Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

I got lost one night in a helicopter during flight school in Alabama. I flew from one group of town lights to another, all over southern Alabama, running low on fuel, and never could figure which was which until I happened to bump into Fort Rucker, which was where I was going. If I hadn’t lucked out, though, people at the heliport could’ve found me on radar and told me where I was. I, like most of my fellow students, would’ve found violent death preferable to the humiliation of admitting I was lost—but help was available.

Help was not available now. At ten o’clock, after identifying a couple of unmistakable television towers and using them to plot our position, we discovered our guesses were wrong. We were way off course: twenty miles too far north. John turned back out to sea and then paralleled the coast, heading south. He called Dave and told them we’d be late.

“How late?”

“I figure we’ll see you by two or three.”

“Two or three!” Dave said. I was standing next to the stove, shivering, listening to Dave’s dismay.

“Yeah, best I can figure,” John said. “Two or three. Had some problems. Ran into some fog out here.”

“Maybe we should reschedule the… shipment,” Dave said. “We’re getting real close to seeing daylight, and you know how the unions are.”

John put down the mike. “Shit! He wants us to come in tomorrow night. He doesn’t want to be unloading the boat in daylight.”

“I think he’s making sense, John,” I said.

“Bullshit. We’re here. We made it past the Coast Guard. You want to go back out and cruise around for a day and give those guys another chance?”

I shook my head. “You want to know what I’d do?”

“Do I have a choice?” John said. He was looking very nervous, very agitated. He was out of booze and there was nothing worse than trying to sneak a million dollars worth of pot past the Coast Guard and put up with Mason when what you really needed was a goddamn stiff drink and no advice. But no, Mason had yet another two cents worth. Shit (I read John’s mind), Mason is a goddamn gold mine of ideas. I have the fucking mother lode of opinions about anything on earth, right here in front of me. He shook his head and nodded. “Okay. What would you do?”

“I’d wait until morning. I’d go back out into the fog, just make a lazy trip south toward Charleston. Then in full daylight, I’d just balls-it-out, sail right into the main harbor there. Blend in with the other fools out sailing in this fucking weather. There’ve got to be some. We sail in, hang out on deck, and wave at our fellow yachtsmen. Our waterline looks normal; we look empty. We’re just another sailboat. They’d have no reason to be suspicious; there’s no sign we’ve got this shitload of pot on board.”

John said, “Then what?”

“Well, then I’d anchor out wherever the other yachts do and wait until night. Then we motor up the Intracoastal Waterway to the same place Dave’s picked out—just come in from the opposite direction.” I looked at John. He was considering it. “What d’you think?”

He nodded his head slightly, distracted, working on it. I could tell it violated his notion of smuggling, which was to stay invisible. I agreed; I just figured invisibility could be achieved more realistically by camouflage. “Nope,” John said finally. “I have a bad feeling about that. I trust my guts, Bob. We go. We go in now.”

“Dave said we’re too close to dawn,” I said.

“Fuck Dave.”

I put my hands up against the stove and tried to thaw them out. I felt my whole body getting cold to my core. I had on a sweater and two jackets, but I was shivering. John picked up the microphone and called. “We’re coming in.”

There was a long silence. “You figure you can make it by two? Three, at the latest?” Dave said.

“I’m positive,” John said.

“Okay,” Dave said, his voice filled with doubt. “We’ll be ready. It’s all clear.”

We heard Ireland yelling and went on deck. He was pointing at a buoy. John had him steer toward it and went below and got our brilliant, half-million-candle-power floodlight. As we sailed past, we got the number. John found the buoy on the chart and for the first time in days we had an absolute fix on where we where. John drew a line on his chart, from the buoy to Santee Point, at the entrance of Five-Fathom Creek. We changed course. We were closer than we’d thought, and it looked like we might actually make it by two.

Five miles away from Santee Point, the wind dropped off, becoming too variable and too weak for sailing. John elected to drop sail and motor the rest of the way. I watched him push the starter with anticipation. Everything depended on that engine. Grind. Grind. Growl. The exhaust burbled out from under the stem. John engaged the propeller and the Namaste grumbled ahead. I breathed a sigh of relief that puffed out as a cloud in the frigid air and joined Ireland on the foredeck.

Ireland and I let down all the sails, rolled them up, and tied them with hanks. We made a neat job of it. We wanted the shore team to be impressed at what professional sailors we were. Look, guys. Forty-four days at sea and we’re still cooler than you’ll ever be if you live to be a hundred. Even with the heat of the effort, Ireland and I were shivering by the time we got back to the cockpit. A local radio station said it was thirty-eight degrees, but out on the water it seemed much colder than that. Ireland and I went below to warm up while John piloted.

We hugged the stove.

“You looking worried, Ali,” Ireland said. “You don’t like the plan?”

“You don’t look so confident yourself,” I said. “I guess the plan’s okay. What the fuck do I know about this business? I just have a bad feeling about it, is all. My guts tell me it’s a wrong move.”

“It’ll be fine,” Ireland said. “Twenty of our people are just a few miles away. They’ve got it covered. We get to that fucking creek, Ali, we got it made.”

I smiled. “You should know better’n me. But I guarantee I’ll never do this again, Bob. Too many things can go wrong.”

Ireland nodded. “Me neither. This is my last trip.”

John called us.

He was pointing ahead. “See that light?”

“Yeah,” I said. A light blinked on top of a channel marker.

“That’s it. That’s Santee Point.” John started laughing. “If those motherfuckers want to catch us, they’d better do it in five minutes, ‘cause we’re outta here.” He cupped his hands by his mouth and yelled to the world, “We’re fucking history!”

We motored past Santee Point and into the mouth of Five-Fathom Creek at one-thirty. According to John’s chart, it would take us another two hours to get to the pickup point. I watched the Atlantic disappear into the mist behind us. I heard the waves washing the rocks at Santee Point as a farewell salute. The sea had been my home for six weeks. It was powerful, vast. The sea had put my life in perspective. I missed it as land surrounded us. Someday, I promised, I’ll be back.

A mile into the creek, it narrowed to about a hundred feet. The chart showed that it got narrower. The sides of the creek were berms raised when they dredged the creek through the surrounding marsh. Stars twinkled overhead. They were stars in the sky again; not stars floating next to the planet. The chill of the night entered my bones and I shivered. My breath puffed out in clouds. The only sound was the chuffle-gurgle of the engine. John had Ireland stand out on the deck with the blazing floodlight scanning the side of the channel so he could steer. The light, which seemed adequate at sea, was now overkill, lighting up the night like a flare.

“John, people can see that fucking light for miles.”