One Man's War

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  “I heard the shots, and I figured I’d come to see if you needed help,” she said softly, running her fingers through his hair.

  “I shouldn’t have come. I knew what I’d find,” he said, sniffling up some snot that had leaked from his dripping nose.

  “You had to,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t have come… I just had to find out.”

  “Now you know. I’ll probably never know what happened to my family for sure,” she told him, taking out a tissue and handing it to him. “Here, blow your nose.”

  He took the offered tissue and blew loudly several times, clearing his sinuses. He smiled at her weakly. “Thanks.”

  “C’mon, cutie!” she said with a grin, standing and taking his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where to?” he asked, following her back to the car. She didn’t say a word until they were both back into the battered Yugo and headed west on Division Street.

  “I’m taking you someplace nice. Somewhere I haven’t been in a while.

  She lit a cigarette, handing him the pack. He lit a smoke too, and was pleasantly surprised when she took his hand.

  They drove through dead, empty streets through town and she took the route 75 Causeway across to Coronado, and followed that down where it headed south again, turning into Orange Avenue then Silver Strand Boulevard, passing the US Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare Center until finally stopping along the side of the road that edged up to a strip of deserted beach that kissed the Pacific Ocean.

  Stopping the car, she hopped out, grabbed a blanket from the cramped back seat, then walked onto the beach. Suplee was still sitting in the car, looking out at her.

  “Don’t just sit there, c’mon!” she yelled, and ran down towards the water. Suplee reluctantly exited the vehicle, leaving the carbine behind, and followed her down to where she’d spread the blanket on the sandy white beach.

  He sat down on the blanket and looked up at her standing only feet away. With a sly smile, Beth crossed her arms and grabbed the bottom of her tank top, and with one yank, pulled it over her head, exposing firm breasts with nipples pointed to the sky.

  “I’m going for a swim!” she exclaimed, kicked off her sandals and cut off shorts, spun, and ran naked into the surf. She swam out a few yards. “Come on in!” she yelled at him.

  “Harry, you’d better do what the lady says,” he said to himself, stood and stripped. He ran out through the surf, swimming up to where Beth was treading water. She closed in on him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and kissed him deeply and passionately.

  They broke the kiss and looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then Suplee grabbed her hand and led her out of the surf, up the beach to the blanket she had laid out. He plopped down, and pulled her down on top of him, kissed her deeply again, more urgently this time.

  He rolled her onto her back, and climbing on top of her, entered her easily. The made love frantically, madly, and when it was over, Suplee fell by her side on his back, breathless. The sun’s rays warmed their bare skin, and she laid her head on his chest, hair still wet from their dip in the sea.

  “That was incredible,” Suplee said, running his fingers down her spine.

  “Yes, it was,” she replied, moving up to kiss him again. When their lips parted, she said, “It’s been a really long time.”

  “It has, hasn’t it?”

  “Far too long.”

  “Didn’t you and Steve or Ken…you know?”

  “Steve, Ken, and I have one thing in common, Harry. All three of us like boys,” she snickered. She sat up, located her tank top, and pulled it on, much to Suplee’s dismay. He was enjoying looking at her naked body, and he reached up and caressed her breast through the thin cotton.

  “You’re telling me they’re both gay?”

  “Yes, unfortunately for me the last few years,” she said. She stood and pulled on her shorts. “You’d better get dressed, or you’ll get sunburn places you shouldn’t be!”

  Suplee pulled on his blue jeans, and after Beth picked up her sandals and the blanket, he followed her to the car. She tossed the blanket in the back unceremoniously, and they both got in. He looked at her for a moment before speaking,

  “So you’ve been alone with two gay guys the whole time?”

  “Talk about irony,” she said wryly, started the car and drove off. “I thought it was me at first. Then one night, it was shortly after we all met, we got a little drunk and I put the moves on Ken, and well…”

  “He let you know he had eyes for Steve,” he finished for her. He lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke out of the window. The breeze felt good coming through the open windows of the ancient Yugo as they sped back towards the base.

  “I resigned myself to a life of celibacy,” Beth said. “I thought us three were the only ones left.”

  “And then we showed up.”

  “I know, right? We saw that ship of yours come steaming up the channel, and I thought to myself, please, if there really is a god, let there be one heterosexual man on board!”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “Yes, lucky for me. I just didn’t know that one as cute as you would be on it when my ship finally came in!” Beth reached over and took his hand, and he looked at her in amazement, turning red at the compliment.

  “It’s been a long, long time, Beth,” he said. He took another drag of the cigarette and looked out over the causeway. He could see their ship tied up at the pier, and wondered if it might actually work.

  “Are you going to be okay, Harry?”

  “I think so. I just had to know, you know?”

  “I bet you think I’m some kind of heartless bitch, coming on to you like that, right after …”

  “Under normal circumstances, maybe. However, this is far from being anywhere near normal. It hasn’t been normal for me, for any of us, in a long, long time. I knew she was dead. I knew my kid was dead. I resigned myself to it a long time ago, back when me and Johnson were still on the Hughes. I just needed to see for myself, is all. What we did, well, it was fantastic, and I don’t think either of us should feel guilty about it,” he said, flicking the butt out of the window.

  Beth pulled the car up along the curb next to an overgrown park, which looked more like a dried out meadow than an inner city park. She shut the car off, and got out, grabbing the blanket. She walked through some dead brown grass up to a picnic table, and Suplee followed her, wondering what she was up to.

  She spread the blanket out on the tabletop, and in the shade of the dead trees, stripped off her top again. She tossed it aside and put her hands on her hips, tilting her head to one side. “We won’t get sunburned here.”

  Suplee stripped and took her in his arms. They made love a second time, slower this time, less urgent. When they were finished, they lay together on top of the table looking up through dead branches and the sky. The sun had crept west, and daylight was waning.

  “We’d better get back to the ship,” Suplee said sadly. He didn’t want to lose the moment.

  “Yeah, they’ll wonder what happened to us,” Beth agreed, standing reluctantly, and began to dress. They walked hand in hand back to the car and with Suplee at the wheel this time, headed off towards the base.

  Halfway back, Suplee snapped his fingers. “Damn, almost forgot!”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Forgot about the air-con units. You are quite the distraction,” he said with a wicked grin.

  “I’ll take that as a positive thing, Harry.”

  He turned into a huge appliance store parking lot a few blocks from the main gate to the base. When he and Beth went up to the glass doors and Suplee tried to pull them opened, he found them locked securely. He took the carbine out of the back seat, flicked off the safety and fired one round into the middle of the glass pane.

  A neat, round hole appeared in the center, and being safety glass like that in automobile windows, it cracked and splintered into thousands of pieces but stayed intact.

/>   He used the butt of the rifle to beat out the glass until all of the shards were piled on the dusty tiled floor of the showroom like millions of diamonds. He took Beth’s hand and carefully walked through the opening into the darkened store.

  They walked through the aisles of refrigerators, washing machines, and stoves towards the rear of the store until they found the rows of window unit air conditioners.

  “Here’s what we need,” he said, tapping on the dusty shell of a General Electric 2,500 BTU window unit.

  “Just this one will cool the whole ship?” she asked.

  “Oh no, we need about twenty or thirty of the bastards.”

  “We won’t fit them in my car, silly!”

  “I just wanted to see if they have enough. I’ll check the back to see if they do, and we’ll come back tomorrow with a bigger vehicle.”

  Beth followed him deeper into the dim building. He walked through a set of double doors that had a sign on it that read ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ and cursed himself for not thinking to bring a flashlight.

  The storeroom was dark, but there was enough light coming through the skylights in the roof to let them see, and as their eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, Suplee found what they were looking for. Satisfied, he took her hand and turned to leave when he heard a noise in the rear.

  A chill rose up his back and he grabbed the carbine slung across his back reflexively, shouldering it and aiming into the darkness.

  “What is it?” Beth whispered, clutching his arm in a death grip.

  “I don’t know, probably nothing. Let’s get out of here,” he said in a normal voice, which sounded like a scream that echoed through the darkened room. They made their way back out through the store and into the parking lot without further incident, where they got back into the Yugo and headed for the base.

  “That place gave me the creeps,” Beth said.

  “Actually, the whole city gives me the creeps. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I can’t wait to get back to sea.”

  “It’s the same for me, Harry, every day for the last several years. I can’t wait to get out of this place and sail the seven seas with you!”

  “It’s not all fun and games, Beth. It’s a lot of hard work. That ship of ours is over eighty years old, and was designed to be manned by over thirty men,” Suplee said.

  “Living here has been so hard. Not so much with lack of food, mind you. It’s just the fact that we’re surrounded by millions of corpses. Every time I drive out, I just think of the millions of dead everywhere. It gets to you after a while.”

  “It’s a necropolis,” he said flatly.

  “Yeah, that’s a good word for it, a City of the Dead. I for one want to keep on living.”

  Suplee pulled up to the dock next to the ship and shut the car off. The both got out and made their way up the gangplank onto the ship, where they were met at the top by Johnson.

  “How’d it go?” Johnson asked.

  “About as much as I expected, Skipper,” Suplee replied.

  “That bad, eh?”

  “We made a few other discoveries, Captain,” Beth said with a wide smile.

  “Oh?” Johnson asked. “Did you find the air con units?”

  “Yeah, we found those, too,” Beth said and Suplee turned beet-red. Johnson looked at Suplee with a quizzical look.

  “There’s an appliance store not far from here. We’ll have to go back tomorrow with a bigger vehicle, but there’s more than enough to fit every cabin in the ship.”

  “Good. If you think it can wait a few days, I think the priority should be getting all this shit cleaned off, paint the rust, and slap some Brasso on the bright work,” Johnson said.

  Suplee and Beth made their way to the upper decks, where they excused themselves and entered Suplee’s cabin, leaving Johnson standing in the passageway wearing a grin.

  “Well, well, Harry. Seems like you got yourself lucky with this shore leave,” he said, and headed towards the galley.

  It took them several weeks, but with everyone’s help, they were able to get the years’ worth of accumulated bird droppings off of every surface on the ship, and not one, but two coats of fresh gray paint on all the rusted surfaces. Suplee’s plan to outfit each of the cabins with air conditioners worked like a charm, and even the galley and mess decks were now cool. He’d done the job so well, in fact, they looked like they’d always been installed.

  The fuel oil bunkers were again topped off, and the galley’s stores were loaded with as much food as they could stow. They had found several intact containers of flour at the ship’s store on the naval base. Mary was busy in the galley baking several fresh loaves of bread that Johnson and Suplee could smell up on the bridge, and the pleasant aroma made their stomachs rumble in anticipation.

  Black smoke poured out of the lone funnel and trailed behind the ship as they passed Cabrillo National Monument and left Coronado in their wake far to the east. They were in blue water now, steaming for Pearl Harbor.

  Johnson was out on the port wing bridge looking down onto the cargo deck where Steve and Beth were busy stowing the mooring lines just the way that Suplee and Ken had shown them. Ken was in the engine room with Nakamura, and he heard the reassuring throb of the powerful steam engine through the decks. Like Suplee had told Beth a few weeks prior, Johnson too was very happy to get to sea and get out of the dead city.

  He took a great breath of sea air into his lungs and smiled. He then entered the bridge, where he found Suplee standing at the helm and looking at the binnacle and ship’s compass, ensuring they were on the course set forth by the captain.

  “How’s it going, Harry?” Johnson asked when he walked into the bridge. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dimness and he saw that Suplee was smiling broadly.

  “Right on course, Skipper, doing about nine knots. I spoke with Mr. Nakamura this morning, and he figures we might be able to squeeze about two more knots out of her if we can get all the years’ worth of accumulated barnacles off the hull.”

  “I figured as much. Maybe we can get some help in Pearl with Sergeant William’s men to get her into a dry-dock.”

  “It’d be nice if the hull was a tad sleeker, eh?”

  “Like the Hughes?” Johnson asked wryly.

  “Well, yeah. Twenty-five to thirty knots is a lot better than nine any day.”

  “True. This is just right for my liking though. Those tin cans will always give me nightmares from now on.”

  “Sorry I brought it up,” Suplee said in an unusually tiny voice.

  “Don’t sweat it, Harry. I know she’s a tub, but she’s all ours. So what if it’s going to take us two weeks to get to Pearl?”

  “The ship’s complement is a whole lot nicer too, Skipper,” Suplee said cheerfully.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I know you probably think I’m some kind of shit for doing that, and I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “You must think I’m some kind of asshole for hooking up with Beth the same day I go and find my dead wife and child. I didn’t even bury them for Christ sake.”

  “I think nothing of the sort, Harry. It’s a completely different world now, and the rules have changed. You’re a great guy, and a fantastic shipmate and sailor. You deserve to be happy.”

  “That might be right, but some rules are still the same. The law of the sea, civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top,” Suplee deadpanned, and that made Johnson laugh heartily.

  “I never took you as a Hunter S. Thompson fan.”

  “I read a lot, Skipper,” Suplee said. “So you’re cool with it?”

  “Yes, Harry, I’m cool with it. I’m glad you’re happy.”

  “I am. I just kept up a false hope, I think. I saw you with Mary when we first got to Pearl, and I had high hopes that I’d find my wife alive too. I knew better. It’s just that seeing them
both lying there in my apartment took all the wind out of my sails.”

  “It’s a far different world now. As far as I am concerned, everyone on this ship is now family as well as crew,” Johnson stated.

  “Thanks, Skipper.”

  “We also have to keep this tub afloat and get her to Pearl, so that gives us all added incentive to do a good job.”

  “And incentive to stay on top of the food chain!” Suplee added with a grin.

  “That too,” Johnson agreed.

  “I do have to say this, Bill. I’ve got this odd feeling it’s not going to be boring at all sailing with you!”

  “I hope not, just as long as it’s not as exciting as our last voyage.”

  Steve and Beth entered the bridge then. “All of the lines are stowed,” Steve informed them. “Anything else you need us to do?”

  “I need to you spell Harry on the helm for a while, Steve. I need him to be rested to con the ship over the mid watch,” he said. “Harry, you go and get yourself some rest. I’ll show Steve what to do here on the bridge. It’s a clear afternoon, we’ve got fair winds and following seas, and we’re in deep water now. I don’t foresee any problems.”

  “Aye, Skipper,” Suplee said, stepping back from the wheel. “Mr. Johnson has the con, Steve has the helm!” he announced, and walked over to Beth and took her hand. As they both went to leave, Johnson called out, “And I mean rest, Mr. Suplee!”

  Suplee smiled broadly and disappeared into the passageway with Beth in tow.

  Johnson took a few moments to go over a few things with Steve, who listened and nodded, taking it all in. After he was settled in his new job, Johnson took a moment to scan the ocean in front of the ship. Satisfied all was in order, he hung his binoculars on the binnacle and sat down in the captain’s chair with a sigh.

  “This is all exciting,” Steve said.

  “Well, Steve, let’s hope it doesn’t get too exciting. A nice, quiet, and easy voyage is what I’m looking for.”

  “Eh, yeah, I mean it’s all new to me. I’ve never been out of California, let alone on a ship in the ocean.”

  “Fair winds and following seas, Steve.” Johnson then got up and walked out onto the starboard wing bridge, letting the sea air hit his face. His thoughts went back to what Suplee had said, how he thought that sailing with him would be exciting.