Mr. Gannson was OD, and he slouched against the metal counter and threw the bull with Ferguson, the gunner’s mate who was on with him as messenger. They both wore .45’s strapped to their hips, and I passed them silently, nodding as I went by. I leaned over the rail just aft of the quarterdeck, looking down at the fluorescent sprinkles of water that lapped the sides of the ship. The water looked cool, and it made me feel more uncomfortable. I fired a cigarette and looked out to the lights of the base, and then I heard Mr. Gannson say, ‘You got a clip in that gun, Ferguson?’
I turned as Ferguson looked up with a puzzled look on his face. ‘Why, no sir. You remember the ditty bag thing. We...”
‘This is shakedown, Ferguson. The captain catch you with an empty sidearm, and you’re up the creek.’
‘But the ditty bag...’
‘Never mind that. Get to the gun locker and load up.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ferguson said.
The ditty bag he’d referred to had been hanging from one of the stanchions in the forward sleeping compartment. Davis, on fire watch, had gone down to relieve Pietro. The fire watch is just a guy who roams the ship, looking for fires and crap games and making sure all the lights are out in the sleeping compartments after taps. I don’t know why he rates a .45 on his hip, but he does. When you relieve the watch, you’re supposed to check the weapon he gives you, make sure it’s loaded, and all that bull. So Pietro handed Davis the gun, and Davis probably wasn’t too used to .45’s because he’d just made Radarman Third, and only noncommissioned officers stood fire watch on our ship. He yanked back the slide mechanism, looked into the breach the way he was supposed to, and then squeezed the trigger, and a goddamn big bullet came roaring out of the end of his gun. The bullet went right through the ditty bag, and then started ricocheting all over the compartment, bouncing from one bulkhead to another. It almost killed Klein when it finally lodged in his mattress. It had sounded like a goddamned skirmish down there, and it had attracted the OD.
Well, this was about two months ago, when we were still in Norfolk, and the skipper ordered that any sidearms carried aboard his ship would have no magazines in them from then on. That went for the guys standing gangway watch when we were tied up, too. They’d carry nothing in their rifles and nothing in the cartridge belts around their waists. Nobody gave a damn because there was nothing to shoot in the States anyway.
I watched Ferguson walk away from the quarterdeck and then head for the gun locker right opposite Sick Bay, the key to the heavy lock in his hands. I walked past the quarterdeck, too, and hung around in the midships passageway reading the dope sheet. I saw Ferguson twist the key in the hanging lock, and then undog the hatch. He pulled the hatch open, and stepped into the gun locker, and I left the midships passageway just as he flicked the lights on inside.
‘Hi,’ I said, walking in.
He looked up, startled, and then said, ‘Oh, hi, Peters.’
The rifles were stacked in a rack alongside one bulkhead, and a dozen or so .45’s hung from their holster belts on a bar welded to another bulkhead. Ferguson rooted around and finally came up with a metal box which he opened quickly. He turned his back to me and pulled out a magazine, and the ship rolled a little and the .45’s on the bar swung a little. He moved closer to the light so he could see what the hell he was doing, his back still turned to me.
I threw back the flap on one of the holsters and yanked out a .45, the walnut stock heavy in my hand. I stuck the gun inside my shirt and into the band of my trousers, cold against my sweating stomach. I heard Ferguson ram the clip home into his own .45, and then he said, ‘Come on, Peters. I got to lock up.’
I followed him out, and even helped him dog the hatch. He snapped the lock, and I said, ‘Think I’ll turn in.’
Ferguson nodded sourly. ‘You can sleep in this heat, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’
I smiled and walked back aft toward the fantail. I wanted to sit down someplace and feel the gun in my hands. But it was so damned hot that every guy and his brother was abovedecks, either hanging around smoking or getting his mattress ready for the night. I went into the head, and the place was packed, as usual.
The gun was hot against my skin now, and I wanted to take it out and look at it, but I couldn’t do that because I didn’t want anyone to remember they’d seen me with a .45.
I kept hanging around waiting for the crowd to thin, but the crowd didn’t thin. You couldn’t sleep in all that heat, and nobody felt like trying. Before I knew it, it was 2345, and Ferguson was coming around to wake me for the mid watch. Only I wasn’t sleeping, and he found me gassing near the aft five-inch mount.
‘You’re being paged, Peters,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I told him. I went forward, and then up the ladder to the passageway outside the radar shack. Centrella was sitting in front of the Sugar George, a writing pad open on his lap.
‘Hi, boy,’ I said. ‘You’re liberated.’
‘Allah be praised,’ he said, smiling. He got to his feet and pointed to a speaker bolted into the overhead. ‘That’s the only speaker you got, boy,’ he said. ‘Nothing on it all night: Just static.’
‘You sure it’s plugged in?’
‘I’m sure. You take down anything for Cavalcade. That’s “All ships.” You also take down anything for Wonderland. That’s us.’
‘No kidding,’ I said.
‘In case you didn’t know, Peters.’
‘Well, thanks,’ I said, smiling’.
‘You’ll probably get a weather report for Guantanamo Bay and vicinity pretty soon.’ Centrella shrugged. ‘There’s some joe in the pot, and I think those radio guys got a pie from the cook. They wouldn’t give me none, and it’s probably all gone by now. But maybe you got influence.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Okay, you relieving me?’
‘The watch is relieved,’ I said. ‘Go hit the sack.’
Centrella nodded and headed for the door. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, turning, ‘the Old Man’s in his cabin. He wants anything important brought right to him.’
‘What does he consider important?’ I asked.
‘How the hell do I know?’
‘That’s a big help. Go to sleep, Centrella.’
‘Night,’ he said, and then he stepped out into the passageway.
I was ready to close the door after him. I had the knob in my hand, when Parson stuck his wide palm against the metal.
‘Hey, boy,’ he said, ‘you ain’t going to close the door in this heat?’
‘Hi, Parson,’ I said dully. I’d wanted to close the door so I could get a better look at the gun.
‘You got any hot joe, man?’ he asked.
‘I think there’s some,’ I told him.
‘Well, I got some pie. You like apple pie?’
He didn’t wait for an answer. He shoved his way in, and put the pie down on one of the plotting boards. Then he went to the electric grill, shook the joe pot, and said, ‘Hell, enough here for a regiment.’
He took two white cups from the cabinet under the grille, and poured the joe. Then he reached under the container of evap, and the sugar bowl. The radio shack was right down the passageway, you see, and most of the radio guys knew just where we kept everything. We went in there for coffee, too, whenever none was brewing in the radar shack, so that made things sort of even. Only, I could have done without Parson’s company tonight.
‘Come on, man,’ he said, ‘Dig in.’
I walked over to the plotting board and lifted a slice of pie, and Parsons said, ‘How many sugars?’
‘Two.’
He spooned the sugar into my coffee, stirred it for me, and handed me the steaming mug.
‘This is great stuff on a hot night,’ I told him.
‘You should’ve asked for battleship duty,’ Parson said. ‘They got ice cream parlors aboard them babies.’