You Are Free

by Matthew Montague

  Chapter Thirteen

  You take the outside ladder down the side of the island to the flight deck and stand on the flight deck and watch a Cobra helicopter wind its engines on the number four spot directly across the deck, and the skinny helo’s wide blades begin to turn slowly and then speed up, whipping around faster until they blur, and you can feel the downdraft tugging at your foul weather jacket and your face and see the pilot turn his black helmet, red in the deck edge lights, left and right and watch the front-seat gunner tweak his nasty little Gatling gun around and see the LSO look left and right and the chocks and chains guys run underneath the spinning blades crouching to the landing gear where they grab the release levers and wait.

  You look out over the water and see the ship moving, and see the LSO spin his hand above his head, and hear the helo’s engines whine higher, and see the LSO’s head swivel and the visor face you, and the LSO grabs the mike on his helmet and talks into it and an arm grabs you from behind and you hear someone say get the fuck in here, you asshole and it pulls you through the door.

  And your face is hot because you know that you were doing a dumb-ass thing standing twenty feet from a running helo without a cranial helmet or a lifevest or the experience that kept the flight deck guys from being blown over the side or eating a blade and you say oh fuck, I’m a dick and the airdale says you are a dick standing on the deck like a boot you know better than that and you nod and he says watch yourself don’t do dumb shit like that we like you.

  So you go below, down through the hull bouncing down the ladders, timing your descent to match the rise and fall of the ship, and you drop down on to the hangar bay and then down another deck to the mess decks and then across the mess decks with the long, rimmed tables where five guys from supply are playing cribbage and one looks up at you and says the senior chief wants to see you and you say when and he says whenever and then you remember that you need to get your hose team qual[109] signed off because everyone on the flying squad is supposed to be able to do any job on the flying squad, so you go a little aft and swing through the heavy door to the engineering spaces and then down another deck and into DC central.

  Ericsson is leaning back in the reclining chair fixed to the deck in the middle of a rectangle of tables with small plastic seats attached, and his mouth is open and he is staring at the overhead and without looking at you he says Kieffer did you know that this is my fourth fucking cruise and not knowing what to say you say yea And then he says, still staring at the ceiling yup, this is the sixth week of my second deployment on this bitch, out of six years in this Navy, I have now been at sea for four years and two months[110] and then he sits up all the sudden and stares at the diagrams of the ship’s firefighting systems on the far wall and then says I just figured that out, four years and two months, and before I get off this piece of crap, I can add another five months to that if we don’t get extended like I have been twice, and I have never once gotten beer at sea[111].

  And then he looks at you and says I bet you want me to sign off on your hose team qual and you say sure if you have the time and he says what the fuck I have nothing but time and so you reach around to the hollow in the back of your jeans and pull out the faded folded green book they gave you the day you got on the boat.

  You flew into Norfolk after graduating from the ATD, a kind of advanced basic where you marched around the base and sat in hot steamy classrooms and tried to stay awake while old chiefs rambled on about capstans and pulleys and boats and painting, and told sea stories about guys getting cut in half by snapping lines, and going out in to Chicago one night riding the trains into the city and wandering around looking at the people who were looking at you, and sitting in diner and eating your first meal without someone screaming at you to chow down and get your ass in muster and then going up to the counter and having the owner tell you that someone had already paid for your meal.

  After you graduated, which wasn’t that big of a deal, Mom and Dad staying home for that one, you got a week’s leave and you flew home, landing in Syracuse and walking through the airport in your dress blues and feeling everyone looking at you, and seeing the long-hair guys and the girls all laughing a little at you with your short hair and little white cap on your head, and Dad was waiting in the station wagon for you and you drove home for 45 minutes without saying much and when you got home it was 11:30 at night, and Mom had dinner waiting but first you went up to your too-small room and put on a pair of jeans and a Def Leppard t-shirt.

  And then you came downstairs and ate quietly while Mom asked you a million questions and caught you up on the news, and then you went back upstairs and tried to go to sleep but looked at the walls with the posters and the shelves with the books and you knew you weren’t at home any more.

  You went out the next night to a bar, and ran into some of your buddies who acted like you were a total dumbass for joining the Navy, but were still bitching about their crappy jobs and running after the same old girls who were putting on a lot of weight and then you ran into your sometimes friend Todd who had gone off to Fredonia and was in his junior year and majoring in economics, and you wondered if you could have should have, might have gone to college and then you remember how the guidance counselor had just looked at you when you brought it up to him, and then asked you if your Dad got a deer this year and you knew that you weren’t going to college, and you remembered the year, it was fourth grade, when you all took the standardized tests and the next year when all the smart kids were in one class and you were in the other.

  And how you took shop while they took algebra, and you took typing when they all took chemistry, and you sat outside the gym on the hill with your buddies and talked about cars while they were all in there sweating out the Regents exams, and how you got that job at the plastics factory while they went to school and how when they came back on break, you had a fine ass Camaro and they were still driving Mom’s car, but that the same girls talked to them and the same girls talked to you because they all had it figured out even if you were still guessing.

  Anyways talking to Todd was like reading a book and he asked you a lot of questions about the Navy and you made up some shit about how tough boot camp was and how you had orders and he looked at you like he wished it was him but with some kind of pity in his eyes.

  So after four days of sitting with your Mom and Dad and watching the television and one more night out on the town where you felt like no one in the world could would talk to you, you told Mom and Dad that you might as well get to your ship and so you changed your flight and left for Norfolk two days early.

  You flew in above the landing lights on the water of the bay and got a cab from the airport and rode through the city in the back, like this night was the last night of them all, and then got waved through the gate and then drove down dark streets past the McDonalds and then up a street toward these huge black ships in the dark on a pier and you couldn’t believe that anything was so big the hulls were like mountains above the concrete piers and their masts pointed up in to the sky and the cab dropped you at the end of the pier and you walked up along side the ship smelling wet air and fuel oil and salt water and seeing steam shooting out from the hulls like a animal breathing and then up the brow and across the water to a hole in the hull where you dropped your seabag and handed your orders to the quarterdeck watch.

  The watch called down to deck and this guy, Upham, came up and grabbed your sea bag and led you down two ladders to the deck berthing where he pointed to a top rack and said put your shit in the coffin locker we don’t have a stand-up for you yet and you put your shirts and pants and socks away just like they taught you in ATD and then let the lid fall and then climbed up into the rack and lay down with your head just a foot below a huge pipe that said JP-5 on it and tried to go to sleep because you knew from your training that JP-5 was jet fuel and the next day they handed you this book and told you that you had to have sections one through four signed off before you could leave the ship. />
  So you flip that book over to Ericksson’s lap and while he sits up and spins around to look for a pen in the nooks behind him, he says you see a pen anywhere and you say if it was up your ass eating a ham sandwich you’d know where it was wouldn’t you[112] and he looks at you and says I guess I would and he goes back to looking for a pen and then you dig one out of your sock[113] and toss it to him.

  And then Ericksson leans forward and flips through your book to the hose team qual and while he looks at it, you can hear the ship breathing, a steady low hum of boilers and turbines and steam rushing through pipes and see the loose packing around the pipes hanging down and steam oozing out[114], and then finally he looks up and says you know this shit don’t you and you say yea and then he reads through the lines of qualification and asks you went to firefighting school[115] before we left and you say yea.

  And you remember climbing up the four-story building sweating in your thick padded brown firefighting suit with your feet loose in the too-big boots and then the instructors lit up the building and the hose team leader opened the hatch and you followed the guy ahead of you in.

  You went into the top compartment and looked down the maze of gratings and ladders and watched as the oil fed fire curled up from below, lighting off like a big gas barbeque, and felt the heavy hose in your arms firm with water pressure and then the hose team leader pointed and the nozzleman opened the nozzle and the hose bucked in your arms as you helped the nozzleman point it down at the base of the flames by arching it up behind his head and the guys behind you pushing forward and kinking the hose and the cooling spray come down on your helmet and mask in a shower while the fire burst up to the deck below you and you felt the heat through your suit and you gloves and felt a little bit of panic creep down your neck to your guts.

  You could hear the hushed roar of the flames despite the foam cylinders squeezed and rolled into your ears and you could see the top of the flames flick the grating you were standing on and you drew deeply into your mask breathing hard and tasting the sweet smell of chemical oxygen while the nozzleman pushed the nozzle from side to side against the fire and the hose team leader drove you toward the ladder to the next deck below.

  The rubber mask edges pressed against your face and you stumbled forward and the nozzle shot up in the arms of the nozzleman and the hose team leader reached out and pushed it back down to the flames with one arm and catching you with the other just as you looked over the edge of the grating and down the ladder into the face of the fire, and then suddenly you were okay and you spread your legs and took sliding steps forward and down the ladder to the fire burning red and orange against the sooty black sides of the building, and as your team worked its way down the ladder with the cooling spray falling all around you and the water on your mask drying off as soon as it hit it you could see that it really all worked.

  At the bottom with the fire out and a reflash watch set you all stumbled out of the hatch and into the cold November air dragging the hose and pulling off your masks and walking wide legged and cocky back to the classroom and since then you’ve gone to three real fires on a hose team and each time it got less scary, and the last time you leaned against the serving line ledge and fell asleep in the warm cozy firefighting suit waiting to go down into the main spaces where burning fuel oil puddled out across the boiler room floor and then woke when the team moved forward with the hose in your arms and looking forward to stumbling down the black ladder through the hatch and finally seeing the fire.

  So you know what you are doing and Ericksson knows that you know and he scribbles his name over and over down the page to the bottom and signs the final qual and you are done and you say thanks and ask him what you want to drink and he says a coke and you look at the book and you say this has got oil all over it and some kind of grease you monkeys can’t hold a simple piece of paper without getting oil all over it and he says I am so sorry that the goddamn lifeblood of this ship got all over you precious report, you admin-pussy and you smile and tuck the paper onto your clipboard and go out the door and you stop to say you know, I wanted to be a machinist mate but I couldn’t get into the school my test scores were too high and I couldn’t get a waiver[116] and you duck the soda can he throws at you.

  So you go up the ladder and across the mess decks to find the supply guys loading the coke machines so none of it will be cold and they tell you that the senior chief wants to see you and you say you know and that you will be right there and so you go back down to DC Central and tell Ericksson this and that you will have to owe him one and he says better remember bitch and then you go back up to the mess decks past the quiet galley with one guy in there scrubbing out one of the huge cooking vats and then past the personnel office to the supply ladder and then drop down two ladders to the supply office.

  Where the Filipino chiefs are gathered around a deck playing cards and then the senior chief Barazza leans back in his chair and says BM3 Kieffer I was talking to the Bo’sun and he say you hot shit on the reports and good on the computer and that you too smart to be a deck ape and he say that you should come down to supply and strike for supply[117] what you think and you say that’s news to me the Bo’sun only chews my ass day and night but I guess I could give it a try and he says you get your ass down here three days a week mornings and we see how it goes eh and you say sure senior chief tomorrow and he says no start next week Monday and he says you know you still got to do the deck work and train your relief and you say that’s the fucking Navy senior chief two jobs for the price of one and all the chiefs laugh and go back to playing cards and you head up the ladder for your berthing thinking that this might be pretty good.