V.

his mouth had healed he was presented with a gleaming, regulation set of upper and lower plates. 'Oh God,' he bawled, and tried to jump over the side. But was restrained by a gargantuan Negro named Dahoud. 'Hey there, little fellow,' said Dahoud, picking Ploy up by the head and scrutinizing this convulsion of dungarees and despair whose feet thrashed a yard above the deck. 'What do you want to go and do that for?'   'Man, I want to die, is all,' cried Ploy.   'Don't you know,' said Dahoud, 'that life is the most precious possession you have?'   'Ho, ho,' said Ploy through his tears. 'Why?'   'Because,' said Dahoud, 'without it, you'd be dead.'   'Oh,' said Ploy. He thought about this for a week. He calmed down, started to go on liberty again. His transfer to the Impulsive became reality. Soon, after Lights Out, the other snipes began to hear strange grating sounds from the direction of Ploy's rack. This went on for a couple-three weeks until one morning around two somebody turned on the lights in the compartment and there was Ploy, sitting crosslegged on his rack, sharpening his teeth with a small bastard file. Next payday night, Ploy sat at a table in the Sailor's Grave with a bunch of other snipes, quieter than usual. Around eleven, Beatrice swayed by, carrying a tray full of beers. Gleeful, Ploy stuck his head out, opened his jaws wide, and sank his newly-filed dentures into the barmaid's right buttock. Beatrice screamed, glasses flew parabolic and glittering, spraying the Sailor's Grave with watery beer.   It became Ploy's favorite amusement. The word spread through the division, the squadron, perhaps all DesLant. People not of the Impulsive or Scaffold came to watch. This started many fights like the one now in progress.   'Who did he get,' Profane said. 'I wasn't looking.'   'Beatrice,' said Beatrice. Beatrice being another barmaid. Mrs. Buffo, owner of the Sailor's Grave, whose first name was also Beatrice, had a theory that just as small children call all females mother, so sailors, in their way equally as helpless, should call all barmaids Beatrice. Further to implement this maternal policy, she had had custom beer taps installed, made of foam rubber, in the shape of large breasts. From eight to nine on payday nights there occurred something Mrs. Buffo called Suck Hour. She began it officially by emerging from the back room clad in a dragon-embroidered kimono given her by an admirer in the Seventh Fleet, raising a gold boatswain's pipe to her lips, and blowing Chow Down. At this signal, everyone would dive for and if they were lucky enough to reach one be given suck by a beer tap. There were seven of these taps, and an average of 250 sailors usually present for the merrymaking.   Ploy's head now appeared around a corner of the bar. He snapped his teeth at Profane. 'This here,' Ploy said, 'is my friend Dewey Gland, who just came aboard.' He indicated a long, sad-looking rebel with a huge beak who had followed Ploy over, dragging a guitar in the sawdust.   'Howdy,' said Dewey Gland. 'I would like to sing you a little song.'   'To celebrate your becoming a PFC,' said Ploy. 'Dewey sings it to everybody.'   'That was last year,' said Profane.   But Dewey Gland propped one foot on the brass rail and the guitar on his knee and began to strum. After eight bars of this he sang, in waltz time:   Pore Forlorn Civilian,   We're goin to miss you so.   In the goat hole and the wardroom they're cryin,   Even the mizzable X.O.   You're makin a mistake,   Though yore ass they should break,   Yore report chits number a million.   Ship me over for twenty years,   I'll never be a Pore Forlorn Civilian.   'It's pretty,' said Profane into his beer glass.   'There's more,' said Dewey Gland.   'Oh,' said Profane.   A miasma of evil suddenly enveloped Profane from behind; an arm fell like a sack of spuds across his shoulder and into his peripheral vision crept a beer glass surrounded by a large muff, fashioned ineptly from diseased baboon fur.   'Benny. How is the pimping business, hyeugh, hyeugh.'   The laugh could only have come from Profane's onetime shipmate, Pig Bodine. Profane looked round. It had. Hyeugh, hyeugh approximates a laugh formed by putting the tonguetip under the top central incisors and squeezing guttural sounds out of the throat. It was, as Pig intended, horribly obscene.   'Old Pig. Aren't you missing movement?'   'I am AWOL. Pappy Hod the boatswain mate drove me over the hill.' The best way to avoid SP's is to stay sober and with your own. Hence the Sailor's Grave.   'How is Pappy.'   Pig told him how Pappy Hod and the barmaid he'd married had split up. She'd left and come to work at the Sailor's Grave.   That young wife, Paola. She'd said sixteen, but no way of telling because she'd been born just before the war