He hands Chris an itinerary of departments to check in to in the proper order. Tomorrow, Chris will report to his department in the smaller of the three communications sites and start to work.
“Hurry up and finish,” Chief Wilson says, indicating Chris’s itinerary, “and then get a god-damned haircut and square yourself away. If I see you looking like that tomorrow, I’ll write you up and you’ll go in front of the captain.”
Chris nods. Embarrassed, he hurriedly walks out of the building and scurries across the base to medical, dental, admin, the library, public works, the commanding officers’ office, the commissary, and the exchange. There are forms for him to fill out and questions for him to answer every step of the way. A spot on almost every form makes him pause:
State your home of record.
The home of record, the residence where you came from, where one or both parents live.
Chris has no home of record. On one form he writes “here” and on the rest he simply writes BEQ Room 11, RAF Lutherkirk, Lutherkirk, UK.
Some who read the forms at the various departments think Chris is being flippant. They raise their eyebrows and demand an explanation. He isn’t being flippant; he’s being honest. Home is where he is and wherever the Navy and the choices of his life will take him.
He realizes his father’s address is just a phone call or letter away, but he has felt so detached from his father for so many years, his father no more than a piece of furniture in the basement, sitting or lying on the couch in a v-necked white T-shirt wrapped in a tattered blanket watching the television at merely an arm’s length away for the ease of adjusting the rabbit-ear antennas, and to change the channel without losing his perch on the sagging couch.
Chris’s last destination is the chapel, a visit he is not relishing.
Chris is unfamiliar with the insides of the buildings of the holy, and he is uncomfortable upon entering. Inside, the chapel is as quiet as a tomb. Chris walks around the front hallway and glances into the chapel itself. He looks at the small stage with a small altar and enough pews to accommodate maybe seventy-five people.
He looks at the cross on the front of the podium on the stage that he doesn’t know is called an altar. He assumes the building is empty in its silence. He is about to leave when he sees an open door into an office by the main entrance. He spies a man in a khaki uniform sitting at a desk. His hands are folded and he is staring at the ceiling. Chris gently taps his knuckles on the open door. At first, the man looks irritated, but then his face lights up when he sees Chris. Chris notes the cross pinned on one collar and lieutenant’s bars on the other.
“Come in, come in,” the man says, standing up. He is a tall man, pear-shaped and red-faced with reddish hair showing signs of gray. Chris notes that he is a bit old to be a lieutenant.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” Chris says while facing the floor, too introverted to look directly at someone he has apparently irritated. “I’m just checking in.” He hands the chaplain his check-in sheet, hoping for a simple signature and not the rehearsed and choreographed welcome he got from some of the other departments.
“No bother, no bother at all. I’m Chaplain Crowley, or Father Crowley, if you share my faith.” He offers Chris a firm handshake that Chris returns not nearly as vigorously.
“Sit down, sit down.” The chaplain takes the check-in sheet from Chris and places it on his desk, which is barren save a telephone and an empty Rolodex.
Chris sits upon a simple armless chair alongside the chaplain’s desk. He has no idea what a chaplain could possibly want to talk about or what he could say to a chaplain.
“So, welcome to Scotland,” the chaplain says, swinging his patent leather shoes up on the top of the desk. The posture is disarming, and Chris relaxes in his chair.
The chaplain notes the two lonely stripes on Chris’s sleeves and knows he is recently enlisted. “And welcome to the Navy. Now you’re in the fleet, as they say.” True enough, any duty station not attached to a training command was considered “in the fleet,” at sea or on shore.
“Thanks.” Chris looks around the sparse office. The walls are empty and the only companion to the desk and two chairs is a small, waist-high bookcase filled with apparently undisturbed books of uniform height and thickness.
“I’m new to the Navy, myself,” the chaplain explains. “This is my first duty station, and I’m as tender-footed as you are to the ways of the military.”
Chris nods, feeling more comfortable. No one this morning has been as friendly, as personable, as Chaplain Crowley.
“So, what religion is yours?” Crowley asks, the topic turning in the direction Chris dreads.
“I don’t have one,” Chris says.
“You don’t have one, or you don’t practice? Surely, you were baptized.”
Unsure, Chris nods his head. “I think I was baptized.”
“In which church?”
“I think Catholic.”
“Aha!” The chaplain pounds his fist on top of the desk and returns his feet to the floor. “Then you’re in my club.” Crowley beams. “But no matter, no matter, the Kingdom of God is wide open before you, and there are many paths you can choose, Catholic or otherwise. I’m not out to recruit you for Sunday Mass. I see myself here to make sure you’re okay on the inside. Where are you from?”
“Just outside of Detroit.”
“Ah,” says Crowley, unable to expand upon the topic of Michigan. “Well, my son, my door is always open, and if you need someone to talk to about anything—no subject is too remote for me—I can bullshit about anything as well as anybody, so please return. In fact, I even conduct very informal Bible studies at my own home, in case you’re interested. Just let me know ahead of time.” The priest stands and extends a hand and bids Chris farewell.
Chris decides he may take him up on the invitation as he steps back into the damp Scottish air. The sky is gray and full of clouds thick and low, causing the street lamps of the base to turn on, even though the day is still quite young.
Chris didn’t feel so alone in the presence of the priest; he felt warm inside. Maybe church is a place for him to go, as he has no place else to go except his messy room inside the sterile barracks in a country he does not yet know.
He finds the base barbershop and sets about restoring his military appearance.
December 26, 1985
Dear Wife,
I so badly want to fall in love and I don’t know if you feel the same way at this point in your life. I’ve been in Scotland just a day now and I’m looking for you but I don’t think you’re on this base, I haven’t seen a face yet that I’m attracted to or could feel comfortable with. It seems everyone here knows a certain group of people and that’s it, if you’re not in a group then you’re on your own, at least that’s what I see from eating in the galley and wandering around the barracks. I never had a lot of friends in school but I always had a few and in boot camp I was never alone and in ‘A’ school there were guys I went to boot camp with and people I talked to in class and it just seemed different. Here I feel like a leper. I start my job tomorrow and I don’t know what that will be like but hopefully I will meet people there.
Do you believe in God? I did when I was real small until I had a teacher in junior high who said there used to be gods for everything. People used to worship sun gods and sacrifice animals and children just to make sure the sun continued to rise, he said there were lots of gods like that and eventually as science grew people learned how the sun rose and of course that meant the end of the sun gods. I saw god the same way, just this thing people used to explain the world, but now I don’t know. I think there is something else there and I’m missing it. No one can explain what can happen when you die or why you’re born and why there is evil in this world. There must be a god and I think I may only feel this way because I feel so alone. Until we meet.
Chris
It is Friday evening and the new year is beckoning. Friday has become the de facto evening for
Rodgers and Hinckley to go to Father Crowley’s house, as no one has to rise early the next morning. There is much drinking and dreaming and discussing on this particular night.
Rodgers and Hinckley summon a taxi, one of a small queue that forms outside the base every Friday and Saturday night, waiting to take the sailors to the nightclubs in Aberdeen or Dundee, or to the pubs in Brechin or Montrose.
Crowley is anxious. He wants to strike again, claim another trophy for the advance of the white race. He wants the country and the world to know that a decent white man isn’t going to take it anymore, this proliferation of the lesser peoples.
“Now, South Africa,” he blurts out while sipping his favorite Boer cabernet after Hinckley and Rodgers arrive. They stare at the fire and drink one of many tins of lager. “South Africa is almost the perfect country. The whites know they’re superior. They don’t give into that gushy liberalism that has destroyed the West—you know, all men are created equal and all that crap. I don’t care what the Declaration of Independence says, Jefferson never meant Negroes; he meant all white men are created equal. He owned slaves himself, for Christ’s sake.”
Hinckley has a vague notion of what the priest is talking about. Rodgers doesn’t have a clue; he just hopes he doesn’t have to shoot anybody else.
“In South Africa,” Crowley says while dreamily staring at his glass of wine, his pale blue eyes almost teary and wistful, “they don’t let blacks vote or hold office or even give them good jobs. They keep them in their place because they know they are incapable of taking care of themselves, much less a business or a government. We don’t see it that way in the United States. The politicians and the churches whine about equal rights while the blacks murder each other, while the Mexicans stab each other and all our cities have gone to hell and all the while, more and more white kids listen to black music and every other show on television is about black people. But not in South Africa. In South Africa a white kid goes to school with other white kids and he is safe, and he lives in a neighborhood with other white kids and he is safe, and the blacks live with the blacks and go to school with the blacks, and though they don’t know it, they are happier. And if the blacks try to organize—they outnumber the white people there almost fifteen to one—the government goes in and shoots them or arrests them. They make it very clear who is in charge.” He drains his glass and refills it from a bottle on the coffee table. He closes his eyes and inhales the aroma of the cork before returning it to the top of the bottle.
“So,” he continues, “if I can’t make progress and help stimulate some change, we could always find our place in the world in South Africa, where the weather is finer than California and our race is raised to its proper status. ”
Hinckley thinks that sounds fine but wonders if he can watch football there. Rodgers helps himself to another beer.
“But I think the gods have placed us here for a reason,” Crowley continues, “and I think we should get to work right away. Nothing so random this time. My passion got the best of me on Christmas. Luckily, no mistakes were made, but our work was sloppy and we could have gotten caught.”
Almost true. The Tayside Police were puzzled about the murder. Dundee had maybe one such crime every few years, and they were usually acts of passion, not random violence. At first, they thought maybe it was a gang murder, some sort of squabbling amongst the Pakistanis, but they could find no evidence supporting that theory. The victim was a man in his early thirties who was walking home from his dishwashing job in a restaurant in one of the nicer hotels in Dundee. He had just saved up enough money to send for his wife and four children to join him from Pakistan, and they were due to arrive in mid-January. There was one eyewitness account from an apartment dweller above the restaurant where Crowley had parked. They had seen the Allegro parked there earlier, but after the gunshots, the car was gone. Regretfully, no tag number was recorded, and the windows of the car had fogged up and no one was seen inside.
“We have to be very precise, and though it must be tempting, we can never—and I do mean never—strike on base, unless we have to make some sort of point. To show that the blacks and other minorities aren’t safe anywhere.”
“Well, hell,” says Hinckley, “the niggers on base go out every weekend, if they’re off. I think they go dancing in Dundee. We could probably find one there, someone from the base.”
“Brilliant,” says Crowley, who rises from his chair and places his hand on Rodgers’s shoulder. “Our little sniper here can pick one off like a clay pigeon. We just have to find a place for him to shoot from.”
“Come on, now,” Rodgers protests. “I still don’t feel good about killin’ anybody; let one of y’all do it this time. I don’t mind scarin’ somebody or beatin’ somebody up, but I don’t know about killin’. I really just want to go home. I can’t stand the Navy and I hate this god-damned country.”
“Listen,” says Crowley and he prepares to talk to Rodgers as he would talk to a small child, “you have been given a talent, and it would a shame for you to waste it. Nothing has been gained by just scaring people. The Klan has been doing that for years, and now the blacks run the south. Pretty soon, they’ll run Missouri, too. You don’t want that. Your family doesn’t want that.”
Rodgers agrees.
“And if for some reason things get too hairy for us, I can use my authority as a chaplain to have you sent home. I can come up with some sort of family emergency, you know, like a death in the family. I can help you… You just have to help me.”
Rodgers reluctantly agrees and feels a glimmer of hope at the possibility of his returning home. Nothing would make him happier. He would agree to almost anything that could get him home sooner.
“Now Mr. Hinckley, back to your idea.” Crowley stands up and walks back and forth in front of the fireplace. “Do we find someone in particular, or do we just wait outside a nightclub and seize the perfect opportunity at the first shot we get?”
“Well, I think we should take the best shot we see at any nigger walking around Dundee.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Crowley replies. “Do you know where they go? Do you know which clubs?”
“Yeah, I hearda this one called Angel’s. I think it used to be a church or somethin’. A lot of them go there—you know, pick up on them bloke girls.”
“I hate bloke girls,” Rodgers pipes in. “They all smoke and drink and wear ugly clothes and they’re fat.”
Hinckley and Father Crowley both ignore Rodgers.
“You two spend the night here, and tomorrow morning we’ll drive to Dundee and scope out the situation, see where we can park. This time, I want to leave a note. We have to leave a note.” Crowley sits down on the couch, too close for both Hinckley’s and Rodgers’s comfort. “Hinckley.” Crowley pours more wine. The bottle is nearly empty, save half an inch covering the bottom. “You write the note again. Take time to be creative and make an impact. Let those of the lesser races know who we are.”
Hinckley nods. “No problem.”
Crowley retires upstairs and leaves the living room and several dusty blankets that came with the furnished house to the two young men. Hinckley and Rodgers drink and talk. Hinckley feels important; he has been trusted to write the note, to be the spokesman for their group. He rubs his hand over his hair and thinks about shaving it off, almost bald, the way the skinheads that he has heard so much about do. But he decides Father Crowley wouldn’t like that; it would draw attention to him. Rodgers, nervous about firing another shot, complains to Hinckley.
“Don’t ya think it would have been better if the South won the Civil War?” Hinckley reasons.
“Well, yeah.”
“Look at it this way: you’re finishing what the Confederates started. You’re kinda like Robert E. Lee.”
Rodgers swells at the comparison. His thumbnail knowledge of history is mostly of the Civil War. He is at peace with the decision to be the shooter, and the possibility of returning home early is enticing. He drifts off to unc
omfortable, drunk sleep in the priest’s sagging armchair and he dreams of walking through his father’s fields hunting for geese in the fall, his black Labrador retriever that died in his early adolescent years wagging his tail at his side.
Friday, a few days after Christmas, Chris is assigned to the smallest division in his department and is put on a shift schedule. The shifts are called watches, as they are known at sea, and they are divided up among four sections. Two twelve-hour day watches, then 48 hours off, two twelve-hour midnight watches and then 72 hours off. Chris goes to his site in the morning, this time in his dungaree uniform that he took the time to iron properly the night before.
The previous afternoon left him with nothing to do and no place to go. He had his hair cut so short and close that a cowlick stands up on the back of his head. He constantly licks his fingers to unsuccessfully flatten his hair.
Chris arrives at his department early in the morning to check in. He meets the division chief, Lassiter, a short and heavyset man with a double chin and glasses. He sits in the chief’s small office, a room barely big enough for a desk and two chairs.
Chris sees the sum of the chief’s career spread across the walls. There are letters of commendation, certificates of advancement, a signed letter from the President for bravery in Vietnam and many plaques indicating completed courses of training.
Chris wonders if he will ever achieve such things. He wonders if he’ll ever go to war.
The chief tells Chris about the division. They relay messages from the Atlantic Fleet headquarters to ships and submarines in the North Atlantic and those on exercises going into the Barents Sea, just by Russia, tempting the Soviet border. The job is highly classified but routine, mainly monitoring signals and making sure they’re intact and the lines of communication stay open. He will be trained on all functions of the equipment and the proper sorting of printed messages. He is permitted to read but to never reveal the contents of the messages, as the information is classified.
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