Джек Кейди - The Jonah Watch

Through the pages of the past, and all about him in the present, messiahs spoke with thrilling commands. Politicians and generals spoke in warm, even-heated, thrilling commands—of national honor and pride as they dealt in disgrace. Teachers, scholars, the businessmen… who spoke in thrilling commands… the notion faltered; and suddenly, Howard, who made too much of things, one day discovered that he was becoming old.

He was affrighted, returned to thought, and emerged from the fright with a sort of low joy. Age, at least, meant that you did not have to put up with it much longer. If asked about “it,” he would have replied with all certainty that history’s greatest gift was that you did not have to take “it” with you.

And then, while walking less than sprightly through a wet autumn in Boston, Howard momentarily stood before the window of a well-groomed, middle-aged and average restaurant.

At a table which faced the street, a familiar face chewed, as if the chewer thought of other years and other matters. Brace, that aging Jonah, with his face lined like a walnut, weathered like an old barn, sat in a well-blocked but ancient uniform that bore the worn, dull rings of a lieutenant. Brace stared, half rose from his seat, seemed momentarily joyful. He beckoned.

Howard, with a hot heart and cold feet, entered the restaurant.

They spoke at first of predestination, or at least they spoke of vicissitudes. They shook hands, clapped shoulders, ordered wine so expensive that the restaurant owner was compelled to hold a long search in the dusty basement he called a cellar. They chortled like mature fools, and about them people sat, watched, smiled with the genuineness of small contempt. In short bursts of conversation men were resurrected, thrust back into the earth—or the sea… “Lost overboard up north… would of ever thought that a guy from Mississippi would die in ice?”

“…dead, of course… bad circulation… good cook, tho’… James the same, just always kind of frail… Levere retired, Snow retired—heard he went back to England… Conally—charge of a buoy snatcher, Joyce, charge of a snatcher… Fallon—engineer on that new west coast icebreaker… more’n enough to do on that ship….”

“The rest?”

“I don’t know. They come’n go.”

“Yourself?”

“It’s all different,” said Brace. “More money, newer ships, air support.” He stared at his wine glass, then looked down at his sleeve. “The world’s oldest lieutenant,” he said. “Never got off of search and rescue.”

“It makes you the last of a kind,” said Howard, who, in a vague way, had managed to persuade himself that he had “kept up”—who in a vague way felt that he was asked for endorsement, or asked to accept an apology.

“One of the last. Levere was like that. Chaney. All different now, of course.” Brace rubbed at the two dull gold stripes. “It means, at least, that you always have a command.”

Wet automobiles passed in the street, and along the sidewalks people moved through a haze that promised winter, a rain so light and dull that it was scarcely even rain. Thick mist, perhaps.

“Married,” Brace told Howard. “Nearly fifteen years. The first time didn’t take.”

“I think… another bottle?”

“Can’t think of a single reason why not… I just remembered. Glass has the deck on a Morgenthau class… never made the Mafia… presume that things kept coming up.”

“I certainly remember Glass.”

Young girls huddled in raincoats, walked beneath umbrellas to protect their hair. A gray-haired woman passed, then two young sailors, then a businessman who strode brisk and grayly. In the streets cars glistened, dull hazed with a sheen of water. Brace and Howard talked, measured—from the lofty view of experience—how much the other drank, matched but did not exceed the amount.

“…had to leave,” said Howard. “Figured it all out later. A lot later. When Dane died, I gave out. It was as if I had become unpropped.”

Brace, about to light a cigarette, paused. Even before he spoke, before his voice gave other inflections, his face showed that he had dropped the gossipy conversation. He thumbed a lighter. It flared. He lit the smoke, and he slurped smoke with a sort of gratitude for the momentary pause that smoking grants. His thin, narrow nose, below the heavily wrinkled forehead, beside cheeks that were furrowed, running with seams—his nose made him look hawklike. He did not look like Levere had looked, but he looked like a man emigrated from the boundaries of Levere’s country, the inshore sea.

“I wanted to be a musician once,” said Brace. “Once I was a pretty good musician, for a kid. My father, who was not a musician—” He again drew smoke, this time slowly, and smoke curled around the lines etched above and beneath his eyes— “taught me not to be a musician. Now, I am not exactly certain what that means, but I am willing to talk about Dane.”

“We were spooked,” said Howard. “Conally and I. I tried to get Dane to take me, instead of you. Maybe I didn’t mistrust you. Maybe I just mistrusted everyone but myself.”

Brace sipped at his wine, drank deeply, again sipped. Beyond the window a young couple stood in mild argument about the restaurant. They made a decision, walked on.

“The whole crew was spooked,” Brace said, “but I’ll be double-dog-damn if they weren’t good men.” He sat, staring through the window into the gray, misting rain. “I’ve seen strange things since, even stranger than that. The sea sends strange things.”

“We thought,” said Howard, “that we had received an omen. We believed we understood the omen.” He felt in his pocket, found an empty package. Brace pushed his pack of smokes across the table.

“A lot of that crew saw something,” Brace said, “but I don’t recall that anyone made comparisons. We’ll never know if each of those men saw the same thing.” He leaned across the table to light Howard’s smoke. “I haven’t thought about it in a long time,” said Brace, “but I did think about it for a long time. Years ago—”

“Dane didn’t trust me,” said Howard. “I don’t know how he knew that I was a short timer.”

“—and I thought until I got it figured out,” said Brace. “Dane was not a complicated man. He was trying to teach me something.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I thought he was trying to kill me,” said Brace. “Either that, or I thought we were in some kind of battle.” He touched his worn sleeve. “I was afraid to go with him.”

“Now I really don’t understand.”

“Why should you?” Brace said. “I was young and making wrong guesses. Something was going on that you didn’t know about.”

“You thought he was not a simple man?”

“I hit him,” said Brace. “When I was trapped belowdecks on that yacht. I was a kid. I was so scared. I had one foot propped on something that kept trying to roll away, and the water was on my neck. I can still feel it. I had nothing to lose.”

“Glass never said… no one ever said anything about that.”

“I asked them not to,” said Brace. “Dane smacked me. I had nothing to lose. I smacked him back. Twice. I laid it on. I bruised everything on that ox except his appetite.”

Two nuns walked past the restaurant, women, who, if not vowed to silence, knew at least some of the great meanings of silence.

“Snow and Dane were both down there,” said Brace. “I learned one thing, but I learned both sides of it.”

The world’s oldest lieutenant sat beside a man who had so far done but yeoman service in the cause of history. One man dangled the yarns of a life spent saving occasional sparks from the quenching sea, the other mulled catastrophes which had severed the lives of millions. Strangely, perhaps, and perhaps for only a moment, they understood the grand cynicism that ruled them; the knowledge that in this world’s hopes and dreams and illusions, in its facades and romantic encumbrances, in the seeming pleasures and devotions of easy belief, of national feeling culled from gutters by their betters, of gods most hopelessly cracked, most disgraced and hopelessly cracked, there are few seas.