Moment
1964: South China Sea
It is hours
into the night.
We are in the bowels
of the attack transport
USS Pickaway.
We are marines: young
warriors, powerful, and
think we are stronger yet.
Vietnam is a word
we barely know. Soon, and
forever, Vietnam will be
the only word we know. A gale
slaps the ship about
like a volleyball.
Our bunks are
tubular steel and canvas,
side by side,
six high. There are
two hundred of us
in a compartment the size
of your living room
if you are moderately
well off. The walls are
half inch steel plate
painted battleship gray. The light
is from single bulbs, each
inside a heavy glass globe
inside a steel cage.
This is to protect the light bulb
from the kind of men we are, and from
heavy things which fly across the compartment
when the ship is at sea
on a night like tonight.
The battleship gray walls
and the glass globes in their steel cages
drip beads of sweat
from saltwater showers. The smells are
sweat, saltwater and puke.
We can’t sleep
for being slammed into
one another. The ship
is hammered
by a heavy sea,
shudders,
nose-dives
into the next.
“Je-sus Christ!”
is uttered loudly
by one of the grunts
from Delta Company.
From another bunk comes,
shouted, “Jesus Christ
blows elephants
for a nickel a herd!”
The laughter is chopped
by a silence, as we wonder
whether the power
that’s just been insulted
is the same as that
which threatens the ship.
Then, from a third bunk:
“Hey. Knock that shit off.”
Now another silence, as
each of us signs
a secret document saying
he is afraid of the wind. ©Dean
Metcalf
11/26/2002
