The Caine Mutiny (72 page)

Like the others, Willie began to calculate his chances for getting out of the Navy; but about the decks he kept a stiff face, and pushed the ship’s routine along against the current of merry relaxation among the crew. It annoyed and amused him at once to see the new officers clustering like bugs around the wardroom radio, exclaiming impatiently at the delay in announcing Japan’s surrender. The more recently aboard, it seemed, the louder they complained. The ship’s doctor in particular (the
Caine
had a doctor at last, a June arrival) announced at frequent intervals his entire disgust with the government and the Navy, and expressed his belief that Japan had surrendered a week ago, and the whole thing was being kept secret while laws were hastily drawn up to keep the reserves in service for another couple of years.

On the evening of August 10, a more than ordinarily silly movie was being shown on the forecastle. Willie sat through a reel of it, and then went below. He was on his bunk in his room; reading
Bleak House
, when he heard the jazz music on the radio break off sharply. “We interrupt this program to bring you an important news bulletin-” He leaped to the deck and scampered to the wardroom. It was the surrender announcement: just a couple of sentences, and then the music resumed.

“Thank Christ,” Willie thought, in tremendous exaltation, “I made it. I came out alive.”

There was no noise topside. He wondered whether anybody else on the ship had heard it. He went to the scuttle and peered out at the moonlit harbor and the dark bluish mass of Okinawa. Then he thought, “Keefer will take her to the boneyard. I will never be the captain of a United States warship. I missed.”

A military band blared from the radio,
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
. A single green star shell suddenly burst over Okinawa and floated slowly down near the moon. Then, all at once, an unbelievably brilliant cascade of lights and fireworks began rising from the island: a million crimson streams of tracers, countless blue and white searchlights fanning frantically back and forth, red flares, green flares, white flares, star shells, a Fourth of July display many miles long of ammunition suddenly sprayed to the starry black heavens in a thank-prayer for peace. And a masculine chorus boomed from the radio,

“When Johnny comes marching home again,

Hurrah, hurrah,

We’ll give him a hearty welcome then,

Hurrah, hurrah-”

Now the deck overhead began to thunder with the dancing and jumping of the sailors. And still the bursts of color rose from Okinawa in million-dollar streams, a glory of triumphant waste, and the rattle and roar of the guns came rolling over the water, and the ships in the harbor began firing, too, and then Willie heard the
Caine
’s 20-millimeters rattling as they had rattled at the Kamikaze, making the bulkheads shudder.

“And we’ll all be gay

When Johnny comes marching home.

Oh, when Johnny comes marching home again,

Hurrah, hurrah-”

For an instant Willie was marching up Fifth Avenue in the sunshine in an immense parade of the Navy, and crowds on the sidewalk were screaming cheers, and ticker tape was falling across his face as he marched. He saw the towers of Radio City, and the spire of Saint Patrick’s. His hair prickled on his skull, and he thanked God for having sent him to the
Caine
to fight in the war.

“And we’ll all be gay,

When Johnny comes marching home.”

The vision vanished, and he was staring at the battered radio on the green bulkhead. He said aloud, “Who told those sons of bitches they could fire the 20’s?” He ran topside.

The Navy’s first AlNav announcing a point system for discharge was on the Fox skeds within a week. It caused howls and curses and screams of pain throughout the minesweeper, as though the ship had been hit by a torpedo. Willie scribbled a rapid sum of his points and saw that he would be discharged, according to the AlNav, in February in 1949. The point system was weighted so as to get rid of married men and old men. There was no credit for overseas service or for combat.

He was not disturbed. The AlNav was monstrous, of course, but he was certain that it would be superseded in a couple of weeks, as soon as the wave of anguished screeching had traveled back up the chain of command and splashed over into the press. He could picture clearly what had happened. This point system had been drawn up in wartime and filed away for a remote future; and all at once it had been snatched out of the files and placed on the skeds before anyone troubled to realize its implications. Meantime the world had gone from night to day, from war to peace. Wartime thinking had become instantaneously obsolete, and the Navy was lagging a bit.

Meantime, there was the decrepit
Caine
to worry about. The repair program at Okinawa had halted in chaos. Multi-million-dollar refittings, night-and-day labor without regard to expense, were now things of the past, a past as remote as Gettysburg though only a week away in calendar time. The repair officer of the
Pluto
, a harassed little commander behind a desk piled a foot high with documents, his wrinkled face as gray as mimeograph paper, snarled at Willie, “How the hell do I know what to tell you, Keith?” (It was Willie’s fourth-visit in a week; he had been turned away by the yeoman the first three times.) “Everything is snafued from here to Washington and back.
I
don’t know whether the Bureau will authorize spending another forty cents on a four-piper at this point. Maybe the survey board will just decide to let the ship rot here.” He pointed at a wire basket overflowing with yellow flimsies. “See that? Everyone is a ship with troubles. Want to get on the list? You can be 107, maybe.”

“Sorry to have troubled you, sir,” Willie said. “I realize how snowed under you are-”

The perspiring commander responded at once to the friendly tone. “You don’t know the half of it. Like to help you, Keith. We all want to go home. Look, I’ll send you a couple of chief shipfitters for seventy-two hours. If between them and your crew you can fix those bloody fuel pumps you’ll have a ship to ride home in. That’s all you want, isn’t it?”

When Willie got back to the ship he called the black gang together on the forecastle. “It’s up to you,” he said. “If they decide to survey this bucket we’ll sit on the beach with the dogfaces for a year waiting our chance for a ride back. Fix the pumps and you’ve got your private limousine to take you home, maybe in a week. How about another look at the pumps?”

The pumps were repaired in two days.

An order went out to all the destroyer-minesweepers in the harbor to prepare to go to Tokyo to sweep the harbor in advance of the victorious fleet. The
Caine
wasn’t included. Keefer went with Willie to the MinePac office on the
Terror
. They tried to convince Captain Ramsbeck that they were ready for sea, but the operations officer reluctantly shook his head. “I appreciate your spirit,” he said, “but I’m afraid the
Caine
is washed up. Suppose you had another breakdown en route? This is the typhoon season. Would you like to ride out a typhoon with twelve knots of power?” Willie and Keefer looked at each other with rueful grins of defeat. Standing side by side on the flying bridge that afternoon, they watched the minesweepers stream out of Buckner Bay.

“Well, I would have liked to see Tokyo,” Keefer said. “I think they will write on my tombstone, Almost, but not quite. What movie have we got for tonight?”

“Roy Rogers, Captain.”

“Why does God go to so much trouble just to make me feel lousy? I think I’ll fast for a month and try to get the answer in a vision.”

So the
Caine
swung to its rusted, mossy anchor in an almost empty harbor, and the officers and crew listened to the surrender ceremonies over the radio.

The new point system came out almost exactly when Willie had anticipated it would, early in September. It was a workable, fair plan. It released half the crew of the
Caine
, and also the captain. Willie’s exit date was the first of November. When Keefer saw the AlNav he became tremendously excited. He summoned the executive officer to his cabin. “Ready to take over the ship, Willie?”

“Why-why sure, sir, but who’ll give it to me? I’ve barely got two years at sea-”

“Hell, Willie, you’re more qualified than De Vriess was when he got the
Caine
. Two years of war cruising is like fifteen years of peacetime duty.
I
say you’re qualified. I said so in the June roster of officers. It’s a cinch. We’ll get MinePac to send a despatch to BuPers-if you’re willing. If I wait for the Bureau mill to grind out a relief for me I’ll still be in Okinawa when the war with Russia starts.”

“I-well, sure, I’d
like
to take over, sir-”

The officer personnel section aboard the
Terror
was filled with a milling mob of captains and execs on errands similar to Keefer’s. The language of the AlNav was plain. It was an explosively sensitive reaction of the Navy to a squall of public opinion. Release was mandatory except in cases which endangered the security of the United States. Every exception had to be reported to the Secretary of the Navy in writing, signed by the admiral heading the fleet or force involved.

When the turn of Keefer and Willie came, the personnel officer hastily leafed through the papers and snapped at Willie, “Two years of sea duty and you think you can handle a DMS?”

Keefer interposed, “It’s been pretty intensive duty, sir.”

“Well, all right, that’s not the point. I’m in one hell of a squeeze play,
that’s
the point.
I
have to recommend these reliefs, and
I
take the rap if some silly young red-hot runs his ship up on a rock. And the admiral says don’t recommend anyone who isn’t qualified, or else, and the department says don’t hold back anyone who’s got enough points for release, or else.” He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and glanced at the growling line of officers behind Keefer. “I’ve been getting this double talk all day. Naturally you say he’s qualified, Keefer, you’re all on fire to go home. I’m staying in this outfit. I’ll have to answer for it-”

Keefer said, “He’s up for a Navy Cross, if that’s any help.” He told how Willie had saved the ship-in the Kamikaze disaster. “Well, he sounds like he might be able to handle it at that. I’ll send the despatch. The rest is up to the bureau.”

Three days later the morning Fox sked produced an action message for the
Caine
. Willie had been haunting the radio shack. He carried the sheet to the wardroom and broke the code hastily.

He was captain.

Keefer was all ready to leave; he had been packing since the day the AlNav arrived. Ten minutes after the despatch came the crew was at quarters for the ceremony of transfer of command. Ten minutes after that Willie and Keefer were at the gangway with the ex-captain’s bags. The gig was away exchanging movies. Keefer stared out over the harbor, drumming his fingers on the life line.

“Tom, I sure thought you’d want to take her into the boneyard,” Willie said. “A ride through the Panama Canal and all-you could have stayed on-it would just have been another couple of months, after all-”

“You talk that way because your escape date is November 1. You’ve forgotten what freedom smells like in the nostrils, Willie. It’s like the smell of all the beautiful women and all the good liquor in the world distilled into one essence. It makes you crazy for it. These minutes waiting for the gig seem longer to me than a month under Queeg, which was longer than ten years of normal living. You’ll know what I mean on the last night of October.”

Willie said, “No sentimental ties to the good old
Caine
?”

The novelist’s face wrinkled. He looked around at the rusty deck, at the peeling stacks. The smell of stack gas was strong. Two half-naked sailors were skinning potatoes by the clip shack, cursing each other with monotonous obscenities.

“I’ve hated this ship for thirty-five months, and I feel now as though I’m just beginning to hate it. If I were to stay aboard, it would only be to see how much deeper hate could get for an inanimate object. Not that I really think the
Caine
is inanimate. It’s an iron poltergeist sent into the world by God to ruin my life. And it hasn’t done a bad job. You can lay my ghost, Willie. I’m tired of it- Thank Christ, there’s the gig.”

“Well, Tom, this is it.” They shook hands, and watched silently as the boat drew near. The OOD and the new exec, a lieutenant junior grade who had previously commanded a yard minesweeper, stood at a respectful distance from the two commanding officers.

Willie said, “I guess this is a real parting of the ways. You’re going on to a brilliant career, I know you are. You’re a fine novelist, Tom. I’m going to bury myself at some poky college and that’ll be the end of me. I’m not good for much else.”