“Seventeen, huh?” Lee said. “I joined the Marines at seventeen.”
“How about that?” Joe Bill said. “A vet, huh?”
“Yeah.” Lee stood from the drawer, shut it gently and turned his back to Joe Bill. He reached into the duffel again and pulled out a couple of journals and some pencils, and as he did, a little black plastic rectangle rolled out onto the bed. Lee quickly tucked the thing back into the duffel.
“So where were you stationed?”
“All around,” Lee said, setting the books and pencils on the desk at the foot of the bunk beds. The cabin was close, and Joe Bill had to step back to let Lee in between him and the edge of the desk. But Joe Bill also realized he’d leaned in some as they’d talked, both because Lee had turned his back and because of the black plastic object Lee obviously hadn’t wanted him to see. Now as Lee stepped by, Joe Bill backed up almost out the door, nearly tripping over his three suitcases that still sat there on the cart. “California,” Lee said. “The Philippines.”
“Wow.”
“Japan.” Lee neatly lined up the journals atop the desk and put the pencils in the top drawer.
“And now to Switzerland,” Joe Bill said, moving back into the cabin, putting some six or eight inches between the suitcases and his heels. “That’s fantastic, really. You on the GI Bill?”
“Are you planning to unpack or just trip over those things the whole time?”
Joe Bill took the three green Samsonites off the cart and into the cabin, leaving the cart outside in the hall. He strapped two of the suitcases in the rack beneath the lower bunk and set the third atop the dresser. When Joe Bill popped the locks, the first thing he saw inside was the red leather Bible. Lee saw it, too.
“So you’re a Christian?”
“Well, yeah,” Joe Bill said. Religion was another topic that embarrassed him. He was a Christian, he supposed, in the sense that he’d gone to the First Baptist Church of Tyler every Sunday morning and Wednesday night since he could remember, like everyone else. But he hadn’t brought the Bible on purpose, had little interest in the subject, and certainly didn’t want to discuss it here.
His mother had worried about him going to France, a Catholic country, because she thought the people there were drunken and promiscuous. He’d gone, at her insistence, to see Reverend Dunn, who’d asked him if he thought he was strong enough to weather the storm of the Papists, if he was prepared not only to stand up for his own faith but to witness to the benighted French as well. He reminded Joe Bill of his duty to be a fisher of men. He’d written something illegible in his shaky old hand on the inside cover of Joe Bill’s Bible, and his mother had packed the Bible with his clothes.
“Humph,” Lee said. He was sitting on the top bunk now, leaning his back against the cabin wall.
“I mean,” Joe Bill started, stopped, said, “heck, I’m just a guy from Texas. We’re all Christians. But I’m no preacher or anything.”
“But you believe in God.”
“Yeah, but—”
“There’s no God.”
“Well, you can—”
“How can you believe in God in the light of science?” Lee said, his voice rising to a higher pitch, his palms out-turned in front of him. “Science will one day prove everything, figure out everything. God’s something people needed when they lived in the Dark Ages. Step into the light of science, pal. Science is the only god.”
“Well, now,” Joe Bill said, “I don’t know.” He felt funny about saying all of this to someone he’d just met. But Lee was so sure of himself, somewhat hostile, and Joe Bill felt that to merely back down, or worse, to admit that he agreed with Lee, would make him seem weak, childish, like someone who didn’t know what he thought about things. “I don’t think God and science exclude each other.”
“But if you say that, you’re still holding on to the old ways of thinking. You can’t water it down by saying it’s part God and part science or that God controls science. God doesn’t control anything. Nobody controls anything, or anyone. You still want to think that there’s someone in charge. There’s no one in charge. We’re all just alone, on our own. There’s no force but science. There’s no supreme being. There’s nothing but matter, and anyone with any intelligence can see that.”
With that said, Lee slid off the bunk to the floor, moved quickly past Joe Bill and out of the cabin, pausing to step over the luggage cart. And thus ended the longest conversation the two men would have for some time.
Over the next several days at sea, Joe Bill realized that Lee was avoiding him. Joe Bill had always been an early riser, but he was never awake before Lee, and when Joe Bill went out onto the deck, Lee would go back to the cabin. If Joe Bill went back to the cabin, Lee would get up from the desk, close and lock the journal he was writing in, put the pencil back precisely in the desk drawer and go back out onto the deck, casting only the quickest of glances over his shoulder at Joe Bill. At meals the ship’s four passengers shared a table—Joe Bill, Lee, and the Wades, an older couple who were on their way to visit France following Colonel Wade’s recent retirement from the Army Signal Corps. The Wades would sit next to each other on one side, Joe Bill and Lee on the other, Lee always sitting directly across from Colonel Wade and eyeing him suspiciously while they ate. The Wades got along with Joe Bill well enough, but they were always trying to engage Lee, who would answer their questions with blunt, toneless replies and never follow up with questions of his own. Mrs. Wade especially seemed fond of Lee. She’d ask him about his plans of study—“psychology or philosophy”—where he was from—“New Orleans”—if he had a wife or a girlfriend—“no”—and what he wanted to do with his life. Lee merely shrugged and continued eating.
One night, four or five days into the passage, about the time the days became a haze of wave and fog, the four of them were sitting at dinner. Colonel and Mrs. Wade had been talking to Joe Bill about his parents back home in Tyler, and Joe Bill had been giving them the standard stories. When she turned and asked Lee about his parents, Lee just stared for a long moment at Colonel Wade, glowering more than usual. Then he shook his head, blew out a high, sharp laugh, and set his fork down next to his plate. The ocean was rough that night, and the fork rattled against the plate as Lee began to speak.
“My father’s dead,” he said. “I’ve never seen him. My mother has to work at a drugstore to support herself. She’s old and sick and frail and has to work at a drugstore. There’s America for you. They’ll put her out on the street if she doesn’t keep the rent coming in. Put her in jail if she doesn’t pay her taxes. She’s never gotten anything for it, either. Just a sore back and wrinkled, calloused hands and off to work again at the drugstore. There’s America.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Wade said, surprised. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just—”
“Home of the free,” Lee said now, slapping the table and sending his fork to the floor, where it slid against the bulkhead and rattled there even louder. “Land of plenty. Hah! Land of a sickness and a cancer. A cancer called money. It eats you and eats you. And when it’s gone you’re dead. Or wish you were.”
“See here,” the colonel said.
“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Wade said.
Joe Bill said nothing. The officers at their table had stopped eating to stare at the scene. The steward had entered the room at the sound of shouting and stood at the corner of the passengers’ table saying, “Please,