And so this was the story you were telling Mike the first afternoon on liberty after the three of you had broke out the food from the reefers and hauled it in steps up the four decks from the reefer deck up and then down the passageway to the mess decks. And at 1400, you were all three crossing the quarterdeck for Puerto Rico and the beach. And then Ames saw some of his buddies and headed off with the black guys and you and Mike walked down the pier and now Mike was telling you his booter stories.
His company commander was this old bastard, been in the Navy for twenty-some years and late at night in the office he told these guys this story about how he got out of basic in ’67 and got orders to a shore det[43] in a place called Khe-Sanh[44] just a few days before the Viet Cong or someone surrounded the place for seventy-some days, and this guy had to learn how to shoot because they don’t teach you that in Navy basic except for shooting some little .22 for one day.
And Mike tells you that this guys eyes would get all red while he was telling them about whacking guys with shovels and how the Viet Cong or whoever would play these long speeches at night over speakers while the flares would shoot up and light up the rice paddies or whatever in this eerie glowing shadowy bright light and you would see the Viet Cong or whoever coming over the dikes shooting their AKs with the tracers from the machine guns flying out over their heads and the mortars going whump and the Spads[45] coming in off the carriers and lighting up the whole treeline with napalm white, white, white in the night.
And Mike tells you how this guy went to work on the flight deck being a fuelie and how guys would get sucked into jet engines and come out the back all red mist and what a bitch it was to clean out the engines after[46] and so this guy, the company commander would walk into the compartment and yell hit the deck and then whip this big fucking stick whirling down the compartment and how this same guy would always get knocked in the head no matter how many times the CC would do this and how the CC would tell the guy that he was a dead man when he got on a carrier.
And how the CC had them all in school call one night and asked how many guys have girlfriends back home and a bunch of guys raised their hands and then he asked them how many of you want to find your girlfriends back home the way you left them and the same guys raised their hands and then the CC said freshly fucked? And all these guys got all sad.
And you have a good laugh over that since only assholes get married in their first tour because most of these women they only want the paycheck and they’re off getting laid the night after you pull out for the cruise and you tell Mike about your first night on base when you went over to the enlisted club for a beer and you started dancing with this chick and then she asked if you wanted to go home with her and when you didn’t answer right away she said it was okay because her husband was out at sea[47].
And by that time you were at the little dive shop and you both rent some flippers and a mask and a snorkel and then you walked down to this huge shallow beach and put on the gear and floated out into the gulf water clear and blue with little schools of blue and yellow fish and some big ones and just miles of sand and warm water that never gets much deeper than four feet and you don’t come up for about an hour before you go back on the beach and smoke some smokes and just lay there and let the boat drain off you.
Later you hit beer on the pier because no one can go in to town unless you are on a tour because the local yokels hate the squids in Rosey Roads[48] so the base puts out some beers and the local wine for you for a buck a pop and some of the guys are getting pretty hammered sitting on the pier in the warm night with their legs dangling over the side looking down at the oily water and you are talking to the mess decks chief Esteppa who is pretty hammered himself and buying you and Mike beers and saying how that fish last night was pretty damn good, right Kieffer while you and Mike are talking about this 19-year-old squid from the boat got himself killed buying a crotch rocket and running it into a bridge at about 110[49]. And you drink your warm beer on the pier with it running sweet down the back of your throat and looking up at smooth black Gulf Stream sky and wonder if this is the world you joined the Navy to see. And maybe it is.