“A real winner,” the OD at the Base told Howard. “I’m glad you’ve got the punk.”
Steward apprentice Iris, it developed, was a man who had been so gorgeously conned that no argument, no set of reasons, could convince him that the entire world was not in a state of error. During the short walk between Base and ship, Iris managed to explain three times that a recruiter in Hawaii had promised him a change in rate the minute he hit the States. Iris managed to explain four times that he had an engineering degree from a great and powerful university, and that the recruiter had promised that a man with such qualifications would immediately be sent to officer’s candidate school. Steward apprentice Iris—who did not have a Chinaman’s chance in a Turkish harem of getting a change in rate (being Hawaiian), leave alone O.C.S., and who doubtless had his sheepskin with him—was tall and spectacled and mildly oriental, if one discounted the indignant and confused expression on his face. Yeoman Howard, who was busy mistrusting all experience, kept his big mouth shut. He took Iris aboard and introduced him to bosun striker Joyce.
“What’d I do with him?”
“Square him away,” said Howard. “I’ll log it. See you below in a minute.”
The minute stretched to five, because of the pickiness of the horse-headed Chappel. Chappel hunched above Iris’s service record which lay glistening in stiff, new, undented covers. Chappel tsked and pursed his mouth and made worry noises. Chappel did not have an engineering degree. Adrian did not have a chief bosun. All that Howard had was a thick envelope from Personnel which he feared to open.
The logging-in ceremony completed to Chappel’s scrupulous satisfaction, Howard laid below; where, with engineering certitude, steward apprentice Iris was hogging the whole show. He had gathered quite a crowd.
“You are a punk,” Joyce was telling Iris. “We don’t need your flak.”
“You must not speak to me in that manner. I have an engineering degree.”
“You are a punk with an engineering degree.”
“This is the cutter Adrian,” said Glass. “The captain is Phil Levere, mustang. The man on deck is Jim Conally. The cook is Reeser Lamp. You are steward apprentice Iris.”
“You dislike me because am Hawaiian.”
“True,” said Wysczknowski, “but yids are worse. And admirals.”
“You slant-eyes is all alike,” Joyce advised Iris. “We’d ought to pack up the lot of you and send you back to Philadelphia.”
“And Polacks,” Glass told him. “There ain’t nothin’ worse than a Polack. I had a long weekend with a Polack lady once… by mistake… you can take my word.”
“Niggers,” said McClean. ”… now know something about this.”
“What are you saying? What in the world are you trying to say?”
“We are saying,” said Wysczknowski with considerable ease, “that there is an old, tired guy back aft, and he has been up all night and cooking. So unpack that sloppity seabag…”
“And get crackin’.”
The fat envelope, when Howard opened it, contained orders:
The dying Dane was ordered to take command, not of Able, but Aaron in Boston. Levere had Able. The captain of Aaron was to take Adrian, a grand swapping around that Howard did not then recognize as a rejuvenating and reaffirming principle. All Howard knew was that the auxiliary orders allowed Levere to take some men with him to subdue the jinx ship. Levere had been scrupulous in his requisitions. He had not wanted to short Adrian.
Fallon stayed, but Snow was transferred with Levere. Chappel went with Levere, as did Joyce and Wysczknowski, Glass and James. Howard, not knowing whether it was a compliment, a disgrace, or neither, was not included.
Chapter 25
We old men, those of us who are not sandpapered flat, as we pontificate from the depths of comfortable chairs, are apt to lie, pretending that chance, youth, dreams and fortitude are bold matters of understood intent. The truth is elsewhere. We fumbled, we puzzled, and if we found any great meanings, the discoveries, like as not, were by plain luck.
Adrian returned to piling seas. As engineman Fallon had done the winter before, taking over from the senior Jensen, now the Indian Conally walked the decks for Dane. Conally resembled a blunt hammer as he pounded a new deck gang into shape.
District offices, frustrated in the appointment of Dane, retained Aaron’s captain aboard Aaron. District sent Aaron’s chief bosun, freshly transformed to mustang, to Adrian. The new captain was Ed Chaney. He was an easygoing spendthrift ashore, a tough and unsleeping sailor the moment that the ship found deep water. He did not suit Conally, exactly; and he did not suit Howard, exactly; but each man had to admit that in any world of fools, Chaney was not going to qualify for merit badges.
Through piling seas Adrian towed Mirabelle, Eben, Lorna Ann, Catspaw, Vicky R. and Knight Ethelred… a manly yacht.
From south came news that the decommissioned cutter Ajax, rusting on the scrap pile in Boston, was sold to a man who planned to turn it into a small and intimate seaside restaurant.
Cutter Adrian fought a fire at the coal yards in Portland. Ice once more formed in the bow, and ice sprinkled as drops fell skidded across the decks from the high arcs of water, while men and fought to stay afoot and in command of the heaving, pulsing hoses. The fire was red and gold against the backdrop of the whitened city, and black smoke rose to distribute the miserable smell of sulphur through the ship.
Seaman apprentice Brace refused sick leave, having nowhere to go, and he hung around the Base as an ambulatory patient—but he resembled, in his anxiety to “get on with it,” a blind pup in a sausage factory. Conally spoke to Chaney, and Chaney read Levere’s comments in Brace’s service record. Brace became a full seaman, albeit a seaman with a temporarily unusable arm.
Cutter Adrian towed Daniel, Misty, and, on a day of glory, met cutter Abner at sea as Abner was returning home. Adrian and Abner closed, men waved, and then the two ships kicked apart on diverging courses to search for the overdue Dominick which was found two days later by dune pounders as the disabled vessel swung at the pick in shoal water.
Adrian towed Violet, Pride Of The Banks, Obadiah.
Abner, in an excess of family feeling, towed Sister Sue, Seven Sisters, The Brothers.
Able towed Erasmus.
Word from south spread through the fleet, and the word said that cutter Able was “takin’ a turn” and “lookin’ good.” Able towed Jacqueline, Prester John II, Rockrose. Able searched and found the overdue and written-off Maiden Of Mist, adrift with a starving crew that had been reduced to its next to last bottle of booze.
A thirty-six foot lifeboat was declared excess by the Base. It was invoiced as a gift to a troop of sea scouts. From north came radio gossip which hoped for the early breakup of the ice.
Adrian towed Whisper, Fife, Excalibur.