Spooner Read Online Free PDF Page B

which you are to exercise personal discretion, Lieutenant,” he
     said.
    “No, sir.”
    Calmer studied him a moment and then nodded, dismissing him, and went back to the helm, lost in the image of the congressman
     having at his poor smothering wife.

    He cut the speed to three knots, the ship rolling now in five-foot swells. Approaching the spot. He went to collect the widow.
    Jensen was outside her door, as ordered. He knocked once, waited a moment, and looked in. To his enormous relief, she was
     still there. He felt ridiculous. What had he expected?

    The crew was assembled in parade dress all along the port side of the deck. The reporters and photographers had come up from
     the ship’s galley and were clustered together, apart from the sailors. Calmer stood with the widow and as he watched, one
     of the photographers, an old-timer in a duck hunter’s hat and a black cigar took the cigar out of his teeth, leaned over the
     side and vomited, some of it blowing back onto his pants and the cameras hanging from his neck. He put the cigar back in his
     teeth, pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed here and there around the cigar to clean up his mouth and chin,
     and then knelt and began working on his shoes.
    Calmer hoped the rest of the media wouldn’t begin chucking breakfast too, which was the way it sometimes went. Somebody yodels
     and a minute later you’ve got an avalanche. He couldn’t protect her from that.
    There was motion behind him, the honor guard emerged from below, and behind it the coffin bearers and the coffin. Three sailors,
     three civilians. The coffin was draped in a flag of the United States. Calmer had not seen who’d brought the coffin up from
     the meat locker to its present spot, but two of his healthiest-looking enlisted men now lifted it from the deck and set it
     carefully on the coffin bearers’ shoulders. Among the bearers were the congressman from the neighboring district and the two
     Toebox aides. The color guard was all from Toebox’s home district and had been brought on board with the widow and politicians
     for the ceremony. There was no official beginning, but the procession to the side of the ship began and the crew came to attention,
     and a moment later even the members of the press fell silent, and in the quiet you could hear the flags overhead snapping
     in the wind. The coffin bearers, meanwhile, sailors and civilians alike, took short, stumbling steps under the weight, and
     the ship pitched and rolled. The wind had moved to the north, and the ship’s bow was no longer directly into it.
    The civilians had all taken one side of the box, and the sailors from Toebox’s home district had taken the other. The sailors
     were taller than the civilians, and stronger, and that side of the box was riding half a foot higher than the other. Calmer
     now saw disaster everywhere he looked.
    The congressman from the neighboring district had turned red, as if he were holding his breath, and then he stumbled, and
     the whole civilian side of the casket seemed to stumble with him. The scene earlier on the deck came back to Calmer, the casket
     lying in parts and the congressman face up, a quizzical cast to his expression, as if there were something about all this
     that he still didn’t understand.
    Calmer stood beside the widow Toebox, and she moved slightly in to him, her shoulder touching his arm, but he could not be
     sure if she had wanted him closer or if it was only the rolling of the ship. She did not pull away, though, and the spot where
     they connected issued some sweet, unknown buzzing.
    The casket bearers reached the spot and set the casket down. Relieved of his load the congressman from the neighboring district
     pitched violently and pulled the flag off the flag-draped coffin in an effort to save himself from the fall. And Calmer felt
     her still there against him, slightly pressed in to him, all of her attention straight ahead. Did she even know they