The Ninth Wave (20 page)

One thing to which all the lines led was boredom and the men and boys
learned to subdivide and measure the boredom and by their ingenuity to
reduce it to manageable fragments. On a hot day a drop of sweat falls
from a sailor's jaw and drops to the deck. As it sizzles on the hot iron
he wonders how much of his kidneys and brain and muscle and genitals
and intestines the drop of sweat contains and his mind spins off on the
pointless conjecture for an hour. Even after the drop of sweat is a ring
of whitish salt, he is still tracing out the fantastic mathematics. That
was one way to subdivide the boredom.
Another was gambling. Shooting craps in the crew's quarters against a
bulkhead with someone holding a battlelamp up for a light and the dice
spinning so small and white that it was like looking down a microscope
at them. Or poker in the officers' club for white chips that cost five
bucks apiece. All the gambling had one thing in common: the grinding,
luxurious, wonderful hatred that everyone felt when the winner put out
his hand to rake in the winnings. The smothering feeling of losing was
almost as satisfying as the wild sensation of winning.
Another way to cut the boredom was to eat. The Quartermaster Corps thinks
the soldiers got fat because the food was high in calories, but they were
wrong. They got fat because eating is a way to pass the time. They ate
hamburgers, meat loaf, sweet corn, dried eggs, canned bacon, evaporated
milk, thick slices of bread, canned butter, black coffee, pork chops,
K-rations, canned hash, french toast, horse cock, canned turkey, green
beans, white beans, kidney beans, jam. During the midwatch they brought
up fried sandwiches made of peanut butter and canned ham. On leave they
went to the U.S.O. and ate doughnuts, sugared, glazed and coconut, and
drank coffee. During the day they drank Coca-Cola, ate salami sandwiches
and potato chips. Before, in every war, men had starved to death, but
in this war no one was hungry; their eyes bulged from eating. In the
Solomons, they used to stack the boxes of food so high that the bottom
couple layers would disappear into the mud. The soldiers hated the cooks
for a reason: they were the only men they depended on.
And so the long lines led into the gray mists of boredom and the fattening
foods, and, very occasionally, death. The lines moved like many-legged
worms, senselessly, planlessly, formlessly.
CHAPTER 12
In the Sunshine and Under Grapes
Behind the low adobe house of the Burtons was a stretch of very green
lawn. The vineyards began just at the far edge of the lawn. The Italian
and Mexican workmen had built a bower at the edge of the vineyard and
trained the live vines over the structure. Clumps of grapes hung down
into the bower; great dusty purple grapes, bursting at the stem with
juice and each grape nourishing a small cloud of flies.
Connie and Mike were married in St. Helena in the summer of 1942. They
were married in the bower with the guests standing behind them on the
lawn. The Episcopalian minister was a short fat man and he said the
ceremony in a dreamy voice, listening with his head cocked as if someone
else were performing the ceremony. From an inner patio came the sound
of corks popping out of champagne bottles.
Mike was wearing an ensign's uniform and Hank stood beside him in a rented
white dinner jacket and black pants with a strip down the side. Hank was
drunk, but Mike was the only one who knew. Hank got up at six that morning
and went to the patio where champagne was cooling in big tubs of ice
and brought back three bottles. By noon he had drunk all three of them.
Behind Connie, Mr. Burton was standing. His lips were stained purple
and this made his teeth very white by contrast. He was wearing a very
white linen suit and he wavered slightly in the heat.
Mike raised his eyes from the minister's face and looked out past the
bower. The vineyard climbed steeply up a hill that shimmered in heat,
was twisted by heatwaves. Around the main root of each vine was a heap
of brown stones that collected heat during the day and kept the ground
warm during the night. Toward the brow of the hill the families of the
Mexican and Italian workers stood, looking down on the ceremony. Beyond
them a single great white cloud slowly changed form, like marble suddenly
become liquid.
The minister, finishing the last words of the ceremony, smiled at Mike and
Connie. As Mike turned to kiss Connie he had an elongated, squeezed-off
view of Mrs. Burton. She was a big woman, expensively dressed. She was
bent forward, her dry eyes peering intently over her handkerchief, waiting
for Mike to kiss Connie. Then, as Mike pressed his lips against Connie's
mouth, the rigid, mutely protesting figure of Mrs. Burton vanished.
The guests moved through the patio, drinking cold champagne from the
Burton winery. At a large table, smoked turkeys and king salmon were
being sliced onto plates.
"I'm sorry your family couldn't be here," Mrs. Burton said to Mike.
"Me too," Mike said. "But I told you they wouldn't be interested. I sent
them all invitations, but they didn't come. I told you they wouldn't."
Mrs. Burton smiled thinly and turned away.
When Connie had written her parents about her engagement, they had asked
Mike to visit them for a weekend. The first afternoon they had gone for
a walk to a cave where some of the wine was stored for aging.
Mr. Burton had walked briskly through the vineyard. He was a startlingly
handsome man with a very narrow waist and big shoulders. His fingers
plucked at the vines, came away with a grape and he popped the dripping
pulp into his mouth as he held the dusty skin in his fingers. He chewed
the grapes carefully and spit the seeds out only when he had made some
comment on the quality of the grape.
"Pinot noir grape," he had said. "Best grape in the world. Makes a fine
rich wine. These are getting a little thin, though. Probably because
the summer's not as hot as it should be."
Mr. Buron drank wine all day long. He started with a little glass of
claret before breakfast and then, for the rest of the day, he drank
constantly. He drank his own wines and those of his competitors. He
drank wines from France and Germany and Italy. With each fresh wine he
made some remark, but Mike soon realized that this was a sort of ritual
that he expected of himself, and Mr. Burton nor anyone else really paid
any attention to the comments. The remarks were made to justify the
drinking. No one expected them to make sense, especially by afternoon.
When they went into the cave, Mrs. Burton turned on a switch. A line
of weak electric bulbs went on. The necks of thousands of bottles
gleamed. Along one wall a line of casks gave off a vinegary, sour smell.
"These are excellent wines," Mrs. Burton said. "They're good for a
reason. Good grapes, good heredity and good care. Best grapes in the
world, the result of thousands of generations of breeding."
Connie walked over and stood beside Mike. She whispered into his ear.
"She's going to give you a lecture on good blood now, darling," Connie
said. "Don't be angry. Just listen patiently and then forget it."
"In humans it's the same thing," Mrs. Burton said. "Good blood and good
environment. That's what counts."
Mr. Burton wandered over to one of the casks. With a pipette he drew
off a glass of wine and sipping it, muttered something. "Coming along
fine. Good body, bit raw yet, but developing . . ." was all that Mike
could catch. Nobody listened to him.
"Yes, Mother," Connie said. "We heard you. Let's go back to the
house. We're supposed to play tennis this afternoon."
"You can spare a few minutes, Constance," Mrs. Burton said. "After all,
if you're going to be married, there's nothing more important than what
we're discussing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
Mr. Burton came out from a shadow with a bottle in his hand.
"One of our best years," he said. "Won't be perfect for another eighteen
months, but then it'll be the best in California." He cracked the bottle
against a post and it shattered. A jet of wine shot back over his arm,
stained his jacket a soft purple. "Smell it. Generations of skill and
breeding in that bottle. Wonderful, eh? Go ahead, taste it."
"Don't, Father," Connie said. "He'll cut his lips on the glass."
"What's the matter, Mike?" Mr. Burton asked. "Don't you like good wine?"
"I don't know about breeding and good environment," Mike said. "Not a
thing. But I know something about you. I know that both of you came from
good old California families who left you a lot of money. And I know
that neither one of you has earned a cent in your life. You even lose a
couple thousand dollars a year on this vineyard. And I know that you run
the vineyard because it's fashionable and you can play like the country
squire and his lady. And I also know that you run a winery so that you
can have a good excuse to lap up a couple of gallons of wine every day."
Mr. Burton was standing beside one of the weak lights and he was staring
at Mike. He seemed lost in admiration for what Mike was saying. He smiled
faintly. The wine bottle hung at his side, dripping wine onto his pants
and shoes. Mrs. Burton had stepped back into a shadow and all Mike could
see of her was her fingers which knotted together, untwisted and then
tore a handkerchief to pieces.
"My family's nothing," Mike went on. "I don't know what their blood is
like. If I had to guess, I'd guess it's pretty bad. I know something about
environment. I was raised in a bad one. So that answers your questions,
Mrs. Burton. No blood, no environment."
"It doesn't matter, Mother," Connie said. "Those things aren't important.
Really they aren't. Mike can do things."
"I believe that," Mr. Burton said. He stepped away from the light and
his lean face, the purple lips, the slightly bloodshot eyes, lost their
distinctness. "I believe Mike's going to be all right."
The handkerchief in Mrs. Burton's hands came apart with a slight rasping
sound.
Mike and Connie tuned and walked out of the cave into a warm spring day.
Looking now into Mrs. Burton,s face as she greeted the guests and shook
hands and directed the servants to pour champagne, Mike knew she would
never forgive him for that day in the cave. He also knew that it did
not matter.
"Here's to you, Mike," Hank said. He was carrying a bottle of champagne
in one hand and he poured a little into his glass after each sip. He
did not look the least bit drunk. "Here's to old Mike who clawed his
way up out of the laboring masses into the middle class. Old Mike,
the upward mobile. Old Mike, the go-getter."
Mrs. Burton came back and stood beside Mike and Connie.
"Where do you go now, Mr. Moore?" she asked. "On to medical school?"
"On to medical school," Hank said. "The Army is sending me to medical
school and has assumed the fullest responsibility for my immediate
future." He poured his glass full, sipped at it.
"That will be exciting," Connie said.
Hank looked at her and ignored what she had said.
"Let's don't talk about me,?' Hank said. "Let's drink to Mike, the upward
mobile, and Connie, his wife."
"Mike the what?" Mrs. Burton asked.
"It's a joke, Mother," Connie said.
"Boy, is it a joke," Hank said and laughed. "It's really a joke."
He held the champagne bottle up and it was empty. He threw it casually
into the bushes. Mrs. Burton winced.
"What're you grinning for, Mike?" Hank asked. "You aren't supposed
to grin."
"Just grinning," Mike said. "Can't a man grin?"
Hank patted Mike on the shoulder and then turned and started to search
for a full bottle of champagne.
CHAPTER 13
"Our Forces Suffered Light Losses . . ."
The destroyer was three miles off the island. In the darkness the island
was a long humped line of black. Occasionally, far up the mountains,
a light flickered from a native village, but at once it vanished as the
blackness rushed in; solidly, like a liquid.
During the day, however, the island was different and made up of many
things. The parakeets made slashing colored lines across the green of the
jungle as they flew in short screeching flights; there was the endless
tin humping of Quonset huts; there were the brown carcasses of wrecked
planes. During the day the roads gave off curls of dust, forming a brown
atmosphere which ended only at the white strip of sand which edged the
island. During the day men stepped out of the dust, stood on the beach
and looked out over the sea and the ships. Then the men turned back
and disappeared into the brown haze; Seabees, Marines, fliers, Negroes,
Californians, soldiers, generals, Mexicans, Okies and natives.
The destroyer moved across the sea as if it were going through smooth
black oil The screw kicked up a ball of foam that glowed solid and
phosphorescent. From the bow of the destroyer a wave broke on each side
and expanded away in two narrow bright lines. One of the lines shattered
on the island. The other stretched away with a simple perfection to the
horizon, where it vanished but did not end.
The destroyer stayed to seaward of the transports and cargo ships that
were unloading. The sound gear pinged endlessly, sending shrill blocks
of sound through the water and making a biting echo on the bridge.
In a cabin directly below the bridge Mike was sleeping. Drops of sweat
swelled up on the sides of his chest, joined together and ran in trickles
over his ribs and left a trail of itch on his skin.
Mike was dreaming. It was an old and familiar dream. He was very young
and he was wearing knickers and holding a sock cap in his hand. He was
standing before a shiny glass window. In raised black letters across
the window were the words, "Home-Made Sausage. See It Made." Inside
the shop a fat girl was seated on a stool before a gleaming porcelain
table. Her cheeks glowed and she had a delicate fringe of blond hair on
her upper lip. She had an enormous bosom which hung, ponderous and warm,
under the crisp cloth of her uniform.
The girl smiled at Mike and shook her head at the five thin smears his
hand made on the window. She turned to her table and deftly arranged
a long wet glistening tube of skin. She put the tube to a nozzle that
extended from a large machine. Gray meat flecked with red spots poured
suddenly into the tube. The skin jerked and snapped on the table, writhed
as the sausage filled it. In a few seconds the tube was full and was
stretched to shiny thinness. Water bubbles popped out, and as the meat
continued to shove into the tube the skin slowly stretched and the bubbles
grew larger. The girl took the skin from the nozzle and a jet of meat shot
out on the porcelain table and the machine stopped operating. Casually the
girl took the long taut sausage and began to twist it into short links.