Washington jumped.
Potts laughed, grabbing a coffee cup from the rack. “Yeah, I’d be nervous if I was you, boy. Never can tell when something might happen on a boat. You been greased yet?”
Crocky walked out into the dining area. “Do you want somethin’, Potts, or you just come in here to dirty my mess hall?” Potts’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “I wasn’t talkin’ to you, Crocky.”
Crocky waved the knife at him. “I said, Petty Officer Potts, ‘Do you want somethin’?’ ”
“I came for a cup of coffee.”
“Then, I suggest, Petty Officer Potts, that you go get your own coffee cup and come back. Too many of my cups have disappeared to those who want to use the mess’s instead of their own.” Potts slammed the half-full cup down on the metal rungs beneath the huge coffeepot. Coffee spilled over the edge, draining into the reservoir beneath the rungs. “I always bring them back. You know that.”
“Come on, Tom, let’s go,” Fromley said from behind the man, grabbing the shirtsleeve of the dungaree shirt.
Potts jerked away.
“Potts, I don’t know shit except whenever you come in here you bring a world of hate and hurt with you. You want to use one of my mess cups? Then you bring the other twenty-six I’m missing from those who always bring them back. You don’t mind roundin’ up my coffee cups, do you?”
Potts’s face turned red, and his lower lip twitched.
Crocky nearly smiled, but a smile might cause the huge snipe to rip both him and Washington into shaven pieces of black potato. He knew the only thing keeping the Ohioan from mouthing off was that Crocky was one of the few on board who had been through the war. Crocky’s word would carry more weight with the skipper than from someone who had never survived depth charges and long, fearful days running from the enemy.
“You mighty uppity.”
Washington stepped alongside Crocky. Crocky reached out and with a quick, tight grip grabbed the lean sailor by the arm.
“I’m mighty uppity, Petty Officer First Class Crocky, is what you meant to say, ain’t it. Potts, I don’t want to see you in my mess again until your leading petty officer come sees me. You understand?”
Potts turned and headed toward the door. “Your day is coming, you know.”
“Oh, I know that, Potts, and when that day comes you gonna be one surprised petty officer to see how it looks.”
Potts disappeared into the passageway.
Crocky dropped his grip.
Washington turned and grinned. “You want me to be calm?” He placed spread fingers on his chest. “You want me to be calm and you stand there waving a blade at him threatening to slice that bigot and you want me to be calm?” His breathing came rapidly, Washington’s ribs easily discernible through the thin cloth of the white T-shirt. “Oh, man, Petty Officer Crocky, you are one calm mother. Did you see the scaredness on his face?” Washington’s lower lip pushed up against the upper; he put both hands on his hips; and he stared at the door where Potts had just left. “Wait until next time, cracker. I’m going to whup yore ass”
Crocky relaxed, a deep sigh escaping. “No you ain’t, because there ain’t gonna be no next time for you. You hear me?”
Washington nodded, a deep grin still covering his face.
“Man, you gonna get yoreself killed is what you gonna do.”
“I saw what you did, Petty Officer Crocky, and you didn’t even raise a hand.”
“What I do and what you do is two different things. I been around the Navy a few years. You ain’t even reached twenty yet and you talkin’ trash about what you gonna do to that white trash. He’d break both of us like a small limb, laugh while he doin’ it, and take wallet photos for his grandchildren.” Crocky turned and walked back into the galley. “Now you gonna stand there musin’ ’bout things, or you gonna bring me my chair like you supposed to?”
“I got it, mastah; I got it.” Washington made several exaggerated bows as he walked across the galley.
“It ain’t him you gotta worry about with the blade, you keep talking trash actin’ like nigra. I’ll be the one whackin’ ya.”
“Okay, you f’ing black gangers!” Lieutenant Greaser Bleecker shouted from his chair, blocking the end forward hatch of the forward engine room. He was leaning back, the metal straight-back chair precariously balanced on its back two feet. “We ain’t down here for our health. We heading down to two hundred feet. What does that tell you?” He pointed at the young, overweight sailor near the fuel lines. “You — Otto — shit-can that doughnut and tell me what going to two hundred feet means.”
The sailor jammed the remainder of the stale pastry into his mouth, rapidly chewing it and trying to swallow at the same time.
“Someone bring me a gun,” Bleecker said, shaking his head. “Shit-can means throw away, Shithead, not eat the damn thing.” Bleecker leaned forward, bringing the chair with him onto all four legs. He stood, took a couple of steps, and lightly slapped the sailor on the back of the head. “Otto, we could be dead by the time you finish that thing.”
“Ah, Lieutenant,” Seaman Otto Lang garbled out through a full mouth. Bits of doughnut splattered the nearby leading petty officer.
“Shit, Otto,” Petty Officer First Class Gledhill snarled, wiping the crumbs from his T-shirt. “Now look what you done.”
“Sorry, LPO,” Otto sputtered, more crumbs flying.
“Well, we won’t have to go to the mess hall to eat,” Potts said from behind the two men.
Half the engine room sailors laughed — everyone but Bleecker, Gledhill, and Otto, who was trying to finish his doughnut.
“Damn, Otto, we’d be dead, but you’d have a full stomach,” Bleecker said with a shake of the head.
He turned to Adam Gledhill, his leading petty officer. “Gled-hill, we got the snorkel up, so let’s practice switching to battery before the old man decides to do it for real. Okay?”
“Aye, sir,” Gledhill replied.
Bleecker looked at the group as Gledhill went through the checklist with the electrician mates, making sure the gauges read correctly, the engines were percolating fine, and everyone understood their job. On a surface ship, make a mistake in the engine room and everything came to all stop. You floated while you fixed the cause. On a submarine, you might be able to float, but you floated deep under the surface of the ocean. And if you didn’t fix the casualty in time, you could find yourself floating forever beneath the surface of the ocean, ships passing overhead never knowing the coffin beneath their hulls. Bleecker waited patiently near the hatch leading forward, a hatch he kept dogged shut most times.
“Potts, you gonna stand there staring at the thing, or you gonna tell me what you’re supposed to do?” Gledhill asked.
Bleecker’s eyes narrowed. The engine room was too small for private conversations. He saw Potts turn to say something to Gled-hill, but Otto Lang excused himself, unknowingly stepping between another confrontation between his LPO and Bleecker’s problem child. All members of the black gang had the potential to be problem children. He had been one until his first chief took him on liberty in Hong Kong, told him he was on the path to spending the rest of his life in the brig, or he could straighten up and become a real sailor. Then the chief had proceeded to beat the shit out of him, leaving him lying in an alley near the Lotus Blossom.
He had barely made it to the boat before it sailed. The chief never mentioned the “counseling session” in Hong Kong, and Bleecker made sure he never received another one. He wondered whatever happened to the chief.
He stood alone near the dogged hatch. Gledhill had his hands on his hips, talking with Potts. Otto Lang — the sailors teased the Dutch German from Pennsylvania, but in the six months since he joined, the teasing had churned into where Otto Lang was more mascot than outcast. Amazing how human nature resolves a lot of conflicts without much intervention. He had been on the verge of asking for Lang to be replaced — more for the sailor than the crew — but things had changed. With the exception of Potts and the bully’s sycophant Fromley.