“We been out here a long time, wherever the devil ‘here’ is,” he said. “I want to get back to Honolulu, spend some of the money I’ve earned. I can feel it burnin’ a hole in my pocket while I’m standing here.”
“Yeah, well, if it gets loose, it can come to me,” Vic Crosetti said. “I got one pocket in every set of dungarees lined with asbestos, just for money like that.”
Carsten snorted. So did everybody else who heard Crosetti. The sailor in front of him, a big, rangy fellow named Tilden Winters, said, “Wish my stomach had a pocket like that. The slop they’ve been giving us the past few days, I wouldn’t feed it to a rat crawling up the hawser.”
“You tried feedin’ it to a rat crawling up the hawser, he’d crawl back down-rats aren’t stupid,” Carsten said. That got a laugh, too, but it was kidding on the square. The Dakota had indeed been out on patrol a long time, and gone through just about all the fresh food with which she’d left port. Sam went on, “Some of the things the cooks come up with-”
“And some of the things the purchasing officers bought, figuring we’d be stupid enough to eat ’em,” Winters added. “That salt beef yesterday tasted like it had been in the cask since the Second Mexican War, or maybe since the War of Secession.”
Again, loud, profane agreement came from everybody in earshot. There were several conversations farther back in the chow line that Carsten couldn’t make out, but their tone suggested other people were also imperfectly delighted with the bill of fare they’d been enjoying-or rather, not enjoying-lately.
Vic Crosetti’s long, fleshy nose twitched; his nostrils dilated. “Whatever that is they’re gonna do to us, it ain’t salt beef.” He made the pronouncement in a way that brooked no disagreement.
A moment later, Carsten caught the whiff, too. “You’re right, Vic.” He made a sour face. “That’s fish, and it’s been dead a long, long time.”
Tilden Winters delivered his own verdict: “You ask me, one of the cooks got diarrhea again.”
“If that joke ain’t as old as the Navy, it’s only on account of it’s older,” Sam said. The closer he got to the pots from which the horrible smell was coming, though, the more he wondered if it was a joke this time.
He took a tray with more reluctance than he’d ever known. As he came up to one of the cooks, the fellow ladled a dollop of stinking yellowish stuff onto the tray, then added some sauerkraut, a hard roll, and a cup of coffee. Sam pointed at the noxious puddle. “You got a sick cat, Johansen?”
“Funny man. Everybody thinks he’s a cotton-picking funny man,” the cook said. “It’s herrings in mustard sauce, and I’ll say ‘I told you so’ when you come back for seconds.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Sam told him, which, considering the stench, was a curse of no mean proportion. He took the tray over to a table, sat down, and looked dubious. “Hey, Vic, maybe the padre ought to give it the last rites.”
Crosetti shook his head. “Way it smells up the galley, it’s been dead a hell of a lot too long for that to do any good.”
Ever so cautiously, Carsten scooped up a forkful and brought it to his mouth. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “It tastes as lousy as it smells.” He looked down at the tray with loathing that was almost admiration. “I didn’t figure it could.”
Tilden Winters made the taste test, too, then gulped down his coffee as if it were the only thing standing between him and an early grave. Seeing their reaction, Crosetti said, “I don’t think I want any. Never was much for sauerkraut, but tonight-”
Most of the time, such grumbling would have got them in Dutch with the cooks. This evening, their complaints went unnoticed in the wider tide of revolted complaint echoing through the galley. “Do the officers eat this shit, too?” somebody shouted.
Carsten’s eyes lit up. He knew he could trust Crosetti for what he had in mind, and Winters was a pretty square guy, too. “Listen,” he said, “if they try and feed us this kind of slop, they oughta know what we think of it, right?”
“Sounds good to me,” Winters said. “Sounds damn good to me.” Crosetti nodded, too. Carsten gestured to both of them. They all put their heads together. After they were done laughing, they solemnly clasped hands to seal the bargain.
Tilden Winters got up first. He slammed his tray down on the stack, then started saying to the cooks what everybody else had been saying to one another. He had a talent for abuse, and certainly a fitting subject for it, too. A good many other sailors joined in his vehement griping. That brought several cooks over, both to defend their honor, such as it was, and to keep the men from getting any creative ideas like flinging the herrings around the galley.
Carsten, however, had already had a more creative idea than that. He and Crosetti took advantage of the confusion to slip behind the galley counter, grab one of the kettles full of the herring-and-mustard mixture-fortunately, one with a lid-and slip off before anyone noticed what they were doing. As soon as they were away, they looked like a couple of sailors on some assignment or other; the kettle wasn’t that different from any of a number of containers aboard the Dakota.
No one paid them the least attention as they headed up into officer country. Again, looking as if you belonged was more important than actually belonging. In a prison-yard whisper, Crosetti said, “Only slippery part is gonna be if he’s in there.”
“Hey, come on,” Carsten said. “If he is, we go, ‘Sorry, sir, wrong cabin,’ and we ditch the stuff instead of dumping it. Either way, we’re jake.”
The cabin door bore a neatly stenciled inscription: LIEUT.-CMDR. JONATHAN Y. HENRICKSON, CHIEF SHIP’S PURCHASING OFFICER. Sam knocked, his knuckles ringing off steel. Nobody answered. He turned the latch. The cabin door opened easily. He grinned again. He’d been wondering if Henrickson was the sort who locked his door. But no.
Inside, the cabin was as neat as a CPO’s dreams of heaven, with everything in its place-exactly in its place-and a place for everything. Somehow, that only made what they were about to do the sweeter.
“Come on, let’s get going,” Crosetti said. “Our luck ain’t gonna hold forever.” That might have been cold feet, but it didn’t sound as if it was-just a steady professional warning his comrade (no, his accomplice, Sam thought) of things that could go wrong.
They took the lid off the kettle. Instantly, the stink of the herrings filled the cabin. They proceeded to make sure the stink wasn’t all that filled it: they methodically poured herrings and mustard sauce over everything they could, desk, bedding, clothes, deck, everything. As soon as they’d finished, they got the hell out of there.
An officer in the passage would have spelled disaster. Sam’s shoulders sagged in relief when the long, gray-painted metal corridor proved bare. “Now all we got to do is look ordinary.”
“You’re too ugly to look ordinary,” Crosetti retorted. But Carsten took not the slightest offense-they’d pulled it off. When they got back down to their proper part of the ship, Tilden Winters looked a question at them. They both nodded. So did he. That was all he did, too, before returning to the friendly argument about Honolulu whores in which he’d been involved before his partners in crime returned.
The hue and cry started about an hour later. Grim-faced petty officers started escorting cooks and galley helpers up to officer country near the bridge. When the first batch of them returned, rumor of what had happened started spreading through the sailors. The general reaction was delight.
“If I knew who done that,” Hiram Kidde declared, although no one yet was quite sure of what that was, “the first thing I’d do is kick his ass.” He was, after all, a CPO himself. But he’d suffered through the herrings in mustard sauce, too. “And after that, by Jesus, I’d pick him up and buy him a beer. Hell, I’d buy him all the beer he could drink.” The gunner’s mate roared laughter. “What I wouldn’t give to see Henrickson’s face.”