by Pete Hamill
“Hello?” I said. “Anybody home?”
There was no answer.
Then I heard a toilet flushing at the far end of the row of bunks and walked toward the sound. Names were stenciled on some of the lockers. Each bunk was made up like the next, the mattress covers pulled taut and rough Navy blankets folded at the foot. I heard water running, then stopping. And then someone whistling: “Cry.” By Johnnie Ray. A big hit in ’51. Even if you hated the singer or the song, there was no way to avoid the words, because for most of a year you heard it everywhere:
If your sweetheart
Sends a letter of good-bye …
A man in faded blue dungarees suddenly walked out of the head, whistling the tune. He stopped and smiled. Lank brown hair, freckled skin, crooked smile.
“Hey, whatta ya say?” the man said.
I fell into the response: “Airman apprentice Michael Devlin reporting for—”
“Jack Waleski,” he said, shaking my hand. “You just get assigned here?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do wrong?”
“Well, I didn’t ask for it,” I said. I didn’t mention Port Lyautey; that might truly sound weird. “They—”
“Yeah, nobody ever asks for Pensacola.”
He took out a pack of Chesterfields, laughing to himself. He offered me one and I turned it down. He lit a cigarette.
“The thing to know,” he said, “is that about the time you realize this is the asshole of the earth, it gets worse.”
He laughed in a wheezy way. I asked him how bad it could be, and he shook his head.
“Look, I got the watch here today,” he said, cupping the cigarette to keep the ashes from falling on the floor, “but I’ll tell you what: Get out of those blues and into a shower. Then pick yourself a rack. When you’re settled, come down to the office and I’ll give you the gouge on Pensacola.”
“It didn’t look too bad coming in.”
“Pal, It makes Shit City look like Paris.”
I smiled as he walked away. Okay. This guy was okay. The place was gonna be okay. Waleski stopped and shouted:
“I was you, I’d get in that shower real fast, sailor. You’re a little ripe.”
“I sure am,” I said, and thought about the woman with the curly hair.
Away off, I could hear the saxophone again, playing the blues.
Chapter
8
I picked an empty top rack on the shady side of the lockers. I unlocked my sea bag and found a pair of whites. Then I stripped off the gummy woolen blues and for the first time felt the hot damp air of the Gulf on my skin. The horn player’s sadness drifted through the screened windows of the barracks. He was playing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” in a jazzy, middle-of-the night way. I wiggled my hot sore feet into rubber thongs, humming: I walk along the street of sorrows …
In an empty locker opposite the bunk, I hung up the pea jacket, then stacked my skivvies, T-shirts, socks, dungarees. The locker was narrow but deep. I turned my blues inside out to let them dry and laid them across the striped uncovered mattress. I still had my ditty bag from boot camp, lumpy with shaving gear, Pepsodent, deodorant, and I laid that on the rack too, along with a standard-issue Navy towel.
At the bottom of the sea bag were three books, and I took them out, too. One was The Bluejackets’ Manual, navy blue and compact; it was a kind of catechism for sailors, full of rules and regulations. The second was a book my Aunt Margaret had given me for Christmas. She was my mother’s sister and was married to an undertaker and lived in Manhattan. She was always giving me books. This one was called A Treasury of Art Masterpieces. It had been put together by someone named Thomas Craven. On the cover, there was a beautiful yellow-haired woman rising naked from the sea, one hand covering a breast, the other holding the long hair over her crotch. The third was The Blue Notebook. I slipped it inside the art book and put the books deep into the back of the locker.
Waleski came back with a blanket, a pillow and a mattress cover. “They say every man in this man’s Navy is guaranteed three squares a day and a dry fartsack,” he said. “Here’s the fartsack.”
As he turned to leave, I asked him who the horn player was. Waleski cocked his head, listening. “You mean Bobby Bolden? He’s a bad ass, a war hero, a prick, and a whoremaster. But he sure can play the saxophone, can’t he?”
“Sure can.”
“Want some advice? Stay away from him.”
I remember shaving for the first time in the deserted head with its shallow sinks and small mirrors, urinals and doorless toilet stalls. In a corner there was a metal trashcan fitted with a large white laundry sack. A hand-lettered sign said: LUCKY BAG. In the Navy, that was where you threw stray or worn-out clothing, and you were free to take anything that you might use. I glanced at it and thought: She smoked Luckies. She was out there somewhere. Probably with a man. A man who knew what he was doing. Who didn’t have a kid’s smooth face or have to submit to the discipline of the Navy. She was out there. In Palatka. A breeze lifted the palm fronds outside the screened window, rattling them against one another. And I thought: Until this day I’ve never seen palm trees. Except in movies and comics and National Geographic. And here I am, shaving at a sink, and they’re right outside the window. I can hear them rattle. I can hear them sigh. I could walk outside and touch them. In Florida. Pen-sa-co-la. I’m here. I’ve come a long way from Brooklyn to this special place. I’ve done it. She smoked Luckies with her left hand.
In the shower, I turned the hot-water knob as high as I could, hoping the hurting water would wash away the long trip, the three different buses and drivers, perhaps even the fragile memory of the woman with the curly hair. I didn’t want to leave the scalding luxury of the shower. Until I went into the Navy, I’d never showered alone. To stand under a shower alone, your hair squeaking and your skin pink and red: paradise. I felt that then; I believe it now, and to hell with the Freudian interpretations. I remember confessing this once to a guy in boot camp. Told him I’d never taken a shower alone. And he didn’t believe me. He had grown up in a house, not a railroad flat in Brooklyn. I couldn’t explain about our flat, with its L-shaped bathroom—the tub crammed into one arm of the L, the toilet in the other, with a sink in between. In the years since, I’ve tried to explain it to women who wanted to know why I spent so long in the shower, telling them how there was barely room to turn around and the water pipes were scalding hot in all seasons so you could never relax and lean against them, and the roaches fattened in the dampness and the single window was sealed by generations of paint. Women didn’t get it. Nobody gets it. And on that first day in Ellyson Field, even I was sick of the images of my old life. Hey, man (I said to my young self): Stop this! You’re here. You made it. You’re in Florida, and it’s snowing in New York.
I was drying myself with a towel when I heard Bobby Bolden playing again. A quick jump tune. The words moved through my head: Jumpin with my boy Sid in the city. He’s the pres-i-dent of the deejay committee … Lester Young wrote it and King Pleasure sang it. For Symphony Sid’s radio show on WEVD, the ethnic radio station. I used to listen at night, fall asleep, and wake up to a lot of singing Hungarians. The weirdest station in New York. They had a Hungarian hour and a Russian hour and an Irish hour and a Lithuanian hour. And every night at midnight, Sid showed up to play jazz. I was then so young that I actually cared about being hip or square, and I knew that Sid was hip. I was also sure that Bobby Bolden was hip, even though I’d never met him. And I thought: I gotta meet this guy. I finished drying myself, wrapped a towel around my waist and wriggled into the shower shoes. I picked up the ditty bag and soiled skivvies and flip-flopped back to the bunk
I paused in the archway. An older sailor was standing at my bunk, a billy club attached to his wrist with a leather thong. He was tapping it gently on his thigh. A first-class gunner’s mate. In dress whites. He was shorter than I was, but his back was very straight and muscles rippled under his tight jumper. There were t
hree hash marks on his sleeve, each standing for a four-year hitch. He looked like a battering ram. And I felt suddenly afraid. Not of the hard body. Or the billy club. It was his face. Pale red sideburns. The white hat precisely two fingers above where his brows should have been. Except that he had no eyebrows. And no eyelashes. His eyes were a slushy pale blue and he didn’t blink. His mouth was a slice. Lipless. Without color. Bracketed by two lines that seemed etched into his cheeks. The skin on his face was shiny. Like plastic. This was my first sight of Red Cannon.
He moved a few feet to his left and stood beside the locker I’d chosen. His eyes never left me. He didn’t speak a word. For a moment, I felt as if I were looking down from the ceiling at the two of us. I saw the empty barracks, the palm trees outside, and felt the breeze coming through the windows. And the young man facing the Old Salt. We locked eyes for a long time. Two seconds or an hour. Even now I can remember the feeling, the knowledge that if I broke the stare I was doomed. Fear entered my belly like a piece of ice.
Finally, without taking my eyes off him, I said: “Excuse me.” I reached for the locker but the gunner’s mate didn’t move. I would have to go though him to get to the locker.
“That’s my locker,” I said.
Something like a smile showed on his face. But he didn’t move. For a moment his eyes clouded, as if a drop of milk had been added to the slushy blue. And then they were diving deep into me, probing for weakness or softness like a knife. And I broke it off. I turned to the side and fiddled with my towel and groped in the ditty bag for something I didn’t want. I felt humiliated. The gunner’s mate had faced me down. And I’d quit to him like a dog. In this strange and alien place. On New Year’s Day. A long way from home.
“What’s your name, boy?” the man whispered.
“Michael Devlin.”
“Your Navy name, boy.”
“464 0267.”
“464 0267, what?”
“464 0267, sir.”
There was a long, silent moment. He stared at me, and I tried to smile in a casual way to cover up my fear.
“Open it,” he said, stepping aside from the locker. His short arms were hanging at his sides. “Let’s see what y’ got heah, boy.”
I turned the combination lock. Six, for the month I was born.
Twenty-four, for the day. Thirty-five, for the year. I unhooked the lock and lifted the latch and opened the locker door. The gunner’s mate stared into it. Then, with his free hand, he grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it hard. The sound was explosive. He did it again. And again, the metallic sound caroming through the barracks. And then he did it once more.
“First off, boy, this ain’t your locker, heah?”
He snarled the words and then banged the door with the billy club.
“This heah locker is the property of the Yew-Nited States Navy.” He banged it again. “Second of all, you aint s’posed even be near this lockuh ’thout my p’mission. You unnastand me?”
He slammed the door again. His mouth was quivering but the glossy skin on his face didn’t move. Then he looked inside. He reached to the back of one shelf and pulled out everything: work shirts, dress whites, skivvies, socks. He cleaned out the second shelf. Then he dropped my pea coat on top of the pile on the floor.
“Now, heah this, boy. I am the M A A on this base. The Master at Arms, case you don’t know what I’m saying to you. I assign the racks in these barracks. Me! Nobody else. You got that? Me! First-class gunner’s mate Wendell Cannon, U.S.N.”
“Sir, I was told—”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you was told, boy. I’m tellin you now. You don’t pick a locker, you don’t pick a rack, you don’t pick your goddamn nose, less I give you p’mission. You got me?”
His eyes fell to the clothes, then wandered back to the locker.
“What in the fuck?”
He lifted out the oversized art book with the long-haired Botticelli blonde on the cover. He blinked as he read the title. Then he turned to me.
“A Treasury of Art Masterpieces?”
“Yes, sir. I—”
“A Treasury of Art Masterpieces?” he screamed. He shook the book in my face. “What are you, some kind of gahdam faggot?” His voice rose another decibel. “What in the fuck is this doing in a locker in this man’s Navy?”
He whirled and heaved the book the length of the barracks. I saw it bounce off an empty rack and skid across the floor. The Blue Notebook fell out, but Cannon didn’t seem to notice. He was looking at me. Waiting. I stepped forward. A red film fell over everything. My body was bursting. I wanted to swing out and destroy him, but when my hands came up, the towel fell. I was naked before him. He had his jaw clamped shut, breathing hard through his nose. His eyes widened. I stepped forward. An inch from his face. The blue eyes didn’t blink.
“You thinkin of doing somethin, boy?” he said quietly. “Standing there with yo’ pecker hangin out? Huh? You want to do something?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well, I’ll tell you what you bettah do, boy,” Cannon said. He smiled thinly. I stepped back, still looking at him. His face didn’t move, didn’t sweat. I picked up the towel and covered myself. “You better get all your gear together and go down there to locker 211. Y’heah me? And then move your fartsack and your ass down to that rack there. You see the one I mean? Yeah, that one. Next to the head. Be perfect for you, boy. There’s lots of light all night long, f’ you to read about your art masterpieces. Easy for you too, ef you hafta shit your pants. Like you’re doin now. Save a lot of wear and tear on this good U.S. Navy beddin.”
He seemed cooler then, almost cold.
“And tonight,” he said, “I think you oughtta go out and stand watch at post three. At midnight. A good midnight to four, that’ll give you lots of time to think about your art masterpieces, boy.”
With that, Cannon turned abruptly and walked the length of the barracks to the far door, his polished shoes clacking on the hardwood floor. The screen door slammed loudly behind him.
I stood there for a long moment. On the Outside (as we called civilian life), I would have beaten his brains out. Or gone down trying. On the Outside, I would have made him eat the book. For sure, I’d have put some damage on his plastic face and made the son of a bitch sweat. But there in the Navy, if I did any of those things, I’d be sent to the brig. “Shit,” I said out loud. And then shuddered. The man had punked me out. Like that. With his sweat-less face and slushy eyes and the three hash marks on his sleeve. That was all it took. No punches. Just authority. And I was there because I asked to be there. I signed the papers. I joined the Navy. And this was the deal. For a moment I felt like crying, thinking of myself free on the streets of a city. And then I twisted and threw a punch at the locker door, slamming it one final time.
Chapter
9
From The Blue Notebook
ACQUILINE. AQUALINE.
I love the sound of a pen on paper. I’m writing these words with a Sheaffer fountain pen. It leaks and stains my fingers, but I love the skoosh sound it makes. I know that professional cartoonists all use steel crow-quill nibs, but I can’t seem to make them work. The nibs always break. Maybe my hand is too heavy. Maybe I don’t hold them right. I tried a Parker 51 once in a department store. It was beautiful. So smooth, and the nib was flexible, so I could get the thicks and thins I need for drawing. But it cost $20. One of these days, maybe I’ll be able to afford one. But not now. Not soon, the way the Navy pays.
I need to make some drawings, but I can’t right now. I don’t have my stuff, and anyway this guy C. would probably have me courtmartialed if he caught me drawing. I can just hear him saying it: Only a Gah-dam faggot would draw pictures like that.
QUALITIES OF A GOOD NAVY MAN. Be loyal. Obey orders. Show initiative. Be a fighter. Be reliable. Keep a clean record. Be fair. Be honest. Be cheerful. Be neat.
—The Bluejackets’ Manual
Maybe we’re just something God dreamed. Or
is still dreaming. If there even is a God. I used to believe in God, too. Like everybody else in the world. I prayed to him and worshiped him. Right up to the day my mother died. Then I said, What kind of God could this be who lets a good woman like that die?
Once I started thinking that way, I couldn’t stop. What kind of God lets Hiroshima happen? What kind of God lets six million Jews die in the concentration camps? What kind of God lets people be poor? Back home in Brooklyn, there were crooked cops and murderers and sleazeball politicians. How could God let them live while my mother dies? How could he put up with a guy that throws an art book against a wall? If there’s a God, then he’s responsible for art, too. He must of said once, Okay, now let there be art. But if He did, why put guys like C. on the earth to hate art? It doesn’t make any sense. And it’s nothing new. There were all those vandals in history, the Visigoths and guys like that, always sacking Rome. They destroyed all sorts of beautiful things, while killing and raping thousands of people. How could they be part of God’s plan? Unless He’s having a bad dream.
Or maybe it’s something else. Something simpler. Maybe God’s a mean bastard. Maybe that’s it. Maybe He’s just a mean bastard who likes to see people suffer.
Agnostic. One who holds that the ultimate cause (God) and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. (That’s me).
Aquiline.
Chapter
10
At twenty to twelve that night I wandered out along a dirt road beside the fence and relieved a small Oriental kid named Freddie Harada at post three. He handed me a dummy Springfield rifle and an adjustable cartridge belt without bullets. In a thin singsong voice he told me to forget about sleeping on the post. Red Cannon or the goddamn Marines came around every half hour in a jeep. Then he hurried away into the darkness.