Of all the people Willie encountered during the war Captain Queeg loomed largest in his memory, forever after. But there was another man who had an even greater influence on his life and character; a man whose face he never saw and whose name he never knew. The day after he encountered this man—it was late in June 1945—Willie Keith wrote an eight-page letter to May Wynn, begging her to marry him.
He was a Kamikaze pilot who destroyed himself in order to set the rusty old Caine ablaze at Okinawa.
Keefer was captain, and Willie was exec. The able trouble shooter, Captain White, had spent five months restoring order on the anarchical minesweeper and had passed on to his interrupted career in big ships. The four-pipers were falling into the hands of young reserves. Willie had become a senior-grade lieutenant on June 1; some of the old minesweepers even had jg’s as execs.
The Bureau of Personnel had evidently decided that scattering the Caine’s officers and crew was the best way to dissolve the bitterness of the Queeg days. Fully three quarters of the sailors were replacements. Farrington was the only other officer left from the mutiny time. Maryk had been detached from the ship a week after his acquittal, and sent to command an LCI, a humiliation which spelled the end of his naval hopes. Nobody knew what had become of Queeg.
Willie was running the ship. Keefer had retired into an isolation like Queeg’s—except that he worked on his novel instead of solving jigsaw puzzles. Luckily for Willie, Captain White had taken a liking to him and had put him through intensive training, two months as engineering officer, two months as first lieutenant; he had been gunnery officer when the despatch came elevating him to the executive post. In all that time Keefer had been executive officer, a sullen, seldom-seen figure around the ship. He had never completely wiped from his face the yellow stain Barney Greenwald had thrown on it. The new officers and sailors all knew the story. The mutiny and court-martial were endless topics for gossip when Keefer and Willie weren’t present. The general feeling on the Caine was that the novelist was untrustworthy and extremely queer. Willie was better liked, but for his part in the mutiny he was also regarded askance.
In the rare times when Keefer took the conn he was nervous, impatient, and harsh, and much given to pounding stanchions and yelling for instant execution of his orders. He wasn’t a good ship handler; he had gouged the sides of oilers and tenders a dozen times. It was freely said that that was why he allowed Mr. Keith to do most of the conning.
Keefer had the conn, however, when the Kamikaze hit.
“There she comes!”
Urban’s yell on the starboard wing was almost gay. But there was no mistaking the fright in Keefer’s voice, the next second: “Commence firing! All guns commence firing!” At the same instant, not in response to the captain’s order but spontaneously, came the popping of the 20-millimeters all over the ship.
Willie was in the charthouse, marking bearings along the course line. The Caine was rounding the southern end of Okinawa en route to Nakagusuku Wan to pick up mail for the mine fleet. There had been no air-raid warning. It was ten o’clock in a gray cloudy morning. The sea was calm and lonely.
He dropped his pencil and parallel rulers and went scampering through the wheelhouse to the starboard wing. Pink curved dotted lines of tracer bullets pointed to the Kamikaze, about a thousand feet up, well forward of the bow, brown against the clouds. It was slanting straight for the Caine, wobbling clumsily as it came down. It was a small, flimsy, obsolete-looking machine. Its wings seemed to be stretching outward as it drew near, and the two red balls were plain to see. There were four streams of bullets converging on it; the plane was absorbing them all and floating down placidly. It was now quite big; a teetering, flapping old airplane.
“It’s going to hit!” Keefer and Urban threw themselves to the deck. The plane, only a few feet away, tilted sidewise. Willie caught a glimpse of the goggled pilot through the yellow cockpit bubble. “The crazy fool,” he thought, and then he was on his knees, his face to the deck plates. He thought the plane was coming right at him.
It seemed like a very long time before the Kamikaze hit, and Willie experienced a race of vivid clear thoughts as he crouched with his face to the cold blue-painted deck. The important point—the fact that changed his life—was that he felt an overpowering tearing regret at not having married May. Since jilting her he had been fairly successful in pushing thoughts of her out of his mind. When he was tired or upset they had come crowding back, but he had fought them off as products of weakness. This mighty feeling of longing for lost joy that possessed him now was different. It had the clang of truth. He thought he was done for, and above all his paralyzed terror towered the regret that he would never see May again.
The plane hit with the sound of cars colliding on a highway, and a second later there was an explosion. Willie’s teeth grated as though he had been punched in the face, and his ears rang. He staggered erect. He could see a puff of blue-gray smoke curling up from behind the galley deckhouse, where the gun crew still sprawled in individual gray lumps.
“Captain, I’ll call away GQ and then lay aft and see how it looks—”
“Okay Willie.” Keefer rose, brushing himself with trembling hands, his unhelmeted hair hanging in his eyes. He had a dazed, vacant air. Willie ran into the wheelhouse and pressed the lever of the p.a. box. The helmsman and quartermaster watched him with frightened eyes. “Now hear this,” he said loud and quick, “we have taken a Kamikaze hit amidships. Set condition Able throughout the ship. Away forward and after fire-fighting and damage-control parties—” Blue bitter smoke came wisping into the pilothouse. It stung his lungs like a dry cigarette. He coughed and went on, “Make your damage reports to the bridge. Turn on foam, sprinklers, and carbon dioxide as needed. Stand by magazine flood valves—ugh, ugh—but don’t flood until ordered—”
He jerked the red GQ handle, and went out on the wing as the clanging began. He was amazed by the billow of smoke and blast of heat that struck his face. Tall orange flames were leaping as high as the mast behind the galley deckhouse and lapping forward toward the bridge—the wind was astern. Smoke in clouds boiled from the flames and rolled over the wing. “I thought you were going aft,” Keefer shouted peevishly, his form dim in the smoke. He and the bridge gang were putting on life jackets.
“Aye aye, sir. Just going—”
Willie had to use elbows and shoulders to make his way down the well deck and the passageway through milling, yelling sailors dragging hoses, snatching life jackets, or just running. He broke through to the main deck. There was less smoke here than on the bridge; it was all blowing high and forward. Red flames, thick as oak trunks, were roaring out of an immense jagged hole in the deck over the after fireroom. Blackened sailors were stumbling out of the narrow hatch of the air lock. Pieces of the plane’s wings were scattered on the deck. The gig was on fire. Hoses were tangled around on the deck and the fire-fighting parties, white-faced, helmeted, in life jackets, were fussing with fire-main connections or dragging red toylike handy-billies toward the hole. They uttered thin little shouts drowned by the banging of the GQ gong and the roaring from the exposed fireroom. The smell was of burning—burning oil, burning wood, burning rubber.
“What’s the dope?” the exec yelled at a sailor staggering out of the air lock.
“Whole plane is down in there, sir! Whole goddamn place is on fire. Budge told us to get out. He’s trying to shut off the main fuel valve—I don’t know if he can get out any more—I turned on the foam system before I came out—”
“How about the boiler?”
“I don’t know, sir, the place is all steam and fire—”
“Do you know how to open the safety valves?” Willie screamed above the noise.
“Yes, sir—”
“Okay, blow ’em off—”
“Aye aye, sir—”
An explosion threw a round puff of white flame out of the fireroom. Willie staggered back. Fire was wriggling up the side of the galley deckhouse. Willie pushed through running sailors to Bellison, who was twisting a fire-main valve with a wrench. “Are you getting pressure on your main?”
“Yes, sir—looks like one hell of a fire, sir—are we going to abandon ship?”
“Hell, no. Put that fire out!” Willie yelled.
“Okay, sir. We’ll try—” Willie slapped the chief’s back and fought through the thronged passageway, stumbling over hoses. Coming to the bridge ladder, he was startled to see Keefer pop out of his cabin, carrying a lumpy gray canvas sack.
“What do you say, Willie? Have we got a chance?” Keefer said as Willie stepped aside to let him up the ladder first.
“I think so, sir. What’s the sack?”
“Novel, just in case—” Keefer dropped the sack by the flagbag and squinted aft, coughing and clapping a handkerchief to his nose. The gun crews on the deckhouse were scrambling through smoke and fire, untangling hoses and swearing in screeches. The bridge sailors—radarmen, signalmen, soundmen—and three of the new officers pressed around Willie, their eyes wide open and staring.
“Captain, it doesn’t look too bad yet—just one fireroom—” Willie began to describe the damage. But he had a strong feeling that Keefer wasn’t listening to him. The captain was staring aft, his hands on his hips. Smoke streamed past his face. His eyeballs had an opaque yellowish look and were rimmed with red.
Clouds of screaming steam burst above the deckhouse. Keefer glared at Willie. “What went up then?”
“I told them to lift the safeties on number three, sir—”
On the galley deckhouse there was a sudden rattling explosion. A fireworks shower of flame—white, yellow, and streaking red—went shooting in all directions. Sailors tumbled down the ladders, yelling. Bullets whistled and pinged against the bridgehouse. “Oh, Jesus, there goes the AA,” shouted Keefer, dodging for shelter. “This ship’s going up, Willie. It’ll be in the magazines in a minute—”
All three stacks boiled over with yellow dirty smoke like vomit. The vibrating of the main engines stopped. The ship glided, slowing, wallowing. The flames amidships cast an orange glow on the gray sea. “Water in the fuel lines.” Keefer was gasping. “We’ve lost suction. Pass the word for all hands to—”
Three-inch shells began exploding in the ready box on the deckhouse with terrifying CRACKS! and sheets of white fire. Keefer screamed, staggered, and fell to the deck. Reeking waves of gunpowder smoke swathed the bridge. Willie crouched beside the captain, and saw several blue-dungareed legs climb up on the rail and leap overboard. Keefer said, “My arm, my arm,” holding his shoulder and kicking at the deck. Blood welled between his fingers and dripped.
“Captain, are you all right? The men are beginning to jump—”
Keefer sat up, his face twisted and sick. “Let’s pass the word to abandon ship—Christ, my arm feels like it’s coming off—I think I took a piece of a shell—”
“Sir, I swear I don’t think we have to abandon yet—”
Keefer got up on one knee and staggered erect. He stumbled into the wheelhouse, and grabbed at the public-address lever with a bloody hand. “This is the captain speaking. All hands abandon ship—”
Willie, at the doorway, heard only the captain’s weak voice in the wheelhouse, and no answering boom in the loudspeakers. “Sir,” he shouted, “your p.a. is dead—”
The bridge sailors were huddled against the bulwark, like cattle seeking warmth from each other’s bodies. “What do you say, Mr. Keith? Can we jump?” Urban cried.
“Stay where you are—”
Keefer came lurching out of the wheelhouse. A fresh explosion in the smoke on the deckhouse sent a rattle of metal against the bridge and a blast of heat. “This ship won’t live another five minutes!” Keefer ran to the rail and peered aft. “Look, they’re all jumping back there. The whole goddamn main deck must be going up.” He dived through the bunch of sailors and clutched the canvas sack. “Let’s go! All hands over the side—”
The sailors and officers began yammering, and jostled each other like subway riders in their eagerness to climb the rail. They bumped and pressed Willie, who was leaning out, trying to see aft through the stinging fumes. “Captain, nobody’s jumping back aft—those guys in the water are all from the bridge!” One after another crewmen and officers were leaping off the wing into the water. Keefer had one leg over the bulwark. He clasped the canvas sack in his uninjured arm. He was climbing with methodical care, favoring his bloodstained arm. “Captain,” Willie shouted at him, “they’re not jumping back aft—they’re not—”
Keefer paid no attention whatever. Willie seized him by the shoulder as he leaned out to jump. “Captain, I request permission to stay aboard with volunteers to try to get the fire under control!”
A flicker of understanding appeared in the novelist’s glazed eyes. He looked vexed, as though Willie had said something particularly stupid. “Hell, Willie, if you want to commit suicide I can’t stop you!” Keefer leaped out far, his skinny legs flailing the air. He fell into the water on his stomach and began pulling himself away from the ship. Heads bobbed all around him. Only Ensign Farrington remained on the bridge, leaning against the flagbag, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Willie said harshly, “What’s holding you back?”
“After you, sir.” The ensign’s collar-advertisement face was smeared with black, and he grinned half in fright and half in boyish enjoyment.
With the wheel untended, the Caine had meanwhile slewed around broadside to the wind, so that the bridge was rapidly clearing of smoke. The deckhouse fire had been blown apart by the explosions. There was only a dull yellow flickering here and there. The ammunition boxes were smoldering jagged ruins. Willie could see irregular flaring flames aft amid giant billows of white steam.
All at once his vision expanded. He saw the ocean and Okinawa again. There were the green quiet hills and the horizon. The ship was half turned around, so it took him a moment to get his bearings; then he realized that they had hardly moved since being hit. The peak of Yuza Dake still bore 320. The ship wobbled on a gently swelling sea. A trickle of yellow smoke dribbled from number-one stack. Scattered yells from amidships emphasized the calm silence. A couple of sailors in the water, drifted astern, were waving and shouting at the men on the ship. There weren’t many who had jumped, so far as Willie could see, going from wing to wing: fifteen or twenty.
He felt an immense peace and personal power descend on him, wrapping his shoulders like a jacket. “I don’t know but what we can save this bucket,” he said to Farrington.
“Aye aye, sir. Can I help?”
“Can you start the Kohler—that putt-putt on the well deck?”
“Radio boys once showed me how, sir—”
“Light it off on the double. Cut in the p.a. switches. They’re marked.”
Farrington ran down the ladder. Willie scanned the men in the water through binoculars, and saw the captain about forty yards astern floating on his back, clutching the gray sack. The Kohler coughed, backfired, and began to chug like an old Ford. Willie went into the pilothouse. He was a little shocked at the sight of the wheel swinging back and forth, free. He got a power hum, pressing the p.a. lever. His voice blared over the decks:
“Now all hands, this is the executive officer. I ask you not to abandon ship. I’ve had no damage reports from any space but the after fireroom. The noise you heard was some ready ammunition popping on the galley deckhouse. Things looked pretty bad there for a minute. The captain gave permission to abandon but he also gave permission for volunteers to stay aboard and try to save the ship. Let’s put out that fire and get some steam up to the main engines. Gunner’s mates stand by to flood the magazines but don’t do it unless I pass the word. Forward fireroom—if you can’t get suction try shifting to the forward tanks. You probably have ruptured lines aft. Close off your stop valves so you don’t get water backing up into the forward lines. Get the pumps going on this water we’re throwing into the after fireroom. Keep calm. Just remember your drills and do what you’re supposed to do. This ship can still steam into the harbor this morning under its own power. If we abandon it we’ll all get dumped into the personnel pool on Okinawa. If we stick with it we’ll probably pull an overhaul in the States. Stay with the ship.”
Farrington came back to the bridge. Willie told him to take the wheel, and hurried aft. The passageway was empty. On the main deck sputtering red flames were poking up a little above the hole, all but smothered in fizzing gray clouds. Soapy foam and water ran in rivulets between the tangles of fire hose. Sailors and officers were jabbering by the life lines, well clear of the ragged crater. Some of them were smoking cigarettes. Fifteen or so clustered around the hole in the deck, pouring misty streams into the cavern of the fireroom. Some sailors were passing a hose down through the air lock, and from below there issued a stream of vile workmanlike cursing. The gig, charred but no longer afire, was being bailed out in methodical sloshes of greasy water by Meatball, sweating in his life jacket. Nobody was running any more.
On the deck outside the clip shack the pharmacist’s mate was kneeling with two assistants, bandaging men lying on mattresses or in stretchers. Willie went to the injured men and talked with them. Some of them had been on watch in the fireroom. Their burns were swathed in thick yellow-stained bandages. There were men with gashes from the exploded ammunition, and one sailor with a crushed foot, swelled to twice its normal size and mottled green. Chief Budge was one of the burned ones.
“How goes it, Chief?”
“Okay, sir. Guess we got it licked. Lucky I got that main fuel shut off before I climbed out—”
“Did you take a muster? Did all your men get out?”
“I couldn’t find Horrible, sir—he’s the only one—I don’t know, maybe he’s around somewhere—” The chief tried to sit up. Willie pushed him back.
“Never mind. I’ll find him—”
With a loud rumble number-one and-two stacks poured out a billow of inky smoke, and the ship vibrated. The executive officer and the chief looked at each other with grinning gladness. “Suction on one and two,” said Budge. “We’ll be okay—”
“Well, guess I’ll get under way and pick up the swimming party. Take it easy, Chief—”
“Hope the captain enjoyed his dip,” the chief said in a low voice. “He’s got Queeg beat a mile for fast footwork—”
“Shut up, Budge!” Willie said sharply. He went forward. From the time the Kamikaze hit until suction was regained, seventeen minutes had elapsed.
During the rescue maneuverings in the next hour Willie retained the strangely clear vision and buoyant spirits and slowed calm time sense which he had acquired when Keefer jumped overboard. Nothing seemed hard to do. He made dozens of quick decisions as damage reports poured into the wheelhouse and little emergencies sprang up in the wake of the conquered big one. He nosed the ship slowly among the swimmers, taking care to stop his screws whenever he came near them.
He turned over the conn to Farrington and went to the sea ladder when the captain was hauled aboard. Keefer was unable to climb; so a sailor dived into the water beside him and secured a line around his middle, and the novelist was fished out of the water doubled over, dripping, and clinging to the sopping gray sack. Willie caught him in his arms as he came up to deck level, and helped him to his feet. Keefer’s lips were blue. His hair hung in strings over staring bloodshot eyes. “How the hell did you do it, Willie?” he gasped. “It was a miracle. I’ll recommend you for the Navy Cross—”
“Will you take the conn now, Captain? Do you feel all right?”
“Hell, you’re doing fine. Keep going. Pick ’em all up. I’ll change my clothes—get pharmacist’s mate to fix up this damn arm, it’s killing me—Did you take a muster?”
“Taking it now, sir—”
“Fine—keep going—give me a hand, Winston—” Keefer stumbled toward his cabin, leaning on the boatswain’s mate’s shoulder, leaving a trail of water on the deck. “I’ll be up on the bridge in half an hour, Willie—take a muster—”
The list of missing men shrank as the ship picked up one swimmer after another. Finally there was only one name without a line through it on Willie’s penciled sheet: Everett Harold Black, water tender third class—Horrible. A search party went wading through the gutted, flooded fireroom in hip boots. They found the missing sailor.
Keefer was on the bridge, his arm in a new white sling, when the report came up. The Caine was lying to in the waters where it had been hit. It was noon, and the sun was hot and dazzling overhead. A stale, sour smell of burning pervaded the sooty ship.
“Okay, that does it, Willie. Everybody’s accounted for…. Poor Horrible—What’s the course to the channel entrance?”
“Zero eight one, sir.”
“Very well, Helmsman, come to course 081. Quartermaster, make fifteen knots—”
Willie said, “Sir, I request permission to lay below and supervise removal of the body.”
“Sure, Willie. Go ahead.”
The deck sailors were rolling away the hoses, sweeping clanking debris off the deckhouse and main deck, and chattering happily about their own small heroisms. They greeted Willie with shouted jokes about a trip to the States. A cluster of them around the galley were munching crude thick sandwiches or snatching loaves from the cursing cooks, who were trying to light off the soup vats and get lunch ready. There was a line of sight-seers around the roped-off chasm in the deck. The voices of the search party echoed up from the dark watery fireroom as from a flooded tomb. A couple of the new ensigns who had jumped overboard stood at the rope in fresh khakis, peering down into the hole and laughing. They fell silent when they saw Willie.
He regarded them for a moment bleakly. They were buddies from a Western midshipmen school. They habitually whined and procrastinated about the officers’ qualification course—didn’t see any point to it. They grumbled about lack of sleep. Their carelessness in handling despatches and letters was unendurable. Moreover, they never ceased commiserating each other for the wretched fate of having been assigned to the Caine. He wanted to ask them sarcastically to write up a qualification assignment if they had nothing better to do than sight-see; but he turned away without a word and climbed down the air lock. He heard them tittering behind him.
The stink of burning and something worse than burning made him gag, as he backed down the narrow ladder of the shaft. He put a handkerchief over his nose and stepped into the fireroom. He slipped and stumbled on the wet, greasy catwalks. It was amazingly queer, it was like a nightmare, to see vertical white sunlight in the fireroom, and water sloshing in and out of the furnaces. The search party was far on the port side. Willie descended the last ladder; the water came up cold and slimy inside his trouser legs. He waded across the fireroom in water that fell to his ankles and then rose to his waist as the ship rolled. The sailors of the search party stepped aside and one of them directed a powerful electric lantern at the water.
“Wait till it rolls away, Mr. Keith. You’ll see him pretty good.”
Willie wasn’t used to the sight of dead people. He had seen a few relatives laid out in plush-lined boxes in the amber gloom of funeral chapels, with an organ mourning sweetly through loudspeakers and a heavy smell of flowers filling the air. No undertaker had intervened, however, to prettify the death of Horrible. The water washed away for a few seconds, and the lantern beam showed the sailor clearly, pinned down and crushed by the battered engine of the Jap plane, his face and his dungarees black with grease. The sight reminded Willie of the mashed squirrels he had often seen lying on the roads of Manhasset on autumn mornings. It was shocking to soak in, all in an instant, the fact that people are as soft and destructible as squirrels. The dark waters sloshed back over the body. Willie fought down the tears and the nausea, and said, “This is a job for volunteers. Any one of you who can’t stand it is excused—”
The search party were all of the black gang. He looked from face to face. They all had the expression that makes men equal, however briefly, before a dead body—a mixture of fright, bitterness, sorrow, and embarrassment. “Well, if you’re all game, okay. The thing to do is rig a block and tackle on that crossbeam and get the wreckage off him. I’ll get Winston down here with some canvas. Then you can lift him straight up through the hole in the deck with lines, instead of hauling him up ladders.”
“Aye aye, sir,” they said.
The man with the lantern said, “Want to see the Jap, sir? He’s piled up on the port catwalk—”
“Is there much left of him?”
“Well, not a hell of a lot. It ain’t too appetizing—”
“Sure, lead the way.”
The remains of the Kamikaze pilot were frightful. Willie turned away after a glimpse of bones and charred purple meat, jammed grotesquely in a sitting position in the telescoped cockpit as though the dread thing were still flying; a double row of grinning yellow teeth burned all bare; and most appalling of all, undamaged goggles above the teeth sunk into the ruined face, giving it a live peering look. The smell was like a butcher shop.
“Well, sir, like the marines say, the only good one is a dead one,” the sailor said.
“I—I guess I’ll go and send Winston along—” Willie picked his way rapidly over the tangled rubbish of plane and deck plates and boiler fittings to the escape hatch and hurried up into the delicious streaming salt air.
Keefer slouched in the captain’s chair on the bridge, pale and languid, and allowed Willie to bring the ship into the harbor. He took over the conn to anchor, giving orders in a flat, tired voice. Sailors on nearby ships stopped working to stare at the Caine’s torn-up seared deckhouse and the huge black hole amidships.
Willie went below, discarded his wet, filthy clothes in a heap on the deck of his room, and took a steamy shower. He dressed in his freshest khakis, drew his curtain, and stretched out on the bunk, yawning. And then he began to tremble. It was just his hands at first, but it spread quickly to his whole body. The strange thing was that the sensation was not unpleasant. It sent a warm feeling and slight tingles all along under his skin. He buzzed with a shaking finger for a mess boy.
“Bring me a meat sandwich, Rasselas—anything, so long as it’s meat—and hot coffee, hot—hot as live steam.”
“Yassuh.”
“I’m going to put my thumb in the coffee and if it don’t blister you’re on report.”
“Hot coffee. Yassuh.”
The trembling fit was dying down when the food came: two thick cold lamb sandwiches, and coffee hidden by its own vapors. Willie wolfed the sandwiches. He took from his desk drawer a cigar which he had received from Horrible, two days earlier; the sailor had passed a box around the wardroom upon being promoted to water tender third. He hesitated, feeling odd about smoking a dead man’s cigar; and then he did smoke it, leaning back in his swivel chair, his feet on the desk. The usual after-pictures came into his mind. He saw the Kamikaze hitting the bridge instead of the main deck and mashing him. He saw himself ripped open by a flying fragment of the ready box; shot through the head by an AA bullet; burned to a grinning half skeleton like the Jap pilot by the explosion of a magazine. The thoughts were fearful and pleasing at once, like a good horror story; they whetted the extreme luxury of being alive and safe and past the hour of danger.
Then it occurred to him that Horrible’s promotion had been his death sentence. Two days ago he had been transferred from the after engine room, which was now entirely undamaged, to the watch in the fireroom where he had died.
With the smoke of the dead sailor’s cigar wreathing around him, Willie passed to thinking about death and life and luck and God. Philosophers are at home with such thoughts, perhaps, but for other people it is actual torture when these concepts—not the words, the realities—break through the crust of daily occurrences and grip the soul. A half hour of such racking meditation can change the ways of a lifetime. Willie Keith crushing the stub in the ashtray was not the Willie who had lit the cigar. That boy was gone for good.
He began writing in longhand the draft of a letter to Horrible’s parents. The phone buzzer rang. It was Keefer, speaking in a quiet, decidedly cordial tone: “Willie, if you’re all squared away would you mind coming up here for a moment?”
“Aye aye, Captain. Right now.”
On the well deck many sailors were perched along the rails in the afternoon breeze, and there was a lively hum of chatter. Willie heard the words “Mr. Keith” repeated several times. The conversation died down when he stepped out of the hatchway. Some of the sailors jumped off the rail. They all regarded him with a look he had not seen on their faces before—directed at him. Long ago he had noticed them looking that way at Captain de Vriess after some neat ship handling. It was a wonderful look. “Hello, Mr. Keith,” several of them said, quite pointlessly, since Willie went in and out of the hatchway twenty times every day without being greeted.
“Hi.” Willie grinned at them, and went to Keefer’s cabin. The novelist was on his bunk in a red bathrobe, resting against a pile of pillows. The sling hung empty around his neck, and the bandaged arm lay along the side of the bunk. He was drinking something dark brown in a water glass. He waved the glass at Willie, slopping the contents over the rim. “Medicinal brandy. Specific for loss of blood, prescribed by the pharmacist’s mate—Also I dare say for nerves tried by a day of heroism. Have some.”
“I will, thanks, Captain. Where is it?”
“Locker under the bunk. Use the glass on the washbowl. Good stuff. Help yourself, and have a seat.”
The brandy ran down Willie’s throat like warm water, without the slightest sting. He rocked back in the swivel chair, enjoying the glow. Keefer said suddenly, “Ever read Lord Jim?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve read it.”
“Good yarn.”
“His best, I’d say.”
“Curiously apropos to today’s events.” The novelist swung his head around heavily and stared at Willie, who kept his face politely blank. “Don’t you think?”
“How, sir?”
“Well, guy jumps overboard when he shouldn’t—commits this one act of impulsive cowardice—and it haunts his whole life—” Keefer drank off his glass. “Pass me the brandy. I just got this by visual. Read it.”
He took the bottle and gave Willie a despatch. CO Caine report Commodore Wharton aboard Pluto 1700.”
“Can you go, sir? Is your arm all right?”
“Hell, it’s just stiff, Willie. A few muscles torn. Nothing. No excuse whatever. I’m afraid I’ll have to go. Will you come with me, please?”
“Certainly, Captain, if you think I’m needed—”
“Well, you know a little more about what went on than I do. Seeing as how I was safely in the drink all the time you were saving my ship—”
“Captain, your decision to abandon ship wasn’t an act of cowardice, there’s no point in your stewing over it. With the whole deckhouse blowing up and men jumping overboard and the flame and smoke and the general obscure picture, any prudent officer might have done the same—”
“You don’t really think that,” Keefer said, looking him straight in the face, and Willie took a swallow of brandy and didn’t answer.
“Nevertheless,” the captain said, “I’ll be everlastingly grateful to you if you’ll say as much to Commodore Wharton.”
“I’ll say it to the commodore.”
After a silence Keefer said, “Why did you stay on board, Willie?”
“Well, Captain, don’t forget, I’d seen the actual damage amidships and you hadn’t. And you were wounded and shocked, and I wasn’t—if things had been the other way around—”
“I would still have jumped.” Keefer threw his head back on the pillows and stared upward. “See Willie, there is one lousy thing about having brains. Makes me worse off than Queeg. He could swallow all his own feeble self-protecting lies because he was a stupid man. But I can analyze. I’m imprisoned forever by the fact that I jumped. It has given me an identity. I can’t forget that fact except by going paranoid like Queeg, and I’m pretty clearheaded. Not much guts, but a lot of brains. The combination is quite possible—in fact maybe there’s a correlation, I don’t know—”
“Captain, pardon me, you’ve been through a hell of a tough time and you’ve lost blood, and nothing you’re saying about yourself makes any sense. You have all the guts anybody needs to—”
“Willie, it was you who left the steel balls on my pillow, wasn’t it?”
Willie looked down at his glass. He had done that one morning after Keefer had rammed a tanker coming alongside and then screamed at the helmsman and put him on report. “I—yes, I did it. I’m sorry, Captain, it was a stupid thing—”
“I want to tell you something, Willie. I feel more sympathy for Queeg than you ever will, unless you get a command. You can’t understand command till you’ve had it. It’s the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. It’s a nightmare, unless you’re an ox. You’re forever teetering along a tiny path of correct decisions and good luck that meanders through an infinite gloom of possible mistakes. At any moment you can commit a hundred manslaughters. An ox like De Vriess doesn’t see that or he doesn’t have the imagination to be bothered by it—and more, he has a dumb oxlike sure-footedness for the right path. Queeg had no brains, but he had nerves and ambition, and it’s no wonder he went gaga. I think I’ve managed to do pretty well—until today—haven’t I?”
The tone of appeal made Willie hot with embarrassment. “Of course, Captain—”
“Well, it’s been a struggle. Exec is nothing. It’s command, command—I don’t know, I might still have bulled through if not for that god-damn out-of-nowhere son of a bitch of a Kamikaze—”
Keefer’s voice cracked, and tears spurted out of his eyes. Willie jumped up, averting his face. “Captain, I’ll come back a little later, you’re not well at all—”
“Oh, stick around, Willie. I’m okay. I just feel goddamn bad about being Lord Tom for life—”
Willie reluctantly leaned against the desk, still not looking at the captain. In a moment Keefer said dryly, “It’s okay, I’m all right now. Have another brandy.”
The tears were gone from his face. He held the bottle out to Willie. “Possibly the most humiliating aspect of the whole thing—I’m wondering whether after all my yapping, all these years, there isn’t an occult wisdom in the Navy’s mysterious ways. They put Roland on carriers, and sentenced me to the Caine. And by some diabolical chance we were both faced with the same test, a Kamikaze fire, and Roland died saving his ship, and I jumped—”
“Captain, you’re reading all kinds of meanings into a random accident. Pull yourself together and forget it. If you’re going to see the commodore at 1700 you ought to start getting ready—Arm bother you?” Keefer was grimacing as he sat up.
“Hurts like hell—that’s another thing, I want to go to the Relief—okay, Willie—” The captain swung his legs out of the bunk, moving his arm carefully. “Have another shot before we go?”
“No, thanks, sir—”
Keefer regarded him appraisingly, with a sullen smile. “I wonder if you realize how much you’ve changed in two years on the Caine?”
“I guess we all have, sir—”
“Not like you. Remember when you left that action despatch in your discarded pants for three days?” Willie grinned. “I never told you, but De Vriess and I had quite a talk about you that night. Curiously enough, it was I who said you were a hopeless case. De Vriess said you would be an outstanding officer eventually. I’ll never know how he could tell. You’ve got yourself a medal, Willie, if my recommendation means anything—well. Thanks for letting me weep into your brandy glass. I feel a lot better for it.” He reached for his trousers.
“Can I help you dress, Captain?”
“No, thanks, Willie—I’m not helpless—not physically. What are they calling me in the wardroom, Old Swandive?” His eyes glinted, and Willie couldn’t help laughing a little.
“Sir, everyone will have forgotten this thing in a week—including yourself—”
“I’ll remember it on my deathbed, if I die in a bed, or wherever I die. Everybody’s life pivots on one or maybe two moments. I had my moment this morning. Well—My mother didn’t raise her boy to be a soldier. I’m still a hell of a good writer, which is something. Whatever Barney Greenwald thought. He probably would have predicted I’d jump. Guess I jumped in the court-martial, too, though I still think I couldn’t have helped Steve any by—Well. Believe I’ll have a last shot if you won’t.” He closed his belt dexterously with one hand, poured, and drank. “It is a very curious feeling for me,” he said, “to be in a situation at last where words can change nothing. First time in my life, or I’m very much mistaken. Better shave, Willie.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Hell, I guess you’ve earned the right to call me Tom again. Even Long Tom—I mean Lord Tom—I believe I am slightly fuzzy as of the moment. Nothing that a little fresh air in the gig won’t fix. Or do we still have a gig? I forget.”
“It looks pretty awful, Captain, but the motor still turns over—”
“Fine.” As Willie put his hand on the doorknob Keefer said, “By the way—” He fumbled in the bookshelf over the desk and pulled out a fat black binder. “Here’s the first twenty chapters of Multitudes. The rest of it is somewhat dampish. Like to look at it while you’re relaxing tonight?”
Willie was astonished. “Why—thanks, sir—I’d love to. I was beginning to think I’d have to buy it to get a look at it—”
“Well, hang you, Willie, I still expect you to buy it, don’t go gypping me on my royalties. Like to know what you think of it, though.”
“I’m sure I’ll like it very much, sir—”
“Well, bring that old comparative-lit mind to bear. And don’t spare my feelings out of military deference.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie went out with the binder under his arm, feeling as though he had lain hands on a top-secret document.
Late that night he wrote to May.