Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [37]
“Fine.” Willie finished packing and dressed in silence. He shouldered his foot locker and stumbled out through the door. Paynter followed with his two bags, saying, “But don’t be surprised if we take off west and never see civilization for a year. It’s happened before.”
Outside the BOQ in the chill misty morning stood a small gray Navy dump truck. “Not very classy,” said Paynter, “but that’s all I could get at five in the morning. Pile in.”
They rattled down the road toward the fleet landing. Willie’s luggage jumped and lunged around in the back as though trying to escape. “Where’s the ship?” said Willie, wondering at the dour silence of Ensign Paynter.
“Moored to a buoy in the stream.”
“Are you regular Navy?”
“No.”
“Are there any regulars aboard?”
“Three.”
“Are you V-7?”
“Yes.”
“Deck?”
“No, engineering.”
“What are your duties on the Caine?”
“Communications.”
Willie was startled. “Isn’t that a queer assignment for an engineer?”
“Not on the Caine.”
“I take it you don’t like the Caine.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What’s the ship like?”
“You’ll see for yourself.”
“Seen a lot of action?”
“Yes and no.”
“You been aboard her long?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you call long.”
“I call a year long.”
“I call a week long sometimes.”
The truck pulled up at the head of steps leading down to the fleet landing. Paynter honked. Three sailors lying in a half-canopied greasy gray boat alongside the dock rose wearily and mounted the steps. Their blue dungarees were ragged, and the shirttails hung outside the trousers. They loaded Willie’s gear into the boat while Paynter turned the truck in to a car pool a few yards down the road. The two officers stepped into the boat and sat on cracked black leather seats inside the canopy.
“All right, Meatball, shove off,” said Paynter to the coxswain, a fat sailor dressed in amazingly dirty rags, with a pure-white new hat tilted forward almost to his nose.
A bell clanged in Willie’s ear and he jumped. His head was no more than an inch from the bell. He shifted to another cushion. The boat engineer started up the motor, after several failures which he commented on with filthy epithets delivered in an indifferent monotone. He was perhaps nineteen, small and gaunt, with a face blackened half by stubble and half by grease, and covered with pimples. Long, coarse black hair fell over his tiny squinting eyes. He wore no hat. He was addressed by the other sailors as. “Horrible.” As soon as the boat chugged away from the landing he took off his shirt, exposing a monkey-like growth of hair.
Willie looked around at the boat. The gray paint was blistering off the wood, and ragged patches showed where new paint had been daubed over old without scraping. Two of the three portholes of the canopy had cardboard in them instead of glass.
“Mr. Paynter,” shouted the engineer over the racket of the motor, “can we stop off and pick up a movie?”
“No.”
“Christ, we ain’t seen no movie forever,” whined Horrible.
“No stopping.”
Horrible thereupon blasphemed and cursed for a couple of minutes. Willie, appalled at his freedom of language in the officer’s presence, expected Paynter to bring him up short. But the stream of gutter talk appeared to trouble Paynter no more than the lapping of the water. He sat immobile, his fingers folded in his lap, his eyes closed, chewing a rubber band that protruded from his lips.
“Say, Paynter,” Willie shouted, “what duties do you suppose I’ll get aboard ship?”
Paynter opened his eyes. “Mine,” he said, with a brief happy smile, and closed them again.
The gig rounded a point of Ford Island and headed into the western channel. “Hey, Mister Paynter,” called Meatball, standing tiptoe on the stern thwart, leaning on the tiller, “the ship’s gone.”
“You’re crazy, Meatball,” said Paynter. “Look again. She’s in R-6, forward of the Belleau Wood.”
“I’m telling you, sir, the buoys are empty. For Christ’s sake, take a look.”
He clanged the bell with a pull cord. The boat slowed, and wallowed in the waves. Paynter climbed out on the gunwale. “I’ll be damned. She is gone.