by J. E. Park
“Swell,” I answered. I was usually good with witty retorts, but that time I was in shock. It felt like I was still holding pieces of Miller’s brains in my hands, no matter how many times I washed them. Now that the adrenaline was dying down, deep inside, I feared that my episodes were coming on, too.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head and felt tears threatening to burst out of my eyes. That poor kid. What they did to Miller was barbaric. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Pruitt was singing while he was…
“Petty Officer Murphy,” Bateman said softly, interrupting my thoughts. “I need you to answer me out loud. Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I need to be a little more certain. Did you get punched? Did you get cut? Did you…”
I looked at my hands, wondering how I could get the sensation of feeling Miller’s brains to go away. “There was a lot of blood. Doc, we got a lot of blood on us. Do we have to be worried about HIV or anything?”
Bateman shrugged. “Well, there’s not a lot we could do even if you were exposed. It takes a while to incubate, so it’s not like running a test right now would do any good. Did it get in your eyes?”
“No.”
“Mouth? Nose?”
“No.”
“Open wounds that you know of?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” the corpsman told me. “If you want some extra peace of mind, though, I can assure you that David was not HIV-positive.”
David. Not Petty Officer Miller. Not even Miller. David. Oh, Christ. Bateman knew him.
HM1 Bateman caught it almost as soon as he said it. He looked up at me after slipping to gauge my reaction, trying to see if I figured out that he and Miller were intimate. I was not in the right frame of mind to put on any sort of poker face. He knew I made the connection the very instant it happened.
Bateman was in a vulnerable position. Back then, being gay was seen as a moral failure, especially in the military. As a product of my times, I essentially thought the same way. Bateman was an exception, though. He saved Randy Green's life after I nearly beat him to death and kept me from spending decades in prison. He was a decorated combat veteran and damn good at his job. Most importantly, the man never wronged me in any way. Bateman was not hurting anybody. I gave him a nod to let him know his secret was safe with me. He was much closer to the victim than I ever was. I did not have it in me to pile onto his pain.
That was a turning point for me on the subject of homosexuality. I came to realize how dangerous being gay was back in 1992. To admit it was to risk being disowned. You could get thrown out of the military for it or even murdered in a public toilet in a land far from home. I began to suspect that it was not a choice, but rather, just how some people were wired. It was the first time I had ever entertained the possibility that we had no more control over who we were attracted to than we did what skin tone we were born with.
*****
I did not sleep that night. In fact, I did not even try. I knew what was coming. There were just too many triggers. I smelled the blood for real this time; I held a man’s brains in my hands. Even though I could not pinpoint the exact moment that David Miller expired, I was looking right at him when it happened. I knew this because I could not bring myself to look anywhere else.
This time I was an eye witness to the carnage, and, unlike with my family, I was not imagining what happened. I saw it for myself. I had an episode coming my way—a big one. The moment I made it to my radar dome, my hands started shaking. I then noticed the sweat, and my mind started leading me to places that I did not want to go. There was nothing I could do but surrender to it and resign myself to the fact that for the next several hours, I was going to lose my fucking mind.
And lose it I did.
*****
CHAPTER 8
S hortly after getting underway to the Philippines, I got called to the Combat Systems Office by our department head. Lieutenant Commander Barry Winston was the polar opposite of LTJG Krause. Born poor and black and raised in Compton, California, he worked his way up from E-1 to O-4. That was an impressive feat of rising above the circumstances of his youth. Accompanied by Chief Ramirez, I did my best to recall every detail I could about David Miller's death. When I finished, Ben Ramirez was not satisfied with my account, so he added a few details of his own.
“Sir, when I arrived at the scene, Petty Officer Murphy had complete control of the situation,” my chief told Winston. “He was not the ranking petty officer on station. There was a first-class boatswain’s mate from the USS Dubuque there, but there was never any question about who had taken charge. The men were all following Murphy’s lead.”
LCDR Winston nodded as he looked me in the eye. “Did you make the call to move Miller from the bathroom and take him to the other side of the bridge?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. I did.”
“Why? The most fundamental rule of first aid is that you don’t risk moving a critically injured man. You wait for the paramedics to arrive and move him on a stretcher. Didn’t you know that?”
“I did,” I said. “I was pretty sure that Miller was going to die no matter what I did, though. I felt the only chance he had…the only chance at all…was for us to get him medical attention as soon as possible. We had to take him to it. We couldn’t wait for it to find us.”
“Did anyone contest your call?”
I nodded. “The Dubuque man first on the scene did, sir.”
“And how did you respond when he challenged you?”
“There was no time for debate, sir. I shut him down.”
Winston looked me over for a couple of moments, trying to get a read. “Knowing how things turned out, do you wish you had acted any differently?”
I gave it a few seconds of thought before I started shaking my head. “Not really, sir. I know now that I did everything I could to preserve that man’s life. If he'd died while we waited for the paramedics to get there, it would have felt like we wasted the only opportunity we had to save him.”
The Combat Systems Officer breathed a heavy sigh. “I wish you hadn’t screwed up your opportunity to go to BOOST, Murphy. If you’d just grown up a little, you would've made a terrific officer. I read the reports. That kid was dead no matter what you did. He never had a chance. You never gave up, though, and you made sure everyone around you never gave up, either. That’s what leadership is all about.”
Chief Ramirez agreed. “When you were running across the park with that kid, all I could hear was you giving orders, Doyle. And every time someone had a question, you were who they turned to for guidance. Even after I arrived, there was never any question about who was in charge. I was the ranking man there, but you were the guy with all the answers. Time is critical in a situation like that, and I knew that I needed to stay out of your way to give that kid a chance. I also knew that you were the best man we could have hoped to have there making things happen. I never felt that I needed to do anything other than what you asked me to.”
“Chief Ramirez is putting you in for a Navy Achievement Medal,” the CSO said. “I’m going to approve it.”
I drew in a deep breath. A Navy Achievement Medal was a big deal. Not one that I thought I deserved, though. “Sir, Miller didn’t make it. I’m not sure what I actually achieved. I appreciate the gesture, but…”
“There’s no ‘but.’ I’m not saying that you haven’t done your fair share of messing up lately,” Winston said. “But when push comes to shove and things get hairy, you always come through. I want that in your record.”
“But…”
“I said no ‘but,’ Murphy.” Winston stood up, signaling for the chief and me to do the same. Our meeting was over. He took my hand and shook it. “Obviously, we all wish that things would have worked out better for Miller. That does not negate the fact that your actions last night deserve recognition.”
“Yes, sir.”
After the CSO released my hand, I took my leave, with Chief Ramirez following me from behind.
“Ben,” I asked when both of us were out in the passageway. “Do you really think that I did anything out there that deserves a Navy Achievement Medal?”
Ramirez shrugged. “I don’t know, Doyle. You do deserve a very detailed description of the look that will flash across Lieutenant Krause’s face when that citation lands on his desk, though. Too bad that I can't think of a way to get video of him while he's signing it.”
*****
You would not have thought that Lieutenant Krause and LCDR Winston had read the same report about the murder of David Miller. He barged into the radar repair shop, once again ordering everyone out but me. The instant we were alone, he started screaming about how I was directly responsible for the radioman’s death. He took particular issue with us moving him over the Albuquerque Bridge instead of waiting for the medics to arrive. This took place less than thirty-five minutes after my conversation with Chief Ramirez and the CSO.
“As far as I’m concerned, that was a gross dereliction of duty!” Krause yelled. He then took issue with me speaking to Yukiko Fukuyama right before the attack happened. “What were you doing talking to a girl when you were supposed to be patrolling the park?”
“I was furthering relations between the American military and Japanese civilians by portraying a positive image…”
“Don’t give me that crap, Murphy! You were trying to get into her pants, weren’t you? You should have been observing your post!”
“My post was fully under observation, Lieutenant. Nothing happened in my area of responsibility. I had to leave my post to render help to the team patrolling…”
“You left your post? That’s another dereliction of duty and…”
I was done humoring the EMO. I was done listening to him. I was done looking at him. We already had this conversation when he wanted to write me up after missing ship’s movement in Hawaii. The circumstances under which he wanted to place me on report now were even more frivolous than that. It was as if he did not even remember our previous conversation. Standing up, I asked, “You think I was derelict in my duty for trying to save Miller’s life? Seriously? Then do something about it.”
“Wha…What did you say to me? Are you suggesting that I place you on report?”
“Suggesting? Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Sir, I’m daring you to.”
The color rushed into Krause’s face. I would have loved to have seen the look in his eyes, but his sunglasses were on, per usual. Losing control, he pointed his finger toward the door. “Get down to the EMO office now! On the double!”
I stormed out of my shop, but I was not about to run as Krause ordered. As it was, my gait was so much longer than his that he struggled to keep up. The two of us descended three flights of stairs in silence but bearing expressions so full of rage that everyone stepped out of our way as we passed. Chief Ramirez later said that when I stepped through the door of the EMO office, I looked so pissed that he thought I had come to kill the lieutenant. He was unaware that Krause was a half dozen steps behind me.
“Get to my desk and stand at attention, Petty Officer Murphy!” Krause screamed as he burst into the office, causing Master Chief Darrow to stand up and take notice.
“What’s going on?”
Before I had the chance to answer my master chief, Krause cut me off. “Shut your mouth, sailor! Zip it!” Turning back toward Darrow, he continued. “I’m sending this man to mast for dereliction of duty. He was talking to girls out in town instead of patrolling his watch. Had his attention been on his duty instead of on his dick, he might have been able to de-escalate the situation before it got one of our men killed!”
I watched Darrow and Ramirez trade expressions between themselves as if to ask, “What the fuck?”
“He also displayed gross incompetence when he decided to move that man from the bathroom to the other side of the bridge!” Krause had by now brushed past Darrow and was rifling through his desk. “Had it not been for that, Mullins might have been able to make it!” Nobody corrected the lieutenant for getting the murdered radioman’s name wrong.
“He even left his post!” Our division officer stopped looking through his drawers to announce that as if it had just occurred to him. “He was supposed to be patrolling the river! But he left his patrol and ran into the park to get himself into another fight! Can you believe that!?!”
Ramirez and Darrow looked at each other again. They could not believe what they were hearing. Nobody was this stupid, not even Krause. They were trying to figure out how an officer with more than twenty years’ experience could come to the insane conclusions that he was reaching. I was too. It looked to me like Krause was in the larval stages of a nervous breakdown. He seemed to support my suspicion when he finally stopped tearing apart his desk and screamed, “WHERE ARE THE REPORT CHITS?!?”
“In the overhead shelf above…”
Chief Ramirez tried to answer, but Krause cut him off. Bunching both of his hands into fists, the lieutenant yelled out, “Aaarrggghhhhhh!” That convinced us all that he had officially lost his mind. “Master Chief! Put this man on report!”
Darrow shook his head. “I’m not putting my name on that shit. If you want him written up for doing his job, you’re going to have to do it yourself.” My master chief then reached into an overhead bin. Pulling out a report chit, he tossed it onto the lieutenant’s desk.
Livid, Krause stuck his index finger out at Darrow. “You’re getting dangerously close to being insubordinate yourself, Master Chief.” From where I stood, Krause was wrong on this. Darrow was being blatantly insubordinate. The lieutenant was just too scared of the man to take him on in a frontal assault. “But, fine! I’ll write it myself! I’ll add the charges of…”
The lieutenant picked the wrong form up from off of his desk, pausing when he saw my name on it. “Navy Achievement Medal Recommendation,” Krause mumbled as he read, allowing us to pick out a few of the words. “Doyle Murphy…RMSN Miller…on the night of…displaying exemplary leadership in a crisis situation.” He then glanced over at the Post It note attached to the form in the CSO’s handwriting and read that loud enough for us all to hear. “LTJG Krause, please sign and return to me ASAP – LCDR Winston.”
Krause dropped the form back down upon his desk. He realized that our department head intended to decorate me for the exact same thing he was hellbent on placing me on report for. Shaking his head in disbelief, he whispered, “goddammit…”
It was barely audible, uttered under his breath, but the lieutenant’s curse grabbed our attention. Krause was a devoutly religious man. A fanatic even. Where most of the men in our division used the vilest of obscenities as punctuation marks, Krause was not in the habit of swearing. He was certainly not in the habit of casually blaspheming.
The lieutenant looked at me again. “Goddammit!” he shouted, slamming his hand down upon the desk. Nobody flinched. “GODDAMMIT!” He then punched the desk hard enough that I would not have been surprised had he broken his hand. “OUT OF MY OFFICE! ALL OF YOU! OUT! OUT! OUT!”
The way events panned out, I was never awarded the Navy Achievement Medal, but I was okay with that. I did not believe I did anything to earn it. Chief Ramirez proved prophetic about the look on Krause’s face once he discovered my nomination, though. We did not go far after the lieutenant ejected us from the office. We stood in the passageway outside the door and listened to Krause completely melt down for more than twenty minutes. That gave me far more personal satisfaction than any trinket pinned upon my chest ever would.
*****
CHAPTER 9
I was atop the ship’s island structure as we pulled into the Philippines, looking off the starboard side. We were near the city of Morong, and there was a hillside cemetery there that faced the sea. Hundreds of Filipinos had gathered within it, all reverently walking amongst the tombstones with lit candles in hand. It was a vision that was at once both somb
er and serene. Despite the macabre pageantry, it was the first time since we left Japan that my thoughts were not consumed with David Miller’s gruesome death.
It had been a rough trip. My episodes came back with a vengeance after witnessing Miller’s murder, and I was back to sleeping in my radar dome. Dixie and Metaire were there when I crippled Randy Green, so they were intimately familiar with my condition. They both kept a very close eye on me.
To a lesser extent, so did Master Chief Darrow. It was he that interrupted the reverie I had slipped into while watching the procession in the cemetery. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, startling me.
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s kind of cool. What are they doing?”
“It’s Araw ng mga Yumao.”
Trying to remember the Tagalog I learned on the mess decks, I asked, “The day of those who died?”
Darrow nodded. “Yeah, something like that. ‘Day of the Dead’ is the way it’s usually translated. It’s a Catholic thing.”
Shrugging, I said, “I’m not so sure about that. Being as Irish as I am, I was raised Catholic. I never heard of it.”
“Not even in Mexico?” my master chief asked. “With all the time you spent in Tijuana? It’s an even bigger deal there. They all wear those skull masks and put skeleton decorations out all over the place.”
“That’s what that was?” I asked. “I always figured that was the way they celebrated Halloween south of the border. I thought they were just so into it that they made it a three-day fiesta.”
Darrow laughed. “If I remember right, it only lasts one day here. It’s quite a party, though. It’s a good day for us to pull in. What’re your plans tonight?”
Shaking my head, I told him that I did not have any. “I’m on duty. I’ve got the twelve to four Petty Officer of the Watch.”
“Aw, man,” Darrow groaned. “You didn’t try to switch with anybody?”