Sailors Take Warning by Malcolm Torres, CHAPTER TWO - DAY 1

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Sailors Take Warning by Malcolm Torres

CHAPTER TWO - DAY 1




Terrance McDaniels treated his freshman year at the University of Nebraska like a social event.  He knew after graduation he’d return to the farm and work there for the rest of his life, just as his parents and grandparents had done.  He earned passing grades in agribusiness, drank brews on the weekend.  On sunny days, he played ultimate Frisbee on the quad.

During finals week, Terrance answered a call from his mother and she told him to come home immediately because his father had died of a heart attack.

That afternoon he stood on the sidewalk outside his dorm glancing down the street, keeping an eye out for his brother’s red dual-rear-tire Chevy pickup.  The trees full of spring leaves and the smell of cut grass wafting across the campus distracted him, as he tried to remember exactly what his dad had said the last time they talked.

A tiny white car pulled up and the driver’s window lowered to reveal his brother crammed into a bucket seat behind the steering wheel.  A ball cap tipped back revealing a crew-cut and a lower lip swollen with Skoal.  Big arms stretched the white t-shirt.

“Where’s your pickup?” Terrance asked.

“Hop in,” his brother sighed, “and I’ll tell you.”

Heading east on Interstate 80, his brother explained, “All the way here I’ve been thinking ‘bout how I’m gonna tell you and I figured the only way is to just say it.”  He spat in a Mountain Dew can.  “Dad borrowed against the farm and against his life insurance and now he’s dead and mom’s got nothing.”

“I don’t get it—” words wandered from Terrance’s mouth.

“The bank already repo’d the pickups and combines.”

“What about the farm?”

“It’s in the final step of foreclosure, little brother.”

Tears blurred the headlights of oncoming cars.

 

*   *   *

 

They qualified for food stamps and a subsidized apartment in Lincoln.

Terrance was the first McDaniels to ride on a city bus and apply for a job, and he earned both distinctions on the same day.  Upon entering Kentucky Fried Chicken to fill out a job application, his stomach flipped at the smell of grease.

Since seeing his dad’s coffin lower into the ground a few days earlier, he was constantly trying to catch his breath, especially inside the tiny apartment.

On the sidewalk, outside the KFC, nervous anxiety tied his stomach in knots, making it impossible to take a step.

Surrounded by glass and concrete, adrift in a sea of parking lots and shiny vehicles, Terrance felt lost among the fast food joints and big box stores.

When he saw the Navy recruiter’s office at the end of the retail strip, he made up his mind.

 

*   *   *

 

They met at a beach barbecue in Manila, while playing volleyball on opposite sides of the net.  Kate spiked on him with devastating power.  Embarrassed, Terrance made a point to block her next shot.  But later in the game when she leaped off the sand and blocked his spike, their friendship officially began.  They sat cross-legged on a blanket under the palm trees, eating potato salad and ribs slathered with spicy barbecue sauce.  They filled tall paper cups with beer from a cold keg and drank until the sky was black and full of stars.  A positive energy pulled them together from the start.  Kate was competitive and talkative.  Terrance was easy going and liked her bubbly California accent.

He admired her high cheekbones, how they glowed with a peach hue, and the way her bright eyes opened wide when he told her about his dad’s farm.  Her nonchalance in a bikini on that beach in Manila disarmed him.

She admired his flat, hard stomach and wide, square shoulders.  He kept his hair in a crewcut to honor his dad, who gave him and his brother crewcuts every Saturday when they were boys.  She heard the subtle Midwestern twang in his voice and looked from his arms to his honest eyes and she couldn’t resist the powerful crush.

The ship left Manila and they met for lunch and dinner almost every day.  During that long 93-days at sea, they talked for hours and became more than friends.

 

*   *   *

 

Deciding not to wait in line for pot roast with gravy and vegetable medley, they went to the salad bar and piled their trays with mixed greens, Garbanzos, hard-boiled eggs, croutons, shredded carrots and bacon bits.  They stood amid a thousand eating sailors and waited for two seats next to each other.

He asked about the alarm he’d heard earlier and paused with his fork in front of his mouth, a crouton impaled on the tines, while she told him about Stanley Comello.  Color drained from her cheeks, and her lips, usually full and smiling, were pinched and listless.

“Rattled you?”

She glanced aside, not wanting to say anymore here, under the florescent lights, among so much loud-talk.

He touched her hand and she saw genuine concern in his eyes.

They took their trays to the scullery and walked aft along the main deck.

“Let’s get some air.”  She led him past the damage control locker and up a ladder into the hangar.  They stopped next to the dented shipping containers, restacked and secured with extra tie-down chains.

“Here’s where it broke.”  She pointed at a section of new black pipe, welded in place.

Terrance saw a foot-long scrape and a mean looking dent on the gray painted bulkhead.  He glanced at the containers stacked three high.

“Is this where,” he paused, “you know, like, you worked on him?”

“Out here.”  She tugged his sleeve.

They emerged on the fantail.  The sun sank in the ocean and the humid equatorial air wrapped them like a moist blanket.  Somebody had hosed the blood off the deck.

A shadow came over her face.  “I tried to resuscitate him.”

Terrance almost made a consoling comment but bit his lip.

A guy on watch, wearing a headset and a life vest, stood at the railing watching swells roll past.  Another couple stood nearby whispering.  Terrance wanted to ask the guy on watch about the ship on the horizon but decided to wait.  He stood behind Kate and rubbed her shoulders.

“I couldn’t help him.”  She tilted her head, letting Terrance work on a tight spot.

While she grappled with the toughest part of her job—death at an accident scene—he felt a powerful impulse to tell her how to deal with it, but he rubbed both big hands over his crewcut and went back to massaging her shoulders.  That’s how it is with girls, he remembered his mom saying, they just want a strong man to listen.

A voice boomed from loudspeakers on the flight deck above.  “MAKE A READY DECK.  STAND BY TO LAND AIRCRAFT.”

A Prowler jet screeched in behind the ship.  Kate pressed her fingers in her ears.  The jet descended on its final approach, a hundred feet off the water, engines roaring.  It was so close they could see lights on its nose landing gear blinking green and red.  A deafening roar as great gusts of burnt air blasted from the aircraft’s engines and rippled the water behind the ship.  It screeched in right over their heads.  A HOWL and a WHIRRRRR, like a metal animal colliding with the ship, filled the air as the Prowler grabbed an arresting wire in the landing area above.

“I gotta go,” Kate said.  “Sternz wants to do an autopsy.”  She looked at Terrance’s dirty brown turtleneck, his canvas pants, and realized Stanley Comello died wearing the same thing.

“If the body’s still there,” Terrance chided.

“If it’s missing,” tension tightened around her eyes, “I’ll dive overboard and swim for land.”

Terrance glanced at the water.  “It’s only a twenty foot jump.”  He smirked and pointed his chin toward the man on watch.  “Be sure he’s not looking when you jump, because he’ll call in a helicopter to pluck you out of the water.”

“There’s an investigator snooping around,” Kate countered Terrance’s skepticism, “so it’s not just rumors.”

“What if the body isn’t there when you get back?” Terrance played it straight.

“Sternz’ll have an explanation.”

“Then why all the rumors?”

“They’re not rumors.”  She pinned him with a stare.  “You haven’t worked for Commander Sternz.  She’s an Annapolis grad’.  She shines her shoes, presses her uniforms, everything by the book.  There’s no way a body leaves the morgue without her knowing.”

“So—”

“So,” Kate squashed his interruption, “when the first body went missing, Sternz ordered everyone to look for it, and like an hour later she said it was buried at sea.”

“That’s not possible?” Terrance challenged.

“No.  It’s not possible.”  Kate shook her head.  “Someone in the medical department would’ve known where it went.  Sternz would’ve known.”

“She didn’t know?”

“She had us looking for an hour,” Kate’s voice rose.

“Maple syrup girl, right?”

“Yes,” she exhaled, exasperated at his unwillingness to take her seriously.

“You should have followed the trail of sticky footprints,” Terrance couldn’t resist.

Kate ignored him.  “The second time—”

“Mister hot buns?” he interrupted.

“It’s not funny.”  Kate regarded his sly grin.  “Larry Burns had a heart attack while taking dinner rolls out of the oven.”

“Burns got burned, huh?”

“Everyone in the department knew Burns was missing from the morgue,” her tone impatient, “and nobody knew where he went, and out of the blue Sternz tells us he was sent to a storage freezer down below.”  Before Terrance made another wise crack, she said in her most serious tone, “No one knew anything about either body being taken out of the morgue.”

“So, who’s snooping around?” he remembered to ask.

“I’m not sure,” a frustrated pitch in her voice.  “Some big dude from Texas.”

“One second,” Terrance changed the subject.  “Hey,” he called to the man standing watch by the railing.

He looked their way.

“Is that the Hayward?”  Terrance pointed at the ship on the horizon.

“Sure is,” the watch smiled.  “They finally found us after ninety-three days.”

Terrance and Kate set their hands on the railing.

The Hayward’s tall antennas and spinning radar towers stood out against the orange sunset.

They faced each other with bright eyes and big smiles.

“We’ll pull into port,” he said.

“That’d be awesome.”

“Maybe we could find a place to stay on the beach.”

She imagined walking around an open-air market, holding hands like tourists but instead she said, “Let’s not get our hopes up.”

“They’ll probably want to keep us out here for another ninety-three days,” he agreed with a resigned sigh.

“I gotta get back to work.”

He led her toward the door into the ship.

In the dark passageway, he stopped and put his hands on her hips.  She touched the back of his neck.

They kissed and for a moment forgot they were aboard a battleship on a nameless ocean.

 

*   *   *

 

Kate wondered what it might be like dating Terrance if they weren’t in the Navy.  She was falling in love with his mix of manners and irreverent humor, his handsome face and broad shoulders.  A clean cut guy from the wide-open spaces of Nebraska she mused as she stood in the washroom running hot water and scrubbing her hands with soap.  She pulled on a surgical robe and imagined living with Terrance in a tiny apartment in a college town, cramming for exams late at night in the library, waiting tables part time, riding bicycles to class, buying plates and glasses at Goodwill, sleeping together in a twin bed on sheets that didn’t match.

“The body’s gone!”  Gutierrez burst in, shattering Kate’s daydream.

“No way,” she whispered.

“It ain’t in the morgue,” Gutierrez insisted.  “The drawers are all empty.”

Kate charged out of the washroom.

A small crowd gathered outside the morgue, everyone speaking at once.

“Where’s the body?”

“Another one missing?”

“Sternz’ll shit her pants!”

Kate barged in and saw the body bag, flat and zipped shut, lying on the open drawer.  It looked odd, as if the body had evaporated.  She wondered why anyone would zip the bag back up and leave it there after taking a body out of it.  She did an about face and walked right into Commander Sternz.

“The body—” Kate said.
Blood drained from Sternz's face as a cold vacancy enveloped her.  The thought of standing in front of the ship’s executive officer, Captain Samuel Brandt, trying to explain how she’d lost another body made her blood run cold.

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