The Caine Mutiny

When Ensign Keith followed the bellboy into his room in the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, he was struck at once by the view of the city in the sunset. The hills were twinkling under a sky massed with clouds, pink in the west, fading to rose and violet in the east. The evening star shone clear, hanging low over the Golden Gate Bridge. Eastward the lamps were burning along the gray arches of the Oakland Bridge, a string of amber gems. The bellboy turned on lights, opened closets, and left Willie alone with the sunset and his bags. The new ensign stood by the window for a moment, stroking his gold stripe, and wondering at so much beauty and splendor so far from New York.

“Might as well unpack,” he said to the evening star, and opened his pigskin valise. Most of his belongings were in a wooden crate in the hotel’s check room. In the valise he carried only a few changes of clothes. On top of a layer of white shirts lay two mementos of his last hours in New York—a phonograph record and a letter.

Willie rolled the record between his fingers and wished he had brought his portable phonograph. How perfect a setting the evening was for May’s sweet voice, and the Mozart aria! She had recorded it for him in a Broadway shop one night when they were both giddy with champagne. Willie smiled as he thought of the delicious April evenings with May during his ten days’ leave. He reached for the telephone, then pulled back his hand, realizing that it was near midnight in the Bronx, when all candy stores were shut and dark. Besides, he reminded himself, he was giving May up, because he couldn’t marry her, and she was too good a girl to be kept dangling. His plan had been to enjoy an ecstatic farewell, then depart and never write or answer letters, allowing the relationship to die peacefully of malnutrition. May hadn’t been informed of the plan. He had fulfilled the first part, now he must remember the second.

He laid aside the record and picked up his father’s mysterious letter. No use holding it to the light, it was bulky and utterly opaque. He shook it, and sniffed it, and wondered for the fortieth time what could possibly be inside.

“When do you think you’ll get to the Caine?” the father had asked, the afternoon before Willie’s departure.

Thereupon his father had limped to the desk and drawn the sealed envelope out of a leather portfolio. “When you report aboard the Caine—the day you get there, not before or after, open this and read it.”

“Why, if I wanted you to know now I wouldn’t have gotten myself a writer’s cramp scrawling it, would I?”

“Fine—Put it away and forget about it. Never mind mentioning it to your mother.”

Three thousand miles from his father and the scene of the promise, Willie was tempted to peek at the contents; merely to glance at the first page, no more. He tugged at the flap. It was dry, and came loose easily without tearing. The letter was open for Willie’s inspection.

But the thin strand of honor held, after all, across the continent. Willie licked the crumbled paste on the open flap, sealed the letter tight, and tucked it out of sight at the bottom of the valise. Knowing his own character, he thought it well to minimize the strain on it.

Well, he thought, he would write a letter to May after all—just one. She would expect it. Once he went to sea, silence would be understandable; now it would be cruel, and Willie didn’t want to treat May cruelly. He seated himself at the desk and composed a long warm letter. May would have needed second sight to read her dismissal in it. He was writing the last tender paragraph when the phone rang.

“Willie? Doggone you, boy, how are you?” It was Keefer. “I got your wire, boy. I been phoning all day. Where you been, boy?”

“Well, come on out, boy, time’s a-wasting. We just getting a party organized—”

“Junior Officers’ Club—Powell Street. Hurry up. There’s a tall blonde on the loose here that is a dish—”

“He’s gone already, Willie, gone to sea. Three weeks’ delay getting transportation for everybody in Frisco except old horseface—”

“Why, the poor boy was down in transportation office, see, he just come off the train, he was getting his orders endorsed. Wouldn’t you know, the phone rings and it’s the skipper of a creeping coffin that’s going to Pearl, and he’s got room for three more officers. Keggs gets endorsed right over to him. He never even changed his socks in Frisco. Left Tuesday. Missed everything. This is the town, Willie. Liquor and gals till you can’t stand up. Get on your bicycle—”

He felt slightly hypocritical, finishing up the letter to May. But he asserted to himself that he was entitled to any fun he could grasp before he went out to sea.

Willie considered himself a mistreated hero; he still smarted under the insult of his orders to the Caine. After triumphing over the handicap of forty-eight demerits and rising to the top five per cent of the school, he had been sent to sweep mines on an obsolete World War I ship! It was mortifying—twice so, because Keggs, nearest him on the alphabetical list but almost two hundred numbers below him in standing, had drawn identical duty. Obviously the Navy had disposed of the two men with no thought of what they deserved, one after another, like hogs being slaughtered. So Willie believed.

He was drawn into a round of drinking and partying that lasted twenty days. He rolled with Keefer from clubs to bars to girls’ apartments. He quickly became popular because of his piano entertaining. Officers and girls alike were rapturous over If You Knew What the Gnu Knew: he had to sing it several times every night. He resurrected a knack developed in college days of making up rhymes on people’s names as he sang:

Willie could go nimbly from name to name in the room, improvising such couplets to a jazzy refrain. This astounded his audiences, especially the girls, who thought his talents bordered on witchcraft. He and Keefer roared up and down the hair-raising hills in an old rented Ford, and dined mightily on Chinese food, abalones and crabs, and did very little sleeping. They were invited to fine homes and exclusive clubs. It was a great war.

Keefer became friendly with an officer in the transportation department. The result was that the roommates were assigned to a hospital ship for their voyage westward. “Nurses and fresh strawberries—that’s the ticket, Willie my boy,” Keefer said, proudly announcing this news. They rolled aboard the Mercy at dawn after a roistering farewell party, and they continued the same pace of pleasure all the while the ship was steaming toward Hawaii. Nurses clustered around Willie at the piano in the lounge every evening. There were sharp restrictions aboard the Mercy on place and time of meetings between the sexes, but Keefer quickly learned his way about the ship and arranged for the pursuit of happiness at all hours. They saw very little of the Pacific Ocean.

They debarked in Honolulu arm in arm with two freethinking nurses, Lieutenants Jones and Carter; exchanged brief kisses under the huge Dole’s pineapple electric sign, and agreed to meet for dinner. The two ensigns piled their luggage into the taxicab of a snub-nosed grinning Hawaiian in a rainbow-colored shirt.

Keefer got off at the bachelor officers’ quarters, a structure of unpainted wood. Willie went to the personnel officer in the cement office building of the Hawaiian Sea Frontier, and was told that the Caine was at the Navy Yard in repair berth C-4. He threw his baggage into another cab and raced out to the repair basin. Berth C-4 contained only a slosh of empty filthy water. He wandered around the yard amid deafening sounds of ship repair, asking questions of workmen, sailors, and officers. None of them had heard of the ship. Battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, in drydock or alongside docks, were everywhere: gray monsters in dozens, swarming with riveters and sailors. But no Caine. So Willie returned to the personnel officer.

“Don’t tell me,” said the fat lieutenant, “they fouled up this berthing chart again—” He searched through a heap of despatches in a box on his desk. “Oh. Pardon me. Yep, she’s gone. Shoved off this morning.”

“Look,” said Willie, “all I want to know is, how do I get transportation from this point to catch up with the Caine?”

“Oh. You want Transportation. Well, I’m Personnel. You’ll have to see Transportation.” The lieutenant got up, put a nickel in a Coca-Cola machine, drew out a frosty bottle, and drank noisily. Willie waited till he had seated himself again.

Willie walked out of the office. Blinking in the glare of the sun, he noticed a sign on the next door: Transportation. “He doesn’t know much,” muttered Willie, and entered the office. A dried-up woman of thirty-seven or so sat at the desk.

“Then how on earth do you expect to get to it?” She pulled a Coca-Cola bottle out of a desk drawer, flipped off the cap against the edge of her desk, and drank.

“I don’t want a scooter,” exclaimed Willie. “Did you hear me ask for a scooter?”

“You came in here, didn’t you?” snapped the woman. “This is the scooter pool.”

“Okay, okay,” said Willie, “I’m new here, and very stupid. Please tell me how to get a start toward my ship.”

The woman pondered, clicking the green bottle against her teeth. “Well, I guess you want Fleet Transportation. This is Yard Transportation.”

Willie gave up for the day. If the Navy was in no hurry to send him after the Caine, he was in no hurry to go. He went back to the bachelor officers’ quarters, thoroughly tired of piling a crate and two bags in and out of taxis.

“Just in time, boy.” Keefer was fresh and cool in newly pressed khaki shirt and trousers. Willie still wore his hot, heavy blues. “Big doings. Admiral giving a party for the nurses tonight. Jonesy and Carter got permission to bring us along.”

“Who knows? They thick as fleas on a dog’s back around here. You find your ship?”

The admiral’s party, at his handsome home inside the base, started as a quiet affair. Most of the guests were within earshot of an admiral for the first time and they minded their manners. The admiral, a big bald man with startling black hollows under his eyes, received everyone with genial majesty in his straw-matted, flower-filled living room. After drinks had flowed for a while the atmosphere warmed. Willie, urged on by Keefer, timidly sat at the piano and played. The admiral brightened at the first notes, and moved to a seat near the piano. He waved his glass to the rhythm of the music. “The boy has talent,” he said to a captain at his elbow. “By George, these reserves bring some life into things.”

Willie shook his head, but the admiral said, “What? What’s that? Let’s have it, whatever it is.”

The song caused a sensation. The admiral put down his glass and applauded, whereupon everyone else did the same. He was in chuckling high spirits. “What’s your name, Ensign? By George, you’re a find.”

“Good name anyway. Now, let’s have some more music. Let’s see. Do you know Who Hit Annie in the Fanny with a Flounder?”

“If you’ll sing it, sir,” said Keefer eagerly, “Willie can pick it up in a second.”

“By God I will,” said the admiral, glancing around at the captain beside him, “if Matson here will pitch in.”

Willie easily picked up the refrain of Who Hit Annie in the Fanny with a Flounder, and the house rocked with the chorus sung twice by all hands, male and female. The nurses giggled, cooed, and twittered. “This is the best damn party,” cried the admiral, “we’ve ever had. Somebody give me a cigarette. Where are you stationed, boy? I want you to come again, often.”

“Hm.” The admiral regarded Willie keenly. “Matson, can you take care of this lad?”

When the party broke up at midnight, the captain slipped Willie his card. “Come and see me at 0900, Keith.”

Next morning Willie presented himself at the captain’s office in the CincPac Building. The captain rose and shook hands pleasantly.

“Sure enjoyed your music, Keith. Never saw the admiral have a better time. By God, he needs it—does him good.”

“Well,” said the captain, “if you want I can put you on a plane for Australia. Maybe you’ll catch the Caine down there, maybe you won’t. She’s running convoy. Those escorts get shoved here and there by every port director who gets his hands on them—”

“Or,” said the captain, “we can put you on temporary duty here in the officer pool till she gets back to Pearl. Might be a few weeks, might be a few months. Depends on whether you’re in a hurry for combat duty or—They can use you out there, sure enough. The admiral wouldn’t interfere with your going out, in any way.” Captain Matson grinned.

Willie glanced through the broad picture window which faced the sea and the hills. A rainbow was drifting down a palm-covered misty mountainside far away. Outside on the lawn crimson hibiscus blossoms stirred in the warm breeze, and a sprinkler twirled a sparkling spiral of water over the close-clipped grass.

“Fine. The admiral will be pleased. Bring your orders around to my yeoman any time today.”

Willie was officially transferred to the officer pool, and took up quarters with Keefer in the BOQ. The Southerner, who had already been assigned to Third Fleet Communications, exulted as Willie unpacked his bags.

“Shinola on that. You gonna get all the war you want, boy. You keep little old Keefer and the admiral happy a few weeks, that’s all.” He rose and swiftly knotted a black tie. “Got the duty. See you tonight.”

Unpacking, Willie came upon his father’s letter. He took it up uncertainly. Months might pass now, before he reached his ship. Dr. Keith had told him to open it upon reporting for duty. He was on duty—temporary duty, to be sure, but it might last a long time. He lit a cigarette, tore open the letter, and sat down to read it. At the first words he started up. He read on, sitting on the edge of the chair, the letter trembling in his hands, the cigarette burning down between his fingers, and ashes dropping off unnoticed.

DEAR WILLIE:

By the time you read this letter, I think I will be dead. I’m sorry to startle you but I suppose there’s no pleasant way to break such news. The trouble I’ve been having with my toe is due to a rather vicious disorder, malignant melanoma. The prognosis is one hundred per cent bad. I’ve known about my condition for a long time, and figured that I would probably die this summer. But the toe began to go a bit sooner. I suppose I should be in a hospital at this moment (two nights before you leave) but I hate to spoil your departure, and since there’s no hope anyway, I’ve postponed it. I’m going to try to stall until I know you’ve left San Francisco. Your mother doesn’t know anything yet. My guess is that I won’t last more than three or four weeks, now.

I’m a little young to go, according to the insurance tables, and I must say I don’t feel ready, but I daresay that’s because I’ve accomplished so little. I look back on my life, Willie, and there’s not much there. Your mother has been a fine wife, and I have no regrets on that score. But I seem to have led such a thoroughly second-rate life—not only compared to my father, but in view of my own capabilities. I had quite a feeling for research. When I fell in love with your mother I thought I couldn’t marry her without undertaking general practice in a high-income community. It was my plan to make a pile in ten or fifteen years of such work, and then return to research. I really think I might have done something in cancer. I had a theory—a notion, you might say—nothing I could have put on paper. It needed three years of systematic investigation. Nobody has touched it to this day. I’ve kept up with the literature. My name might have meant as much as my father’s. But now there’s no time even to outline the procedure. The worst of it is, I now feel your mother would have stood by me and lived modestly if I’d really insisted.

But I’ve had a pleasant time, I can truly say that. I’ve loved reading and golf, and I’ve had all of that I wanted. The days have gone by all too fast.

I wish I might have met this girl of yours. It seems to me that she, or the Navy, or both, are having quite a good effect on you. And believe me, Willie, that is by far the brightest thought I take with me into the hospital. I’ve let slide my relationship with you as I have so many other things, through plain sloth; particularly since your mother seemed anxious to take charge of you. It’s too bad we had no more children. Just bad luck. Your mother had three miscarriages, which you may not know.

I’ll tell you a curious thing. It seems to me that I have a higher opinion of you than your mother has. She regards you as a hopeless baby who will have to be coddled through life. But I am coming to believe that though you are pretty spoiled and soft at the surface, you are tough enough at the core. After all, I see, you have always done pretty much as you pleased with your mother, while giving her the sense of ruling you. I’m sure this was no plan on your part, but you’ve done it anyway.

You’ve never had a serious problem in your life, up to this Navy experience. I watched you in the forty-eight demerits business very closely. It had its comical side, but really it was a challenge. You rose to it in an encouraging way.

Perhaps because I know I’ll never see you again I find myself sentimentalizing over you, Willie. It seems to me that you’re very much like our whole country—young, naïve, spoiled and softened by abundance and good luck, but with an interior hardness that comes from your sound stock. This country of ours consists of pioneers, after all, these new Poles and Italians and Jews as well as the older stock, people who had the gumption to get up and go and make themselves better lives in a new world. You’re going to run into a lot of strange young men in the Navy, most of them pretty low by your standards, I daresay, but I’ll bet—though I won’t live to see it—that they are going to make the greatest Navy the world has ever seen. And I think you’re going to make a good naval officer—after a while. After a great while, perhaps.

This is not criticism, Willie, God knows I am pretty soft myself. Perhaps I’m wrong. You may never make a naval officer at all. Perhaps we’re going to lose the war. I just don’t believe it. I think we’re going to win, and I think you’re going to come back with more honor than you believed possible.

I know you’re disappointed at having been sent to a ship like the Caine. Now, having seen it, you’re probably disgusted. Well, remember this, you’ve had things your own way too long, and all your immaturity is due to that. You need some stone walls to batter yourself against. I strongly suspect you’ll find plenty of them there on the Caine. I don’t envy you the experience itself, but I do envy you the strengthening you’re going to derive from it. Had I had one such experience in my younger years, I might not be dying a failure.

Those are strong words, but I won’t cross them out. They don’t hurt too much and, furthermore, my hand isn’t the one to cross them out any more. I’m finished now, but the last word on my life rests with you. If you turn out well, I can still claim some kind of success in the afterworld, if there is one.

About your singing versus comparative literature—you may have a different outlook when the war is over. Don’t waste brain power over the far future. Concentrate on doing well now. Whatever assignment they give you on the Caine, remember that it’s worthy of your best efforts. It’s your way of fighting the war.

It’s surprising, how little I have to say to you in these last words. I ought to fill up a dozen more sheets, and yet I feel you are pretty good at getting your way—and in other matters any words I might write would make little sense, without your own experience to fill the words with meaning. Remember this, if you can—there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven’t. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end—only at the end it becomes more obvious. Use your time while you have it, Willie, in making something of yourself.

Religion. I’m afraid we haven’t given you much, not having had much ourselves. But I think, after all, I will mail you a Bible before I go into the hospital. There is a lot of dry stuff in the Bible about Jewish wars and rituals that may put you off—but don’t make the mistake of skipping the Old Testament. It’s the core of all religion, I think, and there is a lot of everyday wisdom in it. You have to be able to recognize it. That takes time. Meantime get familiar with the words. You’ll never regret it. I came to the Bible as I did to everything in life, too late.

About money matters. I’m leaving all my property to your mother. Uncle Lloyd is the executor. There is a ten-thousand-dollar policy of which you’re the beneficiary. If you want to get married, or go back to school, that should be enough to enable you to carry out your plans. Money is a very pleasant thing, Willie, and I think you can trade almost anything for it wisely except the work you really want to do. If you sell out your time for a comfortable life, and give up your natural work, I think you lose the exchange. There remains an inner uneasiness that spoils the comforts.

Well, Willie, it’s 3 A.M. by my old leather-covered desk clock. A waning moon is shining through the library window, and my fingers are stiff from writing. My toe is giving me the devil, too. Sleeping pills and bed for me. Thank God for barbiturate.

Take care of your mother if she lives to be very old, and be kind to her if you come back from the war with enough strength to break away from her. She has many faults, but she’s good, and she has loved you and me very truly.

Think of me and of what I might have been, Willie, at the times in your life when you come to crossroads. For my sake, for the sake of the father who took the wrong turns, take the right ones, and carry my blessing and my justification with you.

I stretch out my hand to you. We haven’t kissed in many, many years. I liked to kiss you when you were a baby. You were a very sweet and good-natured child, with wonderful large eyes. God! Long ago.

Good-by, my son. Be a man.

DAD

The ensign rose, wiping his eyes, and hurried downstairs to the telephone booth. He dropped a coin into the box. “I want to call the United States—”

“Sorry. Private calls only at Central Building with censor’s permission. One week delay on them,” said the operator with a Hawaiian accent.

Willie ran out into the naval base and went from building to building until he found the telegraph office. How is dad? he cabled, and paid the urgent rate, giving the office as his return address. Next morning at eight when the office opened Willie was waiting outside. He sat on the steps smoking until eleven-thirty, when the answer was brought to him. Dad died three days ago. Sent you his love in last words. Please write. Mother.

Willie went straight to the office of Captain Matson, who greeted him cordially.

“Sir, on reconsidering, I’d like to fly out to look for the Caine, if I may.”

The captain’s face fell. “Oh? What’s the matter? They give you some rugged coding detail?”

“I’ve already told the admiral you’re set here. He was extremely pleased.”

“Sir, if I may say so, it just doesn’t seem like fighting the war—playing piano for the admiral.”

A hard distant look came over the captain’s features. “There’s plenty of work to do in this establishment. You’ll find that a shore billet is as honorable as any other.”

“Your orders have been put through and sent to the Bureau. I see no reason to countermand them. Your request is denied.” The captain picked up a paper before him and put on his glasses.

And so Willie stayed at Pearl Harbor, decoding messages which told of great actions around Rendova and Munda, of the victorious night battle at Vella Lavella, and of huge preparations for further invasions. Often he came upon the name of the Caine in despatches showing her in the thick of the operations. And across the world the Allies smashed into Sicily and Italy, and Mussolini fell. Meantime Willie played piano for the admiral.

6

Dr. Keith’s Letter