Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Год: 1963
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon and Schuster
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Another searchlight pierced the blackness and caught the bridge of the Fancher in brilliant, merciless illumination. He heard the big Japanese guns bellowing in the blackness, heard the shells as they screamed across the open water, and then the Fancher rocked with explosion and he lost his footing as the deck swung downward to port, slanting under his feet. Someone on the open bridge yelled, “The radar shack! They hit Combat!” He tried to scramble to his feet. Crouching against the bulkhead of the pilothouse, the bridge slanting, the whole ship slanting — I’ll fall off, he thought wildly, I’ll drown — he pressed the button on his mouthpiece.
“Combat, this is Bridge,” he said, and got no answer from the radar shack.
“Combat, Bridge!” he shouted urgently. “Was that a hit?” Silence, “Hey! Can anybody hear me? Clyde, are you on this line? Clyde? Clyde?” Silence. “Will you for Christ’s sake answer?”
The action ended at about 0230, when the remaining Japanese warships began limping northward. The Americans had lost four destroyers and two light cruisers. Almost every ship in the force was badly damaged, but the planes on Henderson Field — the Japanese objective — had been saved. The Fancher, floating on an oil-slicked sea adrift with white hats and the bodies of sailors hanging lifelessly inside their life jackets, extinguished her fires by 1930 and once more considered it a miracle that she was afloat. The tropical sun was brilliant on the warm Pacific waters. The sailors took off their shirts as they worked to clean up the mess.
The explosion in the radar shack had wounded the senior communications officer, destroyed the Sugar George gear, and killed a Radarman Second/Class named Clyde Morrow.
It was not his fault, and logically he knew it was not his fault. But logic and reason seemed to have no place in his reconstruction of what had happened. Piece by painful piece he put the incident together, and the resulting revelation was frightening. He hadn’t wanted to go up to the bridge any more than Clyde had, but neither had he wanted to lose Clyde’s friendship. And so he had taken the easy way out; he had chosen not to argue. He had said “Yes” and sent Clyde to his death. As frightening as the knowledge was, he persisted in exploring it and finally coupled it with what had happened by the river on the night of the carnival. He had said “Yes” there, too, and sent the girl into oblivion.
“Yes,” then, was a dangerous word. Here in a world of snapping hand salutes and of mechanical responses to idiotic orders he began to dread the word and what it meant in terms of his own weakness. He resolved to be extremely careful with its use. He knew now that he was inclined to avoid friction, to present the agreeable smile and the accepting nod rather than to risk displeasure. But on at least two occasions he had gambled on a nod — and lost. He decided he would never allow that to happen again.
He was twenty-seven years old when he was released from active duty in 1946 and returned to his home town. He felt a lot older. The town had changed very little during the war, but it seemed alien and strange to him. He avoided making new friendships because friendship involved a responsibility he had decided against. He took a series of meaningless jobs, leaving one after another whenever he got bored or whenever he felt too much was being demanded of him. Without fully realizing it, he was becoming aimless and rootless, bound by a futile decision that really rendered him decisionless. He had, in effect, committed himself to a policy of non-commitment, and perhaps he realized it would not work even before he met Beth.
He supposed he would never love anyone as deeply as he had loved the girl with the blond hair. Beth had blond hair, too, but she wasn’t that enchanting girl of his youthful dreams, not by any wild imagining. Beth’s hair was clipped short, and her eyes were blue, and there was a somewhat horsy look to her face, a sophisticated twang to her speech. She walked over to him one night at a club dance and said, “My name is Beth McCauley. Don’t you ever talk to anyone?”
“Sure I do,” he said. “What do you want me to say?”
“I’d like you to ask me to dance.”
“Do you want to dance?” he said.
“I’d love to,” Beth answered, and she flashed a quick, conspiratorial grin.
She danced well. She was a small girl who seemed too compactly built, but she moved with surprising grace, and she followed every innuendo of pressure on the small of her back. He walked down to the river with her later. The waters were black; the willows overhung the bank. He thought he could hear a trace of laughter floating on the air.
“I used to come here when I was a kid,” he told her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Mmmm.” He nodded and looked at the water. He guessed he should kiss her.
“You haven’t told me your name,” she said suddenly.
The words startled him. He looked at her curiously and then very softly and slowly said, “My name is the wind.”
“What?” Beth said, and then laughed. “It isn’t at all. It’s Matt. I knew before I asked you to dance.” She paused. “What’s your last name?”
“Blaney. Why?”
“Blaney,” she repeated, and then suddenly added, “Beth Blaney,” as if testing the words.
He made no comment. He shrugged in the darkness, and then he kissed her without any real desire and thought, You can feel her teeth when you kiss her.
There was passion in this girl, and beauty of a sort, and a knife-edge intelligence that sometimes made him feel awkward and clumsy. But most of the time she was pleasant and easy to be with, and he continued seeing her until eventually she seemed to have been there always.
He had no intention of marrying her, not really. Even facing the realization that he could not go through life refusing to form any real attachments, he did not once seriously think of forming an attachment with Beth McCauley. He continued seeing her because she demanded nothing of him. Until one night, by the river, suddenly and without preamble, she said, “Matt, I want to get married.”
At first, idiotically, he thought she was talking about someone else. And then immediately he knew she meant she wanted to marry him, and the idea was so preposterous that he almost laughed aloud. Well, I don’t want to marry you, he thought and said nothing, staring at the river.
“Well?” she said.
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
“Say yes or no, Matt.”
Yes or no, he thought, and he smiled a bit wryly. Yes or no, and what happens if I say “Yes”? Who vanishes this time, Beth? Who gets blasted into oblivion?
“I haven’t given much thought to marriage,” he said cautiously.
“Think about it now, Matt.”
I don’t have to think about a damn thing, he thought. I know I don’t want to marry you. I don’t love you. What’s there to think about?
“I can’t afford to get married right now,” he said. “I’m going to leave my job. I’m fed up with my job.”
“My father will give you a job, Matt.”
I don’t want a job with your father, he thought. I don’t even like your father.
“I don’t know anything about grain,” he said.
“You don’t have to know a goddamn thing,” she answered angrily, “and he’ll still pay you twenty thousand a year.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Yes.”
“I’d hate to think I was being...”