A Pagan Christian

A note on Carabanchel:

Carabanchel was a prison in Spain that was built by and for political prisoners in Franco's Spain after WWII. The prison was used for political prisoners until  Franco's death in 1975. The Franco regime censored news and denied there were political prisoners after the war: Basque Separatists and progressive politicians were labeled common criminals. Thus, Carabanchel housed only "common criminals" until 1998 before it was closed.

   The abandoned buildings provided graffiti artists a remarkable canvas transcending political scribblings into a public art piece that stood by its own merits. It was finally bull-dozed in 2008, replaced with apartment buildings and "green" space, but not without a public outcry.

****

     A guard opened the food tray slot in the iron door and ordered, “Strip off your filthy rags.” Then the door opened as two guards entered. One stood by the door while the other blasted with a hose; cold water on his naked body. The water pricked his skin like piercing needles but he didn’t shy away from it because he too was weary of the stink of several weeks on hold in these cells. This might be the only hygiene he might enjoy. 

   His mind went back to cold mountain streams where he stood naked under the falls after a two day hike from the Val d’Aran… he imagined the cool air on his flesh and had to snap his attention back to the commands of the guards as a jump suit of sorts was thrown in front of him onto the concrete floor. The door clanged shut.

   Alesander was able to count the days by the changing of the guards. A single bulb above in the middle of the cell was on all day and night so that it was impossible to tell one day from another.

   It must have been a couple of weeks when Alesander was taken back to the interrogation room. The inquisitor reappeared and dropped a tablet and pencil on the table.

   “My name is Martin, Alesander.” He spoke softly, “You know and I know that you are beyond help… but I might be able to make your stay here more comfortable.”

   “Gracias Martin… but why?” he asked, knowing full well that any kindly gesture had a price... was this a clue his life would be spared?

   “Are you a Christian, Alesander?” Martin waited for an answer and then continued, “Or, are you a Basque pagan?”

   Alesander almost laughed at this repeated question but held back. This man could never become an ally. Alesander knew that it was more important to make friends rather than enemies. He would see where this man stood… where Martin was going with this line of interrogation, “I suppose that I am…”

   His mind drifted back to his religious studies before he left for Madrid in ’36 at sixteen. The poetry of San Juan de la Cruz spoke directly to his soul and he longed for something of a mystical union with God. He would not feel anything like it until he met with death’s face at the barricades of Madrid or the unrestrained horrors and violence of ambushes in the Pyrenees. Once again his thoughts returned to the fields; of pausing in the shade of an ancient megalithic stone bull in the fields of Mingorria where he’d felt a union with the past, but his mystical experiences were of the martial variety, that razor’s edge where life and death sliced through the moment of truth… not at all scholarly or so refined as in the cloisters of the Church.

  “What, a pagan or a Christian?” Martin insisted.

   His thoughts then went to Avila where he’d arranged to meet with the Bird Dog for an alliance with the American to transport him out of Spain.  It was a welcome rest in a crypt of the Cathedral at Avila among the long dead saints. Then the door crashed open and several guidari flooded into the room before he could reach for his pistol. He had been beaten and dragged to the plaza in front of the Cathedral between the lions by a militia of the Civil Guard. He didn’t respond to his guard’s question but his silence was interpreted as an answer.

   The voice of his the inquisitor broke through the cloud of his mind, “Spain is old and her Saints are old too. I am a Christian and I am bound by Christ to show mercy.”

   “And you expect mercy in return?” Alesander remarked in a low voice but the tables had turned and he was now, for a brief second, the inquisitor.

   Martin’s composure was quickly regained as he spit out the words. “I would prefer cooperation.”

   “From me… or from Christ?” Alesander didn’t care any longer. If the tortures were to begin it … he was ready to bite the capsule.

   Martin’s face became confident as he set the familiar cyanide capsule on the table, “We found this in your cell. When the electrodes are attached to your cojones, you won’t have this at your disposal.”

   Alesander watched it roll to the side of the speckled Formica top to stop at the chromed strip in front of his hands, “Are you saying I should take it now?”


   “No, senor, I am a Christian and I would prefer that you confess your sins. Suicide, according to the teachings of the Church,opens only the gates of Hell for you,” he said as he tucked the capsule into his vest pocket.


"So,are you here to save me from Hell," Alesander was nearly glib,"or to save my body from torture?"
He no longer cared either way.

Inquiry of Asses

Inquiry of Asses

   It was peculiar to Alesander that he was almost glad the hunt was over. He had been dodging in and out the length of the Pyrenees and stealthily maneuvering through friendly villages and side streets and alleyways of cities successfully for so long… he had been captured more than a few times since Madrid... to the camps in Vichy  France... slipped  through the barbed wire to caves in the mountains... but now he sighed, “At last it is over.” He then slept.

   The cells at Carabanchel were dark places. There were no bars or communication with other prisoners if one had the misfortune to be placed in solitary confinement. A small concrete enclosure with a steel door was it. Alesander's cell had a window like the others but it was blacked out with a thick coat of paint. A single dim light bulb, protected from behind a clouded glass above a thick screen, was on or off at his keeper’s discretion. “Off” meant almost total darkness, except for a sliver of light from under the door or the slot with a steel flap hinged on the outside of his cell where a tray could be slipped through to him if his guards thought it kind to feed him.

   He passed time doing exercises and running in-place to keep distracted from longing as much as it was for staying in shape. This prison was fairly new. It had been built after the war as a maximum security facility after the passage of the Law for the Repression of Banditry and Terrorism (Ley para la represión del Bandidaje y el Terrorismo) on April 1947, which targeted the maquis. Thus, there were no decaying bricks to scrape through or bars that could be loosened as in the older jails in the villages.

   Other than mild flirtations with the idea of escape, when he lay down on the steel bunk that still had no mattress, his visions of Iniga became clearer… he could smell her scent and feel her firm breasts in his hands while he slept. Sometimes his thought rested on Baker… Harry Baker, his betrayer, back to when Baker was with him in the Pyrenees as a young O.S.S. agent to his last meeting with the C.I.A. contractor; or, a better word, assassin.

   Ah, sleep… he had to fight the lethargy of sleeping. In the dark of his cell he caught himself excited at the prospect of food waiting waited for a tray to be passed through the slot in the door... waiting for the days to pass... days that were counted by the changing of shifts. Alesander figured it had been about two weeks. The bulb in the cell above him had been off for three or four days before boots approached with purpose, his door slam open, and light stream in.

   His eyes ached at the light… a halo of white light around the shadow of the tall man gave off a contradiction as in saintly aura of the angel of light, Lucifer. Two guards entered and gruffly pulled Alesander off his bunk and led him past the tall man into the eyeball assaulting light of the corridor, beyond the hub of the prison and on to the administrative wing. Arriving at the same room he was interviewed in at first he was put in a chair at the Formica topped table.

   “Ah, Senor Gotson… times have changed,” lighting a cigarette and passing the pack to Alesander, he continued, “Women… girls… they are on the beaches in France wearing their underwear. The call these swimsuits bikinis…. Ah, excuse me, I forgot.”

   “That I don’t smoke?” Alesander pushed the cigarette pack away.

   “No,” the tall man’s smiled suddenly turned grim, “No, I forgot, you are a bandit and, therefore, an immoral man, why should you care that times have changed elsewhere?”

   Alesander braced his spirit for the sinister and dramatic change in tone. He then thought of the stone megaliths he had rested under the shade of so many times and wondered… It was one of those flashes of thought compacted into a fraction of a second… He wondered how hunter/gatherers passing those monuments or watching those who planted those stones, living in agricultural settlements and also planting grain in the fields, felt about the changes that were going on then and wondered too if they tried to hold on to the good old days.

   There was no use in arguing the point. What was he going to say at this time? What could he do about this situation? He had accepted that the war was over for him and his only option now was to surrender his will to that reality and not the madness of the man across from him at the table.

   “My first question for you, Alex,” he blew smoke in Alesander’s face, “Where is Iniga?”

   Alesander was glad he actually didn’t know where she was. What was coming next didn’t matter. He knew nothing of the location for any enlaces of the resistance because he worked alone or with only a few… very few, trusted, tried and true, friends. Even those he knew of, he only knew of most of them by their nom de guerre. They met by a markings on a tree, rock, a weather report or skewed lyrics of a song on the radio at a certain time of the day. He had let his guard down once for an O.S.S. agent turned independent contractor, Bird Dog… Harry Baker, and thus he was here before an arrogant interrogator.

   “I haven’t seen her in years.” He said without taking his eyes off his inquisitor.

   Another lean, weasel looking, character entered the room. It was nothing other than El Strapo who stood leaning against the far right corner behind the tall man. Alesander knew the man as a black marketer and extortionist who’d come in handy more than once for cash transfers, ransoms and any other sleazy task. He was nothing more to Alesander than a tool of the trade.

   The tall man left the room and El Strapo immediately took the chair across from Alesander and took one of the cigarettes from the pack left on the table, tore it open, shook the tobacco onto the table, and with a folder of cigarette papers of his own, rolled one, lit it with one hand and tucked the folder of wrappers into the pack, blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth away from Alesander. After a few minutes passed he  pushed the cigarette pack to Alesander and said, "Take should up smoking to pass time. You look well fed enough but….” Waving a hand past his nose, “Whew, you need a change of clothes.” he then asked compassionately, “How are you being treated, amigo?”

   “Are you with the Red Cross now, El Strapo?” Alesander said sarcastically. However, his sarcasm was for show because both knew the room was wired up. Alesander didn't wonder what the ruse with the cigarette paper was about. He was glad to see El Strapo just because El Strapo was El Strapo. He was used by both sides in this peculiar war against Franco. If there was a way for El Strapo to make things easier for him, Alesander knew he could, for a price but it was hard to tell what....

   “You might say so,” he winked. “I’m here as a favor to the proprietors of this fine hotel. But, if I can help you in any way, let me know. Even here I have influence of a sort.”

   “And your debt to our hosts might be?” Alesander kept up the appearance of distaste for the benefit of the microphones. He sensed the stealthy El Strapo squirm… a shift of the shoulders and eyes that darted ever so slightly around the room.

   “It seems that our beneficiaries here have this interest… er… Iniga in particular… I don’t know why but they have no sense of humor about it. I can promise you that.”

   ‘Times have changed and there is little support for the Resistance, El Strapo. I haven’t seen or heard from Iniga in years. She is probably in France.”

   “The Resistance isn’t given such an exalted name. You are billed in the headlines of the papers as common criminals… and so is she!”

   This wasn’t news to Alesander. It had always been this way since the Republic had fallen. He changed the subject, “Who is this tall man, El Strapo?”

   “His name is Martinez de la Rosa but he is the Grand Inquisitor as far you are concerned. He is a wise man and quite efficient at what he does. That is why you haven’t been subjected to the usual torture and, frankly, it is why you’re still alive,” El Strapo spoke almost gleefully for the benefit of the bugs but with contempt shown only by a slight lift of his upper lip.

   “The Rose, yes, I’ve heard of him.” Alesander was glad to have an image of this shadowy character known up to then only by name. “So, did he send you to persuade or to trap me?”

   “You, Alesander, are already trapped… in case you haven’t noticed.”

   “Then, don’t waste our time on persuasion, El Strapo.” He then let El Strapo slip the pack of cigarette papers between his cuffed hands. He then awkwardly twisted to reach down with cuffed hands to put the pack in his rear pocket. As he did so he thought, El Strapo always comes through.

   De la Rosa entered the room just as soon as Alesander put his hands back on the table. El Strapo obediently lifted himself by pushing his bent body from the table. “May I leave now, Senor de la Rosa?” he deferred.

   Stay where you are for now, El Strapo.”

   Alesander looked up as the Rose stood over the table… looming like an eagle… a bird of prey. “Get up,” the Rose ordered.

   Standing across from the table Alesander resigned to what was coming next. He went inside his mind where there was nothingness. He was taken to another room that had only a drain in the middle. Left there alone for a few minutes he pulled out the cigarette papers where a short note was written that he could barely read in the dim light that said, “Faith, Bird Dog and Fournier watch”. He crumpled it up and swallowed it wondering what it meant. It promised no guarantee that he wouldn’t be tortured but it did hold a glimmer of hope that he was somehow protected. A string of hope was all he needed to keep from popping the cyanide capsule tucked away in his cell… if he would ever get back to his cell.

Progress on "Adriane"

I began writing “Adriane” because of a dear friend from the Basque side of Southern France, and inspiration for the sequel to “A Taxi Romance”, who grew up in the region of Biarritz. My story was originally to be about drug addiction and recovery but it soon took a sidestep into an entirely different direction as  I delved into the background of her fictional forbears. I let my imagination run wild about the French Resistance that was strong in Southern France during WWII and, as I researched, I came upon a deeper understanding of the Basque Separatist resistance after the fall of Madrid in Spain against Franco. Throughout my youth, from the comfortable suburbs of Spokane Valley, I’d heard of Basque Separatists. The subsequent years after the war and the USA’s relationship with Franco’s dictatorship from the Eisenhower years on had not entered my consciousness until I began writing “Adriane”. I had never heard of, the prison Carabanchel or the resistance hero, Ramon Vila, a.k.a. Cara Quimada. Peculiar though, I invented the character of Alesander because I wanted a loner, independent of the Communists and the Anarchists. I envisioned Alesander as a lone wolf anarchist ranging the hills of the Pyrenees but I had no idea that there actually was one in Ramon Vila who had single handedly stuck a thorn in the Franco regime’s side throughout the fifties until he was killed in the early sixties. His specialty was blowing up electrical transmission towers in the Pyrenees and targeted assassinations of key Francoist militia death squad leaders. It just figured that there had to be independents in the resistance after all the disillusionment with the organized Anarchists, Socialists, Maoists and Stalinists of the early fifties. Alesander Gotson is an entirely fictional character that led me into this story rather than the other way around as he took me through the Pyrenees of Southern France and Spain from the fall of Madrid in the Civil War to the late fifties under the oppression of Franco. Furthermore, I had no idea how oppressive the Franco Regime had been and how long after his death clear into the 1980s that his policies continued in Spain. In particular the adoption of children born in prison to so-called miscreants… or, as Basque Separatists were referred to as “common bandits” made it into the narrative of this tale.

Carabanchel

   Alesander eyes adjusted to the light in his cell. He had been led there after his capture without the usual interview and preliminary torture of the infamous Carabanchel. He hadn’t been searched. He still had on his own shirt, boots, trousers and even a box of matches, “This is good.” He said as though there was someone else to hear him… then he lit a match to check out his new abode. His mind was calm… his senses sharp… he was always and at all times centered. A cockroach scurried from the revealing light.
“Say, little friend, you will be here long after I’m gone… should I make it ‘til morning we shall be friends.” The light from the match faded and he laughed. Then his thoughts turned to where he sat and whether or not he’d ever get out.

   “Do you ask, what do I mean, make it ‘til morning?”

   He paused, as though expecting an answer, “No, my friend, I will likely be shot before morning and then your brothers, the worms, can do with me what they will.”
 
   He then took off his boots, tucked them under his head to make a pillow of them and drifted off to sleep.
 
   He slept soundly, waking shortly before hearing the clanging of steel doors and the sound of boots coming towards his cell outside the door. The metallic jangling from the turning of the keys scraped and scratched against the walls of his skull. From behind their orbs his eyes ached from the light cascading into the door as it creaked open until the shadow cast by the guard entering the cell gave his eyes relief from the harsh light for a minute and allowed them time to adjust.

   The guard gestured a get up motion, “You can leave your boots.”

   Alesander rose up, padded barefoot out of his cell and turned to say, “Good-bye, my little friend.”
 
   The guard took him by a shoulder, putting Alesander’s arm behind him in position for hand cuffs. He was led up several hallways and into the administrative part of the prison with rooms of clerks and the sound of typewriters. He thought it peculiar that he felt embarrassed at being barefoot as his feet padded along on the cold, polished, linoleum. Then he was put in a small sparse room furnished with space for only two chairs and a bare table. Mind still and no anticipation or expectation, Alesander was ready for this. He had been ready since the old days and now, after decades in the Pyrenees, interment camps in France and two wars, counting the barricades of Madrid, he had known he was living on borrowed time.
 
   The door opened to the vision of a tall man in a pinstriped suit entered with a file in his hands. He pulled the other chair to the opposite side of the table without a greeting of any kind. The two sat silently for several minutes before the tall man spoke.
 
   “Alesander Gotson,’ he slid a pack of Lucky Strikes across the Formica top of the table.
 
   “No thanks, I don’t smoke,” Alesander didn’t take his eyes off the man’s as he declined the offer.
 
   “Too bad,” the man apologetically said, “American cigarettes are about the only help you’ll get from there. You might have died a hero ten years ago but you will die a common bandit now, Mr. Gotson.” The man pushed the thick file across the table before he continued, “I was in Madrid too… perhaps on the opposite side. Open it. This is what we know about your activities up to now.”
   
   “Why should I care what you know?” Alesander asked but not out of curiosity. He knew where this conversation was going. If they wanted him dead he’d be dead.
 
   “Because, Alex, may I call you Alex?” the man didn’t wait for the answer he wasn’t going to get. “I can make things easier if you can tell us what we don’t know… eh?”
 
   Alesander waited to hear more as a practical matter. What did they want to know and what did he need to bury deep in his heart where it would never be found no matter what they decided to do with him? He flipped through the file. It had names… names and wallet size black and white pictures of guidari that had been imprisoned or killed. Red check marks were aside the names of those he knew were dead. Others had blue checks… He noted but dared not pause at one of Iniga… dear Iniga with the smatchet. Some went back as far as Madrid and the Aran valley… bitter sweet memories… in and out of safe houses from the hills of Leon to the Catalonian coastal plains with the infamous el Quito and el Cara Quimada.
 
    The names he read and pictures that passed his gaze were names that evoked good times… of old comrades resting in the crisp fall breezes of the Pyrenees…  of water from a fresh mountain spring cooling his parched throat. He thought he could smell Iniga’s hair and feel the softness of the nape of her neck on his lips. No, he’d have to bury those thoughts. He’d have to bury them for their sake, not his. He was a dead man already as far as his circumstances foretold.
 
   A manicured finger on the picture of Iniga, stopped him as he tried to flip the page before he could turn it. His attempt to hide a flicker of emotion was noted. “If you have any information of her whereabouts…”
 
   “No, she has been out of my life since nineteen fifty when the CNT called her back to France,” he lied and the lie was transparent but he wasn’t going to give up anything so soon.
 
   Very often, back when Alesander was a teen in Madrid, he fantasized about the inevitability of such meetings and perhaps having a Dostoyevskian dialogue between himself and his inquisitor with all the existential philosophical musings bantered about… but even then he knew better. No, it would be a wearing down process lasting several weeks with sensory deprivation and alternating interrogators working in shifts. The most philosophical any of it would come to would be short and sweet… “Tell us more about…” names, dates and places weapons are stashed. Or when those questions were exhausted confessions were extracted via battery cables attached to one’s gonads and so many more low-tech methods of torture. He knew in his heart that he would tell all he had retained… all that had not been obliterated from his mind.
 
   Back in his cell, Alesander gathered his thoughts about why the interview was so short and why so few questions were asked of him in the twelve hours he sat at that table. He knew time was on the side of his keepers and this was only his first twenty-four hours of a day that would end with, either a bullet in the back of his head, or a day that could drag on for months or years. He still had a cyanide capsule in the lining of his trousers and took it out, held it up in the dim light, rolled it a few times between his grimy forefinger and thumbs thinking:  He knew there was little that could be extracted from him of any value now, not only because he operated alone for the most part, but that the safe-houses and most of the people had all fled to the Pyrenees or France. The few who had been with him had already been killed that day. Furthermore, he could distract, mislead or otherwise confuse, whatever information the Civil Guard had on his movements and that he could do more harm than if he snapped the cyanide capsule with his teeth.
 
   “Keep an eye on this, my friend,” he whispered to the cockroach on the wall a foot from where he tucked it into a gap between the steel side of his bunk and the concrete wall where… “Just in case, you never know.”

A New Cover

 I just changed the cover and re-edited A Taxi Romance after a long period of streamlining the texts and filling in the text with various prints.

I redesigned the cover for A Time Ago & Then. I am in the process of re-editing it also and hope to have that task done in a month. That seems a reasonable goal from where I sit today... we'll see.

I have completed memoir titled A Morningstar Romance. This is a factual memoir of my time at the free land movement commune Morningstar East north of Taos New Mexico. It is the commune I described in some detail in the pages of A Time Ago & Then that I called Risingstar. I am awaiting the appraisal of at least one of the people who lived there at the time and will not publish without it. I await their consent out of respect for the people and not for any legal precautions.

Thirdly, I am moving along with Adriane, the sequel to A Taxi Romance. However, it has taken off into a couple of unexpected directions that are fuel for more discovery towards another novel. I remain excited about it but, I will have to admit, it will take some time to get out what I have already.

Hey Dawg

“Hey, Dawg, I bet you have some good stories.” The three of them; the usual giddy UCSB geeks, trying too hard to be hip, going to town from I.V. and they want a story. Any other time I might have obliged them but not tonight.
“Nothing you’d want to hear.”
“Try us, Dawg.” demanded the white, blond haired, Orange County, master-race looking pretender.
How I hate it when these white college boys try to talk ghetto. “Naw…”
“C’mon, any sex going down in the back seat… any blowjobs… y’know… Dawg… hookers, biotches?” the boy was drooling for a sordid tale.
“You really want to hear my favorite… My best? Naw, you don’t have the stomach for it.” I like DMZ and all that but I cranked up the Robert Johnson to tune them out…

Every time I’m walkin’
    down the streets
Some pretty mama starts breakin’
    down with me
Stop breakin’ down
    Yes, stop breakin’ down
The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out, baby
    Hoo hoo, it’ll make you lose your mind…

My Best Cabbie Story was from the previous night, if I would have, could have, told it:
Crushed, I returned to my room and tried to sleep before going to work. That night I got in my cab and drove around avoiding calls and flags. I’d picked up only a few fares since the shift started and it was already about three A.M. A call came over the radio: “89, Max.”
I picked up the mike, “89.”
He gave me an address on the Mesa. “Work out something, Max, I didn’t give her a quote.”
You never know when you get a call like that: a quote? It could be a long ride. That is what I needed too… as long as the fare doesn’t want to jabber all the way.
 A young woman dressed Goth; all black gear, Doc Martins and fishnet stockings et al, approached my cab. I could see she had been crying. Hmmm, crying… sketchy… volatile, things could change in an instant. I thought: A break-up? A drunk boyfriend? Sometimes rides like this end a block away when the little honey changes her mind and goes back to the turd.
“How much would it cost to take me to Newport Beach…?” Her words had to work their way out her throat through her grief. Something bad had happened.
“The meter would be about One-Eighty….” Back then one-eighty would have paid my lease on the cab, my room and my bar tab.
“One-eighty?” She cried… it was a heart rending cry. Not the kind of cry that is the result of a fight with a boyfriend or even the death of a pet dog. I recognized that this was the cry of a deep-felt grief that had no bottom.
“Hey, don’t worry  ... the meter ain’t set in stone. How much are you able to …?”
“I only have about ninety dollars” she sobbed, turning away… resigned and not even begging for a break.
“Hey, come on and jump in… it’s okay, I’ll get you there.” Hell, I’d thrown in the towel for the night anyway… hadn’t made any money and had already counted that night a loss. Ninety bucks would cover about my lease but not the gas… what the hell. Besides, I needed that long, dead-head, solo ride back… it was a godsend.
She got in the back seat and curled up. Every few minutes a heart wrenching, body convulsing, sob would make it out of her tiny body. She was an adorable young girl about twenty or so but my mind wasn’t there at all. I wondered, curious, what had torn her up? It must be something horrible. She hadn’t said a word since the ride started…. nothing but muted sobs. Dared I ask? Those sobs evoked a lump in my throat as I drove past all the Carpentaria exits. It was dark enough, along that stretch of 101 between Carp and Ventura, for almost thirty miles. It felt okay to cry with her: She wouldn’t see me. The tears flowed. I’d been holding it in. Two years of trying in vain. I just fuckin’ let it go and quietly, intimately, wept with her… I was holding her in my mind’s arms and crying with her.
We must have been past Ventura, near Camarillo, before my tears caught her attention… well, caught it enough for her to ask, “Are you crying?”
I didn’t want to say anything but I might as well admit it. It felt strange to let her know I was crying… I choked it back … that lump, “You caught me…”
“Why?”
“Oh… shit… I just gave up on a long custody battle for my daughter yesterday… and, hell, I’m sorry, I just figured you wouldn’t notice if I cried with you.”
“What is her name… your daughter?”
“Ariel…”
“Will you see Ariel again?” she asked in a flat and very restrained monotone.
“Maybe… to tell the truth, I can’t think that far ahead right now.”
The anger was as thick as it was animated… she bitterly let it out this time… “At least you will fucking get to see Ariel again!”
There was a finality in her tone that let me know someone very close to her… as close or closer than my Ariel, was lost to her forever.
We drove the rest of the way to Newport Beach… without saying another word to each other but the crying had stopped. We arrived in Newport with the rising sun at a parking lot where she had left her car the night before. I mumbled something about being sorry. I didn’t feel right about charging her money for this ride and tried to hand back the ninety bucks when she got out of the cab. She dropped it contemptuously; let it slip to the ground. I watched her drive off into the sunrise and scooped up the ninety bucks off the pavement. I understood her contempt.

I could tell this story to another cab driver like my good friend, Jim, but never to drunken voyeurs as entertainment. However, that was the story I would have told had they the stomach for it:

I can’t walk the streets, now,
to consolate my mind…
Some no-good woman, now,
she start breakin’ down…
Stop breakin’ down!
.
“No, really, you wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“Try me. I’ll tip you good…”
“…I don’t have time…” the meter read thirty-two-fifty… “Call it an even thirty… see ya.”

There was no tip.

I Swear, I'll Fly Away

     That first day was something else. We all sat in the Big Room adorned with the flags of California and the Star and Stripes. Rodriguez saved a seat for me and immediately asked, “What the fuck was goin’ on in there? They kept you long enough.”

     “One of those chiefs had a bone against me. I wasn’t sure they... uh, he, was going to let me pass… but the other thought I was okay.”

     “Why?”

     “I don’t know for sure… could be the way I was dressed.” I searched my mind for a reason and I could think of a dozen... like when he saw my hair was dyed, he might have thought I was queer. Or, he might have thought I was too cocky but I felt like it wouldn’t be appropriate to admit any of that to Rodriguez.

     “I bet he thought you’re queer,” he  observed in spite of my evasion. “A lot of queers try to get in the Navy so they won’t have to hunt Gooks.”

     “You might be right.” He was on to me! and, Gook? it just didn’t ring right to my ear, “I don’t know, he was a prick but the other guy was okay.”

     Just then the Salt One came in the door straight to a podium where he politely asked us, “Gentlemen, please stand.”

     We stood; some in a slightly slumped over posture and some at Boy Scout attention.

     “Raise your right hand and repeat after me after I say 'I', you say 'I', and give your first and last names.”

      “I, Sean Mckee,” I repeated amidst the rumble of a hundred voices reciting their names.

     “Do solemnly swear.”

     A chorus responded in a ragged unison, “Do solemnly swear.”

     “That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

     Again in rumbling unison, “… that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

     “Against all enemies, foreign and domestic;”

     My mind raced with objections between each line… how many of these guys even know what the constitution is besides a piece of old yellowed parchment behind glass? “against all enemies foreign and domestic;”

     Reading from the card he’d read from hundreds of time since he’d received a cushy transfer to the Federal building, the Chief droned on, “that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and faithfully obey the orders of the President of the United States.”

     The sound of more hesitant and confused young voices reverberated in the hall echoing twisted tongues, “and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and faithfully obey the orders of the President of the United States…”

      “…and the orders of the officers appointed over me…”

     Some were looking around the room at the others and I doubted most even heard themselves saying the words. It was clear that everyone’s tongue was getting tired because all that could have been made out of it would have been, “an-th-ords-cers-pointed-o’er-me.”

      As a counterpoint to the oddly harmonious mished and mashed jumble of the recitation, the Chief’s next words were so sharp they pierced our consciousness, “… AHC-cording to REG-ulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

     Everyone snapped to attention repeating a clear and precise as the Chief, “… according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice…”

     “So help me God.”

     All knew that this was the end of the oath and even more fervently united than before, “So help me God.”

     So help me God, I thought… shit, what have I gotten myself into?

    So help me God.

     We had a break before the buses arrived and were issued G.I. chits for lunch at a joint down on Market a few blocks. I sat with Rodriguez and a couple of real hard-core Mexican gangsters. I wondered how they got past the “Salt One” Chief as they boasted of petty crimes and court dates missed for this or that burglary. Rodriguez was another story altogether. He was born and bred for military service and it was a sure thing that anyone could see he would be a leader… the kind of leader that would be followed out of respect, not fear.
    
     This time my involuntary fast was broken, I didn’t take my time with the food. I ordered a greasy… greasy cheeseburger with greasier fries. I wolfed it down without hardly tasting. I found it to be somewhat of a myth that a hungry man oughtn’t stretch his stomach so fast. Mine must have been extra-ordinarily elastic because I stretched it to its limits as others left fries or onion rings on their plates I swooped in on the plates as soon as they rose from their tables. I have been hungry since then but never have I crammed down food with so much enthusiasm. I would admit, however, it did have some dour after-affects but it was worth it.

     Outside the café a rotund pitch black woman with enormous breasts heaving under a choir gown...mitts for hands... pounding a tambourine against thick thighs... singing at the top of her lungs, “I’ll fly away… oh, Glory! I’ll fly away… when I die, hallelujah by and by…. I’ll fly away…” She then broke out from singing... spewing spit shouting to the sky alone with squinted eyes!", "Repent! The day of the Lord is at hand!"

     Some of the guys had never been to the city before and stood by, stunned, to gawk in wonder mostly at her gigantic mounds unrestrained under the gown. I was an old hand... street-wise, now. But I stopped regardless to hear her... as more of an oracle and, as an oracle,  it wasn't boding well for me at all. I joined the others and walked back to where the buses were parked.

     The Chief was there at the first bus, “Okay, you maggots might have heard me call you gentlemen before. Get this straight, you were civilians then. You took that oath and I gave you an hour of liberty just now. After you took that oath you became Government property. You are my maggots now. Put out your cigarettes and get in line.”

     We all boarded buses that hauled us to the San Francisco Airport. As we got off the bus there we were confronted by the first Vietnam War protesters I’d seen so far. No one called us baby killers or spat on us but they did shove placards in our faces admonishing us not to become tools of oppression. A cute bohemian girl, in black dancer tights, braless, fishnet stockings, jet-black hair tied back; with cheap, thin soled, black, Chinese slippers, held a sign saying something like; “No Sex until there is No War!” She pled with us as we passed to turn back before it was too late. I was near going AWOL and I hadn’t even gotten as far as boot camp!

Anchors Away

     After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the year before, the Vietnam “police action” had been escalated into a full blown war. My sojourn in Dayton had caught me unaware that US forces had been pummeled in an obscure paddy named, Dong Xoai just that June and President Lyndon Johnson was committed to putting 500,000 boots on the ground in a place only the watchers of foreign policy had been vaguely aware of before August 7th of 1964. I prided myself as being a watcher but was only mildly opposed to any military action there. Still, I felt that I would be called up in the Draft and didn’t want to be one of those boots on the ground. The Airforce servicemen back at the Red Lion were convinced that it was a futile quagmire to go in there unless the whole damned place was nuked off the map.

     My father had been with Patton in the Third Army. He'd raised me with a sensible and very pragmatic brand of patriotism that held suspect of any politician’s ardor for war. I had discarded my draft card before leaving Spokane even though, by introspection, I can see I had no feelings for or against what was going on in Southeast Asia. I couldn’t see any sense in being a pacifist but I hated the idea that the government could force me to take arms for anything less than a dire national emergency. This jungle shit did not seem to warrant sacrificing my life or anyone else’s. Even at that early age, from what little I did know, I did have no compelling reason to believe Ho Chi Min would, with his brand of Stalinist/Maoist authoritarianism, be any better solution for the Vietnamese people than the corruption the people presently lived with. However, the idea that the USA would be able, by force of arms, to improve things there would be anything but a waste of effort and lives.
    
     The day that I made the decision I was damned near starving…scouring Sunset Beach… huge combers rolling in sets of five or six… thinking maybe there might be clams… yes, a good clam-bake on the beach. I saw myself in a pit dug down in the sand out of the wind with a fire blazing and a bunch of juicy clams… like Frankie Avalon with a voluptuous Annette and two or three bikinis across the fire. But the beach was cold that day. There was little or no firewood to be found; nor any clams… It was wet… one of those wet-wind-blown-mist days that had my long sleeved flannel shirt soaked through to the bone. I’d left warm, sunny, downtown with in tee shirt with my flannel tied around my waist by the sleeves. I knew by now that every block on this peninsula had a different weather system… cool on one side of the street and hot on the other… windy here and balmy there. Just crossing over hills was a weather adventure in San Francisco.

     I took stock of what I had: a good windbreaker in my room back in the Saint Charles; a half loaf of Wonder Bread; one jar of chunky peanut butter; and strawberry jam… and that would be the closest I would get to my clam-bake that day. I wondered if I could sneak up to my room without being challenged. It is a writer’s cliché by now, the rent was due and I only had some change and bus fare in my pockets.

     Through my journeys I’d passed a couple of storefronts housing the Navy and Marine Corps Recruiting offices in the Sunset District. Wet, skinny as a rail, with red hair and goatee… dark brown roots beginning to show, I entered the door and sat down at the desk of CPO Church. He was a clean-cut, all business looking man in his forties who, by the board of ribbons on his coat, had likely spent time during WWII and Korea aboard ship. I took the seat he offered in front of his desk.
    
      “I want to join up.” I heard the words come out of my mouth but wasn’t so sure… I was just going to check out what he could offer.

     “Why,” he asked, eying me over.

     “We got a war going down and I want to do my part.”
    
     “Then, why don’t you join the Marines instead?”

     “I don’t think I’d make the cut with the Marines… you know, brawn over brains.”

      “I can see your point.” He shuffled through some papers and slid them across the desk to me. I can’t say that I could read his mind but a basic poker player ability to read faces told me he wasn’t so very enthusiastic about my offer of service, “Go over there,” he gestured towards an empty desk, “Fill these out and we’ll know more about what we got going here.”

     I could see that my answers didn’t impress him. The interview so far wasn’t going well.
The forms had questions about where, when and how I was sitting in front of his desk dripping wet.

   There were forms to fill out… high school, extracurricular activities… clubs, awards, arrests, convictions (felonies and misdemeanors). I was careful not to mention that I was a sharpshooter in Junior Rifle Club. I didn’t want to be behind anything that might get me shot at… even if that was the only thing of merit I had going for me. I did fill in the spaces about my arrest in Dayton.

     The next pages were standard multiple choice questions that were surprisingly easy to figure out: psychological profile questions, basic math, literacy and so on. I finished it up in less than an hour and handed them over to him. His countenance changed dramatically after he scanned the test. Pulling out a cardstock page with holes that covered the test, he checked through with a red pen all the holes. After he was done he appeared to have a shift in attitude. He stretched his hand over the desk to offer a hand.

      “You picked a good time to join. There’s gonna be a draft before the year is over.” He knitted his brow as though he had hit an unexpected snag, “Why didn’t you finish high school?”

      I knew my answer to that was crucial, “I had to go to the harvest before finals.” It was a lie but it was one he would most probably not check.

      “Harvest, eh? You ain’t afraid of hard work then.”

     “No sir, I thought I’d like it at sea because I’ve handled boats on the lakes all my life.”

      “You did well enough on this preliminary test to qualify for practically any school but schools are part of the package promised to high school grads.” He pulled on his chin as though he had a beard too. “Shit, boy, you aced this test… 100%! You ought to shave that off before you get sworn in downtown.”

     “No problem.” I remembered a Dobie Gillis episode in which Maynard fights shaving his goatee after they join the Army reserves.

     I had to go over the Bay Bridge to Oakland for a physical. It was an ordeal to remember as I stood in line with a hundred or so young men in our underwear. Some had not bathed in weeks beforehand… dodging the draft. It was a general physical for everyone… volunteers and draftees. One draftee, immediately in front of me, even had shit in his jockey shorts. It wasn’t at all pleasant as we were all processed together. He laughed when I mentioned my disgust at the smell.

     “I did that on purpose, pretty good, eh?”

     “No, I wanna vomit!”

     One of the Army NCOs that was hewing the line to each side of a partition heard my complaint and snorted, “Another fuckin’ draft dodger!”

     “Yeah, and I’m queer too, asshole!” Shitpants fired right back at the sergeant… or corporal… or whatever.

     They don’t tell a guy whether or not you pass the physical… I was sure, however, that I would. My starvation problem wasn’t solved and I had to stick it out until I was sworn-in downtown. The Chief called me on the phone at the desk a few days later with good news; I passed the physical and would be sworn-in the next day with one hitch: I’d made a mistake on my dad’s place of birth. I would have to call home and get the right information before going to the Federal Building to be sworn in.

The next day! I was elated and ate the rest of my bread and scraped the last of the peanut butter out of the jar. The chief had given me a paper telling me to ship my possessions home and to bring nothing, not even a douche bag with razor and soap. The Navy would have all that. The only thing I would be allowed into boot camp would be a Bible or similar reading.

     I called home, reciting ahead in my mind everything I had to say… I had to make some amends… but the phone rang only a few times before I heard my mom’s voice on the other end, “Mom, I hope you won’t hang up, its me, Sean.”

     She cried so hard and long it scared me. “Of course not,” she sobbed at last, “I’ve waited for this call for so long. Where are you?”

     “I’m in San Francisco. I’ve wanted to call you too but I was afraid…”

    “Why no Sean, you're my son!”


     “I’m calling from a pay phone Mom; I don’t have much more change. I joined the Navy and I need to know Dad’s birthplace.”

      I cried too. I couldn’t help myself or stop that choking wash of sobs and tears. We spoke some more. Dad wasn’t home but that was okay… I could patch things up with him when I got out of boot camp. Hell, I’d used thirty cents… dropping a nickel at a time in the slot. It hadn’t occurred to me then that my folks loved me far more than I could have imagined and that I had deeply hurt them.

     Chief Church showed up at my door my last civilian morning. I had my trunk packed full of my paintings on canvas board and a few pairs of jeans and so on. I wore my slacks pressed perfectly under my mattress; put on my pair of wrap-around sunglasses I bought the first day in San Francisco that seemed to be ages ago, a black turtleneck and dark suit coat. Those sunglasses were my most valued possession. We were going to go straight to the Federal Building.

     “Do we have time to ship the trunk?”

     “No, were have to be there 08:00 or you miss the boat.” The chief saw my predicament and offered generously, “I’ll get it there for you but they won’t take C.O.D.”

     “Shit, chief, I don’t have any cash at all.”

       “I’ll pay for it but you’ll have to pay me back when you get your first check.” He then dropped me off and directed me to a line that wound its way around the corner of Leavenworth down some steps to the basement on the McAllister side.

      We waited in a room to stand against a wall until one by one they called out our names. Some left and hit the street while others were directed into a larger room where rows of folding chairs awaited them.

     Another behind me looked worried, “I have a couple of arrests that were reduced to misdemeanors by the time my case went to court…”

“I don’t think they’ll hold them against you,” I reassured him, “what were they?

     He was so caught up in the anxiety of waiting that he didn’t hear me and went on, “I gotta get in or it’s the Army… Man, I don’t want to be shipped to Vietnam.”

      I then struck up a conversation with the guy in front of me. We talked small talk about where we were from and so on. They called him first, “Rodriguez!”

     “Let me know how it goes. Sure.”

      Others were in the room for ten or fifteen minutes but Rodriguez came out after only a few and he flashed me a thumbs up before going into the other room.

     “Sean McKee!”

     “Right here, sir,” I thought my high scores on the tests would show that I was as qualified as Rodriguez and expected it to be as short an interview.

     A couple of old salts were seated behind a desk. Salt One took a look at me, “Sit down McKee,” and exclaimed, sneering a glance over to Salt Two. “What the fuck do we have here?”

     I took the seat and waited to be asked about whatever it was on the stack of papers in a file in front of him.

     “Why did you lie about you dad’s birth place?” he demanded first off.

      “I wasn’t sure then. I just guessed and didn’t have time to check. But I have the right one now…” stuttering slightly from nervousness. What would happen if I don’t get in?

     “Well, what is it if it isn’t Trail, B.C.?

     “Merit, B.C., sir.” I’d seen enough WWII Audey Murphy and John Wayne flicks to know I ought to put sir at the end of each answer.

     Salt Two flipped through the file, “Checks out, Chief.”… then he asked, “Is your father a citizen now?

     “Yes sir, he served with Patton at the Battle of the Bulge.” I was suddenly proud of my dad and was sure I would be sent to the big room.

     Salt One still sneering then interrupted, “Are you a queer?”

     I snickered, “Hell no.”

     “Why did you laugh, you think it’s funny?” Salt one demanded looking over at Salt Two. “You want to ask this queer anything?” homophobia was the accepted norm in those days.

     “We have to think this over, go to the lobby until we call you.”

     I sat out in the lobby until everyone in line was interviewed. I was the only one that wasn’t either sent to the big room or to the street. Rodriguez came out of the big room to take a sip from the fountain by the door, “What are they doing?”

     “I don’t know, maybe it is the way I’m dressed.”

     “Might be,” he said and went back in.

      Another fifteen minutes passed before the door opened, “Come in McKee.”
Salt One opened up, “We have some disagreement, I don’t think you’re Navy material. My shipmate here thinks you might be okay though.”

     Salt Two scowled at Salt One and then directed his questioning to me, “You scored pretty high on the tests so far,” and then paused for what seemed like an eternity and I felt I stood in the balance of certain doom. “Why do you want to be in the Navy?”

     My mind raced. I couldn’t tell him the truth that I would rather spend four years at sea than two years in a rice paddy, “I want a career, my dad was in the Army and I have military blood. I’m a sharpshooter rifleman in the Junior NRA. I could be a Marine but the Navy has better career opportunities.” I poured it on. Shit, I didn’t mean one word of it and spilled the beans about my gun range experience. I was pleased to note that neither put a mark on the papers about that.

     “Go back to the lobby, we have to discuss this.” Salt One’s sneer had gone away.

     This time I barely sat down before I was called back. “Okay, go to the Oath Roam,” Chief Two said.
Chief One was silent and showed his disapproval by spitting a mouthful of chaw into a cup. They were done for the day and now could do what they do when they have nothing more to do.