The next day, Sunday, was sunny and clear, and the midshipmen were thankful. A review was scheduled for the pleasure of the commandant of the Third Naval District, a display of the whole military might at Columbia. the other sections of the midshipmen school at Johnson Hall and John Jay Hall were going to merge with the men of Furnald in an array of twenty-five hundred novice naval officers. After breakfast the midshipmen shifted into their dress blues and lined up in front of the hall, with rifles, leggings, and gun belts. They were inspected one by one as minutely as if each midshipman were about to have lunch with the admiral, rather than pass by him in a blur of heads. Demerits flew for a spot on the collar, shoes that failed to reflect the image of the inspector, hair a fraction of an inch too long. A flick of Ensign Brain’s hand on the back of a midshipman’s neck was an announcement of five demerits, duly recorded by the yeoman who walked close behind him. Willie was flicked. In his eminence of twenty-five demerits he floated lonely as a cloud. The closest contender had seven.
A sixty-piece band of midshipmen blasted brassy marches with more lung power than harmony, colors waved bravely on staffs, and fixed bayonets glittered in the morning sun as the ranks of midshipmen marched onto South Field. Behind the wire fences around the field were hundreds of spectators—parents, sweethearts, passers-by, college students, and satiric small boys. The band used up its repertoire, and was beginning again on Anchors Aweigh, when all the cohorts of Johnson, John Jay, and Furnald reached their places. They made a stirring show, the immense ranks and files of white gold-trimmed hats, bristling rifles, squared shoulders in blue, and young stern faces. Individually they were scared youngsters trying to remain inconspicuous, but from their aggregate there rose a subtle promise of unexpected awkward power. A bugle call knifed across the air. “PRESENT ARMS!” blatted the loudspeakers. Twenty-five hundred rifles snapped into position. The admiral strolled onto the field, smoking, followed by a straggle of officers, walking carelessly to symbolize the privileges of rank, but straggling at distances from the admiral strictly regulated by the number of sleeve stripes on each straggler. Ensign Brain brought up the rear, also smoking. He put out his cigarette at the instant that the admiral did.
The admiral, short, stout and gray-headed, addressed the ranks briefly and politely. Then the performance began. Stepping proudly and confidently to the music after a week of rehearsal, the battalions passed in review, marching, wheeling, countermarching. The spectators clapped and cheered. The small boys marched raggedly outside the fence in imitation of the midshipmen, yelling. And the commandant watched with a smile which infected the usually grim faces of the school staff. Newsreel cameras, mounted on trucks at the edges of the field, recorded the scene for history.
Willie went through his paces in a daze of whirling thoughts about May and demerits. He was not interested in the admiral but he was mightily interested in making no more mistakes. No back was straighter, no rifle at a more correct angle in the whole parade than Willie Keith’s. The martial music and the majestic passing to and fro of the ranks thrilled him, and he was proud to be in this powerful show. He swore to himself that he would yet become the most correct, most admired, most warlike midshipman at Furnald Hall.
The music paused. The marching continued to a flourish of drums signaling the last maneuvers of the parade. Then the band crashed once more into Anchors Aweigh. Willie’s squadron wheeled toward the fence, preparing to make a flank march off the field. Willie stepped around the wheeling turn, his eye on the line, staying faultlessly in position. Then he fixed his eyes to the front once more, and found himself looking straight at May Wynn. There she stood behind the fence not twenty feet away in her black fur-trimmed coat. She waved and smiled.
“I take it all back. You win!” she cried.
“By the left flank—march!” bawled Roland Keefer.
At the same instant a squadron from Johnson Hall passed them and the leader shouted, “By the right flank—march!”
Willie, his eyes on May, his mind paralyzed, obeyed the wrong order; turned sharply, and marched away from his battalion. In a moment he was cut off from them by an oncoming file from Johnson Hall. He halted after prancing into a vacant patch of grass and realizing that he was alone. A row of newsreel cameras close by, all seemingly trained on him, photographed every move.
He glanced around wildly, and, as the last of the Johnson Hall file went past him, he saw his battalion marching away from him, far down the field beyond a stretch of empty brown grass. With each grunt of the tubas, each beat of the drums, Willie was becoming more and more alone. To get back to his place meant a solitary hundred-yard dash in full view of the admiral. To stand alone on the field another second was impossible. Spectators were already beginning to shout jokes at him. Desperately Willie dived into a single file of John Jay Hall midshipmen marching past him to the exit in the opposite direction from Furnald.
“What the hell are you doing in here? Beat it,” hissed the man behind him. Willie had landed unluckily in a group of the tallest John Jay men. He formed a distinctly unmilitary gap in the line of heads. But now it was too late for anything but prayer. He marched on.
“Get out of this line, you little monkey, or I’ll kick you bowlegged!”
The file jammed up at the exit and became disorderly. Willie turned and said swiftly to the big glaring midshipman, “Look, brother, I’m sunk. I got cut off from my battalion. Do you want me to get bilged?”
The midshipman said no more. The file wound into John Jay Hall. As soon as they passed the entrance the midshipmen dispersed, laughing and shouting, to the staircases. Willie remained in the lobby, staring uneasily at faded Columbia athletic trophies in glass cases. He allowed fifteen minutes to pass, wandering here and there, keeping out of sight of the officer and midshipmen guarding the quarterdeck. The excitement of the review dissipated. The lobby became quiet. He screwed up his courage, and walked briskly toward the one guarded door. All the other exits were locked and bolted.
“Halt! Sound off.”
Willie drew up at the summons of the officer of the day, a burly midshipman wearing a yellow armband. A few feet away an ensign sat at a desk marking examination papers.
“Midshipman Willis Seward Keith, Furnald, on official business.”
“State business.”
“Checking on a lost custody card of a rifle.”
The OOD picked up a clipboard with a mimeographed form sheet on it. “You’re not logged in, Keith.”
“I came in during the foul-up after the review. Sorry.”
“Show your business pass.”
This was the spring of the trap. Willie cursed Navy thoroughness. He pulled out his wallet and showed the OOD a picture of May Wynn waving and smiling on a merry-go-round horse. “Take it from here, friend,” he whispered. “If you want, I bilge.”
The OOD’s eyes widened in amazement. He looked sidelong at the ensign, then straightened and saluted. “Pass, Keith.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie saluted and emerged into the sunlight, through the one loophole that military wisdom can never quite button up—the sympathy of the downtrodden for each other.
There were three ways back to Furnald: across the field, which was too exposed; a sneak trip around through the streets, which were out of bounds; and the gravel path along the field in front of the library. Willie took the gravel path, and soon came upon a working party of Furnald midshipmen folding up the yellow chairs which had been placed for the admiral’s party on the library steps. He briefly considered mingling with them, but they wore khaki, and they gave him queer scared looks. He hurried by them. The path lay clear ahead to Furnald—
“Midshipman Keith, I believe?”
Willie spun around in unbelieving horror at the tones. Ensign Brain, concealed by a granite post at the library entrance, was seated on a yellow chair, smoking. He dropped the cigarette, ground it out daintily with his toe, and rose. “Any explanation, Midshipman Keith, for being outside your room and wandering around out of uniform during a study hour?”
All Willie’s resolve and intention caved in. “No, sir.”
“No, sir. An excellent answer, Midshipman Keith, making up in clarity for what it lacks in official acceptability.” Ensign Brain smiled like a hungry man at the sight of a chicken leg. “Midshipman Auerbach, you will take charge of the working party.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“You will come with me, Midshipman Keith.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Willie got back into Furnald Hall with no trouble, under the escort of Ensign Brain. He was marched to the desk of the duty officer, Ensign Acres. The midshipmen on the quarterdeck regarded him with pale dismay. Word of his pile of demerits had spread through the school. This new disaster horrified them. Willie Keith was all their nightmares come to life.
“Holy cow,” exclaimed Ensign Acres, standing, “not Keith again.”
“The same,” said Ensign Brain. “The same paragon of military virtue, Midshipman Keith. Out of uniform, absent without leave, and violating a study period. No explanation.”
“This is the end of him,” said Acres.
“No doubt. I’m sorry for him, but obviously I had to pick him up.”
“Of course.” Acres regarded Willie curiously, and with some pity. “Don’t you like the Navy, Keith?”
“I do, sir. I’ve had a bad run of luck, sir.”
Acres lifted his hat, scratched his head with the same hand, and looked doubtfully at Brain. “Maybe we ought to just kick his behind up nine flights of stairs.”
“You’re the duty officer,” said Brain virtuously. “A couple of dozen midshipmen know of this already. For all I know the exec saw the whole business through his window.”
Acres nodded, and squared his hat as Brain walked off. “Well, this does it, Keith. Come along.”
They paused outside the exec’s door. Acres said in a low voice, “Between you and me, Keith, what the hell happened?”
The uniforms of both young men seemed to fade away for the moment, in the friendliness of Acres’ tone. Willie had a sudden flooding sense that this was all just a dream in Looking-glass Land, that he still had his health, that the sun still shone, and that outside Furnald Hall, just a few feet away, on Broadway, his predicament would seem a joke. There was just this one difficulty, he was inside Furnald Hall. Enmeshed in comic-opera laws, he had comically broken a few, and was going to a comic-opera doom. But this dance of nonsense impinged very strongly on the real world. It meant that in time his living body, instead of being carted across the Pacific, clad in blue, would be carted across the Atlantic, clad in brown. This fact bothered him violently.
“What’s the difference?” he said. “It was nice knowing you, Acres.”
Ensign Acres let the familiarity pass. He understood it. “Merton has a heart. Tell him the truth. You have a chance,” he said as he knocked.
Commander Merton, a little round-headed man with bristling brown hair and a red face, sat at his desk facing the door. He was partly hidden by a bubbling Silex. “Yes, Acres?”
“Sir—Midshipman Keith again.”
Commander Merton peered sternly around the coffee at Willie. “Good God. What now?”
Acres recited the indictment. Merton nodded, dismissed him, locked the door, and flipped a key on his interoffice talkbox. “I don’t want any calls or other interruptions until further notice.”
“Aye aye, sir,” rattled the box.
The commander filled a cup. “Coffee, Keith?”
“No, thank you, sir.” Willie’s knees were unsteady.
“I think you’d better have some. Cream or sugar?”
“Neither, sir.”
“Sit down.”
“Thank you, sir.” Willie was more scared by the courtesy than he would have been by rage. There was an air about the coffee of a condemned man’s last meal.
Commander Merton sipped in silence for endless minutes. He was a reserve officer, in peacetime an insurance sales manager with a fondness for boating and for the weekly reserve drills. His wife had complained often of the time he wasted on the Navy, but the war had justified him. He had gone into active service at once and his family was proud now of his three stripes.
“Keith,” he said at last, “you put me into the peculiar position of wanting to apologize to you for the Navy’s laws. The sum of demerits for your three new offenses, together with the twenty-five you have, puts you out of school.”
“I know, sir.”
“Those demerits make sense. The values were carefully weighed. Any man who can’t stay within the bounds of those penalties shouldn’t be in the Navy.”
“I know, sir.”
“Unless,” said the commander, and sipped for a while, “unless extraordinary, once-in-a-million circumstances are involved. Keith, what’s been happening to you?”
There was nothing to lose. Willie poured out the tale of his troubles with May Wynn, including her appearance outside the fence. The exec listened unsmilingly. When the story was done, he pressed his fingertips together and mused.
“In effect, your claim is one of temporary derangement due to a girl.”
“Yes, sir. But my fault, not hers.”
“Aren’t you the boy,” said Commander Merton, “who wrote the brilliant essay on the Frictionless Bearing?”
“Well—yes, sir.”
“That was a brutal essay question, designed to knock out all but the best. The Navy can’t afford, Keith, to lose a man with such a mind. You’ve done us a bad turn.”
Willie’s hopes, which had risen slightly, fell again.
“Supposing,” said Commander Merton, “that I were to give you a total of forty-eight demerits and confine you to the school until graduation. Could you make the grade?”
“I’d like to try, sir!”
“Any offense would put you out—shoeshine, haircut, mussed bed. You’d live with your head on a choppingblock. Any bad luck would sink you—even the day before graduation. I’ve bilged men who had their ensign uniforms on. You wouldn’t have an evening with this girl, Miss Wynn, for three months. Are you sure you want to tackle such an ordeal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
Willie thought a moment. Why, really? Even transfer to the Army seemed a relief in comparison, after all. “I’ve never failed anything I’ve tried yet, sir,” he said. “I’ve never tried to do much, that’s true. If I’m no good I might as well find it out now.”
“Very well, get on your feet.”
Willie jumped to stiff attention. The movement brought him back into the Navy.
“Twenty-three demerits and confined till graduation,” snapped Commander Merton, in dry, bitter tones.
“Thank you, sir!”
“Dismissed.”
Willie came out of the office full of resolution. He felt in debt to Commander Merton. His roommates respected his silence when he returned to the tenth floor. He flung himself upon his books with zeal and hate.
That night he wrote a long letter to May. He promised that at the end of his imprisonment his first act would be to seek her, if she still wanted to see him. He said nothing about marriage. Next morning he got up with Keggs two hours before reveille and ground fanatically at ordnance, tactics, gunnery, navigation, and communications.
There was a visiting time each day between five and five-thirty, when midshipmen could talk with parents or sweethearts in the lobby or on the walk in front of the hall. Willie intended to study through it, but came downstairs to buy cigarettes at the vending machine. He was surprised to see his father seated in a corner of a leather-covered sofa, the cane resting across his knees, his head leaning wearily on an arm, his eyes closed.
“Hello, Dad!”
Dr. Keith opened his eyes and greeted Willie cheerfully, dispelling the picture of fatigue.
“Where’s Mom?”
“She had a patrons’ meeting at the museum. A few patients are pretty annoyed at me for canceling my office hours, Willie, but here I am.”
“Thanks for coming, Dad. How’s your toe?”
“The same—So, this is the good ship Furnald—”
“Let’s walk around. I’ll show you the place.”
“No. Just sit and talk. Tell me about it.”
Willie explained the use of the alphabet flags hanging from the ceiling, rattled off his store of nautical language to describe the massive anchoring tackle laid out in a corner, and explained the workings of the five-inch gun decorating the middle of the lobby. Dr. Keith smiled and nodded. “You’re learning fast.”
“It’s just a lot of talk, really, Dad. I’ll be lost on a ship.”
“Not as much as you think. How are things going?”
Willie hesitated. He felt glad of the chance to break the bad news to his father, rather than to his mother. He could not guess how she would receive the blow. He preferred to disclose his trouble to a man. He sketched his situation, keeping May’s part in it brief. Dr. Keith lit a cigar, and watched Willie as though his son’s face told him more than the words.
“Pretty bad spot.”
“Bad enough.”
“Do you think you’ll make it?”
“If it’s in me, I will. I used to think I was pretty sharp. Now I’m not sure what stuff I’ve got. I’m more curious than worried.”
“Do you care about becoming a naval officer?”
“I guess so. I can’t see myself as a new John Paul Jones, but I’d hate to be licked in this silly way.”
“Did your mother tell you about Uncle Lloyd?”
“What about him?”
“His partner has gone into the Army as a colonel. Public Relations Lloyd is almost sure they can pull you out of the Navy and get you an Army commission. Your mother has been looking into ways and means of transferring you from the Navy.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It came up over the week end. You know your mother. She’ll want to work it all out and hand it to you on a plate.”
Willie glanced out through the window. Midshipmen were lounging in front of the building in the sunshine. “Could I still get an Army commission if I bilged?”
“I gather that it wouldn’t make much difference. It might even expedite matters.”
“Will you do me a favor, Dad?”
“Of course.”
“Tell Mom, as nicely as you can, to call off Uncle Lloyd.”
“Don’t be hasty.”
“That’s what I want, Dad.”
“We can always keep it in reserve, you know.”
“No, thanks.”
“I doubt very much you’d go overseas in that billet.”
“I wish to hell I’d known about it sooner.”
“Suppose you bilge next week? One smudged collar will do it, Willie.”
“If I bilge,” said Willie, “I’ll enlist as a sailor.” He had formed no such resolve. The words came to his tongue.
The gong clanged. Dr. Keith looked around and saw other visitors moving to the door. He rose awkwardly, leaning on the cane. His movements gave Willie a twinge of anxiety.
“You’re not in good shape, are you?”
“I’ll live,” laughed the doctor. He took Willie’s arm, but didn’t lean on it, merely holding it as they walked to the entrance. “Well, farewell to the prisoner of Furnald. I’ll break it to your mother as gently as possible.”
“She can still visit me here. I hope you will, too.”
“I can’t help saying,” Dr. Keith remarked, stopping at the door, “that your devotion to the Navy surprises me.”
“I’m not devoted to it. If you want to know, what I’ve studied seems to me a lot of rubbish. The rules, the lingo, strike me as comical. The idea of men spending their lives in this make-believe appalls me. I used to think it was preferable to the Army, but I’m sure now that they’re both the same kind of foolishness. I don’t care. I picked the Navy. I’ll see this stupid war through in the Navy.”
“Do you need any money?”
Willie smiled ruefully. “Cigarettes are cheap here. No tax.”
The doctor put out his hand. “Good-by, Willie.” He held his son’s grip a little longer than necessary. “Much of what you say about the Navy is probably true. But I wish I were one of your roommates.”
His son grinned, surprised. “Be nice to have you here. But you’re doing more for the war in Manhasset.”
“I’m compelled to try to think so. Good-by.”
Willie looked after the limping figure, and vaguely thought that he ought to have talked more with his father before the war.
In the weeks that followed May came often to visit him. She was contrite and cheerful. With simple tact she found out when his mother was likely to come, and stayed away on those days. Twice Willie saw her come to the entrance of Furnald, observe him talking to his mother, and depart with a discreet wave. In February her visits became less frequent; she enrolled in Hunter College, and had several late classes. But sometimes she cut these to come to him. Willie was uneasy about her return to school, but she laughed at him.
“Don’t worry, dear, all that is finished. I’m not doing this for you, but for me. You’ve had one good effect on me. I’ve decided I’d rather not be an ignorant canary all my life.”
Willie stuck to his resolve to improve his shaky position with high marks, and he rose gradually to a place among the leaders in the school. In the first hours of fiery determination he had set his goal at Number One, but he soon saw that that would be denied him. A mandarin-like midshipman named Tobit, with a domed forehead, measured quiet speech, and a mind like a sponge, was ahead of the field by a spacious percentage. Bunched behind him were three other masterminds. Willie couldn’t compete with their weird photographic registry of print; he soon realized this, and stopped despairing at marks which fell short of perfect. He drudged away in the niche that he found, varying between eighteenth and twenty-third in Furnald.
His struggle against odds was notorious. The midshipmen and even the ensigns were fond of telling their girls about the unhappy devil carrying forty-eight demerits. This celebrity was useful to Willie. No ensign, not even the punctilious Brain, wanted to be the one to drop the guillotine on him. Once Acres came into the room during a study period and found Willie collapsed in sleep over the desk, a plain case costing eight demerits. Willie shook all day, but the offense was never reported.
Mrs. Keith was outraged at Willie’s position and violently sympathetic. She spent several visiting periods urging Willie to accept Uncle Lloyd’s Army commission, but she gave up at last when she saw that Willie was evidently winning his battle and taking deep satisfaction in it.
In the last weeks, Willie faltered, partly from numb fatigue, partly from a sense that the danger was passing. When the final standings were posted, four days before graduation, he had dropped to the thirty-first place.
That same day a sensational document appeared on the bulletin board: a list of the types of duty open to graduates of Furnald. When the midshipmen returned to their rooms after morning classes they found mimeographed forms on their cots. Each midshipman was asked to list the three types of duty he most desired, and to state the reasons for his first choice.
Nobody could find out how heavily these sheets would count in deciding orders. There were rumors that everyone would get his first choice if the reasons were well put; other rumors that the sheets were just more meaningless Navy paper; still other darker rumors, the more believed for their pessimism, that the purpose was simply to trap those who wanted to avoid dangerous duty, in order to make sure they got it. Some advised asking for the riskiest duty; others were for putting down frankly the desires of the heart. Men like Willie, known for a gift of words, were pressed into service to write convincing reasons wholesale. An enterprising ex-newspaperman named McCutcheon on the eighth floor enjoyed a burst of prosperity by charging five dollars per reason.
Keefer instantly chose Staff Duty, Pacific, saying, “That’s for me. Laying around on your duff in Hawaii, with all them nurses around, maybe running to get the admiral a despatch once in a while. That’s my kind of war.” He daringly left blank the other choices. Keggs agonized over the blank sheet for an hour and at last filled it in with a shaking hand. His first choice was Mine Disposal Training, a horrible bogey which no other man in school dared place on his sheet at all. Next he chose Submarines, Pacific—and third, in small letters, he wrote his true choice, Local Defense, Atlantic.
Willie’s one aim in filling out the form was to remain near May. First he placed Staff, Atlantic, calculating that this must land him on the East Coast, possibly even in New York. Next he put Large Ships, Atlantic (large ships spent a lot of time in port). Last he wrote Submarines, Pacific, to show that he was really a daredevil at heart. This last touch was admired on the tenth floor and much imitated. Willie himself thought that his list showed an incisive knowledge of Navy mentality. For a while he was tempted to apply for communications school, a five-month course at Annapolis. Keefer had a brother, Tom, who had attended the school and enjoyed a wild time with the Baltimore girls. But it seemed to Willie that asking outright for half a year more of shore duty would show his hand. Tom Keefer had been sent to Annapolis after requesting an aircraft carrier. When Willie found that out, it decided him against listing the school.
Graduation was one day off, and during a study period the midshipmen of the tenth floor were droning over books, carrying out to the last the pretense of work though the marks were all totaled and nothing counted any more. A word crackled down the corridor like a spark. “Orders!” The midshipmen crowded to their doors. Down the hall came the mate of the deck with a bundle of envelopes. He came to 1013 and thrust two envelopes into Keefer’s hand. “Good luck, mates.”
“Hey,” said Keefer, “there’s three guys in here.”
The messenger riffled through his bundle. “Sorry. Guess Keith’s orders are held up. There’s another batch coming.”
Keefer ripped open his envelope, burst into a cheer, and danced. “Made it! Made it! Staff, Pacific, by Christ!” Willie pounded his back in congratulation. All at once Keefer sobered, and pulled himself out of the hug. “Hey, Ed—what the Shinola’s eating you?”
The horse face was leaning against the wall, trembling as though he stood in a bumping trolley car. His envelope lay on the desk.
“What did you draw, Eddy?” said Willie anxiously.
“Dunno. I—I can’t open it, fellows.” He was staring at the envelope as though it were a live mine.
Keefer snorted. “Want me to?”
“Please.”
The Southerner rasped it open and read the orders. “Jesus,” he murmured. Keggs fell on his cot with his face to the wall, groaning.
“For God’s sake,” said Willie, “what is it?”
“ ‘Report to San Francisco for transportation to DMS 21—U.S.S. Moulton.’ ”
Keggs sat up. “A ship? A ship? Not Mine Disposal—a ship?”
“A ship,” said Keefer. “Now what is a DMS?”
“Who cares? A ship!” Keggs fell back on his cot, threw his legs and arms in the air, and neighed, wept, and giggled all at once.
Keefer drew a picture manual, Ships of the Navy, 1942, from a shelf. “DMS—DMS—I swear to God there ain’t no such ship—no, wait. Here it is—DMS—page 63.”
The others crowded around him as he flipped the stiff pages to a picture of a queer narrow three-stack vessel. He read aloud: “ ‘DMS—Destroyer Minesweeper. World War I destroyer converted for high-speed sweeping.’ ”
“Oh, God!” breathed Keggs. “Mines. Mines.” He dropped into the chair and writhed.
“Hell, boy, that’s a sight better than Mine Disposal. Sweeping is nothing.”
Willie couldn’t muster up any such false cheer. The three had often talked about minesweeping and agreed it was the worst seagoing horror the Navy had to offer. He pitied Keggs. All up and down the floor shouts were being exchanged. Most of the men had received their first preferences. Those who had been honest rejoiced; the others sulked or shivered. Willie was annoyed to learn that everyone who had asked for communications school, even as third choice, had been sent there. He had missed a chance. But Staff, Atlantic, was fair enough.
The mate of the deck appeared in the doorway. “Here’s yours, Keith. Just came up.”
Willie opened the envelope with a thrust of his forefinger and yanked out the sheaf of papers. His eye darted to the third paragraph. The words seemed to rise up at him with a sound of trumpets: Report to Receiving Station, San Francisco, for transportation to
DMS 22—U.S.S. CAINE.