Chapter Eight
In the morning you wake up and remember that you don’t have any more bridge watches and you realize that for the first time since you got on the boat you can live like a normal squid, getting up and hitting chow and going to work and hitting chow and watching a movie and playing cards and hitting the rack, and it really feels good, like you graduated from something, and you hit the head to shit and shave and hit the mess decks for some breakfast, and then get to the deck department office punch in the combination (7-18-54-6), and fire up the computer, deck department yeoman don’t do whole lot since they stand watches and do sea and anchor normally, so after you print out the morning muster you grab your mug and haul your ass up[85] to the admin office to make some copies, stopping on the way to top off the coffee[86].
And then you get back to the deck office and help the Bo’sun figure out the new watch bill and he says goddamnit Kieffer on the flying squad now I gotta put Simmons on the helm and the Skipper hates that bastard and he’s gonna be bitching at me and I’m gonna be bitching at you but you figure it out and format it for him on the PC and print it out on the dot matrix the head zipping back and forth and then you play Tetris[87] for about an hour.
While you play, sorting the little boxes as they come down faster and faster, the Bos’un tells you that the guy overboard last night was a engineering booter come up to see the ocean, and that the Cheng was bitching about deck not having the blast doors shut or the right lifelines in, and the Skipper wants new rules about guys on the hangar bay, and it was just one of those weird things, every boat loses some guys every float[88] but the goddamn officers are all going for rank all the time, and they need to show the commodore that they’re doing something about it, and that one of the escorts picked up the body this morning, and they’re gonna fly the kid back home from Rota and his buddy’s going with him since he was crying in the corner of engineering berthing last night[89], and wouldn’t stop and he’s going to get a psych eval[90] and probably be sent home.
After the watch bill is done you need to make copies and post them around in the berthing, and so you are glad to get the hell out of the office and go to personnel to use their copier, and when you’re done with that, you cop a squat on the mess decks and drink some more coffee and then remember that you need to go get your flying squad turtlenecks so you cut down the ladder to the supply office and ask the senior chief about it and he tells you that the DCs[91] have the shirts so you need to go see them so you climb back up four ladders to the hangar bay and walk out to see a bunch of guys standing by the elevator doors looking for Spain, but the seas are back down though the boat is still hauling ass, and so you back up the AIMD tunnel forward past the deck office to where the DCs hang out in a little corner up in the bow below the fo’c’s’le.
And the DCs are all laying around, out two sacked out on the big angle irons on the hull, as big as a bed with blankets and pillows and shit, and the first class is sitting at the workbench messing with a P-250 pump, and a couple of other guys are playing cards on a desk, and one other guy is just sitting his back against the bulkhead[92] laying back on the curve of the bow, with the radio on playing wild Spanish music, and you tell them that you are the new telephone talker on the flying squad and you need some turtlenecks, and they tell you to go ask supply for them, and you say that you asked supply and supply said to talk to them, and the first class reaches behind him with his boot and nudges the guy laying against the hull and says go below to the storeroom and see if we got any more turtlenecks down there for Kieffer.
You start to go out the door but the first class says wait, what have you got for the turtlenecks, and then he says we need to paint for the office and do you got any white paint up in the paint locker, and you say sure how much do you want and he looks around at the walls and says four gallons and you tell him to go see Stillwater in the paint locker and he’ll hook you up and so you get your turtlenecks and he gets his paint and no one has to fill out any goddamn paperwork and the first class tells Monroe to get you some of the new ones.
And so you, and this guy whose name is Monroe, you and Monroe go back out in the hangar bay and then you follow him down the messdecks ladder and then down the DC central ladder and then down another two ladders, down deep into engineering, and it gets hot, and you can hear just this roar of the boilers and steam and turbines spinning, and you go down another ladder, and then down a real ladder to some storeroom, and the water in the bilges[93] is flooding left and right and washes through the grating and over your boot and then Monroe pulls a huge roll of keys off his belt and tries about twenty before he hits the right one.
He opens the hatch and the two of you go into the storeroom, and he roots around through some old dirty shirts and then digs out four new ones still in the plastic, and he tosses them to you and then he digs out a paper stencil with black spattered paint and cutouts of two crossed axes below flames, and tells you to get them stenciled and stencil your name where the left pocket would be and then you go back out with your foot still all wet and the air hot and a pipe sending steam shooting out toward your face and it’s loud, and Monroe shouts something at you and you turn to say what and trip on a kneeknocker[94], and one of the turtlenecks falls off the top of the pile and hits the grating just as a wave of bilgewater floods over it, and you say shit and Monroe just laughs and then you start laughing, and then realize that you and a black guy are laughing together, which is weird because you never knew a black guy until you got to boot camp and now it doesn’t seem like such a big deal[95].
You and Monroe climb back up the ladders with the sound of the fires and the turbines and the steam rushing through pipes getting softer and softer, and finally when you hit the mess decks and the DC central door shuts behind you, it’s so nice and quiet you feel like you have to pop your ears and Monroe looks at you and says I said look out for the kneeknocker and you laugh again you holding the nasty bilgewater turtleneck out and then dropping it in the trash can and Monroe saying I’ll get you another one when we get them in and then the two of you pretty much pals now go back up forward, you to the deck office and him to the DCs’ space.
You Are Free Page 8