The Jonah Watch

Chapter 15

That man with a propensity for miracles, that Lamp, whose job it was to know what fits in those spaces between groin and heart, took the news hard when he woke. Instead of chatter, of boisterous soothsaying because his grim views were proving out, Lamp fought back. He told Brace to “get crackin’”; and Brace hustled, complained, was always three steps behind Lamp, who behaved like a man in combat. Lamp challenged the miraculous with bacon, sausage, beef, ham, eggs, biscuits, gravy, fresh fruit, cold juices, and a vat of hot chocolate made from stores cached back in anticipation of holidays. Brace dashed about like a complaining sea sprite, one burdened with tasks that whirled his planet backward. There were not enough pots, pans, peeled potatoes. Men who were accustomed to eating rapidly sat on the messdeck and felt the small plunge of Adrian in the freshening breeze. They helped Brace along with their chortles, smart remarks; and they chewed and chomped and burped and chewed some more, as though it were Christmas.

Lamp had “a feelin’,” as he confided to Howard, and Lamp was doing something about his feeling. Even Howard had to admit that the mist ridden night seemed a little silly when remembered across a full plate—and with gravy, too.

“Like that time in Hong Kong,” Lamp confided to Howard. “The cook coulda pulled that one out.”

“What happened in Hong Kong?”

“Later. I’ll tell you later,” and Lamp bustled, charged his enemy, attacking the invisible through a smokescreen of whipped cream for men to smear over pie. “It’s almost a relief,” he told Howard. “We know we got a fight. It ain’t skiddy, now.”

Brace scrubbed pots, to see them immediately refilled. He was jolted into astonishment when the penurious Lamp railed at him to use an extra ration of coffee. Lamp squandered his commissary allowance like a man ashore with heavy pockets and a backlog of fantasies. Brace seemed suddenly grown thin of ambition, indifferent to lost hopes, and with mild distaste for all worlds including engine rooms.

“We’d ought to have a ghost more often,” Racca said. “We’d ought to have one every day.”

“You were scared three points off your compass,” Glass told him. “You’re a tough dago, Racca.”

“Especially around yids. Especially.”

And, as if it were Christmas, Levere, Snow, and Dane stepped from wardroom to messdeck, found space, and celebrated in a vague manner. Levere was serene but not withdrawn. Snow rode Racca and Fallon with small jokes. Only Dane was reserved. He watched Lamp, and his satisfied opinion showed only in a slight, forward shifting of his toadlike frame. Dane may or may not have known Lamp’s motives, but Dane liked what he saw.

As the freshening breeze kicked and moved Adrian against the pier, men relaxed with the tranquil readiness of sleeping cats. For some men, portent lived on an instinctive level. For other men, portent lived in the memory of harsh experience.

“It’ll be a yacht,” Conally said, “and it’ll be today, and it’ll be nightfall or a little after.”

“Don’t talk. Why ask trouble?”

“Summer sailors.”

“They always get caught. Count on it.”

“Yacht from the Virgin Islands,” Racca said. “Nothing but virgins aboard. Been at sea for three months gettin’ lonesome…”

“What would you know about virgins?”

Storm warnings never occur on a clear day, and as the light dulls into darkness in the northeast, and as the temperature crashes down like an anchor, vessels within reach of the coast make high-speed dashes to shelter. The channel lays a sharply pitching road for the pilot boat that heads seaward with pilots to meet more than one ship. A noble government—that is made of the firmest stuff—protects its cannon. From the sea-reaches come minelayers and destroyers, bulking rakish and gray against the dark sky as they head for the anchorage. The wind rushes, as if the continent has become a sudden vacuum, and the wind begins to howl above piling water. It does not moan, has no choreography, is only wind raised to a pitch of storm that denies any pretense toward music. In a while the howl will change to a scream, and the scream will be indifferent, although it seems, sometimes, to speak the name of a particular ship or a particular man.

Adrian bumped and banged against its fenders. The crew belched, yawned, hesitated with reluctance toward movement that, when it began, would be totally absorbing and would allow no quarter even for a single belch. Conally stretched, stood; his face an Indian mask of veiled intent, or of preoccupation with securing the decks. Howard, his belly tightly pressed against his belt, shrugged into his foul weather jacket which carried a multitude of stains but no fingerprints. He left the messdeck to buck into the increasing wind as he went to the Base for the mail. He returned, opened the few envelopes, and discovered that Brace was off the hook. Somewhere en route, steward apprentice Iris was ordered to Adrian.

“What kind of a name is Iris?” Lamp asked when Howard called him to the office.

“An easy-to-spell name… how should I know?”

“I’ll miss that Brace. That’s no bad kid.”

“Levere says not to tell him yet. Let it ride. Otherwise you won’t get anything out of him.”

“I can always get something out of him,” Lamp said. “If I want to, I can get work out of any guy.”

Howard, having loosened his belt and found that his waistband was still tight, was in no mood to disagree.

“You got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“What happened in Hong Kong?”

“The crew on a Navy can went asiatic.” Lamp leaned against the frame of the hatch as Adrian’s deck slid sideways in small, unexciting movements that were brought up short by the mooring. For the moment, at least, and having temporarily worked himself out of a job, Lamp had every reason to tell a sea story complete with embroidery, with moral twinges and judgment. His face settled in that direction. Then he seemed revolted by the idea. The directness of his morning’s labor was a contradiction to ample rambling. His face, which was naturally red beneath the red-blond hair, was also red from the steam of boiling pots and the heat of his small galley which no fan could clear. For a moment Lamp looked nearly wise.

“You remember how things got skiddy awhile back?”

“Yes. Well, no.”

“Things were disappearing.”

“Yes.”

“The same thing happened on that can. They’d been on station a long time. The officers were as nuts as the crew.” Lamp looked like he was going to apologize for something, then did apologize. “I’m not saying that our boys are that way.”

“What are you saying?”

“They beat a Chinaman,” Lamp said with genuine unease. “Only they beat him too hard. They had to toss him overboard to hide it.”

“Well… well, what?” Howard, who would have sworn that he could deal with reality, jumped mentally sideways. “They needed somebody to lynch. Ask McClean. Happens all the time in Mississippi.”

“He was just a guy trying to make a livin’. He was just a guy who came aboard every day with fresh stores.” Lamp seemed nearly as stalled by his story as was Howard. “It’s the way it built up,” he said. “The cook could’ve saved it, but he was asiatic as the rest.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

Lamp looked suddenly shy, timid. “You think I fool around with stuff, and maybe I do. But we’re gettin’ some kind of sign.”

“Bad luck?”

“I just know how bad it can get. I can fight that part, anyway.” Lamp began backing from the office, one hand resting on the frame of the hatch. “They claimed that Chinaman was bad luck. The whole deal got hushed up. An officer was in on it.” He backed away further, then turned and nearly fled, a man who had gossiped about a memory for so long that he had forgotten that the memory was stark.

As a storm increases, ships fleeing past the Portland Head, chased by hugely running swells and by wind that raises shrieks in their rigging, have sometimes stumbled on the tide. The bottom builds out there. When conditions are exactly wrong, huge rocks are flung in grenades of water to explode high above the cliff where lore has it that they have occasionally knocked out the light. There is not much bottom. Small ships are twisted, flung, the helm a feeble protest when a fast-ebbing tide meets a full, incoming storm. It is like a giant roller coaster in an uncertain and macabre amusement park where tracks lead over the hump, come arcing down, and disappear into rock. Large ships have been gutted. Small ships, catching conditions that are exactly wrong, roll over. They offer a fast flurry of spray, a small contribution to that vast wealth of water that lies on the collection plate of the wind.

Yacht Aphrodite, schooner-rigged and not as old as mythology, but certainly as old as Adrian, and with a skipper who was no fool, confirmed Conally’s prediction an hour ahead of schedule. Aphrodite’s hull was disproving the idea that sound maintenance on an ancient bucket will avoid catastrophe. A design that had once held notions of watertight integrity had been violated through redesign. Aphrodite was taking water forward through a sprung plate. It had one watertight bulkhead just forward of midships. It had good pumps, a captain who was a friend of Levere’s… and, it carried a terrified owner who, downeast in Boston, was regarded as a valuable constituent. The man was “getting the cure” from the sea, which teaches that you cannot buy votes against a storm.

“Steel hull. A hundred thirty feet.” Radioman James spoke to a small group on the messdeck. James was below for a quick sip of coffee before Adrian, crashing ahead slow on steadily warming engines, reached the approach to the head.

“Can we tow? Think of the draft on that thing.”

“Don’t know, chum. Maybe tow from the stern.”

“Where’s Abner?” Brace asked.

“Still playing pattycake down south. Still riding herd on Able.”

Brace’s eyes were bright with excitement. They held no fear. He had seen some weather, doubtless thought it was awful weather, doubtless believed he had seen the worst. He was filled with ignorant enthusiasm, excused, perhaps, because any kind of action no doubt seemed better than the dull promise of stewardship.

“Take a turn, sonny,” Lamp told him. “When you get done whoopin’, secure the wardroom.”

Ships, following the romance of the sea with their grace and their resemblance to a womb, are said to embody a female principle; and the sea, itself, is called mistress, harlot, lover, mother.

Maine winters carry a different message. The ship is not soft, warm, loving or safe. The sea is what it is—the sea. Adrian was neither male nor female, but under the circumstances was something more important. Adrian was a ship. Designed by an architect long dead, twice redesigned by a tight-fisted Treasury… a Treasury that perhaps understood that experience teaches what a ship will take, but would never understand that only final experience teaches what it will not take.

McClean crept backward down the steps leading to the messdeck. He was spraddled flat as a starfish. The steps surged forward as McClean’s arms stretched between rails, and for long moments he lay flat on his face as Adrian dove, took green water over the bridge, raised its stern, lay head down and shuddering beneath the heavy thunder of the sea. Lights flickered, flicked, from a generator where Wysczknowski stood by, lashed to the generator’s cage. The ship slowly shrugged away water and sluggishly rose. McClean was pressed upright, nearly thrown backward, and an oily spot on his shirt made him look curiously like a man freshly shot. The lights steadied. From forward the thunder rumbled, decreased as the ship topped a swell, then rushed downward to another crack of thunder. McClean held on, again went forward on his face, wedging knees against the ladder, his forehead pressed down as if he was kowtowing to the sea, while his rear end struggled to get on the same level with his face. He starfished to the messdeck, turned and held on, waited in the boom and crash for the top of a swell. He dashed forward and hugged the coffee urn like a man in love.

Brace, white-faced, sat on a bench behind a table. He clutched the table. He was colorless except for his growing shock of hair. His face was bleached, then dim, then steadily bleached as from forward Wysczknowski temporarily settled matters with the generator.

McClean, his mulatto face not a whit darker than Brace’s, looked frozen in an eternal scream like a masterwork of medieval fresco. Words that were faint, covered with thunder, “engine room… where’s… yeoman—”

Brace clutched the table, stared at familiar, scrubbed bulkheads which always before had stood like planes of boredom. Now the bulkheads rose above his eyes like downrushing plates of steel. He seemed mesmerized, a man sillily gazing at his opposable thumbs in a universe that required tentacles.

McClean was sobbing, or else gasping for breath. He was certainly burning his arms on the coffee urn. A faraway crash of thunder was followed by a nearly present crack that was no louder, but more instantly threatening than the thumping, thundering, drumming sea. The crack came from directly above deck, the fantail.

Brace blinked, fought to stay erect against a downward surging crunch, stood blinking and grasping and no doubt wondering if it was time to drown.

“Gear locker,” McClean yelled as Adrian reached the top of a swell. For three seconds his voice could be heard. “Engine room. Get there. Yeoman.”

Howard appeared from his small sanctuary like a jumping jack not thrown by its spring, but thrown box and all by the hand of a petulant child. He grabbed the frame of the hatchway, leaned forward to stand spraddle-legged. He locked his hands onto that frame, as enamored of that frame as McClean was of the coffee urn. The men waited for the top of another swell.

“Busted arm… still on the plates—”

McClean turned, dived for a rail, began his slow, starfish ascent. Adrian hesitated, the dark, piling sea offering a cross swell to trick the helm. The ship was caught, twisted, skidded in a long slide; then fell like a tin safe dropped from the roof of a high building. It tipped to port, lay like a sick and dying fish; twisted feebly beneath the crash, the slow ascent. The world reversed. The ship skidded down, crashing, rolling, and the coffee urn like a gleaming inclinometer went horizontal. From beneath its clamped lid, coffee spurted like a small, round, laughing mouth. Brace stood spread against the table top, standing in desperation as Howard clung like a monkey on a stick to that rising and hovering frame. He lay on his back in the air and waited for the final, awful dictate. The shaft whipped, roared, the rudder caught, and the ship turned once more into the sea. The thunder began again, and Howard, who could not spare the luxury of relaxing any muscle, gulped air and wept and belched and choked up bile. He motioned to Brace. Brace, having frozen so hard to the table during his dance with the ship that he now lay on top of the table, dismounted and followed Howard, spraddling and starfishing up the ladder.

Racca, his smart mouth moaning, his shirt torn away, was held against the lightly oiled plates by men who kept him from flopping. Snow had Racca’s broken arm extended. Howard crawled forward with the aid kit, off balance, bumping against a protecting rail beside the engine. Brace, off balance and crawling, bumped Howard from behind as Brace attempted to pass splints that were not yet needed. Racca’s eyes were bright with fear and pain, and with the sharp hurt of helplessness as Adrian slid, thumped, and the voices of the engines were blanked even as he lay beside them; blanked by thunder from forward and the drum of the sea against the hull. Howard eased forward with a styrette of morphine, got the needle into the skin and crushed the small glass tube. Racca was looking at him or beyond him, talking, talking. Howard bent forward. Racca was saying, “Jonah, Jonah, Jonah,” and Howard, who was not without guilts of his own, wondered if Racca was talking about him.