The Last Ship (19 page)

“However that may be, I soon rejected the ship thing; the separation. But I have reached a decision . . .”

I waited, listening to the rain; then began, seeming as much a hearer as a speaker of my own words.

“I don’t wish to make too much of this. It is very natural that all sorts of thoughts should . . . these days. One looks around everywhere . . . for whatever might help. My mind—somehow it keeps fastening on the women. They are here. Well . . . a feeling that they are the key . . . the way through . . . that . . .” I hesitated. “This odd sense that . . .” I hesitated again, trying somewhat desperately, I was now aware, not to make the statement sound hopelessly extravagant, above all not a paean, that being the last thing from my intent . . . “Well, that our fate may be in their hands . . . that the women will—could—save us.”

I could feel not just the entire calmness with which he received this pronouncement but an immediate interest altogether different from our previous talk, and quite distanced from my purpose; this one seeming chiefly of intellectual curiosity, as if I had just set forth an interesting proposition, a perhaps bold theorem, though quite possibly a naïve and certainly excessive one, being so entirely untested and unproved, even unprovable; as though he and I were about to explore together a nonetheless fascinating subject of metaphysical and rather abstract character, residing in the higher philosophy, not meant for practical application, and one to challenge and hone the mind, which is always a pleasure. He said, almost as though catchechizing me:

“In what way?”

I could play this, too, simply by coming off of what had been, whatever its other shortcomings, however awkwardly set forth, a serious, even heartfelt, statement. “Perhaps through all those admirable qualities you enumerate, Chaplain.”

“All right, Captain.” Granting me the thinnest of smiles.

Having started, I could not abandon it now—indeed, felt no wish to do so; plunged on.

“Well, this. I do not know. Women heal. They can heal anything. I suppose it starts with that . . . that hypothesis? The simplest of theorems: Men who have women are better than men who don’t.” Instantly I felt I was on dangerous ground with him, the very ground where I judged our eventual conflict would arise. I immediately sheered off from it. “Beyond that . . . just the feeling—and the wondering, yes, just as you say . . . how, in what manner. That if I could find the answer to that, I would have the answer to a great deal of our difficulty. Assuming the thought has any validity to begin with: the women will save us. Then the corollary: Where such power resides, the two must come always together—part and parcel, inseparable. The gift of saving must carry with it also the ability to destroy. Even with God, He has, has to have, both powers. The women will be our salvation . . . or our downfall. The thought . . . that the way in which we handle the fact of their presence will determine everything, one way or the other. They will either save us or tear this ship apart . . . The women . . .”

I stopped a moment and said this: “This sudden power the women have gained over us . . . their awareness of it. Of course, if any of this have the slightest substance, one asks in prudence: What will their price be? I don’t doubt they will have one. Maybe they are waiting for the price to go up. That is usually what happens, one can hardly blame them . . .”

Now I came to a true full stop, shocked that I could have gone so far, fearing that it had come out half apotheosis, half fear of the subject; altogether too grandiose, gone overboard. I sat alarmed at my own prolixity, knowing that I myself had entered, for the second time, whether led by his really rather sinister skill or by the absolute necessity to escape if only for a few moments from my anguished solitude, his confession box; whether I wished to be there or not; aware of the intensity of listening there just by me. And heard only the now-gentle rain, no sound otherwise, only the hush—as though he felt his own absolute silence was at this moment his greatest gift—or perhaps clever tactic. After all, no one could have been more experienced in confessions, in extracting talk from men. I said it then with all abruptness, in rather a softened tone, one that would speak to him of finality.

“The decision I have reached is to let the women decide.”

It was hardly more than a murmur from him. “Of course, Captain. No other way.”

Few things in life are more shocking than complete acceptance where one expected formidable, forceful opposition; one feels a certain sense of collapse within oneself; certainly, hearing that response, I felt the full anticlimax that such a situation brings. (I even half expected a demurral, or at least a considerable surprise, of a naval not a priestly nature—after all he was officer as well as priest—that I, the captain, was prepared to throw over Navy legalities in the matter; there was not the least.) It also brought an abrupt cessation, a weird halt. To, it seemed, everything. We simply waited, mute as ghosts. Though it was not yet noon, the diminishing light through the ports, chattering with rain, left the cabin in shadows. I reached over and switched on the lamp. It made an ungodly noise. I could hear somewhere beyond and above the iterative screeching of rainstorm wind. Then the wind passed in gusts and our concert of the heavens, the fugue developing, once more modulated all around us into that mournful, almost portentous metronome of rain entering the sea. A heavy sense of finality, embracing the decisions both as to the habitations and the women, seemed to reach down and lay hold of us both; of no turning back. At last the priest spoke into that rain-laden silence, and—eerie in its precision of accuracy—into my thoughts.

“Tom . . .” He waited. He was one of the two officers aboard, the other being the doc, who in a matter unwritten anywhere was granted the license, by myself, if he wished so to address me in private. Neither of them often used it. The Jesuit and I, by the way, shared the same first name. And each of us, too, I believe, with our portion of the famous quality ascribed to our apostolic namesake. Doubting Thomases, both . . . “I fear we are headed into heavy seas. Worse, uncharted waters. Heading where men have not been.”

He stopped there, looking at me, and again a silence hung. I could hear returning the quick spasms of rain, drumming the ship:

“And so we have been all along.”

“Not like this. This is something more.”

Yes, looking at him, surely I must have expected something else, adjurations, perhaps, homilies, recourse if not to
Navy Regulations
—which, after all, were my province and concern, and which I had just announced I stood prepared to sweep aside, at least on this matter, then to divine regulations—which were his. It could only be that he had thought the matter through with the same exhaustiveness, and doubtless wakefulness, too, I had given it myself and reached a conclusion identical in its major premise, the only one that held promise, something that would be a nonnegotiable requirement were it to have his blessing, of combining the two, the moral and the practical: The resignation, almost compliance, on his face as before the one now admitted inevitability in our existence told me that; perhaps, I was not so foolish as to think otherwise, our shared conclusion varying only in its details of execution. Those divine regulations we should of a certainty see presently. But I got none of the other major assaults which he was always prepared to mount at once on any proposition where his heart—his God—so dictated. Again I wondered, almost idly, with a faint gnawing suspicion, why not. The prudent thing was to turn away from that, from any questionings it might suggest, to be grateful for his acceptance so far; knowing how much I would need him; therefore use him to the hilt.

“Father,” I said.

Something in my voice. I could sense him look toward me.

“Yes, Tom? What is it?”

I could hear my voice come hard. “Not a day passes but what I think of something. The mutiny, which cost us one hundred and nine hands, two of them women. That passage through the dark and the cold, which cost us fifteen, including three women. Emily Austin. The following
is
for your confession box. Do you know, I think more about the loss of the six women than I do of the one hundred and twenty-one men?”

“I can understand that.”

“So I don’t intend to lose one more woman. It may come to the point where I have to bargain certain things, in a manner ship’s captains customarily do not. I am prepared for that; up to a point; to give at least consideration to almost anything, coming from any hand aboard. Except for one thing. Can we agree as one matter nonnegotiable that whatever happens . . . whatever it takes . . . the women must be protected?”

I heard his voice against the murmuring rain; as if he sensed, too, that here must be dispensed with all indirection, all equivocation; all obliquity; with every firmness, in unshakable resolve, cold and hard as stone.

“As an article of faith, Captain,” he said. “They are our most precious possession. Not the slightest harm can be allowed to come to a single one of them.”

Said as a declaration so lapidary as to require no further discussion.

“I think the men know, know why,” I said. “They are good men. I don’t think they would let anything—well, bad, happen to the women . . . if anyone should try . . . They value them as much as do you or I.”

He spoke as though that, in this matter, went for nothing.

“They may come to value them too much. In the wrong way.” He paused. “The Bixby affair.”

“An aberration,” I said, even as that awful memory flashed through me. “Nevertheless . . .” I sat back and looked at him, this time on a level of eyes. I spoke as a ship’s captain.

“The small arms. I put them under lock and key before the trouble. They still are. I retain the key.”

He received that piece of intelligence as if he were being told the most obvious of details of a routine thing, of proper housekeeping, as though any other procedure would have been not only strange but criminally negligent; his acceptance of the measure so immediate as to make me for a moment wonder if he had heard something that he felt made the action imperatively prudent.

I shrugged. “Unnecessary, I’m sure. These are good men.” I wondered why I had said that again. “Another thing. If anything happens, retribution will be swift and hard. Not reprimand. Not captain’s mast. Not a summary or a special. But a general court-martial. You may feel free to make that clear, along with your gentler methods, at your discretion. If at all necessary, I shall myself.”

He said wryly, yet with that same hard inflexibility in his voice, “Added to the Navy’s, I shall remind them of the Lord’s GCMs.”

I then turned away from it. I found such thoughts distasteful at best—at worst, unworthy, undeserved by a ship’s company as steadfast as had been this one, not once failing to do what was asked of them, and in circumstances to try the hardiest of men’s souls. I wanted to finish up. A course had been set. So get on with it; cast off. I felt a hush even within the sounds of wind and rain, a corner of stillness in which we waited, expectant, as though for a last word, a final thought. I wanted to say, to finish off with: “The numbers are what bother me. The mathematics of it.” And then did not, that being the area where above all others I expected difficulty with him—where realistic details of execution were concerned, not for a moment did I judge that the matter had even begun to be settled. Having arrived at a sort of naval-clerical
pax,
I thought to leave well enough alone, to save for another time that matter of infinite complexity, the one most likely to breed head-on confrontation. Much better not to rush in; to wait, to build on present affinity, however imperfect. I spoke in a voice of accord, of all hope.

“Knowing they will decide it themselves. It should—well, settle, calm the women. I don’t have the evidence but I suspect . . . a certain disquiet among them. Who can say why? Perhaps the idea that these decisions about them were going to be made for them. This should handle that. Knowing that choice, if any, will be in their hands alone.” I waited and said quietly, as something beyond which there was no more to say, “The women are here.”

His reply was as if not articulated, uninterruptive, a whisper of insertion slipping through the rain:

“If you believe in a functioning Providence . . .”

He stopped there and a silence hung. My sensory radar moved at once into an extra state of alertness. His was a voice of shadings, of subtle inflections, of certain varying timbres even, each I had long since discovered meant to convey discrete information, intelligence, judicious appraisal, sidelong suggestion, and to all of which I was carefully attuned, checked out, as to a private cipher. Into it now had come, to my wariness, something the opposite of some of the earlier oppression of our talk. I became aware of a subtle yet distinct change in him. Anxiety—now that the matter had been decided—replaced by anticipation—by, it seemed to me, something akin to eagerness, even fervor. Almost, it seemed, to my astonishment bordering on alarm, a hurry to get on with it. It was my own lurking doubts, these various suspicions, without discernible basis, that I could not understand. I should have been grateful to him—and was; but gratitude mixed with a palpable unease, a question as to motive, as to intent: bringing this hard disquiet into me, its source difficult to identify. I seemed to see a signal flashing danger as clearly as that pennant run up on a ship’s halyard, quickening into alert attention the blood of any seaman. I had the clear conviction of the presence in him of a thought, even of an express design of his own, that he was not choosing to share with me in fair exchange for my putting all of this out in front of him; perhaps only a natural caution at our too-easy agreement. I had never denied him cunning.

“If you believe in a functioning Providence,” he had said.

“They are here,” I said as if he had not spoken.

I was aware that the rain had stopped and I could hear only the immense silence returning. And then suddenly I knew. Why he had raised no objections, floated no divine regulations; that flashing instant when I had felt, and thought my judgment had flown out the port, that he was actually pleased by what was happening; his unaccustomed startlement and dismay that the women, using their seagoing knowledge, might even attempt to depart; his not just willing but rather zealous acceptance of my decision when I had been prepared for perhaps forceful opposition. I knew. The higher purpose.