petros898uhm

@@@@@When the ship goes down, you just ride a nice fat rat to shore "No, this is seriousJeez, I better blow it up And in the darkness he had fumbled for the tube, found it, and inflated the beltRed had watched him with amusementThe way they turned them out now, all the kids wanted to obey the rulesRed had felt almost sad"You're all set for everything now, huh, Hennessey?" "Listen," Hennessey had boasted, "I ain't taking any chancesWhat if this boat should get hit? I ain't going into the water unprepared Now, in the distance, the shore of Anopopei slid by slowly, almost like a huge ship itselfNaw, Red thought, Hennessey wouldn't go into the water unpreparedHe was the kind of kid who would put away money for marriage before he even had a girlIt was what you got for following the rule book He drooped his body over the rail, and looked down at the waterDespite the lethargy of the ship, the wake burbled rapidlyThe moon had passed behind a cloud, and the water looked dark and malevolent, terribly deepThere seemed an aureole about the ship which extended fifty yards from the side, but beyond that was only blackness, so vast, so dense, that he could no longer determine the ridge line of AnopopeiThe water churned past in a thick gray foam, swirling and shuddering along the waves the ship formed in its passageAfter a time Red had that feeling of sad compassion in which one seems to understand everything, all that men want and fail to getFor the first time in many years he thought of coming back from the mines in the winter twilight with his flesh a dirty wan color against the snow, entering his house, eating his food in silence while his mother waited on him sullenlyIt had been an acrid empty home with everyone growing alien to one another, and in all the years that had passed, he had never remembered it except in bitternessAnd yet now, looking at the water, he could have some compassion for once, could understand his mother and the brothers and sisters he had almost forgottenHe understood many things, remembered sad incidents, ugly incidents, out of the years he had knocked around, recalled a drunk who had been robbed on the steps leading up to Bowery Park near Brooklyn BridgeIt was a type of understanding which could have come to him only at this moment, culled from all his experience, the enforced restlessness of two weeks on shipboard, and the mood of this night as they moved toward the invasion beaches But the compassion lasted for only a few minut