The Caine Mutiny (11 page)

It occurred to Willie that if Paynter had fallen from the plank he would have been crushed between the two ships. With this picture bright in his mind Willie set foot on the plank and pranced across like a circus acrobat. Halfway, hanging over the open water, he felt the plank heave upward. He leaped for life, and landed on the
Caine
in the arms of the OOD, staggering him.

“Ho! Don’t be so eager,” said the OOD. “You don’t know what you’re jumping into.”

“Rabbitt, this is the long-lost Ensign Keith,” said Paynter. “So I gathered.” Lieutenant (jg) Rabbitt shook Willie’s hand. He was of middle size, with a narrow face and an air of rustic good humor. “Welcome aboard, Keith. Say, Paynter, this Ensign Harding showed up too, half an hour ago.”

“All kinds of new blood,” said Poynter.

The focus of Willie’s mind widened beyond the plank now and took in the quarterdeck of the
Caine
. It was a place of noise, dirt, bad smells, and thug-like strangers. Half a dozen sailors were planking at the rusty deck with metal scrapers. Other sailors were walking past, cursing under crates of cabbages on their backs. One man in a welding mask was burning a bulkhead with a crackling sour-smelling blue flame. All around were patches of new gray paint, patches of old gray paint, patches of green prime coat, and patches of rust. A tangle of snaky hoses, red, black, green, yellow, brown lay all over the deck. The deck was covered with orange peel, fragments of magazines and old rags. Most of the sailors were half naked and wore fantastic beards and haircuts. Oaths, blasphemies, and one recurring four-letter word filled the air like fog.

“God knows where you go,” said Rabbitt. “There are no more bunks in the wardroom.”

“The exec will think of something,” said Paynter.

“Okay, Keith, you’re logged aboard,” said Rabbitt. “ Paynt, will you take him down to the exec?”

“Sure. Follow me, Keith.”

Paynter led Willie down a ladder and through a dark stifling passageway. “This is the half deck.” He opened a door. “This is the wardroom.”

They passed through an untidy rectangular room as wide as the ship, mostly filled by a long table set with a stained cloth, silver, boxes of breakfast cereal, and pitchers of milk. Magazines and books were scattered on the lounging chairs and black leather couch. Willie noted with horror several secret publications among comic-strip books, leg-art magazines, and frayed
Esquires.
Leading forward from the middle of the wardroom was a passageway of staterooms. Paynter entered the first room on the right. “Here’s Keith, sir,” he said, pushing aside the curtain in the doorway. “Keith, this is the executive officer, Lieutenant Gorton.”

An enormously fat, husky young man, nude except for tiny drawers, sat up on a raised bunk, scratching his ribs and yawning. The green bulkheads of the room were decorated with colored cutout pictures of girls in flimsy underwear. “Greetings, Keith. Where the hell you been?” said Lieutenant Gorton in a high voice, and swung mammoth thighs out of the bed. He shook Willie’s hand.

Paynter said, “Where do we put him?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. I’m hungry. Are they bringing some fresh eggs off the beach? Those eggs we got in New Zealand will dissolve your fillings by now.”

“Oh, here’s the captain, maybe he has an idea,” said Paynter, looking off into the passageway. “Sir, Ensign Keith has reported aboard.”

“Collared him, did you? Nice work,” said a voice full of irony and authority, and the captain of the
Caine
came to the doorway. Willie was even more startled by him. The captain was absolutely naked. In one hand he carried a cake of Lifebuoy soap, in the other a lighted cigarette. He had a creased old-young face, blond hair, and a flabby white body. “Welcome aboard, Keith!”

“Thank you, sir.” Willie felt an urge to salute, to bow, in some way to express reverence for supreme authority. But he remembered a regulation about not saluting a superior when he was uncovered. And he had never seen a more uncovered superior than his commanding officer.

Captain de Vriess grinned at Willie’s discomfiture, and scratched his behind with the soap cake. “I hope you know something about communications, Keith.”

“Yes, sir. That’s what I’ve been doing for CincPac while-while waiting for the ship, sir.”

“Good. Paynter, you’re an assistant engineering officer again as of now.”

“Thanks, sir.” Paynter’s gloomy face was suffused with fleeting happiness. He sighed like a horse having a saddle taken off. “Got any idea, Captain, where we stash the new communicator?”

“Did Maryk put a bunk in the clipping shack?”

“Yes, sir. That’s where we’ve stuck this other new one, Harding.”

“Well, tell Maryk to hang another bunk in there.”

“Pretty damn crowded in that clip shack even for one, Captain,” said the exec.

“War is a terrible thing. I’ve got to shower, before I curdle.” Captain de Vriess puffed his cigarette, ground it’ out in an ashtray on the desk made of a three-inch shell, and walked off. The fat lieutenant shrugged, and drew on a pair of tent-like trousers.

“That’s it,” he said. “Take him to the clip shack, Paynt.”

“Sir,” said Willie, “I’m ready to get to work any time.”

Gorton yawned, and regarded Willie with amused eyes. “Don’t burn out any bearings. Just mosey around the ship for a couple of days. Get used to it. It’s going to be your home for a long, long time.”

“Suits me, sir,” said Willie. “I’m due for some sea duty.” He had resigned himself to a stay of six months to a year. It was his year in the wilderness, the ordeal of which his father had written, and he was ready to face it.

“Glad you feel that way,” said the exec. “Who knows, maybe you’ll beat my record. I got sixty-seven months on this bucket, myself.”

Willie divided by twelve and quailed. Lieutenant Gorton had been on the
Caine
for five years.

“There’s something about the DMS outfit,” went on Gorton cheerfully, “that makes the Bureau reluctant to shift personnel. Maybe the file is lost back in Washington. We got two chiefs aboard with more than a hundred months. Captain de Vriess has seventy-one. So you’ll get your sea duty-Well-glad to have you aboard. Take it easy.”

Willie stumbled after Paynter to the clipping shack, a metal box on the main deck about seven feet high, six long, and three wide. A doorway was the only opening. A shelf ran along one side, waist-high, piled with empty clipping belts for machinegun bullets and cases of ammunition. Ensign Harding was sleeping on a bunk which had been recently welded into the wall close to the deck; the weld was still bright and angry-looking. Sweat was pouring off Harding’s face, and his shirt was dark with wet streaks. The temperature in the shack was about 105 degrees.

“Home sweet home,” said Willie.

“This Harding has
Caine
blood in him,” Paynter said. “He’s starting off right- Well, there’ll be some transfers any day. You guys’ll be down in the wardroom right soon.” He started to go.

“Where can I find Mr. Keefer?” said Willie.

“In his sack,” said Paynter.

“I mean later in the day.”

“So do I,” said Paynter, and departed.

Willie wandered around the
Caine
for a couple of hours, poking his nose down ladders and hatchways and into doorways. He was ignored by the sailors as though he were invisible, except when he faced one in a passageway. Then the sailor would flatten automatically against the bulkhead, as though to allow a big animal to pass. Willie’s sight-seeing tour confirmed his first impression. The
Caine
was a pile of junk in the last hours of decay, manned by hoodlums.

He drifted down to the wardroom. Overhead the metal scrapers pounded loudly. The long table was covered with green baize now, and the magazines and books had been shelved. The room was empty except for a very tall skinny colored boy in sweaty white undershirt and trousers, who was listlessly dabbing at the deck with a mop. “I’m the new officer, Ensign Keith,” said Willie. “Might I have a cup of coffee?”

“Yassuh.” The steward’s mate put down the mop, and sauntered to a Silex on a metal bureau in the corner.

“What’s your name?” said Willie.

“Whittaker, suh, steward’s mate second. Cream and sugar, suh?”

“Please.” Willie glanced around. A tarnished brass plaque on the bulkhead informed him that the ship had been named for one Arthur Wingate
Caine
, commander of a destroyer in World War I who had died of wounds received in a gun battle with a German submarine. Above the plaque on a shelf among a lot of naval books was a leather-bound loose-leaf volume,
Ship’s Organization, USS Caine, DMS 22
. Willie took it down. The steward’s mate set the coffee before him.

“How long have you been on the
Caine
, Whittaker?”

“Fo’ months, suh.”

“How do you like it?”

The Negro backed away, his eyes bulging as though Willie had whipped out a knife. “Bes’ ship in de whole Navy, suh.” He grabbed the mop and ran out the door.

The coffee was lukewarm and muddy but Willie drank it. He needed stimulation badly. One hour of sleep had allowed him little recovery from the luau. He read the statistics of the
Caine
blearily. It had been built in 1918 in Rhode Island (“Before I was born,” he muttered). It was 317 feet long and 31 feet wide and could make a flank speed of 30 knots. Upon conversion for minesweeping one of its four stacks and a boiler had been removed to make room for more fuel tanks, thus increasing the cruising radius.

Overhead the clanking became louder; another work party was starting to chip paint. The air in the wardroom was growing hot and foul as the sun rose higher.
The mission of the high-speed minesweeper
, Willie read,
is primarily to sweep in enemy waters ahead of invasion or bombardment forces
. He dropped the book on the table, laid his head on it, and groaned.

“Hullo,” said a voice, “are you Keith or Harding?” The speaker stumbled sleepily past him toward the Silex, dressed in nothing but an athletic supporter. It occurred to Willie that the conventions of modesty aboard the
Caine
were simpler than those among the Iroquois Indians.

“Keith,” he answered.

“Fine. You work for me.”

“You’re Mr. Keefer?”

“Yes.”

The communications officer leaned his back against the bureau and gulped coffee. There was little resemblance to his brother in the long lean face. Tom Keefer was over six feet tall, small-boned and stringy. Deep-set blue eyes with much white showing gave him an intense, wild look. His mouth like Roland’s was wide, but the lips, far from being fleshy, were narrow and pale.

Willie said, “Sir, I know your brother Roland. We were roommates in midshipmen’s school. He’s here in Pearl now at the BOQ.”

“Really? We’ll have to get him down here.” Keefer coolly put down the coffee cup. “Come into my room and tell me about yourself.”

Keefer lived in an iron cubicle crisscrossed with pipes at the head of the passageway. There were two bunks installed against the curving hull, and a desk piled three feet high with books, pamphlets, wire baskets full of papers, and registered publications in a scrambled heap, on top of which was a stack of freshly laundered khakis, socks, and underwear. There was a prone naked figure in the upper bunk.

While the communications officer shaved and dressed, Willie described his days at Furnald Hall with Roland. His eye rambled around the stuffy room. In shelves welded over the desk and along Keefer’s bunk were crammed volumes of poetry, fiction, and philosophy. The collection was impressive; it was like a college list of the Hundred Best Books, somewhat heavy on the modern side with the works of Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Proust, Kafka, Dos Passos, and Freud, with several books on psychoanalysis and a few that bore Catholic publishing house imprints. “You’ve really got the books,” said Willie.

“This life is slow suicide, unless you read.”

“Roland told me you’re a writer.”

“I was trying to be one before the war,” said Keefer, wiping lather off his face with a wet ragged towel.

“Get to do any writing now?”

“Some. Now, about your duties-we’ll make you custodian of registered pubs, and of course there’ll be coding-”

The steward’s mate Whittaker inserted his face through the dusty green curtain. “Chadan,” he said, and withdrew. The mysterious word resurrected the figure in the upper bunk; it rose, thrashed feebly, jumped to the deck, and commenced dressing itself.

“Chadan?” said Willie.

“Chow down, in steward patois-lunch,” said Keefer. “The name of this vegetable with a face is Carmody. Carmody, this is the elusive Mr. Keith.”

“Hello,” said Willie.

“Um,” said the figure, groping for shoes in the bottom of a black closet.

“Come along,” said Keefer, “and break bread with the officers of the
Caine.
There is no escape, Keith. And the bread itself isn’t too terrible.”