Mayport (Lughnasa 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)
Growing up, I was always interested in seeing places few
other people had seen. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe because of the nature of
my father’s work on nuclear warheads that he couldn’t talk much about. Maybe
because that work called him away to places I’d never heard of, places he
seemed to enjoy more than being with his family. Strange how the mind turns
something negative into something romantic.
That’s how I came to be aboard the USS Leyte Gulf docked in
Mayport the summer the first Gulf War started. I’d volunteered go to sea to
support testing of the prototype communication system my company had designed.
Which meant getting the equipment up and running before the ship sailed to Norfolk
a few weeks later.
By the time I arrived, two double racks of electronic
equipment had been installed in a shelter that was bolted to the deck of the
cruiser, between a pair of Phalanx anti-missile defense guns, beside the
forward smokestacks just behind the bridge. Our job was to get it at least
minimally operational and talking to the high-power amplifier and the
directional antenna up on the mast. To do that, we needed logistical support
from the ship’s communications section.
High summer had officially kicked off in north Florida .
The weather was steamy, hot and humid. Doubly so in the shipyard where the
concrete and steel soaked up the sun then radiated that stored energy deep into
the night. The kind of weather where tempers are prone to flare.
After dropping off my stuff at the hotel and picking up a
badge at base security, I turned up at the ship. We’d been briefed at the
office by a former sailor on Navy protocol and a few things to expect. Only
some of which prepared us for the world we, as civilians, were about to enter.
After a brief tour of the ship and the routes from the pier
to and from our shelter, I remember being told to grab some dinner before we
got started. Other priorities and a compressed schedule dictated we do most of
our work at night.
Sometime after dark, the guy I was working with, my former
boss, needed to talk to an NCO in the communications section about something we
needed. I don’t remember if it was about power, chilled water or getting our
equipment’s crypto loaded with the new day’s key. I hadn’t been down there yet so it seemed
like a good opportunity for him to show me where it was.
The Leyte Gulf is over five hundred
feet long and fifty-five feet wide with a crew of roughly four hundred.
Somewhere in the maze of narrow corridors and steep stairs linking its decks,
we got turned around. One corridor was blocked off as the crew prepared to redo
the chipped paint flooring.
Eventually, we exited to the bow and came back toward the
communications section from the other direction. As I said, it was dark
outside. Most of the corridors were dimly lit, though not quite so bad as a
darkened ship I would learn later. As we drew closer to our goal, the
overpowering scent of noxious, industrial chemicals from the chipped paint
flooring grew stronger and more disorienting.
Finally, we came to a compartment that was roped off with
yellow plastic tape like you see at a crime scene. Emanating from the
compartment was the overwhelming odor of the chemical solvent they used to
dissolve the chipped paint before they relaid it. By now, I was dizzy and had
trouble making my eyes focus straight.
Peering inside from the threshold of the doorway, I saw a
compartment about the size of our living room and dining room. Old style,
chunky, Government Issue steel desks were arrayed throughout with steel
bookcases stocked with black two- and three-inch binders interspersed between.
All the furniture was painted a uniform gun-metal gray, nearly
indistinguishable from the walls and ceilings. The only color was the chipped
paint flooring, a mottled mix of primary blue and white.
The compartment was occupied by half a dozen sailors dressed
in blue work uniforms and one lieutenant in khakis, probably a JG. None of them
looked older than twenty-three. Each squatted atop one of the desks. All the
chairs had been removed when the new, still setting floor had been relaid. But
that inconvenience didn’t mean these men could stop working.
My coworker called to the NCO we needed to coordinate with,
a petty officer first class I think. The man hopped from desktop to desktop
until he reached the door, the same way as when a group of kids declared the
floor had turned to lava. Even as he spoke with us, he kept a sharp eye on the
other sailors in the compartment, like a veteran elementary school teacher who
expected trouble as soon as his back was turned. The lieutenant ignored us and
everyone else as if living in his own little world where none of us existed.
Midway through our conversation with our contact, the
lieutenant asked one of the other sailors in the compartment to pass him a
notebook. Immediately, our contact turned upon that sailor.
“HAND the notebook to the lieutenant,” he instructed with an
iron glare as if addressing an incorrigible child, “DON’T throw it.”
Thinking he had made himself clear, the NCO turned his
attention back to us. I watched as the grinning sailor, probably all of
nineteen, picked up the black notebook in question and swung it with a motion
like he was warming up for a throw. The lieutenant held out his arms,
apparently overriding the NCO’s instructions.
The motion must have caught the NCO’s attention. He broke
off our conversation mid-word and turned upon his insubordinate ward just as
the notebook arced through the air. The kid’s lob was good, hitting the lieutenant
squarely on the hands. But the lieutenant apparently had concentrated more on
his studies in high school than on baseball or football. He fumbled the catch,
swatting the notebook up before clipping it with another hand in a failed
recovery and finally knocking it squarely onto the still damp floor where it
landed with a squishy thump.
The NCO’s reaction came almost faster than the speed of
light. “What the HELL did I just tell you?”
He followed it up with a blistering stream of invective
laced with profanity the likes of which I hadn’t heard since the first time my
mother tore apart my sister’s room by throwing everything she owned into the
center of the floor as a lesson on neatness.
My eyes grew wide. I flashed back hard. I was scared and I wasn’t
the target of this man’s ire. I exchanged a look with my coworker. We both
froze. Neither of us knew quite what to do.
The lieutenant, however, carried on like nothing had
happened, back in his own little world. Squatting lower on his desk, he reached
down and retrieved the notebook, wiped off its cover, then opened it and set
about continuing his work, completely oblivious.
Suddenly, like a parent remembering his misbehaving child
was out in front of company, the NCO turned to us, as composed as a judge, and
asked conversationally without a trace of annoyance, “You gentlemen are up in
the shelter on the O4, right?”
It was like someone had thrown a switch. I think that scared
me more. We nodded our heads uncertainly. Between the mind altering nature of
the chemicals, the men eerily squatting on their desks as if it were normal and
the NCO’s sudden on-then-off reaction, we felt as though we’d entered an
episode of the Twilight Zone.
“Someone will come find you in a few minutes to address what
you need,” he added. And with that he quietly closed the door, only to resume
his screaming the instant it snicked shut. Dismissed, we walked away in a daze,
uncertain what we had just witnessed. We could still hear him yelling at the
kid from behind the door three corners away.
Welcome to the Navy, son. Never Again Volunteer Yourself.
That made quite the first impression. But it did prepare me for the reality of
live at sea.
For the past two months, that’s the world I’ve found myself
in, unexpectedly and unrelentingly surreal. Like falling down a rabbit hole
where white turns to black, where up means down. Where men squat on their desks
to work and mothers abandon their daughters as disruptions. Where mimsy were
the borogoves, and the vorpal blade goes snicker-snack. And I’m desperately
trying to cling to the vision of that lieutenant as I try to carry on my
writing despite the grim absurdity that surrounds me.
