Every time the quartermasters officially logged the ship's position, twice a day, at sunrise and sunset; they made it a point to carefully plot it on a large chart hung on a mess deck bulkhead. It wasn't just for the amusement of the crew, the idea was that if we were to sink unexpectedly, everyone would have an opportunity to know where away the nearest land was, and how far. We had been away from Norfolk for several days now, steaming at a steady 12 knots for the Canal, so I knew that that evening we would we transiting the Windward Passage, the channel separating Cuba and Haiti, the gateway to the Caribbean.

It seemed that this was the first time I had some time to myself. They had been working us pretty hard, drills, refueling from an oiler that came alongside, the interminable inspections, an endless grind of vital and trivial activities which seemed designed primarily to keep our minds off our troubles. I was exhausted, I should have gone below and collapsed on my rack--I had the midwatch that night, bridge lookout; but I was determined to have some time to myself. I needed to get away. It was my first time away from home, at least the first time when I knew I would be away for months, and the enormity of my new situation was starting to sink in. Life had become intolerable, constant work, constant fear, the unbending routine, the discipline, the feeling that you were always being watched, that you were always behind, and you were never alone. I was starting to become homesick, and not just a nostalgia for what I had left behind, but the horrifying realization that my life was changing for a very long time. The days last forever when you're 20 and the only escape is sleep, when they let you. If you were awake you were suffering, and you dared tell no one.

Life below decks was a nightmare, the berthing spaces were small and crowded, mine was the size of a small classroom, and forty men and all their possessions were crammed in there. My little piece of it, my rack and my locker, gave no room for anything but sleep, and during "lights out" only silence and immobility were tolerated. During the day it was constantly being cleaned, and during the
brief times between it was inevitably patrolled by petty officers determined to make your life miserable. Later I came to realize that this regimen was essential to prevent disorder and even violence, but at the time I was convinced I had been stranded in the circle of Hell reserved for bullies and their victims. I was seized with a creeping claustrophobia of the soul that never stopped, and I was coming to fear that there was no possible way I could endure two more years of this. Life had suddenly become impossible, and there was no relief in sight.

I finished my coffee, lit a cigarette and pushed through the blackout curtains covering the watertight doors onto the main deck. For a moment I was blind, the ship was running dark, with only her navigation lights on, and until my eyes adjusted I had to grope my way by feel to the spot I had picked earlier: a bollard on the starboard side of the fo'c'sle, by the lifelines. I could see a glowing coal already there, someone must have had the same idea, but when he saw me coming he flipped his butt over the side and walked aft. I guess he sought solitude as well. I was alone.

I sat on the cold, wet steel, gripped the lifeline stanchion with both hands and began to weep. Never, before or since have I been so profoundly unhappy, so uncompromisingly miserable. Part of my depression came from my intellectual realization that my situation was really not all that bad, certainly not as terrifying as that faced by the infantrymen huddled in foxholes, waiting for death to come for them out of the endless night. After all, thousands went through what I was going through now and survived, even prospered. But I realized now how weak I was, how unprepared for even this relatively mild inconvenience. I was forced to face my inadequacy, my childishness and my cowardice. I bitterly rehearsed my own shortcomings in my own mind, I missed my mommy, missed my girlfriend, I missed my stuck-up clueless college friends and my puerile civilian existence. I punished myself with my own sarcasm for my foolishness and my weakness. I was starting to see how pathetically I was responding to an episode that thousands were breezing through right now, that millions had successfully navigated in the past with no lasting damage. I was ashamed of myself for my inability to cope with an experience that even I recognized to be essentially benign. I was worthless and I wanted to die.

Dewey pushed through the night like a locomotive, the water rushed past, flickering with the phosphorescence of the tropics, the only light visible on a dark and overcast night. The air was warm and moist, like I had remembered it from so many similar nights growing up near the sea in Florida. I couldn't even enjoy the beauty of it, I flogged myself with my incapacity to extract even a little pleasure out of what I knew was going to be a milestone in my life, if I could just get through it. The ship groaned, the waves slapped against the sides and hissed and flushed as they sped on their own mindless errands. The rumble of the engines throbbed through the soles of my boots and I could hear the hum of the ventilators, the wind in the wires, even the squeak of the sonar. I knew this was all there, and I hated it, and I hated myself for hating it. It was wasted on me, I just wanted to go home and I hated myself for my weakness.

Far out to sea, on the invisible horizon, I saw a flash. A few seconds later it repeated, and then again, at regular intervals. It had to be Cuba, the light at Cabo Maisí, the very easternmost point of the island, warning this Yankee warship to give her a wide berth. I recalled from the ship's dead reckoning track on the mess deck chart that we would pass within 20 miles of the Cuban coast. The lighthouse beckoned to me, it called. It would be so easy, I thought. I could slip over the side, no one would miss me until morning muster, even if the lookouts should somehow see me go in the water, by the time the word got to the bridge and they turned around there would be no way they could find me. They had made this point very clear in our training. It's hard to recover a floater even in broad daylight and calm seas. And even if they did find me, I could always say it was an accident, I wouldn't get in trouble, I'd get the traditional shot of medicinal brandy and a day off from work, Naval custom. But no, Dewey would roar off into the night without me, I would be on my own. I could swim west, towards the land of my grandfathers. Could I swim for a night and and day without stopping? Probably not, I was a good swimmer but twenty miles of open sea was probably too much, not to mention the current and the sharks. If the Cubans found me I would probably spend some time in a Cuban jail, perhaps be interrogated, but I knew nothing that would betray my country, and certainly not even Fidel would lock up un naufragado indefinitely. I would go home a hero, perhaps even be discharged from the service. But even if I didn't get away with it, even if I drowned, wouldn't it be better than this? The agony was intolerable, I just couldn't take it any more, even taking my chances with the sea seemed preferable to this infinite unhappiness.

Of course, it was lunacy. There was no way I would jump into that water, no way I could talk myself into it. It was just another pathetic fantasy to distract myself from the immediate necessity of dealing with the problems of the real world. I was contemptible. The light blinked on, as if laughing at my hesitation and my whimpering helplessness. The lighthouse offered an alternative, albeit an almost hopeless one, but an alternative nonetheless; and I was too much of a coward to even kill myself and put an end to it all. I would go back to the torture and humiliation and endure it because I had no other choice.

I could feel the soot starting to rain down on me. Like a gentle hard drizzle, invisible in the dark, but unmistakeable by its feel, its sound, even its smell. Periodically, the black gang would run live steam through the stacks to clean out the accumulated carbon from the day's steaming. Usually, it was done in the middle of the night to avoid giving away the ship's position and to spare the crew the mess. Like now. They were "blowing tubes" and I was on deck. The skipper usually took the wind into account to avoid fouling the ship, but sometimes it couldn't be helped and the deck force would have an extra special clean up in the morning. I knew, I was on the deck force, and not only would the clean dungarees I was wearing now need to be laundered, but the ones I wore on sweepers tomorrow would get filthy as well. More work, more bother, and another inspection for sure tomorrow. And I would have to take another shower before I went on watch at midnight, cutting even further into my sleep time. I flipped my smoke over the side and went back to work.