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I hear a low dull reverberation. I know that voice! Stopping, I see the big bow come slowly out, the heavy foremast with its crow’s nest aloft, the small stack, all that recognizable character – it is my old ship returning to the West Coast to complete another round trip. "Good luck, Captain, and a subless voyage!" Other deep voices float through the evening air – the convoy is making up. The Club is packed to overflowing. A few whites with the blue and gold shoulder markings, swank and conspicuous amidst the mass of coatless officers in khaki, punctuated by their black ties. Hot, noisy and cheerful, we stand in queue to get our tickets for dinner, for it’s "Pay as You Enter." We swarm down both sides of the long tables, filling vacated chairs still warm, and the messboys rush about. We compare our day. Many have the duty that night. Others are gobbling to get to the movies before the blackout. The Club manager, a big perspiring mass of humanity, is frantic. "How in the hell did I know those ships were coming in? And how in the hell do they expect me to feed 150 extra officers without any warning?" No one pays the slightest attention to this daily cry of agony. Out on the verandah, lounging in chairs, men are finishing their cool drinks. The circular dance floor under the palms is empty. This is a good looking, clean cut group of Americans, representing every state in the Union, speaking with the telltale accent of their section, all deeply flavored by the Navy. A friend of mine slides across the floor and worms into the chair beside me. His face is flushed with excitement and he is damp with sweat, having run to get under the deadline for dinnertime. He waves a cablegram. "It’s a girl, and my wife’s done fine!" He relaxes, still breathing hard, and breaks a piece of bread absent-mindedly. "God! I’d give my new half-stripe to have been with her through that! I wonder what the kid looks like. Damn it – I’m ordered to hell-an-gone down under, and it may be two years before I find out." Talk of shop, talk of home. "What ship did you just leave?" "What ship is Bill in?" "John’s got a can." The radio, advertising Honolulu wares, gives us the distilled news through the typical unctuous commentator. The messboys take our last empty coffee cups. The clusters of men break up and disperse into the twilight. The new father gives me a lift home in his ancient horseless buggy, as he lives a few doors from me. "Get a photograph of your wife, and come on in and have a drink with me," I offer. "Thanks a lot. I’d rather just turn in and think. You are a nice guy and I know you will understand." I sit on my little doorstep. "Gosh, why didn't I go to that movie with those other birds?" It is a double house, and the door next to mine opens. A big lieutenant grins at me. "What are you trying to do – take off Rodin’s 'Thinker'? Come on in. I had an amusing diving experience today." In the living room which was designed with the same rubber stamp as mine, on a wicker chaise-longue sprawls "Pay," dressed for the blackout in a small towel. They share this suburban bungalow. Against the wall lean their two tired bicycles, and on the floor by them, disgustedly dropped on entering, are their individual gas masks strapped in the bowls of the steel helmets, holstered automatics and belts draped over. We have been on the ALERT for several days – all liberties cancelled. My big friend was a writer as well as a successful business man, and for years had spent his vacations in the Caribbean in under water research, which was his hobby. Without a diving helmet, he could apparently swim without breathing for an embarrassingly long time. He was expert at spearing fish under water and knew a number of sharks socially. When the noise of the big bombers overhead has died away, he says, "Let’s leave the windows open and lights off, and I'll spin you my yarn of today." His cigarette glows in the darkness. "You know I am in the sub escape training, and mixed up with Navy divers. Well, today, we had a hot one. When you think of the hundreds of thousands of tons of high explosives afloat and ashore around this dump, you are bound to have a little slip sometime. Well, here is an old four-piper tied up at a dock, and the skipper under orders, just ready to shove off when in some inexplicable way, damned if an ashcan doesn't roll off her stern. Everybody that sees it holds his breath. Word is passed to the Captain and he comes tearing aft, and they tell me what he said was enough to detonate all the other ashcans on deck! Well, they send an SOS for the doctor, and I and a couple of divers go roaring down in a car just like a damn fire engine. "Now here is the pretty picture – and my wife doesn't know how near she came to being a widow. The ashcan is set for forty-five feet, and it is lying in mud at the base of the dock at thirty-eight feet. But the worst part is that the bottom rolls off there into fifty feet of water, and we don’t know how near the edge of that hole the ashcan is. They rig up the pumps, we get into our diving gear – and I think of our new house in Missouri with the smoke curling out of the chimney. We flounder around in the mud and muck below there, and can feel the bottom slope away from her. I guess no one ever put a steel cable around anything with more care than we do, and we feel every part of it to see that the baby won’t slip, get the hook in the sling and signal to hoist her up. We can see her black against the light surface, then she disappears into the air above – and well, 0.K., it’s done."
His pouches loaded with hand grenades, a tough young Marine raider climbs over the wire on the protecting mat and pauses to hurl a "pineapple." Outside the open window all the houses have merged into one denser mass against a dark sky. A car passes slowly down the road, barely discernible without lights. A jeep roars past it, comes to a screeching halt ahead of it, and a figure leaps out with a flashlight and stops it. We see the light pass over the faces of five occupants and reflect back on the steel helmet of the Marine. Two other Marines are examining the car and after a moment we hear the curt order, "Follow me," and the escorted car disappears in the night. "Pinched!" says Pay, and turns on the radio. It is a Hawaiian band from the Moana in Honolulu. A sudden voice comes out of the night close by the window, "I can see the dial light on that radio a mile away! Cover it up, please." Pay sacrifices his towel. "Goodnight and thanks." And I walk next door, turn the key in my latch, shut the door carefully behind me before groping for the light switch. Upstairs and brushing my teeth in the hot closed-up bathroom, the same voice hails me from the darkness, "Hey, there is a crack of light from your window." I turn in, cursing blackouts. The shrill screech of the locomotive, the jangle of the little cars on the narrow gauge railroad that parallels the road which borders sharply this section of Navy housing. The windows of the last new quarters that flank it, gaze across the yet uncontaminated sugar cane bordering the far side. This peaceful sea of green undulates in ever increasing swells, far away to the high dry land. There the prickly pineapples take over and march away to the mountains. The varied hum of busses and cars swells loud in the morning, sounds all day, increases again from the opposite direction at eventide; drops to individual passings – slack water between the ebb and How, except for the drone of the homecoming planes aloft. All through the warm dark night, a new tide brings the sharp clank of tractor treads laboring by, the heavy guns, the quicker tanks, the ponderous bull-dozers, punctuated at intervals by the buzz of jeeps and peeps. The sound penetrates the weary brain, the mind drearily segregates and recognizes – segregates and recognizes – segregates and recognizes. Forgetfulness – the dust peppers the still white sheet. The day begins before dawn; the dawn patrol ushers in the day with a deafening crash. The big bombers come low over our beds with the shattering concussion of close passing express trains. Light follows slowly Aurora’s flying horses. |
