The Gulf

by David Poyer

  “Yeah.” Hayes took a swig. He was handing it back when he became conscious of something warm and squishy-soft on the seat under him.

  “What?” muttered Schweinberg.

  “What?”

  “I said, what’d you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Man, that hot water’s gonna feel great when we get back,” said Schweinberg, looking down at the sea. With a strange detachment, he saw that his hands were shaking. He peeled off his left glove and examined his sweaty, beet-red palm. “Hey, good thinkin’ there, Buck, on the oil rig, I mean.”

  Hayes nodded, then remembered that the new CO was trying to reach them. He pressed transmit and said, “Uh, Van Zandt, this is ATO; sorry, we kind of had to concentrate there for a minute. Over.”

  “This is Shaker. I understand. Buck, did they fire on you?”

  How did he know my name? Hayes thought. “No, sir. Thought for a minute they did, but it was the sun on the wings.”

  “But they made passes at you?”

  “Yessir, no shit.”

  “What I need to know is, was there hostile intent? They weren’t just playing around, were they?”

  Beside him, Schweinberg snorted. Buck said carefully, “That’s hard to say, sir. We dived away as soon as we saw ’em. I guess that might have, you know, sucked them in. Invited ’em to hotdog a little. But it looked serious to me, like they were just waiting for a good-enough setup to justify expending a missile. We never gave them one, so they didn’t. But I can’t say what was in their raggedy heads.”

  “Well…” Was it his imagination, or did the new captain sound disappointed? “Anyway, good flying, guys. Stay alert, and look, stick a little closer to us, all right? We could have put a missile out there if you’d been closer.”

  “Aye, sir.” He clicked off and tried to relax. They were at two thousand and climbing. It was cooler now and the sky was turning blue again. He cracked his knuckles slowly, relishing being alive.

  “Want to take it for a while?” said Schweinberg. Buck Hayes took a deep breath. Then another. The trembling in his diaphragm eased off. He set his boots on the rudder pedals, nodded, and took the stick.

  9

  U.S.S. Turner Van Zandt

  BERNARD Newekwe, aka Hospitalman Bernard Phelan, sat curled like a stepped-on rattlesnake in the quiet of sick bay, sniffling and gnawing on his pencil. Among many other things, he wanted a smoke. But he couldn’t. Fitch would smell it and give him hell.

  Tuh. Couldn’t even smoke.… He closed his eyes, digging his fingers in above his belt buckle. He wanted to howl like a runover dog. The cramps were getting worse. Didn’t dare take more aspirin; his ears were ringing from them. And anyway, they didn’t help. He didn’t feel good. Christ. Christ …

  He sniped a yearning glance toward a gray steel safe, but it stopped at the CLOSED placard. He sucked shuddering air through locked teeth. He wanted to get up, rattle it again, but he’d done that a dozen times already. Shit.

  He was alone in the frigate’s little sick bay. Little, compared to the medical spaces on Long Beach. It gleamed soullessly antiseptic from waxed tiling to freshly painted overhead. Gray filing cabinets were squeezed among a sparkling stainless scrub sink, two empty bunks—tucked and smoothed with inhuman neatness—and a folding operating table. It was down now and covered with medical records and the shadow tracings of X rays. Below a battery of operating lights, an oxygen bottle was lashed to the bulkhead, valve polished to a mirror finish. The closed-in air stank of alcohol and Betadine, a medicinal smell, like the ghostly smoke of piñon and juniper that hung over the pueblo in the calm, cold nights of February, under the steady stare of the desert stars.…

  Phelan bit hard on the yielding wood, trying to blot his need from his mind by thinking about something else. About the setup here, for instance. You had to know the setup if you wanted to get anywhere in the Navy. Had to figure who to impress, who really counted. Same as in the pueblo. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same everywhere.

  Van Zandt was short of corpsmen, all right. They’d had seven on Long Beach when she deployed. This ship had one rated man and one striker. The leading HM was a first-class named Fitch. He was forty, bent, balding, obsequious toward the officers and a pint-size tyrant within the ten-by-ten confines of sick bay. Medically, he seemed competent, though all Phelan had seen him deal with so far was seasickness, hammered thumbs, and one case of clap.

  The striker’s name was Golden. He was a seaman, same as Phelan, but since Bernard had his rate, he was senior. He could see this pissed Golden off. The guy watched him out of the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t said anything, but Phelan knew it was coming. Golden made him nervous. He was weird, a creepy, pale, know-it-all.

  A jarring clatter began from the deck above. He closed his eyes. What the hell was going on? It sounded as if they were tearing the ship apart. It felt like the chipping hammers were taking the top off his skull.

  He had to make some connections. He’d drifted around the decks after dark the night before, nostrils flared for the autumnal aroma of marijuana. But he hadn’t whiffed any, and hadn’t seen anyone who looked stoned. He couldn’t believe no one aboard got high. If they didn’t, this was the first drug-free ship he’d ever seen. He’d tried sitting with the dudes at their tables, figuring that was the best way to find out what was going down. They let him sit there, but he didn’t feel they trusted him. Shit, he was no white! Finally, he’d asked one of them, Jackson, what he did to feel good, and he’d just laughed and said he got blowjobs off Indians.

  There’d been five of them and Phelan couldn’t take him then. He would, though, he’d fix their fucking little trains. Nobody fucked with him. Jackson. Wa na ni; remember the name; he’d get his.

  For about the thousandth time that day, he thought about his brick. How could he’ve been so stupid. Enough there for a month if he’d taken it easy. Rationed it. He still couldn’t understand how he’d smoked it all in four days. It must have been weak, cut with something, that was all he could figure.

  Four days … he shuddered, reliving the horror of waking that last morning and realizing his stash was gone, his money was gone, and the ship was gone, too, and he was in trouble unless he came through with something fast. Staggering out into the sunlight, already dog-sick, reeling and puking and knowing it was going to be worse. Much worse. He’d sold his belt and buckle, knife, watch, boots, wallet, and I.D. card (he’d known that was stupid, but he was beyond stupidity) for two more hits. He’d decided to save one, but in the end he ate them both as he shuffled through the streets of Karachi in his socks, cursing and wondering what in hell he was going to do.

  Finally, something had occurred to him. He walked in front of a taxi, not a fast-moving one, and got himself taken to the American legation with a story about being robbed and beaten. They’d bought it, got him a doc and a week’s prescription for pain pills. Nothing he recognized, Pak stuff, but there was codeine or Dilaudid in it.

  And, God, he’d managed it. Instead of wolfing them, he’d taken just enough to keep him upright. It hurt like hell, but gradually he’d reduced the dose, come down easy. No real addict could have done that.

  Only the last of that was gone now, too, and he hurt again.

  He shivered. Christ, it was cold in here. Icy cold. He had his jacket on over the dungaree shirt, but it didn’t cut it, not even with the knit watch cap. He wanted to feel good again but couldn’t think of a way to. Maybe he should have stayed in Karachi. Lots of stuff there. No, that was impossible.

  The pencil snapped in his teeth, bringing him suddenly back to his job. He hunched shivering over the folder, trying to focus on immunization dates. Tetanus toxoid, series of three; typhoid, PPD … Who the hell cared. He scrawled something in the block for medical review and threw it back on the pile.

  Someone knocked on the door. He started guiltily, then shouted, “Yeah, get in here.”

  It was a seaman recruit off the deck gang, nursing a splinter. Phel
an got up, glad for something to do. He tried to keep his fingers steady while he washed the guy’s hand, needled the sliver out, disinfected the wound, and carefully placed a Band-Aid.

  Fitch came in. He hung his ball cap on the oxygen tank and glanced at them. “Problem?”

  “Splinter. Almost done.”

  “How those records coming?”

  “Almost finished.”

  “Anybody past their reimmunization dates?”

  “Uh, not yet.”

  The seaman recruit thanked Phelan and left. Fitch jingled his keys. He looked carefully around the space, then bent to peep under the sink. Looking for dust, Phelan supposed. Fitch was a suckass, a crawler. He hunched there suffering, hating him and every other white and black face on this floating prison.

  Fitch jingled his keys again, humming under his breath, and at last squatted. He flipped the placard on the safe from CLOSED to OPEN. He spun the dial left, left, right, left. The door clicked, then swung noiselessly out.

  Phelan’s eyes stopped, unable to move from the rows of bottles and boxes suddenly visible over the first-class’s shoulder. There was the hard stuff, the morphine Syrettes and more morphine in blocks, pure and potent. Along with softer pharmaceuticals, Valium and Percodan, cough syrups, Seconal, amyl nitrate, pain pills and sleeping pills, grain alcohol and medicinal brandy. Stocked for two hundred men for six months in a battle zone. And all of it two steps away from him, with only the back of Fitch’s balding head between.

  His lips were suddenly dry. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey what?”

  “A guy was in here with a headache. Bad one. I wanted to give him something for it, but all there was out was aspirin.”

  “Aspirin’s good for headaches.”

  “He had a bad one, I said.”

  “You should have passed the word for me. Could have given him something stronger. Who was it?”

  “I forget his name. Look, Albert, I ought to have the combo to that safe. Like then when I’m on duty, I can take care of things without bothering you.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” said Fitch, maddeningly noncommittal. “Okay, this afternoon we got to set up for urinalysis.”

  “For what?” said Phelan. He felt a premonitory shiver.

  “Get the bottles out. It’s Operation Golden Flow. We do a random piss test on twenty people, twice a month. Got a new kit; we can test right here on the ship.”

  The cramp hit him sudden, like a knife sliding in just below the navel. He bit down on a gasp. Was Fitch watching him? Was the bastard smiling? Finally, he got up and fumbled about in a locker, trying not to groan. “Behind the condoms,” the senior corpsman supplied.

  “Here they are.”

  “And here’s the list.”

  Phelan’s shaking fingers dropped it. It drifted to the floor and he looked down at it, helpless, unable to bend over the slowly twisting blade. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Didn’t you do these on Long Beach? Take it down to ship’s office. Get ’em to type the names on sticky labels.” Fitch’s rabbit eyes gloated down at him. “Yeah, your name’s on there, Big Chief. And guess what? I’m gonna be watching while you fill that bottle. See if you’ve been smoking any of them magic mushrooms.”

  There was nothing more ignorant than a melikan. You didn’t smoke peyote. It was a cactus, not a mushroom. And anyway, that was Navaho or Apache medicine. In something not far from panic, Phelan pulled his wandering mind back to the freezing, empty sick bay of U.S.S. Van Zandt. “What do you mean, man? They don’t come no cleaner than me.”

  “I mean, I don’t know you, Phelan. And you don’t look good to me. You ain’t looked good since the day you came aboard.”

  “I told you, I got the flu or something. And I get seasick, cooped up down here.”

  “We’ll see. Go get those labels typed.” The first class turned his back on him.

  Phelan slowly bent for the list. He was on it, all right, written on at the bottom. In pen. He cast a glance of pure hatred at Fitch’s back. He wished he had his knife. He’d cut this son of a bitch here and now. Get the combination, too. He’d make him tell.

  Watching mind movies of Fitch bleeding, whimpering for mercy, looking down where his balls used to be, Bernard went back to ship’s office and waited till the personnelman was busy. He got the labels and hitched himself cautiously behind the typewriter. He couldn’t type fast, but he got them done eventually.

  Fitch was still in sick bay, grinning like a dog in garbage. “Okay, Hiawatha,” he said. “Ready for those shining waters? Let’s see ’em—good. Paste ’em on and meet me down in Ops Berthing. I’ll pass the word and we’ll do it in the head there.”

  Phelan went forward, carrying the tray of bottles like some kind of waiter, he thought. The men he passed made jokes. He didn’t look at them.

  As he entered the head, he heard the names being read over the 1MC. He arranged the bottles on the counter, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, trying to do his job despite it all.

  Suddenly he was filled with a desperate pity for himself. Nobody had wanted him since he was born. Not the Corn People, not the white man, not his so-called friends, who’d wanted only what he sold. He’d grown up poor and hungry and now he was sick. They shouldn’t make a sick man work. It was all so fucking unfair! He needed medicine. Just for a little while longer, till he got clean. Even a drink would help. One of the chiefs ought to have a bottle stashed. How could he get to it?

  Fitch came down a few minutes later, and with him the day’s lottery winners. They stood around watching and joking as each one peed into his container. Urine burned bitter in the air. Some of the men bitched; one couldn’t produce a drop in front of the others. Fitch let him slide shamefaced into a stall, but left the door open and watched him from the back.

  At last, it was his turn. The first-class handed him his bottle personally. Phelan kept his face expressionless, though he wanted to throw the collected samples into the grinning, triumphant face. Prick, he said to himself, and added a Zuni obscenity as he nursed a shaky trickle into the plastic.

  When it was done, the last man milked and checked off, Fitch nodded to the box of bottles, now a fluid honeycomb of a score of shades of yellow, saffron, red, and purple (the man being treated for gonorrhea). “Sick bay,” he said, and left.

  Phelan looked around; he was alone. It was the work of a moment to peel the labels off two of the vials, revealing beneath two identical, already-typed stickers with different names. He put the curling slips into his mouth, picked up the tray, and tinkled after the first-class out into the passageway and up the ladder. On the way he chewed, chewed, swallowed. The gummed paper was sweet. Take that, you sonofabitch, he thought, glaring at Fitch’s narrow-shouldered back. Take that, lifer asshole, fucking belagana prick.

  Though he was still hurting, for a moment he almost felt good.

  * * *

  Later that night, he was sitting on the mess decks, smoking a Marlboro and eating his third bowl of ice cream and strawberry jam, when he caught Fitch eyeing him through the latticework that screened the tables. The first-class hesitated, then drew a mug of joe and sat down across from him. Phelan kept his eyes on the bowl.

  “Hi, Bernard.”

  “What you want, Fitch?”

  “I got an apology to make.”

  A tiny hope flared up in him.

  “About that piss test today. I thought … well, never mind what I thought.” Fitch looked at the bowl. “You’re seasick, I wouldn’t eat no dairy products.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I guess you just can’t tell who’s using and who isn’t. I’d’ve bet my ass old Jackson wouldn’t have been on that shit. But I ran the sample through twice. I don’t know why he’s conscious, it’s the highest opiate reading I’ve ever seen. Anyway, he’s in deep kimchee now.”

  “That so,” said Phelan. He tried not to smile.

  “Anyway, I wanted to give you this.” The square of past
eboard clicked as Fitch snapped it on Formica and stood up. “Give it back to me after you memorize it. We’ll stand one in three underway, you, me, and Golden. He’s up there now. Can you take the twenty to midnight?”

  “Sure,” said Phelan. He dragged his widened gaze from the combination. He looked at his wrist, then remembered: no watch. “What time you got?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “Sure,” he said again. His spoon clattered against the bowl. He wanted to run to sick bay, relieve Golden early and himself, too. But he controlled it. Fitch had sat down again.

  “What else you want?”

  “Just to talk. You got a minute?”

  “What about?” He was unable to keep the quaver out of his voice. Jesus, he thought, there’s all kinds of shit in that safe. The card gleamed a foot away. He slid his hand over it casually, afraid Fitch would change his mind. Only when it was buttoned into his shirt pocket did he relax a little.

  “Take it easy. Just about you. Get acquainted; we ain’t really talked yet. You married? Got any kids?”

  “Yeah. One kid. Little boy.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Three.”

  Fitch took out his wallet and showed him pictures of his kids. Phelan’s wallet was gone and his picture of Denise and Little Coyote, as they called the kid, gone with it. He wished now he’d kept it, but he hadn’t been thinking about pictures at the time.

  He told Fitch about the robbery, laying on the detail. By now, he could see it all clearly. The first-class clucked his tongue and offered to loan him ten bucks for cigarettes till his pay caught up with him. Phelan took it.

  At last, Fitch stretched and got up again. “Well, just thought we’d get acquainted. You know, we got a billet for a permanent HM3. I was figuring Goldie for it, but … You might think about staying with us, ’stead of transferring back to that cruiser. You get a lot more responsibility on a ship this size.”

  “I might put in for that,” said Phelan, making his voice sincere, as he had with the XO. “I’d sure like to make third. What do you think, would you help me out with that?”