Voices

Something wonderful happened to me yesterday, something that even the current president of United States of America, with all this money, can never experience. It made me smile, laugh, cry, and lean my head back in wonder, all in that order. I went to bed smiling.

It was Sunday afternoon as you know, I came in from a trip to the farm and sat down to rest. I checked messages on my cell phone. An odd one popped into view, having been forwarded from a number I hadn’t used in several years. Only a screen of sound waves offered a hint. I clicked on them.

A strong but unknown voice came from the phone, “Hi, my name is Carl Ferguson and, …”

Carl Ferguson? Oh goodness. It was a name I’ve thought of hundreds of times over the years. Those of you who’ve not served in uniform will never understand.

He’s a shipmate from a vessel long ago turned to scrap metal, from a time when I was young and had my whole life ahead of me. I hadn’t seen him since the day I left the USS Hunley, the ship we had manned together for almost two years.

Carl Ferguson? I remembered him as a smiling comrade with reddish hair and an outlook that told the world to look out, for he was coming. I can’t recall ever seeing him angry.

I had requested East Coast duty when leaving Vietnam and they, the Navy, had granted my wish. The Hunley was stationed five miles up the Cooper River from Charleston, South Carolina. By the time I’d finished my tour, I was coxswain of the Fleet Admiral’s Barge, and Ferguson was coxswain of the Captain’s Gig. We were the “elite” of the ship’s forces, answering only to the top brass. We spend our days on finger-piers tending our crafts, sneaking wine and beer aboard, and generally living it up as we waited for it all to end.

All I had to do was to, now and then, take the Admiral out to meet a sub coming in or take his wife and her friends out to see Fort Sumter. Ferguson had to motor up to the main base at Charleston and pick the Captain up each morning went the tide or weather wasn’t too rough. The rest of the time, we directed our crews and swapped lies.

Carl Ferguson? He was married and stayed “on the beach” when not called to duty. We shared many a time, including a storm at sea and the patrolling of a nuclear submarine run aground in Charleston Harbor. The Navy refused to find the incident funny at all. We found it a little amusing to see the “Bubbleheads” sweat anchor links. Before I gained the Admiral’s barge slot, Ferguson taught me to coxswain “Mike” boats, the kind they landed troops in at Normandy. We didn’t invade beaches with them, we hauled personnel and highly classified weapons.

You can make those Mike boats “walk” sideways and we spent many an hour seeing how small a berth we could move them into without a scrape. It was like being paid to become a kid again.

Although we didn’t know it at the time, it was the rip-roaringess, goddammest, no-sweat time of our lives. It would be the last time for me, and maybe for him, that we would get paid for fulfilling childhood fantasies. We just didn’t know it at the time. Here’s to the memories. That’s about all we have left now.

Carl Ferguson? Hell, it just don’t get any better than that. Here we were, young, dumb, and full of life. Here he is now, with his granddaughters.