THE COLLAPSE: Swantown Road

by Frank Kaminski

  “Why are you rollin’ with the po-po, fool?” Tarra questioned, with prejudice. Stephen sat down and curiously added, “Yeah, what’s up with that?”

  Fish took a moment to mentally prepare his response and sighed, “I kinda just rolled my car.”

  “Say what?”

  “Yup, I rolled it!” Fish said, excitedly. Stephen wondered why Fish looked so proud of himself, as if it was some kind of great achievement. The Alexanders just eyed him up, waiting for a punch line or a ‘just kidding’.

  There wasn’t any.

  Fish looked at Stephen and asked, “Can I borrow your truck for while? Just a couple days. It’s not like you need it, you’re retired now.”

  “I’m not retired from life, I’m just done with the military.” Stephen replied. “Wait, you’re serious, you really just rolled your car?” Stephen asked, he was still absorbing the news. Fish nodded, then wholeheartedly provided the all the details of The Plan to Stephen and Tarra.

  “You’re a jackass!” Tarra exclaimed and laughed. Fish shrugged in agreement.

  “No he’s not, mommy!” Kyla shouted, defending her Uncle Fish.

  Stephen mentally debated the thought of lending his truck to his best friend. Even though Fish was an excellent driver, it was still damn near the equivalent of handing over his keys to a sixteen year old fresh from the DMV. Fish had a habit of taking irresponsibility to extreme levels (rolling his car on purpose was a good example of it). As Stephen pondered, Fish and Tarra carried out their traditional back-and-forth banter.

  “Tarra, I couldn’t help but notice all that snow outside.” He began with a grin.

  “Don’t do it.” She warned, anticipating some type of Inuit reference.

  “I mean, there’s quite a bit of snow out there right now.” Fish said, and his grin elongated.

  “I’m warning you, don’t do it!” Tarra said, and was almost out of her seat.

  “I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to go outside and teach the girls how to build an igloo or something.” Fish said, and immediately braced for shock.

  The Kays perked up with excitement at their Uncle Fish’s suggestion. “Yeah mommy, can we?”

  “Oh my god, you are SUCH an ass!” Tarra shouted as her fine-tuned and powerful frame gracefully launched from the recliner and pounced, blasting Fish in the shoulder with a solid haymaker. It was hard enough to make Stephen wince as he watched, but he said nothing.

  Fish grimaced as he rubbed his battered shoulder, and then changed the subject as the words “CHICKEN STAND-OFF CONTINUES” displayed on the Alexanders’ 52-inch LCD television. He read the headline aloud and cocked his head in genuine interest. A female reporter was speaking in front of one of the most bizarre picket lines he had ever witnessed. Colorfully dressed black men were standing side-by-side with leather-clad, caucasian Harley riders and also what appeared to be farmers and jean-jacket wearing rednecks. Several of the men and women were toting a firearm of some type.

  “That has got to be in the south somewhere.” Fish declared, grinning. Behind the well-armed picket line was a restaurant called “Tyrone’s Krispy Krib”.

  Stephen asked, “You haven’t seen this stuff yet?”

  “Nope. You know I hardly ever watch the news!” Fish replied.

  Tarra sarcastically laughed, “Wow, no way. Really?”

  Stephen chuckled at his wife’s comment and then continued, “My dear friend, you’ve been missing out on all the fun! Apparently, this chicken joint down in Memphis was about to be shut down over some type of government bullshit, health inspectors or taxes or something like that. Anyway, as it turns out, the owners of the Krispy Krib are all ex-gang members that decided to go legit. All the Harley guys and ‘Farmer Bobs’ you see there in that picket line are all in support of the Krispy Krib staying open. Either they have a big problem with government bureaucracy or Tyrone makes some really damn good chicken.”

  As Stephen finished his explanation, the attractive reporter on the television turned her microphone to a tall, slightly obese man with a greasy mullet wearing blue denim bib overalls. He was also carrying a shotgun. The man, named Emil Knard, had earned the title of ‘CONCERNED PATRON’ in the footer at the bottom of the screen.

  Fish laughed and said, “I love how the news always gives everyone some kind of title.”

  “I know, right?” Stephen laughed too. Emil Knard appeared very anxious to speak about the imminent shutdown on behalf of the protesters at the Krispy Krib.

  “There ain’t no damn reason these sonsabitches need to come in here and harass these boys for trying to make a good honest livin’. So we’re all gonna be right here until all this hogwarsh blows over.” He hollered into the microphone.

  The reporter withdrew the mic for a moment as a smiling black man with a Krispy Krib smock proudly held a black and white, zig-zag patterned bucket of chicken out to the interviewee.

  Fish thought to himself; maybe that’s the mighty Tyrone himself, in the flesh. The CONCERNED PATRON quickly flipped his shotgun onto his shoulder and lovingly plucked out a drumstick with fingers equally as meaty as the piece of chicken and immediately began gnawing on it, despite the interview and the millions of people that could potentially be watching. Maybe he didn’t realize that the Krispy Krib stand-off had made national news, with several different law enforcement agencies ready and standing by to converge on the supporters.

  With a mouth full of chicken, he continued, “And to top it all off, this is some damn good chicken! I mean, holy Mary Mother of Jesus these boys can fry the hell out of some bird, I’ll tell ya what! This chicken is, well, bless her heart, but this chicken is better than my mee-maw’s, and that’s some damn good stuff, y’all.” The reporter embarrassingly moved the microphone back to herself, desperately attempting to save face, and displayed to her audience how many different types of assault vehicles were present at the scene, even as the CONCERNED PATRON next to her continued to munch and babble about how wonderful the chicken was.

  It’s true, most news reporters have a peculiarly distinct ability to choose an interviewee with the most “character”, but in this case the woman had bit off a little bit more than she could chew, so to speak.

  Fish remained fixated, wide-eyed with fascination until after the network switched over to a story about the Secretary of Defense’s recent decision to drastically cut the number of military personnel on active duty due to another round of budget cuts. At that point, he slowly turned to Stephen, still wide-eyed, and said, “Duuude, we totally need to go to the Krispy Krib!”

  The Kays immediately chimed in before Stephen could respond to that nonsense and yelled, “Yeah, daddy! Can we go with Uncle Fish to the Krispy Krib, too?”

  “No, sweet peas, we’re not going to the Krispy Krib, and neither is Uncle Fish. The Krispy Krib is in Memphis, Tennessee, almost two thousand miles away.”

  “Awww.” The Kays sighed in disappointment with The Sameness.

  Always quick to capitalize on a teachable moment, Stephen added, “Hey, go get your map and I’ll show you where Memphis is.”

  Instantly, the Kays happily jumped up from the floor and raced each other as they scurried down the hall to their play room.

  “What kind of a six year old has a US map, yo?” Fish asked.

  “Smart ones, like mine, yo.” Stephen cockily replied with a grin.

  Tarra was rolling her eyes at Fish. She mumble-laughed under her breath, “Such a loser!”

  “What? I heard that!” Fish exclaimed.

  Chapter 3 – Fish’s Bad Day at Work

  Fish called his insurance company and the local towing outfit. The car wouldn’t be recovered and towed until the next day, as all the trucks were already dispatched to missions throughout the entire island due to the weather.

  Once Fish took care of all the particulars regarding his Mustang, Stephen caved and allowed him to borrow his truck. He couldn’t bear the thought of his best friend taking a cab or a bus to work the next morning,
especially with all the snow, and then struggling to figure out how to get a rental vehicle while he waited for his settlement on the Mustang. Fish had mediocre credit, at best, and Stephen wondered if a rental company would even cater to him anyway. And that was assuming that Fish even had rental coverage in his insurance policy. Additionally, Stephen’s Ford F-150 had naval base decals on the windshield, so Fish wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of getting a rental car registered for base driving when we went to work. It was a total win-win for his buddy.

  The next day, Fish considered how thankful he was for a best friend like Stephen as he displayed his ID card to the security guard at the access gate to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and drove straight in.

  Fish was assigned to the aircraft training squadron on Whidbey Island. The unit’s mission was to train pilots (or retrain them) and get them familiarized with the electronic attack aircraft before they transferred to one of the dozen or so operational squadrons in the area. Fish was a Logistics Specialist First Class, or LS1 for short. His military paygrade of E-6 would be commensurate to middle-management in the civilian world. He was a supervisor of a large office, but had several supervisors above him as well. Even though he was one of the best supply gurus in the Navy, he had never promoted to Chief Petty Officer, despite being eligible for promotion the preceding nine years. Fish was a bona-fide, true-blue, old-school sailor, with the ‘work-hard, play-hard’ mantra. It was the play-hard that contributed to his lack of promotion, mostly, yielding multiple alcohol-related incidents during his career.

  Always on thin ice due to his pickled past, Fish was reluctant to speak his mind when his superiors took advantage of his loyalty or made dumbass decisions that affected his workcenter. He was only nine months shy of retirement, right behind his best buddy Stephen, so he kept his mouth shut and ‘played the game’ in order to get that proverbial football over the twenty-year goal line for the final touchdown that would secure the rest of his life.

  Fish’s supervisor, Chief Worts, was relatively new to the squadron and Fish was not a huge fan of his leadership technique. He didn’t speak to Fish very often. Instead, he chose to micro-manage him via task laden emails and several quick walk-thrus throughout the day to ensure that Fish and his staff were working. The chief spent most of his time canoodling with the other chiefs, instead of contributing to the logistical needs of the squadron.

  Fish did his best to keep things afloat in the office, but the chief would not allow him to sign documents that would precipitate the movement of supplies, and the requisitions would pile up in the chief’s box until he finally decided to sit down and go through them all. Many times the chief wouldn’t begin reviewing documents until after normal working hours were over. He would angrily curse at the pile of work in his inbox and take out his frustrations on Fish, as if it were personally his fault that the airplanes went through so many parts and all the sailors in the squadron needed supplies to get their jobs done.

  When the chief stayed late to review the requisitions and make his signatures, Fish and his staff also had to remain in the office until the chief made the appropriate approvals or changes. Once that was completed, he would give the enormous stack to Fish, who would then distribute them to his staff for processing. Then, the chief would usually leave for the day and order Fish to keep the rest of the office working late until everything was finished. On several occasions, Fish would just let his weary people go home for the day and he would stay to complete everything by himself. Doing that would always upset the chief, if he found out about it. He would scold Fish for ‘not being a good leader’ by choosing to do the work himself instead of delegating it to his junior personnel.

  On that particular morning, Chief Worts had made three or four of his ritual drive-bys, each time commenting to Fish and the rest of the office about how quickly the snow was disappearing, which meant he had been going outside. Most likely to take one of the zillion smoke breaks that he normally disappeared for throughout the day.

  Right before lunch, the chief asked Fish to step outside the office. Fish had sighed, because stepping outside the office was never a good thing.

  “Hooker, I need you to write up Constantine. Her uniform looks like a total bag of shit and twice today I caught her with her eyes closed at her desk.” Chief Worts said.

  Fish shook his head with disagreement and countered with, “Chief, you know she has been a single mother for over two months now, her husband left her and took off back to Texas. She’s just having a rough time right now. She’s still one of my best sailors. I can just talk to her about it, we don’t need to put it on paper.”

  “Are you hung over again or just fucking deaf?” The chief shouted.

  “Actually, chief, it’s neither. I rolled my car last night, but thanks for asking.” Fish said. Chief Worts rolled his eyes at him.

  “Oh, boo-hoo-hoo…you look just fine to me. You better not have been drunk.”

  “I wasn’t.” Fish said, disgusted with Chief Worts’ lack of compassion.

  The chief stuck his finger in Fish’s face and hissed, “You listen to me, Hooker. I can’t have all these other chiefs coming into my office and seeing one of my people like that. What do you think that would do to my reputation?” The chief questioned him with cigarette breath, and waited for Fish’s response.

  “If they knew her circumstances, they would probably –“ Fish had started, but was cut off by a stiff finger to the chest. Ouch.

  “Don’t you play this game with me, Hooker. I really don’t give a damn about how she manages her off-duty time! She needs to square herself away, and that’s the bottom line. Did Uncle Sam issue her that baby?”

  “No, chief.”

  “That’s right, he didn’t. Maybe I should write you up instead, for being such a shitty leader? You obviously can’t control your own people.”

  “No, chief, that’s not necessary. I’ll take care of it after lunch.” Fish sighed. He truly didn’t want to, though.

  “That’s what I thought.” The chief huffed. “And don’t you fucking dare tell her that I made you do it, either. You make it look like the counseling is coming from you, Hooker. You are only undermining your own authority if you say it came from me, understand?” Chief Worts put his hands on his hips and waited for Fish’s response. Truth was, he wanted Fish to look like the bad guy, not him.

  “Yes, chief.” Fish replied, utterly defeated. He couldn’t risk his retirement over an argument or confrontation with his dickhead chief. Fish hated him for what he was ordered to do. Constantine was a good sailor that was simply going through a temporary rough time. She was a wizard at streamlining difficult processes, even better than an old salty expert like Fish, and he relied on her heavily to do the bulk of the work in the office. He hoped that the write-up wouldn’t negatively affect her morale. She was only assigned to the squadron temporarily until her limited duty expired, which wasn’t until the end of September. Even so, he didn’t want her to leave with a derogatory evaluation and a bad taste in her mouth.

  After lunch, Fish drafted up a counseling sheet and called Constantine over to his desk and asked her to sit down. He could tell that she knew something was up, because she was acting overly professional and courteous.

  Fish reluctantly slid the piece of paper over to her. “Connie, you know what this is, right?”

  “Yes.” She said, glancing down at the counseling sheet. She adjusted her posture to an attentive military position as if she knew she was about to reprimanded.

  “I hate doing this, but you need to read it and sign it.” Fish told her.

  Before reading it, she began to break down. “I’m sorry.” She started, whimpering. Her voice crackled and her bottom lip quivered with heartache. “This counseling is because I fell asleep at my desk again today, isn’t it?” The fuse on her bawling dynamite had been lit and she was about to detonate. Right there at Fish’s desk. The other sailors in the office pretended as though they didn’t see or hear anything and kept
their heads buried in their computer monitors.

  Although she was normally a tough cookie, Fish guessed that the frustration from her piece of shit husband leaving her and being stuck with a five month old by herself finally got the best of her. He anticipated that he was about to be the sounding board for all things wrong in her life, and mentally prepared himself for it.

  Fish nervously looked back at his other sailors as Constantine put her face in her hands and began to cry. Fish was about to console her with some seemingly motivating but ultimately pathetic words that he learned from a leadership course years ago, but he didn’t need to.

  Suddenly just then, as if on cue, Chief Worts barreled into the office.

  “What’s going on here?” He demanded, arms and shoulders raised in a ‘what-the-fuck?’ salute.

  “I’m counseling Constantine on her uniform appearance and for sleeping at her desk today.” Fish answered, remembering what Chief Worts had said to him earlier regarding the appearance of the counseling, to ensure that it looked like it was coming from him instead of the chief.

  Chief Worts put his hand on Constantine’s shoulder and scolded Fish as if he was totally in the wrong, “No, no, no, no. You don’t have to do that, Petty Officer Hooker. I’m pretty sure that you are well aware of her situation, and all the bullshit she is dealing with at home. I think there is a better way that we can handle this.”

  Constantine looked up at Chief Worts with her gorgeous dark brown eyes, hopeful eyes, as if he was Superman himself, flying into the office to save her in a knick of time from the evil bastard that was about to write her up.

  Fish began talking but the chief flapped a hand in his face to cut him off and shut him up. Chief Worts gingerly assisted the bawling Constantine to her feet.

  “Come on, young lady, let’s go sit down in my office and talk about this.” The chief consoled. Before they departed, the chief snatched the counseling sheet away from Fish and ripped it up, slowly, in true dramatic fashion, and then flung the shreds of paper onto Fish’s keyboard as he walked away.