“Well, I’ll tell you.” Marx rubbed his eyes, looked very uncomfortable suddenly. “Had me an uncle, named Tommy. My old man’s younger brother. I never met him. He was a radioman on one of those Navy Avenger bombers that disappeared out there all those years ago. Now and again, my old man would get in a funny mood, start talking about the Brooklyn neighborhood he was raised in. Soon enough, he’d be talking about Uncle Tommy and what happened to him. The old man didn’t buy the official U.S. Navy line about them just going down… all those planes, without a spot of wreckage. He didn’t believe any of it. The old man was of the mind that something out there reached out and grabbed Tommy and the rest of them boys. He would never say what he thought it was. But it haunts him to this day.”
Marx went on to say that his old man was in his eighties now. And every December he went down to Florida on the anniversary of Flight 19’s disappearance, out to Ft. Lauderdale and just stood there for a few hours, staring out over the sea, remembering his brother and praying for him.
“Yeah, the old man’s getting on in years, First, but sometimes he still talks about it. Told me he talked with some of the other crew members’ families and none of them believe what the Navy said either. Still don’t.” Marx shrugged. “I’m thinking Flight 19 ended up here. In this goddamned place. Maybe, maybe if I could find some trace of it out there and get my ass out through one of them doors Cushing was talking about… well, I think my old man could die in peace finally knowing. But one way or another, First, I got to get out of here. I don’t want my old man dying thinking that something out there took his son, too.”
Gosling patted his arm, knowing it had been hard for Marx to admit any of that. Like most sailors, he wasn’t given to airing his family secrets in public. Wasn’t given to showing a hint of the softness all men had at their core. What he had shared with Gosling was almost a sacred thing and Gosling knew he had to treat it as such.
“I’ll do anything I can to help,” Gosling told him.
“Hell, I know that, First. I knew you would without me even squeezing my soul out to you. That’s the kind of man you are. Everyone on the Mara knew that.”
Gosling managed a smile, uncomfortable as always with anything approaching praise. He swallowed, said, “What happened to Pollard?”
But Marx just shook his head. “Don’t know exactly. Like I told you, when the ship went down, I was treading water… then along comes the lifeboat with Chesbro in it. We didn’t come across Pollard until we got into the weed. He saw something, I know that… something that peeled his mind raw. But he won’t say what.”
Gosling could just imagine. For he remembered after the fog first encased the Mara Corday, remembered Pollard running on deck, half out of his head then, saying how something had grabbed Burky… the guy on watch… and pulled him out into the fog. Pollard had been in bad shape then… but what had he seen since?
“I tried getting that little shit to talk,” Marx said, “but all he wants is his mommy and I ain’t his fucking mommy.”
Gosling laughed. “I love you like a brother, Chief, but you’re not exactly real sympathetic.”
“Never claimed to be.”
“What Pollard needs is someone real easy to talk to. Somebody with some compassion.”
“You for chrissake?”
“No, not me. But I know just the guy.”
Then they were both looking over at George and he was looking back at them and wondering what in the hell he was doing wrong to get those hard-assed swabbies staring him down like that.
Marx went over to relieve Pollard on the oars, gave him a ration of shit for being crazy and spooked, said the first sea monster they came across he was throwing his shitting ass to that mother. Might even season it first so it tasted better.
Gosling smiled as he replaced George at the oars.
Marx. Jesus, he was something else, all right.
Saks would not tell Menhaus or Makowski where he had gone with Cook. He refused to say anything about it, just that they had business to hash out in private. But Menhaus saw how Saks had looked when he came back. Like he was all bound up, needed to shit something out but couldn’t find the proper opening.
After that, for the longest time, in the flickering orange candlelight, Saks just sat there with his knife in his hand and a dangerous look in his eye. Now and again, he’d cock his head as if he were listening for something he just did not want to hear.
“Rats,” he finally said after a time, “ship’s full of rats.”
“Rats?” Menhaus said.
Saks nodded.
Menhaus was beginning to believe that to Saks, ‘rats’ was the key word for anything he couldn’t or wouldn’t put a proper name to. A metaphor for just about everything unex-plainable aboard the Cyclops.
“I ever tell you, Menhaus, about the rats in Vietnam? Jesus, but we had rats there. Millions of rats. Bastards big as cats, sometimes bigger. They loved our dumps. They’d come into camp at night.”
