Chapter 18

A week after they practiced escaping a fire, the boots learned to seal doors and stack sandbags to prevent one from spreading. The order seemed backwards, but as the clock ticked down to the hour of deployment, they had to trust that the Navy knew what it was doing. Maybe knowing you could escape if you had to made men more willing to tough things out before giving up. Shmuel wondered if he might have stayed at home if he’d believed he had options short of escape. Could he have found a way to seal Avram’s mouth or sandbag his demands?

It was too late to think about what might have been. With less than two weeks before the men set sail, women from the Social Services Bureau arrived on base to set up a plan for them to stay connected to home after shipping out.

“Sam Lord,” the tiny gray-haired lady read from her file. “Or should I use Samuel?”

“Sam is fine.”

She verified his Brooklyn address. “Your parents?”

“John and Dorothy.”

“Siblings?”

“None.” Shmuel also answered in the negative to questions about aunts, uncles, cousins.

“A shame.” The woman put her hand on his arm. “Families are so important.”

“I had a lot of friends. I played sports.”

She brightened. “My grandson Albert is wild about baseball. He’s small but wiry, like you. Would you like Social Services to help you keep in touch with your teammates at home?”

“They’re all in the service too.”

She wrote an “X” on the form. “Religion?”

“We don’t practice one.” Shmuel looked at his hands.

The woman frowned. “Can you suggest another way for us to comfort your parents during this period of separation?” She spoke as if the sailors were going away to boarding school. There was no mention of the Bureau notifying families in the event of capture, injury, or death.

“Just tell them I’ve been well-trained and trust my pals to look out for me. That’s what I write in my letters. They’ll be reassured if you say the same thing.”

She made a note in his file. Then she ran through the services the agency provided. First was a packet of stationery and stamps so he could continue writing home. Shmuel didn’t want them taking up space in his sea bag, but neither could he risk throwing them overboard. When the woman took a break to get a glass of water, he slipped them back into her satchel.

“We deliver care packages. Families buy their boys cigarettes, candy and chewing gum, socks. Mail this postcard to your parents so they’ll know to send them to us, and we’ll ship them to you.” She handed him a card with the instructions and address printed in several languages.

Shmuel said he didn’t smoke or eat a lot of candy.

“Every fighting man needs dry socks, dear.” The woman pressed the card on him. At least it didn’t take up much space. Finally she asked if he had a memento from boot camp, or perhaps a keepsake he’d brought with him, that he wanted the Bureau to mail home for safekeeping.

Shmuel handed her the rope he’d used to hold up his pants the first week of training. He no longer needed it. The regulation belt, not even tightened to the last notch, worked fine now.

“I don’t understand.” She held the stained and twisted twine at arm’s length.

“My folks will. Just say the equipment has been de-acquisitioned.” Shmuel imagined the sister, whom he’d just claimed not to have, reading the notice to his fictitious parents, all sitting on a couch in their nonexistent Brooklyn walk-up. Having spent eight weeks in a world wholly invented by the U.S. Navy, Shmuel saw the Lords as no more or less real than his true family.

Boot camp culminated with battle stations, a twelve-hour exercise that recapitulated two months of training. The men scaled ladders from the Calvin Austin’s upper to lower decks in thirty seconds, ran a forty-obstacle course in a minute, did two hundred push-ups and sit-ups, swam a mile in frigid and oil-slicked waters, hit their mark with firearms, hauled ropes, and sealed the ship’s compartments to contain the damages of war. Everyone graduated. They were no longer boots, but full-fledged sailors. Shmuel donned his Navy ball cap and passed in review before the chain of command.

Mikovski, at the bottom of the chain, was the first to salute him. “You wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t pushed you,” he whispered. “Just remember, Ensign Lord. Surviving boot camp ain’t the same as getting out alive at sea.”

“He’s full of himself,” Tomasio said as they worked their way up the line. Ryan agreed. “You got through on your own brains and guts.” Shmuel wasn’t so sure. He’d joined the Navy to get away from his classmates’ taunts and his father’s rigid expectations. Perhaps he’d needed Mikovski to stoke his defiance and guarantee that his attempted escape was successful.

The new ensigns mingled on deck, the day’s heat and the pride in their chests warming the metal ID tags around their necks. Not until 2100 hours, while packing their bags, did the sweat of fear turn their aluminium disks cold. Come dawn, some would head to the Mediterranean, the rest to Scapa Flow in Scotland’s Orkney Islands or to Queenstown, Ireland. For security reasons, they wouldn’t be told their destination until they set sail. Shmuel and Tomasio were bound for the same place, Ryan another. Mikovski, returning to sea duty, was going wherever Shmuel was.

“How much you wanna bet I land in the fair Mediterranean?” Ryan teased.

“A plugged nickel,” said Shmuel. “I’d rather bet that Tomasio and I are off to France to patrol the Atlantic.”

“Ooh, lah, lah.” Tomasio whistled. “In Paris, I’ll teach you what your fancy books can’t.”

“Wherever they send us,” Ryan said, “we gotta promise to meet in Boston in a couple of years. Maybe we’ll even get Sam the Scholar here to eat a lobster.”

They listened to the other men breathing raggedly or tossing in their hammocks.

“Ever wish you’d mailed the letter to that girl after all?” Tomasio asked Shmuel.

“Surer than ever that I was right to deep-six it,” he answered. The real letter he regretted not writing was to his parents. He’d failed the fifth commandment, “Honour thy father and mother.” And the “girl” to whom he owed a letter was Dev. There was no commandment to honour one’s sister, but Shmuel had violated her trust. Dev was so open to the world. He hoped he hadn’t added the word “disillusioned” to her vocabulary.

The rabbis taught that kindness superseded honesty, yet Shmuel had fretted more about not telling the truth than about hurting those he loved. In the end, lying had come easily. It had gotten him into the war. Getting out would be harder; falsehood had no place in combat. Aboard the Calvin Austin, Shmuel’s chest rose and sank with the swell of the waves. For what he swore was the last time, he prayed to the God that he’d just told Social Services he didn’t believe in, to keep him afloat.