The Sand Pebbles (9 page)

The panic he had felt at noon began creeping over him again. He tried to visualize his own face, and he could not. He knew he had a firm, squarish face and a strong jaw and gray eyes spaced wide under bushy eyebrows, but he could not make himself see it. All he could get was magnified glimpses of the corner of his mouth or the point of his jaw, with lather and a razor scraping, or his hand with a comb parting his short, sandy hair above a vague, wide forehead. He was about to go aft and look in a mirror when the dozing Fang jumped to his feet. Holman saw a slim, erect figure in service whites walking briskly down to the pontoon. It was Lt. Collins.

Lt. Collins returned the new man’s salute and started up the ladder to the boat deck. On impulse he stopped and turned, standing with his face in shadow and looking down at the new man, Holman, in the light beside the log desk.

“Holman, how do you feel about this ship by now?” he asked. “Do you think you’ll like this duty?”

“I like it fine, sir.”

They always said that. They thought they had to.

“Are you sure? Don’t be afraid to speak up.” He made his voice friendly and reassuring.

“I never had living conditions so good in all my life, sir,” Holman said. “I can’t hardly believe yet how good it is on here.”

“I mean the whole ship. The duty. Do you think you will be happy in this ship?”

Holman licked his lips. “When I get used to these topside watches, sir—I’m more used to things down below—I guess I will, sir.”

He was not being candid. Lt. Collins began questioning him. He wanted to discover that puzzling something hinted at but not revealed by Holman’s service record. The man had grown up in a poor family in a small Western town. He had dropped out of high school to join the navy during the war. It was a perfect background for a career man. His frequent transfers Holman explained by saying that he wanted experience with new machinery plants. All his transfers had been at his own request. It did not explain his low marks in leadership contrasting with almost perfect marks in the other categories. There was no direct way to ask him about that.

“Can you say what you really feel about machinery, Holman?”

“It’s real, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

The man pondered. “Well … other ships I been on … military stuff, drills and inspections … in the end, somebody gives you a mark on it.” He was grasping painfully for words to clothe his thought. “I mean, it’s always inside somebody’s head, like. But machinery runs good or bad or it don’t run at all. You can’t fool yourself or anybody else about it. It’s just …
there
. The same for everybody.” He was red and sweating from effort.

“In the end the test of the military stuff is life or death in battle and possibly freedom or slavery for the country which gives one life.”

He said it gently. The man seemed honest in his confusion. Here on my own quarterdeck I meet it again, Lt. Collins thought. There were the men who gave and took death in battle. There were the other men who shuffled papers and cooked beans and such, logistic support for the fighters. The army could keep them separate. In a ship, they all went into battle together. You could not make the distinction between man and man. It had to be made within each man, and each man had
constantly to make it for himself. Military ceremony was a powerful help in that. The distinction was built into a man in his boot training and the military ritual thereafter maintained it.

“You know the twofold nature of duty.”

“Yes, sir. Military is most important.”

He knows it as a verbal formula, Lt. Collins thought. Unconsciously he probably rejects it and that shows up in his behavior in some way that earns him those low marks in leadership. Lt. Collins made his voice firm but kindly.

“San Pablo
is not a Fleet ship, Holman. In Hunan Province it is only by keeping instantly ready to fight and die that we avoid having to do so. No man can be excused.”

“Yes, sir. I never meant—”

“Anyone can learn technical skills. In
San Pablo
Chinese do the dirty work and routine drudgery. Military duty demands a certain spirit of instant readiness to deal in life and death. Only the very best men, and no Chinese, are good enough for that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The men in
San Pablo
are that kind of men. They are all old hands. If you feel that you are not their kind of man, now is the time to say so.”

Holman said nothing. He could probably not admit a thing like that, even to himself. But a strained look was growing on his face. The shoe was pinching.

“We start summer cruising Monday. I still have time to swap you back to the Fleet, if you feel you will not be happy in my ship.”

“Please, no, sir!” Holman said. “I’ll learn what I need to. I’ll measure up, sir.”

It was clear that he meant it. Lt. Collins smiled slightly.

“Very well. I may talk to you again, in a few days.”

He went on up the ladder and stopped outside his cabin, at the boat deck rail. The talk had begun a train of thought in him. That often happened, and he had no one with whom he could talk out such trains of thought. You should keep a journal, he told himself.

The key was death. In Cromwell’s time everybody knew about
death. The church saw to that. But now the people did not like anything that reminded them of death. The naval uniform marked men whose primary purpose in life was to deal in violent death. People would rather not have to know that, even some who wore the uniform. A few years back Josephus Daniels had put chaplains and paymasters into the same uniform as line officers. He was trying to mask the face of death. The current recruiting slogans were pure Josephus Daniels:
Join the navy and learn a trade. Every battleship a school
. It was no wonder the men tended to forget the primary purpose of their lives.

The only true recruiting poster was one they did not use any more. It was Uncle Sam pointing and saying I
need you
. Any man who wanted a better reason than that did not belong in the navy.

Well, the men in
San Pablo
were all right. Chinese handled their logistics and the Sand Pebbles could be pure, dedicated fighting men. If Holman was not one of them, they would know it and they would reject him.
San Pablo’s
isolation was a protection. But the way the times went, with the smart ones back in the States mocking their own history, Holman’s basic confusion could creep unseen into any man. Lt. Collins meant to call all hands aft for a talk before they started the summer cruise. This was the thing to talk about, he decided.

He drummed his fingers on the rail and looked out across the dark water. His mind began forming simple phrases. He went into his cabin to jot a few of them down before he went to bed.

On the quarterdeck, Holman paced anxiously. He had not thought before that he might be shanghaied off the ship. He did not want to go. He did not want to lose that bunk and locker and mess table. So he had lied to Lt. Collins.

Well, he would just have to make it true. If they had no use for him as an engineer, he would have to become a good topside sailor. He resolved to give in on the shaving and do everything else he could to get on the right side of his shipmates. He was going to need their good will after all.

He recognized the scared, qualmish feeling in his stomach. When
you had something to lose, they had a way to put the fear of Christ into you. He could not stop pacing. He was remembering what had happened the only other time in his life when he had had something to lose.

At breakfast Holman talked and tried friendly jokes and after drills he had Clip Clip shave him. The sailors drinking coffee were talking about Red Dog Shanahan, who had just finished two weeks of restriction for getting into a fight with Fleet sailors in Hankow.

“You look pretty rugged,” Farren told Holman, in the barber chair. “You think you and me could take the Reg Dog for a run ashore and keep him out of trouble?”

“Be glad to try,” Holman said.

“One of you can hold his mouth shut and the other one can hold his arms,” Wilsey said. “But who’ll hold his feet?”

“We’ll go to the Hole in the Wall. That’s just up the bank here, beside the dockyard,” Farren told Holman. “We’ll wear shorts, and then we can’t change our minds and go to Hankow. Hankow’s where the Red Dog runs wild.”

The liberty uniform in Hankow was dress whites, because Fleet ships were in port and all sailors ashore had to be dressed alike.

“Sounds good. I’ll go,” Holman said.

“You guys are my elders, if not my betters,” the Red Dog said. “I put myself in your hands.”

“I’ll bet anybody ten dollars you all come back under arrest,” Restorff, the gunner’s mate, said.

“Oh, no, no, no, Gunner!” Farren said. “The gunner always wins his bets,” he explained to Holman. “Don’t bet, Gunner!”

“Can’t pass up easy money,” Restorff said.

Everyone laughed. “I’ll take a dollar of that, Gunner,” Harris said. “I like to see guys get in trouble.”

“Thanks, you kind-hearted shipmates,” Farren said sarcastically. “Harris, you cheap son of a bitch, you could at least of bet him the whole ten dollars.”

“I’ll bet you the other nine, Gunner,” Holman said. He leaned forward out of the barber chair to shake on it.

The Hole in the Wall was a rough, stuffy little board-and-brick leanto and all they had was Horsehead beer served by two dumb and dirty Chinese girls. You could take the girls in back if you wanted to, Farren said. Who the hell wanted to, the Red Dog said. Holman did not talk much. He felt strange, being ashore with two topside sailors, and he knew that being accepted by the crew depended a lot on how he behaved on this first liberty. He would have to be agreeable, spend freely, and be game for anything. The beer was just cool, Limey fashion, and the girls brought chunks of ice to put in the glasses. The Red Dog picked up a chunk of the ice and squinted at it.

“I can see the cholera bugs winking at me,” he said. “They all got slant eyes.”

He began talking about the ice in Hankow. It was clean and cold and crystalline. It tinkled in the glass like the bells of fairyland. The Scotch whisky was smooth as a maiden’s brow and of a flavor so delicate that even the vast vocabulary of Red Dog Shanahan could not do it justice.

“Belay that talk,” Farren said. “We got to make him stop that, Holman. He’s trying to undermine us.”

“Cool, beautiful young Russian princesses. Virgin princesses. Green-eyed and graceful as cats.” The Red Dog sketched them with his hands in the air above the table. “Firm, rose-pointed breasts. Skin
like white rose petals. Curly, warm nests.” His voice and face were ecstatic.

“Holman, we just got to put a sack over his head. We got to, or we’re lost,” Farren said. “He’d get Jesus Christ in trouble, if he had him ashore.”

Holman laughed. Farren reminded him of a big St. Bernard and the Red Dog of a fierce, yapping little terrier.

“You know, I’m awash to the gunwales with this damned warm beer,” he said. “I’d like a shot of whisky.”

“If you great, monstrous bastards are awash, how do you think I feel?” the Red Dog said.

Farren stroked his beard. “Maskee, let’s go back to the ship and change into dress whites,” he said. He leaned to Holman’s ear and whispered, “We’ll shackle the little bastard to his bunk and go without him.”

“Arf! Arf! Arf! I heard that!” The Red Dog jumped up on his chair and pointed accusing forefingers. “It’s mutiny!” he cried. “Shame on you selfish sons of bitches!”

“I was joking. We’ll take you,” Farren said. “Come on aboard and change uniform.”

“I don’t trust you. You ain’t going to trap me back aboard that ship.” The Red Dog turned to Holman. “You look like an honest man with no crap in your blood, Holman,” he said. “Let’s go up to Hankow and leave this bearded traitor here to founder himself.”

“We’d be out of uniform. How about the shore patrol?”

“We’ll go in a car, to the Green Front,” the Red Dog said. “It’s up an alley, and we can hire a kid to watch for the patrol.”

“Okay, I’m game,” Holman said. He stood up.

“We’ll be sorry,” Farren said, standing up too. “You don’t know this little pint of piss yet, Holman. He’s a devil.”

They each took a beer to drink in the car, and it was cooler in the moving car with their shorts and short-sleeved shirts and their white sun helmets with the ship’s name across the front. The driver cursed and honked his way past brown-legged coolies pushing wheelbarrows
and files of coolies with broad bamboo hats and twin baskets of green vegetables slung jouncing from shoulder poles. The road ran along the river bank and into Hankow along the broad, tree-lined bund. To the left, walkways ran down to pontoons with moored steamers and clusters of small craft. Most of the business buildings were of brick, several stories with arcaded verandas, and some had walls around them with gardens inside. It was a big, busy city, and there were many Sikh cops, as in Shanghai. There were five concessions in a row along the river, Farren said, but the German and Russian concessions belonged to the British now, on account of the British won the war. There was a victory monument for the war on the British bund, a lady angel on a pedestal, like the one in Shanghai, and beyond the British bund was the native city. Along the native bund the junks were three and four deep.

The Green Front was a small place with a row of tables along one side and a bar along the other. The floor was damp and it smelled cool and beery. Five sailors in dress whites were eating a meal at one of the tables and no one was at the bar.

“Roll in, you Sand Pebbles!” the bartender yelled when he saw them. “Hi, Farren. Red Dog, who let you out of your cage?”

He was a fat, pink man with thin white hair and a white shirt open at the neck. They introduced him to Holman as Nobby Clarke, a retired machinist’s mate and an old-time river rat. The back bar was stacked with bottles and there was also a stuffed pheasant and a photograph of an old sidewheeler.

“That’s the old
Monocacy
, first gunboat on the river,” Farren told Holman. “When you see them wheels start to go round, it’s a sign you had enough and it’s time to go back to the ship.”