Second Skin (New Directions Paperbook), page 16
“When we get home, Cassandra,” I said, and leaned back against the perfect cushion and shut my eyes, “I want you to try on that camel’s-hair coat. I think her camel’s-hair coat might fit you, Cassandra.”
The Brutal Act
White lifeboat. I heard something, steel, ratchet, a noise I must have known was descending cable, and there was an eclipse of the porthole, a perfect circle of blackness flush against the side of the ship at the spot where the great ring of brass and glass was hooked up with a little chain. The porthole was always open as it was now because I liked to catch the first pink edges of the tropical dawn, first breath of day, first patter of bare feet on the deck above. But it had never gone black before, that porthole of mine, and for a moment—squall? tidal wave? another ship between ourselves and the sun?—I felt what it was like to be faintly smothered in some new problem of seamanship. Slowly I put on my cap, set aside my tom gray copy of the serviceman’s a-bridged edition of the New Testament. Then carefully I thrust my head through the porthole and attempted to twist myself about and look topside. No luck at all. So I looked down. Suspended a long way below me, yet out of reach of the waves, motionless, a white lifeboat was empty and absolutely still down there. For some reason I lowered the port, spent precious minutes screwing tight the brass lugs, even though I was swept immediately by my usual swift fear of ocean nausea. Then I looked at my wrist, 0500 hours, and then I locked the cabin door, climbed topside. For three days, in a sudden effort to keep abreast of Mac the Catholic chaplain, I had been reading the New Testament each dawn. The lifeboat destroyed all that.
I came out with a light in my eyes and the brisk wind catching my cap by the visor, and dead ahead was an enormous field of shoal water emerald green in the dawn. East, I thought and smiled, blotted a little fine spray with the back of my hand. I had to shade my eyes. But the lifeboat was there all right, though swung up as she should have been on giant fishhooks of steel and not suspended above the waves where I had first seen her, and she was motionless up there, hauled now a good distance above my head, and she was as large as someone’s private cruiser and, in her own shade, a solemn white. I wondered whether or not it was the same boat. But the fishhooks were canted slightly, the blocks were pulled from under her, the giant tarpaulin lay heaped on the deck, and after a moment I knew that it must be the same boat. I stood there, shaded my raised eyes, waited.
Because someone was standing on her bow. He was nearly a silhouette to me, and yet I took him all in, the long spread legs, the fist on the cable, the faded denim jeans, the flapping sky-blue shirt, the long black hair whipped in the wind, the white hat rolled up and stuck halfway down the front of the jeans. I watched him in the shelter of the white lifeboat and in the bright warmth of the sun. But he was a man of the wind, a tall bony man of this sudden topside wind, and he was bracing himself on the enormous soft white prow of the lifeboat and grinning down at me.
I cupped a hand, tried to see into the sun, called up to him: “Tremlow? Started painting the shack yet, Tremlow? How about knocking off early for a little boxing?”
It was the windward side of the ship, the eastern side, and even in the shelter of the boat the air was loud so that I could hear nothing but whistling overhead and far forward a heavy singing in the anchor chains. But I could see him and he had moved one foot so that it rested now against his rigid knee, and he was shaking his head at me, still grinning.
“By the way, Tremlow,” squinting, cupping my hand again, “who told you to take the tarp off the lifeboat? The tarp’s supposed to be on the lifeboat at all times. See to it, will you?”
I gave him a half-salute then—mere boy only a third my age and six feet five inches tall and a perfect Triton—and turned on my heel. The lifeboat remained a white impression in my mind, a floating thick-sided craft with a wide beam, deep draft, brass propeller, an enormous white sea rover with something amiss. But at least I had been too quick for Tremlow, once again had managed to avoid his deliberate signs of insubordination.
I took my bearings and made my way aft in time to help Mac into his vestments. We were in the sick-bay which was the most suitable spot on the ship for holding Mass, as I had insisted to the old man, and a few of the men leaned up on their elbows to watch.
“How goes it, Mac?” I said.
“Late as usual,” he said.
“No rush, Mac,” I said, “no rush,” and slipped the purple stole around his damp shoulders. “Did you notice the coral shoals off our starboard side around 0600 hours. Mac? Like a field of underwater corn or something. Or perhaps it was a couple of acres of broken bottle-green glass, eh, Mac?”
But I could see that he wasn’t listening, so I opened the white locker where he kept the cross and took it out, unwrapped it, gave it a few licks with the chamois.
“OK, Mac,” I said, “all yours.”
I was in the middle of my four-year stint on the U.S.S. Starfish and it was a bright pink and green dawn in early June and I was helping Mac, seeing how I could give him a hand. Helping Mac serve Mass though in the background, just hovering in the background, just doing what I could to help Mac start his day. I wanted to tell him about the lifeboat but kept quiet, busied myself with the various odd chores of Mac’s silent hour. But the bell was tinkling and I was trying to make myself look small. From far forward near the anchor chains the mushy rapid-fire sounds of a machine gun died away. I nodded, glanced significantly at Mac, because they knew better than to have machine gun practice when Mac was holding services in the afterpart of the ship. I walked over to a porthole—sea the color of honey now, sky full of light—then turned at a nearly inaudible little SOS from Mac and put a towel on my arm, stationed myself in the background. But not before I had seen that one of the black pelicans was flying high off our starboard quarter with his broken neck thrust forward and homely wings wide to the wind. The bird was good medicine for the lingering vision of the white lifeboat though not good enough as I discovered. Even the hours I had devoted to helping the chaplain failed to save me.
The sick and wounded were first and we made quick work of them, Mac and I, passing from bed to bed with the speed of a well-oiled team, giving to each man his short ration of mysterious life, freely moving among the congregation, so to speak, and stooping, pausing, wiping the lips—it was my job to wipe the lips—then disengaging the hands that clasped our wrists and hurrying on. I leaned over, felt the impression of parted lips through the linen, shut my eyes and smiled down at the unshaven face. “Feeling a little better today?” I whispered softly because Mac was already murmuring to the man ahead, and I daubed once more at the lips with the linen towel. “We’ll get you off to a good start anyway.” And I carefully found a clean spot on the towel.
And then the medicos were kneeling and it was 0730—time was passing, that much I knew—and Mac was straightening up and signaling to me to throw open the infirmary doors. So I threw them open, nodded to a couple of familiar faces, hurried back to Mac. Blond hair faded almost to white, wet blue eyes, enormous unhappy face like the tortured white root of a dead tree, tall brawny heavyweight wearing vestments and purple stole and khaki shirt and pants, poor Mac, and I watched the watering eyes, the dimples that were really little twitching scars in his great pale cheeks, watched Mac and everything he did as if I knew already what I owed him and as if all those days were upon me when Mac would be gone.
“Cheer up, Mac,” I whispered, “there’s a pelican following us. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
But still he was not listening, so I looked around, asked one of the medicos to bring me a fresh towel. Mac was standing in front of the cross with his chest caved in and his clasped hands trembling and his walleyes large and yellow and fixed on the silent faces of the men. I stood beside him, nudged him, and in a louder whisper tried again.
“The men are pretty devout, Mac, at least they aren’t taking any chances. They’re waiting for you. Let’s go.”
More tinkling of the bell. Infirmary jammed with men. Faces looking in at every porthole. Silent faces watching until they could have their turns inside. And inside all the heads were bare—gray pebbly helmets carried by chin straps or stuffed under perspiring arms—and tan or black or blond or red almost all of them were shaved, packed together like so many living bones, and in the silence and looking over Mac’s white shoulder I thought that all those young vulnerable skulls must have been cast from the same mold. The men were breathing—I could see the movement of their chests—they were waiting to return to battle stations, to return to work. Somebody coughed.
And then Mac shuddered and began. They pressed forward at 0800 hours, pressed toward the cross, all of them, with the blank vaguely apprehensive faces of young sailors who never know what’s coming—ocean, destruction, living dream—on their way toward the unknown. Blue denim, white canvas, windburned skin, here and there a thin-lipped smile, a jaw hanging down. I saw Sonny in the crowd, saw him trying to elbow his way to the makeshift altar and sneaking a couple of extra steps whenever he could. I smiled.
“Let me get up there,” I heard him whisper, “me next,” and then he too was in the front row and on his knees and when we passed, Mac and I, passed with cup, plate and towel, I felt the tug on my sleeve and knew suddenly that Sonny’s reverence was not all for God. “Got to speak to you, Skipper,” he whispered as I touched the comer of the towel to the shapeless swelling of those trembling lips, “got to have a word with you right away….”
I nodded.
So at 0940 hours the last stragglers crossed themselves and we were done. Mac went below for a shower while I wrapped the cross in the chamois, stowed it again in the white cabinet. The sea was still a honey-colored syrup streaked with green, the blue of the sky had faded nearly to white, I thought I could smell the spices of a distant land on the smooth clear moving air. If only I could have heard a few birds; I always missed the song of the birds when we were at sea. At least the pelican, sweet deformed lonely creature, was still high off the barrels of our sternmost guns.
I stooped under number three turret then and began to whistle, forgetting as usual that it was bad luck to whistle on a ship. Sonny slid out from behind a funnel, we fell in step.
“Well,” he said, “we got troubles. Oh my, we surely got troubles now. Ain’t you noticed anything peculiar yet today? You ain’t seen a thing to make you suspicion the ship ain’t exactly right? Well, let me tell you. Somebody is fiddling with the boats. How’s that? Sure as I know you is you I know somebody is fooling around with them lifeboats. That’s bad. But that ain’t all. Somebody else has broke into the small arms locker. Yes sir, somebody has busted into that locker and swiped every last small arms on the ship. Ain’t that just the devil? But you want to know what I think? Here’s what: I think they means to kill all the officers and dump the bodies in the lifeboats! Some kind of devilish thing like that, you wait and see…”
I returned to my cabin and unlocked it, opened the porthole, hung my head out of the porthole where there was nothing to see except the golden water, the paste of foam, the passing schools of bright fish, the shadow of the ship sliding down to the deep. And all the while overhead there was a stealthy clamor around the white lifeboat—I remembered that 33 persons was stenciled on the bow—and I nodded to myself, closed up the port again, because poor faithful Sonny was never wrong. But at least the ocean was calm and I wasn’t sick.
So I spent the day in my damp bunk reading, still trying to catch up with Mac, spent the day in hard meditation and drinking warm clear water from the regulation black Bakelite pitcher which I filled at the tap. Around 1600 hours I went topside briefly to assure myself that Tremlow had not abandoned his interest in the lifeboat. He had not. I saw him stow a wooden box —sea biscuits? ammunition? medical supplies?—under the tarp and then with heavy grace and fierce agility drop down beneath the tarp himself and begin to laugh with someone already secreted in that hot white arc. Standing flat against steel, beautifully hidden, I looked skyward then—the poor pelican was gone —and then I skimmed down below again and poured myself another glass of water.
When I felt the sunset imminent I simply spread open the New Testament over my eyes and fell asleep….
I woke even before Sonny kicked with his old black blucher on my cabin door, woke in time to hear him muttering, grunting under the weight of an axe, flapping and sweating down the companionway toward my cabin door. But the cabin was filled with moonlight and there was no hurry. I ran my fingers over the books in the little shadowy bookcase screwed to the steel plate at the head of my bunk until I found the slot for the New Testament and shoved it home. Then I emptied the remains of the water pitcher into my right hand and rinsed my face, snorted, wiped my face on the rumpled sheet. The moon filled the cabin with its pale nighttime color; my palms and the backs of my hands, I saw, were green. I was covered with green perspiration. But I knew I wasn’t going to be sick this time, had nothing to fear from my ocean nausea now.
And opening the door: “Topside, Sonny,” I said, “the first thing to secure is the pilothouse.”
“Now I want to tell you,” panting, chugging along with the bright fire axe, leading me through the darkness and into the sudden green pools, “now you want to watch yourself. They’s got a ringleader.”
“Ah, yes,” I said, “a ringleader.”
“A ringleader, just like I says. And they been having a party. That’s right! They been having a party on the fantail ever since the dark come down. And they’re full of beans! Hear? You hear it?”
A shot, a tinkle, a scream from somewhere aft, the far-off massed clatter of running men. Hand on iron, foot on a rung, I paused and gave the ship my craning and hasty inspection: a black ship in a bright lunar field, and high above us little steel cups were whirling on the mast and there was smoke in the smokestack. The bow dipped, then recovered itself.
“Now about this party,” pulling me around, pointing upward with the luminous head of the axe, for a moment thrusting his enraged face close to mine, “that devil been the whole show, that’s the devil got them stirred up this way.”
“Tremlow?”
“You got the name on your lips. You ought to know. That’s him. Now this devil thought up a party and worked the whole thing out hisself and I was down there on the fantail too—old nigger spy, that’s Sonny—and I want to tell you I never seen a party like that before. It sure stirred them up. You know how? Hula-hula, that’s how. I tell you, when he done the hula-hula, he had them men in the palm of his hand.”
“Tremlow?” I said, “Tremlow doing some kind of Hawaiian dance?”
“That’s right,” but whispering, drawing me back into the protection of a funnel and pointing firmly, contemptuously, out to a white stretch of the deck where half a dozen of them suddenly raced by dragging burden, victim, spoils of some sort through the green glow of that southern night. “Yes, hula-hula. That’s what I mean and with all the trimmings. He danced that dance hisself. And you know what? He got them full of intoxication, that’s it, downright intoxication, with all that hula-hula stuff, got them cheering and bumping around and dancing themselves, the way he beat around there in the middle of that moonlit fantail with two fellows playing those little tinny stringed instruments and two more beating on galvanized iron pots for drums. He even had a real grass skirt that swooped all the way down to his ankles and a shirt fixed over his head so you couldn’t tell whether he was a chief or one of them hula-hula girls. It did the trick, so I guess it didn’t matter which he was. That devil…”
Another shot, another brief turbulent huddle, the arc and soar of something pushed, tossed, heaved and then sailing overboard. And the deep green velvet night was in my face, the whole ship glistened under its coating of salty moisture, and now there was the moon itself adrift in its own mirrored ocean and the ship was in the sway of the moon, and Tremlow, so Sonny said, had done his dance.
“It must have been amusing, Sonny,” I said, and I was hanging on tightly to the moonlit ship though she was still, flat in the water like a melting iceberg. “But I hope they don’t bother Mac. He’s discouraged enough already, eh, Sonny?”
“That chaplain? That chaplain’s on the skids. We coming to each man for hisself now, you wait and see….”
“Yes. But wait a minute,” I stopped short, caught hold of his sleeve, leaned out over the rail, “there, do you feel it, Sonny? Quick, what’s happening?”
Rigid. Black wet nose in the air. Long black paw held up for silence. And then: “Turning.” And moving his head then until his white hallelujah eyes were again fixed on mine, and looking at me and sighing with the hopelessness of all nigger warnings and prognostications, he repeated the word: “Turning.”
“Changing course, Sonny? Are we? Out with it, is she changing course to starboard?”
“Turning,” he repeated, “turning to port. Now you’re the one wants to secure the pilothouse, now here’s your chance.”
“On the double,” I said, and the axehead lunged, the ship was straining, moving into the tension of a giant curve, leading us into some forbidden circle. And then the PA was coughing, whistling, piping the madness of its call to Battle Stations and suddenly and dead ahead of us, the green moonlight and black shadows assumed a more solid and dangerous shape: lifeboat, bridge wing, pilothouse, it was all there, each piece in its proper place and rising in tiers and frosted together like the sections of some giant wedding cake. Then hand over hand and up the last green frosted rungs and feeling the whole of that starboard bridge wing heeling down slightly under the centrifugal force, strain, of that tight turn, and bringing each other to a standstill at the open door of the pilothouse where he, Tremlow, was clutching the spokes and even yet trying to get another degree out of the locked wheel.
Moonlight. Green brass binnacle. Green brass barometer. Madness on the decks below, clatter of falling helmets, bodies stumbling, falling, diving into gun mounts, and up here in the wheelhouse our near-naked wireless operator, Tremlow, at the helm of the ship. Sonny began to swing high the axe, but I stayed his arm, for a long moment could only stand there waiting, holding my breath, surveying that ludicrous scene of Tremlow’s plan. Because there was Tremlow in the moonlit pilothouse, alone on the bridge, and he was wearing only the long grass skirt and the sweat of the dance was still bright and slick and heavy on his arms, his shoulders, his long muscle-banded back.
