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Atomized Links: (the Weblog) theUsual Suspects: 
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the Mark StoriesSea Stories, hmm well. I have some small stories lined up and only one of them takes place on water. These are Mark stories. Mark Douglass Edmunds was my best friend in my Navy days, I only knew him first two years. The second two years I was transferred to the Pentagon, Office of Naval Operations. Mark stayed in Key West working for something called the Key West Contingency Joint Task Force. It was a Fidel thing and it didn't mean a damn thing, but oh Key West. We lost track of one another. Mark was from North Canton Ohio. Mark had a t-shirt; on the shirt was a crazed looking cartoon buzzard. The buzzard was smoking a joint. Mark always claimed that if anyone wanted to understand him they had to understand the Buzzard and the buzzard's ways. The buzzard only desired that you listen to WMMS. It was probably as reasonably good a key to Mark as any. I had the idea to have the stories span a year. By the time of the first story we had known each other for about half a year, the next two occurred roughly midway between the first and the last. All events related are from a previous century. When I first conceived of a group of short impressions, I pulled a handful of memories off the top of my head, settling on some before I had put much thought into it. Not a lot happens in these stories, but then what needs too?
ItMark liked bars, he liked package stores, he liked enlisted man's clubs. He liked the beer and whiskey he could find in such places. I wasn't a big drinker. I always figured I was just under the drinking mans weight class. Testing this served only to confirm it. Mark would head off to one or more of these places nearly every night. The squadron had just returned from a deployment on the Kitty Hawk, and was soaking up a little down time. Mark and I had only recently joined the unit and were looking for things to happen. On this particular night Mark and a few others set off for downtown Key West about eight miles down the road, the Air Station being on Boca Chica key. He left his room key with me, because unlike my room across the hall, his room had a stuffed chair and a reading lamp - this was not Navy issue furniture. Mark was aggravated at me for not going along, once he decided on a course of action he liked unanminity among those around him. I didn't care. I had a card to the base library and a book to read.Sometime around 1230 that night, Mark and his small group came noisily back. Some people are happy mellow drunks, some effusive. Mark was in the category argumentative and belligerent. "You", he shouted as soon as he laid eyes on me. "You should have been there tonight, but no, you didn't want to go, so you missed it." "It" "That's right it. We were where it was tonight, it was all happening right were we were. It was going down and we were right there." "And what was this?", I asked doubtfully, but Mark shook off the question. "No, I'm not saying. You missed it, you'll always miss it. You'll always be sitting here in some chair when it happens out there, because out there is where it is, not here!" Mark was in more than one of his ordinary bellicose moods. He was in possession of something, something that was escaping him and his ability to explain things. He didn't like this, and tried again. "You don't even understand it, so you don't even know your missing it, but I've seen it. I know its out there, I know about it, and it knows I know about it." Suddenly he was seized by a new idea. "I can show you where it was, then you'll see a little. You'll see how close it was, how near you were to it." At the time we lived on the third and top story of the BEQ (Basic Enlisted Quarters) nearest the main gate. We lived on the north side whose end faced up the Keys. So Mark dragged me down the hall to the other end. This was Florida so there were open air staircases on the ends of the building. We went out onto the landing and Mark climbed up on the railing and motioned for me to climb up as well. Kent Dotson one of Mark's roommates and a parachute rigger followed us out and unobtrusively hung onto Mark. "There, you see that blinking red light on that tower, the one with a blue light below it. Next to that another red light that isn't blinking, and just over from that there is a white light you can barely see." I could see them. I saw the blinking red one, at least, and could tell that he was indicating a neighborhood before Duval Street more around the the north end of White street. "Right there", he rushed on in a state of drunken excitement, "in the space between those lights: that's where it was." Through all this he would periodically pause and wait for me or any of the people who had been with him to attempt to doubt any part of it. No one did. I peered into the darkness of the gulf of Mexico and considered the presence of an eternal universal omphalos resting tentatively among the incidental lights of a small out-of-the-way city. Something glimpsed, for a moment, a sizeless page of possibilities folded down into a knot like an origami crane. Mark had no doubts and pointed out the spot triumphantly: "that's where it was. Tonight it was all happening. Right there, that's were you had to be. If you had been there, you'd know, you'd know everything." I was still thinking about this the next morning and tried to ask him about it at the dining hall during breakfast, but Mark had no recollection of any of it at all.
SweepersA day on the ship while at sea had a particular pattern. The basic unit was the watch: four hours long, six of them to a day. A bell rang every half hour: one through to eight bells at the end of a watch. At most of these there wound be some standard phrase said, or action directed. Much of it having to do with setting the ship for day time or nightime running - what hatches could be left open or needed to be closed. Whether the smoking lamp was "lit" or "out". All this would come over the 1MC which was the shipwide intercom. I often regret that most modern american workplace don't have a 1MC. You can't spam a 1MC.
Only one of these pronouncements required any direct action from my ordinary seaman self: the one that proclaimed: Mark, myself, and the guy from the VS squadron, were out in the passage adjacent to CVIC painting the bulkhead. Green paint from the linoleum deck to a height of 3 ft, so that it resembled a sort of wainscotting. White paint from there to the overhead. It was the second day on this task; we were up on stepladders working on a coat of the white having masked off the now dried green. We were working and grumbling, this is what sailors do. We were rated personnsel, that meant we had a particular job classification similar to what the Army or Air force would call a "spec". Painting walls was not doing aerial photo-interpretation, but that wasn't the heart of our grievance. It was the never-ending stream of officers and master chiefs who would come down the passage and feel they had to stop examine our work briefly (medium length strokes parallel to the deck lifting the brush off at the end), then with a curt but reassuring nod of their chin they would tell us "Excellent job there sailors, keep up the good work. Working in our rating we could go weeks without getting anything more substantial than a grunt out of our superiors. Well, I was very young and had the idea that people cared about difficult and skilled effort you lifted and pushed yourself to, but that anyone could paint.
Mark and I couldn't find a reason to the sudden interest and perfunctory compliments on our abilities now that we were setting about slapping an oily zinc based compound on a steel wall. We labored on the theme of our discontent as we worked on the bulkhead. Finally I told the other two "The next guy who comes by and actually says the words: "Good job men!" I'm gonna stick this paint brush in his face."
That was when the XO and some other O-level only types came by and stopped. I was in the middle on a ladder. the guy to my left froze. Mark to my right slowly reached out and grabbed my wrist, grabbed it hard and didn't let go. The XO who was a Captain had started his little paint-boy speech now he trailed off and glanced at us from one to the other. None of us said anything. The Officers looked at each. At last the XO said something like "Well Ok then" and the group went off - a little faster then they had come up. Mark let go of my wrist and I tell him: "what the hell are you doing you nearly broke my hand off."
the CastleOne difficult thing about telling these stories now, is that while I remember certain events well and in approximate detail - these are the stories I relate, often after coming to understand them as stories establishing a memory hook for their narrative line like a photo dipped in fixing solution - I find; though, that I often recall nothing really of what lies on either end of the event I remember. Such is the case here. I remember it was a Sunday, I know we were in port. I came into the CVIC of the USS Ranger at some point in the mid morning. I don't recall if I had eaten breakfast or not. No one was in the CVIC (a warren of about eight compartments about as big a two bedroom apartment where approximately thirty-five people worked) No one was there save for Mark who was in the mission planning compartment, which was a small tv studio/briefing room. I hadn't run into anyone else I knew since I got up. I imagined they were either standing a watch, still in their racks or most likely had hit the gangplank and were out someplace in town (which would have been Olongapo). Mark was hard at work. He had the daily message traffic in hand which told him where on the big metal sliding wall panels to which we had rubber cemented ONC charts of the Pacific, he should place the strip magnets which had the name of Russian ships affixed to them written out using those Denison embossers which punch white letters onto brightly colored plastic tape.I came in sat down and watched, as one would sit down and watch a tv that was turned on. After a while I said to him: "Y'know Mark, we're tied up at the quay in Subic, we don't have to plot the board when we're in port. We're off call." "I know" Mark said , and continued to trace out the intersecting lines of longitude and latitude that marked the individual position of some magnet. What he was doing was a fairly involved piece of work. It took about forty minutes to do well and right. I tried again to make him see the futility of the effort particularly on a Sunday morning in the middle of an extended in-port period, where it was unlikely anyone would ever lay eyes on the results of his labor. Additionally, Mark and I were not ships company but part of the air-wing (the suite of squadrons assigned to the aircraft carrier for that deployment.) We were only attached administratively to a ships unit through the speciality of our rating. Chief Tennyson didn't really give a rats ass about us, or any other of the TAD sailors he was in charge of. If that meant you came in for less scrutiny by turns, it also meant you couldn't buy a brownie point for trying . I pointed all this out to Mark ending with "no ones going to know or care. " "I'll know" he answered. "There are other people whose responsibility this is right know", I told him, " units at sea, fleet intelligence centers, the ready rooms of the fighter squadrons at Clark AFB or Cubi point just around the point in Subic Bay." "Maybe so", Mark said slowly as he finished the plotting, "but this ship is what the Seventh fleet is really built on for the period of this deployment. Our ability to defend everything you just mentioned depends on this ship and its planes and bombers. So the only thing that really matters is what we know. If something goes down and we have to put out to sea this afternoon, pull everybody back from liberty - scrambling back to the ship with their dicks hanging out. We'll be ready, because I'll have plotted the board. " Mark was very proud of himself now and he was finished so he stepped back to take a look at the board. "Its done and we know where all the Russians are. Probably the only two people within fifty miles of here who know all the Russians are, certainly on this Ship and this is the front line of America's defense's". Scanning the array of blue magnets and red magnets on the board, I ascertained that this was true enough and on its way toward being a description of the situation. The admiral's copy of that same message traffic probably contained pictures with all the O's and X's and in the appropriate colors, but I didn't know were the admiral was so he didn't count. I didn't like losing arguments to Mark even low key arguments though I often did. "Hey Mark" I called out, "How old are you". "nineteen", he answers. And how old am I? "Nineteen also" "Did ever read Kurt Vonnegut's book SlaughterHouse Five My memory here is a little hazy I recollect that he said 'yes' but with enough hesitation to make me think he hadn't, but wanted to hear what I had to say. "Do you remember the subtitle of that book?" Slaughterhouse Five, a fictional novel that spins out of an autobiographical instant in Vonnegut's life, has a subtitle: the Children's Crusade. "If you take any war, any army, any navy, from anywhere in history or right now on your board or whoever else keeps a big board plotted, and you crack it open - inside you will find nothing but children." Mark nodded, "I know."
Mark vs. the SudsThe period following our cruise was a very strange disquieting time. In informal Navy jargon we had just completed "our Westpac on the Ranger". Normally it would a quiet time, virtually the entire unit would cycle through leave at first, new sailors would be brought in to replace those leaving just as Mark and myself had come in a year and a half earlier to replace Chris Healy and Mark Schwartz, Later it would progress through a series of increasingly complex training cycles culminating in short "workup ops" deployments on the aircraft carrier the squadron would attached to for the next cruise. Generally this would be known even before you got off your previous ship or shortly after. The workups we did with the USS Ranger were in and around the islands of the Santa Barbara Channel. None of that happened after the Ranger Westpac. The decision had been made to junk the RA5C as obsolete and to decommission all the squadrons that flew it because there was no plane to replace it. The idea was that F-14s from existing squadrons would be rigged to perform tactical photo-reconnaisance. We decommissioned a few weeks after getting back to Key west. Most of the squadron transferred out quickly, many stuck with begging leave from their next command. We were the last Vigi squadron the others decommissioning through the spring and summer as they finished their last deployments.Those of us that were left after four weeks were scarcely noticeable in a large empty fleet hanger. We were in different quarters too, being placed in the building which had formerly held the Army unit which had manned Key West's Hawk anti-aircraft missile batteries; which had pulled up stakes and left town at some point while we were gone. There was no real work to be done by day and fewer friends to hang out with each night. Mark had gone home on leave to see his girlfriend (whom he married the next year). On the particular evening of this story, a bunch of us younger sailors too filled with ennui to even go into town decided to head over to the EM club with the idea of getting really hammered. Just as we were heading out the door, Mark arrives back from leave, with a suitcase and a seabag. I remember we all thought after a long flight from Ohio, switching planes in Miami and tooth jarring final leg on a Air Sunshine DC3 down to Key West Mark would just want to crash. No. He went to his room opened his door just wide enough to jam his luggage through. turned on his heels and headed out with us. The next hour is filled with Boilermakers and conversation forever forgotten. Somewhere around 9pm in a fit of reasonable forethought Mark decided to head back to the BEQ to do laundry. The seabag had been full of dirty clothes- his room was full of dirty clothes. I eventually peeled myself off the bar about and hour later leaving the others to close the place down. It was about a half mile across base to our BEQ, less if you cut through the athletic fields, It was a beatiful fall night some time in late October. As I walked across the softball field I saw a figure sitting alone on first base side bench. I recognized that it was Mark and went up to him. "Hey Mark, what're doing?" "I don't really know" he says, "I was walking across the field here and I stopped to look at the moon." I turned and looked up at the moon as well. It was a full moon or nearly full. Everything is painted white or bleached out in Key West (Boca Chica Key) in the daytime everything was too bright to look at. I have no solid memories of what the middle part of that base looked like, not the buildings, not the trees streets or roads. Just directions from one point to another and which buildings were next to which. Even in the moonlight the landscape seemed to glow with more light than the moon should have had, it didn't look familiar at all but it seemed quiet nice. I realized I was going to miss it. The idea of trading this charmed backwater, for someplace busier suddenly seemed the wrong way. Everyplace was going to be busier from here on, whether or not anything was really going on. For a minute or so we both just sat there on the bench and looked up at the moon and stars. Teetoring on the brink of self mesmerization I thought to ask Mark if he had finished his laundry. I had assumed he had done the wash, gotten it in a dryer and was heading back over yo the club to catch up with us. At the mention of laundry Mark pushed himself to his feet and exclaimed "Laundry!" "Mark", I said, feeling genuine surprise, this was difficult because I was numbed to no small degree at that point of the evening feeling anything sharpley was vulgar interferance , "you left the club at nine, have you been just sitting here for an hour and a half." "Well you see", he started, "after I stopped to look at the moon I couldn't remember whether I was walking across the field this way or that way; so I thought I would just sit right here until I could remember, and thats what I'm gonna do." And he sat back down I had to think about this for a moment. It didn't appear to make any sense, but I didn't want to overlook anything. On the ship - despite the fact that we looked completely different, had different regional accents, and had different last names - Mark had convinced several people that we were brothers. He would simply tell a story to address the lack of facts he had at hand. Despite the abounding implausibility of these explanations people would believe. Mark almost never played things completely straight. I don't think he thought that was something one ought to do for strangers. He had a Barney Fife impression he would slide into by degrees when he though he was around fools or people who were best kept strangers. "You were headed back to the BEQ", I said (as definitely as I could), "laundry remember." Objects at rest tend to stay at rest, but about this time the next wave of people leaving the EM club came by and after a period of checks and observations of the moon, we obeyed the dictates of the hour and followed the flowing current back to the BEQ. There is a coda to this story which I considered not going into. It's my favorite part, but its too cliched, destroys the story maims the narrative thrust. Mark did start a load of laundry when we got back, I remember him setting about it with the taking-care-of -business so stay out of my way demeonor he adopted when he didn't know what he was doing. I called it a day and went to bed, I was woken up by my roommates (Adrian Alverez, and Tim Barett) about thirty minutes later, because someting had struck them as so funny everybody on the floor had to get up. There was water covering the floor of the main hall around the laundry room door. The laundry room itself was full of soap suds up to peoples knees. Mark was in the center of it (having poured an entire box of detergent in a single wash) with a mop and bucket shouting at everyone who came near him that everything was under control and he was taking care of it. The unfortunate who was on watch that night was trying to push all the suds down the drain with a broom. I think some of the older petty officers, seasoned hands in their mid twenties, eventually broke out the firehose and washed out the whole room. I like the finish of this story not just because it contains the implicit practical advice not to mix laundry and alcohol, which is too often tragically ignored, but also because of the ground truth stupidity of the moment.
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