Secret sea; (6 page)

"That'll start it," the doctor said.

"Let's get it started then," Pete said. "What hospital has got what he needs?"

The doctor told him, and Pete said, "How about calling them up and getting space for Johnny, and I'll get an ambulance?"

When the doctor went out, Pete's mother began to cry. Not much, just softly as she sat huddled up in the chair.

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The next few days were hard on Pete. To see Johnny lying there unable to move from his shoulders down, not able to talk except in a halting whisper, was bad. But the kid's courage was worse. Pete never saw a sign of fear in Johnny's eyes; he never saw the kid's lips tremble or tears come up in his eyes. Pete, after watching his brother for a few days, decided that the doctor was wrong in not telling Johnny the truth. And on the night he went into the hospital Pete told him.

Johnny lay flat on his back in the high white bed and listened, his eyes never leaving Pete's. Once Pete saw the muscles around the corners of his mouth draw tight, but he took it without a whimper.

"So that's the way it is, Jawn," Pete finished.

"Okay."

"I thought you ought to know all about it," Pete said.

"Sure. I'll work harder. I thought ... I thought it was just sort of temporary, Pete."

"You'll get over it."

"You think so? Really, Pete?"

Pete nodded.

"That's all right then," Johnny said. "Have you got to go back to the war, Pete?"

"In the morning."

"Take care of yourself.'*

"Don't worry, Jawn."

THE QUARTERBACK

"Well, take care of yourself anyway.*' "I will. . . . Sack time for quarterbacks/' Pete said.

Johnny grinned. "You know what I thought when I hit the trash pile, Pete? I thought, Wow, somebody has really tackled me around the shoelaces this time. But I caught the pass."

They sold the house to get money, and Pete's mother found a room in a boardinghouse in the town where the hospital was. Before dawn on August 7 Pete caught the bus for Miami. He couldn't sleep, and he watched the sun come up and the baking-hot day begin.

At the lunch stop people in the little restaurant seemed very excited about something. Pete bought an Atlanta paper and saw huge headlines: New Bomb Wipes out Jap City. While he waited for his lunch, he read about the destruction of Hiroshima on Honshu. One 29 had dropped one bomb—some sort of atom thing— and the entire city was demolished.

This is the end, Pete thought. We've won it. It'll wind up fast now.

Riding in the hot, lurching bus again, Pete tried to keep thinking about the future and not about Johnny lying in that narrow bed.

The war was as good as over. No nation could take the sort of pounding we could give it with the atomic bombs. One bomb—one city. The

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war was over, and he would be out of the Navy soon. And no more blue checks twice a month.

But at a place where a hairline of longitude crossed a hairline of latitude lay the hulk of a Spanish ship.

Pete put his head back on the rest and closed his eyes. He didn*t sleep—he made his plans.

It was late at night when he found his ship. It had been hauled out on the marine railway in the repair yard, and Pete walked along the starboard side looking at the few barnacles on the plates. The whole place was lit up with floodlights and, as Pete climbed up the makeshift ladder to the quarterdeck, he could hear people inside his ship hammering and banging.

Pete went first down into the shaft alley to watch the night shift drawing the sprung shaft and replacing the big bearings. Then, tired and suddenly very sleepy, he went up to his cabin.

The curtains of the cabin hung motionless across the door, but under them there was a strip of light. Pete thought nothing of it and was about to go in when the light moved.

Pete stood for a second watching the strip of light moving. A cold shiver ran along his spine. Then, without making a sound, he drew the curtains back and stepped into his cabin.

A civilian in dirty overalls was down on his knees on the floor working at one of the deck

THE QUARTERBACK

plates with a wrench. He looked up over his shoulder as Pete came in.

"The trouble is down in the shaft alley," Pete said quietly.

**rve got to get down through this deck to one of the lines," the workman said.

"There's no lines under this deck."

The workman stood up, holding his flashlight down so that Pete could hardly see his face. "Isn't this 0-16?"

"No," Pete said. "0-16 isn't even on this deck."

"My mistake." The workman started to go out, but Pete stopped him at the door.

"Why didn't you turn the hghts on?" he asked.

"Oh well ... I thought they'd bother somebody in the next room."

"There isn't any next room. That's a bathroom." Pete reached over and turned the overhead lights on. The man was tall and thin but his shoulders were wide. The long bill of the sword-fisherman's cap he wore threw a dark shadow on his face so that Pete could see only the outlines of high cheekbones, a thin nose, thin lips.

Pete read his name and number on the identification badge and, as soon as the man went out, he called up the security desk. "I'm probably haywire," Pete told them, "but there was a workman in my cabin using nothing but a flashlight

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and trying to take up a welded deck plate with a monkey wrench. His number was 1753-A and the name on the badge was H. Weber."

"All right, Commander, we'll look into him and call you back."

Pete took a shower and went to bed. The telephone rang and it was Security. "Weber checked out of the East Gate just before we could notify all the gates, Commander."

"He's probably just a sneak thief," Pete said, "rd watch him though."

"We'll put somebody on him when he comes to work tomorrow."

"Okay," Pete said wearily. "Good night."

Pete was half asleep when he suddenly remembered the log in his desk safe. He flipped on the lights and opened the front of his desk.

The flimsy combination lock on his desk safe had been wrenched almost off and the gray enamel all around the lock was chipped down to bare metal. But the lock still held.

Pete called the O.D. "Got any mechs on duty tonight, Joe?" Pete asked.

"One right here, Captain."

"Send him up to my cabin with whatever he needs to break into my desk safe, will you, please?"

"Coming right up, Captain."

In a few minutes a machinist's mate came up with a bag of tools.

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"Somebody tried to break in. One of the yard people," Pete explained. '*I want to find out if he got in and then relocked it or whether I came in at the wrong time."

''Doesn't look like he got it open, Captain. But he was sure banging away at it."

The mech prized open the thin steel door. "No, he never got in. See, he broke the tumblers off. He couldn't have locked it again in the shape it's in now, Captain."

"Thanks very much, Larsen."

The mech saluted and went out.

Pete took out the package, unwrapped it, and flipped the pages with his thumb. Then he put it under his pillow and went to bed. Above his bunk, hanging in a shoulder holster, was his issue .3 8-caliber revolver. He took it out, opened the cylinder, and looked at the six cartridges in it.

Putting the gun back, Pete lay thinking.

Who is Weber? he wondered. Where did he come from? Had he ever been in Cuba?

Was he the "tall one"?

The Purple Heart

xn the morning things looked different to Pete. For a long time, while his ship quivered with the hammering going on below, he sat in his cabin staring out the open porthole.

At last everything seemed to fall into line in his mind. All of his plans from now on had to be made to fit around Johnny lying in that hospital.

THE PURPLE HEART

So Pete made a decision which he had been putting off for a long time. With the war almost over, a few of the Reserve officers would be taken into the Regular Navy. They would never be as real a part of the Navy as the Annapolis officers, but—Johnny needed the money.

Williams knocked and came in. "How was your brother, Pete?"

"Broken back," Pete said. Then he told Bill how it had happened and all the rest. He ended by saying, "So Fve changed my mind about staying in the Navy, Bill. Fve got to stay in now. I need those blue checks twice a month to keep Johnny in that joint up there."

Williams looked at him. "What about the Santa Ybel? I think there's a lot of money in there, Pete. Enough to take care of Johnny."

"And maybe there's none," Pete said.

"My dad will back you. He'll pay for everything you need to go find it. He told me he was so sure about this that he'd put up every cent he had."

Pete shook his head. "It's too risky, Bill. If I didn't find it, where would Johnny be? And your father? Johnny would have to go without the treatment that might cure him. And your father would have lost his shirt."

"My dad has spent his life taking chances," Bill said.

"Not with another man's life. Bill." 63

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"I guess you're right."

**Why don't you go find the Santa Ybel? If you found it, you'd get enough money to retire for the rest of your Hfe."

WiUiams shook his head. "That's the trouble. I don't want to retire. I Hke to work; I hke ships and engines and the sea. If I had a lot of money, I wouldn't be worth putting out with the cat."

"Well, I'll give the log to your father then. He can find somebody to go get it."

"He wouldn't take it as a gift. Maybe you would go in with him as a partner."

"Any way he wants it. . . . Come in," Pete said as someone knocked.

A messenger came in with a sheaf of papers.

Pete glanced at them and held one out to Bill. "The Japs had better start running. Martin's going back to the Pacific," he said.

Bill read Pete's orders in silence and handed them back. "Where are mine, chum?" he asked.

"As soon as I get through my physical exam, I'll go see the admiral about you," Pete said. "Well, wish me luck on my lame arm, will you?"

*They won't even notice it," Williams said.

"Martin, I've got some bad news for you." Pete, who was tying the black necktie, turned

slowly around to face the doctor sitting on the

corner of the desk.

"Mind taking your shirt off again and letting 64

THE PURPLE HEART

me have a look at that arm, Martin? They've given you a *down' outside."

"Sir?" Pete said. Then his mouth got dry and he couldn't swallow. When he tried to unbutton his shirt, his fingers felt Uke rubber balls. He stopped moving for a moment, took a deep breath, and then, steady again, he took off his shirt.

**How much movement have you got?" the doctor asked.

"Plenty, sir. And it never bothers me any more."

"Let me see. Can you reach around behind and touch your shoulder blades?"

"Well, sir, no. But you don't do much reaching back there unless you're in a bathtub."

"Can you touch your shoulder with your fingers?"

Pete tried until the pain in the muscles around his elbow almost made tears come in his eyes. His fingers, reaching, could not touch his shoulder.

"Straighten it right out now," the doctor said.

Pete looked down at his arm, the long scars still bright. It wasn't very straight.

"They did a marvelous job on that arm in Pearl," the doctor said. "I'm surprised that you've got that much movement. But it's no go, Martin. You can't go back out in the Pacific with that arm."

Pete looked straight at him. "Commander, I've

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been running a PC around the Gulf for months now," he said slowly. **This arm hasn't bothered me or stopped me from doing whatever I had to do. Couldn't you just give it an okay on the Y sheet and let me go? It means a command to me, sir, in the Pacific."

"I wish I could. Really. But you aren't fit for duty out there."

Pete felt a slow anger. "Commander, I didn't get this arm falling downstairs."

The doctor nodded. **I know it. And I know that a Navy Cross and a Purple Heart don't make up for it either. But look at it this way. You've done a good job. The war'll be over in a month and there are plenty of ships and men to take care of what's left of it. Why not relax and take it easy?"

"What about—the Regular Navy?" Pete asked slowly.

"You mean can you pass a physical for Regular Navy? No. Under the peacetime physical requirements you haven't got a chance, Martin."

"Couldn't I get a waiver? If I gave the Bureau a big story about how I got banged around in combat, wouldn't that help me get a waiver?"

The doctor shook his head. "You might get a little pension out of it. But you'd never get into the Regular Navy with it."

"Well," Pete said, picking up his orders, "I guess I'll go join the feather merchants."

THE PURPLE HEART

The doctor stood up and held his shirt for him. **I really hate to do this to you, Martin. I've had a lot of people in here faking ailments to keep from going to sea. It hurts to turn down a man who really wants to go."