Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [27]
His son grinned, surprised. “Be nice to have you here. But you’re doing more for the war in Manhasset.”
“I’m compelled to try to think so. Good-by.”
Willie looked after the limping figure, and vaguely thought that he ought to have talked more with his father before the war.
In the weeks that followed May came often to visit him. She was contrite and cheerful. With simple tact she found out when his mother was likely to come, and stayed away on those days. Twice Willie saw her come to the entrance of Furnald, observe him talking to his mother, and depart with a discreet wave. In February her visits became less frequent; she enrolled in Hunter College, and had several late classes. But sometimes she cut these to come to him. Willie was uneasy about her return to school, but she laughed at him.
“Don’t worry, dear, all that is finished. I’m not doing this for you, but for me. You’ve had one good effect on me. I’ve decided I’d rather not be an ignorant canary all my life.”
Willie stuck to his resolve to improve his shaky position with high marks, and he rose gradually to a place among the leaders in the school. In the first hours of fiery determination he had set his goal at Number One, but he soon saw that that would be denied him. A mandarin-like midshipman named Tobit, with a domed forehead, measured quiet speech, and a mind like a sponge, was ahead of the field by a spacious percentage. Bunched behind him were three other masterminds. Willie couldn’t compete with their weird photographic registry of print; he soon realized this, and stopped despairing at marks which fell short of perfect. He drudged away in the niche that he found, varying between eighteenth and twenty-third in Furnald.
His struggle against odds was notorious. The midshipmen and even the ensigns were fond of telling their girls about the unhappy devil carrying forty-eight demerits. This celebrity was useful to Willie. No ensign, not even the punctilious Brain, wanted to be the one to drop the guillotine on him. Once Acres came into the room during a study period and found Willie collapsed in sleep over the desk, a plain case costing eight demerits. Willie shook all day, but the offense was never reported.
Mrs. Keith was outraged at Willie’s position and violently sympathetic. She spent several visiting periods urging Willie to accept Uncle Lloyd’s Army commission, but she gave up at last when she saw that Willie was evidently winning his battle and taking deep satisfaction in it.
In the last weeks, Willie faltered, partly from numb fatigue, partly from a sense that the danger was passing. When the final standings were ‘posted, four days before graduation, he had dropped to the thirty-first place.
That same day a sensational document appeared on the bulletin board: a list of the types of duty open to graduates of Furnald. When the midshipmen returned to their rooms after morning classes they found mimeographed forms on their cots. Each midshipman was asked to list the three types of duty he most desired, and to state the reasons for his first choice.
Nobody could find out how heavily these sheets would count in deciding orders. There were rumors that everyone would get his first choice if the reasons were well put; other rumors that the sheets were just more meaningless Navy paper; still other darker rumors, the more believed for their pessimism, that the purpose was simply to trap those who wanted to avoid dangerous duty, in order to make sure they got it. Some advised asking for the riskiest duty; others were for putting down frankly the desires of the heart. Men like Willie, known for a gift of words, were pressed into service to write convincing reasons wholesale. An enterprising ex-newspaperman named McCutcheon on the eighth floor enjoyed a burst of prosperity by charging five dollars per reason.
Keefer instantly chose Staff Duty, Pacific, saying, “That’s for me. Laying around on your duff in Hawaii, with all them nurses around, maybe running to get the admiral a dispatch once in a while. That’s my kind of war.” He daringly left blank the