“Oh no!”
“So he starts working even harder than normal, round the clock, all the time wondering how he failed the Navy. He’s pouring over old fitreps, looking for faint praise, anything that might have stopped him from screening early. Now keep in mind, it’s not like he’s been passed over— he just hasn’t screened early. But there’s no telling him that.”
“I know it’s a really tough jump, from department head to XO.”
“Even tougher now because they’ve gotten rid of so many boats — Mark’s year group has just been decimated. I understand all that. But I start to see changes in him. He stops eating, for one thing. He’s losing weight like crazy, and he didn’t have that much to begin with. And then the nightmares start.”
“Nightmares?”
“He starts moaning in his sleep, every couple of nights, really tortured sounds, sometimes bordering on yelling. I tell him to get to a doctor, you know, a psychiatrist, but he won’t hear of it, says that will be the end of it, that he’ll never screen if the Navy thinks he’s crazy.”
Angi nodded, and didn’t say what she was thinking: that Mark was right. Nothing would end a career faster.
“Here, look at this,” said Muriel, digging something out of her gigantic purse. She handed Angi a small black book.
“A bible?”
“Right about the time he doesn’t screen early, he starts reading two books constantly. Whenever he’s home, which is not that often, he’s sitting there reading either the bible, or Rig for Dive.”
“Rig for Dive?”
“Some old World War II submarine book. He’d sit there with both books, at the kitchen table with a highlighter in his hand, like he was studying them. Goes from one to the other…Rig for Dive to the Bible and back. This is a guy, keep in mind, who didn’t spend a Sunday in church the whole time he was growing up. Didn’t even want to get married in a church, I had to insist on it. Now he’s studying the bible like his life depends on it. Look inside.”
Angi flipped it open. There were passages highlighted in a rainbow of colors. Muriel had been right; the density of highlighting increased rapidly near the back of the book, where nearly every word was highlighted. There were also densely written notes in the margins. Angi looked close. “What does this say?”
Muriel nodded. “That took me a while to figure out too. They’re equations. Engineering equations. He’d write them all over the freaking bible while he was reading about Armageddon.”
“Do you have the other one? The submarine book?”
“No, I looked. I think he took that one with him. I guess he gave up on the bible.”
Angi felt a deep sense of unease as she paged through it; it did look crazy. The juxtaposition of all the mathematical symbols against the numbered, columned pages of the King James Bible was positively creepy. But still…
“They’re all nerds,” she said. “One time I caught Danny writing on a notepad as he watched football — he said he was ‘keeping score in hex.’”
Muriel nodded vigorously. “I know what you mean, but I’m his wife. Something is definitely wrong with him. So finally, after he refuses to listen to me about seeing someone, I invite over my neighbor one night to meet him. A neighbor who happens to be a psychologist.”
“Oh Muriel…”
“That’s pretty much what Mark says as soon as he realizes who he’s talking to. Asks the guy to leave, very politely, and then tells me that I am trying to ruin his career. No I’m not, I said, I’m trying to help you!”
She started crying then and Angi reached out to touch her hand.
“So, he pretty much moves onto the boat at that point. I didn’t see him or talk to him for a week before. When they left early — I didn’t even know. He didn’t even call me. So, I sat around here for a week, and just thought — I guess our marriage is over. So I called the movers and here I am.”
“I don’t know what to say, Muriel. I’m so sorry.”
She looked down at the table. “He was such a sweet guy when we got married. And smart! My God, he was smart, the smartest boy I’d ever met. And now he’s a wreck. I swear, Angi — I hate the fucking Navy.”
Angi held back on that one — she wasn’t about to defend the Navy in this situation.
“The only thing I’m wondering about now…should I tell someone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Should I tell somebody that I think they’ve got a certifiable nutcase onboard the Alabama? Should I give this bible to someone?”
Angi thought that over. “I don’t know, Muriel.”
“I don’t either,” she said. “What would I tell them? That my husband has been having bad dreams and reading the bible? They wouldn’t believe me, so fuck it. Let the Navy deal with him.”
As Angi rode the ferry home, she wondered if she should say something. After all, it wasn’t just the Navy’s problem. Her husband was onboard that boat, the father of her unborn child. And if the navigator was losing his mind, that was probably information she should share with someone. But, she kept coming back to what Muriel had said — she didn’t have a lot to go on. Nightmares and bible reading, hardly enough evidence to declare a man insane. And what if Muriel was wrong? What if she was just another disgruntled Navy wife trying to stir up trouble for her husband? A call like that really could spell the end of Mark’s career, just the suspicion it might cause, especially as he was on the verge of screening for XO. Danny had certainly never said anything about the Nav going crazy, just that he worked harder than anyone he’d ever met and wasn’t particularly fun to hang out with. But certainly, he’d never said anything about the man losing his mind. She looked at the black surface of the water as they sped across the Sound. She remembered the first time she’d ridden the ferry during Danny’s first patrol, how while looking out at the water she was almost struck dumb with the thought: Danny’s under there. As the ferry pulled back into the Kingston terminal, Angi decided just to keep Muriel’s conversation to herself. If there was a possibility that the Navigator was going crazy, she’d just have to add it to the long list of things she worried about while Danny was at sea.
Kincaid watched as the red digital numbers on the treadmill turned from 4.9 to 5.0. Halfway there. He felt strong. He wasn’t breathing too heavy, and the dull pain in his right knee had departed, as it usually did around mile three. He cranked up the speed to 7.0, put the incline up another half percent. He felt his legs respond, a satisfying tightness in the hamstrings, and felt the sweat start to soak through the collar of his T-Shirt.
Kincaid was the only black officer on the boat, and one of just six African-Americans on the entire crew. The Navy was historically the least integrated service, Kincaid well knew, and the nuclear navy was the most lily white part of the whole operation. In addition, Kincaid was the only prior-enlisted officer on the boat. He’d signed up right out of high school, gone to boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, and completed the whole, grueling, nuclear power training pipeline as an enlisted man. He got halfway through one patrol on the USS Tecumseh, and in looking around at the officers it occurred to him: I’m as smart as those guys. So he applied for a special commissioning program for nuclear-trained enlisted men, got accepted, and attended Hampton College on a full ride courtesy of the US Navy. Then he went through the nuclear training pipeline all over again, this time wearing khaki and an ensign’s gold bars.