Through Waters Deep (6 page)

Saturday, May 24, 1941

Mary eased her way down the ladder to the USS
Constitution
's gun deck, inhaling the scent of ancient oak, brine, and history. “Old Ironsides,” the US Navy's legendary oldest ship, had asserted America's budding strength in the War of 1812. Now she rested in well-earned retirement at the Boston Navy Yard, restored in the 1920s in a campaign partly funded by schoolchildren. Mary had contributed her own pennies for the project.

“Look at all these guns.” Jim bounded ahead with Arch behind him. “Can you imagine reloading shot after every firing? Now our 5-inchers can pump out fifteen rounds a minute, and with a range up to ten miles.”

“Someone's been studying his
Naval Ordnance and Gunnery Manual
.” Arch ran his hand along a gun's iron barrel.

“I'd better.” Jim knelt to study the contraption the gun rested on.

“They're like two little boys,” Mary said to Gloria. “They're having more fun than if we'd taken them to Revere Beach.”

Gloria wore a slim leaf-green dress, and she set one gloved
hand on the peplum on her hip. “I hope it warms up before Arch ships out. I have a simply darling new two-piece swimsuit, and I want to show it off at the beach.”

Mary forced a smile. Gloria was one of the golden ones who could show off and not be punished. It didn't seem fair.

Gloria eyed Mary head to toe. “You have a cute figure. Maybe if we get the boys to the beach, Jim will finally notice you.”

Thank goodness Jim was too far away to hear and too immersed in discussing the gun's mechanics. “I'm not trying to be noticed. We're just friends.”

“But I so enjoy watching people fall in love.”

“Then watch yourself with Arch.”

She patted her upswept hair under a matching green hat. “We're a boring old couple now. He'd better ask me to marry him soon. All these tests are so tiring.”

“Tests?”

Gloria leaned closer, bringing a whiff of perfume with her. “He's so skittish, thinks girls only love him for his money. He wants a girl to be unimpressed by his wealth, even to disdain it.”

Mary studied the handsome blond officer, who peered down the barrel of a gun. “That makes sense. I'm sure he wants someone to love him for who he is.”

“Except wealth is part of who he is, part of what makes him attractive. And it's so hard to pretend.”

“Pretend?” The word tasted like dust.

“Just between us girls, okay?” Gloria winked. “The Vandenberg estate is spectacular. Who wouldn't want that? And the money? Heavens, you could buy anything you wanted, never have to count pennies. I'd be a fool not to want that. But with Arch, I have to wrinkle my nose and pretend the whole thing is quite distasteful. The sooner we get married, the better.”

Mary swallowed the dusty mouthful. Gloria might not be a gold digger, but she was standing in the stream with a pan, ready to sift out a nugget.

“Come on, ladies. Come see.” Jim beckoned them over.

For the next ten minutes, the men showed them how the gun worked, how the sailors hauled it back and forth on its wheels, loaded the shot, rammed it in place, lit it, and protected their hearing with the tips of their neckerchiefs jammed inside their ears.

Gloria made appreciative noises—another act? How could she pretend to like and dislike in opposition to her own tastes, in order to trick Arch into marriage?

“Look at that, Mary. Twenty-four-pound shot.” Jim patted a cannonball.

“That's incredible.” She didn't have to pretend, nor would she ever do such a thing.

Mary could watch him all day, the way his smile tilted slightly higher on the right, the boyish glint in his hazel eyes, the smooth cut of his hair, the perfect fit of his double-breasted jacket, his long fingers and the way he moved them.

She ripped her gaze away. Who was she kidding? She was as guilty of pretending as Gloria. Every day she pretended not to be attracted to Jim, pretended the sound of his voice didn't scramble up her insides, pretended the thought of him shipping out and not returning to Boston didn't leave her aching.

The men led the ladies down another hatch to the berth deck, filled with dozens of hammocks.

Arch fingered the canvas. “Our enlisted men should be required to come aboard the
Constitution
, see how sailors lived in the nineteenth century. They'd be more appreciative.”

“That works for us too.” Jim leaned through a door. “Officers' quarters. They have hammocks too. Although I sure wouldn't mind that desk.”

Mary poked her head inside. A gorgeous oak desk topped with green felt, adorned with antique telescopes and sextants and things. “I assume your accommodations are less colorful.”

“Plain old steel.” His grin flashed, far too close to her face, then he strode away, back to the hatch.

Mary followed the group up the ladders, not easy in a skirt and heels. Perhaps it would be best if the
Atwood
didn't return to Boston. Sure, she'd miss Jim and his friendship, but then she could recover from her crush.

On the main deck, Mary drew in a breath of cool air. A mild overcast hinted at coming rain. Wind played with the skirt of her dress, and she anchored the blue fabric sprigged with sweet little white and yellow flowers.

Arch and Gloria headed for the bow, but Jim circled the main mast, face tipped up and glowing. “Two hundred twenty feet tall. Can you imagine her with sails unfurled, flying with the wind?”

“She'd be marvelous.” Mary imagined yards of snowy canvas snapping above her, sailors climbing the rigging and calling to each other. “It's sad to see her sails trussed up to her masts, isn't it? She can't fly.”

“All she can do is float with the current.” Jim's eyebrows bunched together. “She can't let the wind move her. She can't set her own course.”

Mary laid her hand on the polished oak railing surrounding the mast. What a contrast to the painting in her apartment. In her painting, the tiny sailboat charged ahead, sails full, charting new territory. Yet here this grand old ship sat stagnant.

She let a sigh join the sea breeze. Her sails were bound up tight. She might not capsize, but she didn't go anywhere either.

Jim frowned up at the swooping lines. “My sails are trussed too.”

“You?”

His gaze turned to her, a bit bleary and unfocused, and he made a wavy motion with one hand. “I float wherever the current takes me. I don't make waves, don't push, and no one gets hurt. So far the current's taken me exactly where I wanted to go.”

That did fit his easygoing personality.

He jutted his hand out. “But I don't control the direction. The current chooses. Not me. Not the Lord.”

She studied his intent face. “Your sails are trussed for a different reason than mine.”

He grasped one of the lines hanging limp alongside the mast. “We have to hoist our sails. We have to let the Lord fill them. Then we have to resist the current if necessary to stay the course.”

A sense of peace, of rightness, of exhilaration filled her lungs. “Then we can fly with the wind.”

Jim looked deep into her eyes, his own awash with emotion.

Mary caught her breath, capturing the peace and rightness and exhilaration and sealing it with the joy of shared experience. She'd never felt such an intense connection with another human being.

In the cloud-filtered sunshine, his eyes gleamed green as spring, full of hope and promise. “Hoist your sails high, young lady. Let's see how fast you can go.”

Affection for him swelled inside, burst her restraints, and flowed into her smile. “And let's see where your course lies.”

Sunday, June 1, 1941

Jim stepped out the door from the bridge superstructure to the main deck, and a cool mist tickled his face. Boy, did it feel good to get out to sea.

Well, out to harbor at least. Under an overcast sky, the
Atwood
chugged past the islands in Boston Harbor, with the neat white tower of the Long Island Head lighthouse rising to starboard.

Finally the
Atwood
was out for her shakedown cruise, to see what she and her crew could do. For a month, the men would perform drills and drills and more drills, until they functioned as one. He couldn't wait.

And yet . . .

Jim gazed past the destroyer's two funnels, where he could barely make out the piers of the Boston Navy Yard. Right after the
Atwood
had shoved off, Mary had come, waving a handkerchief, looking small and pretty in her light brown coat.

Made him feel good to know she'd be there when he returned.

Jim stepped down through a hatch, his hands guiding his descent down the ladder as his feet glanced over the steps. Like an old sea salt.

He ducked his head at the bottom, but not in time. The top of the doorway scraped his scalp. After a quick glance to make sure no one had seen, he snatched up his cover and shoved it back on his head. Old sea salt indeed.

More like a giant puppy, bounding around with his tongue hanging out. No wonder Mary wasn't interested in him. A quiet soul like her would prefer a man of suave sophistication.

Did he want her to be interested in him anyway? Sometimes when she smiled up at him, he wanted to draw her close. Her gentle ways soothed him, intrigued him, balanced him.

He'd never imagined himself with anyone but a perky blonde, but now he longed for Mary's company. Strange. He'd have to wait and see what happened.

Jim entered the forward boiler room and shed his navy blue jacket. Heat pressed in, and the roar of the machinery assaulted his ears. At some point he'd have to do his turn down here with the “black gang” in the engine and boiler rooms, but he wouldn't volunteer.

Working his way through the maze of pipes and cables, he kept a respectful distance from the hot steam pipes.

Up ahead, Arch studied a gauge and made a note on a clipboard. His blond hair curled around his forehead.

“Hey, Curly!” Jim called.

Arch shot him a withering glare and jammed his cover over the disobedient locks. “What's the matter? Assistant gunnery officer has nothing to do in peacetime?”

“Nothing to shoot but the breeze.” Jim gave him a jaunty smile and a sheet of paper. “But I do have an important memo from Durant. Jim Avery, assistant messenger boy, second class.”

Arch smiled, skimmed the message, and slipped it onto his clipboard. “Ah, soon they'll give us both plenty to do.”

“I know. Got a practice loading drill at 1500 hours.”

“It'll be a busy month. Glad we're coming back to Boston, though. Good home port.”

“Does Gloria like it here?” A drop of sweat broke free from Jim's hatband.

“Sure. She likes her job well enough.” He marched down to the next gauge. “But she'd follow me anywhere. I'm quite a catch, you know.”

Jim winced at the cynicism in Arch's voice. How many times had they been through this? “You don't think she loves you only for your money, do you?”

“I don't know.” Arch peered at the gauge and adjusted a valve. “Thought she was different, but all she talks about lately is money, shopping, how wonderful it is to buy nice things.”

“Because of her job or because of you?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Look, we're coming out of the Depression. Most of us had to scrounge and save and do without. She sounds like every other American girl with a good paycheck right now.”

“I'm sure that's all it is.” His tone contradicted his words. “Say, you don't think we'll see any action this month, do you?”

Jim laughed. “Along the New England coast?”

“We'll be in this war before the end of our cruise, mark my words. You heard the news—Germany says escorting convoys is an act of war. And here we are committed to escorting convoys in the near future.”

“Yeah. The Battle of the Atlantic's really heating up.” Steam hissed overhead. Jim shuddered at the thought of the thousands of men who had perished the past week in the sinkings of the British battlecruiser HMS
Hood
and the
German battleship
Bismarck
. The war at sea had claimed many ships, many lives, and now the US Navy was skipping right into the middle of it.

Arch dashed to the source of the hissing steam and tightened a valve. “Gloria might need to find another checkbook to raid, because we'll be at sea longer than a month.”

Even if Congress declared war that day, they'd have to return to port in a month to restock. But correcting Arch when he was in a mood like this would only waste words. “See you later, buddy. Off to pretend to fire my guns.”

Back up topside, Jim took a bracing breath of cool air. The deck rolled gently beneath his feet. Far to starboard, the old brick Graves Light signaled the outer reach of Boston Harbor. Jim wouldn't set his feet on land again for a month.

He sighed. He'd also miss his little sister's college graduation. His older brothers, Dan and Rob, would too. At least his parents, Lillian's twin, Lucy, and the two youngest boys would attend.

In Lillian's last letter, she sounded downcast. Most of her pharmacy school classmates had jobs lined up, but not Lillian, despite her excellent grades. No one wanted to hire a woman, especially one who was missing her left leg below the knee.

Jim coiled his hands into fists, the scars on his hands tightening. Anyone who couldn't look past her prosthesis and see a bright capable young lady—well, they ought to be keelhauled.

Men were already assembling by the practice loading machine between the aft superstructure and the searchlight platform. Reinhardt wanted each of the four gun crews to practice on the loader for half an hour each day. Not a popular decision with some of the seamen, but Jim would do his best to make the gunnery officer's orders understandable and palatable.

Lieutenant Reinhardt hailed Jim and handed him a stopwatch. “Time them.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Jim smiled and bit back the “And good afternoon to you too” on the tip of his tongue.

The crew for the number two 5-inch gun rolled up the sleeves of their chambray shirts. All the men were black except the gun captain. While the segregated Navy only allowed Negroes to serve as stewards, cooks, and mess attendants, when general quarters sounded, everyone had a battle station.

Jim found the gun captain, Gunner's Mate First Class Homer Udell. “Good afternoon, Udell. You fellows ready?”

The petty officer nodded. “Aye aye, sir. Good crew here. Number one crew is whining about the number of drills, but my boys know the more they practice, the better they'll get.”

“Maybe we should get some friendly competition going.”

“Yeah?” Udell's sun-wizened face cracked in a grin. “We'll show 'em number
two
gun is number one.”

Jim laughed, clapped the man on the back, and climbed the ladder onto the aft superstructure, about eight feet above the main deck. Standing on the platform for the machine guns, he'd have a good view but wouldn't be in the way.

“Mr. Reinhardt! I'm ready.” Jim leaned his elbows on the rail and held his thumb over the stopwatch.

Below him, the crew took their positions around the practice loading machine. Lieutenant Reinhardt raised his hand high. “Ready, set, go!”

The men sprang into action. After the spade man opened the loading tray, the powder man placed a dummy powder case in the tray, and the projectile man hefted up a fifty-pound target practice shell filled with sand and laid it forward of the powder. Then the projectile man rammed them home. The case and shell dropped into a collecting tray, and the hot case man returned them to be used again.

Over and over they repeated the process, grunting with
exertion. Jim cheered them on. He'd seen similar drills on the battleship, but this crew was slower. They kept getting in each other's way. They fumbled a pass, and a projectile clanged to the deck. They placed the powder case backward and had to flip it.

Udell directed them with practical advice, but Reinhardt regarded them with granite silence.

Jim winced. This was the first time the crew had performed the drill. Slowness was to be expected. Over time they'd improve, but only with guidance and encouragement.

“Come on, men! You can do it,” he called.

“One hundred,” the projectile man shouted.

Jim clicked the stopwatch off.

The crew stepped back, leaned over, hands on knees, the backs of their shirts dark blue with sweat.

Lieutenant Reinhardt looked up at Jim. “Time?”

“Eighteen minutes, forty-two seconds.”

The gunnery officer's mouth screwed up. “Eighteen . . . ?”

Udell stepped forward. “Remember, sir. This is our first practice together.”

Icicles were warmer than Reinhardt's glare. “That was the most pathetic drill I've ever had the indignity to witness. Mr. Avery, please tell me how many seconds they took to load each shell.”

He'd already done the math in his head, but he didn't like the number. “Eleven seconds—eleven point two—”

“Eleven seconds? Eleven!” The gunnery officer paced in front of the offending crew. “That's fewer than six shells a minute. Six. We need to fire at least fifteen. Four seconds per shell, you hear me? Four seconds. Do you realize the Nazi U-boats have been at war almost two years? In the time it takes you loafers to load one shell, they'll sink us.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Udell stood tall, his hands behind his back. From above, Jim could see the petty officer's hands ball up.

“And don't think your lazy performance gets you fewer drills.” Reinhardt didn't raise his voice, but he didn't have to. “A good crew can do five drills in half an hour. So you'll do five drills too—ten if you don't speed it up.”

A single groan rose from below, quickly quenched.

If only Jim could help. At their current rate, the seamen had ninety minutes of hard physical labor before them. And to run through all four crews . . . well, they'd be at work long past dark. “Udell,” he called down. “You're an old hand at this. What did you see? How can we improve?”

Udell glanced up at him with a mixture of surprise and gratitude, then he turned to Reinhardt. “Permission to speak freely to my men, sir?”

“Granted.”

The gunner's mate's shoulders relaxed, and he gathered his crew around him, using lots of hand signals, his voice too low for Jim to hear.

“Mr. Avery!” Lt. Cdr. Calvin Durant stood off to the side, beckoning Jim to come down. When had he arrived on the scene?

Jim climbed down to the deck and found the commanding officer. “Yes, sir?”

Durant pointed his chin toward the gun crew. “I like what you did.”

“What I did, sir?”

“The petty officers are the best asset on any ship, far better than any of us with an Academy ring.” The CO flashed his own gold ring. “Udell knows guns and he knows his men. If we get out of his way, he'll do his job.”

“Yes, sir.” Warmth rose in his chest. He'd done something right.

Durant glanced over his shoulder. “You're a good match for Reinhardt. Between the two of you I might have myself a good officer.”

Jim's left eye twitched. That was only half a compliment then. One more reason to hoist his sails and stop floating.

“Are you a Bible-reading man like your brothers?” Durant's blue eyes homed in on him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Read Nehemiah.”

“All right.” But he frowned in confusion. Why would his CO want him to read about the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls?

“Something you said to Udell reminded me of Nehemiah. See if you can find it. Come to think of it . . . Mr. Reinhardt!” He waved over the gunnery officer.

“Yes, sir?” Reinhardt stepped over with a lot less steel in his gaze.

“Read Nehemiah. In the Bible.” Durant pointed his finger, swept it from bow to stern. “All of you—all my officers are going to read it. No one could lead like Nehemiah. Tomorrow night we'll discuss it over dinner. Pass the word, both of you.”

“But . . .” Reinhardt gazed toward the bridge. “But what about Shapiro? He's Jewish.”

“All the better.” Durant slapped Reinhardt on the back and strode away. “Last I checked, Nehemiah was Jewish too.”

How many times had Dan and Rob warned Jim about Durant's strange sudden assignments? Jim laughed.

Reinhardt sent him a baffled look, the first truly human look Jim had seen from the man. “Nehemiah?”

Jim grinned at him. “Guess we have some walls to build.”