The Trinity (12 page)

I so badly want to fall in love and I don’t know if you feel the same way at this point in your life. I’ve been in Scotland just a day now and I’m looking for you but I don’t think you’re on this base, I haven’t seen a face yet that I’m attracted to or could feel comfortable with. It seems everyone here knows a certain group of people and that’s it, if you’re not in a group then you’re on your own, at least that’s what I see from eating in the galley and wandering around the barracks. I never had a lot of friends in school but I always had a few and in boot camp I was never alone and in ‘A’ school there were guys I went to boot camp with and people I talked to in class and it just seemed different. Here I feel like a leper. I start my job tomorrow and I don’t know what that will be like but hopefully I will meet people there.

Do you believe in God? I did when I was real small until I had a teacher in junior high who said there used to be gods for everything. People used to worship sun gods and sacrifice animals and children just to make sure the sun continued to rise, he said there were lots of gods like that and eventually as science grew people learned how the sun rose and of course that meant the end of the sun gods. I saw god the same way, just this thing people used to explain the world, but now I don’t know. I think there is something else there and I’m missing it. No one can explain what can happen when you die or why you’re born and why there is evil in this world. There must be a god and I think I may only feel this way because I feel so alone. Until we meet.

                                                                         Chris

It is Friday evening and the new year is beckoning. Friday has become the de facto evening for Rodgers and Hinckley to go to Father Crowley’s house, as no one has to rise early the next morning. There is much drinking and dreaming and discussing on this particular night.

Rodgers and Hinckley summon a taxi, one of a small queue that forms outside the base every Friday and Saturday night, waiting to take the sailors to the nightclubs in Aberdeen or Dundee, or to the pubs in Brechin or Montrose.

Crowley is anxious. He wants to strike again, claim another trophy for the advance of the white race. He wants the country and the world to know that a decent white man isn’t going to take it anymore, this proliferation of the lesser peoples.

“Now, South Africa,” he blurts out while sipping his favorite Boer cabernet after Hinckley and Rodgers arrive. They stare at the fire and drink one of many tins of lager. “South Africa is almost the perfect country. The whites know they’re superior. They don’t give into that gushy liberalism that has destroyed the West—you know, all men are created equal and all that crap. I don’t care what the Declaration of Independence says, Jefferson never meant Negroes; he meant all
white
men are created equal. He owned slaves himself, for Christ’s sake.”

Hinckley has a vague notion of what the priest is talking about. Rodgers doesn’t have a clue; he just hopes he doesn’t have to shoot anybody else.

“In South Africa,” Crowley says while dreamily staring at his glass of wine, his pale blue eyes almost teary and wistful, “they don’t let blacks vote or hold office or even give them good jobs. They keep them in their place because they know they are incapable of taking care of themselves, much less a business or a government. We don’t see it that way in the United States. The politicians and the churches whine about equal rights while the blacks murder each other, while the Mexicans stab each other and all our cities have gone to hell and all the while, more and more white kids listen to black music and every other show on television is about black people. But not in South Africa. In South Africa a white kid goes to school with other white kids and he is safe, and he lives in a neighborhood with other white kids and he is safe, and the blacks live with the blacks and go to school with the blacks, and though they don’t know it, they are happier. And if the blacks try to organize—they outnumber the white people there almost fifteen to one—the government goes in and shoots them or arrests them. They make it very clear who is in charge.” He drains his glass and refills it from a bottle on the coffee table. He closes his eyes and inhales the aroma of the cork before returning it to the top of the bottle.

“So,” he continues, “if I can’t make progress and help stimulate some change, we could always find our place in the world in South Africa, where the weather is finer than California and our race is raised to its proper status. ”

Hinckley thinks that sounds fine but wonders if he can watch football there. Rodgers helps himself to another beer.

“But I think the gods have placed us here for a reason,” Crowley continues, “and I think we should get to work right away. Nothing so random this time. My passion got the best of me on Christmas. Luckily, no mistakes were made, but our work was sloppy and we could have gotten caught.”

Almost true. The Tayside Police were puzzled about the murder. Dundee had maybe one such crime every few years, and they were usually acts of passion, not random violence. At first, they thought maybe it was a gang murder, some sort of squabbling amongst the Pakistanis, but they could find no evidence supporting that theory. The victim was a man in his early thirties who was walking home from his dishwashing job in a restaurant in one of the nicer hotels in Dundee. He had just saved up enough money to send for his wife and four children to join him from Pakistan, and they were due to arrive in mid-January. There was one eyewitness account from an apartment dweller above the restaurant where Crowley had parked. They had seen the Allegro parked there earlier, but after the gunshots, the car was gone. Regretfully, no tag number was recorded, and the windows of the car had fogged up and no one was seen inside.

“We have to be very precise, and though it must be tempting, we can never—and I do mean never—strike on base, unless we have to make some sort of point. To show that the blacks and other minorities aren’t safe anywhere.”

“Well, hell,” says Hinckley, “the niggers on base go out every weekend, if they’re off. I think they go dancing in Dundee. We could probably find one there, someone from the base.”

“Brilliant,” says Crowley, who rises from his chair and places his hand on Rodgers’s shoulder. “Our little sniper here can pick one off like a clay pigeon. We just have to find a place for him to shoot from.”

“Come on, now,” Rodgers protests. “I still don’t feel good about killin’ anybody; let one of y’all do it this time. I don’t mind scarin’ somebody or beatin’ somebody up, but I don’t know about killin’. I really just want to go home. I can’t stand the Navy and I hate this god-damned country.”

“Listen,” says Crowley and he prepares to talk to Rodgers as he would talk to a small child, “you have been given a talent, and it would a shame for you to waste it. Nothing has been gained by just scaring people. The Klan has been doing that for years, and now the blacks run the south. Pretty soon, they’ll run Missouri, too. You don’t want that. Your family doesn’t want that.”

Rodgers agrees.

“And if for some reason things get too hairy for us, I can use my authority as a chaplain to have you sent home. I can come up with some sort of family emergency, you know, like a death in the family. I can help you… You just have to help me.”

Rodgers reluctantly agrees and feels a glimmer of hope at the possibility of his returning home. Nothing would make him happier. He would agree to almost anything that could get him home sooner.

“Now Mr. Hinckley, back to your idea.” Crowley stands up and walks back and forth in front of the fireplace. “Do we find someone in particular, or do we just wait outside a nightclub and seize the perfect opportunity at the first shot we get?”

“Well, I think we should take the best shot we see at any nigger walking around Dundee.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Crowley replies. “Do you know where they go? Do you know which clubs?”

“Yeah, I hearda this one called Angel’s. I think it used to be a church or somethin’. A lot of them go there—you know, pick up on them bloke girls.”

“I hate bloke girls,” Rodgers pipes in. “They all smoke and drink and wear ugly clothes and they’re fat.”

Hinckley and Father Crowley both ignore Rodgers.

“You two spend the night here, and tomorrow morning we’ll drive to Dundee and scope out the situation, see where we can park. This time, I want to leave a note. We have to leave a note.” Crowley sits down on the couch, too close for both Hinckley’s and Rodgers’s comfort. “Hinckley.” Crowley pours more wine. The bottle is nearly empty, save half an inch covering the bottom. “You write the note again. Take time to be creative and make an impact. Let those of the lesser races know who we are.”

Hinckley nods. “No problem.”

Crowley retires upstairs and leaves the living room and several dusty blankets that came with the furnished house to the two young men. Hinckley and Rodgers drink and talk. Hinckley feels important; he has been trusted to write the note, to be the spokesman for their group. He rubs his hand over his hair and thinks about shaving it off, almost bald, the way the skinheads that he has heard so much about do. But he decides Father Crowley wouldn’t like that; it would draw attention to him. Rodgers, nervous about firing another shot, complains to Hinckley.

“Don’t ya think it would have been better if the South won the Civil War?” Hinckley reasons.

“Well, yeah.”

“Look at it this way: you’re finishing what the Confederates started. You’re kinda like Robert E. Lee.”

Rodgers swells at the comparison. His thumbnail knowledge of history is mostly of the Civil War. He is at peace with the decision to be the shooter, and the possibility of returning home early is enticing. He drifts off to uncomfortable, drunk sleep in the priest’s sagging armchair and he dreams of walking through his father’s fields hunting for geese in the fall, his black Labrador retriever that died in his early adolescent years wagging his tail at his side.

Friday, a few days after Christmas, Chris is assigned to the smallest division in his department and is put on a shift schedule. The shifts are called watches, as they are known at sea, and they are divided up among four sections. Two twelve-hour day watches, then 48 hours off, two twelve-hour midnight watches and then 72 hours off. Chris goes to his site in the morning, this time in his dungaree uniform that he took the time to iron properly the night before.

The previous afternoon left him with nothing to do and no place to go. He had his hair cut so short and close that a cowlick stands up on the back of his head. He constantly licks his fingers to unsuccessfully flatten his hair.

Chris arrives at his department early in the morning to check in. He meets the division chief, Lassiter, a short and heavyset man with a double chin and glasses. He sits in the chief’s small office, a room barely big enough for a desk and two chairs.

Chris sees the sum of the chief’s career spread across the walls. There are letters of commendation, certificates of advancement, a signed letter from the President for bravery in Vietnam and many plaques indicating completed courses of training.

Chris wonders if he will ever achieve such things. He wonders if he’ll ever go to war.

The chief tells Chris about the division. They relay messages from the Atlantic Fleet headquarters to ships and submarines in the North Atlantic and those on exercises going into the Barents Sea, just by Russia, tempting the Soviet border. The job is highly classified but routine, mainly monitoring signals and making sure they’re intact and the lines of communication stay open. He will be trained on all functions of the equipment and the proper sorting of printed messages. He is permitted to read but to never reveal the contents of the messages, as the information is classified.

Chris has been granted a top secret clearance, the Navy having conducted an investigation on his very unremarkable background, interviewing teachers who barely remembered him and neighbors who seldom saw him or paid him much attention. He was a shoo-in for a clearance.

He is given a badge with his laminated photograph attached to it, permitting him access to the building, past the guardsman, who is British and a member of the Ministry of Defence Police, or MoDP.

The British own the buildings and protect and maintain them, but it seems to Chris that the Americans are more than in charge.

Chris listens to the chief. The chief tells him what is expected of him, now that he is in the fleet and not in school. He is responsible for himself now, getting to work on time and sober. If he comes in hung-over, he will be written up. The chief expects him to advance his rank in a timely manner while he is here.