The Command

When the chief broke them from quarters, the shortest sailor in the back rank took her hat off and wiped her forehead down, then her neck, and the back of her neck. The officers got to sit in the shade, but they put the enlisted out in the sun and made them stand for the whole thing. She’d sweated through her whites. Hobbling aft on her bad ankle, hoping to catch a breeze off the river, she could smell herself, and it wasn’t good.

The kind of smell that took her back to boot camp. Where the same sweltering heat came up off the grinder.

In Orlando, Florida. In August. Wearing two pairs of socks, dungarees, an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt over that, the utility belt (holding a black raincoat, neatly folded and tucked, and a canteen of warm water from the barracks scuttlebutt), and to top it off, a black garrison cap. What better color to absorb heat. Same color as the asphalt, radiating back that Disney World sun. And the constant yelling. The sweat rolling down your body. Carrying your drill rifle in the same position, arm crooked at waist level for hour after hour till your shoulder bunched in excruciating cramps. To the point you dropped cadence on purpose, just to get dropped for push-ups on the hot asphalt. Even though it burned your hands.

* * *

GSMFN, gas turbine mechanic fireman, Cobie Kasson had reported aboard Horn that morning fresh from gas turbine A school at Great Lakes. Or not exactly fresh; she’d managed a week at home with her mom and daughter in Lafayette, Louisiana. Kaitlyn was three now, a bundle of energy outdoors, absorbed with her new kitten in. The navy had changed Cobie so much it was a surprise to find her daughter almost the same; a little older, that was all. Her mom said she’d grow up fast once she started kindergarten. Hugging her frail body, her chicken-wing shoulders, Cobie had wished that would never come. Wished, too, that they could be together.

That was her dream. To have her own place, not to have to live aboard ship or in a barracks.

She’d never thought of herself as military material in school. Her first job was at a tire store. That was where she met Toby, when he came in for new mufflers for his Mustang II. After she had Kaitlyn, she got put on as night desk at the Econo Lodge. It didn’t take long to get fed up with that, especially getting held up by a crack-crazed asshole with a gun. Then the owners sold to a new chain. The maids and servers said new management would lay off all the desk people and rehire. And sure enough, she opened a paper somebody left in the breakfast bar one day and read an ad for her own job.

The Gulf War started that night. The staff gathered in the lobby to watch the bombing of Baghdad. One segment was set in some kind of command post. Men and women watching flickering screens. Another segment showed women loading bombs onto planes. All at once her life seemed trivial. Making snap decisions about whether or not to send out for more breakfast bagels. Her grandfather had been in the navy. She had a picture of him in his sailor suit. He’d enlisted at sixteen, right after Pearl Harbor. So when they told her she’d have to reinterview, take a cut in pay, she’d gone downtown to see the recruiter.

All of which made her first day aboard Horn a sick joke.

She’d spent last night at the transient BEQ. Bachelor enlisted quarters — she was learning the shorthand that condensed everything down to initials. It was OK, almost like a motel, except people were yelling and playing music and carrying on all night long. She didn’t get much sleep, and her ankle hurt like hell even after she ate ibuprofen.

She’d been running downstairs, Week Seven, when she missed a step and fell. Then that night they had to run a mile and a half. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t had to stand for seventeen hours a day. All the girls in her company had swollen ankles. They told her she should see the doc. But nothing — absolutely nothing — was going to keep her from graduating. So she’d kept running, and ate Midol one of the girls smuggled in. But now even when she wasn’t on her feet the ankle still hurt. She hoped she hadn’t fucked it up for good.

When she got on the bus, there’d been three girls on it already, sitting together. Ina, Patryce, with a Y, and Lourdes. Ina and Patryce were third class, senior to her. Cobie was glad there’d be other women in the engineering department. Ina said in a cute English accent she’d heard there were only about twenty women and three hundred men on the ship they were assigned to. Lourdes was a fireman, too. She was Mexican, and Cobie got the impression she didn’t understand the other girls when they talked fast or used slang.