by Pete Hamill
I got up slowly.
Everything hurt.
I leaned on the car and saw three Marines trying to hammer Red Cannon into the gravel. I couldn’t move. It was as if I were watching some movie. Red stood with his legs spread apart and his hands up, refusing to let them knock him down. Then they stopped for a moment. One of them stared at him, measuring. Another slipped off his garrison belt, wrapped it around his hand. They started taking shots at Red. First one. Then the other. Red sneered.
Finally I moved, climbing up on the car hood. I screamed and jumped toward the nearest Marine and brought him down. Suddenly Gabree was coming at me, swinging his belt too, the buckle huge, and then behind him I saw Sal.
And Max.
Maher and Dunbar and Parsons.
And Dixie Shafer too, reaching for something in her bag.
The cavalry.
Gabree turned. I got up. And saw more Marines and other sailors coming out of the Miss Texas Club and then we were fighting all over the parking lot.
I trapped Gabree between two parked cars and grabbed him by the hair and beat his head against a fender until he fell away. Thinking: for Bobby Bolden. Thinking: for Miles Rayfield. Thinking: for Eden Santana. Until I was spun around and whacked in the head by a tall freckled Marine and then saw him pulled back, turned, and hit by Sal. The freckled Marine went down. Sal stomped on his ankles and went back for another Marine, looking joyous, laughing like a maniac. I saw Max about forty feet away, holding a Marine by the wrists and whirling him around and around, faster and faster, as if playing a kids’ game. Then he let him go. The man sailed about ten feet and made a sick thumping sound against the side of a pickup truck.
Sailors and Marines were fighting everywhere. Dixie was cracking fallen Marines on the head with a short blackjack. There were sailors down too. Jack Turner hadn’t moved yet. I started for him and then a Marine sergeant pulled me around. I felt as if I couldn’t lift my hands.
“Freeze there, sailor,” he shouted. “Don’t move.”
I threw a punch at his face, and he blinked, and then he threw a punch, and I went under it and took a deep breath and ripped a punch into his belly and he went down to a sitting position, his hands out on either side of him as if looking for something to grab on to, and I kicked him in the face.
Then I heard Sal yelling, his voice wild and urgent.
“Here they come!”
The Shore Patrol.
Three jeeploads of them were racing down the highway, heading for the parking lot of the Miss Texas Club.
The fight was over.
I looked at the woods beyond the parking lot and started to run. Then I heard a voice on a bullhorn.
“Everybody stop where they are. You are all under arrest. Don’t move or you’ll be shot!”
Nobody obeyed. Sailors and Marines started running in various directions. I stayed low, moving between the parked cars, heading for the woods. I heard a gunshot. Then another. I was very scared now but kept moving. There was a third gunshot, far behind me. Muffled shouts. A trace of music from the Miss Texas Club. And then I was in the woods.
I stopped behind a tree and looked back. Two Shore Patrolmen were leading Maher to a waiting jeep. Jack Turner was up, looking hurt, a Shore Patrolman talking to him. Dixie was shaking her fists. I had a stitch in my side from running and my hands hurt and there was a dull throb at the base of my skull. I heard sirens in the distance. An ambulance or more Shore Patrol. I moved deeper into the woods. The others would find their way back to Ellyson. I’d have to do it too.
Soon everything was dark. I could smell salt on the light breeze. The night was cooler. The ground rose and the woods thinned, the trees more frail and the earth sandier beneath my feet. Up ahead, through the thin stands of trees, I could see the sky brightening. I climbed up a sandy ridge and stopped.
Before me lay the sea.
The empty beach was silvery under the quarter moon. I stood there for a long moment, gulping the salt air, listening for pursuers. My nose was tender, clogged with blood. My side teeth were loose. My hands throbbed. I started walking toward the sea, pulling my jumper over my head, stripping away my T-shirt. I wanted everything off me, the clothes, the dirt, the blood. And by the time I reached the sea, I was naked.
I made a pile of the uniform, my shorts and T-shirt, socks and shoes. I had seventy-eight dollars in my wallet, the great payday haul. I pushed the wallet into the sand under the uniform. And then I turned, walking quickly, and plunged into the cold waters of the Gulf.
Weightless now, turning in the sea, feeling it against my balls and back, the pain seemed to leave me. I dove under the surface, where there were no Marines and no Red Cannon, no musicians with broken hands, no painters with broken necks, no sailors with broken hearts, except me. I wanted to stay there forever. And realized suddenly how easy it would be to die. To just stay there until everything turned black and I was gone too. I would be at peace. There would be no scandal, as there was with Miles Rayfield, and no shame either; they would all just believe that I drowned. Exhausted from the great fight at the Miss Texas Club. Sad. A tragedy.
Good-bye. It would all be over. And then, plunging deeper, my lungs hurting, I panicked.
I didn’t want to die.
Not in the dark of the roadless sea.
I wanted to see Eden Santana at least one more time. Just once. To say what I’d never had a chance to say. A final plea. Or a proper good-bye.
I kicked and pushed against the sea, and felt a current dragging at me, and pushed harder, and felt my lungs bursting, and a whiteness blossoming in my brain; kicked harder, pushed, heading for the surface, panicked again when I thought I was going the wrong way, that I was plunging deeper, suddenly afraid that I’d never make it, that I would die without choosing, without saying good-bye, and then burst to the surface, gulping air, treading water, staring up at thick clusters of stars.
I lived.
And living, floating on the water, eyes closed, hearing the roar of the surf and a distant foghorn, I wanted to be finished with the Navy. I had two years to go. More. An endless time. And I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to float here, weightless, naked, forever. Thinking of dying and how easy it was, I was no longer afraid of the Navy. If I went to find Eden, what could they do? Kill me?
Suddenly I was exhilarated and began to swim to shore. I came up on the beach and clasped my knees and sucked in air. I could feel the sea salt drying on my naked skin. I stood up straight and then immediately crouched low. There was someone about fifty yards down the beach standing where my clothes were piled.
For a moment I was full of fear. It could be the Shore Patrol, tracking me from the woods and the parking lot. Maybe some Marine was dead. Stomped to death between parked cars. I considered slipping back into the sea. I thought about running. But I was naked. I wouldn’t last long on a highway trying to get back to Ellyson Field. And my money was there, tucked into the sand under the uniform. I had no real choice. If it was the Shore Patrol, my ass had had it. But it could be just a beachcomber, some rummy washed up on the Gulf. Either way, I had to get my clothes and money. Whatever the risk. I started walking through the sand toward the person who was standing beside my clothes.
When I came close I saw that it was Red Cannon.
I stopped.
Jesus Christ.
Now, sore and naked and exhausted, I’d have to finish what had begun in the parking lot of the Miss Texas Club.
Red was waiting for me, battered, unbeaten. Three great waves of exhaustion moved through me. I wanted to lie down naked in the sand and go to sleep. I didn’t have any strength left to fight him nor will to beat him. I would have to contrive some rage and use it as fuel. So I thought about Miles Rayfield. His face blue and swollen. The cord digging into his flesh. But the anger wouldn’t come. And I still needed those clothes.
I walked closer, on an angle, giving him a smaller target if he came at me in a rush, protecting my cock and balls. He was shirtless. His
face was a mess of caked blood, dried by the Gulf breeze. He smiled, but I couldn’t see his eyes. The surf broke on the shore. I stopped six feet away from him and waited.
“I need those clothes, Red,” I said.
“Come and get em.”
“I don’t want to fight you for them, but I will if I have to.”
“It’s your gear. Whut the hell do I want with it?”
I took a step forward and so did he. Then we both stopped. I could see his eyes now. One was almost closed and was turning purple. The other just looked sad.
He held out his hand.
I shook it.
“You’re okay, Devlin,” he said.
“And you’re still a prick,” I said and released his hand and went for my clothes and started dressing. I looked at Red. He was gazing out at the sea. And then he toppled over and fell face down in the sand.
I went to help him.
Chapter
66
What Red Cannon Told Me
I shoulda seen they was shit the day they showed. Green snotnose shit, enlisted men and officers both. We were in the buildingways up at Mare Island near San Francisco. They was fixin everything that was ripped up by the kamikazes at Okinawa, the hull and the water supply and the bridge, every damned thing on the ship. This was the summer of ’45, just before the war ended, and I was a third-class gunner’s mate on the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Bet you never heard of her, right, Devlin? Well you ain’t alone. Most nobody ever heard of her, then or now. The Navy don’t want it out, what happened to her. The goddamn politicians don’t, either.
But she was a death ship, Devlin: a great big heavy cruiser, that was what we call tender. That means she was about as heavy above the waterline as below, loaded down with all sorts of shit that wasn’t there when they built her. Just walkin the deck, you knew it wouldn’t take much ocean to tip her over. The Navy brass didn’t give much of a fiddler’s fuck. All those Annapolis boys loved cruisers cause the next stop was usually a battle wagon and that was the top in them days, before the carriers became the big deal. So they gave you a big So What? if you told them the ship didn’t right itself too quick after a sharp turn. They didn’t care she was tender. They even made her the flagship of the Fifth Fleet, and did all kinds of ceremonial shit whenever Admiral Spruance came aboard. And they gave her a captain, McVay was his name, a gray-haired guy with coal-black eyes, always smilin like a goddamned politician.
Yeah.
The Indianapolis.
A nice big cruiser.
They thought it looked good in pictures, I guess, though it wasn’t worth a fuck at sea. So in July, we were gettin her ready, the war over in Europe, thinkin we was all gonna be part of the invasion of Japan. I wunt too big on that. I seen the way the Japs fought at Okinawa and figured theyd take a lot of us with them in Japan. Say what you will about the Jap, but he’s a fightin man, sailor. Still although they was beat, and must’ve known it, the Japs wouldn’t quit, so there was nothin to be done except invade. It was a war and we had to finish it and in the Navy, on the Indianapolis, we’d play our part like everybody else, tender ship or no tender ship.
The trouble was most of the old crew was dead now or scattered around, and one bright morning along comes this new crew. Talk about haulin green shit. Two hundred and fifty wiseass kids fresh out of boot camp and thirty officers out of the Academy and I knew right off we gonna have us some trouble. They made up almost a third of the crew and they showed up like they was goin to a Fourth of July picnic, instead of a war against a real tough son of a bitch. I knew we’d have to break their asses real good. But almost as soon’s they were piped on board, we got orders to get ready to ship out. In twenty-four hours. The ship wunt ready. They wunt enough chow. The livin quarters wunt finished. Didn’t matter. We had to go. And it was all because of the goddamn bucket and the goddamn box.
They swung them on board in the morning, usin a giant goddamn gantry. The bucket weighed maybe three hundred pounds, cast iron, sealed, and we welded it right to the deck, holdin it down with straps. It couldn’t move or slide. If the ship went down, so did the bucket. The box was a crate really, eight feet high, and they took it below decks and wedged it in real tight. But then they called me and Big Nose Bernardi below decks and we met these two army guys, lookin like perfessers with guns, and they opened the box and took out a steel cylinder maybe three feet long and had us carry it into Captains Country, where Captain McVay gave us part of the mess, sealed off, and watched as we strapped this cylinder to the deck and welded the straps tight. The army guys never said a word. They stayed with the cylinder and never came above decks again.
Well, we pulled anchor at three ayem on July 16 and sailed out of San Francisco and started haulin ass. There was all sorts of scuttlebutt about the box and the bucket. Most of the crew thought they had to contain germs. That we was gonna use germs on the Japs. Or some kind of gas that would paralyze every last Jap in the country, something we captured from the Germans. It wunt till well after the war that I learnt that the bucket and the box was full of parts of the atom bomb.
Now out at sea, we were supposed to break in the new crew. Not for any atom bomb. For war. Suppose to do it right off. Dont give em tahm to think. That was the general plan. Real simple. Well, we didn’t get to break em in. There wunt tahm and the ship was a complete fuckin mess. Somehow we picked up a bunch of hitchhikers, officers mostly, all tryin to git to Pearl, which was our first stop. Their luggage was all over the damned deck. Worse, some of em was Army and didn’t know shit from shinola about livin on a ship. And the green kids was the real problem. Some of em was moonin over women. Some even cried for their mommas. They got lost and dint know port from starboard. Real green shit.
Things got so bad, there was a fire on deck cause these green shitbirds left suitcases next to one of the stacks. Suitcases! On a Navy ship. And they was no room in the chow hall, so people ate all over and left food and plates layin around and I seen roaches too. I swear. Cockroaches. On a flagship of the United States Navy.
Nobody paid much attention though. That was just housekeepin. And Captain McVay was haulin ass for Pearl. The Indianapolis was thirteen years old and beat up. But he got her doin twenty-nine knots. We tested the systems. Radio. Radar. There wunt any sonar, though, and that hurt us later. There just wunt time to install it. We was haulin ass with the atom bomb. When we hit Pearl that Monday morning, we discovered that we broke the damned record. Two thousand and ninety one miles in seventy-four-and-a-half hours. I’m still amazed.
But there wunt tahm for celebration in Pearl, for taking pictures, and bragging to reporters. We let the passengers off, and then we were told to get ready to git under way. And seen again that we could have bad trouble. I actually seen some of that green-shit crew start to cry. They wanted to get off. They wanted to call their girlfriends or their mommas. They wanted liberty when they haddin even done nothin yet. They dint want to hear we had no tahm. They dint want to hear we were going to fuckin war.
So we lifted anchor and started out for some little goddamn island called Tinian.
I yelled and hollared, I said we gotta do basic drills, we gotta do abandon ship and fire and rescue and anti-aircraft and man overboard. Nobody listened. I think maybe the captain thought he was gonna be part of history and all he had to worry about was posing for the pictures. And besides, we were in safe water. There wasn’t a Jap for a thousand miles, everybody said. We’d do the trainin later. After Tinian. When we got to Leyte in the Philippines … Well, I did whut I could.
We made Tinian on Friday. It was one of those islands I used to see in the fillums at the Mosque Theater in Montgomery during the Depression. You know, fine ladies in grass skirts and some rummy doctor layin in a hammock with a bottle under the palm trees. There was a landing strip for airplanes but no dock for ships the size of the Indianapolis. So we had to unload the box and the bucket onto an LCT out in the open sea. We cut the straps on the cylinder and put it in the box and started the job. But
the wire was too short and I remember that goddam box swingin around in the breeze, six feet above the LCT. And then all them snotnose kids started jeerin. But we got it done. The mission was finished. At least that’s what we thought. We delivered the goddam box and bucket, and now all we had to do was beat Japan.
We sailed west, with a stop at Guam before going on to Leyte. And at last I started bustin balls on the housekeepin. Some shitbird of an officer had ordered 2500 life jackets for a crew of twelve hundred and they was layin all over the deck so I had them tied and stacked against the bulkheads. I had them clean up all the dirty food. I had them paintin and chippin. But most of the time it was like shovelin shit against the tide.
Wait till Leyte.
That’s what they all said.
We’ll get shipshape after Leyte.
Yeah.
After Guam we passed a spot called The Crossroads and went into the Forward Zone. That meant we were no longer under the command of Pearl Harbor. Now we reported to Leyte. And I dint like the conditions out there. I felt it from the minute we went through The Crossroads.
To begin with, we was alone.
Usually, a heavy cruiser sails with four or five other ships, and that was specially important with the Indianapolis cause she was tender. But we was alone. In the Pacific. That’s a big fuckin ocean, Devlin. Another thing I didn’t like, there was a rule that when you wuh in the Forward Area, you could only do sixteen knots. To save fuel. The third thing was the basic thing.
The crew.
That damned green crew.
Well, we left Guam at nine in the morning on Saturday and even at sixteen knots we should’ve reached Layte about eleven in the morning on Tuesday.