Hurry up and wait

[jack_babalon]

There you are up in your bunk after a four hour watch that followed a twelve hour work day. You're only into the first few strokes of a much needed dream rendevouz with a photo of your girl back home (or a well traveled porn rag) when the sirens start wailing. "General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man their battle stations..." Before you have time to curse yet another well-timed full scale naval cock block, you're already slipping out of your bunk and and into your boondockers. The Engineer berthing is dark except emergency lights. A crimson gloom lit up along an alleyway of lockers. Shadows scramble frantic past and into one another. Everyone's shouting around you -

"This a drill?"

"I don't know... move!"

"Mannnn, fuckin' Suez Canal is what it is..."

"Wake your sorry ass up, Greer!"

"MAKE A HOLE!!!"

And you do. You're fast. Faster than the old Lifers and the beer gut hicks and even the kids who've only had to run on a track or a football field. They don't know what you know. Running from the cops, the mall security, the Zulu Nation, the Latin Kings, the fucking Nazi's at the show, the normie jocks with too much beer and repressed homosexuality. They don't know how to move under the gun. So there you are. First out of the berthing, racing through the hatch up the ladder, hitting the 01 level in a dash. You're only half dressed, buttoning up your blue workshirt like some superhero in reverse. You reach the stern, pop the butterfly handle on the hatch and slide, yeah fucking slide down the ladder three levels fireman style. You land in a crouch and roll across the deck. You mount the headset and call it in -

"Auxiliary Pump Room On Line"

"Auxiliary Pump Room On Line, Aye" CCS responds through a yawn. "Take it easy, Babalon... it's just a drill."

"Fuck me..."

"Come again, ENFN Babalon?"

"Nothing..."

"Auxiliary Engine Room Online..." EN3 Trebbel drawls in the status report sounding like Elvis if Elvis was coming out of a truncated power nap.

"Auxiliary Engine Room Online, Aye... hey Trebbel, what's up with your boy, Babalon there... got a real attitude on him."

"Ah, you guys leave 'Problem Child' alone... he's just been drinkin' too much coffee, s'all..."

"JP-5 Pump Room online..."

And that was that. A big deal over nothing. Adrenalin shakes subside slow. You remind yourself this should come as no surprise. The Old Man's been nervous since the ship left Egypt. Scuttlebutt of terrorists and renewed tensions in the region. This will only be the first of several drills he'll hold over the next few days. 24-7 until the crew is running zombified stupid and the XO has to tell the Old Man to take it down a notch. Meanwhile...

... you light up a cigarette in clear violation of the ship's no-smoking policy and find your 'secret stash'. A coverless copy of The Illuminatus Trilogy. With your ear-goggles strapped on half-listening to the compartments sign in, you lean against the gray bulkhead. The machinery rattles around you in a perpetual cacophony that in time you will discover has a music of its own and it is then that you slip into a different dream:

You stand on the fantail under a canopy of stars that cast you in a silver glow. The ship is still. Drifting. The watch is off in a world of his own. You give a signal - tracing a pentagram with the tip of your cigarette cherry. From out of the shadowed waters The Leif Erickson emerges from gently lapping waves. An honest to goddess yellow submarine, done up with the grace of some gaudy drag-queen Nautilus.

Now!

You dive overboard, praying the ship doesn't start up again, knowing the propellers will suck you in and mince you into so much shark chum within seconds. The water hits ice cold. The muscles go rigid. You almost gasp out the air you saved in your lungs. You fight the panic and do the one thing you could always do right. You swim... you swim fast and burst out of the surface taking what feels like your first breath. Don't stop. Keep going. The Leif Erickson will only wait so long. You make the break. You go and you don't look back. You will become a psychonaut (though you don't know that word yet), a new kind of pirate for the promise of a new century less than a decade ahead. You can see them, a hatch has been opened. They were real all along. They didn't give up on you. They followed you and waited until you could escape. C'mon you're almost there.

Almost...

"...Turbine Room Online, Aye"

"Alright boys, looks like we're in it for the long haul" CCS drones through another yawn, "Nothing to do now but hurry up and wait."

Comments

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

i do daydream of standing on the deck of a ship scanning the panorama
at dawn, at dusk, under moonlight and starlight...

not necessarily a battleship, mind you... heh :-)

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I don't miss the Navy, but I do miss the ocean.