So, I was just reading McSweeney's list of thirteen writing prompts, and had the most fabulous metablog idea -- a summer fiction writing contest. So, here it is.
The rules:
1. Write whatever you want. Short story, novel, play, epic poem, whatever.
2. It must be your original work. However, parodies of other works are acceptable. Just don't plagiarize. And if you do "borrow", remember to cite your sources.
3. More than one submission is allowed. (If you have time for this, let me know how you managed.)
4. You get bonus points for using one of McSweeney's ideas or for filling in the missing portions of Snoopy's novel.
5. All submissions are due on or before midnight EDT on June 17, and can be sent to me by email, my feedback button, or by posting the full text or a link as a comment to this post.
6. If there are more than 10 submissions, the top 10 will be chosen by me and my dad. (He doesn't know I'm volunteering him for this, but he'll be visiting that weekend.) Yes, I know this is completely subjective.
7. Vote beginning Sunday June 18 to determine which of the top 10 is the best.
8. The winner will be announced on June 25, and will be published on the blog. The winner will also receive a coveted "prize to be named later" -- which is likely to include something from my desk -- plus copies of my two favorite Calvin and Hobbes comic strips.
4 comments:
"Uncontrollable Sobbing"
It’s been ten hours. My father has been sleeping for ten hours.
This morning the day nurse tried to give him skim milk. He refused to drink it. “Once you get used to drinking skim milk, you’re screwed for life. You can begin to feel two-percent clotting viscous in your throat. Syrup! No. Tar!
As soon as you accept skim milk, whole milk becomes cream, cream spins into butter, the spectrum shifts, and you’re screwed for life.”
My father is dying here in room 1717 of Easton Hospital, and, unless he wakes up soon, he’s going to leave behind a legacy of milk.
Last words are important in my family. Just ask my little brother. Our ninety-one-year old grandmother died of Alzheimer’s when my mother was six months pregnant. In that Allegheny hospital room twenty years ago, my mother had the presence of mind to ask Grandma’s opinion on baby names. Three months later, Waffle was born.
Now, my father is in a similar hospital room and my mother, my sister Beth, Waffle, and I are taking turns monitoring him. Waiting for his last words. At eight O’clock this morning he gave his milk diatribe, and then took a morning nap. The silent black analog clock in his room reads six fourteen. He has yet to wake up.
Beth and Waffle are in the cafeteria. I am not hungry. My mother is at home, sleeping. She stays here from ten to six, overnight. Watching. Waiting. Listening. There is one slippery orange vinyl chair in this room, but my mother doesn’t sit in it. She paces until she can’t pace anymore, and then she crawls into the adjustable bed with my father’s hairless, cancer-riddled body. His future corpse. My mother spoons with yellow death from one to six AM, never sleeping, ever.
Although, I can’t see my father move with breath, I can hear his respirator and his heart monitor emit steady tandem pulses. For the time being, he is alive, and Carmen, the nurse, says he needs the rest, and that’s the only important thing. Right?
But Jesus, why did he have to talk about dairy products? He could die in his sleep and leave us with nothing but milk. How could he do that to Mom? How could he do that to me? I cannot believe I put my life on hold and flew back to Pennsylvania for milk.
It will not end like this. My father will wake up when Beth and Waffle get back from dinner. We’ll manage to have a deeply profound conversation in between fits of hacking (Dad’s) and weeping (ours). The milk will become moot; nobody cares about next-to-last words in our family.
Would it be wrong if I make something up? Would it be so bad to tell Beth and Waffle that Dad awoke briefly and said something sweet or strong or useful? I could say that Dad said he loves us more than anything, or that he’s not afraid to die because he knows we’ll all be okay without him. I could say that he told me to turn on the heater until I find a gas station, if my engine ever starts to overheat. Anything would be better than the skim-milk spectrum shift.
I sit in the slippery orange chair, listening to my father’s electronic pulse. His starched sheets are almost shiny. I can’t tell if the shine is from overuse or a low thread count. Maybe both. The metal venetian blinds start to move, the air conditioning must have turned on. The comfortable chair is growing uncomfortable, but I don’t move. If I move, a spell will be broken.
The cancer of silence is in this room. It has grown unchecked since 8 O’clock this morning, and will soon metastasize. The life-support percussion is merely keeping it at bay. Until he wakes -until he speaks, nothing will make the silence go into remission.
I suppose it could be worse. My father is a mathematician, a former professor of Calculus and Trigonometry. He knows pi out to over a hundred decimal places. Please, God, don’t let my father’s last words be three point one four one five nine whatever. I don’t think I’d be able to handle that.
I watch my father sleep. The silent analog clock reads six-thirty three. Heavy footsteps in the hall- I shift my attention to the door. The door is made out of heavy wood and there’s a thin rectangular window set above the chrome knob, which is technically a lever, but as it controls the bolt of a door, I’ve decided to think of it as a knob. The window is reinforced glass, and even from the chair I can see the wire grid holding back the outside world. I start to count the squares of the grid when someone knocks softly, and I see Beth’s waxy hand reach for the knob on the other side.
The door opens and I smell ammonia coming from the hallway. Waffle walks in, followed by Beth. I’m amazed at how grown-up they look. Beth has started using a shampoo that gives her brown hair red highlights. Waffle is so tall, taller than I am now. Somehow, Waffle has stubble on his chin. Is that even possible at his age? When did Beth get so pretty? How did Waff get so old?
Beth is in her navy power-suit today. She says that the doctors will listen to her more attentively if she looks professional at all times, but that’s not why she’s wearing it. Beth knows that Waff and I rely on her to be our compass. The Oncologists don’t care what she wears anymore than my father’s cancer does, but we need her to look like she's in control. And she does. If Beth feels as helpless as I do, she’s never shown it.
Waffle is wearing a crimson Stanford sweatshirt. It looks brand-new. He’s a junior now, studying Economics. We’re all so proud of him, but nobody says it, except maybe Mom on holidays. Waff sits on the corner of our father’s bed; Beth stands behind me and rests her pale hands on my shoulders. Beth is three years older than I am; I’m five years older than Waffle. We’re not close, but we’re not distant, either.
I’m wearing a corduroy jacket, because it’s always cold in hospitals. Even through the fleece lining and ribs of my coat, I can tell that her hands are cold. I wonder if she drank whole milk with her meal. I tap her left hand with my right one. My tap says, “I’m glad you’re here.”
She squeezes my shoulders. Her squeeze says, I love you, you know.
Tap. I love you, too.
Tap. Tap.
Squeeze.
Tap.
Squeeze. Squeeze.
Tap.
Squeeze. Squeeze.
I don’t know what she’s trying to say anymore, but I don’t care. I need her here, I need Waffle here; I can’t wait alone anymore.
Waffle is watching the window from our father’s deathbed. I suspect that he’s counting the metal blinds. I stand up and walk over to him. I tousle his light brown hair with my right hand, like I used to do when we were kids. His hair is thick and wavy, I’m jealous. The three of us stand silent watch, a knight, a saint, and a scholar.
Beth usurps the orange vinyl chair. As she sits, the farting sound of flesh on vinyl fills the room, overpowering the electric heartbeat. Waffle, who did
not see Beth sit down, looks up at me, horrified.
It’s too much.
Holding back laughter, I point over his shoulder, at Beth. I see her see his face, and stand abruptly, “What? It was the chair.” Waffle looks back at me, his big brown eyes searching for a confirmation. I start to giggle. Waffle giggles too. “It was the chair!”
“Sure it was, Beth,” he says, rolling his eyes, “sure it was.” Beth looks to me for help but I’m too busy laughing. “We can’t take her anywhere,” Waffle says between chuckles. Beth sits down hard, trying to make the noise again, but she somehow misjudges. She slides off the slippery orange vinyl and onto the linoleum. Hard.
“Ow.” That’s all it takes. Beth must realize how ridiculous she looks splayed akimbo on the floor, because she looks up to the ceiling and starts to giggle. I can’t hold back any longer; the spell is broken. My giggles grow louder and louder until I’m guffawing uncontrollably. There are tears streaming down Waffle’s stubbly little cheeks, and Beth is laughing too hard to stand up.
And it hurts. My cheeks hurt from smiling, my sides hurt from shaking, and, since we’re a family of snorters, my throat is burning. It hurts so much, but I can’t stop. The clock reads seven oh two by the time we’ve calmed down enough for Beth to get off the floor. “Ow,” Waffle says, imitating her. I begin to giggle again, but then it hits me that my father is dying; that he’ll never do anything he hasn’t already done, and my giggles turn into sobs. Beth and Waffle stare at me for a second and then look furtively at one another. I feel embarrassed. Out of control.
I try to stop, to shut the fuck up, but I keep sobbing. My cheeks are dry, there are no tears leaking out of my eyes, but with each exhale, I’m whimpering like a puppy. “Shhh,” Beth says. “It’s okay.” She’s a good liar. She walks back over to me, and side-hugs me into her. I exhale, shaky, but quietly, and begin to get a grip on myself.
“Will you damn kids knock it off? I’m trying to take a nap.” His voice takes control of our neck muscles. Snap. Snap. Snap. We turn to look at him. Apology, hysteria, sorrow, and relief are mixed on our faces.
“Sorry, Daddy,” says Beth, abruptly letting go of me.
“Sorry, Dad,” I say.
“Sorry,” Waffle mumbles.
We stand around awkwardly for a few minutes, while our father fidgets under his blanket. Waffle makes a few pathetic attempts at small-talk, but Dad doesn’t respond, and so we head towards the door. As Beth reaches for the chrome knob I put my hand out to stop her. “We love you, Dad,” I say. “A lot.”
“I love you kids too. Now leave me the fuck alone. I’ll see you in the morning.” I don’t move, neither do Beth or Waffle. Dad points to the door weakly but forcefully. “Out!”
We file into the hallway, first Beth, then me, then Waffle. We follow the exit signs to the elevator, the parking lot, and the damp Pennsylvania night. We climb into Beth’s rented Jetta, Waffle in the back (I don’t care how tall he is- I’m still older), and start heading home. My sister, my brother and me, stuck somewhere in between being adults and being children, driving towards Bethlehem to be born.
Here's mad's entry, entitled "THE ROCK"
Chapter 1 -- Lucky Lager
It was 3 o'clock in the morning when Lucky Lager landed on the Rock.
The weather was about the same as it always was for that time of the night--rainy, with temperatures in the 80s and humidity at 100 percent. It had been that way when I landed on the Rock the previous year and it would be that way when I left in a month or so.
As Lucky Lager entered the air terminal, a little soggy from his venture across the rainy tarmac, the first thing to greet him was a huge sign on the far wall. "Hafa Adai, Welcome to The Rock!" The second thing to greet him was me. He was shipped to the Rock to replace me, and I for one was glad to see him because his pale, brooding presence meant for sure that I could leave. He was a living, breathing reminder that my time was getting shorter by the second. Trust me, there's no better feeling than the feeling you get being short.
I surmised that Lucky Lager would be hungry after a 14- or 15-hour military charter flight from the World, so I took him to the terminal cafeteria for his first meal. He ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke and I watched him eat. He had peculiar habits. He'd nibble on the burger, then take a puff from a cigarette. Nibble some more, take a swig of soda, then puff on his smoke. Eating this way took him twice as a long as a normal human being.
"You always eat like that?" I said.
He pushed his black horn-rimmed glasses up his nose and shrugged. "I'm nervous," he said.
"About what?"
"About being here."
"Nervous in the service," I said. "Ain't nothin to it but to do it, Sarge."
Technically speaking, Lucky Lager wasn't a sergeant yet, but we tended to call anyone who wasn't an officer "Sarge," as in "What it is, Sarge," or "Most hardly but not likely, Sarge."
Lucky Lager told me his life story as he worked his way through his cheeseburger and cigarettes. Most of the details have since been lost to time, but I remember he was from Minnesota and that he had blown 500 bucks at the Mustang Ranch in Nevada during one last fling before shipping out. Like me, he was an engineering entomolgy specialist--a bug killer, a rat catcher, a vermin exterminator. Like me, he'd be spending 15 months at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.
It was late 1972, and we were still bombing the shit out of North Vietnam.
Chapter 2--The BUFFs
When I arrived on the Rock in February 1972, Andersen AFB was still a seemingly sleepy Strategic Air Command base perched on the northern tip of a tropical island paradise. Within a week, though, Richard Nixon renewed the airstrikes over Hanoi and the handful of B-52 Stratofortress bombers that lined Andersen's flightlines mushroomed overnight to more than 150, in what was the most massive airpower buildup in history. Soon the Buffs would be flying out on bombing sorties 24 hours a day, seven days a week in an effort to drive Ho Chi Minh back to the peace table, and the population of the base would more than double to well over 15,000.
If you've never heard a B-52 at full throttle, your eardrums have missed a sonic treat. First there's that high-pitch wail as the eight Pratt & Whitney turbo jet engines fire up. Then, as each engine approaches 12,100 pounds of thrust, there's an earthshaking roar that sends vibrations along your body down to your feet. Your teeth rattle, your bones quake. The first time you hear it you become disoriented and for an instant you
think you might go daffy.
Looking at a Buff (military shorthand for Big Ugly Flying ((Fucking)) Fortress) parked out on the flightline, you wonder how such an ungainly looking bird can get off the ground. It's got a wing span of 185 feet and weighs in at 450,000 pounds. Yet, despite is ungainliness, it can reach a maximum speed of 606 mph and soar to an altitude of over 50,000 feet. It's maximum range is 7,856 miles and can carry either a nuclear payload or 84 500-pound bombs and a crew of six.
During Christmas week 1972, a massive bombing raid over North Vietnam was launched. Eventually, Andersen's bombers would fly 729 sorties in just 11 days alone. On Christmas Eve all the Buffs that could fly were deployed. It was a sight to behold. Those of us not on duty climbed to the roof of our three-story dorm, planted our butts in beach chairs and watched as they took off, one after another, five minutes apart. It took more than six hours in all.
After the last bomber ascended in the darkened night sky, an eerie hush swallowed the Rock the way that whale swallowed Jonah--quickly and completely. The silence nearly drove us mad. For months we'd lived with the boom and whine and roar of aircraft taking off or landing. It drowned out all other sounds, became the Muzak of our waking and sleeping lives. Now this silence seemed impenetrable and alien.
"What the fuck's that noise?" someone whispered.
"Crickets, you fucking dumbshit," somebody said.
We beat a hasty retreat back to our rooms, where we cranked up our music full volume to fill the void.
Chapter 4 -- Sims
It was Sims' last night on Guam, and when I stopped by his room for a farewell drink or two I found him sitting at the edge of his bunk, staring at the floor. He was stone cold sober, an unusual state for someone who had knocked back a fifth of Seagrams V.O. just about every night for the last 15 months. A box containing all the yellow and blue ribbons he had taken off the V.O. bottles sat on a desk next to his bunk. There were enough to weave a suit.
"Damn, Sarge," I said astonished, "where the hell's your hook?"
Sims didn't bother to look up. He just shook his head. "I ain't drinkin," he said in a Missouri drawl.
"Say what?" I said. "Why the hell not?"
There was a long pause, as if had to think about it. "I don't want to miss my plane."
"Miss your plane? That's not till tomorrow! Shit, the night's still young. You don't mind if I have one."
"Knock yourself out," he said.
Sims seemed morose, as if he were going to miss the place, which I knew he wasn't. He was a good ol' boy from Jefferson City, Mo. He had a wife or an ex-wife or a woman of some kind back there whom he spoke of vaguely. He had strawberry blonde hair, a slightly florid face, and the beginnings of a potbelly. He looked like what I imagined Tom Sawyer would've looked like had he grown up and gone to seed.
Sims was a lifer, no doubt about it, but not one of those spic-and-span kind who wore their hair short, saluted smartly and believed in God and country in their overly starched uniforms while adhering strictly to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. No, he was in it for the long haul because the service provided three squares and roof over his head. He'd been around long enough to know when to bend the rules without actually breaking them. He got along to get along, and when he did his 20 he'd get out. I didn't realize it at the time, but he knew how to lead without actually leading. He was a cool boss.
Unlike a lot of G.I.s, Sims didn't have a nickname. Most nicknames were variations on last names. Smith, for example, became Smitty; Brown, Brownie; Lagerstrand became Lucky Lager; Bailey became Beetle Bailey. Sims, though, what could you do with a name like that? He was just Sims. If he had a first name, I never knew it.
As a staff sergeant, he was the ranking NCO in the bug shop, where we worked. When I arrived on The Rock just having made buck sergeant, I was the second-ranking NCO. I became his right-hand man. As such, he put me on nights, first making me work swing shift and then, when Operation Bullet Shot got underway and the Civil Engineering Squadron went to 24-hour shifts, graveyard, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. He wanted someone he could trust holding down the fort at night, he said. As payback, he put me in for an Air Force Commendation Medal before he left. He was quite proud of the citation he wrote, often reciting key lines when we all were sitting around getting drunk. "The energetic application of his knowledge," Sims
would bellow from memory, "has played a significant role in contributing to the success of the United States Air Force mission in Southeast Asia under Operation Bullet Shot. His distinctive accomplishments reflect credit upon himself and the United States Air Force."
The truth is, the energetic application of my knowledge meant figuring out a way to make it seem like I was doing my job without actually doing it. Not that I was deliberately derelict in my duty. The bulk of my job on the graveyard shift was to fog the base with a mixture of malathion and diesel fuel for disease-carrying mosquitoes. But most nights were either rainy or windy, suboptimal conditions to fog. At least once a week, though, I'd drive the ton-and-a-half out to the base housing area where the squadron's branch manager lived, fire up the fogger and drive around his house. After awhile, I'd drive away from his neighborhood, shutdown the fogger and call it a night. The branch manager, a chief master sergeant, would compliment me for a job well done whenever we ran into each other.
Those nights when I couldn't fog, I spent helping my buddies in the shop next-door, Liquid Fuels Maintenance, change fuel filters in the underground pumping stations out on the flightline. It was hot, sweaty, smelly work. When the sun rose, we'd knock off, get cleaned up a little, have breakfast at the chow hall, then start drinking or go snorkeling down at the beach.
Sims knew all this, of course and didn't seem to care. He never said a word about it. Now, on his last night, in his unusual state of sobriety, he seemed, well, sober. A few guys drifted in, then drifted out. Finally, I got up, shook his hand and made some noise about him writing and keeping in touch. But we both knew he wouldn't. Sims didn't look like a letter-writing kind of guy. We said good-bye and that was that.
On my last night on Guam some months later, I took the shuttle bus out to Marbo, where the Air Force had a compound of dorms that looked like a French colonial prison, had a final meal of pancit at the Filipino Club, then drifted back to the base for a night drinking with buddies. The next thing I remember was Lucky Lager shaking me violently awake. "You're going to miss your plane, you dumb sonofabitch!"
I scrambled to get dressed and out the door, slinging my duffel bag behind me. Lucky Lager got me to the terminal in the nick of time, and I boarded the plane back to the World. I had a hangover the size of Texas. It was then that I knew what Sims had meant on his last night.
Chapter 5 -- Saipan
I was sitting at the bar of a near empty club on Saipan when she sat down a barstool away, the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. First she asked me for a light. Then, laughing, she asked me for a cigarette. I was willing to overlook this seeming dyslexia.
The song "Suavecito" by the Chicano band Malo was playing on the jukebox. The bartender and I had been in an animated discussion about it. The album had just made it to the Mariana Islands and "Suavecito" quickly became a hit, the perfect song for the tropics.
The club was bathed in a wonderful golden pink glow as the sun set, and slowly it began to fill with young people. Some scraggly looking guys roamed around a small stage next to the bar, carrying instruments, and began to unpack.
The girl's name was Elise and she spoke with an exotic accent--part island, part French, part something I couldn't quite place. It sounded fake at first, till I got used to her rapid-fire cadence and stream-of-conscious patter. She was a flawless Euroasian beauty--dark hair, green, almond-shaped eyes, pale skin. She was wearing a sarong that had a dark blue hibiscus pattern. She may have had some flaws, but they
were not readily apparent from my perch on the barstool. She was the daughter of some mucky muck on Saipan--rich, spoiled and eager to leave the island. I may have been a horny G.I., but even I could tell I was not in her league. Bored, slightly petulant, she told me her story in between smokes and shots of Chivas Regal. She had a boyfriend named Raymond. They were going to New York or Paris or San Francisco. Somewhere. She tapped her foot incessantly. Clearly, I was not destined to be her ticket off the island.
I'd arrived on Saipan the day before. I was there because Uncle Sugar had been sending planeloads of us from Guam for a couple of days of R&R. From one rock to an even smaller rock, 70 square miles of mostly jungle. Back then Saipan was not the resort that I hear it is today. As far as I could tell, there was only one hotel, the Royal Something Or Other, a drab place with no air conditioning. Whenever a plane came in for a landing or took off, a siren would go off and the male hotel workers would stop what they were doing and rush out to the small airstrip. They were the volunteer
fire brigade and had to be on hand in case of a crash.
Saipan had been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific during WWII. I'd taken a tour of the island my first day and saw where thousands of Japanese soldiers had leapt off a cliff rather than be captured. Thousands of Japanese civilians also committed suicide by leaping off another cliff. There were so many bodies scattered around the island, the tour guide said, that the Americans dropped tons of DDT from airplanes to kill the swarms of flies. Here and there remnants of the war could still be seen--a corroded Japanese tank wedged between a boulder and
a palm tree at the edge of the boonies, so small and flimsy looking you wondered how anyone would willingly go into battle inside it.
My roommate for this R&R weekend was some G.I. named Rob. He was a
clerk in another squadron, and when we'd gotten off the bus at the hotel he'd asked me if I wanted to go halves on a room. Now Rob was sitting at a table with an island girl. He waved me over. I excused myself from Elise, who was telling the bartender how to make some drink she'd read about in a magazine, scooped up my cigarettes, walked over to Rob's table and sat down. He introduced me to the girl. Brenda, I think her name was. Or it could've been Susan. Something like that. She was Filipina, with some Chinese in there somewhere. She might've been pretty, but there was an air
of desperation about her that clouded her face almost like a veil. She studied me intently, as if to read my thoughts.
Suddenly, the lights went dim and the band started up. Before long, a girl appeared next to me. "You want to dance?" she said. She glanced across the dance floor, where a group of girls was standing. Giggling. Not wanting to spoil the moment, I said, "Sure." So we danced. She was quite fetching, maybe all of 17. When the song ended, she disappeared without a word, quick as a Gypsy pickpocket. I caught a glimpse of Elise at the bar, smoking someone else's cigarettes. Rob was holding hands with Brenda (or Susan). Before I could sit down, another girl came up and asked if I wanted to dance. By now the club had filled, with the girls outnumbering the guys by a fairly wide margin, the first and, regretfully, only time I've ever encountered this circumstance.
After the second song, Rob had his arm around Brenda/Susan. By the fourth, they were necking.
And so the night went.
I managed to dance with Elise once, but she proved to be a rather indifferent partner. I guess she was thinking about strolling the Champs Elysee with Raymond.
I might've danced with the same girl twice, but I can't be sure. Conversation was, through no fault of my own, kept to the barest minimum. A girl did say, "You dance good!" I remember that. I'm pretty sure I danced almost every song the band played and some of the radio music in between ("Suavecito," definitely).
In the end, I suppose I provided a service of some sort on the island of Saipan. I'm just not sure what it was.
When the lights went up and the club closed down, Rob and I walked out into the balmy tropic night by ourselves. There were so many stars in the sky I got dizzy. Back at the hotel, before we passed out, Rob held up a piece of paper like it was a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. "Look, man," he said. "We traded addresses and phone numbers. She promised to visit me next month."
The next morning, I lounged by the pool, sipping a beer that had gone flat over night, trying to cut the edge of a hangover. When it was time, we boarded a twin-engine cargo plane, waved desultorily to the hotel workers who were manning the fire trucks at the edge of the runway, and flew back to Guam.
I never saw Rob again, so I don't know if Brenda/Susan ever fulfilled her promise and visited him on the Rock.
Chapter Eight -- Running Between the Raindrops
A few of us working graveyard trooped down to the air terminal in the middle of the night to see Bob Hope and his troupe arrive. We were there mainly to see the girls, but they looked haggard and plain after their long flight. Some of us were a little disappointed. A day later, though, on stage, under sunny skies, they looked refreshed and brilliant in their little outfits. It was a typical Bob Hope show, though--same routine, same gags. We were entertained anyway. It was, after all, the Rock.
The more memorable performance was Tiny Tim's, because it was so unexpected and so bizarre. We'd stumbled upon his show at the airmen's club one night after smoking a stick of primo Buddha. The airmen's club wasn't much of a club--just a bunch of wooden picnic tables in front of a covered stage surrounded by a wooden fence. We heard the music and peeked through the slats of the fence like little kids. "Why don't we just go in?" I suggested. Inside, a bunch of drunk G.I.s were whooping it up as Tiny Tim strummed his ukulele and warbled "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" in his weird falsetto. Suddenly it began to rain. Hard. First they turned off the stage lights, but Tiny Tim continued singing. Then, they turned off the sound equipment. Tiny Tim didn't flinch, he just warbled louder. Then, the roadies started removing equipment from the stage, but Tiny Tim just stood there at his dead mike and finished the song in the driving rain. The place went nuts. It might have been the best audience he'd ever
performed in front of. When he finished the song, he blinked as if he didn't know where he was, then started another song.
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We were lounging around on the windward side of the dorm late one afternoon, watching tin cans rust, when someone said, "Hey, ain't that Bunk?" Off in the distance we could see someone sprinting like hell across the open field between the post office and the dorm. Sure enough, it was Bunk, some guy in Liquid Fuels Maintenance who was TDY (temporary duty) from a base in Massachusetts. It was 5 o'clock straight up, which meant retreat, which meant the sounding of Taps over loudspeakers and the lowering of the flag in front of the Headquarters building. At such times, if you were outside, you were supposed to face the general direction of the flag, snap to attention and salute. Only dopes and lifers got caught outdoors at 5 p.m. Bunk must've figured we'd razz his ass mercilessly if we spotted him saluting, so he did the only other thing he could think of--run. "Look at the dumbass go!" We stood at the railing, shouting encouragement. "GO, GO, GO!" We chanted. We hollered. We were easily amused. We placed bets on whether he'd make it to the dorm before Taps finished, but the wagering came to a screeching halt when we spotted a staff car bearing the flag of a full bird colonel rounding the bend. The car came to a stop, and the colonel eyed Bunk, then looked up at us on the third floor. We scattered. A few minutes later, the colonel entered our orderly room downstairs, emerged with the first sergeant in tow, climbed the stairs to the third floor and began a room-by-room search for us. By then, though, we had grabbed Bunk and fled down the stairwell at the other end, disappearing into the NCO Club down the street just in time for Happy Hour.
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There was a senior master sergeant in the 43rd Civil Engineering Squadron who was more spic and span than, well, Spic & Span. His uniforms were always heavily starched, the creases so sharp you could slice cheese on them. More importantly, he never got rained on, even during the monsoon season when it poured for three weeks straight. "What's your secret, Sarge?" I asked him one rainy afternoon. "What's that, son?" he said. "How do you stay dry," I said pointing to his spotless khakis. "I never see you wet." He looked at me and my soggy uniform and laughed out loud. "No secret, son," he said. "You just have to learn how to run between the raindrops."
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"The weather girl is on." Those of us out on the catwalk with nothing better to do, meaning all of us, would rush into the nearest room to watch the weather girl on the AFRTS station. She couldn't read the weather report worth a damn, but she was nice to look at. It wasn't a difficult gig, mainly because the weather report was virtually the same every day. Highs in the 90s, lows in the 80s, with 100 percent humidity and a good chance for showers. One afternoon, though, the weather girl surprised us. "There's six inches of soft pack on Mount Lamlam," she said with a winsome
smile. "Just kidding, guys."
+++
I waited for more than an hour on Christmas Day to call home on a free phone line the base had made available. My mom answered. "Hi, it's me," I said. "What's wrong?" she said. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong," I said. "Did something happen?" she said. "No," I said. "Nothing's happened. I'm just calling to wish you guys a merry Christmas." "Where are you?" she said. "I'm on Guam, where the hell else would I be?" "Are you sure everything's all right?" "Yeah, damn it, everything's fine!" "There's no need to yell," she said. "Do you want to talk to your dad?" "Yeah, I guess." My dad got on the line. "Are you in trouble?" he said. "No, I'm not in trouble. Why would I be in trouble?" "I don't know. Why are you calling then?" "I'm calling to wish you guys a merry Christmas! Geezus..."
Epilogue
I first learned I'd gotten my travel orders one evening as I sat down to dinner in the main chow hall at Lowry AFB in Denver. Rapovy, my roommate, informed me. He was working in the squadron orderly room after being busted for going AWOL. He'd gotten one of those Dear John letters from his girlfriend back home and had taken off to try and make things right. Of course, things only got worse, and so now he was shuffling papers, stripped of the stripes on his sleeves.
"Your orders came in," he said, plopping down at the table with a tray of food.
"Oh yeah? Where to?"
He muttered something that sounded like Nam.
"Nam?" I said.
"No, not Nam. Guam."
"Guam? Where the fuck is Guam?"
I found out soon enough. Located at map coordinates 13 degrees 28 minutes North, 144 degrees 47 minutes East, the Rock was a speck in the Pacific. At about 209 square miles in area it was the largest and southernmost island in the Mariana Islands archipelago. Its climate was tropical, of course, and it was hot and humid just about all year round. Temperatures were moderated somewhat by northeast trade winds. Its dry season ran from January to June, the rainy season from July to December.
The base I was headed for, Andersen AFB, was located at the north end of the island. Back then it was part of the Strategic Air Command. It was named in honor of Brig. Gen. Roy Andersen, the chief of staff at what was then known as Harmon Field, Guam, whose aircraft disappeared while en route to Hawaii in February 1945. Oddly, most civilian maps identified it as AnderSON AFB, contrary to the military's AnderSEN AFB, I'm not sure why.
I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm sort of glad I spent my 15 months on the Rock. I suppose the passage of time has blotted out the boredom, the loneliness, the sometimes stark raving lunatic desire to get the hell out of that place.
What's left are images of just being there, images much sharper than I would have ever imagined, as if they were tattooed into my memory bank: a drunk falling off a third-floor balcony and somehow landing on his feet and running off into the night; some G.I. hidden in shadow with a bow and arrow drawn and aimed right at me as I fumbled with my keys trying to get into my dorm room late one night; a flatbed truck loaded with 500-pound bombs overturning on a curve right before my eyes and one of the bombs rolling rolling rolling till it finally stopped against the left front tire of my truck; the ghostly expressions of my buddies from Liquid Fuels Maintenance who nearly blew themselves up and probably half the island when dry grass around a portable diesel generator powering an air pump caught fire as they were cleaning out sludge deep inside a storage tank up at the jet fuel tank farm.
Some years ago I had a notion of writing a novel about all this. I figured the best place to start my research would be in letters I'd written home. Maybe I'd find a nuance, a mood, a thought, a piece of war gossip, anything to provide me with inspiration, a starting point, a germ of a plot. So one day I asked my mom if she still had all those letters I'd sent from Guam.
"Oh," she said. "I threw those away a long time ago."
"What? You threw them away? I thought moms were supposed to keep shit like that forever!"
"They were just getting in the way and I wanted to clean it out."
Great. Just great. How much space does a pile of letters take up?
Anyway, what I was left with was pretty meager: a book of snapshots that I'd titled "Guam During the Spring of Insanity or Everything You Wanted to Know About Guam But Were Afraid to Ask," a couple of letters from buddies, some Air Force documents, and of course my memory.
I doubt that novel will ever get written.
But I'm still learning how to run between the raindrops without getting wet.
The End
"Ketchup"
Josh was very nervous. It was his first day as a cashier at McDonald's. He wanted to do everything exactly right. He smiled at the guy with the bright orange shirt and aqua blue pants who walked up to the counter. "Can I help you," he asked.
"Yes", said Josh's first customer, "I'd like one small bag of french fries please."
"Okay," said Josh, hitting the small fry button, "would you like anything to drink with that?"
Josh felt that he was doing very well. He remembered where the fry button was and everything. He started to relax.
"Do you have root beer?" asked the customer hopefully.
"No, I'm sorry we don't. But we do have coke, diet coke, spr-"
"Forget it," snapped the customer, "I'll just have a water."
Josh forced himself to remain calm and polite. "Okay, sir that will be 80 cents."
Josh walked over the drink station and got a glass of water. Then he went to the fry station and got the fries. He brought them both over to the counter and placed them on the man's tray. The man handed Josh one dollar and five cents. Josh, remembering his training, carefully hit the one button, the zero button, and finally the five button. The register told him to give the man twenty five cents. He gave the man a quarter. He did everything right. He was very relieved. "Thanks sir," he said "Have a nice day."
But then it happened. "Wait a minute man," said the customer, "I need some ketchup."
"Oh, I'm sorry sir. How many packets would you like?"
"Twelve."
"Twelve?" Josh began to panic.
"Make it thirteen."
Josh couldn't believe it. He hadn't had anything like this in his training. "I'm sorry, sir. I don't think I'm allowed to give out that many ketchups."
The man in the orange shirt seemed annoyed. "What do you mean? I'm the customer and I want 13 ketchups! Its your job to give them to me!"
Josh tried to reason with the man. "I'm sorry, sir, but you've only got a small fry. There's no possible way you could use that much ketchup on so few fries."
The man became angry. "Look, man, I know how many ketchups I use! Don'ty tell me how many ketchups I use!"
Josh refused to give in. "I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem right."
"Just give them to me!"
"Well-"
"Listen, Burger Boy, I've had enough of this crap! Get me a manager!"
Suddenly Josh was struck by a wave of doubt. Maybe it was okay to give out thirteen ketchups. And besides, even if it wasn't, would anybody really care? Would anybody even know? What if Josh was wrong and the manager fired him. Wouldn't it be easier just to give the man his ketchup?
"Please sir, no," said Josh, "Don't call the manager. I'll give you your ketchups. I'll give you fourteen. Just don't tell anybody."
The man thought for a minute and said "Okay. But I think my fries are cold, can I have new ones?"
"Sure," said Josh, "I'll get you a large."
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