by J. E. Park
I tried to call out, “Attention on deck!” when the skipper came through the door, but he cut me off with a curt “At ease!” In civilian clothes, he marched right up to my cell without acknowledging either the master chief or Krause. He then stuck a photograph up to the bars of my cell. “Do you recognize this girl, Petty Officer Murphy?” he asked, showing me a picture of what a miracle looked like.
The photograph was taken in a local hotel room. It was of a cute, blonde-haired young woman with her left eye blackened and swollen shut. Seeing the girl’s face in a Polaroid so close to the captain’s revealed why she had looked so familiar before. It was a familial resemblance. My heart started racing, and it took a Herculean effort to keep myself from smiling. “Yes, sir. That’s the girl I saw being beaten up in Waikiki, sir.”
Captain Fleming nodded his head and lowered the picture. “That’s my daughter, Murphy.”
I did not mean to, but I could not help smirking at Krause when the captain ordered me to be let out of my cage. The EMO went from unbridled glee to looking like a little boy watching his brand-new puppy getting raped to death by a herd of rutting wildebeests. Suspecting that I remained on very thin ice though, I wiped the smile from my face before I could be accused of gloating.
The captain shook my hand as I emerged from the cell. Still, he looked me in the eye and asked, “What did I tell you about fighting, Murphy?”
“Sir, that was not exactly a fight. I mean, I was doing the best I could, but those gorillas beat the shit out of me.”
“Did you think you were going to win a fight against three men?”
Actually, it had only been a few weeks since I whipped five bad enough for my fiancée to break off our engagement. To be fair, though, those guys were not exactly varsity material. I was not inclined to brag about it. Seeing how I got away with that one, I was not going to cop to it while still standing in the brig, either. “No, sir,” I told the captain. “But I figured if those guys were busy beating on me, they wouldn’t be hurting the girl.”
Darrow was standing behind the captain, so Fleming did not catch the look on my boss’s face when I said that. My master chief saw right through my bullshit and was trying to keep from busting out in laughter. He managed to keep it all inside, though. Instead, he flashed me an expression that broadcast precisely what he was thinking. Niiiiiiice!
“Petty Officer Murphy,” the captain said. “Cindy told me what happened. Her version of it anyway. I just have one question for you.”
“Sir?”
“Why didn’t you step in and help while my daughter’s boyfriend was getting his clock cleaned by those guys? Why’d you wait until one of them struck her?”
I was hesitant to answer. “Sir, I need to level with you; I’m torn between trying to be truthful and being diplomatic.”
“Don’t jerk me around, Murphy.”
I nodded. “Okay. Your daughter’s boyfriend is a dick. I didn’t jump in because from where I stood, it looked like he was getting what was coming to him.”
Krause’s jaw dropped to the floor. My master chief put his palm over his face. Even the duty master-at-arms looked away. It was clear they all thought I should have opted for diplomacy.
The captain did not. After shaking off my blunt assessment, he reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “Yeah, that’s kind of what I figured. I don’t like that little prick much either. I heard he cried like a little girl the entire time he was in the ambulance. You’re free to go, Murphy. Get some rest, take a shower, and go enjoy yourself. You surf, don’t you?”
“A little.”
“Then give the booze a rest and go catch some waves. There’s a hurricane churning southeast of us whipping up some good surfing on the bottom of the island.”
“A hurricane?” Master Chief Darrow sounded surprised. “My wife’s flying into Honolulu a few hours from now. I didn’t hear anything about a hurricane heading for Hawaii.”
The captain shrugged. “It’s far enough away that it’s not expected to affect us much. Go pick up your wife, Master Chief. Murphy, grab your board and hit the beach.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m on duty today, though.”
The captain stopped. “You’re on duty? You know what? As a reward for standing up for my daughter, I’m granting you special liberty until we pull out on Monday. Krause!”
“Yessir?”
“Write up Murphy’s special liberty chit for me. Get it to my office in thirty minutes so I can sign it before I leave.”
It sounded like all the moisture got sucked out of my lieutenant’s mouth. “Yes, sir.”
“Murphy, I’ll have the lieutenant leave it on the quarterdeck for you. Understood?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Good.” The captain patted my shoulder and shook my hand once more. He then shook hands with everyone else before departing the brig with Krause in tow.
Once they were out of earshot, Master Chief Darrow slid up beside me and leaned his arm on my shoulder. “I have no idea what just happened there.”
“I do,” I told him. “A goddamn miracle.”
Darrow nodded, but I could tell the two of us had different interpretations of what miracle had transpired. For him, it was the coincidence of me picking a fight on behalf of a girl who turned out to be the captain’s daughter. It saved what was left of my career.
For me, it was something else entirely. Had those three brutes not started kicking the piss out of that young lady’s boyfriend, I would have. It would have been my back she jumped on to help him. It would have been my face she dug her nails into. She could have ended up hurt as I tried getting her off of me. Had that happened, it would have been far more than my career at risk. It would have been my freedom.
If I hurt the captain’s little girl, even accidentally, I doubted the skipper would have been satisfied just sending me to captain’s mast and tossing me out of the Navy. He would have had me court-martialed. Jailed. Discharged under other than honorable conditions. With what amounted to a felony pinned to my record, my life would have become even more of a ruin than it already was.
As I let that sink in, I was intensely grateful to the three men who kept me from clobbering that prissy little prick. Those guys saved my life as I knew it. At least for a little while, anyway.
*****
CHAPTER 2
I was no stranger to Hawaii. When I first reported aboard the USS Belleau Wood, the vessel was the Third Fleet’s temporary flagship. That meant we were practically living in Pearl Harbor until the USS Blue Ridge finished its overhaul. At the time, I was underage, so I could not join my shipmates at the bars. It was there I started to dabble in scuba diving to keep myself from going stir-crazy.
After the captain cut me loose for the rest of the week, I attempted to pursue my old pastimes. I dove Hanauma Bay, then tried some south side surfing per the captain’s recommendation. It was not as good as he had heard. Attempting to better test my skills, I grabbed my board and headed to the North Shore to ride the bad boy breaks instead.
I damned near killed myself. Flattened on my first ride in an epic wipeout, I got slammed against the ocean floor so hard it knocked the wind out of me. This is not something you want happening while you’re underwater. I made it to the surface to expel some of the sea from my lungs, but before I could take another breath, I got blasted by a second psycho swell. That one sent me ass over elbows through the churning surf, but at least I was able to get my feet on the ground.
I staggered toward the shore, vomiting and coughing to clear my airway. While still waist-deep in water, the ocean tried to finish me off. A third monster break took me from behind, pounded me into the sand, then dragged me along the bottom. As it passed over me, it used the surfboard I still had tethered to my leg to peel me off the bottom. My legs bent over my head, cracking every vertebra in my spine as the Pacific tried to fold me in half.
As if that were not bad enough, Nā-maka-o-Kahaʻi, Hawaii’s goddess of the sea, tried to pants me,
too. The wave that nearly broke my back also ripped my swimming trunks off. It pulled them down my legs and off of my feet before I could even begin to react. Had it not been for the tether around my ankle, that bitch would have had them. Denied her swimwear sacrifice, Nā-maka retaliated by pulling my board back as far as its leash would allow. She then took aim and released it, sending it hurtling at me as if it were fired from a slingshot. My Ron Jon somehow smashed into my face and crotch at the same time, dropping me naked and dazed back into the water.
A couple of visiting Australians saw the whole thing. While laughing hysterically, they managed to pull me from the water and drag me back to the beach, likely saving my life. Unfortunately, my dignity did not make it. Mourning its loss, I decided to go back to drinking.
*****
It started with a few rounds of drinks to thank the Australians for saving me from drowning. And for getting my pants back on before I ended up on the Hawaiian offender registry’s hall of fame. There are few people more enjoyable to drink with than folk from Down Under. Unfortunately, it had only been a week since my Australian fiancée broke off our engagement, and the accents of my new friends kept reminding me of that. Before I realized it, I was no longer drinking for fun. I was numbing my loneliness.
I stuck it out with the Aussies for as long as I could. Eventually, though, it became too much and I started wandering. Before long, I fell in with a group of local entrepreneurs on the outskirts of Waimea. They were peddling a vile home-brewed pineapple spirit imbued with mind-bending potency. I spent the next couple of days transcending time and space on that horrible stuff. When I finally got off of it, I found a shower, bought new clothes, and made my way back to Honolulu sans surfboard. I lost it somewhere along the way.
When I got off the bus in Waikiki, I immediately saw something was up. The place was empty. The ever-present sun was gone, the wind picked up, and the sky had turned gray. Waikiki’s serene bay had grown tempestuous and its waves lashed the beach with uncharacteristic anger. It took a while for me to find an open tavern. When I finally did, I asked the bartender what was going on.
Looking at me as if he was wondering what rock I had been hiding beneath, he asked, “You haven’t heard about the hurricane? Iniki? It’s heading right for us.”
“No shit?” I said. “Last I heard, it was passing way south.”
“It took an unexpected turn a couple of days ago.”
That concerned me. I figured I had been blackout drunk for a while, but the bartender’s news left me wondering for exactly how long. I prayed it was not enough to have missed ship’s movement. Seeing a newspaper lying on the bar, I checked the date. It was only September 10th, and I let out a long sigh of relief. The ship was not supposed to leave until the fourteenth. I was good. “You alright?” the bartender asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I am now. For a second, I was worried I might have missed my boat.”
“Are you in the Navy? If you are, yeah, you did.”
“What?!?” I asked, now horrified.
“The fleet’s gone,” the bartender told me. “They can’t ride out a hurricane in port. They had to ship out.”
I could not believe it. I avoided getting busted out of the Navy for assault, only to end up in danger of losing a chevron for letting the ship leave without me. That was a big deal. I was screwed. Not to mention, I had to find someplace to ride out the storm. “Damn, I should probably put some effort into getting a room, eh? You think anything’s open around here?”
The bartender shook his head. “There wasn’t enough time for people to get off the island. Rooms are pretty booked. It’s going to be tough.”
“Shit,” I said. “How long are you planning on staying open?”
The bartender shrugged. “I’m kind of a storm junkie. I’ll stay here as long as we have customers.”
Our tender was a trooper. Besides myself, there were only a pair of women in the bar, seated a couple of stools down from me. Both seemed to be in their forties and far too pale to have been in Hawaii long.
The woman seated closest to me had bright blue eyes and short jet-black hair. She was at least twenty years my senior, but still very pretty and only now starting to show her age. That was something she also noticed, and she was not taking her freshly found crow’s feet well. It was the reason she was in Hawaii. Her name was Darlene Gabriel. When she heard the bartender say he would stay open as long as we were there, she raised her glass. “That’s what makes this man so bitchin’.”
Darlene’s friend was Abbie Tindall. Abbie was younger than Darlene but still considerably older than me. If I had to guess, I would say she had just turned forty or was very close to it. She was shorter than Darlene, standing up to my shoulders, with red hair and green eyes. Though by no means overweight, she had a fuller figure than her companion. Abbie also had an adorably high-pitched voice that made her sound like Betty Boop. “His name is Bob too!” Abbie squeaked. “He’s ‘Bitchin’ Bob.’” Turning to me, she asked, “Have you met Bitchin’ Bob?”
I shook my head and held out my hand. “No, we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m damned glad to meet you, Bitchin’ Bob. I’m Doyle Murphy. World traveler. Teller of tales. Seeker of truth. Defender of freedom. Tequila aficionado, and sexual dynamo.”
Bitchin’ Bob shook my hand as the two ladies erupted into laughter. “Bob Monroe. The pleasure’s mine,” he said.
I threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and told Bob to get the ladies whatever they were drinking. They introduced themselves, then got up to take seats on either side of me so we could talk.
Both were school teachers from Fishers, Indiana, and it was their first time in Hawaii. Having been there several times myself, I gave them tips on what to see and do. I told them that they had to visit the USS Arizona memorial and try snorkeling in Hanauma Bay. I also suggested the North Shore, where I had just been. I recommended they avoid homemade pineapple spirits, though.
“What about the nightlife?” Darlene asked. “What’re the best clubs around here to meet people?”
I laughed a little. “Truth be told, the last time I was here, I was underage. I couldn’t drink out in town. Hell, I once got thrown out of a place in Honolulu with a couple of guys from the Australian Navy. They were cool and invited me back to the bar they had on their ship, though. I got so tanked on the HMAS Swan that they made me spend the night. I freaked out when I woke up the next morning. I thought I got so drunk that I got press-ganged into the wrong country’s Navy.”
“What about this time?” Abbie asked while ordering us all another drink. “You look like you’ve had time to find your way around.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been looking to meet anybody. I’ve been drinking with the singular sense of purpose of staying fucked up.”
“Why’s that?” Darlene wondered aloud.
I shrugged and told the ladies how I got dumped on the pier in San Diego via a letter delivered to me by a shipmate. “Aw, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Darlene said as she put her arm around me. “There’s a lot of that going around. Isn’t there, Abbie?”
Darlene’s friend frowned a bit and cast her eyes down at the bar. “There sure is. I was married for almost twenty years. Got hitched right out of high school. I did everything I was supposed to do. I held a job, raised kids, loved my husband, took care of my family, kept a clean house, and stroked his ego every day. The son-of-a-bitch left me for our babysitter. At least you found out it wasn’t going to work before you invested the best years of your life into her.”
I raised my glass and clinked it against Abbie’s. “You win. Unless Darlene has a worse tale to tell.”
Caught mid-drink, Darlene needed to swallow before she could answer. “No, I had no real tragedies like you two — just a long pathetic string of poor decisions that kept me single. So here I am, pushing fifty without ever being married or having children. Now it’s looking like it may be too late.”
“You’ve never married?” I found t
hat hard to believe. Darlene looked great now. She must have been stunning in her twenties.
“Well, it’s not like I never had offers. They were just from men that weren’t perfect enough to meet my impossible standards. Looking back, though, all but one of them turned out to be great guys. It was me that was screwed up. So here I am, with my fellow wreck, cruising Hawaii looking to take the edge off a mid-life crisis. We were looking forward to some reckless behavior but ended up thwarted by a goddamn hurricane. Cheers!”
“Cheers!” Abbie and I answered. Looking back at it, I should have known what was going to happen, but at that point, I was utterly without a clue. The three of us kept toasting our screwed-up lives, only interrupting our drinking to peek at the weather outside.
After we returned from one of those trips to the back patio, Bob ran in from the front of the building. He took my drinks from me, placing them out of sight. “You need to hide somewhere! Now!” He grabbed a piece of paper and a marker, writing “Out of Order” on the sheet in bold black letters. He then stuck two pieces of masking tape on it. “Go into the bathroom and go to the last stall. Attach this to the door, then get inside. Make sure you lock it. Stand on the seat so they don’t see your feet.”
“They?” I asked. “Who the hell is ‘they?’”
“The Shore Patrol.”
“Shore Patrol!” I exclaimed. “Shit! What are they doing here?”
“Looking for sailors. They’re sweeping the bars and picking up stragglers to ride out the storm on base.”