Sweet Reason (6 page)
The Captain had laughed off reports of a race riot. “If you ask me, it was a clear case of high spirits.”
On the mess deck the separate but equal arrangement quickly froze into the status quo.
More about the Barbed Wire
“As for the business about the barbed [he pronounced it ‘bob’] wire,” the Captain was saying. “This a perfect example of how something can be distorted all out of proportion. Some of you may have noticed the bob-wire display in my cabin. I was born and raised in La Crosse, Kansas, which happens to be the bob-wire capital of the world. You probably aren’t aware of it, there’s no reason why you should be, but it so happens there are hundreds of types of bob wire, not any one all-purpose bob wire. When I was a youngster” — the Captain’s eyes glistened with a faraway look — “my God, I used to enter the splicing contests every year. Once I turned in an eleven-second effort and walked off with a second prize against contestants from all over the state.”
Jones shook the memory out of his head. “But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that I collect bob wire the way some people collect stamps. The display on my bulkhead is part of my collection. The strand in the center, the one surrounded by gold braid, happens to be a collector’s item. It’s worth five hundred dollars if it’s worth a penny. It’s an actual strand of wire made in La Crosse in eighteen sixty-two and used to fence in the Indian reservations. The bobs are on the inside so as not to hurt cattle on the outside. Now to make out that there is some connection between this and concentration camps, well, it’s downright offensive. There’s nothing wrong with bob wire per se. In the hands of Americans, it was used to open the West to civilization and create a lucrative cattle industry. In the hands of the Nazis, of course, it’s something else again.”
“Captain,” the XO piped up after a moment’s hesitation. “I think I speak for all the officers in this wardroom and for all the men on this ship when I say that there is no question that the insinuations made against you personally are slander, pure and simple.”
“It never occurred to me you would see it any other way, gentlemen,” Jones said generously. “I don’t mind telling you that without your marvelous support, this kind of thing could give a commanding officer a complex.”
(Later Lustig thought of: “You already have one — a military industrial complex.”)
“Nevertheless,” Jones plunged on, “I wanted to set the record straight, so to speak. Which brings us to the main order of business.” Jones nodded again to underscore the question that followed. “Who, gentlemen, who is Sweet Reason?”
The Captain allowed the question to sink in. Then, letting his eyes traverse the table, he added: “Let’s face facts. We are dealing with a lousy, stinking fifth-column rotten apple. And we’ve got to stamp out this rotten apple before
it infects the other weak apples in the barrel. But we’ve got to do it delicately — we mustn’t bruise any of the good apples going after the bad.”
“It’s got to be a surgical strike,” said the XO.
“Precisely,” agreed the Captain. His facial muscles quivered and he brought a hand up to his cheek to restore order.
“Captain, sir, with all respect, have you considered the other possibilities?” asked the Poet. “There’s always a chance it’s a joke, isn’t there?”
“Mister Joyce, the person who signs himself Sweet Reason has invited the officers and men on board this ship to commit sabotage and mutiny. That’s no joke. We’re dealing with a rotten apple, and I mean to crucify him. Before we can do that, however, we have to find him. I’m open to suggestions, eh?”
Ensign de Bovenkamp raised his hand.
“There’s no need to raise your hand here, Mister de Bovenkamp,” the Captain said in a kindly voice. “Just speak up, my boy.”
“Proper,” de Bovenkamp said, his jaw working on a wad of chewing gum. “How about putting Proper on it, Captain?”
Proper’s Curriculum Vitae
Sonarman Third Dwight Proper was obviously the man for the job. A short, wiry sailor with beetle eyebrows and an abnormally low hairline, he had been a member of the Chicago Police Force for two years before enlisting in the navy. (No matter that he had been a uniformed patrolman on the traffic detail.) Proper quit the force and went to sea
for a breath of fresh, pollen-free air; he had hay fever, rose fever, and was allergic to dust, fresh fruit, corn, mayonnaise, cats, dogs and wool. Unfortunately, he turned out to be allergic to navy-issue pillows and mattresses too, a fact of life that forced him to go around armed with a Benzedrex Inhaler at all times.
Proper’s experience as a Chicago cop had already been put to good use in Cartagena when Chaplain Rodgers discovered that there was 753 men ashore from various U.S. Navy ships in the port — but only fourteen of them could be seen, sipping soda through honest-to-goodness Spanish straw, on the main drag.
“Can’t account for the whereabouts of seven hundred thirty-nine sailors,” the Chaplain frantically radioed Captain Jones, who had the day’s shore patrol command duty.
“Find those seven hundred thirty-nine men, Proper,” the skipper had ordered, and in no time at all the ex-Chicago cop had solved the case. All 739 of them, it turned out, were on The Hill, a labyrinthine quarter on the edge of town with narrow, muddy, urine-soaked streets and hundreds of half-naked urchins running around barefoot soliciting for the whorehouses.
“Look at all those fucking sailors!” exclaimed Proper when he arrived on the scene.
“Well I’ll be damned!” muttered the Chaplain when Proper returned to The Hill with him in tow.
Proper Picks Up the Scent
“Several things are readily apparent,” intoned Proper in his preliminary report to Captain Jones an hour after the war council.
“Point A: True Love is definitely not your Sweet Reason. I questioned him very carefully. He swears that the leaflet was already rolled up in your napkin ring when he picked up the breakfast tray in the galley and brought it topside. He thought it was a plan of the day. The other stewards said the same thing. And I believe them.” Proper said it as if the fact that
he
believed them left no room for anybody else to doubt them. “If they were guilty, Captain, they wouldn’t have left the incriminating leaflet somewhere that cast suspicion on them, you get my point? Which means that someone slipped in during the night and put that leaflet in your napkin ring.”
“But I thought the galley was locked during the night?”
“It is, Captain, but the key is left under the rubber mat in front of the door because the steward who locks up at night is not the one who opens it in the morning and there’s only one key.”
“I see,” nodded the Captain. He was impressed with Proper’s thoroughness. “Go on, go on.” Jones chewed away on the inside of his cheek as Proper continued.
“Point B: Sweet Reason is a poor speller.”
“A poor speller, eh?”
“Yes sir, a poor speller. You’ll notice he spells ‘Amerika’ with a K. It’s not a typing error, because the K is nowheres near the C on a typewriter. You get my point?”
“Yes, I think I do. What about fingerprints?”
“That’s my point C, Captain. Point C: It would be useless to dust the evidence for fingerprints because too many people have already handled the merchandise, if you know what I mean. And the chances are pretty good that the culprit was careful to keep his prints off in the first place.”
The Captain was beginning to get edgy. “You don’t sound very hopeful, Proper.”
“On the contrary, Captain, I have every reason to believe I can identify your Sweet Reason by tonight.”
“Well, that
is
good news. How?”
“Captain, do you notice anything about these four leaflets?” Proper spread them out on the desk, putting weights on the corners of the window-shade one to keep it flat.
Jones studied the leaflets intently for a few moments. “Only that they’re the work of a goddamn rotten apple,” he said finally.
“With all respect, Captain, you have to look at this with a detached eye, if you get my point. Now the first thing I notice when I look at these four leaflets is that they were typed on the same typewriter. The one in your napkin ring is the original; the other three are carbon copies. See how they get less distinct as you go along?”
“By Jesus Christ Almighty, you’re right!”
“I tried typing with the same grade of paper — it’s sold in the ship’s store, by the way — and I discovered that I could make an original and five readable copies if I used new carbons, and four readable copies if the carbons were old ones. Get my point?”
“Go on, Proper, go on, my boy,” the Captain said impatiently.
“There are probably one or two copies of this seditious leaflet still in circulation on the ship, if my guess is right.”
“All this is very interesting, my boy, but how will it help you find Sweet Reason?”
“Oh, that’s simple. I’ll just check the type on every typewriter on the ship until I find the one that typed this leaflet. The sailor who owns that typewriter or has access to it is your Sweet Reason.”
Captain Jones Takes the Conn
Lustig, who was the Officer of the Deck, and the XO, who was trying to improve his sun tan, were chatting on the wing of the bridge. The
Ebersole
was plane-guarding for an aircraft carrier, steaming on the port beam of the giant ship as it raced into the wind and recovered its jets from a strike against the mainland.
“That’s the thing about people like that,” the Executive Officer was saying. “Sweet Reason, my ass. They only know the bad side, never the good side. A country as big as ours is bound to have faults. But it’s a place where a man can start with nothing and pull himself up by his own bootstraps. My god, it’s a place where anybody can become President.”
(“
Anybody
has,” Lustig thought of saying — too late to fit it gracefully into the conversation.)
“Sweet Reason,” the XO went on, shaking his head mournfully. “What a misnomer that is.”
Noncommittal as always, Lustig took a bearing on the carrier’s superstructure jutting like a high-rise apartment from one side of the flight deck and discovered that the
Ebersole
was slightly off station. “Helmsman, steer three one seven,” he called into the pilot house.