Departure by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

mate added themselves to the crowd, and the steward went to the box and returned with two pounds of butter. Putting it in a pan to melt, the purser began to sift his flour. There was an easiness about them, they had been together so long, but also a tenseness, and the steward could only think, “What a damnfool thing over a pot of soup.” But the wiper said stolidly, “I’d use arrowroot.”
    Nobody laughed. The purser stared at him for a long moment, and the wiper, a dark little man, nodded back solemnly.
    â€œYou got arrowroot?” the purser asked the steward.
    The steward went for the arrowroot. The purser let the butter brown delicately, and then turned it with the arrowroot, bit by bit; using a big wire whip and thicking the roux as he worked. They were silent while the roux cooked, and then, when it was ready, they watched him blend it into the soup. There it was, golden brown, almost eight quarts of it.
    â€œTaste it,” the steward said.
    â€œIt looks right,” the purser murmured, a curious expression on his face.
    â€œGo ahead and taste it,” someone else said.
    The purser tasted it, and it wasn’t right, and he thought of the little, dried-up Normandy woman laughing in his face. The others watched him but didn’t ask to taste it themselves. He added pepper and salt and tasted it again. The steward raised his brows inquiringly.
    â€œSomething’s missing,” the purser said slowly. They all felt what he felt now.
    â€œYou’ll get it,” the wiper said. “You only ate it once. You want to remember what it tasted like. Maybe that was a long time ago. Just think about the taste.”
    Now they felt worse than he felt, and there was an element of love as well as sadness as they watched him walk out of the galley onto the deck. “To hell with it, it’s just soup,” the carpenter thought, but he was sad too.
    The purser walked to the after hatch and sat down next to the cook, and for a while the two of them sat silent, watching an ordinary paint over the rust where shrapnel had scored and punctured the rail.
    â€œThe son of a bitch,” the cook said finally, but the purser said nothing at all, and the Greek guessed what it was. “They can somehow pull through on steak,” the cook said. “It will be tough, but they’ll pull through.”
    â€œIt’s not that. I feel like I’m coming home empty. It’s a crazy way to feel, but that’s what I feel.”
    â€œI was on a C3,” the cook said, “and I had a second who was a Swiss, and he put nutmeg into every soup he made.”
    â€œNutmeg?”
    â€œNutmeg,” the cook said. “Me, I make an onion soup from old gravy. I fry some onions and let them swim. To hell with it—it’s onion soup.”
    â€œYou ever put nutmeg in soup?” the purser asked.
    â€œI beat the ass off that damnfool Swiss once I found out.”
    â€œYou got any nutmeg?” the purser asked.
    â€œI got a bag of nuts somewhere.”
    â€œLet’s try it,” the purser said.
    They went inside, and the cook found the nutmegs. The purser took half a ladle of soup, and the cook scraped the nutmeg into it. Then the purser tasted it. “A little more,” he said. He tasted it again, and it was right, like no other soup the world had seen, and then he let the carpenter and the cook taste it, while he thought about the way the old Normandy woman had laughed. The steward wanted to taste it, and so did the wiper and some of the others, but the purser shook his head.
    â€œIf any’s left over,” he told them. “I got to get supper.” And he put the garlic bread into the oven to dry out slowly.
    That night, the purse stood on deck, arms on the rail, and watched a lighthouse blinking, on and off, on and off. He felt warm and close to a lot of people, and he wanted to cry because he was home and he’d say good-by to them and