Greenwald throws wine at Keefer

Greenwald throws wine at Keefer during a dinner celebrating Steve Maryk’s acquittal, converting an evening of relief and conviviality into a public confrontation over the trial’s moral cost. In front of the officers, Greenwald argues that Maryk was only partly vindicated, that Tom Keefer escaped responsibility while benefiting from the case, and that Greenwald himself had wronged Captain Queeg by attacking him in court. The wine in Keefer’s face gives that indictment a physical ending, leaving the party silent and its supposed triumph visibly unsettled.

A celebration built on relief

The dinner begins in high spirits. Willie Keith is enjoying the release from fear that followed the verdict, and the officers drink large quantities of Keefer’s champagne. Harding, drunk and affectionate, repeatedly embraces officers and recalls that Maryk had once given him his hat when he needed to vomit. The story becomes a running joke: when Keefer predicts Harding will have to repeat the performance, Willie holds a silver bowl of celery beneath Harding’s mouth, prompting laughter from the table except for two puzzled older guests.

Keefer then announces Greenwald’s arrival as that of a conquering hero. The officers greet the lawyer with wine and cheers; he appears rumpled, unsteady, and bemused by how far the party has progressed. When the room calls for a speech, Greenwald initially resists, then tells them he is drunk and has been drinking with the judge advocate, trying to get him to retract the insults he had used against him. He says they finally shook hands after the ninth or perhaps tenth whisky sour. The comedy of the entrance and the party’s exuberant welcome establish the mood Greenwald is about to break: the officers treat the acquittal as a victory, while he sees a compromised outcome beneath it.

The toast turns into an indictment

Keefer introduces Greenwald as the “rescuer of the oppressed and the downtrodden” and the hero who slew “Old Yellowstain.” The toast reduces the trial to a simple heroic contest, with Queeg as the defeated villain and Greenwald as the brilliant advocate. Greenwald’s speech refuses that flattering version. Turning to Maryk, he says the dinner is a sham: Maryk is guilty in part, and the acquittal is only partial. He predicts that the reviewing authorities will regard the verdict as a miscarriage of justice, that Maryk will receive a reprimand in his promotion record, and that his hopes of entering the regular Navy will be lost.

Greenwald says he secured the acquittal through legal tactics, including making Queeg and a Freudian psychiatrist look ridiculous and appealing to the Navy’s pride. He recalls that the defense nearly failed when the USS Caine’s favorite author testified. In his view, that testimony almost sank Maryk, because Keefer did not openly support the case against Queeg. Greenwald says he could not force Keefer into the witness line and had let him withdraw instead. The party’s applause for a clean victory thus gives way to an account in which Maryk bears the consequences while Keefer has kept himself clear of the most damaging exposure.

Keefer named as the beneficiary

Greenwald’s toast shifts from Maryk’s uncertain future to Keefer’s apparent success. He says Keefer has achieved a perfect score: he pursued Queeg, preserved his own reputation, and stands to become the next captain of the USS Caine. Greenwald imagines him accumulating favorable fitness reports, publishing his novel about the Navy, making a fortune, and marrying Hedy Lamarr. The extravagant prediction is barbed because it sets Keefer’s anticipated advancement and literary success against Maryk’s expected return to fishing and reprimand.

Keefer starts to rise, but Greenwald tells him he is finished and continues the toast. He explains that he defended Maryk because he came to believe that the wrong man was on trial; the only way to defend Maryk, he says, was to bring Queeg down. He admits anger at having been forced into that position and shame over what he did. His stated debt to Queeg makes the accusation more complicated than a simple attack on an enemy: Greenwald says Queeg had once protected his mother from Hermann Goering. The man Greenwald helped discredit was therefore also someone to whom he felt personally indebted.

The wine and its aftermath

Greenwald refuses Keefer’s dinner and wine, raises a final toast to the author, and throws his yellow wine into Keefer’s face. Some splashes onto Willie Keith. The act happens so quickly that officers at the far end of the table do not initially understand what has occurred. Maryk begins to rise, but Greenwald pushes him back into his chair and offers to wait in the lobby if Keefer wants to fight. He acknowledges that they are both drunk and that Keefer would probably beat him.

The other officers begin muttering and looking sideways at Keefer. Greenwald leaves, stumbling slightly near the door. In the silence that follows, no one meets Keefer’s eyes. Keefer laughs, dismisses Greenwald as crazy drunk, and tells Willie to have the food served, but the response cannot restore the earlier celebration. The meal proceeds quickly and quietly; when Keefer cuts the cake, the applause is brief and dispirited, and the party ends after coffee with five unopened bottles of champagne left on the table. The confrontation does not undo Maryk’s acquittal, but it changes what the dinner can mean: the courtroom victory remains, while its unequal costs and Keefer’s role in the story have been made impossible for the officers to ignore.