The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [89]
His things were laid out on the slablike medical table and he reached over for fresh paper and rolled a page into the typewriter. He took his time at this, which would have astounded Jones or anyone else back at East Base who had ever seen him put a typewriter to work. On TPWP pieces he wrote as fast as the keys could tolerate, never needing to glance down—one of the blessings he owed his father was those boyhood sessions at the training typewriter in the Gleaner office, with bunion pads hiding the letters on the keyboard. But nights on his movie script, which were many, he deliberately slowed to a sculptor's pace, letting the imagination feel its way toward the shape of trueness. The scene he was working on took place on the Letter Hill. The character based on Purcell was the last player to reach the whitewashed rocks—Camera: the slope below him appears steep and endless, he tapped onto the paper—and others of the football team sagged against the stone emblem trying to catch their breath. His fingers resting on the keyboard, he tried out dialogue in his inner ear, trying to catch words out of the air. It was a pursuit that enabled him to stand the slow, slow passage of military hours, the way some other man in uniform somewhere might endure the duration by nightly reading in War and Peace, and upon finishing it, starting over. (He made a mental note to find out what Danzer did to pass the time, if he did anything.) It was an abiding mystery, the script, that promised to reveal itself only in the measured workings of his mind and his fingers. And it was something Tepee Weepy could not reach.
***
He lurched through the next days at Danzer's side, listening over and over to him regulate a cook here, a baker there, a storeroom swabbie down in some gloomy chamber at the bottom of the ship. All of it about as exciting as the derring-do of the corner grocer. SUPREME TEAM MEMBER BATTLES ENEMY WITH BISCUITS, he could just see the headline. Tepee Weepy would be thrilled to the gills with this piece. Sure it would. As military service went, what he was reporting on aboard the USS McCorkle amounted to the essence of quiescence.
Meanwhile the long lean destroyer itself was never at rest. The Cork was aptly nicknamed, bobbing with every bit of weather. Yet that was the only discernible peril it faced. There were moments, staring out at the methodical ocean, when he pined for a genuine storm to shake matters up into something he could write about with some life to it, before snapping back to his senses. Think about it, Reinking. Throwing up your guts doesn't help you do your job. Just ask Dex.
So, it seemed like just another helping of the idly floating Cork's routine when Danzer turned to him over dessert one dinnertime and announced for all to hear: "You can't deprive us of your company this evening, Ben. It's movie night."
Well, why not? he figured. Let's see if Slick Nick supplies popcorn and soda pop along with the main feature. He trooped into the wardroom with the topside contingent and the petty officers invited up from below and sat there in tight quarters watching Compromised with Edward G. Robinson and Bette Davis chewing up the scenery and each other. That soapy drama, however, did not stand a chance of staying with him after what flickered onto the white metal wall at the end of the room first. He should have known Danzer had