Puzzle – Chaser Piece
by
Jansen Estrup
I pick up the book I originally wrote to explain it all, one called War Stories for My Grandchildren, and show myself, my monitor, the cover.
“It illustrates the powerful hold emotions can gain over our memories.” I say to my inquisitor, the part of me which fancies itself a puzzle solver.
I'd been a Navy Chaser then, nearly a week stranded in New England by bad weather. My two mates and I were finally seated in a drafty Goonie Bird, waiting to take off.
My monitor grunts and wants me to read the passages aloud. I resent him … always have, but open the book to the story called 1965 Chaser and find the page.
I read:
Twenty minutes later, pistol belts dangling off our shoulders, we climbed aboard the still idling aircraft and grinned at each other's grubby appearance. None of us had shaved for nearly a week. Our whites were wrinkled and dingy with New England's best airborne dust and muck. Our shoes hadn't seen any polish or a buffing cloth and we smelled so bad even over the leaking hydraulic fluid and fuel that the plane captain wrinkled his nose at us and fled forward. We didn't care. We were going home, at least to a place we could eat, sleep and find a change of clothing. We gave a Bronx-cheer as the R4D began taxiing … and then we felt it brake and stop.
The plane captain opened up the cargo door and helped a tall commander up. He reached down and assisted his boss, a four-striper, aboard. Immaculately dressed, he glared at us as he found a bucket seat.
The door almost closed, then reopened.
This time three civilians came in, one of them immediately making us all aware that he worked on Congressman So-and-so's staff. Then we waited while the congressman himself arrived with several others in tow, at least two of them GS-16s with 'urgent business' in Washington over the weekend, and a darling secretary who seemed thrilled to be part of the adventure. The bird was filling up fast by the time three junior officers and a couple of retirees got settled and there seemed to be more coming.
At this point the first one to crash our party, the tall commander, took steps to impress his boss (as I took the captain to be), or maybe it was the secretary. He stood up and speared us with a quick dark glare as he marched up to the cockpit. We could hear his authoritative voice demanding to speak to the pilot.
An officer in a flight suit came out, a lieutenant commander if I saw his rank correctly, and they spoke briefly, hotly. Looking pleased with himself, the senior of the two officers returned to his seat and graced us with one more glare.
“Shit,” I thought. We were going to be bumped off the flight.
The co-pilot ducked back into the flight deck, but just a moment later he was back. “May I have your attention, please,” he announced loudly, so he could be heard over the idling engines. “The aircraft commander has asked me to relay this message to all passengers --- If he hears any more complaints about the armed enlisted men on board, he will clear the aircraft. This flight was specifically originated to collect them and their gear, and we are under no obligation to carry passengers --- anyone wishing to disembark should do so now.”
He glanced around the plane, his eyes eventually stopping at the commander, who seemed bound to keep on embarrassing himself.
“Who is the pilot of this plane?” he leaped up and bellowed. He already had his notebook out, his pen poised to note the man's name, rank, organization and manner of career suicide.
The co-pilot smiled. “Chief Petty Officer Montrose Milton is the aircraft commander,” he said, and arched an eyebrow.
The commander put his pen in his pocket, folded his notepad and sat down without a word.
“I thought so,” the co-pilot said. “Anything else?”
There wasn't and he went back forward. A few moments later the engines were revving and we were racing down the runway.
I was astonished. Which of those revelations had been the most stunning? I knew the Navy had enlisted pilots during WWII but had no idea they were still around. Was it that, or seeing how powerful a chief petty officer might become, how much no-nonsense respect had seemed automatic and unquestioned.
This little bit of theatre had been very good, at least for my frame were of mind. We were going back to Norfolk! On the other hand, maybe it was knowing that the plane had been sent especially for us, that someone had realized we were lost up north and come to get us. I don't know how I would have reacted had I known that the flight had been scheduled not so much for us, but for me.
Either way, I decided that if I was going to stay in the Navy it was going to be as a Chief Petty Officer. Now all I needed was a career path … a permanent command and a job.
“So, that's an interesting tidbit.” My monitor observes. “But what has it got to do with you, really?”
I start to answer, but suddenly I don't know anymore. “It seems weak, doesn't it. I don't know. For years … for decades it seemed like such a powerful motivation.”
“Okay, so what happened next?”
The flight was uneventful.
For once my ears cleared easily and after all the military and civilian brass had departed the plane we brig chasers climbed down to find a staff car waiting for us. What the hey?
Back a X Barracks Squire Coontz was strangely subdued. No “'bout time you goldbricks got back' or 'I'll be damned, its Hector Erector!'” Not even a simple “Thought I told that workin' party to clean this place up.”
Instead, with unusual sensitivity, he said, “Guess what, Dumb Ass. You got some orders. Tin can out of Dago. Its deploying to Veet Nam next month. You'll be checkin' out today.” He handed me a thick envelope. It was sealed. “You'll want to get shaved and a shower first, and,” he waved disdainfully at my uniform, “somethin' clean to wear. Better give me your piece and stuff now.”
“Okay,” I said, and shoved it all through the opening onto his desk. I was in a hurry now. Checking out was a ridiculous process. I'd have to get signatures from every branch of the Base Library, the Gym, Recreation Center, Mess Hall, Dispensary, the Dispersing Officer, Supply … and … who knew what else. I'd seen the form. It was a page and a half long.
As I started for my locker, he said, “There's something else. Navy Relief and Red Cross have been trying to see you for a couple of days. Something about your father. You'll be going on emergency leave. There's a flight to Jacksonville in two hours. We'll take care of the usual checkout.”
And that was it. After six months of grinding immobility, suddenly everything came loose, like a rock slide. There was a tense flight. A train ride and taxi fare got me to within a few blocks of the place I'd been having breakfast six months before. I left my seabag in the lobby of the Veteran's Memorial Hospital, a vast five storied building overlooking the Manatee River. The elevator took me to the top floor and as I hurried down a long hallway I marvelled that the setting sun provided so much light. It reflected everywhere off the polished floor and white walls. Had my father had that in mind, twenty years before when he helped design this wing?
I found the family standing around his bed. Most of them greeted me warily, but my wife gave me a welcoming smile and hug. She whispered, “There's no hope this time.”
Pop looked skeletal, dead already. Everything was shutting down. Everytime they checked something else was diagnosed. Leukemia, blood poisoning, diabetes, gangrene …
Suddenly he opened his (milky) eyes and looked at me. His voice was strong. “Stay out of Cuba, Pete!” he said clearly.
I looked at Pete, my brother, who was standing at the head of the bed near the night stand. He shook his head. I looked back at my father but he had already closed his eyes and would never open them again. Those were the last words he uttered.
A nurse and a hospital administrator came into the room, both of them carrying the tools of their trade, a clipboard full of forms.
And soon it became clear to me why my mother had been so frantic to have me home. Rebellious against almost everything for most of her life, when it came to family she seemed unable to break the most trival more.
I was needed so urgently, in her mind, because as oldest male, I was now head of the family … and it was my job to decide whether my father should die in this hospital room, flooded morning and dusk by sunlight, or back at the office he maintained at the front of the main house he had converted many years before from an old garage. In the years since he and my mother had so openly despised each other, he had been relegated to that small space.
He slept there admidst his lifetime of books and plans, drawings, blueprints and photographs of his ships and buildings, launching pads at Canavaral, of himself as a young sporting man in a mackinaw and heavy boots, a hunting rifle on his shoulder and snow fields vast as the Arctic behind him. And prominiently displayed there was a dusty old model of a bridge made of matchsticks and glue.
“We'll take him home,” I told the administrator.
Pop died there a couple of nights later, alone amongst the things he cared most about.
“So what,” my monitor asks, “is new. This is what you wrote 20 years ago when you were first trying to solve this puzzle.”
As if I'd had a uereka moment, I pounce, “Yeh, but back then the story ended when I vowed to be a Navy chief. The other part got lost … forgotten.”
“Forgotten? You mean like accidentally? Or on purpose … repressed?”
I don't answer.
“It was a powerful vow. What happened next?”
I remember. “The next morning we packed up the little car and drove across country, to San Diego … and I went to war.”
“So what happened to your father?”
I don't want to remember.
“So what happened to your father?”
I don't want to answer, but I say, “I don't know … I didn't know for a long time … I still don't know.” And way off, down the decades, I hear a child whining, “It wasn't my fault.”
There is silence in my head for a time and I dread that next sharp querry. But when it comes it is soft, generous, even friendly.
“Don't you think, after all of these years, these generations, I should have a name? 'Monitor' is awfully impersonal … disrespectul, even.”
I don't want to answer … not yet. I drop this piece of the puzzle back in the box as if it is suddenly hot, or vibrant.
