Final Harbor

Chapter 9

The two women waiting at the end of the pier for Dusty Rhodes and John Barber were a study in contrasts. June Rhodes was tiny, barely five feet tall with a slim, girlish figure. She was one of the Island people of mixed racial strains that so often produced women of exquisite beauty. In her veins ran the blood of the old Polynesians, of Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians and white missionaries. The slight slant of her large, dark eyes gave a piquancy to the pale copper tones of her skin. Her hair was jet black, thick and luxuriant and hung to her waist, caught at the back of her neck in a simple clasp.

June Kanakaia met Dusty Rhodes when he was a young sailor and she was seventeen. She had accepted his grave courtship with a naive trust that had awed him and which he had never violated. Gordon, Jr., was born a year after their marriage. Alan two years later. In Dusty Rhodes’ view June was the ideal Navy wife. She kept a spotless house, never complained of not having enough money and helped her husband study for his promotional examinations. She reared their children with a firm discipline that brooked no disobedience but was tempered by the love that flowed from her as naturally as the rising of the sun each day. She accepted the long separations from her husband when she had to be both mother and father with a stoic resignation, living for the day when Rhodes would have put in his twenty years of service and could take a job in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard and be home every night.

Dottie Barber was tall, blonde, buxom and as outgoing as June Rhodes was reserved. A Los Angeles secretary, she had saved her money until she could afford a third-class ticket on one of the Lurline cruise ships that traveled between the West Coast and Hawaii. She met John Barber in a department store in Hawaii. He was buying a spool of white cotton thread and she had giggled uncontrollably when the sales girl sold Barber a darning egg and tried to explain its use.

Barber had tipped his white hat back on his head, eyed her and said that if she knew so much about how to darn socks maybe she could tell him about it over a cup of coffee. She admitted to being an expert, that she had darned her father’s socks for years. The cup of coffee had extended into a quiet dinner and ten days later she wrote home for her clothes and personal possessions, cashed in her return ticket and used the money to finance a week — long honeymoon.

The two women, as unlike as night and day, had been close friends for years. When Rhodes and Barber won the right to wear the Chief Petty Officer’s billed cap on the same day, June and Dottie had hosted a celebration for the promotions with as much pride and joy as if the elevation to the rarified atmosphere of a Chief Petty Officer in the prewar, peacetime Navy was theirs — as in a real sense it was.

“The reception committee is waiting,” Rhodes said to Barber as they walked up the pier.

“Yeah. One good thing about being married is there’s always someone there to say hello when you come in to port.”

“Didn’t know you had any trouble in that line when you were single,” Rhodes said.

“Been so long I forgot about it,” Barber said. The two men reached the end of the pier and Rhodes bent and gravely kissed June on her mouth. She hugged his arm and they both turned at Dottie Barber’s cry.

“Hoo hah! Lemme show you how to welcome a sailor!” She threw her arms around Barber’s neck, knocking his cap to the ground, and hugged him fiercely while she was kissing him. The embrace went on and on until finally Dottie stepped back, smoothing her skirt.

“There, you sex maniac! Let that hold you until we get home! June, I’ll call you tomorrow about noon if I’m able.”

“No, you drive,” Rhodes said. He walked around the front of their shiny 1938 Ford and got into the passenger’s seat.

“The boys busy?”

“They’re finishing up the housecleaning and setting the table for lunch,” June said. She sat up very straight on the thick pillow she used so she could see over the steering wheel. “When we heard, day before yesterday, that Mako was on the way in Gordy and Alan took over. They washed and waxed the car, cleaned the yard and then started on the house.”

“What brought all that on? Usually they have trouble with hanging up their clothes.”

June smiled, her white teeth gleaming in her copper-hued face. “Gordy has found out about sex and women. He told me that I shouldn’t be all tired out when you got home!”

“My God!” Rhodes muttered. “At fourteen? I was raised on a farm and I knew about breeding cows and pigs when I was ten but I never connected it with men and women until I was at least, oh, sixteen, maybe later.”

“All you people from Minnesota are backward,” she said. “I think he’s known about it for a long time. This is his way of letting me know that he knows. When you leave on the next war patrol I’ll start the sex education for both of them.”

“You think you ought to do that? It’s kind of, well, it’s a delicate subject.”

“The old Polynesian fathers taught their daughters about sex by deflowering them in front of the tribe,” she said in a prim tone. “The girls learned by doing. The boys learned by watching. After that they could practice with each other as much as they wanted to. I don’t intend to do that with my sons but I’d rather tell them what’s what and have them get it straight than let them pile up a lot of bunk from other kids.”

He nodded. “Other than that, how’s everything?”

“We’re all fine,” she answered. “I made the last payment on the radio. The car needs a new fan belt. Gordy wanted to put it on but I told him to wait until you got home so you could see what a good mechanic he is.” She looked at him and grinned. “Not such a long patrol this time, shorter than the first one.”

“Thirty-five days is long enough,” he said. “Took us fourteen days to get on station. We spent a week there and then got called home. Is Dottie okay, their girl all right?”

“They’re fine,” she answered. “We followed the same sort of routine we had when you were both on the East Coast putting the Mako in commission and all during the first war patrol. We called each other every day, got together every couple of days or so. Gloria Brannon came over to the house every Sunday after church. Except the last two Sundays.”

“Was something wrong?”

“Well, you know how it is. You’re the Chief of the Boat so if any of the wives of the crew or their girl friends have a problem they come to me if you’re out at sea. Captain Hinman’s wife is dead now,” she shuddered slightly, “so she isn’t here to give any help to the officers’ wives. Gloria Brannon has to do that and she just isn’t very good at it. She’s too sweet to deal with the problems other people have.”

“What problems?” he said softly.

She drove for a few moments without speaking and then she pulled over and parked the car by a curb. She turned to him and her words came out in a rush.

“Mary Simms is sleeping with a civilian, a Civil Service engineer they sent out here to work on the sunken battleships!”

“Who knows, who else beside you and Gloria Brannon?”

“Who doesn’t? According to what I’ve heard every officer’s wife on the Base knows about it. He’s been living at Mary’s house. He moved out two days ago when we heard you were coming in.”

Rhodes’ big right fist clenched and he began to beat his fist against his knee.

“He’s been living in Simms’ house? In his damned house? With their little girl there?”

“No,” June answered. “The little girl wasn’t there. She was staying at Gloria’s house. The Brannons’ little girl is about the same age. They played together.”

“What the hell is wrong with Mary Simms?” Rhodes grunted.

“The right question is what is wrong with her husband,” June said. “From what I hear your Mr. Simms is an all-out bastard. He’s all-Navy. Clean sweep down fore and aft twice a day. When the ship is in port he holds quarters in the front room before he leaves for the ship each day and issues his orders for the day to his wife and daughter. Then he inspects when he comes home to make sure his orders were carried out! Shape up or ship out! Dottie said that if John ever tried anything like that she’d raise a lump on his head as big as a watermelon!”

“You didn’t get involved, did you?”

“Oh, no! I’ve been married to you for fifteen years, remember? I know the Navy! Enlisted men do not fraternize with the officers. Enlisted men’s wives say ‘yes, ma’am,’ to officers’ wives and they lower their eyes when they meet the Captain’s wife in public.”

“Now wait a minute! Marie Hinman wasn’t like that!”

“No, she wasn’t,” she agreed. “Marie Hinman, may God give her soul rest and love, was a wonderful woman. She liked everyone. She spoke to everyone and it didn’t matter if it was some deck hand’s girl friend or the Admiral’s wife. Gloria is every bit as nice but she hasn’t got the steel in her that Marie Hinman had. She doesn’t know how to cope with what she calls ‘marital infidelity’ but I call it screwing all hands!”

“You’re talking dirty, woman!” His big hand touched her thigh gently as she put the car in gear. She looked at him and smiled. “I’m a vulgar woman and I’m raunchy and I haven’t had a man, not even a civilian, in thirty-six days and I’m going to kill you tonight!” She tried hard to make her soft voice growl.

“You gonna let the boys watch, old Polynesian?” He caught her back-handed slap at him and laughed.

“I shouldn’t be kidding about those things,” she said as she wheeled the car into their street. “I didn’t know if I should tell you or not. I’m glad I did.”

“I’m glad you did, too,” he stared through the windshield and then slammed his knee with his fist.

“Shit!” he snapped.

“Watch your language, sailor, we’re almost home.”

“Well, damn it, we’re losing the Old Man and Mike Brannon and that means that Pete Simms will probably be the Executive Officer next war patrol. If his marriage is breaking up, if it affects him, it could be bad. An Exec who hasn’t got his whole mind on his job could lose the ship!”

“Captain Hinman and Mike Brannon both leaving?” She slowed the car slightly. “Honey, we heard things, little things, the last week or two. What happened out there?”

“Later,” he said. “There’s the boys on the lawn. My God, look how Alan has grown this last month!”

Dottie Barber rolled over in bed late that night and reached for a cigaret.

“Pappy John,” she said, exhaling a long plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “Pappy John, you are still the best man who ever started a rusty engine and made it purr like a kitten! Now rest easy and get your strength back and let me tell you about your engineering officer.”

When she had finished John Barber reached up and rubbed his balding head.

“God damn it!” he muttered. “That son of a bitch Simms is bad enough now. If he finds out about this he’s gonna be hell on wheels with the throttle stuck wide open.”

“He’ll find out,” she said. She lit a cigaret for him. “Everyone on the Base seems to know about it.”

“What sort of a guy is it she’s been shackin’ up with? You ever see him?”

“He was pointed out to me when I went to the Commissary on the Base one day,” she said. “Nice-looking man, little bit chubby, just like Mary is. I heard he’s married, has a wife and four kids on the East Coast.”

“She’s got to be out of her skull!” Barber said. He ground out the cigaret in an ashtray Dottie was holding on her bare stomach. “I could understand her shacking up if Simms was dead, lost at sea or something. But she shouldn’t be screwing all hands just because we’re out at sea for a few weeks!”

“She’s not screwing all hands,” Dottie said sweetly. “Just one little civilian. And from what I hear she’s just as lonely when the ship is in port as when you’re gone!”

“How would you know that?”

“Marylin, the mixed-blood who lives at the end of the street, the one who’s married to that Yard machinist? You know him. Well, Marylin babysits for officers when they have a party and does housecleaning for some of them. Marylin says that Mary Simms always calls her when Pete Simms is due home from sea to help her clean the house. Your nice Mr. Simms walks in, pulls on white gloves and walks around feeling over the tops of the doors and inside cupboards, looking for dust. He must think he’s an Admiral on inspection tour!”

“I know,” Barber growled. “The son of a bitch came off a battleship. He pulled that sort of shit when we were shaking down the Mako. One day one of my firemen put a bucket of dirty oil at the bottom of the ladder that goes down to the auxiliary diesel and then he unscrewed the light bulb.

“Simms went down the ladder in his white gloves and put his foot in the bucket! You’d a thought a main engine had blown up! Got his white gloves all dirty trying to get his shoe and sock off. Came back to the engine rooms later and told me to put all hands to scrubbing the bilges with their toothbrushes!”

“My God!” she said. “How’d you get out of that one?”

“That’s what you got a Chief of the Boat for,” he said. “I went to Dusty and he got Mr. Simms straightened out. Does Dusty know about this, you think?”

“June knows about it so I guess that he’ll know,” she said. “But Mr. Simms is as much your problem as Dusty’s, isn’t he?”

“In a way,” he said. “The Chief of the Boat is the only Chief with enough weight to go to the Old Man and tell him one of his officers is carrying too much right rudder. Stop that, will you! I’m too old for that stuff!”

“Oh no you’re not!” she giggled.

“I am so!” he said. “You’re a crazy woman!”

“You’re not too old!” she giggled. “I’ve got a handful already!”

Mike Brannon waited until just before noon before telephoning Lieut. Don Grilley’s house. Bernice Grilley answered.

“Don’s in the shower and I’m stirring up a mess of real Oklahoma-style flapjacks and there’s some great pork sausage my Daddy sent me a few days ago and y’all bring Gloria and little Glory over and have some lunch.” She listened to Brannon’s remonstrations for a moment.

“Too late, friend. While you were talkin’ I poured in some more flour and if y’all don’t come over I’ll have a lot of wasted flapjacks. Now come on, right away, y’hear?”

She greeted the Brannons at the door and led the way to the dining room, a tall, slim woman whose self-assured manner had been developed through several years of making a home for herself and her geologist husband in the out-of-the-way places of the United States.

“Last batch of the first bunch is on the griddle,” she said as she went into the kitchen. “Don, old buddy, start dishing up will you, while I turn these ‘jacks?”

They ate hugely, Gloria Brannon protesting that she really shouldn’t take a third helping, and then Bernice Grilley put little Glory Brannon in the front room with a big coloring book and a box of crayons. She brought a big pot of coffee out to the kitchen.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Don Grilley said. He lit a cigaret and touched his wife’s hand in thanks as she poured coffee.

“Well, it’s not my responsibility now,” Mike Brannon said. “I’m officially detached.” His round face was troubled. “But I’m concerned about this thing, what it could do at the Mako.”

“You’re talking about the Simms mess?” Grilley said.

Brannon nodded his head. “Mess is the right word.”

“We’ve seen that sort of thing in the oil camps,” Bernice Grilley said. She reached over and got one of her husband’s cigarets.

“A man leaves his wife alone too much. Sometimes she goes wrong because she’s just too lonely. Sometimes she welcomes the absence so she can cat around.”

“What did you do about things like that?” Mike asked.

“Nothing,” Grilley answered. “Not anyone’s business. I wonder sometimes why the Navy makes it their business when something like this happens. The Navy is government and government shouldn’t be sticking its nose into private affairs.”

“Oh, you’re wrong!” Brannon said. “When you’re out at sea, especially in a submarine, and a man is all upset because of something like this he could lose the ship, sink it!”

“You can get killed working on an oil rig just as easily,” Grilley said. “But it doesn’t happen that often. But that’s none of my business, the Simms thing I mean. All I want is for this war to end so I can go back to being a civilian.” He noticed that Mike Brannon’s face had begun to set in what the Wardroom called “The Executive Officer’s ‘Now Hear This!’ expression.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mike. I’ve learned a lot from some of the people I’ve met. You, for one. If all the officers in the Navy were like you and the Skipper I’d consider putting in to be a Regular. It’s the Pete Simmses that bother me.” He turned to his wife.

“Tell Mike and Gloria what Simms did when we invited him and Mary over after our first patrol run. We asked them over to have a Mexican-style dinner,” he explained to Mike.

“Well, he came in and then he began touching things, tables, over the doors, things like that. And he told me I wasn’t a very good housekeeper. He said that as long as I was in the Navy that I should run, what did he call it, Don?”

“A taut ship,” Grilley said with a grin. “Now tell them what you said!”

“I told him to gather up all the dust he could find, pat it into a little pile and then stuff it — you know where!

“He looked at me as if I’d hit him in the face! Then he told me than an officer’s lady didn’t talk like an enlisted man’s riffraff. I told him that I certainly wasn’t an officer’s lady by choice and that the sooner Don was back to being a civilian, the better I’d like it.”

“It must be very hard for two adult people to jump into Navy life with both feet like you’ve had to,” Brannon said slowly. “I mean, those of us who are Regulars have been at it since we left high school. The Academy, all that. Usually we marry a Service brat and she knows what it’s all about. Or we marry a young girl who’s adaptable and the older wives help her out.

“Gloria wasn’t a Service brat but her father was a quarterman in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a leading shipfitter. She knew all about the long separations, the lousy quarters they give to junior officers.

“You should have seen the shack we lived in when we were sent to Panama! Roaches big enough to carry off a bag of groceries, if we’d ever had enough money to buy a whole bag of groceries. The roof leaked in the rainy season and they wouldn’t fix it then because they couldn’t work in the rain. When the dry season came they couldn’t fix it because they didn’t know where it leaked!”

“What’s Mary Simms’ background?” Bernice asked.

“Civilian,” Gloria Brannon said. “She met Pete when she was working in some Senator’s office in Washington. He was attached to the color guard or something like that. He was a football player at the Academy, you know, big man on campus sort of thing. Very good looking, as he is now. She was much slimmer then, she’s let herself go a little since they had the baby.

“She told me once, when they were commissioning Mako, that he made her do thirty minutes of calisthenics every morning when they got up. Then he’d take his shower and she’d fix breakfast because he wanted his breakfast as soon as he was dressed. And then he’d chew her out for not being showered and cleaned up! He said she shouldn’t sit at an officer’s table in a robe and hair curlers!”

“Nice man,” Grilley said. “You had a little trouble with him at New London, didn’t you?”

“Just a little,” Mike said slowly. “He started getting on Nate Cohen, needling him because Nate’s Jewish. I stopped it.”

“Simms is a fool,” Grilley said. “Cohen is ten times as smart as Simms is ever going to be. Did you know he was studying for the Rabbinate, Mike?”

“Yes. The Skipper told me he saw it in his service jacket. I wondered,” Brannon’s face was solemn. “I never served with a Jew before, never even knew a Jew for that matter. I thought they had to eat special foods off special plates, things like that.”

“If they observe dietary laws, they do,” Grilley said. “But I think Nate would have asked for a dispensation because of service in a submarine in wartime.”

“You got along very well with Cohen?” Brannon was speaking slowly, picking his words.

“Yes,” Grilley said. “I had some Jewish professors in school. I admired them as men and for their learning.” He was conscious as he spoke of a subtle change in the room. The same sort of change that came about whenever Nathan Cohen walked into the Mako’s Wardroom was here in this slightly shabby room in this seedy house that the Navy had appropriated for Officer’s Quarters. There were only a few Jews in the prewar Navy. The Jew was unknown. Therefore he was dangerous. Grilley changed the subject abruptly.

“I think there’s something you ought to know, Mike. We, all of us in the Wardroom and I’m sure that everyone in the crew — we’re going to miss you. You were one hell of a fine Executive Officer. I know you’re going to make a hell of a good Skipper.”

Brannon blushed, the solid red flush mounting swiftly from his open shirt collar to his black hair. His bright blue eyes squeezed shut for a moment and then opened.

“Well, Don, that wasn’t necessary. I’m going to miss Mako, all of you.” He spread his hands, almost helplessly.

“You know, when you Reserves started coming in with us we resented you. Yes, we did! Called you shoe salesmen and ribbon clerks. You got ranks that some of us worked years and years to get. I think you can understand how we felt. We’d been doing our work for years, ever since high school and in you came and got braid some of us couldn’t get. And I, for one, want to go on record as saying that most of you people are damned smart!”

“It cuts both ways,” Grilley said softly. “Most of us who came into the Navy had a pretty low opinion of Regular Navy officers. We thought you were parasites, you’d been getting free hospital care, free dental care, a free education and that sort of thing and we’d been on the outside, fighting to get through school in the Depression years. And most of us have found out that most of you are damned good men, damned good.

“I found out that it isn’t much different in here than it is outside in many ways. You have a system. In the oil fields you learn very quickly to lean on the chief rigger. He’s the man who knows everything. Here you lean on the Chief of the Boat. He knows everything.”

“Let’s end this mutual admiration society,” Bernice Grilley said, “before you wind up crying on each other’s shoulders. When do you have to leave, Gloria?”

“We’ve got about another eleven days,” Mike Brannon said. “We get to go together, privilege of command. But we’ll be together for only a few weeks, and then Eelfish will go to sea. Gloria is going to stay in the States, with her folks.”

“I don’t like that part,” Gloria said. “I won’t be here to see Mike bring his ship in at the end of his first war patrol.”

“I don’t think you’d see that anyway,” Mike said. “Bob Rudd told us at lunch yesterday that Nimitz is thinking of sending most of the new submarines to Australia. Down there we’ll be closer to the islands the Japs have captured and closer to their supply ships.”

“Do you know anything about this new Captain we’re getting?” Grilley asked.

“I know Capt. Arvin Mealey,” Brannon said. “His father was an Admiral. I served under him in R-Boats in Panama.”

“What’s he like?” Grilley asked, his voice as casual as he could make it. He could feel the atmosphere in the room change. Reservists didn’t ask leading questions about Regular Navy officers.

“He’s a strict Commanding Officer,” Brannon said slowly. “He lives by the Book, by the rules and regulations of the Navy. If you know the Book, if you live by it, you’ll get along with him just fine. If you don’t, well, I’ve seen some who didn’t. They had a lot of trouble. I got along with him pretty well.”

“How about the man who’s taking your place?”

“I don’t know him,” Brannon said. “He’s a Reserve, I was told, an engineer from M.I.T. You didn’t go there, did you?”

“No,” Grilley smiled. “Oklahoma. A Reserve as the Exec? Pete Simms will have a fit! He thinks he’s going to be the new Executive Officer of the Mako!”

“I think he should be,” Brannon said slowly. “I don’t know of any other Fleet Boat with a Reserve for an Exec I don’t know how Captain Mealey will like that. He may not like it at all!” He rose and Gloria went into the front room to get little Glory.

“You people take good care of Mako,” Brannon said as he reached the front door. He walked through the door quickly so Grilley wouldn’t see the tears filling his eyes. Once he was away from the house and in the shadow of a tree he turned.

“You keep a sharp lookout when you’ve got the deck, Don. You’ll see the Eelfish one of these days!”