The Jonah Watch

Chapter 22

Dane did not die in the tunnel of ice aboard Islander, he died because of that tunnel; in a hospital, and he died with dry feet—perhaps the only surprise life ever presented him for which he was not fully prepared.

Ice—be it ever so humble, and as those few know who have raised their eyes beyond the horizons of cocktail glasses—is worth talking about by sailors and poets. While fire at sea is spectacular and fast, ice gives a man time to think. Ice is not whimsical, as fire is sometimes whimsical. Ice is occult, abstract, yet persevering. It requires only the smallest amount of commitment from the sufferer. It is generous in its reward to that commitment.

Dying in company with ice is almost as nice as dying of morphine. A man gets to lie down, give away his busyness, and forget in that permanent haze of fading mortality all of those pranks and sideshows of a world where dealers in death appear as regularly as rows of cabbages at the greengrocer’s. Death, dealing a pat hand of ice, seems to understand such calms. If death did not understand, death would not be so certain, so banal.

Cutter Adrian punched its screws into the sea and pressed north. On the bridge, Levere and Chappel and Dane planned the best way to accomplish the impossible.

—Three hundred feet—yes, chum, but draft like a ping pong ball—think of the freeboard, that thing’s like a sail—have to harness—towing yoke—only way to go—I seen them things, bitts are offset—yoke it then, chief, yoke it. We’ll get on radio, try to get a set up—

Howard, summoned to the bridge, stood silent and waited. Dane turned to him, and Dane was imitating Gibraltar. He hunched his shoulders in a clear effort to loosen them, or else in anticipation of finding that handle he needed to pick up and hoist the world. “Fix your watch list. I want Conally, Joyce, Glass and the punk to the bridge. I want them now.”

“Technically,” said Howard, who engaged in a courageous act, “the kid is still with Lamp.”

“Don’t give me no technically.” Dane’s chief’s hat was pushed to the back of his head. His forehead seemed to bulge, and it was covered with sweat although the bridge was chilled. His forehead glistened in imitation of an ornamental light bulb. White strands of hair poked from beneath the hat. He flexed his hands. Salt water stains on his foul weather jacket were white pools on the green fabric, like an abstraction of surf.

“I’m not the world’s best seaman.” Howard persisted with near desperate courage. “I’m better than Brace.”

“Yeah, but you ain’t Brace, short timer.” Then Dane relented, as though the echo of his own words offended his ears. “The punk has to learn,” he said quietly. “I know that you’re lots better.”

And Howard, fatalistic before a knowledge that he did not understand, and possibly having received a compliment, laid below to carry his errand.

Ice hung in dull circles as condensation froze on the ports. The brass dogs on hatches were covered with frost, brittle looking, like calcimine. As Howard crossed the fiddley, the hot air rising through the grates warmed his legs, but his shoulders felt the chill that radiated through the hull. Chief engineman Snow ascended the ladder from the engine room.

“These double-enders have two drive lines,” said Snow. “What is the problem, exactly?”

“I’m no engineman. I think the thing only has one transmission.”

Islander, certified in all respects ready for sea, had suffered a burned clutch. It was drifting toward the sharp waters near Bibb Rock, and it was an odds-on chance that the ferry was going to fetch the rock. The inshore wind was at twenty knots. Islander, streamed to a jury-rigged sea anchor, was drifting at half a knot.

“I must speak with their engineman.” Snow flitted from the fiddley, toward the bridge.

On the steaming messdeck, men waited for news. Brace sat and stared at the accomplished fact of a vat of peeled apples. Adrian rose and fell with slight and distant shocks as the increased speed pressed it against the easy sea.

“Come to the office,” Howard told Conally, and Howard’s voice was small and strained with his fear.

Conally stepped into the office. His swarthy Indian face, which was usually a mask of reserve, wrinkled with omen. He attempted to readjust his face, resume his mask. Failed.

“You’re supposed to take Glass and Joyce to the bridge,” said Howard. “You’re supposed to take the kid, too.”

“What’s goin’ on? What?”

“I don’t know what’s going on. Don’t know.”

“Do you think Lamp’s right?”

“Yeah,” said Howard. “Lamp’s right. So is Dane.” He paused, and he was as helpless as Conally. “Maybe the crazy part isn’t over,” he said. “Maybe Dane is nuts.”

“There’s six guys on that thing.”

“I don’t know what that means. We’ll do our best. What does that mean?”

“I dunno,” said Conally. “Maybe I’m nuts, too.” He turned to leave, turned back like a clipped apology. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “I’ll try to stay between them.” He stepped to the messdeck and began hollering, swearing. Glass and Joyce stood, grabbed their gear, ran. Brace picked up the vat of apples, carried them to the galley, moving with approximately the grace and speed of a cow en route to a barbecue. Howard, rushing, brushed past—stopped.

“Get moving.”

“I’m moving,” Brace told him. “Just as fast as I promised to move, when people lie to me.” Brace refused to look at Howard, but Brace’s face was shamed, and it was clear that Brace was lying. He sat the vat of apples on the deck of the galley, looked up, and saw the awesome figure of Lamp standing above him and looking down.

“You’re lying, sonny. Get truthful and get moving.”

“It’s an emergency,” Howard said. “It has nothing to do with what we talked about. It has nothing to do with whether you go to engine room or deck.”

“It does have to do with what we talked about, but not the engine room. It’s worse than that.” Brace’s eyes showed a hint of unreasonable fear.

“Get moving, sonny.” Lamp bent, picked up an apple, tossed it, caught it. “We mostly serve these in a pig’s mouth. After we roast him.”

Brace moved.

“Yellow?” Howard stood in momentary disbelief.

“Naw,” said Lamp. “He ain’t yellow, but he sure is trembly, ain’t he?”

The small bridge, when Howard returned, seemed packed with Adrian’s entire crew. The increased speed caused spray to rise at the bow. In the sunshine, the light spray became pale feathers of blown ice; like a sown blessing from an apostolic hand creating parables of seed on rocky ground. The ice fell to the decks in hoar flakes and pebbles.

“I want crash mats on the bow,” Levere told Dane. “Rig them while we still have daylight.”

“Phil—Cap—” Dane faltered as he displayed a familiarity with Levere that the crew had never before heard. “The plates won’t take it.”

“Will the line?”

Dane slumped, and he momentarily looked like a stubbed cigar butt. Then he straightened, stomped a foot. “If we don’t get more wind. If we can get it head to wind, let the wind blow through it instead of agin it.” He stomped his foot again, either to shock his rheumatism into obedience, or in a display of anger. Howard, who in later years would have more than several occasions to wonder if he had ever done anything correctly would—in those later years—recall one thing.

“I want to be in on this,” he told Dane. “I don’t care what you think.”

“You’ll be on the helm,” said Chappel.

“Use Rodgers.”

“You are the best helm after Glass.”

“Glass is going to be on deck,” said Glass, “and if you don’t like it, you can book Glass, later.”

“You will be on the helm,” Chappel told Howard.

Men stood, sweated with compacted closeness, with tension. They jammed together on the bridge—Conally, Dane, Snow, Joyce, Chappel, Brace, Glass, Levere, Howard—shuffled, sweated. Quartermaster designate Rodgers over-corrected on the helm, spun it back, was silent and attentive to the compass as he chewed on Chappel’s estimate of helmsmen. Rodgers began to speak, thought better of it, remained silent. Brace looked toward Howard, and Brace had his back to Dane.

“I suppose,” Brace whispered in a voice of absolute despair, “if you’ve seen one engine room you’ve seen ’em.” The trace of fear was still in his eyes.

Snow, standing across the bridge and with the radio transmitter in one hand, was turned sideways to Brace. He did not see Brace’s eyes, but he heard Brace’s words. He turned to Brace. Snow’s eyes showed contempt, but his voice was level and implied nothing to any other man on the bridge. “Have you something to say?”

Brace flushed, pawed helplessly at the pocket of his dungaree shirt as if he searched for his heart. The flush rose from his neck, made his ears glow as certainly as neon. The flush ran across his cheeks and forehead. He began to speak, stuttered, became silent.

Dane looked at Levere, and Levere was looking forward into the rapidly icing bow. Light spray rose, sparkled, dimmed into white flakes of ice. Sunlight bleached the bow, and the hooded three-inch-fifty gun looked like a schoolteacherly white finger, admonishing the sea.

“There ain’t nothing else we can do.” Dane turned to Conally. “You think of anything, Jim?” He turned to Snow. “Ed?”

“I think,” said Snow, “that we are capable of repairing the clutch. If you can keep it from the beach for two hours, I believe I may promise power on one drive line.”

“They haven’t got any hawser,” said Levere. “You’ll have to rig the yoke.”

If Dane had ever been disconcerted, no man could recall having seen the event. Dane stood, squat, compact as a stump, and like a stump, at least temporarily immobile. Then he shifted his weight, flipped at the underside of his nose with the back of his hand—for the enjoyment. He looked at Brace, and Brace was ablush and silent. Dane’s voice was thick with scorn. “I was on an icebreaker, once. Convoy to Murmansk.”

Dane turned toward Conally. Glass stepped back to tread heavy on Howard’s feet. Dane began to bulge, swell, prepare his blast. Joyce faltered. Joyce stepped backward, trod heavily on Howard’s feet.

“You are a bunch of punks,” Dane said kindly. “You are ladies at a garden party… and now, ladies, if you have finished sippin’ at your tea…” The blast arrived:

Tuck up your skirts—ladies—tuck ’em up and get crackin’.

Dane wheeled, like a man trying to take first advantage in some dark contest. He was first off the bridge, first onto the main deck, and he moved aft as certainly as an army tank. He did not bother to slam his feet into the angle formed by house and deck.

“Stand by for a moment,” Snow said to Brace, as Conally, Joyce and Glass fled as if pulled by strings. Snow’s small face, in the light shadow of the sunlit bridge, was not elfish. It looked not exactly old, yet it was creased, weathered, strangely and suddenly thin-lipped. “I do not break promises,” said Snow, “and I do not value your silly accusations.”

Brace seemed ready to faint. He no longer blushed. His face was pale.

“Your apology will not be accepted this time,” Snow told him. “Acceptance must be earned. As Chief Dane has just remarked, I suggest that you get cracking.”

Snow turned back to the radio, preparatory to seeking more information from Islander. Brace stood, puffed, panted, zipped at his foul weather jacket. He staggered from the bridge, and he rocked from blows that were clearly delivered by the heavy hammers of shame.

Levere turned to Howard. “Stand by.” He walked to the hatch, undogged it, and he stood on the wing looking aft. Ice swelled and built in the bow, and the spray was extending the ice further along the decks. The fantail was slick with a thin layer of it, but the fantail was not deadly, as the bow was deadly. Levere watched the action as men began laying out hawser to form a yoke. Levere’s face, slightly swollen, dark, hawklike, French, Yankee; seemed for a moment ready to mutate into a mask of tears. Then he muttered something incomprehensible. From the bow, spray rose. Light feathers of ice hit Levere’s jacket and lodged in his hair. He turned to enter the bridge.

“The eighty-three boat from Kennebunkport is underway,” he told Howard. “It won’t arrive in time, but it may arrive in time to do something.”

“If we only had Abner—”

“We don’t,” Levere said. “We have towing line and alternatives. I want to give you instructions.” Levere paused, watching Howard critically, wondering, no doubt, if he had the right man for the job.

“Sometimes,” said Levere, “if you can’t pull, you can still push. Now, that is not a tugboat helm. It will seem to react a good deal more quickly. The hull will skid.”

Howard, suppressing thoughts of those whispering bow plates, creaking, strung weak with age, listened to instructions on how to steer a tugboat.