The Caine Mutiny

Willie moved his belongings into Queeg’s room (he could think of it by no other name) and lay down on the bunk. It was an immensely queer sensation. Once, when he was sixteen, his mother had taken him to Europe; during a guided tour of the palace at Versailles, he had lingered behind the crowd of tourists in the imperial bedroom, and had leaped over the velvet rope and lain on Napoleon’s bed. He was reminded of that now as he stretched out on the bunk of Captain Queeg. He smiled at the association, but he understood it. Queeg was once for all the grand historical figure in his life. Not Hitler, not Tojo, but Queeg.

His mind was painfully divided between the thrill of command and the misery of May’s lengthening silence. He wanted so much to share this great news with her! He well knew that the Caine was a dirty old broken-down hulk—and that only because it was such a pitiful caricature of a ship had he been entrusted with it—and yet his blood ran quick with pride. He had risen from his fumbling, incompetent beginnings as Midshipman Keith to the command of a United States warship. Nothing could erase that fact. Luck and merit were mingled in the event, but the event stood. It would be on the records of the Navy so long as the Navy existed.

MY DARLING:

Three months ago I wrote you a very long letter, and I have received no answer. I feel impossibly sheepish about repeating what I said, because I can hardly believe you didn’t receive it. If by some wild chance you didn’t please let me know quickly—you can send a wire to me now, I think—and I will write it again with extra flourishes. But if you got it—and I must believe you probably did—then your silence says everything that has to be said. I will still look for you when I come home. I want to see you face to face.

I am at Okinawa. Today I relieved Keefer as captain. I came through the war unscratched, and, I’m sure, a little better for having been somewhat useful for the first time in my life.

I love you—

WILLIE

Even at anchor, on an idle, forgotten old ship, Willie experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identity, and a stretching out of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of his ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before. He had the sense of having been reduced from an individual to a sort of brain of a composite animal, the crew and ship combined. The reward for these disturbing sensations came when he walked the decks. Power seemed to flow out of the plates into his body. The respectful demeanor of the officers and crew thrust him into a loneliness he had never known, but it wasn’t a frigid loneliness. Through the transparent barrier of manners came the warming unspoken word that his men liked him and believed in him.

He gave them fresh reason to do so in his first week as captain. A typhoon brushed past Okinawa one night, and Willie was on the bridge continuously for thirty hours, maneuvering finely with his engines and rudder to keep the anchor from dragging. It was a horrible night. The newcomers aboard did a lot of worrying and praying; the crewmen who had lived through December 18 were less terrified. When gray dawn broke over the heaving, whitecapped harbor, it revealed a dozen ships stranded on beaches and reefs all around the bay, some high and dry, some lying on their sides in shallow water. One of the wrecks was a DMS. Of course the sight of these unhappy ships made everyone on the Caine feel especially snug and smug and comfortable; and Captan Keith was established as a hero.

New storm warnings kept coming in all day. More typhoons were loose in the South Pacific, and the paths of two of them indicated that they might hit Okinawa. When the waves in the harbor subsided Willie rode over to the Moulton in his gig. The DMS squadron, back from the Tokyo sweep, were ranged in the south anchorage. He burst in on Keggs in his cabin.

“I want to get the hell out of here. MinePac doesn’t know what to do with me. He’s afraid to send me to sea because I might have another breakdown. Come on over to the Terror. Maybe we can talk him into letting both of us go. You can escort me.”

Keggs looked scared and perplexed. “Willie, we don’t originate sailing orders in this outfit.”

“Listen, boy, everything’s broken wide open. None of the big brass knows what to do from day to day. The war’s over. It’s all different—”

“Ed, what can we lose? Wouldn’t you like to be under way for home at 0900 tomorrow?”

They tracked down the operations officer in the wardroom of the Terror, drinking coffee alone at the end of a long table. He greeted Willie with a friendly smile. “How’d you keep that old wreck of yours afloat in the blow, Keith? Well done. Have some coffee. You, too, Keggs.”

The two captains sat on either side of the operations officer. Willie said at once, “Sir, I want to take the Caine back to the States. Now. Today. I don’t want to ride out any more typhoons with the engine plant I’ve got.”

“Wait a minute, Lieutenant. Nobody asked you for suggestions about sailing orders—”

“I am as of the moment. My crew fixed the pumps. Sitting here through the next two typhoons isn’t going to make me any more seaworthy—”

“Well, you can always be surveyed here, you know—there’s a board on the way—”

“But I can still get her home. She has scrap value you’ll lose if you scuttle her here—”

“Well, I don’t blame you for wanting to get home. We all do. But I’m afraid—”

“Sir, how does the admiral feel about the Giles, laying up there on Tsuken Shima on her side? It’s not going to be any credit to Mine Pac to have another major vessel wrecked. The Caine is in no shape to stay. The safe course is to send us out of this typhoon area. I have a crew to think about.”

“Send Keggs along, sir. We’re all up for decommissioning. The high-speed sweeps are finished. Anyway, I won’t break down. My crew will hold her together with chewing gum and baling wire, I swear, so long as the bow is pointing to the States.”

Ramsbeck stirred his coffee, and regarded Willie with wry appreciation. “I’m hanged if you don’t make out a case. We’re up to our ears here, we can’t think of anything—I’ll talk to the admiral.”

Two days later, to the tremendous rejoicing of both crews, the Caine and the Moulton received orders to proceed to the Naval Supply Depot in Bayonne, New Jersey, via Pearl Harbor and the Panama Canal, for decommissioning.

It cost Willie Keith an unexpected pang to steam away from Okinawa. He stood on the bridge looking back at the massive island until the last green hump sank into the sea. At that moment he really sensed the end of the war. He had left his home three years ago and come half around the globe; he had pushed as far as this strange, unknown place; and now he was going back.

He couldn’t get used to steaming at night with lights showing. Every time he glanced at the Moulton and saw the yellow flare from the portholes, the red and green running lights, and the blazing white mast-head light, he was startled. Instinctively he still observed all the black-out regulations; crushed his cigarette before emerging from his cabin, slid through the curtains of the charthouse so as not to leak any rays, and held his fingers over the lens of his flashlight. It was uncanny, too, to be on the bridge at night and not hear the gurgling pings of the sound search. The sight of all his guns untended, trained in, and covered with canvas made him uneasy. For him the sea and the Japanese had been one enemy. He had to keep reminding himself that the vast ocean did not spawn submarines of itself as it did flying fish.

He spent long night hours on the bridge when there was no need of it. The stars and the sea and the ship were slipping from his life. In a couple of years he would no longer be able to tell time to the quarter hour by the angle of the Big Dipper in the heavens. He would forget the exact number of degrees of offset that held the Caine on course in a cross sea. All the patterns fixed in his muscles, like the ability to find the speed indicator buttons in utter blackness, would fade. This very wheelhouse itself, familiar to him as his own body, would soon cease to exist. It was a little death toward which he was steaming.

When they tied up in Pearl Harbor, the first thing Willie did was to go to the Navy Yard’s telephone exchange and put a call through to the candy store in the Bronx. He waited for two hours, slouching on a battered couch and leafing through several tattered picture magazines (one of them had a detailed forecast of how Japan would be invaded, and predicted that the war would end in the spring of 1948). The operator beckoned him to her desk at last and told him that May Wynn was no longer at that number; and the man on the other end didn’t know where she could be reached.

The candy-store proprietor was spluttering. “You really calling from Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor? It isn’t a joke?”

“Look, Mr. Fine, I’m May’s old friend Willie Keith who used to call her all the time. Where is she? Where’s her family?”

“Moved away. Moved away, Mr. Keith. Don’t know where. Five-six months ago. Long time—Shaddup, you kids, I’m talking to Pearl Harbor—”

Back at the ship his desk was piled with mail that had accumulated at Pearl Harbor, most of it official. He turned the envelopes over eagerly one by one, but there was nothing from May. An odd-sized bulky brown envelope from the Bureau of Personnel caught his eye and he opened it. In it was a letter and a little flat maroon box. The box contained a ribbon and a medal—the Bronze Star. The letter was a citation signed by the Secretary of the Navy, praising him for putting out the fire after the suicide attack, and concluding with the formula, Lieutenant Keith’s heroism over and above the call of duty was in the highest traditions of the Naval Service.

He sat and stared at the medal numbly for many minutes. He began to open the official mail. It was the usual mimeographed or printed matter for a while; then he came on a letter which was typed.

From: The Chief of Naval Personnel.

To: Lieutenant Willis Seward Keith, USNR.

Subject: Improper Performance of Duty—

Reprimand for.

Reference: (a) Court-martial Order #7–1945.

Enclosure: (A) Copy of Reference (a).

1. In accordance with reference (a) enclosed, the Bureau finds that your conduct in the matter of the irregular relief of Lieutenant Commander Philip F. Queeg USN of command of the U.S.S. CAINE on 18 December 1944 constituted improper performance of duty.

2. Your attention is directed to the comments of the convening authority, the Bureau, the Judge Advocate General, and the Secretary of the Navy. In accordance with those comments, you are reprimanded.

3. A copy of this letter will be placed in your promotion jacket.

“Well,” thought Willie in a whirl, “a medal and a reprimand. Nice morning’s haul.”

He scanned the close small type of the court-martial order. There was a page and a half of comment by Com Twelve, the convening authority. He judged that it must have been written by Breakstone and signed by the admiral. The acquittal was disapproved. Willie knew this created no danger for Maryk, because he couldn’t be tried again; but it unquestionably meant the end of his naval career.

In the endorsements that followed, the higher authorities all concurred emphatically with Com Twelve’s comments.

“Well, I concur too,” Willie thought. “That makes it unanimous, so far as the case of Lieutenant Keith goes…. Poor Steve.”

He brought out of a drawer the red cardboard clip folder in which he kept the documents of his naval career. There one on top of the other were his orders to Furnald Hall and to the Caine, his commission, his promotions, and his applications for transfer to submarines, ammunition ships, underwater demolition squads, mine-disposal units, secret extra-hazardous duties, and Russian language school, all of which he had submitted in moments of despair during the Queeg year, and all of which Queeg had disapproved. He carefully inserted the citation and the letter of reprimand side by side, and sealed them in, thinking as he did so that his great-grandchildren could puzzle out the inconsistency at their leisure.

Three weeks later, on the morning of the twenty-seventh of October, Willie sat in the cabin, muffled up in his bridge coat, reading Pascal’s Pensées, a book he had pulled out at random from one of the suitcases piled at his feet. His breath smoked. The air streaming through the open porthole was raw and dank. Outside were the shabby sheds of the supply depot, and beyond them the gray muddy flats of Bayonne knobbed with oil tanks. The Caine had been tied up for three days alongside a dock, stripped of its guns, empty of ammunition and fuel. All the paper work was done. It was the end of the trail. The decommissioning ceremony was half an hour off.

He fumbled inside his clothes, drew out a pen, and underlined in ink the words of the book, “Life is a dream, a little more coherent than most.” In the weeks since leaving Pearl Harbor he had felt more and more that he was living in a dream. It didn’t seem possible that he had himself conned a ship through the great locks and steamy green ditches of the Panama Canal; that he had sailed past the coast of Florida and picked out with binoculars the pink stucco home on the shore of Palm Beach where he had spent seven childhood winters; that he had brought a United States ship of war through the Narrows into the harbor of New York, threading among hooting ferryboats and liners, and had seen the spiky skyline and the Statue of Liberty from the bridge of his own ship, he, Captain Keith of the Caine.

His rise to command had seemed queer enough at Okinawa, but there, at least, his Navy identity had still possessed him. Coming to the East Coast, nearing his home, seeing the landmarks of his old life rising up real and unchanged, he had felt his military personality dissolving, drifting away into the sea air like vapor, leaving a residue which was only Willie Keith. It was this transition that made the days and nights dream-like. He was no longer a naval officer—but he was no longer Willie Keith, either. The old personality didn’t fit; it seemed as odd as an outdated fashion.

His exec stood at the threshold and saluted. “Ship’s company is at quarters, Captain.”

He laid aside the book and went out on the forecastle. He returned the crew’s mass salute and stood facing them, on the rusty empty circle where the number-one gun of the Caine had been fastened for thirty years. A stiff wind blew a swampy oily smell over the deck, and flapped the crew’s pea jackets. The sun shone feebly yellow through the gray smoke and mist over the harbor. He had prepared a long, sentimental speech. But he looked around at the faces and his heart became cold. He had nothing to say to these strange ensigns and jg’s. Where were Keefer, Maryk, Harding, Jorgensen, Rabbitt? Where was Ducely? Where was Queeg? The skimpy crew appeared as alien as the officers. All the men released on points were gone. He saw a few familiar faces: Budge, fat and stolid, had ridden all the way; so had Urban and Winston. Most of the others were sullen draftees, married men with children who had been dragged from their homes in the last months of the war.

Willie pulled the decommissioning order out of his pocket and read it aloud in a high, strained voice over the wind. He folded it away and looked around at the ragged thin ranks of the crew. A forlorn end, he thought. A truck rattled past on the dock, and a crane was snorting at a nearby pier. The cold wind stung his eyes. He felt he had to say something.

“Well, most of you are pretty new to the Caine. It’s a broken-down obsolete ship. It steamed through four years of war. It has no unit citation and it achieved nothing spectacular. It was supposed to be a mine-sweeper, but in the whole war it swept six mines. It did every kind of menial fleet duty, mostly several hundred thousand miles of dull escorting. Now it’s a damaged hulk and will probably be broken up. Every hour spent on the Caine was a great hour in all our lives—if you don’t think so now you will later on, more and more. We were all doing part of what had to be done to keep our country existing, not any better than before, just the same old country that we love. We’re all landlubbers who pitted our lives and brains against the sea and the enemy, and did what we were told to do. The hours we spent on the Caine were hours of glory. They are all over. We’ll scatter into the trains and busses now and most of us will go home. But we will remember the Caine, the old ship in which we helped to win the war. Caine duty is the kind of duty that counts. The high-powered stuff just sets the date and place of the victory won by the Caine.

The exec brought him the ragged remnant of the commission pennant. Willie rolled up the narrow bunting and stuffed it in his pocket. He said, “I want the jack, too. Have it wrapped for mailing and bring it to my cabin.”

The chief of the decommissioning detail was waiting at his cabin door. While Willie was handing over the keys and records the yeoman brought him the last logs to sign. Steward’s mates came in and out, taking his bags to the dock. A sailor entered with the wrapped union jack. Willie addressed it to Horrible’s parents, and told the sailor to mail it. At length his chores were done. He went down the abandoned gang-plank, not saluting. There were no colors to salute and no officer of the deck. The Caine was junk.

A yard jeep drove him to the gate, where his mother was waiting in a new tan Cadillac. Mrs. Keith had been driving to Bayonne every day since the arrival of the Caine. It was natural and inevitable now that she take him home. But Willie didn’t like it. “She drove me to the Navy’s gates,” he thought. “Now she’s driving me back home. The little boy is through with the sailor game.”

He had been utterly unsuccessful in his efforts to track down May. She seemed to have vanished from the world. He had called Marty Rubin’s office a dozen times, but the agent was out of town. His mother had uttered not a word about May, and that irritated him, too; he interpreted it as a bland assumption that she had won the fight once for all.

He was quite wrong. Mrs. Keith was avoiding the subject out of fear. Her son made her uneasy. Even since his visit in February he appeared to have aged; the change was in his eyes, his gestures, his bearing, and the very timbre of his voice. From the ruddy careless boy of three years ago he had evolved into a peculiarly gray-toned, nondescript adult. All she wanted was that he come back to live with her in the big empty house. Once he came home, she thought, he might thaw and become more himself again. She was terribly afraid of saying anything that would give him the cue to declare his independence.

“It must be sad to leave your old ship after all these years,” she greeted him.

“Happiest moment of my life,” he growled, aware that he was echoing words of De Vriess spoken two years ago. He slumped glumly beside her, and they drove in silence almost an hour. When they were crossing the Triborough Bridge Willie suddenly said, “I’ve been trying to locate May. She seems to have disappeared. You haven’t heard from her by any chance, have you?”

“It surprised me. I did break with her. I didn’t write for five months after that. Then one day I wrote.” He watched his mother’s face. “Are you very upset?”

“Will you be upset if I marry her? If she’ll have me, I will. That’s definite.”

Mrs. Keith glanced at him for an instant. She was a timorous gray-headed old woman in that look, and Willie suddenly felt warmly sorry for her. Then she turned to the road again, and her determined strong profile was the same as ever. She waited a long time before answering. “You’ve grown up. You know everything I can tell you. If you’re still seeking out May, she must have qualities I’ve never had a chance to observe. I hope she doesn’t hate me.”

“I wouldn’t want to be shut out of your life, whatever you do. I’m rather short on sons.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. She said in an agitated voice, “Why now? You haven’t kissed me since you’ve been back.”

“I’ve been in a fog, Mother. When I find May I’ll be normal again, maybe—”

“Bring her home and let me get to know her. Were you fair to me? Didn’t you hide her away like a cheap liaison? I took her at the value you set on her, Willie. That’s the truth.”

It was a good shot—only partly true, he thought, because his mother’s possessiveness had a violent life of its own—but a fair criticism of himself. He was relieved by his mother’s apparent surrender. “I’ll bring her home, Mother, as soon as I find her.”

He called Rubin’s office as soon as he brought the bags from the car. This time the agent answered. “Willie! It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for a couple of months for you to show up—”

“Where’s May? Is she all right? What are you being so mysterious about? Is she married or something?”

“No, she isn’t married. Look, can’t you come in? It’s kind of important—”

“Come on in. Come to my office. The Brill Building. I’ll wait here for you.”

Rubin’s “office” was a desk in a cluttered room that had four other desks occupied by four other agents. Rubin stood as soon as Willie came in the door, and picked up a loud plaid overcoat draped on the back of his chair. “Hi, Lieutenant. Let’s go where we can talk.”

He said nothing about May as he led Willie along Forty-seventh Street and turned up Seventh Avenue. He asked eager questions about the Kamikazes and minesweeping. Willie interrupted at last. “Look, Marty, I want to know—”

“I know what you want to know. Here we are.” They went through a revolving door into the crowded ornate lobby of a popular tourist hotel. Willie knew it well. He immediately recognized, even after three years, the deodorant perfume that characterized the place; every hotel in New York has its own unchanging smell. Marty led him to a large glass-covered signboard in mid-lobby, and pointed. “There’s your girl. She’s stopping here.”

NOW NIGHTLY IN THE GORGEOUS AZTEC LOUNGE

There was a picture of a saxophonist and May together at the microphone. “Now you know,” Rubin said.

“Said the other one didn’t bring her any luck. She’s been with Feather since about two weeks after you left, Willie. She’s—she’s mixed up with him.”

The words and the tone made Willie very sick. He stared at the saxophonist’s picture. He had rimless glasses, a flat thin stage smile, and a long nose. “He doesn’t look like much—”

“He’s a prime no-good. Married and divorced twice—I’ve been fighting it, but—she just gets sore at me—”

“He caught her on the bounce, Willie. You threw her down pretty hard. He’s a fine musician, he has a lot of moola, and he’s as smart as Einstein about women. He’s a little god in his own crowd. May—well, she’s pretty innocent, Willie, for all her wise-guy line—”

“The story—the story he tells her—is that his last divorce isn’t final yet. Maybe he really wants to marry her—I don’t know—we’re hardly talking any more—”

“Oh, she still pays me the ten percent. She doesn’t have to, we never had anything on paper. I know for a fact Feather advised her to stop paying. But she pays. Not that I ask her. We had a hell of a fight over your letter—sorry I got my nose in your affairs, Willie—but I said something about Feather being a draft dodger, and she wasn’t buying any cracks about Walter at that point—”

They walked to the Aztec Lounge and heard music through the closed doors painted with green-and-yellow feathered serpents. The band was playing Anchors Aweigh. “See, a special welcome for you,” Rubin said. “Come on in.” They slipped through the doors. The big garish room had a wide polished dance floor and a multitude of empty tables. Green paper palms screened the doorway. Through them Willie saw May on the orchestra platform, singing. He was terrifically startled. Her hair was bright blond.

“Let’s wait here awhile,” Rubin said. He leaned against the wall with his hands in his coat pockets, peering at the stage through his thick greenish glasses. “How do you think she looks?”

The music slowed and died in the middle of the number. The leader was rapping with his stick. “Honey, what’s so tough about that phrase?” he shouted. “Let’s take it again from C—”

With an impatient sweep of her head May said, “Walter, I hate this damned song. Why do we have to do it? Such corn—”

“Look, baby, when that parade breaks the place will be jumping with Navy. We’ll be doing it all night—”

The agent grinned. “How unconscious can you get? Don’t you know today’s Navy Day?”

The band struck up again. May sang a few bars and stopped, looking at Feather obstinately. He shrugged and waved the band silent. “Like some coffee, Marie?”

“Break for a half hour,” Feather said to the musicians. They scraped their chairs and walked off the platform, chattering. May threw a camel’s-hair coat around her shoulders. She and Feather came toward the door, walking side by side in an automatic closeness that jarred Willie’s nerves. He stepped out from behind the palms, acutely conscious of his gold-buttoned bridge coat and white scarf and tarnished hat.

The girl staggered back a step, putting her hand on Feather’s arm. Her mouth fell open. She stammered, “Good God, Willie. Did you want me to drop dead? How—how long have you been here?”

“I—Walter, this is Willie Keith—Captain Keith, or Lieutenant Keith—I don’t know, which is it? Are you still captain of that minesweeper?”

Feather held out his hand. “Glad to meet you, Willie. Marie’s told me about you—” They shook hands. Feather was not bad-looking; the lobby picture was unfortunate. He had a pleasant, keen expression. The eyes were wrinkled and shadowed, and the plentiful brown hair had streaks of gray. His grip was firm and his voice strong, good-natured, and attractive.

“Well, how about you two guys joining us?” the bandleader said. “We’re just going to grab a bite—”

“Whatever you want, Marie,” the musician said carelessly. “There isn’t a hell of a lot of time—”

She caressed the bandleader’s hand. “I won’t be long, Walter. You go ahead.”

Feather raised one eyebrow. He nodded, and smiled at Willie. “All dressed up for the parade, Lieutenant?”

May and Willie were alone in the vast dance room painted with Aztec designs. The rows of empty tables and chairs were bleak and mournful. Willie said, “Why the hell did you dye your hair?” His voice made a thin, hollow echo in the room.

“Don’t you like it?” They were confronting each other not two feet apart, like prize fighters.

“Thank you, honey. Every night-club columnist in town has complimented me on the improvement.”

“It doesn’t matter. You said you want to talk to me. This is as good a place as any if you want privacy.”

They went to the nearest table and sat. Willie threw open his coat and pulled his scarf off. May clutched her coat around her. He thought she was shivering. She said, “You look all different.”

“You always hated him. You never believed what a friend he was to you. God knows why he likes you—”

“Didn’t you think I was entitled to an answer? Just one line saying no thanks, I’ve got me a bandleader and I’m a blonde?”

“I don’t have to listen to you get nasty. Just remember, my friend, you kicked me into the gutter. If somebody picked me up what do you care?”

“May, everything I said in the letter still goes.” He wanted to add “I love you,” but he couldn’t. There were too many grinning Aztec masks all around.

The girl’s look softened. “It was a wonderful letter, Willie. I cried over it. I still have it. But you wrote it four months too late.”

A twist of pain crossed Willie’s face. He said flatly, “Are you his mistress?”

She faced him. Her face was so white that her make-up looked garish. “Well, what the devil do you think? What do grown people do when they’re together night and day like me and Walter—play marbles? Everybody knows about us. You and your goddamn stuffy, stupid questions.” Tears stood in her eyes.

Willie could hardly talk. His throat was closed up. “I—all right, all right, May.”

“Not necessarily—I just—” He leaned his head on a fist. “Give me ten seconds to get used to it—”

Willie looked at her and nodded. “Okay, it’s absorbed. Will you marry me?”

“Now you’re being noble. Nobility is your long suit. You’ll think better of it in the morning and back out gracefully—”

“May listen, I love you, and I always will. Every name you call me I deserve. Everything that’s happened is my fault. We might have had a perfect love, the springtime thing that’s in all the books. I wrecked that. But you and I belong to each other, I know that.” He took her hand. “If you love me, May, marry me.”

May didn’t take her hand away. He thought he felt a little pressure. The blond hair troubled him very much. He tried not to see it. “What changed you, Willie? You’re different, really you are.”

“I almost died, and I realized that all I regretted was you.” He knew it was a good speech, but to himself he was wondering whether he really wanted her after all. But the momentum of his emotions was impossible to arrest. May was inside this creature somewhere and he was going to have May.

She said wearily, “Willie, what do you want me to do? Come to a college with you on the GI bill and make chops on an electric grill for you and wash diapers and talk about books? I’m making two-fifty a week steady.”

He leaned to her and kissed her. Her lips smiled under the kiss. He jumped to his feet, pulled her up, and kissed her passionately, and this time she responded in the old way. She leaned back in his arms, and said huskily, “Amazing. That still works.”

“Not by a long shot. Sit down, beautiful sailor.” She pushed him into his chair and sat, and put her hand over her eyes. “However, it makes for confusion, a little bit, I’ll say that. Surprises me—”

“If you call love what we had, those things don’t happen again. And thank God for that, I say.”

“You can’t kiss two people the way you just kissed me. You’re not in love with him.”

“You could always talk fast. Be honest, Willie, what’s the point of coming back out of nowhere like this? It’s all dirty and broken and finished. It was wonderful but you ruined it.”

“It isn’t all sex. Our minds run the same way. We’re talking just as we always did. Even these painful things we’re saying are alive and worth hearing and exciting, because we’re saying them to each other—”

“No, I’ll go into business if you really want it. I can make a go of whatever I put my hand to—”

“I do, and I think you’re talking through your hat about money. You’re stalling.”

May looked bewildered and desperate. “Don’t you know what a horrible beating I took from you? I thought our love was good and dead. I was glad of it—”

She scrutinized his face coldly. “Okay, since you’re being so noble I feel like telling you something. I don’t care if you believe it and I don’t intend it to change anything. Just so’s you know there are two noble people in this deal. I haven’t slept with Walter. So there’s no question of rescuing the poor lost waif.” She grinned sarcastically at his stunned look. “Too much for you to swallow, no doubt. I told you, I don’t care—”

“Not that he didn’t try, God knows, or doesn’t keep trying in his nice way. But there’s a catch. He really wants to marry me. And he’s not a grabbing college boy. Seems he isn’t divorced yet. And I have this coarse Catholic prejudice against getting into bed with a married man. Nobody else would believe this, no reason why you should—”

“You’re still thinking in Navy terms. What can civilized people do in the afternoon?”

She suddenly laughed aloud, richly and deeply. “You fool. I said civilized people, not Frenchmen.” She looked at him with a flash of the gaiety that had been their way together. “You know, you’re still Willie, after all. You looked so damn forbidding there for a while—”

“It was the hair, May. It threw me completely. You had the most beautiful hair in the world—”

“I know you liked it. It was Walter’s idea. He’s cold-blooded about it. He’s taken surveys and everything. The dopes like their singers blond, that’s all.” She put her hands to her hair. “Is it really so awful? Do I look like a tramp or something?”

“Sweetheart, my love, stay blond the rest of your life. I don’t even know what you look like. I love you.”

He told her the story of the Kamikaze, watching her eyes. The look in them was familiar. He thought May was glancing out through the windows of the singer. She was still there.

“I got this for my colossal heroism.” He pulled the Bronze Star out of his pocket, opened the box, and showed it to her. May’s eyes gleamed in admiration. “Here, take it.”

“I want you to have it. That’s the only good I’ll ever get out of it—”

“Not now. Put it away. I don’t know, maybe another time—it’s—Thanks, but put it in your pocket.”

He did, and they looked at each other. She said after a while, “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“We might try another kiss. As long as you’re a hero.” She stood, pushed aside his coat, and clung to him, kissing hard. With her face against his shoulder she said faintly, “I always did think I would like to have your kids—before. I—I don’t feel that way about Walter, it’s different—Willie, this thing would need an iron lung and—and then I don’t know—you’d never forget Walter—neither would I—honestly, you’re being hard on me. I was all back in one piece until an hour ago—”

“Happy? Happy is when you don’t have a broken leg, so far as I know.” She began to cry.

She pushed herself away from him suddenly and pulled a mirror out of her coat pocket. “God, if Walter sees me in this condition, things will really start popping.” She began to work hurriedly at her make-up. “Willie, you devil, you’ve never been anything but trouble for me, you’re my haunt.” Powder flew in little clouds from the puff. “Imagine you wanting to raise the kids Catholic! That’s the point in the letter where I started to cry—it was so absurd, talking about the kids. What kids?… Look at those eyes. Burnt holes—” Some musicians came strolling through the curtains on the stage. May glanced at them over her shoulder. Her smile faded and her face set in a businesslike look. She put her make-up away. Willie said quickly, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Oh, sure, why not? I’ll have lunch with you. But I have to make records at three-thirty.”

“Willie, don’t start pressing me. And don’t start building things in your head. This talking has gone all wrong—I feel drunk—it proves nothing—Look, do me a favor and wipe off that lipstick—” She looked uneasily at the musicians again.

He stepped to her side and said in a low voice, “I love you. We’ll be happy. Not comfortable. Happy. Not two-fifty a week. Happy. Happy in love.”

Willie said, “I also like your eyes and your face and your voice and your mouth. I don’t want to leave you. Make it breakfast instead of lunch, breakfast at seven o’clock. I’ll check into this hotel so I can be within a few floors of you—”

“No, no, not breakfast. Don’t check in. Don’t be crazy. The war’s over, there’s time, all kinds of time. Willie, get that look off your face, and go away, for God’s sake, I still have to work—” She turned away abruptly, trembling, and walked toward the stage, hugging her coat about her.

The door opened and Walter Feather came in. “Hi, Lieutenant. If you want to see the Navy parade, it’s coming down Fifth Avenue now. You can hear the drums in the street.”

They faced each other for a moment, and there was something in the bandleader’s face that unaccountably reminded Willie of Tom Keefer—the mocking condescension perhaps, or perhaps a softness under the brightness. He felt encouraged. He had matched Keefer.

“Thanks, Feather. I guess I’ll go have a look at it.” He glanced at the stage. May was watching them, holding a sheet of music. He gestured good-by to her, and she barely nodded. He went out into the street.

Brass-band music was echoing down the side streets. He hurried to Fifth Avenue, worked to the front of the crowd, and watched the Navy’s blue ranks marching by. The music made him straighten up in his heavy bridge coat. But he felt no regret at being on the sidelines. His mind was full of the fight that lay ahead. He was going to make May his wife. He did not know what manner of life they could find together, he did not even know whether they would be happy, and he did not care now. He was going to make May his wife.

Torn paper was flying in the air over the victorious marchers; and now and then a scrap drifted down and brushed the face of the last captain of the Caine.

40

The Last Captain of the Caine

NOW NIGHTLY IN THE GORGEOUS AZTEC LOUNGE