The Path Paved with Blood from Saigon to Kabul

 I don't give a damn which President was in before and I certainly don't give a damn about who is in office now. None of the sociopaths we call politicians have ever had my trust... not even the ones I tacitly supported. I do give a damn about the men and women that are sent to remote places in the world with the purpose of pay-back to the premier assholes/tyrants who try to piss on our ideals & national security.

Yes, I know. There are lessons our brass never learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan. There are analysts, pundits, and theorists who are writing that history. I don't give a damn about that either. I don't even care that our President has been on the wrong side of damned near every foreign affairs blunder or success in the past near fifty years he sank his ass in a chair in congress and now the White House.

I do care about and am maddened by, are those beribboned military officers who might have once put their own lives on the line until they advanced in rank through the political labyrinth of the Pentagon to pin four stars on their collars. Was kissing ass and playing the game in Washington for profit and for fun worth it for them? Was forgetting those who are in the field and allowing what might have started out as a just cause to become a sewer to dump munitions, blood, and money for the sake of their own ambition worth it? Can the General Milleys of the Pentagon covering their asses sleep at night while the nightmare of the evacuation goes on in Kabul? Will the next generation of officers learn anything from this fiasco for the next fiasco?

My heart sinks as much for the civilians who supported our mission whose fate we couldn't have cared less about. I can't imagine the fear and sense of betrayal they must feel as they mob the planes just as the memories of the fall of Saigon haunt us.

Oh yes, and then there's the pundits... the media monkeys who dance to and parrot the propaganda from overstuffed blow dried hair-dos of the organ grinders. They are all playing the same game.... the Washington circle-jerk of ambition. It isn't even about money to them. It is about sucking up to power and it doesn't matter to them what the power is about. Even the organ grinders don't care once they get their mansions on both coasts forgetting or vilifying the people in fly-over country who see through the bullshit though they are the ones paying for it.

This one is especially tragic because it began with our sending well trained and our best soldiers in for the right reasons but as soon as the morons in DC saw the profits, the mission sank into second place.... then third place... and then eventually buried in the deeps of the swamp.

I saw it coming. I hoped we'd get the people out. I sensed that we wouldn't. The Taliban was fighting Crusaders. We thought we'd just kick their asses and go home. It isn't like that. They have long memories and we forget what the panic was on cable news of last week. Islam is set permanently in the minds and souls of Jihadists. They die as martyrs. When taking them on, the West has never learned that you have to go in balls-on like it is WWIII. The whole nation has to be committed.

I remember the shock of 9/11. I remember driving cab the whole month of so. The parties stopped. The nation grieved. I had Iranian customers in my cab who apologized to me. We cried together. Then time buried the feelings, the parties gradually picked up. I became depressed as we engaged our military. The nation became distracted by shiny objects and ignored the blood and money Neo-Cons sacrificed as our attention was weirdly switched to Iraq. We were worn down and wanted to get on with our lives. After all, the numbers... the casualties only affected a few... not like Vietnam or WWII. The home front could go on as though there was no war going on beyond a few news segments now and then about how well it was going over there. A whole generation grew up, went to college, and learned nothing more than how racist, how sexist, and how homophobic we were for barring transgenders from whatever shithouse they wanted to use.

It's over for us. When the pandemic hit our hands were tied because all our pharmaceuticals were produced in China where the virus originated. We couldn't even get masks because they too were outsourced to be produced and hoarded in China. When Washington outsider, President Trump, tried to bring this to the public's attention, he was called an anti-Asian racist. That was when it really came to our attention who was behind the collapse of American power... It was Corporate multibillionaires, and political morons with major investments in China that gave up on us and sold us out. They sold us out on the so-called War on Terror too.

I moved to New Mexico where the California version of the Bi-Coastal Propaganda machine is weaker and settled in with my Pueblo friends and rancheros to watch the fall of Western Civilization. I'm far enough from the Tourist Trap of Taos where the machine hasn't quite taken hold. I'm out here where it is encroaching on lands that are still pastures for ranches and people are honest enough with themselves to help each other out in any crisis. It was a shock at first... well, not a shock, but I am pleasantly surprised that spirit is still here.

I'm just sad. Let me cry alone... alone with my fellow Vets.

Therapy Speak

The best article I've seen in the New Yorker for some time by staff writer Katy Waldman. 

 For Lori Gottlieb, the author of the book “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,” the downsides of casual therapy-speak are more straightforward. “I want to be clear that there’s no reason why people who are not professional psychologists should be expected to use these terms correctly,” she told me. “But there’s a lot of inaccuracy.” Error can be introduced via colloquialism—“O.C.D.” for “organized”—or the actual misconstrual of a word’s meaning. (Someone mistaking “conflict” for “abuse” or labelling you a “gaslighter” because you’ve expressed an opinion that they don’t agree with.) As philosophers from Michel Foucault to Peter Conrad have observed, medical vocabulary lifts up the speaker—claiming that your intrusive neighbor has “borderline personality disorder” cloaks you in authority while pathologizing him. Using these words as bludgeons strips them of complexity; the problem with armchair therapy, or what we now might call “Instagram therapy,” is that it can transform a “deeply relational, nuanced, contextual process,” Gottlieb said, into something “ego-directed, as if the point were always, ‘I’m the most important person and I need to take care of myself.’ ”

The One Unforgivable Sin

I've lived hard but my life hasn't been hard. If I had to change anything I might have loved harder, played harder, drank harder, smoked harder, danced harder, and did I say, loved harder?

Yes, I did, that is the one thing I never got enough of... will never get enough of.

Oh, I've been loved more than I deserve.

See, it is one thing to be loved but loving is better.

To hold her one more time.

To see Bonnie smile, overtaken by the ecstasy of love climaxing, body exploding in spasms, her joy in that one moment was, was bed sheets tangled, was moans... was laughter... was worth more than a mountain of gold.

Did I hear that, know that then?

I can't believe my luck.

Carolyn once complained that I was like a Koi swimming with the grace of the gods steeped in the murky waters all around wherever I swam ... she said I was the luckiest man in the world because somehow I always swam through & under it.

She had a right to be jealous. She gave the world Alanna, and when Alanna was born, so was unconditional love. I was once more luckier than the luckiest man in the world. 

I don't know the how of why. There have been times when I believed I was cursed... that I somehow jinxed myself when she left with Alanna and the dogs.

She resented my luck and how I abused it. I suppose that is my greatest curse of all, to jinx my luck. I cursed her and when I cursed her the curse boomeranged... decapitating my soul.

I had to wander in the wilderness for more than a decade... when drinking hard, dancing hard, playing hard, and loving hard became the fulcrum of the curse that was the one unforgivable sin.

She called about seventeen years ago to ask me to lift the curse and forgive her. I was baffled because I had cursed myself when I cursed her. 

Forgiving is easy but forgetting takes some necessary work. I said sure and gave my blessing.

Any of you Christians ever wonder what Jesus meant by the one unforgivable sin? I did and still do, but I think I know what it is now. Gamblers know what it is too. Never jinx your luck. I swear, I was damned lucky to survive that one.

That one unforgivable sin.

"Never curse your fiddle," the old-timers say.

I know how to do that too.

Loving Eliane began it all. We laughed with the gods and I embraced her suffering. Loving her lit the path. Unconditional love. The curse lifted, and then, and only then, did Bonnie clear the murky waters when we laughed with the gods while they laughed with us. Giving and receiving... intercourse is a word that means communication... a word for sexual congress too ... that's what they do... intercourse and laughing with the gods.

I know that the gods don't curse us. They have been my friends. We curse ourselves when we allow ourselves to jinx our luck by abusing it... when we think enough isn't enough, and in the throws of self pity we abuse our luck. 

I almost did it again when Bonnie died bt I knew better this time.

The gods never cease loving us. We stop loving ourselves. We forget to laugh with them at calamity. Did I not know that calamity of the soul is a force weaker than gravity?

I can't afford o allow calamity to corner me. It's likely I don't have another decade to try my luck.

That would be the Unforgivable Sin.

 

I Wished We Still Smoked

When she passed, my spirit became cold…

as cold as its lips on that last day I touched them.

That last day was an open coffin “Celebration of Life.”

Its make-up was perfect,

its hair straight,

its eyes closed,

its spirit gone.

I’d begged the officers to allow me one last look before they zipped it up… one last look while the remnants of her spirit still hovered nearby… but the County Chaplin said it would be better for me to see her at the funeral. I don’t remember how he put it but that was what he meant. My reaction was extreme. I cried! I cursed! “Who do you think I am, you think I’m a baby! Do you think I haven’t seen death before!”

I was an obstacle to the procedures of denial to be ignored as humanely as possible. The horrors of war are the horrors of civili-fucking-zation!

They zipped it up and took it away and three days later, at the funeral chapel, after she was long gone to wherever she, the Bonnie of her went, I stood over this dead image knowing the last time I really saw her was all I would have to hold on to.

Memory

The last time I saw her face before mine,

her hair matted to her brow with sweat…

the rest splayed over the pillow

like she was ready to order,

“I’m ready for my glam shot, maestro.”

She was always ready for a glam shot.

The girl had an affair with the camera.

They surely loved each other.

How could I be jealous?

Ah, to feel her body convulsing,

gasping at times clutching,

pushing away and pulling me in…

forever in time and place dissolved…

Oh, god, there is never enough of eternity here 

in this embrace… in this coming back… in this going to…

Then, time stops… her rapture complete...

Our eyes fixed one on one,

that coming and going… that orgasm.

What do I see in those eyes

the color of a sparrow’s wing?

What do I hear? What do I feel

when seeing hearing and feeling

evaporate into a memory of

a moment?

And there she stays in memory…

a close-up… But it ain’t over yet.

The last time I saw her smile,

her lips were warm,

our eyes open to each other…

our souls cut through a jungle of inhibitions…

we chased the tiger…

the tiger chased us…

there’s a cadence to it…

Stop --- Orgasm…

a cheap word

but coming and going is the best I can do.

Has anyone ever seen a smile that glowed?

I have, in that moment.

We have no words until she is done...

no words but one more spasm

and a chortle.

Laughter followed… musical really.

It too has a cadence like orgasm…

it too moves us by spasms…

spasms of bodies pleased to the core…

every cell celebrating…

relieved of their chains,

muscles moving in and out

in their own directions,

thoughts unleashed

basking in the warmth of a love

No longer telling itself what can and ought to be except for the rhythm of it, the sweet tones of it… the bypassing of the brain straight as a dagger to the heart of it.

The rational mind denies all of it.

Hard to write about something you never believed in ‘til it happened.

But words do come, her face glowing she said, “I wish we still smoked.”

Never knowing what’s coming from her next I cede, “Okay?”

“This would be a good time for a cigarette, you know, soft focus, light over and behind you… you roll over and light two cigarettes.”

“I can see it… the light’s direct… on your face now… the shadows are gone.”

“Welcome back. I guess they call this stage un-coming.”

“I promise, every time I don’t smoke, I’ll think of you.”

“Yeh, I wish we still smoked.”

Chapter 9. Max McGee & the Pumpkin Patch

Ryan stayed in touch with me at Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii. He didn’t re-up but managed a lateral transfer, landing a gig as a detective for the Santa Barbara Police Department. He suggested I come to Santa Barbara to join him there once I recovered. He said my military experience in the CIC would count for something towards a lateral transfer too, and that his recommendation ought to make it a shoo-in. Once stateside, I found it difficult to adjust from the beginning.

Ryan damned near held my hand to take me through the hoops; registering at City College and filing the paper work for getting my G.I. Bill started. For reasons only the gods grasp, a lateral transfer of all of my military time qualified me for Public Service Purchase towards retirement bennies but it was required I take Criminal Justice courses and basic Police Officer Service Training taken off from requirements in the Academy.

I knew I wasn’t cop material by then. My head still rang… I had nightmares. Flashbacks. I couldn’t concentrate. I could’ve had a good career, but I walked out of class one morning and changed majors to philosophy with Dr. Timothy Fetler, and after transferring to UCSB, completely immersed myself in Religious Studies with Walter Capps who held the first seminars on Vietnam Veterans, while eking-out average grades in everything else.

My records from Vietnam were expunged for the most part and as far as the VA was concerned, I received an honorable discharge as an E-6 staff sergeant and though I didn’t expect a Purple Heart there was no mention of medical treatment, or where and how I served except for a couple authorized ribbons. I didn’t find out about these omissions until Professor Capps urged me to apply for VA Disability Compensation.

On college campuses Vets were an isolated lot among the bright-eyed kids on Mom and Pop grants in those days. Some of us on the GI Bill walked around like we’d fallen through a rabbit hole.  Max McGee is another Vet that’s a ghost shadowing this story. He knows all the key players and all of them know him… like the string in string theory… I think. Max and I weren’t the kind of Vets who went on to bigger and better things, like grad school or engineering degrees, and we recognized that character in each other. Max achieved a little more than I did as an art student that earned a BFA and I declared a major in history before dropping out. I had some serious drinking to do and school was getting in the way.

We spent hours in his garage on Cinderella Lane next to a pumpkin patch. One night we were stopped by the cops because we’d been hurling pumpkins at each other in the pumpkin patch next door. There was no arrest, but I remember throwing one and yelling, “Take that Prince Charming!” and he’d throw one back and yell, “You see a prince here you can suck his dick!”

We rolled in the pumpkin patch laughing and hooting after the cops left us. The scary thing to me was that I think I felt an urge to hold him… to protect him, and we cried. I smashed another pumpkin over his head when he tried to walk away, and it started all over again. The details of what happened then are still creepy to me, but we might have done something that night in the pumpkin patch. There was no travelling down the Hershey Highway or anything like that.  We shoved the idea that we might be gay into the background with all the other ghosts and avoided eye contact for a while. After all, he was married, and I was… well, I had a memory of someone, a woman… and after her, I was so very alone. Relationships, gay or straight take commitment and let’s just say, after Kim-Ly, I wasn’t commitment material. It hurts too much to love somebody that much and some of us just ain’t cut-out for suffering the pain of it more than once. Though he was absolutely devoted to his wife, Max had a similar attitude about love and it was the glass slipper neither of us looked for or talked about it after that night. We both left Prince Charming at the pumpkin patch on Cinderella Lane before the ball.

During that time Max and Celeste had a baby girl and he’d become domesticated… for a while. He told me about how he missed graveyard shift cab driving and the independence it gave him. He said he hadn’t felt at home in any other job since returning State Side. I dropped out of school and was driving a hack graveyard shift when I met Anna and it turned out that she knew Max too. I didn’t see much of him until after these events had passed. I heard that he’d been a teacher or something at the prison up in Vacaville and then, much later, there were the rumors about Nicaragua. After his divorce geedunk floated around that Max was there with a Miskita Chica and Eden Pastora.  Had I known then I would’ve worried about him. When I did find out my fears were salved after I heard that the Bird Dog had him covered. The consciousness of a warrior ain’t human and combat’s nasty enough for those of us who are fuckin’ animals from the get-go. But going into the cesspool of values that is war without the DNA for it, he would be more than scarred for life and I don’t wish that on anyone… especially not someone I love. A lot of Wannabees that missed out on Nam became Mercs and found out it takes more than an abundance of bar-room testosterone to have what it takes.

Kraszhinski's Odyssey: Chpt 15. A Fishing Trip

Chapter 15. A Fishing Trip

I had to leave the sanctuary of Anna’s studio to pick up my VA check at the Virgin. Spiderman was at the desk holding up a foldout to the light. I slammed the counter’s ringer. He damned near fell out of his chair.

Recovering his composure, he said, “I see you Crash, but I’d rather look at this. What do you think, is she a ten?”

I glanced at it a second. The light from the desk lamp reflected off the sheen of the ceramic glaze on the page. I squinted, pretending to appraise the picture’s most important anatomical features.

I asked, “You got my check yet?”

He took his gaze off his skin mag to eye me, “Say, you been takin’ vitamins or something?”

“I didn’t come here for a date, sweetheart, I just want my check.”

He put the magazine aside, pulled the government envelope out of my old pigeonhole, and slipped it across the counter, “You ain’t drinkin’ are you?”

“It’s only been a week. You think it shows?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“I just have to keep my head clear for a while. At least ‘til a few things get straightened out. Say, I can pay half my bill when I cash this.”

“Forget about it until you’re back in the hack.” Lucas leaned over the counter to damned near whisper, “Crash, I gotta tell you. Some kind of detective was here, an’ he was lookin’ for you. What kinda shit’d you get yourself into?”

I couldn’t be too careful, or I’d end up like Perry, “Was he alone?”

“Yeh, why? What difference does that make?”

It had to be Ryan because, when it’s official business, detectives come with back-up. “Not sure, what did he say?”

“He just asked if you were stayin’ with that Anna chick. I said I didn’t know but you’re a lucky man, Kraszhinski, if you are.”

“Hey, you’re starting to drool.” I stepped back to walk away. “But thanks, Spiderman. You don’t have to tell him I was here.” The thought came to me that Ryan didn’t know where I was hiding out. Anna hadn’t let him know. I supposed she had good reason not to.

---- break ----

I went out to the corner liquor store to cash my check. John had been doing that since I first moved into the Virgin. It was better than direct deposit. I didn’t want a bank account and I liked it that way. It kept me invisible; no debit cards, credit cards, everything was cash and carry. I always paid up on the first of the month. I had John stop my tab at fifty bucks so that I wouldn’t use up my reserves. That was how I budgeted my VA check.

John cashed my check… counted it out and passed it to me. I peeled off fifty bucks

“No Crash. You can get me later… when you’re back on your feet.”

I looked down at my shoes, “Look, I’m on my feet John. Here, take this. I’m okay, really.”

John took the money, “You know; that cop friend of yours? Detective Ryan. He was here first thing this morning… banged on my door before I opened. He says it’s urgent.”

“I know. I’d appreciate it if you don’t know anything… right.” I clacked three quarters on the counter, and he passed back a pack of generic smokes.

Sliding a pint across the counter, he said, “I can’t lie to a cop, Crash, that ain’t my style.”

I pushed the pint back to him, “You’re an honest man, John. You don’t have to lie for me.”

---- break ----

I was at the State Street traffic lights on 101 before I realized that I didn’t take that pint from John. It felt good. The walk-light changed and two steps into it I had a vague urge to turn around and go get it. I didn’t have to struggle much though. It felt like a big hand was on my shoulder guiding me away. It wasn’t long before I was on the breakwater enjoying the surge of the surf pounding away under me. I sat on the concrete bench to take in the morning sun. I knew what the big hand was, and the feeling was vivid… like the way I felt helpless while watching Anna as an adolescent in my cab… how as a young adult she was in this oh-so-fucked-up world fighting. Anna wouldn’t be beaten by the perversity of adults; she wouldn’t be beaten by the arbitrary capriciousness of nature either. It was a feeling of awe, fear, and beauty, compounded by a willingness to fight for it and against it. There was no consideration whatsoever of what it would mean to fight it. That’s when I saw Ryan coming towards me from the Yacht Club.

Ryan stood before me with stout legs planted apart, hammer fists at his waist, day old speckled with grey carrot colored stubble on ruddy cheeks below piercing blue eyes. A wool watch-cap covered a bristled butch-cut on a neckless block of a head that was welded on broad shoulders above a barrel chest under a Navy-blue cable-knit sweater. He had ten years on me and was a head shorter, but I wouldn’t take him on. Hell, I’d rather stand naked without a cape in a bull ring against el Toro than go toe-to-toe with that man.

I patted my hand on the wet spot where the spraying surf from the night before left a puddle, “Don’t sit here unless you want to get your butt wet.”

“Walk with me to Mzz Sherlock, Crash. You in the mood for some fishing?”

“Depends on what we’re fishin’ for, my friend.”

“I’m not asking.”

 Mzz Sherlock was a clean boat of about forty-five feet… nothing fancy about her… a modified Main Lobster Yacht. Called a yacht because it was no longer a working boat but converted for use as a pleasure craft… a sport fishing boat. The stern had been closed off and rigged to mount poles so that she would no longer be hauling lobster traps aboard. The old straight-eight marine engine that powered her could plow through just about any seas. The cabin was large enough to tuck a gateleg table that dropped down for a third berth, and on the other side, a chart table for plotting a course. The most modern features in the cabin were a marine radio, a scanner and a 1950’s radar screen.  Otherwise, a compass, sextant, and clock, were good enough for him. Forward of, and two steps below the cabin, it featured a shower next to the head, and in the forward hold, two more berths.

We boarded and cruised out of the harbor. I knew he was going to fish for something other than marlin and that he would be patient. The sea-air away from the harbor was different… just as fresh and all… but there was something about it.

We baited our lines, set up our poles, and took turns at the helm. Ryan opened a cooler and pulled out two cans… a beer for himself and offered me one.

“You got a soda or something?”

“I heard you quit drinking.”

“No. Just laying off a bit. Who told you that?”

“A little sparrow… ‘sides, you don’t look so shitty,” he laughed a deep roar. I wondered whether I’d ever heard Ryan laugh.

I’d damned near forgotten how to drink a soda. I gulped it down as though it was a beer and tossed the can off the stern. It was a funny thing, but I was embarrassed enough to think I needed to make an excuse for my abstinence. I said, “I didn’t really quit. I’m just putting some time between drinks, if you know what I mean.”

Ryan pushed an empty five-gallon paint bucket next to me and scowled, “Put ‘em in here next time.”

He cut the motor and we just drifted with the current. He continued to look at me with a scrunched rusty brow.

A weight pressed my chest and caught in my craw, so I let it out, “Anna’s in trouble.”

“I know,” he dropped his empty in the bucket as his line went taut and his pole bent some. He yanked the pole from its rod holder and hollered, “It’s fishin’ ya know.”

The pole went back to its previous arc, “You got nothing there, pal.”

“Sometimes the little ones fight harder than the big ones. You don’t know what you’ve got until you pull it in,” he said.

I wasn’t comfortable between these two loyalties. I pounded a cigarette out of the pack but didn’t light it. Anna hadn’t told me enough to know how much Ryan knew or how much I should let him know, “And, like I said, you got nothing.”

 Ryan was staring at my cigarette, “Fortuitous subject though… let’s talk about that.”

“Let me guess, it’s not this smoke? It’s about Anna.”

“You tell me. Anna’s too smart to get big headed. She’s in a trap she got into as a small fry and now the ante has been upped on her.”

Ryan’s eyes were still on my smoke, “Your boss is into some pretty sick shit. Worse than that, he took that bimbo with him and now it’s starting to cave in on all of them.”

“Yes, there’s Jenny, but I’m not sure who else you mean.”

“I mean Perry. Bloody murder and more.”

“Anna told me. You do know I was in jail at the time…?”

“You probably don’t know what’s been going on. I don’t think you even cared until a week ago. Am I right?”

“That I care? Yeah, I suppose I do. Ryan, I think I’m coming alive. I feel it and I’m remembering things. I just didn’t give a shit.” I patted my shirt pocket. Assured that I had a full pack, I took the helm.

“And now you do?”

“Yeah, oh I don’t know. I had a child… a daughter. It just keeps getting scrambled.”

I began cruising just fast enough to create a froth. I watched the foam churning up the ocean astern and, out of a strange compulsion, I tossed the new pack of smokes over Ryan’s head into the roiling wake. I don’t know why I did it, but it felt right. It was letting go of another big chunk of the past.

I looked back in time to see Ryan smile and a Marlin clear the water. It came back down, missing the bait on my line. It was a majestic loop and a good sign the day would be a good one. I shouted over the throbbing motors, “So, Anna’s the live bait? Why are we fishing if you already have a bead on Doc?”

Ryan reeled the squid towards the boat in front of how far astern we saw the jumper and, as an aside, he shouted, “You know, great whites have some sort of instinct. A marine biologist in Monterey told me. If you kill one… well, the old ones… the big ones… they skedaddle and don’t come back for a long-assed time. Maybe they discuss us. All you’ve got to do is kill one. Folks don’t know that.”

I knew lots about great whites and he knew that the breeding grounds at the Farallons were within my bailiwick. I hated it when Ryan went into one of his teaching modes and tried to trick me, “You’re gonna tell me that your fucking marine biologist was Ed Rickets?”

He laughed, “You caught me. Forgot you college boys read Steinbeck. Okay. I lied, it’s an old fisherman’s story.”

I knew that there had to be more, and he was stalling to see how patient I could be. There’s a marlin out there and Ryan’s talking shit about great whites. “You aren’t going to let me know more?”

“About fishing? Crash, you’ll know more when I know more. Try to remember, this crap will take time and patience. Stay close to Anna, she has her secrets and I don’t completely trust her, but I know she can help us out. We don’t want to scare off the big ones. Her story has some holes in it. Her heart’s good but she’s a compulsive liar and is covering her sweet ass… for good reason,” he said.

“Okay, I get it now old man. Are you in love?” If there was a truth I knew up to this point, it was that I hadn’t been paying attention before the other day. “She’s kinda young for you. I take it that you’re not going by the book this time?”

“I am. But the book we’re going by hasn’t been written. Circumstances always warrant an exception. I have to tell you, something smells bad at the station. Might go up near the top of the chain of command in the DA’s office and beyond. Someone’s stepped on my earliest attempts to investigate and I can’t pin it on interdepartmental shenanigans.”

“So, Ryan,” I was intrigued now, Ryan was going rogue. That wasn’t his style, but I’ve seen him do it before. We both did back in Nam when command obstructed. Our loyalties were to the boots on the ground and not the honchoes in the Pentagon.

I probed, “I need to know what we’re getting into.” Still not sure what anything he said was about, I added, “I’ve never liked working with the Embassy back then either. Too much like catch and release.”

Ryan’s rod dipped a couple of times, “Sometimes they tease the crap out of ya.”

I cut the engines as soon as I heard the reel’s shrill r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r’s. He grabbed the pole out of its holder and planted the butt of the rod under his belly. The fight was on. I could see why Hemingway loved fishing for the big ones. It could be compared to a bare-fisted boxing match. The rounds keep going until one of the boxers is knocked out… No TKO’s… Knocked out! And it looked like I had a ringside seat for this bout. The line went straight down, pole bent… keeping the line taught, Ryan reeled and released it… brought it closer and let it go out forever further and reeled it back. The damned thing took a dive down to at least 150 feet. The line changed directions a dozen times before the fish breached in a graceful leap coming back down as sure as a fencer’s parry and lunge. Ryan and that leviathan had been at it at least an hour as I stood by with the gaff.  Several times that fish got almost close enough to gaff but wasn’t tired enough to give up.

It dove further, I shouted, “How deep is it here?”

“About 130 fathoms!”

“Shit, you got that much line, that’s damned near 800 feet!”

“780 to be exact… and no, I’ll have to horse him a bit!”

I was ecstatic even though I’d been at ready for so long. “What do you figure, six hundred pounds?”

Ryan was calm… his eyes towards the horizon, “Maybe more. But look, there’s a great white’s fin… just disappeared out there.”

Another half hour the Marlin had been tiring but found the reserves to turn away as though fleeing. It mustered enough strength to make one more leap when, in mid-air, it happened. That fucking great white breached and sailed in a perfect trajectory to grasp the fish in its teeth at midsection and dove back down into the deep.

“You see that! Fucking robbed us!” I cursed, holding the gaff at-ease, no longer ready to haul in our prize.

Ryan pulled up his line with only the head of that huge Marlin on it. That was all there was left of it. I swear he was off the charts giddy, “Yeah, but didn’t that give you a rush better than any of your damned drugs?”