

## M/V Pleiades

Her final voyage

A novel by

R. Cliff Harris

©2013

Smashwords Edition

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To all the ships at sea

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people.

-Abraham Lincoln

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few vertues.

-Abraham Lincoln

## Contents

INTO THE LIGHT

ALONE

ABU GHRAIB BLUES

NAVY DAZE

ADRIFT

FOUR FIFTY-SIX

MISSION ROCK RESORT

SILVER BIRDS

TURNED TO

DJIBOUTI VICE

FIRST BLOOD

FORE 'N AFT

PERPETUAL MOTION

MID WATCH

THE GULLY GULLY MAN

HIGH SEAS

BT DAWN

BUNKERS

BREAKOUT

RUMORS

HEIGHT OF POLARIS

BITCH BOX BLUES

ALEX

AN-PDR-27

NUKES

UNDER THE GUN

DEATHDAY

THE POET

GLOSSARY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

August 25th 1989

### INTO THE LIGHT

So uh...can I ask ya a question? Ever smell something in a dream? And I don't mean to ask if you ever dreamed you're smellin' somethin'. I mean really smellin' something, and we're not talking breakfast driftin' in from the kitchen, either. The reason I ask is the first thing that hit me was the stink. Forty-Nine Plymouth, no mistake about it. If you've never been in a Forty-Niner, like my folks used to call it, there's nothin' I can tell you. If you absolutely had to know where I was coming from, like just what that smell was like, you'd have to go find you one of them old-time bombers and sit in it. The next thing that hit me was that I wasn't hearin' words. What I was hearin' was like barks and yaps. And last but not least, and what really bowled me over, was that I was being carried. No shit. There I was in my mother's arms. But all this wasn't like a memory or a dream. I was there. It was like I was really there and I was smellin' stuff. Really smellin' it. Go figure.

There we were. We were getting out of the Forty-Niner, my family I mean. There was my sister, Marie, hoppin' around. She couldn't even have been in grade school. And my parents, they were like kids too. My old man's tattoos were sharp and crisp, fresh from the war in the Pacific. During the Second World War the government moved my grandfather from the mine to the shipyard. That there was just how a coal miner's daughter collided with a merchant seaman. The sun hadn't even faded them tats a tad, the way I'd become accustomed to remembering them. And ma, she was dressed like you'd picture June Cleaver to dress, with the hair to boot. And after we like got situated there on the sidewalk, we started walking towards this brick house, and I knew the house. It was my mother's aunt's place. Tower City, Pennsylvania. "Upstate" is what we used to call it, bein' as it was upstate from Philly. Tower City was a coal-mining town that had pretty much died right along with the mining industry. At one point it must've been a hoppin' place. I'll never forget the last time my mother and I visited my father's grave before she died. She pointed at this old dilapidated house on the way out of town and she said, "That was the whore house, Frank."

Onto the porch of my mother's aunt's house we went, and my old man knocked on the front door. A young aunt Anna answered the door. Christ, it never dawned on me she ever had been younger than the old, bent-over, and wrinkled soul that I remembered. Her husband had been killed in the mines and she never did leave that town. It had been an ugly accident. In those days, before the mines shuttered their doors, they'd blow a whistle when somebody died and the townspeople would all gather together...and wait.

And then that barking and yapping I told you about earlier started up again. And as it turned out, I was the center of attention. But mind you, all I could do was gawk back. So after a spell I'm carried by my mother up a long flight of steps in the front hallway and carried into a room on the second floor. I'm placed in a crib and, after a little doting, I'm left there. I listen as my mother's footsteps fade away as she descends the stairway. Boy, times have changed. The room was barren. There was no carpet on the hardwood floor and only a few pieces of furniture. There was a doily on a chest of drawers, and on it a lamp with a rich red fluid in its pimpled glass base. It must have been springtime. The window was a quarter open and the scent of the mountain air invaded the room. Lace curtains swayed gently in the light breeze. Other than the furniture, all there was was a big cast iron radiator in the room and a crucifix on the wall. The crucifix was one of those one's that opened up and had the holy water and candles and stuff for the last rights. Aunt Anna's husband, the one that had been crushed in the mine, he had had his open casket viewing right there in that house, right there in their living room, and where the couch usually was was where they sat the casket. That's how they did things back then in Tower City.

So I'm in that there crib and I'm lookin' around. The party was obviously downstairs. I was missin' my first boat, in a manner of speakin', so I started wailin' away. Screw this, I wanted down stairs. Well, after a spell my mother reappears. She gently feels me and, no, I don't have a full diaper thank you. Then she leans over and again gently picks me up and softly croons something I can't make hide nor hair of. A baby bottle appears like out of nowhere and, hey, no thanks, you're missin' the point. I just wanted into the mix down stairs. I push the damn thing away, so I'm placed back down in the crib and, watchin' me all the while, she backs out of the room. As her footsteps fade down the stairs again, I give up. What's the point? Hey, take it from me, if you have you a tot at home, there's more to their existence than food n' crap.

BAM. Fade to black.

So then all of a sudden I'm sittin' on my parents' bed in our row house on Saint Vincent Street in Philly. Our house was right across the street from Jardel Playground to be exact. And again, there is Marie, my sister. I figure she's in maybe second grade and I haven't hit kindergarten yet. She's sittin' on the bed there with me and she has a small toy car and she is looking out the window at the traffic light on the corner. When the light is green she meanders around with the toy car, navigating the pattern on the bedspread. When the light changes to red, she stops. But what gets my attention is out the window there is a U. S. Navy blimp floating in the sky, up there among the clouds. The Philadelphia Navy Yard used to have more blimps than a park has pigeons. They used them for maritime patrols in the Atlantic and based them there. Again, this like ain't no dream. It's like I'm really there.

BAM. Fade to black....

So, like shit, what the hell's goin' on? Whisky tango foxtrot? Next thing I know I'm sittin' in our kitchen there on 72nd Avenue. We had moved from that row house to this big-ass twin house. My old man wasn't sailin' boson no more. Now he's the NMU Port agent in Philly. He had made the big time. I'm at the kitchen table studying the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates. I'm starin' at a drawing of an earthworm. My mother's on my shit big time because I'm screwin' up in school. I figure I am in second or third grade, hell I don't know, when do they teach ya about backbones? I do remember Sister Assumption doing the teaching, though. She was ancient, but it was hard to tell just how old she was. That was back in the days when all the nuns dressed like penguins. And when anybody seriously screwed up, she'd say "And they shot Lincoln." Yo, from the looks of her she just might have cast a vote for him.

So the doorbell rings and ma goes to answer it. Obviously we're not talking a door-to-door salesman because there was a ruckus goin' on. Next thing you know, these guys in suits, shit, three or four, come into the kitchen. Turns out they were G-men, you know, FBI. They started shakin' down our house, something to do with my old man's union business. Ma and me got our very own agent to keep an eye on the two of us as they proceeded to dismantle the place. And all the while my mother is standing there holding the warrant and sobbing.

BAM. Fade to black....

So there she is, my mother, crying again. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, there I am at my old man's funeral. A heart attack blew right by his sclerosis of the liver. My mother had given the undertaker a fifteen-year-old picture of him, and I'll be goddamned if he didn't look fifteen years younger planted right there in his casket. Just by lookin' at him—you know how they look like figures in the wax museum—I could have told you exactly which picture my mother had given the mortician. All the people were standing around awkward like, but when you heard the comment about him lookin' good, you knew they meant it. And there was the smell thing again. You couldn't see the walls of the place through all the flowers. The place stank like a flower shop. There was a parade of union punks there. Sorry my ass. Them boys were there to conduct business, not to mourn. Yeah, a dead port agent. Hey, we're talking employment opportunities and career advancement. Them assholes were like lickin' their chops and they weren't the least bit bashful. And all the while they're being all polite to my mother. Well you know what, brotherhood my ass. After all them flowers died, that was all she wrote. My poor mother was left to twist in the wind and fend for herself. She had always been a housewife. What the fuck was she supposed to do to support herself? The union survivor's pension hardly covered a pot to piss in.

I startled myself when I looked down. I was wearing my high school ring, in my first semester of my junior year. I found that damn ring a while back. Frickin' thing didn't even fit on my pinky. But what the hell, turned out I never graduated anyway. My old man was the only one who could kick my ass, so after he passed away I ran amok.

BAM. Fade to black....

Well, the smell wasn't the only thing that came thundering back big time. This time I'm pie-eyed in P-I, the Philippines that is, Magasisi Boulevard to be exact. And again, I ain't dreaming about bein' drunk off my ass. I am drunk, big time. A full bag. I'm ricochetin' down the street there headin' for the Quarterdeck, a bar I've been told to stay clear of by none other than the captain of the replenishment tanker _Wichita_. I'd been thrown out of high school after being nailed with a pint of Jack Daniels in World Affairs class, and mind you we weren't studying the booze industry in Tennessee. Into the Navy I went. Hey, what's a drunk to do?

So this here was my first taste of the third world. Subic Bay -- "ugly man's paradise" -- the place where zit-encrusted adolescence collided with green-card mania. If you trip into a bar there and talk to a woman, you are now property. One of the most vicious scrapes I ever saw was two of them bar girls goin' at it over ownin' the rights to this squid. And you don't pay the women, you pay the bar. The "bar fine" is what it is called, and after paying it the little lady would take you home and bug you to buy her shit from the Navy exchange there on the base.

Yeah, ass-backwards all right. The women over there chase _you._ Go figure. And ships stayed there for a long while, owing to they used the shipyard there and the low-wage labor to do major maintenance, so you stayed there for weeks. So I meet this cute little number and we start going steady. After knock off I'm in my civvies and over the "shit river bridge", they called it, which led off the base and into Olongopo like a heat-seeking missile. A buddy of mine married his little honey ko. He was a second class BT. He had met her during an earlier WestPac Cruise. They had their wedding in this Catholic church in Subic, which is like thirty clicks south of Olongopo. I took my girl and when we left the reception this local police like guy starts arguing with her in Tagolog. Then he takes her to the local magistrate, which turns out to be a bunch of guys with a tub full of ice and beer playing poker on a porch. Her crime? She don't have her bar-fine tab. You see, I had picked her up at her apartment, not the Quarterdeck where she worked, so I had to go all the way into Olongopo to the Quarterdeck and pay the bar fine and bring back the receipt so I could spring her. Like I was saying, the place took a little getting used to.

So, to make a long story short, I start drippin'. Evidently the little woman had been doing some moonlighting when I had duty days. Man was I pissed. That bitch. I got to get my butt shot up and the Navy don't let anybody off the base until they stop leakin', which in my case was four days. And like I said, the old man had forbid me from going back to the Quarterdeck owing to how pissed I was. You slap a lady over there and you are on legal hold until they sort things out, which can take months. I waddled over the Shit River Bridge with every intention of stayin' away from her, but like I said, I'd been drinkin'.

Magasisi Boulevard. The smell of open sewers battled with the monkey meat they was cookin' on street stands all over the place, and all you heard was the sounds of them little dirt bikes whining off in the night. They dueled with the jitneys, these Jeeps they chromed and decorated the shit out of. So I go into the Quarterdeck and there she is, sittin' there at a table all pretty like. Lucky for me she ain't with another squid 'cause getting in a brawl with somebody would've brought the Shore Patrol on for sure. I'll never forget, I walked up to her and leaned over her table on my fists and slurred, "Bitch, you gave me the clap." Well, I was dealing with a professional. She didn't even bat an eye. "I didn't give you the clap," she says, "you bought it."

BAM. Fade to black....

What hit me next was the heat. There I was getting bumped around in the back of a little dinged-up Toyota pick-up truck. Man the heat and the dust just had their way with you. The sun was still low on the horizon being as it was early morning. You knew it was gonna be a scorcher. It was me, this fella' named JW, and a whole bunch of suitcases, and in my case a seabag being jostled around in the bed of the truck there. We were in Djibouti, in Africa. We were inside the harbor compound driving past all the warehouses and shit. I'm not saying anything to JW, you'll know why soon enough. I'm bushed. We'd been flying for what seemed like a week. I'm lookin' and lookin' and then I see her, for the first time. She was there by the pier, hull down, and you could only make out her superstructure and stack and masts above the dock and all the crates and crap strewn all about on the pier. Yes sir, that there was the first time I ever laid eyes on the motor vessel _Pleiades_.

BAM, fade to black...and pitch black is how it stayed this time.

I started hearing something, a sound. I just couldn't make it out. It didn't sound natural or mechanical, and I couldn't really make it out for some time. I really can't explain it. The best I can do is say it sounded hollow like, like when Darth Vader breathed, except it was a constant sound, not breathing. And over time it got louder and louder. Louder and LOUDER. I don't remember anything else, you know, like the temperature or smell or me even. That must be why the others that've been down this same road must have come up with that out-of-body bullshit term, you know, the "experience." So I start to get to the point where this here sound starts to hurt, you know, like on a carrier flight deck during flight ops, and all the while it's pitch black. Then all of a sudden the noise just vanishes, like BAM. But, like right when that happened, a little pinprick of white light punctures the blackness off in the distance. _Way_ off in the distance. No sound now, just the light. If it was light, that is. I ain't sure what it was, but it grew steadily, or I was being drawn towards it. I couldn't figure out which it was, but it bathed you in warmth. No light like I ever saw ever made me feel like this here beam. Man, it beat the piss out of Jim Beam even, and this here is a boozehound talking, don't you know.

And just like with what happened with the noise, the light thing grew steady. I could see beams headin' my way from it, like light beams through a smoky room. And all these beams headin' at you made it seem like a tunnel. A tunnel I was moving real steadily down.

Into the light.

### ALONE

Near as I could figure, I was one pearly-gate bound bozo. I figured after a little jawbonin' with Saint Peter, I'd be off to eternal bliss. And blissful I was there in the light, until I got nudged back to my senses, that is. Something nudged me from behind. I wasn't real aware of my body until this thing hit my back. Then I really got thumped, and it knocked me clear out of the tunnel. All of a sudden I was in a brilliant aqua. No more black or ball of light. I turned and holy shit, and I mean holy shit, this giant snake, this constrictor, was snakin' all over me. It had some lunch lined up, namely me. It was wrappin' all around me. The fucker was going for the kill. The thing was like eight or ten inches thick and so long I couldn't tell where the head or tail was. I started squirmin' all around trying to get away, but it was hopeless. The more I struggled the more entwined I got myself. Then I just up and gave up.

And things just got worse. Another snake had him a victim maybe twenty or thirty feet away. Except, Jesus, it was awful, he had himself some hot lunch. The body it was snaking around was horribly burned. Later when the G-men were grillin' me, they sure were interested in this guy. But lookin' at him you couldn't figure out his race let alone his face. He was burned so bad there weren't any fingers on the stumps that used to be his hands. And past that snake and guy was something really bizarre. What I saw looked like the surface of the sun. No shit, I don't know how else to put it. It was a brilliant sea of yellow, lapping and churning all about, and brilliant to the point where it actually hurt my eyes to look at it. And we were moving towards it, the snake and me.

What I thought I was looking at then was a sea of souls. Not individuals, like we are now, but like a pool of energy, everybody all lobbed in together. Them serpents, they were taking me and my toasted friend to hell. I thought I was sailing right into that blazing pool there to join 'em all. Why the light earlier? Hey, I suppose hell wouldn't be hell without a little taste of heaven. What I honestly thought I was seeing was the big mystery unfolding right there before me. Life after death, I mean. 'So this is how it is,' I was thinking.

If I'd kept on that line of thought, I more'n likely would've died. And it would've been a real painful, miserable end. What it was that pulled me through was a tuna. No shit. I haven't had a tuna-fish sandwich since. I don't want to take the chance of scarfin' down the tuna that I owe my life to. Bad Karma. But there he was, a yellow-fin, moseying right on by me. Sound faded in too. I heard this deep roar. And these things started adding up, making me take another look at what I was seeing. Then I realize it ain't no serpent. What it was was me and this other poor bastard are wrapped up in the _Pleiades_ ' mooring lines. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was under a burning sea, and in that same split second it became real obvious to me I was shooting towards the surface, floating right to the top, and there would be no stopping that. One thing I learned out of all this right here is there must be something to training. Years before, way back in Navy boot camp, they'd taught us to wave your arms 'round like a son of a bitch when you were under burning oil. That way you separate the flames, making a hole so you can get up an' get yourself a breath. I remember they stuck us in this pool an' tried to make us practice this. We paddled around, waiting for lunch mostly. But without even thinking about having been taught to do this years before, I just started doing it, like I'd been programmed like a machine or something. And I got to admit it worked like a charm, except they really ought to put the word out that the breath ya get is like sucking on an idling truck's tailpipe. We're talking burning hot and nasty. But hell, the bottom line in a case like this is it worked. It's not like I'm bitching. An' again, there's no telling how long this wavin' all 'round an' breathing an' bobbing went on. But like I said, it felt like damn near forever.

At one point, while I had ducked under water, I caught me a glimpse of what looked like a dark hole, a black border. And I made my way for it. I started working in that direction. And after a piece, I got there. Lady Luck smiled on me big time that day. If only I could've got to Reno. I came out of the flames upwind. See, that way I was free an' clear. If it'd been downwind, the flames would've just kept on coming at me. But there I was, all of a sudden, under a blue sky. And with that I felt like a million bucks just then. Until, that is, I started thinking an' looking all around. Once I'd convinced myself the flames were heading away from me, I rolled over on my back an' tried as best I could to rest a bit, to catch my breath. It's funny 'cause I remember my ears hurting something awful. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why until it dawned on me I'd been wearing sound-powered headphones. They must've been wiped off my head in such a way that they almost took my ears with 'em. I'm lucky they didn't break my neck. And the back of my legs hurt. You know, the calves. I must've banged 'em pretty good flying off that rail like I did. I'd been perched on the _Pleiades'_ handrail.

But the more I thought, the worse it got. I caught myself looking 'round for the _Pleiades_. That was the first thing I did after I got up the energy there. You can't see much at all from the sea, when you're in it I mean. Ya can hardly see over the waves all around you, even when you're up on a crest. 'What the hell happened?' I started wondering. The more I thought in that there direction, the more I wished I hadn't. The _Pleiades_ must have exploded. She must've been ripped open if we were talking 'bout burning fuel oil. She might've even went down. What else could it've been. But why?

Well, thinking 'bout that there took me from bad to worse. It was a straight shot. If there'd ever been a case of out of the frying pan an' into the fire, this here was it. The only thing I could think of was they had dropped one of them warheads they'd got. Obviously it wasn't any nuclear blast, or I wouldn't have been there at all. Hell, I would've been vapor. But I knew from my Navy days that these bombs had high explosives in 'em to detonate the warheads somehow. An' the high explosive could go off without making the big boom. Low order explosions, that's what they called it when the HE went off without detonating the nuke. That's what the Navy had trained me for: weapons-handling accidents. Only thing I could figure, the only thing right there that made any sense, was that there was what had happened on _Pleiades_. And that there was the problem, see. That's what scared the living shit out of me. What all this meant was that for those of us who had survived that blast, there was like no hope. We were goners. It having happened so fast, you knew a Mayday couldn't possibly have been sent out. An' the _Pleiades_ wasn't the type of ship to send one of those out anyway, being as we'd been operating like a spy ship all along.

What all this came to mean was that the ones who'd been blown away in that blast were the lucky ones. They'd gone fast. The rest of us were looking at a slow death. So I took to screaming. It was bad enough thinking you were just gonna wither away there in the sea, to rot like a grape on a vine, but the thought of dealing with it alone, that thought there was just unthinkable. And I screamed, and I screamed. And every once in a while, I'd stop an' listen. And the only answer to all the noise I'd been making was the sea. The sea just lapped on as it tossed me all about. I would've given my left nut right then and there to have been able to walk on water. Just for a split second, just to get up an' get one good look around, to prove to myself there was nothing out there. That the _Pleiades_ was really gone.

In a roundabout way, Lady Luck was still with me. I got to trying to kick myself as high in the water as I could, to get a look-see. I was getting maybe as high as my belly out of the water, that was about all, but something caught my eye, something orange. I made my way over in that direction. For a split second, I thought I'd come across somebody, but what it turned out to be was a life preserver, a kapok, entangled around a splintered lifeboat oar. I untangled the life vest. I was more interested in the whistle attached to it than the vest itself. I got that thing an' started blowing it like a son of a bitch. The sound from a whistle travels miles at sea. That's why they string 'em on life vests. I just about blew the little ball right out of that damn thing.

But again, the only answer was the swish of the sea an' the laps of the waves. That sound there was starting to get on my nerves. After a while I gave up an' put on the vest. During all that what I'd been holding on to was this broken oar. And I started laughing, hysterical like. What had hit me so funny was the old saying about being up a creek without a paddle. Here I was all by my lonesome it looked like, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, clinging to a fricking paddle. That there back then, that there just tore me up. A creek would've looked awful good to me right then. Any ol' creek. No doubt about it, I would've traded that there paddle for a creek, alligators 'n all, in a heartbeat.

Then I started throwing up. I don't know if it was because of all the salt water I'd swallowed or maybe it was just plain fright. Not that the reason would've made any difference. Try treading water an' barfing at the same time sometime. It's a real treat. Plus, wearing the vest, I couldn't just duck out of the way. After I settled down a bit, I started wondering how it would end. I mean, this here really sucked. We weren't talking the Pacific. This here wasn't tropical water, it wasn't freezing but it wasn't warm either. Warm enough for sharks I figured. Or maybe I'd last long enough to starve to death. But thirst would get me first, I realized. Jesus, water water everywhere....

I didn't even have the luxury of hanging myself if it got unbearable. That thought there had me reaching for my knife, but they'd taken that off me before I got stuffed below decks. I wouldn't even be able to slit my wrists an' pray I went before attracting sharks. I couldn't help thinking that a night out there was gonna be murder. And I began to see the sea there in a way I'd never seen it before. And it's probably how I'll see it for the rest of my life. I don't think there'll be any helping that.

It was like I didn't exist. Maybe that's the best way to put it. All the times before I'd seen the sea, it was always me an' it. I was looking at the water, either from the beach or from a ship, but it was always me an' it. Drifting there like I was, it was like I was being ignored, like the ocean couldn't give a floating fuck. I was an absolute nothing! The ocean had been tossing seawater about at that very spot for millions of years, and it'd keep doing so for another couple of million, 'til some continent came drifting by, more'n likely. So who the hell was I. The only answer was I really wasn't a whole bunch more to speak of than the bubbles left over from the whitecaps. I'd exist for a spell, and then be gone. An' that was that. And except for me, who the hell cared. Insignificant is the twenty-five cent word. I felt insignificant. An' anybody else that'd been there would've felt that same way, too. That was all there was there to feel.

Here I'd survived a whole pack of Uzi-toting maniacs, and a blast big enough to send a ship straight to the bottom, only to bob to death. And that's what got to me the most, the fact I'd pass away there in the sea, an' nobody'd ever know, much less care. But, as it turned out, I was only in the water four hours and forty minutes. And we're talking almost an exact figure, 'cause I got it from the Navy. That's one thing the Navy is good for. It logs everything. Absolutely everything. If the world ended, they'd have the exact time when written down somewhere. You could bank on it. So I got the time from them that the _Pleiades_ got nailed, subtracted it from the time the boat officer reported getting me on board, an' came up with, like I said, four hours an' forty minutes. The first hint I got that I was gonna be rescued was when I heard an airplane coming over low. You could tell it was a plane 'cause it hummed. Helos have a beat to 'em. It came by so low that he must've been looking for survivors.

Naturally I started waving an' screaming. But it was probably that orange vest I was wearing that really caught their attention. It came over again an' I got a quick look at it. It was one of those P-3's, one of them four engine Navy patrol planes. I knew he'd seen me because the third time he came over, he dropped a smoke float. I could see an orange pillar of smoke off in the distance. But it was close enough to me to make me believe it was me he'd spotted. An' just so there couldn't be any doubt, 'course I started swimming toward it.

Well, I never reached it. A Navy motor whaleboat came at me from behind. A sailor on the bow reached out with a boathook an' I grabbed a hold of it. I almost expected it not to exist, like this here was all in my mind or something. But it was real, thank God for that. I was pulled up to the boat and a couple of 'em lifted me over the gunwale. Besides the regular boat crew they had 'em a corpsman in the boat. I got laid down on the bottom of the boat an' covered with a blanket. The boat officer was going over his walkie-talkie about me being a male Caucasian an' he was guessing my height, weight and age an' all. An' not doing a very good job, I might add.

Them guys in that boat said all I was saying at the time was "son of a bitch". None of this made sense to me at the time. I mean, the Navy being right there an' all. But it'd been so long since anything had been making sense, I just let it all happen. I heard the boat crew officer give the order to head back to their ship. It was the destroyer _Dahlgren._ The prettiest ship I'd ever seen, I might add. I just lay in the bottom of the boat until they got it in the davit, but then I got my second wind. They had a stokes litter there for me to get in, but I refused to get in it.

The ol' man, a Navy Commander, was right there when I climbed out of the boat. I walked right up to the guy, an' what I did 'bout knocked his socks off. I saluted 'im. More out of habit than anything else. But like I said, you could see on his face it knocked 'im for a loop. He had to catch himself, he almost saluted me right back. Habit's a two-way street I guess.

"What about the helo?" he asked.

That right there was straight out of left field. I didn't know anything about any helo. All I'd seen was that P-3.

"What helo?"

He got to looking like he wanted to deck me right then an' there.

"Where are you from?"

"Philadelphia, originally," I answered. That got a twitch out of 'im too.

"Can I have your name?"

"Sure, Frank Sawyer," an' then for good measure I rattled off my social security number.

His XO, executive officer, was right next to him writing all this stuff down, like a good XO. The captain turned to the corpsman that had been in the boat with me.

"Get him below and see to him, Quinn."

"Aye aye sir," the corpsman answered.

With that I was taken down to sickbay. Walking through the passageways on a Navy destroyer, I felt right at home. But it still didn't seem real. I half expected it all to up 'n evaporate. You know, 'bam, fade to black.' In sickbay there I took the best and without a doubt the most enjoyable shower of my entire life. When I got out, there was a hot meal waiting there for me. Why I would've signed the papers for a twenty-year hitch right then'n there. They had two guys guarding the door to the passageway that I could see, but it was just me an' the corpsman in the sickbay itself.

"Are there any others?" I asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"Have they picked up anybody else?"

"No, I don't think so," he said. "You're it so far."

After I had finished my meal, he pointed towards the bunk.

"You can hit it," he said.

An' hit it I did, an' I don't mind telling you, I did something there I hadn't done in years. I cried myself to sleep.

### ABU GHRAIB BLUES

So I would come to find out it's just like they say, "it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings." An' ol' Bertha, why, at that point there, she hadn't even powdered her nose.

I was out for ten hours. No shit. It's in a Navy log somewhere. Guess I was hell-bent on getting caught up on some serious sleep all at once. Maybe it was just relief. When I woke up, it turned out I still rated a couple of watchdogs. A different enlisted guy, I guessed he must've been another corpsman, was sitting in sickbay there with me. He'd been there all along more'n likely, reading a paperback. As I swung my feet out of the rack, he put his book down and made him a phone call. He called the captain to say I'd woken up. Outside sickbay was a couple of guys on guard duty like before. For somebody that'd been sound asleep, I had me a lot of attention.

All these guys here were under orders not to talk to me. That became real obvious real quick. But telling a sailor not to talk is like telling a cop not to be cocky. At first I didn't even get the time of day off these guys. But as time went on, an' who I was got around, I got to trade a couple of tidbits here 'n there. It goes without saying that right then I had a whole bunch of questions. But as far as asking questions went, it was a one-way street heading straight at me. Whenever I asked something I got a "Are you serious?" like look. The only thing I got out of those guys then was that the ol' man was coming down off the bridge to talk to me.

What I was was a hot potato. Then an' there, Benedict Arnold had nothing on me, an' I guess under the circumstances, I could see how they saw it that way. The first thing the old man asked me when he got there was how I felt. An' how I felt was stiff. Stiff all over. And a bit dizzy to boot. All that probably came from being batted clear off the _Pleiades_ straight inta' the drink. He had with 'im there a clipboard. On it he had him some questions. The guy was polite, but he made it real clear things were gonna be on his terms.

"What can you tell me about the helicopter?" was his next question.

Here we go again, I thought.

"Helicopter? Ya got me. All I saw out there was a P-3."

"Yes, you're correct, we did have a P-3 in the area, but what about the helo?"

"Don't know nothin' 'bout any helo. But I couldn't see much from the drink, captain."

He stared at me for a while. The way he was looking at me reminded me of the look you get off doctors. His eyes were right on me, but it seemed like his mind was somewhere else going a thousand miles a second. I just sat there all quiet. I had nothing to add.

"What was the name of your vessel?"

" _Pleiades_ ," I told 'im, an' he wrote it down on his pad.

"How long had you been aboard her?"

"Three, four weeks," I answered. That there really hit me. All this shit had been packed into that there amount of time. I got to thinking about that to where I missed his next question.

"Sawyer," he said, getting my attention back.

"Where did you join the vessel?" he repeated.

"Djibouti." He wrote that down too.

"Do you remember the date?"

"Ah, no I don't." With all the flying and my drinking an' all, hell, I couldn't remember.

"Who operated the ship?"

"Man, I have no idea."

"Do you have anything to declare?"

Looking back I realize I took that question all wrong. I was thinking like it was a customs question, which made it seem real stupid. Declare what? Hell, I was treading water when you picked me up. You guys already had been through my pockets. But what he was fishing for was a confession. See, I was being handled like I was a war criminal. A POW. That hadn't dawned on me yet at that point. But not to worry, they was gonna make it crystal clear soon enough. So, as it turned out, I shook my head "no" to that question for the wrong reason, but the answer was good either way. That was the end of my first interrogation.

"I'd like to remind you that anything you say, to anyone on board here, could be used against you. I suggest you keep to yourself and behave. You are in serious trouble."

Well, as far as he was concerned I might've been in serious trouble, but the way I saw it I was in better shape there than I'd been in in a long time. I mean I'd have to really work at getting a bullet in the brain at that point. I'd have to earn it. And the ol' three hots'n-a-cot I rated sure as hell beat treading water all by your lonesome in the middle of the freezing, fricking Atlantic. Yeah, that there right then was the type of serious trouble I could handle. Granted, we weren't talking the life of Reilly. I wasn't allowed out of sickbay. They brought me my food and there was a head in there, so except for when I left, I was stuck in that one space. But by then, after what all I'd been through, I didn't exactly have high hopes about anything. I knew better than to expect it to ever get really Reilly.

And I don't think them guys there took me for a criminal. You know, the real people, the enlisted guys. Like I said, they weren't supposed to talk to me, an' they never did, at least not when officers or chiefs were around. What did the trick, was that one of the guys standing guard duty at the door had a brother who'd been on the guided missile frigate _John L Hall_ back 'round the time I was there. And blood being thicker than law'n all, like, that there loosened a few lips. Plus, we were talking tit for tat. These guys here, see they were pretty much in the dark themselves. They hardly knew what the hell was going on either. There was a lot of that going around back then it seemed, no matter what ship you were sailing on.

So anyhow, because of that, I came to find out their doings up 'til then. The _Coontz_ class guided missile destroyer _Dahlgren_ , _Spruance_ class destroyer _Ingersol_ , and the _Kidd_ class guided missile destroyer _Callaghan_ had been off Gitmo doing damage-control training, routine stuff ya do before a cruise, when all of a sudden it was drop everything an' haul-off balls-to-the -wall to hunt for the _Pleiades_. An' when it came to the _Pleiades_ an' what she'd been up to, ya see, I could shed some light on that. So I did. A fair trade. It wasn't like I was trying to pry military secrets out of 'em. All I was really after was news about the _Pleiades_. What I found out was that she'd been sunk all right, by a couple of Harpoons from the _Callaghan_. And it turned out they hadn't given up the search yet, but the _Dahlgren_ , the tin can I was on, was heading in. She was full-speed-ahead heading for Norfolk, to drop me off the story went. There were still the other two ships out there, the _Ingersol_ and the _Callaghan_ , and they were staying to keep looking. But they didn't figure there was much hope. I also found out that I was still the only survivor they'd come across so far. Alive that is. They'd recovered a couple of bodies, but nobody else alive. That there got to me, and it started me wondering. I asked if they'd found men or women, but nobody there knew. It'd been one of the other ships that'd fished 'em out.

Then I run across the li'l' bit o' dope that finally cleared up the ol' man's bunch of helo questions. What all that was about was that the Navy had lost three guys in a helo. An H-2, I think it was, had been lost from the _Ingersol_. Word they had was we'd shot it down. It'd been red-eyed right out of the sky. The ETs had figured that much, somehow. You know them 'n their magic boxes. That was news to me. It might've happened before I'd shown up on the weather deck. It must've happened off the bow or JW or I would've caught it, you'd figure. We might not've heard nothing because of those noisy winches back aft. But if it'd happened off the stern ya had to think either me or him would've saw it. But like I said, at least finding that out cleared up for me why the ol' man kept quizzing me on helos.

But the general idea 'bout how they handled me on the way in to Norfolk there had been "hands off." At the time I really wasn't getting me a very good picture of what I was in for. Whenever any of the loads were there, you know, any of the Khaki, it was mum's the word all around, which meant I spent a fair amount of time alone with my thoughts 'cause they were keeping me pretty much under their thumb. Ah, but what thoughts they were. That little cruise there to Norfolk was when things started coming at me, catching up like. Something started really eating away at me. Guilt's 'bout the only way I could put it, but you know, that really doesn't fit the bill either. I don't know what to call it. It was like I was wanting to laugh 'n cry at the same time, an' I just couldn't for the life of me fit it on the same face. Why on earth was I there? Why was it only my dumb ass? I kept telling myself, 'hell, it ain't my fault,' but that there didn't seem to work. As true as it was, it didn't do the trick. It just didn't seem possible that I'd done, at least as far as anybody knew at that point, what everybody else on the good ship _Pleiades_ hadn't managed to do. I'd survived. I thought it might've been they had us separated. Cops do that, you know. That way they can punch holes in your bullshit. Shoot down your stories. I just couldn't see me being it, the only one left. Sure wasn't like the me I knew. Not with my kinda luck. All my life, I'd always been the one stepping in it. But then again, round two wasn't even in the cards at that point there. I had no idea what I was gonna be in for.

That right there, that would change. I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I guess I half expected these guys to just take me for my word, like I was just gonna trot off down the pier, you know, maybe after a warning or something. Yeah, right. An' they shot Lincoln. But it wasn't like they could send me to the mast. Hell, I wasn't in the Navy any more, fellows. You guys already threw my ass out. No problem, see, they had them a better idea.

On the fifth or sixth morning there on the _Dahlgren_ \-- you'd have to check you a Navy log somewhere to find out which day for sure -- I got woke up early an' they had breakfast there waiting on me. Nobody was saying diddly as far as what was up, but by the looks on a couple of my buddies' faces, I knew something was going down. Looks don't lie on a buddy's face.

I heard flight quarters passed over the ship's 1MC down the hall and I didn't have to guess what that was all about. You even could hear from where I was there in sickbay the helo come in and set down with a thump. Then you could hear the chains from the tie downs being dragged across the flight deck. It didn't shut down though, it just beat on all the while. A guy in flight deck gear showed up and he had with him a pair of bright orange coveralls. I got handed them an' was told to put 'em on. Then I put on a flight deck inflatable vest an' a cranial, they call 'em, one of those flight deck helmets. Then, and get this, they handcuff me. One of those 'round the waist numbers. Like after wrapping me in all this safety gear, they shackle me up so I can't get to any of it. What a well-dressed rock I would've made.

After all that I got led out onto the flight deck and they loaded me on the helo. The flight crewman got me all situated in a seat an' buckled down, then he signaled the pilot an' we were off. Up, up'n away. That's what I like about silly-ass airdales. They don't putz around. Not one bit. And that just might've been my last day at sea. We landed at a Navy airfield somewhere, must've been 'round Norfolk, and I got my first taste of how things were gonna be from then on. The party, see, was over. We sat while the engines died down, an' after the blades had stopped but the turbines were still whistling on I got unbuckled. A van pulled right up to the helo. The side door slid open an' a bunch of G-Men got out. Poured out, just like in the movies. They were in suits and packed guns an' a couple even had earphones and all. Two of 'em got in the helo with us and I got unshackled so they could remove my cranial and vest. Then I got re-shackled with the cuffs and got sat back down there for a minute.

The pilot handed one of these guys, one of the agents, a big manila envelope an' that guy opened it an' looked through it right quick, like he was checking on something. What that was, I don't know. It must've been the captain's report or something. Then this guy looked at me an' motioned to the aircrewman to stay put, an' I got hustled into the back of the van. There was three more G-Men an' a driver already in it. That van didn't have any windows so I didn't get a good idea of where we were. Not that it mattered. I got driven straight to a jet that was waiting for us. One of those little business jets, like a ten or twelve seater. An' straight into that jet I went, but not 'til after all the van guys had spread out on the strip there like they were looking to protect me from getting shot. Like they were worried about snipers or something. And I'm looking at all this thinking, 'If you guys are so frickin' worried about me gettin' picked off, what the hell am I doin' in a day-glo orange jumpsuit?'. But anyhow, me an' the whole crowd from the van got into the jet OK, an' off we went. With all this, I began to realize just how deep the shit was. It wasn't looking like I'd be home for Christmas. It could be maybe I'd be gone for good. Ya hear stories, ya know, but until then I hadn't paid 'em much mind. I'd always thought they were just stories. All this right here was new turf. Looking around me there, I knew I wasn't about to find me any buddies in this bunch. They were nothing but manners in suits.

"Mister Sawyer, would you come with me, please?"

"Watch your step, please. Watch your head, please."

They would've made, the whole lot of 'em, killer butlers. That flight wasn't very long. It was just a short hop. Before I knew it we were rolling along a runway somewhere, 'cept that time the plane rolled right into a hanger. Straight in. Not that I could see much, I wasn't near a window. Another van had pulled up an' it was the same story. We went a short distance and then I was taken into a building. And that was the last I saw of daylight for a good long while. Inside that building the first thing that happened was I got looked at by a doctor. By then I had me some mean black an' blue patches, on the back of my legs mostly. But they looked me all over, took blood an' had me piss in a bottle, an' took me down the hall an' X-rayed me, an' I remember 'em taking some pictures.

The whole time there wasn't a word spoken 'cept for business. None of these guys had any sense of humor. Manners out the ass, but not much else to speak of. One thing for sure, I was the life of the party. After the physical, I put back on my orange jump suit an' then it began. I was brought into a bare room. All there was was one of those big long folding tables in it an' a couple of folding chairs for the agents. Agents of what, I never did find out. When I asked once I was laughed at. As for me, at the beginning at least, I stood. On the table was a mound of paper. I'd come to find out every sheet of that mound was on me. Every last one. They knew more about me than I did, no shit. You weren't just talking military stuff, you know, records. They had it all -- driving records, high school report cards, what, a couple of Police reports, the works. Stuff I never knew even existed. Interviews with people I knew, people I hardly knew, people I didn't wanna know. They'd been busy boys.

An' they went at it. They took to playing me like a piano. An' they were good. Very good.

I'd been arrested before, you know. Wasn't like this was the first time. I had something to compare it to. But these guys, they had it down to a science. When all that crap hit the fan in Iraq I heard the experts on TV talkin' about how they try and destroy your "p and e". That's pride and ego. Like I said, it was a science. An' no, they never beat me or drugged me or put shit on me or panties on my head or any of that crap. They never had to. Like I just said, they had it down to a science. It was like they were out to prove ta me ya didn't have to be afloat to be miserable. After what I'd just been through you would've thought I'd be able to handle anything, that nothing would've surprised me. But this here, this here was pure hell. Remember now, there was a whole bunch of them an' one of me. They worked in shifts. An' for me, it never ended. I was on the grill for what must've been days on end. Every once in a while they made like I was gonna get some rest, an' they did get around to giving me some. They gave me just enough to feel worse, every time.

They played all the little games, too. Good cop/ bad cop, all that shit. They screwed with ya needing food, with your having to go to the head. All clean shots. They never did lay a finger on me, but good hits just the same. You know how the government works. I'd be willing to bet a couple of 'em were out playing golf at any given time. A one-sided tag team was what it was. They were fuckers. Motherfuckers. But them pretty boys there, they had god 'n country on their side. They couldn't help letting you know that. On top of it all they were snots. Paid, pampered, pensioned pricks.

I guess I've made my point. Sorry, I got carried away. Maybe you had to be there. All this here still pisses me off. I didn't get one ounce of respect. They really didn't care if I'd been in on it or not. Not one of 'em cared. Their job was to break me an' look at the pieces. To study 'em. An' those guys, the way they had it set up there, they could've broke anybody. Through all this, all they really ever got out of me was just the little I knew, because that's all I had to give. I was just a wayward rope choker for crying out loud. But I was all they had. So they were out to make the best of it. And don't you know that halfway through all this I started spazing out. I got floored like with the sweats an' a killer case of the shakes. What must've been the DT's set in. Adrenaline must've been holding it off all the while until then. Or maybe my nerves just went. An' it wasn't like they didn't notice. Yeah, we were having some fun. Somebody ought to take all this an' start a theme park. You could call it something like, "I'd Rather Be Dead Land." 'Course I can joke about it now, but believe you me there was nothing at all funny about it back then. Nada. All I was to those guys was a nut that needed cracking. An' good overtime. Unlimited probably.

After getting the whole story out of me 'bout five times, they took to digging inta certain parts. They were real hot on this Doctor Dundalkin dude. Boy, they wanted everything they could get on that guy. I got a hunch he might've already been one of them. A G-Man gone bad. They sure knew enough about 'im. Photos an' all. For positive ID _._ Where do ya suppose they came up with them from? It makes ya wonder, but there's no telling for sure. And some of the Doctor's comments had 'im going too. I must've gone over a comment on "core groups" a hundred times, over an' over. And what he said one time about "windows," that was a big one. Ya see, I think whoever was behind _Pleiades_ had 'em an inside track. What this "window" deal was was a time period that Dundalkin knew was open. A time that sub was fair game, like maybe a satellite needed maintenance down-time or something like that.

I was real sorry I mentioned things like that. It was almost like I was cutting my own throat. Keeping my mouth shut on shit like that probably would've saved me a week. But there was just no telling what would set these guys off. I mean, how was I to know. They wanted the complete lowdown on every single person that I came in contact with. Everything I knew about everybody, even all the Filipinos onboard _Pleiades_. We spent a lot of time on all the officers. Course we spent forever on the captain and chief engineer. During all this there wasn't just agents in the room working on me, either. They would bring in typed pages of stuff I'd said, of me talking. Printed pages. They had to have had people off somewhere working on stuff like that, making 'em an' reading them over, looking for holes in my story, comparing notes. An' after I got to the point to where I couldn't see straight, I'd like get confused the third time I'd been over something an' botch it all up, get it backwards or say something different, and all of a sudden they'd be in my face reading to me what I'd said earlier.

"We have a problem here," they'd start with, an' you knew you were in trouble. Then after they'd read what ya said earlier, you were an hour on it. On a simple mistake.

"What is it you're hiding?" they'd ask.

The whole time I'd be telling 'em like it was, and they'd take it like it was all pure bullshit. Like I was hiding something. No respect. None at all. I didn't rate any. An' this here went on for weeks. Near as I can figure, two weeks. Not like I was in any shape to figure after them shitheads finished working on me. Wringing me dry. Around the clock. But you know what they say, you can't get blood from a stone. Talk about beating a dead horse. Hell, by the time they was done I was glue. Even those assholes had to figure sooner or later I was telling the thing like it was, that every tiny bit of info I had in me had been yanked out of me. Well, what can I tell ya? All good things come to an end.

Finally at one point I was led down a hall an' stuck in a room. No windows, a bed, an' one of those one-piece, seatless prison-shitters was all that was in it. There was a black square on the wall near the ceiling, a black piece of plexiglass. I knew damn well there was a camera behind it. Not that I cared. They was letting me well enough alone. What the hell, I got me some sleep. If it wasn't for my meals, I would've almost figured they'd forgot about me in there. I didn't get to talk to anybody for a couple of days. It was just me and my shivering nerves.

I was pretty bad off. Crumbling. So bad, a doctor showed up out of the blue. After looking me over, he said I was "experiencing trauma." Matter of fact like. No shit. "An' they shot Lincoln," I told 'im. He ignored that. Didn't say nothing. Probably just chalked it up as "trauma." I don't think he was even talking to me, even though it was only me and him in the room. He was thinking out loud. But he was the only visitor I had. 'Til the day I got cut loose, that is. On that day there, all of a sudden it was like I was having an open-house in my cell there. The door opened an' before I knew it there were four of them G-Men in there with me. They were dressed like they always were, in suits an' all. One of 'em had a shopping bag with 'im. Like from a department store. The rest, they were all empty handed, as usual.

"Time to go," one of 'em said.

I didn't know how to take that. The one with the bag stepped up an' laid it there by my bed. Inside the bag were clothes, new clothes, my size it turned out. After I changed out of my orange jumpsuit an' into them, one of the agents looked around at all his pals an' said, "Well, let's go."

With that we all left the room. We walked down the corridor and out a door. Waiting right there was a car. A government car. A plain-Jane sedan, you know the type. Two G-Men got in front an' one of the other agents got in back with me. The fourth guy, he remained behind. As we drove off, I watched him as he turned an' headed back into the building. I caught a sign on the way out the main gate. Anderson Air Force Base was where I was. That's where I was held all that time.

"You're going to be free to go in a few minutes here, Frank," the one in the front passenger seat said. Then he turned an' looked at me. "Yeah, you're going to be all on your own here shortly." He was eyeing me. Looking me over pretty good. "How's it feel?"

I didn't answer. Something wasn't right. I felt like I was on the outside of an inside joke. Like this here was all a setup. We'd gotten on a freeway an' they were heading for someplace in particular. Driving on in automatic. I sat there with my mouth shut. How it felt was wrong, an' there was no point in telling these guys that. I didn't want to give 'em the pleasure. What this all looked like was just another mind-fuck. Where we wound up was downtown D.C. They drove right up to the bus terminal in the middle of the city there and pulled over an' parked along the curb in front of it.

"Well, this here is as far as we can take you, Frank. Wish we could run you up to Philly, but you know how it is, with the deficit and all."

I opened my door. I half expected that it wouldn't work, that the thing wouldn't open.

"I don't have any money," I said.

"Well, wish we could help you out there, Frank, but that's really between you an' your last employer, isn't it? If you get a hold of them, why I'm sure they'll pay you your due. What is it, three weeks that they owe you?"

The driver got a big kick out of that. He almost broke out laughing. I got out of the car and shut the door.

"Oh, and Frank," the one in the passenger seat called.

I leaned over an' looked in the car, past the driver there, at 'im. From between his legs, he pulled out a brown package. A bag. He handed it to the driver who handed it to me.

"That's from all the guys," he said. Then he motioned for the driver to take off.

But before they drove away, the one in the back seat leaned forward over the front seat, an' said to me through the open window,

"Happy sailin', Frank."

And that right there was where they left me. Where, ta be exact, they left me holding the bag. Washington, D.C., Murder City, U.S.A. An' inside the bag? Get a load of this. A bottle of TANQUERAY. Really, no shit. A fifth. Were they shooting at priming the pump or what? You don't think they were trying ta tip me inta a tailspin, do ya? Na. I remember back in the Navy we had a kid in my division that was a total screw up, an' I said to the chief that somebody oughta take 'im 'round back. Ya know, fine-tune 'im. An' this chief said to me, "Why, all we gotta do is give him enough rope to hang himself. He'll take care of his own self for us."

I still think this here was one of those deals. Probably always will. Not that it was the least bit out of bounds. Everything they did there was Kosher. It was just pointed, that's all. Doling out the rope. So what'd I do? What do you think I did? Well, no big surprise here, what I did was exactly what they'd figure I'd do. That neighborhood right there, well it ain't really what ya'd call polite. I hiked around a bit 'til I run across a vacant lot with some cover. In between two row houses. An' I parked it right there, on a pile of rubble, and I popped the cork.

### NAVY DAZE

Back in my day a lot of people looked at you like your zipper was down when you told them you had something to do with the Navy. But really, such a deal. Not too many outfits will run your life soup-to-nuts for you while you're concentrating on your drinkin'.

Welp, I suppose one way of puttin' it is there's a cap for every beer bottle. I had to get my mother to sign me in. I was under eighteen so I needed her to do that. She wasn't all that crazy about the idea, but hell, you know what I told you about her survivor's pension. Young guys like me, we were called "Kiddy Cruisers" Notice you never see any of those recruiting posters saying something like "Join the Navy and be one of forty guys stacked like pancakes in a tiny tin room." Join the Navy and learn to count backwards is more like it. Every squid who ain't a lifer can tell you exactly how long they have left, and guys with less than a year to go, hell they'll tell you without your having to ask.

And I can't say the handwriting wasn't on the wall. The first time I went to see the recruiter they put me in this room to watch a movie on the Navy. There was fighter jets screamin' all around, submarines flyin' out of the ocean and Navy SEALS paddlin' 'round in a rubber dingy. Another "Victory at Sea" it was. Well, when the thing was over the guy turns on the light, and he had forgotten to get the tail of the film on the take up reel, the whole thing was in one big clump on the floor. I didn't take the hint. I went trippin' up the gangway of my first ship like every other boot camp. Had that "Navy Issue" look about me. You could still smell the factory in my P-jacket. I was even using that silly-ass plastic garment bag they gave you when you graduated from basic. What are you gonna do? I wouldn't have been any worse off with "screw with me" tattooed on my forehead. Speaking of tattoos, I got me one. It was one of those cartoon-like round bombs painted like an eight ball with the fuse lit. A thing of beauty.

I wasn't a bad sailor though. I worked hard and I played hard, which seemed to be OK with the Navy. I went deck department, Bosun's Mate to be exact. I figured I'd learn me a trade I could use on a merchantman if I had to. Plus, deck was in the family; my old man sailed deck department.

One thing about the Navy: when you fucked up they'd be sure and let you know. And we're talkin' toot-sweet. In no time at all I was on restriction to the ship, chippin' and paintin' in the bilge of the fire room of the good ship _Wichita_ with the other fuck-ups. And I got introduced real fast to this shit called "Anabuse," which they gave you to make you puke when you drank. But hell, if a boozehound is good at anything besides drinkin' it's pukin'. What were they thinkin'? Right about then is when I run across the term "FTN"—fuck the Navy. Yeah, FTN.

July 11, 1984 rolled around and I got the hell out. And I stayed out. For a whole ninety-three days. I wound up at my sister Marie's house. 'Bout the only useful thing I got accomplished during my three months out was going to the Coast Guard and putting in for a "Z" card. That's a Merchant Mariner's ticket. I rated an Able Seaman's endorsement from all my deck time in the Navy. That AB rating would turn out to be my ticket to the _Pleiades_. I guess what it was was I'd grown so used to being led around by the nose that I didn't know how to do my own navigating. I found myself down at the same recruiting depot where I'd enlisted the first time with my tail between my legs. Marie was glad to get rid of me because me and my brother-in-law were drinkin' ourselves silly every night. You know, the funny thing about the children of alcoholics is that if they don't turn inta drunks themselves, they go out and find one to marry.

I got sent to the _USS John L Hall_ , an FGG, _Perry_ class, home-ported in Mayport, Florida. My first combatant, and my last combatant. There was a whole different attitude on that ship than what I'd been used to on tankers. Bosun's Mates' own oilers. I mean, the deck department is the backbone of an UNREP ship. On one of these combatants that wasn't the case. The deck apes are looked down on on those ships by the electronic and sonar types. And we won't even mention the Gunner's Mates. All the tankers I was on over the years had at least three divisions of deck types, you were talking almost a hundred guys. This frigate had twenty- three guys total in the deck department.

And the Navy itself was changing big time too. I can honestly claim that the Navy that I got thrown out of wasn't the one that I joined. The old policy 'bout dope was "just keep it off the ship," and that there was going out the window. A couple of years earlier the aircraft carrier _Nimitz_ was conducting flight ops in the Atlantic and some Marine Corps pilot missed the centerline and smeared his A-6 all over the flight deck. I think something like fourteen guys were killed, mostly guys working on the flight deck. They did autopsies on all the victims. The pilot was clean, but a bunch of the flight deck guys turned up positive for illegal drugs, like THC from pot. 'Course that doesn't mean that they were stoned at the time. They could've used pot weeks before and it still woulda shown up positive. Traces of THC stay in your system that long. These guys' only real crime was having an A-6 drop outa the sky on 'em. If you're a bozo you don't last long on a carrier flight deck; them guys got their shit in one sock.

Well, the Navy used this as an excuse to change their ways. Some congressman was screaming 'bout how the whole fleet was stoned. So they started the big "war on drugs." "Keep it off the ship" went over the side and "If we nab ya we're gonna nail ya" became the new tune. You see, they never could pick up pot before on drug screens, but they'd come out with this new machine that could spot it. There were two types of surprises. One was called the "unit screen." They used these to determine the "scope" of the problem. They'd test everybody on the ship, but they didn't ID the individual bottles. This just told 'em how many were using in any given command. The second method they called a "random." What they did was roll the dice and come up with a number. Then everybody with that number, in say the last digit of their social security number, got tested. And brother, your number was on that bottle. We called it the "whiz quiz." All of a sudden everybody was droppin' acid 'cause they couldn't test for that yet. I skated by for over three and a half years, made first class even, and I owed it all to the gods of roulette. A lot of randoms missed me entirely. The first one to hit me came right after we had come back from a mini-NATO cruise off the coast of Norway. The only thing that'd saved my ass was we couldn't find reefer in Norway to save our lives. The last number in my Social Security number is nine and that time nine it was. Boy, was I relieved, and sorry about the pun. Through no fault of my own, I was clean.

The next time I got tagged on random I was dirty as hell. I think I was even stoned at the time I gave the sample. I figured I was popped for sure, but the list came back without me on it. What I found out was that when they took randoms they only tested a percentage of the samples they took. We had guys swearin' up and down that by drinking vinegar you could beat the test. Herb tea was another one. There was a bunch of supposed ways of beating the test that you'd hear floating around. One of my favorites had something to do with standing on your head. But what I really think happened to guys that'd had those wonder methods work for 'em was that their samples were in the batch that wasn't even tested in the first place.

After I gave that one dirty sample and didn't get nuked I thought I musta been immune to the test or something. Well, I shoulda just concentrated on my drinking 'cause the time after that I made the "whiz quiz" hit parade. Me havin' been a First Class Petty Officer and already having a bunch of priors on me meant the big boot. It was like the three strike law; it was automatic. But the Navy couldn't just throw me out. They had to drag it out over a month and a half. Ever notice that the easier it is to join an outfit, the harder it is to get your ass out of it? Right off the bat I had to go to Captain's Mast on the _John L Hall_. Forty-five and forty-five, reduction in rate, and a bunch of money. Sound familiar?

Then I was told to pack up and off I went to Pensacola Naval Air Station. That's where I got my JAG review. JAG stands for "Judge Advocate General," which is Navy for lawyer. The Navy can't just call a lawyer a lawyer. I was fed up to the point where it didn't matter anymore. I just wanted out. The "new Navy" wasn't for a guy like me. This Navy Lieutenant JAG Officer got assigned to my case. I spent more time listening to the problems he was having with his classic TR-6 sports car than he spent looking into my situation. He was real disappointed I was a Bosun's Mate. He'd been hoping for an electrician.

"Hell, Sawyer, these drug cases are pretty much cut 'n dried anymore, 'less we can prove they screwed up somehow when they were handlin' your urine sample."

But like I said, at that point there I just didn't care. I had to stay in restricted men's berthing on the base. Every two hours we had to muster, but other than that I had a lot of time on my hands. For extra duty they gave us bags and a poker and they expected us to run around the base and pick up litter. I would just go down to the sea wall and make myself comfortable, then I'd fill up my bag from a trashcan somewhere to make it look good. Not that I was real concerned. Force of habit mostly.

Pensacola is where they have the Officer Candidate School, or OCS, for guys that are gonna be pilots. You see these poor bastards running 'round all over the place. They use Marine Corps Drill Instructors on 'em. They're fun to watch; their heads are shaved bald and they wear green fatigues and silver helmets with their names scribbled on them. They're always screamin' and rolling all around on the ground 'n shit, generally just acting like raving lunatics. I can't tell you how relieved I am knowing that none of these guys is on drugs. I sleep a whole lot easier for sure.

Matter of fact, the Navy had a Marine Corps Gunny Sergeant in charge of us in the restricted men's berthing. Gunny Sergeant Clinch, USMC. He an' I didn't get along at all. The first day I got there he was all over my case Marine Corps style to get a haircut, like I was supposed to look neat to get thrown out or something. Just to get a bigger piece of his goat, I quit shaving. I'd come to find out that when you plain don't give a rat's ass anymore, there ain't a whole lot they can do to you. I even hooked up with a pretty lil' postal clerk who was on restriction for being UA. That's Unauthorized Absence. I met her in the chow hall. I used to sneak out of the barracks at night and meet her at the obstacle course. We got us some exercise. Wasn't love, it was luck.

All this wouldn't have been nearly as big a pain in the ass if they could've told me how long it was gonna take. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anybody, including in particular my worthless lawyer. There was a guy off the carrier _Independence_ that'd been there four months. He was getting a big runaround. There was some legal bump in his case. I was praying mine would be cut and dried so it'd be over fast. Mustering every two hours was starting to get on my nerves big time. It got to the point where I could recite from memory all sixty-something names of the people on restriction. You could too if you had to hear 'em repeated every two hours seven days a week. I was having a problem figuring out what I was gonna do. I called my sister Marie and she was having a real tough time of it. My mother had moved in with her and she already had her four kids to deal with. She had just thrown her old man out. I felt pretty bad about the way he and I had carried on back when I had gotten out of the Navy the first time. I told her I was gettin' out again, but I didn't say anything about getting' thrown out. I just couldn't go back to Philly; she'd enough problems. I asked her to mail me my "Z" card. I told her I had some work lined up in Houston.

Well, June 7th turned out to be the big day. Gunny Sergeant Clinch called me into his office and introduced me to Petty Officer Cummins. Told me to follow him. We went to this admin building down near the seaplane ramps. Cummins was all right. He was a submarine sailor on shore duty. A lot of these bubbleheads you run across are prima donnas, but he was a regular type of guy. A Torpedoman, he was. I just went along with the flow because I didn't want to cause the guy any grief. When we got to the building this GS-2, you know, Government Service, was already peckin' away at my paperwork. He was one of those hunt 'n peck two-finger typists. I was tempted to ask him if that was why he was a GS-2, but I decided not to be a wise-ass. He pulled out a blank DD-214 and I knew it was all over. I was out.

"Let's see, what kind of discharge?" he asked himself and went hunting through my paperwork. "Ah. Here it is", he said, "Dishonorable." Like it was nothin'.

'Lot of good that lawyer had done for me. He had told me I was probably gonna get a Dishonorable, but I had a good chance of upgrading it to "Other Than Honorable" after I'd been out for a while. He said all I'd have to do is mail a letter in requesting it.

"Can I see your ID card?" the GS-2 asked me.

I handed it over and he took a pair of scissors from his desk drawer and began dicing it all up. I got a funny feeling watching him do that. He had a bunch of papers for me to sign. When I had finished, he looked over all of them.

"Oops, I forgot your reenlistment code," he said, and fed my DD-214 back into the typewriter.

"Let's see, that'll be "RE-4F" he said as he pecked. "OK, that's it." He sounded like a barber does when he's done your hair. I don't think this guy had the slightest idea I had just watched sixteen years of my life go down the drain. No pension for this kid.

Cummins escorted me back to the barracks. It was empty when we got there, which was just as well because I wasn't in the mood for conversation. I put all my shit in my seabag and then Cummins took me back to Clinch's office.

"Cummins here is gonna take you to Disbursing and then he's gonna take you to the Main Gate. I don't want you causin' any problems now."

"Hey Gunny, can I stop by the exchange on the way out?"

A simple enough request, I figured. I wanted to say goodbye to Sylvia, that Postal Clerk I'd been boppin'. I figured I could pull a fast end around and see her before I left.

"Mister, let me explain somethin' to you. Cummins here is goin' to take you to Disbursing and then to the Main Gate and if I catch you anywhere else, I'm gonna have you arrested for trespassing. And I don't mean that I'll throw your ass in the brig," he said, pointing. "What I mean is you're goin' straight to the county jail. Can I make myself any clearer?"

Dumping a seaman for doing drugs seemed to me, at the time at least, to be 'bout on a par with pitchin' the Pope for being pious. Know something? Right then and there I had nothing on an empty milk bottle that'd been put out on the back stoop. Yes sir, I got me a pretty good idea of just how Captain Bligh felt getting his ass tossed inta' that dinghy. Set adrift I was. The first time I'd got out, for them ninety-three days, that'd been a separation. But this here, this here was final. And being threatened with the county jail, I mean instead of the brig, that's exactly when it hit me, when it all came home. I was an orphan.

### ADRIFT

The Disbursing Department itemized, deducted, carried over, added, subtracted, prorated, estimated, looked at the leave I had on the books 'n finally flat out up'n told me eight hundred forty-six bucks was all I had coming. I was expecting a couple grand and was thrown for a loop. What they said got me was I had to pay back a portion of some reenlistment bonus from somewhere because I hadn't completed my enlistment contract. I didn't even get pissed; just wrote it off as the final insult. Of course right then and there I didn't have wheels on account of a couple of antics I'd pulled with my liberty cruiser. Hell, I didn't even have a license at that point. Money in the bank? C'mon now, who are you kiddin'? Get with the program. Pay attention. And a seaman on the beach, why they're as 'bout as useful as a milk bucket under a bull. That was one of JW's favorite sayin's I couldn't help Shanghain' here.

So I figured, being as I was in Pensacola, I'd mosey down I-10 and get me some work in Houston, oil fieldwork offshore. The Navy didn't want me so I'd just have to go make some real money. Yeah, right. I hear it's not the case these days but back in those days a hitchhiker had something goin' for 'im. You see, truckers had to keep them a log. They had to account for their time. And being as they could only legally drive for so long, they used hitchhikers to "pad the books" in a manner of speakin'. After a couple of short hops a trucker picked me up and I was off. If a cop stopped us the driver told me to hop in back and make like I was sleeping. There was a law you couldn't wake up the relief driver, so I was the alibi. How any of them truckers get any sleep is beyond me. At one point I tried getting a couple of winks in the back of a cab and it was like there was a guy who hated your ass underneath you in a bunk bed with a long-handled mallet. When the hell are you supposed to sleep? In between bounces? No wonder those truckers never have any kidneys left after a while. Plus hell, one trucker is all you need to nail. After that, assuming the guy don't think you're an asshole, they get on their CBs and before you get off one hop there's another one behind you dieselin' your way lookin' for you.

My sister Marie had filled me in on a little tidbit about Houston when she mailed me my "Z" card. Vince Marone, a childhood friend of mine from 72nd Avenue, was living there. Vinnie was a fellow Holy Angels alumnus. What? You never heard of somebody who graduated from a parochial school refer to himself as an alumnus? Well cut me some slack why don't you. Except for Navy boot camp and a couple of rehabs, Holy Angels is just about the only thing I ever graduated from. Anyhow, Marie still talked with his sister and had gotten me Vinnie's address. He was going to school there, something to do with biology. Turned out he was a Christian Brother. Surprised the crap out of me. That's damn near a priest. What I remember 'bout Vinnie most of all was on a two-dollar dare he rode his bike through a car wash. Must've been the good Lord gave 'im a second pass. He was staying at some seminary while he was going to graduate school, then he was goin' back to Philly to teach.

To make a long story short, he was cool, but as soon as them priests found out I wasn't going to be joining up they threw my ass out. They were fresh out of seminarians at this place. Didn't take them long to notice I had "love" _and_ "fear" tattooed on my knuckles. And it turned out their seminary was in Montrose, which was the gay side of Houston. I'd been doing my drinkin' in a lesbian bar the two nights I lasted in the seminary, and a couple of them took a liking to my dumb ass and let me hang with them for a couple of days. Turned out my luck was true to form. There was a strike goin' on and nobody was workin' offshore, not even the guys who did have experience and steady jobs. So when it came to me breakin' into the business, hell I'm runnin' 'round Houston getting laughed at.

Well, I figured I'd keep moseyin' down I-10 and try 'n catch me a ship on the West Coast. If nothin' else I wouldn't be freezin' my ass off on the East Coast. It was that time of year. And again, after a couple of short hops on the way out of Houston, I nailed an eighteen-wheel flatbed and that was all she wrote. We rattle'n clanked all the way through Texas. Jesus, you thought you was in purgatory by the time we neared New Mexico. It takes a whole day to get through Texas on I-10. And I don't mean an eight-hour day, I mean a twenty-four hour day. I got dropped off in El Paso as the sky started to glow. By the time the sun peeked over the horizon I was in another rig loaded with crackers headed for L.A.

Getting to the West Coast was such a joyride I treated myself to a hotel room when I got there. I woke up and checked out and sat in this park across the street. Maybe it's because I'm from back east, but yo, Los Angeles don't seem like a city to me, it's more like a suburb with a thyroid condition. I'm used to a center city or downtown like most places have. L.A. is like endless burbs. Anyhow, I'm sitting in this park and this pack of...hell, I'd don't know what they were, started flowing into the park. They were dressed in robes and were singin' and chantin' and beatin' drums. Yes sir, the land of fruit and nuts. I got the hell out of there. Having survived Catholic school I wasn't in no mood to join that parade. That evening while lookin' for a place to crash I ran across a Greyhound bus terminal and bought me a ticket for Frisco. Figured I'd sleep on the bus, like a two-for-one deal. At least I knew my way around that town from my Navy days in Alameda.

I'll never forget my arrival in Frisco in the dark. It was something like four-thirty in the morning and it was me and a bunch of homeless squealin' from underneath their cardboard boxes on the street there. Scared the livin' shit out of me, mostly because there wasn't a whole lot in between me and them right then. At that time of day it don't pay to get a room so I walked down Market Street to the Ferry Building to watch the sun rise over the Bay. Through the span of the Bay Bridge I spied Alameda where that first Navy tanker I was on was home ported. Maybe it was them homeless types, but I got real motivated to catch a ship. The NMU hall was padlocked. Nothin' doing there. Over near Fremont Street there's a bunch of union halls so I headed in that direction. I'd been over the Bay Bridge all kinds of times back in my Navy days and had always took note of the Sailor's Union of the Pacific building there on the right hand side headin' into Frisco. And that's right where I headed. Goin' in the front door there was a bunch of seamen millin' around smartly like they do. I didn't have no union book so I was watchin' my P's and Q's. I talked to a bunch of seamen and finally found a guy that was ex-Navy. I figured he'd be the one to hit up on, bein' as we had that in common. Turned out he was a snipe, a QMED they call 'em. What he was doing was something they called "baseball". He was an SUP book man and he had an arrangement with this other dude on this ship. How it worked was they knew when each other wanted to be relieved. They'd each do two months on a Matson ship, the _Laurline_ , and when they wanted off the other guy would be waiting. They was in cahoots. The guy on the ship would wait until after the last job call went down at the union hall and pay off the ship. The company would call it into the union and, low and behold, the other guy happened to be waitin' around. Two months later, the same deal, only ass-backwards. That way they always had a job lined up and could avoid all the hiring hall happy horseshit. It was called a "pier head jump". Sweet.

Anyhow, this guy was just millin' around all day long waiting for the last job call to be over so he had nothin' better to do than shoot the shit with me. The guy's name was Wells. I forget where he was from originally but he rented a flat there in San Fran. I told him about me being shit-canned over the whiz quiz'n all and he got a kick out of it. They didn't drug-test back in his day. He told me his first chief ran across a bag of weed during some inspection once and the old goat handed him the bag and said "Wells, get rid of this." He said it took him and a couple of close friends damn near a week.

Yeah, the times had changed. Ol' Wells, he was OK. He told me a tale about these ships out in Diego Garcia. I'd been out there during my tour on the oiler _Camden_. It's in the Indian Ocean. Hell it's right smack in the middle of the Indian Ocean, in the middle of nowhere. I'd seen the ships he was talking about, I'd even done some drinkin' with crews off of them ships in the Seaman's Center there. They were called MPS ships, for military pre-position ships. They were owned by the Marine Corps and stocked with everything a division of marines needed -- trucks, armor, ammo, bulldozers -- the works. Anyhow, he said he was on one ship and right in the middle of his tour they renamed the ship. All these MPS ships were named after Congressional Medal of Honor winners, 'cept the one he was on had to be renamed. Turned out that some guy went into like the Army and was kicked out, so he changed his name and joined the Marine Corps, and he won him the Medal of Honor. So when this Wells guy was on this MPS ship all this came out and they change the name of the ship back to this guy's real name. So what you had out there was five ships named after Medal of Honor winners and one was named after a Dishonorable Discharge chump like me. Poetry.

Sure enough, after the last job call 'ol Wells hung out and the call came and off he went. Before he split he turned me onto a place seamen from out of town stayed at in North Beach, a place called Hotel Saint Paul. And being as it was after the last job call and all, that's where I headed. Hotel Saint Paul was on Kearny Street. It was right near that Carol Doda place and all the other girlie bars and pud-pullin' palaces. You know, twenty-buck-a-beer bullshit, and zero probability of getting' laid ta' boot. The Carol Doda place, that ain't there no more. Them places were the first topless bars in the country. You woulda' thought that that two story sign with the blinkin' tits had historic value, but I guess not. It ain't there no more either.

The office for the hotel was on the second floor, up a long flight of steps. I guess you'd call it an office. What it really was was a cage with a Chinese guy sitting in it. The place was borderline armored. Must've had something to do with the caliber of clientele it attracted. But what the hell, it beat bein' in the Tenderloin, one of the seediest neighborhoods. I slid the guy my rent through the slit underneath his thick plexiglass window there and off to my room I went. You could only rent rooms by the night, probably so they could get rid of their problem children easier. I stashed my seabag and went to check out the neighborhood.

A door or two down from Hotel Saint Paul was a little hole-in-the-wall dive. The name of the place was "Grassland." It was a shot and beer type joint. What I appreciated about it the most was that on all the round stool seats was a print of an eight ball. It was that type of place, an eight-ball magnet. By eight balls, for eight balls. It was my type of place. Eight ball, you got to admit, was me. Hell, it was my first time in there and I showed the little Asian babe behind the bar, Amy her name was, my eight-ball tattoo and it rated me a free shot with my beer. I went over and found some Thorogood on the jukebox and racked the pool table. Hell, I had me a home address. Yep, the type of place you can remember how to get to, but for the life of you you can't remember how to get home from. And right there, sitting on an eight-ball stool, choking a long-neck bottle of Bud, downin' Jack Daniels and tappin' my toe to "I Drink Alone", is where my encounter with the _Pleiades_ began. No shit. Appropriate or what?

There was a San Francisco Chronicle behind the bar and at some point I asked Amy if I could see it. I was browsing through the want ads and right there, in black and white, it was. "Marine Personnel" it said. I couldn't believe my eyes. "Deck and engine rates, licensed and unlicensed." Best of all, it didn't say nothing about unions. In a town like San Francisco you probably see adds like that all the time. It never dawned on me to check the papers for work, though. I called the number and nobody answered; it was well after five. I cut the thing out real carefully and put it in my wallet in between the dwindling bucks. But that was how it all began. I spent the rest of that night right there perched on that eight-ball stool. Went around the corner to smoke some dope with my pool-shooting buddy, but otherwise I was there 'til "glasses in, asses out" time. I was putting the moves on Amy's friend half the night. Marilyn, I think her name was, but she knew better than waste time with the likes of me.

The next morning my head felt on the order of how a tennis ball must feel in play at Wimbledon. Even Mr. Wu, my friend at the front desk, took note as I slid my day's rent through the hole in his cage. That's when I came across the newspaper clipping I had stashed in my wallet the night before. I probably don't have to tell you that my room didn't come with a phone, so I went off down Kearny Street to find a payphone to make the call. I wound up in a donut shop.

"Marine Personnel," the lady who answered the phone said.

"Yes ma'am. I'm calling about your ad in the paper."

"I see, and which position are you applying for?"

"I sail AB, Able Bodied Seaman."

"I see, sir, and do you have the U.S. Coast Guard Certification for that position?"

"Yes ma'am, I do." You could tell she was reading right off a form.

"I see, and do you have in your possession at this time a 'Z' card for that position and a valid U.S. Passport?"

"Yes ma'am, I do."

So far so good. These people sounded like they meant business. I was half expecting the next question to be if I wouldn't mind pissing in a bottle, you know, taking a drug test. Something was bound to go wrong.

"Would you be interested in talking to our representatives? We are currently conducting interviews at the Holiday Inn in downtown San Francisco."

"Yes, please, that would interest me." I was trying not to get too excited over all this

shit.

" Are you presently located near San Francisco?"

"Yes ma'am, I'm standing in it right now."

"I see. Would it be convenient for you to come to see our representatives tomorrow afternoon at two-fifteen?"

"That'd be fine."

Convenient? Hell, if I didn't come up with something soon I'd be living on the sidewalk.

"Mr. Sawyer, if you would please contact our representatives by house phone at the

Holiday Inn on Kearny Street in downtown San Francisco at two-fifteen, they will be eager to see you. We are in room four fifty-six. If you cannot make the appointment for any reason, please contact us at this number. Please be sure to bring your Merchant Marine documents and passport."

"OK. I'll bring them. Four fifty-six, right?"

"That's correct, sir. Four fifty-six."

After I hung up I made a mad dash for the donut counter and bummed a pen to scribble "four fifty-six" down on a napkin. Hell, I already knew where Kearny Street was, I was standing right on it. I couldn't help think that was a good omen.

It was well before noon and I went back to my room to inventory the ol' magic lettuce. Come to find out I had sixty bucks and some change. I was trying my best to treat my long shot from the want ads as a long shot, but when all you got is sixty bucks, panic takes the helm. Just finding somebody that wanted to talk to me was a major accomplishment. But tomorrow at two-fifteen was a long time coming. Wells, the guy I talked to at the SUP hall the day before, had mentioned the MWI -- Maritime Workers International. He said they was scarfin' up all the low-ball government contracts. Most seamen wouldn't work for them kinds of wages, but he said for a guy like me, tryin' to get his foot in the door, why that might be the ticket. So I took my feet and started headin' for that there door. On the way there I walked down to the wharfs hoping to catch a tug idling at the pier like they do in between jobs. Their unions are separate from the deep-sea unions and I was hoping to get a fix on where their hall was. I didn't have any luck.

The MWI hall wasn't hard to find; it was right around the corner from the SUP hall on Fremont Street. Didn't look like shit from the outside but inside there was a bunch of guys millin' around. The place was about the size of a high-school gym. Up front behind a long counter there was a big shipping board with the names of ships going down the side of it and the jobs, you know, like AB, QMED, Cook/Baker, across the top. On the right there was a sign that read "JOB CALLS WEEKDAYS AT 8, 10, 1, and 3, SATURDAYS 8, 10." Yeah, I thought at the time things were looking up. Here was work at least. I floated around and talked to a few guys, you know, trying to figure out what the story was. Against the wall there was another board with a bunch of cards hanging on it. They had a seniority system. The guys who had sailed eight years or more had "A" union books. These were the guys that had the pick of the litter. Under them were "B" books. Those guys had sailed for at least two years. They got whatever crumbs the "A" books left behind. Turned out I was what you call a "C" card. "C" cards gotta eat shit 'til they get ninety days work two consecutive years in a row. The 'ol catchola twenty-two. Only after that did you rate a "B" book, see. If you ask me, these unions set it up so's you're so busy fuckin' with one another you don't have time to fuck with them. And these union cats, they're the ones in high cotton. Hey, my old man didn't hit fat city until he was _behind_ the union hall-hiring counter.

But no matter how you sliced and diced it, I was on the outside lookin' in. I saw a guy standin' around there that looked familiar from the Hotel Saint Paul. I'd seen him in the hallways. I went and asked him if he was stayin' there even though I already knew the answer. His name was AJ. He sailed in the steward department. "Stew burners" they're called. He had him a hot ticket. The way they do it is they register for work and go home. In AJ's case home was some trailer outside of Vegas somewhere. When you register you have ninety days to find a job. You bid for work using your registration. If a guy goes for a job and has, say, a twenty-day-old card, a guy with a seventy-day-old card beats him out. So the idea is to register and not even bother looking for work until you got some time on your registration. Until, like I said, you have a hot card. The problem is if you don't score before ninety days runs out you "fall off the board" it's called. Then you got to re-register and start all over again.

Ol' AJ, he was a seaman's seaman. In short, he didn't give a shit about nothin'. He had been shit-canned off his last ship, a tanker, for smokin' somewhere they didn't want you smokin'. No problem, he just paid-off and hung out at his trailer outside Vegas until he went broke. By law you could stay on a ship six months if you was an "A" man like AJ, but he was the type that hardly ever finished a tour. Like I said, a seaman's seaman. He also had a brother in the business, he sailed stew burner too. His old man was retired and lived in a trailer 'round Vegas, that must've been how AJ wound up out there. Originally AJ was from Baltimore, or 'Bulmore' as they say. Matter of fact, he had a brother that was a 'Bulmore City' cop. Unlike me, him and his brother was in a Union that was still in the game. The NMU, why they didn't have nothin'. After U.S. Lines went under, they hardly had any contracts left. Witherin' away on the vine they was. Back then Lykes Lines was like their last company, and they was on the ropes pretty much. About the only place you could ship with them was in the Gulf. Back in my old man's day these companies were going gangbusters. Now they are just plain gone. These days there ain't no such thing as the NMU.

So AJ found him a job he wanted and threw in for it. He beat out a couple of guys with his 'killer card'. He wanted the job because it was gonna hit Brazil. He said Santos was hot an' that was where he was headed. It was a flyout.

AJ said he'd fix me up with the port agent, but the guy wasn't at his desk. He was out at some ship's payoff. His name was Mercury Carter, a big black dude. He said that was the guy I needed to talk to. I figured that was my best shot, so when AJ headed back to the Hotel Saint Paul, I went along with 'im. He invited me into his room to smoke some dope while he packed. I remember he showed me his roll of Coast Guard Discharges. He must've had a hundred of 'em. The boy'd done some sailin'.

Yeah, he said this Carter guy was the ticket and I could use his name. He also said it wouldn't be a bad idea to grease the guys' palm, you know, give 'im a couple of bucks for helpin' me out. Shit, and here I am with sixty bucks and a twenty-dollar hotel tab to boot.

"What are you talkin' about greasin' the guy's palm. Hell, I made First Class Bosun's Mate in the Navy, more than once even." Hell, I told 'im I'd done this an' knew that and done that 'n knew this. They was lucky to get an _experienced_ guy like me. AJ laughed right in my face.

"Hey, see that dude over there?" He pointed to this guy sitting down all alone. He had a glaze on his eyes that outdone any donut I'd ever seen. The only reason you woulda' thought he was alive was every once and a while he twitched.

"That there is 'One trip Dick'. And I don't mean to say he's a dick, Dick is his name. When the hall is plum empty, that's who they send. Before they send out a 'C' card like you, they send ol' 'One Trip'. They call him that because he shows up back here after the first port of call every ship he's ever been on. The guy's _never_ made a round trip even."

Yeah, I was on the outside lookin' in. But what the hell, now I had a name and a reference. And then there was that company I had the two-fifteen appointment with. Something had to give. One or the other, it didn't matter which.

Now those of you who have been paying close attention or who have a boozer in the family probably already know my next move. There I was, three thousand miles from home, no job, no money, nada. Who ya gonna call? Why Marie, of course, my sister. The last time I talked to her I had made like I was set up with work in Houston and now here I come, down and out in Frisco. Nothing that a four-minute string of pure bullshit couldn't iron out.

"Yo, my new company sent me to San Francisco to meet a ship and guess what, I got rolled. Believe that shit? Me rolled. Bla bla bla. Na, I'm OK. Really. Yeah, a little sore's all. Say, could you help me out, with say three hundred bucks? I'll wing it back first chance I get. Hey, and I'll take care of the collect call, too. My ship's due in in a couple of days."

I don't know who to feel more sorry for, me for having to have to pull that kind of crap, or Marie for having to listen to it. I don't know, maybe she came up with the cash just to shut me up, but she promised to wire me the three hundred bucks.

Marie sounded like she was hard pressed about the money. No wonder, considering her situation having to support Ma and her own kids by herself. She had thrown out her drunk old man by that point there. I spent the whole stroll I went on later that night in search of the Western Union office swearing to myself that I really was going to "wing" the cash right back.

Yeah right, and they shot Lincoln.

### FOUR FIFTY-SIX

For a day that had started full of promise it turned out to be a disaster. A frickin' disaster. I'm livin' proof you can clobber somebody over the head with somethin' and they won't take the hint. That day there shoulda' brought it to my attention to take a different tack. But I rolled out of bed there at the Hotel Saint Paul that next day with hardly a hangover to speak of. Not that I'd reformed, it's just that I was broke. AJ didn't like flying with drugs salted away on him, so I inherited what was left of his pot stash. So all I'd done was some dummy dust the night before, no drinkin' to speak of.

And sure enough, Marie had come through. There was three hundred bucks worth of brand spankin' new crisp twenty-dollar bills waiting for me at the Western Union Office I had staked out the night before. Armed with that and two genuine shots at employment I thought I was in the catbird's seat. But AJ's buddy, that Mercury Carter dude, let's just say he turned out to be a major league asshole. Brotherhood my ass. If I had to pick a morning in my life to forget, that there one would be it.

Mercury Carter, like AJ said, was this huge black guy. He had told me to go see him about work, and I couldn't help remembering him mentioning that it wouldn't hurt to, you know, grease his palm, bein' as shippin' was so bad. So I go see him that there morning and he says he can fix me up with a flyout to some ship somewhere. 'Course the entire time he's talkin' to me he's on the phone with somebody else. I remember havin' a hard time figuring exactly who he was talkin' to, me or the other guy on the line. The conversation got to where it needed sortin' out a couple of times. But the guy was huge, the phone looked tiny in his big ass fist. He said come see him after lunch. So I leave two hundred on his desk, ten twenties, and off to lunch I go. What a dope. 'Course I got me an excuse, I was on dope, don't you know. I figured I was as good as gold. So after lunch I stop by and this Carter guy is nowhere to be found. Finally I get somebody there to get him on the phone, and the son of a bitch says 'Sawyer? I don't know the name.' Well I get to raisin' hell. Next thing I know five or six of them union bastards are all over me. 'You accusin' Mr. Carter of takin' a bribe? Don't you know that there is illegal? _You_ accusing the man of doin'something that's against the law?" After a couple of sucker punches I exited that hiring hall out the side door horizontal like, like a torpedo leavin' a fast attack sub.

Later that afternoon on the way to the Holiday Inn I stopped at several cars parked along the curb and watched as my swollen eye swelled the rest of the way shut in their side view mirrors. It was pretty ugly. Holding my eyelids open hurt like a son of a bitch. But what was botherin' me was the white part of the eye was blood red. I'd been clocked at the MWI hall pretty good. And as bad as it seemed right then, I wouldn't really know the whole of it for a couple of weeks. From the get-go my wardrobe wasn't much to speak of. It kind of went along with the kind of luck I'd been having. And now this, a shiner ta boot.

The Holiday Inn on Kearney Street turned out to be this big tall building. You could stay a week at the Hotel Saint Paul for what a night in that joint would cost ya. I even caught some funny looks as I went up the stairs and into the Hotel. The lobby was real fancy, and I felt out of place. I started having fear flashes about me going up to room four fifty-six and finding myself face to face with a room full of Navy recruiters. They've been known to put bogus ads in the papers. Yeah, this whole thing was bound to be another wild goose chase.

I got there at like quarter 'til two, so I figured I'd lay low a piece and found me a place to fade into the woodwork. With all the big time business types scurryin' all around I figured they'd boot my ass out of there in a New-York minute. I was sitting on a couch in the lobby there and this guy I hadn't paid attention to who was sitting across from me came over and sat right next to me.

"You goin' up for an interview?"

"Yeah, four fifty-six," I said.

He nodded.

"You got any idea who these people are?" he asked.

"Na, I just saw their ad in the newspaper.... You know who they are?"

"Nope, that's the sixty-four dollar question I was sent here to find out."

"You were sent here?"

"What do you sail?" he asked, ignoring my question.

"I sail deck, AB. How about you?"

"Bosun." he said, one-upin' me. He was a tall slender guy, built pretty good. He had curly, short, dirty-blond hair.

"What time's your appointment?" he asked.

"Two-fifteen. When's yours?"

"Supposed to be two but they told me they were running behind. I'm supposed to head up at two-fifteen. Who you sail with?"

"I don't sail with anybody. That's what I'm doing here. Just got out of the Navy. Who do you sail with?"

For somebody who asked an awful lot of questions it was beginning to dawn on me that this guy sure didn't answer many. Figures the guy was a bosun, and not the type I would want to sail with either. I had him pegged for a one-way son of a bitch for sure. I guess he caught on that I was starting to get pissed because he gave in a bit.

"I sail union," he conceded.

"What the fuck you doin' here if you sail union bosun?"

"Well, we're a little curious as to what's goin' on here. Might be a scab operation," he said under his breath, acting as if he'd just dealt me a hot card in a poker game.

I let him know right then and there what I thought of unions. Told him the whole nine yards. Didn't really care what he thought, being as I didn't like the guy anyhow. 'Bout halfway through my story he started chuckling and kept it up pretty much through to the end of my tale. He was particularly amused when I got to the part about my eye.

"Jesus Christ, an' you just strolled in an' laid two hundred bucks down on some guy you didn't even know? Jesus." Yeah, he was real amused.

"Brotherhood my ass, this is why all them guys got clubbed to death back then to form unions?" I asked, pointing at my shiner. "Union officials didn't get killed back then, guys like us did. Rank and file guys."

"Look, man, why don't you try a week in the real world. Things don't work like on TV, man. You want to get into a union, let me tell ya how to get into a union. The next beef that rolls around, why you just get ya a baseball bat an' get your ass down to the picket line, reportin' for duty like. When those guys get a chance to see what you're made of, then you'll get the opportunity to join the union.

"Christ, if everybody who walked in the front door got a ticket what would you have? A union full of dicksmokers more 'n likely. That what you want to go to sea with?"

"OK. I'll get me a bat an' wait for a beef. In the meantime, what am I supposed to do? Polish shoes?"

"Wake up an' smell the coffee, will ya? This shit don't happen overnight. You got to pay your dues. You think I just walked on a ship an' started knockin' down five 'r six grand a month from the git go? One hand washes the other, brother. I'm down here this mornin' doin' the union a favor, but I got news for you. It's a simple fact of life -- what goes around comes around. That's how the world turns, buddy."

With that he looked at his watch.

"Hold it. I'm missin' the frickin' boat!" and off he went, makin' tracks for the elevator.

I was about ready to go looking for a soapbox for the son of a bitch. I felt like sticking a "real" foot up his ass. I found the house phone and called four fifty-six. Somebody answered before the first ring.

"McGill?"

"No sir, this is Frank Sawyer. I have a two-fifteen appointment."

"Right, right, Sawyer, two-fifteen. Ah, here's Mr. McGill now, ah, we're running a little behind here, Sawyer. Can you hold on a bit?"

"Yeah, no problem, I figured as much. I was just talkin' to McGill, I guess it was, an' he told me how you were runnin' behind."

"Oh, so you and McGill know each other?"

"Not really. I just met him while we were both sittin' around down here."

I had half a mind to tell the guy that McGill was nothing but a union mole but decided against it.

"Well good. Tell you what, Sawyer, being as that's the case, why don't we just have McGill let you know on his way out when we're ready for you. I suppose that'd be the easiest way to do it."

"I'll be here."

When I die I hope I go quick 'cause if I don't I'll be kicking myself for all those times I spent wishing time would just hurry up and pass. I sat there twiddlin' my thumbs trying not to think about the situation I would be in if this job didn't pan out. They made quick work of McGill, though. I think they got his number real fast. Before I knew it, he was tapping me on the shoulder.

"Done already?" I was surprised.

"Have at 'em boy. They're some sorts of scab outfit all right. I don't know who it is they're backstabbin' but I don't think it's us. I bet they're tryin' to pull the rug out from underneath somebody though. You sure you want to work for an outfit like this? You're gonna get yourself a reputation, ya know."

"I got this without a reputation," I said, pointing to my eye again. "So what difference is it gonna make if I get a reputation?"

"Suit yourself," McGill said, and off he went, out of the lobby.

I went over and caught an elevator, hit four and with that soft little nudge elevators give ya, without me even realizing it at the time, I began the great mystery ride. Well, I got to hand it to these guys. Whoever the hell they were, they didn't waste any time beating around the bush. By the time I had one foot in that room I had the distinct feeling I had entered the twilight zone. I don't know what I was thinking, but I half expected the bunch of us to be sitting around a regular hotel room. I mean, what did I know about the corporate league? But I come to find out these fancy hotels rent out conference rooms to big companies from out of town to use. It was shaped like a regular hotel room but in the center was this long conference table. Behind it sat these three guys. God, the feds would give their collective eyeteeth to know who those guys were. I went over this meeting with them, must've been a hundred times.

When I entered, they all stood and introduced themselves but I'm not the best guy on the block when it comes to remembering names. You know, the ol' "in one ear out the other" routine. Probably weren't their real names anyhow. They were all dressed up in three-piece suits. The boss man, or at least the guy who did all the talking, wore cowboy boots, and coming from Philly, the likes of that makes ya take a second look. Don't seem right. Three-piece suit, and I mean a slick three-piece suit, and cowboy boots? Hell, why not throw a beanie 'copter cap on to round it out? Course, look who's talking. I'm there practically on my knees begging for work.

Before I even got to sit down, they asked to see my "Z" card. I handed it to the head honcho and he passed it right off to one of his boys, who took to scoping it out.

"Jesus," the headman said. Then he looked down at his paperwork for a second, fishin' for my name. "Sawyer, what the hell happened to that eye?"

That's when it hit me the whole time I was talkin' to that union mole, he never mentioned my shiner, I was the one who brought it up.

"You guys union?" I asked.

With that the main guy looked at his two buddies.

"Why do you ask? Are you a union man?"

With that I laughed out loud.

"If I was I wouldn't have me this." I said, pointing to my eye.

I told 'em my favorite union story, I don't have to tell you which one. These guys got as big a kick out of it as my union bosun buddy in the lobby. Them three guys, they were all laughin'.

"In answer to your question, Sawyer, no we are not union. This here is a one time, hopefully highly profitable business venture. We don't have time for the likes of unions."

"Good" was all I could come up with.

"What was the last company you worked for?" the headman asked.

"I'm just out of the Navy."

The guy made a show as if he was impressed.

"So you've never sailed as a merchant seaman?"

Oh no. I could see it coming, getting politely ushered right out the door. "Well, no, sir, I haven't."

He looked at the other two guys like they were all having a silent conversation. Then he turned to me and said, "Why don't you have a seat?"

Everybody got situated at the table. One of the guys took out two magazines and placed them right in front of me on the table. One was a _Time_ magazine and the other was a _Newsweek_ , I believe. Turns out the _Time_ magazine was the old issue that had the _Titanic_ on the front cover. I didn't get the picture. I mean I didn't know what they expected me to do. I just sat there looking at them while they stared at me.

"Please," the headman said, pointing to the magazines. Guessing at what I was supposed to be doing, I opened the _Time_ and started leafing through it. I just looked at the pictures. If they expected me to read the damn article we would've been there all night. After I browsed around the _Time_ for a spell, I opened up the _Newsweek_. The _Titanic_ wasn't on the cover but there turned out to be an article in it on it. It was about this French expedition, which brought up some of the debris from the wreck. I could tell by looking at them that that's what I was supposed to be looking at. After I finished leafin' through that one for a bit, the boys started to stir, so I laid the magazine back on the table.

"What do you think?" asked the cowboy.

"What do I think about what, sir?"

"What do you think about the _Titanic_?"

"What's there to think about?"

They all looked at one another.

"What kind of work did you say you did in the Navy?"

"I was a Bosun's Mate. Worked on deck. Spent most of my time on UNREP tankers."

"I'm sorry, UNREP?" he asked.

Good, now everybody was in the fog.

"Oh, uh, that's Navy for 'underway replenishment'. We used to steam at twelve or thirteen knots about a hundred eighty feet apart or so and deliver cargo and fuel to other ships."

"I see, and what exactly were you doing during all of this?"

"Well over the years I had a bunch of different jobs. Ran the RAM tensioner, worked on STREAM gear, hi-line, a bunch of different stuff."

Was I selling myself or what?

"You ever done any winch work?"

"Well yeah, an UNREP station ain't nothin' but winches."

Pay dirt. Without even knowing it, I had hit home. As it would turn out the _Pleiades_ was really nothing but a floating winch platform, too.

"Have you ever done any maintenance work on winches?"

"Sure. I must've slushed about six thousand miles of cable in my day. Spent more time than I care to contemplate wrestlin' birdcages."

That, my friends, ain't no lie. A birdcage is when you loose tension on your winch and all the wire on the drum just spaces out and tangles all up. Anybody who ever operated a fishing pole as a kid knows what I mean. Only way to straighten 'em out is take the mess by the hand and work it out real slow. It can take forever.

"Interesting," was all he said.

Looking back I kinda feel sorry for myself. There I was, swollen eye and all, doing my best to make a good impression to land the damn job and all the while those guys were thinking, "Yeah, this is one dumb son of a bitch. He'll do." I guess it was at that point that they decided that I could very well be their man, and they moved in for the kill.

"Sawyer, back when you were in the service, did you ever have a security clearance?"

"Yeah, I had a confidential clearance. Workin' on deck that's all I needed. They just wanted to make sure I'd keep my mouth shut about where we were goin' and stuff like that. Some guys got secret and top secret clearances because of the kind of work they did, but I never had to get anything like that."

"Do you think you could handle a top-secret clearance if you had to?" the guy asked me.

"I don't see why not."

At that point there I still hadn't figured out what they were getting at. It reminded me of my catechism career. I could never seem to be able to answer them questions either. And those answers were given to ya in black and white the night before for homework. For a minute they looked at each other again, then the main man nodded at the others before turning to look at me.

"Well, Sawyer, you appear to be qualified for the job, but if we're going to be able to discuss this thing any further, I'm going to need your word that what is said here will be held in the strictest confidence, regardless of whether you get the position or not."

"I understand."

"Yes, well I hope you do. A lot of people are going to have to rely on you to keep your mouth shut. We're not talking some military exercise here. We're talking about several influential people's cash money, and a rather substantial amount at that."

"I see."

With that the cowboy walked around from behind the table. He picked up the _Time Magazine_ and opened it up to the section on the _Titanic_ and laid it down in front of me. It was the picture of a bunch of shit from the wreck strewn over the ocean floor.

"What do you see there?"

"Wreckage," I replied.

"Well, I guess you could call it that. Do you know the history behind all this?" he asked.

"No. I remember hearin' about them findin' it, that's all. It was in the news."

"Oh, you got that right, it was in the news all right. Are you familiar with the name Dr. Robert Ballard?"

I shrugged. I'd never heard of the guy.

"You see, Dr. Ballard was the man who assembled the equipment and led the mission that found the _Titanic_."

"Oh," I chipped in. Hey, if he said so.

"He's actually been there. They went down in a little submersible submarine and explored the wreck.

"Look," he said, turning a page. "Here's a photograph of the inside of the _Titanic_."

I looked at the picture just to keep him happy.

"This fellow made quite a reputation for himself. People have been trying to find that wreck for some time. Dr. Ballard succeeded where many had failed. As a matter of fact, it took even him more than one try to locate the ship.

"Look here" he went on. "Look at this," he said as he turned the page and pointed.

"A bottle of wine, chilled since 1912, cork still in it. What do you figure somebody would give you for that? _Titanic_ , 1912. Pretty fair vintage, eh?"

I nodded my head, agreein' with him.

"How 'bout this," he said, pointing to a toilet among the wreckage in another photo. "What do you think one of these mega rich guys with one of those twenty million dollar mansions would pay to put a genuine _Titanic_ crapper in his guest's powder room?"

He picked up the _Newsweek_ and opened it.

"You see, uh, Sawyer, when Dr. Ballard found the wreck he declared it a, well, kind of a national park. His expedition didn't remove a thing from the debris field. Just took pictures. He said it ought to be left the way it was in respect for all the people that died in the disaster. What do you think about that?"

"Makes sense."

"I agree, it was a nice thought. Our friend Dr. Ballard didn't tell a soul the latitude and longitude of the wreck, but it didn't take our French friends very long at all to find it and bring up some mementos."

He laid the _Newsweek_ open to the page that showed the pictures of what the French had brought up.

"What do you think of the French? Do you think they're grave robbers? Think they're desecrating a grave?"

I didn't know what to tell the guy. I wanted to tell the guy what he wanted to hear. Not that I gave a shit about him, all I wanted was the silly-ass job. These guys were acting like I was shooting for a spot on a quiz show. Christ, I was just out of the Navy. This civilian shit was wacko. I was well-schooled in doing what I was told, not debating anything. Didn't they know that? They were gettin' impatient for my answer. I thought I was doing OK up 'til then. But wouldn't you know they had to hit me with a yes/no question where I had a fifty-percent chance of blowin' the whole wad.

"Yeah, I guess so," I finally said.

With that the cowboy jerked. It kinda looked like he got goosed almost. I wasn't sure whether I'd hit or missed. I was about ready to come out with "Well, maybe not," when he said "That, Sawyer, is our goddamn problem. That's exactly why this whole thing has to be treated like some kind of clandestine military operation, like a red-headed stepson, because just about everybody would agree with Dr. Ballard. Hey, let the poor souls rest in peace, don't go down the typical American path and blow the whole thing up into a morbid garage sale. Right?"

"Right." I said

"But that isn't going to happen, and do you know why?"

I gave him a dumb look.

"Because these bastards" he said, smackin' the _Newsweek_ , "won't let it happen. You see, we know that the French are goin' back, and, Sawyer, they're going back in a big way."

"This," he said, pointin' to the picture of their trophies, "ain't shit. They're going back major league. I don't want to go into how we know, but we know that the French intend to go back and clean the place out, to bring everything and anything up that will come up."

"Ever been to France? You know how they are? Poor bastards, it was probably that bottle of wine down there, they can't help themselves."

With that the other two started laughin'.

"Well, do you know what, Sawyer?"

"What?"

"It ain't gonna happen. In fact as far as I'm concerned, the Frogs just oughta stick to cookin'. What do you think about that, Sawyer?"

"I think you ought to go ahead an' go for it."

"Well, we're going to. That's exactly what we're doing. But like I said, we're going to have to be prepared to take some heat. There's gonna be bad press involved in an operation like this. You know, 'How could you be so heartless?' But speaking for myself, I'd rather take a little heat than sit by and watch the French walk away with the golden egg. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

This guy must've known I was between a rock and a hard place just by looking my way. Why all the theatrics was beyond me. In the shape I was in I woulda' stalked Bambi with a loaded bazooka for the right kind of money. And we weren't talking a whole hell of a lota' bucks either.

"Know something, Sawyer? I think you do know, and that's why I like you. Know something else, Sawyer? Most of the people who've come in here knew about as much as they did about us when they left as when they came in. Know what I mean? We're looking for a particular type of guy. Somebody like you, who's already been around. It's a sorry thing to have to say, but to find a guy you can trust these days isn't a very easy proposition."

"Look at all this," he said waving around to the room. "Look at the dog and pony show you have to put on just to find a guy like you, somebody with a little integrity."

Now the guy was starting to sound like a Navy recruiter. Something I was used to. "Know what I'm going to do?" he said as he motioned to one of his boys. "Hand me that application. I want you to fill this out and I'll talk you over with the office."

I filled out my name, but when I got to my address I was stuck already.

"I'm over at the Hotel Saint Paul," I said. "I'm not sure of the phone number, hell I don't have to call myself."

The cowboy waved his hand. "Ah, Jesus. Forget about all that," he said, taking the form.

"This here is you and you're at the Hotel Saint Paul. OK, we'll be able to find ya."

He walked back to his chair with the form. He sat and made a couple of notations on my application.

"Now look here, Sawyer, don't make a horse's ass out of me. While I'm talkin' you up to the main office don't you be running all around town blabberin' all over the place. All your friends need to know is that you went to talk to a guy about a job on a ship, you hear?"

"Yes sir."

"They just broke this vessel out. It'd been laid up, I understand. Spent a damn fortune reworking her, and I believe they're loading stores on her now?" he said, looking at his buddies. They nodded their agreement. "So if you get the green light, they're going to want to get you out there pronto. Are you ready to go?"

"Oh yeah," I said. If he only knew the half of it.

"OK." He seemed to be pleased with it all. "We got some big names and big money involved here, Sawyer. I wish I could cut you in on who's who, but I'm not at liberty to, not right now anyway. Believe me, you'd know who I was talking about. Big names. You'd think these kind of people wouldn't care what others thought about them, but I guess when you get a million bucks just to eat a bowl of cereal in front of a camera or wear a pair of jockey shorts, you got to watch where your name winds up."

I'll never forget this is when I heard them use the term "fragile consortium." Is that English?

"These people already laid out some change, but goddamn it if we can't keep them out of the spotlight like we promised them, they'll pull the plug in a heartbeat. We got a winning ticket here, Sawyer. But believe you me, it's a very fragile consortium. Our ducks are all lined up, and if I have my way you're gonna be on the team."

I nodded my approval.

"That just about does it. Do you have any questions?"

"What about pay?" I asked sheepishly.

The boss man laughed as he looked at his buddies. "Well yes, I guess a fellow might be interested in what he'll be workin' for. Who's got the register?" One of the other guys fished it out and handed it to him.

"Let me see. AB, right? Ah, you're lookin' at sixteen-hundred base, with fourteen bucks-an-hour overtime. I understand Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays are at the overtime rate, excess of eight on the weekdays.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bonus in it for you when you get back. You know, after they get a look at the booty. You're going to make a nice piece of change, assuming I can get you on with them."

I stood up and thanked them.

"And don't you worry Sawyer" he said pointin' at my eye. "We aren't in the market for boy scouts with a nautical merit badge, we're lookin' for real seamen to do a real job. Hell, who's the most famous seaman in history? Columbus?" he asked, lookin' at his two buddies.

"Didn't he die of the clap?"

With that they all started laughin'. I was laughin' too, 'cept it wasn't with them guys. What I was laughin' at was I was sayin' to myself, 'Yeah, well he bought it too, more 'n likely.'

### MISSION ROCK RESORT

The evening of that interview I drifted into a seedy place in the Tenderloin. It was pretty crowded and dark, with loud music. Just the type of joint I was looking for 'cause I intended to spend the evening hijackin' other people's cocktails. Lot of pride I had, huh? Well, I'm in the place maybe an entire minute when this cute little honey elbows over to me and says, "Can I get you a beer?" Tight little brunette with angelic eyes. I mean, I was in love.

"Hell yeah."

It's funny 'bout women. Sometimes, I guess you could call it chemistry, but sometimes it just happens. I mean sometimes for no reason out of the blue a little woman takes a liking to ya and you're off. Goes the other way too. Sometimes you just see some honey that rings your bell, and you just got to go for it. Maybe my judgment was a little bit off because of the luck I'd been having. Who knows? But anyhow, I just watched this pretty little thing make her way over to the bar and order a beer. Man, I heard Cupid playing rock 'n roll.

Well, to make a long story short, she got me a beer all right; she was the goddamn waitress. My heart pulled a Hindenburg number right then and there. Shortest romance I ever had. I must've downed ten different varieties of liquor. Boy, spending the night clipping drinks does a number on ya. Any drinker can tell ya a story 'bout mixing booze. Something ya really ought not to do, 'cept my lack of funds had me in a jam. Now, I realize that you're probably getting real tired of falling down drunk stories by now, but you got to realize that that was my way back then.

The next day was a Friday. Shitty day, too. Cold and damp. I sat around and waited for the Holiday Inn crowd to call 'til about ten-thirty. Needless to say I was wound tight. I finally gave up on waiting and walked down the street to the hotel. I went in the lobby and dialed four fifty-six and got some salesman or something. The mystery trio had checked out. I spent the rest of the afternoon trading warm plasma for cold cash. How it all goes is they suck a pint of blood out of ya and, while they let the needle and tubes dangle out of your arm, they run across the room and throw the bag of blood into what looks like a washing machine. That's how they spin the blood and get what it is they're after, the plasma, whatever the hell that is. Then they prance back to you and drain the bag back into your arm. Presto, twenty bucks. Easy money. Here I am practically hocking my own body parts and the day before the three stooges were all concerned about how I'd feel 'bout grave robbing.

When I got back to the digs there was one of those yellow stickum things on my door. All it had on it was a number and "concerning employment" written in chicken scratch underneath it. I was so nervous I had trouble fitting the quarter in the damn phone. One ring was all it took.

"Sawyer, how are you?"

"Well, that depends."

"None of that, Sawyer. I got good news. Congratulations, I talked to the office and they're gonna take you on. Can you be ready to fly out tomorrow?"

"No problem."

"One thing, though. We never got around to examining your passport yesterday. I need you to bring it with you when you pick up your ticket. We don't need to fly you halfway around the world to find out you can't get off the plane."

"Where do you want me?"

"Are you familiar with San Francisco?"

"Pretty much."

"How about a place right off Third Street, Mission Rock Resort. Do you know where it is?"

"Not right offhand, but I'll find it."

"OK, how about three-thirty. That too soon?"

"I'll be there."

"Three-thirty it is. OK, tiger, we'll see you there."

"Tiger"? Jesus Christ, the guy oughta be coaching little league. I don't know, I guess he wasn't all that bad of a dude. He and his buddies probably were just hired to hire us. I doubt he really knew what was in store.

I was familiar with how to get to Third Street from where I was. It was right off of Market Street. I was out the door and down Kearny Street in a flash. San Francisco really isn't that difficult a town to find your way around in. Once you learn to separate streets from avenues, that is. At least it isn't like Washington, D.C. I remember once as a kid my ol' man tried to take us to see the Washington Monument. We'd drove down from Philly on a day trip to D.C. Well, the poor bastard spent an hour and a half hunting for it. You could see the son of a bitch sticking up like it does the whole time, which only made it worse. Was like D.C. was flashing us the bird. We got damn close to it a couple times, but had to settle for the Jefferson Memorial, I think it was.

Well, me finding the Mission Rock Resort was another one of those numbers, 'cept I was walking and of course it started raining. All the roads in Frisco seem to make sense, with the exception of Third Street, that is. Third Street starts off like all the other numbered streets down toward the Ferry Building next to the Bay, but it makes a dogleg off into nowhere, I came to find out. No shit. It hooks a right and the next corner you come to is the corner of Third and Fourth Streets. Figure that one out, why don't you. You don't see numbered streets colliding in Philly, or anywhere else I've ever been. If I'd been driving all this would've been a minor inconvenience, but remember now I'm hoofin' it and it's raining. By the time I finally found the place it was ten'til four. It must've been at least a couple miles up Third Street. The guy would've saved me a lot of aggravation by saying it was right next to the old Todd Shipyard, because that's where it turned out to be. But then again, he was from out of town and he probably didn't know either. I went in the place and all there was on the first floor was a snack bar. A closed snack bar, I should say. Right at the front door was a flight of stairs leading up so I went up 'em. On the second floor was a bar. There was only a couple of people in it. Nobody I knew. A bolt went up my spine; I had a horrible feeling I had blown it. The barmaid was looking at me funny. I was standing there dripping all over the place. I asked her where the men's room was and she pointed. I went in and used the hand dryer to blow-dry my hair. That's about all the damn things are good for anyway. After straightening up a bit, I went back to the bar and ordered a drink with my blood money.

The place had a bird's-eye view of the shipyard. The two dry docks were empty and all the cranes were standing abandoned, pointing every which way. About the only time they use the place now, except for government work, is when a ship breaks down in Frisco. These days most of the scheduled commercial work is farmed out overseas.

So then this guy comes up to me. I had noticed him on the phone earlier. Other than that, I had never seen him before. A little Italian-looking fellow. Looked like a family man from South Philly.

"Trouble findin' the place?" he asked.

"Who wants to know?" I wasn't expecting a stranger.

"Frank Sawyer, right?"

"Right."

He took a seat beside me at the bar.

"You, uh, you got your passport?"

I took it out and handed it to him.

"Gin and tonic," he said to the barmaid, then he went back to my passport, reading the first page carefully. He put his finger on the expiration date, and with that he shut it and handed it back to me.

"Let's grab a table," he said as he stood. He motioned for me to go ahead as he paid for his drink. I went over and sat near a window. I wondered how he had spotted me. As he came over, he pulled an airline ticket out of his breast pocket and threw it down in front of me and sat down. United Airlines. I opened it.

"You're departing at 9:05 tomorrow morning," he said. "Think you can make it there on time?"

"Today's been a bad day."

"Looks like it."

We were gonna have a wonderful relationship. The ticket had me going to Dallas-Fort Worth, Paris, then Djibouti.

"Where the hell is Djibouti?"

"Geography was my worst subject," he said as he took the ticket from me. He leafed through all the ticket stubs. For a wise guy it took him a while.

"East Africa," he finally said.

"Why the hell am I goin' to East Africa?"

"Because that's where the ship is. Would you like me to see if they can swing by and pick you up here?" He handed the ticket back to me.

"Na, I like airline food." For a guy that needed a job, I wasn't doing a very good job of minding my Ps an' Qs, but I figured this guy for a gofer. As long as we were getting along so well, I figured I'd go for broke.

"Say listen, bein' as I'm flyin' out tomorrow an' all, I was wonderin' if you could give me a little advance?"

"Advance?"

"Yeah, you know, a couple of bucks. Pocket change. Hell, I'm goin' to Djibouti."

He shook his head in disbelief.

"Sit tight," he said. He was pissed. I was happy. He got up and went over to the phone.

It had stopped raining. Things were looking up all around. I can't tell ya what it felt like to have my paws on that ticket. My buddy had gotten a hold of whoever it was that he had to and he was doing some talking. It wasn't much of a conversation. He hung up and made his way back to the table. I've played enough poker to know when to push my luck. The bottom line was that I figured that I knew enough to screw 'em up. He sat down with his wallet in hand.

"Hundred bucks do ya, champ?"

"You're too kind," I said. He forked over the cash, five twenties.

"Look, I'd like to hang around an' shoot the shit but I'm runnin' a little behind," he said as he stood.

"It's been real," I said.

"Yeah, right. Hope the plane don't crash."

I waved him off _._ I got up and went over to the bar. As I sat down I couldn't help noticing my shiner in the mirror behind the bar. I didn't have to wonder how the guy pegged me anymore.

### SILVER BIRDS

I don't like flyin', 'cept it ain't what you're thinking. It's not that I have a fear of being smeared all over some smokin' mountainside someplace. It's just that when you get down to being a loud asshole drunk, they cut ya off and there ain't no going next door.

As I walked home from Mission Rock, after putting a serious dent in that hundred bucks, it dawned on me I didn't know the name of the ship I was going to. Here I was about to make a beeline to Djibouti and I didn't know where to go when I got there. Then again, I didn't really know where "there" was, either. But they had coughed up a hundred bucks and a twelve-hundred dollar airplane ticket, so I decided it was like more their problem than mine. I got me some crystal meth that night from a dude I'd met shooting pool. Like I've already told ya, I ain't fonda speed, but this kid wasn't gonna oversleep. And of course, if you're doing speed ya need you a little reefer to take the edge off, so I copped a dime off a street vendor in the Tenderloin.

Eight o'clock sharp the next morning I was at San Francisco International, cross-eyed and bushy-tailed. My seabag got tagged, then sailed off on one of those conveyor belts into the great abyss, and I got my ass wedged into a seat.

United Airlines. First we went into Dallas-Fort Worth. Had one of those layovers there where you don't get off the airplane, ya just get to watch a quick little musical chairs number and off ya go again. Texas to Paris, how's that for culture shock? There was a fly whizzin' around the cabin as we took off. He was in for a little surprise, huh? So I'm in a window seat \-- I got a habit of asking for window seats -- and back behind me is this loud obnoxious fella. A Texan. Now I realize loud obnoxious Texans are a real rarity. We're talking few 'n far between, but ya just have ta take my word for it. He was making a play for one of the stewardesses and getting absolutely nowhere.

"Hey thar', li'l darlin'. Say, didn't I know you in a former life?" was how he started off. Then he got to winking at other ladies sitting around him, in between cat calls. To top it all off, right next to him was a deaf couple. They were using those hand signals, whatever it's called. Well, the deaf guy gets up to go to the bathroom and my buddy there takes to writing this lady a note on a napkin. Goddamn, you should've seen the look on her face. I suppose she didn't know what a clown the guy was because she couldn't hear and all. She balled the napkin up and sat there and freaked before she all of a sudden just stuffed it out of sight somewhere. It was a fourteen-hour flight, and Rodeo Joe back there made damn sure there wasn't a single horny broad on that plane before he passed out. God bless Jim Beam.

Well, along came Orly Airport in Paris. I had a four-hour layover, not enough time to do anything but hang around the airport. They got one of those SST airplanes parked out front for you to look at. You're 'bout halfway to being an astronaut in one of those things. In my travels I ran across the Texan a couple of times. I figured he was laying-over too by the looks of him. I was tempted to turn around and say something rude to him back on the airplane. As it turned out it was a good thing I hadn't; the son of a bitch must've been like six-foot-eight. I'd just as soon let him be talking his loud English to a couple of snickering French honeys like he was doing than have him beating the dogshit out of yours truly.

So about an hour before the flight, I walked over to the departure gate for the flight to Djibouti. It was an Air France flight. The gate was packed. Not that Djibouti was a hot item; what it was was Djibouti is just a stopover for the flight to the French Seychelles. The way it was put to me was the Seychelles are to France what Hawaii is to the States. So I'm in with a whole bunch of people who're looking like they're off to Waikiki. I'm in the process of taking all this in when I notice, not that I couldn't help noticing, that right behind me is this fuckin' Texan. 'Course he sees me 'long about the same time I see him, so there's no ignoring him.

"Jerry Wayne Kohler," he says, sticking his hand out.

"Frank," I say, shaking the guy's hand.

"Say, weren't you on that flight from Dallas?" he asked.

I felt like sayin', "Yep, and I sure enjoyed watching ya make a horse's ass out of yourself," but all that came out was a simple, "Yeah."

"Where're y'all off to?" he says.

"Djibouti."

He took to looking serious, and asked, "What's your line of work?"

"Seaman."

With that he lit up.

"Goin' on a li'l treasure hunt?" he said with a knowing smile.

"You might say."

Oh shit, figures the guy was a seaman. Looked like me and Jerry Wayne were gonna get acquainted.

"What's with the eye?"

"Little goin' away present."

During all this, we're moving up in line. I got to the desk where they check your tickets and seat you. I asked for my usual window seat, then moved aside and let the big man up. He stuck his thumb out at me and says to the lady: "I'd like next to my friend here, if you would please, ma'am."

All I had in mind was pumping the guy for what he knew about our little "treasure hunt." Getting stuck next to the bastard all the way to Djibouti, it goes without saying, wasn't a happy thought. By then I hadn't slept in going on two days and it was starting to come home. It was like five in the evening there in France, and that wasn't helping either, ya know, the sun going down and all. Hop on an airplane for twelve or fifteen hours and you can't hardly figure out what day it is, let alone the time.

The place was packed, but lucky for me we managed to find two seats in the waiting area there next to one another.

"How long y'all been with this outfit?" he asked me as we settled.

"Shit, two days?" I guessed, lookin' at my watch. "How 'bout you, Jerry?"

"Jerry Wayne," he said, correcting me. "I just signed up with 'em myself. What are y'all sailin?"

"AB," I said.

"Me too. Been sailin' long, Frank?"

"Just got the boot from the Navy. Matter of fact, this is my first merchant job. How about you?"

"Oh, I've been out an' about. Been sailin' since I was eighteen, since I got out of the Army."

"Damn, must've been a whirlwind tour if ya got out of the service when you were eighteen."

"Well now, I didn't exactly get out. I got put out. I got my ass in a heap of trouble back home when I was a kid and the judge says to me, 'Boy, it's all up to you. Now, I can send y'all over to the county an' have y'all smashin' rocks, or ya can git yourself in the Army. That was back durin' the war when they did crap like that. So I done some quick figurin' an' come to decide that if I go in the Army I'd get beer money an' a couple of weekends off here an' there, so I go that route. They sent my ass up to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for boot camp. We called it Fort Lost in the Woods. Talk about the middle of nowhere. Then they sent me back to Texas, got put in a mechanized division. See, I was a tank mechanic. 'Course the shit was hittin' the fan big time over in 'Nam back then and they was in the process of getting my whole division ready to go overseas. Well, I got word the captain was lookin' for me an' I go find the guy. You see, they'd done a check of everybody that was gettin' shipped out."

"'Private, it says here you're a convicted felon,' the captain says to me."

"'Yes, sir, that's how I got here,' I tell 'im, which was the truth. I do tell the truth every once 'n a while."

"'Son," he says, 'how'd y'all get in the Army with a felony on your record?'

"'Sir,' I says again, 'that's how I got in the Army.'"

"But wouldn't y'all know they couldn't have any convicted felons bein' sent overseas to shoot gooks, so they up an' threw my ass out right then 'n there. They said I had what they called a 'fraudulent enlistment.'"

You could tell ol' Jerry Wayne was still gloating 'bout all this. He was the type of fellow who went through life content with playing dumb. I would come to find out he had a lot of aptitude in that respect. Along about then they started loading the plane. Me and Jerry Wayne got shuffled on board like so many cattle. It was an Air France 747. This was the first time I was ever on a foreign airliner. It strikes ya as funny because everything is so familiar, but nothin's in English. French sure is a sexy language. The stewardess came over the intercom and I was well on my way to getting all hot 'n bothered before I realized she was just giving us the same ol' dope on how to wear your seatbelt.

In no time at all we were boring a hole in the night sky. It was about a five or six hour flight on to Djibouti from Paris. So far so good with ol' JW. I guess he gave up on putting the moves on the ladies, not knowing French. He was having a hell of a time in that seat. Almost looked like a snared rabbit flailing all around. I'm a normal sized guy and there ain't no way I can get comfortable in an airline seat, so you know for a fella Jerry Wayne's size it musta sucked big time.

"Ah Jesus," JW said in agony. "Hope I can just grab me a quick case an' head home."

"Case of what?"

"You know, a neck case 'r a back case. Hell, I don't care, any case."

"From the looks of you, ya might have a case by the time ya get there."

"You ain't lyin'," JW agreed.

"No such thing as a case in the Navy. Can't sue the government."

"Yeah, well out here it's the only way to go," JW said. "You just lay low an' wait your turn, sure's shit one'll come along. You just git you a good one an' y'all can kick back an' retire. I got two brothers back in Texas, both got their cases. My brother Jimmy, why he done it right. You see, y'all be better off if ya can tie two companies into it somehow. See, Jimmy was on a coonass tug an' fell off the tug onto a barge. He got the tug company an' the company that owned the barge. Back injury," he said, winkin'. "Ol' Jimmy's got to lower that painful back injury into his brand new Chevy pickup every day an' go down to the local bar for his 'therapy.' Poor soul. They say it's gonna be like that for the rest of his life." With that, Jerry Wayne chuckled.

"Why I didn't work a lick last year, cleared forty grand."

"Back injury?" I asked.

"Hell no." He took a quick look around to see if we had anybody's attention. "Torched my trailer," he said in a low voice. "You know, my mobile home. I'll tell y'all what the key is there, lighter fluid."

"Lighter fluid?" I asked.

"Yep, just get y'all some charcoal lighter fluid. Odorless, tasteless, don't leave no residue. Oh, an' another thing, leave the windows open just a hair. First time I tried nothin' seemed to work. Turned out that was it, y'all gotta leave the windows open. Ventilation," he said, jabbing me on my shoulder with his thumb.

It was a short night. Ya see, we were flying east. 'Fore too long the sky started to glow. We got a meal before we landed. Know somethin? Not even the French can come up with an airline meal worth two shits. Must be it can't be done. Jerry Wayne was gonna get his case all right. Not that he'd live to collect. 'Course, neither one of us had any way of knowing at that point that ol' JW's long string of dumb luck had just come to an end.

### TURNED TO

So with that ka-thunk that airplane wheels do, we were in Djibouti. Djibouti International, I guess I should say. It was seven-something Sunday morning local time. I don't think thirty people got off that 747. I'd come to find out why soon enough. As a matter of fact, they didn't even have one of those ramps every other airport I've ever been to has. They had one of those stairways with wheels on 'em you see in black 'n white movies. Just rolled it up to the plane. The pilots didn't even turn off all the engines. They only bothered to turn off the ones on the side where we got off. They must've been in a hurry or something.

Looking back, my first impression was the heat. It wasn't that long after sunrise and the air was already pretty well baked. It was a dusty place too, which didn't help matters. Stands to reason, I guess. That end of Africa ain't known for its ski resorts. As we walked from the plane to the terminal, a truck pulled up and they opened up the belly of the 747 to get at our luggage.

"Goddamn," Jerry Wayne said as he looked all around. "If we got any further away from home, we'd be gettin' closer."

A sterling example of JW's faultless logic.

Pandemonium seemed to be the order of the day inside the terminal. Considering maybe thirty people had gotten off, like I said, and there were maybe fifteen people waiting to board the plane, ya should get a pretty good picture of the size of the place. I've seen bigger tomato stands in Jersey. Waiting for us right inside the door was a genuine Djibouti customs inspector. The guy was dressed in a worn khaki uniform. He asked us for our passports and we dug them out.

"Business?" he asked.

"Seaman," I answered. With that he pointed for me to head for a corner of the building where they had tables set up. Right behind me came Jerry Wayne, then came along this woman. All the while the people who were departing were coming at us from the other direction, against us. We had them outnumbered, so for them it was kinda like swimming up stream. It didn't take a whole lot of people to overcrowd the place. In there between all the "excuse me's", I bumped into an American who was on his way out. He wasn't too hard to peg, had on a Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA" t-shirt. I can't really recall what he looked like, but I remember, or maybe I should say 'bout all I remember about him was he was wearing a gold earring.

"Where you headin?" I asked him.

"Home. This ain't my cup of tea," he said as he moved along past me.

"You goin' to the ship?" he asked, looking back over his shoulder.

"Yeah," I said, barely catching this look off him. An "Oh you poor bastard" look if I ever saw one. I wanted to pin the guy down but I lost him in the shuffle. Why fate couldn't have teamed me up with that guy instead of ol' Jerry Wayne is one of those things I've wondered about on more than one occasion. Had that happened, hell, I might even have avoided the whole mess like it turned out he'd done. Speaking of JW, he was already zeroing in on the woman that had been sent our way by the customs cop. But another khaki clad customs fellow came and got him for something and ruined his approach, and left me standing there with the lady. I hadn't been paying attention to their conversation but having seen the guy in action before, I could only imagine what'd been going on.

"Got to watch that guy," I said.

"Oh...why?" With that I realized that she looked like she could take care of herself. She seemed to have bearing, or at least that's how the military would've put it. You could tell she was a bit older, but she had a real pretty face, piercing blue eyes, and, what caught my attention probably the most, a dynamite body.

"Ah well, it's just that I've spent the last twenty-four hours on the same airplane as the guy and in my personal opinion, just my personal opinion mind ya, Happy the Clown don't have nothin' on him."

With that she laughed. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, all the aforementioned and a sense of humor ta boot."

"Are you here to join the ship?" she asked.

"Yep. Just came all the way from 'Frisco, sailin' AB. How 'bout you?"

"Cook baker," she said. I'm Debbie Page."

"Frank Sawyer." We shook hands.

"Is that eye alright?" she asked with a concerned look.

"No problem, I got me a spare," I said, winking my good one.

Now there was a novel idea: women on ships. Something you didn't run into in the Navy, least not in my day. They had some on tenders, but that was about it. My preoccupation with that fellow with the earring evaporated right then and there.

The place had thinned out a bit and I couldn't help noticing a commotion over in the corner. Through the remaining crowd I spotted none other than Jerry Wayne arguing with a customs guy over an opened suitcase. I had done it right, I can remember thinking, having stashed the couple of joints I had brought with me in my breast pocket. For that very reason I was a little reluctant to go over and see what the hell was going on. But Debbie started heading that way and I was soon in tow. The customs guy was holding this enormous buck knife, which evidently had come out of JW's bag.

"Who the fuck are you takin' that off of me!" he was saying as me and Debbie arrived. The customs cop was about half his size and he looked like he was about ready to panic.

"Yo, Jerry," I said. "I can't help noticin' that that fellow that has your knife is also wearin' a pistol."

"Jerry Wayne," he spit, "an' that's my goddamn knife." The thing must've had a fourteen-inch blade. Not like he'd be using it on deck.

"Jesus Christ, JW, this ain't Texas for cryin' out loud."

"Look, let's just get to the ship and tell the captain. He's the one who ought to be handlin' this. This guy's just doin' his job," Debbie added. She had a cool head. I was liking her already.

I'm not sure any of these customs guys spoke very much English. French is the language to get by on in Djibouti. That was adding to the whole mess.

"Hey, JW, I think the guy's about ready to shoot ya in the kneecap," I said. He probably could've tied the little guy in a square knot, but he went slack, giving in.

"Captain better get the fuckin' thing back. Paid a hundred an' forty for it. Got no business takin' it."

That's when I noticed that we had gathered a crowd of customs agents. It would've been interesting if JW hadn't thrown in the towel. A black guy in street clothes came up and said "ship" in rough English and motioned for us to follow him. I pointed to the suitcase, trying to get the message across that Debbie and I didn't have ours yet. He just shook his head "no" and waved for us to follow him outside. When we went out of the terminal there was a little rice-burner pickup truck sitting there running with our bags already in it. Jerry Wayne followed, lugging his. JW and I climbed in back with the luggage as Debbie hopped in front. With that we were off on our first look at Djibouti. I don't think it was even eight o'clock yet. It was Sunday morning. There weren't very many people out, just a dusty road and a lot of shacks. After being to a bunch of these third-world countries, they have a tendency to all blend together. There was a stench in the air that reminded me of the Philippines. Must come from having open sewers is all I can figure, same smell. We followed a windy road 'til we came to a sentry. There were two Africans standing guard with AK47's. Jerry Wayne was noticing them too. Up 'til then he'd been busy moping about his knife.

"Don't run across too many of them in Texas, do ya?" I said.

"Who runs this place?" he asked.

"Beats the shit out of me."

After the driver talked a bit with the guards in some foreign language, we got waved on through. That gate turned out to be the entrance to the port facility. Inside were a whole bunch of those warehouses, I guess you would call them. They had roofs but no siding. Piled in them were thousands of sacks with a drawing of two hands shaking and American flags on 'em. "Project Handclasp" was printed on them in big block letters. Food, like you see in CARE commercials. Debbie said something, but I missed it. She was pointing to all the warehouses.

Djibouti is a flat place and off in the distance -- we were still a couple of miles off -- I got my first glimpse of the _Pleiades_. She was hull down, being tied to the pier, but you could still make out her white house, and that she was the center of a whole lot of attention. The closer we got the worse she looked. I glanced at JW and from the looks of him he wasn't too impressed either. By the time we pulled up to her I was wishing we were driving in the opposite direction.

"Jesus H. Christ," JW moaned. "Looks like the only thing keepin' her afloat is her moorin' lines."

"Goddamn," I added. She might have been painted white at one time but as for now she was more running rust than anything else. All around her on the pier was a whole bunch of crates and funky looking equipment strewn around, and a giant spool of wire.

"Look at that." Jerry Wayne pointed at her stern in disbelief.

"A fuckin' Panamanian flag. She ain't even an American flag. Those lying motherfuckers, it ain't even an American flag vessel!"

I didn't have anything to add.

"Some case I'm gonna get. Frickin' settlement probably be in bananas."

JW ranted on. Debbie got out of the cab. She looked miffed too. "Did you guys see all that food just piled up? Imagine. All the starving people here in Africa and all that food is just sitting there. Selfish bastards, why can't they just settle their differences and get all that food to the people."

None of that was registerin' on either me or JW.

"What's that say?" JW asked, pointing to her stern. The runnin' rust made the letters real hard to see.

" _Pleiades_ ," Debbie said.

"That mean 'sucker' in Panama?" I asked.

"Well, Mr. Baskin did mention that the ship was just taken out of layup," Debbie said, consoling me and JW like we were two five-year-olds.

"Why don't they just put her back," JW went. During all this, the driver had been placing our bags on the pier. On the stern there were a bunch of what looked to me to be Filipinos manhandling stores. A couple had stopped to look at us. Then it clicked. What the hell was I doing looking at Filipinos. We were in Africa for God's sake.

"Man, if I only had the cash to get my ass back to the states," Jerry Wayne mumbled. I'd been thinking the same thing.

"I thought you cleared forty grand last year?"

"Yeah, well I had one hell of a blast spendin' every last nickel of it, too," he confessed.

"C'mon," Debbie scolded us as she picked up her bags and headed for the brow. To her it was all a big adventure. Me an' JW followed, with a wee bit less enthusiasm. Half way up the gangway JW froze dead in his tracks.

"This has got to be some kind of joke!" he said, pointin'. There were chickens. No shit. Live chickens all bunched up in a cage on the fantail. Back when I was in the Navy we were moored next to a Filipino Navy ship once in Subic, and I'd seen this chicken bit before. But I never in a million years thought I'd be going through this.

"Oh come on now, they're just chickens. Are you going to tell me you two are afraid of a couple of chickens?" Debbie scolded.

The woman was missing the point. Once on board we come to find out there wasn't anybody on watch on the quarterdeck. There was a stand set up with one of those green log books, but the pages were just blowing in the wind. Wasn't like the Navy where they always had at least one armed guy on watch. Then again this was a commercial vessel, the paranoia factor wasn't there, I figured. We just laid our bags down and took to looking around, you know, admiring the chickens. Then along comes this man. I did a double take. He was the closest thing to the walking dead I've ever seen. The guy was around six, six-one, but Jesus, I don't think he broke a hundred- twenty pounds. He had 'im a pair of Jimmy Carter lips that rode funny on his face. He licked 'em a lot. Behind his glasses floated two blood-shot eyes suspended in their sockets. In between his boat shoes and his trousers you could see these naked, tooth-pick ankles. Half a foot of excess belt flapped all around as he walked. 'Bout the only thing healthy on 'im was his head of hair, which clashed with the rest of him. It was thick and grey and neatly trimmed.

"Well, well, what do we have here. Welcome aboard, welcome aboard," he rambled in a real noticeable New England accent. He was holding a hand held radio, which he called over.

"Mate on watch," he said. Then he held the radio to his ear and listened for a minute.

"Mate on watch," he repeated into it.

"Yes, captain," came the reply.

"Where are you Mate?"

"On the bridge, captain."

"Great, great. Can you just step in his office there and grab the purser. We got some new men here we need to sign on."

"Will do, captain."

He looked at us with a vacant stare, a look that was going to become all too familiar soon enough. Then, with like a subtle jolt, he clicked back to life.

"Well, the bosun's gonna be a happy man. He's been cryin' for help since he's been here. The purser will sign youz on then I need youz to report to the bosun. He's down in the aft winch room."

I couldn't believe it. We'd just spent all that time getting there and the son of a bitch was sounding like he was going to turn us to right then and there.

"Captain, ah, I haven't slept in two days, sir," I said.

"I know, I know," he said. "You're going to be tired, but I have my sailing orders for tomorrow morning, and now you have your orders. All this," he said, pointing at the pier, "needs to be on board and properly stowed by morning. It's unfortunate, I know."

I looked at JW and he was raising steam pressure too. I don't think I've ever, before or since, felt so helpless. Standing there in that furnace, beat to death, with no end in sight. It's a wonder I didn't do a meltdown number right there on the quarterdeck. I think the captain thought that his little speech was it and that was that. He turned his attention to Debbie.

"And you, my dear?"

"I'm Debbie Page, captain," she said as she stepped right up and shook the captain's hand.

"I'm your new cook baker." She was all excited and bubbly. She must've gotten her sleep on the airplane. Somebody her size probably could curl up real comfortable like in an airline seat. Made me wanna puke.

"Fine, fine," the captain repeated. I don't think he knew how to take her exactly. With that, a short, stubby, older guy walked up. He had one of those W. C. Field noses, you know, looked like a strawberry. He could've been cast as Rudolph in a Christmas pageant as is.

"Yes, captain," he said, reporting."Yes, Mr. Wolpert, can you take these fine young people an' sign them on board please?"

"Yes sir, captain." He motioned to us. "Wanna come with me, please." And the three of us traipsed off after him like so many ducks. The end of the line turned out to be the Radio shack.

"You the radio officer?" Jerry Wayne asked.

"I'm the radio officer. I'm the purser. _I'm_ the ship's typist. Who knows what else I'll be by morning."

"This place for real?" I asked.

"Never seen anything like it. Just one thing after another," he said as he handed us the ship's articles to sign. I caught a whiff of 'im. You could've cop'd a buzz off his breath. In walked a husky fella with short curly black hair, 'bout my height an' age.

"Jesus, Mary, 'n Joseph, white people!" he yelled. "Now don't tell me you people speak English too!" he added in New York twang, paying particular attention to Debbie.

"What about it?" said JW.

"Man these fish heads 'r about ready to send me up da creek for good. Which one of you is da winch expert?" he asked.

Me and Jerry Wayne looked at each other.

"Who said anything about a winch expert?" I asked.

"Main office said dey wuz sendin' one."

"I told the guys who interviewed me I'd worked with winches before. I never said nothin' 'bout bein' no expert," I said.

"You worked with winches before?" he asked.

"Why, yeah."

"Well then that makes you our winch expert. Wait 'til you get a load of dis operation."

I was already quite loaded. At that point I had had 'bout all the shit a fella could stand.

"Oh, uh, Charlie Hoag. _I'm_ da bosun."

We all introduced ourselves.

"What's this shit 'bout us havin' to turn to now?" I asked.

"Turn to? Sound like a squid."

See, squid's Merchant talk, meaning Navy.

"Got a problem with squids?"

"Not squids dat know winches. C'mon, I'll show ya your rooms. I got us all our own rooms. Turns out these Flips are used to bunchin' all together. I got 'em four in a room."

Charlie screwed Debbie with his eyes one more time before leading us, flailing with our bags, down below. The passageways were covered with grime. It was unreal. Our rooms were forward and below decks in the fo'csle. I got pointed into one room; JW got sent next door. My place was a pigsty. There was an overflowing trash can right in the center of it. There were bunkbeds, neither of which had mattresses, a desk, and crap strewn all over.

"You can worry about dis place later. Just throw your work gear on," Charlie said.

"Man, this ain't right," I bitched.

Charlie pulled the chair over to the desk and sat down, clearing himself off a space on top of the desk.

"Relax, relax. I got a little pick-me-up here for you two. Believe me, I know exactly how you feel. It's been nonstop horseshit since I got here," he said as he pulled a neatly folded paper square out of his pocket.

"An' dis ain't no Djibouti dust. Dis here is some of New York's finest," he said as he carefully laid out some lines.

"There's a Duty Free shop down at the end of the pier. During lunch I'll take ya down there. I don't know what your pleasure is, but they probably can fix ya up," he said, right before chasing the first line. "I got me some vodka, six bucks a bottle."

"I'm a little short on funds," I said.

Charlie waved his hand. "No problem. I'll talk to Captain Enk, get youz an advance or somethin'. Hell, I can spot ya a couple of beans."

"Captain Enk?"

"Enk," he said.

"Enk?" I repeated.

"E-N-K," he spelled.

"Enk," I marveled.

"Hey Jerry, get in here," Charlie yelled.

"Jerry Wayne," JW yelled from across the passageway.

"He's a little particular about that," I said.

Charlie handed me the rolled bill he'd been snorting with. I did a line; he motioned for me to do another and I obliged him. In walked JW and he lit up as he realized what was going down. I handed him the bill and vacated my seat.

"Did you get a load of that spool of wire on the pier?" Charlie asked. He talked with his hands. Must've grown up in an Italian neighborhood by the looks of him. I wondered how he'd got a name like Hoag.

"Yeah," I answered.

"Well, dat crane on da stern is what they're gonna be usin' to lower tha' sled, they call it. Me an' the electrician -- you'll meet him in a couple of minutes -- already fed da cable through the shives on da crane, around tha pulleys on tha ram tensioner, and down below to tha' take up drum. An' we had to make sure we had enough lead from that end of the drum to reach where der gonna put da control booth on tha stern."

Most of what he said was making sense to me. I'd been around stuff like that before.

"But you see, dis just ain't wire rope, this stuff has a coaxial cable runnin' inside of it. That way they can get TV pictures up from da sled an' all tha control signals down to it. If we should crimp that cable, an' God forbid snap dis coaxial inside it, we're shit out of luck, to the tune of a million bucks."

Jerry Wayne sat there at the desk just gawking at me and the bosun like we was hashing over rocket science or something. Charlie motioned for him to do up the last line, and JW banged his head on the empty bookshelves over the desk while doing his duck. Both me and the bosun got a kick out of that one. Must be tough going through life out of calibration with the rest of the planet.

"That spool's got damn near a mile of that cable on it," Charlie went on, "an' there ain't gonna be no rest for da' wicked until we got it laid on that take up drum down in tha winch room perfectly."

Boy, let me tell ya, if I knew then what I know now, I gladly woulda' snapped that sucker in about fifteen different places.

### DJIBOUTI VICE

So while our chemical resurrection kicked in, the bosun led me and Jerry Wayne aft and below to the winch room. New York's finest was right. At that point there we were wired tighter than that cable was on the drum.

"This here's Glide," Charlie said as he rousted the electrician from his catnap. He was a bearded, athletic looking fella wearing, of all things, a grease-splotched Philadelphia Eagles t-shirt.

"How 'bout them Birds," I said, shaking his hand.

"You from Philly?" he asked.

"Born, bred, 'n boogied," I answered. "How 'bout you?"

"Jersey. Right outside Philly. Right over the bridge."

"Clyde is it?" I wanted to get it right.

"No, not Clyde, Glide," he corrected me. You could tell he'd been down this here road before.

"Like with no motor, Glide," he added.

"Funny name for a white boy," JW said. He was sizing the guy up. Looked like the big man had him some competition. A bout between him an' Glide woulda' been even money.

"Yeah, well, that's what I go by."

"What'd ya mamma name ya? She didn't name ya Glide, did she?"

"Matter of fact, she named me Buford. That's kinda like why I go by Glide."

"Buford? Ain't that a kinda cow?"

Right then and there, I thought Glide was gonna collect himself another nick name. Something on the order of Boomer or Duke. He just stood there quiet like and drilled a look into Jerry Wayne. He was making him a decision, which musta been to just play it off, 'cause what he said next was "You must be thinkin' of Hereford."

"Maybe so," JW said, still eyeing him.

"I didn't get your name?" Glide said to him.

"Jerry Wayne."

"Pleasure meetin' ya, Jerry," Glide said, offering his hand.

"That's Jerry Wayne."

"Oh...OK, have it your way. Jerry Wayne," he said with a shrug, and with that shook the guy's hand.

"As long as we're on the subject, nobody calls me Buford 'cept traffic cops with their pens out."

Yeah, I like the way Glide handled JW. It was a goddamn relief to run into somebody that seemed normal. I was beginning to think the _Pleiades_ was nothing but a bucket full a bozos there for a while.

"Youz guys done socializing? Or maybe I should send out for a pizza," Charlie barked.

"Relax, relax, Charlie. What I tell ya 'bout packing all that white shit up your nose. Charlie's a real excitable boy," Glide said, nodding at me.

And with that we began the great cable flail. It didn't take long to discover that the bosun had a real short fuse. Scream first, think later. It wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn't wrong half the time. Me and Glide worked the winch room. The bosun was up on the fantail working the control lever, talking to Glide over sound-powered phones, and wonder boy, JW, had been sent down on the pier to keep the slack out of the spool that the cable was being fed off of. They had spent the whole day before trying to thread the cable correctly from the spool to the take-up drum in the winch room. According to Glide, it'd taken about fifteen tries and almost cost the lives of a couple of the Filipino guys that were helping. Glide kept an eye on how the cable was laying on the drum while I put on a pair of gloves and got a five gallon bucket of grease and coated the cable as it came down through the overhead. The key is to get the first layers on smooth, and Charlie kept stopping the whole operation and running down below to check it out. He'd get to yelling 'bout a bunch of nothing. I don't take well to a guy like that, but Glide would stand behind 'im and mimic how he was, you know, how he talked with his hands, and all I could do was try not to laugh. The fact that the winch room was like a broiler didn't exactly help matters either. It must've been a hundred and thirty degrees down there. Just standing still ya had sweat pouring off ya. I got to bitching about the whole mess, but Glide didn't want to hear any of it.

"Man, don't take this shit so seriously. Sailin' ain't for everybody. Got to develop ya a thick skin, ya know. Just roll with the punches, or else you'll wind up like him," pointing in Charlie's direction.

I'll tell ya flat out, if it wasn't for Glide, I probably wouldn't have made it through that first day without a knock down drag out with the bosun. By about eleven we got to where things were going smooth and Charlie started to settle down a bit. When we knocked off for lunch he made good his promise about taking us down to the Duty Free Shop. When I climbed out of that winch room onto the main deck it felt like I'd been hit by a blast of arctic air. After about twenty paces I realized how good it was to have been separated from ol' Jerry Wayne for the entire morning. As the four of us headed down the dusty road by the dock to the Duty Free Shop, he lit off about his knife again.

"Look," Charlie said, "da ol' man's got a million dollar cable to worry about 'long with everything else, so where exactly do you think your hundred-and-fifty dollar buck knife fits in?"

"I'm just about ready to go see me a doctor," JW threatened.

"What for, somethin' wrong?" Glide asked with a chuckle.

"Who needs somethin' wrong? I was on a tanker once an' there was a bunch of asshole Yankee officers fuckin' with me, so I just up an' went into town to see a doctor. Told the nurse in his office my ankle hurt, so she made me take my boot an' sock off so's she could have a look-see. 'I don't see anything wrong with it,' she says, 'but let me have the doctor take a look,' an' she went off to go fetch 'im. Well I just took my boot an' beat the b'Jesus out of my foot. The doctor came in an' first thing he says is, 'Boy, somethin' don't look right.' Next thing you know I got a Unfit for Duty.' I just took that lil' piece of paper back to the Chief Mate's office and danced all around wavin' it right in his face."

You could tell it was a high point in his life. Me and the Glide were laughing, but Charlie wasn't too amused.

"Jerry Wayne, youz happen to notice that rag we got hangin' in the stern?"

"Yeah, an' that's another thing. What's the big idea 'bout y'all sendin' me to a ship like this? I'm 'n'merican, I don't belong on no ship like this."

"Wanna know why these guys didn't go wid an American flag ship? I'll tell ya why. 'Cause dey didn't want to deal wid a buncha lazy fucks runnin' off to see doctors every time dey had some half-ass'd belly ache. You wanna go git a Unfit, why you just go right ahead. Matter of fact, when you get back with it we'll let you use da ship's copy machine so you can run youz off 'bout a thousand copies. Then youz can take every last one of 'em down to your room an' use 'em for asswipe. That's what you can use 'em for."

"We'll see what the American Embassy has to say 'bout that."

"Who cares what they got to say? They ain't got nothin' to do wid us."

Ol' JW got to looking like a mutt in a veterinarian's waiting room. Charlie had made his point. And like a fool, I'm enjoying all this instead of realizing that what was being said went for me too.

"We just had a loser up an' take off. Flew his own ass home 'n you can do da same. What it cost 'im, thirteen hundred?" he asked Glide.

"Somethin' like that," he said.

'Course it was no secret to anybody right there that JW, and me for that matter, hardly had enough bucks to catch a cab inta town, let alone an airplane ticket home. There's an old sayin' about sailin' that says it's just like prison with the added probability of drownin'. Hell, fact of the matter is you got more rights shackled to an Alabama chain gang than you do as a seaman. Shit, at least they let them chain gang bro's sleep every once in awhile.

Well that Duty Free shop turned out to be something else. I was expecting a little dinky place but it was really pretty well stocked. The reason being is Djibouti is about your last chance to grab some firewater before ya hit all them dry Arab ports. I was hoping to pick up a handbook 'r two, but all I got was a dumb look from the clerk when I asked if he had _Playboy_ or _Oui_. After lugging about eight bottles of Tanguera _y_ over to the counter, I asked Charlie how long he figured we'd be out. He really couldn't say, so I tacked on four more bottles. Coming from the Navy, I didn't have too much experience with just totin' booze on board a ship. Ya had to take great pains to get liquor on board with ya on a grey hull. It was a real cat 'n mouse game. You wound up pulling shit like dyin' vodka blue and filling up Windex bottles with it.

Glide had him one bottle of Southern Comfort. It amazed me that they carried the stuff. All the way out there, I mean.

"That all you gettin'?" I asked.

"I just like havin' me a little halfway celebration when the time comes," he told me. "Bein' an electrician, ya gotta watch mix'n your juices."

We got back to the _Pleiades_ about twenty 'til one. I waddled up the gangway with my case of booze an to my amazement, nobody said a word. After stowing it below in my room I hit the mess deck for a quick bite to eat. Got a plate with pork 'n beans plopped on it. It didn't look like the _Pleiades_ was gonna be much of a feeder. Not that I was all that hungry, being coked up and all, I was just looking to bump into Debbie. She was nowhere to be found. Word was she was up in the officers' saloon. I wouldn't be seeing her for a couple of days. The Navy and the merchants had some things in common, like the upper crust getting all the sugar. There were a bunch of Filipino guys just hanging around on the mess decks, grab assin'. They had already finished eating. I was getting checked out pretty good, but nobody said a word to me. They just went rambling on in Tagalog amongst themselves, but I think I was their topic. Me, Charlie, and Jerry Wayne were the high-priced talent. I don't think those Filipino guys were breaking five hundred a month with overtime.

At one o'clock the whole lot of us filed out back aft and into the scorching sunlight on the fantail. The cable gang was there waiting for me. The Filipinos went back to doing what they were doing, moving gear and stores from the pier to the holds amidships. A skinny white guy wearing khakis was running them and operating the ten-ton boom. He turned out to be the Chief Mate. By now we pretty much had the job down pat. The idea was to keep the cable taut. In no time we had it back to where everything was running smooth again. The bosun was a little finicky in the beginning, but before too long even he realized we had it to where it was damn near running on auto. 'Bout the only time we had to hold up was when I needed a new bucket of grease. Before long me and Glide figured a way where we didn't even have to stop to do that. A mile is a hell of a lot of cable.

At ten-of-three we broke for coffee. While the three of us laid on the fantail, Charlie went off to find the Chief Mate to report our progress. He came back all psyched, saying that the chief had told him that after the cable was on board and all the dunnage on the pier from all the boxes the equipment had come in was put in the dumpster, we could knock off for the evening. Miller time, baby. I'd need 'bout half a case of beer just to put back the water I had sweated out down there in the winch room.

"Gentlemen, let's go powder our noses," Charlie suggested with a smile. Glide opted out, but kept a lookout while me and Jerry Wayne followed the bosun back into the steering gear room there just aft of the winch room. Between that sniff and the prospect of getting one last blast ashore, we were all in fine spirits. By twenty-after we were back at work. Yellin' over all the racket of the drum sucking up the cable, Glide filled me in on the prospects in town. He told me 'bout Ethiopia having been at war with itself and how there were a lot of Ethiopian women hanging out in the local bars, most of 'em hookin'. They weren't supposed to be in Djibouti to begin with, but the prospect of getting rounded up and tossed back into Ethiopia, like they did every so often, wasn't any worse than just plain staying in Ethiopia. "Law and order don't mean shit durin' a war," I can remember him screaming. He said there were a fair number of Europeans in the nightclubs. As a matter of fact, a bomb went off and killed a bunch of Germans not too long ago in one. He didn't know why or who'd done it. The French Foreign Legion had a post there, and you had to watch gettin' into fights with those guys 'cause they would gang up on ya. They ran in packs. You could spot 'em easy with their shaved heads. Dealing with jarheads was nothing new to me, I recall thinking. Where did ya have ta go to get away from bones for brains? Djibouti, evidently, wasn't far enough.

We knocked off for chow at five. Glide said that just because the three of us were rocketing along, ya know, because of the coke, didn't mean he was gonna miss out on his dinner. None of us were hungry 'cept him. Me, the bosun, and JW just hung out and waited for him to get back. I went down on the pier to watch these Filipino guys catchin' crabs. They got them some small line and tied some bait on 'em, and just dropped 'em in the water. I'd never seen anything like it. Crabs were just floating along in the water. The crabs would latch onto the bait and they'd just lift 'em out of the water an loft 'em into a bucket. Every once in a while they'd fall off the bait before making the pail. The Filipinos would grab 'em as they scurried along the ground and slam dunk 'em into the bucket. They were real small, just three to five inches I'd say, but there were hundreds floating by and they were pulling them in left and right. Those guys were one with the sea. It was in their blood; you could see it as plain as day.

Glide made quick work of chow, and we were back at it in no time. We were what you would call "motivated". Worked straight through 'til the bitter end of that cable came spazin' off the end of the spool on the pier. While the bosun and Glide figured out the best way to secure the end of the cable -- ya had to keep tension on it -- me and Jerry Wayne went down the gangway and commenced cleaning up the mess. There was shit strewn everywhere, but we were zipping right along. Like I said, we were motivated. Charlie said Enk had told him that the Harbor Master wouldn't dispatch no tugs until he made sure that we weren't leaving a mess on the dock.

'Long about nine thirty I was pacing on the pier there taking in the muggy night air while waiting for everyone else. The Filipinos were having themselves a party. They had their crabs all broiled and they sat around singin' an' drinkin' 'round a bonfire there right off the pier. They stuck together in a clump all right. I'm sure they must've had their beefs amongst themselves, but you'd never know by looking at 'em.

The Chief Mate was out walking on the main deck, stopping to check things out here and there, with his radio in his hand. Charlie and JW came out on the main deck, an' the chief motioned to Charlie that he wanted to talk to 'im. I could see it coming, him canceling our liberty, that is. It wouldn've been the first time the carrot had been yanked right out of my teeth. Charlie listened to him for a couple of seconds, then motioned for me to come up. I cussed all the way up to the gangway.

"Chief Mate wanted to meet youz two," was all he said when I got up there.

"James Run," he said, nodding at me and JW. He was a real formal guy. Always real proper. He was a Californian, from San Diego. Like I already said, he was real thin and always wore real neat khakis with these Hush Puppy shoes, which looked real odd to me, coming from the Navy and all.

"The bosun was quite pleased with your performance today. Keep up the good work. Going into town tonight?"

Me and JW shook our heads yes.

"That's some bruise," he said, meaning my eye.

"Looks worse than it feels."

"How'd it happen?"

"Just a little scuffle."

"Well, I hope you don't have a tendency toward that type of thing."

"You an' me both."

He studied me for a second, then nodded, like in agreement.

"Sailin' board is set for eight o'clock in the morning, so remember that when you're contemplating that last drink."

"Yes, sir," I said. Force of habit from the Navy.

"Yeah, right," Jerry Wayne chipped in.

With that Glide showed up. He had on a black satin shirt with fiery liberty dragons embroidered on its sleeves. He had had it made up in Hong Kong. Looked like he wasn't gonna be such a dead-beat, party-wise, after all.

"Let's boogie," he said.

And a long boogie it looked like it was gonna be. You can't get a cab inside the harbor compound, so we started hoofin' it down the road that led to the main gate. Charlie and Glide had been down that road before. They said that there usually were cabs hanging around the main gate. I certainly hoped so, otherwise we woulda spent the entire night hiking into town. But as luck would have it a pickup truck happened by. It was driven by the agent who was handling the _Pleiades_. We got a ride all the way to downtown Djibouti from him.

The center of town was this big square, with a courtyard in the middle. Ringing the courtyard were a whole bunch of red cabs, Datsuns. Their drivers were spread out all over. They were lounging around, shootin' the shit, playing cards an' board games. Some were waiting in cabs, on cabs, and park benches. Slow night. There were a couple of night clubs right off the square there, and we made our way to the nearest one. It was a disco, with music blaring, pourin' out into the street. Inside it was typical, you know, all the blinking and flashin' lights and mirrors 'n all, everything but a crowd. Most everybody in the place worked there. It was a Sunday night. The four of us walked up to the bar. Charlie and Glide still had some Djibouti Francs from the night before, but 'course me and JW had to exchange some dollars. We did it right there at the bar. I took a lonely twenty out of my wallet and handed it to the barmaid. She had this thing, looked almost like a little flashlight, and she rubbed it across my twenty. A little light blinked on it, and with that she made me some change in Djibouti bills. They must have a big bogus buck problem there. I'd never seen that one before. Charlie had already bought a round of beers.

"Frank, you OK for cash?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm OK, bosun."

He gave Glide a funny look. I don't think he liked the idea of me an' Glide getting along like we were doing. I think he wanted me dependin' on him. He was the type of guy that wanted something on ya, you know, like owing him money. You see me and Jerry Wayne worked for the bosun. He was our boss, but Glide was the electrician, he was with the engine department. Him and the bosun had equal rank. Usually on a ship you have the electrician present whenever you run any of the winches, and that's what he was doing working with us that day.

Well, like I said, that place was beat, and we went back out into the square and wandered into the next place an' ordered a round. It wasn't much of an improvement. Everyone was for continuing to hop so we beat that place too after that one drink.

"Glide, where wuz dat place we wuz in last night, the one with dem hookers?" Charlie asked.

"Down one of them alleys," he said, pointing.

"Christ, Charlie, I hope you're wearin' a rubber when you're punchin' these babes. They got AIDS all over Africa, ya know."

"Youz know somethin', Glide. I bet these days youz can catch AIDS from a church pew. 'Sides, if ya gotta go, I can think of worse ways dan fuckin."

We headed off down a narrow street. Looked more like an alley, like the alley of death. Laying all over were people, old men mostly, just layin' on strips of cardboard. They were everywhere. We got to an intersection, and to our left was a neon sign a couple of blocks down. We headed for it. It was a bar all right, a small, one-room place. Inside, three or four black honeys were hanging out over near the juke box. I've been a lot of places, an' these days most places you go you see crates with Japanese stenciling all over 'em sitting on the docks, waiting to be hustled off. But I'll say one thing for us, we still own the juke boxes and videos.

One of them honeys went behind the bar and served us our beers, Tusker I think they were, Kenyan. The other three chicks dived on us. I was into a little companionship, but what Glide had said 'bout AIDS had hit home on me. These chicks could hardly speak English. They were Ethiopian all right. You could tell by their faces. Ethiopians have real distinct features. They're beautiful women. Well, we got to banging down beers left and right in that place, buying drinks for the ladies and all. It didn't take long for me to catch a buzz. I'd been up for going on three days by then.

"Yo, Charlie," I said. "I got a joint, wanna go burn one?" I thought it was only right to offer. I'd been lappin' up his toot all day.

"Man, where'd youz get some reefer?" he asked.

"Some of Frisco's finest. Brought it with me."

"How much youz got?"

"Just this, my last one," I said, pointing to my breast pocket. It was a well-traveled jay.

"Man I wanna cop some. I need it to mellow out sometimes."

Boy, he could say that again.

"Let's go," he said and we both wobbled out into the street.

"Where the hell you gonna score some reefer this time of night?" I asked as we headed up toward the square.

"We'll do like ya do anywhere else, we'll hit up a cab driver."

"You think you can find one that speaks English?"

"What, you kiddin', you can't find a cabbie dat speaks English in New York," he said. "They'll know what we want."

When we reached the square and it became obvious we were looking for a cab, we almost started a riot. They got to swarming all over us. Finally Charlie just ducked into one an' I followed. The driver turned out to be an older fella. He looked more Indian than African. He was wearing these real thick glasses.

As he looked at us for directions, I said, "Jesus Christ. I wonder if this guy can see past the hood."

"No shit," Charlie said as he pointed for the guy to get moving. We didn't care where we went, we just wanted out of all the excitement. We turned down one of them small streets, in the same direction as the bar we had just left. As soon as we cleared the square, Charlie motioned for the cabbie to pull over. He was all confused, being as we had just gotten in the cab.

Charlie commenced playing charades with the guy but he wasn't havin' much luck. I tried my hand, making like I was using a pipe instead of a joint. That wasn't working either. In desperation, I pulled out the joint I had in my breast pocket. The guy got this frightened look on his face, and I knew right then and there I had done the wrong thing.

"Man, you shouldn've done dat," Charlie hissed.

The guy started waggin' his head no. We got out of the cab. Charlie dropped a couple of Djibouti on 'im an' we beat it. We could see the neon sign over the place we'd left the others at, so we headed down there toward it. It was a couple of blocks away.

"Too bad I only got one joint," I said. "Ain't hardly worth tokin' on it with four people. Be a waste, ya know."

"Yeah, I hear you. How's 'bout just youz an' me do it up. We can try 'n cop again later."

We walked down a dark alley behind the bar where Glide an JW were an' lit up. While we were tokin' on it something caught my attention, but I couldn't make it out for sure. Then something else caught my eye, and I began to catch on. We were being stalked, you could tell. I snuffed the joint and flicked it. All of a sudden 'bout six guys were all over us. They were Africans, and they forced me an' Charlie up against this wall. I guess their eyes were used to the dark an' they could see a lot better than us, because in no time the joint I just flicked was being shoved in front of my face.

"I never saw that before," I said. "Don't you go pinnin' that on me." I knew they had us cold, though.

One of 'em came up to me an' showed me this document. He was a cop. What he was puttin' in my face was his credentials. He took the joint from the other fellow and smelled it. 'Course runnin' through my mind at this point is everything I ever heard 'bout being busted in some foreign country. Then I'm thinking about that movie 'bout that dude in Turkey, you know the one.

"Man, it's just one joint," Charlie pleaded as they started to rifle through our pockets. They seemed more interested in my seaman's document, you know, my "Z" card, than anything else.

"United States?" the inspector asked in broken English. I nodded yes.

"Very serious, very serious," he said, shaking the joint.

With that we were led off down the street. The whole thing was unreal to me. I couldn't hardly believe it was happenin'. The ol' 'it'll never happen to me' syndrome. We walked a ways, long enough to have me thinkin' that they really meant business. All of a sudden, without any warning, they pushed us down a dark alley. They all gathered around us as the cop walked right up in front of us.

"Two hundred," he said.

"Now they're talkin'," said Charlie.

He yanked out his wallet an' whipped out some bucks. Made a quick count and just smacked 'em into the guy's palm. Two hundred United States dollars. The cop didn't react though. He just looked at the money with this confused look on his face. He did it long enough that I guessed at what his problem was. I actually just reached out an' took the money out of his hand. I went in my wallet an' started countin' Djibouti Francs 'til I hit two hundred. Then I slapped that wad into his palm. He did a quick count, then him and the whole bunch just like took off down the alley.

Two hundred Djibouti Francs is maybe, what, fourteen bucks. I mean, all I cashed was a twenty and I'd already bought a bunch of beer. 'Til this day I wonder if it ever dawned on any of those guys what they'd passed up.

"Youz see, it was that frickin' cab driver. He's da one that put da finger on us," Charlie went. "Nobody's gonna get away pullin' dat shit on me."

"We were pretty lucky," I said.

"We weren't lucky. You was stupid. Youz never show nobody no dope, ya hear me?"

"OK, OK," I said. He was right.

We headed back to the bar. As we passed a bunch of dark figures layin' on cardboard up against a building I said, "Jesus, can ya picture what prison be like 'round here. Looks like bein' a free man 'round here be worse 'n being in one of our jails."

"I think these guys is Muslim," Charlie said. "They probably lop your lips off for smokin' a joint."

Back inside the bar we went back to good ol' beer. I told JW an' Glide the story, admittin' to my dumb move for starters. Charlie sat there an' fumed.

"That cock-sucker ain't gonna get away wid dat," he kept repeating.

My way of looking at it, we were almost one up on them, with the money thing and all. We drank 'til we got the boot from that place. Charlie, with each arm 'round a honey, went off down a dark alley.

"He's plum crazy," Glide said. We didn't know the half of it. The three of us caught a cab from the square back to the main gate of the marine terminal. They wouldn't allow the cab in, so we had to hoof it back to the boat. We had to flash our "Z" cards to get in the place. It must've been at least two miles back to the ship from there, an' the prospects of taggin' a ride looked pretty dim.

All this time, nobody mentioned the "T" word. It was the three of us, walkin' all alone there in the dark, so I didn't see any harm in bringin' it up.

"Know somethin'? Back there might've been a warnin' from the ghosts of the _Titanic._ We might be cursed forever disturbin' their graves."

"Aw bullshit," Glide said. "What's dead is dead. Besides, for every one of us here there're ten guys who'd take our jobs. If it wasn't us it'd be somebody else."

"Yeah, an' a hundred-fifty Filipinos behind every one of them guys," Jerry Wayne added.

'Course we were all three sheets to the wind. I'm amazed we found the ship that night. I know it wasn't any of my doin'.

By the time we got back to the _Pleiades_ , took like almost an hour, we were high steppin' an' singin' "We're off to find the _Titanic_ , the _Titanic_ of iceberg acclaim. Fa la fala..." You know, to that _Yellow Brick Road_ tune. Drunken sailors. Little did we know, as we stumbled up the gangway like three dopes, that the _Titanic_ offered better odds.

### FIRST BLOOD

If there's anything I can't stand, it's climbing into the rack and spending the night staring at the overhead. But, believe it or not, after being up for, like I've said, going on three days straight, that's exactly what I did that night. Now I know a lot of you are thinking, 'ah, it was the cocaine'. Well, I guess it could've been the toot, but you know, it'd been quite a while since my last snort, and whatever goes up must come down. Lord knows I'd drank enough booze that night to souse a hippo. What I think it was, and mind ya I spent the whole night pondering this, was the time-change. Four in the morning in Djibouti is probably about one in the afternoon back in Frisco, although I didn't go so far as to figure this all out exactly. I never can get very far into that 'east is least and west is best' crap before my head wanders right up my ass.

I had mixed feelings about my new room. True, it was a pigsty, but with a little elbow grease, throwing the trash out, swabbing the deck, I'd get it to where it would at least be respectable. Back in the Navy there was no such thing as your own room, at least not 'til you were seven-tenths of the way down the road to makin' Admiral. As an enlisted guy, they used to stack ya up like toast in a club sandwich. It was work just to keep my eyes shut, and 'long about the time the light started seeping in through my porthole, I gave up trying. A loud knock on my door startled the shit out of me. The door flung open and banged against the bulkhead, and there was Charlie.

"Seven-twenty," was all he said. Then he went off down the passageway doing likewise to my shipmates.

Ya shared your commode and shower with the room next to you, and I opened the door to find it already occupied by a Filipino. Being no time for introductions, I just shut the door and got into my work clothes. Then I made my way up the ladder to the passageway that led to the mess decks. I was still drunk, and I figured that coffee was my best bet. I got myself situated with a cup and sat there, watching the others straggle in. Jerry Wayne came in looking pretty much the way I felt.

"If y'all ever catch me with a drink in my hand again, shoot me."

"Likewise," I said.

"How'd y'all sleep?" he asked.

"I didn't."

"Me neither."

He slowly nursed his large frame into a chair at my table. In came Glide, all chipper like. It goes without saying this didn't sit well with either me or JW. Matter of fact, if it hadn't been for him being a home boy, I probably would've thrown a dish or something at him. He scribbled on a breakfast chit and passed his order in to the Filipino cook in the galley. Then he emptied the last of the coffee pot into the sink and got to making himself a fresh pot, whistling all the while.

"Good mornin', gentlemen," he said as he set his tool belt, bursting with tools, at our table before headin' back to mind the coffee.

"If y'all don't have the common decency to at least look a lil' bit miserable, I don't think you should even bother settin' here," Jerry Wayne warned.

"Ah, you guys don't know the secret. Didn't anybody tell you?" he said over his shoulder.

"Tell us what?" I asked.

"Water. After a night like last night, ya gotta drink water. You see, your body dehydrates when ya get shitfaced like we did last night. I always drink about four, maybe five glasses of water after a binge like that."

"Hell, thanks for tellin' us now," I said.

"Sorry, thought you knew." Glide sat down at the table.

"Now if that don't work for ya, you can always try moderating your alcoholic beverage intake."

"Fuck you." Jerry Wayne said. I was on the same train of thought. Glide got to laughing.

"Don't candy-coat it there, JW. We're friends, you know, fellow seamen. You ain't gonna get anywhere in life 'til you learn to quit pullin' your punches like that."

"Now's 'bout as good a time as any ta turn over a new leaf," JW said, and he could've passed for dead serious. In came Charlie, looking a bunch more hyper than we'd become used to seeing him.

"What time's 'fore 'n aft,' bosun?" Glide asked him before he even reached our table.

"Der waitin' on some frickin' part. Chief Mate just tol' me they ain't sure when it's gonna be."

"'Fore 'n aft'?" I asked. I never heard it put that way before.

"Ya'll know, fer getting' under way," JW said, looking at me like I was a dope.

"Ah, we called that 'sea 'n anchor' in the Navy." You know, trying to explain my ignorance.

"Well youz ain't in the Navy no more. What, we gonna have ta translate everything inta squid for ya the whole trip?"

A look I caught off of Glide told me I wasn't the only one thinking Charlie was being an asshole. The bosun stood there in front of our table thinking to himself, flicking his fingers on his right hand. Neither me or JW dared say anything. It was pretty obvious Charlie was all hot and bothered about something.

"Jesus, what's eatin' ya, Charlie? Them two honeys you toted off last night blow ya off when they found out you weren't sportin' a double barrel down there?" Glide joked.

"If I want any shit outa youz, I'll squeeze your head," Charlie yelled, pointing his index finger straight at Glide's forehead.

The whole mess deck froze, which stands to reason. Just 'bout everybody in the space worked for the guy, 'cept Glide, that is. He just got up and strolled over to the coffee pot and poured himself another cup, lackadaisical like.

"Can I pour ya a cup there bosun? It's fresh, just made it myself." When the bosun didn't respond, he looked all around and raised the pot, extending the offer to anybody else on the mess deck. There weren't any takers. "You, 'n youz," the bosun said, pointing at me and JW. "Let's go." And with that, giving Glide one last hard look, he just walked out of the space, with me and Jerry Wayne scurrying after him. If we weren't behind him he never would've known. Didn't bother to look back the whole way. The chase ended on the weather deck, all the way forward, on the foc'sle. He went right up to the hatch cover to the fore peak and gave the dogs a couple of raps with the channel locks he always carried. Standing there we were in plain view of the pilot-house. The mate on watch, a young kid in khakis, peered down at us from a bridge wing not bothering to hide his curiosity. The management had us pinned down pretty good right there. Wasn't going to be a whole lot of opportunity to screw off.

We was in for another scorcher. There was no wind to speak of, the sea looked calm as hell, damn near like glass, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The horizon was like a knife edge where the two different shades of blue met. The only disturbance in it was an all too familiar silhouette of a warship, something I was used to seeing.

"Man o' war," I said, pointing.

"One of ours?" Jerry Wayne asked.

"Would one of youz give me a hand!" Charlie yelled.

With that both me and Jerry Wayne scurried over and pitched in. We lifted the hatch cover while Charlie pinned it so it was held open.

"I had 'bout all da squid shit I can take an' we haven't even let go da moorin' lines yet," he grumbled as he shook the hatch, seeing that it was secured.

"Now look, youz two. This here's da Bosun's Storeroom. The Chief Mate went down dere yesterday an' said it looked like a storm been through. I want youz two to go down there an' sort it out so's if we need somethin' we can find it. Think youz can handle that?"

"No problem," I said.

"Well see 'bout dat. I got to go find da Mate an' ask 'im how he wants to handle tha sea watches. I'll send yuz up a couple of gooks to give ya a hand." And off he tromped.

Me and JW just stood there and watched him go through the door from the foc'sle to the house.

"We gotta see if we can't get some Valiums into that boy's soup," I said.

"Mydol's more like it," JW mumbled as he threw his leg over the hatch combing.

Storm hit it was right. Place looked like the aftermath of a spaghetti factory explosion. There was all different lines tangled together all different ways for starters. Then there was anchor balls, lanterns, firehoses, elephant trunks, grappling hooks, rakes, why, you name it, just thrown every which way all over the place.

They found a way to keep us busy, all right. It was one of those jobs where you could hardly figure out how to start, let alone picture ever finishing. To top it all off, the place didn't have any ventilation to speak of. Jerry Wayne peered up the ladder at the tiny patch of blue ya could see through the open hatch. Sweat was pouring off us already.

"Son of a bitch."

We weren't too motivated. You could've put in a fair amount of work and you probably wouldn've been able to tell anyway. We started off picking this and that up from here and there, wondering what things were, mostly. Lot of shit we didn't even have a clue.

Somebody started coming down the ladder and we took to looking busy. It was only the Filipinos the bosun had promised. Neither of these two knew English. They looked at us anticipating orders. One of them was a real roly-poly dude.

"Jesus," JW said. "Don't that one look like Buddha?"

I had to laugh because he was right.

"Watch what you say. Maybe he is Buddha; one wrong word and he'll send your ass straight to hell," I said.

"What, y'all mean we ain't thar already?"

He had a point.

"Look," JW said, "Let's have these two feed us all this line up an' you an' me can coil it on the deck up there."

"That's a lot of extra work, why don't we just coil it down here?"

"Where would y'all rather be now, down here in this steam bath 'r up yonder in the fresh air?" Ol' JW was on a roll.

He took an end of a line he found and started up the ladder while I did my best at trying to get across to our two coworkers what he had in mind.

While Jerry Wayne pulled on his end, I untangled it down in the locker and fed it up to him. After the Filipinos got the idea I headed up the ladder myself.

"Good thinkin'," I admitted to him when I climbed out of the Bosun's Locker.

The warship was making her way into port followed closely by two tugs. I know a U.S. warship when I see one and I knew it wasn't one of ours.

"That ain't one of ours," I told JW.

"Y'all better knock this squid shit off, it's startin' to get on my nerves, too."

We probably would've gotten into it right then and there if I didn't go get distracted by something on the pier. A Willy's Jeep was heading down along the waterfront toward us. In it were four people. As it neared, I could make out the uniforms of the two men in the front seat. They were wearing those French Legionnaires' outfits just like the ones I remember from that TV show as a kid.

"Look at this," I said to JW, pointing.

As the Jeep hit potholes in the pier, all four of the occupants got tossed up in the air together. When they pulled past the bow of the ship, where we were, you could make out the two in the rear of the Jeep. One wore a khaki uniform, and we figured him for a local cop. The other looked like a Muslim guy dressed in street clothes. The Jeep pulled a tight U-turn and stopped at the foot of our brow. I noticed the mate on the bridge wing looking at them, too. He walked inside the bridge and picked up the phone. Calling the captain, more than likely.

The four of them got out of the Jeep. The Legionnaires looked funny in their shorts. I wasn't used to seeing that, short khakis, that is. They headed up the gangway single file, the two Legionnaires first, the second of which carried a bulging manila envelope. We were looking down the side of the ship and we lost sight of them as they neared the quarterdeck.

"What y'all suppose that's all 'bout," JW wondered out loud.

"I don't like the looks of it," I remember saying.

The door to the house opened, and Charlie stepped out. Me and JW were standing there gawking, you know. He had caught us screwing off cold. I was waiting for him to blow up but he didn't. He didn't look pissed, he looked all excited like.

"Youz two, c'mere," he said as he walked toward us.

As the three of us gathered together, he looked around, as if he was worried about somebody seeing us.

"Listen," he said. "Last night I came home with youz, OK?" Close up, he had a petrified look in his eyes. Something was very wrong.

"What's this all about?" JW asked.

"Man, there ain't time now," he said, almost pleading.

"Please, I came home with youz, OK?"

This is the same guy, remember now, that spent the morning chewing on our ass.

"OK, bosun, no problem, you came home with us," JW said.

Charlie turned, looking at me, with this begging look, you know.

"OK bosun, OK, you came home with us, ain't that right, Jerry Wayne? The bosun here come home with us," I said, rehearsing.

"What those guys want?" JW asked.

"I don't know. They're with the 'ol man now," Charlie answered.

"How's it comin'?" he asked. He didn't do a very good job of making it seem like he really gave a shit.

The three of us walked over to the hatch to the Bosun's Storeroom. As we peered down, the two Filipinos stood up real fast when they saw Charlie. He smiled. All of a sudden he was Joe Nice Guy. We heard some clicking, and before we figured out what it was, the captain's voice came on over the intercom. There was a speaker there on the bow.

"On the _Pleiades_ , this is the captain." Then silence as I guess he figured out what he was gonna say. "Will all male crewmembers and technicians, with the exception of Filipino nationals, please assemble on the main deck aft. That is all male crewmembers, with the exception of Filipino nationals, please assemble on the main deck aft."

"The plot thickens," JW said.

The three of us headed aft. By the time we made it back to the fantail, most everybody else had already assembled. The Chief Mate was there with his radio. Looked like maybe about eighteen people were waiting. Everyone was wondering what for. The chief did a rough count, and I guess he was satisfied we had everyone.

"OK, captain, I believe they are all here," he said over his radio.

"Would you please just, kind of, form two lines," he asked.

Everybody did a shuffle. I'd never seen most of the people that were there. In no time the captain and the four guys from the Jeep showed up. The head Legionnaire motioned, and the Muslim fella and the local cop began walking down the line of people. The Muslim was looking everybody over. When he got in front of me, he stopped. I nearly shit. He said something to the cop, and the cop motioned to me as he looked over at the head Legionnaire, who said something to the captain. And as the pecking order goes, the captain said something to the Chief Mate. He walked over to me.

"What was your name again?" he asked.

"Frank."

"Can you step over here, Frank?"

Man, all the while I'm thinking that we should've let them locals have the two hundred American. The Chief Mate led me over to where the captain and Legionnaires were standing, but nobody was paying any attention to me. They were all looking over toward the two lines. As I turned around, sure enough, there was the Muslim dude pointing out Charlie. Jerry Wayne was looking over at me with this wide-eyed look.

As Charlie joined me, the captain looked at the Chief Mate.

"That'll be all with the rest of them," he said.

The Chief Mate turned and said, "OK. That will be all. Thank you very much." The lines broke up and everybody started heading off in all different directions.

The captain licked them lips of his before he said, "We have a problem here. It seems there was a cab driver slain last night and according to this man here, you two were seen getting into his cab earlier in the evening."

Charlie and I stood there speechless.

"Do you know which cab the man is referring to?" the captain asked.

"We wuz in a couple of cabs last night," Charlie said. I nodded agreement.

"Just you two?" asked one of the Legionnaires. I hadn't realized he spoke English.

"There wuz only that one jus' youz an' I was in," Charlie said, looking at me.

"You had some problem with the cab driver. Can you tell me what it was?" the Legionnaire asked.

"We was lookin' for a cat house, was all," Charlie said. "He wanted fifty American to take us to one, so we split. We had a beef over the fare, but we ended up paying him. He only took us 'round the corner."

The two Legionnaires started talking amongst themselves in French. Everybody else just waited on them.

"What time did you return to the ship?" asked the Legionnaire.

I got to thinking. That was a tough question. We'd been drinking and all.

"I figure maybe one-thirty," I said. I didn't say nothing about Charlie. I wasn't too crazy about volunteering any info at that point.

"Both of you?" the Legionnaire asked me. There was no way out of that one.

"Ah yeah, there were four of us in all. Me, Charlie, an' two other guys."

The two Legionnaires went off on another round of French. I'm standing there thinking that all they had to do was come up with the cab driver that drove the three of us back to the gate to shoot down that alibi. They must not of had the time to have rounded up all the players. And if they did, the limb I just tiptoed out on for Charlie would get hacked off for sure. There was the guards at the gate, too. It ain't like I had had any time to think this all over before I cast my lot.

"If you would, can we see your hands?" the Legionnaire asked. I held out my hands and he looked them over front and back.

"Did you do that last night?" he said, meaning my eye.

"No sir, that was imported."

He moved on to Charlie, who had some cuts on his knuckles that got them two going off gargling French again.

"What is this?" he asked Charlie.

"From wire rope I was workin' with yesterday," he replied.

The Frenchman looked at the captain, who nodded his head yes.

"Captain, was an officer on watch last night who could verify the time these four men returned back on board?" the Legionnaire asked.

The captain turned to the Chief Mate, but before he said anything, this tall blond-headed guy that had been standing there spoke up.

"Captain, I can verify that Charlie was on board last night at around one-thirty, like the man said.

"As a matter of fact, he and I were right over there chatting until, what was it, two-thirty, would you say, Charlie?"

Charlie shook his head in agreement.

"And you are?" the Frenchman asked.

I'm Dr. Dundalkin, the senior scientist embarked. _I'm_ with the concern that has chartered this vessel."

"I see, Doctor." You could see the guy thinking that one over. "Do you always stay up half the night just to chat?"

"Well you see, Lieutenant, night, at least these days for us, is a relative concept. I just arrived from Seattle and I'm afraid I'm having a little trouble figuring out exactly when night is. The sky says one thing, but unfortunately my body seems to be coming up with something all together different."

"I see," said the Frenchman.

The two Legionnaires went off on another gambit amongst themselves. They seemed to be having a disagreement, and from them pointing at their watches a couple of different times, the argument seemed to be over exactly that, time.

"And when are you sailing, captain?"

"At any minute now. We had planned to be underway this morning, but we've had a few complications. We anticipate having the snags cleared up here shortly."

The Frenchman thought a bit, then kinda raised both his eyebrows. He gave Charlie a long look, then rattled off something in French to his sidekick. I don't know what that guy said back, but judging by his tone it must've been juicy.

"Well, I hope you have a good voyage, captain."

The other Legionnaire handed him the manila envelope.

"Ah yes," he said. "Captain, this was confiscated from one of your crewmen at the airport. Can you see that it is returned to him after your departure."

The captain took it and nodded. The four of them headed for the gangway. Before he turned, the Muslim fella gave me a look that damn near left a bruise.

The captain went searching all over that lumpy envelope, but there wasn't anything written on it anywhere. The flap was glued shut, and when he ripped it open, it came flying out like a bat outa hell, hit the deck with one hell of a thud. Damn near nailed him right on the foot. If he didn't react so fast, faster than I ever woulda thought he coulda, he might of had him a broken toe. He got to looking like a flamenco dancer, for a fraction of a second.

There, laying in its sheath on the deck by the 'ol man's feet, was Jerry Wayne's fourteen-inch Buck knife.

### FORE 'N AFT

"Stevie Wonder coulda drove the Goodyear Blimp through the holes in his story, an' now the bastard's got me all fouled up in it," I bitched to Jerry Wayne.

After our little interrogation, I'd been told by the Chief Mate to go back to whatever it was I'd been doing. So I headed forward to the fore peak on the foc'sle. JW was there sitting on a bit, waiting to hear what was going on. With all the shit flying it didn't seem like anybody was worrying too much about trivial crap like work getting done. We're talking major scuttlebutt now. A dead body, murder, the whole nine yards. Usually the big news is what time you're heading in or outa port. We weren't in that league any more, we had a regular TV mystery show tied up right there to the pier.

"Hell," JW said, "y'all was there for the kickoff."

"Yeah, well icin' the guy was all his idea."

"Listen to you. What, y'all on the side of that sand nigger? Ya'll feel sorry for 'im or somethin'?"

"Who said anything about me feelin' sorry for the guy? I'm just pissed I got dragged into all this, wouldn't you be?"

"Hoag is one of us, remember?" JW said. "An American. That cab driver went straight off an' squealed to the pigs, didn't he? If them cops wasn't on the take y'all be settin' in some sorry ass'd jail somewhere. Your hide'd be history, brother. What would ya think 'bout Charlie Hoag's move now if that'd been the case. Ya'll know you'd probably be settin' in there wishin' ya could do a number on that rag head yerself. Besides, y'all think that that son of a bitch wasn't in it for a cut for himself? He seen y'all were Yankees. Out here, why that's the green light for plunder."

"Jesus, Jerry Wayne, two hundred Djibouti ain't no reason to go kill nobody."

"Ya'lls missin' the point. Now I'm from Texas, an' as much as I'd hate to admit it, an' I don't very often, Texas is part of the ol' USA. You're from Jersey 'r Philly 'r whatever, an' Charlie Hoag is from New York. We can piss, bitch, 'n moan 'bout all that back home, but the simple fact of the matter is that out here we're all Americans an' we gotta start actin' like it. We got to stick together. Stand up for one another. Otherwise these motherfuckers'll run all over us. Why do y'all think nobody in the world respects us anymore? Stands to reason that if y'all let anybody 'n everbody walk all over ya nobody's gonna respect ya. After this, y'all think these shits 'r gonna fuck with the next Yankee they run across? Hell no. This is the kind of shit that needs doin' if ya ask me."

So what was I gonna do? Here I was halfway around the globe tangled up in all this. Near as I could figure, Charlie Hoag was way out of bounds, but I wasn't sitting very far from a whole world of shit myself. I couldn't see any way of opening my mouth without it all blowing up in my face, even if I hadn't offered up an alibi for the guy. That lousy joint I flashed is what got me. There was no telling what they'd do to me about that. For all I knew, Djibouti might've been one of those countries where they just locked you up and threw away the key for something like that. Who knows? We were talking Muslims.

And speaking of Hoag, where the hell was he anyway? Can you imagine how bad I wanted to talk to the guy, to find out what the story was, what was going down? All this had hit me like a slap in the face. Then I run across this nasty thought, that for all I knew the guy coulda been putting the finger on me that very minute to the captain 'r Chief Mate. If the son of a bitch went and killed a guy over something as stupid as he did, there was no telling what else he'd do. Jerry Wayne and I were leaning over the rail there taking in the sights. Two tugs were nudging a second destroyer into berth alongside the one we had watched heading into port earlier. I came to take them for French warships, judging from the looks of the flags hanging off their sterns. I began to figure JW for a Klansman or something after the way he'd been talking. Course he could babble all he wanted to. He hadn't been there for the kickoff, like he put it. I got a knack for getting my ass into shit like this. JW was free and clear. Even if everything did come out in the wash, there wasn't anything that coulda been pinned on him.

As I rolled over the whole meeting with them French dudes in my mind I started wondering about that blond-headed fella, that Dr. Dundalkin. I couldn't figure him out. Charlie had me nailed. Not only did I work for the guy but we'd been together and all that night. We'd both been involved with that thing over the joint. Why did Dr. Dundalkin just up and volunteer an alibi for Charlie? Maybe he was sticking up for Charlie because, like JW was saying, he was a fellow American. Who knows? But I knew one thing, Hoag couldn've made it back by no one-thirty. The Doctor must've been bullshitting about that. So what was I gonna do? If I made a run for it down the brow, where the hell could I go? What were the odds of Djibouti having an American Embassy? And even if they did and I could find it, what was I gonna say? In my mind I kept hearing Charlie saying, "They don't got nothin' to do with us." What if after finding the embassy they ran my ass back to the ship? I wouldn't last too long with a guy like Charlie around. About the easiest place to off a guy is on a ship. He'd just wait a couple days until we were well out to sea and do a number on me some moonless night. I'd never know what hit me. I'd be doing like a cement shoe shuffle to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. And who woulda given two shits? And what if the embassy said, "sorry, can't help ya"? Where the hell would I be then, calling Marie collect from Djibouti? She didn't have no thirteen hundred bucks. I'd look pretty funny sleeping on one of them pieces of cardboard in downtown Djibouti.

These Merchant officers weren't into this god 'n country or honor 'n integrity crap that Naval officers were into. They were out there for one reason, and one reason only -- cash money. It'd become real clear to me real fast that if I did something like standing in the way of their bucks they would've forked me over in a heartbeat. They might even have saw to it that I'd go instead of Charlie, being as he was more useful to them than me. As much as I hated to admit it, I was longing for my Navy days. If this'd been a Navy ship, I wouldn've been in this fix. Forty-five days restriction, forty-five days extra duty, and a reduction in rate looked like sand box stuff next to what Djibouti might have to offer. There was no doubt in my mind that if my skin stood in between getting this captain's blessed ship underway and getting stuck in port 'til all this got ironed out, I would've been hung out to dry without a second thought.

"Y'all look like you're fixin' ta explode," JW said, breaking my spell.

I just gave him a dirty look and walked off. I went over to the hatch to the Bosun's Storeroom. Them Filipinos were down below there straightening up the mess. Somebody was working.

"Looky here," JW said. I turned and he was watching something going on down on the pier.

As I walked over to the rail I was expecting to see that Jeep again with Legionnaires hopping out of it. To my relief all it was was the agents' pickup truck with a large crate in the bed.

"That there's gotta be our part. Loosen up there, squid, this must mean we're 'bout ready to fly the coop."

Charlie and the Chief Mate walked down the brow and over to the truck to look over the crate. Charlie got a load of me and JW gawking at him and motioned for us to come down.

"Should've known better than to stand there lookin'" JW said as we started to head aft to the gangway.

'Course, it goes without saying, getting buttonholed into a little work was the least of my worries. The prospect of getting my ass outa there was an encouraging thought to say the least.

By the time me and Jerry Wayne got to the pier this Dr. Dundalkin dude was there with Charlie and the Chief Mate. They was discussing where to put the thing as we walked up.

"The Doctor would like this put in the dry lab below," Charlie announced. "Either of youz two have any idea where that is?"

Me and JW looked at each other. Charlie gave the Doctor a 'See what dumb shits I got workin' for me' look.

"Tell yuz what. Just get it up on the main deck an' I'll show ya where we want it. We're gonna need it secured for sea. Either one of youz know how to tie a knot?"

It was nice to see he was returning to his own self. Neither me or the big guy had an answer for that one. We just started wrestling with the crate. It probably weighed fifty 'r sixty pounds. No big deal as far as the weight was concerned. But it was a big awkward thing, especially when we got it over to the brow and found out that it didn't fit in between the railings. We had to hold it up above our shoulders. It was a pain in the ass. Me and JW being about a foot apart in height didn't help either. Charlie, the Chief Mate, and the doctor were there on the pier watching the whole ordeal. Charlie was shaking his head.

"What the fuck they got us doin' this gook work for?" Jerry Wayne mumbled.

"We just spent all mornin' waitin' for that so don't youz go droppin' it over the side now," Charlie threw in.

When the two of us got up on the main deck with it, the bosun started applauding. That guy was something else, considering that just under an hour earlier I'd helped him get his nuts out of a ringer. The bosun said something to the Chief Mate and Dundalkin and loped up to the brow.

"Let's go," he said as he passed us. Me and JW lifted the crate again and followed. We went to a door amidships and began jamming the crate through it.

"Jesus Christ, be careful. You don't wanna let the Doctor see youz bangin' that thing." Charlie was great for advice, but he sure as hell wasn't that useful otherwise. The only way the thing would fit through the door was sideways. When we got it down the ladder to the deck below, the bosun led us down a passageway and into a space that must've been the dry lab they were talking about. After we got it set where Charlie wanted it, he took to securing it with some line. Me and Jerry Wayne just watched while the maestro did his thing.

"OK, that ought to keep it," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "Now look, youz, this is how the mate wants the sea watches set. He wants one of us white boys around all the time. That way they got somebody that knows English on duty, ya know, around the clock. So it's just gonna be one of youz an' two gooks on each watch. I'm takin' the eight-to-twelve, bein' as I gotta oversee the day work. Jerry Wayne, I want you on the four-to-eight, an' the squid here can have the twelve-to-four."

With that I began to realize that brown-nosing was on Jerry Wayne's list of strong points. I felt like the monkey in the middle. I could tell that what was news to me right there was just something those two had worked out earlier amongst themselves. Me getting stuck with the mid-watch put a snicker on JW's face. It was by far the worst watch to get. Ya didn't get any sleep on it being up half the night all the time. In the Navy ya hardly ever had the same watch every day; you rotated them. Course I knew better than to bring up the Navy way of doing things by then. I just concentrated on not looking pissed, you know, acting like their screwing me over wasn't getting to me.

"JW, go give Glide a hand with the shore power cable." With that, Jerry Wayne just nodded and turned and went up the ladder.

"I need ya ta give me a hand with the pilot ladder," Charlie said, looking at me, then he followed JW up. The journey ended back on the fantail, in front of a large wooden box on the port side up against the house. Charlie banged on the rusted latches, then lifted open the lid as it screamed, like in protest. Inside, underneath some rat guards and stoppers and dented lamps, was the pilot ladder.

"Clear this stuff off. I gotta go see what side the Mate wants the ladder on," Charlie said as he headed off.

By the time he returned I had cleared all the junk off and was trying to budge the ladder. It was bundled together and lashed. The thing weighed a ton.

"What'r ya doin'?" Charlie scoffed. "That the way ya did it in the Navy, squid?"

He pulled out his knife and cut the small stuff that held the ladder in a bundle, then began pulling the ladder out, rung by rung. The guy was right. I mean, that was the way to do it. It's just that I was getting fed up with his attitude, not to mention that squid shit. When he saw me standing there fuming, he stopped what he was doing.

"What the hell's your problem?" he asked.

"What's my problem? Christ, I put my ass on the line for ya this mornin' an' here ya are treatin' me like a bag of shit, an' now ya wanna know what the problem is?"

"Now wait a second there, squid. What do ya expect, me ta say thank you? It was your dumb ass that got us into this."

"What d'ya mean 'us'? I had nothin' to do with killin' that guy."

"Hey man, it was an accident. Could've happened to anyone. I didn't mean to kill the guy. I just wanted ta give 'im a piece of my mind for rattin' on us is all. Like you wasn't pissed about that either? I just punched 'im in the head. You remember how skinny the shit was. I must've broke his neck 'r somethin'. It was news to me too that the guy was dead."

"Look, Charlie, just because I did somethin' dumb in that cab don't mean I'm to blame for all this."

"Well it wouldn've happened if ya hadn't, that's for sure. What, you think I always go 'round killin' people in my spare time?"

"I don't know what to think. All I know is that if those French guys do some askin' 'round we're gonna be in a world of shit."

"Listen, if they had somethin' on me we would've known it by now. It was a clean hit; there weren't any witnesses. So it's a little sloppy 'bout me comin' back to the ship. There's other reasons besides me bein' out murderin' people that could explain that."

"Yeah, well just do your own explainin' from now on."

Charlie threw the ladder to the deck in disgust.

"What the fuck do ya want me to do? Turn myself in? That there's Djibouti," he said, pointing. "You think I could get me a fair trial there? Hell, do they even have trials? You tell me. Jesus Christ, resurrection ain't in my bag of tricks. Goddamn, I wish it was, I'd use it. But what's dead is dead. Hangin' me wouldn't change nothin'."

I didn't say a thing. I just picked up the pilot ladder and began pulling it out, rung by rung.

"Look, we're gonna be gettin' underway here in no time," Charlie said in a calm voice. "We get three miles out there an' all our troubles are behind us, yours an' mine."

"bosun," called the Chief Mate, as he rounded the corner of the house on the starboard side.

Charlie turned.

"Leave that for now, bosun. The pilot is on his way. Get the brow up soon as he's on board. I'll pass 'all hands on deck, fore 'n aft'."

"Let's go," Charlie said.

"You're back here on the stern with the Third Mate. I'll be up on the bow with the chief. I'm sendin' JW up on the wheel," he told me as we headed for the gangway.

JW and Glide were heading up the brow after having heaved the shore power cables onto the pier. Glide gave me a pat on the shoulder as he passed by me and the bosun there at the gangway. I wished the guy had been around to talk to. Least I knew he had some common sense about him. Jerry Wayne stood there waiting for directions from the bosun.

"Pilot's on his way. When he gets here you take 'im up to the bridge. I want you on the wheel, OK?"

"Sure thing, bosun," JW said.

The bosun started to untie the line that had secured the brow railing to the gangway. He gave me a "what're ya standin' there for?" look, so I began to untie my side. Three Filipinos were heading aft and Charlie motioned for them to hold on right there. They did like he told them, and when me and Charlie finished removing the line from the brow a couple of them took to coiling the line up. All around the _Pleiades_ people were appearing outa the woodwork. Up on the bridge wing the captain was finalizing things with the agent. There was a short, round fella in khakis with him. He'd turn out to be the Second Mate, an Italian named Tozzi. That was the first I'd seen of him. The rails were lined amidships with a bunch of people, most of whom only looked familiar because of that morning's lineup. They'd turn out to be technicians who worked on the fancy gear we had on board. Or at least that's what we were told back then.

On the pier a funny looking flatbed truck pulled up with eight or nine raggedy ass'd dressed men on the back. They piled out and began taking station next to the bollards on the pier. Obviously the line handlers had arrived. They looked up at us, with this awe in their eyes, almost childlike. We were soon going to be off and heading over the horizon. Something that would remain only a dream for them the rest of their years. It's probably the same stare major league ball players collect from the bleachers in distant cities back home. The closest these guys would ever get to the magic lands overseas would be stories told by drunken sailors in their local bars.

The pilot was halfway up the brow before I realized he was who he was. His radio he toted over his shoulder is what gave him away. All pilots carry them to talk to the tug captains. He sure didn't look like your typical pilot. He was a little Arab, and what I remember most about him was his scruffy looking shoes. Back home, well I guess in most places, Harbor Pilots are big deals. In the States a lot of them knock down six figures easy. From the looks of this guy's shoes, in these parts they didn't command the same respect. Same job, same ships, same salt water, but somewhere along the line somebody came up with a difference. But I suppose he was a long way off from a strip of cardboard for a bed in the back alleys in town there. Must be all relative.

"OK, let's get on it," Charlie ordered. He was meaning to get the brow up on deck. "Yo, Chief," I interrupted. "What are we gonna do with the agent, toss 'im over the side?"

We were even. I'd got back for that dumb move I'd made earlier with the pilot ladder. Course Charlie didn't admit to nothing right there. He just went off in a huff toward the bridge. I just hung around with my Filipino friends, leaning on the rail waiting. When Charlie came back you could tell something was wrong. He'd taken to flicking his fingers again.

"We got to wait on the tugs. They ain't done with them Navy ships yet," was the explanation he gave. "Fuckin' Navy," he added, with an eye on me. I looked at my watch. It was getting to be past ten. I would be on watch come noon. The more time all this getting underway crap took, the more it would eat into my watch, and that sat OK with me. The word must've gotten out that we were gonna be delayed further, and the peanut gallery amidships had thinned out considerably. A lot of the technicians had opted for the shade below over the hot sun on the deck. Charlie was pacing. One of the main reasons I wasn't pulling my hair out was I was too busy watching Charlie sweating bullets. You could say I was even enjoying it. I walked athwartships and, sure enough, a French Navy tanker was heading in toward port, with a tug made fast to her port side.

"Get that pilot ladder secured on the starboard side," Charlie ordered when he saw me standing there taking in the sights.

We were starboard side too, so the best we could do was just to get it fastened to the rail. We'd have to pay it out after we were underway. Me and two of the Filipinos dragged it over and with two clove hitches around the rail posts, it was secured. We then went back to standing by around the gangway. The ship's agent finally came along, all smiles. The guy looked like an Indian. He more'n likely made a pretty penny off the _Pleiades_. Beaming, he wished all of us standing around there on the quarterdeck good luck. And with that he was off, down the brow. Pulling the brow up turned into a floating Keystone Cops affair. The thing was too long to just pull it straight up, the house was in the way, and Charlie got to going off into one of his screaming fits. Them three Filipinos just took to talking amongst themselves in Tagalog and ignoring the bosun. I caught on and just did what their hand signals told me to do. You could say that despite Charlie, we got the thing up and stowed.

"Get them chains shackled 'cross the gangway," he grunted. Then he stomped off, cursing up a storm, heading forward to his station on the foc'sle. The Chief Mate could have him.

We could see the tugs across the harbor twisting the tanker. They still had yet to push her into her berth. Them must've been the longest twenty minutes in Charlie Hoag's life. Granted it was fun to watch the asshole squirm, took my mind off my problems for sure, but all things considered, I was just as happy that he had disappeared off forward. Me and the three Filipinos were left alone there on the fantail. Buddha was one of them. He walked around and picked and chose until he found three objects about the same size and to his liking. Then he began juggling. The guy was good. He did three at once, then two with one hand, then he had them going every which way there for a spell. He motioned for me to try and, well, there must be something to that juggling shit. There I was with the little fat guy laughing at me. I gave up and just concentrated on watching him. It helped pass the time, and took my mind off my situation.

Along about the time we saw those two tugs were heading in our direction, that young mate, the one that'd been up on the bridge earlier that morning, showed up. I think he was only twenty-one or twenty-two. This was his first job out of the Merchant Marine Academy, I'd come to find out. He looked it too. I'd seen it all before. In the Navy they were just as obvious. Canoe Clubbers, we called them. Ya know, Butter Bars, Ensigns, Annapolis Grads. All the same. This guy was holding onto his radio for dear life, and his eyes were darting all over tarnation. Right off the bat he screwed up. The first thing he did was give Buddha shit for juggling.

"You're Frank?" he asked me.

"Yeah."

"Nice to meet you, Frank. Listen up now, this isn't tha Navy where you have thirty guys to do this."

Oh brother, sounded like the bosun had gotten to him. I felt like telling him that if he'd just shut up and stand out of the way, these three Filipinos could do the job without either me or him. Handling lines on a ship can kill ya quicker 'n shit. They part and lop people in half all the time. I'd never seen anybody cut in half myself, but I had seen lines part from being under strain, and it ain't nothing you want to be around. They literally start smoking before they part.

The two tugs came homing in on us. One headed for the bow, the other straight for us on the stern. On the bow of our tug was a skinny African deckhand dressed only in a tattered t-shirt and shorts. He arced his monkey line onto our deck as the tug nudged up against us. We hauled in the line from the tug and made it up to some bits on the port side there.

"Single up," the captain's voice blared from the mate's radio.

With that we scurried over to the starboard side and undid the top mooring lines on the bits there. There were three of them, a bow, stern, and spring line. Down on the pier the line handlers were freeing up those eyes from the bollards. Me and the three Filipinos then worked fore to aft heaving in the loose lines. Your talking hawsers now, big six strand polly howsers to be exact. It's not like you pull 'em in by hand. What you do is drag 'em to a capstan and heave them in using the warping head. There was no time for being neat. In no time we had lines snaking all over the fantail, had to watch your step. After all that was done we had a second to chill out.

"Stern singled up captain," the mate passed over the radio to the bridge. They must've had some problem up on the foc'sle because the captain took to yelling at them, and of course we heard it coming over on the mate's radio. "That's just great," I remember thinking, "we got two bloody screamers, the bosun an' the captain."

We stood there, waiting for them to get whatever it was that was fouled up straightened out up on the foc'sle. The technicians had gotten the word and they were manning the rails again, watching the _Pleiades_ surrender her ties to the beach.

"Cast off, fore 'n aft," the captain's order came over the radio. We slackened off and undid the remaining lines from their bits and the line handlers ashore went along and pulled the eyes up over the bits and dropped them off the pier, into the sea. Back on the stern there ya gotta watch ya don't tangle the lines in the screw, so the idea is to get them out of the water pronto. In any seaport the village idiot knows that, but the captain got to reminding the mate there and then the mate took to reminding us. Like there ain't a limit on how fast you can heave in a line.

When all the lines were on deck, there was nothing left to do but watch as the pier slowly drifted away. On it a whole bunch of sailors had left their initials and ship's names and dates, painted in about every color of the rainbow. Hell, if you'd been in Djibouti, you'd want people to know too, wouldn't ya? The line handlers stood watching us. A couple were waving. There was a silence on the ship and the pier, almost as if there was something sacred going down.

Both tugs started giving off toots, signals between them and the pilot on board the _Pleiades_. Their diesels began to strain and the lines between us tightened. And with that, the _Pleiades_ took to being yanked from her berth and pulled out to sea, like a reluctant child.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I, for one, couldn've been happier to see Djibouti begin to fade away. But what I thought was the end of all my problems was actually just the beginning.

### PERPETUAL MOTION

"Sailor's remorse" is how I heard it put once. Forget by who. I've always remembered it, though, like those words fit like a glove or something. Can't really tell you why, just did.

You know, remorse. Remorse is the feeling, like that jolt you get when you're traveling on the freeway and you realize you need to use the john worse than you had figured, and you're one hell of a lot closer to the last exit you just passed than the next exit, way on down the road.

I caught my first dose of this "sailor's remorse" right outside the Golden Gate Bridge, on that first Navy tanker I was on, on my very first morning at sea. It starts coming on while you're heaving in the lines and builds up 'til it hits you like a bucket of ice water. I can remember as plain as if it was yesterday, standing there at morning quarters, watching the whole ship's compliment assembled there in formation swaying in unison. We were mustered down in the cargo deck because it was raining. All three hundred-sixty of us. Couldn't help asking myself, over 'n over, 'What the hell was I doin' there?' Only thing I could see on the horizon was work. For some reason I had thought steaming was gonna be all shits 'n giggles.

After all the bragging you hear seamen doing about drinking, fighting, an' fucking, you'd never would've guessed they'd spent most of their lives bottled up like cloistered nuns. That first old goat Navy chief I had read my mind that morning like it was flashing in block neon letters across my forehead or something.

"Son, sailors belong on ships and ships belong at sea," he said after collaring me after quarters.

That logic didn't do a thing for me. No sir, didn't help one bit. Standing there, knowing you're soon gonna be watching dry land sink below a liquid horizon, ya just can't help thinking about what the hell you're doing. In the back of my mind what I was realizing that morning on the _Pleiades_ , though I'd never would've admitted it to myself at the time, was maybe I'd been doing a little too much drinking and carrying on for my own good. Hell, some people just disintegrate when they stay put too long, like it's just in their nature. That's what gets ya into this life of perpetual motion. After you've tried staying in one place a couple of times and had things turn to shit on ya each'n every time, you come to expect it. When you see a couple of warning signs that it's starting to happen all over again, you know it's time to beat feet. Sooner or later you learn it's a lot easier to just keep moving on down the road than it is to deal with what it is about ya that keeps getting you in between that rock and a hard place all the time.

Am I rambling on or what? I think maybe we've run across another symptom of "sailor's remorse".

Getting back to business, until the tugs finish dragging ya from the pier and twisting the ship around, there isn't much of a chance to get anything accomplished. You just "stand by" they call it, something a seaman can do better than just about anybody, I bet. Not much ever gets done while you're "standing by." The powers to be pretty much let you alone because they need you right on the spot to tend the tug's lines after they get done doing what it is they got to do. That's when you don't even bother wasting time thinking about what's before the bow. You just gawk at the pier heading away from you, most times for good. I've been to a hell of a lot of ports, not all that many twice, though. Beneath our feet the deck started to quake. The ol' _Pleiades_ was coming back to life. I walked to the stern and looked over the rail. Sure enough, the sea looked like it was fixing to boil over. Once our screw got a good bite we'd be underway and making way.

I've never been into that thinking of a ship as a she shit. To me, a ship ain't nothing but a whole hell of a lot of steel plate welded together, with a bunch of pipes, pumps, winches, valves, boilers, motors, and diesels lobbed in. Course back in the old days when Lady Luck was the biggest reason ya made it in and out of port, I can see how a fella could get all emotional about it. Having affections for a ship these days don't make much more sense than falling in love with, say, your lawn mower. I half expected to see that fricking Jeep come barreling down along the pier, those two Legionnaires a bouncing and a waving. But luck was with us, or maybe, seeing how things turned out, I should say luck was against us. Before long we were laying down a foamy wake. You knew the bow must've been pointing in the right direction, being as you had both a pilot and a captain checking up on each other up forward.

Evidently, mates are as susceptible to "sailor's remorse" as anybody else, because ol' Paul nearly fumbled his walky-talky when the captain came over it all of a sudden. Caught him in a trance along with the rest of us. Woke him up all right.

"Stern, stand by to cast off your tug."

"Standing by, captain," he answered, after taking a second to get his shit together. He didn't appreciate us laughing at him either, but hell, we all were. You couldn't help it.

"You heard the man," he snapped, putting an end to the snickers. Me and the Filipinos drifted over to the bits on the port side that the lines to the tug were made fast to. Then we went back to standing by. I just stood there listening to all the squeaking the tires fixed to the bow of the tug made as they mashed against our hull.

The tugs started tooting at each other again, and that African deckhand began making his way to the bow, so we knew we'd be casting off soon.

"Cast off astern," we all heard the captain say over the Third Mate's radio. He just motioned for us to go to it.

Well, we tried, but the lines were still taut. The captain of the tug, looked like an Indian guy, took to yelling at his deckhand from the bridge window and, after catching his drift, the African be-bopped over and began working the winch on the bow there. The idea was to give us some slack. Soon as we could lift the eyes off the bits and drop them into the sea, he started heaving in, using his winch, as his captain steered clear of us and off to port.

"Tug clear astern," the Third Mate reported to the old man.

"Bow, cast off," the captain ordered.

In no time the forward tug came by, passing us close aboard to port as we overtook her. There were two deckhands on her bow busy trying to untangle all the lines they had just finished yanking back onto her deck. That tug took station off our port quarter, waiting to pick up the pilot. The first tug headed off back to Djibouti, being finished with her part of ushering the _Pleiades_ off to sea.

"OK, let's get the pilot ladder over the side," Paul ordered. He looked proud of himself for having come up with something that needed doing all by his lonesome.

A seaman will never be allowed to get away with the last laugh, ya know. It'll never happen. If officers couldn't put ya in your place and keep you there, there wouldn't be any need for them, would there? But it's a kick-in-the-pants whenever you get to watch a green one for a change, especially when ya know damn well what he'll turn into sooner or later. In no time at all we had the rungs of the pilot ladder tossed over the side. Meanwhile, Glide had appeared from out of nowhere, it seemed. He was standing back on the stern there alone, just watching as the shoreline abandoned us. Looking back I often wonder why I didn't have the common sense to respect the man's solitude, but I walked right over and stood next to him. He didn't say anything for a while, but then he glanced over and gave me one of his friendly nods.

"Least a convict can blame the judge. Funny thing about us is we incarcerate ourselves," he said.

"Party's over," was the best I could add.

With that both of us stood quietly watching the wheel wash _Pleiades_ was churning up off her stern. It'll hypnotize ya, same way a campfire does cowboys.

Glide was an "up" type of guy, you know, seems he was always in a good mood. It was a surprise to see him like this, depressed that is. I didn't know exactly how to take it. Maybe what this "sailor's remorse" thing does is it turns everybody ass-backwards or inside out for a spell. Even the old salts.

The tropical water was a brilliant emerald green. Judging by the looks of the sea off the stern we could've been off of San Diego for all I knew, or Pearl, or Guam, or a hundred other warm water ports. About the only difference I've run across between all the oceans is their names on the map. Course they all have their reputations, and most of them are well-earned. The North Atlantic in winter comes to mind to most folks the fastest. One of my ol' man's favorite sea stories was the one he always told about being a day out of Bayonne for three days, owing to the seas. When the seas get to be like that, there's no such thing as getting any sleep. You just hug your mattress like it's a wayward surfboard sliding sideways in the breakers. But I can't say I haven't been through likewise in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The seas have their moods, like any other living thing. The sky's the same way. Sometimes it just makes you stop and take notice, you know, admire it, point out a mix of colors or a funky cluster of clouds to the guy you're working with. Other times it ain't nothing but a blah ol' gray. But there are times when blah old gray hits the spot too. I imagine everybody knows that feeling. Sitting right there, suspended between the two, it's like being subjected to a LSD picture show. Some people just don't get it, though. They pity you when you tell them you go to sea for a living. It's kinda like liver - you either like it or you don't. Ain't no in-between.

I've been in and out of so many different ports I'm not exactly sure I'd bet the Bentley on exactly how Djibouti's went. It didn't have much in the way of protection, if I'm thinking of the right place. It was pretty exposed to the open sea, is what I mean. I think I remember passing some buoys on the way out, aids to navigation. Even in this day and age, some ports out there don't have any buoyage yet. A captain just has to wing it when he runs across one of them. We began a hard turn to port. Both me and Glide noticed it at about the same time, so a comment between us wasn't needed. Our wake wasn't trailing straight behind us any more; it was leading off the port quarter. Funny how, unless you're up on the bridge staring at the rudder angle indicator, the place that tells ya the best what the ship is up to is the ass end, the stern, that is.

"Off to find the _Titanic_ ," Glide said to himself, breaking the silence.

"Oh yeah, I've been meaning to ask ya, what was all that about this morning?" he asked.

Little did I know then that this was the beginning of a conversation that will probably haunt me for the rest of my years. It hadn't dawned on me that he didn't know what went down that morning. Then again, with getting under way and all the commotion, it figured he hadn't had the time to tune into the scuttlebutt. And boy, did I have a juicy lil' tidbit to unload on him. As a matter of fact, for a spell I savored it, just like ya do that first joint out of a new bag of weed.

"You know that cabbie, the one that put the finger on me and Charlie last night, 'bout the reefer?"

"I know of him," he said, meaning he had never actually seen him.

"Well, evidently him and Charlie bumped into one another last night, must've been after he was done havin' his willies with those honeys he was with."

"Yeah, so?" Glide wasn't catching my drift.

"Well he snuffed the guy."

"What do you mean snuffed?"

"You know, he killed him. Those French guys were lookin' to talk to him. Wanted to know his whereabouts an' all that crap. I guess the other cabbies told them about the beef we had with 'im last night."

Glide was looking at me like I was making it all up or something, like he was waiting for the punch line.

"I just saw Charlie, he was up on the foc'sle."

"Yeah, well I guess they didn't have enough on him to hold'im."

Glide still wasn't buying it.

"Well, what did they want to talk to you for?"

"They asked me if me and Charlie came back last night together."

"Oh yeah, and what did you tell them?"

"Well, I told them we had. Told 'em we were both back by one-thirty or so."

"Are you shittin' me?"

"No, I ain't shittin' you."

"So what you're sayin' is the bosun killed somebody last night."

"That's what I'm tellin' you."

"So, wait a second, how do you know he killed this guy?"

"I asked him."

"Ya asked him, right, an' what did he say?"

"Well, he said it was an accident. He only wanted to rough the guy up a bit, you know, teach 'im a lesson."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Serious as a heart attack."

Glide took to looking like he just took a poke in the head. His eyes roamed around the deck as if he was looking for something he lost.

"Jesus, Mary, 'n Joseph," he mumbled.

You know the feeling you get when you're working on something important, like some piece of gear that you don't have any spare parts for, and you screw it up? I felt just like that. Glide was pissed. I didn't think he was going to react like that. I mean, he'd been around, ya know.

"I knew the guy was wacko, but I had no idea," he said, still looking down. Then he gave me a screwy look, right in the eye. Made me uncomfortable as shit.

"Why'd ya cover 'im?" he asked.

I had to fish around for an answer to that one. What do you say to something like that? What I found out was I really didn't have an answer.

"Well, he's one of us," I said after he'd given up waiting and had looked away. He was real pissed at me, you could tell.

"Let me ask you something" he began. "Now, you were there when those cops nailed you two. I mean, you were in it as deep as Charlie. Did all that crap get you to where you wanted to kill that cabbie? Did killin' that guy ever cross your mind?"

"No," I said.

"No shit, so what's with bailin' out Charlie? You realize what we just put to sea with. That guy's psycho."

"Christ, Glide, we're in Djibouti. What do you think they'd do to 'im?"

"Maybe Rambo should've thought about that before he went an' killed the poor son of a bitch."

I felt like I was back in parochial school getting balled out, like I was getting a lip lashing from one of the good sisters at Holy Angels or something. Not that I automatically gave two shits, it's just that I had a lot of respect for Glide.

You become a quick study sailing, as far as picking who you hang with, that is. You learn what to look for in a person real fast, and what to avoid maybe even faster. Besides, what would you figure the odds are of running into a homeboy in a place like Djibouti. That had something to do with it, too.

"Well, what's done is done," he finally said after a long pause. "No sense worryin' over something ya can't change, is there? It's out of our hands now anyway, ain't it?"

With that he shrugged his shoulders and raised an eyebrow. You could see the tension up and leave him, like it was melting. And then he let out a long exhale, as if he was pumping overboard what was left of his anger.

"Boy, some morning you had, huh, wakin' up after a night like last night and getting' put on the spot like that. Bet you didn't know what to do, did you?" he asked.

"Shit no," I said. "The first I heard of it was from those Frogs. Course Charlie came runnin' up right when they showed up an' told me to say that he was with us when we got back to the ship. I was thinkin' maybe he stiffed them broads or somethin'."

Right then the Pilot showed up there on the fantail. He had been escorted back by one of our Filipinos.

"Catch you later," Glide said as he headed off. He saw I was gonna be busy; it was time for me to go to work.

The Pilot walked over to the rail where the ladder was rigged. He tucked his radio in under his life vest as he watched the tug cross our stern and begin her approach.

_Pleiades_ had cut her speed to where she was soon making bare steerageway. The tug came alongside and mated with the mashing and squeaking of those tires again. When she had steadied up a bit the pilot went up and over the rail and climbed the short distance down. Hell, _Pleiades_ didn't have much of a freeboard. After waiting a couple seconds to catch the tug on an upswing, he hopped on board her. And with that the _Pleiades_ was on her own.

As the tug cut loose, the ol' man gunned it, and you could tell we were speeding up again by that vibration she made and the looks of our wake. The mate gathered us together on the fantail there.

"You're all on the twelve-to-four, aren't you?" he asked the three of us. He was making

it obvious he was a little unsure of himself. We all nodded. He looked at his watch.

"OK, well, won't be much time for lunch. Somebody has to go relieve the wheel, and the other two will have to stow these mooring lines below. They go down that hatch over there."

The three of us looked at one another. Seemed like nobody cared either way. Actually, I don't think my two Filipino partners knew what was going on. They were just doing everything I was doing.

"Well look, you come with me," he finally said to Buddha, "and listen, you two, I don't wanna be getting any shit from the old man about it taking all afternoon to stow these lines. Grab something to eat fast and get to it."

It must've been around one o'clock by then, so the main idea was to kill three hours. No matter how you sliced it, we were all going to wind up on the wheel for an hour before we got off watch at four. Buddha went off forward trailing after the mate, leaving me and the other Filipino. I found out by trying to get his name out of him that English wasn't even his second language. He just looked at me with this "anything you say, boss" air about him. Pity was about the only reason we managed to get a quick bite to eat on the mess decks. We had missed the noon meal and had to beg off the cook. My Filipino friend did all the talking, I think that's what did the trick. After that, the two of us went back topside and opened the hatch the mate had pointed out to us earlier. It was just us on the weather decks. All of those other folks, you know, those technicians, must've gone about their business, the show being over and all.

The locker that the mooring lines were going into was a small space, hot and dank. I had had my fill of below decks after that damn cable horseshit, so I sent the Filipino below to fake out the line as I fed it down. He just hopped down there into that sauna like a real trooper. You name it, and if I told him to do it, he would've done it. Amazing how that works. I didn't have nothing on him as far as being a seaman went, but I guess just because I had a white ass or spoke English, I got to call the shots.

It felt good to work up a sweat in the sun for a change. We got right down to it and were well on our way to stowing the first two lines when I began to feel the gentle roll of the sea, and that was cause for a break. It wasn't all that long ago that I was ricocheting around San Francisco like I'd lost my rudder, wondering if I was ever gonna feel the sea beneath me again. But there it was, that gentle sway, kinda like a playful nudge. It's just as though I'd run into an old friend or something. At night it's tits, like you're being rocked to sleep by Mother Nature herself. Maybe seamen are just people who didn't get enough cradle time as newborns or something, and they go off to sea to compensate.

My train of thought got broken by my watch partner's head coming up out of the hatch. He was wanting to find out why everything had come to a standstill all of a sudden.

"Wheel?" he asked.

He knew some English after all. For the mate's sake I remember hoping he had port and starboard down too. Hell of a helmsman he would've made if he didn't, huh?

I looked at my watch and it was ten-til two, so I nodded my head yes. He pointed at himself, and I nodded yes again. With that he hauled himself out from below and headed off forward, giving me a little extra time to "stand by." The ocean had turned into its royal blue, being as we had left the shallow water. I passed the time watching the water ripple past the hull and fan out into our wake. The sea doesn't waste any time erasing the path a ship cuts across her, dicing it out of existence in no time. I wondered how long it would be before no one could've told we'd passed. As big as ships get, none of them even come close to leaving their mark.

Ol' Buddha came plodding back, and pretty soon we had the stern secured for sea. After a second look around, just to make sure nothing would come back to bite us, we took to doing what a seaman does best next to "standing by." Hiding.

I was really runnin' on empty by then. Ever been so tired ya felt like you were beside

yourself? That's how I felt at the time. After a ship first puts to sea, everybody kinda like chills out. Ya take time to let things settle down. The bosun must've just found him a hole too, because we didn't see hide nor hair of him. He was probably celebrating, had good reason to. I couldn't speak for Charlie, but as far as I was concerned, I will never hear the term "getting away with murder" again without finding myself thinking of that cabbie.

When my turn for the wheel came, I went off to find the bridge. I'd never been there before. You see, all the officers live up there near the pilothouse, so you look particularly stupid being lost up around their neck of the woods. When I finally did run across it, I was in for a shock. The place was empty. Paul, the Third Mate, was hunched over some charts on the chart table. The AB on watch was standing there in front of the wheel minding his helm. Other than that, the place was empty. Now, I had heard of how these merchant guys did things, but after all my Navy time, it still looked awful funny. But then again, at that time I hadn't been, I guess you could say, indoctrinated yet.

I steered one course the whole hour. The mate had me keep it on hand steering too. What a pain in the ass. He said we were still too close to land. Crock of shit if yad asked me, not like anybody ever bothers to. There's nothing difficult about steering a ship, except that I was dead tired and there really wasn't any reason for me to be doing it.

At ten 'til four a Filipino from the four-to-eight watch came to relieve me. I was a happy man. But before I got off the bridge, Paul said he wanted to see me. He brought me over to the course recorder, a machine that records the heading of the ship on a roll of paper. They use it for accident investigations'n shit. Well, my line was a wee bit wobbly. Granted I wandered a couple of degrees here an' there, but I didn't anticipate being graded. He piled on a lecture about the importance of precision in good seamanship. I did my best to look like I cared. Unlike some people on the bridge at the time, it wasn't my first venture out into the big puddle. Ships have what we call "Iron Mike". Automatic steering is what it is. And, you know something? There isn't a seaman alive who can steer a truer course than Iron Mike. Now it isn't like autopilot in an airplane. You don't leave a port and dial in your next destination and go play Cribbage. All Iron Mike does is hold a course. Let's say if you set the thing on two-five-zero, it steers two-five-zero. But man, when you look at the course recorder after you've been on the Mike for a while, it looks as though you took a ruler to use to draw the line. This thing is linked right to the rudder, and senses it so well it steers a damn near perfect course. It steers so much better than a seaman can; your fuel consumption goes way down when you're on the Mike. The only real reason to be in hand steering any more is when you're maneuvering. In and out of port, that type of thing. This close-to-land crap didn't fly with me. Who did he think he was talking to? Some teacher at whatever canoe club he graduated from probably told him to run his new AB's through the wringer like he was doing, to show them who was boss or something, "you can run but you can't hide" crap. I heard they flat out tell them at those maritime schools not to trust guys like me. If there's anything I can't stand is somebody that thinks that just because you don't have an education, you don't have any common sense either.

Hell, if he wanted a pretty course line, he should've had it on the Mike. Me and Paul didn't get off on the right foot. It probably goes without saying that schoolboys are right up there with Meter Maids in my book. Course it's all relative. I don't recall ever impressing any zeroes either, officers, that is. None of this had me losing out on any sleep though. I went below to my cabin. Blew dinner off, even. Wasn't suffering from insomnia any more, and my lights went out about the nanosecond my head thumped the pillow.

### MID WATCH

We'd be here for a month of Sundays if I were to try to hit on all the differences between the Navy and Merchant Marine. It'd blow your mind. Same ships, same oceans, but for crying out loud after a while you're amazed they share the terms "port" 'n "starboard". When you go from one to another, like I'd done, every time you turn around something ass backwards hits you right between the eyes.

You can start with waking up. Hell, why beat around the bush? Back in the Navy they sent the Messenger of the Watch to come get you up when you had a night watch. But you see, he had a log with him, one of those goddamn green logs. Anybody who's ever been in the Navy knows what I mean. They call this log the wake-up log. After he rousted you, the messenger made you sign this log, see. Then they had you by the balls.

"Seaman Sawyer, what do we have here?" I can remember that first chief of mine, the same one I told you about earlier, asking me as he showed me my name scribbled in that wake-up log. O'Rourke his name was, Bosun's Mate Senior Chief O'Rourke. There was nothing he liked better than pinning you down cold. He got a nut off watching you squirm. People don't stay in the Navy for the money.

"Seaman Sawyer, after you sign the wake up log, the onus is on you to get your butt to where its got to be."

O'Rourke was always onus'n this and onus'n that. It got to where he had all of us in third division onus'n this and onus'n that, too. "The onus is on us," we used to remind each other every so often, for no particular reason. But in the Merchant Marine, if you don't make it to watch on time, the guy that was supposed to wake you takes the heat. No shit. Figure that one out. I had a hard time getting a handle on the logic behind that myself, but remember, I'd been tainted by the Navy for all those years. I'd come to find out forgetting to wake the watch is the ultimate screw-up on a merchantman. It's at the top of the list for pissing everybody off at you all at once.

After the guy off the eight-to-twelve watch came to wake me for that first night watch on the _Pleiades_ , I had some serious doubts about my chosen vocation. I felt drugged. After being up for three days straight, getting five or six hours sleep doesn't exactly fit the bill. Almost makes you feel worse. It was twenty after eleven, and I was due on watch by quarter 'til. After getting dressed I made my way to the mess decks. That's when it was brought to my attention that in the Merchants they don't have "mid rats," like in the Navy, they have what they call "night lunch." Same baloney and stale bread, different name though.

Buddha and Edmundo, my watch partners, were already there. If you ever need to figure out who's the deck gang on a ship, just keep wandering around until you run across three guys arguing over whose got first wheel. Them guys are your AB's. Oh, by the way, in the Navy it's called the "helm", but it's a "wheel" in the Merchants. On the night watch one guy goes on the wheel, one guy goes on lookout, and one guy goes on standby. They're hour-and-twenty-minute stints each, then everybody rotates. Naturally, I opted for the standby slot, and my two partners didn't object. Working with those two then was like a walk in the park with a dog. I remember wondering about how long it would go on like that. They weren't dumb. Couldn't last forever, but while it did, no sense blowing a good thing. We'd be arguing over who had what wheel when soon enough.

There's all kinds of ways to set up the watch, but we ran it so you went from the wheel to lookout to standby. And then, so that you didn't have the same ol' rotation every night, we worked it so that if you had the last wheel the night before, you had the first wheel the next night. Sounds simple enough, but you'd be amazed at how getting three people to agree on how things were the night before turns out to be like a day in court. "I had last lookout." "No you didn't, you had last stand by." "The hell I did, I didn't, didn't I?"

It's kinda like washing your socks. When you think about it, it doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, but everybody knows how that goes.

Come twenty 'til, my watch partners headed off to do their things while I sat there caught up in the coffee's antics in my mug. Things ain't always what they seem. That little liquid slug of caffeine was straight an' level. It was me an' the _Pleiades_ that was really doing the rocking an' rolling. Just as I started debating the odds of getting nailed catnapping, the mess deck's phone rang. It was my buddy Paul. He wanted to know if I had made my fire watch round yet. It was news to me that I was supposed to make a round, but of course I made like I was just contemplating going on one.

"Dump the garbage on the fantail, we're fifty miles out now."

"Sure thing, Mate."

Paul was the type of guy that couldn't stand the thought of somebody just hanging out and not doing something. A real company man. You couldn't help noticin' that the _Pleiades_ was a floatin' roach motel. I first ran across tropical roaches in the Philippines. They call 'em water bugs over there, but they sure look like overgrown cockroaches on steroids to me. I don't know if they came on with the stores or were there already, but they was there. So for that reason, if nothin' else, I was motivated to ditch the garbage.

I made my way back aft to the fantail. When I went out on deck I was as blind as a bat. Pitch dark. I found myself a comfortable little niche and waited for my eyes to adjust. Slowly I could start making out the horizon. Soon I could make out the shadows caused by the moonlight, and you had to wonder how you couldn't see a thing a little while earlier. As I headed off on my garbage hunt I banged into the chicken cage back there and got them all cackling. Jesus, sea chickens. Eventually I ran across the bunch of runny, dripping plastic bags of glop piled up and took to lobbing them over the side. They made splats off in the night as they hit the sea. I wondered to myself how long I'd be out there treading water if I went over the side with them. It'd be just my luck to go over with the garbage. Every shark for miles around would've been heading my way. They got this graph on the bridge that tells you how long a man can survive at certain sea temperatures. "Safe stay time" it gives you. The thing about this graph is that they put shark attack probability on it, too. You can't help noticing right when you get to a temperature that'll allow you to live long enough for somebody to find you, the probability for shark attack goes through the roof. No doubt about it, a man in the drink's not a whole hell of a lot better off than a fish out of water. I'd know that all too well soon enough.

Along about then it was time for me to go relieve the wheel.

"Phew, damn you smell like shit," was the greeting I got from Paul. Made me want to punt his head about forty yards.

"Don't have to waste any time wonderin' if I got the garbage over, do you?"

"Man, I guess not," the mate said as he maneuvered up wind. Buddha was making faces too, but he was the type of guy that just couldn't piss you off. He told me the course he was steering and I repeated it, and the wheel was mine. Off he went to relieve Edmundo as lookout on the bow. The mate had it on the 'Iron Mike'. As I settled in I was expecting him to have me put it in hand steering, pricks usually being consistent an' all, but to my surprise he let me keep it on the Mike.

The bridge of a ship at night is something to behold. It's like being in fantasyland. The radars, we had two of 'em, are lit up like Christmas trees. They got these computerized deals on merchant ships, all kinds of blinking knobs and numbers glaring at you, not to mention the sweep of the scopes. Everything is lit up red, see. They use red lights because for some reason you don't lose your night vision with red lights. That gives you a spooky feeling. Ain't just looks, either. All this electronic shit is beeping, buzzing, clicking 'n pinging all the while too. And just like with that cup of coffee that had me going earlier, as far as looks go, it seemed like you were on a cement foundation and the rest of the world out the windows was doing the bobbing and rolling.

Probably because I was stinking up the place, the mate took to opening the forward bridge windows. The warm night air just moseyed on through. There wasn't any traffic, even on the radars. It was shaping up to be a quiet watch. Just what the doctor ordered for the first night out on what looked like would be a long voyage. The SATNAV beeped and the mate got to paying his charts some mind, so I took the opportunity to slink up and lean on the rail at the front of the bridge. SATNAV is one beep among all the others that went bye bye. Now they got GPS. Hell, at least SATNAV used to take some figurin' out. It kept the officers busy for a spell, which meant you could chill out for a stretch. The village idiot can do GPS; it gives your latitude and longitude right there spelled out for you. And the damn things are about the size of a pocket calculator. Somebody told me they don't even teach Celestial at these Maritime Schools no more. Celestial Navigation was an art form. But like I told you, if something takes skill, ya just gotta kill it. It's a lot cheaper to hire village idiots.

I looked out the opened window onto the foc'sle. There was ol' Buddha up there in the moonlight doing his lookouting. Having plotted his satellite fix, Paul walked across the bridge and said, "Let's see if we can't find some news," and he took to searching for something in English over the short wave. He eventually ran across the BBC. I'm not the least bit interested in world affairs, but I was happy that me an' Paul didn't have to stand there and make small talk. I drifted back to thinking about the Navy again. Here we were steamin' right along. The mate and I were on the bridge, Buddha was on the bow, Edmundo was about somewhere on standby, and down below there was the engineer minding his store.

Looking back to, say, the Navy tanker I was on, on a quiet night like this she would've had a guy on the helm, and another on the engine order telegraph, or lee helm. Then they'd have a guy on the skunk board, they called it. He wrote down all the radar contacts with a grease pencil, 'cept on an empty night like that night there on _Pleiades_ , he would've been doodling. Now hold the phone, we just got started. We only just begun. You had a lookout on the port bridge wing, one on the starboard bridge wing, and still another one on the stern. Every hour everybody rotated. On top of all that you had a Bosun Mate of the Watch to orchestrate the whole mess. The Quartermaster of the Watch stuck to his chart table, plotting the course and laying in the fixes. Instead of a Mate you had the Officer of the Deck, and he had him a sidekick, the Junior Officer of the Deck. Below you had a bunch of guys on watch in CIC, which stood for Combat Information Center. They had two or three radars and all the radio circuits down there to keep 'em busy. Up on the flying bridge you had a signalman sitting there in the dark, and below in radio you had a couple of guys on watch, too. And we won't even go into all the guys in snipe land down there in the engine room and fire room. But you're talking another ten twelve guys down there easy. And more than likely I'm forgetting somebody. Remember now, I said a quiet night. If you got to doing night ops, you know, like fueling other ships, or helo ops, hell, you could've put bleachers up there on the bridge. Talk about assholes over elbows, you needed a traffic cop.

My reminiscing got interrupted as Wolpert, the radio officer, came up on the bridge. Sparky was well lit. You could tell by looking at him. He wobbled about a bit, taking in the radars on his travels. He's the guy in charge of maintenance on them. Sparks had the best racket on the ship. Those guys make more money than the captain, and all they got to do, it seemed, was hide out in the Radio Shack. You hardly ever see 'em working and never see 'em dirty or, heaven forbid, sweating. And that's probably exactly why nobody ever liked the radio officer. They're jealous. Ain't that just how it always goes, though. What it is that makes you a success is also what makes you miserable. Maybe that's what made a saucer out of ol' Wolpert.

But these days, hell there ain't any radio officers to speak of I hear. They automated the Radio Shack and got rid of 'em. That's how industry works, if some skill makes big bucks, the bulls eye is right on 'em. Industry steals the skill and shit cans the fat, dumb, 'n happy bunch.

"Mister Mate, how goes it?" Wolpert slurred.

"Didn't see you there, Sparks," Paul answered as he made his way over to turn down the BBC. Paul was surrounded. He had me stinking up the place and I couldn't help noticing Wolpert smelled like a dumpster in the back alley behind a distillery. You could notice a difference in Paul when he was talking to other officers. Remember when you were in grade school? Remember how the older school kids ignored ya? I felt like that. I'd like to have seen the goings on if I had shown up for watch as pie-eyed as Sparky was then. But it didn't seem to matter to Paul, those two just got to talking about the scopes. I took to clock watching, being as it was getting close to time to be relieved. Then and there I had a brainstorm. Hell, why not make a little detour en route to the bow an' fix myself a drink? What the heck did you need a lookout on a night like tonight for, anyway? Hell, these days the only time anybody takes lookout seriously anyway is above the artic circle. That's because icebergs don't ping on the radar screen.

But damn, FTN, a whole case of TANQUERAY in my cabin. Gawd. I just marveled at the thought. By the time Edmundo showed up to relieve me on the wheel I had broken out into a cold sweat. Ah, but what a lookout. I'll never forget that night. When me an' my drink finally appeared to relieve Buddha on the bow, he was beside himself. He motioned for me to follow him and we walked up to the bull nose. Then he motioned for me to stick my head through it. I'm there, yeah right, but he kept on insisting. Back then my priorities being what they were, I was more concerned about spilling my booze than going over the side. It didn't take long for me to get the picture though. It was an amazing sight. Right up off the bow wave there was a bunch of what looked like torpedo wakes sparkling beneath the sea. Dolphins stirring up the fluorescence was what it was. Must've been six or seven in all. Every so often one would peel off to the side and disappear off the beam or break the surface.

The way it was explained to me later by Paul was the ship creates a "low pressure wave" in front of the bow and these dolphins dig riding on it. In other words, what they're doing is body surfing. It was a sight that belonged in a fairy tale. You could hear 'em squeaking like they do, too. The phone there on the bow rang and it was Paul wanting to know what was going on. Couldn't have our lookouts screwing around now. Never know when a submarine is gonna surface.

But shit, not even Paul could've screwed up a night like that. Gin in my mitt, warm tropical air rustling my hair, my butt planted all cozy like on a bit, and the moon laying down a silver sheen on a calm sea. I thought I was out of the woods. After all the horse shit I'd been through things were beginning to look like they were gonna go my way for lil' bit.

About five minutes after I was supposed to be relieved the door to the foc'sle opened and JW's familiar hulk appeared. Ordinarily I would've been pissed, but by then I was so mellow it didn't ruffle my feathers. As a matter of fact, I spent the next couple of minutes holding my breath trying not to laugh at JW wandering around like a blind man on the foc'sle, you know, his eyes not being used to the dark an' all. Almost broke his ass a couple times.

"Goddamn, where the hell are y'all?" he finally came out with.

"Yo."

"Hell, that you, Squid? Shit, I thought it was one of them pea brains up here. Why didn't you say something?"

"I was havin' too much fun watchin' ya."

"Oh yeah, well if I broke my ass who'd ya suppose be up the rest of the night on lookout?"

"Not this boy, it's Miller time," I said, sporting my empty mug.

That's when I spotted her. Debbie, that is. Couldn't mistake that figure, at least not on the _Pleiades_. She was up on the starboard bridge wing all by her lonesome. Her hair was blowing in the breeze an' her shoulders were kinda bunched cause she was leaning on the rail. Man, what a sight. She looked like she was right out of one of those fancy TV ads.

"My little woman's up early," I said.

JW turned and gawked. Took him a while to see her.

"Yeah well she's got to fix me breakfast."

"Wonder if anybody's tappin' that yet?" I asked.

"Just a matter of time, if she ain't already. She probably'll get her an officer."

"What a waste."

"Yeah," JW agreed.

"You know, I believe that if it wasn't but for sex, men an' women wouldn't have shit to do with one another. We probably would've migrated to different continents by now if it weren't fer need o' nookie."

I had to laugh at that one.

"That is a woman," he said. "For sure. And a woman needs a man. She acts like little miss independence. You just wait and you'll see what I mean. Charlie's got his eye on her."

Beauty and the Beast, I remember thinking.

But I'll tell you something about JW. Despite his being loud and obnoxious an' all, he did have this "country logic," I guess you'd call it, about him.

Being raised in the big city, having been thrown into Parochial Schools where they separated the boys from the girls like if they didn't they'd infect each other or something, it had never dawned on me that the two sexes naturally gravitated to one another. Maybe I'd always been too busy begging to realize that what I should be doing is kicking back an' letting nature take its course.

"Think you can handle it?" I asked.

JW nodded and motioned for me to hit the bricks.

And with "a woman needs a man" echoing 'round in my head, I made my way below.

### THE GULLY GULLY MAN

Silly me. See, what I was thinking the night before when I hit the rack was that I could sleep-in the next morning. I wasn't due on watch 'til noon that next day. An' as I took a suction on that bottle of gin in my room after that first mid-watch, I was gloating over that fact. Like I said, silly me.

Well, as I'm sure you have probably already guessed, 'long about ten-after-eight that next morning, the door to my cabin damn near wound up in bed with me. For a second there I thought we had a collision or something. I mean the bang was that loud. I was amazed to see that the door was still on its hinges. And standing there was, you know it, my main man Charlie.

"What youz doin' in the rack?" he wanted to know.

"Sleepin'."

So there. Tit for tat.

"Howz am I supposed to run this ship if everybody spends all day in bed?"

"Man, I had the mid last night," as if he didn't already know. I was ready to start in on just how did he figure he ran the ship but decided we had enough fat to chew on as is.

"Youz here to sleep or work?"

"Actually, I was kinda hopin' to do a little of both."

"Know something Squid? Youz ain't got no four year hitch on here. This ain't no Navy. If your butt ain't up on deck in ten minutes, I'll see if the Chief Mate can't arrange to have somebody willin' to hustle meet us at Port Suez, an' you can begin your trip home via camel. Assuming camel jockeys pick up hitchhikers, that is."

I don't have to tell you who won that pissin' contest. I do recall that later that day JW explained to me how he looked at it.

" Y'all's nuts 'r pretty much in a ringer, at least 'til y'all manage to come up with talking- back bucks. No sense in even arguing. Face it," he said, "until y'all got the bucks to tell 'em to stick it, it's like Lincoln never got 'round to freein' nobody."

"After you get a couple of grand on the books, why then the ball is in your court. That's when you can tell Charlie what you really think about him, an' his mother too, for that matter."

Anyhow, ten minutes after Charlie's tender "rise 'n shine," my ass was on deck with all hands takin' orders from 'im.

"Listen, we're due in Suez City the day after tomorrow. Chief Mate wants everything that isn't nailed down on the weather decks stowed. These sons o' bitches will swipe anythin'. Start wid da fire stations. Put da brass down dat hatch. Ya know, the nozzles an' da applicators. We'll put all the hoses back here an' lash 'em together in one bundle so's like Godzilla couldn't haul 'em off."

And that's how that first morning began. After we got everything out of sight, we took to figurin' out just how we were gonna secure all the different doors and hatches from the inside. I'd never been through the Suez Canal, but evidently we were in for a real circus.

Charlie kept him one of those little pocket note pads. Every time you bumped into him on deck he'd break it out and riffle through a couple of pages and then look at you with a squint, like he was taking aim. When you seen him around, Charlie was either fiddling with that note pad of his or his walkie-talkie. If it wasn't that we re-rearranged about half the shit we stowed a couple of times over, you would've thought he was organized. At any rate, the bottom line was, he kept us jumping through our asses them three days en route to the canal. I come to find out the canal is real one way, in a manner of speaking. Glide told me he was on a tanker once and this Egyptian pilot wanted a bottle of booze off the captain before he'd let the ship go on through. Well, this ol' man got all hot an' bothered and told 'em to stick it. So this tanker just, sure as shit, sits there. Now a tanker off hire is big bucks out the window, mind you. In no time at all the tanker company was all over the captain's case big time about why he hadn't got with the program an' coughed up this bottle of booze way back at the git go.

Each day they run one convoy headed north through the canal and one headed south. The convoy headed north, the one we'd be in, starts out at six o'clock in the morning. You steam up to this lake about a third of the way through the canal, Bitter Lake they called it, and there you exchange pilots with the southbound convoy. Then you run up through the remaining two thirds of the ditch, completing the northern leg.

We were due at the place where they form up the northbound convoy in the afternoon the day before we were scheduled to go through the canal. We were arriving at that point there on our watch, and we were going to be mooring to a buoy. I happened across that little tidbit when I was told to get a hawser out of the locker, fix a chafing chain to it, and feed it through the bull nose. The way I saw it, the prospect of mooring to a buoy wasn't a pretty one. Nobody was used to working with one another at this stage of the game, and you could add to that half the deck gang not knowing English. Yes sir, I seen it coming. Throw Charlie's temper into the equation an' it was bound to blossom into another _Pleiades_ version of the ol' bunch o'monkeys fucking a football.

Well, my momma drowned all the dummies. I made damn sure I got my ass on the second wheel that afternoon. Used me some "creative memory" on my watch partners. Hell, they didn't seem to care. Made sure I was gonna be a spectator for this one. The afternoon we reached Port Suez there at the entrance to the canal there was a small boat waiting to take our mooring line from us and attach it to the buoy. And sure enough, two minutes into the drill Charlie was howling away. Dumb son of a bitch this an' shithead that. The captain had maneuvered us up to the buoy and we were dead in the water. I just stood there in front of the wheel and congratulated myself for, if you'll be so kind as to pardon the pun, steering clear of that one.

But let me tell you, we hadn't wasted any time en route those last three days. As soon as we had secured the ship to the buoy, it was well after four by then, the bumboats, they call 'em, zeroed in on us. Damn, you would've thought we were having a blue light special or something. They were all over us. Grappling hooks were coming up over the side from everywhere it seemed. They were hawking anything and everything, legal or not. Them rugs with dogs playing pool an' poker on 'em were big items, as were sun glasses, embroidered pillows, water pipes, papyrus paintings galore, furniture even. An' of course, tons of t-shirts. Once they got on board these locals rolled out carpets, spread their wares out to where it got to looking like it was a Macy's window display, and just planted the flag. If ya wanted to barter with 'em they spoke pretty good English, but if ya was out to make 'em move they didn't seem to understand a word you was saying.

The Chief Mate came up on the bridge from the foc'sle an' told me to lay below and report to the bosun on the main deck, so I got to see all this commotion first hand. As near as I could figure, Charlie was still up forward on the foc'sle, so I headed for the stern. What goes around comes around, ya know. Now the captain had ordered that none of these guys were to be allowed on deck, but as soon as you finished kicking one of 'em off three more would appear. Keeping 'em off was a joke. Let's face it, in this day an' age a seaman don't spend a hell of a lot of time practicing repelling boarders, an' these guys were doing what they did for a living. They were pros.

We weren't a U.S. flag, but as soon as these locals figured out there were Yankees on board _Pleiades_ , we attracted a lot of attention. There were six or seven ships moored there that evening waiting to go through the canal, and the only U.S. flag ship was an MSC tanker sitting a couple of mooring buoys down. But pretty soon us an' this tanker were the home port for most of these bum boats.

Americans may not be very popular 'round the globe, but I'll tell you, them people don't have any problems with the dollar bill. Yes sir, it was a real carnival atmosphere. There was this guy standing on the stern that motioned for me to come over. I would come to find out he was this fella called the Gully Gully man. He was standing near a capstan on the fantail. He had him two eggs in his hands. Buddha was there an' a couple of the other deck guys. Anyway, he took these two eggs, see, and covered them with a handkerchief. Then he whipped the handkerchief away real fast, and there on the capstan were these two live chicks. He let 'em run around a bit and then he gathered 'em up and covered 'em with his handkerchief and whipped it away. Presto, the two eggs were back.

Well, it goes without saying that he had our attention. Next he asked the crowd that had gathered there on the stern if anybody had a dollar bill he could borrow. Best we could do was somebody came up with a five. Well, he takes this five-dollar bill and takes out some newspaper. Then he cut the newspaper with a pair of scissors so that it was the same size as the bill. Now we're all watching this guy like a hawk, don't you know, 'cause everybody wants to be the one who spots how he's doing this sleight of hand shit.

So anyhow, he takes the newspaper, matches it with the five dollar bill, and folds them in half, then in half again, an' again, an' again, while we're watching his every move. By the time he's done folding this thing, it's a little square 'bout an inch across, newspaper on the outside. Then he holds it up in the air and waves it around for all of us to see. He asks if anybody thinks the five-dollar bill was still there. We'd been watching, and there didn't seem to be any way that it wasn't. But see, he wanted double or nothing to find out. Well hell, ya had to know. The curiosity was killing us. Somebody, forget who exactly, came up with a five. He checked with the guy who had given him the first five and he was a player, too. So he handed that guy the little square of newspaper and he unfolded it.

Nothing. No five-dollar bill. Then he took this piece of newspaper back and ripped it right in half. He handed a piece to each guy who'd given him a five. That was their big return on investment. Meanwhile, everybody is laughing at 'em. But like I said, it was a carnival atmosphere, so it was all in fun. So then out of the blue he picks me out of the crowd. Maybe he had me figured for a sucker by the looks of me or something, but what he did was he took more of that newspaper he had with him and ripped it into three even pieces. Then he took each piece and balled 'em up into little balls about the size of marbles. He had me hold my palm out as he was doing this and as he finished each one he placed 'em in my hand.

When he was done doing that he held up each ball separately, real showman like, for the crowd to see. Then he took all three and put them real careful like on the capstan. Again, for everybody to see, he picked up one and placed it in my palm. Then he picked another one up and that one, too, went into my palm. The last one he held up and he waved it around for everyone to see, then he placed that one in his palm. Using his free hand he motioned for me to make a fist, and as I made a fist he closed his other hand with the little paper ball in it. We bopped fists and he pointed to his own fist, like he wanted to know how many of these balls were in it. Everybody was watching this all the while, don't you know.

Well, I said that there ought to have been one in it but I knew better than to say so. He motioned for me to open my hand, and I did to find it was empty. He opened his hand and, sure enough, those three balls were in it. While everybody was ooing and ahhhin' 'bout that, he holds up my watch for all to see. No shit. Course I grab the watch an' everybody's cracking up. The guy was wasting his time with magic 'cuz he should've been a full time thief. Who knows, maybe he was a thief and was just moonlighting as a magician.

Just about then, Charlie shows up and breaks up the show. A bunch of people gave the Gully Gully man tips, and as he made his way over the side to his bumboat, I just couldn't help wondering where those little chicks were at.

I don't know about you, but when it comes to canals I picture all these locks and stuff. That's probably because that's how the Panama Canal is. But the Suez ain't nothing like that. It's like just one big ditch.

Along about dawn they have a pilot boat that makes like a milk run and drops off the pilots to all the ships that are transiting the canal. Soon our captain was using his engines so as to maneuver to slack off the mooring line. After those guys from that little boat let go the eye of our line from the buoy, we heaved it in and faked it out on the foc'sle there. And away we went. It was like a nautical parade, all these ships lined up. Chugging along we traveled into and up that first leg of the canal. Me and the rest of the deck gang just "stood by" on the main deck. On the shores of this lake ya finally reach, called Bitter Lake, it looks like there's a war on. You see, the front line of the Seventy-Three war between Israel an' Egypt was this canal. You can still see some bunkers and military trucks and tanks.

The pilot had the captain pull up to a certain place on this lake and we dropped the hook. There we waited for all the pilots from all the ships in Bitter Lake to get swapped all around. It wasn't just our group of ships anchored there, there was already a whole bunch of ships, the ones from up north headed south, in this lake when we got there. They were almost home free, already having steamed down the upper two thirds of the Suez. There, in that lake, our convoy got a whole different set of pilots for the northern half. For some reason, hell if I could figure it out, it takes a whole lot longer to go north to south than it does to go the way we were going, south to north. I mean, we're talking the same ditch. It's hard to figure.

The name of the town on the northern end of the canal is Port Said. That's where ya dump your pilot and head out into the Mediterranean. We got there about four that afternoon, right when we were getting off watch. We made good time, all the old salts claimed. The last order of business having to do with the Suez had me an' JW wrestling with the pilot ladder again as we stowed the thing back aft down the hatch. After we got that accomplished I strolled down the main deck to where Glide and this black guy I had never seen before were leaning over the rail. Glide introduced me to the guy. His name was Perry. He had a funny accent. The guy was from the Caribbean, a place called St. Vincent. He was a real live wire. When you hit on something he thought was funny he like danced around. He almost looked like a puppet on a string when he did that. Glide an' him had been working together on something all day. You see, Perry was an electronics guy. A real smart fella. He had sailed for years as an electrician and had gone to some electronics school in New York where his brother lived.

Those two got to talking about what it was they were working on an' I couldn't make hide nor hair out of it. I be into knot tying, thank you. Well, after a while Perry went below and that left me 'n Glide leaning on the rail. There was traffic all over, ships leaving with us an' ships anchored there waiting to go on through the canal southbound on the next convoy, but what caught our attention was the silhouette of that American MSC tanker I told you about earlier, that was now off our starboard beam.

"I bet ya your payoff she's headin' for Turkey," he said.

"What makes you so sure?" I asked.

"I used to work for MSC. Matter of fact, I was on a sister ship to that one right there. They keep a tanker out here all the time. You run into Turkey to take on fuel at the pipeline there and then go 'round the Med deliverin' it. Every now and then you make a quick run into the Indian Ocean to work with the fleet. We used to call it the Turkey Trot".

"Never been Union?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, I'm Union now, MWI."

"Then what in God's name are you doin here?"

"Well, I got my time in for the year with the union. They want you to do a hundred-twenty-five a year to keep your seniority and benefits, so I had some time to try somethin' new."

I told him my favorite Union story, and you know which one that was. He winced a couple of times along the way to show he was following along. By then my swollen eye was deflatin' a tad, but he had seen what it was like earlier. When I got done with my little outburst he just stood there quiet for a spell.

"Well, I'll be honest with you." Glide said. "Every once and a while I need a real job. That's why I'm here. The funny thing about the MWI is the more you get paid the less you work, no shit. When I broke into the Union, only jobs I could get were military. Christ, you worked your ass off for peanuts. Truth is, as you work your way up to the better contracts, when you get the seniority that is, it gets real cushy. But I'll tell you something else, these cushy contracts are getting harder and harder to come by. Even on the gravy contracts shit is disappearing. Like for example, you used to get paid 'Port Time' they called it when you were at the dock. Now that's all gone, right out of the contract. The MWI went for all them low-ball government contracts. Shit, the government is like the worst outfit to sail for. Yeah, the Union traded my wages away for their market share. They kept low-ballin' all the other Unions. The Unions like your old man's, the NMU, why they didn't give in, so now they're extinct. And the MWI, they own the waterfront."

"Yeah, I know how you feel," he said. "These unions certainly have their way about them. Ain't no excuse for some of the shit they do. But I don't know, maybe I just think they're a necessary evil."

I didn't have anything to say to that. We both just stood there quiet like. Then after a bit he added, "Well I'll tell you what. When it comes to unions, at least when ya do get screwed, ya get screwed by your own kind."

### HIGH SEAS

So one night at midnight when I showed up to relieve the lookout on the bow, I'm handed binoculars. "Don't let the Mate on Watch catch ya squirrelin' 'em away," he says. "The Chief Mate wants ya to wear 'em all the while you're on lookout. That way, see, they won't get dropped."

Now the officer up there on the bridge has two radars that tell him what's up for thirty miles out all 'round the ship. Not to mention that he's up higher than the lookout on the bow an' can see farther anyway. But all of a sudden we need these binoculars. Plus, I'm told, now the guy on standby has to report to the bridge and pick up a radio, you know, a walkie-talkie. I guess they figured that way they had you under their thumb. Mickey Mouse was what it was. But you get used to officers being officers. They're paid to think, you know. And I think they feel, in the back of their minds, that they have to keep coming up with proof that they're thinking. All the time. You see, they need to justify their existence. Not that I mind 'em thinking, it's just that the end result of all this thought, more often than not, is us having to do something asinine. This binocular thing was a case in point. But, we get to laugh at 'em an' their silly-ass ideas, not to mention bitching about 'em behind their backs. So in the end, I suppose you could say, we almost break even.

Most every time you deal with an officer it fits into one of just a few categories. They're either telling you to hurry the hell up, or just hold on an' wait. Or, they want you to quit doing it your way and do it their way, never mind that either way'll work just fine. An' last but not least, an' my personal favorite, is when they want you to forget about doing whatever it was they just told you to do. Honest to God, you'd think they got paid for changing their minds. That's why you learn never to get too excited about what they come up with, because before you know it they either forget about whatever it was they told you to do or they got ya doing it all different anyhow.

They seem to love telling you you ought to become an officer, too. As if that's supposed to be a compliment or something. Ya see, in the Merchants ya don't need to drop everything and spend four years at some college, ya just need one thousand eighty days at sea to take the officer test.

Officers don't mind telling ya how hard this test is, either. To get to be an American Merchant Marine Officer, ya have to go to the Coast Guard and take an exam that lasts for like four days. Judging by my experience, the Coast Guard doesn't pass you because you get so many right answers. I really think they make officers out of the guys who change their answers on the answer sheet the most.

As I stood there that night with those bulky binoculars hanging around my neck, I had to laugh. I had a buddy in the Navy and when he was a month away from getting out he started to panic, I guess you'd call it. Everybody I knew that was getting out of the Navy went through this stage. It's like you had to convince yourself you weren't making a big mistake by getting out. Hell, I kinda went through it myself, an' I got thrown out. It was funny because even the guys who hated the Navy caught a dose of it. Anyhow, this buddy of mine said that if he got to where he missed the Navy he'd just hang two coke bottles 'round his neck and go stand in his bedroom closet from midnight 'til four in the morning, until the nostalgia wore off.

But anyway, there we were, barreling across the Mediterranean at all of fourteen knots. Took us over five days just to make it across the Med. And after having been thrown all together, and I mean the people and all the gear, we got just what the doctor ordered, time to sort out the whole mess. Took us over a day just to get over Egypt, having to remember what was stashed where an' all. The officers took to laying down rules left and right. The crew, well we got to see which ones they were serious about, and all those technicians got to setting up their equipment.

I took to figuring out the routine of the deck department. On your day watch when you weren't on the wheel you didn't have lookout or standby like you did during the night watches. What you did during the day watches was you worked on deck, which meant having to deal with Charlie. In other words, I got to like standing the wheel. It was beginning to become real clear to me that there was something about Charlie, like that this thing in Djibouti wasn't just a quirk. The first morning out of Port Said I got my own ass up, being as I was trying to avoid another obnoxious reveille. When he saw me out an' about that morning before breakfast he looked disappointed. Like missing an opportunity to be an asshole really bugged the shit out of him. I think he got a bigger kick out of kicking my door open than the door. Well, we'd all come to find out the truth about Charlie soon enough.

Captain Enk would come up on the bridge after one o'clock. Except for us on the twelve-to-four watch, the rest of the ship knocked off ship's work from eleven-thirty 'til one. I guess Enk had already done all his figuring in the morning, because he spent most of his time in the afternoon with his skinny ass plunked in the captain's chair staring out the bridge window. When he did do any talking, it was to Paul mostly. He was the type of captain that'd tell Paul to tell me something while I was standing right there. This is the same guy that was all polite like when we met him on the main deck in Djibouti. Now that I was signed on and was crew, all of a sudden it was like I was a piece of furniture.

But that was OK. I'd learned long ago the way to play the bridge of a ship is to keep your mouth shut. That way these officers forget you're there and you're almost guaranteed to find out more about what the hell's going on by standing right there eavesdropping than asking 'em outright. The Pilot House is where most of the powwows take place. If you're wanting to know what's going down you're better off buttonholing the last guy who had the wheel than asking a mate on deck. The mate is more likely to tell ya you don't need to know or he just don't know than part with any skinny.

I got Enk's story just that way. Paul was sucking up to him and the two talked about shipping an' all while I stood there like the invisible man. Enk was from up in New England somewhere. He had gone to sea as a kid during the Second World War and had been at it ever since. He was a tanker man. He had a brother who sailed, too, but had been killed, got asphyxiated on a tank barge. After the war Enk went to work for Gulf Shipping. Worked his way all the way up to captain. The guy had a wife and kid. From the way he talked about his kid the two weren't all that close. His son was a salesman in New Jersey, which when you think about it, is probably as close to being a sailor without going to sea as you can get. Anyhow, Gulf Shipping went under. The company just dumped its shipping end lock, stock, an' barrel. But it wasn't like Enk got left out in the cold. He had been with 'em for years. Gulf bought out his pension and the guy knocked down hundreds of thousands of dollars. Might even have been something like half a million. Big bucks. But I think ol' Enk had a hole in his pocket. It had been a while since he'd been to sea, but he wasn't on the _Pleiades_ because he missed the salt air. The guy was in debt. Never did find out why. Something went south on him though, I gathered that much. Maybe could've been 'cause Scotch was his primary nourishment.

The Chief Mate was busy working on checking out all the booms and winches. He'd show up on the bridge every so often, usually covered with grease and sweat, juggling a pair of channel locks while he talked to Enk. He was one guy who treated you like a man, though. He talked straight at you, an' then he actually listened to what you had to say. He'd worked his way up from messman, and you could tell. So had Enk for that matter, but for him it'd been so long ago I think he'd lost touch with those days. Tozzi was the Second Mate. He was an Italian fella. A little round man with a short fuse. A real hothead. He'd go ballistic in a heartbeat. The guy spoke English, not all that well, but he could get his point across. He had the eight-to-twelve and the Chief Mate had the four-to-eight. I didn't see too much of Tozzi, but I was careful not to cross the guy, being as you never know when they'll shuffle the watches and who you'll wind up working for.

Down the hole, the engine room, ya had the black gang. The chief engineer was something else. He took some getting used to. You never saw the guy around. Cheng they called him, short for chief engineer. I ran into him one day when the Chief Mate sent me looking for an easy out after I broke off a rusted stud on the fantail. The Second Engineer, a schoolboy out of California, was on watch in the engine room. He told me that Cheng kept the easy outs up in his office. They're the type of thing that grows legs, like people borrow 'em and never return 'em. Ya keep stuff like that in the "gold locker", they call it.

So I go off to find the guy's office. It was up there in officers' country. I found him all right. He was sitting at his desk. I would've liked to have seen the look on my face. I guess Cheng was used to it though. What it was was he had been burned. I mean burned bad. Half of his face was gone. He looked like something out of Dick Tracy. His name was Zonfrom. He was an Israeli. Never did find out what had happened to him. I don't think anybody knew. How do you ask a guy like that what had happened? Glide figured it could've happened in one of them wars Israel had, or maybe it was a shipboard screw up. But he said that if Cheng wanted people to know what had happened, he'd tell 'em. So it remained the big mystery.

Cheng turned out to be a real hermit. He took his meals in his room. Ya never saw the guy around the ship. Rumor had it he did all his snooping 'round the engine room during the wee hours, but speaking for the twelve-to-four watch, we never seen 'im 'round. Glide said he was a real wiz, though. Never missed a beat. There were three other engineers besides him. You had the kid from California I told ya about earlier, he was the third assistant. The second assistant was a Filipino named Aldo, and the first assistant was a black guy named Dewey. Another oil-patch refugee. Dewey was from Mobile. But other than Glide, I never really did get to know any of these engine guys. Glide was always all 'round the ship doing his electrical work, but the others, why they worked in a place I avoided like the plague.

The engine room's like a damn oven. I don't know how anybody can stand it down there. Grease smeared everywhere an' slimy oil spritzing out all over, not to mention those diesels screaming to the point where they had the fillings in your teeth vibrating. Yes sir, that's a whole different breed of cat working down below there. As for who we were told were technicians, Perry was the only one I had any contact with. Couldn't really say how many of them there were, or what they were doing. The G-Men came up with the magic number of thirty-three souls on board _Pleiades_ , but I really can't say how they came up with that figure, an' I knew better than to ask.

One of these technicians was a woman. She was the only other female on board besides Debbie. Her name was Jean. She was a middle-aged lady, an old hippie type. I met her a couple of times because she and Debbie shared a room. Speaking of Debbie, the race was on. Usually I ain't all that aggressive when it comes to women, but I couldn't stand the thought of an asshole like Charlie just waltzing away with her. I'd come to figure it like JW had said, a woman needs a man. And it sure's shit ain't no secret that a man needs a woman. And I knew I sure as hell could use a woman. Particularly a hot little number like Debbie. Charlie was putting the big macho number on her. "Me bosun, you Jane" type of thing. I could tell that that routine was going over like a lead balloon. Shit like that didn't work on a girl like Debbie. The problem was it looked to me like Debbie had the hots for JW. She liked 'em big an' tall was all I could gather.

I don't know how everybody figures men wear the pants. At this stage of the game, at least, the woman is the one with all the say. Even ol' Captain Enk cleared the captain's chair on the bridge for Debbie when she wandered up there. Women on ships. The old man treated me, with over sixteen years sea time, like I was a lump in the linoleum and here's Debbie, a first tripper, lounging in his chair. Course that was both their doing. She had thirty-one guys drooling all over her, no mistake about that. The funny thing was, I don't think she ever knew it. Knowing her, she probably figured any ol' body could lounge 'round in Enk's chair. Being as everybody was tripping over each other putting on the make, I decided to take the laid back tack. I made sure me an' her bumped into each other every time I could, and I used to carry shit for her and give her a hand whenever the opportunity presented itself, but I didn't lay on the little hints an' moves I saw everybody else doing. Chasing a woman is a lot of work. That's why I usually concentrated on my drinking, unless of course I ran across one that'd taken a liking to my dumb ass.

Well, all my plotting didn't work anyway. I caught her heading off into JW's room. Shucks. Like I said, what are you gonna do, they call the shots.

Course the next day everybody wanted to know.

"That chick's bizarre," was his report. "Captain Kirk don't have nothin' on her," he said. "She ain't even orbitin' a class M planet near as I can figure."

He had got her in there, got her all cozy, cracked a bottle of liquor, dimmed the lights, cranked the music. Things were going A-OK for the most part. She got to talking reincarnation and spirit stuff, and something called Scientology. But hell, with a body like hers, that's OK. Where he dropped the ball was she asked 'im if he had anybody back home.

"Hell," he said, "y'all sittin' there with a pretty little woman, nursin' a nice buzz, listenin' to some tunes, light down low, guess I got disoriented. I screwed up, let my guard down. Y'all know what I did?" he asked. "I told her the truth. No shit. She went cold fish on me right then n' thar. Damn, an' I knew better."

Best news I'd heard all cruise. But it wasn't like she'd been dropped into my lap. It was just that I was still in the running. Ah yes, and I didn't have anybody back home to lie about.

Meanwhile, Paul had eased off me apiece. About the only run in we had was about the twelve-o'clock bit. At noon, they test the ship's whistle and general alarm. You ring 'em both, but the handles for 'em were at different ends of the bridge, which meant the guy on the wheel had to ring the general alarm while the mate gave a toot on the ship's whistle. Don't sound all that difficult now does it? But that didn't mean Paul couldn't make it difficult. His big hard-on was that he wanted them to both go off at the exact same time. I asked him why, and he said because he said so. Tradition, ya know. Ship shape shit.

Well, he made such a big deal out of it that I took to screwing up on purpose. Boy, would I get him going. He'd have a countdown from ten and give me a signal, the works.

"Oops," I'd say. I don't think the kid realized that if he didn't go flying off the handle over it I wouldn't of had any fun. And it wouldn't have been worth screwing up at all if it wasn't any fun. But he kept getting all upset, kept trying to figure out a way to pin me down, make me do it right, or his way, I guess I should say. The bottom line was, the only way he'd have it his way was to've been in two places at once. When Buddha or Edmundo were on the wheel he got his way, but when I was up there, 'oops' it was. Hell, two out of three ain't all that bad. What was the guy's problem? Running a gang's like playing the piano. Any ol' asshole can pound on the keys, but it takes a little talent to wind up with something resembling harmony. I sailed with the best officer I think I ever sailed with in the very same waters we were transiting right then on the _Pleiades_. The guy's name was Lieutenant (JG) Clifford. I served with him on the _John L Hall,_ that Perry-class frigate I was on back in the Navy. Those Navy officers are all college boys. You get you a boot camp Ensign and he's bound to be the most intelligent person ya ever met that didn't know dog shit about sailing. Some of 'em catch on, some of 'em don't. But you see, this Clifford guy had gone to college for history. Back then I was BMOW, Bosun Mate of the Watch. After you got done herding everybody to where they were supposed to be when the watch rotated, there was nothing to do but hang out, you know, "stand by". Clifford used to call me over and we'd shoot the shit. An' a lot of those nights we wound up talking about history. But it wasn't the same boring shit like they threw at ya back at school. He used to talk about history that had something to do with what I knew. Some of the stories he told me I'll probably never forget. Back then on the _Pleiades_ , being as I was in the Med again, I couldn't help recalling some of the things he'd told me.

He used to talk a lot about the Romans, being as they were from right around there. Most of what I had known about the Romans was from being half awake in church, but Clifford didn't cover the religious angle. He used to talk about their military mostly. They had one hell of an army. Shit kickers. They even had a Navy. That was something I never knew. Clifford said they weren't natural seamen. They had to copy a lot, and the reason they had to copy is their enemies had a navy and they didn't. An' the way things turned out, they needed one to beat 'em. So they spent all this time and money coming up with a Navy to beat whoever the hell it was they were fighting. Well, after all this time 'n money, they put to sea an' a storm came along and sank the whole damn fleet. He said they lost 65,000 guys in that one storm. Imagine that, 65 grand.

So they rebuild the fleet, which took 'em a while, and put to sea again, and another storm comes along and zaps that fleet too. He said at that point there they were damn near running out of Romans. You'd think the days of the weather sinking men of war were long gone, but Clifford tol' me the U.S. Navy lost a whole squadron of destroyers in the Pacific to a typhoon during World War Two. The Commodore in charge of these destroyers was more concerned with keeping his formation pretty and following his sailing orders than seamanship, an' none of the captains in the task group had the balls to stand up to the guy. So they steamed in their pretty lil' formation right to the bottom.

By the time we neared the Strait, I was getting the routine down all right. The drinking routine most of all. I was potted every day. Good thing I wasn't navigating, would've taken me about six weeks to find the Atlantic Ocean. But it was like nobody cared. I was on the 'high seas' all right.

It probably wouldn't have bothered anybody if I'd slit my wrists, either, assuming, of course, I could've done so without making a mess somewhere.

### BT DAWN

Now I realize this ain't no place for a romance novel to blossom from out of nowhere. And don't worry, because it ain't gonna. But I'm faking down the whole nine yards about what went on on the _Pleiades_ , an' this thing between me an' Debbie is all part of it. And I don't mean to ever make it sound like it was the romance to end all romances either. In a way, you could say without even knowing it I lied to the girl from the get-go. I mean, I didn't have anybody at home, but you see I had this thing with the bottle. And nothing gets in between a guy like I was back then an' his bottle. Debbie would've been better off with a cheating father of sixteen.

Course none of this was clear to me in those days. What we had wasn't what you'd call a relationship. What we had was a collision. I mean, I had my drinking problem and she was blind to it, so she must've had something out of whack herself. But for that short period of time there on the _Pleiades_ , what we had worked for the both of us. Why? Who knows? Hey, I see things a little differently these days, and I realize that our little thing would've come all undone, would've unraveled, sooner or later. I don't think either of us were ever really in bed with each other at the same time. But don't read too much into all this. Along the way we did manage to have a hell of a good time. She told me later, after we had gotten together, that she never noticed any of the maneuvering I'd been doing. Saying hello, being all polite, and helping her carry this an' that. Didn't register one iota. She said the first time I got her attention at all was when she happened by once when the bosun had me and this technician guy Perry working together.

Back aft on the main deck, in the house, the last space before you hit the weather deck was called the dry lab. Hell if I know why, it was a name left over from the _Pleiades_ ' seismic days. But anyhow, they had these aluminum racks set up and me and Perry took to setting in all these electronic boxes into these racks. I was the dummy of the duo. Perry was the one who knew what all went where. I just did what Perry told me to do. Some of this gear was heavy, and awkward, and ya had to stand there holding the damn things until ya got 'em secured. All the while we both were straining muscles an' pinching fingers. I mean to tell ya it was a pain in the ass. Like I said earlier, this Perry dude was a live wire. We'd been busting each other's chops all morning. All in fun, mind you, but we were coming out with some pretty obnoxious stuff. And it was a two way street.

At one point he up an' said to me "What does AB stand for anyway? Always Baffled?"

I told 'im to watch his manners or we just might wind up throwing hands at one another. Well, then he took to calling me "Pinky". "Hold it right there, Pinky. Hand me that, will ya please, Pinky?"

So Debbie tells me she had happened by right when I was telling Perry that if two of his black ancestors had only put their heads together, we would've had velcro a thousand years ago. Just walking by an' hearing that, she kinda figured me for an asshole. Now what gets me is that I'd been spending all this time following her around an' all, being helpful and minding my Ps and Qs, and it turns out that this is what she notices about me first. What's that tell ya about manners? And then down the line, me an' her wind up being together anyway. What's that tell ya about first impressions? I'd asked her what she was doing up on the bridge wing that morning me an' JW had seen her. She told me she wanted to learn all the constellations, had her a book on 'em. Well I couldn't help her there, but I also found out that she was real excited about going through the Strait of Gibraltar. So I kept an eye on the mate's chart when I had the wheel, and made sure I had a pretty good idea of when we were gonna sail by the rock.

I guess you could call that our first "date." I banged on her cabin door and she was in there reading. I bet she had thirty of her own books in there. She was reading all the time. But she dropped everything and dug out this dinged up, taped together Kodak camera from her luggage and her and I went up on the foc'sle. They have traffic separation patterns in the Strait itself. The place is a real bottleneck, and there's traffic like you wouldn't believe. Ships are lined up a long ways heading in both directions, an' you got ferries bouncing between the two shores. It was just getting to be twilight. All this was nothing new to me. I'd been there a bunch of times before, being as I'd been on a couple of Med cruises in the Navy. But I could remember my first time through there. Damn TV commercials screw everything all up. All the while you're waiting, you're picturing this colossal thing in your mind. All it really looks like is a zit on the bank there. Hell, on the other side of the strait, there's a mountain that dwarfs the rock big time. I told her she was in for a disappointment, and when she was I scored me some "been 'round the block" points.

When you're heading out of the Med, the rock doesn't look anything like its pictures. It looks like a long ridge with a piece of plywood leaned up against it. The Brits made it that way so they could drain water into caverns or something like that. The famous angle, the one you always see around, is from the Atlantic side. We stayed up there on the bow an' talked for a good long time. Talked about all kinds of stuff. She had loved the Mediterranean. Debbie was all wrapped up in its history and all, about the ancient Greeks especially. This Ulysses guy was her hero. She told me how he left ancient Greece and sailed all around the Med. Debbie knew all these places he had been. She could name 'em all, but I'll be damned if I could remember one of 'em. He got lost and spent ten years traveling around before he got back home again. In the process he went here an' there and was up against all these "mythical monsters" is how she put it. The reason I remember that is I asked her what the hell a myth was. She said a myth was like a made up story. I said 'hell, I'd be making up stories too if I was captain and had been lost in the Med for ten years'. I mean, the Mediterranean ain't all that big of a puddle. Granted they was paddling around back then for the most part, but shit, ten years? Debbie got a kick out of that one. Looking back, _I'm_ not so sure she wasn't laughing more at my ignorance than my humor. But at any rate, it didn't matter, because something clicked that night. It was a tough call though, because she was the type of girl that was friendly to everybody. But I got this feeling we were on to something. There was nothing said, nothing that I could put my finger on or quote, it was just a feeling I had.

She always focused on the positive about everything. I bitched about all the damn water bugs the _Pleiades_ was infested with, and she was even positive about them.

"They're part of the animal kingdom, just like we are." She said.

"Animal kingdom my ass, there're bugs."

"They have more protein per weight than beef."

"Real appetizing too, huh." I said.

"You already eat insect products."

"The hell I do."

"Do you enjoy honey? Without 'bugs' there would be no such thing as honey."

Yeah, well she might have had a point there, but mind you I didn't go scarf up some A-1 sauce and go on the hunt. But it was high time we were in the Atlantic. Look out _Titanic_ here we come. And a high time it would be. It was cause for celebration. Hell, breathing was a call to celebrate in them days. I took Debbie in tow and turned her on to my stash of TANQUERAY. As a matter of fact, on watch I was a bit tipsy on the wheel. Lucky for me, Paul didn't seem to pick up on it. Got away with it that night 'cuz it turned out to be a quiet watch. I did promise myself never to do that again, though.

Lo and behold, I made good on that promise the very next night when I showed up for my night watch stone cold sober. But the night after that, why I showed up just plain stoned. Reason being was JW liked his weed, and he had gotten around to getting himself some somewhere. That second night out into the Atlantic, he wandered up on the bow when I was on lookout. He hadn't gotten any sleep that evening because he'd just done some cocaine earlier, an' now he was looking to smoke some pot to "take the edge off." I was due on the wheel next, but things had been quiet all night. I figured, hell, couple of tokes, no big deal. We burned a joint right there on the bow, right underneath Paul's nose.

Except for maneuvering for traffic, the mates had been keeping us on the Mike. More often than not, the hardest thing ya had to do on your wheel stint was make the coffee in the pitch dark Pilot House without spilling it all over. Counting on quiet ain't the type of thing you ought to be doing at sea. Hell, I should've known better. That kinda logic is 'bout as likely to blow up in your face as bubble gum is. Sure enough, about ten minutes into my wheel, this alarm starts going off in the Radio Shack behind the Pilot House there. I got to thinking it was a smoke detector by the way it sounded. Ol' Wolpert goes charging back in there. He'd been hanging out on the bridge shooting the shit with Paul, like he had a habit of doing that time of night. A couple of minutes later he's back in the Pilot House.

"That was a five hundred kilo hertz alarm," he says.

That meant nothing to me, but Paul knew what it meant.

"Did you get voice contact?" the mate asks.

"I should be pickin' something up on two-one-eight-two, but I'm not. Could be they don't have their ground down or they're not crankin' hard enough."

"Can't imagine somebody in distress not havin' enough energy. If this tub was goin' down, I sure as hell think I'd have enough adrenalin to muscle that damn thing. Maybe we're just out of range. I'll call the old man," Paul says.

That's when I found out what was going on.

"Yes captain, this is Paul, we've received a five hundred kilo hertz alarm from an emergency lifeboat radio transmitter."

There was a pause, then he said "No sir, nothing other than the alarm itself."

Again there was another pause.

"That would be on two-one-eight-two, and no sir, there's been nothing there."

"Yes sir," he says and hangs up the phone.

"Ol' man's on the way up," Paul yells back to Sparks in his shack.

"Mark your head," the mate says to me.

"Two-eight-five," I tell him.

"Put her in hand, Frank, steady on two-eight-five," Paul says.

Now this is just great, I say to myself. They don't call reefer "dummy dust" for nothing. Believe you me, I don't need any help at all getting confused at the wheel. It's funny how fast ya forget your right from your left when the shit is hitting the fan. And it ain't just me either. They got "right" and "left" stenciled in big bold letters with arrows pointing the right ways on every ship I'd ever been on. And to top it all off, the captain was on the way up, probably dragging the Chief Mate along with 'im too. 'Everybody ought to have me figured for a horse's ass by sun-up,' I can remember thinking.

Next thing I know I'm all alone in the Pilot House. The whole party up an' moved to the Radio Shack. I could hear 'em discussing things back there, but I'll be damned if I could make out anything they're saying. And that was OK by me, because I'm stoned and I don't want to be near no spotlight. But I hardly had time to get lonely. I realize there's somebody else on the bridge with me before too long, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out who the hell it was. The figure was too tall to be the Chief Mate, and too slender to be JW, who I knew was up and about. All the while I'm having a hard enough time trying to remember what course I'm supposed to be steering there in the middle of all this. You know how pot makes you paranoid. So I decide to just plain not care about who was wandering 'round there in the dark.

A fella could've gotten himself a pretty good idea of how things went there on the _Pleiades_ if he had paid attention to what went down that night. What can I tell ya, nobody ever accused me of being the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Soon enough, the captain an' Paul are back in the Pilot House. The ol' man goes over to the radar an' says, "What are you on here, Paul, CPA? Let's get this thing off relative an' punch up true motion. That'll give us a better idea of where this guy is, if he's still pingin'."

After fiddling around a bit with the computer they got whatever it was they were after, an' then they took to scoping out the scope.

"What's the range an' bearin' to this target?" the ol' man asked as he pointed to a blip on the radar.

"Ah, zero-one-seven, at...eleven miles, captain."

"Well we have true motion on everyone else but him. Course he could be a fisherman, but what do you want to bet that's our frantic friend?"

The captain walked up to the phone at the front of the bridge and dialed. As he did that tall figure that had been lurking at the front of the bridge moved toward the rear, but I still couldn't make out who it was.

"Yes, who is this, the Third?" the ol' man asked over the phone. He was talking to the engine room.

"This is the captain. We're going to be ringing up full-ahead here. I'm going to be needing all the turns you can give me. We've received a distress call...thank you," Enk said, matter of fact like. Right then Wolpert came storming in from the Radio Shack.

"Captain, we've got voice contact."

"Ring up all ahead, bring her around to zero-one-seven, Paul."

"Yes sir," Paul said as he started to fidget with the engine order telegraph.

"What do you got?" Enk asked Sparks.

"Tanker, British Registry, Main Engineering Space fire, captain."

"How about position?" the captain asked.

Wolpert handed the ol' man a piece of paper and Enk took it to the chart table to get a look at it.

"Right standard rudder, steady on new course zero-one-seven," Paul ordered.

"Right standard, coming to new course zero one seven," I answered.

"Paul, get over here. Where's your last fix?" the ol' man asked.

Paul went high-tailing over to the chart table like a schoolboy brown-nose. The two of them got to laying down an estimated position and plotting the position of this tanker. They came up with a range an' bearing and the two of 'em paraded over to the radarscope.

"Now see there, what did I tell you? What's the range and bearin' to him now?" Enk asked.

"Zero-one-eight, ten-point-eight," Paul says. He started punching knobs on the radar.

"What are you doing?" the ol' man barked at him.

"I'm putting it back in relative, captain."

"Why?"

"I was going to work a course to intercept, captain."

"Course to intercept? Keep the goddamn thing in true. She's dead in the water. Why do you need to work a course to intercept?"

Nothing like when an officer you ain't particularly fond of steps on his dick. Captain one, rookie zero.

"Sparks," the ol' man called.

"Yes, captain." Wolpert stuck his head into the Pilot House from the Radio Shack.

"Do we have any word from them about casualties? Any idea of what assistance they're gonna need?"

"No, captain."

"Poor devils. Paul, can you give me an estimated time of arrival?"

"Yes sir." Paul got on the scope.

"Range is now ten-point-six. We have turns on for fifteen knots. We should be there in... forty-one, forty-two minutes, there about. I don't have a speed made good, I'm just going by turns, sir."

"Call out the Chief Mate and the bosun. We need to prepare the RIB boat. You have a man on standby?"

"Yes sir," Paul said.

As Paul went over to the phone at the front of the bridge to call the Chief Mate, he got a hold of Edmundo on the hand held radio an' told him to go roust the bosun.

"We should have a visual on this guy soon," the captain said as he made his way to the front of the bridge to fetch his binoculars. As he stood there hunting for the tanker, Sparks walked up to him.

"Captain, I just got off the radio with the Second Mate of the tanker. He identified her as the B/T _Dawn_. He said that they don't need any medical assistance. All of their crew is accounted for. They've evacuated the main space and activated the CO2 System. A Russian merchantman and a Norwegian flag tanker have also responded to the SOS."

"Very well," Enk replied.

"Back when I was sailing Second I was on a tanker that had a main space fire," Enk said out loud, to nobody really, like he was just talking to himself.

"We could account for everybody but the oiler on watch. Looked everywhere. Finally after two days somebody realized that what we'd been taking for a pile of rags in what was left of the fire room was the oiler."

"What's he bear?" he asked.

"Zero one nine," Paul reported from the radar.

"Mark your head," Enk ordered.

"Zero-one-seven" I replied.

"Bring her right to zero-one-nine."

"Right to zero-one-nine," I said.

As I was steadying up the Chief Mate and Charlie came up onto the bridge from below. Both the captain and Paul were busy searching the horizon for the _Dawn_.

"Good morning, James," the ol' man said to the Chief Mate.

"We received a distress call from a tanker about a half hour ago. She's had a Main Space fire, no injuries. The engine room's been evacuated and CO2's been activated. She's dead in the water about nine miles off our bow. Can you and the bosun and the standby go and prepare the RIB boat? They've lost all power. We might be needing the boat to transfer parts or who knows, maybe her captain will request help or want some of his people off her."

"Yes sir," was all the mate said. Then him an' Charlie went below.

"Make out anything?" Enk asked Paul, who was still at the window hunting for the _Dawn_.

"No sir."

The captain walked over to the radar and punched a couple of knobs.

"Zero-one-nine at nine-point-two," the captain said.

"They must've lost their emergency power, too, if they're using the life boat radio. Don't expect we'll be seeing any lights on her."

'Bout then this shadow moves up and stands beside Enk at the scope. The big mystery was solved the second he opened his mouth.

"Captain Enk, this ship, this tanker, she's not in dire straits is she?" It was this Doctor Dundalkin.

"I don't know if you could call loss of power and no main engines in the open ocean dire straits, but it certainly isn't an enviable position, Doctor."

"Didn't Mr. Wolpert say that there were two other ships headed this way to render assistance, captain?"

"Yes, he did. What are you driving at, Doctor?"

"Well, you know as well as I do the importance of our remaining...out of the limelight, let's say."

"Limelight or no limelight, Doctor, let's just say that out there is a ship in distress, and we are bound by international law, and common sense, to render assistance."

"Captain, may I remind you, as the charterers' on-board representative, that great pains, not to mention expense, have been undertaken to ensure...shall we just say 'covert status,' here. If we start taking on survivors in this instance, and in doing so make our presence and capabilities known to anyone who inquires, why, as far as the charterers are concerned, this vessel would be rendered useless for our purpose."

"It is out of my hands, Doctor. SOLAS mandates I proceed to this vessel and offer any assistance required."

"SOLAS?" Dundalkin asked.

"Safety of Life at Sea, Doctor. It's a written agreement that we all must abide by."

"Do you realize what is at stake?"

"Doctor, do you want to call attention to us? Because if you do, I can think of no better way than to turn one-eighty, and proceed away from here. Right now we are the closest vessel to a ship in distress. And if I didn't pursue this course, we'd attract a lot of attention. Now if I'm not mistaken, that's exactly what we're trying to avoid, isn't it?"

"I see," Dundalkin said. "Well, you are the captain."

"Thank you," Enk said. End of conversation.

Bickering big-wigs. They're so much fun to watch. Course what I should've been doing is paying close attention to what was really going on, instead of enjoying the little spat those two were having. We didn't even see the tanker until we were like five or six miles out. As a matter of fact, we could see both the Norwegian and Russian ten or fifteen minutes before the _Dawn_ was visible, and they were nine or ten miles off our stern. But you have to remember now that the _Dawn_ was without any running or deck lights.

All my years at sea I'd never seen anything like it. What a sight. You couldn't help but get an eerie feeling when you came upon her. You have to picture for yourself this huge super tanker, all like eighty-thousand tons of her, in the black of night. She was empty too, which made her tower out of the water all the more. No lights, dead in the water, wallowing in the swells like something out of a ghost flick. No sign of life anywhere on her. When we first arrived on the scene, Enk cut his speed down to like five knots and we did a slow pass, coming within a mile of her. Even from that distance, the _Dawn_ towered over the _Pleiades_. We were just standing by, waiting for the crew over there to figure out what the hell it was they needed. By the time we made our third loop around her, those two other ships had arrived on scene. It was going on four o'clock by then. It looked like I was stuck on the wheel for the duration. The four-to-eight watch was on the deck standing by to put the RIB boat in the water.

The big black hulk just bobbed 'n rolled there, being orbited by us an' those two other ships. All the captains of the ships that arrived to help were talking over channel sixteen, the Norwegian and Russian in broken English. And all the while this Dundalkin guy was doing a slow burn right there on the bridge, and he wasn't alone. Everybody was kinda wondering what the hell was going on. Enk had offered to send any equipment or people over that their captain needed. Over there it sounded as though they didn't have any idea what it was they needed. Finally their captain came on the radio himself. Wolpert had patched this lifeboat radio over one of the circuits on the bridge so they could hear what was going on from there. The first thing this tanker captain wanted to know is if anybody had Bergen Diesels on board. We didn't, and from the chatter over channel sixteen we came to find out that none of these other ships did either.

Then their captain let the cat out of the bag. The fire had started in the engine room and gotten out of hand. They evacuated the space and flooded it with CO2, which under the circumstances was the thing to do. They switched to auxiliary power and had intended to wait it out. You see, CO2 puts the fire out, but it doesn't remove the heat. You have to seal the space airtight and wait until it cools. If you open the space up too soon, oxygen enters and being as you already have all this heat an' fuel there, your fire starts right up again. Then you're in real trouble 'cause you've already used up your CO2. But what had happened on the _Dawn_ is this emergency diesel that ran the auxiliary power fried its coupling. And sure, you carry a spare part for something like that, except the spare is, you guessed it, in the engine room they can't get into. Well, when their ol' man admitted to that there was a long silence over all the radio circuits. See, nobody is keying their radios 'cause everybody is laughing.

What a sight – eight-, nine-hundred foot of tanker, all eighty-thousand tons of her, making like a cork. Lights out an' DIW, and about as useful as a Quaker in the Marine Corps. All because this forty-dollar piece of rubber was where they couldn't get at it. The rules for this safety at sea stuff is all official like. We were the first ship there on the scene, so that put us in charge. It's just the way they have it set up. Ol' Enk had Dundalkin breathing down his neck though. He went back to the Radio Shack and got on the horn and asked this _Dawn_ captain if there was anything he could do to help. They couldn't do anything on the _Dawn_ until things cooled down in the hole, and that could take hours an' hours.

You could hear in Enk's voice that he didn't like doing what he had to do, but he just told the _Dawn's_ captain that he had "operational commitments," and had to proceed on "duties assigned." And that was that. At sea you don't get paid for stuff like this _Dawn_ business. Emergencies are on the house. I think it's a great story though. I'll probably be telling it the rest of my years. And to think it only cost me a night's sleep. Enk ordered me to bring her around to two-eight-five, and while I was spinning the wheel he told the Chief Mate to post the watch and let the others lay below.

### BUNKERS

Holy mackerel. All the while I'm getting to know Debbie, JW's comment about "she's in orbit" is ricocheting 'round my skull. The little honey seemed more like a schoolteacher when you talked to her than anything else. The way she was, all proper like, made you want to behave when you were around her. You know all the books she had that I told you about? Well, half of these books were about going to sea. She was kinda binging on the subject, but in a lot of ways she knew more about sailing than I did. One book she had was all on sailing traditions and customs. She showed me where the gold earring came from. You see, seamen started wearing a gold earring so that if their bodies ever washed ashore, they'd get them a Christian burial. The earring was to pay for it. No shit. I saw it myself in this book.

She was reading this other storybook by this guy that sailed a couple of hundred years ago, this American guy. "Two Years Before the Mast," it was called. It took that long to get places back then. She read to me what this guy wrote about being bored at sea, about nothing ever changing unless they ran across "storm or sail or sight of land."

"That's still true today," she said, all excited like. And yeah, I guess you had to say it kinda was, 'cept all the while I'm thinking to myself "before women on ships, that is." Like I've said, Debbie reminded me of a schoolteacher. It got to the point where we got into a conversation every time we bumped into one another, which was pretty often being as I was going out of my way to "happen" into her.

The first thing I ran across which made you think that maybe she didn't have all the hinges on her rudder was that she'd been married three times. As a matter of fact, the first or second husband, don't remember which, was some big-deal professional baseball player. Second base, I think she said, for California. And I didn't doubt that. She was getting up there, she was thirty-seven. But she was still hot to the touch, no mistaking that. Then it happened. I was talking to her one day on the weather deck, and the conversation somehow bumped into religion. Yo, we had lift off. She asked me if I'd ever heard of Scientology. Other than JW mentioning it when he was describing how bonkers Debbie was, I'd never heard of it. So that's what I told her. Never heard of it. That right there was the end of me never having heard of Scientology. In a nutshell, what this Scientology is is the "Science of the Mind" and, like every other religion, they got it all figured out for you. And they don't mind telling you that, either.

Debbie talked so much about all this stuff it's almost funny that I have to stop an' try an' remember about it. They got a big thick book on all this stuff. Damn thing's about as thick as the Bible. Ah yes, the "human mind," she said, had three parts: the "analytical," the "reactive," and the "somatic," I think it was. What they all mean, well, I really can't say. I didn't make it that far into the book about all this, you know. Course I never really had the handle on the "father," "son," and "holy ghost," either, and the good sisters spent, shit, eight years trying to slap stuff like that into my dumb ass. They made a big deal about memory, too, these Scientology guys did. "standard memory banks" and something called "engrams." Everything you ever heard, whether you were paying any attention or not, was still with you, somewhere. It's just that your "monitor," which was your "center of awareness," couldn't put its finger on it, until _they_ showed you how, I guess.

But what all this eventually boiled down to, I came to find out, was that people like me, and Debbie even, were what they called "pre-clears." What we needed was one of these Scientology guys, a guy they called an "auditor," to go to work on us. See, we needed to become "optimum individuals", and to do that you had to take all these classes so we could be "clear" too. And these schools cost big bucks.

"Auditors" and "pre-clears" and "engrams," shit, I told Debbie flat out it sounded more like the IRS than a religion. She didn't take that well. I learned not to say things like that about Scientology. I had my drinking an' drugs, and she had her "science of the mind," so we were even. Now I really had nothing against all this stuff, 'cept it was more work than being a Catholic, and I mean including Holy Days of Obligation and Lent. I never thought that was possible. She was pretty determined to get me mixed up in all this, but lucky for me, there wasn't much that needed to be done there on _Pleiades_. We had to wait and get me an "auditor" on the beach.

But I still had this feeling we were in for something, you know, me and Debbie. And other people around started saying so too, so like I knew then it wasn't just me. I don't know how I wound up at the head of the pack, it just happened, an' I wasn't bitching. I don't want you to think that during all this time I was just wandering 'round scheming on Debbie. The Chief Mate and Charlie kinda thought us deck guys were motorolas or something. I was up 'til four in the morning every night on watch, and they were always looking for me at eight o'clock after breakfast. We worked until noon, went back on watch 'til four in the afternoon, then I had to make like gonzo, because more often than not they had a little something for us to do after dinner. I took to sleeping in the evenings in an empty room I found so if they came looking for me in mine, they'd sure as hell be disappointed.

Truthfully, I wasn't all that crazy about working in the morning either, but with the whole ship busting their asses to get things squared away, I just gave 'em that much. The morning of the third day we were in the Atlantic, Charlie told us we had to get ready to take on bunkers. When they fuel a ship, they call it "taking on bunkers". An' goddamn, you know what? That's what the Navy called it, too. Taking on bunkers. Holy cow, evidently somebody somewhere had dropped the ball. The word was we were going to pull into the Azores, to the island of Santa Maria. Now this was good news. You know something, nobody is more amazed at what a drunk can drink than the drunk himself. Them twelve bottles of TANQUERAY weren't holding up all that well. It had barely been two weeks gone by and I was down to one virgin bottle and maybe a half of another. Where had it all gone? Hell if I could figure it out. But I knew one thing, we'd be taking on more than Diesel Fuel Marine in Santa Maria.

Diesels are the most fuel-efficient ships going. Steam ships, like the ones I'd been on in the Navy, guzzle fuel like there ain't no tomorrow. That's why there ain't that many steam plants in the Merchant Fleet. Course gas turbines take the cake for using fuel. 'Bout the only ships that use gas turbines are military, you know, destroyers an' stuff. That frigate I was on, the _John L Hall_ , was a gas turbine. It had airplane engines in her. Hell, Uncle Sam can afford it. But we'd been going balls-to-the wall all this time. Diesels got their efficiency range, an' if you exceed it, why, they ain't so hot on fuel either. The captain was hell bent on getting to where we needed to be, an' he didn't seem all that concerned 'bout the gas tab. I talked to Snipes all the time and I knew that if we had the _Pleiades_ throttled down to where she should've been, we could've made it 'round the globe. It musta been a "time is money" number was all I could figure. Well, I was in for a disappointment. The first sign that things weren't gonna go the way we were hoping for was that we didn't take to hauling out the mooring lines.

"We're gonna be on the hook," Charlie informed us when we hit him up on what was going down. And you didn't have to be an Einstein to figure out that if we were gonna be at anchor, we weren't gonna be getting shore leave. Sure enough, we picked up a pilot outside the harbor around ten o'clock in the evening and we anchored. What a pisser that was. We could see the lights of the town right there, but that was as close as we got. A fuel barge was lying in waiting for us, and there in the dark we hauled up the hose and she pumped away. JW tried faking a toothache, and boy was I kicking myself in the ass for not having thought of that first. But it didn't matter, 'cause the Chief Mate said nobody was going in. Nobody. He gave JW a couple of aspirin. It took us four or five hours to top off. We sat there on our duffs while the engineers ran around with their sounding tapes taking their readings on the tanks. So close, yet so far.

The only bright spot for me over all this was that when we finally got underway, it was like four in the morning. The four-to-eight got stuck with the watch. And like a thief in the night, with us standing there wondering why all the rush, what was with the big hush, the _Pleiades_ took to the sea.

### BREAKOUT

I'll tell ya what, it didn't take a genius to figure out by then that the _Pleiades_ was gonna be one thing after another. This fueling flail bit had hardly settled down when all you heard 'round the deck was about this big breakout that was coming up. No sir, never a dull moment. When I was in there borrowing that tool from the Cheng, in his office, I couldn't help notice that he had a piece of paper taped to the front of his desk. Which is probably why he put it right there. And on this piece of paper was written, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine." You see, what a chief engineer really does for a living is he goes 'round and 'round with the captain. Those two are like cat and mouse. Now the captain of a ship is still the man. I mean, when push comes to shove he can fire the Cheng. But the Engineer has his turf, an' any captain knows better than to tread on it. Winds up being like a game of Chess.

Now for a workingman, the "poor planning" crap don't count for diddly. "Do it," 'bout sums up your choices. And that's about as candy coated as it ever gets. And 'round about then "do it" was starting to get real old. Turning-to at eight every morning after the midwatch was wearing thin big time. I was lucky to be pulling down three hours sleep at a whack. Didn't feel to me like it was a case of me playing ball anymore; it was like I was running all 'round looking for cover where there was none.

"Well they can't make you work it," old timers like Glide would tell ya. But the way they said it, you know, the look on their faces, let you know you was in a no-win situation, like they'd seen guys try an' beat it before, and they knew the story. You could buck the system, but not without becoming like a leper. It's almost like the crew wanted you to get screwed if you tried to go against the grain. That way they didn't feel so stupid just playing along, you know, taking it all the time themselves.

So, moving on, looking back at this ROV machine I'm about to tell ya about here, there's one thing I can say for sure. It was, without a doubt, the biggest gaggle of gizmos I'd ever laid eyes on. Chock a block fulla' gadgets it was. Shit packed in it an' hanging off it every which way. The thing looked more like something that belonged in orbit, or on the moon maybe, than being dragged through the ocean. It had a metal frame about twenty-five, maybe thirty feet, long, an' it was five or six feet wide 'n high. Inside this frame, like I told you, all kinds of gear was jammed. A sardine would've been jealous.

ROV stood for "remote operated vehicle." Now our ROV had another name, ALEX, which stood for something else, but hell if I can remember what in particular. The thing had four or five props on it, and they were made to swivel all around. That's how they drove it about down there. These props and the lights on it were about the only things you could recognize on the damn thing. All the other stuff on it -- Jesus, ya couldn't tell what the hell it was. Anyhow, they had it stowed in the midships hold for the transit, and being as we were coming up on the operating area, 'twas time to break the thing out and set it up. See, that cable we'd spent forever putting on the drum was to be connected to it. That's how they talked to it and controlled it and how it was connected to the ship.

Me an' Buddha were up on the foc'sle stowing the mooring line we had used to tie up the fuel barge the night before when Charlie came by an' told us to drop everything an' head back amidships. Par for the course. When we got there the Chief Mate was working the ten-ton boom raising the hatch cover off the hold. While he was doing that, me an' Buddha an' Charlie were sent back aft to drag the end of our favorite cable up forward. But just to make it a little more interesting, we had to make sure as we drug it up forward, that it was outboard of everything. The reason being was that this cable was going over the side with the ROV.

Glide and Perry were standing by to connect the cable to the ROV. That was gonna take a while, we heard, 'cause after it was connected they had to run tests on it so that when it did go over the side it didn't, like, keep on going. After we got it in the water we were going to have to disconnect it from the ten-ton boom, and the captain was going to have to maneuver to get the thing in our wake. Then we'd use the boom on the fantail to hoist it up on the stern. That was where they were gonna operate it from, and where they wanted it secured.

During all this I couldn't help wondering why they hadn't just secured the damn thing back there in the first place. But being how everything on that ship was all ass backwards, I figured maybe they just wanted to make work or something. Well now I think what it was was they were hiding it, keeping it out of sight, 'til they were ready to use it. Leading the cable up forward didn't sound like much at the start. But being as the thing was so fragile, it took us some time. Remember now, if we bent it to the point where the coaxial part inside of it snapped, it would've been the death of us. We were feeding this cable off a drum below decks, then through the RAM tensioner on the stern, and finally through the stern hoist. Lucky for us, Charlie took it upon himself to go below an' operate this drum. And that was kinda like pulling the fuse out of the powder keg.

By the time me an' Buddha showed up with the end of the cable amidships this ROV ALEX thing was sitting there on the main deck. We'd been like an hour, an hour an' a half en route. At that point Glide an' Perry went to it and me an' my watch partner went on standby mode. They had already disconnected a bunch of stuff on the ROV where the cable was going, an' they had a couple of manuals I guess they needed to use, laying here 'n there on the deck. It was slow going, I suppose, 'cause it was the first time those two had worked on this thing. I got bored watching 'em after not too long and took to wandering 'bout the main deck amidships there. You had to watch looking "stand by" like, or Charlie'd for sure come up with something else for us to do.

Along about then ol' JW came strolling back to join us. He'd just got off the wheel, and that was OK because "standing by" was one of his strong points. It was tough to get bored "standing by" with JW, him being such a talker an' all. He'd hardly made himself comfortable when I noticed something go flittering by overhead. One of those deals where you know you think you saw something, but have no idea what. You just stop an' wait for another crack at whatever it was to happen by again. Sure enough, there was something whizzing 'round up there overhead. It was a bird. But not a sea bird, see, it was a land bird. And a land bird looks funny at sea. Sea birds sail 'round mostly, they put out their long ass wings and just glide. This little brown land bird, a sparrow JW called it, was pumping its wings there like there was no tomorrow.

We must've picked this little feller up in the Azores. This wasn't like the first time I'd seen something like this. For some reason a lot of these birds take a liking to ships and adopt 'em. What it is about a ship that gets their attention is beyond me. Ain't like there's much for them to munch on laying 'round. Not unless they can feed on paint chips an' rust, that is. Maybe they're just hanging out and don't realize something as big as a ship gets to moving. Kinda like, "surprise!"

You'll see 'em flying around for a couple of days, then sooner or later you'll catch 'em sitting, you know, perched somewhere. They almost look like they're hyperventilating, just sitting there puffing. At that point you can grab 'em. I'm sure I ain't the only guy that tried feeding one. But I've never known 'em to take food. Like everybody that's ever spent any time chasing birds as a kid knows, the only time you ever get your paws on one is when they're about ready to kick the bucket. Not long after seeing 'em sitting around you'll run across 'em all stiff an' hard, looking just like them stuffed birds that you hang on Christmas trees.

Me an' JW got into an argument over all this. I said the thing was a goner because I'd never seen one of these land birds survive a trip at sea. He claimed to have been on this run down to South America somewhere on this tug and tow operation where the birds would last the whole way down there. I couldn't see it, but he swore by it. Glide wandered over in the middle of our little debate. Him an' Perry were having some problem and they were taking a break to clear the air. Glide sure didn't help my argument. You see, he'd been on a tanker or something, and when they left Sri Lanka he said they had these blackbirds hanging 'round the ship. Well, you see the cook took to caring for these birds, putting food out for 'em and all. And these birds actually took to eating the food, like I said, something I'd never seen. But the reason I remembered Glide's story is how it ended. They pulled into the French Seychelles and this customs guy comes on board and freaks at the sight of these blackbirds. Something about they didn't have any of these birds there and weren't looking to have any. Glide said before you could say "customs declaration," they had a bunch of inspectors on board with shotguns blasting away at the birds. Can you picture the look on this cook's face?

Then this Doctor Dundalkin guy showed up and took Glide in tow off to the ROV. They had one of these scopes electronic techs use set up an' plugged into ALEX and the two of them an' Perry got to fiddling with it. Something wasn't right. Perry went off and in a bit showed up with another one of these scopes. Well, nice try. After going through all they had to do to switch the two, the second one wasn't any different than the first. Then the three of'em took to grabbing this an' that tech manual an' pointing. There ain't nothing an ignorant shit like me appreciates more than company, an' I have to admit I was enjoying watching these widget wizards with their heads up their asses. This here went on for a while. Glide disappeared for a couple of minutes and then showed up with Cheng. I think that was probably the only time I ever saw the guy out on the main deck in broad daylight. And I guess Glide was right, the guy must've been a brain because he just stood there and looked at the thing for a second, then asked 'em a couple of questions, then just walked off. The three of them looked at each other, rearranged a few things with the wiring in ALEX, then took to looking at each other, embarrassed like.

Well, all this dragged on and on. At four that afternoon, after we got off watch, they were still at it. You know, even standing by can get old after you've had your fill of it. It wasn't until after dark that we had the thing ready to go over the side. The big sweat the loads were squawking about was that they were afraid of getting the cable near the screw while it was slack an' we were coming about to get the ROV positioned off our stern. I'll tell you what, I'd rather be at the dentist getting a root canal than participating in one of those all hands numbers on the _Pleiades_.

We had the ROV off the deck and were steadying it with tag lines when we heard Enk start screaming over the walkie-talkie. He wanted JW in the Pilot House pronto. One of the Filipinos was on the wheel an' there'd been a problem with 'im. He wasn't answering up fast enough for the ol' man, an' he threw 'im off the bridge. You know, it was this language problem they had. At the time it didn't dawn on me that it was gonna be my problem real soon. But anyway, after Jerry Wayne got up there we went on with it. And after a fair amount of screaming and dancing ALEX found himself back aft secured on the centerline of the fantail.

Piece of cake.

### RUMORS

Know something? I really don't think there is such a thing as a loose end. There could be for a spell, a short spell, but ya see, a man won't let a loose end be. Somehow, some way, a fella will tie a loose end together with something. Hell, when you come right down to it, with anything that looks like it'll work. I guess what I'm trying to say is a human being has to make something out of nothing, if nothing is all he's got to work with.

Those first couple of weeks on the _Pleiades_ none of this came into play because we thought we knew what was going down, you know, off to find the _Titanic_ an' all. But real slow like, holes started cropping up in that story. Wee little ones at first, then they soon got big enough that even I couldn't help notice 'em. And in that span of time between the _Titanic_ farce going by the wayside and what we were really doing becoming obvious, why we got to pumping out rumors faster than Dunkin' does donuts. And we nearly drove each other batshit in the process.

I got such a kick out of the first real clue as to what was going down I didn't really give it the attention it deserved. The mid-watch after the breakout I showed up dead to the world but in a very good mood, the reason being I'll get to. Anyhow, when my wheel came up, I went up to the Pilot House and relieved Edmundo. As I stood there that night in the pitch black in front of the wheel—the mate had it on Iron Mike—something just didn't seem right, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. One thing I did know, by the way Paul was stomping 'round, was that he was all hot 'n bothered 'bout something. But for the time being, I just stood there in the dark in the dark, if you know what I mean.

Halfway through my wheel I about shit myself. "Two-six-three," came blasting out over the 1MC, what we call the "bitch box", there on the bridge. That never happened before.

"Quartermaster," Paul said, "bring her right to two-six-three."

"Aye, right to two-six-three," I answered. It was only a couple of degrees off the course we were steering, so I didn't even have to take her off the Mike. They have a knob on the helm for small course changes like that.

"Two-six-three."

"Very well," Paul answered.

Then I got to wondering what the hell that was all about. Like who was that at the other end of the 1MC giving course changes. That's when it hit me that Paul's chart table was empty. You know, no charts on it. Usually Paul spent his watch hunched over 'em doing his doodling, laying in his satellite fixes an' whatnot. Now that this got my attention, I also noticed that all the different Navigation gear, the satellite receiving equipment, that is, weren't glowing in the dark like they usually were. They must've been off.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"Assholes," drifted back at me through the dark. Paul was standing over in front of the bridge windows pouting.

"No, really, what's goin' on?"

"They're doin' the navigating down below," Paul answered.

"That's a first."

"No shit it's a first, it's illegal as hell."

"Why they doin' it that way?"

"The captain said that's the only way he can guarantee the charterer that the position will be kept confidential."

"That'll work."

"Work hell, I got the conn up here. How'm I supposed to have the conn if I can't even plot our position?"

He was fuming. Poor guy. Monkey in the middle he was. He was acting exactly like a kid does at the playground who doesn't get chosen by either side in a pickup ball game, and it probably goes without saying that I was enjoying every minute of it. I kind of sauntered over to the radars. The sweeps were whizzing 'round the scopes an' there wasn't a contact to be had. We must not've been anywhere near the shipping lanes.

"Gee," I said, "ain't no traffic and ya ain't navigatin'. Hell, you ain't doin' anything. How's 'bout you makin' the coffee tonight?"

Talk about salt in a wound. That was the best zinger I'd come out with all cruise.

"Fuck you," Paul said.

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"Put it in hand."

Shit, he got me, but it was worth it.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

"Are you in hand yet?" came the answer out of the black.

I moseyed back to the wheel and switched her in hand.

"Well, I guess you are makin' the coffee. I can't do it if I'm in hand."

No reason to shut up now. I was already off the Mike. There was a good long silence, but after a bit Paul said "When it's time to make the coffee, put her on the Mike and make it."

"Yez'm boss."

Too bad it was dark. My only regret was the kid couldn't see the shit-eating grin all over my face. Well, it was quiet for a while. Maybe Paul got to thinking 'bout how stupid all this made him look, because I heard him there in the black back of the bridge fumbling with the coffee pot. Well, let me tell ya it wasn't the guy's night. Before too long there came a funny sound from back there.

"Oh Jesus Christ," was the next thing I heard. He'd done the number where you forget to empty the coffee pot before you make the new batch, an' the coffee maker was overflowing. Yes sir, pissing all over back there. It wasn't like it was something I'd never done it was just the timing. Got to where I was almost howling, couldn't help it really. Before long I could hear him snickering too, then just plain laughing out loud right along with me.

"Goddamn it, Frank, put her on the Mike an' get back her an' give me a hand."

I guess what really happened that night was that me an' Paul finally realized that we was in the same boat.

The last rotation that watch had me up on lookout. That day there, that was the best day I ever had on _Pleiades_ , hands down. As a matter of fact, it was the best day I'd had in a long, long time. A busload of lawyers couldn't have convinced me I hadn't turned the corner, that my luck hadn't changed. The only downer all day long was I'd polished off the last of my gin while sitting on the bit on the bow there. When JW came up to relieve me, I filled him in on Paul 'n all. He got a big kick out of it. Every dog has his day. As dead on my feet as I was, I couldn't help sitting there a while an' gloat 'bout it all.

" Y'all know what I heard?" JW asked.

"What?"

"I heard a couple of the mates talkin'. They were talkin' 'bout how Enk spent some time in the loony bin."

"Who knows?" I said.

"No charts in the Pilot House. Y'all don't suppose Enk ain't headin' for the edge again, do you?"

"Well, if he is, we'll be the last to know, don't you know."

"Course," he said.

Yeah, an' the rumors, they were starting.

"Say, you know what else I heard?"

"What?"

"I heard y'all was bonin' Debbie."

"Who told you that?"

"One of the Flips. Says he seen you tip toein' out've 'er room tonight."

"Shit, I wish."

I was lying through my teeth. Like I said, it had been a very good day, but I don't know, maybe it was because I was fishing for some privacy, but I just thought I'd let that one rattle 'round rumorville a tad longer.

### HEIGHT OF POLARIS

That night, the one I just got done telling you about, hell, I couldn't lose. I left Jerry Wayne up there on lookout and went back to my cabin, and ya know what, ol' Debbie was curled up in my rack there. No shit. Dead to the world, asleep that is, but there nonetheless. Evidently I wasn't the only one that'd enjoyed our little romp earlier that day. An' yo, killer caboose she was all right, no doubt 'bout that. Hey, what d'ya expect, poetry? Remember, I am a seaman, not a serenader. Let's be sure an' keep all this in perspective.

I'll say one thing, though, we had that chemistry together, me an' her. The truth is, I'm not gonna get any more particular, being as this ain't that type of tale. You either know what I mean or ya don't. I'll just let it go at that. But I was beside myself. Couldn't believe my luck, really. So much so I plum forgot to set my alarm that night. Well, you guessed it, that next morning 'round eight, Charlie does his favorite number on my door, 'cept this time the jolt was on him. There was me an' Debbie there in my rack, sitting up, all startled 'n buck naked. An' there, too, was Charlie. Damn, his eyes were open so wide that if he hadn't batted his eyelids every now 'n again like he'd done, in disbelief like, I think his eyeballs stood a pretty good chance a just rolling clear outa his head. The guy was in shock. An' no wonder, a girl like Debbie an' a guy like me. He might've stayed in shock, too, if it hadn't been for the door he'd just kicked open coming back, when we rolled to port, an' whacking him.

"Eight o'clock, get your ass on deck, Sawyer," was all he managed to come out with, then off he went. Well, scratch one rumor.

You'd maybe think I'd get to bragging about all this, but I spent most of that morning running all around, telling anybody who'd pay me any mind at all 'bout my serious alcohol problem. Not having any, that is. I was past the panic stage, I was down to zilch. We're talking nada. That's what I had on my mind. It wasn't just running out that was freaking me, it was the prospect of being out for good. What had been the best day for me on _Pleiades_ was followed by what I really thought, that morning at least, was the worst. Time would prove me wrong on that one, but it was in the miserable league for sure.

Charlie an' that fricking note pad of his. He just doled out the work from this book, like there wasn't gonna be a tomorrow. It was a week an' a day from the Azores to the operating area, an' the whole way was balls-to-the-wall. And we're not talking seamanship type shit, we're talking idiot work. Moving crap mostly, heavy stuff. Operating a chain fall was about as technical as it got. The first order of business was to move this big ass crate that had been stored down in the midships hold. When they broke out ALEX, the remote operating vehicle, it had been brought topside an' set out on the main deck. What they wanted was it hustled back to the fantail. What it was was ALEX's articulator arm. Me an' JW were told we were gonna perform the feat, an' before long Glide showed up to lend us a hand.

Course the son of a bitch was so heavy the three of us couldn't even budge it. An' it was just the right size so that it didn't clear half the shit it hadda go over or around. Yes sir, we had us a grunt match. And in between grunts I was getting razzed 'bout Debbie. Charlie didn't let on anything, at least not to my face. But Jerry Wayne had given me a ration of shit for not owning up to it the night before when he had asked me 'bout it. He flat out up an' called me a liar.

"Y'all think y'all got a magic wand down thar 'r somethin'? Glide, know what? I believe this fellar here figures he's special," he said.

"Never know," Glide warned. "Lucky one night, alone the next."

Believe it or not, I had a hard time concentrating on the subject, being as I was 'bout ready to blow full-bore clear into the heart of DT town. The shakes, they were a'comin'.

"Something fishy here, Jerry Wayne. He's holdin' out on us, don't it seem that way to you?" Glide asked.

"Hell, I don't think so, I know so, Glide. But I feel better 'bout it though. See I reckoned it was you Yankees holdin' out amongst yerselves. I must admit, I do feel a whole lot better 'bout all this bein' as y'alls gettin' snubbed, too."

That there ribbing went on for a while. What I was was a one man cure for monotony. They made it real clear that I'd be either spilling the beans or hearing 'bout it. It was gonna be one or the other for sure.

"Why do you suppose he ain't talkin', JW?"

"No tellin'. You reckon he's inta kink?"

"Could be. Yeah, that could be it. Maybe Frank here spent the night hog-tied. Lord knows we got enough twine layin' 'round."

"C'mon, cut the shit." I could see where this was heading. They'd been at it all morning and I wasn't in the mood. "Can't a fella have a little privacy around here?"

"Ya had your privacy last night, didn't ya? We just want in on some of the highlights, ya know. Was she a groaner, that type of thing. There's no harm in that now, is there?"

"Jesus, are you guys perverts or what? Is this what you two do for excitement?"

"That's the goddamn problem, Frank, you're hoggin' all the excitement. What we're after don't amount ta much more 'n a few crumbs after the banquet, for Pete's sake," Glide said, looking to JW, who was nodding in agreement.

"Really. I'll tell y'all what. He's one sly son of a bitch, Glide. I never noticed 'im puttin' the ol' moves on. Next thing I know he's got her in the bag. Guy like 'im, why you wouldn't want 'im in the same state as your sister."

" Jerry Wayne, it just came to me. I know what Frank's angle is. I'll be damned if I didn't pull the same shit once, way back when I was a rookie. He's just bustin' our balls by buttonin' up. Look what's happenin' here. He don't have to bullshit 'cause we're doin' it for 'im. Luck lays the long straw on 'im an' he ain't content with that. He's got to score him some bonus points besides."

"How'd y'all figure that, Glide?"

"Hey, people been known to stir more shit with silence than they could've by tellin' a tall tale."

Jerry Wayne wasn't catchin' on, and neither was I for that matter.

"I raised more Cain once by not sayin' a word than I could've done by splicin' a month's worth of sea stories together. I pulled it off back when I was a young buck. I was sailin' messman, as a matter of fact. You can figure for yourself about how long ago that was. Hell, I believe it was my first ship even, a _Waterman_ Lash. We were on that Southeast Asian run, you know, 'round the rim. But all I kept hearin' about was Thailand this an' Thailand that. Me bein' a cherry boy, I was the center of attention. All the old farts were dumpin'on me. Cherry Boy this an'Cherry Boy that. I was sick of it. Just plain had enough. It was all I'd been hearin'. Then the big argument was on which cat house to break me in on. Well, the day before we pull in, I chip this tooth, see. So the ol' man sets it up with the agent to get me to a dentist. We got there in the morning an' first think I'm whizzed off into town. So this dentist, well he sure wasn't what I was used to. The guy had to pedal his equipment, know what I mean? But anyhow, while I'm waitin' in his waitin' room there, this older lady comes in an' she's in pain. It's written all over her face. So when this dentist's assistant comes out to get me I said, 'Hey, let her go in ahead of me.' Like I cared. I was gettin' out of work anyway. So she just shoots off into the office, wasn't even a discussion. So, I get my tooth ground smooth an' all and get sent back to work. Knock off rolls 'round an' the cherry boy here gets his ass dragged by the ol' farts into town, into this bar, see. The ship was on a regular run, so these guys were in and out of there like every forty-two days or somethin'. They knew everybody, and I'm gettin' put on display like I'm somebody's brand new Buick or somethin'. And when they drag me up to the Mamasan to get introduced, guess what? It's the lady with the toothache. No shit. And she recognizes me right off. What do you suppose the odds of that're? 'Bout the same as bein' hit by lightning while holdin' a bare light bulb, I bet. Anyhow, the next thing you know, there's drinks 'n dames on the house, for the whole lot of us, and all the while I'm gettin' the royal treatment. Ya should've seen that bunch of ol' shits. They was pinchin' themselves. Mamasan didn't explain, an' course I wasn't gonna. As a matter of fact, I never did tell 'em what the true story was. No sir, I didn't hear any more of that 'cherry boy' shit. 'Why I never saw Mamasan act like that, have you? Jesus what'd ya suppose came over her?' They just couldn't believe it. 'This type of thing always happen to you kid?' Why I laid on them ol' assholes a perpetual case of 'we be baffled,' and I'm sorry to say, most've 'em went to their graves that way. No sir, never did spill those beans. Just couldn't bring myself to do it. How can ya bust a bubble like that? It was too much fun listenin' to 'em wonder out loud 'bout why the hell it ever happened."

"Glide, why did y'all tell 'im that? Now we'll never get anythin' out of the guy."

"Let the kid have his fun, JW. You had your crack at 'er."

"Yeah, an' I blew it, didn't I? If I'd only lied to her back then I'd be busy lyin' to y'all right now."

Long about then, Charlie came stomping by, checking up on us. An' that box hadn't moved in a while. We couldn't have that now, could we? By then, I had a hard time giving two shits. Yeah, I was a bit thin skinned. No booze an' hardly any sleep to speak of will do that to you. An' thinking about it made it a good deal worse. The twelve to four watch was a son of a bitch. See, Charlie had the eight-to-twelve, so after midnight the guy got himself a bunch of rack time, 'til like seven in the morning. Same with JW. After he got off the four-to-eight in the evening, he got him some rest 'til he got rousted for his morning watch. But the twelve-to-four, why with them hounding you every morning at eight to do day work, hell, you were screwed. After your afternoon watch, by the time you got done with supper, it was 'round five- thirty, six o'clock. An' like I've already told ya, more often than not, then they had something that needed doing. Something or other that'd been put off all day. Some people can just lay down an' get to snoozing. Must be they have a clear conscience or something. Glide was like that. All I know is I sure as hell couldn't. And it was driving me crazy.

It must've been pretty obvious I was getting awful frayed around the edges. Even Charlie paid it some mind. After the three of us got that crate back aft where it belonged, Charlie got a hold of me and told me to go round up three or four of those plastic buckets we had laying here an' there 'round the ship. He told me to clean 'em out real good, and bring 'em down below. What we were gonna do is make us some wine. Some Chateau _Pleiades_. Not that Charlie had got Christian all of a sudden. I think the guy realized that if I didn't get me some sauce to simmer me down I was gonna be worthless. Motors need their gas an' alkies need their stash. That took the edge off some. At least I could look on down the road and figure on some relief.

And it was on one of those nights in between the Azores an' the operating area that I finally got the message that things weren't all that they seemed. With our mission I mean. Paul an' Sparky were on the bridge one night arguing. Paul insisted it was a CIA deal and Sparky wouldn't buy it. I just stood there in the dark taking it all in. After Wolpert had left, stumbling off like was his way, I asked Paul what the hell was going on. He said he didn't exactly know what was going down, but we sure as hell weren't heading anywhere near where the _Titanic_ was. Well, I ain't the smartest guy on the block, but I wasn't born yesterday, either. I figured Paul was still bellyachin' 'bout not having charts an' all. Those days we just sat 'round waiting for the bitch box to send up course changes like it did every so often. We were steering pretty much due west for the most part, an' everybody knows that an iceberg is what did in the _Titanic_ , so you'd figure we'd be heading north. But navigating is one of those things that don't always make sense. Sometimes by steering what they call a "great circle course", it don't seem like you're heading in the right direction, but don't expect me to explain how it works. I've already told ya 'bout me bein' a navigating nitwit, haven't I? Well, when I said that to Paul, that maybe we was on a great circle, he brought me out on the bridge wing an' showed me a little something.

"See the Big Dipper up there?" he asked, pointing it out for me.

"Yeah."

"Well, you see them two stars there?"

"Yeah."

"They call them the pointer stars. You know what they point at?"

"What?" I wasn't no star man.

"They point to the North Star. That's how you find it. That's how you're sure you got the right one."

"OK." But I didn't get what he was driving at.

"Know anything about the North Star?" he asked.

"It's north," I answered, not really trying to be a wise-ass.

"Well, yeah," Paul said, "but its real name is Polaris, I mean, that's the name of the star itself. And the thing about Polaris, the reason it's always been so useful to navigators, is if you take the height of Polaris, and by that I mean the distance it is above the horizon, it tells you your latitude, your actual distance north of the equator."

"OK." He wasn't gonna get any argument out of me.

"What all this tells us, you an' me that is, is we aren't anywhere near the _Titanic_. And by the course we're steering I can tell you we aren't heading in that direction either. I don't need any SATNAVS or charts to tell me our latitude, see what I mean? One thing for sure, we aren't headin' for anywhere up north."

"So where are we goin'?" That got me a dumb look out of Paul.

"Wouldn't we all like to know the answer to that one," he said.

### BITCH BOX BLUES

So they were making such a big deal 'bout this "operating area" that last week before we reached it, I half expected to see this big-ass X in the ocean to mark the spot. We had to be ready for it. I think we moved everything on that ship that wasn't welded down 'bout twice, maybe even three times. If I'd moseyed up to the bow for a lookout one of those nights an' had found the stern there, I really wouldn't have been all that surprised. I mean to say we'd done some serious rearranging.

The afternoon before we were due to arrive the Chief Mate happened by while I was working on the main deck. You know, moving something. He asked if I knew where JW was at. I said the last I saw him he was giving the bosun a hand. You know, moving something. Then the chief asked me if I could do him a favor an' round 'im up and head up to the Pilot House. The captain wanted to talk to the two of us. Well, a seaman ain't any different than anybody else when it comes to being told to go see the man. Your first reaction is panic, like 'Oh shit, what'd I do ta piss 'im off now?' Enk hadn't been paying me no mind at all 'til then. Now this. And it wasn't like we didn't have buckets of Chateau _Pleiades_ stashed all over the goddamn place, either. Near as I could figure he must've tripped over, or maybe even fell, inta one. When I got a hold of JW, he didn't have a clue either. Then me an' him went an' found Charlie an' bounced it off of him. He said to never mind the buckets an' just go see the guy. Enk was in his dayroom, that's where we finally found 'im. I'll tell ya something, he had a pretty good buzz on himself. I'm talking Scotch. Not that I gave the guy a roadside sobriety test or anything. It was just that I remember being all worried about us having been making vino all over, an' as it turned out he was, far as I was concerned, half planted. Like, 'why worry?' I remember he didn't look at us. He was more like looking through us, on into the great beyond. Never never land.

"I can't afford to be playin' charades when we have this gear deployed, gentlemen. I'm going to need one of you two on the wheel, at least while we are operating. That way I know I can get a quick response on the helm if need be. Now I've talked to the Chief Mate about this, and we've decided to put you two on six and six tomorrow. We'll be needing the bosun on deck."

My first thought was relief. While Enk was licking them fat dry lips of his, gawking off into space, waiting for me or JW to say something, I was thinking, "Whew, we ain't gonna get nailed after all!" Meanwhile, both me an' JW just stood there.

"I hope it won't last that long, but we have a job to do."

See, most everybody hates six 'n six, you know, six hours on watch and six hours off watch. I couldn't help ta notice JW's mouth was hanging wide open, like the hinges on his jaw'd come undone. But what was the ol' man waiting for, an argument? The guy was the captain.

"That will be all," Enk finally said.

When we left the ol' man's dayroom there, JW lit off.

"Goddamn, six 'n six, that's bullshit. They hire a bunch a yellow wet backs ta save bucks an' when they get to be needin' somebody to know what the hell they're sayin', we got to go on six 'n six."

Now I was loving every minute of this, I don't mind telling ya. After two weeks of the twelve-to-four, six 'n six, well, it looked pretty good to me. Actually, I was looking at a bit of a breather. Back when I'd be bitching 'bout not getting any sleep on the twelve-to-four, JW was one of the ones telling me to just shut up 'n grin an' bear it. You know, "take it like a man" crap. Now that his chestnuts were over the coals, why he wasn't singing that tune any more. As a matter of fact, he made a mad dash over to where Charlie was an' started crying like a baby. I just went back about my business. You know, moving something.

Sucking up to the bosun all this time evidently hadn't done ol' Jerry Wayne much good. That next day we went on six 'n six. It began at noon. I took the first watch being as I was used to heading up the Pilot House at noon anyway. The people that'd come up with the gear on the _Pleiades_ seemed to have a serious problem with naming their shit. Like I've already told you, they took turns calling this ROV thing that and ALEX. This first piece of gear to get dunked they either called the "towed array" or the "side scan sonar," depending upon which bug was up their ass at the time. Me an' JW, well we just called it "that fuckin' thing" for the most part. But anyhow, "it" looked like an airplane, really, wings an' all. As a matter of fact, the thing looked empty next to ALEX. It didn't have anywhere near the same amount of shit hanging off it. Looked pretty plain. Listen to me, a plain plane. Maybe they should've given me a crack at naming all that junk.

But anyway, it was a hell of a lot smaller than ALEX. Its wing-span was something like fourteen feet, an' it couldn't have been that long. What we were doing was searching. These guys had the general idea where what they were looking for was, but they didn't have it nailed down. This towed array thing was lowered down a half mile or so, judging by the cable we let out. Don't get its cable confused with our favorite cable now. It had a drum all its own, but a good bit smaller than ALEX's. After this "sonar" thing went in the drink, we began steering what Paul called a "grid".

This hunt wasn't all a bowl of cherries, I was quick to find out. See, we had to keep her in hand the whole time. That was because there was a lot of turns involved in steering this grid. The commands would come up through the bitch box. They were keeping track of our search pattern down below there wherever they were plotting all this. It wasn't very consistent either. Sometimes the courses would come up pretty regular, like at a pace. Sometimes you wouldn't hear anything out of the bitch box for a while. Then again, sometimes you got so many new courses to steer all of a sudden, you got to feeling like you was parallel parking. No shit, you felt like you ought to be checking your pockets for change for the meter. Other than courses to steer, the only other thing you heard out of the box was about "legs." You used to hear 'em mention finishing one leg or starting another, but other than that, it was all just courses. And the whole time that that thing was down there I don't think we topped five knots. All this looked to me like the lazy man's way to success.

Enk really didn't change his routine after we started operating. He'd wander up on the bridge like he usually did after lunch. For the most part it was me an' the bitch box. A course would come up an' I'd steer it. 'Bout the only real change was that at four o'clock Tozzi, that Second Mate I've told you about, the short Italian fella, would come an' relieve Paul. This guy wasn't too worried 'bout not having the conn. No sir, he didn't mind the bitch box one bit. He'd been 'round a time or two. He had "easy money" written all over his face. Poor JW. He didn't think too much of six 'n six. Course I hardly saw the guy, mostly just coming an' going there in the Pilot House. Relieving each other on watch, that is. But I got enough of him in just that short period of time so like I didn't go through Jerry Wayne withdrawal or anything. I'd show up for the wheel an' he'd just say "bitch box blues," an' give me the course we were steering. "Bitch box bullshit," I started laying on him when he came to relieve me.

Now it ain't like I'm a fan of six 'n six either now. The problem is you work six hours, then grab some sleep, five hours if you're lucky, then go back on watch for another six, then the second time you get off, you come to find out you got just enough sleep the last time around so that you don't get any sleep this time around. Ya wind up doing nineteen-hour days on five hours sleep. I don't mean to say it'll kill you. I know a lot of people work long hours, but it does get old. Try it sometime. Remember, it ain't like I was well rested at the start of all this. Seems like I'm always bitching bout sleep, don't it? The Filipino guys were working on deck for Charlie all this time, being as they was off the watch bill. Then they had to cover the lookout at night. What all that meant was that when me an' Jerry Wayne were off the wheel, we got us some time off. A hell of a lot more than I'd been used to lately.

Debbie an' I got some time together then. She pretty much took to camping out in my room, which was OK by me. But you could tell people were pissed, an' among them people was Charlie. Debbie told me he cornered her an' flat out asked her what she saw in me. Them guys just couldn't figure out how I had wound up with the brass ring. Hell, I didn't know either, but at least I had better things to do than spend time wondering. It was the quiet before the storm, an' owing to the storm we were heading into, I can only figure that maybe fate owed me some quality quiet.

One thing about Debbie was she worked up in the Officers' Saloon, so I picked up on all the scuttlebutt from her, like what was being kicked around up there. She told me there was a hellatious stink going on about what we were doing. Sounded to me like they didn't know much about what we were doing either. But the rumors, they were still flying. Matter of fact, they was getting worse. I'd heard we were looking for gold somehow. Some big lost treasure. Then there was the old one about it being some big government secret mission. CIA. And I heard a bizarre one 'bout it being a UFO hunt, top secret, see. We knew we weren't up north where the _Titanic_ was for sure, but the why, nobody knew. Something else I heard some people saying was that we were just checking out all this fancy gear before heading up to the cold water. Then there was the story that somebody had already beat us to the _Titanic_ , you know, scarfed up all the goodies, an' we were just gonna putz around a bit an' then head home.

Rumors are funny, it's almost like they're living beings, like they get born. See, one guy will just suppose something, out loud, out of the blue I mean, an' then a second guy will repeat that to a third guy, and by the time it makes it to the fourth guy, why, it'll stand up in court. All these rumors were nice tries, but none of 'em, as it turned out, were anywhere near the truth. At least at that stage of the game. It was kinda cool to find out from Debbie that the zeroes were in the dark too. Made ya feel just like one of the boys. I wasn't accustomed to being in the same boat with those guys. At least while knowing I was. Hell, I can recall even having a little time for myself in those couple of days there. Got to stoop over the rail an' study the sea for a piece, like all seamen will do from time to time.

I had to laugh. I was back on the fantail, taking it in for a bit, an' I caught a load of my little friend. That land bird, I mean. An' there it was, dead as a doornail, scooting along the deck, like it was being brushed right along, owing to the wind. I went over and scooped it right up, shortstop style, an' had half a mind to go finish my argument with JW, 'bout these land birds never making it. But then I can remember thinking, "What's the point?" It was all stiff, like they get, and it was all spazzed out like. One wing was sticking out straight and the other was all bent. I tried to force the bent wing out like the straight one as best I could. Then I tried flying it as if it was one of those balsa wood airplanes I flew as a kid. You know the kind I'm talking about, the ones ya got at the drug store. I still see 'em 'round. Well, the damn thing made right for the drink, didn't even arc 'n inch.

Right in, baby. An' it made a ker-plunk any ol' rock would've been proud of.

### ALEX

Now, if I had to pick a time when this here deal went south, when the whole ball of wax, like, up an' melted, it'd have to be when ALEX went in. That's when we went screaming into the bare-knuckle league, when all the bullshit bit the bullet.

On the fifth day after we had started towing around this "side scan" thing, the whole routine we'd become accustomed to, running the legs an' all, well, it went out the window. We started going dead in the water for spells. The bitch box'd order all stop, an' _Pleiades_ would just rock herself into the troughs, and there we'd sit, rolling to an' fro. All the while this was going on, you couldn't help noticing that huddles started happening all 'round. On the bridge, on the stern, in passageways, you name it. The captain, this Doctor Dundalkin dude, the Chief Mate, technicians, everybody was throwing in their two cents, it seemed. Something was going down.

That morning, while I was off watch, I was hanging 'round back aft an' I took to checking out the chicken population there in their cage on the stern. It was really starting to dwindle. A lot less cackling. Glide happened by, an' he tugged at my arm.

"C'mon, if you're a chicken fan you'll get a kick out of this."

I followed him over to ALEX. He had with him an' egg. He'd just come from the galley where he'd gone to get it.

"Check this out," he said, an' he took my hand and placed this egg in it an' I just stood there with this egg in my palm. All the while I'm thinking, "Here we go again, egg tricks."

"Now just wait," he told me.

ALEX's manipulator arm, remember the thing that'd come in the crate we had to drag back aft, well, they'd been working on it for a while. What they'd been up to was attaching it to ALEX the ROV, and right then, while I was standing there with this egg, it like came to life. It spun all around an' headed over toward me. At first it moved so fast I had half a mind to dump the silly-ass egg 'n run, but as it neared me it slowed up. Then real slow like, it moved in. It had a clamp on the end of it, like a two-fingered hand, an' as it got close in, this clamp gadget snapped open. The thing zoomed right up to me an' got its paw on this egg in my hand. Then it lifted it up, having snatched it right out of my palm, and swung it through the air over to where Glide was standing. Glide stuck out his hand, and this arm thing spun 'round and laid it right on his palm, all without cracking it.

Glide was a happy man. He went up and stuck his face in what must've been a camera attached to this arm. He had this shit-eating grin on his face as he waved the egg at whoever was controlling this arm down below. Then he danced around the fantail there, the way a receiver does in the end zone, an' slam-dunked the egg into the deck like he just caught himself a touchdown pass. Splat!

"Miller Time!" he screamed.

A bunch of the other technicians started to show up on the fantail. It seemed as though ALEX had graduated. They'd been busting their asses trying to get the thing up an' running in time. I'd learned that from talking with Glide. It wasn't just the ALEX on deck that needed working on, there was all kinds of stuff, computers and all, down below, that needed tweaking too. Dundalkin even showed up. The guy looked like a proud father. That day was the day I noticed that Dundalkin had one blue eye and one brown eye. Maybe it was because I don't think I ever got a real good look at him in broad daylight before. You don't get a load of that very often, having different color eyes I mean, which is probably why I noticed it then.

There was something about that guy that always made me want to avoid him. I can't really put my finger on exactly what it was about him that made me feel that way. I mean, he was always friendly, but it was the kind of friendly that Highway Patrolmen are to you when they're busy writing you up for speeding, if you know what I mean. But that day was a bit different, probably because he was real pleased ALEX was on line. Beside himself, might be a better way of putting it. ALEX the ROV, after all, would turn out to be the operation.

It wasn't long after that that they raised the towed array, and hoisted the thing on deck. That little evolution took place while I was on the wheel. I had relieved Jerry Wayne at noon. We putzed around for a while, going in circles mostly, then they got to lowering ALEX. Before that happened, Enk had come up to the Pilot House an' said a few words to me.

"I don't have to tell you about the cable, do I?"

Boy, he had that right.

"Pay attention to what you're doing."

"Aye, sir," I answered. Like a horse's ass, I can actually remember being a bit pissed 'cause I had missed the big event, them lowering ALEX, I mean. I had thought this ALEX thing was gonna be like the towed array, you know, like you lower it and that was that. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The son of a bitch would turn out to be the world's biggest yo-yo. Up on deck, down inta' the drink, up, down, up, down. All I had missed was the maiden voyage. There'd be more than enough ALEX to go around. And that there was an' understatement.

But the first time it went in, what I think they were doing was making a couple of passes at their target. You see, they had used the side scan to find what it was they were looking for. But they needed ALEX to go down and verify that they'd actually found it. ALEX had the cameras and lights and all. And find it they did. I was on the wheel there in the Pilot House when Dundalkin himself called up over the bitch box. That there was a first, a one an' only, even. I could tell his voice, and he was all excited. Imagine that, Mister Laidback himself.

"Captain Enk?" he asked.

Enk walked over to the box an' answered up. "Yes, Doctor."

"That was an excellent pass, Captain. We've just established positive identification. Thank you very much, very nice work, very nice work. Tally ho."

The guy sounded like a kid at Christmas. I'll never forget that little conversation. I just stood there at the wheel thinking, "Tally ho?" Where the hell did that come from? "Tally ho" was 'bout as nautical as bricklaying. But I didn't have a whole lot of time to concentrate on my eavesdropping. From then on your hitch on the helm was hell. We weren't towing anything anymore, we were maintaining station. ALEX had to be in one place, hovering over whatever it was they were working on. The mates' party was over, too. They needed to do more than steer the ship so they could maintain station. They needed to use the engines for them to be able to do it too. That meant that the whole time me or JW was at the wheel spinning the dog shit out of the damn thing, the mate on watch was also fiddling frantic like on the engine order telegraph. And you can bet those guys down below, wherever they were operating ALEX from, weren't exactly sitting 'round daydreaming either. This here was the whole shooting match, soup ta nuts.

Yeah, this ALEX routine was day an' night compared to the tow job we'd just completed. The whole time we were maneuvering there I was thinking to myself of how would be the best way to spring it on JW. He was gonna love this all right. The only good thing about it was time whizzed right on by. You were so busy, you didn't even get a chance to catch the time on the Pilot House clock every now an' then. It hardly seemed like we had been at it an' hour or so when over the bitch box came, "OK, captain, we're going to be standing off here for a while. We're all clear, you can go ahead with your personnel rotations."

They must've talked about this over the phone or maybe in one of them huddles or something. That was the first I'd heard of it. Nothing had been said before about any personnel rotations over the bitch box. I looked at the clock and I remember being blown away about it being half-past six already. Where in the hell was JW, I wondered. He'd been usually relieving me around ten-til-six up until then. I'd find out the answer to that one real soon. The ol' man ordered me to steady up on a course, an' had Paul ring up all ahead slow. That's when it hit me that Paul shouldn't have been there either. Hell, he should've been relieved by Tozzi two hours ago. Things were all fouled up, at least as far as the watches were going. After I reported that I'd steadied up on the new course, Enk walked over to me.

"Nice work, very nice work."

"Thank you, sir." I got a kick out of Enk complimenting me.

"I need you to go back aft and report to the mate back there. Paul, do you want to take the helm."

"Yes, sir."

Right then was when I first started to catch on. I was counting on laying below an' bouncing on Debbie after that watch. You know, relieving the tension. Me an' her had kinda a routine worked out when we were on that tow schedule. I got to admit, between her an' our vino coming of age every so often like it was, I'd been spoiled shitless. This here was the end of that, and real soon I'd be coming to find out a lot more was gonna be following that out the window. Little things, like meals an' showers.

Back on the stern I found JW all bent out of shape. And I mean bent out of shape. He was all hunched over, just fuming. On his head he was wearing a sound-powered phone, an' he was tugging on the cord between his fists like he meant to tear it in two. Plus, he had grease smeared all over 'im. From the look in his eyes, you could tell he was 'bout ready to come unglued.

"I got news for y'all," he said as I reached him. "Six 'n six is out, we're on twenty-four an' zip. These cocksuckers expect you an' me to cover the whole goddamn thing ourselves."

"How long they expect us to do this?" I asked him.

"How the hell should I know?" he grunted as he tore the phones off his head. Then he shoved 'em at me, nearly knocking me on my ass. The Chief Mate was back there, and he got in JW's face.

"C'mon, Jerry, calm down. It isn't anything personal. We're all in this together."

"Jerry Wayne!" he blasted. It looked to me like he was fixing to deck the mate. I think I walked in on the middle of a little discussion already in progress between those two.

"C'mon now. Just chill out and get yourself up on the wheel. You're going to make matters worse for all of us."

"Right, I'll steer this son of a bitch. Hope the cable don't snap." Then he went stomping off forward, looking like he had plans to do something drastic. The Chief Mate just shook his head as JW left, then he motioned for me to follow him, an' I did, winding up over at the stern winch that was feeding the cable over the side to ALEX.

"Frank, you need to keep your eye on the way the cable is feeding through these sheaves and through the RAM tensioner. If you see anything odd, get a hold of the bosun. He's on the other end of your sound-powered phone, down below in the winchroom."

Then he pointed to a bucket of grease. "We'll need to slush the cable every now an' again. We'll be by to let you know when and to give you a hand."

"Aye, sir" I said. "How long do you figure this is gonna last?"

"At this point, Frank, I wouldn't venture to guess. We'll try to get you a break or two, as best we can. Right now...we just have to let things fall into place. We'll work something out."

Looking at the guy right then, I'm not so sure he believed that himself. But what are you gonna do? You can only swim so far. I got me a comfortable little niche an' took to watching this cable go feeding itself through everything there on the stern while the RAM popped up an' down.

Yeah, an' Alabama chain gang wouldn't look all that bad in comparison right then.

Glide came by after a while. You see, as electrician, for some reason you're responsible for all the hydraulics, too, an' that's what the RAM tensioner is, all hydraulics. He stood there and took in all the machinery. He wasn't looking too happy about all the goings on either. I mean the last time I'd seen him he was dancing 'round the fantail. It was pretty obvious to me he had had himself what they call a mood swing. I yanked me some slack out of my sound power phone cord an' walked over to where he was standing. He gave me a look. Boy did he have a case of sad eyes. It wasn't your typical Glide.

"What's up?" I asked 'im.

"I don't know about all this, my man." Then, while looking back over at his machinery he added, "I think you and me might just wind up with our portraits hangin' in the Trick Fuck Hall of Fame."

### AN-PDR-27

A lot of people there on the _Pleiades_ had me pegged as a pinhead, an' I dare say that that bunch wasn't the least bit surprised that it took me a while to get the big picture. 'Cept, it wasn't like they were thinking though, it was just that I'm the type of guy that likes to see proof positive before jumping on a bandwagon. No doubt about it. I was no Columbo when it came to figuring out the lowdown on what was going down. But hell, I was a rope choker. A deck ape ain't being paid to be no detective.

Most of the other guys, you know, like Glide an' Perry, had all kinds of opportunities to trip over facts. They bumped into little tidbits all the time, an' they could add 'em up for themselves. But me an' JW, going around and around between the Pilot House an' the fantail like we were, well we were out of the loop, in a manner of speaking. But, slowly this submarine story started circulating and bit-by-bit I watched it grow. More an' more , people started figuring it to be that way. Everybody had their own reasons and these people didn't mind telling you, for the most part, what they were.

Glide was in and out of a bunch of spaces I didn't even know existed. Him being an electrician, well, like I've said before, he got around. He told me he had seen what looked like a submarine on a video monitor somewhere. He had just caught a glimpse of it before somebody had covered up the screen with a piece of cardboard. And he wasn't one to get taken in by wild-ass ideas. He was the type of guy that called a spade a spade. Perry was the same way. At one point he and I were talking and he came right out and told me that what these people were up to was no good. He said they could get us all in serious trouble. In fact, he went so far as to say he thought they were crazy for doing what they were doing, but he didn't go as far as filling me in on the how's an' why's he used in all this figuring of his. And guys like these were pretty smart fellas. But still, things being how they were, with never really having anything you could sink your teeth into, you know, facts, ya just couldn't help wondering. Rumors had been flying every which way on that ship for so long, you just had to see the proof for yourself.

And actually, looking back to those days, you were a little more preoccupied with when you might get you a little sleep or a bite to eat than caring about submarine stories. To top it all off, the hours we were all working had you going in an' out of the zombie zone. At that point, just about the whole ship was doing the 'round the clock bit. Even the galley was up into the night putting out hot night lunches. But there was an exception, an' it was a loud one. I'm talking about the Filipinos that had been bumped off the watch bill, you know, because of the language thing. You saw them wandering around the deck, looking like lost sheep. Everybody was too busy to dole them out something to do. 'Bout the only time me or Jerry Wayne got something to eat was when one of these guys ran to the galley for us. If it hadn't been for those guys looking out for us, all on their own, nobody else would've bothered.

Half the time I was on the sound-powered headphones with none other than my main man Charlie. That's who we were talking to when we were on the stern. I asked him when the hell me an' Jerry Wayne were gonna get a break and he asked, "Did you keel over yet?" So I said, "Well, not yet." And he said, "Then you don't need a break. Pay attention to what the hell you're doin'." If there's anything I can't stand it's being pampered. Shit, I even came right out and asked this Doctor Dundalkin what the hell we were doing. He had wandered back on the stern and was peering over the side at the cable feeding into the ocean. I yanked on my sound-powered phone cord 'til I was standing next to him. Between the hours that I'd been working an' the bullshit I'd been hearing, I'd developed what you might call a short fuse. I figured, hell, what's he gonna do, send me to sea an' work me 'til I drop? Right after he gave me a quick glance I asked, "What is it you got us doin', Doc?" "Making history," he answered, not even bothering to take his eyes off the cable. And you know something? He wasn't lying. Not that his answer did me, or anybody else for that matter, any good at the time.

So I'll tell you about how I came upon my big clue, how I got me a glimpse that made me a member of the sub club. I'm not real sure what day it was, daylight was all I can really remember it being, but I was up there in the Pilot House on the wheel. Call it the second day after we started operating with ALEX, that'd be about right. Anyhow, ALEX was on deck, and we were standing down a bit. We were taking a short breather. You know, standing by. Up comes Doctor Dundalkin to the Bridge. He asked Paul, the mate on watch, where Enk was. Paul said he was below and Dundalkin asked if Paul could get him up there. When Enk shows up, Dundalkin said to him, "Captain, we're going to begin our close in work. I'd appreciate it if you would remain on the Bridge during these evolutions." "Very well," Enk said. It struck me funny, that little conversation, because you don't see captains of ships getting marching orders all that often, at least not from people on their own ships. But that's why that there stuck in my mind.

So ALEX got put in the drink for its "close in work," an' stayed down for quite a while. They didn't hoist it back on deck until well after dark that night. By then I was back on the fantail doing the sound-powered phone number, eyeballing the cable. When ALEX broke the surface of the water, they cut the winch and just let it trail behind us. And then all kinds of strange things started happening. For one, I was told to get off the fantail. Everybody cleared the deck back there. I walked forward and leaned on the davit for the lifeboat and watched the goings on. It looked like a scene out of a schlock science fiction film. They had the decks lit with red lights, you know, for night vision, and that added to the eerie feeling you got watching all this. After the decks had been cleared, they hoisted ALEX up and set 'im on the stern, and then this guy walked up to it. He was wearing a white suit. There was a hood over his head and he had him black rubber gloves and boots on. You couldn't see his face, he was all sealed up.

This guy had with him a box with what looked like a microphone attached to it, and he took to walking all around ALEX with this thing. He was checking it all over with the microphone, like he was listening real careful for something. This here had got my attention. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell was going on. He kept at it for what must've been at least a half-an-hour, and I kept an eye on him the whole time. But all he did was stick what I figured was a microphone all over ALEX. Finally he acted like he was satisfied, and walked forward to where Dundalkin was standing. He took off his hood an' underneath he had a mask on, like a gas mask, and he took that off too so he could talk to Dundalkin. I couldn't hear what those two were saying, but after a piece Dundalkin looked around and announced to everybody, "OK, the levels are acceptable; they're within acceptable tolerances."

At that, technicians started pouring all over ALEX, like it was business as usual. While everybody was moving all around I walked over to where Dundalkin and this suited up guy were talking and did a fly-by on that box he'd been using. I just caught a glimpse of it, but that turned out to be enough. On this box was written AN-PDR-27. And seeing that, a bulb went on in the back of my brain. The guy in the white suit caught me looking at his thing there and he scarfed it up real quick, but I already had seen enough an' it didn't take long for this AN-PDR-27 to come bubbling up out of my memory. I'd remembered the thing from my Navy days. What it was was a radiac, a thing they use for measuring radiation. I had run across those boxes before, when I was being trained on that frigate I was stationed on, for what to do if we dropped a nuke. While we were handling it, that is. They called it "accident/incident" training.

Right then and there everything clicked. All with that one quick glimpse. They were doing close-in work, and I figured it was close in work on a sub. All those boats are powered by nuclear reactors, so you could see why they were concerned about radiation. There was proof enough in that there pudding for me, and I now had my two cents to chip in with everybody else's.

Now the big question was, what the hell had we gotten ourselves into?

### NUKES

"An' they shot Lincoln," was what I couldn't help thinking. Yeah, I was in a mess all right. Major danger. If only ol' Sister Assumption could see me now. You get into a jam like that and you just can't help thinking you're one dumb son of a bitch. You feel real stupid, no ifs, ands, or buts 'bout it.

Back then, right smack in the middle of all that, I promised myself that if I got out of that mess, the first time I ran across one of those bag bums on the street, you know, a pan handler, I'd pour out my pockets to the guy, every last nickel. Then I'd tell him, 'Whatever you do, don't look for a job. Stay the hell as far away from work as you can.' You can't help keeping a promise like that to yourself. Ya got to do it, and I did, too. When you pull through some major league boondoggle by the skin of your teeth like I had, ya don't wanna mess with your luck. A deal is a deal. And no fooling, for what it's worth, I kept that promise. Not trying to be an ass, either. After all, looking for work, trying to make a buck, was exactly how I got there. This sub shit sure didn't beat the breadline bit. Not by a long shot. No matter what kind of dime they'd promised for your time.

Seriously stupid. Plain dumb. It was how we all felt, all of us that'd been duped into being there, that is. Ya thought in circles, chasing your tail like. An' you figured yourself right back to where you started from, every time. Seriously stupid. Plain dumb. The only real relief from that there thought circuit was when you took to telling yourself that it wasn't really happening. I did a fair amount of that. And the worse it got, and at that point it got nothing but worse, the more you took to saying to yourself, 'Na, this can't really be what it seems.' There is a word for thinking like that. It's called denial. And the reason this denial thing exists is there are times it's your only comfort. Like then.

The rumor mill had come to a screeching halt. There wasn't much need for it after it became obvious to everybody what we were really up to. But it wasn't long at all before it lit right off again, 'cause the big question then became who the hell was behind all this. JW swore up an' down it was Uncle Sam. An' for his proof was all the shit the government had pulled before. Agent Orange an' those nuke tests that all them sailors got sick from in the Pacific. And asbestos. Why, he went on an' on, had 'im a list. The guy got on my nerves. Every time you saw him he had an addition. But I couldn't buy that. Not because I didn't figure our government would do something like this, I just couldn't see 'em doing it that way. They would've done it different.

And don't think they gave us time off to sit around an' ponder all this. The _Pleiades_ kept rolling right along on her little errand like there wasn't gonna be any tomorrow. And as a matter of fact, in a matter of days, for a lot of people, there wasn't gonna be. You just watched what the hell was going on, wondering all the time. No sir, like I've said before, never a dull moment.

What they'd been up to lately was they had attached a basket like thing to ALEX. It kinda resembled a stretched milk bottle crate, you know, the wire kind, with dividers. And in this basket they would put these things in there, six at a whack. The best way I can describe these six things is that they looked like oversized thermos bottles, the big metal kind that pipe fitters 'r construction guys haul off to work with 'em. But boy, did they baby the daylights out of these thermos like things, and as it turned out, for good reason. You could tell that they were something special if for no other reason than each of them came in their own bright yellow suitcase type of container. These suitcases were brought up on deck one by one. And as these things were taken out of the cases, one of them technicians took to working on it. It'd take a good hour, hour an' a half, for them to load ALEX's rack. Then they'd dunk 'im. He'd be down for around four or five hours at a clip. And when he returned, these thermos things would be gone. By now you learned better than to ask any of these guys what it was they were up to. But you'd also come to find out that keeping a secret on a two-hundred-forty-foot ship was damn near impossible. So you just watched and waited, knowing that sooner or later, you, or somebody that you swapped skinny with'd figure out what they were doing.

Now that I was a member in good standing in the _Pleiades_ Sub Society, I'd get turned on to nifty little points of interest every now an' then. I was on the wheel one time when Enk had laid below for a while, an' for a short stint it was just me and Paul in the Pilot House. That's when Paul told me that the Russians had lost a ballistic missile boat off of Bermuda a few years back, an' he'd bet his bottom dollar that that was what we were up to. Near as he could figure, and mind you he didn't have any charts or nav gear, that was the neck of the woods we were in. After having proved to myself that a sub was what we were really after, the leap of faith ya needed to figure that the nuke warheads on board her was the real point of this whole little treasure hunt wasn't much further than what you'd need to hop a crack in a sidewalk. At least it sure seemed to me that we were marching in that direction all right. It made perfect sense all 'round.

But you see, this figuring here didn't lead ya down a happy trail. Why on earth would you come up with a crew made up of guys like me an' the others for such a hot operation? It wasn't the type of mission where you just pull up to the dock when you're done an' pay the boys off. 'See ya 'round, fellas. Oh, an' keep quiet 'bout us havin' a boat load of bombs here, will ya?

Near as I could figure, there was only one way around that little problem for these guys, and it wasn't a pretty one for us, at least not from where I was sitting. Every which way you figured, it led ya right smack to a dead end. You might be thinking that all we needed to do was get together an' figure out how to upset their little apple cart, 'cept you got to remember now we'd been working 'round the clock by then for days. And we also never got a chance to gather together in a group. Me an JW chased each other 'round between the Pilot House and stern. We had a minute or two when we relieved each other, and that'd be it. There was always somebody waiting on us. Enk was on the bridge most of the time, at that stage of the game, so ya didn't have any time to hash things out up there. And more often than not you were all by your lonesome on the stern when ALEX was submerged. Debbie wasn't allowed either on the bridge or the weather decks while we were operating, so I practically never saw her. Glide'd be around every once in a while, but he was really getting run ragged an' didn't have much time to stand 'round an' shoot the shit. We'd get a chance to compare notes every once in a while, if one of us hit on something, but we're talking fast passes.

Logic was driving Glide to the same place it was taking me, though. He'd come to see us as the throw away end of this little operation, too. At one point he got a chance to say real fast to me, "This here's as good a reason as any for a mutiny. Shit, overdosin' on breadfruit ain't dog crap compared to this. Keep your eye out for a weak link."

We all knew by now that this was a big set up, and you had to figure they'd be ready for us trying something. They'd have to expect it. One time I went up near the RAM and was looking it over, you know, thinking 'bout what Glide had said about "weak link." Before I knew it, one of these technician guys was on my case, asking me what I was doing. I told 'im some shit, I forget what it was, just some excuse, but he stood there until I backed off. Then he went back into the house. A couple of minutes later Charlie came over the sound-powered phone telling me to stay away from the gear. That there baffled me a bit until I spied a camera that they had set up to keep an eye on what was going down on the stern there. So like I said, they were ready for us. And after about two full days of them planting these thermos bottle things, hell, they must've sent six or seven loads of them down below there, the big question about what they were up to with 'em got answered. Answered with a bang, ya might say.

I was up on the wheel when the Pilot House started to fill up with spectators. Enk an' Dundalkin were up there along with some guys I didn't know. Technicians is what I took 'em for at the time. ALEX was secured on deck an' we had steered a steady course for a time, an' then had come around one-eighty and ordered up ahead-dead slow on the engines. At that point Dundalkin went up to the bitch box and said over it, "OK, Dave, we're lookin' good up here. Arm them."

"Stand by," that guy below answered over the box, and then a second later, "armed and acknowledged, Doctor."

Dundalkin took a quick look around the Pilot House, and then said over the box, "Hit it, Dave."

"Signal sent," this Dave guy reported back a couple of seconds later. Everybody on the bridge just waited, keeping their eyes peeled all the while up forward, off the bow. So I did likewise.

And then, out of nowhere it seemed, this big geyser of water came shooting straight up out of the sea. It looked like a depth charge or something had gone off below. For a split second I expected to see a submarine come shooting up, like it had just done one of those emergency tank blowing numbers to make it to the surface. What I was really hoping it was was the U.S. Navy doing a cavalry like number, you know, over the hill an' to the rescue type of thing. No such luck.

Some things you never forget. That Dundalkin guy turned and looked at everybody. What all them thermos type gizmo's was was explosive charges. They must've just cracked that sunkin sub's hull like it was an egg so they could get at them nukes.

An' with this shit-eating grin on his face, he went over to the bitch box an' punched a button. Then like it was some big inside joke or something, he said, "Dave, looked to us up here like it was a real 'sweet nutcracker'"

### UNDER THE GUN

"Between the rock an' a hard place." That's 'bout the best way you could sum up our little predicament there on the _Pleiades_. A very big rock an' a very hard place. And not much of a "between" ta speak of, either.

I've been a real careful storyteller up 'til now. I wanted to get it right, you know. Took the time to like look up a few radio frequencies even, just to get the numbers right. What I couldn't remember and could find out, why I took the time to find out. And, if I ran across something that I'd put down ass-backwards, I'd go back an' change it. From the get go, I wanted to be sure I was setting it straight.

But this here part, hell, I don't know. Shit came at you so fast, an' it was so intense, I couldn't really swear by what was happening when. I've put things in order here, you gotta to tell the story, but you have to understand that I'm only doing as best as I can. Having been up for a whole bunch of days straight had put things in a definite haze ta boot. Not to mention all the wild shit that was thundering down on us. I feel about how a hot sneaker at the laundromat would feel trying to describe to you its ride in the dryer. At this here point, it seemed we were either tumbling out of control, like twirling through space, or getting our asses knocked for a loop. An' again, there wasn't much time "between" the two.

But anyhow, getting back to business, what those thermos bottle like gadgets had been were shaped explosive charges. ALEX had been used to place them on the hull of the sub down there on the ocean floor. At first I figured they were magnetic, and that's how they must've stuck where they had to stick. But subs are made of titanium, ain't they? Titanium and magnets don't go together, do they? Hell, maybe they glued them on. These guys on _Pleiades_ were a brainy bunch. They'd figure out the how's and where's of placing these charges onto that boat down there so they could split her right open. In order for them to get at those nuke warheads, they had to gut that thing like it was a big ass fish. The size of these explosive charges sure didn't look like they could do the job. They looked too small. You have to figure that these subs have real thick hulls because of all that pressure they're up against. But that was just it. She sat under something like five thousand feet of seawater, and at that depth it was like cracking the shell on an egg. They had to be careful, too, about blowing everything to kingdom come. What they were after were warheads, and just peeling off the skin was what they had in mind. Then, see, they'd just use ALEX to get down there an' pick them nukes out of there like they were ripe tomatoes.

The beauty of all this, at least as far as I was concerned at the time, was that these explosions had mucked up all the mud, or silt, or whatever the hell was down there where the sub was resting. What this meant was we got a break. No shit. They figured visibility wouldn't be good enough to risk sending ALEX down there for a good ten, twelve hours. The big boom'd made it all murky. I about died when I heard that one.

One of the Filipinos came up to relieve me at the wheel. I'd almost forgotten that they'd ever stood watches. On my way below I ran across the Chief Mate. He was on the main deck, leaning on the rail underneath the starboard lifeboat, just staring out over the sea. And boy, did he look like a truck or something had just run over 'im. He had him a couple of combat caliber rips in his khakis and he was all covered with grease an' sweat, to the point where he could've passed for just having climbed out of the drink. I had him figured for one of the good guys, so I went up and stood next to him. Nobody spoke right off. Finally he said, without bothering to look at me, "God help us." "Shit, like this here is exactly what has me wonderin' if there is a God," I said after a while. "Who knows?" he answered. We were both silent for a minute, then he added, "I'll say one thing. This doesn't seem like a bad time to hedge your bet. Might be a real quick return on investment." Then he turned and looked at me. "Get below and get yourself some rest, Frank. Lord knows we all need it. I'm liable to fall asleep in the shower myself."

I sure didn't fall asleep in the shower. Didn't even make it there. I remember waking up in the chair in my room still dressed except I had one shoe off. Who knows how long I'd been there like that. But, I took care of the problem toot sweet an' plowed into my rack. There was no way for me to know it just then, but by the time they would have me run out of my rack at the crack of dawn that next morning, all the song an' dance shit would be over. And over for good. There'd be zero doubt in anybody's mind that we'd be playing hard-ball from there on out.

It was one of the Filipinos who woke me that morning. I couldn't make any sense out of him. He wasn't one of the ones who spoke any English. But by the way he was acting, jabbering loud an' fast, there was no mistaking that something was very wrong. I caught the general idea though, you know, panic, and got my shit on as fast as I could. I was still pulling on my shirt when I first got to the passageway. I met JW there. He was fumbling along too.

"What the hell's this all about?" I asked him. "How the fuck should I know?" he answered. He looked awful. I'm sure I wasn't much to look at myself. When we got up the ladder from where we lived to the passageway on the main deck level, there was people all over, an' all heading aft. From the looks of it I figured we must've been having a fire or something like that. Something major. We all stampeded straight out onto the fantail from the deckhouse. There everybody had been bunched up, herded together, courtesy of Charlie, inta one group. It looked like an abandon ship number. It didn't take long after being ushered into that there group to come to find out nobody knew what was going on. Debbie came and latched onto me, hugged me big time. She didn't even have a clue, even with the inside track she had her in the Officers' Saloon. And Charlie, except for "shut up an' get your ass back over 'ere," wasn't talking.

I couldn't see any smoke to speak of, an' the _Pleiades_ , she was on an even keel, so you knew it wasn't like we were taking on water or anything. Both the port and starboard lifeboats were up in their davits with the gripes an' all still secured. Looking all 'round, I just wasn't getting the big picture. It was dawn, and we were left to stand around there in the dull light. The only thing the least bit soothing 'bout all this was a warm breeze that swept across the deck. The sky was red over the horizon. All this was enough to make a life long believer out of me, 'bout that "red sky at morning" crap. It was a good time to be taking warning, all right. Whenever I hear that saying these days, I don't have to tell you what I find myself thinking about. ALEX an' that plane thing were still secured nice and neat there on the fantail, just the way they'd been left. I checked 'em out real close to make sure. I thought maybe somebody had sabotaged them overnight or something. As it turned out, I was on the right track.

"So, bosun, what's the big secret? It ain't like any of us are going anywhere," I shouted at him. Everybody there kinda took to that one. Charlie started getting heckled by a bunch of us.

"We're workin' on the 'big secret' right now. Won't be long," he answered. Then he walked up to me. Debbie an' I was holding each other there.

"Comfortable?" he asked, looking straight at Debbie. She didn't answer. She just gave him a shit look. "Girl like youz belongs on the winnin' team, babe. Why is it you're hangin' all over that loser?"

"Oh go away!" she said. With that, Charlie gave me a "we'll see" look and walked back to the front of the group that was gathered there on the stern. Thinking back to how things were right then, that asshole probably didn't know himself what was going down. He was your basic flunky. An ant. The picture really didn't start coming into focus until the Chief Mate, Tozzi, the Second Mate, and the third assistant engineer, that kid from California, came back aft. They were escorted by one of the technicians, 'cept there was a little twist, something we hadn't seen before. This here technician had on him an Uzi, one of them stubby lil' machine guns. From the looks of it he had just finished rounding him up this group of zeros. Them officers were just herded in there with the rest of us. Somebody hit the Chief Mate up for what was going on an' he just shook his head in disgust. But that Uzi, see, that brought home to all of us what we were up against. The other little event, which happened there on the stern that morning that made it real clear about how things were was when this guy with the Uzi walked over to Charlie. He had him a .45 tucked in his belt there, and he pulled it out and handed it to the bosun, right there in front of all of us. Charlie was beaming big time as he pulled out an' checked the clip and moved the action back to eyeball the breech. As he slid the clip back in, he broke out in a big shit grin as he took us all in, gawking at 'im. Things got real quiet. And we waited.

In a bit, a bunch of people started pouring onto the fantail from around the port side of the deckhouse. Three of the Filipinos first, followed by two more armed technicians, and then Dundalkin and Enk. They gathered in front of us. Dundalkin nodded at the two armed guys an' said, "We've got this, go make another sweep." As those two were heading off, another technician came back aft there on the fantail from up forward. He was lugging a piece of yellow gear, about the size of a small suitcase, with what looked like a hand crank sticking out.

"Put it there," Dundalkin ordered, pointing to a spot on the deck in front of all of us. The Doctor was always calm an' collected, it'd seemed. But he sure wasn't now. Nowhere near. He looked like he was 'bout ready to blow up. The best way I can describe how I remember him looking is hateful. I noticed he had on him, in a leather holster, what looked like a nine millimeter. And it was like he wanted to whip it out an' use it on each one of us there on the stern. Enk was standing right next to Dundalkin, and he was looking like a dope, or at least like he'd been doped. Course knowing him he might've just been stoned on his Scotch, but none of this here that was going down looked like it was registering on the guy. Maybe he'd just given up. Two of the Filipinos they had with them there in front of us were my old watch partners, Edmundo and Buddha. The third guy, I didn't know that guy's name. But then again, I'd been working with Buddha for what, 'bout three weeks now, and Buddha, the nickname we'd given him, was all I knew to call him.

"Who put you up to this?" Dundalkin demanded from those three. They were petrified. None of 'em answered. "I want to know who put you up to this?" he repeated, this time pointing at the group of us huddled together there on the stern. Nothing doing. Then, in like disgust, he yelled at Charlie while pointing at that yellow box, "Get rid of it! Throw that goddamn thing overboard!"

"Youz can't, boss. I mean youz can, but it won't sink. It's made'da float," Charlie said.

"Well, make it so it won't float and get rid of it," Dundalkin said, like he was talking to a five year old. Charlie went over to the fire station on the stern an' pulled the ax off of it. He then walked over to this yellow box an' began waling at it. Its fiberglass case began splintering all over. I didn't know what the thing was. In all my years at sea I'd never run across anything looking like it. And I'll tell you why. What it was was an emergency lifeboat radio. At that point none of us there on the stern could have known what was going on. That's because we'd come to find out these three Filipinos had come up with this caper all by their lonesome. You see, they keep the emergency lifeboat radio in the radio shack. The radio officer's job is to bring it to the lifeboat if the ship is going down. In the meantime they stow it in their shack for safekeeping. See, if they kept it in a lifeboat, it'd wind up broke-dick just like the rest of the gear they stow in lifeboats. Later, I learned from Edmundo that they snuck into the radio shack through the escape scuttle at the top of it. Sparks was blitzed as usual an' had passed out there in his chair. They snuck out this emergency radio, see, thinking they could use it to call for help. The whole _Dawn_ thing was what probably gave 'em the idea to do what they did there. They were on watch with me at the time all that went down. They couldn't figure out what the hell had gone wrong, how the hell they'd been collared. But the Chief Mate, he told us that these emergency radios set off alarms. You know, so they attract attention. Like the one I'd heard going off the night we crossed paths with the _Dawn_. That's what could've nailed 'em. Nice try. Almost, but not quite. At least they had had the balls to try something. You had to give them that much.

When the Chief Mate told me this, I said, "Hell, that means somebody heard the alarm, right?" But he said they could've covered it real fast, you know, going out over that frequency and saying it was a screw-up while they were doing maintenance on the radio or something. But Charlie did him a number on the thing with his ax, an' no, it didn't float when he got done with it. He took to tossing the pieces over the side.

During all this smashing, Dundalkin had been pacing back an' forth there in front of us. What he was about to say was gonna cause me more grief later than I care to think about. What he said was, "We were doing outstanding, way ahead on the power curve. We might not even have had to return for the second window. Now this." Again he shook his head in disgust. None of that made any sense to any of us, not even the Chief Mate, I'd come to find out. "I told them coming out here with only a core group I could trust was absolutely asinine. 'Feasible', they said. They felt it was feasible. The security risks at this stage of the game would be easier to manage than during shore side recruitment. Yeah, right, look at this," he said, flinging his arm over his head. Raising his voice, he then went on. "This is anything but feasible. Now I have to contain this and try to continue with the operation."

It was as if he was arguing with a ghost up until then, talking to nobody in particular, but at that point he turned to us there, looking right at us, an' said, "There will be no 'benefit of the doubt'. Do you understand me? None. From this point onward, for your own sake, measure your words and your actions. I will not entertain the slightest compromise. You will enjoy no leeway. You will find this the furthest thing from a court of law you've ever witnessed." Then his head whipped 'round an' he looked at the three Filipinos standing there. "Lest there be any doubt, Hoag, the fat one. Right now, for all of them to see." Charlie went up to Buddha an' grabbed him by the collar an' shoved him over to the rail on the port side.

What happened next, well, it's like in my head for good. Like a video tape that'll play over an' over again. And mind you, it has. Unless you've seen something like this, or about like it maybe, like a traffic or industrial accident or something, I'm not so sure you could understand. It all went down so fast it was like my brain wasn't involved. I had to go over an' over the memory, like a video, that had stuck in my mind, 'til it was clear to me what actually had happened there. Charlie took that .45 of his an' aimed it at Buddha's head an' fired it. Goddamn thing sounded like a cannon. That boom hit me like an'lectric shock, an' I saw this chunk fly off, out into the sea. A hat -- that was my first reaction, believe it or not. Somehow my mind made that chunk into a hat.

Buddha hit the deck, just plopped right down on his ass, right there, with his back resting on the rail. His body was turned, twisted like, to the left. 'Cause of the force of the bullet, must've been. But when _Pleiades_ rolled to starboard his body swung the other direction. An' oh my god. It was like I'd been punched in the gut by the sight. The whole back of his head, on the left side there, was gone. It looked as if someone had taken a five iron to a melon. It was that hollow. You couldn't believe you were looking at a human. What that chunk had been, that I'd wished was his hat, was at least a third of his skull an' a good deal of his brains. When _Pleiades_ rolled the other direction, Buddha's body slumped the other way again. It all seemed like an' ugly magic trick. When he was in that position, ya couldn't see any of that awful wound from that angle. It was like he was just sitting there, eyes open, in a blank stare.

At that point I took to noticing Charlie. He had turned his head an' was looking our way. The look on his face, it looked like the guy was getting off. You know, getting a nut. This here, this is what turned that sick motherfucker on. There could be no doubt about that in anybody's mind that was there that morning. All of a sudden Charlie swung to his left and fired. Another boom. By the time I looked to the right, Glide was on the deck. The ax, the one that Charlie'd used on that emergency lifeboat radio, slid across the deck until it came to rest right near Charlie's feet. Glide had grabbed it and had made for the bosun, but Charlie had cut him down. He'd been hit between his belt an' his crotch, an' the bullet had blown out the small of his back. The force had knocked him clear off his feet, spun 'im clear 'round. Next, there was machine gun fire. It was the technician that'd brought back the radio from up forward. He was firing in the air. After a short burst, he lowered the gun and pointed it right at us, but then he held his fire. His buddy, the other technician back there on the stern, had his Uzi on us, likewise. Right then an' there, I figured that to be it. There was no doubt in my mind they was gonna mow us down, just spray into us, all over. But everybody froze. The only movement there was was from the roll of the ship an' the breeze. Everybody just froze.

The first one to move was Dundalkin. He had his nine-millimeter drawn. He walked over to where Glide was layin' on the deck. He jabbed him with his foot, an' said real run of the mill like, "This one isn't dead yet, at least the top half of him isn't."

It'll blow your mind how much blood there is in a human body. The pool from Glide had already begun to reach where we were all standing. He was still, just layin' on his back there. Every once in a great while, he'd take a deep, quick breath. All of a sudden, Debbie let go of me an' ran up to Glide there. Charlie started walking over to him too, an' from the looks of him he meant to finish him off with his .45. Dundalkin intercepted him, grabbed his arm.

"There're axes like this all over the ship, aren't there?" the Doctor asked Charlie.

"Yeah, all da fire stations."

"Well, we don't need that. Get rid of them. And the lifeboats. Next thing you know they'll be taking off in them. See if you can't disable them somehow."

"Right, boss," Charlie answered.

As Charlie headed off, Dundalkin stopped 'im. Pointing right at me, he said, "Take him to give you a hand." Charlie looked at me and smiled. Probably because my life was passing before my eyes at the time. Talk 'bout terrified. Right there, being pointed at by Dundalkin wasn't a very healthy proposition.

"Let's go, Frank," Charlie chirped. "Let's go!" he repeated. Needless to say, I wasn't all that excited 'bout getting under way there. Me an' him took to traveling all 'round the ship, collecting all these fire axes. When I got a bunch, four or five, we'd go out on deck an' I'd dunk 'em. This here went on 'til we had got 'em all.

After deep-sixin' the last bunch, we went over underneath the port lifeboat an' he drew his .45. He pointed the thing right at my head. I don't have to tell you what I was thinking. "Any last wishes loverboy?" I didn't answer, which stands to reason. I wasn't breathing, an' more'n likely my heart wasn't beating either. Then, with this big howl, laughing I mean, he raised his gun an' fired a couple of shots through the lifeboat. All the while splinters were raining down on us. With that, one of them technicians made his way over to us real fast.

"What the hell are you doin'?" the guy asked.

"The Doctor wanted me to disable the lifeboats," he answered. Dundalkin showed up right about then, too. I guess the gunshots had got his attention.

"That's all right," he told the technician guy. "He's just following my orders. The least of my worries right now is sinking."

That technician guy nodded. He pulled the clip on the Uzi he was carrying an' looked at Dundalkin, like he was asking a question. "Go ahead," Dundalkin said. With that, this guy just took his Uzi an' like peppered the hull of that boat.

### DEATHDAY

I guess in a case like what we faced, the bottom line is you take what you can get. If you offered somebody a bullet in the head today or a bullet in the head next week, most folks would wait a week. That's about what it was, in a nutshell.

For a good while there on _Pleiades_ , my ass was eyeball-to-eyeball with the grim reaper. An' I mean to the point where my nose was flat. Death. Ain't nothing else I know of like it. I'll say one thing, when you're faced with it, when it's in your lap, ya learn to appreciate one thing about it. There's something about it that just relieves some of that there funk. And exactly what that thing is is that it's democratic. Everybody croaks sooner or later. Presidents, rock stars, captains, admirals, sinners, and even saints. Everybody.

A buddy of mine saw a lot of shit in Nam. One of the things he said once really hit home with me. He mentioned the dying screamed for their mothers. He said he figured it was because your mother brings you into the world, and you couldn't help thinking about them on the way out. I could relate to that. For some reason I couldn't help thinking about mine there on _Pleiades_. And I don't think it was just me. JW went on a tirade once about how the worse thing about the whole mess we were in there was we would just vanish, more than likely, and his mother would never know what happened to him. I often wonder how it would have been there on _Pleiades_ after having had that little experience with my tumble into the "light". After that there experience I can't really say I got religion, but I got a feeling there is something after all this. It ain't like I don't fear death any more; it's just that I see it now as inevitable. Sooner or later, the light will have its way with me and you. No way around it.

But hell, maybe all that "into the light" crap was a hallucination. Maybe the end will be a fade to black. It ain't like I did die, I just knocked loud on the door. I think the biggest change in me since having gone through all I went through on _Pleiades_ is that now I really can't help but notice all the ways we distance ourselves from death when I run across 'em. All the little games we play to pretend it don't exist. Before all the heavy stuff went down on _Pleiades_ , I remember I was back on the fantail, an' along came one of the galley guys. A Filipino. He had come back there to get him a chicken out of the coop. Now, I don't have to tell you I'm a city boy, and that's probably why what happened there right then made such a mark on me. A hick like Jerry Wayne probably would've thought nothing of it. Anyhow, this Filipino dude took this chicken, grabbed him 'round the neck, an' spun him round his head. Snapola.Then, while this thing was still spazin' out break dance like, he took him a knife from his apron, an' diced away, cleaning this chicken up for cooking. Yuck.

If everybody had to slaughter an' slice and dice their meat, there'd be a hell of a lot more vegetarians out there. We pay good money to avoid anything to do with death. We pay others to keep it out of our hair for us. And my old man, why my mother had cared for him all his life, but after he died, all of a sudden, it was the mortician's job. Yeah, we were like a bunch of old folks there on _Pleiades_. The funny thing was, all we did was talk about death, but mind you nobody ever mentioned the "D" word. You just didn't do that. The religious, why they got religious, and the rest of us, we just fixated on all the shit we wouldn't be getting accomplished because the curtain was coming down.

After me an' Charlie an' that gun goon, which is what we took to calling the ones with the weapons amongst ourselves, got done making sieves out of the lifeboats and puttin' a bullet or two in all the inflatable life raft canisters on the main deck, the three of us headed back to the fantail. From the looks of everybody back there, I didn't need to ask. Glide had died. Both his body and Buddha's were gone. They'd been thrown overboard. You could still make out the path their bodies took over the steel nonskid deck owing to the trail of blood and glop. A couple of the Filipinos had been taken away. Nobody knew where. They led me back to the group there an' I joined 'em. I got told to sit down an'shut up. We might not have been allowed to talk, but looks worked good enough.

After a while, Jerry Wayne an' those guys came out of the door back aft there leading to the fantail from the house. They were wrestling with something big, an' it turned out to be one of the ladders from inside. You know, the aluminum steps that went between decks. Those guys had unbolted the thing an' drug it all the way back there. They banged all around until they got it through that door and out on the fantail. When they got done with that, they were led over to where we were and joined us sitting on the deck. And we waited.

At one point Charlie came by dragging a pilot ladder into the house. After like forty-five minutes, Charlie came back out and him an' two of them gun goons picked four people, all Filipinos, and took 'em inside. The rest of us were left there under guard to sit an' wonder what was going on. A couple of minutes went by an' Charlie 'n company showed up again and picked them another bunch. You knew they were up to something. At the time, what it was was anybody's guess. There was no need to take us down below just to snuff us. If they were just gonna waste us, they would've done it right there on the fantail. That way it would have been easier to clean up. Everybody got led into the house, a group at a time. Me, Debbie, that Jean lady, the only other woman besides Debbie on board, an' JW were the last to go. We made up the last group. When they came and got us they led us up forward through the main deck passageway. We went up to where I normally went below to my cabin. That was the ladder that had been removed. The pilot ladder had been tied to some piping above the hole left in the deck 'cause of the missing ladder. Right then we got frisked. I had my knife and marlinspike taken from me. And our belts got taken too, for some reason. After that they motioned for us to go down. Jerry Wayne went first, then I followed. When I got to the bottom, the pilot ladder, which had been cut off at the bottom to fit right, was hoisted up, leaving Debbie an' Jean still up on the main deck level. When Debbie had started for the ladder, Charlie had stopped her. "No, no, my little one, we have a special place for our pretty lil' love buns," he said, giving me a fucking New York nod. One of the goons was left there to guard us as the others went off down the passageway. I went into my room. It had been stripped of all my gear, all the drawers had been gone through an' emptied. There were four rooms down there. Two on that level, an' there was another ladder to a lower level where there was two more rooms. Everybody's gear had been tossed. They didn't want any surprises. There was something like fourteen of us down there, though it was hard to figure how many owing to people coming and going all the time. Officers an' crew, we were all thrown in together. Paul an' the Chief Mate and those engineers were kept down below with us. Perry came up to me soon after I got down there. "I'm sorry about your friend," he said. I could only shake my head in agreement. Jerry Wayne walked in, and put his back to the bulkhead and slid down, taking a seat next to me. "We're done dead," he said. And if like that wasn't the perfect cue, right when he said that all the lights went out. They cut the breaker on the main deck. "Fuckin' assholes," JW barked as he slammed his fist into the bulkhead. So that was gonna be our lot, crowded down there in the dark. That there was about as good a dungeon as you could get.

What a miserable time that was. All of us stuffed down there. At the time _Pleiades_ wasn't operating, so the only ones that ever got out of there that day were the galley guys. The ladder got lowered, an' they went up an' did chow. Our meals got lowered in a bucket with a ladle, but I didn't have much in the way of an appetite. Them assholes topside had taken some time out to do them some more rearranging. See, me an' JW had been taken off the wheel. They were making sure we wouldn't be able to maybe spin the wheel real good at a real bad time to foul up ALEX, permanent like. Ol' Dundalkin was in a bind all right. We'd been busting our asses before, and now he had him the same job with half the help. Plus they had them more work to do, keeping an eye on us an' all. The only reason we wasn't being wasted right then an' there was he needed to squeeze what he could from us. He had to figure where he could stick us all where we couldn't do damage. The answer to that there for me an' JW was the fantail. See they had that camera back there to keep tabs on us so they freed up a gun for something else. At one point Charlie had the watch on us up top an' when me an' Jerry Wayne looked up out of our pit he called down to us that we'd be working back there again, on the stern, minding the store. They put sound-powered phones on us and ran us around adjusting the hydraulics and reading gauges for 'em. Me an' Jerry Wayne'd be doing six 'n six soon as we started operating with ALEX, we were told. The Chief Mate was the only one who had the knack of running the stern boom to raise an' lower ALEX. So they didn't have much choice but letting him do it, 'cept now the whole time he was at the controls he had him a gun at his head. He said they told 'im that if he dared fuck with ALEX we'd all be history right then an' there. The whole lot of us.

After the first day, the engineers and mates got yanked up for their watches an' marched straight back down there when they'd been relieved. Paul told me they were using Charlie to teach a couple of the Uzi crowd how to handle the wheel. That's how they were working their way around me an' JW. I didn't get out of there for a good long while. No telling how long, 'cause there was no way of knowing 'bout time passing down there. My guess'd be at least a couple of days, maybe three. The only news about what was going on came from people who'd been brought up to do something. Debbie was running meals around, I'd heard. She had asked for Paul to say hello to me. Other than knowing the time, people who had returned didn't have much to say. Not much was going on topside, it seemed. Things were on hold.

All I did was lay around an' try an' get some sleep. I did get some sleep, but not much to speak of. Sleep without rest was what it was. You'd drift off but you woke as tired as when you'd started. An' more often than not you was in better shape in the nightmare you just left than what was there to greet you when ya woke up. There was no doubt in my mind that after these assholes got what it was they were after, their nukes, we'd be getting the same treatment Glide 'n Buddha got. Everybody more or less thought the same thing. Those of us down in the hole, that is. But you held out. It didn't make any sense at all that they would give us a chance to get out of this here mess alive. The odds were a joke. But still we took 'em.

Down in our pit we had talked about trying everybody just calling it quits. Saying, "Fuck it, no go, shoot us." If we all bit the bullet together, it was hard to see how they could've managed without us. A couple of times we'd almost got to the point where everybody agreed, then somebody would pull out, say he wouldn't go along, an' that was that. Without everybody going the distance, it wouldn't fly, an' that was a hell of a distance to count on people to go. Even if everybody agreed down there, you couldn't help thinking somebody would've bailed out when the bullets started flying. And that ended that idea.

Some guys thought what we oughta do was flat out attack. We would've lost a couple of people for sure getting to the guard -- it was a numbers thing -- but after that we'd have one gun and room to run. Just like the other plan, the attack pack came in an' out of favor over time. "Man, what we got here is the 'Burma Monkey Syndrome'", JW kept on saying. I'd never heard of this "monkey syndrome" before or since, for that matter, but I'll sure as hell never forget it now. I must've heard JW go over it forty times if I heard it once. Ya see, in Burma, this is according to Jerry Wayne now, they use this here technique to capture monkeys. What they do is take a coconut an' cut a hole in it. This hole is about the size of a monkey's fist. Then they put this fruit that these monkeys go for in this coconut. Last, but not least, they put an eye-bolt through the coconut an' attach it to a chain attached to like a tree. The way the story goes is these monkeys happen along an' see the fruit in these coconuts, so they put their fists through the shell there an' get their hands on this fruit, but they can't get their fist an' fruit out through this hole. So they sit there like a snared rabbit 'til the trappers come along an' fetch 'em. These monkeys don't have it in 'em to just let go of the fruit an' boogie. They just get all confounded like, 'cause they want the fruit too much to let go, so they're as good as tangled in a web. That there was JW's whole point. According to 'im we were acting like these Burma monkeys. We were the ones incarcerating ourselves. What we had to do, in his opinion, was give up the fruit. An' I gotta admit, that story did get to me. I mean, it made me think. An' the way he was telling it all the time, ya couldn't help think about it. Then I shared something with ol' JW that I would come to regret. You see the religious guys got me thinkin'. Hell, a couple of them Filipino guys, well turns out they was Muslim. I never realized that until they started prayin'. Since my Navy days I thought all them guys was catholic.

Anyhow, I was reminded of this old black and white flick I saw once. Can't for the life of me remember the name of this flick. Only thing I remember is Kirk Douglass was in it. It was about these three French soldiers that were picked in a lottery to be executed because their entire regiment turned turtle when they were supposed to attack. After this trial, they were stuck in a basement. One was religious and went off to talk to a priest. The two that weren't inta' God an' all sat with each other. One of the French dudes says, "In an hour we will be dead, and that cockroach will still be living." The other guy doesn't miss a beat. He just goes thump, end of cockroach.

Well, from that point onward, every single frickin' water bug JW comes across, he grinds into the deck, givin' me a 'fuck 'em' nod all the while. That there got old. If I'd known he was gonna overdose, I woulda kept my mouth shut. 'Bout the last thing I needed right then was to be startled by ol' JW. Poor bastard, I think JW got all worked up for nothin'. Them things might survive a nuclear war, but I don't think one of 'em, and mind you we was infested with 'em, made it to the beach from the middle of the Atlantic. All this here ended when JW came an' shook me out of one of these here spells of almost-sleep. He told me Charlie wanted to see me.

After walking over, an' in a few cases on, a couple of people, I got out to the passageway an' found that the pilot ladder had been dropped already. It was my turn to go up. When I reached the top Charlie and an Uzi man was there to escort me to the fantail.

There, ALEX was being readied to go in. I knew the looks of that all too well. It was pitch black. The red lights, like I've said before, made it a real eerie scene. I was led over to that set of headphones.

"Do me a favor an' try something" Charlie said. "Dis here's Casanova," he told his partner. "I been lookin' for a good reason to separate his face from his head for a couple of weeks already." With that, those two walked off. The fantail was busy as hell. The Chief Mate was over on the controls to the winch that would lift and dunk ALEX over the side. Next to him was a gun-toting goon to keep a close eye on 'im. Dundalkin was there, too, an' there was a bunch of guys ready to tend to the tag lines for when they lifted ALEX. They used the tag lines to steady the thing until it was clear an' away over the side. They got 'im in the drink without a hitch. ALEX, I mean. After that they started lowering it an' the fantail cleared out. Soon I was left alone to keep an eye on the gear back there. Just me alone on the red-lit stern in the dead of night. Just me an' what all was left of those chickens, that is. I had to laugh when it dawned on me how much me an' those goddamn things had in common. We all were caged, all goners, all on a one-way ride, 'cept they had them a good excuse for being there, having brains the size of lima beans.

So back into the routine we went. Six an' six. If ALEX didn't stay down the whole six hours, if they brought him up an' set 'im on the deck, down into our hole we got stuffed. That happened a couple of times. And one of those times JW comes and gets me and takes me aside, and like he's got the keys to the kingdom, produces from underneath his shirt a c-clamp. He had had it stuffed in his pants. The boy had done good. The goons would give us the once-over every time we got stuck down in our hole, they sure as shit didn't want us to have any tools, but somehow he had gotten by them with the c-clamp.

"Lookey here boy, I got us a wrench."

"What are you talkin' about JW, that's a c-clamp." I said.

"Oh no, y'all got it all wrong. This here's a wrench."

"How do you figure?" I asked, waitin' for the punch line.

"Don't y'all know a tool is defined by its function?" "Ya'll c'mon," he said, motioning to me to follow. The boy had it all figured, and I was in tow. He must've been plottin' this one for a while. We went into the head in my cabin. The medicine cabinet had been stripped just like everything else, but what JW went for was the mirror on the medicine chest. He broke the mirror off, ripped it right off its hinges. Then we went in the next cabin and did the same. He handed me the two mirrors. By that point we had collected an audience. We had one of the Filipinos keep tabs on what the lookout keeping an eye on us was up to. He was out of sight up there, which was OK by us. Mind you, this is all goin' on in the dark. Wasn't much light to speak of in our dungeon there. That first deck had some light pouring down from the main deck through the ladder-less ladder well. JW picked him another Filipino and positioned him with one of the mirrors and showed him just where he wanted him to aim the beam of light reflecting off it. JW was real concerned that the guy would attract the attention of our sentry and because the Filipino was having a problem understanding that he grabbed Perry and had him do it. Then he had the Filipino stand by the ladder well and with the second mirror, aim that beam down to the bottom deck. It was obvious JW was hell-bent on illuminating something, but I didn't have a frickin' clue at the time what he was up to. Down to the next deck we went and did the same to the two rooms down there, you know with ripping the mirrors off the medicine cabinets. So after we had us the four mirrors all lined up like JW wanted what it turned out we was doing was illuminating the hatch going to the pit-sword. Like I already told you, JW must've been plottin' this for a while. The pit sword is this blade that is lowered through the hull of the ship and it tells you the speed through the water. But hell, we was up against pitch black so it did the trick. Then he motioned for me to follow him and we went over to the hatch and he worked the wheel and opened it.

"Ya'll give me some light," he said as he made his way down the ladder to the pit-sword.

I angled the mirror so he could see what he was doing. When he reached the bottom he motioned for me to shine the light on a manhole on the bulkhead.

"Shine the mirror here" he ordered.

"Flashlight," I said, "tool's defined by its function" I was giddy. Looked like the son-of-a-bitch was on to something. JW took the c-clamp and tightened it on a nut that held the cover on the manhole. Well there ain't a whole lot of leverage on a c-clamp, but JW was a big bastard, and it worked. As the nut loosened, he gave me a shit-eatin' grin I'll never forget.

One by one, JW removed the nuts from the manhole cover. The manhole cover was for the duct keel. The duct keel runs the length of the ship along the keel. If we could get down there we could do an end-around, nail the bastards from behind. There were two accesses to the tunnel, the one there at the pit-sword and the other one in after steering. They wouldn't know what hit them. Yeah, the "mouth of the south" was onto something.

So off comes the manhole cover and the first bump in the road we hit is we're plum out of mirrors. The duct keel is pitch black. You have to make your way through lumber holes all the way aft, and in the dark you wouldn't have a prayer. We had daisy-chained a beam of light all the way from the top deck down the ladder-well, down a passageway, and then down into the pit-sword hatch. But then we were shit out of luck. There's an old saying that goes something like "the only difference between going to sea and going to jail is the added probability of drowning." But, my all-time favorite one is "what do you say to a merchant seaman wearing a suit?" And the reply goes "will the defendant please rise." My point here is that seamen know all the jailhouse tricks. Why? Go figure.

JW opened up a paper clip from his pocket and had me shine my beam until he found a wall electric outlet. He took him this paper clip and stuck it in the outlet, and in no time the thing was heatin' up. He had him a jailhouse cigarette lighter. But like I said we had us a crowd and Paul asked him what the hell he was up to. All the while I'm thinkin' 'he's makin' a torch ya dumb son of a bitch.' The place had been stripped, all the rooms, so somebody already had ripped up their shirt and stuck it in one of the dog wrenches.

"Hey JW, that duct keel ain't gas free. You're liable to blow up if you take that torch down there." Paul said.

"So what are y'all sayin'? You want me to clear our prison break through OSHA? Look ya shit for brains, I don't need none of y'all school boy crap now."

"JW, don't get me wrong. This is a thing of beauty, but let's take a minute here. If you blow up or start a fire down there, we blow the whole nine yards, let's take a minute and think about what we're doing here."

As JW attempted to light the rag, he said, "The only decision y'all need to think about is whether you want to remain conscious or not, 'cause I'm just about ready to put your lights out."

JW was just about fixin' to snap. He had no time for Paul. All the while I start to think that maybe Paul had him a point. Before I could say something one of the Filipinos stepped forward. At first I thought he was offering JW a candy bar, but what he was handing him was one of those "chemlights" they call them. All the life preservers have these chemlights, so if you go overboard at night you can signal for help. JW took one look at it and threw his torch to the deck and grabbed the chemlight. The thing is just a tube with fluid in it and a small capsule inside with another chemical. It's plastic, so you bend it and the inside capsule breaks and the two chemicals mix and produce a phosphorescent green glow. They come in wrappers and he just opened the thing up and cracked it. At that point there, what you do is shake 'em. The harder you shake 'em, the brighter they glow. Without saying a word he went to the manhole and climbed down through it. All of us stood there and gawked at the manhole as the light faded to black and he made his way aft in the duct keel. And there we stood, in the dark. After all the happy horseshit we'd been through, finally something going our way.

The first thing that burst the bubble was we started hearing banging from the duct keel. Clanking, like metal on metal, from off in the distance. "What the fuck is he doing?" somebody asked in the dark. Well, I knew JW well enough to know exactly what I was listening to. It was a genuine JW tantrum. The big boy was pissed and he didn't care who heard what. The glow returned to the manhole and out JW crawled. He then paused to examine the studs that held the manhole cover on.

"Damn studs are seal welded to the deck," he said. "There's no fuckin' way in hell to get the aft manhole open from the inside of the duct keel." The engineer from California, Brian his name was, was standing right there and JW asked him, "You guys are on watch down there. Can y'all get to the manhole?"

"We got a guard on us the hole watch. They follow us around when we make our rounds. I ain't gonna be able to get it open."

"Ya'll just have to take the guy out. Get the cover open and we'll be right there."

"JW, you seen these guys? They all have earphones, they're all wired together. You aren't going to take him out without alerting everybody." Paul said. I think it was a case of shootin' the messenger. JW had to try real hard not to haul off and keelhaul Paul. He was all jacked up, but slowly he came to his senses and simmered down a tad. He slammed the chemlight to the deck and spit out, "All y'all got here is a bigger dungeon." And that there ended our great escape.

On the morning of what I would later come to figure to be maybe the tenth day after we began operating ALEX, I went up that pilot ladder out of our dungeon for, as it turned out, the last time. Things had been running pretty much like clockwork. As far as I could tell those guys were getting done what they had in mind to do. But I never saw any warheads myself. And I can't talk for JW or anybody else. I can say nothing was ever said about 'em, at least not around me. They had started allowing me an' JW to grab a bite to eat on the mess decks before our stint on the stern. On that morning there, while I was on the mess decks, I caught a quick glimpse of Debbie through the door as she was passing by. A couple of minutes later she came flying in, grabbing a hold of me.

"You OK?" I asked. She shook her head yes.

"How 'bout you?" she asked.

"We're doin' OK down there," I told her. "Where are they keepin' you two?"

"Locked in our room."

"Have they bothered you?"

"No, no, everything's OK," she said.

"Honey, things aren't lookin' too good," I said.

"I know, we're just going to have to take things as they come."

"I wish there was something I could do." I felt helpless right there.

"The worst it could be is EOC," she said. I didn't know what she meant by that.

"EOC?"

"End of cycle," she said.

"Where'd that come from?" I asked.

"The church."

It figured. "Damn, end of cycle. Honey, them people got you thinkin' like a washin' machine." To this day I regret having said that. I could tell by the look on her face it hurt her. I guess we were all clinging to something. An' right there, saying that, I kinda greased her grip. But we didn't get to argue. All of a sudden a gun goon came happening by. He was on us like a fly on shit.

"You know you two aren't supposed to be together. What are you doin' in here?" he asked Debbie. She didn't say anything. "Let's go," he ordered. And turning to me he said, "You want to eat out of the bucket with the rest of them?" With that, those two left. That there was the last I ever saw of her. I sat there playing with my food. Just sick about all that had happened. Sick of how everything had turned out. I sat there until the phone on the mess decks rang. It was JW. He was calling from the phone that was in the box on the rail next to the sound-powered phone jack.

"Frank, where the hell are y'all?"

"I'm eatin'."

"You're late. How's about relievin' me for chow. Hurry the hell up, I got to take a wicked shit."

I thought about that for a minute. "Sounds like you should be able to work somethin' out," I said, an' hung up. I was in no mood for Jerry. Well, another gun goon showed up in a heartbeat.

"Aren't you supposed to be relievin' the guy on the stern?"

"Oh yeah, right." I traipsed back there an' found JW fuming. He didn't say a word, he just took off the sound-powered headphones an' threw 'em at me as he walked off. That there was getting to be a habit. Misery ain't the only thing that likes company. Anger attracts a crowd, too. I put those headphones on and paced back and forth for a good while. You can only take so much before a snap'll happen. With all this shit rattling 'round in my mind, what I think was happening to me then and there back on the stern was I think I was starting to have a breakdown. I walked up to the rail an' leaned on it, with my ass facing the gear I was supposed to be watching. And I just didn't give a shit. I thought back to when I was a kid for some reason, to when my ol' man used to bring me to the harbor in Philly where the ships sat at anchor, there on the Delaware. There'd almost always be a seaman leaning on the rail on those ships, looking at the city, taking in the sights. They all leaned the same way, no matter where them or their ships were from. They all stood the same way I was standing right then myself. I started thinking about how in the Navy, the chiefs would give ya shit if ya sat on the railing. "Only one authorized to sit on the rail's a seagull, son," they'd always say to ya when they were shooing you off. Hell, no chiefs or seagulls out here now, I thought. With that thought in mind, I swung my ass up on the rail. "Fuck 'em." And there I sat.

Little did I know the _Pleiades_ was already a goner. The ball was already in motion by then. Well on its way. Somehow I'd missed the first act, the red-eye round. I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of missing the second, though. I was on the port side. I looked up on the port bridge wing, an' there was Enk and Dundalkin. They was in a shouting match. Big time. They were in each other's face. I pulled one of the ears of my headphones off, but because of all the noise coming from the stern winch an' the RAM, I couldn't hear anything. There was no telling what all the screaming was about. Then I saw something you don't see every day. I saw Enk take the pelorus off the port compass repeater. That's the ring with the sight on it they use to shoot bearings. He took that thing an' put it right through the glass on the repeater. Splintered glass flew all over. Now, I've seen a lot of vandalism on ships. Hell, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't done a little myself. But that right there was the first time I run across a captain doing it. Enk stormed off the bridge wing. Dundalkin followed. That left me there all by my lonesome to wonder 'bout that, 'bout what it was all about.

Well, I found out. The Navy said that first Harpoon missile slammed into _Pleiades_ 's port bow. Right smack into the middle of the port two's, they call 'em, the forward Diesel Fuel Marine Deep tanks. DFM. Mind you, I said the _first_ Harpoon. There was another right on that one's tail, but I didn't hang around for it. That first blast knocked the senses right out of me. It just lasted a split second, but oh wow, what a rush. Yes sir, I had me a light show Walt Disney would've wanted on film. He would've used it to hang over his castle. Anybody who's ever been knocked out knows pretty much what I mean. It's funny how a simple thing like planting your butt on a railing, just like you've always been told not to do, can turn out to be exactly what saves your ass.

November 7th 2013

### THE POET

And so as that first Harpoon missile slammed into the _Pleiades'_ hull and detonated, all the souls onboard her, like a startled flock of birds taking flight, were on their way. And on they went, every last one of them, 'cept for my dumb ass. It's that eight-ball thing all over again. I guess it's like they say: the fruit don't fall far from the tree.

But if you'd take a minute, you'd notice we've come full circle now. See, right here we've hit the beginning of this tale right square in the butt. Right after that psychedelic light show I told you about, after my bulbous buttock got blow'd off the _Pleiades'_ handrail, yours truly was in that '49 Plymouth.

Lookin' back it's crystal clear to me just how I got my ass in that jam on the _Pleiades_ : booze with a dash of bad luck. As for the booze, I was more or less just bein' traditional. More sailors have drowned in the bottle than the sea. And as for the luck part, well if, say, Charles Lindbergh had had my kind a' luck, he would a' landed in Tijuana. That's about the best way I can sum up my kind a' luck.

I was ransacking my storage space as I was getting ready for my second great escape to Frisco, which I'll get to in a second, and I ran across what you just finished reading. I wrote this thing when I was in rehab at a halfway house in Baltimore like a year after the G-men dumped me on that street in D.C. When you first come out of a chemical haze, why, you find you got a big hole to fill. All the time you used to spend drinkin' needs to be spent on something, and writing this memoir of my lil' junket on the good ship _Pleiades_ was one way I plugged that big hole. And the story's been basically buried hither an' yon, in one box or 'nother, ever since. At first I hid it, mostly because of my fear of tickin' off the feds. Then I plumb just up and forgot all about it. I can honestly say I haven't seen this piece of writing in over twenty years. Reading it was like a warp back in time.

But hell, the _Pleiades_ sank damn near twenty-five years ago. No shit. Time rockets right along. And being is we're talking about time passin', I'm here to tell you that I'm looking at twenty-two years of sobriety come this October.

Wonders never cease.

AA, you ask? Everybody always does.

Nope. I bounced in and out of AA for a while. Let me tell ya a little secret about AA. Their success rate is ten percent. As a matter of fact, that just happens to be the same percentage of people in the general population that just up and quit drinkin'. Now, it works for some people, so I'll be the last one to diss it, but the notion most people have that quittin' drinkin' just takes goin' to some meetings—why, it don't work that way.

Bottom line, it became real clear to me that I either quit drinkin' or die. That there epiphany is what "cured" me.

When you first quit, what makes it so tough is there's like an alarm going off in your head and you need to take a drink to shut it the hell off. And if you don't take that drink it just keeps ringin' on an' on. There's no way in hell to turn it off, so the only option is to learn to live with it.

But after all these years, that alarm, hell, I don't hear it any more. Every once and awhile I have me a dream, and in the dream I'm fallin' off the wagon. And when I wake up I'm like, "Shit, just a dream, thank you Lord, thank you Jesus."

It ain't like _I'm_ the only one that's changed, either. The _Pleiades_ went down, in a manner of speaking, three wars ago. I remember when the Persian Gulf War started, all the nuts were runnin' around screamin' about it bein' all about oil. The best definition of politics I ever ran across is "Politics is the art of enriching yourself through the use of public funds." When you look at the portfolios of the people who called the shots over there, between Halliburton and Oil, it speaks for itself. Them "nuts" nailed it. When the extremist and the common man find themselves in bed with one another, what you got is a problem.

It's startin' to look like we just did to Iraq what Hitler did to Poland. Freedom? Other than friends of the politically connected having the freedom to take suction on the U.S. Treasury, I don't think there was a whole lot of freedom happening over there.

In the course of one generation, we've gone from a military that accomplished a Herculean deed to a military that was simply deployed duped. And our "Shock and Awe" turned out to be more like "Shock an' Aw Shit."

We Americans as a people spend more on arms than just about everyone else on the planet combined. But you know, when the _Monitor_ and _Merrimack_ met, whoever fired the first cannon ball made every man o' war in the world obsolete all at once. I'm talking in a nanosecond. All the wooden hulls, they were worthless in an instant. That's how war works.

They're workin' on a drone that can take out a target anywhere on the planet in not hours but minutes. Lot of good all of our aircraft carriers will be then, huh. The first day of the next big war they will be the first to go, and the ones that don't get nailed will be pretty much worthless.

And the last people to catch on are always the people running the show—you know, the brass. Right before the American Civil War, somebody came up with a bullet called a mini ball that increased the effective range of rifles from something like two hundred to a thousand yards. Lining up the troops and marching them into a blithering fire was suicidal. But the slaughter went on and on. Sooner or later they caught on, though; after three or four years of carnage the earthworks outside of Petersburg were a dead ringer for the trenches in France a little over a half century later in the Great War.

The brass always plans the next war with the last war. Remember how we all got told you had to study history in high school so we didn't repeat the past? Didn't any of these generals or admirals go to high school?

So about four months ago I was hackin' my head off; I had me a chest cold that just wouldn't go away. Now, I was working for a painting contractor—paintin's about all a deck seaman's good for on the beach—doing a spray job where you had to wear respiratory protection. Man, you get thrown off the job if all you do is hack an' cough. Now, I don't have to tell you that I didn't have health insurance. But man, after I started spittin' up blood I went and did something I never do: I went to see a doctor.

When you don't have insurance, what you do is you go to a clinic, and that's exactly what I did. I walked into that clinic and never came out. To cut to the chase, I got diagnosed with lung cancer. And in a medical manner of speaking got told I was a dead man walking. And that there, my friends, kicked all the poetry right outa' me. But coming through the clinic, they put you in this program and you're like getting treated next to firemen, cops, teachers, and plumbers—you know, people with benefits. There's no difference between ya', except off in accounting somewhere. Go figure.

When you first get diagnosed, you are like, "Yo, you got me confused with somebody else. This must be some kind of mistake." Then it sinks in it ain't an administrative error and the shit hits the fan. Just plows into you like a bat outa' hell. More anger than I knew what to do with. Told the boss to fuck himself, told the wife to fuck off, and told my dog to bag 'is own shit. There's nowhere to run, really; the cancer thing just saturates your mind. I went into the bathroom one morning right after I got diagnosed and went like I always did for my vitamins. Then it hits me. Actually, I laughed my ass off. They told me at that clinic that I'm pretty much terminal, and here I am taking One-a-Days. Everything, I mean everything, changes.

"Non-small cell carcinoma with diffuse mets" was my label. My lung cancer had spread all over already. Even though my odds weren't even on the charts, they offered me treatment. There was this radiation thing offered me that I took them up on. I joined the C crowd at the radiation department. Those guys were amazing people. The toughest people I ever hung with, and this is a seaman talkin'.

There was a local legend I had heard about a couple of times and finally met the woman. May Fong. You are talking all of a hundred ten pounds soaking wet. She was doing the radiation therapy thing when I met her. She had been battling the big C for ten damn years. Unbelievable. Chemo, radiation, surgery-relapse-radiation-chemo-relapse-surgery ... ten damn years. Why? What made her go through all that? Masochism? Nope, she simply wanted to watch her children grow. She did it all for her children.

And then there was chemo. Gawd. Waterboarding can't hold a candle to chemo. Shit, you want people to talk, just diagnose 'em with cancer and chemo the truth out of 'em. I'd been told straight up mine wasn't a good cause, because of the late stage I was in. The cancer has also spread to my brain, and the odds of beatin' that was about zero too. One dose of that chemo and I looked at it all. If chemo offered a fighting chance it'd be one thing, but for a long shot? Chemo ain't far off of gargling battery acid.

That's when I sat my ass down and looked at the lay of the land. Florida in July is a scorcher, so screw Florida. Right about then I get a credit card offer in the mail. Took that credit card offer up and got me a three-grand first-class ticket to San Francisco, knowing full well I'd more than likely be as dead as a doornail by the time that bill found me. There's nothin' sweeter than a credit card when you're terminal; it don't get better than that. It's like bein' in Congress.

And when you join the terminal crowd you basically can divvy 'em up into two distinct groups. There's one clump that just churns in denial and anger and pointless bargaining and in some cases a catatonic depression, and then there's the other clump that has just accepted their mortality. And that's where I had arrived. I don't know, maybe my tumble down the tunnel into the light helped me arrive there. Of course I had read all that tunnel stuff is your brain shutting down. I guess I'll be finding out sooner rather than later.

Right after I was diagnosed I got all caught up in the "fightin' cancer" crap. But it's all about odds. My odds flat out suck. But I got turned onto this thing they call palliative care. What the palliative care thing is, is that you get treatment for your discomfort, and they deal with personal, financial, and spiritual things, and that's about it. When you get hit with this cancer crap your head goes right up your ass. Palliative care helps you to work through everything. They're like the exact resource you need when you're dealin' with what I'm dealin' with here.

I decided to head for California and find a hospice because I'd be needing care soon, and I needed housing. A hospice in San Francisco that fit the bill was available, and I always liked the weather in that town: it's a maritime climate. So I said, "What the hell." Dumped my problems and off I went. Years ago I hitched across the country. These days you stick out your thumb you get laughed at, if not run over. But I figured Frisco was it, just like I figured it decades ago. Bottom line, the cancer "fight" was over. I didn't wanna hear nada about battling cancer. And palliative care, here I came.

The hospice I got into is run by Catholic nuns. It's in a house off of Silver Avenue in Frisco. They run the hospice I'm in and they feed the poor all over town. When I got to the hospice there were seven of us terminal types. Sad to say, that number fluctuated pretty regular up and down. It _is_ a hospice, you know. New people would show up with that deer-in-the-headlights look, or the coroner would show up in his city van. There was one guy that had been there for like four years; he must'a been terminal somehow, but I don't know what his story was.

You get your own room, and there is a common area and kitchen. They have religious pictures and statues and crucifixes all over the place and the nuns will pray for you in a New York minute, but they don't push anything on you, they pretty much leave you to yourself unless you ask them for something.

Sister Nazareth was the nun who ran the place. All that woman did was care for others. That's when it dawned on me I had spent my whole life lookin' out for number one, screw everybody else. Here I'd been miserable all my life and 'ol Sister Nazareth, that woman lived in bliss. The sooner the meek inherit the earth, the better we'll all be.

Of course, when you're on the way out like I am, things take on a whole 'nother tone. Even though I was seein' the light, there was no way this kid was gonna' be like an Olympic caliber hypocrite and get born again. It just didn't pass muster with me. I read they caught W.C. Fields reading the Bible on his deathbed, but he dodged that bullet and up and claimed he was just "lookin' for loop holes."

I just had to ask Sister Nazareth about her name. When they join the nuns there, they always dump their old name and take on a new one, just like the Pope does when he makes Pope. I had never met a nun named after a town before; the ones I had known had regular people names, usually saints. She said she picked Nazareth because in the Bible it is told Jesus never caught on in Nazareth because they knew him too well, they were too familiar with him. These are the people that had witnessed the Son of God go through puberty. I got a kick out of that. And sister Nazareth got a kick out of me having been a seaman. She turned me on to a psalm she knew from the Old Testament in the Bible:

They that go down to the sea in ships

And do business in great waters

See the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that in my experience going down to the sea in ships was all about avoiding work—booze n' blow, and the wonders of cat houses. Jesus hung out with fishermen. They say he was a carpenter. Well, you know that was a seafaring trade in his day. Sister Nazareth turned me on to this fishing boat they found over in Israel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee that is from Jesus' day. It had been repaired about forty-five times by wooden patches. That woulda' kept a carpenter busy for awhile. Maybe the Good Lord sailed for a spell. The good sister told me historically they really only know about something like the last three years of his life. Nobody really knows what he was doing before that. He sure stirred up a world of shit; it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he had been a seaman.

One of us terminal types was a guy named Tony. From what I gathered he had ALS, but getting the diagnosis out of somebody here is a whole lot like getting a convict to tell ya' what he was sent up for. This place wasn't like the chemo or radiation places I had been. Not everybody there at the hospice had cancer. But this Tony guy was a bit demented and my second day here somebody died, and this Tony guy lights off about how the nuns killed him. And he went on and on with names and dates of others they had murdered while he had been there. He wasn't the least bit bashful about any of this, but I gotta say, those nuns handled him with nothing but love and kindness. Tony passed the first Saturday I was at the hospice, and near as I could figure, I don't think the good sisters were involved.

They had a community room but they didn't have any television or radio or anything. No problem there: I wasn't the least bit interested in watching the tube; it just rubs in your face your predicament. Baseball, hell, won't be here for the playoffs, pointless to watch. The news? Who the hell cares? History Channel? Hell, I'm history now.

The second or third day I was there I was stir-crazy and went outside and wondered up to San Bruno Anenue and drifted into a coffee shop. They had Internet access and I use that, that you can steer to where you want to go.

So I'm writing this and I Google _Pleiades_ and nothing on her shows up. A bunch of other vessels named _Pleiades_ but nothing on the motor vessel and crew lost in the Atlantic. So I got to surfin' the web. I Googled the _Poet_ for the hell of it and I regret doin' that. You see, the S.S. _Poet_ was the last U.S. flag vessel to have been lost at sea without a trace.

I was curious about what the Internet would show on that, being as it was U.S. flagged. Foreign flag ships go down all the time. The reason I know about the _Poet_ is she sailed from Philly in 1980. They have a plaque dedicated to the crew in the Old Swedes' Church near the waterfront. She was hauling grain and for years what you heard around was that the cargo had swollen due to moisture or something and it popped the rivets in the hull.

But there on the coffee shop's Internet I learned that it might have been the mule for the Iran Contra deal. There is this guy on the Internet sayin' one cargo hold was all spare parts for weapons in Iran. His story is that the Israeli military "nixed" the deal in self defense. Just like the 'ol U.S. Navy nailed the _Pleiades_ , they took out the _Poet._

And why wouldn't they? She was delivering weapons to Iran, her mortal enemy. This Internet guy claims the office for the shipping company that ran the _Poet_ and the CIA front for Iran Contra were in the same Office Park in Texas and there might have even been some employees in common too. But that's the problem with the Internet, who the hell is doin' the fact checkin' on there? But after my junket on the _Pleiades_ I'm not one to call this guy a quack just yet.

Don't get me wrong—online has its uses, like doing an end around my doctors. I looked up lung cancer to get the lowdown on my predicament. One thing about all these health care professionals, when you hit them up on how long they figure you have left to live, they clam up or just up and dodge the question. On the Internet I ran across the little tidbit about the average life span after a diagnosis like mine, lung cancer that's spread all over, is four to six months. On the Internet it's right there in black and white. Ok, so I'm a pretty gruff guy; maybe they're afraid I'd shoot the messenger or something. I don't know why the people I dealt with couldn't just say it averages four to six months instead of all the "well, we really can't say, we're not God, you know, everyone is different" crap they hand you.

But the days of me wandering out the door are over; the energy just ain't there anymore. I got diagnosed three months ago, and I'm now starting my third week at the hospice. Judging by the weight flying off me, I think it's going to be closer to four months than six. Some of you may be wondering if I'm tempted to go back on the sauce—you know, fall off the wagon. But right now, reality is what I crave. I even pay attention to the "palliative pills" they slide my way. I avoid the ones that put you in lala land.

Writing has become a real chore, though. As a matter of fact, I now have to kinda' muster my energy just to get out of bed. I'll be god damned if I'm gonna lay here and wet the bed but I'm afraid it's gonna come to that soon. And I got a slap in the face today when I caught myself looking at my reflection, and I didn't know it was me. Just like Springsteen's lyrics in _Philadelphia_ , I didn't recognize myself. I got a real jolt when that happened. No doubt about it, Bruce musta' done his research.

But I got to be honest with you; I really don't recognize America anymore, either. The only real regret I have is we've reached a moment in time I'm not so sure this country's ever seen before, and I ain't gonna be here to see how it pans out. I've sailed literally around the world. Everywhere you go in the third world everybody grovels, but then there's always a family or two in those countries that can give Warren Buffet a run for the money. And there's nobody in between the two of 'em. One family has billions of bucks and the rest of the country don't have a pot to piss in. America and the industrialized world were the exception to that rule. The main reason this country has been able to achieve what it has achieved is due to us being an exception. Europe seems to have a middle class that is supported, but America? I can see us bein' nothing but palatial estates on steroids surrounded by an endless expanse of trailer parks.

These days it sure as hell looks like those days may be over. Bein' an exception, that is. Right now it's like the big money just floats over us out of our reach. It's like there's a huge donut floating over us where the big money just hands cash to one another. It just goes 'round and 'round up there and if us working stiffs could ignore all the noise and concentrate on what was going on we'd get a clear picture of what was going on. Yes sir, the big money just hands it off to one another, and our only option is watchin' that big money go 'round and 'round.

But the money going around up there ain't like perfect; there's bumps and grinds up there, and that's cool, because the money wouldn't go around all that easy up there if some crumbs weren't sprinkling down on us. Crumbs are what lubricate the whole thing. You see, the reason we ain't real familiar with that money doin' its thing up there is down here we're too busy scratchin' n clawin' n'fightin' each other over the frickin'crumbs. And there's a certain breed of cat down here that has a line on the crumbs, and _they_ got no problem with the big donut up there.

But things are gonna change now. One way or another, and I hate to put it this way, but it's killin' me that I'll never know how it turns out. All I can do now is place a bet. Lincoln claimed that God must've favored the common man simply because he had made so many of 'em. And that Occupy crowd, they talk about the one percent. They got a point, all right, but they also seem to be a little too polite to really change anything. Now, that Arab Spring that went down, those guys got the job done, and they learned the social media stuff they used to do it from us. Time for us to learn from them, huh. I mean, those guys were up against some hard core assholes, and they managed to hand them their butts. No matter how bad it looks here, they proved it can be done. Our biggest problem is each other. They got us infightin' down here, while they laugh at us up there in the donut. We'll figure it out sooner or later.

But as for me, I'm done. Why, I'm plumb out of sea stories. I bet you didn't think that was possible, did ya'? Fifty-six just like sticks in my head. Fifty-six—a great year for Chevys. I was born _in_ fifty-six and I'm gonna die _at_ fifty-six. Turns out fifty-six is it, my number. Oh, and if you're fixin' to send any pity my way, save it for yourself. You'll be in this boat soon enough. That, my friend, is the foundation of my sanity right now. Everybody dies. Death is, if nothing else, democratic.

I'll tell you who probably has a hell of a time with this: those bozos in the donut. After a lifetime of privilege, must be real tough to deal with death. Poor bastards, there's nobody to bribe. Ninety-nine point nine percent of all species that ever existed have become extinct, who the hell are we to break that mold? You really think _we_ are something so special? And the species that have beaten those odds, like those dead horseshoe crabs you find littered all over the beaches at the Jersey shore, shit, other than bein' funny lookin', not much to be marveled at there, huh. We all go, so what's the big deal if we all go at once. I told you what sobered me up was realizing I was killin' myself. I don't think humanity could ever get to that point. Between arrogance and bucks n' bull, we'll never see it coming.

Being from a country that was founded on the grand proclamation that all men were created equal, all the while ignoring slavery for like the better part of a century, I guess you can say bucks n bull's _always_ been here. That there proclamation worked just fine as long as you didn't consider blacks to be human. They must've put 'em in the livestock column, that's the only way to make that logic work.

Government of the people, by the dollar, for the dollar. That there, friends, is the name of the game these days. Hell, I'm from Philly, no news there, huh. But let me tell you, when I see the Liberty Bell, I ain't thinking Philly or liberty. What I'm thinkin' is those frickin' contractors have been screwin' us from day one. The "Liberty" Bell never made it to dong; ding broke it. No shit. The first ding, and I ain't lying, was all it took, literally. I tripped over an American Civil War tale about a contractor that supplied the Union Army with shoes. The frickin' shoes fell apart after a mile or two of marching. When they confronted the contractor he just claimed the shoes were for the cavalry, they were never meant to be walked in.

But like I was sayin', when you're in the boat I'm in with this cancer spreadin' all over you, political crap ain't even on the radar screen anymore. Trust me, when breathing becomes a chore, that's all you care about. I have these nightmares about suffocating I don't even want to think about, I don't even want to describe. I don't want to go there, I get dragged there enough. Dead tired but petrified about dreaming. Not a tack I'd have chosen to take, for sure. And when breathing becomes a chore, it's real clear that what you have on the horizon is nothin' but gnarly. Friends, it just might get so bad I'll have to haul over all hatches and gun covers myself.

So huh, what I really need now is to rest ... all my yarn is spun.

Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms, the smoking lamp is out, silence about the decks.

But before I go ... can I ask you a question?

Do you think _all_ men were created equal? Or is it just that the "in" crowd, with the class, culture, and coin, really are in a league of their own?

## GLOSSARY

**AB:** an acronym for Able Bodied Seaman.

**Able Bodied Seaman:** the name of the deck rating for individuals working on commercial merchant vessels.

**A-6:** an attack aircraft based on naval aircraft carriers flown by Navy and Marine pilots.

**aft:** toward the stern.

**Airedales:** Navy slang for members of the aviation community.

**ALEX:** a fictitious deep submergence system loosely based on the ARGO system used by Robert Ballard, who found the _TITANIC._

**amidships:** an indefinite area midway between the bow and stern.

**Anabuse:** a drug prescribed to military personnel who were thought to be problem drinkers, the use of which caused physical discomfort after imbibing alcohol.

**astern:** directly behind a ship.

**athwart ships:** across or at right angles to the keel.

**berth:** 1) bunk 2) mooring space assigned a vessel along a dock or pier.

**bitt:** cylindrical upright fixture to which mooring or towing lines are secured aboard ship.

**bilge:** bottom of the hull along the keel.

**bitchbox:** epithet of amplified audio circuit (1MC) or intercom used to communicate between spaces of a vessel.

**bollards:** a strong cylindrical upright fixture on a pier to which a ship's mooring lines are secured.

**bosun:** abbreviation for boatswain—person designated in charge of deck gang.

**bridge:** area in the superstructure from which a ship is operated.

**brig:** naval term for jail.

**brow:** a form of gangway used when a vessel is moored alongside a pier or nested together. Rollers on the pier side allow it to move with the motion of the vessel caused by tides and swells.

**BT:** acronym for boiler technician—a person who tends to the ship's steam plant.

**bulkhead:** a partition that is a structural member of a vessel's construction.

**bullnose:** a chock placed centerline right over the stem, referred to as "in the eyes" of the ship.

**capstan:** a machine powered by either electricity or steam used to lift heavy loads. Consists of a turning vertical drum around which rope or cable is turned.

**captain's mast:** non-judicial procedure (NJP) used by local commanders to dispense discipline.

**celestial:** the technique of determining your position on the surface of the Earth by using celestial bodies and the time of their observations—a sextant, mathematical tables, and a chronometer are the required tools.

**chafing chain:** chain attached to a mooring line to prevent excessive wear.

**conn:** the act of controlling. On the bridge of a ship at sea, one person is designated to hold the conn; only that person may issue helm and lee helm orders. When an officer of the deck announces "I have the conn," he or she is then legally responsible to give proper steering and engine orders for the safe navigation of the ship. The captain may take the conn at any time.

**coon ass:** derogatory term for Louisianan Cajun.

**CPA:** acronym for closest point of approach, derived from calculations on a radar scope. CPA gives the shortest distance between two passing vessels expressed in range and bearing.

**Damage Control (DC):** a division onboard a naval vessel dedicated to firefighting and de-watering and the maintenance of associated equipment.

**davit:** strong arms by means of which a boat is hoisted over the side or aboard.

**DD-214:** the administrative form used when a service member separates from the military.

**dinghy:** a small boat.

**DIW:** acronym for dead in the water—a vessel under way but not making way.

**drink:** i.e. water or ocean.

**dry lab:** the space on an oceanographic vessel where tests are made on core samples of the ocean bottom brought to the surface.

**DTs:** acronym for delirium tremors, uncontrolled spasms. A condition brought on by depriving an alcoholic of alcohol. Tremors are physical chemical withdrawal symptoms.

**duct keel:** a vertical pace that runs along a vessel's keel.

**ET:** acronym for electronics technician personnel who operate and maintain electronic equipment in the Navy.

**fantail:** the aft end of the main deck.

**Fat Man and Little Boy:** nicknames given to the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

**forepeak:** the extreme lower forward compartment or tank on a vessel used for trimming or storage.

**forty-five and forty-five:** abbreviation for forty-five days restriction to the ship and forty-five days extra duty assigned while on that restriction.

**fos'cle:** forecastle/forward section of the main deck, generally extended from the stem aft to just abaft the anchor windlass.

**frigate:** a class of warships smaller in size than a destroyer.

**FTN:** acronym for fuck the Navy.

**Gitmo:** slang for Guantanamo Bay Cuba.

**gooks:** derogatory term for Asian.

**GPS:** acronym for global positioning system, currently the most advanced form of navigation.

**GS-2:** acronym for government service, second pay grade—one grade above dead bottom.

**gunner's mate (GM):** the rating of a Navy petty officer responsible for the care and maintenance of a ship's weapons systems and ammunition.

**gunnery sergeant:** non-commissioned Marine officer rating just below a first sergeant and above a staff sergeant.

**gunwale:** the upper edge of the side or the rail of a small boat.

**hawser:** a heavy wire or rope used for towing or mooring a vessel.

**HE:** acronym for high explosive.

**jarhead:** derogatory term for United States Marine.

**kapok:** a jacket-style life preserver.

**keel haul:** an extreme form of punishment used aboard sailing vessels. A person was literally hauled underneath a vessel athwartships.

**khaki:** term used to denote officers or chiefs.

**lashed:** to secure an object by turns of line, wire, or chain.

**make fast:** to secure, usually with line or rope.

**Marine Corps Drill Instructor:** an elite group designated to provide basic training to new Marine Corps recruits.

**Matson:** a shipping company that sails the route between the continental United States and Hawai'i.

**mayday:** a distress message sent from a ship in need of assistance.

**merchant seaman:** an individual who is employed on civilian commercial vessels—regulated by the Coast Guard in the United States.

**MSC:** acronym for military sealift command—Navy owned and operated merchant vessels.

**muster:** 1) a roll call, 2) act of assembling for a roll call.

**MWI:** acronym for maritime workers international—a fictitious maritime union.

**NATO:** acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

**NMU:** acronym for national maritime union, a now defunct organization.

**nutcracker:** term used by Dr. Dundalkin to indicate the submarine's hull had been punctured.

**1 MC:** the principle one-way announcement system for blanket communication on a ship. Can be used for general announcements and through system-specific circuits targeted communications between designated spaces on a vessel (specific circuits are known as JV circuits).

**paid off:** the term denotes the status of a merchant seaman who has collected his compensation and separated from a vessel.

**pelorus:** flat non-magnetic metal ring mounted on a vertical stand about five feet tall. The ring encloses a gyro repeater that is graduated from 0 to 360 degrees—upon this ring is mounted a pair of metal sighting vanes, much like the sights of a rifle.

**P-jacket:** standard issue cold weather gear.

**port agent:** on merchant ships, the port agent meets incoming vessels to address grievances and collect dues.

**QMED:** acronym for qualified member of the engine department—a merchant seaman who works as an unlicensed member of the engine room.

**RAM:** a hydraulic cylinder and piston arrangement. In the case of UNREP equipment the RAM tension device is used to dampen variations caused by sea state.

**Red Eye:** (MM-23) a shoulder-fired air defense weapon that predates the STINGER missile.

**RE-4F:** acronym for re-enlistment code. 4F denotes re-enlistment is forbidden.

**RIB-boat:** rigid inflatable boat.

**ROV:** acronym for remotely operated vehicle.

**SAT NAV:** an outdated navigation system eclipsed by GPS.

**SEALS:** (sea/air/land) acronym for elite Navy special forces.

**sheaves:** grooved wheel in a block over which the rope or chain is led.

**SOLAS:** acronym for "safety of life at sea"—an international convention.

**sound powered phones:** an internal communication circuit (IC) powered by the vibration of the human voice so that communications can be maintained regardless of whether or not the ship has electric power.

**squid:** derogatory term for Navy sailor.

**steerageway:** a rate of motion sufficient for a vessel to answer the helm.

**stern:** aftermost part of a vessel.

**stern boom:** a large boom positioned on the fantail to raise and lower heavy equipment over the side.

**stokes litter:** a rigid stretcher designed for maximum utility.

**STREAM:** acronym for standard tensioned replenishment alongside method—the hydraulics and rigging used for underway replenishment for fuel oil.

**SUP:** acronym for Sailors Union of the Pacific.

**tack:** to change the direction of a sailing ship.

**Tenderloin:** the neighborhoods that constitute the seedier side of San Francisco.

**three hots and a cot:** slang for the luxuries of life aboard a naval ship, as opposed to the lifestyle of a soldier.

**UA:** acronym for unauthorized absence—failure for a service member to be at the appointed place and time.

**UNREP:** abbreviation for underway replenishment.

**Waterman Lash:** a vessel designed to be able to load and unload shipping containers without the use of shoreside cranes.

**West Pac:** Navy abbreviation for Western Pacific Deployment.

**winch:** a steam or electric operated machine with drums or barrels to coil a rope, cable, or chain—used for hauling or hoisting.

**zeroes:** a derogatory term for Naval officers.

### About the Author

R.Cliff Harris was born and educated in Philadelphia. He graduated from both LaSalle High and Temple University's School of Communications. A former Navy Surface Warfare Officer, he sails in both the deck and engine departments in the Merchant Marine.
