Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [2]
At the instant that Mrs. Keith saw Willie swallowed up, she remembered that she had neglected an important transaction. She ran to the entrance of Furnald Hall. The chief stopped her as she laid a hand on the doorknob. “Sorry, madam. No admittance.”
“That was my son who just went in.”
“Sorry, madam.”
“I only want to see him for a moment. I must speak to him. He forgot something.”
“They’re taking physicals in there, madam. There are men walking around with nothing on.”
Mrs. Keith was not used to being argued with. Her tone sharpened. “Don’t be absurd. There he is, just inside the door. I can rap and call him out.”
She could see her son plainly, his back toward her, grouped with several other young men around an officer who was talking to them. The chief glanced dourly through the door. “He seems to be busy.”
Mrs. Keith gave him a look appropriate to fresh doormen. She rapped on the glass of the outer door with her diamond ring and cried, “Willie! Willie!” But her son did not hear her call from the other world.
“Madam,” said the chief, with a note in his rasping voice that was not unkind, “he’s in the Navy now.”
Mrs. Keith suddenly blushed. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay, okay. You’ll see him again soon-maybe Saturday.” The mother opened her purse and began to fish in it. “You see, I promised-the fact is, he forgot to take his spending money. He hasn’t a cent. Would you be kind enough to give these to him?”
“Madam, he won’t need money.” The chief made an uneasy pretense of leafing through the papers he held. “He’ll be getting paid pretty soon.”
“But meantime-suppose he wants some? I promised him. Please take the money- Pardon me, but I’d be happy to give you something for your trouble.”
The chief’s gray eyebrows rose. “That won’t be necessary.” He wagged his head like a dog shaking off flies, and accepted the bills. Up went the eyebrows again. “Madam-this here is a hundred dollars!”
He stared at her. Mrs. Keith was struck with an unfamiliar sensation-shame at being better off than most people. “Well,” she said defensively, “it isn’t every day he goes to fight a war.”
“I’ll take care of it, madam.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Keith, and then, vaguely, “I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
The mother closed with a polite smile, and walked off to her Cadillac. The chief looked after her, then glanced at the two fifties fluttering in his hand. “One thing,” he muttered, “we’re sure as hell getting a new kind of Navy.” He thrust the bills into a pocket.
Meanwhile, Willie Keith, spearhead of the new Navy, advanced to war; which, for the moment, took the form of a glittering array of inoculation needles. Willie was not angry at Hitler nor even at the Japanese, though he disapproved of them. The enemy in this operation lay not before him, but behind. Furnald Hall was sanctuary from the United States Army.
He was jabbed swiftly for several tropical ailments. The bugs thus liberated whirled down his bloodstream. His arm began to ache. He was ordered to strip naked, and his clothes were carried off in a heap by a burly sailor.
“Hey, when do I get those back?”
“Who knows? Looks like a long war,” the sailor growled, and mashed the green hat under his arm. Willie followed with anxious eyes as his old identity was hauled away to camphor balls.
With forty other upright pink animals he was herded into a large examination room. His lungs, liver, heart, eyes, ears, all the apparatus he had been using since birth, were investigated by hard-eyed pharmacist’s mates, who prodded and poked him like suspicious women about to buy a turkey in a market.
“Stand up straight, sir.” The last pharmacist’s mate of the line-up was eying him critically. Willie stiffened. It unnerved him to see, out of the corner of his eye, that the examiner looked very dissatisfied.
“Bend over and touch your toes.”
Willie tried, but years of overeating barred the way. His fingers hung eight inches from his toes. He tried the ancient mode of cheating-
“Without bending the knees, please.”
Willie straightened, took a deep breath,