by Andre Dubus
So he left that first draft on his desk and went to lunch, planning to work on it again that night. After lunch, on his way to the ladders going up to the signal bridge, he met Commander Craig in the passageway. From a distance of ten paces he saluted, and spoke with a cool formality that he normally used only when greeting strangers who outranked him.
“Good morning, sir.”
Commander Craig averted his eyes and saluted flaccidly in return.
“Going up on watch, Danny?”
“Can’t go anyplace else, sir”—looking straight ahead, passing him.
He climbed to the signal bridge, then stood at the guardrail, his cap in his hand because of the wind, until he could fully open his eyes to the day. Several large white clouds moved with the course of the ship, passing it. The ocean glared, appearing hot. He relieved the officer in the turret and slowly moved it, fore to aft and back again, but he did not look through the binoculars; he had not adjusted them to his eyes.
Sitting in Sky II, the only place he was free to go, earning his pay by performing a senseless function as part of a complex but inadequate air defense system, he smiled at the absurdity of it. He knew the Captain had acted on impulse, and he wondered what feeble ruse the Captain would think of to free him from arrest. Being court-martialed was out of the question. It was bad for the officer corps, cost too much in terms of the troops’ respect and certainty; so an officer’s punishment usually took a more expedient form. The Captain might give him a letter of reprimand, hurting him when he entered the promotion zone next year. But many good Marines, as a direct result of their virtues, had been in frequent trouble. He remembered a lieutenant-colonel once, in a leadership class, saying if you had been in the Corps ten years and still weren’t a colorful character you’d never be a field grade officer. Of course Dan had known that was not true: he had already seen too many field grade officers who exuded inconspicuousness as some nervous women exuded motherhood. Yet he had believed it was partly true, the colonel’s plea for individuality a proof in itself.
That leadership class had been in Basic School where, he could still recall with pride, he had been the Honor Man of his class, having consistently maintained for eight months the highest gradepoint average for work in the classroom and the field. It was a goal he had set for himself during the first week, as soon as he discovered that such a goal existed. He had studied nightly, had purposely gained competence without annoying his classmates, for he had never forgotten that his profession was one which, above all, involved men. He disliked martinets as much as he disliked their slovenly, ineffective opposites; and while he absorbed his education, converted words from manuals into rules he could follow by instinct, he remained a humble noncritical companion even to those lieutenants whose professional shortcomings and noncommitment actually pained him, as if their presence in the Corps somehow blighted his. He was doing more than just being friendly. He was waiting. His function was not to chide Reserve officers, but to lead troops, and he impatiently stored his energy for the time when he would leave Basic School and join the Fleet Marine Force, where he could impress his standards and ideals on those troops he longed for.
As Honor Man he had received two awards: a regular commission and a Mameluke sword, and he had left Basic School with a conviction that he had found his destiny in a world of action. He did not consider war a necessary part of that world. He could have a satisfactory career without ever encountering an enemy, and he did not think of combat as an accumulation of corpses nor as an end in itself, but as an abstract test of how well he had lived each day, how well he had trained himself and his troops. Since he could judge that for himself, he did not need to be tested, and he was able to fulfill himself with the knowledge that he and every man under him were ready for the most demanding of duties. He thought football coaches and baseball managers probably felt the same; but there was a difference: he had gone further than they had. While they worked with skillful athletes, he trained and led every sort of man who decided, for his own reasons, to join the Corps. Each of these men became a measurement of his effectiveness as a leader. For he could not rest until he knew that everyone under his command was able to do anything that had to be done, whether it involved a flamethrower or the delivery of a message. Therefore, he could never rest, and he liked that too.
This was his attitude when he had left Basic School, and three and a half years later it remained as untarnished as the Mameluke sword he had been awarded: a ceremonial heirloom from First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon. He liked to recall that O’Bannon—a colorful soul, it was said—had been given the sword in 1805 by the rethroned ruler of Tripoli after O’Bannon had led a force of Marines, mercenaries, and Arabs against that ruler’s enemy; that, in spite of this, O’Bannon was not promoted to captain, so two years later had resigned. Years after O’Bannon’s award, the Marine Corps had adopted the Mameluke sword as its own. Now every Marine officer knew who Presley O’Bannon was.
If, then, Captain Howard gave him a letter of reprimand, he would not be the first good Marine to become a victim. Certainly the Commandant and future promotion boards would be able to read the truth in his case.
Shortly before three o’clock the Vanguard turned into the wind. Looking at his watch, Dan stopped the turret and half-rose from his seat, his face to the open ventilation port. On the flight deck a small propeller-driven plane was being pushed to the catapult.
He had forgotten. His impulse was to leave the turret, run down the ladders and onto the flight deck, if only to exchange salutes and handshakes and wish them luck. Now he saw them, moving away from the island in scattered file; their hands were pressing on the tops of their barracks caps, their faces turned from the wind, their bodies leaning under the weight of shouldered seabags. Freeman was the last to board. He stood beside the plane, looking up at the hatch, a small green figure against the silver fuselage. He swung his seabag to the deck. Then he released his cap, took the seabag in both hands, and with an effort that Dan could see from his distance, he lifted it. The wind caught his cap and took it, his head turning aft, watching, as he stood with the raised seabag. Someone took his bag into the plane and he ran: he had covered about ten yards when he stopped and watched the cap rolling and leaping the last few feet, over the portside. He looked around at the sailors on the flight deck, and glanced upward at the bridge; then, lowering his head, he jogged to the plane and climbed through the hatch.
When Dan was relieved from the turret at four o’clock, he started writing the letter again. He wanted to sleep but he did not have time: the next two watches were the dogwatches, from four to six and six to eight, and he would be in the turret again at eight o’clock. He had written a page when the Captain’s orderly phoned and said the Captain wanted to see him in his cabin.
As he went up the ladder he felt that he could be whipped now: he was tired, he had lost Freeman, and there was nothing else that he felt like fighting for. If Captain Howard was going to attack the independence of the Detachment, start handling Marine disciplinary cases himself, then Captain Schneider would have to fight that. He would concentrate what energy he had on Freeman’s letter, and he would go through the motions of air defense. When the ship reached Iwakuni he would tell the story to Captain Schneider, then he and Alex would go on liberty.
He waited for the orderly to announce him; when he entered, Captain Howard was standing behind his desk, holding a small yellow sheet of paper. He waited impatiently as Dan formally reported, standing at attention three feet from the desk. Then he told Dan to stand at ease.
“I have sent this message to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.”
He was holding it across the desk now and when Dan simply looked at it, trying to imagine the Commandant receiving a message which apparently had something to do with him, the Captain said:
“Here. Read it.”
Without moving his feet he reached out and took it. The words were printed in pencil:
Request immediate transfer 1st. L
t. Daniel F. Tierney 065524 USMC from this command. Incompetence and conduct unbecoming an officer. Letter of reprimand follows.
He read it again; then for a while he merely looked at it. Finally, his eyes still on the message, he said:
“A clean sweep.”
It occurred to him to drop the message on the desk but that required energy he did not have; so he handed it to the Captain. He could look at him now.
“Since you’ll need to go about the ship to check out, I am taking you off arrest. I suggest you start packing and checking out as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In these cases, orders generally come by message. I expect them in a couple of days at most. You will certainly be departing the Vanguard upon our arrival in Iwakuni.”
“Yes, sir. Is that all, sir?”
Captain Howard shook his head.
“Your letter of reprimand will be ready tomorrow. Among other things it will mention your handling of the incident, lying to Commander Craig, and your insubordinate outbursts in my cabin. I’m telling you this so you can plan your statement, if you choose to write one. You will also get a change-of-duty fitness report. It will be unsatisfactory and you can enclose a statement with it too. So there are a lot of things to be done. You are restored to command of the Detachment, but if anything unusual comes up, you will consult with Commander Craig before taking action. I also expect you to perform your duties in connection with our exercise with the Marine Air Wing.”
“Yes, sir. Is that all, sir?”
“That’s all.”
When he returned to his stateroom, he thought of calling Tolleson, but decided not to. Tolleson had been through enough lately, was becoming marked by a look of futility; and, besides, Dan had no time for impotent cursing. He did not have time to phone Alex either. He went to the wardroom and ate quickly, speaking to no one—he could not even have said who sat at his table—then he worked on Freeman’s letter. When it was finished—clear, objective, subordinate—he just had time to bring it to Tolleson for typing before he climbed the ladders again, to the turret.
Since afternoon the wind had diminished. Before entering the turret Dan watched a cloud slowly cover the moon, bright and full again. For the entire first hour of his watch, he sat without moving the turret. When he found himself having an imagined dialogue with Khristy, he let it continue, telling her about Freeman as she listened, sitting opposite him at a cocktail lounge table, drinking a martini. He paused to reflect on that: how he always thought of her in the surroundings of their dates, or that one time in his bed. He would never be able to think of her at a kitchen table, say, or reading a magazine on a couch in late afternoon. He tried placing her in a living room he had never seen, but he could not do it; so he brought them back to the cocktail lounge and talked to her again. For a while her face showed little. But gradually her lips tightened, her eyes started to squint—then she broke in and said he was right, oh didn’t he see? Couldn’t he? They were wrong: the Navy, the Marine Corps—all those men narrowed down to one purpose: victory in combat, yet their final purpose was subject to grander complexities on higher levels, trickery of politics, interests of nations, lies, lies, lies. Inhuman: what they were doing to Freeman, what they did to thousands so they could take a piece of land, an island—some bloody place that happened to be of tactical worth. Then he said no, as long as there had to be armies, there should be a Marine Corps, because they were the best. And no matter what the government used it for, the Marine Corps was people. Men became professional Marines not because they had to but because they could: they chose a way of life that followed a clear-cut truth, politically neutral in a world of changing enemies. Why, a Marine—with his detachment from home, money-making, and politics, and his devotion to an isolated and insulated truth—was the man with most liberty in twentieth century America. The professional neither lived nor fought for governments, but for courage, endurance, honor, duty—
He stopped the conversation. Looking out at the sea he was disturbed that his talk had shifted from Freeman to an argument about the ideas he lived by yet rarely voiced. He tried to start over, to conjure Khristy and the cocktail lounge, but he was looking at the flight deck, estimating the now darkened spot where Freeman had been standing when his cap blew away, and he was too alert for daydreams. He was wondering how the Captain’s message had been received at Headquarters Marine Corps; there was no way to find out how badly damaged his professional reputation was; he could get an indication from the type of orders he received, but that was all.
He had been in the turret for nearly two hours when the hatch behind him was jerked open and, turning, he saw in the darkness Alex’s face and shoulders. He took off his earphones.
“I’m being shanghaied from the ship,” he said.
“What?”
“With a letter of reprimand and an unsatisfactory fitness report. Transfer’s being arranged by message.”
Watching Alex’s face as it jerked back, he felt the pleasure of having delivered a shock. Then Alex said:
“How would you like to bust the Vanguard wide open?”
“Show me how,”
“I just got hold of Doc Kellog, because he’s been flying most of the Goddamned day. I asked him what I did wrong and he said I must have known I didn’t have a chance when they already confessed homosexual acts in San Francisco, passive or not. So I said no, I mean with Freeman. And he said what the hell did I want—a promotion too?” Alex paused. “The board cleared Freeman.”
Dan dropped the earphones and climbed out, standing on the signal bridge and looking at Alex in the moonlight.
“Wait a minute. He’s off the Goddamn ship, they flew him off this afternoon—”
“That’s not the point. Point is, the senior member is the only one who signs the recommendation of a field board. The Goddamned point is—”
“Commander Craig.”
“Right: the old salt, the old no-sweat—”
“Jesus Christ, what could the Captain have told that bastard!”
“You tell me. What do captains tell commanders in this Goddamned outfit: they tell ’em to change the recommendation of a board and sign it and these ball-less wonders change the recommendation and sign it. That’s what happens.”
“Okay. Okay: I’ve got two statements to write and there’s going to be one screwed-up Captain when I’m through. By the time Freeman writes to Magnuson and I write the Commandant there won’t be anybody getting promoted around here.”
“Magnuson?”
“Freeman’s senator. I told him to write tonight.”
“Well, now: we may see a little justice yet.”
“Revenge. But I won’t be here.”
He was thinking of an investigating officer from Headquarters Marine Corps arriving on the ship. Since a Navy captain was involved, the Marine would probably be a senior colonel, maybe even a brigadier-general.
“Would Kellog testify?” he said.
“He wouldn’t start anything, but I’m sure he’d tell the truth at an investigation.”
“Well, he’ll get the chance—I’ll guarantee you that.”
Alex stayed with him for a while longer, neither of them mentioning Dan’s transfer, then Dan got into the turret again. He began planning his statement and as he wrote it in his mind, he pressed his eyes to the binoculars and swept the sky as if all of them—Captain Howard, Commander Craig, Doc Butler—were out there, for him to find and destroy.
When he was relieved at midnight he knew exactly what his letter would say: much simpler to write too, no dodging the truth as he had in the recommendation for Freeman. The honest simplicity of his next day’s work allowed him to sleep well. He woke at seven, thinking of Captain Howard up in his cabin: saw him wearing pajamas and a robe, shaving with an electric razor and thinking of evading Marine air now that Freeman and Mister Tierney were taken care of. By the time Dan had finished shaving he was angry, impatient to start his letter; it would have to wait, though, for h
e had the eight to twelve watch in Sky II.
But he did not stand that watch. As he was climbing the last ladder to the signal bridge, his breakfast-filled stomach protesting, general quarters was sounded. He turned and started down the ladder before he had time to curse. Then he did, aloud, to the bulkheads. He had three minutes to get from the top of the ship down to the hangar deck, then across it and aft to the gun mount. Then condition Zebra would be set: hatches closed all over the ship and no one was supposed to open them until the drill ended. He ran down three flights, holding the handrail, swung onto a landing and stopped: the ladders below him were crowded with sailors, pushing upward. He started down, pressed against the handrail so that for moments he could not move. One of the sailors jammed against him said:
“Wrong ladder, sir.”
“I know,” and gripping the rail he jerked himself down, broke through, reached a landing and was halfway down before he was jammed again, stupid and enraged: probably every sailor on the ship knew there were two ladders in the island and during general quarters you used one to go down and the other to go up, just as port and starboard passageways were used for going aft and forward. But he had no idea where the other ladder was.
He went on, pushing sailors, further shamed when they turned angrily but, seeing his bars, said nothing. The bosun’s mate announced over the loudspeaker that condition Zebra would be set in two minutes. Dan reached another landing, bumped into a commander who looked surprised, then annoyed: “Wrong ladder, soldier.” “Right, sir—” When he got to the hangar deck there was one minute left. “Circus—” he said and ran, dodging between planes: across the hangar deck, aft, through a compartment where a damage-control crew in helmets and life jackets waited to close the hatches, up another ladder—an empty one—and finally, out of breath, onto the sponson deck beneath the gun mounts. He climbed a ladder to Mount 8, ran over the catwalk to Mount 6, and climbed into its large grey turret. A Marine in utilities stood watching an instrument panel, as if he were actually bringing up rounds from below-decks. Dan moved past him, climbed into his seat within the plastic bulb, put on earphones, and received manned-and- ready reports from the gun crews.