Sweet Reason Read Online Free Page A

on some books to keep the blood rushing to his head (one of his medical theories was that this increased potency), Wallowitch cut a ridiculous figure. He had a large, bulbous nose, a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed when he talked, body odor, shaggy hair and a loose fitting uniform that looked like a hand-me-down from another war. Only much later, when the Poet pointed it out, did everyone become aware that the constant flow of jokes formed a moat around Wallowitch, keeping everyone at arm’s length. Nobody could say for sure what the Shrink thought about anything or anyone; he was the wardroom clown who lived in terror of being caught in the act of holding a serious conversation.
    From the moment he reported aboard the Ebersole (at which time, according to legend, he took one turn around the rusting deck and put in a formal request for transfer to a “ship”), the Shrink kept dipping into a seemingly inexhaustible well of humor. Very early on he started making up the names of knots; “take a turn on that bollard,” he’d order some seaman, “with a double crossover sheepshank half-hitch double-bitch, okay?” In one of his milder escapades, egged on by a klatch of junior officers, he honed hisceremonial sword to a razor’s edge and shaved with it on the fantail in full view of half the Atlantic destroyer force. Another time he suckered Chaplain Rodgers into a theological discussion.
    “Does God have sperm?” the Shrink asked innocently.
    “I’d imagine so,” the Chaplain said thoughtfully.
    “And if he has sperm, do you think he jerks off?” Wallowitch pursued.
    “Now come off it, Shrink, that’s not one single bit funny.”
    “But Chaplain, the question has serious implications. If he has sperm and a sex drive and jerks off, we have nothing to worry about. But if he doesn’t relieve the tension somehow, it’ll build up until we have another immaculate conception. And we all know how much trouble the last one caused.”
    Then there was the time Keys Quinn lost the tip of his middle finger at Iskenderun; it was sliced cleanly off when a mooring line whipped taut while the Ebersole was tying up alongside the burning tanker. With everyone around staring in wide-eyed horror, Quinn casually strolled away to find the Doc. At which point Wallowitch scooped up the digit and went racing down the deck after him. “Hey, Keys,” he yelled, “let’s not leave personal belongings lying around the deck.”
    Now and then one of the Shrink’s sallies got him into hot water with the Captain. The first time that happened was when Otto Rummler was riding the Ebersole on an antisubmarine exercise in the Caribbean. Rummler, a former German U-boat skipper who was about to become captain of a destroyer that the Americans had donated to the West German Navy, was extremely well liked by J. P. Jones, who considered him a thoroughgoing professional, “the kind of man a country can count on when the chips are down.”
    One night in the wardroom Rummler was politely discoursing on “ze great American poze — zat you dizlike vaws undfight zem mit reluctance.” “On ze ozzer hand,” Rummler went on, “vee Chermans come across az eager beafers, a reputation vee hardly dezerve conzidering ze reluctance of ze Cherman Staff to follow Hitler into Czechoslovakia in zirty-nine. Ach, mein friends, ze world it haz a miztaken notion of uz Chermans; vee are not vaw criminals but careerists, pure und zimple careerists. Zat is ze joke.”
    Rummler exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke, which wafted into Wallowitch’s face and made him cough. Wallowitch screwed up his face as if he were wearing a monocle and, enunciating each word precisely, said: “Az all ze world knowz, ze Cherman joke iz not a laughing matter!”
    Captain Jones sensed instantly that the Shrink had insulted his guest and insisted that Wallowitch apologize then and there, which Wallowitch did.
    “No offenze intended,” he muttered.
    “None taken,” Rummler said