Excerpt from Book:
Student in the Underworld
A novel
By Irving Warner
Taylor:
a)
“We think we are straight in our justice,
No anger from us against those
Who hold out pure hands.”
312-314
The Eumenides, Aeschylus
1.
Student Patterson looked under
his bunk for Ensign Freemont in their so-called ‘stateroom’. It was the
size of a large pizza oven with no shelves. Their space was the smallest
human abode on the
U.S.S. Refrigerator Transport 125-A
named after no one, launched prematurely—before anyone thought to name
it. Or cared to?
Freemont hid there—butt out, face towards bulkhead buried in a
pillow. If only Fremont’s situation were simple such as
mal de mer
rather than rank cowardice.
“Freemont, the Captain said he would have you shot if you abandon
your post again.”
“My father is Secretary of the Navy. They wouldn’t dare. I hate
high seas. I’m scared, Student. All we’re doing is packing prime rib and
ice cream for the black market in Saigon. I’m in the Skull and Cross
Bone Society. I was president of my class at Yale. I shouldn’t be here.”
Student stood, yanked the kink out of his back—braced himself as
the next 50 footer swept under the “Bugly”, short for Butt Ugly, the sly
nickname the 40 man crew had for their ship. It is the spring of 1968,
and soon all this sea faring nonsense will be over for him.
He went forward 25 feet to the bridge. The helmsmen and
quartermaster’s mate looked at him—both treating themselves to a smirk.
They loved cowardice in officers.
A blue-green monstrosity
parented by seawater and doom—one in a succession of six or seven
thousand—swept the entire 350 foot length of the “Bugly”. Southern seas
poured into the gaping hole where the 2.5 inch deck canon stood before
being ripped out.
“You think she’ll sink with that hole in her, Lieutenant?”
“No. The watertight doors are double there.”
“We’re sure as hell heavy in the bow. We might founder. Where is
Ensign Fremont, Lieutenant?”
They each mimed concerned glances—but if foundering were
possible, the rat-bastards would be fighting each other over the only
lifeboat not caved in or rotted out. Best to keep his officer-distance
and not answer.
In fact, like anyone on the
ship, the two carrion eating foul knew where Fremont was. They knew
where
everyone
was in rough seas. They were, with the exception of Lieutenant Anderson,
at their post mostly drunk, stoned or both, or in their bunk hanging on.
Lieutenant Anderson,
recently of Annapolis, Maryland, was the senior lieutenant on the
“Bugly” the day Student reported for duty in San Francisco. Student had
eleven months left of his three-year active duty. Anderson was full of
navy acronyms:
“I’m the OD, you’re the JOD and the little shit being carried
across the dock in a wheelbarrow is the ExO, and the guy supervising the
swabies pushing the wheelbarrow is our God-Don’t-You-Know-It captain.”
Student’s presence on the Bugly was a bumper-harvest coincidence
of history and dumb chance.
He originally signed up in the Navy ROTC program in 1960-- years
before Southeast Asia melted into America’s tar baby. He had gotten two
degrees out of the deal, and now he had nearly served all his years of
active duty, ‘Glory Be to His Wisdom’, as they said at his church in
Iowa.
The concluding twelve months was sea duty. He had become bored
with teaching English at an obscure base. He had, to the horror of his
fiancé and colleagues at the easy-does-it navy base in
Michigan--volunteered for this experience.
He went from bored on land to bored at sea—on a freezer ship
shuttling monotonously between San Francisco and the Mekong Delta,
downriver from notorious Saigon.
This was the western-leg of his last trip. He did not want to be
an OD, a JOD—or any other military acronym for the rest of his life.
This was the much planned point where he would spend the remainder of
his days quietly normal, contented and modestly provided as a Ph.D. in
English might allow. He and Debbie would settle into a mid-western
town’s college community, raise their family and take in literary
readings by wandering artists from far flung locales.
All would move towards completion when he reported directly to
graduate school in San Francisco after sea duty. Debbie would join him
there; they would joyfully wed after a three-year engagement. This was
the halfway point to normalcy. At the completion of his Ph.D. Debbie
looked forward to their permanent home with name-brand zeal.
“And
our home will have Edgington Dutch Doors, Stu. I just love Dutch Doors
with the rich old wood tones.”
Debbie had been surveying diverse publications on house design
since high school and Student accordingly admired her for it.
With a societal stamp-of-approval-on-the-buttocks in three years,
they would move back possibly to their home state of Iowa, savor the
good life with modesty and watchful moderation.
It just wasn’t to be.
Seers of Future Present
(Elder Men and Women dressed in flowing robes and wearing sandals)
Oh Student, you wretched man, your hopes and dreams are all for nothing.
Your future has turned into a featureless plain of desiccated cow flops.
True, Debbie began her teaching credential at the University of
Wisconsin when you began your year of sea duty. She also discovered sex
and radical politics, all in a single package beginning with a chap
named Sean. He saw her coming with corn growing out of her ears, and she
was a God-send for him and as it developed quite a few others.
And that is not all: Poor man, you are about to start one of the most
catastrophically and colossally discombobulated graduate programs in the
history of American Collegiate education. If you ever get a Ph.D. it
will be a miracle. We are the only chance you have, and frankly, we
aren’t optimistic.