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

“Really?” Baker said, shocked. He saw his new clerk evaporating before his eyes.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you before,” I said.

The phone rang.

“Wally?” Baker said into the phone. Wally was Baker’s buddy, a counselor in Dorm One. Baker laughed his southern, good-old-boy laugh, which meant Wally had a new fuck joke.

I returned to my typing.

By dinner no one had called.

The next day, no one called. I met the warden in camp, said hello. He didn’t mention the incident. Maybe he thought I showed admirable ingenuity and spunk by sneaking past him. Maybe he knew they needed a competent clerk in clothing.

Deacon was gone the next day. I smiled when I realized he hadn’t said good-bye. That was his style.

The tall blond guy in the issue room, John, assumed that as the head of the issue room, he’d be getting the desk in that room. Deacon had used the desk, so I figured it would be mine. I walked into the issue room and saw John going through the drawers. I sat in a chair and watched him. John had been working here for almost two years. John looked up a few times, but mostly he was sorting through the stuff Deacon had left behind. We were contesting the ownership of this desk without saying a word.

“I know Deacon said you could have this desk,” John said after a while, “but I’ve got seniority. I need a place to run this room. This is going to be my desk.”

I looked through the window into Baker’s office. The only other desk was the one in there. To be cooped up with a hack all day was really asking too much. I figured I had enough clout, even being new, to force John to give up the desk. I watched him. I noticed that Joe and Tony Abruzzo, the two guys who work with John, were watching me to see what I’d do. Technically, John worked for me. He managed the clothing issue and repair room efficiently. He was probably the only guy in camp who knew how to do it and cared enough to do it right. It was to my benefit that I didn’t have to monitor him and also to my benefit that I didn’t have to learn his job to be able to monitor him. All I really wanted was not to have to sit in Baker’s office all day.

“How about if I just borrow your typewriter now and then? When you’re not using it?”

John smiled. He’d been tensed up, ready for a confrontation. I could see him relaxing. “Sure. I’m usually up and working anyway. Help yourself.”

As I walked to Baker’s door, I could hear Tony Abruzzo, the Mafioso, laughing. “Good job, John. You defended your fucking territory like a man.” I guess it looked like I’d lost.

“There he is. There he is,” Baker said, smiling a huge smile, as I walked into his office. Rusty, his almost constant companion, grinned. “So, Bob,” Baker said. “What does it all mean? Really?”

I sat down at my desk and flipped on the typewriter. Baker asked the same question every morning, and every morning I’d give the same answer: “I just don’t know, Mr. Baker.”

Baker laughed like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, every day. What he was laughing about was all the oddball reasons people were sent to this prison. He collected incarceration histories like people collect stamps. His friend, Wally the counselor, kept him up-to-date on all the strange ones.

Baker said a guy had just arrived in camp for scaring a bear. “Imagine that, would you?” Baker laughed hard enough to make his face red. “This fellow scares a fucking bear. I mean a bear, you know: four legs, black and hairy, long snout? A fucking bear! He scares this bear, you know? Boo!” Baker put his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers. “And now he’s in Eglin for six damn months.” Baker laughed more and finally added his ultimate comment: “Bob. What does it all mean? Really?”

“I just don’t know, Mr. Baker.”

On Christmas Eve, many of the staff of Eglin—guards, secretaries, counselors—distributed gift packages donated by the government and by local citizens. We lined up, walked outside to get our packages, and walked back inside. We got a vinyl notebook with a pad of paper, two Bic ballpoint pens, a box of envelopes, two bars of Zest soap, two handkerchiefs wrapped in plastic, a six-pack of Juicy Fruit gum, and a calendar you could use to mark off the days.

CHAPTER 28

By New Year’s 1984, 1 had quit smoking. I was walking forty-five minutes a day.

I think I must have been healthy, but I didn’t feel healthy. I woke up every morning with a new, insidiously minor, malady. Usually I felt some new pain in my head which I assumed was a new tumor. The pains got worse over the course of several weeks until I woke up one morning with a migraine. The pain was so intense I couldn’t open my eyes. Light hurt, even the dim light inside the dorm. I staggered to the infirmary, where they gave me aspirins and told me to go back to bed. My head felt like it was expanding. I lay in bed with a cold washcloth on my forehead and hung on. Then I got nauseous, went into the bathroom, and threw up. I went back to the infirmary, and while I was trying to explain to the aide there how bad I felt, I threw up again. They told me that there was nothing they could do, I just had to hang on. The next time I felt one coming on, they said, come over and they’d give me something to prevent the attack. By dusk the headache was gone. I walked outside and felt like I’d just been reborn. I took a deep breath, smiled at the squirrels, marveled at the rosy glow of the sunset. Not having the pain was like feeling exquisite pleasure. Ordinary life, I realized, is constant, exquisite pleasure which I take for granted. I resolved never to forget again. Life, just being alive without pain, how wonderful. The next morning, I’d forgotten my revelation and went back to work.

We were sitting around the issue-room table telling stories one afternoon when a man appeared in front of John’s desk. He stood at ease—I mean, the “at ease” you’re taught in the military, feet apart, hands clasped behind your back. When John looked up, the man straightened to attention.

“Yes?” John said.

“Johnson. I’m here to pick up my clothes, sir.”

“You don’t have to call that asshole sir,” Tony said, laughing.

Johnson glanced at Tony, turned back to John. He said nothing.

I said, “When did you go?”

Johnson’s eyes met mine. “1967 through 1969, sir.”

John got up to get the bundle of clothes already picked out for the new prisoner.

“You don’t have to call him sir, either, Johnson,” Tony said, making a face at me, signifying the guy was a little off.

The man ignored Tony, something Tony was not at all used to.

“When were you there?” Johnson said to me.

“1965. First Cav.”

“You flew helicopters,” Johnson announced.

“Yes. What did you do?”

“I killed Vietnamese, sir.”

“What unit?”

“I was a Seal, sir.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I heard that was a tough job.”

“I liked to kill Vietnamese, sir.”

John plunked down the bundle of clothes. The man picked it up, about-faced, and walked out the door.

“That guy isn’t back yet,” Tony Abruzzo said.

Later, Mr. Baker told me about Johnson. It seems the staff all knew about him.

“The guy was a Seal,” Baker said.

I nodded.

“Well, he lived in Key West, heard about a pot bust, heard that the boat, still loaded, was at the Navy base there. This guy gets dressed in black—black face paint and stuff—sneaks into the base at night. He attacks, subdues, gags, and ties up the two sentries guarding the boat loaded with the evidence and then he steals the fucking boat! All by himself!” Baker started laughing. “I mean, this is one tough fucker.”

“How’d they get him?”