It was then that Bullitt decided he would dance. He sprang to the top of the table and assumed an attitude. "My Chinese temple dance," he shouted, and, as the boys laughed and urged him on with clapping, with the pounding of beer cans on the table, he began a series of sinuous, snakelike movements, standing in one place, moving his hips, and waving his arms over his head.
He was a shocking old man, Williams thought, sobered and shamed by the grotesque spectacle. He banged his fist on the table. "Stop it, Chief!" he shouted. "For God's sake, stop it!"
Bullitt paid no attention. The guitar played, the clapping and the shouting and the laughter went on.
Williams stood up and grabbed for Bullitt. He seized one waving arm and pulled him down from the table, where he fell and lay in the dust like an aged mechanical toy. Williams helped him to his feet and dusted his clothes with his hands. There were boos and shouts of protest as he led the chief, glassy-eyed and stumbling, away to the boat landing.
Bullitt lay in the back of the crowded, rocking boat, where Williams had helped him, and as they moved out into the bay he began to snore. So this is the man responsible for the best medically equipped destroyer in the squadron, Williams thought bitterly, looking down at the exhausted, worn and dissipated face. And this was the way he behaved ashore —the reverse side of the coin. Oh, better a little less technical perfection, Williams thought, and a little more humanity. What was the old saying from Proverbs? Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith? Bullitt couldn't even show gratitude or affection —if it was gratitude or affection that had prompted him to get the perfume for Williams —without deceit or trickery or the exercise of his basic cynicism about the nature and the motives of men.
And Williams was responsible for this man's being here. He had to face that. How had he dared take on this responsibility in a world so alien to him, righteously holding up his own values in defiance of others whose world this was? He should have listened to McNulty. But he had not listened to McNulty, and now here he was, in a boat full of brawling sailors, caring for his drunken and incapacitated chief. And what if orders for transfer did not wait for Bullitt in Norfolk? A quick, cold fear gathered at the pit of his stomach at that prospect. Oh, Bullitt could prepare for war all right; his whole life had been a mechanical exercise of preparation for the state of war, but, now that it had actually come, the tedium of the long wait had so eroded his character that he was no longer equal to it. How would they get through it, if they had to face it together? What mistake had he made in standing on his principles?
Chapter 9
THE SHAKEDOWN cruise was finished. They had left Guantanamo Bay, and the character of the ^y'^A:, Williams felt, had changed. They were no longer amateurs now, so to speak, and neither was the ship. Together, men and ship, they seemed to be one living organism, as if the Ajax were some leviathan of the deep, and the men who sailed her the living cells of her body. The crew seemed to have matured; they went about their tasks with an automatic, unquestioning sense of responsibility. There was work to be done, a war to be fought. Now, for the first time, Williams could speak of the Ajax as "she," and, without thinking, he began to refer to his shipmates not as boys but as men.
On the second day out. Doctor Claremont had sent Williams to find Pawling and bring him to sick bay so the doctor could examine his hand. When the first dressing had been removed to be changed Doctor Claremont had been present. He was shocked by what he found. The injury should have had immediate surgical attention. Bullitt had presumed too much, but possibly this was because he, Doctor Claremont, had not asserted himself in the beginning.
They were sailing close to the shoreline, and as he went on his errand Williams could see the land, distant and verdant under the sea haze. Up forward on the open deck, McNulty was working with Stud Clancy and others of his court. Stud Clancy was still lost, wandering, in his grief. To help him through this period, McNulty had devised a series of small and complicated tasks, to divert his mind. Today they were constructing the restraining jacket which Bullitt, in his offensive way, had requested for use in the unlikely event a man might go mad and have to be forcibly restrained.
For this purpose a canvas hammock was used. The clews, or lines, by which it would be tied up in a barracks or on board ship were removed. The canvas was spread out flat, and along the edge of either side of its length holes were cut at regular intervals. If it was required for use, the man would be placed on the hammock, his arms at his sides, and the hammock would be stitched up with line through the holes, so that the victim would be held rather like a papoose. Sitting on the deck now, with leather palm pieces, heavy needles, thread and wax, McNulty, Clancy and MacDougal were busy binding the holes, surrounded by absorbed spectators.
It might have been a scene from the Odyssey, Williams thought as he came upon them. The blue sky overhead, the glittering sea, the rise and fall of the ship, and the sun-bleached heads bent over the canvas, sewing.
When Williams came back with Pawling, it was nearly the end of the sick-call hour, and Bullitt had already left the sick bay. Pawling's injured hand, which Doctor Claremont examined, was scarred, but it had healed, and he had full use of it, except that the middle finger had stiffened and could not be bent. "Oh, it's okay, Doctor," Pawling said, with his meaningless laugh.
Doctor Claremont felt the hand again, a look of thought and concern on his face. "I think we'll turn him in when we get to Norfolk," he said. "It may be that a little physical therapy will bring the function back, but, again, it may need surgery. Remind me about this when we get to Norfolk, Williams, will you."
"Yes, sir," Williams said.
Now that his son had been born, Doctor Claremont had become less withdrawn, and even rather cheerful. Distressed by the incident of Pawling's hand, he had taken over more and more from Bullitt in the actual treatment of minor complaints at sick-call hours, and Bullitt was more often to be found in his bunk, asleep, with the scent of alcohol hovering above his head. He rationalized his desertion of the sick bay in his own way. His job, he explained to Williams, was done. "Of course," he added, "I don't know just how long you will continue to be the best-equipped ship in the squadron, but fortunately that is not my responsibility. I simply have to gather my forces for the next batch of incompetents."
Williams was not amused. In the past he had been able to rise, on occasion, to the chief's wit and sarcasm; his periods of apprehension and disgust had always been overcome ultimately by respect for Bullitt's ability. But after the last liberty ashore at Guantanamo Bay this respect did not return to him. Bullitt never referred to that evening. Presumably the whole episode was so commonplace that he never gave it a second thought. But Williams could not forget, and he was relieved that Bullitt stayed away.
So now it was Williams and Doctor Claremont who spent the long afternoons there together. Doctor Claremont, with his new grasp of the situation, was finally and at last aroused to the reality of their imminent approach to action, and, somewhat belatedly, to the necessity of discussing this with Williams. During the present war, for example, more and more was being discovered every day about the nature of shock, which had needlessly claimed so many lives in the First World War, and he would review with Williams the new approaches for treatment. And there were new studies in the early care of burns, especially flash burns, that special hazard of sea battle, when an exploding shell might send a sheet of flame briefly but destructively through a compartment. In such an instance only the exposed areas of skin were burned, and even though the surface layer of clothing might be destroyed the skin below was unharmed. Claremont impressed upon Williams the need to keep reminding the members of the crew, especially those working in compartments below, to wear their blue work shirts at all times, with the sleeves rolled down and buttoned at the wrist. With the casual dress permitted aboard a destroyer, the tendency was to discard clothing in warm weather, but unless they formed the habit of being adequately covered at all times they might forget to be prepared in action.