Ice Brothers (2 page)

“Hell, I bet the whole damn thing will be over in six months,” Mark said. “Those little yellow bastards can't fight!”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Erich, Paul's father-in-law, said from the back of the room, where he was sitting hunched over a radio. Turning the machine off, he stood up. “Don't forget,” he said in his deep voice, “that we will also be fighting the Germans.”

“Hell, they're so busy fighting the Ruskies that they don't know where they are,” Mark said.

“Maybe,” Erich said. “Perhaps this is not the time to remind you, but everyone in this family has German blood. The only pride I have left in that is the knowledge that Germans are never easy to beat. Get ready for a long war.”

“I, at least, am German only on my father's side, and his father left Germany because he saw that everyone was going crazy there,” Lucy, Sylvia's mother, said. “We're all Americans now, thank God.”

Erich did not answer. Slowly he sat down and hunched over the radio again.

“I think I'll go upstairs,” Paul said, sounding oddly normal to himself. “I have to get washed up.”

He started toward their apartment on the third floor, hoping that Sylvia would follow. She did. Their private war forgotten, they hurried to bed, and never before had the love-making been so good. War in its very first stage, at least, was not exactly hell.

Long after she had gone asleep, Paul sat staring at the curtains which moved slightly in the draft from the window, as though someone were standing behind them. The north wind whistled around the eaves of the old house, and rattled the shutters. He wondered what a storm like this would be like aboard a ship at sea. Since boyhood he had prided himself on being good with boats, but he was only a summer sailor, he suddenly realized, and had no idea what the North Atlantic in December could be. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to find out. At heart he was probably a coward—everyone was afraid, he had read, and bravery consisted in the ability to conquer fear. Whether he had this ability he could not guess. The moaning of the wind grew more and more mournful, more terrifying when he pictured what it must be like on the open sea. He put his arm around the warm shoulders of his wife and hugged her closer. Never before had he been bold or thoughtless enough to start making love to her when she was asleep, but the rules of peacetime were already disappearing and he did not restrain himself. When he realized that she was helping, the world, however briefly, was his. Despite his exhaustion, he still could not sleep when it was over. Suddenly the first real meaning of the war to him became clear: there would be an end to love-making. Erich was undoubtedly right when he said it would be a long war. His mind was suddenly full of a newsreel he had seen which had shown pictures of young German sailors marching in a training camp. A superior race, the Nazis called themselves, and it made him feel really odd to think that his blood was just as “Nordic” as theirs. If they were superior, he was too, but he didn't feel very superior as he thought of all those Germans who were now training to shoot at him. Millions of them had already been fighting for years and must be pretty good at it by now. But he would be good at it too, if they didn't kill him too soon—despite his fears, he had some inner certainty of that. And despite the abject loneliness that he was sure he would feel as soon as he left Sylvia, he realized that he was eager to enlist, to get on with this whole enormous drama which had just begun for him. With all the experience he had had on boats, and his two years of ROTC, maybe he could find a way to wangle a commission in the navy or the Coast Guard, which in time of war was just about the same thing. It would take years, of course, but maybe he actually could get command of his own ship before the war ended. Why was that so important to him? Did he still think he could end up the hero of some crazy war movie?

Paul didn't know, but he made up his mind to make some telephone calls in the morning to see if he could possibly get a commission. After all, it wasn't just a matter of pride or absurd dreams of glory. Officers got paid a lot more than enlisted men, and he had a wife to support, didn't he?

CHAPTER 3

Before Paul got a chance to call anyone in the morning, his brother, Bill, telephoned him.

“I'm going to join the army air force,” Bill said exuberantly. “That's where the real action's going to be! What are you going to do?”

“I don't know yet,” Paul replied.

“Listen, I've got an idea for you. I hear the Coast Guard is going to take over a whole bunch of yachts for an offshore patrol. If they took the
Valkyrie
, they'd fix her all up, and they might let you go as skipper. They'd probably make you a chief boatswain's mate. You'd get good pay and you'd probably get back to Boston every week or so.”

“Why don't you do it that way?”

“Hell, I don't want to fight the Germans with an old yawl. Give me a P-38. You were always the great sailor in the family anyway.”

“I'll check into it,” Paul said, but he already had decided that he too did not want to fight the Germans with an old yawl, despite the attractions of the scheme.

“Just don't get yourself drafted, boy,” Bill concluded. “I hear the infantry ain't good for the health.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Paul said, and he envied the apparently carefree bravery with which his brother was planning to join the army air force. The only thing that scared him more than the thought of being machine-gunned in a muddy trench was the vision of crashing in a burning plane. Putting on his best blue suit, he drove to the Boston headquarters of the Coast Guard.

This day, Monday, December 8, 1941, the streets and sidewalks were crowded with people and the bars were overflowing. Long queues, some of them stretching around a block, stood before each recruiting office. Every car, store and bar had a radio turned on loud to await news, and the sound of music was mixed with an excited babble of voices.

Paul could not get anywhere near the district office of the Coast Guard. For half an hour he stood in a line that stretched over the top of a hill, seemingly to infinity. Gray-haired men with the collars of old pea jackets turned up around their ears stood in that line, middle-aged men, some of whom were kept company during the long wait by their wives, and many boys who looked too young to be out of high school. They were almost all unusually cheerful and joked about the possibility of the war being over before they got a chance to enlist. Their breath frosted in the cold December air, and some of them danced little jigs to keep warm. A good many carried bottles and were quick to offer a swig to strangers. When a pretty girl walked by on her way to a nearby office, a few of the men whistled. A tall thin man in a trench coat which looked much too thin for that weather called, “Come join up with me, baby!” Instead of sticking her nose in the air and hurrying away, she gave him a brilliant smile and blew him a kiss. The long line of men applauded, clapping their mittened hands together as loudly as possible. To this she responded with a pretty curtsy just before disappearing into a doorway and the crowd cheered.

The long line appeared to move hardly at all. Halfway up the block a stout man dressed in a Chesterfield coat and wearing a homburg hat tried to cut into it and was jovially rebuffed by a short man in a brown leather jacket.

“You push ahead of me, Jack, and you won't have to wait for no war. You'll have one right here!”

The crowd laughed, and with hasty apologies the well-dressed man hurried to the end of the line.

All this was interesting, but Paul soon grew both cold and bored. Reasoning that he might do better with telephone calls, he ducked into a bar. Long lines stood there, too, both in front of the two telephone booths and at the bar itself, but here it was at least warm. A jukebox blared in the corner: “Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” At the crowded tables men and women sat drinking and talking intently to each other. They leaned against each other, touched a lot and held hands—the atmosphere was certainly a lot sexier than it ordinarily was in a Boston pub at ten o'clock on a Monday morning. When three chief petty officers, resplendent with gold hash marks, walked in, a place was immediately made for them at the bar. Many people offered to buy them drinks and asked them if they knew what damage had actually been done by the Japs at Pearl Harbor.

It took Paul only about twenty minutes to get to a telephone booth. He was not surprised to find that he got a busy signal when he called the Coast Guard office, and settled down to a routine of repeating the call about every two minutes. He was surprised when his fourth call got through. Figuring that he would get nowhere if he asked to speak to the busy recruiting officer, he told the harried girl who answered the telephone that he wanted to speak to the district Coast Guard officer. After a series of buzzes, a weary male voice said, “Lt. Christiansen speaking …”

“Are you the district Coast Guard officer?”

“I'm one of his assistants. Who is this?”

“My name is Paul Schuman. I'm the master of a charter boat and I've got three and a half years of college, two in the Navy ROTC. Can I get a commission in the Coast Guard?”

“You should be talking to the recruiting officer.”

“I know, but nobody can get through to him. I just thought you could tell me if I have a chance, and maybe you can mail me some forms or something.”

Lt. Christiansen laughed. “You sure know how to expedite,” he said. “I bet you'd make a good supply officer.”

“I want to go to sea. I'm good with small ships.”

“You are, are you? Give me your name and address. I'll send you the forms.”

“Paul Schuman, Two-oh-nine Fieldstone Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts.”

“Well, you're lucky,” Christiansen said. “At least you live around here. We've got people from all over sleeping in men's rooms and railroad stations.”

“I guess that must be quite a problem.”

“You said it, boy. I got my own wife and kid in a hotel that costs more in a week than I make in a month.”

An idea hit Paul then. He didn't know whether it sprang from the milk of human kindness, from the practiced opportunism of his older brother, or from a lesson he had learned in some odd, reverse way from his father. Instead of simply sympathizing with Christiansen, he said, “If you want an apartment, I can find one for you out in Wellesley.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Like you said, I'm an expediter.”

Christiansen's voice suddenly turned sharp. “Look, I can't do anything for you because of this except send you some forms. But if you can find me an apartment near this crazy city, I'd sure appreciate it.”

“It will only take me a few minutes,” Paul said. “Do you have a telephone number it won't take me half the day to reach?”

In a clipped voice Christiansen gave him a number and abruptly hung up, perhaps in confusion. Putting another nickel in the telephone, Paul called Lucy Kettel, his mother-in-law.

“Mother,” he said, using the appellation she wanted, though it never seemed natural to him, “I just met a young Coast Guard officer who can't find an apartment around here for his wife and child. You must know plenty of people with big houses.…”

“Well, I don't know anybody who wants to
rent
…”

“There's a war on. Isn't it our patriotic duty to help servicemen?”

“I know, but I don't know anyone who wants to take a stranger into her home.”

“Let's face it, it would do me some good if we can do this guy a favor,” Paul continued. “He's an assistant to the district Coast Guard officer and I'm trying to get a commission. As an officer I'll get maybe five times the pay I'd get if I enlisted.”

There was a pause before she said, “The Hendersons have an apartment over their garage. It's been empty since their chauffeur quit. They're not planning on hiring another.”

“Please call them right away,” Paul said. “I'll call you back in five minutes.”

“How much rent will these people pay?”

“The guy's a serviceman. Tell the Hendersons that this is a matter of patriotism. Maybe the guy can pay fifty a month, not much more. Call right away. There's a crowd trying to get into this phone booth.”

Actually, the people waiting in line did not seem restless. They all had drinks in their hands and were watching with appreciative interest a sailor who was giving his girl such a hearty and prolonged embrace that he would have been evicted from the bar in peacetime.

While he waited five minutes Paul sat with the receiver to his ear to show he had a right to remain in the telephone booth. Finding that he had no more nickels, he conquered a feeling of waste and inserted a dime. His mother-in-law answered immediately.

“The Hendersons say they'll take him if you'll absolutely vouch for his character.”

“I vouch for it. How much rent do they want?”

“They'll need sixty a month if they're going to pay for the heat.”

“It's a deal. Give me their name, their address and their number.”

This time Paul had to put a quarter into the telephone, an extravagance that hurt him deeply. Christiansen answered immediately.

“This is your expediter,” Paul said. “I got you a garage apartment in Wellesley. Nice section. Sixty bucks a month, heated. Do you want it?”

“God, do I want it! I was going to send my wife and baby back to New London. I can't thank you enough!”

“Just send me the forms and answer me one question,” Paul said. “If I have all the qualifications, what happens? What's the timetable?”

“You'll take a twelve-hour examination in navigation and seamanship at M.I.T. on February second. If you pass that, you'll be wearing an ensign's uniform by April. What's the address of this apartment?”

Paul gave it to him and added, “It's only about a block from where I live. If you have any trouble give me a call.”