The Sand Pebbles (6 page)

“Good job. Make finish,” Holman told Po-han. “Come on. We knock off now. Clean up.” He made hand-washing motions.

“Hab got watch,” Po-han said.

That meant he would have to stay down there until eight o’clock. Holman stayed and talked for a few minutes to let Po-han know by his manner that he did not blame him for the steam blast. Then he headed for the washroom. He was pig-dirty and bone-tired, but he knew the piping.

Taking clean clothing from his big, new locker and walking through the clean, spacious compartment cooled Holman’s temper. So did the washroom. It was all enamel and shiny white tile, with four spigots along the trough and a shelf and mirrors above it. The two showers were inboard and they had steam connections of eighth-inch tubing and a cock, so you could set the water as hot as you liked. The windows and the door to the fantail were open and a cooling breeze blew through.

As he showered, Holman thought about the washrooms in Fleet ships. They were hot and crowded. You got a ration of one bucket of water to shave, brush your teeth, wash your clothes and take a bath. You bathed squatting on a tile deck with other naked men around you so thick that the saying was you had to scrub three strange asses before you came to your own. If you wanted a bath too often, they sneered at you for being too lazy to scratch.

He was shaving when the little man came in and undressed, dumping his clothes on the bench. Holman had met him that morning, but he could not remember the man’s name. On a new ship it always took Holman a long time to connect up names and faces, especially if they were not engineers.

“Hi, Holman.” the little man said. “Sunburned already?”

“Sunburned?”

“Backs of your legs all red.”

“Oh. I got hit in the ass with a steam blast.”

“Watch it when you first put on shorts. New guys always get sunburned.”

“I’ll watch it.” Holman kept on shaving.

The little man started the shower splashing and got under it. In the mirror, Holman could see the man eying him. He had bright red hair and pinched-in, elfish features under a bulging forehead. He was a wiry, fair-skinned little man.

“Holman!”

The little man’s voice was a whipcrack. Holman turned around, surprised.

“What’s my rate?”

“Storekeeper,” Holman guessed.

“Yeoman. Ship’s writer, to you. Now what’s my name?”

“I don’t know.” Holman almost said he didn’t give a damn, but the little man intrigued him. “I heard too many names today,” he said.

“I’m the Red Dog. Red Dog Shanahan. Red Dog Bite-’em-on-the-ass Shanahan, and nobody’s ever supposed to forget my name. I’m a dangerous and desperate man.”

Holman grinned. “I’ll remember it now,” he said. He turned back to shaving.

“Nobody ever shaves themselves on this ship,” Red Dog said. “You’re breaking Clip Clip’s rice bowl.”

Clip Clip was the Chinese barber. “Let him charge me double for haircuts,” Holman said. “I like to shave myself.”

“We don’t even sell razor blades and shaving gear in the canteen.”

“You got a canteen on here?”

“Yeah. It opens whenever somebody can get Duckbutt Randall off his ass.”

Holman finished shaving and ran his fingertips over his face and started to leave. Behind him the little man snapped, “What’s my name?”

“Red Dog Bite-’em-on-the-ass Shanahan,” Holman said.

“Arf! Arf! Good man, Holman!”

Holman walked back to his locker grinning.

After supper he went below again, in clean dungarees, to check some of his sketches. Po-han followed him and he would point to one of Holman’s sketched crosses and then to a particular valve and ask, “Same? B’long same?” Po-han was always wrong, but he knew that there was something very wonderful about those marks on paper, if he could only grasp the secret. He worked his lips and screwed up his features and he looked about to cry. Holman could read that expression and he had often known in himself the painful, tantalizing feeling behind it. Something in Holman answered to the young bilge coolie.

He tried to explain, but the pidgin English they shared was not enough. Po-han could not get the idea of breaking down the great mass of piping into separate systems. He could not say what was moving in what direction through any of the pipes that Holman pointed out. He did not even have the idea of stuff moving through pipes. All of Holman’s doubts came back. How could these bilge coolies ever tend machinery?

“Come over here,” he told Po-han.

Po-han followed him over to the feed pumps. Holman choked the throttle on the duty pump and dropped the pressure fifty pounds. “You fix,” he told Po-han.

Po-han eased open the steam inlet and restored the pressure. The hot well stood just aft of the pumps. Holman knelt and opened the rundown valve. Po-han watched the water level drop in the gauge glass with his Chinese eyes as wide and round as he could get them. Just as the water went out of sight, Holman closed the rundown valve.

“You fix,” he said.

Po-han practically flew to the make-up feed pump and set it clacking. He watched tensely until the water level built up again and then secured the pump. Holman tried him on several other operations and questioned him on them all. Po-han knew what to do, but he did
not know what it was that he did. He knew in a vague way that steam and water moved through pumps and valves, but when he twisted a valve he did not realize that he was opening or closing it. To Po-han, all that he did was isolated little magics that moved a pressure gauge pointer or a water level back to the right place. What he had glimpsed in Holman’s sketches, what his eager, wistful eyes were reaching out for, was the big magic that would make a living whole out of all the little magics. Well, some navy engineers he had known were not much better off than Po-han, Holman thought. He decided to try to show Po-han the steam cycle. He started at the boiler.

“Inside b’long steam. Live steam,” he said, thumping the boiler shell. “Strong steam.”

Po-han nodded. They traced the steam from the boiler shell to the feed pump throttle, and Po-han could not understand the difference between live steam going in and exhaust steam coming out. He just did not have the basic words and saying “exhaust” to him did not give him the idea behind the word. It was no good showing him pressure gauges. Po-han thought fifteen pounds on the exhaust gauge was “moh plashah” than one hundred thirty pounds on the steam gauge, because the exhaust gauge and its numerals were physically the larger. He could not read the numerals and he did not know the meaning of “pressure.”

“Jesus. I don’t know how to tell you, Po-han,” Holman said.

Disappointment began dulling the eager pain on Po-han’s face.

“We’ll try a different way,” Holman said.

This time Holman acted it out. He was live steam, coming along the line snorting and bulging his muscles, and the live steam did work in the feed pump, Holman reaching in to the crosshead with both arms, grunting heavily, pretending to lift the piston rod up and down as it stroked, and then the steam came out the exhaust valve wheezing, drooping, muscles slack, staggered over to the condenser and went to sleep, Holman’s folded hands beside his head.

Po-han went through the same act. His eyes never left Holman’s face. He understood that the steam got tired in the pump, but he thought it died in the condenser.

“Maskee. This side steam makee dead,” Holman said, slapping the condenser shell. He knelt and bled water from a cock on the air pump discharge. “Before steam, just now water,” he told Po-han. “Water belong dead steam.”

“Stim dead! Stim dead!”

Po-han knelt with the water flowing over his fingers and his eyes sparkled. He knew fire turned water to steam in the boiler, but apparently he had never realized that a flow of river water through the condenser turned steam back into water. The thought excited him. Holman became water and made undulating motions along the condensate discharge line to the hot well. Po-han followed, undulating too. At the hot well he pointed to the water in the gauge glass.

“Stim dead!”

Holman nodded and grinned. He undulated from the hot well along the feed suction line into the water end of the feed pump. Po-han followed. Holman came out of the feed pump still undulating silently, but stiffly, fists clenched and muscles bulging to indicate increase in pressure. Po-han followed suit, but he looked puzzled. He did not understand pressure. Holman undulated stiffly through the feed heater and began making a sizzling noise.

“This side makee hot,” he told Po-han.

He had Po-han feel the temperature difference between inlet and outlet. Po-han understood. Holman sizzled and undulated along the feed line to the feed check on the boiler shell, pushed open an imaginary trap door, clacked and went into the boiler. Po-han clacked and went in too.

His face was like a searchlight. He looked at Holman and tapped the bottom of the boiler gauge glass. “Stim dead!” Then he tapped the steam space above the water in the glass. “Stim live! Stim live!” It was wonderful to see his face. He was just realizing in his own fashion the life-and-death cycle of the steam, endlessly repeated, and how it tied together pumps, piping and heat exchangers into the big magic. He looked like Columbus discovering America.

Suddenly, his Chinese face alive with joy, he began acting out the steam cycle again, as Holman had done it. Holman followed, grinning.
When Po-han came back as water to the feed pump, his face shadowed and he stopped.

“This side … how fashion …”

He didn’t know how to ask and Holman didn’t know how to tell him.

“Pressure,” Holman said. “Makee pressure.”

“Plashah.” It was just a noise in the air to Po-han.

“Push. Workee,” Holman said. “Inside boiler live steam have got too much pressure. Suppose water wanchee go inside boiler, no have got pressure, no can open door.”

He imitated the clack of the feed-check valve. Po-han was trying very hard, almost crying, but he couldn’t get it. Holman dropped the feed pressure by fifty pounds and tapped the gauge.

“You belong water. Just now no have got pressure,” he told Po-han.

He motioned Po-han to come along the feed line and Po-han did, undulating stiffly and doubtfully.

“My belong live steam, have got too much pressure,” Holman said.

He began snorting and grasped Po-han’s bare, sweaty shoulders and pushed him backward, sliding on the oily floorplates, to beside the feed pump. Then he stopped and raised the feed pressures back to normal and tapped the gauge. The feed check on the boiler began clacking again.

“Now
you have got pressure!” Holman put Po-han’s hands against his shoulders. “Now push me, pushee live steam!” he said. Po-han pushed weakly. “Workee! Have got too much plashah!” Holman said. Po-han pushed harder and Holman’s feet began to slide. He slid backward, his hands resting lightly on Po-han’s shoulders, and he saw the pure light of joyful learning come back into Po-han’s face. This time he really had the idea, with no dark spots left in it anywhere.

“Plashah! Plashah!” Po-han cried.

“Pressure!” Holman echoed him, grinning happily too, and then he saw somebody in white watching them from the gratings. He dropped his hands, feeling foolish and embarrassed. Po-han, unseeing, went on to clack once more into the boiler.

The man in shorts came on down. He was the other watertender, the one junior to Burgoyne. Holman did not remember his name.

“I got to write up the log,” he said. “I didn’t want to break up anything.”

He had a perky, sparrowy manner, to match his long nose and beady eyes, and a nasty little grin.

“I was teaching him the steam cycle,” Holman said.

“That what you call it?”

He did not quite dare make the wisecrack he wanted to. Holman set his jaw.

“He don’t know enough English. He didn’t know what ‘pressure’ means,” Holman said. “I had to act it out for him. How would you do it?”

“I wouldn’t bother. He already knows all he needs to know. They’re all too stupid to learn anything.”

Holman flushed. “What’s your name?” he asked. “I forgot your name.”

“My name’s Perna.”

“Well prong you, Perna!” Holman said harshly. “Everybody’s got a right to learn. Whoever wants to learn what I know, I’ll teach ’em!”

“You don’t have to get your bowels in an uproar about it,” Perna said. He made a face and went around the engine to the log desk.

“I won’t be surprised if I end teaching this coolie a damned sight more than you got brains enough to learn!” Holman called after him.

He went up the ladder, angry again. He had met that kind on other ships. He knew them now by their very tone of voice and manner. They sat on a nickel’s worth of knowledge as if it were the great Inca treasure, and if anyone junior to them learned something, they thought they were being robbed. Nothing in the world delighted Jake Holman more than bankrupting a son of a bitch like that.

He could not go to sleep. Shadowy pipe and valves and fittings kept sliding across the dark gray screen of his closed eyelids. He had an angry knot left in his stomach and he could hear a faint buzzing behind
his left ear. It had been a long while since he had heard that buzzing. It came only when he was very tired or worked up about something, something like the clash with Perna. It always led his mind back to where it had first started, and he could only get rid of it by going back there. It was not a very nice place, back there.