The Sand Pebbles (49 page)

“Offer a thousand!” Lt. Collins told Shing. He turned inboard, white, sweat-streaming. “Holman, get back to your station!”

“Go to hell. Shoot. Do something.”

The officer drew his pistol. “Go below or I’ll shoot you for a mutineer!” He whispered it hoarsely. His eyes were terrible.

Bronson was tugging at Holman’s arm. Holman slammed his gun butt into Branson’s belly and the quartermaster went down.

“Shoot, God damn you!” Holman said. “Shoot
somebody
, you yellow son of a bitch!”

He could feel his flesh reaching out for the healing bullet. He locked on Lt. Collins’ eyes and he could hear Po-han wailing and wailing in half-voiced words. They were all frozen there. Then Lop Eye Shing turned around, evil-faced, saying something.

“Po-han talkee too much no can,” he said. “Po-han talkee somebody shoot he.”

“Oh God!” The pistol lowered. “Yes. Yes.” Lt. Collins looked around the bridge. “Who—”

“I will, sir.”

Crosley was holding a rifle. Holman jerked it away from him.

“Not you, Crosley,” he said.

He chambered a cartridge and took aim with the bridge rail as rest. He followed Po-han’s head with the beaded foresight, rolling, rolling, and Po-han saw him and held his head still. Holman sagged his stomach muscles and in a quiet place far back in his mind he said
Good-bye, Po-han
. He squeezed the trigger. He saw the head jerk and he knew that it was all right now.

He stood erect, trembling. Bronson was still down, gasping and retching. Weakness washed through Holman. No one spoke. He crossed the bridge and threw the rifle out into the river. The splash seemed to release him. He ran for the engine room.

They anchored again in midstream to wait for the boat party. Holman ran everyone out of the engine room. They were afraid of him.

He tended the fires and water. He oiled and rocked the engine. He did not want to stop moving. The planks bridging the naked bilges were slippery with oil. He sprinkled more sand on them. Sand was in the bilges, all along the bare, red-leaded ribs of the ship. That sand was going to wear hell out of the bilge pump.

Burgoyne came on the gratings and said, “Chow, Jake,” quietly. After a few minutes he went away.

It was dark. He heard them talking on the quarterdeck. They were pulling themselves out of it in the only way they knew.
That sign on him says “running dog,” Oh Joy told me
. Crosley’s frog voice.
He sure didn’t run fast enough that time
. Harris. A general laugh. Stawski?
Arf! Arf!
Someone shushed fiercely and the voices faded. The buzz behind Holman’s left ear did not fade.

Franks stood at the head of the port ladder. “Jake, you got the eight-by on the quarterdeck,” he said. “Double guard tonight.”

Holman looked up. “Not me,” he said. “I got the watch down here.”

“We all know how you feel. Duty’s the stuff to take your mind off it.” Franks’ voice was kindly. “You got to do your duty, Jake.”

“All I got to do is die someday. I’ll never stand a topside watch again. Nor go to quarters. Not on this ship.”

“However you want it, Jake. For now.” Franks went away.

Taps went. He sprinkled more sand on the planks. He cleaned the fires savagely, slicing clinkers, hoeing ash and red coals out on the floorplates. He made a sulfurous hell with the cooling hose and gulped it into his lungs. The choking burn relieved him.

Burgoyne was on the throttle platform. His face was sad.

“It’s midnight, Jake. Give me the watch. Turn in.”

“Get out of here, Frenchy.”

“It had to be, Jake. Orders. It’d been sure death for the boat party, maybe all hands. Remember Wanhsien.” Burgoyne gulped. “Po-han understands, wherever he is now.”

“Where he is now. Where is he? Get out, Frenchy!”

“I loved him too. I loved him like a brother.”

“You can’t—
Get out
, or I’ll slug you!”

“It happened, Jake. It’s past and done. You got to let it be a thing that happened.”

“You want to know something ain’t happened yet?” Holman breathed through flared nostrils. “Maily’s knocked up.”

Burgoyne flinched. “Jake! What you saying? That ain’t so.”

He put out a hand. Holman struck it down.

“It’s true. She told me herself, that first day in.”

“She would’ve told me first of all.” Burgoyne’s face was working. “If it’s true, why didn’t she tell me?”

“You figure that out,” Holman said harshly. “Go topside to figure it out. God damn you, now maybe you’ll leave me the hell alone!”

Burgoyne went up, his shoulders drooping. Sometime later Big Chew came down quietly and left a covered bowl of food beside the hot well. Holman threw bowl and all into the trash can.

All night he moved like a prowling animal, keeping his hands busy, and it was right behind him. If. If. A chain of ifs, from his first hour aboard.

Po-han was still there, in the smooth, quiet stroking of the pumps he had rebushed. The quick, pulsing throb of the dynamo. The high, sculptured steel- and brass-gleaming engine. Deep in the foundations of the engine, Po-han was there.

Hammah hammah hammah
.

He saw Po-han in the curling flames and heard him in the whispering steam and the trickle of water into the hot well. It all came from the sun and it went where everything went. Along the way
it shaped itself so you could know it, in a laboring engine or a warm and breathing man; you joined and mixed and knew. But you could not stop or hold it. It never ran backward. It went where everything went because it was everything.

Wild white horses. Wild white horses
.

You could not repair a dead man. The engine was only metal. He groped his hands along the smooth, hard links and rods and columns and he could not touch Po-han. He struck the engine column until his knuckles bled, soothed by the pain, but the engine did not feel anything. It was just metal. It could not give anything back.

Po-han was not there. He was not anywhere. They should name a destroyer after him, but they did not even have his name written down on paper. They never would have. Tonight they laughed and tomorrow they would hardly remember. Po-han was a coolie. One grain of sand.

Po-han would never be there again, smudged and oily and grinning, his eyes dancing with a new idea. Po-han was alone on the dark river sands, hanging from broken shoulders. His fires were out, his wild white horses charged off and lost in the big, dark sky.

You, me, can do, Jehk
.

Can do. Can die. Must die. But everything else is voluntary. All night the buzz behind his left ear did not stop once.
Can die
, it was saying.

Near morning Bordelles came back with the China Light stragglers. Holman let the steaming watch come down and they got underway at dawn. He kept the throttle. He would not eat or drink or speak to anyone. They all kept clear of him. It was plain that they thought he was crazy. He found a kind of wild, pleasant freedom in being crazy. He had not filled in the auxiliary log sheet all night and he did not start a steaming log. At the end of the first hour Crosley whistled the voice tube.

“What you making, up and down, up and down?”

“I don’t know,” Holman said. “What do you care? You know where you are.”

“I got to have it for the log.”

“Wipe your tail on the log. We’ll still get there.”

“Well, by God—”

Someone hushed Crosley. They did not call down for readings again. By the end of the day Holman was feeling groggy and weak and all the lights had colored haloes. He knew he could not last through another night. After they anchored, Jennings came down. His eyes looked round and solemn behind his rimless glasses. He let Holman’s bitter words just slide off him.

“You’re sick. You’re in a nervous state,” he said. “I’m only doing my duty.”

“I know. I’m government property,” Holman said. “I’m on your Title B cards, ain’t I?”

“You have to eat and rest. I’m responsible for you.”

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“No. If I did, I’d bring men down to overpower you for your own good,” Jennings said. “Prove you’re not, by coming up with me.”

“Well, I am crazy, Doc. It’s a great feeling and you ought to try it yourself,” Holman said. “Maskee, I’ll come up. But you tell them bastards to keep clear of me. Tell ’em not to cross my bow.”

“Nobody will bother you, Jake.”

No one was in the washroom when he took his shower. He shaved himself, for the first time in many months. His face had fierce red eyes and hollow cheeks and a puckered scar on the left cheek that was tricky to shave around. He could not shave there as smoothly as Clip Clip could. Wong put a big plate of meat, rice and vegetables in Holman’s place, and a pitcher of coffee. The Sand Pebbles were all at the other two tables, pretending to watch a couple of acey-deucey games and keeping their voices down. The food stuck in Holman’s throat, but he drank a cup of the coffee. Then he sat on his bunk.

They all wanted to help him and he hated them. He hated them for being alive. He hated himself for being alive. That was crazy. It was all right, being crazy. If you killed somebody, it wasn’t murder. That was why they were afraid of you. They didn’t know who
you’d kill next. Yen-ta came in and whispered to Burgoyne. Burgoyne came over.

“Jake, the skipper would like to talk to you.”

“I don’t need any of his moral courage right now.”

“It ain’t an order,” Burgoyne said. “You don’t have to go.”

“Then I’ll go,” Holman said.

It was clear and dark and warm topside, with all the stars out. Lt. Collins looked pale and tired. He tried to explain about Po-han: the orders to shoot only to save American lives; how the not-shooting was what had really saved the American lives, women, children; it would have been another Wanhsien fight; Comyang’s neck was out for their even being at Paoshan; the big lie the gearwheel would have made; the propaganda harm to America and to the navy. Holman would not sit down, but he listened quietly. He knew it all already. The raw edge in him seemed dulled at last. He did not want to lash out.

“All that’s true. Po-han’s still dead,” Holman said. “I killed him.”

“I know,” Lt. Collins said.

That was all. Outside, Holman stopped by the rail, the same place where he had talked to Miss Eckert. He looked at the dots of light, fishing sampans, shrimp trappers, all over the far dark water like fallen stars. He listened to the buzzing behind his ear. Sometimes he could almost make words out of the buzzing, like seeing faces in clouds. Two dark figures came forward, past the engine-room skylight, and the bearded shape of one of them was Craddock. They stopped, facing Holman, and the woman was Miss Eckert.

“Mr. Holman,” Craddock said. Holman just looked at him. “Our mission is to all burdened spirits,” Craddock said. “We can help you find peace. Please let us help you.” His voice was deep and dark as the night over them.

“Didn’t they tell you I’m crazy?” Holman said. “Ain’t you scared?”

Craddock’s hands wrestled with each other. “It was God’s merciful hand acting through you. By prayer you can know that in your heart and forgive yourself.”

Holman thought about Craddock’s rain prayer of the past summer. His head felt cool and clear and crazy and his ear buzzed.

“All God is on this ship is a word to swear with,” he said. “What I want to know I want to know in my head. Why Po-han?
Why Po-han?”

“God’s ways are unsearchable. We are all His instruments and we must not question Him.” Craddock intoned the words.

“Because he don’t know the answers?” Holman laughed bitterly. “From the way he takes care of his tools, I wouldn’t let him run an engine room, let alone the world.”

The girl just stood there. Craddock stiffened. “No matter how blasphemous your words, no matter how ugly and vicious the life you lead, you cannot forfeit one atom of the great love God bears you,” he said coldly. “You need only fall on your knees and repent and you will find a joyous peace you cannot even imagine.”

He said a lot more, wrestling his hands and cracking his knuckles.

“You came to me. I didn’t send for you,” Holman said. “You despise me, don’t you? You want to smear God on me the same way you’d smear blue ointment on a chancre, don’t you?”

The beard jutted. “I hate the sin and love the sinner.”

“People are what they do. The sinner is the sin,” Holman said. “I’m a murder, not a murderer. You can’t hate ideas, you can only hate people. The thing you kill is people.” He laughed again, coldly crazy. “I hate you too, Craddock. You’re phony as brass and glass. I ain’t your kind and never want to be.”

“Say what you will, you are still God’s child! You cannot escape His love!” Craddock pronounced it like a sentence to the gallows, with fierce relish.

“Tell my father next time you see him that I said to stow all missionaries in the double bottoms of hell.”

Craddock turned his back. “Come away, Miss Eckert,” he said harshly. “We can do no good here.”

She followed the old man obediently for a few steps and then halted. After a moment, she turned back. Holman relaxed his fists. She was about the only person alive he did not want to hurt.

“He was trying to help you in the only way he knows,” she said softly. “We feel guilty. If we had not stayed behind—”

“I already iffed all the ifs. Po-han’s still dead.”

“Yes. Talking won’t change that.” She leaned on the rail and he turned to lean beside her. “Many Chinese Christians have been tortured and killed this past week,” she said. “One of our Chinese pastors was tortured and killed, when the news from Wanhsien came.”

“Po-han wasn’t a Christian.”

“He was off your ship. They make no distinction.”

“Craddock does. Why didn’t they kill Craddock? Why Po-han?”

“China is becoming a nation.”

“I heard that before. I don’t know what it means.”

“It means being Chinese in the same way you are an American.”

“I don’t know that either.”

“I’ll tell you how Cho-jen understands it.”

Cho-jen was her brilliant student. Her Po-han. He said China’s weakness was in believing that all men were brothers. In a true nation only your fellow citizens were brothers and everybody else was fair game if they could not defend themselves. The Christian God was really a set of tribal deities, one for each treaty power flag. Christianity denationalized the Chinese by making them feel American and despise China. But they were barred absolutely from America as an inferior race, so they were being taught to despise themselves. Yet any American who wished might come to China and live there outside of Chinese law under the protection of his own armed forces. Cho-jen said China had to become a nation in self-defense.