Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [154]
“Tom, it’s a known fact that you read a hell of a lot more than I do and talk better, and all that. The only thing is, common sense is worth more than all the talk and all the books in the world.” Maryk lit a cigarette in a swift scratch of flame and spurt of smoke. “You’re all wound up in big words, paranoid, psychopath, and all that. Captain Queeg is nothing but a strict guy who likes to have his own way, and there are a thousand skippers more or less like him. Okay, he rolls little balls. You sit in your room before reveille filling your desk drawers with a lot of scribbling. Everybody is a screwball in their own way. It doesn’t make them crazy.”
Keith and Harding looked from one speaker to the other with the intensity of children at a family quarrel.
“You’re whistling in the dark,” said Keefer. “Ever hear of a captain in his right mind trying to rig a court-martial as crudely as he’s doing it?”
“It happens every day. What the hell is a summary court-martial but a farce? Nobody on a ship ever knows any law. Hell, how about De Vriess with Bellison-and Crowe?”
“That was different. De Vriess fixed the court to let them off. He was going through the forms because the Auckland police were so sore about the riot. But rigging a trial to convict a man-moral considerations aside, he’s violating all his Navy principles. That’s what makes me think he’s going off his head. You know damn well that the enlisted man is God in this Navy. For two reasons, first, because he is the Navy, and second, because his relatives back home pay the Navy’s appropriations. Sure, hounding the officers is standard emotional ping-pong for skippers. But the enlisted man? The regulations bristle with his rights. Queeg’s juggling dynamite and giggling happily.”
“When it comes right down to it, Stilwell is guilty,” said Maryk.
“Of what? Christ, Steve! Wanting to see his wife, when poison-pen letters from home were accusing her of adultery?”
“Look, try the trial tomorrow,” said Maryk. “Give us a beer, Harding. Drop it, Tom, or I’m going to semaphore for the gig.”
The rest of the afternoon went by in increasingly sullen beer drinking.
The plan of the day read: 1400. Summary Court-Martial of Stilwell, John, GM 2/C, in the wardroom.
Shortly after lunch Queeg sent for Harding. Then he sent for Paynter. In another quarter hour, Paynter brought the same message for Keefer. The novelist rose. “Nothing like polling the jury for the verdict before the trial starts,” he said. “Eliminates all that unpleasant suspense.”
Willie was in the ship’s office, his mind whirling in a fog of legal rituals and phrases. The yeoman, obese as a pudding in shrunken dress whites, was helping him arrange the papers for the trial. When Chief Bellison, the master-at-arms, came to the door, smooth-shaven and immaculate, his shoes gleaming black, and announced, “Fourteen hundred, Lieutenant Keith. Ready in all respects for the court-martial,” Willie had a panicky moment. It seemed to him that he was utterly unprepared for his task. He blindly followed the yeoman and the chief into the wardroom, where the three officers were ranged around the green table, looking strangely dressed up in their black ties, and grave and embarrassed. Stilwell came shambling in, picking at his cap, a meaningless half-smile on his face. The trial began.
Willie sat with Courts and Boards open before him, carefully acting out the ritual step by step. Jellybelly prompted him, and he prompted the accused and the court. As Willie pushed the limping trial along he was reminded