Time to think. It was something that Ray Brentwood, ex-commanding officer of the guided missile frigate USS Blaine, had plenty of time for — ever since that misty early morning in the Sea of Japan, in the very first attack on an American naval ship in the war, when he was engulfed in flame, the Exocet slamming into the Blaine forward of the bridge.
At San Diego’s Veterans Hospital, the so-called “restorative” operations were over, but despite laser “weld” plastic surgery, the tight, polished-skinned ugliness of “burn unit” surgery remained. It was so severe that, upon meeting him, people made a point of chatting with him and looking at him longer than they normally would any other acquaintance in order to prove to him and to themselves that it didn’t really matter — when it did. Beth and the children had been the least of his worries, as it turned out. At first he’d been afraid that John, four, and Jeannie, seven, would, albeit unintentionally, shy away from him. But they, like Beth, adapted faster than Ray thought he had any sight to expect. The worst of it for the children wasn’t the long trip down from Seattle to San Diego Veterans — they welcomed these — but the teasing by other children. The “Frankenwood” jokes. Who was it, Ray wondered, who had said children had become more sensitive in America because of the experiences of so many minorities in the melting pot? It was a lie. Children — no matter what their nationality— all lived in the same country in childhood. It was the world of survival of the fittest, the most natural instinct to pick on the weak.
Even so, for Ray Brentwood, his children’s burden at school, caused by his disfigurement, was not the worst of it for him. Much more damaging for the family as a whole was the undeniable fact that Ray Brentwood, captain, U.S. Navy, had been fished up out of the water by rescue craft while many of his crew had perished aboard the frigate, fighting the fires that had finally been extinguished.
Ray had gone over his testimony to the naval board of inquiry a million times. He remembered one moment he’d been standing on the bridge. There was an explosion of glass as the missile had hit, and then he’d been thrown back. The second officer, or was it the third? — covered in blood — was screaming something at him, and the next thing he remembered was thrashing about in the water. The crucial question for the board, and for his peace of mind, which had never been answered, was: Had he been pushed over by the officer of the watch or somebody else who had thought the ship was irretrievably lost? Or had he quit the ship voluntarily?
In vain, his court-appointed lawyer searched for testimony that would answer the question, but all the others on the bridge were dead within minutes of the missile hitting or had died shortly thereafter before any exonerating testimony could have been collected. The fact that the Blaine, one of America’s top-of-the-line Oliver Hazard Perry fast-guided missile frigates, was the first ship hit in the war had made it the focus of enormous public attention. The navy was reluctant, “in the extreme,” as the prosecuting lawyer had advised the board, to lend any solace, even the merest suggestion of it, to any idea that a captain could abandon his post under duress.
The Brentwood case wasn’t simply a matter of naval PR for the Pentagon but was seen as a crucial case not only for the navy but for all the services. With thousands of young officers raised in peace, not having received a baptism of fire, it was considered vital by the chief of naval operations that benefit of doubt, which might properly be extended in a “civil mercantile marine situation,” should not be extended in the case of Capt. John Raymond Brentwood, USN.
Ray Brentwood was then named an “interested party” to the inquiry. It was an innocent-sounding phrase but one that spelled terminal paralysis, if not outright rejection, for the hopes of advancement in any career officer. The decision of the inquiry was to “immediately relieve” Captain Brentwood of his command over the Blaine, which was now being virtually rebuilt from the hull up where the Exocet had blown a bank-vault-sized hole in her forward section. Brentwood was now dubbed “Lord Jim” after Conrad’s character who had deserted his ship and passengers during a typhoon only to arrive in port on another vessel to find his had weathered the storm after all. Ray Brentwood was also told unofficially that he was “damn lucky” not to have been court-martialed. The scuttlebutt had it that two things had saved him from this. First, his family connections — that is, string pulling by his father, retired Adm. John Brentwood, Senior, now serving on the New York Port Authority as director of convoys, and by his younger brother, David, one of the heroes of the Pyongyang raid.
Second, it was rumored that the navy, because of the increasing convoy losses due to the unexpected successes of the renewed Soviet sub pack offensives in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, needed anyone who could tell a bow from a stern. The first part of the scuttlebutt, about his family connections, was untrue. Adm. John Brentwood was the last man to interfere, to pull strings for kin. He abhorred it, fought it all his life. The second part of the scuttlebutt was correct — the U.S. Navy was desperate for trained men, if not to man new ships, then to train younger men who would. And it was this fact upon which Ray Brentwood, now released from the Veterans Burn Unit and waiting at home in Bremerton, Washington State, had pinned all his hopes. Either that or, as his wife Beth had suggested, he could opt for early retirement because of his facial disfigurement.
“Retire to what?” he’d snapped. “Who’d have me anyway? The sea’s the only thing I know anything about — only thing I care about.”
“How about the family, Ray?”
He’d turned on her, the bright sheen of what had been his cheeks stretched tighter than usual over the reconstituted jawbone they’d wired together for ten weeks — all his nourishment had had to be taken by straw. “You know what I mean, Elizabeth. I am thinking of the family.”
He walked away from her and looked out from the living room of their bungalow toward the clutter of gantries, gulls, and noise of traffic below, the latter’s diesel and gasoline fumes so thick that only now and then could he hope to catch a whiff of the sea. Thank God the burn hadn’t taken away his sense of smell. “If they’d only send me to sea again, I—” He spread his hands in utter frustration. “Goddamn it! I have to get back my pride. A coast guard cutter, patrol boat — anything! All I need, Beth, is a command again.”
He sat down on the love seat, tossing his cap on the coffee table, running his fingers through his hair, which by now had all returned except for a mangy patch above the left ear. He was glancing anxiously at his watch. In ten minutes — three o’clock — Washington said it would ring with the Pentagon’s decision. “Make a difference to the kids, too, wouldn’t it? To say I had a command again.”
“Yes,” said Beth softly, “I guess it would. But you’d still be away from us.” He looked across at her. Her love was genuine; he could see it in her eyes and it constantly amazed him. She saw right through him, right to the heart, to his desperate longing for things as they used to be and knowing they couldn’t be the same ever again. It was she, he remembered, who had made the first move in bed on his return from the hospital. Before they had begun, he had asked her to turn off the lights.
“No,” she’d replied, her hand cool, calmly stroking him over the hard, unfeeling scar, looking only at his eyes. “I love you,” she’d said. “You understand, Ray? I love you.” He’d cried and she held him and he wept like a child. “There’s plenty of time,” she’d assured him, and at once he’d felt humiliated — as low as he’d ever been — and grateful, and angry that he should be grateful, and overwhelmed because she meant it.
The phone rang. She looked at him to answer it. “You take it,” he said, not wanting to grab it — sound as if he’d been anxiously hovering over it all day.
“Hello? Yes, he’s here. Just a moment please.” She placed her hand over the mouthpiece and held the phone out to him. “I think it’s the Pentagon.”
She waited as he spoke, biting her nails. Damn it! Why couldn’t he ever give any indication of what was being said? The old navy macho cool.
“Yes, sir,” was all she heard him say, his tone neutral. “Yes, sir. I understand — yes, sir.” He put the phone down slowly.
“Well? Tell me!” said Beth.
“Hi, Mom! — Where are you?” It was Jeannie, home from school. Then they heard John.
“Quickly,” Beth urged Ray.
“Wait till the kids simmer down,” he told her.
“Ray. Tell me!”
He looked down at his cap. “They’ve given me a command. Don’t know what yet. Have to report to San Diego in forty-eight hours and—”
“Hi, Dad!” Jeannie called out, then stopped, letting her school bag slide to the ground. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Beth quickly. “Your dad got one of those darn gnats in his — straight in his eye. Here—” She handed Ray a crumpled Kleenex.
“Ah,” said Ray, turning around to face Jeannie full on. “Little buggers—’scuse me — little beggars. So tiny you can’t see ‘em. Flew right into me.” He blew his nose, then suddenly clapped his hands. “Hey! How about we go out for Chinese?”
“Thought the Chinese were fighting us?” said Jeannie.
“Not these Chinese,” said Beth. “We’ve been eating there for years.”
“They could be spying on Hood Canal — watching Uncle Bob’s ship…”
Ray had developed a particular sympathy for outsiders since his days in the confinement of the burn unit. “They’re not spying, for crying out loud. Hell, if they were spying—”
“How about all that water poisoning stuff and…” continued Jeannie.
“Hey, Tiger!” said Ray, seeing Johnny walk in. “Are you ready for liberty?”
John hadn’t seen his dad in such a good mood since — he couldn’t remember when. “Yes sir!” said John, saluting.
Ray straightened and returned the salute. “Very good, officer of the deck. What’ll it be? Chinese or hot dogs?”
Jeannie knew John would opt for hot dogs if she didn’t move quickly. “Chinese cookies,” she said. “Yummy.”
“Yeah, Chinese cookies,” said John enthusiastically.
“Very well,” said Ray. “Now, all hands hear this. Liberty boat departs in exactly—” he glanced at his watch, frowning authoritatively “—ten minutes. Go!”
When the children had left the room, Beth ran over and hugged him. “I’m so happy for you… I…”
He said nothing. He couldn’t.
“So they didn’t tell you what it is?”
“Not on the phone, no. But he did say it would be a command. Ten to one it’s a PT boat. I don’t mind. They’re fast, Beth, and they carry a wallop. I don’t mind at all.” He closed his eyes and hugged her. “Thank you.”
“Uh-oh,” called out Jeannie. “My little cooing turtle doves.”
Ray batted her with his cap. “Where’d you hear that, kid?”
“Old movie at school. W. C. Fields. You know him?”
“Wasn’t he some admiral?”
“Oh, Daddy!” Without further ado, she turned to her mother. “Mom, can I tell you what happened at school now?”
“This is an equal employment facility,” said Ray. “Shoot.”
“Guess who won the spelling bee.”
“Oh, Jeannie!” said Beth. “That’s great, honey.”
“Hey, hey,” said Ray. “Atta girl. Give me the killer word.”
“Uh — let’s see—”
Beth was bursting with it all. She hadn’t seen the family so exuberantly happy since—
“Cacklebladder,” said Jeannie.
“What in hell’s that?” asked Ray.
“Right!” put in young John.
“It’s when spies pretend to kill someone but they don’t really,” Jeannie explained.
“That’s dumb,” said Johnny.
“It is not dumb. It makes the other guys think the guy is really dead when he really isn’t.”
“What for?” said Johnny combatively.
“To fool them, silly.”
“That’s dumb.”
“It is not. Besides, you’re too young to—”
“All right, all right,” said Beth, moving in to referee. “No arguments. Let’s go or we don’t eat.”
Heading out to the car, arm in arm, Beth was laughing.
“Cackle — what was it? I’ve never heard of such a word. Have you?”
“No,” said Ray. “It’s all they’re hearing at school now, I guess, with all this espionage business. God knows it’s real enough.”
“You mean you’ve never heard the word?” asked Jeannie.
Ray turned, surprised. “Nope. Never. I’m not a spy. I’m a sailor, Jeannie.”
“Yes,” said Beth, and for a second they savored everything that meant — before the kids started fighting about whether it would be chop suey or chow mein.
Ray’s fortune cookie told him “Your expectations will be exceeded.”
“A destroyer!” said Beth, reaching over and holding his hand. “Or maybe—”
“Shush!” he told her. “Don’t tempt fate.” Then smiling, lowering his voice, “Besides, Jeannie might be right. The cook might be listening.”
It was the fortune cookie he was thinking about two days later when, after a night during which he’d been too excited to sleep, he reported to San Diego and. in the gray morning light, passed ships from a carrier in for refit to a missile frigate like the Blaine—was it the Blaine? He looked more closely through the maze of electrical cables and oxyacetylene torches. No, it wasn’t.
It was muster, and ship’s companies were quietly, quickly assembling on deck for morning assignments by the time he reached “vessel designation IX-44E,” the USS Grace.
It had to be a mix-up. He saw a sailor in oily overalls coming down slowly along the pier, against which the low tide was slopping, the smell of the intertidal life all but lost under the stench of oil-fouled water. He hated the smell of diesel and considered that the greatest single advance in the modern nuclear navy was doing away with the fume-laden, oil-fired steam propulsion of the old days.
“Sailor?” he called out to the man in the overalls.
The sailor stopped, should have saluted but didn’t. Instead, he looked affronted, staring at Brentwood’s face angrily. “Yeah?”
“You tell me where the Grace is?”
“You’re looking at ‘er.” With that, the sailor walked on farther down the pier. Ray felt his stomach go to ice, the enormity of the disappointment hitting him with the speed of a rushing locomotive.
The Grace, a surface vessel, was designated IX-44E. “IX” indicated “unclassified miscellaneous,” “44” indicated “sludge removal barge. Self-propelled.” He didn’t know what the “E” stood for. Dazed, as if he’d been poleaxed, he walked down the bowed plank onto the creaking apology for a deck. It was all wood — old wood — wood that looked as if it had been cut from waterlogged trees eons ago. And grimy. It was 115 feet by 27 feet — or so the lone sailor aboard, who was awakened, cursing, told him.
“What’s the ships complement?” Brentwood asked, his voice strained, barely audible.
“Twenty — ah, maybe twenty-two, Captain.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Think it’s twenty-one. Sir.”
“Propulsion?”
“Ah — this here barge is self-propelled, sir. Not pushed.”
“I know that. But what pushes it, sailor — an eggbeater?”
“Ha, ha — no, sir. We got a GM 8 down below.”
“Horsepower?”
“Couldn’t tell you that, Cap’n. Two shafts, though. Yes, sir — one of the boys told me that.” The man frowned, looking deeply troubled. “I think it’s two.”
Ray Brentwood, ex-commander of the fastest guided-missile frigate in the United States Navy, took a deep, long breath and immediately regretted doing so. All he could smell was thick, sinus-plugging diesel. “How many officers?”
“Uh — never had one of those, sir. You’re the first.”
“Who’s been in command then?”
“Uh-Petty Officer Beamish, sir. He’s ashore with the rest of the guys. They come on around ten.”
“What’s your name and rank?”
“Able Seaman Jones, sir. Guys call me Jonesy.”
“What are your duties, Jones?”
“Uh — now, that I can tell you, sir. See, we go out, suck up any oil that’s leaked from the bilges in transit up and down the coast. Then that derrick there in the middle—”
“Midships,” said Brentwood, appalled.
“Yeah, well, we lower the suction hose down over the A-frame and slurp! Up she comes. Then we trundle back here to port and dump ‘er in that old scow — the Elaine—up yonder by the big… carrier there—Salt Lake City. Sometimes folks up the coast see a bit of oil and give us a call, so we go and mop ‘er—”
“It’s filthy!” said Brentwood.
“Well, Captain, diesel’s dirty stuff. Course, sometimes we get a few eggheads — uh, sorry, sir — I mean, ocean scientists down from La Jolla and we let ‘em hang some stuff off the stern. They keep track of the oil spills, see? Like every oil cargo is different, sort of—”
“Isotope stamping,” Brentwood cut in. “It’s called fingerprinting.” It was a long-standing pollution control device to track down whoever flushed oil from bilges in transit up and down the coast.
“Yeah, I reckon that’s what they do,” said Jones.
“What’s the ‘E’ stand for?”
Jones’s gaze followed Ray Brentwood’s finger pointing at the designation IX-44E in faded paint on the barge’s port side.
“Oh yeah. That’s ‘E’ for ‘experimental.’ “
“You mean the oceanographer’s stuff?”
“No, sir, I mean this is the first self-propelled sludge-removal barge in port. Used to just push ‘er around with a tug.”
“Jesus!” said Brentwood, and right then and there he decided he was going to resign from the navy. If they thought they could push him out quietly with this insult — the bastards were right.
What saved him, changed his mind, was Robert Mitchum, an actor his dad used to like, whom he’d seen in an old late show one night watching KVOS-TV out of Seattle. Mitchum was playing the part of a destroyer captain in World War II being hunted by a sub, and the destroyer had been hit. It wasn’t out for the count but was well on the way. “Old Bob,” as Ray’s dad used to call Mitchum, as if they were brothers, ordered everybody to abandon ship except essential crew. The officer of the deck had the job of making up the list of the nonessential personnel and had put down the garbage baler’s name — a low-IQ eccentric who was in charge of garbage disposal.
“Old Bob,” sleepy-eyed, had said no — the garbageman had to stay. Everybody disliked the man because he stank and had a weird passion for his job. But “Old Bob” told the OOD that the man’s dedication to “baling”—compacting garbage, making sure it sank out of sight instead of breaking up and acting as a trail for the marauding sub to spot and follow — could save the ship. Ray remembered that on this foul-smelling, misty wharf, and what his father had always told him — to swallow his pride and think of the navy, that it was bigger than any individual. Had to be.
Ray ordered the lackadaisical Jones to round up the vessel’s “full complement” by 1000 hours or he’d fine every man jack of them. They were going to scrub her down — stem to stern— and the engine room, crammed box that it was, was going to be so clean that any one of the ship’s company could eat their dinner off it. Was that understood?
“Yes, sir,” said Jones, saluting and wiping dirty hands on his dirty dungarees.
As Ray Brentwood watched him walk up the gangplank along the wharf, he felt the barge shift and strain against the hawsers. The tide was coming in. He saw a forlorn-looking sea gull perched atop the grease-stained derrick well forward of the wheelhouse, the latter looking like a box plonked on a slab of tired wood. “Well, bird,” Ray told the sea gull, “I don’t think Grace’ll win the war — running up and down the coast sucking up bunker C — but at least we can give the lady a little respect.”
In all the annals of war, never had a man so unwittingly belied the role of the vessel under his command — sludge-removal barge IX-44E — propelled.
The gull rose, squawking, depositing on Brentwood’s cap what the Grace’s captain took to be appropriate comment on his career prospects.