"He has gone below," Chaplain Foss said. "The bos'n is with him."
"Good," Captain Thompson said. "Good."
McNulty had taken Stud to the boatswain's locker in the forward hold, because it was one of the few small places in the ship where a man could be alone. He left him there when he went to look for Williams. "He's taking it bad, Doc," he said. It was the first time McNulty had come to Williams about anything since they had left Boston, but his manner was completely natural. "He's crying now, Doc, and I thought maybe you could give him something that would sort of quiet him down."
Williams went to Doctor Claremont, who gave him the key to the medical locker, and permission to take a phenobarbital to Clancy.
At the boatswain's locker, Williams shut the door behind him. Stud was lying, sprawled face down, on a coil of heavy line, crying with childlike sobs. Williams sat down next to him on an overturned pail. Stud turned his tear-stained, swollen face toward him in silence, with his twisted mouth half open, like a mask of tragedy.
"I've brought you a pill," Williams said. "It will make you feel better."
"She's dead," Stud said. "I ain't never going to see her no more."
"I know," Williams said. "You take this pill."
Stud turned his body to one side, facing Williams, and rested his head on his folded arm. "I couldn't stand to go see her put in the ground," he said. "Do you think I done right?"
"I think you did," Williams said. "You can remember her as she was when you saw her last."
"But I've been so bad," Stud said, chokingly. "Do you reckon she knows that now, how bad I was?"
"It doesn't matter," Williams said. "You've been no worse than anyone else. Mothers can forgive anything."
"She forgive me anything," Stud said. "No matter what I done. Like the time about the cake."
"The cake?" Williams asked.
"There was this cake, see, on the table in the pantry, cooling," he said. "It had thick icing on it, like I like. You know, chocolate. I seen it there, and when she went out to feed the chickens I picked up this butcher knife, see, and scooped off a hunk of icing and put it in my mouth." He paused a moment to catch his breath. "And then she come in and seen it, and she said, 'Tim' —that's my real name, Tim —she said, 'Tim, that cake was pretty for the company, and now you spoiled it,' and I said, innocent-like, you know, 'I didn't do nothing,' and she said, 'Stick out your tongue, Tim,' and I stuck out my tongue, and the knife had cut it, and the blood commence to run down my chin. Oh, it was funny," he said, his face contorted with anguish. "She's dead," he said, crying harshly, "and I didn't never even tell her. I didn't never tell her that I loved her! I loved her more than anybody else in the whole world, and I didn't never even tell her, and now she's dead!"
"You didn't have to tell her that. She knew. Take the pill, Stud. McNulty wants you to take it. Do it for him, Stud."
Clancy raised himself up on the coil of line, and took the pill Williams held out to him. He swallowed it with a sip of water from the mug Williams had brought.
"Drink it all, Stud," Williams said, "When you cry, you lose a lot of moisture. You've got to put it back."
"Is that a fact?" Stud said.
"It's a fact," Williams said.
"It don't matter," Stud said, falling back on the coil of line, his face suddenly empty. "She's dead."
Chapter 8
ON Tuesday of the last week at Guantanamo Bay, a long-delayed shipment of mail arrived from the States, brought out to the Ajax at the end of the day's maneuvers. At such a moment the Ajax ceased to be a unit and became a collection of two hundred and fifty separate individuals. For Sullivan the distribution of the mail was one of his most disagreeable tasks. In their eagerness the boys pressed around him in a smothering mob, and he would have to shout the names louder and louder above the din, and fight to keep the mail from being snatched from his hands. But when the last .letter, the last package, the last magazine and book had been claimed by its rightful owner, an intense silence settled over the ship. Later would come the talking, the comparing of notes, the exchange of news, the confidences; but each man read his mail in what privacy he could find, by climbing down into the engine rooms or boiler rooms, by hiding behind stacks or ventilators, by going far forward or aft on the deck, or, in the last resort, by climbing, clothed, into his bunk. To each man, for a precious moment, came the scents and the sounds of home.
Doctor Claremont's wife had borne him a son. He weighed seven pounds and three ounces, and he was to be called David, as they had decided in advance if the baby should be a boy. He had wisps of black hair, and eyes, as everyone said, like those of his Grandfather Claremont, He was a good baby; he rarely cried.
Doctor Claremont wept. Then he laughed. It seemed to him as if the invisible walls of a confining room fell away, and the whole world bloomed like a rose. He had to share the news with someone, and, still holding the letter in a trembling hand, he left his cabin in search of Lieutenant Palazzo.
Lieutenant Palazzo stood on the deck, leaning against the number-one five-inch-gun mount, reading his mail. There were the usual number of letters from girls, but this time one of them was very disturbing. A girl named Rhoda Smith wrote to tell him that she was pregnant, and what should she do? She had told no one yet, not even her parents. She would wait until she heard from him with a plan. Lieutenant Palazzo's stomach contracted and his mouth grew dry. For a moment he couldn't even remember who Rhoda Smith was, or what she looked like. The address on the envelope, an apartment on the East Side of New York, brought her back to him. He had had a few days' leave in New York before going to Norfolk to pick up the Ajax, and he had gone to a cocktail party where he had met Rhoda Smith, urban, smart, witty, a career girl with her own code of morals. They had been with each other constantly over a week-end, a wartime New York week-end.
They had done the usual things. They had taken a carriage through Central Park. They had crossed to Staten Island on the ferry, and run fast around the turnstile, hand in hand, to return on the same boat. He had stayed in her apartment, and they had seemed absolutely and blissfully alone in the city. He could not remember that the word love had ever been mentioned; there had been no tears and vows at parting, yet now she wrote, "There is an enormous happiness underneath, just waiting to be released when you say you'll come back to me." Well, he wouldn't be trapped that way. He could just ignore the letter. . . . But that might be dangerous. If she tried to trace him through the Bureau he would be in worse trouble.
It was at this moment that Doctor Claremont came up with his letter. Lieutenant Palazzo, an uncomplicated young man, found nothing of irony in the news. He was genuinely pleased at Doctor Claremont's happiness. He slapped him on the back and Doctor Claremont flushed with pleasure. Lieutenant Palazzo remembered that he had half a pint of whisky in his room. He had brought it aboard one night after a party, forgetting it was in his pocket, and when he found it there he decided that, since he had already broken regulations unknowingly, he might as well keep it, and save it for a special occasion. "Come on. Doc," he said, putting his arm over Doctor Claremont's shoulder, "you and I have got to celebrate." He stuffed Rhoda Smith's letter in his pocket, and they went back together to his cabin to break out the bottle.
Young Stanley of the black gang had a box of cookies from his mother. They had suffered a sea change, and were little more now than dry and broken fragments in a pink dust of the colored sugar with which she had frosted them. But the boys wouldn't care. Anything from home, no matter in what condition it arrived, tasted better than a feast on board, and the boys would gather around to scoop up the pieces the minute the word was passed. First, though, Stanley pulled out the folded, dusty note he knew would be there. It was addressed to "My dearest boy," and it was awash with nostalgic sentiment. Stanley crumpled the note into a round ball, swallowing hard between anger and tears. When he was sure no one was looking, he would throw it over the side.