War Story

 

Bret Lott

This was the story he gave his wife once he’d married after the war, and the story he gave his children, the story he gave his children’s children.

 It was no hero’s story, he knew, but only a story of what he’d done, how he’d served with the blessing of his hands at a time when he’d been needed. Only a story of how he’d helped.

 And every time he told them the story, they listened as though this were the first time they’d heard it. It was in the way he told it, the way he held his head, the angle of his jaw, the cut of his eyes as he chose the words; words not meant to impress them with the feats of the man before them, but words meant to share the shard of the war he’d witnessed.

 They listened and knew him because of the story. They all owned a piece of him, carried the story in them like shards of their own lives, his story their own story, they believed, for the way he told it made them feel as though they had been there.

 They listened.

 He told them the story of himself, a young man who worked aboard the Yorktown as ship’s cook third class, a boy, really, who’d somehow solved a mystery that involved the making of donuts, a boy who’d become famous for the way he fried them up, made them so that they seemed a part of heaven, light and sweet and true. There were, of course, other foods he helped cook aboard: Boiled Spiced Beef and Macaroni & Cheese and Ham & Pineapple and Baked Stuffed Meatloaf; Griddle Cakes and Oatmeal and Scrambled Eggs and Bacon; Rice and Boiled Carrots and Turnips and Beets and Stewed Tomatoes; Iced Caramel Cakes and Coconut Layer Cakes and Hot Raisin Rolls.

 But the donuts were his. He made donuts for them all, for machinist’s mates and radiomen, petty officers and ensigns, the barber, the dentist, the signalman, and the captain. And because they respected this ship’s cook third class for the donuts he made, they all knew his name, gave him no nickname as everyone else in the galley had: B.O. was one, Cleaver was another, and Flour Boy and Greezy and Turnip Truck and Potato Head. But they never called him even Cookie, that nickname that was no name at all. They never called him Donut, as he’d expected they would. Even the flyboys, the kings of the ship, never called him anything but his name: Dorsett.

 He told his family of how he’d come on board a year before Midway, was there at Coral Sea when everyone had all but given up on the ship; was there when she’d washed into Pearl, a trail of oil on the water behind her like a thick black shawl swallowed by the sea; was there on board when they got the call back to sea three days later, most all hands in town and sleeping off drunks or still tanking up, nobody—least of all the goddamn Japs—believing she’d be ready for action for at least another month.

 Then they were at sea, steaming and steaming, the boilers doing their work to bring them somewhere they did not know for duty they could not say.

 And they were at Midway, and there were swarms of airplanes, Japs and American alike, the ship’s cook third class now an ammo passer inside a turret, any idea of donuts long gone with the heat and fire and blast and the heat and fire and blast. He knew only the ache in the muscles, an ache he could not tend and that meant nothing inside this heat and fire and blast that turned the barrel of the 40mm he worked red hot at the muzzle. Still they shot off round after round after round, this donut king only an ammo passer here above decks, sweating and aching; the ship’s cook third class told them, too, of seeing nothing from his turret but planes above and smoke and fire from the muzzle, that steel red hot.

 Then had come the direct hits, the hit and hit and hit that shook them from the turret, then the listing to port of the ship, listing so full and heavy he knew there was no hope for her. Next had come the call—a siren sounded, men shouted—to abandon ship, and the ship’s cook third class had been no hero, had done as everyone else did and acted only to save his life. He’d felt himself a coward, felt somehow he ought to stay on board and do what he could for these men and this place that had always known him by his name. But he’d been ordered to abandon ship still listing as though she meant to tip them all off, a dump truck letting loose a load full of sailors, and he jumped, jumped what seemed a mile down off the deck into blue water, others falling down around him, and then had come the feel of cold water swallowing him, and the depth to which he slipped once swallowed. He told them of how he could see light glittering above him, all wind knocked from him with the cold and the impact, and how he saw beside him and above him quick slashes into the water like knife blades, like terrible white blossoms of air as man after man plunged into the water around him; and he’d thought then, for the first time—he’d not even thought this inside the heat and fire and blast of the turret, not even with the shock of direct hits—that he would die, here and now, a sailor drowned by another sailor slicing into him from far above as he tried to swim for air, swim for air, tried to reach that glittering light above him, reached for it, around him crashing slices into water, slicing around him, cutting and cutting.

 Then he was above the glitter, his eyes bitter with salt as he filled his lungs with air, gasped for it, though even that word seemed too gentle a word to describe what he felt. He wanted to breathe in all the air there ever was, wanted his lungs filled with it, wanted his entire body to explode with it, and he turned, saw men bobbing up all around him while still there fell more men, more and more men, everyone bobbing up in only a moment’s time.

 He told them of how there was a man beside him, a sailor he’d never seen before, a man not three feet away from him, and how the two of them looked at each other, mouths open, taking in air. Then they smiled, both began to laugh at the same moment for whatever triumph this had been: they’d jumped from the flight deck to open sea and had lived. These two men had lived.

 The other sailor blinked, wrinkled his forehead. Ain’t you Dorsett? he said, and still grabbed for air. The ship’s cook third class nodded, still smiling, his lungs not yet full enough to let him even utter the simple word Yes.

 Goddamn, the sailor said. Sure glad the Japs didn’t get you. You just keep making them donuts and I’ll keep eating ‘em, that sailor said, and they both laughed again, laughter that came as they still tried to gain air, and they swam through the falling men toward the destroyer that had pulled up to fish men out, the Balch.

 He told his family of climbing a rope ladder up the side of the destroyer to a deck swarming with men shadowed in smoke, all of them wet and shivering and as much like ghosts as he knew he would ever see. No real ghost would ever rival these, he knew, would ever make his heart twist and tear, make his still-empty lungs pinch and burn, the way these figures in smoke made him feel, all of them with sooty faces, wet and trembling bodies, coughing and yelling and coughing.

 Then the smoke seemed to part a moment, and the ship’s cook third class glimpsed the side of the Yorktown itself, the huge gray of it, men still jumping from its side and slicing down into the cold blue water, men still swarming up before him and onto the deck, men and men and men. From where he stood aboard the Balch, and with the way the Yorktown listed towards them, he could see the flight deck, could see the turret in which he had passed ammo, could see the bridge and the signal light and the broad white line down the middle of the deck, the stripe with which those flyboys aligned themselves; and then he looked to the sky, saw the planes had all gone, the Japs disappeared in the belief they had taken care of business, had sunk the Yorktown itself, CV5 left to history and the depth of the ocean here at Midway. They had sunk her.

 But she didn’t sink, merely listed to port a few degrees more, then stayed put, and they all watched from the Balch for the rest of that day and on into the night, stars above them like a million cutting angels in the black, watching over the Yorktown, making sure she didn’t sink.

 He told them of the way dawn came the next morning, the way the wind picked at the ship’s cook third class’s thin blanket as he lay on deck, tried to take whatever sleep he might out here beneath all the stars, stars fading fast now, whispering out and leaving no trace of themselves as gray light took over, then pale lavender, then orange, then yellow, until finally there surfaced above them all a blue so perfect the ship’s cook third class thought maybe he’d dreamed the life of those stars, thought maybe he’d slept after all, and the stars, those cutting angels that had stood guard over their ship and over these sailors, all these raggedy sailors aboard somebody else’s ship—well, maybe those stars had only been a piece of his dreams.

 But then had come strange word, passed man to man on deck, a whisper itself, as quiet and hushed as the way those stars disappeared, that men were going back aboard the Yorktown, a detail that would try and save the ship.

 And he remembered his name then, remembered the way everyone aboard called his name, remembered this was the way the ship had known him: Dorsett. He was only a cookie, only made donuts for men whose lives were much more important, from the flyboys on down to the machinist’s mate on the fifth deck, two decks below the gallery. He was only a cookie, but it was what he could do, had done, what he did with his hands.

 So, out of no shine of courage or glint of bravery or glistening heroics, he stood from the spot where he knew, finally, he had not slept at all, had in fact seen those stars like angels, had seen them whisper their way into nothing, had seen that sky move through its colors to this blue; and now he moved among other men, all of them whispering, some of them standing, like himself, and moving until they were a clutch of men, a detail for a detail, all of them moving along the passageways in search of a CO to whom they could volunteer to head back aboard, do whatever it was needed doing.

 It was a salvage detail, of course; they’d astounded the Japs with the Yorktown’s being right back in action here at the Midway, and now they would scare the living shit out of them with repairs made while at sea, making ready to use her again. A ghost ship, the Japs would believe, risen from the dead.

 So they moved down the rope ladders they had climbed only a day before, leaped into boats that ferried them from the Balch to the Yorktown, where they climbed rope ladders back aboard.

 There were 141 of them and 29 officers, and their job was to salvage what was salvageable, to make this list less pronounced so that planes could land and leave again, to make this vessel marlinespike again if they could.

 They all knew they could. They would cut loose whatever they could to port, lessen the weight in order to right her up. And they would repair the deck, make it landable again, and they would stay on board and do this work until they were finished. They would be the first ones here when everyone else came back on, and they would be the boys lining the flight deck to welcome that first flyboy, their king, back to the Yorktown.

 It was this ship’s cook third class’s detail to feed them all, all 141 sailors and 29 officers, to keep them in food that would give them the energy to do the work that needed doing, and he was glad for it, glad for the hands he’d been blessed with, glad for the duty he’d pulled, glad to be back here. They knew his name. They knew he would feed them.

 There was no power on board, so he’d had to go below decks, all the way to third, with only a flashlight. He could only know what he saw in the beam from the light, and what he saw as he descended the first of the ladders was a world at odds with gravity—the whole of it was bent to port—and for a moment as he stood on the first deck, he’d felt a stab of vertigo, felt as if he were about to fall down for the way the doors were tilted to the left, all dogged down tight, the starboard walls too near as he stood, the port walls too far away. His whole body leaned to the starboard, one foot higher on the floor than the other. But he shook this feeling away, held the flashlight on the first dogged door a few moments, focused there and set his mind to the task at hand: he had to feed the men, had to make his way deep into the vessel and come back into daylight with whatever food he could find. This was his job.

 He opened the door, found in the beam of light the next hatch, this too dogged down tight, and opened it. He went down this ladder, tried to stand strong on the narrow steps, and imagined carrying up boxes—would he find boxes?—of food at this angel, in this dark. But this was his job, and he knew he would do it. He did not know how, did not know if, in fact, he could. But he knew he would do it. There was no choice.

 Then came the terrific metal groan of the ship, its first tremble; and he lost the light, saw it bounce at his feet, down the passageway away from him, the walls echoing the groan of the ship. He stood in the darkness, the flashlight finally stopped a good ten yards away and pointed down the empty passageway. He held a hand to either wall, pushed hard against the steel to hold himself steady. And still the groan echoed through the ship, through the walls, through his hands and into his bones. It was a dark sound, a sound like deep, slow thunder, the kind of thunder he heard in the middle of the night when he was a kid in Pennsylvania, the kind of thunder that seeped into his sleep, cast tremendous shadows into his dreams, until he woke up to the idea to the idea of the sound, and the sound itself was there with him, lightning long gone, only the dark and the sound. And suddenly he knew he was still only that kid. The kid in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania was huddled here inside him, and he knew that kid would never leave him, not for the rest of his life, not until he died. He would always be that kid, walking into thunder and darkness, just like here, now.

 The sound edged away, finally, left him in a still darkness that seemed even darker for the lack of sound, and he made his way along the passageway to the flashlight, picked it up, felt the weight of it in his hands. He would not drop it again.

 He opened the hatch, went down the next ladder, finally made it to the third deck, is deck, the deck he owned, and now he had begun to get used to the pitch of the deck, the weird purchase his shoes made on the floor at this angle.

 He shone the flashlight from side to side, saw spewed everywhere what he’d thought had been stowed; in the passageway outside the galley were dozens of empty loaf pans everywhere, and somehow silverware was out, too, spatulas and metal trays, all of it mound up along the port side like heaps of steel trash along the wall. He reached the long steel tubes of the tray trough, the place where men stood on line and pushed along their trays, cookies inside the galley itself standing opposite them and ladling out heaps of food. He reached for the tray trough, held tight to one of the tubes, and shone the flashlight inside to the galley.

 The long row of steel vats in there glistened in the light, and the griddles to the left seemed perfect, intact and clean and shining. The deep fat fryers still stood upright, waiting, he knew, for when the men up on deck would file along here accompanied by the rest of the crew, all hands lining up for the first true meal back. For a moment he let himself imagine the celebration feast: Baked Spiced Ham and Sweet Potato Pie and Roast Tom Turkey and Mashed Potatoes and Garden Salad with Cardinal Dressing and Fresh Apple Pie.

 And his donuts. Donuts for them all, for all the men back aboard the Yorktown.

 He saw all this in a moment, saw it all in the titled world, even smelled the feast in the dark, and then came the next groan, this one smaller, he believed, though he could not be certain. Still the sound seeped into him, still his legs shook with the moment, still the air itself seemed to groan. But he did not lose the light. He held on, and the sound left.

 He climbed up into the galley, moved past the empty vats and griddles, made his way to the reefer room, where he pulled open the steel doors to find the heavy air of spoiled food, the power gone for all these hours. He could only give them what they had in cans, he knew then, and left the reefers, headed for Central Stores and the rows and rows of food he knew would be in heaps on the floor.

 He found the door, dogged down as per orders, and opened it. Central Stores was on the starboard side, across the galley and the far passageway, a room large enough to bunk fifty men, and when he opened the door, cans rolled toward him, slammed into his shins as he tried to stop them all from falling out of the room and toward him. But he could not stop the cans from rolling out and stood aside, let gravity take over and settle the cans where it would.

 Here was the food: canned hams and canned peaches and canned asparagus and canned beets and more canned hams. He would make them sandwiches, he knew, canned sandwiches for all, and he then left the cans, weaved his way back along the deck to the bakery, where he knew the tall steel cupboards in there held bread. It was day old at best, but still it was bread, and when he shone the light into the bakery and saw the tall cupboards had tumbled to their sides, saw that the doors stood open, dozens of loaves of bread on the floor, he knew he could do the job. He knew it.

 

 He slammed open the canned hams on the table in the galley, tore through them with a huge can opener fixed to the edge of the table, spun its wooden handle faster than he’d ever done on duty. He cut bread with a knife he’d found under a vat, then opened the cans of peaches. He made sandwiches, his hands sticky with the sugar gel from the canned hams, made dozens of them, all with only the light from the flashlight, and he wondered how long the batteries would last before burning out. Still he made the sandwiches, and opened the cans, and cut more bread.

 He found, too, a cardboard box from deep inside the Central Stores, a box that held twelve canned hams, loaded into the box sandwiches and opened canned peaches, the lids still attached and pressed down, figuring he could let the men grab up a sandwich, dip their hands into the cans. This was a war and this was a ship they were trying to keep from sinking—no plates, no utensils. Only hands.

 He carried the box above his left shoulder like a waiter with a tray, the flashlight in the other hand. Twice, as he made his way up ladders and through hatches, the ship groaned, and twice he believed he might fall, let loose all this food, all this work. But he stood fast both times, and finally, what seemed hours later, he emerged on the hangar deck, the deck just below the flight deck, and into smoke and heat and shine of light coming in the open hangar bays at port and starboard. When he found men, he knelt to them, handed them sandwiches, pulled out the cans of peaches.

 They were men with welding torches and men with sledge hammers and men with shirts and no shirts. They were men cutting loose entire turrets, even the one he’d worked himself, and letting them fall into the sea, and they were men hammering plywood planks to the flight deck, covering up the holes where they’d taken hits. They were men who were all them sweating and working, just as he himself, ship’s cook third class, was working, and they all turned to him when he arrived, and they spoke to him.

 Dorsett! they said, and, Goddamn, it’s Dorsett!

 They said, Where the hell’s the donuts, Dorsett? and, Dorsett, where’s my Delmonico?

 They said, Thanks, Dorsett. Thanks tons, Dorsett.

 They said, Glad you’re here, Dorsett.

 He fed the men, and the more trips below the more confident he grew, stepped where he ought, held fast when he needed, balanced the box when the groanings came. Deep inside the ship became his own kingdom, his domain rich in darkness and the smell of good food and spoiled food, rich in groanings he saw as perhaps hell itself, him settled down inside the blessing of this ship’s hull and meting out food to the sailors working to save her from that hell.

 He told his family of how he worked for hours feeding the men, each trip only a piecemeal, a dozen or so men fed out of a box. He followed the same passageways down and up each time, the same passageways he’d followed his first dive in. And on each successive trip up from the black, it seemed the sun pierced him even more deeply, his eyes surrendering to the darkness of his kingdom, him squinting and squinting into the light, and still he worked, still they called his name, still the groanings came.

 He slept for a while, and he ate a few sandwiches himself. When he ran out of peaches, or at least could find no more in the heaps of cans inside Central Stores, he opened a can of yams, dipped a finger into it, tasted it: sweet and thick and orange—he could even taste the color of it down here in the dark! They were good enough for his men, who drew out fingers full of the yams, brought them to their lips, lapped it up. Ham and sweet potato pie, one welder said, the blue tip of the torch he held hissing in the afternoon sunlight. Might as well be Christmas Day, Dorsett, he said, and the ship’s cook third class had smiled, nodded, went on to the next man.

 And slowly, slowly, the ship started righting, the list less evident the longer these men worked. He could feel it in his feet, until it seemed almost too easy for him to walk the passageways, and it seemed the earth had somehow twisted on its axis, moved back into place. He imagined again the feast down here in the galley, the heaps of steaming food, the men all laughing, calling out the nicknames of all the cookies as they ladled up food into their trays. Greezy, give me another slice off that turkey, they would call, and B.O., hustle your ass with the Sweet Potato Pie, and, Flour Boy, how about a couple-three more rolls?

 When evening came, and the blue that had broken above him early that morning had given up to the orange and lavender and gray and, finally, a black riddled with those same stars, he moved through the hangar deck, the open bays to port and starboard letting in the miniscule light from those stars, towards the bunks at the fantail, bunks stacked four high and nearly filled with men already sleeping, snoring, wheezing in the black. But before he’d mounted the last ladder up to the bunkroom, he’d stood there on the fantail, looked out to the sea: there were those stars, spread as thick as he’d ever seen them, and below them lay the Pacific, a perfect black, unforgiving and relentless as a dream soaked in thunder. And he swallowed, thought he might cry at the beauty and terror of these both: stars and the sea.

 But he did not cry, because he was too tired for it, too aching after feeding the men all day long. He turned, left the stars and that sea behind him, and climbed the ladder, moved into the bunks, found one. Some of the men were still working below decks, but most were here or in other bunks, all work on deck shut down for the blackout, the Balch and Gwin and Monagahn somewhere not far away, all of them blacked out just in case the Japs were headed back, and he fell asleep in a listing bunk with the good knowledge in his head that those ships were out there and stood guard over him and his men, because they were, yes, his men. They were his, and this was his ship, and this is what he could do with his hands. And they knew his name, even the ship knew his name: Dorsett.

 He told them of how he woke up when the sky was still dark, though some of the stars had whispered out, just as yesterday morning, and how the routine began again. He went below, shone the flashlight across Central Stores, started in. This was breakfast, though, and now he found cans of jams, opened them, slathered bread—bread going old, he could feel, bread gone hard—and still he slathered, stacked, carried it all up the ladders and through the hatches.

 And he told his family of his last trip down, and how he could not know this was the last trip at all but had somehow felt it, felt that all of this would soon be ending, felt it with the way his hand touched the cold steel walls when there came another magnificent groan, its sister tremble, felt it in the staleness of the bread in his hands, felt it in the way the light from the flashlight cut into his world down here; that light his only guide, his only way to find the landmarks needed to gain his way along the same passageways he’d traveled for over a day now. He felt somehow that this would not last much longer, any of it, and that he would be returned to light and food and normal duty—donuts, he thought, donuts!—sooner than he could say.

 Which was when, he told them, there seemed to trickle down through the darkness, the powerful infinite darkness the flashlight only pretended to penetrate, some kind of commotion, a sound that seemed the sound of voices, and he thought that perhaps the ghosts of the stars above had descended, had gathered in a hull of this ship—he’d been working over thirty hours now, had been wandering a path through a ship dead in the water, had been working his hands and working his hands all this while, so that his mind down here on the third deck had begun to give itself up to its own wanderings, its own depth of fear and blackness, and ghosts of stars seemed the next logical sound he might hear—and now those ghosts were wandering the passageways, guarding him, guarding him and all others with their beneficent light.

 They were the voices of ghosts he heard, nameless voices, and as he slathered jam on a slice of stale bread, he heard a strange and quiet and careful whine from somewhere around him, and he knew, suddenly and fully, that this was a torpedo, and that they were about to be hit.

 The torpedo slammed home, and the sound he heard was suddenly nothing at all like the thunder he’d heard when he was a sleeping child on a farmhouse in Pennsylvania. This was thunder up close, this was lightning striking here, right here, this was power and force and violence all in a moment; and now he was on the floor among knives and vats and deep fat fryers. All of it was illuminated with only the jagged tumble of the flashlight as it bounced off the floor, rolled and bounced, all of it in a moment, a moment that included the ghost voices, and the careful whine, and the explosion. The death of the world, he’d thought down there, all in a moment.

 He lay there on the deck floor, the flashlight somewhere off to his left and under something, and he tried to stand, tried to pull himself up by the edge of the table. But he could not move, the table edge a mile away, the darkness slicing him in half.

 Still there came the voices, and he knew them now not to be ghosts, but men, all these men he had fed now screaming above decks, the sound somehow filtering down to him, and he knew now the goddamn Japs were here, and here he was, flat on his back.

 He told his family of how he closed his eyes then, let the black surround him totally, not even the small light from the flashlight in him now, and suddenly he took that blackness, took the dark, and made it work for his good, made it become a piece of himself that would take him from this place. He swallowed, kept his eyes closed, and he sat up, saw in his mind’s eye the edge of the table, and now felt it with his hand; and he pulled on the table, felt himself rising in the dark, felt himself standing, and now in his mind the entire ship was lit up, power restored, the picture of his domain as rich in detail and clear of purpose as the black of no flashlight had been empty of all things. The white walls were clean and glistening, and all the bread pans and silverware and metal trays were stacked and stowed; loaves of fresh bread were stored neatly in the tall metal cupboards—he could even smell the rich yeast smell of them, even warm butter—and Central Stores was an immaculate room, each shelf inside filled with perfect rows of canned goods.

 He saw all this, saw it as clearly as if it had been the day before the Coral Sea, even the day, perhaps, this old boat was christened by Eleanor Roosevelt herself all the way back in 1936, back when he, ship’s cook third class, was, in fact, still a kid in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania.

 He saw the Yorktown unblemished, clean, marlinespike. He saw it.

 Then came the next careful whine, and the next terrible blow, this one larger, closer than the last, and the floor rippled beneath his feet, threw him up into the white light of these glistening walls, threw him up and up and up, the groans of the last day, that sleeping thunder, only a simple whisper next to the sound that stabbed into him now.

 He did not know how long he was out, only knew when he opened his eyes to the old black that the ship was listing more than it had ever listed. This was all he knew.

 He felt himself begin to slip down the floor, felt himself falling as the ship listed, a steady movement, and he sat up, grabbed hold of something his hand found, something sturdy and attached to the floor. He saw the small glow of the flashlight a few feet away, wedged back beneath something—a fryer?—on the high side of the room, and he stood, walked toward it as though he were climbing stairs. The ship was listing to port again, the passageways he’d worked all this time down there on the low side, and he stooped, lay flat on the floor and reached for the flashlight, took hold of it, its weight in his hand welcome, an old friend.

 But then there came a different sound, the one he’d hoped never to hear, the one no sailor ever hoped to hear: from the low side, down to port and inside decks beneath him, there came a gentle wash of sound, like a distant river, an easy and calming sound.

 She was taking on water.

 Still the list grew, degree by degree, and still his feet fought to keep him standing. The passageway was below him, across the galley on the port side. But he would not go that way. He could which hatches below were dogged, nor which doors; he could not say where either first or second torpedoes had struck. He only knew she was taking on water, and she was listing more deeply each moment.

 She was sinking, and he was three decks down with only a flashlight.

 He turned to starboard, made it out the opposite side of the galley and into the passageway there, a passageway that paralleled the old one he’d traveled. This passageway was littered with debris, too, just as the port had been. But it was a different place, the positions of metal trays and huge cooking pans and all else on the floor down here not the same, and he told his family of how he’d had to navigate a new course in there, had to find a new way out at the giant angle of descent the floor was making and in the midst of all this debris inside the ship he loved and was losing at that very moment.

 He leaned against the starboard wall for balance, shone the flashlight in quick sweeps across the floor, saw old loaves of bread that had somehow made it this far from the galley, saw a wadded up sailor’s cap, saw steam trays everywhere.

 And he told them of how he’d seen on the floor a cookie’s apron, draped out on the port side of this passageway like some dead ghost, just lying there, and he told them of the name stenciled across the front of it, Flour Boy, and how he’d paused over the apron a moment, for some reason moved to pick it up, bring it back to the kid—Kaminski was his name, Butch Kaminski, a kid even younger than himself—but then the ship lurched to port yet again, and the wash of water beneath him grew louder, no longer a smooth and calming sound, but the sea itself, the sea coming up after him, the hull of this ship no longer the protective blessing he’d believed, but a blessing lost, pierced through with torpedoes, events out of his hands bearing down on him hard and wanting him, he knew, dead.

 So he left behind the apron, made for the ladder up where he found the hatch to the second deck dogged down tight. He put the flashlight in his back pocket, hoped still it would not burn out—he had two more decks to go—and wheeled the hatch open, climbed up and made for the next dogged door and the next ladder, the next hatch up. All of this while the ship fell to its port, all of this along new passageways, all of this with the sea swimming up beneath him and behind him, a black sea, he knew, that would swallow him, above him no glittering light like there had been two days ago when the same sea had swallowed him once he’d jumped. There would be no light here, that water black and moving fast, ready to bear him away to his death inside the ship he loved.

 Finally he made it to the hangar deck, saw men making for the low side, the port bay, and as he moved down the deck face, he saw these same men he’d fed all these hours abandoning ship, saw them silhouetted against the light, then disappear. And out past was a ship pulled in close, the Balch still out there, and he saw men scrambling up the rope ladders just as they had two days before, and he wondered at this fact, the fact he’d have to abandon the same ship twice in less than two days.

 Now he was on the lip again, below him the same sea that would swallow him in its blackness were he three decks below, there in his kingdom. But here it was a kind and perfect blue, and he only paused a moment before he jumped yet again, fell down and down and down toward the men he’d kept fed while they tried to save the dying ship behind him. He was swallowed again, and this time it seemed he sank even deeper, fell even farther from the glittering light above him. Only then did he realize he still held the flashlight, that it was still on making its own vague stab at illumination, and then he let it go, watched for an instant the flashlight sink, watched its beam twist and whisper into the cobalt beneath him. Then he looked up, saw the glittering light above him again, and he reached for it again, reached for it while other terrible white blossoms of air cut through the water beside him—he was not the last man off—and then the sea itself buoyed him up, let him break free, and he swam for the Balch, swam for that safety.

 He watched from the deck the Yorktown sink only a few minutes later, saw her go under, saw her disappear forever from the face of this earth. The kind and perfect blue sea fashioned itself around her and took her down, while men around him wept, and while he himself, ship’s cook third class, wept too, wept openly and without shame for this loss, this life, the job she had done.

 He wept and turned, crossed the deck, his back to where she’d disappeared, and he told them of how he’d simply sat down on the deck, and looked out at the sea.

 Then someone was standing beside him. He felt a boot nudge his leg, and he looked up.

 The man had been crying, he could see, his eyes red and shining. But he was smiling. He had his hands on his hips and looked at this ship’s cook third class.

 He said, You never brought me Delmonico, Dorsett, and he shook his head, still smiling.

 There was his name.

 Dorsett.

 And he saw the picture in his mind of the white glistening walls, of the exact order inside the galley of a ship now settling into its life past its old life, this new life in the black at the bottom of the sea. He saw the loaves of bread—still smelled them!—and saw the silverware in their bins, saw metal food trays stacked and shining. He saw it all, and knew this would never leave him, and knew, too, that he owned this story, and he saw all of this was ship’s own gift to him: a story, and his own name. The truth.

 He looked up at the man, saw the soot in his face, saw the torn dungarees black with machine oil.

 And he told them of how Dorsett said nothing, only felt himself smile up at the man, Dorsett smiling while he still wept.

 

 He told them this story.

 And they listened, believed they knew him because of the story, believed they owned a piece of him, a shard of history: the Yorktown, her life and death, and himself among the men who’d tried to save her, men who knew his name. They believed they knew him.

 But he hadn’t told them all of the story.

 There was a piece of truth he’d never told his wife once he’d married after the war, never told his children, or his children’s children. There was a piece of the story he never told anyone, kept only to himself. His family owned a piece of him, he knew, with each telling of the story. But there remained a piece of the story that owned him, that held him to its own truth, the part he never told, but knew all more intimately for the fact he never chose the words to speak it.

 It wasn’t Flour Boy’s apron he saw in the sweep of white from the flashlight as he made his way along the passageway out, behind and beneath him the quiet rush of black water. It wasn’t the apron he saw, but the boy himself, Butch Kaminski, ship’s cook third class, a boy younger than himself, and it had stenciled words Flour Boy he’d seen across the back of the boy’s shirt, him lying face down in the pitched angle of the passageway.

 It was a nickname, Flour Boy, and for a moment in the darkness splintered by the beam from the flashlight he tried to recall how Kaminski had come to his name, what he’d done to have been thus christened by men on board this ship. But he could think of nothing, no reason for those words, Flour Boy, a nickname now dead, dead as the body before him, and he saw his own hand now reaching down to the boy, reaching and reaching, finally taking hold of the boy’s shoulder, rolling him over amidst the clutter of old bread and steamer trays, to reveal to him a face blue and black with death, his arms blue, his hands blue, the body here these two days.

 He did not tell his family any of this, nor did he tell them of how he’d tried then to lift the dead boy over his shoulder there in the passageway, tried to carry him because, he believe, there might have been a family somewhere who would want this boy brought back, just as for himself there were a father and mother on a farm in Pennsylvania who certainly would want him back. There was a family, he believed, who would want Flour Boy back. So, the flashlight tight in his one hand, he lifted the boy, staggered beneath the weight of a man whose nickname, however reasonless, seemed enough of a reason to bear him back.

 Nor did they tell him of how, once he’d made it the twenty yards to the next ladder up, then made it up the first three steps, the weight of this man, the cumbersome burden of him, became too much, the purchase of his own feet more and more uncertain with each degree of list, until, only those three steps up, he’d finally had to move back down, finally had to ease the boy gently back to the deck floor. He did not tell them of how the boy’s body had seemed to seat itself, then slip onto its back, all of it simple and slow as if Flour Boy had only allowed himself to fall asleep sitting up, then let himself onto his back, black lids closed, blue arms beside him. He watched all this in the shine from the flashlight, only watched.

 Then he saw in the light the glint of the boy’s dog tags, the silver trace of chain at his neck, and he knew what he’d been taught in basic training, knew the purpose of dog tags.

 He did not tell them of how he saw his hand reach yet again, reach to the blue neck of the boy, then pull, pull hard, until the chain gave up, and of how he held the thin metal plates up to the light from the flashlight, and read the name there, KAMINSKI BUTCH, and the numbers beneath it.

 He did not tell them of how he slowly slipped one of the tags from that chain, held the single plate in his hand, then knelt to Flour Boy. He did not tell them of how he pried open the boy’s mouth, the lips black in this light, nor did he tell them of the touch of the boy’s teeth, the cold of them. He did not tell them of how he placed the metal plate vertically in the boy’s mouth, wedged it between the upper and lower front teeth.

 He did not tell them of how he’d stood then, and raised his foot to the throat of the dead boy, his boot tip just touching the jaw, all around them both now the sound of water, a distant river rising.

 And he kept secret from those he loved the hard kick he’d given straight to the boy’s chin, drove the tag deep into the boy’s jaw and skull so that this body, this Flour Boy, if ever recovered, would be known—the dead body would carry a name.

 And he did not tell them of how this part of the story ended, the chain and remaining tag surrendered to the first CO he could find aboard the Balch, but only after he’d seated himself on the deck and watched his ship die, saw the kind and perfect blue sea fashion itself around the Yorktown and all those left aboard, watched the sea draw the ship down and away from him forever, inside it the ghost of names lost to war, a whispering black sea inside that hull like the truth of death now inside him, the true story no words could save.

 This was the story he did not tell, a story buried in him like this deep, slow thunder he heard in the middle of the night when he was a kid in Pennsylvania, a story as sharp in him as the need to breathe in all the air there ever was, a story as cold in him as the swift kick of a boot into the jaw of a dead sailor younger than himself. This was his story, the shard of true history he’d been given.

 And because this was the story he would not give them, they knew him not at all, neither the wife he had found after the war, nor his children, nor his children’s children.

 His family owned a piece of him, he knew, with each telling of the story. But there remained a piece of the story that owned him, that held him to its own truth, a war story with no end.

 Dorsett, they’d called him.

 No one he knew.

 

from How to get Home: A Novella and Short Stories 1998