Emancipation Day (3 page)

The four of them spent the watch either sitting on the hose locker or standing in the lee of a lifeboat, smoking and telling lies about the girls they’d left behind. They called the women “parties.” Jack thought about Vivian. He’d phone her when he got back, but she’d probably have someone else by then. Sweet little party like that, it was a wonder some officer hadn’t got his
hooks into her already. What did she see in a guy like him? He held on to the ship’s rail with one hand, keeping the other in the pocket of his greatcoat, staring out at the ocean, unable to go forward, afraid to go back.

His stomach began to feel worse when they lost sight of land. He spent the eight hours between watches lying in his hammock, trying not to throw up. He thought he’d be all right as long as he didn’t eat, but at twelve hundred hours he went above decks, emerging from the blood-red light into the sudden, silent starlight, and was sick. It was like being drunk, only all the time.

One relatively calm night, Spoonerson told them about taking his survivor’s leave in Ireland after the
Ottawa
, a sister destroyer escort, went down. He’d been billeted in a castle beside a pub and had fucked a barmaid named Cathleen every night for two weeks, or so he said. When his leave was up she tried to cut her wrists with a broken wineglass. Jack leaned his elbows on the taffrail and watched the way the moon lit up the spit left behind by the props. This was all bullshit, he thought. Who would be fool enough to kill herself over Spoonerson?

“The
Ottawa
was a beautiful destroyer, though,” Spoonerson said after a while. “Went down right about where we are now, thirty-two merchantmen in the ring, except it was a Sunday and not so fucking cold. Thirteenth of September, 1942. Out on a hunt, wolfpack caught her. Sixty-five survivors from a crew of a hundred and seventy-eight.” Spoonerson leaned over the rail and spat into the propwash, a tribute to all drowned seamen. “First torpedo came through the fo’c’sle on the port side, into
the signalmen’s mess where thirty men were sleeping. Rudder smashed all to shit, and when the sub’s commander saw she couldn’t manoeuvre, he angled off and torpedoed her again, this time hitting her amidships on the starboard side, right in the boilers. She went down like a stone, captain with her. Me and a few others was picked up by the
Arvida
, took us all the way to Londonderry.”

Jack looked at Spoonerson’s ribbons. He might have been telling the truth. But then why was he still a second-class PO doing fire duty? No one was who they said they were.

On his fourth day out he was worse but thought if he tried to eat something he would get his sea legs, so just before noon he climbed up to the mess for chow. The sea had become rougher if anything, not stormy exactly but moody, as though on a slow burn, biding its time, and the clouds on the horizon were always low and dark. Someone said they were over the Grand Banks, where the water was shallow and easily rucked. As soon as he entered the mess, the smell of frying sausages sent him running for the side. After that, all he could think of was the ship’s heaving, the deck slowly rising under him, and just when he thought the ship was about to flip over it would begin to go back down. A pause, as though the ship were lowering itself for him to jump into the sea, and then the whole thing would start again the other way. Jesus, the sweat running down his rib cage, the roaring in his ears.
Rolling home
 … He felt hollow and filled with sound, like a cave in a windstorm. Or maybe like a horn. Thank Christ he didn’t have to blow one now. He stood at the
rail for the entire watch, feet sliding on the slick metal, wishing the ship would just keep canting for once and dump him over the side. He didn’t report to sickbay, although he knew plenty who did. Sickness was cowardice. Next worse thing to deserting your post. Frank told him to eat, keep something in his guts, so he went up to the mess for mid-rats before his night watch and what did he see? Two pumpkin pies set out on the table. At first he thought they were walnuts on top, then they moved. Cockroaches. He puked all down his uniform front, inside his tunic. Seamen stepped around him. “Christ, Lewis, get the fuck down to sickbay.”

He had to crawl on his hands and knees, couldn’t stand up his stomach hurt so much, he just wanted to lie down in it and die, but he made it to the hatch, through the blackout cheaters and out onto the fantail, where he lay on his stomach clawing at the deck mat with his fingernails to keep from sliding over the stern. Couldn’t move another inch. Fuck it, let them put him on charge, let a sniper see him. But it was Sinclair and Trilling who found him.

“Well, look at this sorry excuse for a seaman,” Sinclair said. He stood wavering on the deck, as though trying to keep his balance. “He don’t look human at all. He couldn’t be drunk, now, could he?”

“No,” said Trilling. “We’re drunk, and he looks worse’n us.”

Jack tried to speak but he had no breath. All his stomach could do was tighten and heave. I’m all right, boys, he thought, leave me alone, I’ll be fine.

“I think he is, though.” Sinclair leaned unsteadily over Jack and nudged him with his boot. “Drunk, I mean.”

“Maybe we should give him some water,” Trilling said. “Whaddaya say, Jack, ol’ boy? You wanna cold shower? Sober you up a bit?” Sinclair was unfurling the three-inch hose from its housing on the afterdeck. “That’s the ticket!” shouted Trilling, and together they turned the water on him, a jet so strong it took both of them to hold it, laughing so hard they nearly washed him overboard. Jack wrapped his arms around a stanchion as his legs swung over the side, and he stared down at the propwash glowing phosphorescent in the glowering sea, still puking, through his nose, now, from terror. His cap filled with water and the chin-strap started to choke him, then it broke. He looked up into the white faces of his tormenters and screamed. What had he done to deserve this? Why did they hate him? What did they know?

When they shut the hose off and left him, his greatcoat froze to the deck. He didn’t know if he was still hugging the stanchion or if his coat was the only thing keeping him on the ship. His last thought before passing out was that his mother would look into her tea leaves in the morning and see a floating cap with his name stencilled on it. She would tell his father he had drowned.

Their ghostly faces were still leering at him when he came to, and it took him a long second to realize he was in sickbay, lying on a metal cot. Pipes hissed above his head. Orderlies scurried about, the ship rolling more than ever, but he felt better, no, he felt
numb, they must have given him something. He lay for a long time afraid to move, hearing the kettle drums’ pulse through the sides of his cot. His hands were wrapped in bandages.

A man wearing a white smock came up to him. He was older, probably an officer but the smock covered his pips. He looked more like a businessman to Jack, like he was going to sell him insurance or something: hair neatly brushed, nails cut short and filed smooth.

“Ordinary Seaman Jack Lewis,” the man said, reading his clipboard.

“Sir.”

“I’m Surgeon Captain Barnes, chief medical officer on board. You’re a lucky man.”

“Am I, sir?” Barnes. Dr. Barnes. It couldn’t be. Jack felt his palms sweat under their bandages.

“Your mates thought you were drunk.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I’ve determined that. Worse case of seasickness I’ve ever seen. Where’re you from, anyway? Saskatchewan?”

“No, sir. Windsor.”

“Nova Scotia?”

“No, sir. Ontario. Across from Detroit.”

The man looked amused. “I know where Windsor is,” he said. “I’m from there myself.”

Jesus. It
was
Dr. Barnes. “Wish I was there now, sir.”

“Hmm. Well, you’ll have to stay where you are for a bit. Until your hands improve and we can take those bandages off. Couple
of days. They were pretty badly frozen. We should be into the storm good and proper by then. Think you can manage?”

“No, sir.”

“Good man,” he said, and left.

Jack stared after him. Doc Barnes, Peter’s fucking father. The one man in the whole goddamned Navy who had reason to kill him. Had Peter written to him? He felt his stomach and chest start to go and he thought about calling for a bedpan. Whatever the doc had given him was either taking hold or wearing off. Half an hour went by and no one came to his cot. Maybe Barnes had poisoned him and was waiting for him to die. Eventually, an orderly padded up and placed a bottle of pills on the metal bedstand.

“The MO says you’re to take these for seasickness.”

“I already have seasickness,” he said.

“Take one every four hours. Every time you hear eight bells, take a pill. Got that?”

He nodded and the orderly left. He looked at the bottle. “Pill #2-183,” but no name on the label. The pills were pale yellow, like powdered piss. How the fuck was he supposed to take them with his hands wrapped in bandages? But of course he wouldn’t take them anyway, in case Barnes had recognized him. A chief medical officer could get away with anything, even murder.

He’d never met the doc in Windsor because he’d gone off to war before Jack had joined the All-Whites, but he remembered the photograph in Peter’s house, on a small table under a lamp with a fringed shade. It was always early evening when he’d visited Peter and Peter’s mother, Della. He and Peter would
stand by a window in the upstairs parlour, blackout curtain askew, looking down onto the street through the leaves of a giant chestnut. Black smoke over Detroit, Jack’s own face reflected in the glass, hollows where his eyes should have been and his pale ears sticking out. He looked like a frightened raccoon. Were his cheekbones too high? Della was behind them, knitting. He watched her reflection in the window as she crossed her legs, swinging her foot in time to the needles, the little pucker of concentration making her lips look poised for a kiss. He turned his head for a better look at his own profile in the window. A little too high? He’d kiss her if she ever gave him the chance.

“They threw a woman off the Belle Isle Bridge.”

What woman? Who were “they”?

When he woke up, Frank Sterling was standing beside his cot. “Hello, Jack,” he said. “I hear they had to chip you off the deck with ice scrapers.”

Jack held up his bandaged hands. “I could have died, the bastards.”

“They’re being disciplined,” Frank said happily.

“For what? Attempted murder?”

“Naw, unauthorized use of firefighting equipment. An hour’s rifle drill every morning at oh six hundred. I’ve been reassigned to your station, me and Merrifield.”

This was good news. He liked Frank, although he didn’t trust him all that much. He was older, twenty-three or four,
came from a posh town somewhere near Toronto, father a lawyer or something, Frank was always vague about what. Jack could smell money, and Frank had the smell in spades. He was built like a prizefighter, buzz cut, heavily browed and bull necked, but he didn’t have a boxer’s stance. Stood with his feet apart. Doing his bit for the country but not taking it too seriously. Lots waiting for him when the war was over, in it for some kind of lark, the lawyer’s boy who could have been an officer or maybe even ducked the war altogether, but joined the ranks instead and befriended people like Jack. You couldn’t trust someone if you didn’t know their motives. But maybe he and Frank weren’t so different after all: they both wanted to see how the other half lived.

“Any action yet?” Jack asked.

“No. Quiet as a mouse. Bad weather keeps the U-boats under, apparently. But we’ll soon be crossing the Pit, said to be swarming with the enemy. If we get one on the
ASDIC
we could be out for a long time.”

Jack groaned. He’d heard of ships that had stayed out for months, their crews not even getting shore leave for over a year. He looked at the bottle of pills. “You getting seasick at all, Frank?”

“Yeah,” he said, touching his stomach. “Been feeding the fish all morning.”

“You should take these pills,” Jack said. “I don’t need them anymore.”

“Really?” Frank picked up the bottle and read the label.
“Thanks, bud,” he said, spilling a few into his hand and putting them in the pocket of his dungarees. “Mighty white of you.”

Jack looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t mention it.”

After three days the orderly cut Jack’s bandages off with a pair of scissors. The skin beneath them was as pale as skimmed milk and he marvelled at it, the black hairs on the backs of his hands lying flat, like grass after a flood. On the fourth day he was back on watch, this time with Frank and Merrifield, but he still felt like death on a plate. Merrifield was an easygoing Nova Scotian who’d been a bosun’s mate on any number of whaling and sealing ships, according to him, before joining the Navy. Jack picked up a new cap from ship’s stores, but it had HMCS
Assiniboine
on it instead of HMCS
Avalon
, the Navy base in St. John’s that was his posting, and he didn’t like it. It felt like a transfer, like he’d never get back on solid ground. And they didn’t have his size: the strap dangled comically under his chin. The weather had calmed but the fog was so thick he could barely see the width of the ship, the sea a vague menace, something alive but unseen, forgotten for long stretches until suddenly remembered and dreaded, like a debt.

He was still regularly sick, but he didn’t take the pills; he wouldn’t have kept them down long enough, anyway. He wondered how Frank was doing with them. He ate his salt cod (which they called sewer trout), or chipped beef on toast (shit on a shingle), then ran to the side to send it all over the rail.
Chipped beef came out looking like a chocolate milkshake. Creamed corn cut a lovely golden arc through the fog. Every smell set him off. Soap, aftershave, cigarette smoke, burning coal. But he wouldn’t go back to Dr. Barnes.

He was mustering for noon watch when the fog lifted, as though someone had raised a blackout curtain. Jesus, the sea was big. High overhead, a lone gull’s muted cry cut through the wind whistling through the rigging. Then the alert sounded: Action stations! U-boat off the port bow. They had both been cruising through the fog, the
Assiniboine
trailing behind the convoy and the U-boat waiting just below the surface for stragglers. Radar apparently hadn’t picked it up in the ground clutter. PO Spoonerson stood at the rail under the companionway, calmly smoking and calling back to Jack and Frank to remain at their post. “She’s that close we can’t get our big guns down low enough,” he said. “Cripes, Lewis, if her hatch was open you could puke your lunch right down into her. She’s trying to get far enough away from us to dive. Can’t dive this close or we’d be on her in a minute with the depth charges.”