Grand Theft Pusher Boat

OCD as my ally is beginning to falter.  Bent over my keyboard day after day, the house is a shambles of benign neglect.  I’m working working working with no time to pick up and clean.

My lighter is depleted of propane. Desperation leaps to the fore. I can’t fire my cig with the sparks of the striker.  I rummage about the cluttered desk and the auxiliary credenza for the reserve lighter…

Oh…that was the reserve lighter.

I reluctantly lurch up from the Captain’s Chair to pursue my quest.  Feeling along the mantelpiece in the scant light of daybreak, I notice the grandkids’ photos are peeling away from their frames.  I clumsily knock one to the hearth.  I’ll pick that up later.

Empty-handed still, an unlit fag drooping from my lips, I hurry to my nightstand in the far back corner of the bedroom.  Pulling open the top drawer, I study my choices.  I choose a blue Bic over a red one (Decisions, decisions!) and spy an unopened pack of cigarettes in there: another back-up reserve.

It was placed there donkey’s years ago, just in case I depleted the two full cartons in my office closet, before dashing out to the Class VI, to replenish my supply before it’s too late.  The absurdity of all this hoarding is lost to my companion nico-addiction.  The need to never-be-without overcomes the logic of common sense.

Half-empty packs lay strewn about the house, the garage, the truck.  I never hid this many bottles when I was an active drunk!

Hastily pouring the next java flow, I return to the keyboard, anxious to continue.  I close my eyes and construct an image of Ed Sullivan, resplendent in his sharkskin suit; his arms crossed demurely across his chest, his hands tucked in his armpits; and implore my muse’s favor, to seek the right words, to shock the reader to attention.

Leave my housekeeper, due this very morrow, to deal with the domestic mess: I’m working here…  And now, back to the Shew:

Happily entrenched in my new job as Boathouse Yeoman, I arrive every morning before sunrise, to make the coffee and set matters to order, before the lifers come clumping into the Boathouse to blearily pour their first life-restoring cup of mud.  I am thoroughly secure in the good graces of CBM Rodriguez by this time.  He is pleased with my work, and the assurance of his prudent choice.

Bobby Oertling is there, my apprenticeship beholding to him.  We have quickly gone from co-workers to fast friends, enjoying the banter of two quick wits and the mutual admiration of our attention to duty.  Father Rodriguez beams from his desk at his two best boys getting the job done, all the while entertaining the Boathouse Pirates with our laughter and good cheer.

The Chief was quite aware that both of us were stoners; but our nightly indiscretions came as no surprise to him.  Our daytime personas permitted him to turn a blind eye with impunity all round.

Bobby never spoke of his first tour on the fast boats of Zumwalt’s Brown Water Navy--the Riverine Force, down in the writhing snake of inland waterways that make up the Mekong Delta.  Even while still in-country, we only disclosed where we were; never what we did.  That vow of silence was to become our lifetime credo; to the shame and soul destruction of us all.

I was completely unaware of his exploits, until the day Rambo pinned a Bronze Star on his chest, citing his bravery under duress in the midst of one great big nasty firefight, during the Tet Offensive of 1968.

Those running skirmishes on water were vividly portrayed in Apocalypse Now: the boy calling himself Mr. Clean, from some Bronx shithole, taking one in the chest and dying on the deck of his PBR, in a pool of his own blood, even before the guns went silent.

Remember too, the poignant close to that terrible scene: of the Chief of the Boat tenderly holding the bloody limp body close to his; openly weeping now, for the jiving wise-assed kid that he had secretly loved…and coveted.

The movie gave me the opportunity to ride in Bobby’s flotilla, albeit vicariously, to sense the emotions of close quarter combat.  The movie also gave me insight into my own experiences, to be revealed further on, in another monograph.

(I am not throwing out teasers to whet your appetite.  I am trying to prepare you, gentle readers, to share memories that you probably will not enjoy reading; any more than I will enjoy the telling of them).  Nuff said.  Now back to the Boathouse:

The nine guys re-assigned with me had also settled down to the daily grind of work details.  Most of them relieved themselves of days’ work done by adjourning nightly to the enlisted mens’ Crow’s Nest at Tien Sha.  Few of those guys were stoners—at least, not to the extent of the Boathouse Pirates.  They sat in the humidity of Viet Nam nights, drinking beer out of the can, until depleting their paychecks or passing out…or both.  I saw this phenomena repeat itself with every incoming group, usually beginning sometime around their third week; and lasting until they took the bus up to Freedom Hill.

Some of them were acolytes of the lifer caste; little drunks-in-waiting to their soused senior brethren.  Ever eager to assume the mantle of a higher rank,  they clung tenaciously with their tongues affixed to the rear ends of those who would stand up for them; scaling the ladder of banal conventionality, to reach the ultimate reward of skatin’ duty that was surely just beyond a red-eyed line of sight.

This is the telling of one such soul.  For convenience, his name here is Johnny.  I can’t recall his real name; and his unshorn head with a week’s worth of stubble is just a blur to me now; there were so many just like him.  Standing idle with a chipping hammer held still by his side, I can barely spot him out on a fuel barge, sucking up to Dickhead with all the alacrity of his veiled intent.  I can still smell the reek of booze on him at morning muster, if he wasn’t standing too close to Dickhead.

One night, after tanking up at the Crow’s Nest and catching the cattle car back up to the causeway, he clumped past the Boathouse night crew, who were inattentive to the steady stream of inebriation on parade.

Somehow, he managed to fire up one of the spare pusher boats and took her out in the harbor.  This in itself was no cause for alarm.  Pusher boats on 24 hour duty (like the modern fireman, they worked 24 on, 48 off) routinely went out in the night, the time on their watch no bar to the arrival of ships at Deep Water Piers.

Johnny’s motive for Grand Theft Pusher Boat was never learned.  The transcript of the Captain’s Mast was never leaked; and Johnny wouldn’t say.  Perhaps he was looking to pick up a whore at Stone Elephant; maybe he was just out taking a joy ride.  Regardless, what he did do was beach the boat on a sand bar just off the beach from a class C village.

He waded ashore, and with the nine-lives fortune of a drunk, he crashed through the village unharmed and wandered out to Marble Mountain Road, where the Four-Team picked him up. (The Four-Teams were multi force patrols on the roads of Da Nang.  Usually, they were made up of a Shore Patrolman, an Army M.P, an ARVN M.P, and a Korean Marine)

The next morning, Johnny sleeping it off in the brig; the news of the prior night’s disaster reached the Boathouse.  It probably trickled down through the chain of command to its destination of the responsible non-com, CBM Rodriguez.

We stood at muster that morning, with Scott intoning the order of the day.  The Old Man came wandering out on the causeway, with his brown Lucite coffee cup in hand.  While Scott droned on in his high nasal pitch, our thirty sets of eyes followed the Chief, as he walked to and fro; the news sinking in and his internal pot rising to boil.

Suddenly, with a ‘God Damn It!” at the top of his lungs, he threw his cup down on the causeway, reducing it to shards.  With a scowl that brooked no intervention at that exact moment, he stormed back in to the Boathouse.

Scott watched him disappear, and like the competent subordinate that he was, turned to us and called for volunteers to form a work party; to retrieve the boat from the beach and tow it back, if it proved unable to get under way on its own.

My hand and Bobby’s immediately shot up.  Scott picked the two of us, no other ratings being required.  EN-1 Byrd pointed to a boat already fueled and engines fired for their morning warm-up.  A party of five, led by Scott climbed aboard, cast off and headed for the beached vessel, barely visible from the causeway.

When we had approached to the safe draft of our boat, Scott eased her into neutral, and Oertling and I jumped in the water holding the ends of two nylon lines.  The water came to our chests and the stranded pusher boat was still 100 yards inward towards the shore.  At first it was a struggle to pull the lines behind us and wade in water that deep.  Halfway there, the water came to our knees and the going became easy as we closed on the stern.

We were astounded at how far in Johnny had driven his stolen vessel.  The only thing we could figure was that he had both throttles wide open and the boat churned sandbar until it came to full stop.  He must have been so out of it, he was unable to assess his peril.  Or maybe he was just trying to get close in, so he could traipse into a class C village and see if there were any cute gooks for sale.

Securing the loops on the stanchions, Bobby tried to start the engines.  No go; dead in the water.  We waved to Scott a prearranged signal (the batteries were dead, so we couldn’t use the on-board radio).  Scott shoved his throttle arms forward and the tow boat’s twin 671’s roared to life, churning up a maelstrom of sand and backwash as they did.  After three stop and jerk motions, the beached pusher boat broke with the sand bar and began its return to Service Craft.

A week later, Johnny was back for muster, something of a hero now to the lifers, for his Holden Caulfield hijinks.  Nothing was learned of his fate at Captains Mast. No demotion: E-3 was bottom rank in-country for land-based sailors.  No garnishment of wages: his paltry pay couldn’t cover the damages in years of payment.  No discharge, general or otherwise.  No transfer back to the Fleet: in pre-Vietnamization, every warm body was precious.

Soon, the idle gossip died the death of the irrelevant and life sailed on for the boys of Service Craft.

If Johnny should ever happen to read this yarn, I am positive he would recognize himself in the notoriety of the escapade.  If he does, I just want to say, every harm intended, you bonehead!  On the other hand, maybe he struck a miracle deal with God: sobered up, pulled his weight, ascended the ranks to raves of his outstanding service, retired with honors, and continues doing acts of selfless servitude to this very day.

Might…(Wait for it!)…but I kinda fuckin’ doubt it!!