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Da Nang – 1967
Hank looked over the railing. He’d just smoked half a joint after having swallowed small, measured amounts of Dexedrine and Valium, so he was hypno- tized by the scene: oil slicks, left behind by ships like his, created a constantly shifting color palette just beyond the shoreline. Small, wiry Vietnamese chil- dren used casket-sized Styrofoam casings in order to float on the gentle surf. It took Hank a few seconds to realize what these casings were: they’d been used to cushion the stowed bombs, big ones, during the Ames Victory’s trip across the Pacific.
Before the Ames Victory had left San Francisco, up- stairs neighbor Theresa had told Hank to look up
her friend Phil, a photojournalist in the war zone. So he’d left a message for Phil at the Da Nang Press Club, where a wire service reporter told him, “Phil? Prob- ably in the boonies.” And now he had shown up at the Ames Victory, at the top of the gangway.
Phil, also in his 20s, wore U.S. Army camouflage fa- tigues, but sported an Australian bush hat, cocked at a jaunty angle, signaling he was a civilian. He was short, compact, energetic, wore glasses, with a thin nose that came straight down from his forehead, eyes close together, giving him a rat-like look.
They shook hands.
“So you’re a friend of Theresa’s,” Phil said. “I call her Big Red.”
“Tall, maroon hair. Yup. Big Red. She was my old lady for a couple of weeks.”
“She was my old lady for a couple of weeks too.”
“Homosexuality once removed,” Hank said.
“What?”
“That’s what Leslie Fiedler calls it. Us, having had the same old lady.”
Phil laughed uncomfortably. He had a nervous, in- tense manner and asked to see the bridge, the engine room, even the fo’c’sle Hank shared with his two watch-partners. Phil said he’d worked on merchant ships before becoming a photojournalist and pep- pered Hank with questions. Did Hank like working on ships? How did he feel about being on a ship full of
napalm and other bombs?
Hank shrugged it off. “You must know,” he said. “You know the joke about ammo ships: If anything hap- pens on this ship, she ain’t going down. Uh-uh. She’s going straight up.”
“Yeah, right,” Phil said. “Shit happens. But it’s not like going into battle, right?”
Hank agreed: definitely not like going into battle. He said the tough part about working on ships was the solitude, the isolation: on lookout on the bow at night, scanning the sea for lights, standing by at 3:00 am in the messroom, or working alone all day on deck, removing rust or painting. He said that life at sea had taught him how to be alone.
“Yeah,” Phil said, looking up at the rigging. “Is that useful?”
“Well, it’s what we really are, all the time, isn’t it? Even when we’re with others?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Hank said he’d memorized lots of poems, mostly by W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. That way, he said, when he was alone, he had “good company.”
“Far out.”
The two men left the ship, went down the gangway to the pier, and walked through a U.S. Army depot where there were hundreds of broken tanks, LSTs, amphibious craft and other large military machines, kept there so they could be cannibalized for parts. At the end of this area, Hank pointed out a small wire- mesh trashcan that had a sign on it: Please Help Keep Vietnam Clean. The trashcan was empty.
“Americans... we’re good at unconscious irony,” Hank said. Phil didn’t react. It was hard to tell if he’d even heard the remark.
11
Killing the Nice Jewish Boy
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