because he looked like one: he was in his mid-thirties, rather well- built though inactive, and he kept his hair as short as Dan’s. When he was a lieutenant, he had served as a regimental surgeon with Marine infantry, and he liked to talk with Dan and Captain Schneider about those days. Doc Butler would know about Freeman, because all prisoners went to the dispensary for preconfinement physicals.