Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [30]
“Willie? Doggone you, boy, how are you?” It was Keefer. “I got your wire, boy. I been phoning all day. Where you been, boy?”
“Plane got hung up in Chicago, Rollo-”
“Well, come on out, boy, time’s a-wasting. We just getting a party organized-”
“Where are you-Fairmont?”
“Junior Officers’ Club-Powell Street. Hurry up. There’s a tall blonde on the loose here that is a dish-”
“Where’s Keggs?”
“He’s gone already, Willie, gone to sea. Three weeks’ delay getting transportation for everybody in Frisco except old horseface-”
“How come?”
“Why, the poor boy was down in transportation office, see, he just come off the train, he was getting his orders endorsed. Wouldn’t you know, the phone rings and it’s the skipper of a creeping coffin that’s going to Pearl, and he’s got room for three more officers. Keggs gets endorsed right over to him. He never even changed his socks in Frisco. Left Tuesday. Missed everything. This is the town, Willie. Liquor and gals till you can’t stand up. Get on your bicycle-”
“Be right over, Rollo.”
He felt slightly hypocritical, finishing up the letter to May. But he asserted to himself that he was entitled to any fun he could grasp before he went out to sea.
Willie considered himself a mistreated hero; he still smarted, under the insult of his orders to the Caine. After triumphing over the handicap of forty-eight demerits and rising to the top five per cent of the school, he had been sent to sweep mines on an obsolete World War I ship! It was mortifying-twice so, because Keggs, nearest him on the alphabetical list but almost two hundred numbers below him in standing, had drawn identical duty. Obviously the Navy had disposed of the two men with no thought of what they deserved, one after another, like hogs being slaughtered. So Willie believed.
He was drawn into a round of drinking and partying that lasted twenty days. He rolled with Keefer from clubs to bars to girls’ apartments. He quickly became popular because of his piano entertaining. Officers and girls alike were rapturous over If You Knew What the Gnu Knew: he had to sing it several times every night. He resurrected a knack developed in college days of making up rhymes on people’s names as he sang:
“Hirohito trembles when he hears of Keefer,
To calm his nerves he has to light a reefer-”
Willie could go nimbly from name to name in the room, improvising such couplets to a jazzy refrain. This astounded his audiences, especially the girls, who thought his talents bordered on witchcraft. He and Keefer roared up and down the hair-raising hills in an old rented Ford, and dined mightily on Chinese food, abalones and crabs, and did very little sleeping. They were invited to fine homes and exclusive clubs. It was a great war.
Keefer became friendly with an officer in the transportation department. The result was that the roommates were assigned to a hospital ship for their voyage westward. “Nurses and fresh strawberries-that’s the ticket, Willie my boy,” Keefer said, proudly announcing this news. They rolled aboard the Mercy at dawn after a roistering farewell party, and they continued the same pace of pleasure all the while the ship was steaming toward Hawaii. Nurses clustered around Willie at the piano in the lounge every evening. There were sharp restrictions aboard the Mercy on place and time of meetings between the sexes, but Keefer quickly learned his way about the ship and arranged for the pursuit of happiness at all hours. They saw very little of the Pacific Ocean.
They debarked in Honolulu arm in arm with two freethinking nurses, Lieutenants Jones and Carter; exchanged brief kisses under the huge Dole’s pineapple electric sign, and agreed to meet for dinner. The two ensigns piled their luggage into the taxicab of a snub-nosed grinning Hawaiian in a rainbow-colored shirt.
“Navy Base, Pearl, please.”
“Yes, gentlemans.”
Keefer got