CHAPTER 4

As Paul drove home to show his new uniform to his wife, he could not get out of his mind the picture of his father sitting in a broken chair in the cellar puffing cigar smoke into the furnace. He had always loved his father with an intensity which made him want to cry when he thought about him too much, but he also had done his best, he realized suddenly, to make himself the direct opposite of him. One thing Paul never wanted to do, one thing he had avoided since the age of fifteen, was to take money from his mother, or any woman. As a matter of fact, he could have paid for his own uniforms. While he was driving away from his parents’ house, he began to wonder why he had presented his mother with this bill when he had handled all others himself. Did he somehow resent the fact that she always had tried too hard to drive him toward equaling all the conventional successes of his brother, and now that he had a commission for her to boast about, was he meanly trying to charge her for it?

Perhaps there was an element of that, but he was also worried about his ability to continue the token rent he insisted on paying to his father-in-law for the apartment and the allowance he gave to his wife to enable her to buy clothes. An ensign’s pay was mighty fine compared to that of a private in the army or an apprentice seaman, but it wouldn’t stack up very well against the income of an accomplished campus hustler. Paul wondered what the opportunities for bridge and poker would be in the service. Aboard a ship he would have to be careful, but he might get a chance to visit a few officers’ clubs.

Paul tried to forget his financial worries as he parked in the driveway of Erich’s house and hurried to show his wife his new uniform.

“You look lovely!” Sylvia said, “but you don’t look like my husband.” Then she burst into tears. After calming her, he took her to see a movie, a war film in which Errol Flynn mowed down whole armies.

When they got home Sylvia’s mother told him that his father wanted him to call.

“I got hold of this Mr. Katstein,” Charles said. “I also talked to Bill. Bill is handling the details. All you have to do is sign the master papers and give the keys to Katstein. The bastard will meet you aboard the boat at nine in the morning.”

“Okay,” Paul said. That didn’t seem much of a reply to make to the momentous news that the Valkyrie actually was to be sold to a junkman, but no more words would come.

Paul arrived aboard the Valkyrie an hour early. In the morning fog the graceful hull of the old yawl looked almost ready to sail around the world. This, he told himself, was no time for nostalgia and sentiment. He should pack his personal belongings. There were few—a moss green sweater which Sylvia had left there on her last summer visit, his .30-.30 shark rifle, a cheap sextant he had bought but never actually used. The thought occurred to him that he might take the binnacle and perhaps some of the cabinet doors with their diamond-shaped leaded panes before the buyer saw them, but suddenly he realized that he didn’t want any dusty souvenirs, parts of a corpse, following him around from house to house for the rest of his life. This old yawl, aboard which he had learned to sail and where he had, for better or for worse, wooed and won his wife, was in no danger of being forgotten.

The teak decks were covered with grime, and there was some small pleasure in the thought that he would never have to scrub them again. Going below, he lit a fire in the shipmate range for the last time and poured himself a shot of rum. Once he had told his brother that if they ever did have to sell the yawl to the ship breakers, he would polish her up and deliver her, under full sail. Suddenly he felt old. He had no more impulses at all to undertake a gesture of that kind.

Before long he heard the chugging of a diesel engine close by. Going on deck he saw a small harbor tug emerge from the surrounding fog. Black tires had been hung from her rail as fenders. As she nosed alongside, these squeaked against the white topsides of the yawl and Paul almost yelled in protest before he realized that now of course a few marks wouldn’t make any difference. A seaman on the bow tossed him a line and as he made it fast to a cleat on the yawl, a thin man in a camelhair coat which looked odd in these nautical surroundings stepped from the pilothouse of the tug and climbed nimbly aboard.

“I’m Katstein,” he said. “You Paul Schuman?”

“Yes.”

“Your brother showed me this vessel about a month ago. I just want to make sure she hasn’t been stripped.”

“Nothing has been taken.”

“All the inside ballast still there?”

“All of it.”

“We can get on with the papers then. There’s no use wasting your time or mine.”

They went down to the cabin, which was warm enough now to kill the musty odor. The papers, which had been kept in a drawer of the chart table, were so damp that they were hard to sign.

“I guess that’s it,” Katstein said, giving him a receipt for the documents which he already had prepared, and a certified check made out to Charles R. Schuman for three thousand dollars. “This is the way your brother wanted it handled. Is it okay with you?”

“It’s okay with me.”

“I’m going to tow her over to my yard right away. I don’t want this place to be sending me any bills.”

“Okay.”

“She’s a beautiful old vessel,” Katstein said, running his hand over one of the leaded glass cabinet doors. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore and they never will again.”

“I suppose. Do you want a drink, Mr. Katstein?”

“Don’t mind if I do. I suppose you think I’m stealing this ship from you, don’t you?”

“No one has offered us a better price.”

“The day of these old vessels has gone. No one can afford them these days, even if there wasn’t a war on. If it’s any consolation to you, she won’t be making anybody rich. There’s not enough lead here to bring more than five grand, and I have to get rid of the hull and melt the stuff down.”

“I wish you luck.”

“Maybe they’ll use the lead to make bullets. It sure would be nice if this old keel finished Hitler, wouldn’t it?”

The vision of the old yawl’s keel sailing through the air into Hitler’s face and smashing the dictator shook Paul. He poured himself another drink and refilled Katstein’s glass.

“I guess it would be nice,” he said.

“Well, I’ve got to get going,” Katstein concluded. “Will you help us cast off these lines?”

Paul had already placed the personal belongings he had collected on the painters’ raft. Still carrying his glass of rum, he got aboard the platform. Placing it by the rifle, he paddled ashore. Leaving his possessions on the raft, he walked to the end of the pier and on a signal from the seaman aboard the yawl, let the stern line fall. Slowly he walked around to the end of the other pier and released the bow line. It took several minutes for the men aboard the yawl to coil these heavy lines. Then the tug made a chuffing sound and started to move the old yawl into the mist which shrouded the harbor. At this distance the white hull of the Valkyrie again looked almost new and in the fog her slender spars seemed endlessly tall. Paul watched until the swirls of mist completely obscured her. He tried to think deep thoughts about his youth disappearing into that fog, but they seemed phony as hell. The wind from the harbor was cold. He walked rapidly back to the raft and stood staring at the junk he had gathered there. Why save a rusty rifle when the Coast Guard would give him big guns soon enough? Why have a sextant that was little better than a toy? Paul kicked these items overboard with his right toe and they sank silently into the muddy waters. Only the moss-green sweater and the glass of rum were left. The rum he did not kick overboard. After taking a sip, he studied the glass as though for the first time. It was a cut-glass tumbler, part of a diminishing set that had been aboard the yawl ever since he could remember. It was strange to think that this was the last of the Valkyrie that he had left. The glass would make a good souvenir, but after draining it, he lifted it high above his head and, on impulse, threw it down on the raft. Instead of smashing, the heavy tumbler caromed off the wet wood and sank intact, indestructible to the last. Picking up the moss-green sweater, Paul hurried to his car without a backward glance.