The Last Ship (43 page)

“They did these animal radiation tests at a place out in West Texas. Amarillo, Texas—it was the end of civilization,” he commented. Selmon was from Boston. “The Wild West. They were a damned sight more secret than they ever needed to be—but then everything was. Secrecy was a disease. They picked up our whole class and planted us down there for a full month. Just so we could see it for ourselves. They didn’t, couldn’t, try it on everything. Rhinoceros, for example. Lions. Wildebeest. Not many of those in Texas. But almost every domesticated, or semi-domesticated, you could think of. Pigs. Sheep. Cattle of assorted breeds—to find out whether there were differences in the amounts a Hereford, a Charolais, a Santa Gertrudis, or a Brahmin could take—they actually tested, compared those four. Do you know what animal of all turned out to have the highest tolerance?”

“No idea.”

“Prairie dogs. Plenty of those around Amarillo, Texas.”

“Prairie dogs? How odd. Anyone find out why?”

“Not the foggiest. One speculation—a frivolous one basically—was that they spent so much time underground.”

“Amarillo, Texas,” I mused absently. “I believe that’s where they put the things together. Place called Pantax. Any connection between the location of that industry and the animal tests being conducted there?”

“As a matter of fact there was. The radioactive ingredients being so conveniently at hand for the exposures.”

“Prairie dogs,” I reflected. “Who would ever have thought. Something rather profound in that if I could think what it is.”

Again he smiled thinly. “I always felt so, sir.”

“It would be interesting to know how giraffes fare in comparison with prairie dogs.”

“Yes, too bad we never learned. No giraffes in Amarillo, Texas.”

 *  *  * 

My choice would have been to find a couple of cows, along with a not very large bull, but I felt certain that, however these ranked on the radiation ladder, they would never make it on the nautical ladder, aboard ship: certainly not on a destroyer. Cows would insist on larger and more commodious vessels. If not cows, why not goats? They would suit my purpose just as well. Somehow I had the feeling, with no shred of evidence or knowledge to back it up, that they would also make better sailors. I had checked the matter with Selmon. Were goats among those tested? Oh, yes. Plenty of goats in Texas. How did they rank? They had done quite well in the experiments, coming out at the higher levels of tolerance. I pressed my inquiry. If we found living goats would it be safe to take a couple aboard? Yes, provided they had not already reached unacceptable levels. What about their milk? The probabilities were these: Their milk would not be safe to drink immediately. But as their radiation levels diminished, in time it should be perfectly so. All these responses he gave me readily in conversational tones. Another thing that I appreciated in Selmon was his invincible lack of surprise at any matter put by myself to him and his absence of all nosiness, meddlesomeness. Of course, lieutenants (jg) are not given to interrogating their captains, and I was aware that inwardly he might be teeming with surprise and questions, wondering intently what we might be wanting with goats. Or maybe he had even guessed—he was, as I have said, a man of percipience.

I had high hopes of finding them, especially after Selmon’s disquisition on their absorption capacity. I had traveled extensively in the Mediterranean during my two-year stint of shore duty at the NATO command in Naples, making dedicated use of that assignment to explore at the Navy’s expense every nook and corner of a sea I loved above all others. People are not generally aware of the numbers of the islands of the Mediterranean. Of course, everyone knows of the celebrated ones—Malta, Sicily, the Greek islands—but how many know of Gorgona, of Ponziane, of Ustica, of Pelagie, Lampione, and Lampedusa? There are scores of such islands popping up here and there on the blue plain of that sea, islands that few outsiders ever touch; sparsely populated for the most part, a fair number unpopulated at all, at least by human beings. Most of them decidedly hilly and rocky; it may be due to these topographical characteristics, actually favored by him, that there is no life so indigenous to the islands of the Mediterranean as the goat. He is everywhere, in every variety. And has been there, as we know from reading the ancient Greeks—the goat, I always felt, was clearly the favorite animal of men like Pindar and Hesiod—more or less always. Indeed, the animal of the gods. Present and accounted for in how many friezes, in how many tapestries I had seen with my own eyes—at Patmos, at Rhodes, and a dozen other Greek gardens: Were not goats the one animal always certain to be around chewing the grass on Parnassus’ slopes? In view of what Selmon had said, the Amarillo findings, they must be somewhere, on some island or another. If we wanted them we should have goats. I wanted them. Two. The Mediterranean, if indeed we were forced to put it behind us, cross it off, could well be our last chance to procure an animal that might turn out to be not just an asset but an urgent need in our future existence.

As we moved across the sea I ordered specific course changes that would bring us into waters I knew to have islands set in them. From the moment we had entered the Mediterranean I had ringed the ship with lookouts, as I have noted elsewhere—we were looking for other ships, for life ashore—equipped, each lookout, with 7x50 binoculars and with a sound-powered phone to communicate instantly to the bridge anything he raised. In addition the Big Eyes was now constantly manned. I shared my new intention only to the necessary degree, merely alerting all lookouts now to keep a sharp eye out for goats on all islands we passed. To these I always brought us close inshore. And one day one of the lookouts sang out, “Goats on the starboard bow.”

 *  *  * 

We had steered, staying well off, by the island of Sicily, standing in the distance like nothing so much as a black sore festering in the blue sea. One wished it could sink into it, rather to leave nothing than this, and thus be put out of its misery; remembering, in my case, from NATO duty in Naples, from firsthand inspection, how the island was loaded with missiles. It happened on Isola di Linosa, lying about a third of the way between Africa and Sicily, and we took a boat in with a small party I had carefully selected. Very rugged hills covered with flourishing green grass and flowers of assorted colors, rising closely above a strip of powdery white beach of negligible depth. Nobody in sight. It was a pretty day, a gentle warmth flowing down from a sky where a few white billows of fat cumulus rode lazily against the azure. We could see the ship standing patiently out, gray-blue and immobile, sole lord of a gray-blue sea glittering in the still sunshine. A lookout had spotted them somewhere up there. Presently came from the heights their distinctive bleating sound. We looked up. A small herd of them, perhaps a dozen in number, had approached and stood just above us, their heads poked out in a leaning-over position, gazing straight down with a Parnassian hauteur and a contained curiosity at these visitors who had invaded what they seemed to regard as their private property. Then, dismissing us as of no interest, unimportant mortals, they pulled their heads back, bent, and began the serious business of munching the grass, in their digestive course following the green patches down the hill nearer to us, sure-footed on the steepish incline, ignoring us wholly. We stood conferring on the sand.

“Gunner,” I said, “do you think you could wrestle down a couple of those goats?”

“Well, sir,” Delaney said thoughtfully. “I’ve wrestled down goats before. But goats are a very tough animal, Captain.”

I looked at the huge Preston whom I had purposively brought along, as I had Delaney. “Then perhaps you should take Preston here with you. See if you can bring back two.”

“Two, sir?”

“A female and a male goat. I would appreciate that.”

A certain look of enigma held Delaney’s face. Then something like the remote glimmering of a comprehension—I could not be sure.

“Aye, sir. A nanny and a billy,” he gently corrected my goat terminology.

The gunner’s mate turned and picked four short lines out of the boat.

“Preston,” he said with the authority of his Missouri farm boy’s background, “bear in mind that goats are a very independent animal. They’re nobody’s patsies.”

The boatswain’s mate stood immense and impassive, as if it were beneath his dignity to counter any suggestion that he might have difficulty dealing with a goat. Delaney continued in educatory tones.

“What they are partial to is being scratched between the ears—not too hard. A goat takes that as a very friendly sign. Just keep scratching him there and you should be all right. I’ll do the tying while you do the holding—and the scratching. Got that, Boats?
Between
the ears.”

“Shall we get on with carrying out the captain’s order?” the boatswain’s mate said evenly. “Before they take off while we’re going to school about them?”

“Right. Let’s shove off.”

The gunner’s mate carrying the lines, the two men ascended the hill. The goats, hearing their approach, turned slowly and gazed at them, only lifting their heads from their munching, retreating not a step. Delaney and Preston came beside them. The gunner’s mate appeared to be sizing up each member of the goat-family herd, making his selection. I had the clear feeling that he had at least vaguely discerned my intention and was looking for the finest specimens.

Then it was as if the two men had disappeared among the goats. A certain amount of bleating and
baa-
ing drifted down to us on the beach. Presently the two sailors were coming down the hill, picking their way with their burdens through the rocks. Delaney was carrying the smaller—manifestly the nanny—around his neck. Preston had the other, larger one in his arms. The hooves of both animals were secured in a fairly loose but adequate fashion, using double half-hitches. They made it to the beach where we approached and stood studying them. They were not your garden-variety goat. They were stunningly beautiful animals, with long silky hair that seemed to be a complete spectrum, lovingly blended in patterned patchwork, as if by some seamstress of angel’s gifts, of the color brown: tan hairs, ochre hairs, chocolate, terra-cotta, coffee, sienna, mahogany, copper, umber, chestnut, Titian, all combining to form a rich and luxuriant pastiche of deep softness. Even in the sailors’ arms the animals had the nobility of bearing of a born aristocracy, a natural imperiousness. They seemed to have stepped out of some ancient tapestry of priceless provenance.

“Mr. Selmon?”

The j.g. unsheathed and commenced to run his radiac over the goats while Delaney and Preston each continued studiously and with a wise gentleness to scratch his particular ward in the approved manner, between the ears. We watched in silence, hearing the low clicking sounds of the counter’s emissions. The goats kept opening and closing their eyes, dreamily. As Selmon proceeded with his examination they turned their heads and observed him over their shoulders with melancholy and suspicious expressions. Selmon went over them meticulously, across their flanks, proceeding then to their necks. There he paused and looked intently at his meter. Then he ran the counter gently over their long-haired coats once more and back to their necks; again he paused and examined the meter. We waited for his verdict, watching him.

“Captain, we’re not intending to eat these goats, are we?” he asked.

“Certainly not, Mr. Selmon.”

“Then they’re okay, sir,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. What they have will soon disappear.”

I felt an unaccountable sense of triumph, as of an important victory; the more so that of these we had had few. We stood then admiring the goats, which had passed muster and appeared tolerably content in the arms of the two sailors.

“Look at her,” Delaney said proudly of his. “Just look at those tits, Captain.”

Had he guessed? I was certain not. “It’s time, Captain.” I turned, startled in my appraisal of the animals, to see Selmon looking at his radiac.

We loaded them into the boat, where they kicked a little, not very seriously, then, as Delaney and Preston steadied them in a kind of rocking motion, settled down, seeming not to mind too much the short sea journey to the ship. We got them up the Jacob’s ladder, where the gunner and the boatswain’s mate set them down on the quarterdeck. They planted their legs sturdily while the two sailors kept a half-holding, half-stroking hand on them. They looked studiously around at the ship’s ambience and
baa-
ed a little. Then remained peaceful, apparently convinced they were in not unfriendly hands, while sailors gathered to admire them where they stood now at ease, displaying themselves in a kind of holding of court, heads lifted in their natural haughtiness, above those ravishing coats, as if to say, “Look how perfectly beautiful we are.”

“Do goats get seasick, Delaney?” I asked him.

“Well, sir, to tell the truth I don’t rightly know. I’ve had plenty of goats,” he said. “But I’ve never taken them to sea. But a goat is a very tough animal.”

“Yes, you’ve told me.”

“We can always give them seasick pills,” the gunner’s mate said.

“Let’s billet them amidships,” I said.

“A good idea, sir.”

Shipfitter Travis went to work immediately building a pen for our two passengers. Doing our best for the goats, we situated this enclosure amidships, the least likely part of a vessel to induce seasickness. At first Gunner’s Mate Delaney assumed responsibility for their welfare. Then, as his garden duties grew, he asked around and discovered that Signalman Third Bixby, the farm girl from Iowa, knew more even than himself about goats; in her opinion, considerably more. “I
raised
goats. They require very special care,” she said, and took them firmly off Delaney’s hands, feeding them various fodders we pick up along the way after Selmon has put his imprimatur on these gatherings with his counter, now and then giving those gorgeous coats a brush, walking them back and forth on the weather decks. They quickly got their sea legs, and soon followed her, without a leash, agilely up ladders, these perhaps seeming child’s play after their accustomed cliffs. “Goats are smart,” Bixby informed me one day when I came across the three of them on a stroll and was afforded a short progress report. “Sheep are dumb. A sheep would probably just have walked overboard long ago, not even knowing he was doing it.” Ship’s company seems glad to have aboard, safe and sound, at least two of the animals of the world. Their presence is a kind of comfort.