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Angi held back on that one — she wasn’t about to defend the Navy in this situation.

“The only thing I’m wondering about now…should I tell someone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Should I tell somebody that I think they’ve got a certifiable nutcase onboard the Alabama? Should I give this bible to someone?”

Angi thought that over. “I don’t know, Muriel.”

“I don’t either,” she said. “What would I tell them? That my husband has been having bad dreams and reading the bible? They wouldn’t believe me, so fuck it. Let the Navy deal with him.”

• • •

As Angi rode the ferry home, she wondered if she should say something. After all, it wasn’t just the Navy’s problem. Her husband was onboard that boat, the father of her unborn child. And if the navigator was losing his mind, that was probably information she should share with someone. But, she kept coming back to what Muriel had said — she didn’t have a lot to go on. Nightmares and bible reading, hardly enough evidence to declare a man insane. And what if Muriel was wrong? What if she was just another disgruntled Navy wife trying to stir up trouble for her husband? A call like that really could spell the end of Mark’s career, just the suspicion it might cause, especially as he was on the verge of screening for XO. Danny had certainly never said anything about the Nav going crazy, just that he worked harder than anyone he’d ever met and wasn’t particularly fun to hang out with. But certainly, he’d never said anything about the man losing his mind. She looked at the black surface of the water as they sped across the Sound. She remembered the first time she’d ridden the ferry during Danny’s first patrol, how while looking out at the water she was almost struck dumb with the thought: Danny’s under there. As the ferry pulled back into the Kingston terminal, Angi decided just to keep Muriel’s conversation to herself. If there was a possibility that the Navigator was going crazy, she’d just have to add it to the long list of things she worried about while Danny was at sea.

• • •

Kincaid watched as the red digital numbers on the treadmill turned from 4.9 to 5.0. Halfway there. He felt strong. He wasn’t breathing too heavy, and the dull pain in his right knee had departed, as it usually did around mile three. He cranked up the speed to 7.0, put the incline up another half percent. He felt his legs respond, a satisfying tightness in the hamstrings, and felt the sweat start to soak through the collar of his T-Shirt.

Kincaid was the only black officer on the boat, and one of just six African-Americans on the entire crew. The Navy was historically the least integrated service, Kincaid well knew, and the nuclear navy was the most lily white part of the whole operation. In addition, Kincaid was the only prior-enlisted officer on the boat. He’d signed up right out of high school, gone to boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, and completed the whole, grueling, nuclear power training pipeline as an enlisted man. He got halfway through one patrol on the USS Tecumseh, and in looking around at the officers it occurred to him: I’m as smart as those guys. So he applied for a special commissioning program for nuclear-trained enlisted men, got accepted, and attended Hampton College on a full ride courtesy of the US Navy. Then he went through the nuclear training pipeline all over again, this time wearing khaki and an ensign’s gold bars.

All that made him a few years older than his JO peers: he was twenty-seven. But Kincaid made sure none of them thought they were in better shape. He devoted every spare minute to working out, using every piece of the paltry exercise equipment the ship stored in Missile Compartment Lower Level: the treadmill, a rowing machine, a stationary bike, and a punching bag. Unfortunately, everything except the treadmill and the punching bag was broken. It had all been scheduled for replacement, but their orders had changed before the new equipment arrived. The broken gear didn’t disrupt Kincaid that much; his routine centered on the treadmill. But it bothered him deeply, as a submariner, to go to sea with shit broken.

Kincaid tried to run five hundred miles every patrol, tracking his progress on a sheet of graph paper taped to the state room wall. Each sheet from each patrol went into green half-inch binder. Whenever possible, he did his run in ten-mile increments, which took him about ninety minutes. It was the longest he could go, especially early in a patrol, without pissing people off for monopolizing the treadmill. Already, though, the competition down there in Missile Compartment Lower Level was starting to wane. People were getting lazy. A new patrol was like the New Year: everybody had resolutions. I’m going to qualify chief of the watch. I’m going to learn to play guitar. I’m going to lose twenty pounds. But usually by the third week, he pretty much had the place to himself.