“Don’t get cranked up here,” Glass told Brace. “They’ll roll you for your socks.”
“Why’d we come here, then?”
“It’s in every guidebook,” Howard told him. “Always visit the Chamber of Commerce first.”
“You used to be a funny guy.”
“I don’t feel funny anymore.”
The men drink a third beer, then a fourth, in preparation for the cold trip crosstown.
“I wish I could meet a decent woman.”
Howard, who has learned the great secret, and who, after beer, is generous: “Go to a library.”
“You yeomen is all alike.”
“It’s true,” said Howard. “Two thirds of all sailors who marry meet their wives in libraries”—a statistical exaggeration by Howard, who, doing correct calculation, would have arrived at only half that figure.
“Makes sense, sorta. Where else can a decent woman be seen talkin’ to you?”
The men drink a fifth beer, a sixth.
Brace looked through the windows at the cold streets. He was reluctant to move into that darkness, and the reluctance showed on the once bland face that was now creased here and there with a light wrinkle. He looked around the seamy, grungy, spit-ridden bar. His movements, once quick and inaccurate, were now deliberate. He whirled his flat hat on one finger.
“It’s either about something,” he said, “or it isn’t. I’m going back to the ship.”
Howard stood. “I’ll come with.”
Glass stood. “Me, too. If I did go over that way, I’d probably just run into my folks.”
“Because things are changing,” said Brace. “Everything is changing.”
Some change was abrupt. Racca and Masters left the ship, Racca on a stretcher and Masters escorted by Majors. Three days later, as the first heavy snow swirled between buildings and danced in a northeast declamation along the pier, Racca returned with his arm in a cast. The snow slopped along brick streets where traffic churned dirt, mixing the snow into a cold custard of filth. As the wind increased, and the snow increased, ships along the pier faded. The white bows melted into wind and snow, and the ships became spectral blots of white on white.
Racca smiled, gossiped, grinned. He clowned. He was a juggler of his emotions, a bare adept who managed not to weep. McClean helped pack Racca’s gear. Men who did not even like Racca, much, pretended that he would soon return to limited duty, but it was clear that Racca was ashore to stay.
Masters pretended madness, and was believed. The first storm died. The second storm moved in with an immense burden of snow, as if the storm attempted to cloud and hide the shame of the dirty streets. Masters talked and talked and talked; to doctors, and to a legal officer. He accepted a general discharge.
“He got off easy,” said Glass. “They could of hung him high.”
“This way causes less stink,” Howard told him. “Plus, it’s cheaper.”
“Of course, if he’s really crazy…”
Wysczknowski, dealing a perennial hand of solitaire, shifted uncomfortably. The messdeck, where Brace mopped, was constantly damp with melted snow. The ship was vaguely cold, and frosted breath combined with melted snow to cover bulkheads with a thin glaze of moisture that was not cold enough to freeze, not warm enough to evaporate. “Everybody was crazy,” said Wysczknowski. “Masters yellowed out. The crazy part don’t matter.”
Some of the changes looked good. Fireman Schmidt transferred in from a weather cutter. Schmidt’s square kraut head, with its regulation dress blue weather-cutter haircut, bent like a lover in the engine room, and it was clear that Schmidt was going to be okay.
Third engineman Bascomb, with a Georgia accent, transferred in from a buoy snatcher. Bascomb was a lanky, cracker-looking yahoo with a loud mouth who—according to scuttlebutt—got that loud mouth because, where he was raised, it was a far piece between the house and the barn. Men idly worried, watched Bascomb and McClean; were relieved when the two went ashore drinking, to return in a maudlin, foul-mouthed state, because bartenders were prejudiced against southerners.
Other change was subtle, and perhaps it was not change at all. Howard knew that Levere spent too much time in operations. Howard counseled himself with a dozen troubled speculations, chief among them the cold suspicion that either Abner or Adrian would be permanently assigned to New Bedford. Howard kept his silence against the awful day when the news would arrive, but the news did not arrive; and Howard, for two days, was otherwise occupied. When he could finally contrive no good official reason for calling Abner, he dug in his own pockets and looked for a pay phone. He hunched in his peacoat, shivering, frozen because he was ashore in a regulation, dress blues town. He dialed.
“Nobody here is talking,” he said to radioman Diamond.
“It happened so fast,” Diamond told Howard. “It’s snowing hard here.”
“We already have it here. Radio says they have it deep up home.”
“I know,” said Diamond. “I’m the radioman.”
Yeoman Wilson, climbing from Abner’s small boat to the deck of Able while carrying a medical kit, had grabbed a chain. The chain gave way. Wilson fell backward, struck his head on the gunnel of the boat, and was dead.
“The hook had rusted,” Diamond said. “Somebody tied that thing in place with marlin.”
“A bosun’s mate, then, or a seaman.”
“Try to find out—you can’t. Our guys already been that route.”
“There’s a board of investigation.”
“They’ll hang the captain,” Diamond said, “and probably the chief bosun.”
“But who really did it?”
“Try to find out—because no one knows. Maybe not even the guy who did it.”
Some change only threatened.
“I want out of this,” said Brace. “Where is that guy, Iris?”
Lamp, surrounded by the enormous port of Boston, thus with a surfeit of sinners, stayed aboard. His excellent cooking improved. While the rest of the crew forgot Jensen, and as Racca and Masters vanished more surely than spirits from their places on the messdeck, Lamp attacked the invisible. This time his attack was subtle, in the form of constant small surprises. Men peered suspiciously at silly desserts, at pink cupcakes—at creampuffs—which they licked experimentally, then wolfed. On the cold ship the only warm place was the galley, and steam from Lamp’s fires spilled from the galley and clouded the messdeck. Brace mopped, squeegeed, swabbed, could not get rid of water.
“Iris is at the base in South Portland,” Howard told Brace. “Waiting for us to get in.”
“Quit complaining, sonny,” Lamp told Brace. “We got November off. You want to be steaming in that mess out there?”
“Nobody’s steaming, anyway.”
Which was nearly true. During November, cutter Aaron, of Boston, towed fishing vessel Pearl. Cutter Abner, standby in New Bedford, towed fishing vessel Stella. Two men were reported in the surf at Hampton Beach. Dune pounders searched, recovered no one. As storms swept off the North Atlantic, traffic dropped. Fishermen doubled up their moorings, mended nets.
Brace complained, but his work improved. For the first time, Brace seemed to listen to his own complaint, hear his own voice. The tenor of complaint and voice changed. Brace seemed nearly reasonable; stoic, the victim trapped in a dentist’s chair from which, sooner or later, he could step away drilled and patched and forgetful.
“A guy gets tired,” he told Howard. “I don’t mean the work, I mean the kind of work.”