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

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. I figured I was looking at a favor coming up, considering I was a celebrity and all.

“This is prison, Mason.’’

“Really?’’ I said. “This is prison? I know it’s prison. So what? I see people wearing new boots around here.”

“You haven’t been here long enough for new boots. Next.”

“Are you kidding?” I said.

An inmate behind me said, “C’mon, man, I’m late for chow. Deacon doesn’t kid.”

I got out of line and stood by the door to the clothing room, seething. Deacon’d been here so long he figured he owned the clothes. I watched the traffic in and out of the clothing room, trying to understand how it worked. Somewhere in there, they had boots. New boots.

Inmates waited in line and walked in a door and up to a counter and called out their clothing number. Other inmates inside, one of them the old guy from my dorm, Doc, would go to one of the hundreds of bins behind them and get the inmate’s laundry. Then the inmate walked out the other door. I saw another door at the far end of the building. I walked to it and peeked in through the screen. I heard the chatter of a sewing machine. I went inside and saw a guy working on a sewing machine in a closet-sized room. The bottom half of a Dutch door with a shelf on top was closed across the doorway. I leaned on the shelf and said, “Hi.”

The guy looked up from his work. “Hi. Need some alterations?” he said with a strong accent. Sounded English to me.

“No. That’s what you do?”

“That’s right, mate.”

“You British?”

“Me, mate? No way. I’m Australian.”

I grinned. Seemed funny to me. “What—”

“Got caught at sea, mate. Your Coast Guard nabbed us in international waters and towed us back.”

“Tough break,” I said.

The man shrugged. “Better jail here than in Australia, mate.”

“Why’s that?”

“They take a sterner view of this drug-smuggling business than your blokes do. I got five years here. I’ll serve maybe two. In Australia I’d have gotten ten and served ten.”

“Man,” I said. “That’s tough.” I looked at the sewing machine.

“You knew how to operate that before you got here? Ah—” I said, prompting him for his name with raised eyebrows.

“Tom. Tom Carpenter,” he said. “I was a sailmaker on the outside. You?”

“I was a writer.”

“Oh. You’re the bloke they been saying was showing up. Robert Mason, right?”

“Bob.”

“Bob, then. I’m reading your book right now, Bob. Nice job, that. You know a lot of our boys were there, too.”

“I know. I met some Australian pilots over there. I remember they used to carry change purses made from kangaroo scrotums.”

Tom nodded. “Yep. That’s them, all right. What do you need, Bob? Something altered?”

“No. I was trying to find out who’s in charge of boots.”

“Boots?” Tom jutted out his chin. “Right behind you, Bob. That old fart in there, Timmy. He’s the bloke you want.”

I turned. Across the hall from Tom’s alteration room was another doorway. I walked to it and saw an old man inside holding a shoe up against a buffing machine, his back to me. I stepped inside. When the man turned around to set the shoe on his work counter, he saw me. “Yeah?”

“You Timmy?”

“Yeah.”

“I hear you’re in charge of boots and shoes here.”

“Yeah.”

I pointed to my boots. “These things are beyond fixing,” I said.

Timmy looked down at my boots and grinned. “That’s the shit they issue to the new guys. You’re supposed to go through the exchange window to get new ones. You try getting Deacon to exchange ‘em for you?”

“Yeah. He told me this is prison.”

“That old fart’s acting more like a hack every day. He’s been here almost five years, and I don’t think he’ll leave when he’s free. If he does, he’ll probably open his own fucking jail. Prick.” Timmy looked at my boots again. “Elevens, right?”

“Right.”

Timmy stepped into a small storeroom and came back with a brand-new pair of work boots, size eleven. “Here you go. The least a body should have around here is some boots that are fit to wear.”

I sat on a wooden stool and changed boots. “You work on shoes on the outside?” I said as I laced up the new boots.

“I used to own a shoe shop,” Timmy said.

“How’d you get here, owning a shoe shop?”

“Shoes had nothing to do with it. I got stupid and agreed to fly a fucking DC-6 load of pot from Colombia.”

“DC-6?” I looked at Timmy skeptically. He looked at least sixty- five. He was gray-headed and stoop-shouldered, the least likely looking pilot I’d ever seen.

“Yeah, used to fly ‘em for the airlines. I retired ten years ago, opened up my shoe store with my brother. We were doing fine. Not getting rich, you know? But a good living. Greed got me. Some kids asked me did I want to make a hundred thousand on one flight. Said they owned a DC-6, heard I used to fly ‘em.”

I tightened up the laces and tied them off. I stood up and walked around experimentally. “How they feel?” Timmy asked.

“Great. So how’d you get caught?”

“It was an old plane, most of the instruments were broken,” Timmy said. “Got caught in the soup and couldn’t find the damn cow pasture where they wanted the stuff. When I got low on fuel, I just flew the fucker to the nearest airport and landed. Damn near made it, too.” Timmy grinned at the memory. “But they were watching the airport, Customs guys. Came aboard.”

I nodded. “I know what that feels like,” I said, standing on tiptoe to stretch the new boots. They fit perfectly, a little stiff from the newness. “Well, thanks, Timmy. These are great. Any time you want a favor, let me know.”

“I don’t care nothing about favors. There’s nothing in this camp I want except to get out of it.”

I was lying on my bunk after I’d showered, watching life in Dorm Three. A Cuban across from me coughed so hard I thought I’d see chunks of lungs coming up any second. When he finished hacking, he looked up, blinked, wiped his mouth, shook his head like a fighter who’d taken a hard punch, and lit up another cigarette. It was disgusting. I pulled my pack of Winstons out and tapped out a cigarette and lit it. I was going to quit, but I hadn’t gotten to it yet.

Barnett’s feet dangled off the edge of the bunk above me, and then he jumped down to the floor. He leaned over and said, “You read much?”

“Some,” I said.

“Here,” he said, holding a mail-order book catalog toward me.

I took the catalog. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Barnett said, walking away.

I opened the catalog and heard, “Mason? You Mason?” An inmate on crutches swung across the waxed tile floor, his crutch tips squeaking and chirping. His left leg was in a cast from his ankle to above his knee.

“Yeah,” I said. “What about it?”

“I’m a Huey pilot, too, that’s what about it!” The inmate laughed and sat down on Doc’s bed.

“No shit?”

“No shit, brother. Jack Cantrell,” he said, holding out his hand. “There’s at least three of us here.”

I shook his hand. “Three of us? Three Huey pilots?”

“That’s a fact. Above the best!” Jack Cantrell yelled the Army Aviator’s motto.

“All right!” I said. “Pleased to meet you, Jack. Who were you with?”

“Flew guns with the Americal.” He immediately rolled up his pants leg and showed me gnarled scars on his good leg. “Got raked in my cockpit, Bob.” He rubbed the puckered skin around his knee and shin. He crossed his arms, raised his sweatshirt, and showed me a pencil-thick half-inch-deep indentation in his chest. “A fucking tracer came through my chicken plate just far enough to stick into my chest. Sat there and burned into me.” He let his shirt drop and rolled his pants leg down. “You?”