John Passos - 1919

It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of the yelling and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only got ashore for a few hours and couldn’t find Marceline and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the Delaware with all the new Americanbuilt steel and concrete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by towing five ships’ boats crowded to the gunnels, so they guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.

No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the mate knocked him flat and said he’d have him arrested when he got back home for a damn German spy. They coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel himself and yelled down the tube to the engine room to give him everything they’d got, that wasn’t much to be sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.

The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo probably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale that was blowing up west northwest. They’d no sooner crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that shook the ship and a column of water shot up that drenched them all on the bridge. Everything worked like clockwork. No. 1 was the only compartment flooded. As luck would have it, the crew was all out of the focastle standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The Chemang settled a little by the bow, that was all. The gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have a couple of shots, but the ship was rolling so in the heavy sea that the shots went wild. Anyway, the ketch went out of sight behind the island that blocks the mouth of the roadstead of Vigo. The Chemang crawled on in under one bell.

By the time they got into the channel opposite the town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No. 2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom. They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the right of the town.

So they were ashore again with their bundles standing around outside the consul’s office, waiting for him to find them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and didn’t speak as much English as he might have but he treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited officers and crew to go to a bullfight there was going to be that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and were changing her registry.

When they got to the bullring half the crowd cheered them and yelled, “Viva los Aliados,” and the rest hissed and shouted, “Viva Maura.” They thought there was going to be a fight right there but the bull came out and everybody quieted down. The bullfight was darn bloody, but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and the people sitting around made them drink wine all the time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the officers were tendered a banquet by the local pro-allied society and a lot of bozos with mustachios made fiery speeches that nobody could understand and the Americans cheered and sang, The Yanks are Coming and Keep the Home Fires Burning and We’re Bound for the Hamburg Show. The chief, an old fellow named McGillicudy, did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success. Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid there was awful pretty but wouldn’t let ’em get away with any foolishness. “Well, Joe,” said Glen, before they went to sleep, “it’s a great war.” “Well, I guess that’s strike three,” said Joe. “That was no strike, that was a ball,” said Glen.

They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quarreled about their status and they got pretty fed up with it. Then they were all loaded on a train to take them to Gibraltar where they were to be taken on board a Shipping Board boat. They were three days on the train with nothing to sleep on but hard benches. Spain was just one set of great dusty mountains after another. They changed cars in Madrid and in Seville and a guy turned up each time from the consulate to take care of them. When they got to Seville they found it was Algeciras they were going to instead of Gib.

When they got to Algeciras they found that nobody had ever heard of them. They camped out in the consulate while the consul telegraphed all over the place and finally chartered two trucks and sent them over to Cadiz. Spain was some country, all rocks and wine and busty black eyed women and olive trees. When they got to Cadiz the consular agent was there to meet them with a telegram in his hand. The tanker Gold Shell was waiting in Algeciras to take them on board there, so it was back again cooped up on the trucks, bouncing on the hard benches with their faces powdered with dust and their mouths full of it and not a cent in anybody’s jeans left to buy a drink with. When they got on board the Gold Shell around three in the morning a bright moonlight night some of the boys were so tired they fell down and went to sleep right on the deck with their heads on their seabags.

The Gold Shell landed ’em in Perth Amboy in late October. Joe drew his back pay and took the first train connections he could get for Norfolk. He was fed up with bawling out that bunch of pimps in the focastle. Damn it, he was through with the sea; he was going to settle down and have a little married life.

He felt swell coming over on the ferry from Cape Charles, passing the Ripraps, out of the bay full of whitecaps into the smooth brown water of Hampton Roads crowded with shipping; four great battlewaggons at anchor, subchasers speeding in and out and a white revenue cutter, camouflaged freighters and colliers, a bunch of red munitions barges anchored off by themselves. It was a sparkling fall day. He felt good; he had three hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket. He had a good suit on and he felt sunburned and he’d just had a good meal. God damn it, he wanted a little love now. Maybe they’d have a kid.

Things sure were different in Norfolk. Everybody in new uniforms, twominute speakers at the corner of Main and Granby, liberty loan posters, bands playing. He hardly knew the town walking up from the ferry. He’d written Del that he was coming but he was worried about seeing her, hadn’t had any letters lately. He still had a latch key to the apartment but he knocked before opening the door. There was nobody there.

He’d always pictured her running to the door to meet him. Still it was only four o’clock, she must be at her work. Must have another girl with her, don’t keep the house so tidy…. Underwear hung to dry on a line, bits of clothing on all the chairs, a box of candy with halfeaten pieces in it on the table…. Jez, they must have had a party last night. There was a half a cake, glasses that had had liquor in them, a plate full of cigarette butts and even a cigar butt. Oh, well, she’d probably had some friends in. He went to the bathroom and shaved and cleaned up a little. Sure Del was always popular, she probably had a lot of friends in all the time, playing cards and that. In the bathroom there was a pot of rouge and lipsticks, and facepowder spilt over the faucets. It made Joe feel funny shaving among all these women’s things.