Joe Williams leaves Del

Joe Williams leaves Del after a public confrontation turns their troubled relationship into a final break. The departure follows a cycle of jealousy, reconciliation, and financial frustration: Joe packs his suitcase, abandons their household, and sets out for New York City, where he intends to look for work and pursue a second mate’s ticket.

A relationship under strain

In Norfolk, Del’s days were divided between her office and evening work at the American Red Cross canteen, while Joe was often already in bed when she returned. He heard her talking and joking outside their door with Army officers who had brought her home, and imagined an intimacy that intensified his jealousy. Their arguments could end in reconciliation, but the same conflict returned: Del said he did not understand her and accused him of interfering with her war work. At other times she was affectionate, and Joe’s love for her surged back with the closeness.

Their quieter routines held a different promise. On Sunday mornings, when Del was too tired to get up, Joe cooked breakfast and they ate together in bed. She praised him and urged him to find a well-paid shore job so she would not have to work. Yet her accounts of wealthy men who had wanted her to leave Joe, and of a rejected offer of a pearl necklace, left him feeling diminished rather than reassured. When he tried to talk about a possible life with children, she discouraged the subject. Their domestic intimacy persisted, but it did not settle their competing hopes for the future.

Work, parties, and mounting resentment

Joe looked for employment and came close to becoming a foreman at a repair shop in the Newport News shipyard, only to lose the position at the last moment to another applicant. The missed opportunity sharpened his sense of dependence as Del continued working. On outings with Del, Hilda, Army officers, and a midshipman from a destroyer, Joe felt socially dismissed. Del accepted attention from men in uniform and sometimes left him alone with the company; he experienced these occasions as further proof that he had no place in her wartime world.

He began spending more time in a poolroom with men he knew, drinking corn liquor heavily. Del was angry when she found him drunk, but by then he had become less concerned with her disapproval. His drinking did not create the underlying divide, which had already appeared in their arguments about her work and their incompatible expectations, but it deepened the estrangement and helped set the conditions for the final encounter.

The street confrontation

One night, after going to a fight and drinking afterward, Joe saw Del walking with an Army officer. In the darkness, the two stopped in doorways, and Joe saw the officer embracing and kissing her. He waited until they were under a streetlight to make certain that the woman was Del, then challenged them. When she began laughing, Joe struck the officer, who fell onto a small patch of grass beneath the light.

Del responded by threatening to have Joe arrested for insulting the uniform and assaulting the officer. She denounced him as a slacker for remaining at home while other men were at the front. The accusation landed amid the couple’s existing dispute over patriotism and Del’s war work, turning a private jealousy into a public quarrel about military service and loyalty. Joe sobered up, helped the officer to his feet, and told both of them to leave him alone. Rather than continue the confrontation, he walked away.

Leaving Norfolk

Joe went straight home, packed his suitcase, and left the household. He sought out Will Stirp, who was in town, woke him, and explained that he had broken up housekeeping and needed money to get to New York City. Will lent him twenty-five dollars and supported his decision to leave. They talked until dawn; Joe then slept through much of the day before catching a boat bound for Washington.

During the overnight trip, Joe stayed on deck rather than taking a room. Conversation with an officer brought him into the pilot house, where the familiar smell of old pipes and the view of buoys and lighthouses helped him begin to collect himself. He planned to visit his sister in New York City and try for a second mate’s ticket through the United States Shipping Board. His stories of having been torpedoed impressed the men aboard, none of whom had crossed the Atlantic. The departure therefore ends not with reconciliation but with a practical new direction: Joe leaves Del, turns toward the sea and prospective work, and resumes the unsettled life from which their relationship had briefly offered shelter.