Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [225]
“Whom did he get?”
“Some lieutenant off a carrier. Used to be a lawyer.”
“Good?”
“Can’t tell. Steve seems to like him. Mumbling, shambling kind of guy- All kinds of hell breaking loose, Willie. Do you know about your pal Stilwell? He’s gone crazy.” Keefer flipped the towel around his shoulders and seesawed it briskly.
“What!”
“Diagnosis is acute melancholia. He’s up at the base hospital. He was getting kind of funny there aboard ship, you know-”
Willie remembered very well Stilwell’s brooding, sallow, pained face. Twice on the homeward voyage the sailor had asked to be relieved of the helm because of a blinding headache. “What happened, Tom?”
“Well, I wasn’t here. The story is that he took to his sack and just stayed there for three days, not answering musters, not going up for meals. Said he had a headache. Finally they had to carry him to the hospital. He was all limp and foul, Bellison says-” Willie wrinkled his face in horror. “Well, it was in the cards, Willie. One look at him and you know he’s one of these tense burning-up-inside ones. And no education, and a year of riding by Queeg, and the mixed-up emotional background, and on top of it all a general court for mutiny hanging over him-it isn’t mutiny, any more, by the way. That’s another thing- Got a cigarette? ... Thanks.”
Keefer wrapped the towel around his middle and clacked out to the saloon, exhaling a gray cloud. Willie followed, saying eagerly, “What’s all this about the mutiny?”
“Steve’s going to be tried on a charge of conduct to prejudice of good order and discipline. I told you that dried-up captain was out of his head, recommending trial for mutiny. I still don’t think you guys have anything to worry about. The legal boys know they have a damn shaky case-”
“What about Stilwell? Is he going to appear, or what?”
“Willie, the guy’s a vegetable. They’re going to give him electric-shock therapy, I hear- How’d you make out on leave? Did you marry the girl?”
“No.”
“I had a pretty good leave,” said the novelist, pulling on white drawers. “I think I’ve sold my novel.”
“Hey, Tom! That’s swell! What publisher?”
“Chapman House. Nothing signed yet, you know. But it looks okay-”
“Gosh, it wasn’t finished yet, was it?”
“They read twenty chapters and an outline. First publishers I showed it to.” The gunnery officer spoke casually, but powerful pride rayed out of his face. Willie regarded him with round eyes. The growing pile of yellow manuscript in Keefer’s desk had been half a joke, after all. Novelists were mythical figures to Willie-dead giants like Thackeray, or impossibly remote, brilliant rich men like Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Mann.
“Will-will they give you a big advance, Tom?”
“Well, as I say, nothing’s definite. If it all works out, five hundred or a thousand dollars.” Willie whistled. “It’s not much,” Keefer said, “but for an incomplete first novel, well-”
“It’s marvelous, Tom, marvelous! I hope it’s a huge best seller! It will be, too. I told you long ago I wanted the millionth copy, autographed. That still goes.”
Keefer’s face relaxed in a foolish rosy smile. “Well, don’t rush things, Willie-nothing’s signed-”
Steve Maryk’s spirit failed him in the very first moments of the court-martial, when the members of the court were sworn. Seven officers stood on a dais in a semicircle behind a polished red-brown bench, their right arms raised, staring with religious gravity at Challee as he intoned the oath from a battered copy of Courts and Boards. Behind them on the wall between the wide windows was a large American flag. Outside, green-gray tops of eucalyptus trees stirred in the morning sunlight, and beyond them the blue bay danced with light. It is a cruel unconscious trick of planning that has placed the court-martial room of Com Twelve on Yerba Buena Island, in such fair surroundings, with such a beckoning view. The square gray room seems all the more confining. The flag hangs between the eyes of the accused and the free sunlight and water, and its red and white bars are bars indeed.
Maryk’s eyes were drawn to the face of