Captain Hall merited a solo cabin on the officer’s deck below the bridge but, walking a ship’s tour with Mac, found the top bunk in Bear’s cabin unused. “Good enough,” he said, and heaved his ruck up onto the bed. “I’ll get you a blanket and pillow,” Mac offered, relieved not to be pushed from his own digs. The first mate turned to Xerox, shadowing the two officers, and said, “Get the captain a blanket and pillow.” The bald-headed private scurried down the passage to the linen locker, one hand on the rail as the ship moved with the ocean.
The crew calmed under way, decompressed. They knew what to do out here. No colonels, no sergeants-major. No unanswered questions, no ambiguous missions, no mindless rules of engagement. Instead, a sensible world, logical rules. The ship moved, and you tried not to do too much. Out here, sundown and sunup might pass unnoticed even if you stepped outside, because it simply didn’t much matter. Under way was a different reality—four hours on, eight hours off, four on, eight off, four on, eight off. Every day, twenty-four seven.
On the bridge: a warrant officer, an NCO, and a specialist or PFC on the helm. And Xerox; always Xerox. A similar shift in the engine room. A constant rotation though the three cooks in the galley, a meal always available. On the officer’s deck, Skipper at the ship’s computer, usually playing Doom. Across the passage, door propped open, Chief in blue coveralls at his small desk, buried in overflowing parts catalogs and equipment manuals, somewhere in a never-ending cycle of inventory.
Passages quiet, under way; from the moment they left a pier someone was always sleeping, or trying to. The hushed stop-start waterfall of a sea shower, the faraway bleat of someone’s pillow-buried alarm, quiet chatter of a postwatch card game—cigarettes and cocktails behind a closed cabin door. These were the only underway noises, all muted even more by the ever-present hum of the diesel mains and the generators. The hum made the ship’s air dead, words becoming weighty things that would pass your lips then drop to the floor before arriving at another’s ears. Half of most conversations consisted of “What?” and there wasn’t much to talk about anyway so why bother talking at all.
Give me a cigarette.
What?
Give me a smoke.
Get your own.
But I’m sitting here, man.
What?
Never mind.
On the shelves in each enlisted cabin, strapped down for sea with bungee cords, each soldier’s flak jacket, helmet, M-16 rifle. As they hit open water, Top had ordered all weapons and ammo to be turned in and secured in the small-arms locker down below. Skip had countermanded the order, yelling as he made for the stairs off the bridge. “Am I the only one who remembers we’re supposed to be at war? Thisis the Army, right?” He passed the medic, coming up the stairs. “We are at war, right, Doc?”
“Sure, Skip. Whatever you say.”
“Skipper,” Marc Hall said, rapping his knuckles on the open door of the ship’s office. Mannino, leaned back in his desk chair, computer joystick in hand, came as close to jumping as his squat body would allow before Hall waved him off. “It’s your ship,” the captain said.
Feet on the floor, leaning forward, Mannino said, “What can I do for you, Sir?” He set the joystick on the desk and picked up a pen, tapping it, not sure what to do with his hands.
“I’m going to head down to the deck, talk to the drivers—the Red Cross men. We’ll need to set some guidelines for the trip.”
Mannino thought a moment, tapping, then said, “Is it all right for them to sleep in their trucks? In the cabs?”
“I think they’d be most comfortable.”
“Yeah, okay. Good. Run of the ship, but only outside, only on deck. We’ll feed ’em three times a day—someone’ll come lead ’em in for chow. And the shitter, too, I guess.”
“Thank you, Skipper,” Hall said.
Mannino nodded. As the captain turned, he said, “Spent any time at sea, Sir?”
Hall stopped, turned back, and said, “No.”
“It’ll be rough tonight, once we’re out in it. This is a flat-bottom boat, she always rolls, but we’ll have weather tonight, too. Get settled in quick. Might be tough to get around later.”
“All right.” Hall turned to go again, but Mannino wasn’t done.
“Most guys tie themselves into their bunks. You might want to think about it, Sir. If you don’t want to wake up on the deck.”
Hall laughed, and said, “Really?”
“Really.” Mannino made a twisting motion with his hands. “A loose wrap of Ranger cord’ll do the trick.”
“How’s it going to be for the men on deck in the trucks?”
“Rough. Wet if they walk around. But just tonight. Tomorrow should be fine.”
Down on deck Hall had the Haitian truck drivers and Red Cross clerks gather aft and spelled it out for them. He was slowly learning he didn’t speak Creole as well as he’d thought, but he managed to get through it okay.
“Attention bois moue,”he said—mind the wet deck, especially in this weather. Already the ship was rolling deeper, farther, a fine mist spraying even this far back every time the bow crashed down into a trough. Their questions were about food, meals, and Hall’s answers were good. Even in the dark he could see smiles, feel them relax.But hold tight tonight, fellows, he said.After the meal, back to your trucks. If you must vomit, do it on the deck. It will wash away.
They laughed and talked between themselves and Marc said a few more things then someone spoke from the back of the group,“Ki pays ou sorti!? ”—What are you, anyhow?
I don’t understand.
What are you? American?
Yes. American. My mother—she was Haitian.
His mother! His mother! Good boy.
Laughs all around.
Your mothers, too, right fellows? We all have Haitian mothers.
And they laughed even louder that he could laugh with them.
Hall turned to go and one yelled—Wait!
“Oui?”
“Pouqui ca ou la”—So, why are you here?
What’s that?
“Why, Sir, are you here?” the man asked again, in English.
Marc could find no words to answer, in Creole or English.
The cabin door was propped open, Tory in the desk chair with a Jack and Pepsi cocktail in her big ceramic Waterborne mug. Dick Wags sat on the lower bunk—her bunk—tucking the bottoms of blue coveralls into his combat boots. He was coming on watch; it would be eight hours before Tory started hers. The cocktail was to force sleep, her first real sleep since they entered Haitian waters. She was wearing gray Army shorts and a T-shirt, her feet up on the desk. Her feet were raw, hard, the bottoms and sides like cracked stone. Tory took secret pride in her feet; she walked barefoot in the summer, on sidewalks and pavements, no pain.
“Rough sailing tonight, Roomdog,” Dick Wags said.
“I always sleep better, though.” She took a large swallow of her drink. “Unless it gets really bad.”
Boots tightened, Dick Wags stood, checking himself in the mirror, then lighting a cigarette. “If you want—” he started to say, but was interrupted by Bear, filling their doorway.
“Sergeants, I’d like to introduce you,” he said, and Marc Hall stepped up behind him. Tory stood, in one move setting her drink down and plucking the cigarette from Dick Wags’s hand, taking a puff, trying to mask any hint of the Jack Daniels on her breath. She liked Bear but didn’t know him well.
“Captain Hall, this is Staff Sergeant Wagman, my assistant bull engineer, and Sergeant Harris, the bridge quartermaster.”
Marc put his hand out, finding Dick Wags’s first. “Pleased to meet you, Sergeant.”
“Sir.”
Tory took another puff, stepping forward to take Marc’s hand.
“Sergeant Harris and I already know each other,” he said. “We had quite a day yesterday.”
Bear looked confused, but didn’t say anything. He was often confused, and generally kept it to himself.
“That’s great,” he said, no idea. “Captain Hall’s getting settled in for the night. I showed him where the shower is, and the importance of the male/female sign on the door. He’s bunking with me.”
“Sir,” Tory said, their hands still locked together.
Tory walked Dick Wags out, getting a drink at the water fountain by the stairs. She walked slowly back to her cabin, closing the door behind and standing still a moment, hand on the knob. She pushed her fingertip against the button, the lock giving a slow click as it set. She put her right hand up and switched off the light, the dark of the cabin instant and complete.
It was one step to the desk chair, and she stepped it, pulling the chair out, turning it around, then sitting. From the other side of the thin bulkhead she heard the latrine flush. Passing her hand across the desk top she found a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit it with her Zippo.
There was a knock at the door. She didn’t move.
“Jersey?” It was Roy. A knock again. “Hey. New Jersey?”
The doorknob rattled. He’d come down for a cocktail. Tory smoked, silent. The Steward’s footsteps trailed off down the passage. Next door she heard the sound of the shower spray on the steel stall.
There was light now, a little. From under the door. She could see her feet. And light when she took a drag on her cigarette; the cherry bloom, Junior Davis used to call the warm quick-burn glow. She took a drag now, lingering, the tip burning red and filling the room for the briefest second. Then she exhaled, resting the cigarette in the ashtray on the desk.
She stood. One step to the bunks, and she stepped it. Then one step up, her left foot on the mini ladder, her arms pulling, and she swung herself up onto Dick Wags’s rack, clicked the small bulkhead reading light on, then swung herself around: belly on the green Army blanket, her feet on his pillow. The sound of the shower in her ears, she scooched forward and pressed her right eye to the hole.
Junior Davis’s naked body was the first Tory ever examined in great detail, and she went at it with a small obsession in the first months of their relationship. Meeting Junior, being with Junior, fell like a last step in an unplanned process that began with signing her Army enlistment papers almost two years before. Tory clung to Junior with a fierceness she didn’t understand, learned who he was with her eyes and fingers. Their first night together, in a roadside motel on the strip leaving Virginia Beach, she got up out of bed and turned on the overhead light. She liked—needed—tosee. He was pale, tall and tough as a piece of rope, with more scars than she thought a twenty-five-year old should have. She traced them and knew them like she knew the little veins on her own ankles or the freckles on her forearms.
Junior would shower in the middle of the night, walking the second-floor hallway of her dormitory barracks with just a brown Army towel wrapped low around his waist, using his copy of the key to open the door when he got back to her room. (They rarely used his room, three buildings over, because he had a roomdog, a crew-mate of hers; Scabliagni, whom everyone called Scaboo.) Tory kept a purple lava lamp in the corner, and after his shower Junior Davis would stand framed in the doorway, glowing in liquid light, then stretching up with both arms to grab the door jamb and do a pull-up—Tory, curled in the bed with blanket to chin, watching.
“Stop it, New Jersey,” he’d say sometimes, crossing the room to put his hand in front of her eyes. “You’re making me nervous.”
But he wasn’t nervous and she knew it. He liked to be watched. He liked to be liked, and liked to be noticed. Which was fine; Tory liked to watch.
It was comfortable. Not like seventeen, eighteen; high school and the long, dry summer before she left New Jersey for good, fumbling in dark places with her gray-eyed boyfriend under the stands at the stock-car track in Flemington, night air all grease and fries, rushed hands pushing up under shirts and down into tight, unbuttoned jeans, lips and tongues kept locked together so no chance to stop or change your mind. Tory always tried to pull back from the never-ending kiss, break her lips away and just watch for a minute, just breathe, the roar of stock engines making everyone deaf to everything. She’d known him in high school but only to look at, a memory of passing in the hallway and the parking lot. Wayne his name was, Wayne Apgar, cousin of the family who owned the bar in Croton. He worked part-time on a pit crew, and was nineteen, one year older. He took her under the stands three different Saturday nights, with a blanket from the trunk of his car, red and black squares. Wayne Apgar’s face smelled of fuel, the smooth skin on his chest deeper, musky. He was the first one she put her hands on and explored by touch. She came very close with him, very close; short, quick breaths. He didn’t like it when he noticed she was watching him work, and on the third night, wool blanket itchy and rough beneath them, he rolled her over so she couldn’t watch, his chest on her upper back, his one hand gripping tight to her long hair, the last boy who would ever have his hands in that hair, just two weeks before she shaved it down to barely an inch and got on a Greyhound to Fort Leonard Wood.
Junior Davis was dark-eyed in his own way, and baby-faced in the sunlight, but he was no kid. Twenty-four when they met, he was slow, languid—their nights together rolling out with no end. They would lock her barracks-room door at nine or ten o’clock on a Friday night, the little fridge tight with cans of Rolling Rock, a fresh pack of cigarettes and bottle of Jack Daniels on the desktop. Junior Davis liked to fuck in the heat, thermostat cranked so they’d sweat; she’d raise the window and stand by it when they’d finish something, icy breeze pushing goose bumps across her breasts and belly, her back and legs still red from the warmth of the room and the blankets. She liked the openness of leaning there like that, on the cracked winter windowsill of her barracks room, raw and tired.
“That’s a control thing,” Junior told her, eyes half-closed, smoking his own cigarette on the bed.
“What is?”
“Standing there naked like that. It’s exerting control. Something in your past makes you need to exert control.”
The corners of her mouth raised, amused, and she smoked and shivered and said, “Maybe I just like being naked in the window.”
Junior liked to talk, and would, under the blanket, wrapping long limbs around her and telling long stories then talking would turn to touching and touching was exquisite and then he couldn’t talk because he’d pushed her onto her back and spread her thighs and his mouth was busy. Even then she looked at him, down the length of her body, over her breasts and to where his hands lay flat on her belly, the top of his head framed by her thighs, and she’d stare until the point where she couldn’t anymore and had to stretch her neck out and lay her head back, teeth bared and eyes squeezed closed. They moved, it seemed to Tory, across the room without walking or memory, realizing you’re on the old couch then on the bed then sometime much later blowing cigarette smoke out the gap in the cracked window, Junior kissing her neck as she smoked.
She went on the pill because he didn’t like to wear anything—he went in smooth, and it did matter, she thought, it mattered in the feel, and more it mattered in the mind. What she liked most of all, what made her growl, was to push him down on the couch and crawl on top, kissing his face and mouth, kneeling over his lap, drifting her bottom back and forth, teasing him, grazing but not letting him in, then slow, slow, a centimeter at a time, pushing herself down, hands flat on his chest and knees in his sides, riding at her own lazy, determined speed, her own time, riding.It matters, she thought. This time, with him. It mattered. The music loud in her ears, Junior underneath. The music was all Tory’s on those winter nights, endless in the CD changer as the night ground on, all her guitar players, all her old men, and when she was done, eyes squeezed and her chest flush and trembling—when she’d gotten everything from him she could—she’d pull herself off, open and empty, padding naked across the floor, taking a pull from her beer as she reached down in the darkness to turn up the volume for “Life by the Drop.”
They were drunk together. Their long rolling nights—Junior Davis finally curled asleep under the sheet as Tory watched the sky purple with Sunday dawn—and their short evenings, too. Everyone had a beer in the car between port and barracks at the end of the day, and a beer to shower. If they all went out to eat there was a pitcher and Riddle would refill it then T.K. and so on. If Junior Davis came over after there was a beer open before the door closed. Whether they fell asleep on the couch watching the ten o’clock news or passed the weeknight boredom naked in bed, there was the same nice buzz, the same low cloud in the brain.
They were drunk alone, too. Tory mixed vodka and frozen lemonade over the summer when Junior Davis was out with the Mike Boats, drinking when she watched TV or read a paperback out on the lawn before the sun went down then maybe some eight ball on the pool table in the dayroom. Her barracks neighbor, a loud pool-shark parts clerk PFC named Candy Phelps, stuck to Diet Coke and tequila and walked around the barracks most evenings in cut-off sweats and flip flops hefting a glass stein filled with ice and the syrup-sweet drink.
Enough so it wasn’t drunk anymore, just the general state of being. But that’s how it was in the green machine, in the dorm barracks or the cheap off-post apartments down Warwick and Jefferson avenues; after your first year, then two, you slipped into it, slipped through, one day after the next, hot summer rolling to cold winter rolling to hot summer. Tuesday was just as good a night to kill a twelve as a Thursday or Friday. Easy, with the TV or a card game and what else were you going to do? No tax on beer at the Class 6, and what else were you going to do? It was just raising the bar on what drunk was; drunk wasn’t drunk anymore, civilian drunk—that was every day. True drunk now was really fucking drunk. True drunk was what you did on an August Saturday afternoon in Mac’s backyard with Victor Charlie using an oar to mix up a batch of Purple Jesus Juice in a kid’s plastic bathtub and Doc and the Steward burning up a mess of chicken on the grill, then heading out to Bucks or the Crystal around eight with Junior and Dick Wags and Alicia to raise hell and waking up next morning with no idea where you’d gone after that or how you’d got home to the barracks or to the boat. That was drunk, true drunk. It was social and about as subtle as an old steel hammer.
When Tory and Junior Davis were drunk together just the two of them it was different, low and slow and constant, never rushed. It was a steady killing of bottles and an endless burning cigarette. It was instant fights, sharp tempers, small objects flying across the room and slamming into the wall and sometimes each other. It was quick makeups, fierce apologies. It was Tory busting out laughing, slamming her forehead into his chest so hard he yelled. It was hands all over each other, going down on him as he drove her truck cross-post to make the Class 6 before it closed; Junior Davis following her down the sterile store aisles, his wide hands up under her shirt, palms cupping her small breasts hard through the lace of her bra.
Their drunk was a lot like their relationship in that way; it matched their relationship, followed the same track. Same as when you’re drunk and you don’t notice things have started to change, or you think maybe you see a change and you don’t know why or how long it’s been that way and you shake your head to clear it but you’re drunk now and nothing is very clear.
Tory pulled away from the pinhole, leaning back on Dick Wags’s rack, thinking. She ran a hand over her hair, lips pursed.
Not sure why anymore, she leaned back in, putting her eye to the hole. She’d been watching him, watching his body in the shower, intent, but Marc was gone, nothing there, everything black.
Tory pulled back again, blinked, then switched, putting her left eye to the hole. And that’s when Marc Hall pulled his eye back, stepping away from the bulkhead in the shower. He lifted his heels, pushing himself up a bit on his toes, and put his mouth to the pinhole.
“Hello,” he whispered.