The Sand Pebbles (11 page)

“Oh yes. They always storm the armory,” the Red Dog said.

“Oh, you’re drunk!” she said. She sounded disgusted.

The woman went up to the barricade. The British sailors were lining out kneeling and they had a machine gun on a tripod and a young officer stood behind them with a sword. The plumes of water
were falling back along the street and they wavered and stopped and the firemen fell back through the barricade. After them came the Sikhs and Volunteers, all soaked with water, and they all went inside the compound. The woman went in with them. She turned in the gate to look back at the Sand Pebbles and the Red Dog threw her a kiss.

“Krishe! Gotta heave!” Farren said. His eyes were bulged and glassy.

The waving arms and shaven heads came down the street slowly as a tide makes and their frantic screeching filled the street. The young British officer walked back and forth slapping his leg with his sword. Above the shaven heads was a big sign for Three Castles cigarettes and the sudden crackling, volleying fire chopped through it and down into the crowd. The tripod danced and the machine gun throttled off the screeching like hands around a throat. The crowd was gone except for flopping, lumpish bundles criss-crossing each other on the street, and the firing ceased with a few after-pops.

Farren was heaving and strangling, bent over, hands on stomach, his beard all foul. The sight and smell of it made Holman’s stomach knot and rise. He was not drunk any more.

“Red Dog, take his other arm,” he ordered. “We got to get the hell out of here.”

Around the second corner they ran into the American shore patrol.

The drunk ended officially next day on the quarterdeck. Everyone not concerned with mast kept clear, but the ragged coolies on the pontoon watched it without understanding, as they watched everything on the
San Pablo
. The three prisoners stood in line, hats in hand, facing the log desk, which had been moved across to stand right against the foot of the boat deck ladder. On the back of the log desk, ordinarily hidden, was a weather-stained card lettered:
Shame on you bastards
. It was an old
San Pablo
joke, but the three prisoners and the three chiefs standing in line inboard were very quiet and solemn. Lt. Collins came down the ladder and the chiefs saluted him. The prisoners did not have the privilege of saluting.

Lt. Collins stood on the bottom step, where he could look down
on the prisoners across the log desk. He gave them each in turn a cold, sharp stare. Then he turned his thin, dark face down to the paper on the desk before him.

“You men are all charged with being drunk and out of uniform and with insolence to the shore patrol,” he said quietly. “Have you anything to say?”

Farren spoke for all three. “We just had too much to drink, sir, and we’re sorry now.”

Franks stepped forward. “Farren is a good man, Captain,” he said. “He’s always clean and sober aboard and attentive to duty and very reliable.”

In turn, Lynch and Welbeck stepped forward to say the same things about Holman and Shanahan. Lt. Collins turned his eyes back to the bareheaded prisoners and they were very cold eyes.

“You are not specifically charged with what I consider your most serious offense,” he said. “There was a dangerous riot in progress. You should have placed yourselves under the first military command you encountered. Drunk or sick or asleep, no matter what, you are fundamentally on duty every minute you draw breath.” His voice rapped harsh and cold at them: “There is
no
relief and
no
escape from your military duty!” He slapped the desk for each
no
. “Do you clearly understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” they all said humbly.

“Very well, then.” His voice lost its edge. “Holman, I am sorry to have to spoil your clean record so soon. Farren, your record already leaves much to be desired.” He looked at the Red Dog, dwarfed between Farren and Holman, and a twinkle came into his eye. “Shanahan, it is impossible for you to shock me any more, but I continue to be mildly disappointed in you,” he said. “I have no doubt whatever that, if the truth were known, you started that riot all by yourself.” He paused. “Stay aboard three weeks, all three of you.” A shadowy smile crossed his face, but he quickly hardened it and snapped, “Mast dismissed!” and went back up the ladder.

A few minutes later, drinking coffee in the compartment, Holman knew he was in. They were all calling him “Jake” and wanting to
hear the story of the big drunk again and what the captain said at mast. A well-composed drunk like that one always became a sea story, to be told and retold for years, and Jake Holman was already solidly a part of
San Pablo
folklore. He was a true Sand Pebble and there would be no more question of the captain swapping him back to the Fleet.

It was their last day in Hankow and the skipper was going to make a talk after quarters.

“He gets right fancy in them talks of his,” Burgoyne told Holman at breakfast. “You don’t know how to take it sometimes.”

“Last Thanksgiving he told us how China is like Indian country in the old days in the States,” Farren said. “The businessmen and the missionaries are the settlers.”

“We’re the U.S. Calvary on the plains of Texas,” Wilsey said.

“Prong the U.S. Calvary,” Harris said. “I hate dogfaces.”

“I knew an old soldier once that was an Indian fighter,” Holman said. “We got lots of Indians back where I come from.”

“Prong Indians too,” Harris said. “Pass that jam.”

“It just now strikes me, the treaty ports and concessions are like Indian reservations,” Holman said. “Only it’s the palefaces that are on ’em.”

“All but the missionaries,” Farren said. “The biblebacks are scattered all over hell’s half acre. They’re the ones give us all the trouble.”

“Prong all missionaries twice,” Harris growled.

Wong brought Holman his dozen fried eggs. He explored the new thought as he ate the eggs. He liked new ways of looking at familiar things. He began looking forward to the captain’s talk.

After they made colors Bordelles put them at parade rest and Lt. Collins came to the edge of the grating to talk. As before, Holman was struck by the picture he made in white and gold against the great varnished wheel with the flag rippling red and white above it. Lt. Collins looked down, his thin face unsmiling.

“Tomorrow we begin our summer cruising to show the flag on Tungting Lake and the Hunan rivers,” he said. “At home in America, when today reaches them, it will be Flag Day. They will gather to do honor and hear speeches. For us who wear the uniform, every day is Flag Day. We pay our honor in act and feeling and we have little need of words. But on this one day it will not hurt us to grasp briefly in words the meaning of our flag. That is what I want to talk about this morning.”

He paused. Chinese quarreled noisily on passing junks. As always, ragged coolies watched from the bank.

“Our flag is the symbol of America. I want you to grasp what America
really is,”
Lt. Collins said, nodding for emphasis. “It is more than marks on a map. It is more than buildings and land. America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be. We in
San Pablo
are collectively only a tiny, momentary bit of that structure. How can we, standing here, grasp the
whole
of America?” He made a grasping motion. “Think now of a great cable,” he said, and made a circle with his arms. “The cable has no natural limiting length. It can be spun out forever. We can unlay it into ropes, and the ropes into strands, and the strands into yarns, and none of them have any natural ending. But now let us pull a yarn apart into single fibers—” he made plucking motions with his fingers “—and each man of us can find himself. Each fiber is a tiny, flat, yellowish thing, a foot or a yard long by nature. One American life from birth to death is like a single fiber. Each one is spun into the yarn of a family and the strand of a home town and
the rope of a home state. The states are spun into the great, unending, unbreakable cable that is America.”

His voice deepened on the last words. He paused, to let them think about it. It was a new thought and it fascinated Holman. Just by living your life you wound and you wound yourself into the big cable. The cable grew and grew into the future like a living thing. It was a living thing. The thought fascinated Holman.

“No man, not even President Coolidge, can experience the whole of America directly,” Lt. Collins resumed. “We can only feel it when the strain comes on, the terrible strain of hauling our history into a stormy future. Then the cable springs taut and vibrant. It thins and groans as the water squeezes out and all the fibers press each to each in iron hardness. Even then, we know only the fibers that press against us. But there is another way to know America.”

He paused for a deep breath. The ranks were very quiet.

“We can know America through our flag which is its symbol,” he said quietly. “In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment.”

Holman’s eyes went to the flag. It looked almost alive, streaming and rippling in the breeze off the river. He felt that he had not ever really looked at the flag before.

“Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth,” Lt. Collins was saying. “It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible.”

A foul smell blew across the fantail. It was from a passing string of barges taking liquid Hankow sewage back to the fields that fed
Hankow. Sailors called them
honey barges
. The foul breeze made no difference in the bright, rippling appearance of the flag.

“For us in
San Pablo
every day is Flag Day,” Lt. Collins went on. He was talking easily but earnestly. “Civilians are only morally bound to salute our flag. We are legally bound. All Americans are morally bound to die for our flag, if called upon. Only we are legally bound. Only we live our lives in day to day readiness for that sacrifice. We have sworn our oaths and cut our ties. We have given up wealth and home life, except as
San Pablo
is our home. It marks us. It sets us apart. We are uncomfortable reminders, in time of peace. Those of you who served in the last war will know what I mean.”

Heads nodded along the ranks. Holman nodded too.

“It is said there will be no more war. We must pretend to believe that. But when war comes, it is we who will take the first shock and buy time with our lives. It is we who keep the faith. We are not honored for it. We are called mercenaries on the outposts of empire. But I want to speak for you an epitaph written for an army of mercenaries such as we in
San Pablo.”

He cleared his throat and spoke solemnly:

He paused again. There was some foot shuffling in the ranks. They did not want to take this stuff too personally, Holman knew. Lt. Collins hardened his expression. His eyes bored at them. He seemed to loom above them on the grating. His voice rang harshly.

“We serve the flag. The trade we all follow is the give and take of death. It is for that purpose that the American people maintain us. Any one of us who believes he has a job like any other, for which he draws a money wage, is a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser in the bunk in which he lies down to sleep!”

It shocked them. Holman felt his cheeks burn. That was not the idea he had of himself. All along the ranks they were looking down at their feet.

Lt. Collins talked on, his voice quiet again. He talked about the flag code. There was a lot of it. The honey barges moved by and the air was clean once more. The flag was a Person, Lt. Collins said. The union of stars was the flag’s honor point, its sword arm. You always displayed the flag so that it faced the beholders. There was only one time when the flag turned its back on the beholders. Lt. Collins’ voice became hushed.

“That is at a military funeral, when one of us who has lived and died honorably goes to join the staff of the Great Commander,” he said. “Then our flag lies face down on the coffin and clasps the dead man in its arms. I am not ashamed to believe that in that moment the spirit of the dead man passes directly into our flag. That is our special reward, who keep the military faith.”

He said it quietly, looking at them quietly, and went right on.

“So may we all live and die honorably, each in his own time,” he said. “And now in closing, I want to read you what Calvin Coolidge, our Commander in Chief, has to say about our flag.”

He pulled a white card from his pocket and read: “Alone of all flags, it represents the sovereignty of the people, which endures when all else passes away. Speaking with their voice, it has the sanctity of revelation. He who lives under it and is loyal to it is loyal to truth and justice everywhere. He who lives under it and is disloyal to it is a traitor to the human race everywhere. What could be saved, if the Flag of the American Nation were to perish?”

He sighed and put the card away. He seemed abruptly smaller and less intensely present. He went forward, walking rapidly and looking at no one. Bordelles took over to dismiss the formation.

Afterward, the men stood around on the fantail. They were oddly quiet. Holman waited for someone to say something sarcastic. When men had been touched underneath, that was how they put themselves right again. Holman did not want to be the one to start it. No one started it.