Ice Brothers (9 page)

“Paul! I've been dying for you to call. What's happening?”

“Well, I got on the ship and everything's going fine. It looks like I won't be going anywhere for a few weeks, and I should be able to get home about one night out of three.”

“Wonderful. Are you coming home now?”

“I have the duty now. Tomorrow or maybe the next night. I'll let you know as soon as I can.”

“Oh, Paul, I miss you so. I've been going crazy alone here. I'm sorry I've been so bitchy and terrible!”

“Honey, you've been fine, Wonderful.”

“No, I've been crazy. It just hit me today that you're going away for a very long time, months, maybe
years
.”

“We'll have a few days together.”

“None of this seemed real to me until you actually left. Paul, this may sound crazy, but I wish I was pregnant. I want to have a baby while you're gone. Hurry home and help me with my problem.”

This sudden passion bewildered Paul, and he felt a tingling sensation in his groin that was almost enough to make him take a taxi to Wellesley immediately, despite Coast Guard regulations. No, that really would be all wrong. Sneaking away for a few minutes while he had the duty was bad enough.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I should be able to get home around six or seven.”

“That seems like ages. Paul, something's happened to me. I feel the way I did that first night for us on the boat. The hell with the future. We only live once.”

“That's right. Look, I had to sneak away to make this call and I have to get back to the ship. Tomorrow night!”

“I'll be waiting. We'll have the house to ourselves. Dad's taking mother to the symphony. I'm going to give them tickets.”

“Great.”

“I love you, Paul. I'll prove that to you.”

“I love you too,” he said, and forced himself to hang up. While he hurried back to the
Arluk
, he tried to imagine why one day of loneliness had worked such a considerable transformation in Sylvia. Was she afraid of losing him forever, and was this her effort to keep him, or did she really love him as much as she had said? No matter—she was still in character. Sylvia had always been the most unpredictable person he had ever known, and now he could hardly wait to get home to her.

As he climbed across the
Nanmak
toward the
Arluk
, he saw that there was some kind of disturbance at the gangway of his ship. Two men were grappling with each other while a third tried to separate them and all were shouting. Naturally something would have to happen during his brief run ashore!

Boarding the
Arluk
, he saw that two seamen were now holding the arms of Cookie, who was struggling and yelling. The Swiss chef's fury was so great that his voice was incomprehensible. Suddenly Paul realized that he was speaking German, a language Paul had learned both from his father and at college.

“Now, my friend, what's the matter?” Paul asked in German.

“Tell those bastards to let go of me,” Cookie yelled in German.

“Let him go,” Paul said to the two seamen in English.

“He'll go wild again,” the taller seaman said. “He's crazy.”

“Will you quiet down if they let you go?” Paul asked in German.

“I'll kill them if they don't. I'll shit in their soup,” Cookie said in German.

“What the hell kind of language is he speaking?” the taller seaman asked.

“He's talking Swiss. Let him go. He'll be all right.”

The seamen took their hands from Cookie's arms. He stood limp and trembling. Suddenly he sat down on the deck.

“You have to realize my situation,” he said in German, sounding curiously calm and reasonable.

“Explain it to me,” Paul said in German.

“How come you're talking German?” Cookie said in German. “Are you a fucking Nazi?”

“I'm talking Swiss the same as you are,” Paul said in German.

“Well, you look like a goddamn Nazi. Have you any identification?” Cookie said, suddenly switching to his broken English. Paul realized that he was not only crazy, but drunk. It also happened that he did not have any identification on him. His orders had been taken by the quartermaster.

“Never mind that,” he said in English. “What's all the trouble here?”

“I insist on seeing your identification,” Cookie said in English with dignity. “You look like a Nazi and you speak perfect German.”

Figuring that the man was so drunk that he wouldn't know the difference, Paul took a card showing that he was a member of the Boston Yacht Club from his wallet and showed it to him. Cookie blinked at it in the dim light.

“All right, you're not a Nazi. Try to understand me. I'm a
chef
. I'm not a goddamn sailor. There's no reason why I can't go ashore when my work is done.”

“Mr. Farmer assigned him to the third watch,” the taller seaman said. “Tonight the third watch has the duty.”

“You goddamn ignorant bastard!” Cookie yelled in German. “I'll shit in your soup.”

A bright floodlight suddenly illuminated the well deck. It came from the
Nanmak
, and looking up, Paul saw a tall, husky lieutenant j.g. standing on the wing of that ship's bridge looking down at them. He looked aloof and his voice was disdainful when he said, “I thought you might want to see what you're doing.”

“Thanks,” Paul said, and to Cookie added in German, “You're too drunk to go ashore tonight. If you don't quiet down and go to your bunk, we will have to lock you up.”

“You've got no place to lock anyone up,” Cookie said in German.

“I'll find a paint locker,” Paul said in the same language. “Be good, Cookie. We are trying to take care of you.”

“If you lock me up, I won't cook,” Cookie said in English.

“Cookie, we all have to follow regulations.”

“Then I'll follow the regulation Coast Guard cookbook. If you go by the book, so will I. How will you like that?” Cookie started to struggle to his feet.

“Cookie,” Paul said, reaching out a hand to help him and putting his arm around him. “We all know that you're the best cook a ship ever had.”

“I'm not a cook, I'm a
chef.
”

“You're the best chef a ship ever had. Even the French Line never had a chef like you. I want to take care of you. Now let me help you to your bunk. Tomorrow we'll get this matter of standing watch all straightened out …”

Grumbling alternately in English and German, Cookie allowed Paul to help him to the forecastle. Struggling free, he went to the galley, took a quart of gin from a flour bin, dusted it off, took several swigs, and carried it to the bottom bunk nearest the galley door. Paul helped him to climb in and took off his shoes. Cookie half sat up in an attempt to finish his gin and passed out, leaving the open bottle on his chest. Paul grabbed it before much spilled, took a swig himself, located the cap on a galley counter and put the bottle back in the flour bin.

When Paul emerged onto the brightly lit well deck, the husky officer was still standing as though at attention on the wing of the
Nanmak
's bridge.

“You can put your light off now,” Paul said with irritation, and stopped himself from adding, “Show's over.”

“Do you mind if I come down and talk to you for a minute?” the officer said. The bright light stayed on.

“If you want,” Paul said.

The officer went into his pilothouse and soon emerged on the well deck of his ship, where he leaned on the rail without coming aboard the
Arluk
. He had a broad, freckled face and his eyes looked pink.

“You're a reserve officer, aren't you?” he said to Paul.

“How did you guess?”

“You've got to learn how to handle enlisted men. You can't just stand there arguing with them like that, lowering yourself to their level.”

“What would you have done?”

“Put the man on report and have him carried to his bunk. Find a way to lock him up if necessary and have him taken ashore to a brig in the morning. No fuss.”

“Then you'd lose the damnedest cook there ever was.”

“It's easy to get cooks,” the lieutenant said disdainfully. “You have to learn to maintain discipline. One incident like that can spread.”

“Thanks for your advice. Now would you mind putting that light out? It hurts my eyes.”

“Men rarely cause trouble in a brightly lit place,” the officer said. “Better leave it on for the night to prevent a recurrence.” He went into the wardroom of his ship.

Paul couldn't think of any regulation which might allow him to shoot out a light on another man's ship. Muttering to himself, he went below to his own wardroom. A steam radiator hissed and it was much too hot. After opening the portholes, he sat down at the table and looked around. It was a bleak, stuffy little room. How many years would he have to spend in it? And why, oh why, hadn't he done what Sylvia wanted, and stayed in college till June instead of hurrying to join up? If he'd done that, he'd have three more whole months to live with his beautiful wife in their little apartment under the eaves of that old colonial house, the memory of which already seemed distant and Utopian. Before his classmates even got in the service, he'd probably be dead, sunk in an Arctic sea by some monstrous German ship.

Almost crying with homesickness, self-pity and regret, Paul climbed into his bunk and quickly slept.

CHAPTER 7

In the morning Cookie seemed alert and energetic as ever, though his eyes were red. As soon as Paul appeared at the table in the forecastle, Cookie brought him freshly squeezed and iced orange juice, croissants, coffee and a mushroom omelet. Paul did not have a chance to do justice to this repast before he heard a fearful thumping on deck and a rising babble of Southern voices.

“Watch out thea, son. What kind of a mothah fucka is this here crazy fishboat anyhow?”

The voices sounded black to Paul, but the men were all white. He got the impression that dozens of sailors, all dressed in soiled and rumpled blue uniforms, were throwing sea bags to the deck of the
Arluk
and jumping aboard. They were led by a fat chief machinist's mate with gold hashmarks up to his elbows.

“What's going on here, Chief?” Paul asked, still wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.

“All these here men have been assigned to this ship,” the chief said. “It sure looks like somebody don't like us Southern boys.”

“Where are you all from?”

“Well, we was all in the brig, and this son of a bitch from personnel came through this morning and picked all us Southern boys for the Greenland Peetrol.”

“Well, I ain't no Southern boy,” a burly gunner's mate whom Paul recognized as the man he had seen with the blonde in the telephone booth said in a New England accent. “You guys are all from the
Cayuga
, ain't you?”

“So what if we are?”

“Well you guys been fucking up ever since you got into port. You the guys that cleaned out the Silver Dollar Bar, ain't you? And ain't you the guys that chased that old tassel girl right out of the Crawford House into the street and around the block? Well, they
told
us all that if we fucked up again we'd land on the Greenland Patrol. They're making an example out of us. You must have fucked up again last night, just like I did.”

“We just got tossed out of the Old Howard,” the chief machinist's mate said. “We didn't cause no damage.”

“You chased the girls on the stage again. I heard about it. We all fucked up and here we are, examples on the Greenland Patrol.”

There was a rising chorus of moans and protestations. Paul was suddenly aware that the aloof lieutenant j.g. was out on the wing of his bridge again, disdainfully watching him.

“All
right!
” Paul said angrily as sea bags bounced all around him and the confusion mounted. “Quiet! You men fall in here on the well deck. I want no more Chinese fire drill. This may look like a fish boat, but she's now a United States Coast Guard cutter. All
right
. Attention!”

Now that they were all lined up at attention, Paul had no idea what to do with them. He decided to give them a speech, pretending he was a marine sergeant in the movies, or maybe a captain in the Foreign Legion.

“All right, you men are brig rats. We'll forget that. All we care is how you act from now on. And if you foul up again, you won't go back to a nice warm brig. We got other ways of handling foul-ups on the Greenland Patrol. Try us and you'll see. Now I'll have bunks assigned to you men. Your first job will be to clean up yourselves and your gear. And do it quietly. The first man who raises a racket will get the first taste of how we handle things on the Greenland Patrol. At ease. Fall out!”

Noticing that Farmer had come from the wardroom to see what was going on, Paul added, “See that these men get settled, Mr. Farmer, and take no nonsense from them.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Farmer said. “Come on, boys, and I'll see you get bunks.”

Paul walked to the wardroom, clicking his heels hard on the pine decks. Green was lying in his bunk studying a copy of
Knight's Modern Seamanship
which Paul had lent to him. “What the hell is going on up there?” he asked.

Paul sat down at the table and suddenly broke into laughter. “I don't know,” he said. “A bunch of guys from the brig came aboard, and I had to straighten them out. I don't know if I'm Captain Bligh, Errol Flynn or Sergeant York, but it seemed to work.”

Paul's bravura act did not work for long, however. The new members of the crew were old Coast Guard hands, and they soon recognized him as a raw reserve officer, Green as a man who knew even less than Paul did about ships, and Farmer as a nice old fisherman who cared nothing about military discipline. When the officers tried to get them to scrub the decks, wash down interior bulkheads and stow the mountains of gear that were constantly being shoved aboard, they cheerfully began the tasks and abandoned them as soon as the officers turned their backs. They bickered constantly with each other and the yard workers, engaged in frequent scuffling matches, carried beer cans and pints of whiskey in their pockets and kept the ship in shambles. Green simply retreated to his bunk, and Farmer sat on the bridge sorrowfully shaking his head. Paul kept yelling at the men more and more and always got instant obedience that lasted only for an instant.