Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [117]
“Sounds like a marvelous life, Steve.”
“Well, it isn’t. It boils down to making a dollar the hardest way there is. Break your back, and the market is never right-when you catch shad, nobody wants shad-when you catch mackerel, there’s so much goddamn mackerel you can’t sell it for manure-and that’s how it goes. And the jobbers on the beach scrounging every quarter they can. It’s a business for dumb foreigners, like my father. I’m dumb, too, but I’m not a foreigner. I’ll find something else to do.”
“Meaning the Navy?”
“Okay, I’m stupid. I like the Navy.”
“I don’t understand it, Steve. There’s something so honest and useful about fishing. Not a motion wasted, not a drop of fuel oil burned without a purpose. You break your back, yes, but at the end of a run you’ve got fish. You of all people, to to want the Navy! Paper, paper, paper-nothing but phony kowtowing and gun-decking and idiotic drills, all to no purpose whatever-utter waste-Christ, and the peacetime Navy-Sunday school every day of the week for grown men-”
“Don’t you think the country needs a navy?”
“Sure.”
“Who’s going to man it?”
“The Queegs, of course. Not useful citizens.”
“Sure. Leave it to the Queegs. Then along comes the war, and you get a Queeg over you, and you scream bloody murder.”
“Screaming helps pass the time.”
“The Navy isn’t all Queegs by a long shot.”
“Of course not. He’s a waste product of the system. Buckled into a monster because his feeble little personality can’t stand the pressure of Navy standards- This is fine champagne, by the bye, pity you don’t appreciate it- But Steve, the real Navy is a tight little father-and-son group. It’s a tradition, like the British governing class. You don’t shine in. You’d just be one of the lowly timeservers-”
“You think fishing is useful. Well, I think manning Navy ships is useful. They’re coming in goddamn handy at this point-”
“So help me, you’re a patriot, Steve.”
“In a pig’s eye. I know seamanship, and I’d a damn sight rather put in twenty years for the Navy and get a pension than get arthritis and a sprung back hauling fish out of the water. At least that’s how I figure it with my thick head.”
“Well, bless you, my boy. Here’s to Fleet Admiral Maryk, CincPac of 1973.” He sloshed champagne into Maryk’s glass and made him drink it. “How’s your premonition doing, boy?”
“Well, it goes away when I don’t think about it.”
“The little Berkeley girls will fix everything. Let’s shove off.”
Professor Curran, a pudgy man with a pink face and a little soft mouth like a child’s, led the two officers into a reception room alive with twittering coeds. Here and there were gawky boys of bad complexion. The arrival of two battle veterans in blue and gold electrified the air. The girls lost their real nonchalance and assumed false nonchalant attitudes; and there was a violent activity in powder puffs and lipsticks.
The professor’s introduction of Keefer was long and fulsome. This was one of the rising literary stars of America, he told the shining-eyed girls. He mentioned that several of Keefer’s short stories and verses had appeared in the Yale Quarterly and such fine periodicals. He dwelt on his play, The Amaranthine Weed, which the Theatre Guild had held under option for a year. “But,” he added archly, “lest you get the idea that Thomas Keefer is just another writer for the high-brow coterie, let me inform you that he has also sold stories to Esquire and the Ladies’ Home Journal-yes indeed, the very best of the ‘slicks,’ as they are known.” The girls giggled and exchanged knowing looks. It was all news to Maryk, sunk in the comer of a decrepit green couch in the back of the room. Keefer had never talked about his writing. It was unnerving to realize that his shipmate was a real young author of consequence. He was ashamed to think that he had joined in the coarse wardroom jokes about