Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [65]
“Well, we’ll leave it at that. Have a good time tonight. Don’t drown your sorrows too heavily.”
“Thank you, Captain. Is that all?”
“That’s all, Willie.” He returned the invitation to the ensign, who turned and walked out, closing the door rather hard.
Willie dashed up the ladder and ran to the clipping shack. His course was clear to him now. His position on the Caine was hopeless. The new captain would read the fitness report and mark him once for all as an unreliable fool-not a fool in Keefer’s sense, but in the Navy sense. There was only one thing to do: get off this cursed ship and make a fresh start. The penalty for his mistake was paid in the damning fitness report. “I can, and I will, erase that description from my record, so help me God,” he swore to himself. “But not on the Caine. Not on the Caine!” He was sure that the admiral would get him transferred. Several times the great man had embraced him after a chorus of Who Hit Annie in the Fanny with a Flounder, and had declared that he would do almost anything to get Willie on his staff permanently. “Just say the word, Willie!” He had been joking; but it was a joke with a core of truth, Willie knew.
He dragged the qualification course from a grimy drawer in the clipping shack. He calculated the number of lessons due by this date. He spent the rest of the morning and the whole afternoon grimly filling out those assignments. After dinner he presented himself in Lieutenant Adams’ room, shaved, glossy, and dressed in his last precious set of shore-laundered khakis. “Request permission to leave the ship, sir.”
Adams glanced at him sympathetically. His eye moved to the four assignments in Willie’s hand, and he smiled. “Granted. Give my love to the admiral.” He took the assignments and laid them in his work-basket.
As Willie mounted the ladder to the main deck he met Paynter coming down with both fists full of wrinkled, moldy letters. He said, “Anything for me?”
“I dropped yours in the clip shack. This is all old stuff that chased us around SoPac for a couple of months. Just caught up with us.”
Willie went aft. Sailors were milling around the mail orderly on the quarterdeck in the twilight as he shouted names and passed out letters and packages. Four dirty weather-stained canvas sacks of mail were heaped on the deck at his feet.
Harding was lying on his bunk in the gloomy clipping shack. “Nothing for me,” he said sleepily. “I wasn’t on the Caine mailing list way back then. You sure were.”
“Yes, my folks thought I was going straight to the Caine- Willie snapped on the dim light. There were several old crumpled letters from May and his mother, and a few others; also a battered oblong package that looked like a book. His nerves were shocked when he saw his father’s handwriting on the package. He tore it open, and found a black-bound Bible with a wrinkled note protruding from it.
Here’s the Bible I promised you, Willie. Luckily I found one right here in the hospital bookstore, otherwise I’d have had to send out for it. I guess Bibles go well in hospitals. If my handwriting seems a little cramped it’s because I’m sitting up in bed to write this. Everything’s proceeding on schedule, I’m afraid. They’re operating tomorrow. The surgeon is old Dr. Nostrand, who should know better than to try to kid me. But I appreciate his optimism only too eagerly, all the same.
Well, my son, take a look at Ecclesiastes 9:10, will you? I’ll let that stand as my last word to you. Nothing more now, but good-by, and God bless you.
DAD
Willie turned to the Bible passage with shaking hands.
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
The words were underlined with wavering ink lines. Beside them Dr. Keith had written in the broad margin: “He’s talking about your job on the Caine, Willie. Good luck.”
Willie turned out the light, threw himself on his bunk, and buried his face in the sooty pillow. He lay so, motionless, for a long while, heedless of the creasing