Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

“How can I do that?”

“The old man doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, anyway. He doesn’t care who his talker is, so long as he’s got one.”

“Clyde, he’d—”

“I’ll take your place at the Sugar George in the radar shack. You go up and handle the phones. Please.”

“I can’t do that, Clyde.”

“Please.”

“How can I...?”

“I thought we were friends,” Clyde said.

“Yes, but...”

“Then please! Can’t you see I’m about to—”

“All right,” he said softly. “Yes, Clyde. All right, I’ll do it. But for God’s sake, hurry!”

He would remember that night as long as he lived as a night of confusion and terror, Friday the thirteenth, a jinx of a night. There were fourteen American warships and only twelve Japanese, but the Japanese numbered two battlewagons in their force, and the early American advantage of radar was somehow lost in the baffled confusion of a voice radio circuit that was carrying radar reports from the Fancher together with commands on course, speed, and gunfire from the flagship... until suddenly the Japanese fleet loomed out of the darkness not a breath away, and then radar didn’t matter a damn.

They came upon each other with shocking swiftness, meeting in the sound between Cape Esperance and Lunga Point, anticipating the contact and then suddenly surprised to find themselves in the middle of a desperate fight. Japanese searchlights blinked into the night, long fingers of illumination sweeping the water, capturing the surprised and frightened looks on the faces of American sailors as the orders to commence firing and counter-illuminate were roared by the gunnery officer. Standing on the bridge of the Fancher in Clyde’s usual battle position, the sound-powered phones on his head, the mouthpiece an inch away from his lips, he relayed urgent radar reports to the exec and watched the world disintegrate in fire. The roar of the guns was deafening, salvo after salvo pouring from the batteries, sending shudder after shudder through the length of the ship. No one seemed to know exactly what was happening. Each ship that cruised by silently in the darkness could easily be the enemy. Searchlights winked on and off with frightening suddenness; tracer shells threaded the night like blinking neon, red and white; billows of thick black oil smoke belched up from the ships. The sea churned with the geyser-white spray of exploding shells; the night itself was a churning cacophony of fire and smoke and shouts.

Another searchlight pierced the blackness and caught the bridge of the Fancher in brilliant, merciless illumination. He heard the big Japanese guns bellowing in the blackness, heard the shells as they screamed across the open water, and then the Fancher rocked with explosion and he lost his footing as the deck swung downward to port, slanting under his feet. Someone on the open bridge yelled, “The radar shack! They hit Combat!” He tried to scramble to his feet. Crouching against the bulkhead of the pilothouse, the bridge slanting, the whole ship slanting — I’ll fall off , he thought wildly, I’ll drown — he pressed the button on his mouthpiece.

“Combat, this is Bridge,” he said, and got no answer from the radar shack.

“Combat, Bridge!” he shouted urgently. “Was that a hit?” Silence, “Hey! Can anybody hear me? Clyde, are you on this line? Clyde? Clyde?” Silence. “Will you for Christ’s sake answer?”

The action ended at about 0230, when the remaining Japanese warships began limping northward. The Americans had lost four destroyers and two light cruisers. Almost every ship in the force was badly damaged, but the planes on Henderson Field — the Japanese objective — had been saved. The Fancher , floating on an oil-slicked sea adrift with white hats and the bodies of sailors hanging lifelessly inside their life jackets, extinguished her fires by 1930 and once more considered it a miracle that she was afloat. The tropical sun was brilliant on the warm Pacific waters. The sailors took off their shirts as they worked to clean up the mess.

The explosion in the radar shack had wounded the senior communications officer, destroyed the Sugar George gear, and killed a Radarman Second/Class named Clyde Morrow.

It was not his fault, and logically he knew it was not his fault. But logic and reason seemed to have no place in his reconstruction of what had happened. Piece by painful piece he put the incident together, and the resulting revelation was frightening. He hadn’t wanted to go up to the bridge any more than Clyde had, but neither had he wanted to lose Clyde’s friendship. And so he had taken the easy way out; he had chosen not to argue. He had said “Yes” and sent Clyde to his death. As frightening as the knowledge was, he persisted in exploring it and finally coupled it with what had happened by the river on the night of the carnival. He had said “Yes” there, too, and sent the girl into oblivion.

“Yes,” then, was a dangerous word. Here in a world of snapping hand salutes and of mechanical responses to idiotic orders he began to dread the word and what it meant in terms of his own weakness. He resolved to be extremely careful with its use. He knew now that he was inclined to avoid friction, to present the agreeable smile and the accepting nod rather than to risk displeasure. But on at least two occasions he had gambled on a nod — and lost. He decided he would never allow that to happen again.

He was twenty-seven years old when he was released from active duty in 1946 and returned to his home town. He felt a lot older. The town had changed very little during the war, but it seemed alien and strange to him. He avoided making new friendships because friendship involved a responsibility he had decided against. He took a series of meaningless jobs, leaving one after another whenever he got bored or whenever he felt too much was being demanded of him. Without fully realizing it, he was becoming aimless and rootless, bound by a futile decision that really rendered him decisionless. He had, in effect, committed himself to a policy of non-commitment, and perhaps he realized it would not work even before he met Beth.

He supposed he would never love anyone as deeply as he had loved the girl with the blond hair. Beth had blond hair, too, but she wasn’t that enchanting girl of his youthful dreams, not by any wild imagining. Beth’s hair was clipped short, and her eyes were blue, and there was a somewhat horsy look to her face, a sophisticated twang to her speech. She walked over to him one night at a club dance and said, “My name is Beth McCauley. Don’t you ever talk to anyone?”

“Sure I do,” he said. “What do you want me to say?”

“I’d like you to ask me to dance.”

“Do you want to dance?” he said.

“I’d love to,” Beth answered, and she flashed a quick, conspiratorial grin.

She danced well. She was a small girl who seemed too compactly built, but she moved with surprising grace, and she followed every innuendo of pressure on the small of her back. He walked down to the river with her later. The waters were black; the willows overhung the bank. He thought he could hear a trace of laughter floating on the air.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” he told her.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Mmmm.” He nodded and looked at the water. He guessed he should kiss her.

“You haven’t told me your name,” she said suddenly.

The words startled him. He looked at her curiously and then very softly and slowly said, “My name is the wind.”

“What?” Beth said, and then laughed. “It isn’t at all. It’s Matt. I knew before I asked you to dance.” She paused. “What’s your last name?”