Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [4]
“I’m Keith.”
“Keggs.”
The fat Southerner shoved a number of his books off the cot to the floor, and stretched himself out on the springs. “Ah had me a farewell party last night,” he groaned, inserting a happy giggle into the groan, “to end all farewell parties. Why do we do it to ourselves, fellas? ’Scuse me.” He rolled his face to the wall.
“You’re not going to sleep!” Keggs said. “Suppose they catch you?”
“My boy,” said Keefer drowsily, “Ah am an old military man. Four years at Gaylord Academy. Don’ worry about of Keefer. Punch me if Ah snore.” Willie wanted to ask the old military man how serious lordosis might be in a war career. But as he searched for a delicate way to open the subject, Keefer’s breath grew regular and heavy. Within a minute he was sleeping like a hog in the sun.
“He’ll get bilged, sure,” mourned Keggs, turning the pages of Naval Ordnance. “So will I. This book is absolute gibberish to me. What on earth is a cam? What do they mean by an interrupted screw?”
“Search me. What do you mean, ‘bilged’?”
“Don’t you know how they work it? We get three weeks as apprentice seamen. Then the top two thirds of the class become midshipmen. The rest get bilged. Straight to the Army.”
The fugitives exchanged an understanding look. Willie’s hand crept around to his back, to ascertain how hollow his hollow back really was. He began a series of frenzied efforts to touch his toes. At every bend he came nearer. He broke out in a sweat. Once he thought the tips of his fingers brushed his shoelaces, and he gurgled in triumph. With a swoop and a groan he brought his fingers squarely on his toes. Coming erect again, his spine vibrating, the room spinning, he found that Keefer, rolled over and awake, was staring at him with frightened little eyes. Keggs had backed into a corner. Willie attempted a lighthearted laugh, but he staggered at the same moment and had to clutch the desk to keep from falling over, so the effect of nonchalance was marred. “Nothing like a little setting-up exercise,” he said, with drunken savoir-faire.
“Hell, no,” said Keefer. “Especially three o’clock in the afternoon. Ah never miss it myself.”
Three rolled-up mattresses came catapulting through the open door, one after another. “Mattresses!” yelled a retreating voice in the hall. Blankets, pillows, and sheets flew in, propelled by another disembodied voice shouting, “Blankets, pillows, and sheets!”
“Couldn’t imagine what they were less’n he told us,” growled Keefer, untangling himself from a sheet which had draped itself on him. He made up a bed in a few moments, flat and neat as if it had been steam-rollered. Willie summoned up boys’ camp experience; his cot soon looked presentable. Keggs wrestled with the bedclothes for ten minutes while the others stowed their books and clothes, then he asked Keefer hopefully: “How’s that, now?”
“Fella,” said Keefer, shaking his head, “you an innocent man.” He approached the cot and made a few. passes of the hand over it. The bed straightened itself into military rigidity, as in an animated cartoon.
“You’re a whiz,” said Keggs.
“I heard what you said about me bilging,” said Keefer kindly. “Don’ worry. I be there on the great gittin’-up morning.”
The rest of the day went by in bugles, assemblies, dismissals, reassemblies, announcements, marches, lectures, and aptitude tests. Every time the administration remembered a detail that had been omitted in the mimeographed sheets the bugle blared, and five hundred sailors swarmed out of Furnald Hall. A fair-haired, tall, baby-faced ensign named Acres would bark the new instruction, standing on the steps, jutting his chin and squinting fiercely. Then he would dismiss them, and the building would suck them in. The trouble with this systole and diastole for the men on the top floor (“tenth deck”) was that there wasn’t room for them all in the elevator. They had to scramble down nine flights