The Jonah Watch

Chapter 12

Steaming through September, Adrian resembled a toy ship playing at rescue. It towed the Ann, the Emerald, the Dolphin—two trawlers and a giddy-looking yacht that was rigged (as Fallon remarked) like a Paris lady’s toilet. The tows were dull, short and routine. They were so easy that Levere occasionally left the bridge for a one-eyed nap. Seas ran nearly mellow. Winds retreated north as if to bide their time. Old men knit gear, eyed the north with suspicion, looked at the gray and motionless sea, while young men were lulled. The lousy cutter Able, of New Bedford, went aground on a sandbar off Martha’s Vineyard and cleaned some barnacles from its hull. It was freed by the tide and a tow from an 83 boat. Men shook their heads as the tale spread through the fleet. They praised the good luck that found them only on the North Atlantic, and not on the cutter Able.

“Cutter Un-Able,” Glass said. “Sell it to the Mexican navy.”

“I don’t want to hear,” Lamp told him. “I got enough to think about.”

Hester C. lay on the mudflats like a small black and gray splash of fear, or a low grade curse. A third yellow raft that was deflated and broken and flogged and thrown by the tide, came ashore near Kennebunkport. Levere received two letters. One was written by an Air Force squadron commander. The other was written by a widow. Levere wrote answers to the letters from the privacy of the wardroom.

Cutter Aaron, of Boston, towed a tugboat—which (as the redheaded Rodgers pointed out) was like letting a barmaid take the pope on a guided tour—while Snow said: “Lad, if you crack wise about my last ship, I must adjust you in a way that will make you forever innocent to barmaids.”

Adrian was relieved from standby for a week. Men went ashore. They saw and smelled garlicky sailors from a French destroyer. The sailors wore red-trimmed hats, and they straddled bar stools with cocky and easy arrogance. They made wonderful conquests among the bar girls. Adrian’s crew was too unjoyful to fight.

The Cape Cod Canal bridge stuck halfway up or halfway down. Rumor said that it looked like something—that when you saw it—you wanted to kick a field goal. Aboard an Italian freighter, a deckhand hanged himself from a steering cable. From northward came radio gossip about the early formation of ice.

Amon disappeared shoreward, to walk (when Lamp visited him) white-robed and in a bemused state along the polished floors of the Marine hospital.

“He knew me,” Lamp reported. “I think he’s going to be just fine.”

After a week, a memorandum arrived. Amon had epilepsy. After a second week, Amon’s orders arrived. He disappeared toward the interminable hospital circuit of Boston. Lamp, in mourning, packed Amon’s gear for transit to the hospital. Lamp would accept no help. He would allow no one to enter the privacy of his grief. Men passed silently by him as he stood in the crew’s compartment and rolled Amon’s clothing into tidy bundles. Lamp occasionally untied a roll, then rolled it over and over again until he was satisfied that it was perfect. His small head, which was always disproportionate to his huge frame, now seemed of normal size as he slumped deeper and deeper into his clothing. He whispered to himself, or to Amon—or perhaps he prayed. The silent, passing men looked at each other, shook their heads, then climbed to the main deck and gave low and surprised whistles.

“You’d think the guy was dead,” Conally said to Howard.

“Lamp and Amon worked together for a long time.”

“I miss the little guy,” Conally said. “I’m not sayin’ that I don’t miss him.”

Like an erased spirit, Amon was scuffed from the messdeck and into the ditty bag of tales that were not sea stories, as Jensen’s death was a sea story.

Men remember ships, but few departed men are remembered aboard ships. Although a man may walk straight across the pier and take duty on a neighbor ship, he seems to have ceased existence when his feet step for the last time from the gangway. His name is crossed from sailing lists, duty rosters, and, at best, he leaves a small and noticeable vacuum into which a new man with fresh orders will step.

“I hope the new guy’s a Chinaman,” Glass confided to Howard. “It might make Lamp feel better.”

“There isn’t any new guy. We don’t have any orders, yet.”

Lamp rarely spoke. When he did, it was in a graveside voice that shushed and offered sorrowful scorn. In somber tones he repeatedly observed that good men died young and bad ones were promoted. His gossiping, speculating and moral-headed self seemed withered, indrawn, or shelved like a dusty parcel of beans forgotten among the dry stores. He spoke of growing old, and his face drifted like a cratered moon about the galley. His eyes seemed to sink backward in their sockets as if, inside him, sight and soul were searching to combine. He told no stories. He refused to speak to Brace. Brace, through confusion or tact, avoided the messdeck. Lamp watched Brace’s comings and goings. When Brace did appear, Lamp splashed hot water in his sinks, may have burned his hands, was obviously searching for heat.

Lamp worked, strove, attempted to do the work of three men and could not do the work of two. Work increased as Lamp’s timing failed and the bottoms of pots and pans were burned and needed scouring. He was like a penitent answering for the sins of the entire crew, and perhaps answering for a few of his own. His cooking lapsed into a menu so terrible that radioman James (who claimed to have once suffered greatly) further claimed that eating aboard Adrian was like eating at home when you were married. Men who had never been married clung to their illusions. They scoffed at James. Like husbands they bore with Lamp’s grief. Like lovers viewing that first momentous stumble, they expressed the firmest loyalty, but their eyes reflected small yet awful doubt.

Dane, who had seen ten dozen cooks, and who knew when a ship had a good one, assigned men from his deck gang to take turns at helping Lamp. Lamp scorned them, spoke in small shrieks, seemed compelled by the hysteria that attends the romance touted by popular magazines. He shrewishly told vigorous and adroit seamen that they were inept. They were clumsy. They could not peel a potato properly, nor wash dishes, nor could they fill the coffee urn without spilling. After Lamp served franks and beans for the third night in a row, even the most loyal of his husbands agreed that something had to be done.

Lesser deities might need ten, but Dane had one commandment. It concerned competence at sea. Conally lived easily beside Dane. Bosun striker Joyce lived through days of celebration or through days of dark failure. Seaman Glass, the best man aboard in his rating, rarely suffered. Brace, whose performance was a little bit better than bad, was still a pluckable chicken.

Dane spoke to Lamp. He talked not with a roar, but in the rough tones of comradeship assumed between men who have shared wind and heavy water. Lamp faltered. Dane was flustered. He had not expected a scene or a public display. Lamp stood in his galley and blubbered that he would earn atonement. Embarrassed men sidled from the messdeck. They fled with the rapid regret of refugees kicked from their homeland through differences between politicians. Lamp swore that he would do better.

He did worse. From a creature of indignation and remorse, he turned into a creature of confusion. His commissary lists brought strange combinations of stores to the fantail. Howard shook his head over requisitions and wondered why Adrian needed two cases of stove blacking. For the first time in Howard’s memory, Dane had a command problem worth taking to Levere. The problem was discussed in the wardroom over plates filled with something that vaguely resembled frank and bean stew.

“Thought he’d shape up on his own,” Dane said. “He’s a rated petty officer. He ain’t a kid.”

“I called Personnel,” Levere said. “No steward is available right now.”

Howard listened from his customary position in the ship’s office. He nearly choked from a gulp unattended by beans.

“We might have tolerated it last summer,” Levere said. “Now the men are not getting much liberty.”

“Nor are we,” said Snow. “One forgets tranquillity when all is well.”

“It ain’t tran… quillit—it’s chow. These guys’ morale will get shot.”

“Personnel can send a seaman apprentice.”

“We already got an apprentice.”

“You have heard the tale about Jensen?”

“Amon was getting sick,” Levere said. “The crew knows he was seeing things.”

“Some are a bit spooked.”

Howard, who would be double-dog-damn before he would admit that he had also seen Jensen, sat silent.

“I don’t want to transfer Lamp,” said Levere. “He deserves better. We won’t get a replacement as good.”

“I tried givin’ him a shake. He shakes too easy.”

“He needs permanent help. Assign your junior man until we can get a steward.”

“Lamp won’t have that kid on a bet. Lamp is down on that sailor.”

“Lamp needs a new set of problems,” Levere told Dane. “One way to cure a rift is to make men work together.”

“…one way to kill a punk.” Dane was reluctant. “Sorry, Cap.”

“No, give me your opinion.”

“I’ve been shovin’ the kid’s nose in it for six months. He’s startin’ to come around.”

“He wishes to be an engineer,” said Snow. “We could put it to him that success with Lamp is a route to the engine room. If Chief Dane agrees.”

“…if it’s for the good of the ship… these kids come and go…”

“He may eventually change his mind about the engine room,” Levere said. “These youngsters are flighty.”

Brace went to the galley, to the hot and steaming crucible a-rattle with pans, loud crashes beside Lamp’s huge silence and peremptory commands. Brace discovered red-tiled decks, bleached walkboards to be pulled and scrubbed daily, sinks floating a thin skim of grease, the smell of fresh garbage, of onions, and the pale sight of cod, halibut, and the red slabs cut from animals. Silence amplified the rattle of lobsters in a bucket, a gift to the menu from a towed lobsterman who felt that he needed to insure good credit; or was possibly grateful. In the wardroom and on the messdeck Brace dealt with the nose-wrinkling smell of brass polish, the bland smell of soap, starch, and the acrid disinfectant; the whole knit together in its many parts by Swedish steam and brooded over, it seemed, by the coffee urn which sat as idollike as a well-burnished commodore. Sliced potatoes were peeled in a vat of cold water…

“I hate it,” Brace told Howard, “but I can hold out for awhile.”

“We only get stewards when somebody enlists from Hawaii.”

“The engine room,” said Brace. “No more freezing, no more Dane.”

“Dane is okay. What do you know about freezing?”

“He’s not okay,” Brace said. “He’s a secret trombone player”; and Howard, a day or two later, thought of the summer and of Brace’s tale. Howard dismissed the matter for a week as he thought of other things, and as Adrian steamed into a haunted October. Howard returned to Brace.

“Why the engine room?”

“Snow.”

“He’s the guy who smacked you.”

Brace, having wrestled deeply with philosophic problems while painting the mast, did not realize that his solution was old and unmentionable news. He began a grave summation. “He was tryin’ to tell me what was important.”

“You should be a Philadelphia lawyer, kid.”

“…not much is… important. I can hold out for a while.”

“We get another steward, then maybe you’re off the pick.”

Chagrined, Lamp made the best of a bad case. He turned hotly from the insoluble problem of Amon, to the close and burning problem of personal insult. When Brace’s name disappeared from the watch list, Lamp muttered to Howard about plots. When Dane told Lamp that Brace was to be his new helper, Lamp affected catatonia of his own. His eyes blinked, his lower lip quivered—and, when Dane went back abovedecks, and the constrained landscape of the messdeck seemed unlikely to launch tigers or chief bosuns, Lamp bustled to the ship’s office and threatened in outspoken terms about a transfer. His face flushed, his hips moved in humorous and slightly lewd wiggles of agitation. His honest despair combined with his dishonest threats and he was like pink pie filling oozing through a crust of sorrow.

“Cutter Able needs a cook,” said Howard. “Cutter Able always needs a cook.”

“Don’t smart mouth, sonny.”

“And a crew. And a captain.”

“I can go to any ship in this district.”

“The lightship needs a cook. Easy duty. Ride on those mushroom anchors all year. A lot of vomit, a little soup. Gets so you can’t tell the difference.”

“You’re worse than Glass. Glass is only evil, but you—you…”

Lamp’s revenge was silence. It was like Quaker revenge, or it was oriental, and it carried, naturally, more power than any Protestant dialectic. It was the righteous silence of predestination flogged by ill omen. Or, perhaps, it was the silence of the defeated general, the politician made ludicrous, the embezzling banker caught rifling his mortgages and his plans to seduce widows in advance of foreclosure. Lamp huffed and he puffed, and seemed swollen with air in his attempt to suppress words; like he had gulped a huge wind that he judiciously withheld until the proper moment to blow down the house of cards that life had dealt. Instead of nagging Brace, he gave curt commands about business. Brusque orders made Brace trot, but the quality of Lamp’s cooking improved. The lost Amon no longer seemed to chatter quite so close to Lamp’s ear.

“He won’t be able to hold out,” Glass said.

“I doubt it,” Howard agreed. “He wants the engine room pretty bad, but nobody could put up with that.”

“I mean Lamp. I know that big ox. Once he starts to talking it’s all over.”

As if to prove Glass correct—and suddenly—one morning it was all over. Howard returned from a mail run to the Base in company with yeoman Wilson. Howard heard a voice as he descended the ladder, and the voice was like a heavy-shanked memory of hours and days and weeks and months of gossip, idiocy and small wisdom. Words spilled, flooded, took roundhouse swings at silence. Lamp was telling Brace about riots and low acts in Hong Kong. Howard grinned, chuckled with relief, and headed for the office not yet knowing what Adrian lay athwart that ghastly October.