Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

“That’s good,” Paul said. “Tomorrow I’ll give you some books and show you what to do if a fire starts. Have you got a wife ashore?”

A look of pain crossed Green’s face, but was quickly controlled.

“My parents have come to see me,” he said. “They’re waiting for me up at a hotel. I haven’t even called them because I don’t know what to say.”

“You can go ashore now and you’ll probably have every third night for a couple of weeks at least. Be back at eight in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. Or am I supposed to say, ‘Aye, aye, sir’?”

“Just have a good time.”

Nathan walked slowly from the shipyard and waited on the street, hoping to get a taxi. He dreaded going to see his parents because he knew they would talk about their latest attempts to get news of his wife, and after more than two years of trying, Nathan knew that there was very little chance of that, and if they did get news, it was almost certain to be more than he could stand to hear. On August 14, 1939, his wife, Rebecca, had gone back to Poland to try to get her parents out. She had arrived in Warsaw only a few days before the Nazis had invaded Poland, and had not been heard from since. No member of her family had been heard from since.

For two years Nathan had tried to persuade the United States government and the Red Cross to try harder to trace his wife, and he had even tried to go to Poland himself, giving up only when the British authorities convinced him that the last thing his wife would want would be for him to follow her into prison or death. For the past six months Nathan had forced himself to accept her probable fate, and the only emotion left to him was a need to fight the Nazis, which this very unmilitary man was now trying to do as best he could. Nathan never talked about this. Somehow talking about it with people who couldn’t share his depth of feeling would seem to him to be a kind of desecration of his wife. What had happened was too terrible to be discussed. Even his mother and father did not understand this. If they had understood, they could not have kept giving him assurances that Rebecca “must be” all right, and hiring more and more lawyers who promised they had ways to get news of her.…

When Nathan could not find a taxi on that waterfront street, he was almost glad for the excuse to delay seeing his parents. Slowly he walked the many blocks to the Plaza Hotel. When his mother embraced him and his father gave him the quick, affectionate hug he remembered so well, he was genuinely glad to see them, but then they started talking about a Free French lawyer they had found who had real connections with the Underground all over Europe, and even with people who had access to people who had access to Nazi authorities who for a price could find who was in the concentration camps.

Nathan listened quietly, aware that his parents were too old or too vulnerable themselves to give up hope. They still lived on the pretense that everything was going to turn out all right, and perhaps conditions in Poland were not as bad as they had been painted, one never knew what was propaganda and what was truth. Rebecca was a very resourceful person with great inner strength, and they were sure that she’d find a way to pull through.

Perhaps they did not really believe this but were afraid that he needed the reassurance to go on. After making it seem almost certain that good news about Rebecca would soon be forthcoming, they asked Nathan about his new assignment aboard the Arluk .

“Do you like it?”

“I like it fine.”

“What kind of a ship is it?”

“I’m afraid that’s a military secret,” he said with a smile.

“And the captain, do you like him?” his mother asked.

“We don’t have a captain yet. The executive officer is a nice guy.”

As soon as possible Nathan left his parents, saying he had to report for duty before ten that evening. His feet were sore from the many blocks he had walked that day, but he was far too restless to remain still. After walking around the Boston Common, he rented a room in a small hotel and fell into a deep sleep with dreams he did not remember when he awoke, but which had caused him to twist his sheets into ropes.

After telling Green to go ashore for the night, Paul had stood watching the tall, stooped figure walk away from the ship. Nathan was a strange one, Paul thought — a man who obviously had great troubles, great weaknesses as an officer, but a kind of depth that made Paul feel curiously shallow. In a way this made Paul resentful, but there was a quality of rueful honesty about Nathan that he also respected. He seemed to be an intelligent man only a little older than himself, the only one on the ship Paul could think of as a potential friend in any meaningful sense of the word. And he obviously knew even less about running a ship than Paul did. In this respect, he and Nathan were certainly in the same boat, but now was not the time to worry about that. Seth Farmer walked ashore with a wave and for the first time Paul found himself the only officer aboard a Coast Guard cutter.

Briskly he walked around the deck. It was getting dark. Bright lights and cutting torches were reflected on the murky waters of the harbor. The din of ship construction continued ashore, but there was no sound aboard the Arluk . Locating several coils of fire hose on the sides of the deck house, Paul wondered how he would get pressure on them in case of an emergency. After trying three watertight doors, he found the way to the engineroom and descended a steep flight of shiny metal steps. The size of the diesel engine astonished him — it looked as though they had parked a locomotive in the bowels of the ship. In the dim light he saw a young machinist’s mate sitting in a chair reading a comic book. The boy put it down guiltily and stood up when he saw Paul.

“I’m just looking around,” Paul said. “If there were an emergency and I called for pressure on the fire hoses, would I get it?”

“Sure, sir.”

“Thanks.” Big deal, he thought, feeling pompous.

Next Paul walked to the bridge, where he found a quartermaster sitting on a stool, studying a girlie magazine.

“In case of an emergency, how would I sound a fire alarm aboard here?” he asked.

“This switch is for the general alarm,” the man said, pointing to the bulkhead near the wheel. “We’re just supposed to sound that and shout fire.”

“Thank you.”

Well, that procedure at least had not turned out to be very complicated. What should he do next? On a shelf in the bridge he saw an ordinary telephone. He had, he remembered, promised to call Sylvia as soon as he knew what was going on.

“Is that a shore phone?” he asked the quartermaster.

“Yeah, but it goes through the district switchboard, and they won’t put through private calls.”

“Where’s the nearest phone ashore?”

“There’s a little bar across the street.…”

“I’ll be back in a ten minutes.”

As he walked across the shipyard he was sure that by leaving the ship, he was committing a heinous breach of regulations. If the ship blew up while he was gone, he would achieve the unique distinction of being the first officer in the long history of the Coast Guard to be court-martialed on his first day of active duty. On the other hand, he had promised his wife that he would call her as soon as possible. It would be cruel to delay much longer and the idea of regulations which defied common sense made him angry.

The nearest bar was a big smoky room crowded with shipyard workers, sailors and their girls, all of whom were talking so loudly that even the jukebox could hardly be heard. There was only one telephone booth, which stood in a dimly lit corner at the back of the saloon. As Paul approached it, he saw that it was occupied by a burly gunner’s mate and a buxom blonde who certainly were not telephoning anyone. The dawning realization that they were actually making love standing up in a telephone booth filled Paul with an odd mixture of disgust and admiration. It didn’t seem right to stand there staring at them, and he certainly did not think it would be wise to tap the gunner’s mate on the shoulder and ask if he could use the telephone. Turning to the bar, Paul ordered scotch. Before he finished it, the couple came out of the booth, looking happy if rumpled, and he hurried into it. Sylvia answered at the first ring.