At the Midway (53 page)

"You motherfucker!  Don't
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-
"

Gilroy did it again, this time lacing the pipe
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holder's shirt with a long wet streak.

"Give it to him!"

"But
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"

"If he does it again we'll all three go!"

The man with the package studied Gilroy briefly.  "He's crazy enough," he sighed.  Gilroy held the can high, ready to splash everything in sight if either of them made a false move.  "Thieves fall out," the package man murmured as he handed the opium over.

"We're not fucking thieves," Gilroy protested.  "Just fucking dope fiends."  Then he laughed.  "Which don't mean jack shit to you, because you're fucking dead."

Swinging his arm wildly, the fluid spiralled out, hitting the man with the pipe in the eyes. Gilroy kicked the second man in the knee as he charged.  There was a loud crack.  The man fell.  He emptied the can, saw the first flash of ignition.  Then he was out the door, slamming it hard behind him.  For an instant he was afraid he would have to hold it shut as the second man crawled forward and pounded from inside.

"You bastard!  You fucking
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!"

There was deep rolling whoosh as the fire swept the room, turning the two into living torches.  Their screams were cut short.

The explosion bombed Gilroy's ears, blew him back against the corridor wall.  He just missed being seared by flames shooting out.  He'd not crawled six yards before a sharp burst
alla breve
startled him to his feet.  The marine in the corridor was sounding the call for the fire control parties.  He paused, heard the corresponding bugle call forward and knew his message had been received.  He turned to Gilroy.

The stoker was gaping at the deck.  The package had split open in his fall.  A line of opium trailed up the corridor.  The portion that had spilled out when he fell was on fire.  It was impossible to distinguish its odor in the inferno.  Already the smoke and fumes were making the passageway unbearable.

"What the hell is this, grease monkey?" the marine demanded, noting the dark smoldering clumps of opium.

Somehow, the marine was to blame.  Gilroy just knew it.  In grief and rage, he grabbed the unsuspecting man by the neck and slammed him against the wall.  His air choked off, he could not shout for help.  He would have been dead the next instant had it not been for all the laudanum Gilroy had ingested the last few weeks.  It had sapped the stoker's main strength.  His arms quivered like a baby's.

Still, the marine could not push him off.  Nearly twenty years as a fireman had made Gilroy's biceps thick as bandirons.  He was only freed when another marine came up from behind and low
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leveled a punch to Gilroy's kidneys.

"Clear the deck!  Clear the deck!"

Sailors leapt out of the way as the fire control parties shot down the bowels of the ship
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-
and Amos Macklin was caught out of place at the worst possible time.  In the pocket of his white steward uniform was a flask of gin for Seaman Gilroy.

It was the look the stoker had given him the night before that undid him.  Passing in the shadow of the lifeboats
-
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the blackout would not begin until midnight
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-
his eyes had shown with peculiar whiteness.  Piercing eyes.  Evil.

But most unsettling, eyes without recognition.  Gilroy had stared right through him, ghosting past Amos as if he were a wall to be pierced and left behind.  His face was as black as the night beyond the arc lamps.  Turning, Amos could just make out the form of Dr. Singleton.  Gilroy went up to him.  They exchanged words, but Amos could not hear them above the racket of the work crews.

The noise, oddly, increased the sense of isolation.  Whistling in the dark
en masse
. The lights carved out a stark cave of loneliness.  Come midnight, when the blackout went in force, it would be merely emphasis of their remoteness.

Gilroy was about to do something crazy.  Of that Amos was sure.

He'd been relieved when the stoker stopped pestering him for liquor.  He assumed it was a brief respite, that Gilroy had picked up a few bottles in San Francisco and would resume his nagging once they were consumed.

The look he gave Amos seemed to confirm just that.  He was dry.  Time to own up, or Gilroy would report him to Ensign Garrett.  The steward would not have given in to what he perceived as an unspoken command.  Gilroy looked so gaunt and haunted Amos felt he was only a few steps short of death.  If the stoker died, a good chunk of the steward's worries would go with him.

One more pint just might do the job.

He had tried to get some sleep.  Like almost everyone else on board he found the prospect of battle on the morrow pounding his temples, making even a light doze impossible.  Swaying in his hammock, he wondered if Gilroy lay awake also.  If so, he was probably waiting for Amos and scheming his vengeance if Amos did not come.  The attempt to sleep was pointless when thoughts like this preyed on his mind.  Sneaking into the galley, he unlocked the liquor cabinet and filled a pint flask with gin.

He was passing one of the dynamo rooms when the fire alarm was raised.  As men poured through the hatches, he had the fleeting impression they were after him.  But they only wanted him out of the way.  He waited a full minute after they were gone before allowing himself a sigh of relief.  A sigh that was throttled when he saw two marines hauling a man up the corridor.  There was no mistaking the grimy attire and complexion.  The man was a stoker.  As they came close, he recognized Gilroy.  Obviously injured, but the Leathernecks were not treating him gently.  Holding him up by the armpits, they banged his shins painfully as they dragged him across the coaming.

Before reaching the spot where Amos stood they dodged to the side, disappearing into the warrant officers' mess.  Empty this early in the morning, they could only be going in for privacy.  Amos wanted nothing to do with it.  When he heard a cry of pain, he knew he should run back to the liquor cabinet and return the gin to its clear glass bottle.  It was not so much sympathy as curiosity that prompted him to edge in the direction of the hall.  And annoyance.  No sailor took kindly to marines mistreating a mate.

"So who paid you off?  The Japs in California?  Where was it?  San Diego?  San Francisco?  They pay you with dope, you fucking
-
-
"

The sentence ended with a loud slap.

"Don't kill him.  The Navy'll do that for us."

Amos' scalp went cold when he heard the next voice.  It was Gilroy
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yet not Gilroy.  A heavy timbre weighed the voice, shale sliding across shale.  A devil in a sideshow.  "Navy?  You're Navy!"

"Hey, what's that?"

"You fucking jugheads don't think you're Navy.  Well, you are!  You got more saltwater up your ass
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-
"

There was a harsh, dull echo.

"What's that again, grease monkey?"

"Sea
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boy sailors, green as the Seven Seas."

"Hell, leave it.  He set fire to the ship.  He'll hang sure enough."

The man speaking did not seem convinced.  Amos guessed his main concern was that they might be held culpable if they accidentally murdered the stoker.  He peeked into the mess.

And was horrified when Gilroy instantly saw him and shouted, "There's the black bastard at fault.  Goddamn nigger put me up to it!"

The marines exchanged skeptical glances, but one of them nodded at the steward.  "Come over here, boy."

"That's the one fought Hensley the other day.  You're a helluva fighter, boy.  But don't try any tricks with us, or we'll finish you."

A wild fire of terror raced through Amos' vitals.  He could not believe his own stupidity.  The Leathernecks could do almost anything they wanted to him and not one man would care.  If they discovered the flask in his pocket they would have all the moral justification they needed
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not that they needed any.  They could fuck him up proper and he'd be only one more bloody nigger.

"Don't dawdle.  Come here.  We just want to ask you about this shit shoveler."

Amos found himself unable to meet their faces.  He gazed out over the galvanized tables of the mess, gleaming with nickel dullness, like morgue slabs.  The warrant officers' mess.  He'd worked here any number of times since their departure from the Capes.

No.  He had slaved here.

And he was about to act the slave again.  He knew it.  He felt it crawling up inside him, a body of nausea.

"What do you say?  You put this greaser up to setting the paint locker on fire?"

"And mind you, it's murder, too.  I heard the screams."

"Couldn't miss the smell," the first marine added.

"Amos Macklin's his name," Gilroy slurred through his bloody mouth.  The black man could now see one of the reasons for the stoker's strange tone:  One of his front teeth flapped back and forth like a toppled saloon door as he spoke.  "You take him down like you're taking me, he'll tell you.  Goddamn nigger was
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"

He let out a howl as one of the marines punched him in the spine.

"Shut up, greaseback!  All right, boy.  What've you got to say for yourself?"

Dignity abandoned him.  The instant he opened his mouth his voice, normally a rich baritone, became an inarticulate whine.

"I don't know nuffin', marse.  Please, suh, I don't know why he's sayin' doze things."

"Marse!" the marines erupted.  They pointed at each other.  "Marse!  Never been called master before!"

Amos took advantage of their hilarity by begging to be let go.  The flask felt like a burning cross in his pocket.  Even the whites on board were severely punished for carrying unauthorized liquor.  He could only expect worse.  Far worse.  Any moment, he expected it to fall out and crash to the deck, guilt and accusation in one liquid flaming form.  His behavior was no longer voluntary.  The sheer necessity for survival caused the slave to hop out, to break into a cringing song and dance.  Amos Macklin, amazed critic, watched from somewhere else as the chattel bowed, pleaded, shuffled, and all too quickly convinced the marines of his harmlessness.

"Don't let him go!"

His screech earned Gilroy another rough tap from his captors.  As Amos backed out of the mess hall, he heard one of the marines comment, "That boy don't know shit, grease monkey.  You're a self
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made nigger, you are.  And a murderer."

"And a traitor."

0545 Hours

"Where's Grissom? Goddammit, where's my exec?"

Captain Oates was racing down one of the aft passageways when he finally spied the lieutenant trotting towards him.  Seeing Oates, he raised both hands and nodded.

"It's under control...."  He stopped to catch his breath.  He'd been in the thick of the fight against the blaze.  Face and forearms covered with soot, he looked like one of the black crew.  His collar had become a crust of smoke and sweat.  "We lost two men....  They were trapped in the locker.  Ten more were overcome by the smoke and fumes… and something else."

"What do you mean?"

"There's a couple of them I don't think'll pull through."

"But it's under control."

"Yes."  The lieutenant girded himself against Oates' inevitable response to his next words.  "It was sabotage, sir."

"What!"

"And murder, I believe.  That's what the captain of the marines thinks."  He relayed what the marines had learned from Gilroy.  Unquestionably, they had employed their own quick, brutal method of forcing a confession from the stoker.  But the exec did not bother telling Oates of his suspicion.  After all, the
Florida
was his ship.  He would probably have approved.

"You said we lost men to the fumes… and something else?"

"Aye.  I heard a story once about a warehouse fire.  In one of the treaty ports.  There was opium stored inside.  When they tried to put out the fire, they started seeing things...."

"Hallucinations?  My God, are you saying
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"

Grissom braced himself against the corridor wall.  He had inhaled some of the fumes himself.

The captain was not a man who kept his peace when angry or flustered.  "Have you confirmed this?  Have you?"

"The stoker fell asleep soon after.  No one's been able to wake him.  That's what the marines tell me, at least."

"Wake him!  Dammit!  Wake him!  I'll see to it!  He'll know there's a God in Heaven and Hell when I finish with him!  Dammit, what if he's a Jap spy?  We've got to know!"

Turned out by the bugle calls echoing madly through the corridors, sailors had darted to the hatchways to see what was happening
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only to be shoved back by the watch as the damage control parties and marines raced aft.  Baffled and fearful, they wondered if a battle had already been fought and lost.  A concern that was trebled when they saw injured men being carried to the infirmary.