Charley was bolting his wuffs avec du bakin and the coffee that tasted of bilge.
“What I’m looking forward to,” Joe Askew was saying, “is a real American breakfast.”
“Grapefruit,” said Mrs. Johnson.
“Cornflakes and cream,” said Joe.
“Hot cornmuffins,” said Mrs. Johnson.
“Fresh eggs and real Virginia ham,” said Joe.
“Wheatcakes and country sausage,” said Mrs. Johnson.
“Scrapple,” said Joe.
“Good coffee with real cream,” said Mrs. Johnson, laughing.
“You win,” said Paul with a sickly grin as he left the table.
Charley took a last gulp of his coffee. Then he said he thought he’d go on deck to see if the immigration officers had come. “Why, what’s the matter with Charley?” He could hear Joe and Mrs. Johnson laughing together as he ran up the companionway.
Once on deck he decided he wasn’t going to be sick. The fog had lifted a little. Astern of the Niagara he could see the shadows of other steamers at anchor, and beyond, a rounded shadow that might be land. Gulls wheeled and screamed overhead. Somewhere across the water a foghorn groaned at intervals. Charley walked up forward and leaned into the wet fog.
Joe Askew came up behind him smoking a cigar and took him by the arm: “Better walk, Charley,” he said. “Isn’t this a hell of a note? Looks like little old New York had gotten torpedoed during the late unpleasantness… I can’t see a damn thing, can you?”
“I thought I saw some land a minute ago, but it’s gone now.”
“Musta been Atlantic Highlands; we’re anchored off the Hook… Goddam it, I want to get ashore.”
“Your wife’ll be there, won’t she, Joe?”
“She ought to be… Know anybody in NewYork, Charley?”
Charley shook his head. “I got a long ways to go yet before I go home… I don’t know what I’ll do when I get there.”
“Damn it, we may be here all day,” said Joe Askew.
“Joe,” said Charley, “suppose we have a drink… one final drink.”
“They’ve closed up the damn bar.”
They’d packed their bags the night before. There was nothing to do. They spent the morning playing rummy in the smokingroom. Nobody could keep his mind on the game. Paul kept dropping his cards. Nobody ever knew who had taken the last trick. Charley was trying to keep his eyes off Mrs. Johnson’s eyes, off the little curve of her neck where it ducked under the grey fur trimming of her dress. “I can’t imagine,” she said again, “what you boys found to talk about so late last night… I thought we’d talked about everything under heaven before I went to bed.”
“Oh, we found topics but mostly it came out in the form of singing,” said Joe Askew.
“I know I always miss things when I go to bed.” Charley noticed Paul beside him staring at her with pale loving eyes. “But,” she was saying with her teasing smile, “it’s just too boring to sit up.”
Paul blushed, he looked as if he were going to cry; Charley wondered if Paul had thought of the same thing he’d thought of. “Well, let’s see; whose deal was it?” said Joe Askew briskly.
Round noon Major Taylor came into the smokingroom. “Good morning, everybody… I know nobody feels worse than I do. Commandant says we may not dock till tomorrow morning.”
They put up the cards without finishing the hand. “That’s nice,” said Joe Askew.
“It’s just as well,” said Ollie Taylor. “I’m a wreck. The last of the harddrinking hardriding Taylors is a wreck. We could stand the war but the peace has done us in.” Charley looked up in Ollie Taylor’s grey face sagging in the pale glare of the fog through the smokingroom windows and noticed the white streaks in his hair and mustache. Gosh, he thought to himself, I’m going to quit this drinking.
They got through lunch somehow, then scattered to their cabins to sleep. In the corridor outside his cabin Charley met Mrs. Johnson. “Well, the first ten days’ll be the hardest, Mrs. Johnson.”
“Why don’t you call me Eveline, everybody else does?” Charley turned red.
“What’s the use? We won’t ever see each other again.”
“Why not?” she said. He looked into her long hazel eyes; the pupils widened till the hazel was all black.
“Jesus, I’d like it if we could,” he stammered. “Don’t think for a minute I…”
She’d already brushed silkily past him and was gone down the corridor. He went into his cabin and slammed the door. His bags were packed. The steward had put away the bedclothes. Charley threw himself face down on the striped musty-smelling ticking of the mattress. “God damn that woman,” he said aloud.
The rattle of a steamwinch woke him, then he heard the jingle of the engineroom bell. He looked out the porthole and saw a yellow and white revenuecutter and, beyond, vague pink sunlight on frame houses. The fog was lifting; they were in the Narrows.
By the time he’d splashed the aching sleep out of his eyes and run up on deck, the Niagara was nosing her way slowly across the greengrey glinting bay. The ruddy fog was looped up like curtains overhead. A red ferryboat crossed their bow. To the right there was a line of four- and fivemasted schooners at anchor, beyond them a squarerigger and a huddle of squatty Shipping Board steamers, some of them still striped and mottled with camouflage. Then dead ahead, the up and down gleam in the blur of the tall buildings of New York.
Joe Askew came up to him with his trenchcoat on and his German fieldglasses hung over his shoulder. Joe’s blue eyes were shining. “Do you see the Statue of Liberty yet, Charley?”
“No… yes, there she is. I remembered her lookin’ bigger.”
“There’s Black Tom where the explosion was.”
“Things look pretty quiet, Joe.”
“It’s Sunday, that’s why.”
“It would be Sunday.”
They were opposite the Battery now. The long spans of the bridges to Brooklyn went off into smoky shadow behind the pale skyscrapers.
“Well, Charley, that’s where they keep all the money. We got to get some of it away from ’em,” said Joe Askew, tugging at his mustache.
“Wish I knew how to start in, Joe.”
They were skirting a long row of roofed slips. Joe held out his hand. “Well, Charley, write to me, kid, do you hear? It was a great war while it lasted.”
“I sure will, Joe.”
Two tugs were shoving the Niagara around into the slip against the strong ebbtide. American and French flags flew over the wharfbuilding, in the dark doorways were groups of people waving. “There’s my wife,” said Joe Askew suddenly. He squeezed Charley’s hand. “So long, kid. We’re home.”
First thing Charley knew, too soon, he was walking down the gangplank. The transportofficer barely looked at his papers; the customsman said, “Well, I guess it’s good to be home, lieutenant,” as he put the stamps on his grip. He got past the Y man and the two reporters and the member of the mayor’s committee; the few people and the scattered trunks looked lost and lonely in the huge yellow gloom of the wharfbuilding. Major Taylor and the Johnsons shook hands like strangers.
Then he was following his small khaki trunk to a taxicab. The Johnsons already had a cab and were waiting for a stray grip. Charley went over to them. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Paul said he must be sure to come to see them if he stayed in New York, but he kept standing in the door of the cab, so that it was hard for Charley to talk to Eveline. He could see the muscles relax on Paul’s jaw when the porter brought the lost grip. “Be sure and look us up,” Paul said and jumped in and slammed the door.
Charley went back to his cab, carrying with him a last glimpse of long hazel eyes and her teasing smile. “Do you know if they still give officers special rates at the McAlpin?” he asked the taximan.