Things That Are Funny on a Submarine But Not Really, page 9
“What?” I say.
He leans in close to me, like he really is going to plant one on my lips. “There’s a spook on board,” he says, then he leans back, letting me take in what he’s just said.
“Is that so? Who told you that?” I ask, thinking if Doc really wants to find out if Tintin is spying, he surely wouldn’t have told Grenadier jack shit. Grenadier’s strung out and an emotional wreck. No way in hell he could be trusted with intel.
Grenadier leans in close to me again, whispering, “No one. I know because days ago I sent an email to my daughter saying how I brought mini Milky Ways underway with me and stowed them in my dopp kit, and today when I went to grab my mini Milky Ways, there were only three left,” he says.
“Oh, yeah, and those mini Milky Ways hold the clue to all our boat’s movements and technology on board?” I say.
“No! Don’t you get it, Dead Man? Someone’s been fucking reading our emails, that’s what it means,” Grenadier says.
I shake my head.
“Grenadier, we get pretty fucking bored on this boat, but I don’t think anyone’s bored enough to try and intercept your emails to your four-year-old daughter about mini fucking Milky Ways,” I say.
Grenadier holds up his arm in front of me, so I can see the inside of his wrist.
77 “Look, I sliced my wrist, not my brain, asshole. I know when something stinks. It was the same with Candy Love back in Jaro City. I knew he’d squeal on us. I just knew it,” he says.
I shake my head. “No one’s crazy enough to spy. You’d be found out faster than fuck and end up in the brink the rest of your life.”
“Yeah? I bet there are guys who get away with it. What if you got paid enough money? What if you didn’t have to work another day in your life? Wouldn’t you do it?” he says.
I shake my head. “No, I wouldn’t, and I sure as shit don’t know anyone else on this boat who would.”
“I do. I can name at least one shipwreck in Radio who would do it,” he says.
“Yeah, well don’t tell me his name. I don’t want to know,” I say.
“Tintin,” he says.
I don’t know how it happens so fast, me getting up and grabbing Grenadier and putting him in a head lock. He sputters. I think he’s trying to say Tintin’s name over and over again, but it just comes out “In, In, In.” If we were in Jaro City and having this fight, I’d be dead by now. Grenadier would have a piece on him or a blade. He starts reaching out toward the desk where the scissors are. Because I’m so much heavier and taller than he is, I have an advantage, and I can pull on his neck and get him away from the desk. Then the door swings open. It’s Cord. He looks at me with my arm around Grenadier’s neck, whose face is now three shades darker than usual. He says very calmly, “Dead Man, I brought you a Red Bull,” and he holds out a Red Bull for me which is obviously one he just scored for himself, but he sacrifices it in order to break up the fight. I don’t take it at first. Grenadier’s trying to pull my arm off his neck. All the sputtering he’s doing saying “In, In, In” is getting my arm fucking wet. Cord holds the can out to me again, closer this time, and he looks right into my eyes and nods. I let Grenadier go and push him onto the deck and out of my way so I can get past him and leave, but before I do, I turn around and grab the can out of Cord’s hand.
78 I drink it in crew’s mess while a bunch of us are watching Silence of the Lambs. Everyone wants the painting Anthony Hopkins has done of Jodie Foster holding her lamb so we can hang it up on the bulkhead. Then everyone does their best serial killer voices and goes around saying “Clarice.” I think how it’s just one more thing I couldn’t write about to Isa. This whole boat and everyone on it, in fact, is something I’ll never be able to describe to Isa.
79
13
Matthew McConaughey comes over the comm. We stop in our tracks to listen. Guys in the P-way stop, guys sleeping stop dreaming to listen, guys mid-spoonful shoving hamsters, aka chicken cordon bleu, into their mouths stop to listen. We turn off the TV as Hannibal Lecter is saying, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” A sailor stopping in his tracks every time they hear any voice on a loudspeaker is the curse of a sailor. We could be walking in K-Mart and an announcement comes over the air while we’re buying Cheetos and we freeze just as we’re grabbing the bag on the shelf and stop and listen because we’re hyper-trained to listen to any announcement that would mean we have to sprint into action. In his Dazed and Confused voice, the captain says, “Hey, yeah, so this is your captain speaking, and just so you know we are slowwwwwly making our way to the land of the light here in international waters off China, and we’ll be going to the surface. Happy journey, sailors,” he says. We all sigh, relieved it’s not an emergency. A few guys say, “Alright, alright, alright” in a voice just like Matthew McConaughey’s.
When we’re on the surface, I catch sight of Tintin walking quickly through the P-way. I follow behind him.
He heads toward the hatch, where, at the moment, we are receiving six Navy SEALs who were just airlifted by Viper choppers to our location. I wonder how Tintin knew we were taking them on board just now. Tintin doesn’t notice me behind him. I see him surreptitiously holding his cell phone in his hand, cupping it so only the camera 80shows. He’s taking pictures. Sure, it’s cool to see the SEALs come on board. They look like Ken dolls compared to the rest of us because they’re six feet tall, tan, fit as fuck, and have close haircuts and shaves. I can still smell the aftershave on their faces they must have put on in the morning, but taking pictures on the boat sure as shit could qualify Tintin for a Bravo Bozo, or worse, getting called to captain’s mast. I’m about to tell him to stow it when he slides it back into the pocket of his poopy suit. Wonton comes up from behind me. “Man, look at those dudes. Fit as fuck,” he says. We’re all grungy and smelly, and Wonton still has a staple sticking out of his forehead. The SEALs get taken by the XO to the wardroom.
Back in Radio, we’re all there. Everyone’s guessing what could be going on, except Grenadier. He says he knows what’s going on. “They’re here to extract the spy,” he says.
“Grenadier, maybe you should go back to your rack and get some rest. We’ve got enough sailors here,” I say because Grenadier’s eyes look like they’re bugging out of his head, like a fish someone’s squeezing by the gills.
“No, I want to be here when they get the spook. I want to know who he is,” Grenadier says.
“I’m about to headlock you again,” I say. Cord gives Grenadier a look and motions with his head toward the door.
Grenadier scoffs and says, “I still say someone on this boat is a spy.” Then he slinks out the door.
I feel sick because we’re on the surface and we’re rolling side to side in four-foot waves. Subs are pigs on the surface. We sailors would all much rather be stealthy walruses under the sea, which is our preferred environment. We get ready to receive transmissions. I look over at Tintin. He looks like he always does, except I still see the outline of his phone in his pocket, even though he knows phones aren’t allowed in Radio.
There’s no email from Isa, but the news from home is that there’s been a lot of rain and culverts washed out. A tree came down behind the house that nearly missed my bedroom ceiling by a few 81feet, so I should feel lucky to be on a submarine out in the middle of the Pacific, so my parents say. They also say my sister is thinking of going to the Naval Academy for college and becoming a ring knocker. I think she should go Marines while she’s there. She’s in shape, and gutsy, and curses more than I did when I was her age, and I think how I should remember to write her an email encouraging her to be a Marine. “Misery loves company, but I’ll never fucking salute you because you’ll always be my little shit of a sister,” I’ll say in the email. I know my parents are happy she’s going to college; at least in the email they didn’t mention again how they want me to get a college education. It’s bad enough I’m about to vomit hamsters from the boat rocking so much, I don’t need to also feel sick because of them telling me what to do. Fuck, though, I miss them, or maybe I just miss being home, which without them wouldn’t feel much like home, so I don’t really know what that means. All I know is it would be nice to walk to the back field with them and the dogs right now. I can see the stream where the dogs jump in and wade. The place where the tall grass is nearly lying down, and the stream’s edge is muddy from the dog’s paws. I can hear my father saying, “Wow, look at how high the water is!” and being amazed because that’s what he’s like, someone who’s always amazed by the littlest things. Sometimes he gets so excited about something that my heart starts to race because I think something’s wrong, but it’s usually just a giant spider in a web in the corner of the window or a Cooper’s hawk spreading its wings and flying above us that he’s marveling at. Maybe Isa would want to know what my home is like. I could write all this to Isa whenever I get around to writing her again.
I exhale loudly. Cord glances at me, then looks away.
“If there were a spy on board, who do you think it would be?” I ask. Cord shrugs.
“If you had to guess,” I say.
“I really don’t know,” he says.
“You?” I say.
“Me?” Cord says. “Why would I spy?”
82 Now I shrug. “Money. Send something back to your parents. They can’t make much selling roses and daisies and shit,” I say.
“They work seven days a week. They make enough money. But that’s not the point. I’d never spy. I hate spies,” he says.
“I bet all spies say that,” I say.
I get up and start walking out.
“Where you going?” Cord says.
“Can you keep a secret?” I say.
“Yes,” Cord says, and I know he can.
“To catch me a spy,” I say.
83
14
In crew’s mess, there’s leftover lemon meringue pies that the CS made, but when I go to grab a slice, the Chop tells me I can’t have it. “It’s for the SEALs. They’ll eat them later when they finish whatever diving they’ll be doing,” he says. Usually, the Chop is generous with me and saves me desserts if I miss any because of my shift. I start wondering if Doc told Chop to cut me off because I wasn’t scribbling in my little notepad about Tintin’s every move. What will be cut off for me next? I’m about to ask the Chop if the Doc had anything to do with it, but Captain comes on the comm and says, “Hey guys, this is your captain speaking, we’re going to take our guests down for a dive and give them a ride for a while in our bat mobile, until we reach our destination. Prepare to dive.”
Everyone around me asks, “What destination?” and we all look at each other, but nobody knows. Some of us think maybe we’re headed for a port, and we’ll be able to get off boat for a couple of days and walk around Singapore. We all start reminiscing about the last time we were in Singapore. Wonton reminds us how we went to the Four Floors of Whores, and then we went and had our feet cleaned by fish where we sat on the edge of a pool, rolled up our pants legs, and stuck our bare feet into the water and the fish nibbled on them. We couldn’t stop laughing it tickled so much.
After sailing beneath the surface now for a few hours, we still don’t know where we’re headed. All that we know from looking at the gauges around the boat is that we are four hundred feet down. Baitz 84thinks that it’s just an exercise we’re doing to tote some SEALs around and then let them out to swim circles around our boat testing some state-of-the-art breathing apparatus. Grenadier thinks the SEALs are here to extract the spy. The boat slows down. The captain then orders that we rig for ultra-quiet, which means that everyone not on watch must go to their racks and be quiet. I think I can go to Rackistan, but then the COB tells me I have watch in Radio, which is bullshit. I already had watch. This has got to be the work of Doc putting pressure on me to spy on Tintin.
I head back to Radio, and because we’re rigged for ultra-quiet, I try to walk like a kitten, but my sneakers are squeaking if I put too much weight on my heel, so I tiptoe in the P-way, which makes me even taller, and then bam, I bang my goddamn head on a pipe, gash my forehead, and have to keep from saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” All I can think of is how there is nothing good that happens on this boat that I could ever write to Isa about, and maybe I should (a) just stop writing to Isa anymore because it’s just too depressing, (b) make up a fairytale about this boat and how we all wear crisp uniforms and speak politely and link arms and sing sea shanties in our spare time, or (c) tell Doc I’m the fucking spy so he stops asking me to spy on Tintin.
In Radio, I wipe up the blood coming from the gash on my forehead with a few blank pages from the back of my Dune paperback. Why are those dumb pages in books anyway? I don’t really wipe up the blood with the pages. Really, I just slap the pages to my forehead so that it looks like I was out in the street in a strong wind and some trash flew into my face and it stuck there. Tintin’s reading his manual, so I ask him, in a whisper, why those pages are there in the backs of books anyway. Tintin responds in a whisper, without looking up from his manual, “So you can rewrite the ending, so it ends the way you want it to end.” I nod. It sounds reasonable. Maybe, if by the end of Dune the planet Arrakis doesn’t have water, I can rewrite the ending so the place gets flooded and becomes like the lost fucking world of Atlantis. Maybe this is another reason I shouldn’t go to college, because with all the themes in the book, Fear, Family, Religion, Power, I think just adding 85water would make everything better. My thoughts are interrupted by the Chief of the Watch. “Prepare to surface,” he says.
This is when Tintin tosses the manual aside, and I pick my head out of my asshole and we both sit in front of our screens and get ready to start receiving messages. Tintin goes over the flash messages with me, making sure we’re decoding them correctly because flash messages aren’t standard messages. I get on the XJ phone circuit to the captain. “Sir, messages for your eyes only, Sir,” I say. In a moment, the captain is standing in the doorway of the radio room. He’s thin and tall, with a dimple in his chin and a five o’clock shadow that looks like flecks of gold. I hand him over the messages and look for his reaction. I wonder what Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused would look like if he got bad news, if he’d still say, “Alright, alright, alright,” in his slow Texan accent. The captain goes up ten points at least in my estimation because he doesn’t look worried at all even though the messages, when translated into plain sailor English, say that a Chinese fucking military trawler has intercepted one of our unmanned underwater drones, a UUV from a US research vessel in nearby waters, and the Chinese have hauled it on board their piece-of-shit excuse for a surface vessel, and the Chinese sacs of balls are refusing to respond to requests from the US vessel to return our goddamn motherfucking property, and so we are ordered to send out our SEALs.
My sphincter is tightening. For the first time since I’ve been a submariner, my boat is now involved in something more than just drills and training and general surveillance. I look at Tintin, seeing if he’s as amped as I am. The whole of Tintin is usually pretty relaxed. He slouches most of the time, even in his chair, and sometimes, while talking to you, he rests the back of his neck over the edge of the back of the chair, looking up like it’s a beautiful day. He’s not slouching now. He’s sitting like someone stuck a pole down his shirt back. His eyes are jumping from the captain to the screen where the messages show up and then back to the captain. Maybe he looks anxious, and maybe he looks like he should run and hide, but maybe that’s just me misreading him. Of course he looks wild-eyed. Suddenly we’re like boots on the 86ground. We’re actually going to engage with the enemy—hoorah. I tell myself to calm down. I know from reading Dune that when Gurney Halleck, the weapons teacher, instructs little Muad’Dib how to fight, he tells him, “In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack.” If anything, our submarine should be planning on getting out of harm’s way fast by submerging, not thinking about the target of one of our torpedoes.
Tintin and I send messages back and forth between the captain and the fleet commander. WEPS is topside right now outfitting the SEALs with inflatable rafts and pulling out automatic rifles for them from the special forces op box. We are one half-mile from the fucking Chinese sampan sack of shit trawler military vessel and also one half-mile from one of their fake islands they made by piling sand and cement on top of a fucking coral reef so they now consider us in their waters and that’s why they think they have the right to take one of our UUVs and not give it back.
On the screen that shows us what the periscope sees, there’s a rubber raft with the five SEALs in it who look like Ken dolls as they motor off toward the Chinese vessel.
“How much do you want to bet the fucking Chinese don’t give that UUV back,” I say to Tintin. Tintin doesn’t answer because the captain has given us a response to send back to the fleet commander saying that the ETA for the SEALs to reach the Chinese fucking ball sac sampan military vessel is ten minutes.
“Fuck, I hope they fuckin’ shoot the shit out of the Chinese if they don’t give us back our UUV,” I say.
Tintin says, “Dead Man, go into my rack and get us three Red Bulls apiece. This might turn out to be a long day in our lovely steel tube of dumb.”
I’m on it fast. Tintin being generous and giving me three Red Bulls is cumshaw. I run to Tintin’s rack, leaving him alone in the radio room. I’m happy to do it. I’ve run out of Red Bulls already since the beginning of our underway, and Tintin’s right, this might be a long day. Running to his berthing, I feel like they’ve turned up the oxygen 87the way the captain does on field days when we have to clean. I feel abso-fucking-lutely great. This is real-world shit we’re engaged with right now. I think about all the things I know about China. The trade war we have against them, the way we’ve increased visa restrictions on them, the way the FBI and Homeland Security are saying that China is trying to influence US elections, the way in the ’96 election they donated money to the DNC, the way in 2014 they hacked the computer system that contained data on all government personnel, the way they’re embedding tech into microchips on goods sent to the US, and, most importantly, the fact that they’ve got missiles that if launched could reach all the way to the US. All of these things have the potential to turn this engagement with the Chinese into a total shit show. Spying for the Chinese right now would probably be pretty lucrative. Whoever’s doing it, if they’re really doing it, is making bank. This is definitely something I can’t tell Isa about.
