The Sand Pebbles (7 page)

He had wanted very badly to finish high school, so where he had finished was in the jail in Wellco, Nevada, because that was how things worked in Wellco, Nevada. The town marshal was beating him up in a little room with a rough cement floor. The marshal had a blackjack swinging from his wrist, but he only used his fists. Holman could not seem to fight back. At sixteen, he was too near being a man to break and cry and not yet man enough to go for the throat and die fighting. His ears were ringing and he was losing the feel of his body and he could only keep getting up again from the floor that smelled like carbolic acid. The marshal’s face never changed, lean and leathery, not angry, not enjoying it, just doing a job in the same way he sometimes broke remounts for the U.S. Cavalry in the pole corral at the edge of town. And so he broke Joris K. Holman down at last to his hands and knees in a mess of his own blood and vomit sharp and burning in his throat.

Holman shuddered convulsively in his bunk. He was sweating all over.

It was easier in court. The buzzing made a kind of dream screen between Holman and the rest of them. Garbage Tin, the school superintendent, was there, his eyes still blacked. Judge Mason would not take Holman’s word against Garbage Tin’s, about the lie. But Judge Mason did fix it up about Holman’s age and got him into the navy. To the end Garbage Tin held out for reform school.

Holman relaxed slightly.

The navy was a lot like reform school, but they paid you for it. They made Holman a fireman, because of his husky build, and when he got a ship he could go ashore with a little money in his pocket, for the first time in his life. He made no friends on the ship and he avoided civilians ashore. He hated civilians. He found a pock-marked Mexican whore on Pacific Street, with a kind, sweet face, and she
could make the buzzing go away for hours, sometimes for days. He kept going back to Maria. Aboard ship he hated all military crap and he hated personnel inspection most of all. You had to stand at attention with your eyes fixed on an imaginary spot three feet ahead and six inches up while the captain talked about you to your division officer as if you could no more see nor hear than a piece of machinery. At those moments the buzzing was very bad. They were all excited because they were Making the World Safe for Democracy. Holman did not care about that. The posters of Uncle Sam pointing and glaring reminded him too much of Garbage Tin. He heard that in the Asiatic Fleet there was a lot less military crap. Out there, the guys said, they were only keeping China safe for Standard Oil, Robert Dollar and Jesus Christ. All old Asiatic sailors were supposed to be crazy. Holman’s shipmates thought he was dim-witted, and sometimes they called him Asiatic. He decided slowly that he wanted to go to China, but he found it very hard to take initiative in anything in those days. Then his division officer dumped him in a China draft, to get rid of him, and so he went to China anyway.

Holman sighed and relaxed quite a bit. His stomach was easing.

It was much better in China. The whores were all like Maria, and the Japanese girls were the best ones of all, and they soothed and healed Jake Holman. The buzzing softened down and he began coming out from behind his dream screen. He liked it ashore. He liked junks and sampans and rickshaws and pagodas and tiled roofs with upturned corners. He liked the noisy, crowded, smelly streets of open-front shops full of everything from dried duck gizzards to lacquered coffins. He loved the hanging red-and-gold signs he couldn’t read and the yelling Chinese arguments he couldn’t understand and the twangy, jangling music that did not sound like music. It all made him know that he was a hell of a long way from Wellco, Nevada. He began taking more interest in his work aboard ship, and then he discovered the big secret.

Holman relaxed altogether. He could barely hear the buzzing be hind his ear.

The secret was simple. They could not get along without the
machinery. If it did not run, the ship would be a cold, dark, dead hulk in the water. And it did not work with engines to order them to run and to send down the marines to shoot them if they did not run. No admiral could court-martial an engine. All machinery cared about a man was what he knew and what he could do with his two hands, and nobody could fool it on those things. Machinery always obeyed its own rules, and if you broke the rules it didn’t matter how important or charming or pure in heart you were, you couldn’t get away with it. Machinery was fair and honest and it could force people to be fair and honest. Jake Holman began to love machinery.

It brought his mind alive again. Just as it had been with him in high school, he found that he could learn the inner secrets of machinery faster than anybody else. Just as it had been with his high school teachers, he discovered the basic ignorance of his senior petty officers, and of course they hated him for that. But they were also accountable to their officers for the machinery, and they were all secretly afraid of their machinery, and when they were convinced that Jake Holman knew more about it than they could ever learn, they were happy enough to let him take care of it and keep them out of trouble. The only favor he wanted in return was to be excused from all musters and inspections and topside military crap. That was an easy favor to grant, and they always granted it. Whenever he could, Holman always transferred to a smaller ship. The smaller the ship, the less they had of military crap.

Holman yawned and stretched his arms and the buzzing was all gone. This ship was the smallest yet, and it had as much military crap as a battleship. But they still had to have the machinery. And she really was a home and a feeder. He would worry about the rest of it tomorrow. He went to sleep.

For turn-to next morning Holman walked around the engine room with Lynch. He was wearing his new white shorts and he felt very silly dressed like that in an engine room. This first walk and talk about the machinery on a new ship was always a kind of mental wrestling match, with the new man trying to show the chief how much he knew. Lynch wouldn’t wrestle. Holman scratched his thumbnail on pump rods and commented that they were steam cut. He shook valve gears and the loose bushings rattled. Lynch just grinned.

“She steams,” he said. “That’s all we give a damn about.”

The other engineers were all down there too in shorts, and their day’s work was only a gesture. Burgoyne looked around the fireroom while Perna checked the bunkers, and then they both made out the coal report. Stawski followed two coolies around and watched them jack over idle pumps with a crowbar. Wilsey watched a gang of coolies jack over the main engine. The jacking gear was a removable worm that engaged a worm wheel around the shaft just aft of the engine. They turned the worm with a long ratchet bar, and it took three coolies hauling at it with a rope and singing, “Hay ho! Hay ho!” while a fourth coolie squatted and threw the bar clicking back after
each heave. Holman could barely see the balanced tons of metal move.

“Are them coolies dogging it, or is she really that stiff?” he asked Lynch.

“She’s stiff. The dockyard rebabbited all the bearings,” Lynch said. “She’ll free up, with a day’s steaming.”

Chien followed them around the engine room. He ignored Holman. He was very attentive to Lynch. Lynch told Chien various small cleaning and repair jobs to do. Holman simply could not draw Lynch into technical talk.

“There ain’t no blueprints. Nobody ever knew the valve settings,” Lynch said. “Chinamen in Hong Kong built her for the Spaniards, Christ knows how long ago. So long ago her frames and plates are all wrought iron.”

“I been noticing the dents.”

“You ought to see her in drydock, all humps and hollows. She just ain’t got the springback steel has,” Lynch said. He laughed. “She’s a beat-up old bitch, but by God she’s a home!”

After battle drills Holman had to go with Lynch again, to sign Title B cards in the CPO quarters. The quarters were aft on the boat deck, in a block that also held the sick bay and a small stateroom for the Chinese pilot. There were wicker armchairs outside under the awning and broad-leafed plants in green wooden tubs, and the Chinese messcook was sitting in one of the armchairs shining shoes. Inside, the CPO bunks had blue spreads, but otherwise the place was no more clean and spacious than the crew’s compartment, directly below it on the main deck.

“Lemon! Catch coffee!” Lynch told the messcook.

They were alone at the round table inside. Holman had a big stack of cards to sign. On each one he had to cross out Pitocki’s name. Lemon brought coffee in a porcelain pitcher and set out two of the CPO cups with handles. Lynch leaned and pulled a bottle of rum out from under a bunk. He held it up and sloshed it.

“You’ll have some, won’t you?”

“Sure. And much obliged,” Holman said.

Lynch splashed rum in the cups. He filled his own half full. He did not look good. His face looked puffy and yielding, like wax that was too warm, and his brown hair was very thin on top. The hot coffee in the rum made an aromatic smell.

“Here’s how,” Lynch said. He tossed off half his cup and snorted.

“Ain’t how for me,” Holman said, grinning. He sipped at his cup.

“Needed that!” Lynch said. “Holman, I hear you locked horns with old Chien yesterday.”

Holman went on guard. “It wasn’t much. We both saved face.”

“Well, you know how slopeheads are about face and old custom,” Lynch said. “I got to cut you in on how we do things on this ship. It ain’t like the Fleet ships you’re used to, not a bit.”

When you wanted something with a bilge coolie you always went through old Chien, he said. Same with the deck coolies, you went to Pappy Tung. You never got familiar with deck or bilge coolies. It was all right to kid with the compartment coolies, because they knew their places. And you never wore dungarees except to stand a steaming watch.

“Like you yesterday, in the bilges and all dirty,” Lynch said. “It made it look like you didn’t trust Chien, so he lost face. And you lost face for being so dirty.”

“That’s how it is on here, huh?”

“That’s how it is.”

Lynch poured more rum for himself. It was putting a sparkle in his pouched eyes and his face looked firmer.

“No, thanks.” Holman waved away the bottle. “What work do we do, and what do they do, down in that engine room?”

“They do the coolie work, the dirty stuff and the mule hauling. We give ’em the jobs, supervise and inspect. And we keep up the paper work.” Lynch squinted at Holman. “Oh, we make ’the big decisions, and we’d take over in any emergency, but for routine stuff Chien carries the load.”

“Whatever happens down there that ain’t routine?”

“Nothing! Nothing, by God!” Lynch leaned back and laughed. “Old Chien’s been aboard more than twenty years and not much
can
happen he ain’t seen and handled before. That’s what’s good about it.”

Holman poured himself more coffee. He kept his face straight.

“Keep old Chien happy, give him what he wants, and you can just forget about the Goddamned machinery,” Lynch said.

It was clear enough that Chien had the place on this ship that Holman wanted for himself. But how could he ever ease Chien out of it if all engine work was coolie work and he was not a coolie? He saw Lynch eying him oddly and he tried to grin.

“Get out of that Fleet way of thinking,” Lynch said. “We ain’t in no engineering competition. We ain’t got any division maneuvers or drill schedules to keep up. No admiral is going to chew the Old Man’s ass if we break down. We don’t even have typhoons and we ain’t never out of sight of land. Engineering just ain’t
important
on this ship.”

“I guess you’re right,” Holman said sadly.

“What is important is face and old custom.” Lynch sipped at his coffee royal. “Take shaving. It’s old custom that Clip Clip shaves all hands.” He rubbed his jaw. “Hell, I’d feel abused if I had to shave myself. I probably forgot how.”

“The coolies get paid by squeeze, huh?”

“And how, they squeeze!” Lynch nodded vigorously. “On coal and stores and chow—oh, I could tell you some stories. But you’ll see.” He chuckled. “It all goes to Lop Eye Shing. Sew Sew and Press Press and Clip Clip’s take, the tips, everything goes to Shing and he shares it out again.”

“Shing. Who’s he?”

“Number one boy for the ship, been aboard twenty-five years,” Lynch said. “He’s half paralyzed, you don’t see him on deck much. But he’ll be up tomorrow for payday.”

Holman stood up. “I got ’em all signed,” he said, pushing the cards toward Lynch. “Thanks for the rum. And for the good advice.”

Lynch waved a hand. “Good for us both.”

In the compartment they were drinking coffee at the mess tables and waiting their turns for a shave. Holman poured a cup and sat down and Burgoyne shoved a paper at him.

“Put your name down for your turn,” he said.

“Don’t need a shave right now.” Holman knuckled his jaw. He had a stubble, but he knew it was too light in color to show much.

“Ought to have a clean shave to take the quarterdeck,” Farren said. “You got the twelve-to-four.”

Farren made out the watch list for Holman’s section. Holman looked at Farren’s beard.

“Maybe I’ll grow me a beard,” he said.

“It’s a free country,” the gunner’s mate said.

They were not as friendly as yesterday. On any other ship Holman would not have cared about that, because he would have the machinery to back him up. He did not know about this ship. I will get shaved, he thought, and then, no, God damn them, shaving was a man’s own private business.

They left Holman out of the talk. They were all kidding Clip Clip, talking about bending him on like a messenger and discussing his good and bad points as a piece of
duhai
. Clip Clip was a nervous, wizened old Chinaman in a white U.S. Navy surgical gown, and he was very fast and expert with his shaving. He shrilled and chattered back at the sailors, making a great show of anger, and they all laughed at him. A big, sloppy seaman named Ellis, with a half-round scar on his cheek, sneaked up and goosed Clip Clip. The old man jumped and squealed and turned, waving his razor.