“I don’t know if they’ll be socially acceptable.”
Shipley crossed his legs as he sat on his rack, resting his right arm on the shelf-desk. “How about the weather? Any change?”
“I swung by radio on the way here. Petty Officer Baron said no updates on or changes to the previous message.”
Shipley uncrossed his legs, leaning forward with both hands on his knees. “Let’s plan on surfacing after dark. We’ll exchange our air and top off the batteries before the storm hits.” He stood up, leaning forward over the small sink, turning on the water. “As long as the surface picture is clear, and weather permits, we’ll keep doing that until the weather hits.” He wet his hands, turned off the water, washed them, then turned on the water just long enough to rinse the soap off.
“I would think that they will cancel our mission,” Arneau said. “You could be right,” he said as he dried his hands. “There is a chance they may cancel our mission. I can’t see the Soviets coming out in this weather.”
Arneau raised his right hand, two fingers touching his forehead. “Aye, sir. I will make plans and have the surface detail ready. Meanwhile, I am off on a rescue mission to engineering.”
“I’ll be in the control room, or the conning tower. Is the contraption still on the periscope?”
“I don’t think so. I told them not to leave it on there.”
“Let me know how it is going in engineering.” Shipley smiled. “Let me know if you need medical help back there.”
They laughed.
“Who’s the officer of the deck, XO?”
“Lieutenant Weaver has the conn right now, Skipper.”
“Where we goin’?” Washington asked Crocky as he slid a baking pan of hot bread from the oven.
“How the hell should I know, boy? Our job is to cook food. It don’t make no never mind where we be going as long as the crew has their food.”
“But I was talkin’ with Marcos and he said we was headin’ for the Arctic ice cap; that we was goin’ to go under it and surface through the ice.”
“That Marcos is full of shit.” Crocky turned. Marcos was swapping the mess deck with a damp mop. “Marcos, come here.” The Filipino steward hurried to the end of the serving counter, staying on the serving side, his eyes huge. “Yes, boss?”
“What this you tellin’ Washington?”
Marcos shrugged. Santos walked up beside him, wiping his hands on the towel he was holding. The crew swore the two were brothers or slightly mismatched twins.
“Santos, what the hell you doin’? Quit wiping yore hands on the towel. That thing is full of germs and shit. Marcos, I asked what is this shit yore hearing?”
“I heard we going underneath the ice, Petty Officer Crocky. We going to be first American diesel submarine to go under the ice.”
“Yeah, and we would be the first one never to come out because no other diesel submarine would be that foolish.” Crocky shook his head, pulling his apron up and wiping his hands on it. “Listen to me, you two.” He swung his finger to Washington. “No, you three. No way this boat is going to go up under the ice shelf and then surface through centuries-old thick ice.” He dropped his apron, the cloth draping back over the huge stomach years of eating his own cooking had grown. “We used to talk about that during the war. We’d run out of air before we could get through. Now, this Nautilus might be able to do it because this nuclear shit is supposed to run forever. But we diesel sailors ain’t gonna do it.”
“Where we goin’, boss?”
“Marcos, why you care? Submariners don’t need to know where they goin’. All they gotta do is make sure we stay evens.”
“Evens?” Santos asked.
“Evens,” Crocky replied. “Where the number of submergings and the number of surfacings come out even.”
“Even?”
“Shit, man; you don’t know arithmetic? Two, four, six, and so on and so on. That be evens, man. You can’t have an odd number without sinkin’.”
“We don’t want an odd number.”
“What’s odd number?” Santos asked, looking at Marcos. Marcos responded in Filipino, the words rolling out rapidly and sharply. Santos’s mouth opened and he nodded. “Evens and odds.” He smiled at Crocky.
Crocky looked at Washington. “What you smilin’ about, boy?
Get that trash together and take it to the trash room. We got dinner coming up here and we still got the trash from lunch.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“And quit that ‘boss’ shit. I’m Petty Officer Crocky to you and those stewards of ours.” He looked at Marcos and Santos. “We done talkin’. You two get back to your duties. We got dinner comin’.” Crocky walked over to the coffee urn and filled his cup. “Christ. My head hurts now from all this Navy trainin’ I gotta do for you three. Someday it better count when I get to the those Pearly Gates.”
“If we goin’ under the ice, then you might get there faster.”
“That might be more like hell, because I’d still have you three with me, Washington. How long it gonna take for you to get that trash out of here?”
“Santos!” Washington shouted. “Give me a hand with this trash!”
“Shit, man,” Crocky interrupted. “There ain’t enough trash for a workin’ party. Santos gotta finish cleanin’ the tables and gettin’ the trays ready.” Crocky set his cup down awkwardly. It turned and spilled, gray, growing-old coffee running down the stainless steel cabinet. He calmly picked up his cup and filled it again. “Plus, he gotta clean up this coffee area. It’s a mess.”
Washington pulled the bagged trash from the small cabinet where they stored it between runs. Three bags were stuffed into the storage area. He pulled them out on the deck.
“You make sure they’re tight. I don’t want you havin’ to clean some passageway again because Senior Chief Boohan catches you spillin’ trash.”
Washington spent a few seconds making sure nothing was leaking. A leaking bag meant the sailor spent time cleaning up after it, wiping down the bulkheads, sweeping and swabbing the deck. It was better to be sure. If it was leaking, better to be cleaning it here than in the passageway, where everyone eventually passed you, including that cracker Potts. It had been days since the incident in the mess hall, but Washington had met bigots on the streets of Philly. They might go deep like a submarine and stay quiet, but they never changed their spots.
He lifted the trash bags and started toward the doorway.
“Be careful with them,” Crocky said.
As Washington stepped into the passageway, Crocky went back into the small kitchen area, his attention focused on the beans simmering in the huge pot and the potatoes his three sailors had peeled after breakfast. Mashed potatoes were easy to make and leftovers turned into midrats, which turned into potato pancakes for breakfast.
Washington worked his way carefully along the passageway heading toward the forward torpedo area. Trash was stored in the torpedo rooms until it could be dumped overboard through the aft escape hatch. Crocky said that during World War II they sometimes shot it off the boat through the torpedo tubes.
At-sea trash eventually settled to the seabed, where sea life made short work of it. Those few instances when a trash bag surfaced, it quickly disintegrated and the trash would float for hundreds of miles, dragged by currents and winds.
Several times on this trip Washington had had to brace himself against the bulkhead, holding the trash out alongside him, to allow others to pass. A couple of times ahead of him, he heard someone warn of trash coming. He hoped they were not referring to him.