Sepulcher By The Sea

SEPULCHER BY THE SEA / Nickell Romjue ? IT WAS NO EASY THING to go from operations research at the war college to a piddling army post like Fort Poe. Deems walked a little farther along the rampart and raised his binoculars to scan the tourists milling around the flag bastion, trying to crowd each other over the low chain-link fence into the moat. Fort Poe was the only wet-moat surrounded fort in the whole country, and since yesterday he was its commander. Commander of the Disneyland of the army. Splashes of green pastel and purple appeared in his lenses. Another tour of senior citizens had made it up the ramp and onto the terreplein and were pouring into the mob on the bastion to look out over the graveyard of wooden ships where the ironclads clashed in 1862. Some gazed long minutes over the wide roadsteads as if expecting the Merrimack and Monitor to rise from the depths at any moment. And not even named for a general anymore! In the madness of the times, truckling to Oval Office "populism," the army had renamed old Fort Comfort, the home of the old coast artillery school, for an enlisted man—the Master of Horror. General Comfort, who was a battle captain of the Seminole wars and son and sire of an F.F.V., had been twirling in his grave ever since. "Poe" was the army's bow to a White House order: "Humanize the soldier's environment," they'd said. "Scrap the 'big-kidon -the-block' symbolism of generals' names." Poe had been a private at the fort briefly in the 1820's before going insane as a writer. Morbid images began to stir in Deems' memory—sepulchers, pits, tombs by the sounding sea. Sick, sick. A mouldering mind, decadent. Decaying like the walls along which he stepped briskly, kicking out his frustrations. Deems turned the corner of the bastion and looked down the long line of the landward front. The parapet embankment fell inward from its crest to the wide walkway that stretched down the full length of the rampart, which formed a flat grassed roof over the vaulted casemates below. Here and there rusted pipes and small chimneys rose up out of the vaults—vents for the gases of old Rodmans and Dahlgrens. The fort sat smack on, the post historian had told Deems that very morning, a powder keg of live ordnance. There were abandoned caches everywhere. In fact, Deems' own office probably sat directly atop the old ordnance yard. And indolent cannoneers, from Poe right on down to the bored coastwatchers of World War II, had retired their shot and shell over the wall into the moat by the ton. The Missouri Review · 223 He relaxed his gait, slowing to inspect the unfamUiar structures and contours of his new domain. To his left, the parapet slanted up steeply, well over a man's height. Going to all fours, Deems clambered halfway up the embankment to peer over the crest through the sprigs of grass just beginning to displace last year's dried clumps. The ragged disorder of the parapet turf was appalling. Through the clumps, Deems caught sight of another gaily colored group congesting Moat Walk on the opposite bank. Wfvat was it with The Golden Years anyway that brought out the hideous Easter hues? Fat women in bright pantsuits pointed cameras into the moat and up at the embrasured stone wall and at Deems peering down at them. Like a sighted sniper, Deems ducked back behind the parapet, a motion that started him down the inner embankment in lengthening strides ending in a long squatting leap onto the rampart. He hit it with a bounce, stumbled upright, staggered, struck foot on stone, and went sprawling. Deems shot quick glances up and down the rampart walk as he got to his feet brushing himself off. Alone. Hmm. Now what in the hell were these stones? All along the rampart against the rise of the parapet were dozens of small monuments and markers. Small mounds rose before some, and on one a pile of dried dandelions half covered fresh dirt. Headstones! Deems stopped abruptly and bent...