Pacific Interlude Read online

“Is this an auction? The lady set a price, I’m paying it.”

  “You’ll take it?” she said, sounding incredulous.

  “Sure. Maybe it will make up for all the letters I haven’t written home.”

  Syl reached for his wallet and gave her five twenty-dollar bills.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking carefully at each bill before rolling them up and tucking them into her black sling. She tried not to grin too broadly.

  “How much for the amber?” Schuman asked.

  “A hundred dollars?”

  “I’ll take it if you’ll accept Australian money,” he said. “A bank can change it for you.”

  “I’ll take it!” Her eyes gleamed with delight.

  “You guys are some businessmen,” Buller said with disgust. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to bargain?”

  “I think it’s worth the price,” Schuman said, picking up the necklace. “Good amber doesn’t come cheap, with or without the last bug of its kind.”

  “You got anything else?” Buller asked.

  Her face grew tense. “One more thing, but it is very expensive. A real diamond.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  She opened a small drawer at the bottom of the box and with slightly trembling fingers took out a flat box of flaking leather. Syl had to help her with the catch. When he opened the lid, a single diamond in the middle of a gold brooch gleamed on matted black velvet.

  “That is something,” Schuman said. “How many karats?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, holding it up to the light, where it flashed brilliantly.

  “Two karats, maybe three, I’d guess. That really ought to be worth something.”

  “If” it’s real,” trusting man-of-the-people Buller said.

  “Of course it is real. I don’t cheat you—”

  “How much you want for it?” Buller asked.

  “How much do you offer?”

  “I’ll give you two hundred for it and I’m not even sure it’s real—”

  “It’s worth much more than that,” Syl said.

  “Skipper, you’re no help.”

  “You wouldn’t want to cheat the lady, would you? Paul, how much do you think that things’s worth?”

  “At least a thousand, maybe much more if it’s a perfect stone.” Schuman examined the diamond. “The whole brooch is beautiful. It looks very old.”

  “Was it your mother’s?” Syl asked.

  “Yes,” she said, perhaps a shade too fast. “How much will you give me?”

  “I’d offer fifteen hundred if I had the money but I don’t,” Schuman said and shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

  “You got it,” Syl said. “Take the rest of that Aussie money back.”

  “I gave it to you, to your welfare fund—”

  “Take it back. You won it fair and square.”

  “Are you talking about the dough I lost?”

  “That’s right, Buller,” Syl said.

  “I feel pretty strange about it,” Schuman said. “I don’t like to be an Indian giver but now I’m going home … That stone might be worth a lot more than fifteen hundred dollars, do you realize that, young lady?”

  “I will take fifteen hundred. I need money now.”

  “Go ahead, buy it,” Syl said. “I don’t like having all that cash in my cabin anyway, and if I give it to the men they’ll probably just buy the same kind of trouble they bought in Brisbane.”

  “That wasn’t so bad,” Buller said, but he looked faintly uncomfortable.

  “All right, I’ll do it,” Schuman said. “Let’s go back to the ship and get the money.”

  “I’ll stay here,” Buller said. “Do you have any more stuff for sale, honey?”

  “Only small things …” She put an ivory bracelet and a thin gold chain on the table.

  “I’ll look at this stuff,” Buller said. “See you when you get back.”

  “We all better go,” Syl said quickly. “We’ll have to pick up another load of gas before we come back. What’s your name, miss?”

  “Mary O’Brian,” she said, looking uneasy. “When are you coming back?”

  “About three hours—we have work to do, but we’ll be back. My name’s Syl Grant …” He introduced the others. Schuman paid her for the amber necklace.

  “You are my good luck!” she said. “Now if they’ll give me a license, I can open up this place again!”

  Syl and Paul Schuman pocketed their gems and all three walked down the stairs.

  “What’s the matter, skipper?” Buller said as they reached the street. “Were you afraid to leave me up there with her alone?”

  “We’ve got to go get another load.”

  “You had your eye on her and didn’t want me beating your time,” Buller said with a laugh. “Don’t deny it …”

  “You weren’t exactly making friends with her—”

  “She was cheating you guys blind. Don’t you know a smart little whore when you see one?”

  “What makes you so sure she’s a whore?” Syl said.

  “Hell, she thought we were going to arrest her. Either she stole that stuff or the Japs gave it to her. She was probably some colonel’s private stock. But she’s no ordinary street girl … I’ll give her that.”

  “I’m sure she’d be glad to hear it,” Syl said.

  “Look, don’t get me wrong … I liked her too but I understand her. She may have sold you a piece of glass, Paul, but you at least ought to get a good piece of ass along with it if you play your cards right—”

  “For God’s sake, she’s been beaten up—”

  “That won’t hurt unless you just want to shake hands with her. The part that bugs me about this is that you’re taking my money to buy a girl I want so bad I can taste her. Well, at least it’ll teach me not to drink the next time I play poker with you …”

  When they got back to the ship Simpson and Cramer met them at the gangway.

  “The major was just here, skipper,” Simpson said. “They’ve got enough of the wrecks cleared to let the big tankers move in. They want us to go to Lingayen Gulf right away—another shuttle run.”

  “And we never even got a chance to go ashore here!” Cramer groaned.

  Syl said nothing and went to his cabin, put Schuman’s money in a manila envelope that had carried his last convoy instructions.

  “Here are your orders,” he said with a grin as he handed it to Schuman. “I wish you luck.”

  “He’s already got all the luck,” Buller said. “He gets to give my money to a prize piece of ass while we’re off to shuttle more gas. I hear there ain’t even a bar at Lingayen Gulf.”

  Syl ignored him … “Paul, I hope we can all get together after this thing is over.”

  “I’ll want a blow-by-blow description of what my money gets you from Mata Hari,” Buller said. He actually leered.

  “I’ve got to go back to that troopship in a couple of days,” Schuman said. “You know … it’s crazy, but in a way I wish I were sailing with you guys.”

  “If you’re that crazy it’s really time you went home,” Syl said, clapped his old friend on the back and after a final handshake, watched him walk toward the street with the brown envelope under his right arm.

  “Ready to get underway, skipper,” Simpson said.

  “Very well. Set a course for Lingayen Gulf.”

  Here we go again …

  CHAPTER 29

  IT WAS ONLY about a hundred and ninety miles, a twenty-four-hour run, to Lingayen Gulf, the bay in which the invasion of Luzon had been launched. The fighting was now over there, and Syl could tell the men that they were to have a few days without needing to worry about enemy action.

  The crew of the Lucky Eighteen did not feel so lucky during their short voyage, though. The ship had visited Manila, the so-called Pearl of the Orient, and only the officers had been allowed to go ashore. Cramer and some of the men still blamed Willis for this.

  The unhappiness of the crew had deeper causes as
well. There was a curious feeling of letdown after the action they’d seen, fear of more, but a more intense resentment of boredom while they were waiting for it. The men had already picked up rumors of further invasions and they studied small-scale charts, guessing whether Formosa, Okinawa or the islands farther off shore would be the next stepping stones on the way to Japan. Syl was not the only man aboard who worried about the weaknesses of the hull, the possibility of typhoons on any long voyage and the fact that the Japanese were more and more resorting to mass suicide attacks.

  The crew’s discontent increased when they discovered that the village of San Fernando on Lingayen Gulf, where they were to supply storage tanks and barges for an airstrip, had nothing to offer but one native bar off-limits to all military personnel. The only good part of this duty was that it was relatively unhurried. The ship could keep current air traffic supplied by shuttling gasoline from the merchant tanker only in the daytime and could anchor at night.

  “Get yourselves a good rest,” the major in charge said. “God knows where you’ll go from here. We’ll all be moving up before long. My bet is Okinawa.”

  Rest without recreation meant idleness, and tensions increased as they lay at anchor from dusk to dawn, staring at the few lights ashore. Even during the days there was not much for the crew to do as the ship completed her short shuttle runs and lay for hours loading or unloading. There was much rain, short but frequent tropical deluges which drenched everyone’s clothes quicker than they could be dried. Shoes in lockers acquired a crust of mildew, and the whole ship rusted so badly that she began to look more red than green.

  The inevitable native canoes ghosted alongside the anchored ship at night to sell booze. The distilleries in Manila were put into operation almost before the shooting stopped, and bottles of “MacArthur whisky,” little more than brown alcohol, were soon available, in addition to homemade wines. Once more Syl and Simpson found men drinking and smoking in any hidden corner of the ship they could find, and once again Syl reminded the men of the safety regulations.

  Keep them busy, he told himself … He managed to acquire five-gallon cans of red lead and green paint from the army base. Chipping the rusty steel plates could make sparks and could not be done while the ship was loading or unloading, but sandpapering could go on at all times, and so could the painting. Since an adequate supply of turpentine and rags could not be found, the men used gasoline and odd bits of old clothing to clean their brushes.

  After two weeks of shuttling gas and painting, the routine was broken by panic. At about eleven o’clock on a muggy night while the ship lay at anchor, Syl and Simpson were jarred by the shriek of the general alarm and Cramer’s hoarse call of “Fire forward, fire forward in the paint locker!”

  Heart pounding, Syl was almost trampled by men rushing for the hoses as he ran to the bridge. Smoke was pouring from a ventilator funnel above the paint locker, and in the throat of it was a blush of flame. Cramer was already shooting clouds of carbon dioxide down it from a hissing fire extinguisher. As soon as the hot door of the locker was opened men advanced with spray nozzles. The blaze was put out, but a hot argument about its cause started. Perhaps someone had ducked into the paint locker to smoke and nurse a bottle, or perhaps there had been spontaneous combustion in a bucketfull of gasoline-soaked rags. In either case, carelessness had endangered the lives of the whole crew. Simpson wanted a culprit, but everyone denied putting the bucket of rags there or smoking anywhere near that place.

  While all the shouting was going on Willis limped up to Syl on the bridge. In the dim light from a cloud-covered moon Syl at first thought that his glistening face was wet from the hoses or sweat and was shocked to realize that his nose was bleeding profusely.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “I got hit.”

  His voice was toneless.

  “Who hit you?”

  “Damn near everyone, it felt like.” …

  Jumping up from his bunk in the darkness of the forecastle with the other men at the first shriek of the general alarm, Willis had been slammed against a steel bulkhead by unseen persons. His injury could have been pure accident, but he remembered men hitting and kicking him while passing. He had been knocked down and “stomped,” he said.

  “I almost got trampled myself,” Syl said. “Maybe nobody did it on purpose—”

  “Maybe,” Willis said. His voice sounded dead. “I can’t prove nothing …”

  “You can’t see that character in the dark,” Cramer said when asked his opinion. Several men nearby laughed. “You got to move it when that alarm goes off. Anybody who’s slow is going to get run over …”

  Willis said nothing. He sat on a hatch on the tank deck holding a handful of toilet paper to his nose and cut lips.

  “What are your injuries?” Syl said.

  “My knee hurts,” Willis said in that flat monotone. “I hurt all over. I think my nose is broke.”

  “We’ll get you to a doctor,” Syl said. “I’ll put you on the train to Manila in the morning if we can’t find one here.”

  “Manila!” Murphy said. “Anybody want to sock me in the nose?”

  “His nose ain’t broke,” Cramer said to Syl later that night after Willis had returned to his bunk. “You can’t break a nigger’s nose—”

  “Chief, that’s a stupid goddamn thing to say. And if you use the word ‘nigger’ again I’m going to have you busted—”

  “If you want to transfer me to Manila for a deck court you can do it any time you want, sir. For your information, sir, I’ve done a lot of boxing and a nigra’s nose is a lot harder to break than a white man’s. That boy is malingering, building up his hurts just to get off of here. If you let him get a trip to Manila out of it, every man in the forecastle is going to come down sick inside of a week.”

  “Apparently I think better of the men than you do,” Syl said. “You are dismissed, chief.”

  The next morning Syl could find no medical facilities in San Fernando and he couldn’t see how anyone without an X-ray machine could tell whether Willis’s badly bruised nose was broken. No question the man’s left knee was very swollen. After typing up a letter ordering him to go to an army hospital in Manila for treatment and to return to the ship as soon as possible, Sly borrowed an army jeep and drove Willis to a nearby railroad station.

  “What will I do if the ship’s gone when I come back?” They were sitting in the jeep, waiting for the train.

  “I’m guessing we’ll be here a couple of weeks,” Syl said. “Report to the Coast Guard personnel officer in Manila when you’re ready to come back. If we’ve already sailed they’ll just transfer you to some other ship.”

  Willis’s face remained expressionless, but Syl thought he could see hope in his eyes for the first time in days. No surprise … how long could any man stand the hostilities of his own crew plus enemy attacks and the built-in tensions of a gas tanker?

  “I’m sorry all this happened,” Syl said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sat looking down, his face showing nothing.

  “It’s crazy, I know, but the military actually has good intentions. If they’re going to get rid of segregation, they’ve got to start somewhere.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cramer, some of the others … it takes people time to learn … we can’t change them overnight, it takes patience—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All of the men aren’t like that. Sorrel and Hathaway tried to be your friends.”

  Willis did not look up.

  Syl was grateful when the engine pulling three small cars arrived, a narrow-gauge railroad train that looked like something out of an amusement park.

  Syl carried the laundry bag in which Willis had packed his few remaining possessions.

  “I’ll try to make things better when you come back,” he said as he handed the bag to Willis aboard the train.

  “Yes, sir,” Willis said, not looking at him, and was lost in a crowd of soldiers.
>
  As the train pulled out for Manila Syl was somehow convinced that he would never see Willis again, and in spite of himself was relieved at the thought. What happened to Willis was lousy. But it was nobody’s fault. He’d try to remind himself of that when he got feeling too guilty …

  “So he’s gone,” Cramer said when Syl returned to the ship. “Good. That’s one smart little nigra. It wouldn’t surprise me if he finally turns out to be the only survivor of the Lucky Eighteen.”

  “That’s a lousy way to talk, chief. He’ll be back and we all can survive this goddamn war if we don’t go crazy ourselves. Tell the men that if I find anyone smoking anywhere but the fantail I’m going to confiscate all tobacco and matches and throw them overboard.” You tell ’em, captain …

  A week later Wydanski found men smoking cigarettes in the engine room again and Simpson caught more in the forecastle. Syl lined up all hands on the tank deck and ordered them to drop their cigarettes and matches on the deck.

  “This time I’m telling you for the last time to give it up. If it happens again there’ll be a body search, and appropriate punishment.”

  The men’s faces were sullen and only a few packages of cigarettes and matches were dropped to the deck. After Syl ceremoniously dropped them overboard, he turned and said, “I am doing this to save your asses too, not just mine.”

  The men turned and sullenly went to the forecastle. Syl had often felt himself to be unpopular aboard ship, but he had never before run up against this silent wall of hatred from his own men. He went to the wardroom, where Buller and Simpson were drinking coffee, their faces covered with sweat.

  Even Simpson thought he was carrying things too far. Mostly he was afraid there would be an explosion among the men. Who knew? Maybe he was right … Syl went to his bunk.

  For most of the next miserable two weeks he just lay there, thinking bad thoughts, reading a little, emerging only when he had to move the ship from the fuel barge to the big tanker and back again. His uniform was always wet with sweat and his sleeping bag stayed damp. In the fetid nights he often got chills and wondered whether he’d picked up malaria in New Guinea despite the atabrine pills, which he had been forgetting to take recently. His throat felt raspy and the cough that had plagued him in Tacloban came back. When he woke up with chills and coughing in the middle of the night he shamelessly found himself wishing he would get a fever high enough to justify following Willis to a hospital in Manila. Maybe the damn ship would sail to Okinawa without him. At least then the Y-18 could have two survivors. Simpson would be delighted finally to be put in command. The men still hated Simpson even more than they did him, but most of them thought Buller was a regular fella … okay, the combination of Simpson and Buller might work better without him. God knew, the Y-18 was not exactly a happy or efficient ship now. If Buller were made executive officer, some nice young ensign would be sent to take his watch. Maybe a new officer would have steadier nerves. Only someone with a crazy man’s ego could think that the ship couldn’t survive without him …