You Are Free

  Chapter Fourteen

  So next Monday you muster in with Deck and after you get the muster report up to the bridge, you go down below to the supply spaces and report to Barazza and you spend the first morning climbing down ladders with the second class SK[118] Thomas to the storerooms deep in the forward half of the ship and as you drop down below the waterline, somewhere between the third and fourth decks below the hangar bay, you can hear the ocean slamming against the hull and the sliding rush of water on metal and then down past the reefer decks and further below than you ever went before, six decks down where the lights are low and the decks are wet and you can feel all that water all around you just one layer of aluminum away.

  After that you and Thomas climb back up to the second deck and then down again to the supply office where he gives you a chair on the front side of a desk and shows you where to fill your coffee mug and shows you how to check in supply chits[119] to make sure they are right because you get one number of about 200 wrong and instead of ordering helo parts you are ordering a new rudder or something and then you enter the chits into a log and then help create message forms so that the new parts will be on the pier when the ship hits Toulon.

  And it’s all kind of interesting and at least it’s different and you are not still sitting in the deck office listening to the deck apes shoot the shit, and even though the paperwork is getting to be kind of pain in the ass, but when you get done for the day, you’re not covered with grease and paint and all sweaty and you start to drift into having supply friends and away from your deck friends and when you hit the berthing at night you have to take a lot of crap from them.

  You are still in the deck office most of the time though and you still sit around with the Bo’sun and listen to his sea stories about how he was on a gun boat in Vietnam[120] running up the rivers and it was hot as hell all the time and the fucking Viet Cong would wait until you got the boat to somewhere it wouldn’t turn around and then they’d open up and you’d jump on the .50s and hammer the bush and that other Chicano Simenez or something would pop grenades over the trees while the Skipper hauled ass up the river farther and farther until one night you knew you must be over the border into Cambodia or some shit like that and you couldn’t raise the base on the radio anymore.

  So the chief decided that the only thing to do was to haul ass back down the river and so he opened up the throttles all the way and you tore ass back down the black water with the bush flying by and every four five miles the VCs would open up on you and you stood at the .50s the whole fucking way with those big guns hammering in your hands shaking your hands and your shoulders and your guts and all the sudden you notice Simenez there dead with his guts in his hands draped over the stanchion and then you all ran out of fuel and you were still about 20 miles from the Delta and the boat glided to a stop in the black fucking night and you all sat there quiet as little mouses and sweated it out until the Army sent a helo with 55-gallon drums of gas and dropped them on the far shore.

  So with the sun coming up you rowed the gun boat toward the shore slow as shit with these little paddles and a big boat and drifting on the slow current as every second you could see the trees a little more and then the boat got stuck on some sand bar still about twenty yards from the beach where the fuel was and so the chief made you and this black guy, Conner or something like that, jump out of the boat into the hot water and sinking into the mud and slog your ass to the beach and into the jungle and roll the drums back into the water with the stink of the place in your nose and then float them mostly underwater out to the boat where you climbed up the ladder and pulled a couple leeches off your legs and then you all hauled the drums up over the gunwale and into the stern cockpit and then pumped the fuel into the tanks and shifted weight to get the boat off the bar and it took about half an hour or maybe an hour and by the time you were done the sun was all the way up as your boat spun around floating down the river.

  By the time you got the engines primed and started loud as hell you were sure that every gook for fifty miles was running down there to kill your ass and then the chief hit the throttles and the boat jumped up in the water and you were flying down to the delta with the sweat drying in your hair and you never felt so good in your life so we didn’t get killed the Bo’sun says but Jesus I thought we were going to die and you ask the Bo’sun why the hell he joined the Navy when it was Vietnam and he said I woulda got drafted anyways and besides it was a good chance to get the hell out of east LA – you know, he says to you, it was either get killed in Vietnam or get killed in LA so what the fuck, you know.

  And you think that the Bo’sun is one tough motherfucker and you realize that the shit he’d seen you were never going to see and then you remember how he’d once seen rattled up a ladder on the starboard sponson when you were unrepping[121] and caught a chunk of falling rigging just above Kileen’s head while Kileen a total boot was crouching down with his hands over his head the Bo’ sun held the huge piece of steel there for a second and then carefully dipped it and tapped the Kileen on the head and said how the fuck did you expect that your little pin-dick arms were going to stop a 100 pound turnbuckle from crushing your fucking head, you dumb-ass motherfucker.[122]

  Then the Bo’sun shook his head and then by himself lifted the gear back into line with the rigging and said to Kieffer here rig this cock-sucking bitch back up here for me – you motherfucker, splice that goddamn line and get it through this screweye before I jam this right the fuck up your ass I am holding this piece of shit up for you bastard, least you could do is shake a fucking leg for me while Kileen laid there on the sponson and the Bo’sun looked down at him and said well, I ain’t goin’ to fuck you right here…get your ass back on that line and get ready to haul dumb piece of goddamn…been in this Christ-forsaken Navy for 23 goddamn years and I swear to my good Lord and savior that the fucking recruits get dumber every fucking…move.[123]

  And Kileen jumped up and kind of scrambled down to the end of the line before Bo’sun waved him back and said get your ass back up here back under this goddamn turnbuckle and while you put your tiny little ass into this job, I will instruct you as to how to make goddamn sure it doesn’t drop on your precious little noggin again but you remember how the Bo’sun’s face was all white and sweaty when he caught the turnbuckle and your remember that the Bo’sun had seen that you had seen and then he winked at you and smiled slow and that was something.

  The Bo’sun was a poet all right, like that old guy chief you had as a company commander, the guy who told you all not to introduce him to your mommies and daddies at boot camp graduation ‘cause he’d tell them just what a miserable fuck-up you were and how boot camp had not changed a goddamn thing.

  This bastard invented the bunk drill where there were these four little black dots on the decks of your compartment at Great Lakes where the four legs of each of the heavy old iron racks had to go and one morning he came out of the office and found a rack off its dots and had you guys stand one each at the end of the racks and lift them up and carry them all the way around the compartment, eighty guys, forty racks, in a big fucking chain circling around with your arms shaking and then you all had to put the racks back down right on the little dots and if he could see one dot[124], you were all going around again but you liked the chief and you like the Bos’un too because even though they are a pain in the ass they’d catch a turnbuckle for you too.