At the Midway (65 page)

Dr. Singleton tried to glimpse the island from the landing stage, but the bright searchlights induced a peculiar blindness in those just below them.  Still, he felt safe.  If any of the serpents were still alive, they were probably curled up on the reef.  But Singleton was puzzled.  Beasts of such enormous size must require long periods of hot, sunny warmth to make them as active as they had appeared that day.  What did they do when it was cold and stormy?  Obviously, they did not simply roll over and die.

He shrugged off these doubts.  A hand reached out
-
-
black, he noted.  He was helped into the boat.

Ensign Garrett was busy securing a three-pounder in the bow of the larboard whaleboat when he spotted Singleton.  "You sure about coming, Doctor?"

"Without the sun, those serpents are helpless coils of lizard flesh."

This drew grateful laughter from some of the men in the boats.  It was this same reasoning that had induced the captain to delay their departure until nightfall, in spite of the dire fuel situation.  As the doctor settled in the first boat, he was startled by the number of black faces around him.  In fact, Garrett, a signalman, and a medical rating were the only other whites in the whaleboat.

"Join the pogey bait, Doctor," said Amos Macklin.  "I'm afraid you'll have to scoot down onto the centerboard.  Your seat might get a little wet."

"You boys all... uh... volunteered?" Singleton grunted as he moved over.

"Lieutenant Grissom gave us a speech.  Said he would guarantee our ratings when we got back to Virginia if we would turn out for him tonight."

That would explain the black man's forward way of speaking to him.  The Negroes and their white officers were treating this as a suicide mission.  If you didn't expect to come back, it did not matter how you acted.

"We're the sacrificial black lambs, Doctor."

"Belay that talk!" Garrett called in a loud whisper.  "Cast off!"

The rowers to starboard pressed their oars against the platform and pushed.  Slashes of light darted ahead of them, showing the direction.  Behind them, the profound deep-well clicks of the fore and aft turrets pounded like giant footsteps across the water as the huge twelve-inchers swung around.  They were accompanied by the metallic singsong of smaller caliber guns as they were loaded and aimed, the faint chimes of machine gun ammo belts unraveled and clamped in their breeches.

Oars were dipped, distance gained.  Gradually, the sounds of the ship were replaced by the surf thumping against the reef.  The searchlights revealed the turbulence, as well as the opening they were looking for.  Fear of the serpents was usurped by thoughts of sharp coral ripping apart boats and bodies.

At the front of the boat Garrett made a wide motion with his right arm.  "A little to port... there... plenty of room.  A little more to starboard... let's keep the marbles rolling."

"Hey, Doc, how come you not wearing your sauce?" came a Negro voice.

"He got plenty of sauce
in
him.  He don't need any on the outside."

Frustrated by his awkward position at the bottom of the boat, Singleton did not respond to their taunts.

The rowers put more back-muscle into their strokes.  The mouth of the lagoon might be as roomy as Garrett indicated, but the roar of water against the reef urged them faster.

"
There
!"

"What?  What do you see?"

The boat suddenly lost way as frightened men reached under the thwarts for their rifles.

"Goddammit!  Don't stop!  We're halfway there.  Who sang out?"

"Here," said one of the men to port.  "I know I saw something.  The water just kind of rolled up."

"Reef.  That's all.  It's all about us and we'll end up on it if you don't take up those oars again."  Garrett worked his hands nervously.  Lucky as hell, they were.  If the ocean had not been so calm, the surf equable, they would have foundered in a trough and been swamped then and there.  "You want to show us white devils something?  Then keep the marbles rolling.  Come on, give me some cadence.  Row and rhythm, rhythm and row."

Even though Garrett had met some of them by the galley, the blacks could not help chuckling at his foolishness.  They took up the sweeps and stroked ahead.

"Where's the other boat?"

"She fell astern--"

The night clattered down like a bulb dropped from the sky.  Sharp shafts of light streaked out to the surf, then swept towards the first boat.  Water sprayed up as a burst of gunfire hit close.

"Shit!" Garrett hollered.  He pivoted the bow machine gun and was about to open up on the second boat when the
Florida
concentrated her lights on them and lit up their mistake.  The firing ceased.

"You sons of bitches!" Garrett called hoarsely.  "Do we look like sea serpents?"

The other boat drew closer.  The coxswain made an apologetic motion.  "Everyone all right over there, Mr. Garrett?"

"Row.  Keep rowing.  We'll end up on the reef yet, we keep fucking around like this."

And then, very distinctly, the ocean hunched.  The searchlights rounded off with light and deep shadow an Appalachian brow nipped by moonlight.  It rose ten feet between the two whaleboats, then subsided.

The men held their breaths.  The damn thing was right between them!  If they opened fire, they'd end up shooting at each other.

"They
can't
be active."  Singleton's voice was fear and disbelief incarnate.

The signalmen in the stern of each boat flashed urgent messages with their lanterns.  From the
Florida's
signal bridge came equally frenetic responses.  There was a vague sound of bugles.  The searchlights began to swing wildly, trying to catch the beast in their beams.

"
They
aren't
reptiles
!"  Singleton's words were like laughter.

"Pipe down, Doc!  We have to listen!"

"But don't you see?  It's wonderful!  Everything we thought we knew--"

"I'll have you bound and gagged if you don't shut the hell up!"  Still wary of the coral outcrops, Garrett told the rest of them, "Watch it, boys.  The current's stronger here.  Push ahead. Once we get to the island we can set up the three-pounder."

Heartened by this thought, the rowers forged ahead.  The men in the second boat saw them and followed.

"Almost there, lads, almost...."

The light from the
Florida
became more of a nuisance than a help.  The searchlight beams were broken up by the reef as they tried to follow the boats turning towards the beach, creating monstrous shadows as terrifying as the watery hill.  Of more aid was the light on the shore ahead.  Via Hart's wireless, the men on the island had been advised of the landing party and had built fires to guide them.

"Damn, looks like they sent all the niggers!" came a voice as they approached.  Jumping out and hauling the boats up, another marine caught a whiff of the duff and exclaimed, "They sent all the
dead
niggers!"

"Come down and help, you lazy jugheads!"

"Who's that?  Mr. Garrett?  What the hell is the captain thinking, sending the stewards to us?"

"We've got a three-pounder here.  You want it?"

Eagerly, the marines surged into the water to lend a hand.  There was a loud splash as Singleton climbed out and blundered through the surf.  "They're active!" he said, struggling across the sand.  "Dark as Hades and they're active!"

"Right, Doctor," said Garrett.  "Give us a hand with these shells.  No supercargo allowed this trip."

With an artillery round under each arm and a rifle slung over his back, Amos Macklin followed a line of men inland to the compound.  Here and there a small fire uncovered hints of what had happened on the island.  Buildings destroyed, the sad heaps of wounded and dead.  As he took up a position on the perimeter, his chest thudded against the ground and his heart hammered with excitement.  His sweat mingled with the duff sauce and dripped into his eyes.  When he tried to clear them, his hand slid through goo.

"We've decided the bastards are guided by smell more than anything else," a badly injured sergeant was telling Garrett nearby.  "So why not have the fires?"

Here we all are
, Amos thought.  But wait.  Certainly, in any gallery of antagonists, Gilroy would have to be included.  Methuselah too, for that matter, with his devastating vision of all the things that would go awry for blacks in the world.

Having Garrett here was a plumb.  But Midshipman Davis' absence was telling.

Turning, he observed Singleton looking timorously over the shoulder of one of the medical ratings, his complexion white and sickly in the low lamplight.  When the rating pulled back a wounded man's bandage to reveal a ghastly sucking wound, Amos was sure Singleton would faint.

Nobody here but us ghosts
, he thought as he squinted towards the beach.

2018 Hours

His body
-
-
his joints, his pores, his flaming gut
-
-
burned with the ache and longing for an opiate.  To inhale painlessness and fantasy, to remove himself from scuffed reality.

For uncounted hours Gilory had hidden in the stokehold.  Heat and thirst accosted him like devils in a desert.  He could not believe his luck, getting out of the brig like that.  But it was his ill fortune to be unable to reach his final cache of opium.  He had hoped everyone would be too preoccupied with events topside to bother with him, without reckoning the captain's determination to track down the murderer and arsonist.  Not only the Master
-
at
-
Arms and his men, but the entire ship's crew was on the alert for him.  It was a bitter lesson Gilroy had learned near the forecastle.  A young seaman had stepped down a hatchway and seen Gilroy lurking near one of the tarpaulin lockers.

"You're a coal passer," he'd said.

There was no sense denying it.  A stoker's complexion never recovered after a few years in the boiler rooms.  "Just going through this."  Gilroy opened the locker.  On top of a roll was a long, stout canvas needle.  He hid it against his forearm.

"Why?  What are you doing in this part of the ship?  What's your name?"

"My name?"

An odd innocence crippled the boy's suspicion.  He did not flinch as Gilroy walked up to him.  Stood openly, unexpectant.

Gilroy whipped up his arm and forced the needle through the boy's eye as hard as he could.  Into his brain.  He died without a word, but with tremendous violence, his body convulsing on the deck, the curled spasms of his hands gashing paint off the wall.  The body unconvinced by death.

Gilroy was mildly surprised by his act.  Just looking at the thrashing body exhausted him. He yawned, nearly fell asleep on his feet.  Then he heard voices approaching and retreated.  Further down.  To the harsh iron terrain he knew so well.

His hours in the empty stokehold were not so bad when compared to the hellish boiler room.  Eventually, though, his thirst became predominant, more powerful even than his craving for opium.

Echoing footsteps gave him plenty of warning when the search party came down the passageway.  Scurrying to the nearest shovel locker, he became acutely aware of every limb and muscle as he squeezed himself in.  The press of his biceps against his stony pectorals.  The way his sphincter tickled as he drew his legs in and squatted.

"You know what we'll do with that murdering bastard?" came a familiar voice.  "You know, lads?"

That was the Master
-
at
-
Arms.  A prim
-
looking man with tiny pursed lips.  The stoker could have squashed his face with a backhand.  Master
-
at
-
Arms!  What a mighty title for a worm. But Gilroy became abruptly respectful on hearing his next words.

"When you see that bastard, shoot to kill, 'cause he's a killer.  An anarchist.  Your life won't be worth spit if he gets within two yards of you."

His sentences tolled back and forth across the hold like the clock of doom.  The Master
-
at
-
Arms might be a worm, a slug, spittle on a snake, but he had his minions.  Gilroy listened to them pounding across the deck.  His skin prickled when he sensed them looking directly at the locker.  Softened when they looked away.  Too small for a man, was their conclusion.

The echoes receded.  The hatch was slammed shut.

There it was: shoot on sight.  Mad Dog Gilroy.  He laughed, but the echo sounded so sinister and unfamiliar, that he quickly stopped.

"Oh, Mother, if you really were my mother, I'm a dead man."

He stood and pissed on the deck, leaving a wet trail in the coal dust.  He was trying to decide what to do next when the ship jumped violently and sent him sliding to his knees.

"People keep talking about serpents," he said as he picked himself up.  "What serpents?  I ain't seen none."