“Well, damn it, we’re losing the Old Man and Mike Brannon and that means that Pete Simms will probably be the Executive Officer next war patrol. If his marriage is breaking up, if it affects him, it could be bad. An Exec who hasn’t got his whole mind on his job could lose the ship!”
“Captain Hinman and Mike Brannon both leaving?” She slowed the car slightly. “Honey, we heard things, little things, the last week or two. What happened out there?”
“Later,” he said. “There’s the boys on the lawn. My God, look how Alan has grown this last month!”
Dottie Barber rolled over in bed late that night and reached for a cigaret.
“Pappy John,” she said, exhaling a long plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “Pappy John, you are still the best man who ever started a rusty engine and made it purr like a kitten! Now rest easy and get your strength back and let me tell you about your engineering officer.”
When she had finished John Barber reached up and rubbed his balding head.
“God damn it!” he muttered. “That son of a bitch Simms is bad enough now. If he finds out about this he’s gonna be hell on wheels with the throttle stuck wide open.”
“He’ll find out,” she said. She lit a cigaret for him. “Everyone on the Base seems to know about it.”
“What sort of a guy is it she’s been shackin’ up with? You ever see him?”
“He was pointed out to me when I went to the Commissary on the Base one day,” she said. “Nice-looking man, little bit chubby, just like Mary is. I heard he’s married, has a wife and four kids on the East Coast.”
“She’s got to be out of her skull!” Barber said. He ground out the cigaret in an ashtray Dottie was holding on her bare stomach. “I could understand her shacking up if Simms was dead, lost at sea or something. But she shouldn’t be screwing all hands just because we’re out at sea for a few weeks!”
“She’s not screwing all hands,” Dottie said sweetly. “Just one little civilian. And from what I hear she’s just as lonely when the ship is in port as when you’re gone!”
“How would you know that?”
“Marylin, the mixed-blood who lives at the end of the street, the one who’s married to that Yard machinist? You know him. Well, Marylin babysits for officers when they have a party and does housecleaning for some of them. Marylin says that Mary Simms always calls her when Pete Simms is due home from sea to help her clean the house. Your nice Mr. Simms walks in, pulls on white gloves and walks around feeling over the tops of the doors and inside cupboards, looking for dust. He must think he’s an Admiral on inspection tour!”
“I know,” Barber growled. “The son of a bitch came off a battleship. He pulled that sort of shit when we were shaking down the Mako. One day one of my firemen put a bucket of dirty oil at the bottom of the ladder that goes down to the auxiliary diesel and then he unscrewed the light bulb.
“Simms went down the ladder in his white gloves and put his foot in the bucket! You’d a thought a main engine had blown up! Got his white gloves all dirty trying to get his shoe and sock off. Came back to the engine rooms later and told me to put all hands to scrubbing the bilges with their toothbrushes!”
“My God!” she said. “How’d you get out of that one?”
“That’s what you got a Chief of the Boat for,” he said. “I went to Dusty and he got Mr. Simms straightened out. Does Dusty know about this, you think?”
“June knows about it so I guess that he’ll know,” she said. “But Mr. Simms is as much your problem as Dusty’s, isn’t he?”
“In a way,” he said. “The Chief of the Boat is the only Chief with enough weight to go to the Old Man and tell him one of his officers is carrying too much right rudder. Stop that, will you! I’m too old for that stuff!”
“Oh no you’re not!” she giggled.
“I am so!” he said. “You’re a crazy woman!”
“You’re not too old!” she giggled. “I’ve got a handful already!”
Mike Brannon waited until just before noon before telephoning Lieut. Don Grilley’s house. Bernice Grilley answered.
“Don’s in the shower and I’m stirring up a mess of real Oklahoma-style flapjacks and there’s some great pork sausage my Daddy sent me a few days ago and y’all bring Gloria and little Glory over and have some lunch.” She listened to Brannon’s remonstrations for a moment.
“Too late, friend. While you were talkin’ I poured in some more flour and if y’all don’t come over I’ll have a lot of wasted flapjacks. Now come on, right away, y’hear?”
She greeted the Brannons at the door and led the way to the dining room, a tall, slim woman whose self-assured manner had been developed through several years of making a home for herself and her geologist husband in the out-of-the-way places of the United States.
“Last batch of the first bunch is on the griddle,” she said as she went into the kitchen. “Don, old buddy, start dishing up will you, while I turn these ‘jacks?”
They ate hugely, Gloria Brannon protesting that she really shouldn’t take a third helping, and then Bernice Grilley put little Glory Brannon in the front room with a big coloring book and a box of crayons. She brought a big pot of coffee out to the kitchen.
“You wanted to talk to me?” Don Grilley said. He lit a cigaret and touched his wife’s hand in thanks as she poured coffee.
“Well, it’s not my responsibility now,” Mike Brannon said. “I’m officially detached.” His round face was troubled. “But I’m concerned about this thing, what it could do at the Mako.”
“You’re talking about the Simms mess?” Grilley said.
Brannon nodded his head. “Mess is the right word.”
“We’ve seen that sort of thing in the oil camps,” Bernice Grilley said. She reached over and got one of her husband’s cigarets.
“A man leaves his wife alone too much. Sometimes she goes wrong because she’s just too lonely. Sometimes she welcomes the absence so she can cat around.”
“What did you do about things like that?” Mike asked.
“Nothing,” Grilley answered. “Not anyone’s business. I wonder sometimes why the Navy makes it their business when something like this happens. The Navy is government and government shouldn’t be sticking its nose into private affairs.”
“Oh, you’re wrong!” Brannon said. “When you’re out at sea, especially in a submarine, and a man is all upset because of something like this he could lose the ship, sink it!”
“You can get killed working on an oil rig just as easily,” Grilley said. “But it doesn’t happen that often. But that’s none of my business, the Simms thing I mean. All I want is for this war to end so I can go back to being a civilian.” He noticed that Mike Brannon’s face had begun to set in what the Wardroom called “The Executive Officer’s ‘Now Hear This!’ expression.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Mike. I’ve learned a lot from some of the people I’ve met. You, for one. If all the officers in the Navy were like you and the Skipper I’d consider putting in to be a Regular. It’s the Pete Simmses that bother me.” He turned to his wife.
“Tell Mike and Gloria what Simms did when we invited him and Mary over after our first patrol run. We asked them over to have a Mexican-style dinner,” he explained to Mike.
“Well, he came in and then he began touching things, tables, over the doors, things like that. And he told me I wasn’t a very good housekeeper. He said that as long as I was in the Navy that I should run, what did he call it, Don?”
“A taut ship,” Grilley said with a grin. “Now tell them what you said!”
“I told him to gather up all the dust he could find, pat it into a little pile and then stuff it — you know where!