Jay and I drove back...

Jay and I drove back to LA almost every weekend together. He owned and lived in a apartment complex in Hollywood. I had kept my apartment in Long Beach when the ship returned to San Diego and commuted on weekends and days off. I planned on living in Los Angeles when my enlistment ran out. It had been slightly over a year since I had left Hawaii. It had been the only year of my time in the Navy that had been relatively calm. Although I still worried about Brewer talking about the NIS incident, it was filed farther back in my mind. The briefcase rested comfortably in a safe deposit box in Long Beach. The Dixie hadn't been a bad ship to finish up my tour of the Navy on. It was a destroyer tender. A huge floating hulk with dozens if not hundreds of shops on it.

Any Navy ship, destroyer class or smaller, could tie up alongside of her and get damn near any problems it had taken care of. It rarely got underway so the many of the crew lived off of the ship. It was a den of thieves, drug dealers, drunks, and Navy castoffs - a typical post Viet Nam Navy vessel. I had laid low my year onboard the ship but had witnessed hundreds of drug deals, busts, assaults, and even an attempted male on male rape. Recently four crewman had been arrested for hanging out along the Mexico border, which was just a few miles away, and robbing illegal aliens as they crossed the border.

"Hey man! Check it out, dude. That new guy is Beaver from that television show." There was new meat laying a fresh coast of paint on the anchor. I had walked over and taken a look at him. Negative. I walked back over to the guy spreading the scuttlebutt. "You're full of shit, Jimmy. That's definitely not Jerry Mathers." Jimmy was Jimmy Carnahan, a pasty skinned little fart that liked to paste a sign up in the bus windows every night when the lifers bussed us back to the barracks. Same goddamn message every night. "Girls - show us your tits!!" The little bastard drove me nuts. "Hey new guy," I shouted. "What's your name?" "Jay North," Jay had shouted back like he hadn't given a shit who he was and had turned back to his coat of battleship gray. I looked back to Jimmy. "Dennis The Menace, not Leave It To Beaver, dumbass. Two different shows and two different people." Jimmy tore off towards the stern of the ship to spread his hot new gossip, probably stopping off at a head to wax his cane as he was a well known and notorious shipboard masturbator. Jay started up the car and pulled out of the parking lot like he was late for a date with a five hundred dollar prostitute with a purse full of Bolivian blow and I banged the top of my head on the glove box in the process. "You're sure getting short, aren't you? Shit, man. That's fucking great." "Couple more days, man. I'm short. Short as a motherfucker." Short was short for short-timer. Military slang that meant my enlistment was soon to expire.

My time ran out the following week and I had enough leave to burn out the rest of my enlistment. My shipboard days were done. This would be the last time Jay and I would be making the LA run together. I rubbed the bump already growing on the top of my head. "Stop at a liquor store before you get on the highway so we can score some beer for our long journey. I think we'll need some with all this speed in the car. We might wind up with a bit of the proverbial cottonmouth." Jay pulled over at a package store and I ran in. Throwing two twelve packs of Holland's finest and a couple of packs of Swisher Sweet cigars onto the counter, I perused the stack of skin magazines, always looking for lesbians pictorials, while I waited for the clerk to ring out the customer ahead of me. "Would you like to share that beer with me? We could have a party, you and me." I looked up to see a black wino leering at me. He had a big booger hanging out of his nose and bleeding chapped lips that he was smacking at me. Bathing also didn't appear to be a high priority on his list. "I'll blow you for a beer," he whispered. The dirty old degenerate looked eerily familiar.

Just in case in might need it, I reached into my back pocket and felt for my folding Buck knife which was standard issue for sailors in those days. "Get the fuck out of here you old rummy," hollered the clerk who was obviously retired Navy by the faded tattoos on his forearms. "Fucking class of people we get around here these days," he muttered as he shoved two jugs of Thunderbird into a paper bag and handed them to the drunk. "Now get the hell out of here you smelly old bastard." The wino followed me out the door staying about five feet back. I turned around and faced him. "What in the hell is your problem, asshole?" He had an evil grin on his face. "I know you. You was in my last company. Your ass is in hot water. boy. Hot motherfucking water! I've had people who came to talk to me about you. Bad motherfuckers, too. Been looking for your ass. Gonna put a cap in your ass someday, that's for motherfucking sure."

"What the hell are you talking about? What company? What bad motherfuckers?" Who the hell was this guy? Looked just like another San Diego alky to me but still eerily familiar. "Less than a goddamn year and they kick my ass out. I lose my pension, Everything. Just cause some boot can't keep his mouth shut. Could have been you. Maybe you was the one that talked." I stood there silently looking at the wreck in front of me. Then it registered! My boot camp commander. Only four years had passed since I had seen him. Laying back in his chair with a recruit named Murphy kneeled in front of him. The passing of time had not been kind to this wretch. I tossed a five dollar bill down on the sidewalk and walked quickly to the car.

"I don't need your charity you prick! Look at me! This could be you! This may be your future!" I jumped in the car and threw the beer onto the floorboard. Jay looked at me oddly. "What in the hell was that all about?" "Did I ever tell you about that time in boot camp when I saw that recruit blowing the...." Jay's laugh echoed out the windows as he headed on to the on ramp. I turned around in my seat and looked back at the liquor store. Former Navy Chief Johnson was standing in the middle of the street. Giving me the finger. I uneasily settled back into the passenger seat. What did he mean? Bad motherfuckers? Who was looking for me? I once more felt the need to disappear. Disappear into the mist.