by Colin Conway
Porter twisted in his seat, strained against the harness tethering him in place, trying to catch a clear view of the ship. She steamed below him churning a foamy wake in the same patch of cool blue water as she’d been every day since leaving San Diego seven months prior. Porter adjusted his sunglasses to see out the window. Each glimpse made his heart rate accelerate to match the rhythmic thwacking of tandem rotors as they fanned the air overhead. The Salvation was as long as four football fields put end-to-end, and it towered more than fifteen stories from the waterline. This aircraft carrier displaced 85,000 tons fully loaded as she was with eighty planes, six helicopters, and four thousand men and officers, whose mission was launching and recovering aircraft to support our troops in the jungle.
Porter remembered the first time he landed on that flight deck. It seemed a lifetime ago when he missed all three wires and had to double back. He’d never been that nervous again in his life, until now.
“I hope this works, Commander,” the pilot said.
“Yeah,” his copilot added. “Those dumb shits need all the help they can get.”
“Don’t say that,” the pilot said.
“What? I’m not saying just the blacks. I mean all of them, Commander. Both. You know? It’s a powder keg lately. Worse than usual, is all I’m saying.”
Porter’s stomach dropped though their altitude hadn’t changed. He’d heard of tensions amongst the crew second hand. Tensions were to be expected on a long deployment.
In the helo, Porter adjusted his microphone. “You’re talking about racial tension,” he said, playing along.
“Can you imagine, sir?” the pilot asked.
“It’s not that big a problem, gentleman,” Porter said. “All our bones are the same color. There’s nothing more to it than that. We’ll all be one big, happy family before Old Sal sails back to San Diego.”
“Sounds like you got it all figured out,” the pilot said.
Porter cleared his throat to buy some time. He needed to come across as confident and in control. “I usually do, boys,” he said with a laugh into his helmet-mounted microphone. “I usually do.” He cupped his hand over the microphone, so his touch could convey the sincerity missing from his statement.
“They’ll need that,” the copilot said, “especially since the captain has been bearing down on them.”
“Yeah,” the pilot said. “The last time the Salvation got liberty there was a big dustup at one of the nightclubs. Nasty fight.” The pilot’s helmet reflected the sun as he spoke.
The copilot pivoted partially to face Porter. “A couple crewmen stayed behind ’cause of it.”
Porter’s research had mentioned a couple hard landings and widespread crew testiness, but he had no idea what the pilot meant about “bearing down” or how severe it might be.
“No better man for your new job. You gotta admit, Commander. Right?”
Porter didn’t know which one said that. A wave rolled inside his ribs and he had a fleeting sensation that he might vomit. He kept it together by thinking this was his lucky ship. She’d always brought him success, and he’d be successful now as well. He always was.
“Isn’t that right, Commander?” one of the voices asked again.
Porter’s right eye twitched and he was glad they couldn’t see him. The weight of it all seemed to press down on his shoulders in that moment. Surely, he was there based solely upon merit. His father had always called guys like this “jive turkeys,” but that didn’t change the question.
“You bet your ass,” he said. As soon as the words left his mouth, he couldn’t be sure if he’d conveyed confidence in his leadership or his race.
The helo hovered twenty feet above the deck. Blades thwacked, and Porter’s heart raced even faster. They lowered to ten feet, then five, and hung there for what seemed like an hour. Porter’s throat ran dry. He exhaled so that his next breath would be the mixture of jet fuel, scorched rubber tires, and sweat that comprised that Salvation air.
When they did touch down, it was more gently than he’d ever managed in his old Crusader. Porter removed his helmet and set it on the seat beside him.
The crew chief opened the clamshell door with the roar of rollers in tracks. “Sir,” he yelled through the noise of the blades chopping the air above their heads and the wind washing across the deck. He gestured the “all-clear” for Porter to exit the aircraft.
Porter stepped onto the deck in khakis instead of a flight suit, then signaled a thumbs-up as he crouched and looked back at the helo. A strong crosswind flapped the slack in his khaki sleeves and pant legs. He adjusted his sunglasses and leaned his weight into the wind to move forward.
Awaiting him just outside the down draft were the chief engineer—a skinny man with a big, genuine Midwest smile; the chaplain—a young lieutenant who had a baby face and cynicism in his eyes; and the command master chief—a salty senior chief who must have been around since World War II. He had hands like baseball mitts and squeezed Porter’s hand the hardest by far but avoided making eye contact.
Porter stood tall and proud on the flight deck of that ship—felt the surge of strength he’d previously known as a pilot taking off and landing on that very deck.
The chaplain and the chief engineer said, “Welcome aboard, Commander Porter,” in unison, while the senior chief said, “You got big shoes to fill here, sir.”
Porter thought he misread the tone of the man’s voice. He looked over the top of his sunglasses at him. Dismissed the notion. Assumed his words had gotten caught in the wind blowing past their faces.
On the flight deck, a dozen airmen in color-coded shirts hustled around the helicopter, refueling the helo and assisting the flight crew with any additional items or services they needed prior to their return flight to the airfield outside Da Nang.
Porter did his best to keep up with the questions from the chaplain and chief engineer. “Yes,” he said, “it was a good series of flights to get here. Yes, I am excited to be back aboard the Salvation. No, I didn’t mind being called away from my cushy gig in Newport, because this is where I truly want to be.”
All the while, the grizzled old master chief looked off toward the horizon and muttered under the weight of the wind.
CHAPTER 2
Elliot Brackert had seen the helo circling. He was a defrocked petty officer with a Fu Manchu mustache, hair longer than regulation, a wrinkled uniform, size-twelve boondockers, and a mission of his own. He slipped down to the hangar deck and stood in the shadows.
The hangar deck was the largest covered space Brackert had ever seen, at sea or on land. It was the space below the flight deck where all the planes were stored, maintained, and repaired. This was the place where the crew assembled for special events. As an aviation electrician, Brackert had spent most of his days in there. Knew his way around the hangar bays as well as he knew the woods back home in Knoxville. His access had been revoked two months ago, after his crow had been taken away when he’d officially declared himself a conscientious objector.
While the helo circled and the mechanics and ordnance men rode up the elevator platform to get a closer look at the new XO, Brackert took advantage of the diversion to get up close to an F-8 Crusader. As he approached one of the planes, a stocky, redheaded guy everyone called Hydrant walked by.
“Hey, Elliot. My son took his first steps the other day. He’s walking, man. Can you believe it?” Hydrant was the only one aboard the ship to call Brackert by his first name.
Brackert shook his head. “Seems like only yesterday that giant tapeworm was slithering out of your wife’s hairy snatch.”
Hydrant laughed. “Tell me about it.”
Up close the red hair was kind of orange, and Brackert wondered if the guy’s wife was redheaded, too. As good buddies as they were, Hydrant had never shown Brackert a picture of the woman.
“That kid is going to be a handful. The night we made him, I fucked my wife so hard my hipbones were bleeding an
d her whole undercarriage was black and blue.”
“Jesus, Hydrant.” Brackert rarely flinched in these kinds of exaggerated conversations, but the image of bleeding and bruises surprised him and formed too clear a picture.
Hydrant ignored Brackert’s shock and punched him lightly in the arm. He had the smug crease across his face that guys get when they’d one-upped you. Instead of giving Brackert the opportunity to turn the tables, Hydrant changed the subject. “How’s things in the chaplain’s office?”
Brackert slapped his hands together. “It’s skate duty, let me tell you. And that old boy only quotes the Bible in Sunday services and at Bible study in the evenings but, I swear, if I have to hear one more hokey story about how to be a well-behaved and patriotic young man, I’ll yank the Bible out of his hands and beat myself to death with the damn thing.”
Hydrant shook his head. “Easy, tough guy.” He pointed a grease-stained finger. “That kind of talk will land you in hell.”
Brackert shrugged. “Too late for that.”
Hydrant pulled a screwdriver from his back pocket and dug grease out from under his thumbnail. “So, what are you doing up here now, anyway?”
Brackert nodded his chin toward the flight deck. “Why aren’t you up on deck watching the new XO arrive?”
Hydrant leaned to see up and over the open hangar bay. “He’s here?”
“I reckon if you hurry you can see him standing up on deck.”
Hydrant waddled the fifty yards toward the ladder leading to the flight deck, leaving Brackert alone to hurry and do what he came to do.
Click here to learn more about No Salvation by Jeffery Hess.
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