Sweet Reason (29 page)

“You’re four degrees off station, Mister Lustig.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Lustig said. He ducked into the pilot house to adjust the revolutions per minute so that the
Ebersole
would drift back on station.

Whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump — four more Phantoms leapt into the bright sky, wheeled into formation and banked through a wisp of a cloud toward the mainland.

A supremely calm, dulcet-toned voice came over the primary tactical radio circuit from the carrier. “Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera, immediate execute, nine turn, I say again, immediate execute, nine turn, stand by, execute, over.”

Lustig picked up the radio-telephone and said, “This is Elbow Room, roger, out.” Then he called to Carr, who was the helmsman: “Left standard rudder.”

Lustig’s order was carried off in the wind, and Carr turned to de Bovenkamp, who was sulking next to the radar repeater. “Mister Lustig said left, didn’t he?”

Preoccupied with trying to catch the Captain’s eye, de Bovenkamp nodded, and Carr spun the rudder over and brought the Ebersole round ninety degrees to the left, a maneuver that put the destroyer a thousand yards ahead of the carrier. The wind immediately died down.

“Why’d the carrier change course?” the Captain asked.

“Her Foxtrot flag’s dipped, Captain,” Lustig explained. “She’s still got a flight of Phantoms to recover but they’re not due in for another few minutes. She’ll turn back into the wind when they show up.”

Jones sat back in the captain’s chair on the starboard wing of the bridge and beckoned to the Executive Officer, who had just come topside. “All right, XO, now fill me in on what Filmore’s up to, eh?”

“Well, it seems as if your silver star’s come through, Captain — the one we recommended you for after we sank the patrol boat the other morning. Filmore’s going to have Congressman Partain personally pin it on you right smack in the middle of the carrier’s flight deck. I guess he thinks the ceremony will produce some pretty good footage to sort of wind up the Congressman’s visit. They want us alongside to high-line you over as soon as they recover the next flight of Phantoms.”

“Goddamn, that is news,” Jones brightened. Some of the color had seeped back into his face and it made his features more distinct. With mounting enthusiasm he began to go over the details.

“Let’s see, I’ll have to get rid of this sweater and put on a tie, eh? And get True Love up here with my campaign ribbons and my shoes, will you, XO? Oh, and my blue baseball cap. They film these things in color, don’t they? Yes, don’t forget my blue baseball cap with the ‘Swift and Sure’ emblem on it.” Jones pivoted in his chair and looked back at the carrier, riding like the Rock of Gibraltar in the swells of Yankee Station. “She’ll probably come around to this course again when flight ops are over, which will put us dead ahead of her. Hmmmm. I guess the best bet would be to come right and make a full circle and come up from her starboard quarter for the highline transfer, wouldn’t you say so, XO?” Jones squinted at the sea, trying to judge how the wind and waves would affect the approach to the carrier.

“Coming right sounds as if it should do the trick, Skipper,” the XO said. Both men were feeling pretty good now. “I’ll get True Love up here in a jiffy.”

The Captain had already put Band-Aids over his bleeding cuticles and was lacing up his Adlers when the dulcet voice came over the primary tactical circuit again. “Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera, immediate execute, turn nine, I repeat, immediate execute, turn nine, stand by, execute, over.”
Lustig acknowledged the order and brought the
Ebersole
back into the wind, putting it once again on the port beam of the carrier.

“Her Foxtrot’s two blocked,” Lustig said by way of explanation.

A flight of sixteen Phantoms peeled off into a racetrack pattern that took them low over the
Ebersole
and around the far end of the track toward the carrier, where one by one they settled like ducks onto the flight deck. The seventh jet in line had had its landing gear shot away and belly-whopped down, skidding to a stop a few feet from the edge of the flight deck. Instantly dozens of men in brightly colored jerseys swarmed over the wounded airplane. Through binoculars Jones could
see
them lift the pilot out of the cockpit by his armpits, lay him on a stretcher and dogtrot off toward the island that jutted from the flight deck. A yellow tractor pulled the Phantom clear and the rest of the jets, still circling overhead in the racetrack pattern, came on it.

“Her Foxtrot flag’s down, Captain,” Lustig yelled into the wind. “She’s finished flight operations. Ah, there it goes, there goes the Romeo flag — she’s getting ready to receive us alongside.”

“Very well, Mister Lustig,” Jones called, standing near the pilot house door. “I’ll take the conn.”

“The Captain has the conn,” Lustig yelled to Carr on the helm.

“Aye aye, the Captain has the conn,” Carr repeated.

The primary tactical circuit came to life again. “Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera, immediate execute, nine turn, I say again, immediate execute, nine turn, stand by, execute, over.” Lustig picked up the radio-telephone and acknowledged the order.

“Did you get that, Captain?” he yelled.

Jones nodded, then turned toward the pilot house and called into the wind: “Left standard rudder.”

Inside the pilot house Carr looked at de Bovenkamp, who was leaning dejectedly against the radar repeater. “The Captain said left, didn’t he, Mister de Bovenkamp?”

“Right,” de Bovenkamp said, nodding rhythmically and unwrapping another stick of gum.

Carr hesitated for an instant, then shrugged imperceptibly and spun the rudder over right.

Just as the
Ebersole
began to respond to the helm there was a commotion at the top of the inboard ladder leading to the pilot house, and Proper burst through the pilot house onto the open bridge clutching a typewriter to his chest. A huge ring of keys hanging from a lanyard around his neck jingled as he ran. “I found it,” he shrieked, thrusting the typewriter into the Captain’s hands. “I found the mother, I found it, I told you I’d find it and I found it.
And I know who Sweet Reason is
!”

Every eye was riveted on Proper.

“You know who Sweet Reason is?”

Proper nodded excitedly. The Captain looked dumbly at Proper, unable to believe his luck, to believe the whole Sweet Reason business was over, then he glanced down at the typewriter in his hands, then back at Proper, then at de Bovenkamp, who was sliding a stick of gum into his mouth, then at the Executive Officer, but the Executive Officer wasn’t looking at the Captain or Proper or the typewriter, the Executive Officer was staring out past the Captain, out to sea with a look of depthless horror in his eyes, then Proper was staring in the same direction as the Executive Officer with the same look in
his
eyes, and the Captain followed their gaze, knowing all the time what was there, followed it out to sea and saw the aircraft carrier turning into the
Ebersole
, looming over the
Ebersole
. From somewhere behind him came a moan of terror. Pressing the typewriter to his campaign ribbons, nodding as if what he saw merely confirmed what he knew, Captain J. P. Horatio Jones tilted his twitching
head and watched the carrier come on the way he had watched, on more occasions than he liked to remember, the sun come up over the horizon.

Richardson Gets a Little Something for His Troubles

Two decks below the bridge, in the supply office, Richardson finished counting the last stack of bills, checked his total against his ledger, found he was ten dollars over and smilingly slipped the extra bill into his wallet.

Tevepaugh Strikes Up the Single Solitary One-man Band

Facing aft on the torpedo deck in his folding canvas captain’s chair, Tevepaugh felt the
Ebersole
heel over and assumed that they were going alongside for the highline transfer. Cradling his red electric guitar in his arms, he reached down, plugged in the amplifier, and tried a few tentative chords. There was a howling feedback from Tevepaugh’s guitar — an unbearable shriek of fear from the ship itself! Then the 70,000-ton carrier, four city blocks long, plowed into the 2200-ton destroyer, climbed up and over the smaller ship, hammered down on the smaller ship, shattering it on the anvil of the sea.

Commander Filmore Composes the Epilogue

At sunset Commander Whitman Filmore dispatched his lackey Haverhill to shore by helicopter. Haverhill carried with him a satchel containing the film clips of Congressman Partain’s visit to Yankee Station and a news release describing the tragic collision at sea, during flight operations, between one of the greyhounds of the fleet and an aircraft carrier. The destroyer, which sank within minutes of the collision, had unaccountably turned in the wrong direction, putting itself directly in the path of the onrushing carrier. One hundred and fifty-three of the destroyer’s crewmen survived the sinking. Among the 102 dead or missing were Captain J. P. Horatio Jones, the XO, Chaplain Rodgers, Richardson, Lustig, Moore, de Bovenkamp, Boeth, McTigue, Tevepaugh the guitarist, Ohm, Carr, Doc Shapley, Saler the cook, Proper, Czerniakovski-Drpzdzynski, DeFrank, Duffy, Angry Pettis Foreman, Jefferson Waterman, Keys Quinn, the Poet, the Shrink, True Love and Sweet Reason.

Endit.