Forgive me, but a news story a couple of weeks ago sent me to the files for an old effort. I offer it as a prelude to Veteran's Day. 

THE BANKWALKER: A TALE OF THE U.S. NAVY

On the day Bergenheister checked on board the U.S.S. Seward—it was in the late winter of 1968—I was in the ship’s Personnel office. You might say I was the first friendly face he saw. Maybe I wasn’t all that friendly, but at least I didn’t look through him like the yeoman assholes did or berate him as did LTJG Cravens. He was the Personnel Officer and hated two-year men and Vietnam veterans in equal measure. He lost no opportunity to demonstrate it. This was the “East Coast” Navy after all.

            I was waiting to update some pay records, and having come on board a year and a half earlier, I knew how to be invisible, an essential talent in the United States Navy. So I just watched. From my position I could see the side of the JG’s head and Bergenheister’s face straight-on like he was posing for me, not that he noticed me or anything else in the room. He just stared straight ahead, like his body was there but his mind was anchored somewhere safe at sea.

            “Men,” Cravens said. “We have us another two-year puke here.” He slammed the file so hard on his desk so hard that coffee splashed on the file. He wiped it with a sleeve and turned to the nearest yeoman. “What’s the shitiest job we have open?”

            “Mess-cooking, sir,” the Yeoman said. He said it very fast and forceful like he was volunteering to charge a machine gun nest. Our yeomen were like that. The other sailors called them “squat-to-pees.”

            “No,” Cravens said.  “I leave that for the cocksuckers transferring here from Vieeeet Naaam duty.” He stretched it out as I had heard him do before, like the day I checked on board. He looked at me and made a smirk like I had brought a little joy into his miserable life. I suddenly noticed a thread hanging from my shirt and gave this “Irish Pennant” my full attention.

            Sailors on the east coast of the U.S. didn’t like sailors from the west coast in those days. It mostly had to do with ribbons on a guy’s chest. There wasn’t any combat to be had to the east of the United States, and the personnel resented those four or five medals the Viet Nam veterans wore. The typical east coast sailor, even the ones with years of experience usually just rated a Good Conduct Medal and the ever present “Geedunk medal” you got for enlisting during a time of war, even if they didn’t call it a war.

            So it created a sullenness in the east that was missing in the more boisterous WesPac. LTJG Howard Cravens had a particularly bad case of it since he was a staff officer. That meant he couldn’t hold command and the line officers, who could, looked down on him. I don’t even think they would sit together in the Officers’ Mess. He was a pasty looking little guy with a receding hairline. His face shook when he talked, the shaking just a little out of rhythm with the words. He was a real asshole, Some Navy officers were. Some weren’t. You just had to play the hand that was dealt you.

            Now, Cravens stared at Bergenheister and made a disgusted-looking face.

            “Besides,” he said. “I wouldn’t want this putrid-looking asshole anywhere near my food.”

            Here I couldn’t completely fault him. The lad did present a fairly pitiful sight. I pegged him as the character “Boo Radley” from the movie version of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He was the spitting image of the character as played by Robert Duvall. He had white, wispy hair and his skin was as pale and clear as a pearl. His eyes sank into dark hollows, and their pale-blue centers stared straight ahead like he was watching something real interesting and real far away. I think that pissed the JG off even more.

            “Nah, we’ll send him to the deck force and let him chip paint for two years.” He tossed the chart to the yeoman and leaned back in his chair.

            “Christ Jesus on a crippled cross, where do they get these fucked-face scumbags?” he said, looking at Bergenheister who just moved his mind’s anchor a little farther out to sea. From my vantage point, though, I saw it: just a faint movement across his face. It flew over his eyes and seemed to brush his cheeks the way a freak summer breeze will flutter the surface of a calm sea. Then it was gone, and there was just the pale sadness again. It wasn’t the first torment he had handled in his life. Given the two years ahead of him, I suspected that it wouldn’t be the last.

Many of the two-year guys did come from the bottom of the barrel. They were the ones that had too many police records, couldn’t pass the entrance test, or had some psychological problem that kept them from doing anything other than be shot up or fill a slot for someone else who could get shot up. Some had been drafted and sent to fill the Navy’s quota. On the social scale observed by the rank-and-file regular enlistees, they fell in above officers and below the rest of the enlisted. They only served their one term and usually couldn’t re-enlist although some became damn fine sailors and more, as we shall see.

“Get out of my fucking sight,” Craven said to Bergenheister. “Show him the way to the deck division office,” he said to the nearest yeoman.

Then he nodded to me. “What does our war hero want today?”

The yeoman pranced in front of the new guy and motioned without looking at him. Boo Radley followed obediently, just like in the movie.

That was my introduction to Nathan Bergenheister.

He skipped mess-cooking and went straight to the deck force, as promised. He ended up in the same division to which I was assigned, although we saw little of one another. He spent days chipping paint from a specified section of the ship, sanding and painting the same section, and then chipping that paint away again in that never ending cycle of naval activity that has existed since the first boats ventured out from the Dark Continent. If the repetitive insanity of it bothered him, he never said so.

I served as Coxswain for the Admiral’s Barge which made me elite, even among Boatswain’s Mates, the senior rating of the Navy’s enlisted. I kept up with his progress through normal scuttlebutt which suggested that he would spend his two years in an uneventful cycle of work and standing watch. Normally that would include going ashore on liberty and wasting his money. At that time, no one ever saw Bergenheister go ashore, though. If he did, he did it when nobody was looking. Mostly, if you saw him after hours at all, he would stand on the ship’s fantail and stare at the shore if we were docked. If we were at sea, he would stand and stare at it with the same look of non-belonging.

In fact, and this was weird, no one ever saw him move much at all, except as a single cell in an organism composed of a number of men headed for some task. I mean, sure he had to move. That makes sense. It’s just that afterwards there was not one sailor who could remember observing any independent movement of his in those early days. He simply appeared places and then disappeared the same way.

He didn’t cause any trouble. He went about his work and, as far as anyone knew, seemed satisfied in the service. He generally messed alone, or in the company of a few guys from the division but he always let the others do all the talking. Although he was in the sun most of the day, he didn’t lose his pallor, at least not then. All in all, in a world with many strange types, he was just a little stranger than most—just another misfit passing through.

That was about to change.

To understand the change, you should know a little about our ship. It was a tender and carried only two gun stations. Since most of the work was specialized, there wasn’t much turnover and there wasn’t much advancement. That is to say there wasn’t much except within the deck force. This was 1969, after all, and riverboat duty was taking a toll on Boatswain’s Mates in Vietnam, so there were always slots available into which to advance. That’s the way I became coxswain for the Admiral. The previous guy’s brother got killed on a boat somewhere near Da Nang and the fool volunteered to go and get even. So I lucked out. Those were strange times.

Also, the military was fully integrated by now so there were social adjustments being made which could create dicey situations on a moment’s notice. We have already seen the tensions that could develop between sailors of the different coasts. Just imagine what might happen if their skin colors were different.

It was a ship though, after all, and the requirements of the service threw the different types together in cramped situations on a daily basis. Business was conducted, but one tended to socialize within one’s work group. It wasn’t a particularly happy ship. For most of the guys, it was more like a dirty job than the adventure promised during recruitment. Being moored five miles up a river from Charleston, South Carolina further restricted our contact with either normal people or other servicemen. It was just a berthing for those waiting to get out or move on.

For those of us who drove boats, life was simple. You just had to line up the range markers, steer as best you could and remember that the red markers lay to starboard when you were returning home. Some days were even nice, as when we would pick the Admiral’s wife, her servants, and her friends at the main base and motor them out to Fort Sumter. She never failed, on debarking after the trip to say, “Now Boats, there was some wine and cheese left over. Would you make sure it gets stowed and disposed of safely?” Then she would wink. I relate all this to set the facts straight. I had few complaints about my duty.

Events offering as much grandeur as those about to unfold often start without a great deal of notice. I first became aware of things to come when I was passing the time with another Boatswain’s Mate on the fantail. The sky was overcast and threatening rain with the winds gusting from the northeast.

Carl Richardson, a huge black man, we called them “brothers” back then, came from the port side shaking his head.

“Godamn, godamn,” he was saying it over and over. He walked toward us. “godamn, godamn.”

            Richardson was a good man so we usually stopped to, as the old sailors called it, “yarn” with him. He stopped in front of us, still shaking his head. Before he could start in again, I spoke.

            “Richardson, what’s the matter with you?”

            “Boats,” he said, shaking his head. “I ain’t no goddamned man. I just thought I was.”

            I thought for sure he was going to cry, but he sure wasn’t the type. He was a fine sailor when he wasn’t drunk, riled, or, in particular, both. Most of us worked at maintaining the correct balance lest he go to yawing uncontrollably. He was from a rough side of Memphis according to another sailor who had grown up in the same neighborhood. Carl had been in the Navy for a year and a half because, as he put it, there was one thing that he would never allow, ever, under any circumstances.

            “Ain’t nobody gonna fuck me in my goddamned ass.” He reminded the world of that periodically.

            We learned how he had defended that principle against five fellows in a south Memphis holding-tank one night. That’s what caused him to be a sailor. It kept him out of prison. Such were the social choices in the Memphis Quarters.

So we worked well with him and avoided even the most casual peek at his backside.

            But today he was troubled. It had to do with his manhood.

            “You know that guy Bergenheister? That frail lookin’ fucker?”

            We were alone now. The other sailor didn’t want to get caught lollygagging on the fantail and was a little frightened of Richardson anyway. He had vanished.

            I said I knew who he was talking about. Richardson shook his head again.

            “I thought I was a man, but shit!”

            “Richardson, what are you talking about?”

            “His whacker, man. That’s the biggest son-of-a-bitch I ever seen.”

            It took awhile for me to arrange all the scenes that had established this revelation. First, Richardson was more or less permanently assigned to cleaning heads ever since he had threatened to throw BM2 Allegretty overboard for calling him a “nigger-cracker.” Afterwards, Allegretty had decided to lessen the chances of this happening, even when in port, by keeping Richardson occupied below decks as much as possible. He sent Carl to clean the head almost every day.

            So Richardson had happened upon Begenheister in the process of pulling his skivvies up in the head when this key bit of information emerged.

            “That man is hung like a goddamn donkey,” he said. “Then he started to stutter. “Bu…Bu… Boloney. That’s what it looks like: a goddamn stick of baloney.”

            I was cracking up by now. “You got to be shittin’ me.”

“I ain’t shittin’ nobody. I thought I was a man but damn!” Words began to fail him. Then he regained some degree of composure.

            “Maybe that’s why he so goddamn pale,” He said. “Carryin’ that shit around all day would make a man frail.” He looked at me with earnestness in his eyes.

            “I ain’t shittin’ you man. I ain’t nothin’ compared to him. You wait. He gonna be the champ.”

            About this time I happened to catch sight of Master Chief Boatswain Mate Zelmer rounding a bulkhead. I immediately winked at Richardson and nodded that direction.

            “Now you get your ass back in there and tell them I said to get it done and shut up about it,” I said in my best petty officer voice.

            Whaaa.? Richardson started then caught my meaning. “I sure will, Boats,” he said and spun around smartly. “Chief,” he nodded and slipped by him without slowing, a big, black, blur moving quickly by like a dark mountain in the fog.

            Zelmer watched him with the look of suspicion that requires at least 20 years of continuous service as a Boatswain’s Mate to perfect. Then he looked at me. “Don’t you have a boat to take care of? These guys ain’t supposed to be hanging around out here.”

            “That’s just what I was telling him, Chief,” I said. And I was gone.

In the old navy, they had to pass rumors at the water bucket, or scuttlebutt, hence the term. Back then, it was a large water barrel lashed to the main mast amidships. The sailors from different watches would meet there and pass information.

We now used the fantail, or rearmost portion of the ship. That’s where the after deck gear locker was so there was always a reason to be there. We didn’t have many chances to gather around a water fountain. It’s just another of the old Navy traditions that has suffered. There’s probably something more sacred about news being passed to quench one thirst while another is being satisfied by mere water. At any rate, the size of Bergenheister’s penis was genuine scuttlebutt now. His navy life would never be the same.

The first to verify was a tall, stalk-of-corn-looking fellow from South Georgia named Dankley. He had been on the beach all one night and by the time he got on board, it was too late to go to sleep and too early to go to work. He decided to take a long shower and try to clear his head. Since it was a good hour before anyone else would be up, he undressed, grabbed a towel and flip-flops, and deck-slapped his way into the head.

He flopped right into the room where Bergenheister had just emerged from the shower wearing naught but what nature provided. Dankly stared for a second and then jumped into a shower. When he turned around, Bergenheister was gone.

The experience cleared up a couple of points. First, Richardson wasn’t lying. Second, it explained why nobody had noticed before. The poor lad had been somehow waking himself up an hour early and taking care of his toilet before anyone else was up.

Dankley drove the Captain’s Gig, which was moored on the opposite side of a floating dock from my boat when we were in port. Later that morning, after we had put our crews to work, he wondered over, coffee in hand, and motioned me aboard the Barge. It was a crisp day in late March with no discernable breeze. The skies offered calm seas all day. We went below and I poured a cup of coffee. We sat on the soft cushions reserved for the Admiral and guests without speaking for a while. Finally, since we were both southerners and had developed a level of trust, he spoke.

“You know that new kid Bergenheister?”

“Yeah, I said,” expecting something. “What about him?”

“He’s a regular goddamn bankwalker,” He said.

“A what?”

“A bankwalker, man,” he said and he sounded annoyed. “Ain’t you from the country?”

“Yeah, but…,” I struggled.

“Didn’t y’all ever go swimmin’ in some pond somewhere when nobody was around?”

“Sure,” I said and began to sense the course we were following.

“Remember how most of us ran and jumped in the water as soon as we got our clothes off but there was always one bastard that would walk around the bank showing off?”

“A bankwalker,” I said.

“Yep,” he said. “And that goddam Bergenheister is a real one,” he paused. “Or at least he could be if he had any clue.”

Then he told me the whole story of the early morning shower.

“A thang of beauty is a thang of beauty wherever,” Dankley said, finishing his story and his coffee at the same time. He rose to go back to his boat. “We ought to enter him in a ship ‘dick-off’ with the other departments. Bet we could clean up on bets if word doesn’t get out first.”

But word had gotten out. Richardson turned out to be a one-man information center and before long poor Bergenheister couldn’t take a shower without a group waiting to check out the rumors. At first, the attention frightened him. He would come out of the shower and, seeing a group milling around, grab his towel and wrap it around his middle and just stand there until the crowd dispersed. Next day, another crowd, sometimes from another ship’s division would be on hand to satisfy their curiosity. It seemed that these daily torments would plague Bergenheister for his whole tour.

Then one day he smiled. That day, he didn’t rush from the shower but, instead, walked slowly past the crowd and nodded, the quick facial gesture brightened his face like the flash of a firefly. The crowd parted for the celebrity he had become and he walked by with his towel in his hand as if headed for a picnic.

I happened to be at a sink shaving when this happened, so I can attest to the truth of it. Bergenheister had been on the ship about six months by then and from that day, some strange things began to happen on the old USS Seward.

The first thing I heard about it came, of course, from Richardson. He had delivered a message from the ship to the boat pier and stayed around to swap gossip. It was then that he told me about a deal working with another ship at the main base in Charleston. Our men were putting Bergenheister up in a contest with that ship’s champion. There was already big money floating between the two vessels on the outcome.

“We gonna clean their asses,” Richardson said, so confident in his prophesy that he asked how much I wanted to put up.

“I think I may pass.”

“Shit man, you’re missing a sure thing. Why don’t you just loan me twenty and I’ll pay you interest from my winnings.”

It was tempting, but I basked a lot in the reflected glory of my admiral and I didn’t want to go back to leading “chip and paint” parties. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

“It’s a sure thing,” he said again. “We’re proud of that boy.”

“What does he say about it?”

“Hell, he ain’t got no say. He’ll do what we tell him to do. All he has to do is drop his drawers for a few seconds and let people see that anchor-shank he carries around. We promised him ten percent of the winnings.”

“Well let me know how it comes out.”

He didn’t have to tell me. A large group of Seward sailors checked out for liberty that evening, quietly, each with the seaman’s eternal hope of happiness on his face. They returned around midnight drunk and anxious to spread the news. Bergenheister was with them but he wasn’t drunk. While the victors were waking everyone in the compartment up to announce the news, he just smiled, for the second time since he had been aboard, undressed, and climbed into his bunk.

It wasn’t long afterwards that the crew left for another showdown, this time with more confidence. The results were the same, just as they were the next time, and the time after that. Then we heard some scuttlebutt that the U.S.S. Saratoga—the “Sorry Sarah”—was coming into Charleston. Supposedly they had heard about Bergenheister and phoned ahead from Portsmouth. Some Sailor on the Sarah had a cousin on the Seward and he said they wanted to challenge Bergenheister with their man, a big “brother” from New York City. Aircraft carriers carried a huge crew and the fellows in deck-force were counting on a big haul. Our ship was headed for the major leagues, or so we thought.

It wasn’t to be. The carrier was held up for repairs and by the time it got underway, our ship had sailed for Puerto Rico. The Old Man had decided the crew had performed so well for the last several months that the crew deserved a trip for rest and recreation (R & R.)  So the Saratoga came and went without a match.

It was maybe the best thing for the legend of Nathan Bergenheister. At least that’s what I gathered from the secondhand accounts. I didn’t make the trip since my admiral was in-country and might need his barge. Because it was a short cruise, they didn’t take the Captain’s Gig either, so Dankley and I, along with our crews stayed back with the boats. The admiral always gave two days notice when he requested the barge and the Old Man was gone with the ship, so we enjoyed a week of mild drunkenness aboard the boats, talking about what we might do when our tours were up.

Dankler leaned toward being a hairdresser. His mother owned a shop and, having grown up in it, he calculated as how it was the greatest way in the world to meet girls.

“Now I’m not queer,” he would say, “But it don’t hurt to let them girls think you are ‘cause then they just bust a gut trying to cure you. There is one who works for Mom, a nice guy, and you ought to seen the women fussing about him offering to make him right.”

“What does he do?”

            “Just smiles, takes their tips, and says he’ll think about it.”

I never was sure about all this, the girls I mean. They had different ways of looking at things but I wasn’t sure that was one of them. It helped pass the time, though.

As for me, I was trying to decide if I wanted to stay in this man’s navy. It had its bad moments, but where else could a person have so much fun and get paid for it? We talked about it for hours—a guy who wasn’t gay and a sailor who wasn’t sure of his future.

Thus the time passed and the day came for the ship to come back up the river, held on each side by a couple of tugs guiding it along like cops walking a drunk home. The tugs turned it around in mid-river and they began to back it into a “Mediterranean Moor,” named after the ass-ended way they moor ships in crowded ports.

As they shot the first leading line over, I could see Richardson standing on the fantail with Bergenheister alongside. While they were waiting for Dankler’s crew to secure our side, he kept waiving at me and pointing at Bergenheister. When the stern of the ship edged closer, I saw Bergenheister smile. This time it was broader and not as shy as usual. Richardson clapped a hand on his shoulder. “My man, my man,” he kept yelling and looking at Bergenheister like a farmer would look at a new calf. The lad would look down at the deck and then look back up and smile. I remember thinking to myself, “He must have really cleaned up this time.”

In all the excitement, I simply figured that they encountered another challenger and didn’t think about it again. A loudspeaker yelled to lower the Battle Flag and the ship was pretty much docked as far as the “after” crews were concerned. While they were securing the forward lines, a voice boomed over from the ship’s speakers.

“Men, this is your Captain speaking. We’ve had a grand cruise and I’m certainly proud of you. Each of you.” He said this last one like he was personally shaking hands with every member of the crew. “Thank you for a job well done, and keep up the good work.”

The weather had been fair and warm for the docking, with a moderate breeze from the southwest with a bank of dark clouds resting on the far western horizon. As the excitement died down, and the crew began to attach the gangway, Dankler’s engineman hurried by, heading for the dumpster at the end of the pier with a garbage bag containing the last of the beer cans. The flag on the fantail began to flutter as if it was happy to be home and we headed back to our stations.

Later, Richardson told me about the cruise, at least the epic parts. The account was corroborated by any number of more reliable witnesses. That is to say they were reliable for the first 24 hours or so. By the end of the week, there were more eyewitnesses to the affair that there were in the entire ship’s complement. But I pretty much take Richardson’s account on faith, at least for its entertainment value.

It seems that the first night, the two sections not on duty had gone ashore and found a whorehouse in Old Town San Juan. It was actually a large building with a bar downstairs and rooms on the second and third floors. Girls would circulate around the tables in the bar, touching the men on the shoulders at first and then reaching below the tables to make their intentions even more unmistakable. They would invite a sailor showing interest upstairs to negotiate a price. As the night wore on, they became more brazen and more explicit with their probes.

“Them bitches would reach right down there and let you know they was open for business,” Richardson said. “And a ‘brother’s' money was as good as anybody’s,” he added. Richards smiled like the mere thinking of it could bring it all back again. “They was equal opportunity ‘ho’s””

We were standing on the fantail after working hours watching the clouds rolling in. Spring rains and storms were on the way, but nothing could turn Richardson’s mood gray.

“The third night we all got it together that we was going to take Bergenheister there,” he said, stopping again to enjoy the memory.

“Bergenhiester,” he said. “My man.”

“Did he want to go?”

“Shit man,” he reflected for a moment, “I don’t know. We just told him to get his dress whites on and he came.”

“Just like that?”

“Pretty much, but anyway…”

Somehow I suspected more coercion, but it wasn’t a good time or a good idea to challenge the official version.

“So he got dressed and went on the beach with you guys?”

“That ain’t the only thing.”

“You took him to the bar.”

“You done already heard about it?” Richardson looked hurt.

“No, I just guessed. Go ahead.”
”We fucked around a good while and got there late.”

“Drunk, I suppose?”

He just looked at me as if I had asked if the port side of the ship was on the left.

I narrowed my search. “Was Bergenheister drunk?”

            “Naw, man. He don’t drink.” He looked me in the eye with a speck of impatience showing. “You want to hear this or not?”

“Sure, go ahead,” I said. Then I shut up. Narrative interruptions were among the long list of irritants that could cause Richardson’s ballast to shift.

            “Well,” he paused for effect. He was getting warmed up now. “We found a table in the back and put Bergenheister against the back wall. When them girls came up, they all started pawing us first. The place wasn’t crowded so there was a bunch of them.”

            As the story came out, it was apparent that there had been a plot afoot. The men let the women feel around awhile and pretended to be broke. Before long, they appeared to start losing interest and then sprang the trap.

            “Him,” one of the Second Class Bosun’s Mates said, pointing to Bergenheister. “Moocho dinero.”

            Up to now, the women hadn’t paid much attention to him as he was in the middle of the group at the back of the table. Now they took a look at him and heads began to shake.

            “Baby,” one said. “No do child.”

            This was exactly what they wanted to hear. “He ain’t no child,” the gang protested. “Go feel,” and they pointed below the table.

            “Them girls just kept shaking their head and sayin ‘baby” and ‘child,’” Richardson said. “They didn’t want nothin’ to do with him.”

            “So what did he do?”

            “He put on that look he do when somebody be fuckin’ with him,” Richardson said.

            I knew the look. A lot of people picked on Bergenheister, mostly people from other departments and always when Richardson wasn’t around.

            “So did he miss out?”

            “Shit no, man. We got him this close, he was gonna try for the teddy bear.”

            Richardson never ceased to amaze me.

            “We all scooted around and left a space open beside him,” he said. “Then we motioned the closest girl to sit down there.”

            He stopped here and offered that huge grin he was known for. It’s the one a person always wanted to see because Richardson could trim his sails in a second if he felt threatened and you didn’t want to see him do that.

            “So did she?”

            “Oh yeah,” he said. “She sat down and whispered something in his ear. He just sat there with that look on his face. Then she reached down under the table.” He paused again.

            “What happened then?”

            “He jumped and she let out with this scream you probably heard back here.”

            “Then what?”

            “She moved in on him and screamed again. Then she moved closer and started feeling him up for real.”

            “What did he do?”

            “Funny thing… he sorta smiled. Then that bitch started jabbering to them other women in Spanish and they all squeezed in.”

            I was trying to get this picture clear in my mind.

            “They was all crowd’n in and reach’n down to see if it was true,” he said.

            “And I suppose you were all tying to help.”

            “We was just watchin,” he said. He didn’t smile.

            I got back to minding the helm. “So then what?”

            “Boats, them women drug that poor man out from under that table and gathered around him like he just won a fifteen-round fight. He was nervous but you could tell at the same time he kinda liked all that attention,” he paused. “I don’t guess he had ever had none.”

            “Had none what?”

            “Attention. You know. ‘Cept when somebody be fuckin’ with ‘im.”

His eyes turned away from me for a second and I could tell he was thinking.

            “I bet I can guess what happened next,” I said.

            He snapped his head back toward me. “It was the damndest thing,” he said.

            “What?”

            “They took that boy by the arms and marched him right up the stairs. Must have been six of them,” he said. “They was all jabberin’ and singing and old Bergenheister’s feet wasn’t even touching the floor.”

            “Did he have any money with him?”

            “That’s the funny part.”

            “How so?”

            “We had his damn money. We was afraid he would get it taken away from him.”

            “He didn’t have any?”

            “Goddammit, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

            “What?” Richardson was not completely there with me at that instant, but somewhere back in that bar watching the show of his life.

            “He didn’t need no goddamn money. We had taken up collection and we was all going to pay if we could get him laid.”

            “So you paid for it when they came back down?”

            Richardson left me and drifted away again. He had this serious look on his face that didn’t quite fit. Finally he docked and looked at me.

            “When they came back, they wouldn’t take no fuckin’ money.”

            “Wouldn’t take any money?”

            “Wouldn’t take any money.”

            “Hell, Richardson,” I said. I was getting a little impatient. “I’ve been in whorehouses. They take your money whether you can do it or not.”

            “That wasn’t it,” he said. “That wasn’t it at all.”

            “You mean…?” I was stretching my brain, tying to get around all this.

            “They was gone a real long time and when they came out, everybody was happy.”

            “The girls were happy?”

            “One of them grabbed some flowers from a pot and was throwin’ them on the floor in front of him. He just walked down those stairs good and slow, steppin’ on them flowers and lookin’ at us like he knowed something we didn’t. I ain’t lyin’”

            “Motherfucker,” I said.

            “That’s what happened.”

            You may not believe it, but it was a happier ship after that Puerto Rico run. The upper-level noncoms and the officers all said it was due to the positive effects of R & R. Those of us that had been around a little knew better, though. We had been on R & R and we knew it just made you want out of the Navy that much more.

            No, it was something else that brought the men together. I think it was having a mascot, because that was what Bergenheister had become. Not only did people quit picking on him, they were nicer to one another. Men from different departments started going on the beach together. Nathan gained some color in his cheeks and won some more money for his shipmates. We started a Navy Relief program on the ship. I even heard that the ship’s efficiency rating went up. I couldn’t help but think that having this source of pride had something to do with it. I mean having this guy in the crew with a dick so big that even the whores stopped their scheming. When you are looking for something to give your life purpose, you take what you can get.

            It didn’t last, though. Boy, did it not last.

            When they let Cravens out of the personnel office for a spell was when it started going to hell. Our Ship’s Bosun left for some training in Chicago. He was a good man named Harrington. Nervous, since he was a Mustanger, that is to say he was commissioned from the ranks and never quiet accepted by officers or enlisted after that. But he was square and dependable, “all in a clove-hitch” as the old sailors used to say meaning you could trust his rigging, calm or storm.

            Well, he left for a month and they let LTJG. Cravens muster the deck force in the mornings in the meantime. There is an old navy tradition that only the ship’s cook could polish the ship’s bell since that guaranteed that he would get out from below decks and all that smoke and mess and get some fresh air. So, I guess, it was with Cravens. They wanted to let him out among the guys long enough to clean out his scuppers. We all thought it was pretty funny to see him strut about. That was until it happened.

            It was late spring of that year on a morning set off by a dark, sullen overcast and no measurable breeze. A little fog oozed in and around the fantail where we mustered. Cravens read us our orders for the day and, when he should have dismissed us to go to work, suddenly came about and walked over to Richardson.

            “Sailor,” he said, getting real close to Richardson’s face. “The Duty NCO tells me that you didn’t answer the call for “sweepers” this morning.”

            We couldn’t believe our ears. This was total bullshit. Everyone knew that Richardson got up early in the morning and went out for exercise when the ship was in port. He was determined that he was going into law enforcement when his enlistment was up and he worked at staying in shape. You could see him of a morning trudging down the road flailing his arms about like pieces of loose rigging. The Old Man himself urged us to exercise, but as far as I know Richardson was the only one who did.

            The deal was this: only the duty-section was officially required to turn out for morning sweepers. If a seaman stayed on board, however, the Duty NCO generally turned him out as well rather than trying to figure out who was on duty and who wasn’t. It didn’t take long and you had to get up anyway so there were no complaints.

            A lot of the guys, particularly the married ones, rented some cheap place on the beach and drove in mornings, just like regular jobs. Also if you were out all night doing god knows what, you wouldn’t make sweepers. As long as you made muster, and weren’t in the duty-section, it was a loose arrangement extending to, all assumed, a person with little enough sense to go out and run around the base before daylight.

            So this was bullshit and we all knew it. We weren’t totally surprised, though for Cravens was a total asshole who just had to be tolerated. The whole thing would have blown over like a squall if Richardson had stood his ass-chewing like a good sailor and had the affair not escalated.

            Before anyone knew it, Cravens called Allegrety over. “Is this the man?”

            “Yes sir,” he said, “Looking as pleased as a seaman who had just tied his first bowline.

            Cravens started to offer up his reprimand when Richardson protested.

            “Sir,” he said, “I was off duty and went out to…” He stopped and started shaking. The enormity of the injustice stalled his ability to communicate.

            Then Allegrety swung his helm in the wrong direction. “Shut up while an officer is speaking to you…” Then he sailed right into the iceberg by adding: “Boy.”

            That wasn’t what you called a “brother” in 1968. Before anyone could blink an eye, Richardson weighed anchor and knocked Allegrety clean across the fantail. Then he crossed the deck in two long strides and was on top of him in a headlock which immediately turned Allegrety’s head this awful purple color like bad storm clouds of a morning. He was trying to talk but all he could get out was “Hep…hep.”

            Cravens didn’t know whether to reverse engines or drop anchor. He wouldn’t get any closer to the pair than he already was. “Release that man,” he finally got that much out. Then he made a short sort of half-step toward them. “I’m ordering you to release that man.” He said it like he was asking for more sugar for his coffee.

            “Keep away from me or I’ll kill this motherfucker.” Richardson’s eyes had turned this awful greenish yellow color. None of us moved.

            Cravens froze too. He turned and looked at us as if to say “What should I do?”

            We looked back at him with the weight of five-thousand years of seagoing protocol on our side and a look that said, “You’re in charge, asshole. You figure it out.”

            Allegrety was looking worse now and his eyes were beginning to bulge. “Let that man go,” Cravens offered again, more like a suggestion than an order.

            This all happened in less time than it takes to tell, so we all stood frozen-like, not wanting a shipwreck but not wanting to participate either. If the truth were known, more than one person was enjoying it.

            Then Bergenhiester was standing beside Richardson. As usual, no one had seen him move. “Let him go Carl,” he said. It was one of the few times I had ever heard him talk and he said it so softly that it barely made it through the fog to where we stood. We heard it though, and it was a voice sweet as that of a mother telling a baby to go to sleep.

            “I’ll kill this motherfucker,” Carl looked directly into Bergenheister’s eyes and we all knew what the look said. It asked, “Yes or no?

            “You don’t want to kill anyone,” Begenheister said, “Now just let him go,” He placed his hand on Carl’s and we felt the flow of strength from where we stood.

            They faced one another through the fog for the time it takes to fling a lead-line and Richardson released his hold. Allegrety rolled onto the deck and gasped like he had just been born. Richardson started crying and Begenheister put his hand on his shoulder.

            It’s all right now Carl,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right,”

            It was all action then. Cravens sprang over and helped Allegretty up. He sent someone for the Officer of the Deck and soon they hauled Richardson away, still crying as if the sky had been opened for him and he had seen something terrible. Later in the day, they took him from the ship in handcuffs.

                        We didn’t anything else about it. The Navy had its way of dealing with such matters. It had a lot to do with discipline and very little to do with justice. Allegretty put on his dress uniform for no apparent reason one morning and disappeared for a day. After that, nobody mentioned Richardson again. I can’t say anyone shunned Allegrety because of it since most of us had never had much to do with him in the first place. We simply all went forward like we were a single soul, albeit a soul with a piece missing. Ship’s work continued but had to be done without much levity. It was back to old times. There were no more “dick-offs” with the other ships.

            Then one morning in April, the ship started buzzing as ships will do when something sinister is going on aboard. A runner appeared on the pier and told Dankley and me that all the noncoms from deck force were to report to the bunk area.

            “What the fuck?” Dankley asked as we started up the gangplank.

            “Who knows?” I said. Maybe they’re giving us a commendation.”

            “What for?” Dankley said and then he realized I had been joking. “Fuck you,” he said as we walked into the compartment.

            What a sight it was that greeted us. The other noncoms, except for Allegrety, were lined up in the aisle near the center of the compartment. He was standing alongside Cravens and some other officer at Bergenheister’s bunk. Bergenheister was standing against the bulkhead at attention. He had a new expression now. Quite new. It was still signaling a distant anchorage, but there was a hint of amusement on it now, like he finally understood the game.

            The bunks consisted of rectangular metal boxes about six inches deep that a person slept on. The tops were hinged and they lifted up to allow the occupant to store his gear and belongings below. They had the top of Begenheister’s bunk open, displaying the contents.

            They motioned for us to come over and look. It was pretty pitiful. There was his normal issue: socks, shirts dress clothes, skivvies and such. I felt as if I was looking in someone’s bedroom window.

            The only other items were as follows. There was an ancient harmonica that didn’t have the appearance of having been played in this century. The name itself had almost been rubbed away by someone who had once evidently loved it a lot. There was a faded and ragged photo of an old man with a beard and the attire of someone who lived far from city life. He looked too old to be the father, but who knows? There was also a worn and yellowed woman’s handkerchief bordered with the most delicate lace you can imagine. In a corner, and constituting the object of Cravens attention, were four rolls of what appeared to be ten and twenty dollar bills, each tightly rolled and secured with rubber bands.

            Dankley and I looked but said nothing.

            “Anything odd there?” Cravens asked.

            I didn’t answer.

            “Odd?’ what do you mean sir” Dankler asked.

            “You know what the hell I mean,” Cravens said.

            Dankler didn’t answer. He just looked at Allegretty.

            “There’s more money there than he’s made since he entered the Navy,” Cravens said. “We want to know where he got it.

            I looked past Cravens at the other NCOs and the look I saw was classic Navy. I knew in a second that they had clammed up, abandoning Bergenheister when some of them still had money in their own lockers that they had won because of him.

            “Don’t look at them,” Cravens said. “They don’t have any idea where a puke-ass Seaman Apprentice got this much money.” He barked it at me like I was on trial or something.

            Then he said, “We want to know if you have any idea where he got it.”

            The Navy is big on honor and all that shit. They have this code that comes from way back when sailors rode out storms with nothing but a little rotten wood between them and the bottom of the ocean. Honor is important when that much rides on the trust men build with one another. So they beat it into us pretty hard. I had heard they even taught it at Annapolis and in Officer Candidate School, but I wasn’t sure. On top of all that, I had my admiral to think of and my boat crew. I was representing them as well as myself. If I answered wrong, my naval career would be over after one tour. That was simple enough. I thought about that long blue line stretching back into the past through the mist and storms and battles and long, aching, stretches of boredom on glassy seas, all the way back to the dark hull of the old Constitution and to then to John Paul Jones himself, bloody and wild-eyed and ready to send two crews to hell to prove a point and gain honor with his own “Bonny Dick.” With all this weighing on me, I looked Howard P. Cravens, LTJG, USNR straight in the eye.

            “Sir, I think he does some part time work when he’s off duty and earns some extra money.”

            I swear I heard someone giggle behind Cravens, which made his face turn even redder and the hate more visible. But honor is as honor does and I just figured “fuck it.”

            With that, they couldn’t bring Bergenheister on charges of theft or anything. They weren’t about to screw with the Admiral’s coxswain, not right then, anyway. So Cravens had to settle for cooking up charges for some less than honorable discharge. The ironic thing about that was that this was 1969, and by then employers, and the general public if the truth be known, had ceased to give a shit about honorable discharges and such. They pretty much didn’t think too much of a veteran, no manner his exit strategy. In a few years they would even have to start paying people to serve in the military. Real salaries, I mean. Then maybe guys wouldn’t have to place bets on the size of a man’s penis for a little extra spending money. It would be a more serious but drearier way of life, I imagine.

            Anyway, it was over for poor Nathan. Cravens managed to get him locked up below decks in a holding brig with a Marine who had killed his buddy while playing with a 45 caliber pistol. The ship turned quiet. No information flowed from on high about what would happen and when. The scuttlebutt was completely dry. Then a yeoman appeared at chow one evening with some bruises on his face and a black eye. Word then spread about the ship as to the exact hour and minute Bergenheister would be mustered out.

            It was a beautiful spring morning. The evening before had ended with a glorious red sunset but the morning was clear with just a hint of a freshening breeze from west southwest. Everything smelled new.

            Nothing had been planned, but fifteen minutes or so before the appointed time, it seemed as if anyone on board below the rank of second-class petty officer had suddenly found some reason to be near the fantail, where the gangplank led from the ship. Men would grab a shackle, unscrew the pin, throw it overboard, and head to the after gear locker for a replacement. Others suddenly needed a couple of “phantoms” of line. My crew and I needed to take the admiral’s wife and her friends on an outing later that day, so we picked that time to get into our dress-whites for the trip. I made sure that I had all my ribbons. I even included the Purple Heart I picked up when a truck I was riding in hit a land mine. (As a rule, one never, ever, risked pissing people off by wearing a Purple Heart aboard the USS Seward.) I draped my most extravagant lanyard across my chest and attached a bosun’s pipe to it although it wasn’t necessary. We weren’t going to pipe the admiral’s wife aboard or anything, but the pipe and lanyard looked impressive—real navy and all that.

            We did it for Bergenheister. I guess we also did it, at least a little, to foul Cravens’ rigging. And it did.

            As he led Nathan off, we all lined the rails and stood at attention. As Cravens walked the lad to the fantail, each of us gave a snappy salute. We gave it a little late so it looked as if it was for Nathan, who gave us a nod. Cravens gave us a look that could have melted a solid steel bulkhead. There wasn’t much he could do, though. A few bruises later, another yeoman admitted that he—Cravens—had tried to start an investigation for mutiny but the Old Man had run him out of his office and told him to not come back.

            It was a good send-off for Bergenhiester. He knew it too. As he walked along the long line of shipmates, he unfurled that new smile of his and shook his ass from side to side like a boat wallowing in rough seas. Then, when he got near the fantail, he kept it up with his chest stuck out and a look on this face that said “fuck you” and “thank you” at the same time, depending on who you were. He walked up to the Officer of the Deck and snapped a salute that was part John Wayne and part Jerry Lewis. “Request permission to go ashore, sir,” he said and marched off, scarcely waiting for the response.

            He might have checked on board as Boo Radley, but he checked out as The Bankwalker.

            We never heard from him again.