Bar Room Raconteur

The Bar Room Raconteur

After getting his dad settled in the living room for a short visit after his parents divorced, Bob and his father sat on the couch to have a beer and watch some T.V. Sitting so close to him, Bob noticed how much his father had aged. His 6’2” frame combined with his broad shoulders and chest gave no hint that he had lost any of his power, but he was heavier and softer. His hair was graying and the creases in his face were deeper. When he was younger, he looked like he was chiseled from granite. His black mustache and hair cut to a Marine Corps flat top gave his piercing blue-gray eyes a fearsome demeanor. His fists were so big and powerful they belonged on the end of an ax handle. He had thick fingers whose grip was strengthened by his years of working on a farm and milking cows.

These same hands would hold the stock of a rifle; grip a hand grenade or caress the body of a woman. They held his children. Perhaps he even killed a man in combat with them but now the fingers on those hands wore the dark yellow stains of nicotine. Now, these same hands that would not shake during a bombardment or a firefight trembled in the morning while waiting for a drink.

What was not visible at the time were the deterioration of his father's lungs and heart from decades of the hard life that he had lived. Tropical diseases like malaria, contracted in the jungles of the Pacific, combined with heavy drinking and the inhalation of a couple of packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, began to corrode the soft tissues inside of him. The erosion of his body was also leeching from his spirit any sense of purpose or passion. As he leaned forward on the couch to reach his beer and cigarette, Bob admired how formidable he still looked.
Mac was aware of what was happening to him, but he didn't care. He had no interest in prolonging a life that he felt had exhausted its excitement and purpose. He had become bored.

There were no more wars to fight, no more women to love or children to raise. He would never again be the most handsome man in uniform. What friends he had from his Marine Corps days were dead or scattered all over the country. Left without these, his passion for life was diminished and his interest in life had become lackluster, so he saw no sense in prolonging it. Life had become a still photo rather than a motion picture. He hated getting old.

He had been retired from the Marines for many years now, and his life as a civilian was a poor substitute. It lacked the vitality, camaraderie, and character of the military. He missed living on the edge. Mostly, his life lacked a consequence.

He was a man who spent most of his life in the Marines, training, fighting, and leading his platoons in life and death situations for many years. For him, his life began there and, though he had been retired for over 20 years, it ended there. Somehow it marked him so deeply that now that it was gone he filled that place with drinking and reflecting on its loss. He seldom discussed anything about his life prior to joining and little about what happened after he retired.

His career took him to Quantico Virginia for artillery school to New Hampshire, where he was a prison guard over men serving life sentences in the Portsmouth Naval Prison. Down to Cuba and then back up into the Carolina’s for the formation of the 1st Marine Division. From there he went out to the west coast was stationed in San Diego, Camp Pendleton and San Francisco. During the war he traveled across the pacific to Hawaii, The Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal, Australia and New Zealand. He traveled further north for the Korean War and lived in Japan for almost two years where he fathered a daughter. A large part of his noncombatant duties was served in the military police where the naked and dangerous underbelly of any society resides. His job exposed him to killings, to suicides or more mundane crimes like being drunk and disorderly. These places and experiences became the heart of his stories. They were exotic and remote places that only a few had visited.

He could remember each place and person in incredible detail and in the stories he would tell he would animate the monsters and sirens he encountered on his journey. He wove his stories into a humorous tapestry of love, war, sex and circumstances which drew people around him to hear him tell his tales.

There was a fascinating depth to him that seemed bottomless and mysterious but more than anything else he was interesting. His experiences in the world coupled with his winning manner of telling a story drew people to him whether he was in a bar or around the kitchen table. He would sit leaning forward on the table to bring himself nearer to his audience. Leaning on one elbow with his finger pointing at his listeners he would begin describing the back drop from which his story would emerge. His voice was warm and steady as he causally he told his story and his listeners would sense that they were about to transported to a place more exotic and dangerous than the one they were sitting in at that moment. His smile was evidence that he enjoyed himself immensely as he recounted an experience that amused him or one that caused him to turn to a serious voice.

He was not demonstrative, nor would wild exaggerations or gestures would be forthcoming from him as he talked about death, love or war. He would just calmly sit and weave a tale that gave his listeners seated around the kitchen table a chill.

“I would rather die in the jungles than ever go back to Korea. Talk about a frozen wasteland. We are talking about sub-zero temperatures during the winter. It’s a place that couldn’t grow anything except heat and humidity in the summer and ice in the winter. I was a combat engineer in Korea. We either built bridges to get somewhere or blew them up so the enemy couldn’t use them. We had to clear the mine fields all the time to get anywhere.

Once, I was called forward and the Captain said “Sgt. you need clear us a path through this mine field.”
“I asked if he could tell me if it ours or theirs? He said he didn’t know and had no idea of what the grid pattern look like. He told me you and men are just to have to go out and find them. You better do it quickly sergeant as we can’t leave these tanks and vehicles out here on the road all day. I knew that the enemy was up in the hills above us. I am not crazy of lying down exposed on an open road but I ordered my men to get a move and we spread out on the ground and starting searching for a few to give us idea of the pattern.

We spread out and lying on our bellies we crawled on the frozen ground gently pushing the tip of our K-bar into the frozen ground waiting to feel the knife hit the metal of the outer shell of the mine. You had to come in from side angle otherwise you would hit the movable plate at the top and it would explode.

Once we found one, we had only two choices. One was to use your fingers (and then he would show them how to move your fingers around the side of the mine without exploding it) to move enough dirt away from the mine to get your fingers underneath and defuse it. You had to take your gloves to get your finger and thumb around the screw.
You got to be real careful not to lift it too high. We had some guys that just didn’t have the touch and the mine would blow half their body away.

The other was to gently remove the dirt around the mine and place a rope across the top with a hook on the end. Moving slowly back, we would yank the rope and explode the mine. We always had to pound the hook back into shape because the Marine Corps did not consider it to be an expendable item. This went on until we figured out what the pattern was and could clear a route forward.

We advanced up the road until dark. We knew the enemy was around us but without air support the Captain thought it best that we dig into the hillside and wait until orders come in telling us where to move. It was impossible to dig a foxhole in the rock strewn frozen ground. There were no trees or boulders to protect you. All you could do was lie out on the perimeter and wait while sub-zero wind blew through your clothes.

He paused for few seconds to take a drag on his cigarette and the room chilled and became quiet.

“Then in the middle of the night, we heard the most god awful horns blowing while flares exploded above us. Looking up to the ridge with flares as a back light you could see the Chinese lined up along that ridge coming right down on us in a frontal assault. Bugles were blowing, flares exploding, Jesus I thought it was a Chinese new Year. Their line extended as far as you could see left or right. Now I knew how Custer must have felt.

The tank turrets turned around shelling the attack while our machine guns fired up. The place lit up with thousands of tracers shooting in all directions. You couldn’t stop to think about anything except getting those gooks in your gun site and shoot the bastards one at time. They were so many in the assault that we quickly locked into interlocking fields of fire in an effort to perforate their lines and slow them down.

Finally, we had to call our artillery fire in real close to our own position but it bought us the time to get another two companies of Marines up to reinforce our us. In the morning there were bodies everywhere. They were frozen solid in the same position in which they died. On the flanks our line was breached and we lost Marines in hand to hand combat. We killed them with every weapon the Marine Corps gave us that day.”

His narratives were always plain and simple. His language was clear and his imagery was easy to envision. The violence in his stories was never gratuitous. They didn’t need to be.

He was not vulgar or prone to use graphic sexual descriptions either. He spoke obliquely when talking about such subjects. Women found him gentle, attractive and approachable because of it.

He didn’t need to use those dramatic tools to engage his audience’s attention or to add credibility to the story. Listening to him, you knew that he saw these events first hand. Whether he was driving drunk around Hawaii in a jeep with an old, toothless, male African lion in the back or clearing mine fields in Korea, he had no need to neither try and impress anyone or call attention to himself. He never glamorized war. He just described it as he experienced it. He was a witness and a participant in encounters with the deepest emotions and the most terrifying experiences that shape our lives. Perhaps his desire to relate these experiences came from the fact that he simply survived them.
He survived the campaign on Guadalcanal but due to the severity of his malaria he was sent back to the states for treatment and didn’t return to the pacific until the end of the war to train for the invasion of Japan.

In 1945 he was transferred to Maui as a platoon Sergeant for Easy Company,2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment, 5th Marine Division. This was the company whose men raised the flag on Mt Suribace on Iwo Jima. After raising the flag on Iwo Jima and securing the island, the Division was sent to Maui to rebuild and prepare for the invasion of Japan while the flag raisers went back to the states to sell war bonds.

Feeling like he belonged back with his unit rather than be giving speeches, Ira Hayes requested to be transferred back to his old unit. His return to his old division landed him Mac’s platoon.

He wasn’t the only flag raiser Mac knew in the corps. He also knew Rene Gagnon, who unlike Ira stayed in the states selling war bonds. To Mac, Rene was the smarter of two.

Mac’s tone would always become quieter and more serious when the subject of invading Japan came up in conversation. To him the idea of invading the Japanese homeland was unimaginable and catastrophic. The prospect of success was dimmer than any of the other campaigns because now you would be fighting on Japanese soil. Given the casualties the Americans took as they moved ever closer the Japan, it was evident that many of them or none of them would ever get out of the landing craft. He said it was horrific if you stopped and thought about what waited for these American invaders but all you could do now was focus on training right in front of you. He knew though that landing on the beaches at Maui would be no comparison to landing on Kyushu or Honshu.

When the atomic bomb was dropped he was relieved. He didn’t know what it was but he knew the war was over. Immediately he was reassigned to the Military Police and arrived in Tokyo after the Japanese surrendered.
Traveling through Japan, he was on a train that went through Nagasaki one day. His son asked him what he saw. He said he didn’t see anything. There was nothing to see. It was just flat as far as you could see. There were no political or moral arguments in his mind. He had no reservations whatsoever. To him it was a simple answer. It was either them or us.

Yet in spite of his jovial and bar room raconteur personality and his love of companionship he could sit quietly alone for hours, hunched over the kitchen table pondering something while watching the ash grow on his cigarette.
Living in Portland after retiring, he would often stand alone on the front porch at 2 or 3 in the morning silently smoking a cigarette while his wife and 3 boys would be asleep inside. He would just stand there in the dark staring out into the black and silent night. His son Steve would watch him from his bedroom above the porch. The only light from the blackness below was the inflamed ember of his cigarette glowing brightly as he inhaled. While watching him Steve wondered, "What was he thinking about?" Finally he concluded that his father must be standing down there in the dark wondering, "How in the hell did I end up in Beaverton, Oregon with all these kids?”

Nighttime was his time. He would sit at the kitchen table in his blue bathrobe, T shirt and boxers smoking and having a drink after everyone had gone to bed. He would sit silently and stare down at the table. He liked company but he did not need it. Late at night, Bob would join him for a while at the table and wait silently until his father spoke to him. He seldom asked him how he was doing in school or what was new. Instead, he would begin to tell him about something that happened to him, something that always occurred between 1936 and 1957.

From out of nowhere he would look at him and start talking about something he remembered.

“I was in Norfork, Virginia one night on liberty. I was a 22 year old PFC. What a lousy place that is. They have signs on the front lawns saying “sailors and dogs keep of the grass. Shit city we called it. One night I meet this guy, a civilian and we had a few drinks together in this whore house. Seemed like a nice guy and after a couple beers he took his hat and left.

I didn’t see any more to do as I had been there awhile already so I left to go back to the base. I was in my dress blues, looked real sharp you know and I walked outside. There were 3 civilians standing in the middle of the sidewalk blocking my path and a fourth sitting in a car with the engine running. In the dark they approached me and I could see they had trouble on their mind. “Where you going Marine?” one said as they moved closer to me. “I recognized one of them as the fellow from inside the brothel and said “Hey, how are doing? Remember me? We just had a few drinks together.”

The man approached looking me over and said ‘oh yea, I remember you’ and with that he knocked off my white cap. I stood there and waited to see what was next and then he said “why don’t you pick your nice white hat Marine”. There was no way I was going to bend over and pick it up so I kicked it off the sidewalk never taking my eyes of them and said “that’s ok. I got more those back at the base. As they moved in a little closer to crowd me, I backed up against the building so no one could get behind me. A moment later I heard the worst and loudest singing in my life and looked down the sidewalk to see three drunken sailors in uniform emerge from under a street light walking together with their arms around each other to keep from falling down.

I knew that these guys were going to wait for the sailors to pass and then jump me. They must know that sailors and marines fight a lot but a man in uniform and can always count on another service man if the fight involves civilians. That is why they backed up a little and started a conversation with me. I knew that once those sailors passed me these guys were going to jump and roll me. I figured a few seconds was all I had so I looked to see which one of these guys I could hit the hardest? I took one to my left and when the 3 sailors came by, I turned and I hit this son of bitch with everything I had right on the jaw and down he went like a sack of sand. “Having trouble marine the sailors yelled and with seconds they jumped the other two guys.

I just stood there against the building watching these squids beat the crap of these guys. The guy I hit never got up. He was out cold. The driver was no fool and he drove off at a run. The lady of the house screamed out the door for the police.

I am just standing there with my back at the wall watching these guys get the shit knocked out them right at my feet. When the cops arrived and started loading these guys into the paddy wagon one of them turned to me and said what the hell are doing out here Marine. I said to the officer “I stopped to watch the fight.” He said “you get the hell out of here or you are going too”. I reached down to ground, picked up my cap, stepped over the guy I knocked out and walked back to the base.”

He paused for a minute and looked at his son and said “you just remember that kid. You get out numbered, back your ass against something and don’t let anyone get behind you.”

These stories were the ones he had to tell, and he told them over and over in order to keep them alive. It was as if they died, he would die. He had to tell someone, otherwise he had no connection to the world around or behind him and he would cease to exist. He saw so much in the reflecting pool of his memories but he knew that what he saw was a memory and not a man. He would refresh his drink, light another smoke, and go back to someplace in the past that defined his life.

His coming to visit instilled some anxiety in Bob. He knew what to expect of him, as the chain of command drove the hierarchy in his house growing up it would be like that here. In his house or under his command, Mac was like a giant redwood tree and very little grows underneath those trees. They are so big they gather all the sunlight for themselves. He was used to giving orders and having them followed. But his son was 26, a former Marine himself, and now a senior in college. He had been living on his own, and taking care of himself, for eight years. Taking orders was no longer was the priority in his life. This was his home. He rightfully anticipated that a new conflict would be coming as the son is rising and now with his father coming to visit his home, it would be his dad’s turn to move over.

Mac would tell his boys that the changing of command from father to son would be inevitable. “let me tell you something kid, that a day would come when you’re not going to want to do what I tell you and on that day you will leave because if I lose control to one of you, I won’t be able to control the other two”. That day came when the older boy blocked a doorway that Mac was trying to pass through on his way to the kitchen. His son stood in the doorway with his chest expanded and as his father approached, he thrust it into Mac’s. They stood face to face looking into each others eyes.

“So you think you ready to take on your old man now? Is that what this little display is all about? Let me tell you something. At my age I don’t care anymore about winning or losing. What you need to know is that I am not going to easy. I am going to get a piece of you even if I have to bite it off. You are not going to get out of this pain free. You need to think about whether it is worth it to you. I can also tell you that even if you take me, you won’t feel good about it.”

Looking into Mac’s unblinking metallic blue gray eyes his son thought over what he heard and decided it best to step aside to step aside and let his father go on his way. He was not ready. Mac knew that the key weapon in intimidation is that just a pin prick of doubt will burst the over inflated balloon of self-confidence.

Living in San Francisco in 1974 was very different than the life on the farm his father led as a young man. Life in the city was about freedom and audacity, not regulation and authority. There was nothing that was clean and sterile. Order was not part of the day’s routines and traditional roles and values were left back in your hometown.
Bob lived in the heart of the city, which is an incubator of activities and people unaccustomed to being in a Marine household. It was a hot congested jungle where lives and bodies were entangled by vines of vice and desire. The city cooked 24 hours a day. It never stopped. It was a place, where sensual appetites were rapacious and always remained unsatisfied. It was a great place to be at 26 years of age.

Denny returned from work after 2 a.m. the night Mac arrived and joined father and son at the kitchen table for a drink. Sitting around the kitchen table Mac reached into his pocket and produced an empty key ring. Tossing it over to Denny he said, "Look at that. That’s something you don't see every day, an empty key ring. No more house, car, or office in my life. I left with only my suitcase. Ellie, of course, had already given away all my clothes so there was very little to pack. At least she didn't throw them out onto the street or driveway like she used to. She can have it all, including the car payments, house payments, electrical bills and all the crap that goes with those things. I have my suitcase and that is all I want. I went overseas with less," he said.

"What did she do with your old uniforms?" Bob asked.

"She threw them away," he responded.

He wondered to himself that his father seemed almost naked without it. Without his uniform, who was he? He began to realize that he had no idea.

He and Ellie had 4 children not 3. There were 3 boys and a girl though you would never know it from the family pictures on the wall. There was always one child missing in the pictures. The only tell-tale evidence of the daughter was a framed small round picture of Toni on the front lawn of the house holding her doll. Ellie kept the picture on her dresser for the rest of her life. Toni was the second oldest child but only lived with the family for a few years before being sent away to a state hospital. She was born with Downs Syndrome.

Ellie had wanted a daughter to raise and when she received the news about Toni’s condition she felt like she was being punished by God for an egresses sin she had committed as young girl. Her grief was compounded over that sin and she believed that Toni was the price she paid for committing it.
While Mac was fighting in Korea, Ellie was left with 2 infants, one young boy and Toni to take care of. Living on a 400 square mile Marine Corps base 3000 miles from her family the burden eventually become too much for her. Try as she might she could not take care of Toni. She applied to the Marine Corps to return her husband home on a hardship discharge from the Korean War to help her with the family. It was shortly after his return that she and Mac made the decision to send her away to be taken care of at a state hospital.

During one of the few visits the family made to see her, they would stay in a motel room off the grounds of the Porterville State hospital. During the summer months the temperature of the central valley would often be above 100 degrees. While Mac found a cool bar to drink tap beer and the boys spent the day in the motel pool, Ellie would sit in the room crying while combing Toni’s hair. She put on her makeup and dressed her up in pretty clothes with little bows in her hair. As Toni held on to her doll Ellie repeated over and over how beautiful she looked and held her close to her. The two day visit would end terribly when Toni saw the car turn back onto the hospital property. It would be the moment when she realized that she was being brought back to the ward and her mother would soon leave her behind once again. It took the nurses to come out to pry and coax her out of car and take her back inside all the while Ellie kept repeating promises to come back soon to see her. Toni understood what was happening and cried out only two words to her over and over again: “mommy” and “home”. This was the last visit Toni would receive from a family member for many years.

Mac never discussed Toni nor wanted any part of seeing her. She was a blank spot in his narratives. He would mumble sometimes that it was his fault or that she wouldn’t recognize him anyway. When pressed to talk about her by his sons the evidence that emotionally he could not cope with it would appear. His defense was “She doesn’t even know I exist”. Sadly she did know he existed. She knew she had a mother, father and brothers but Toni would never reenter Mac’s life again.

The night after his father’s arrival, Bob invited his girlfriend and a couple of friends over to meet his father. Sitting around the kitchen table having a few drinks was an easy way for Mac to be introduced. Sharing drinks at a bar or around a table talking was his element. After everyone imbibed a few drinks and as he answered questions about his life, he started to tell a story about his time in the military police while serving in New River North Carolina before the war. As he proceeded to tell the story, Bob looked over at his girlfriend sitting next to him and started to run his fingers through her hair. He commented to her about how beautiful she looked. She didn’t respond as she seemed fascinated by Mac’s story, which by now had reached the point of a call from the hotel into the Kingston Police station asking for help.

“The desk clerk at a local hotel reported that a woman was with a Marine upstairs screaming, ‘You murderer! Oh my God, you murderer.’ The door was locked and bolted on the inside and the hotel clerk was afraid of what he might find inside. He wanted the police and MPs to come immediately.”

As his girlfriend listened, Bob took in the outline of her rich figure and started to nudge her to get her attention so he could ask her to go back to his bedroom. He could feel the smooth soft skin on the back of her neck as he gently ran his fingers through her hair. His urges were calling him.

Mac continued, “in the hall we could hear her sobbing inside but there were no other noises. We pounded on the door until she screamed, “You murderer, you animal! Help! Help!”

“We drew our weapons, unlocked the safety and pulled back the hammer. I reared my body back and shouldered into the door to get it open and the three of us exploded into the room with our guns searching for a target. With our weapons locked and loaded, we quickly surveyed the room but found no one other than the sobbing woman sitting alone on the edge of the bed.

‘He is in there,’ she said as she pointed to the bathroom. ‘He is in there.’ I ordered the two other MP’s to cover the door as I burst into the bathroom. Looking down the barrel of my 45, I only saw a drunken Marine sitting on the floor in my gun sights.

“There was this drunk Marine over in the corner sitting in between the toilet and the wall with his arm around the back of the water pipe. He looked at me and, with a smile on his face, waved his arm said, ‘Hi ya, sarge.’
“We all had our guns pointed at him until we realized that he was unarmed and too drunk to stand up. I demanded to know, “What the hell is going on here, Marine?”

With his free arm, the marine pointed inside the toilet bowl and said, “Look.” The Marine and the two officers leaned forward to peer into the bowl and to their amazement, there was a small orange duckling, the couple had won at the local fair, swimming around inside the bowl.

The drunk Marine said, ‘Watch this, sarge.’ With the arm around the pipe, he reached up and pulled the cord on the water closet. The sound of the flush unleashed a torrent of screams from the woman in the room. As the water was sucked down the pipe the duck caught in the whirlpool started swimming faster and faster against the suction of the vortex in an effort to stay afloat. The faster the water drained, the faster he paddled. In spite of his struggle to paddle fast enough, to keep from being flushed down the toilet, the duck was eventually sucked down the drain and disappeared.

Other than the woman on the bed sobbing, the bathroom became quiet as the bowl started to refill. Mystified all eyes remained transfixed on the now quiet drain, which had just swallowed the duckling.

‘Jesus Christ, Marine, what the hell are you doing?’ I demanded to know? The Marine just sat there, next to the toilet, laughing so hard that he could care less about the prospect that we were about to haul him off to the brig. The woman continued sobbing about her boyfriend’s cruelty until the water refilled the bowl. When the water level was restored, and the toilet quieted down, out of the depth of the drain the duck suddenly popped up and continued to paddle around in his porcelain pond as if nothing had happened.”

As the crowd sat around the table laughing, Bob returned to his mission of getting his girlfriend to head back to his room. Quickly she moved away and responded, “I can’t tonight. I have a lot of things to do in the morning. We will have to get together some other time.” Bob continued to try and coax her until she looked at him with exasperation and asked him to walk her to her car. As they walked downstairs to the street, Bob kept pressing her to tell him what was wrong and why wouldn’t she stay overnight?

Leaning against her car she turned and said, “I can’t stay sleep over in your room tonight.”

Standing close to her he placed his hand on the fender and pressed closer to against her body. The engine was still warm under the hood and as he moved his fingers slowly over the sleek, waxed smooth skin of the hood its feel reminded him of her. “Why not? I haven’t seen you all week” he asked.

“Because you father is there.” She said as she leaned forward and moved towards the door.

“My father? What does my father have to do with this?” He protested.

“Don’t you understand? I can’t have sex with you when your father is in the next room. He is your father, for God’s sake. We will get together some other time.”

With that, she gave him a quick kiss, slid into the embrace of the leather bucket seat and left. As he stood in the street watching the red lights on the well rounded rear end of her car disappear over the hill, he realized that things were changing for him much more than he had anticipated.

While standing in the living room listening to his father entertaining everyone in the kitchen, a friend approached and asked, "Hey is it cool to smoke a joint? I know your father was a Marine and an MP and all that, but is he cool?”
Bob stood there thinking about what is quickly changing in his world since the arrival of his visitor and said, "Just wait a minute."

He walked into the kitchen, opened a can of beer, lit a cigarette and sat down next this dad at the kitchen table. Looking at them together it was obvious that they were father and son but though they were similar: they were not the same.

A few minutes into one of his dad's stories, Bob reached behind his chair and pulled from a kitchen drawer a bag of pot. As his father continued to tell the story, Bob licked a couple rolling papers together and sprinkled the marijuana onto the papers. His father stopped talking and turned his head to watch Bob as he rolled the joint. The whole kitchen became quiet. The tension was palpable. He made a final lick of the papers and, with his lighter, fired it up. He took a long drag inhaling the smoke very deep into his lungs. When he exhaled, the cloud of sweet vapor enveloped both he and his father. Without any hesitation, Bob slowly turned to his left to sit face to face with his father and lifted the joint right up under his nose.

The look in his father's clear blue grey eyes created a chill in the cloud of smoke. With his eyes fixated on his Bob’s, Mac waited patiently for the next move. In a strong and unwavering tone, Bob returned to his father the threat that he had heard so many times growing up.

"Does this bother you? Because if it does, let me tell you something now. You are now a guest in my house. In my house, we do things according to my rules. If you don't like those rules, then there is the front door. I will buy you a one-way bus ticket anywhere you want to go."

His father's eyes never blinked. Not a facial muscle moved. He took his time to respond and in a measured even tone he said, "You feel better now?"

"I do. Does this bother you?"

"Have I said anything?” he answered.

"No," Bob replied.

"Then shut up, and leave me alone”.

Chapter 5

The novelty of this new arrangement of Mac living in the apartment soon wore off. The difficulties arose not just from the difference in age or experiences but the collision of two people who occupied a different place in a family. It is one thing to be friendly with your father but it is another to be friends with him.

Bob didn’t leave home in search of a father: he left to get out from under one. Now his father occupied his home, work place and life once again. The relationship reached a point where it needed to be lanced.

Mac’s favorite place to drink became the small neighborhood bar two blocks from the apartment on 24th street where Bob worked. It was in the center of an old, Irish working class neighborhood on the backside of the Castro district. It was one of the few remaining neighborhoods that had not been assimilated into the gay mecca of the Castro. The rough neck blue collar residents didn’t take kindly to modernity and new customs.

The patrons of the bar were people who for generations lived in that neighborhood all their lives. They grew up together, attended masses and Catholic school together, married each other, divorced and remarried someone else and divorced again. In a single night, you would have couples at the bar with their ex’s sitting with someone else at the other end.

Feuds and grudges carried on since high school were always a cause of fight. Instead of meeting in the park to fight after school, they would now just punch someone in the face they didn’t like and a brawl would spread through the bar.

The drinking was heavy, the juke box was loud, pools balls were constantly colliding on the table and the crowd was noisy and unruly. Through the smoke, noise and body heat Bob worked his usual Friday night shift. This night was busy as Friday is payday and with just a little extra drinking you could spend a week’s pay in a couple days..
The bar was real busy with all 22 stools occupied and a second row building behind them. Arms were all reaching in to get Bob’s attention to bring another drink. He found himself getting very busy. It had been like that since 5 o’clock. He was in for a long hard night.

Glasses needed to be washed, drinks refilled, ashtrays cleaned, orders to be rung up, beer box refilled and creating change for the jukebox kept him moving and perspiring for a couple of hours. Since there was no air conditioning the swamp cooler struggled to keep the air flowing.

The keg of beer that he dropped on his foot while stocking the bar didn’t help him at all. With the swelling on the top of his foot, he had to hobble slowly up and down the bar trying to meet all the demands for drinks.

Mac stood down in the center of the bar near the register where he could reorder his drinks each time Bob came down to ring up an order. His voice could be heard above the crowd and the music.

“Hey, bartender! Get us some drinks over here,” he hollered good- humoredly. “Give us a round and include George and Bill in that order.” He was standing at the bar with a drink in one hand, cigarette in the other giving orders and flashing his money around as if he were the center of attention.

“Come on. Christ, you were this slow in grade school?” With that, he would launch into stories about Bob as a child and regal everyone with jokes at Bob’s expense.

He turned to his drinking companions and launched into another story. “Listen up Junior, this is your dad talking. You get down here right now and give us another round”.

Walking up and down the bar to serve drinks and listening to Mac’s comments and orders each time he passed him was starting to get to him. His father had been going on like this for over two hours.

Standing at the register adding up a large round of drinks, he could his name being called again. “Robert Junior. What are you doing over there? We need some drinks here. Listen, I changed your diapers when you were a baby, now get over here and give me a drink.”

Bob quickly grabbed a bar towel and went to the edge of the bar. In one hand, he snatched his father’s cocktail glass, ran it over the brushes and through the rinse, and slid it up the drain board to the well. With the other he picked up the ashtray, dumped it, and cleaned it with Mac’s used cocktail napkin before taking it off the bar. With a quick wipe of the bar towel, Mac suddenly found himself standing with nothing in front of him.

After the bar top was cleaned, Bob looked at his dad and said, “Yes you did change my diapers and soon I will probably have to change yours but for tonight, you can take your ass down the street and drink because you are done drinking in here tonight. Go down to the Cork and Bottle or Jury Room if you want a drink because I am through serving you. You’re eighty-sixed.” They were again to chest to chest, eyeball to eyeball in the doorway at home again but this time there would be no pin prick of doubt.

His father reared back and commanded, “You get me a drink right now!” With a swaggering bravado, he turned to his companions to get acknowledgement of who was in charge here.

“I told you to leave,” Bob argued back, “You are eighty-sixed.”

His father said, “You can’t do that!”

“Oh, yes I can. You forget I work here. “I am not in the God Damn Marine anymore and neither are you. This is my job, and you are bugging the hell out me. I don’t get paid to put up with this crap from you or anyone else. You are done tonight, so get on your way.”

His father started once again to protest but Bob cut him off quickly by charging with the question, “Who do you think you are? You come in here every night and throw money around like you are a big shot. You buy everyone drinks and demand extra attention, but when you leave you don’t even have the courtesy of leaving me a tip. My brothers leave me tips, my friends leave me tips, but for some reason you don’t think you have to. You do it at other bars. You are respectful of their bartenders but, because I am your son, you don’t need to show me any. I don’t need you coming in here telling my customers stories about me and making jokes at my expense. My name is not Junior, it is Bob. I am working. This is my job. Now get out of here, I am not serving you anymore.

Bob finished and moved to the end of the bar. His father stood there looking at himself in the mirror, as if someone just punched him in the face. He made no attempt to leave. When Bob returned to ring up another drink, his father quietly asked him for a drink. Bob turned and replied, “No. You’re done here. If you want a drink, go down the street.”

Each time Bob came down, he had to ignore his father’s request for conversation. The bar suddenly got quiet with a number of people leaving, and Mac stood by himself rooted to the floor in the center. Activity behind the bar began to lessen and as Bob came down to refill the beer box, his father said quietly ‘Hey, come on. Let me have a drink,” as he pointed to the cash on the bar, his fingers pushing the money towards the edge.

There was to be no compromise. The addition of this unlikely roommate upset the old father and son relations and it had to be dealt with regardless of much it hurt either of them. Mac was right when he said it wouldn’t feel good besting your father. Right now it didn’t feel good but it had to be done just the same.

Reluctantly he poured him another drink. His point had been made and he knew his father had heard it. He rang up the drink and when he put the change on the bar, his father pushed a dollar bill onto the rail. That gesture may have been the unspoken apology signaling a victory but his dad was right when he said his son wouldn’t feel good about it.
One night after a shift Bob returned to the apartment only to find it dark and empty. He was surprised as his father was not at the bar down the street and it appeared that he was not at home either. As he entered the apartment he heard his father say quietly ‘don’t turn on the light. Be quiet and come in the kitchen.’ Bob walked in to the kitchen to see his father staring through the kitchen window with his pair of Marine Corps field glasses looking into the apartment building across the street.

“What are you doing”? Bob asked.

“Jesus have you ever watched those two girls across the street. They got a third one over there now and they’re all stark naked rolling around on the floor with the drapes wide open. They do it every night. Take a look.”
“That’s ok that stuff goes on all the time in the city.”

He asked “do they always leave the drapes open?”

“Yes they do. I can’t figure out if its exhibitionism or advertising but there must be 4 apartments on this side of my building that look into their rooms. I think they have just come to a point in their life where they no longer want to hide or apologize for being who they are. The entertainment value does get a little old sometimes. I mean it’s not like there is a shortage of sex in San Francisco. Look Dad we need to have a talk. I think it is time we split up. I am looking for an apartment over in the marina.”

“Boy what I wouldn’t give to be over there.” His father said, ignoring the remark.

“Well you aren’t going to be invited over there and if you were, I doubt they would have any use for you, so let’s sit and talk about moving. Besides what in the hell would you know anything about that stuff?”

“Oh you think so? Your old man has been around the block a few times you know. Not much I haven’t seen.”

Bob knew his father was no prude. He suspected that there wasn’t much in life that he hadn’t done. Morality to him was just a word and not a box. It was elastic. Always being stretched and released to accommodate his appetites. As they talked about the lesbians, he remarked that the reason most men had a difficult time with them, was due to their jealousy. He had none. To him, they were simply the competition.

“I was dating this nurse down in the Naval Hospital in San Diego. She was a switch hitter. A real good looking woman with an hour glass figure. You know great hips and ass on her. She had a girlfriend on the side who was married and her husband liked to take movies of her with her girlfriends or another man. Since I looked like I just out of central casting, I got invited to give the girls a good time while he filmed us. It was even better when I was invited back to watch us on the movie screen in his house. Nice guy. He didn’t say a word when I said to the girls “let’s do another take.”

“Good thing she wasn’t in the Navy. When I was a guard at the Naval Prison in Portsmouth, we had prisoners serving 8 to 10 years just for being queer. Can you imagine that? Poor bastards. Spending their lives locked up with guys doing life for murder. They had a tough time in a prison like Portsmouth. Jesus, can you imagine getting10 years in a maximum security prison for just being queer? But what can you do about them? They’ve been in the military forever. I don’t know but seems a waste to just keep persecuting or prosecuting them all the time.”
“Come on Dad, let’s sit and talk about our situation.”

Mac resisted the idea of moving and didn’t understand why there was any hurry to do anything. He pointed out how he helped out around the house, loaned money when needed and paid his share of expenses.

“Look Dad, I have to get on with my own life. Denny is getting married after graduation so something will need to be done by then anyway. Besides it is tough living here with you drinking as much you are. I wake up every morning at 7 hearing you vomiting up all the booze and stomach acid from the night before. Your lungs are so congested with fluid that sometimes when I am sitting with you I worry that you are going to drop dead or drown from the fluid in your lungs. You need some help Dad?”

Mac sat at the table with his heavy head bent down and said. “Well you won’t have to put with it much longer. I don’t want any help. I am not going to be around here much longer.”

“Christ, Dad you may last another 10 years. You are only 60. Are you going to sit and drink one or two quarts of vodka day waiting for a heart attack? Am I on death watch here? You need to be someplace on your own closer to the Army hospital. Somewhere, if something happens to you there are people around to get you help. I can’t do that. I have to work and go to school besides I have my own life to lead. This was only supposed to be a couple days and now we are going on a year.”

“You remember boy that you are not my father. It is the other way around. You are in no position to tell me how I live my life.”

“Then you need to live someplace else. I don’t want to be your father but you are not as independent as you think. You have no right to make decisions that other people have to take the responsibility for.”

Two months later he had his heart attack but it was not bad enough to send him to as he put it the “Staff Club” in the sky. He became more determined than ever to create another one. When he recovered, he returned to the routine of drinking at home and the bar down the street.

One morning, Bob came home from a few days out of town and was greeted by the sight of a naked woman partially covered by the sheet lying next to his father on the twin bed in the middle of the living room. Their bodies clearly were too big for the little mattress so their legs, shoulders and butts were spilling over the edge of the bed. The floor was littered with their clothes. Both of them were passed out from what appeared to be, counting the glasses and bottles on the counter, to have been a big night or nights of drinking. While making some coffee in the kitchen, Sally appeared in his father’s bath robe to get a cup.

The robe was too big for her and when her body moved in one direction the robe moved another. Her body was in constant motion in that robe. She was short, about 15 years older than Bob. She was a naturally very large breasted woman, who was either unconscious or indifferent to her naked breasts moving about so freely in the open robe.
Her smudged mascara was a mess which made her eyes look heavy and worn out. The red lipstick she put on the night before was smeared around her lips and her disheveled and uncombed dyed blond hair was all over her face and yet she seemed unconcerned with her appearance.

We sat at the table and she introduced herself. He could tell by the ease in which she talked to him in her condition that she was very accustomed to meeting people this way.

Mac found his trousers and shirt and joined them in the kitchen to get a drink to calm his nerves. His hands were shaking badly. She poured him a cup of coffee and a shot of vodka in a water glass as it was easier to hold. The conversation moved to their meeting at the bar the other night. They laughed as they each contributed to the telling of her story. She reached out to hold his hand as it shook holding the coffee cup. There was no attempt to conceal it as clearly it didn’t bother her. She seemed to desire it as it gave her a way in which to take care of him. This was her way to show her affection. It was also to stake her claim.

She had been one of the early topless dancers on Broadway. The size of her breasts lent themselves to star in an act where her “Mammary Rama’s” were the center of the show. My father remembered her name from the past as it appeared on the lighted sign of a woman wearing neon pasties, in front of a club on the near the corner of Columbus and Broadway.

She must have been very beautiful when she was on the strip because in spite of her age and lifestyle she still maintained a certain beauty and a round but pleasing figure but like most entertainers of her type her career lasted much longer than her looks and body.

Mac loved the attention she gave him. The relationship with a show girl was titillating for him. She was 20 years younger and her sexuality and body provided a spark in the emptiness of his life. She knew how to play her men and her half naked preparation of his breakfast not only titillated him it gave him a sense of himself that he had not felt in many years. After his breakfast, he went to shower and clean up and when he emerged he was shaved, scented, groomed and dressed in a nice shirt and slacks. Sally remarked upon seeing him “you look very handsome”. In return his sense of humor gave the message that she fulfilled something in him: something like excitement. He enjoyed her company. And he showed it to her. He was respectful and gentle. He would tell his sons that women always needed to be treated well. “I don’t care who you are with you treat her well, she will take good care of you. Just remember the first time you are with a woman you give her everything you got. Don’t take anything for yourself. The second time, you give hers and then take yours because the third time, she will give you everything.”

He never put his hands on a woman. Though he teased that he wished he had done that with Ellie, he would not get physical with her. He joked that she was too dangerous. When she threw alarm clocks at him or hit him in the groin with a crockery milk pitcher sending crashing to the floor, he never grabbed or struck her.

“By the way” he said “we tried some of that pot you have in the drawer. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No I don’t but how did you like it?”

“It was really something. Jesus it sure makes you horny and hungry. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted sex or a bowl of ice cream."
Sally added “oh you were so bad last night Mac.”

He smiled boyishly and said “Look at this” He rolled up his trouser legs and sleeves of his shirt to display the rug burns he got from crawling around on the carpet chasing Sally around the room.”

“Rug burns. Jesus I chased her all over the place.”

Bob said “Yea okay Dad, I kind of get the picture here” as he looked around the room to see if any of the furniture was broken.

A couple days later it became apparent that the occupants of the apartment now had a new roommate. There were signs of a woman’s presence in the apartment. The toilet seat was always down, a women’s razor was in the shower, a fourth bath towel was added to the towel rack and curlers and a hairdryer were underneath the sink. The kitchen was always clean, the beds were made and someone had moved all the dirty clothes into the washing machine downstairs. The telltale feminine evidence was everywhere. Bob suspected that his mother had moved in.

Catching Mac alone at the bar one night, Bob approached him about this emerging problem.

“Is Sally moving in? What’s going on here Dad?”

He argued that he was entitled to have someone stay over with him occasionally as he paid his fair share of the rent and help out with the chores. Denny was gone most of the time and planning on moving in with Pat before the wedding. You are gone most of the time anyway, so what is the harm?”

“Dad. You must be losing your memory here. Mom is coming down soon for my graduation and the plan was she was going to spend at least one night with you in Denny’s room. I don’t think you are going to be able to convince her that just because you are divorced that the 3 of you share the bed. This is my graduation and I don’t want this event to turn into a cat fight.”

Dismissively he said “I will take care of that. I told Sally she can’t come around for the time your mother is here and take her stuff home. She said she would. Beside it is my wife we are talking about and how I handle things with your mother is none of your business.”

But she did come around. The night Mac and Ellie were having drinks in the local bar, Sally walked in armed with her lowest cut blouse and skin tight white pants. She was there to hunt. As she flirted her way down the bar, she soaked up all the attention from the downcast eyes of men gazing deeply into the canyon of cleavage she had on display, hoping to create a little jealousy in Mac. The amber light of the bar and her make up filled in the lines on her eyes which gave her the illusion a youthful beauty as age disappeared from her face. For a few moments at the bar she was 25 and back on the stage on Broadway sensually moving her large breasts around to the delight of the crowd. She loved the attention. To get more of it she stood close to the men so they could smell the powder and perfume on her body through the smoke and feel her heat that generated the little beads of perspiration on her skin.

In here she was hot and she enjoyed the attention from men and envious women as she danced provocatively to the music while brushing against the male bodies at the bar. But Mac gave her no indication that he even knew she was there.

He was busy entertaining Eleanor, who by now had a couple drinks in her and was bringing out her rhinestone cigarette holder. A couple Bourbons always made her feel more sophisticated. It was an affectation she acquired working as a cigarette girl in some Boston nightclubs when she was in her 20’s. She had Mac play some Frank Sinatra on the juke box, batted her long eye lashes at him and laughed at his jokes while he stood tall and handsome lighting her cigarette. She was the civilizing force in his life. Her faux sophistication never tarnished her elegance or her sense of propriety. He was charmed by her as she was by him.

She had been charmed by him since the day her brother was home on leave from the marines and brought him by to meet his family just before Pearl Harbor. Ellie worked as a cigarette girl in one of Boston nicer night clubs. Walking around with the cigarette tray hanging from her bare shoulders and low cut dress she would watch Mac entertaining a young woman she knew whose husband was in the north Atlantic with the navy. She could tell he had a high opinion of himself with his good looks and sharp uniform and he had a lot of nerve too when he asked to borrow her car to take the lady home. Ellie also learned that Mac was married to a woman in Georgia but then she couldn’t mind too as she was married too. She would always recall her first impression of Mac as being “the most handsome man I ever saw in a uniform”.

Eleanor never glanced in Sally’s direction. She didn’t need to. She knew what was happening. Mac’s good looks were a magnet to women and Eleanor held her ground with him for almost 30 years. She knew how he felt about her. It was written in the small poem he sent her when he was overseas many years ago. She carried a copy of it in her wallet which read:

“To my darling wife
”Believe in Me”
I only ask that you believe…
Because my life can be… No happier or greater
Than… The faith you have in me… Believe in
Everything I do… And every word I say… No
Matter what the world may think…Or time may take
Away… And if I make a few mistakes…Or I exceed
My share…Be not to prompt to criticize
Or eager to compare…but hold me always in your heart…And
Give me every chance…Because I need your loving
faith…To conquer and advance…And please believe
me when my lips…Are trying to express…That all
I ever want in life is just your Happiness.
Your loving husband

Mac

Is there any reason why she should doubt his feelings for her?

Looking at herself in the mirror she touched up her lipstick and moved a curl of her jet black hair around. She wore all black that night with a gold chain around her neck and gold earrings. The white gardenia that she wore in her hair gave created a lovely contrast that accentuated her beautiful face, radiant smile and black hair. Her skin was a dark color from her Italian blood and her passion for the sun. She was not one to develop a bar tan of a gray and pallid face.

Sitting elegantly on the bar stool with her cigarette holder and glass of bourbon she felt disdain for Sally. She had a silent contempt for women like Sally who mistook a bust line for class. Quietly charming Mac she waited for the next move to take place.

After a couple drinks Sally started pacing up and down the bar walking behind the seated patrons. As she approached Mac, Eleanor rotated her body around on the stool and just when Sally walked by Ellie looked her in the eyes and punched her right in her breast. With perfect calm, she then turned back around towards the bar, puffed on her cigarette holder and took a sip of her drink as if nothing had happened. In shock Sally stepped back and with rage in her eyes coiled to lunge at her but Mac stepped in between the two women and pushing Sally hard she fell backward onto the floor. His voice was clearly heard above Sally’s screaming obscenities when he told her “you get the hell out here. Right now get on your way. You have no business in here tonight.” Leaving with the rear end of her white pants covered in dirt from the floor she walked out and left for good.

Ellie was watching the exchange in the bar mirror and never once acknowledged that there was something amiss. She knew from all the years she and Mac were together that no harm would ever come to her if he was around. She knew his defense of her was an indication of his continued affection for her. Divorced or otherwise he would always be the most handsome man she ever saw in a uniform. At 50 she was still beautiful herself. Her man still protected her.
The time eventually arrived to dissolve the living arrangement at the apartment and Mac took room 406 at the “The Ireland Hotel” downtown. It was a hotel that catered to federal and state employees, Irish tourists and a number of pensioners who made the hotel their home. The hotel had most of the necessities that he required. It was an older property but was well maintained due its proximity and use by employees of the Federal Building and Civic Center. Rent included maid service and a front desk which was manned 24 hours a day. Downstairs was a bar and restaurant which was open 6 days a week until 2 AM. It was closed on Sunday’s but residents of the hotel would drink at the gay bar next door.

He felt quite at home in the hotel bar as most of the law enforcement officers and investigators from the FBI, DEA agents, and the U.S Marshalls who frequented the bar daily put Mac back into an element of men and women in law enforcement.

The radius of his life was getting visibly shorter. Everything he needed was within the span of a couple blocks and therefore he had no interest to travel further from the hotel.

His possessions could fit into a wall locker and a foot locker. He had no need for a car or even a bus pass since he seldom left the corner neighborhood. He had his social security check, his Marine Corps retirement check and his free medical care from the military to sustain him for the remainder of his life. He was planning on leaving nothing behind him when he died. He continued to strip more keys off the key ring.

He spent the first half of his life as a voyager traveling to conflicts abroad and return to his wife and family when they were completed. That was his life. His former wife was aged now and lived in another state. His kids were grown up and searching for their own place in the world. There were no more battalions to command and nothing purposeful for him to do.

His travels have ended and home is now mitered down to the hotel and its bar. His journey becomes the places he is able to walk to around the block. His emphysema severely restricted his ability walk to far without leaving him gasping for air. The extra weight he added to his body, plus a quart of vodka and 3 packs of cigarettes a day, increasingly placed a greater strain on his heart and lungs which forced him to pause and lean against a building to catch his breath when he walked.

He still talked of plans of traveling to see some family or old friends from the Marine Corps but the longer he sat and thought about it, the further the distance it became to see them. The moment he would get the impulse to go, the horizon would move further away from him. The idea of all the preparation and the inconvenience of traveling discouraged him. The very thought of how much effort it would require tired him and the importance of the people he wanted to see would diminish. As his health continued to deteriorate, he knew that this hotel would be his last address. The palliative to his dying would the convenience of the hotel and the comfort of a bar and a drink while he waited. He would philosophically say that his life could be better or worse but it couldn’t be simpler.

The bar inside the hotel provided a still environment for its guests that contrasted with the activity of life outside. Calendars were unnecessary. There were no windows in the bar downstairs. Consequently there was no natural light or any distractions from watching people outside walking to work. The plants are all made of plastic and the fireplace was fueled by gas through metal logs. The weather inside was constant and unchanging. The temperature never varied. At times, without music or voices it was as quiet as church. The TV over the bar was the window to the world but the volume was never turned up. The policy on the TV was "if you want to watch TV, then you should go home and drink."

Change is not welcome in a bar. It requires a decision, effort and action to adjust to it. If you change the well brands you hear about it. Change the prices you hear about it. Customers smoked the same cigarettes, drink the same cocktail and sat on the same stool. It is a life you can count on. One that you know will not require anything strenuous or demanding. Move anything around in the bar disrupts the very reason why a patron chooses to make this his regular spot.

A bar is not just a place for conviviality and relaxation it also provides an atmosphere to escape the noise in the world or in your thoughts. People like Mac find sitting on a stool, staring down into the deep well of his drink gives him time to reflect on something to pass the hours. It doesn’t require anything to do. Just gaze down into the glass and think. He sits and watches the ice cubes begin change from ice to water until the chemistry of water and whiskey is just right for that first sip. When the time is right, an impulse will cause him to raise the glass to his lips. He is quiet as he raises the glass to his lips and sees his reflection in the mirror along the back bar.
The man in the mirror looking back at him is the reflected image of who he is today. His hair color and the lines in his face show the wages of life that has made him become the man he has become. In each line and crease is a memory of what has brought him to this moment. Memories of joy, sadness or lingering regret occupy his mind and become revealed by the image in the glass. This drink before him has the power to transform that moment into a new day and another man.

He lifts that glass again and knows that soon, the man in the mirror will shortly become someone else. Perhaps, someone younger or more handsome, someone more interesting or someone without disappointment or regret: anyone but the man’s face in the mirror looking back at him.

The mirror is not a window. Unlike a window it is not allowing you to look forward to the world ahead of you but rather you see your face and all that is behind you. The past is behind you. It becomes your one sided vision of life. You are looking backwards while staring ahead.

Alcohol is a sacred potion. The word “whiskey” comes from Medieval Latin and means "the water of Life". The powerful alchemy of blood and alcohol creates a feeling of intoxication that magically transforms your life as it slowly flows through your bloodstream. Reaching every possible extremity and organ it has the power to change both you and time itself. "Hey, bartender" the Mac says, as he pushes his money in front of his empty glass "give me another one here". The alcohol blood count has begun to rise and each .10% rise in the alcohol count, a new feeling flows through his veins his lifting his mood. He is seeking the mixture of blood and alcohol that gives him the balance of comfort and activity. Once he reaches it he will strive to maintain that balance all day.

The faithful gather at the bar to receive the potent elixir each morning at 6 AM when it opens. The allegory of transmutation is about to begin. Seated on their stools, they are lined up against the bar. Leaning forward, they rest their arms on edge of the rail waiting for the bartender to deliver their first drink of the day. A cocktail napkin sits under their chin while smoke rises up from their slow burning cigarettes to create the smoky atmosphere of being in a holy ritual. Along the back bar in the little alcoves are an array of amber colored bottles sparkling and shining from the light behind them. This is the altar which contains the transformed blood that fulfills the promise of washing away the sins of the world. It also washes away their sins. Is it any wonder why with such a promise that they line up to consume a poison that shortens rather than lengthens their lives?

Sometimes for entertainment, during the quiet of the early morning hours, the bartender would place a snifter on the bar and pour cognac into the little goblet. The little bowl sitting upon a glass stem becomes the receptacle for the consecrated cognac that has been transformed from wine to brandy and brandy to cognac. Each step in the transformation process increases the alcohol content from 12% to a more potent 40%. Lighting a match, he ignites the combustible libation and from it a tongue of a cool blue flame appears. Raising the fire above the head of the communicants at the bar and he would proclaim "behold the lamb of God. Behold He who washes away the sins of the world or at least helps you to forget them". "Amen" the chorus of the faithful responded. With laughter, the house then bought the next round of drinks.

Mac’s memory is jogged as he starts to feel slightly intoxicated when his blood stream delivers the spiritual potion to his soul. The relaxation of the muscles and nerves releases a feeling of ease and comfort. The noise between his ears begins to quiet as he slips into a mood that has no noticeable beginning or end. Alcohol makes thoughts of chores or appointments evaporate. It helps you to forget and it makes time itself disappear. Now he has crossed an invisible line in which the illusion is: this is the way you were always meant to feel.

Time is no longer a factor in determining what you do or when. It is erased by the question "do I have time for another drink". Of course you do. The very question guarantees the affirmative. Time becomes pliable and it can't place restrictions anymore to govern your life. Time is what you want it to be. Words like “late” or “early” have no meaning in here.

Without light: day is night. Time becomes deflated and unimportant. It can no longer rule your life with the fear of death because death is no longer a victory for time but one to those who desire it.

The euphoria generated by a couple of cocktails allows memories of better or sad times to bubble up from the well spring of your life and overcome the hangover from yesterday’s drinking. Those drinks allow for the self- indulgent lamentation necessary to generate deep emotions in yourself while you pass the time sitting at the bar. Deep feelings that help you feel alive.

Wandering back to through those memories, you discover that the facts of your life never change but the narrative does. Memories are impressions not fixed facts like a monument. The story of your life can be retold over and over again and with each telling, dull stories become more interesting, sad ones more poignant thus making the teller more colorful in this grey life. The narrative of the moment is what matters now: not the facts. As your drink lifts your spirit, you begin to feel more personable and more communicative. The walls around you dissolve and you lose your inhibitions. You begin to invite the people around you into your life to share a drink and to tell them those stories. Talking to the stranger sitting next to you, the listener suddenly becomes someone, who helps you walk out of the cave you just inhabited to enjoy yourself, as you wait by the river to cross.

This process of decay is easily concealed in the recesses of a bar but it does have its consequences and the cost of Mac’s drinking was becoming one. By now he would consume one to two quarts of vodka a day. The price of drinking in a retail establishment was going up but being a fixed pension he reached a point where he could not quit or afford more.

The increase in the expense of his drinking caused him to seek some employment. He was not one to drink alone in his room or drink cheaper booze so in order to maintain his lifestyle he took a part time job in a bar
on skid row. He talked glowingly about the friends he made to his son and invited him to stop by and have drink.
The small neon sign outside the bar read “Bottoms Up”. It was small hole in the wall place between two hotels for the indigent street winos and other denizens on 6th street. Walking to the door he had to step over two men in dirty clothing who were passed out on the sidewalk. The odor of the place assaulted his nostrils as he walked in to the grimly lit bar. The smoke and dim lighting gave the atmosphere a misty look. It reminded Bob of walking into the gas chamber during Marine training. . The odor in the still air hung like a dense fog and the feel of the humid mist on his skin and in nostrils repulsed him. Along the bar, a half a dozen denizens occupied bar stools and were grouped together on the concrete floor listening to the story teller pouring drinks. In the darkness and dim lights they looked like shadows having a drink.

After serving Bob a drink he returned to finish describing the landing at Guadalcanal to the patrons at the bar.
“The morning after we landed, we looked out across the channel and saw that overnight, our fleet had sailed away leaving us with only 10 days of supplies and no sea or air protection. We quickly ran out of food which is why we called it “Starvation Island.”

Word had come down to the admiral of the fleet that the Japanese navy was steaming south to the Solomon’s to exterminate the Marines on the island to retake the airstrip that we occupied. When it comes to priorities in war, the mission is first, the equipment is second and the men are third. Since a ship is a big piece of equipment, they just left us and sailed off to Hawaii. We knew that there were no cavalry coming to save us. So we were cutoff, surrounded and left alone to fend for ourselves.

The Japanese fleet arrived off shore cloaked in the blackness of a starless night. When the firing started you could see a line of warships across the channel stretching from Savo Island to the southern end of Guadalcanal. Earlier in the day they landed 20,000 Japanese Marines on the other side of the island. Their bombers in Rabaul were loaded for day time bombing runs. We built some bunkers which were of little use if a 12 or 16 inch round hit it. We had nowhere to go. There was nothing we could do except sit and wait to find out if one those shells had your name on it. In the black darkness under the canopy of the palm and Mangrove trees, you could see the glow of cigarettes from many of the Marines that chose to sit among the trees along the beach and watch the giant fire balls erupt from their big guns hurling 1000’s of rounds on the airfield. You knew there would be a round for you. In this rain, no was safe. No one was going to get off this island alive.

The sound of the shells flying over was a relief as it indicated that it had past you. You don’t hear the one that is going to hit you. Did you ever hear a 16 inch shell explode nearby? It is not a sound you will want to hear again. There are no wounded men.

Each night the Tokyo express made a run down the slot unmolested and firing at their leisure to blow the Marines into the sea. As the ground shook from each explosion and the shrapnel from shells and blasted trees filled the air around you, it made you wonder: what could be so important on a God forsaken place like this?

“In the morning the before the bombers arrived from Rabaul, I walked back to the air field to help repair the pockmarked airfield from the 1000 rounds that hit the strip the night before. Walking along the path, I came upon a Marine position that took a direct hit. There were body parts and dead Marines all over the area. Marines were already working to clear the area and put new sand bags and guns in place. Sitting along the path was a signed that said “Opening soon, under new management”.

“Christ. I tell you if it wasn’t the bombs or the bullets that would kill you it was the snakes, diseases and salt water crocodiles. Often the croc’s would come up river from the ocean and wait for a Japanese patrol to cross the river at night. You could hear the screaming and the thrashing water when one of them got taken by a croc. On this island, you were either the enemy or food. It was primeval. The jungle, the heat and humidity and the bugs would drive you out of your mind. At least a bullet kills you quickly.

I was in a foxhole one night on the perimeter and this bug crawled inside my ear. I couldn’t move to get it right away or I would have given our position away to the Jap snipers up the trees. God damned thing got in there and made itself a home. The pain was unbelievable. I had to sit there in agony all night until I passed out. If I moved or made a sound we all would be dead. It wasn’t until daylight before they could get me to the hospital on the beach. When I came to, I looked over in the corner of the tent and saw a captain wrapped in a blanket shivering and crying.
He was the same one who took a stripe from me back in the states for returning late from liberty one weekend. He told me I had a lot of nerve calling myself a Marine and now here he is in the rear wrapped in a blanket because he too afraid to fight. I couldn’t resist the urge to kill the yellow bastard and I went and pulled him off the deck and was cursing and shaking the coward until the doctor rushed in with some corps men to pull me off him. We got Marines dying at the front and this chicken shit is back on the beach crying in a hospital tent. The doctor ordered me to get out the area right away and get back to the front before I could be court martialed. I was hoping to get some rest but I guess cowards come first.”

One of the patrons at the bar asked “Being on an island what did you with the prisoners?”

“What prisoners? We didn’t take any prisoners and neither did they. If they got one our guys they would stake out his body all cut up on the side of the trail. Nope we didn’t much care what they thought at the Geneva Convention. We weren’t fighting the Germans. It was clear no one in Geneva had ever fought the Japanese before.”

Mac didn’t tell them that the Marines fought and held that airstrip for 5 months on Guadalcanal before they were relieved and 1/3rd of the Marines contracted malaria. His own malaria was so severe that he had to be returned to the states after the Marines were relieved in December. Out of the 20,000 that landed 6800 were killed or wounded.
He laughed but the others drank silently as they suspected that the man before them had returned from the land of the dead.

When the story ended his father cheerfully introduced him to his new “friends”. Friends, who themselves were just a short distance from the prostrate drunks outside on the sidewalk. In all his life Mac would never associate or be among the bums on the street or any other place. He was a man, who would repress his uniforms after they returned from the dry cleaners before wearing them to the base and now here he is standing with unkempt hair in a wrinkled shirt whose buttons were straining from his extended belly. His teeth required work to repair a broken front tooth which was knocked out by two guys who jumped him one night while working in the bar. It was a dangerous place for a man his age but he needed the money and because of that he did many things that were unthinkable many years ago.

As a boy riding through city’s skid row his father pointed out the drunks sleeping in doorways and told him that many of those men had college degrees and families. “You can be sure that none of them anticipated they would end up here.” Now after many years his “all Marine” father would call these men his friends. Sitting on a stool getting drunk in this bar, Bob began to see his own future.

The question that nagged his son as he sat there drinking, was no longer what was his father doing there but what was he doing there? He was only 30 and by now he realized that his childhood aspirations to be like his dad carried with them a grimness and despair that a younger man with a long life ahead of him would find hard to live.
His memories of his father as a young man were indelibly pressed into his mind. Sitting in booths at the staff clubs on the base or in the stands of a parade field was like watching a movie. The resplendent colors of their uniforms, the big guns, tanks, flags full of streamers commemorating great battles and of course the division band playing the Marine Corps Hymn was a vivid, colorful and memorable impression.

Mac’s birthday and the Marine Corps birthday both fell on November 10th. It was big day in his house as it is for Marines all over the world. One morning, the division bandleader who lived next door, brought the First Marine Division band to Mac’s front lawn to play Happy Birthday and the Marine Corps Hymn before heading onto the base for the Marine Corps birthday parade.

Mac rounded up his family that morning by telling his kids to hurry so they didn’t miss the parade that the Marine Corps was holding to celebrate his birthday. He maintained that joke long after everyone knew it wasn’t true.
The volume of laughter and loud talk afterwards in the staff club animated the room as they recounted the many places, battles and men that they knew. Their stories encompassed places as far ranging as the Banana Wars in Central America, the China marines, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. Watching from a booth his son found this world far more exciting than being in 8th grade. For Bob, this became the cauldron out of which was forged what it meant to be a man.

His first introduction into the other side of this life began on a family outing to the base dependent swimming pool at age 10. His father was usually at the staff club across the street but on this day he was at the pool. As Ellie marched to the ladies dressing room with her 3 boys following like little ducklings behind her, Bob heard his father say “hey! Where in the hell do you think you are going?” Bob pointed to the Women’s dressing room and his father quickly responded “oh you’re not. You’re too old for that. Follow me.”

He followed him down the full length of the pool to the deep end where beneath the 30 foot jump tower was a sign that read “Men’s Locker room.”

Walking inside he was greeted by the clouds of steam from the showers and loud laughter and howls echoing off the metal wall lockers. Undressing by a locker he felt pale and small in his hairless adolescent body. The level of loud male voices made him nervous. He anxiously wished that he could be back in the ladies dressing room among the soothing voices and soft bodies of the women.

Entering the shower room he discovered that he was too short to reach the handles. The marine next to him turned to help him and with his tattooed arms and shrapnel scars riddled across his hairy chest, he laughingly said “boy, a little guy like you must be from the navy” and within that steam locker his voice let out a thunderous roar of laughter. There were no children or women in here. No sailors or dog faces either. There were no colorful uniforms adorning marine bodies. It was naked and aggressive. This is Marine Corps territory. It was a man’s world unlike anything he had ever imagined.

He could not see at the time that men like his father have no place to tether themselves to as they get older and retire. Since Mac’s mother died when he was 12, he grew up working and living with various relatives on their farms while his father remained in Boston. When he enlisted at age 20 in 1936, was when he found his home in the Marines. Everything else after that became secondary.

As the years went by his buddies died or were dispersed around the world leaving no corps anymore to surround him. When he left the military, he lost the safety of being in the middle. He became isolated and exposed like a marine lying on the ground of a Korean hillside.

Now a “family” that once seemed so unimportant in his life, was no longer for the sentimental anymore: it is an anchor. The Marine Corps had been that anchor for him 22 years but now it only secured his memories. It is no coincidence that upon the Marine Corps emblem sits an eagle with expanded wings ready to soar while below, the globe embraces an anchor. There is a saying in the Marines that if the Marine Corps wanted you to have a family: they would have issued you one.” Now, alone and sick Mac needed one.

The decomposition of his body would take him, like the winos outside, to a place further down that he had not anticipated. His son was no longer prepared to follow him. The road had split for him and he had to make some choices. He knew too, that in spite of his father’s drunkenness in the “Bottoms Up” that he was not going to be able to change his father, who by now had forsaken not just his self-respect but his desire to live. He wondered if it was time to go their separate ways.

What Mac thought about all of this was never discussed with his son. Like most experiences in his life he kept his feelings to himself. You could get a story or an anecdote but never a true disclosure of what he thought about the direction he had taken. To listen to him tell it, he was just tired of getting old and wanted to have it all over as soon as possible.

The realization that his father was losing his bearing and self-respect caused Bob to call him up to get him to quit the job. His father protested vigorously that he needed the income and for him to mind his own business but his son was unsympathetic.

He considered his remarks for a moment but decided this was not a conversation he wanted to be an equivocal one. He told his father that he would never come to visit him again if he didn’t quit that job. Whether Mac understood it or not, Bob told him that it was too painful and disappointing to visit his father in such a place. If money is more important to him than his self-respect then Bob would not be a part of it. Either he quits the bar or he is on his own. “You look like a bum. Get your teeth fixed and clean your-self up or you can stay alone in that hotel until you die because I am not coming up anymore until you get yourself together.”

Sitting at the hotel bar with his son Bill, Mac groused about the threats.

“Who in the hell does he think he is talking to me like that?

“I don’t know Dad but I think he is serious and I think he means what he says.”

“Your brother is lot of talk. You don’t think he would just stop coming up here to see me?”

“Yea I do Dad. I think he is serious.”

There were no visits or calls from Bob to see his father for over 3 months. All communication ceased. When he finally went to the hotel to see him he was quite surprised. His father had lost a lot of weight because he had quit drinking since their last conversation. He had fixed his broken tooth, shaved, cut his hair and purchased a new jacket and shirts. He even bought a suit. He wore to his own funeral.

The phone call from his father was unlike any other. His father wanted to see him and asked that he come to his hotel as soon as he could. When asked what this was about, his father declined to answer on the phone but the anxious tone in his voice indicated that something truly serious had happened. Sitting together in his room rather than the bar also was an indicated that his father needed to tell him something important.

“My doctor tells me I have a lung cancer and they want to operate on me in the morning. What do you think I should I do?” He seldom asked his kids their opinion about his life. His indecision was so uncharacteristic of him that his son could see that he was quite disturbed by this unexpected cancer. It appeared that this cancer changed the calculus of his acceptance of dying and it unsettled him.

The appointment was cancelled in the morning and his son went about visiting people who could help him find the right answers for his father. His entire focus dealt with the morbidity question of the operation until one doctor said “it is not a morbidity issue. The issue for your father is his ability to recover strong enough to be able to be independent.” He went on to explain how patients with emphysema and heart disease run the risk of never being able to get off the table and continue to be independent afterwards. Dying on the table is statistically a very small number.

Sitting with his father in the hotel, he delivered the information and when he mentioned that risk of not being able to be independent, he correctly predicted his father’s reaction. The risk of losing his independence was more important to him than dying. He was prepared to die on the table but unwilling to risk his freedom.

“If that is the case I won’t do it. They can haul me out here but I am not going to risk giving up my independence simply to extend my life.”

“Then you will die Dad. If you don’t do this surgery the lung cancer will spread and with your heart and lungs in such a diseased state you won’t last long.”

“I don’t care. Besides I hate getting old”. He responded.

Sitting before the surgeon at the Army hospital the next day, Mac opened the conversation with the statement “Major, with all due respect we are not having this operation. I understand that dying on the table is not my main risk but losing my ability to be independent is and that I am not willing to give up. If I don’t do this operation how much time do you think I can remain independent?”

“3 to 6 months at best”. He said.

“Well Major, we can end this meeting now. I will take the 6 months. I would like to say thank you Sir for your advice.”

“Give me a minute to explain some other options before you go. There are treatments that may help.”

Mac interrupted him and said “No Sir. There will no alternatives here.”

“Why not?” The doctor asked.

Mac leaned forward towards the major looking directly at him while pointing to his thick full head of hair and said. “Do you see all this hair doctor?”

“Yes, why?” He replied not understanding where the conversation was going.

“I am taking all of this with me when I go.”

This pronouncement of his imminent death, disclosed the fact that underneath the veneer of color and a multitude of life’s most extreme adventures he was a man and not a myth. Men die: myth’s live on forever. The uniform was put away now. His friends were buried and the great battles lay to rest in the history books. All that remained now were the few who survived to tell about them.

The meeting ended the questions about his future. He no longer had one. Now with a disintegrating body and a crumbling soul he prepared himself for the brief remainder of this life.

Afterwards sitting at the hotel bar the two of them talked over the conversation with the surgeon and the new subject of his death. “Maybe now is a good time for you to read that bible your sister sent you? By the way what did you tell her when she asked if you read it?” His son asked.

“I thanked her and told her I didn’t read it since I saw the movie. My sister is little over the top on religion. Did you know that she snuck bibles through the iron curtain to distribute them in communist countries?”
“What’s she like?”

“I didn’t know her well. My mother died when we were kids. She was sent up to live with our relatives in Nova Scotia. I was sent out to the farms to work and go to school. We were so poor my father had to cut holes in my pockets so I would have something to play with at Christmas time.

I don’t think I saw her again until she was 16. I was in uniform at the time. She told me later that she was crushed to find out I was her brother. Too bad her husband died. Howard was a nice guy but he killed himself by falling off a ladder and left her with those 4 girls. I admire her though, became a nurse and raised those girls all alone. They make them tough in New England. She had tough hard puritan faith in her. Thank God I got away from hell fire and brimstone.”

“It seems to me Dad you just went from one hell fire and brimstone to another with the Marines.”

“That maybe so but it is not a sin in the Marines to have sex or drink.”

Sin. There is a word that probably never crossed his lips. Sin described a large part of his life style but he never was troubled about it. His attitude about religious life was displayed one night during one of those Catholic meatless Friday dinners when Ellie gave her oldest boy a hard time for not wanting to go to Mass. She said to him “you just wait young man. Someday you are going to be in the Marines and in combat and you remember what they say. There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.” His father looked up from his pork chop, cigarette in the ashtray and a bottle of beer in his hand and said “how in the hell do you know Eleanor. You have never been in a foxhole.”

He had been in a lot of foxholes from Guadalcanal to Korea. His kids used to ask him if he was awarded any medals for heroism. He would respond in his usual unglamorous way and say “When I was in a forward position, the other guys would write letters home or sit around and shoot the breeze. Do know what I was doing? Sharpening my entrenching took. My tool was so sharp I could dig a foxhole before a second shot was fired. They used to call me gopher Mac. I could dig a foxhole faster than anyone. No, I wasn’t awarded any medals. I had a lot of friends that did and most of them are buried over there. I was just a marine doing my job.

Remember, the most important thing in a war is to come home from it: not to die in it. I did and that is how you boys got here. I believed in my rifle, my training and my fellow marine. It was apparent to all the boys that their dad lived his life with the philosophy that he would rather feel good than be good and that he would rather be alive than dead.

He believed in doing his duty and to do his job well. He emphasized over and over how important training and drills are. There is no time to think in battle. Thinking is replaced by reaction. If your weapon jams during a firefight at night you better be able to break down that rifle by feel and fix it. You had to know how to do things at night or follow orders without thinking. It was his job, it was war.

He believed that most men were killed from making a mistake. Maybe they didn’t zig instead of zag while under fire or perhaps they were careless and talked or smoked giving their positions away. Men, who napped during instructions or didn’t bother to pay attention in training classes, were a danger. These were the careless men who put the lives of other marines at risk.

In his closet was a Japanese Arisaka 6.5 rifle. He would pull it out once and awhile to show it them. He would immediately ask “any of you boys see what is distinguished about this rifle? What can it tell you about the Japanese? They would look it over and shake their head no. He said look at the color of the steel. See the bluing in it. Now look down the barrel. I haven’t cleaned that rifle since the war and there is not a rust spot on it. The Japs made the finest steel in the world. See that flower? He pointed to a 16 leaf chrysanthemum embossed on the rifle. Do you know stands for? Once again they shook their heads no. That is the imperial seal of the Emperor. Look it over and see if you can find a weakness in this rifle. They busily looked it over again and once again could not find anything wrong with it. He handed them the rifle and pointed to the stock and said. See the seam in the stock? That tells you they had to glue two pieces of wood together to make the stock. That means each time the rifle fires it puts pressure on that seem until it splits and the rifle is no good. That stock shows you that though they had the finest steel they had a shortage of wood.

His older boy asked where did he get the rifle?

“I was on a patrol on Guadalcanal and we walking through a cocoanut grove. We had to be real alert as there were always Jap snipers above us in the tree tops. I heard the sound of the palm fronds above me moving and I immediately fired off a couple shells from my shotgun into the tree top. A few seconds later the rifle fell out from the tree. I knew its owner was dead. If he was alive he would have never let go of that rifle. I picked it up and brought back to Australia when we were relieved and shipped to my dad. Do you know what’s funny? The Geneva Convention said we weren’t allowed to use shotguns because of the type of wound that it made. Christ almighty! What the hell do those people think is going on over here?”

He had disdain for men who thought of war from what they saw in a movie bragged they were going to “win” a lot of medals. These are men, who believed that you could pull a hand grenade pin with their teeth and throw it like a baseball or cradle a water cooled 50 caliber machine gun in your arms spraying bullets like you were watering your lawn. They were the ones who thought that when you got shot, there would be no blood or pain. There wouldn’t even be a hole in their clean pressed uniform. They were the children looking for a bloodless adventure, who readily volunteered in order to prove their courage to others. If they had seen death up close they would be more careful.
Personally, Mac was careful about volunteering. He learned that caution in boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina in the summer of 1936.

“The heat and humidity on that Island during the summer months was unbearable. You couldn’t even sleep. All you could do was lie still in your bunk and perspire. Around midnight one night, our D.I came through the barracks yelling “anyone who wants to jump into the pool tonight, grab your trunks, your towel and fall outside. The whole company was out there. We marched down to pool. Lined up along the edge and saw that the pool was empty. In front of each marine was a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush. Ok. Hollered the Drill Instructor, everyone get in the pool and start scrubbing. This pool better cleaned before morning formation or you girls will spend the day in the swamps.”

Mac said in the Marines you learn to ‘stand in the back, shut your mouth and never volunteer”. He said he kept that promise to himself until he arrived on Guadalcanal.

The Marines were on the beach one night watching the first of five major naval battles over the fate Guadalcanal. It was called the “Battle of the Five Sitting Ducks”. Four American cruisers were sunk and the battle became the worst defeat in the history of the United States Navy.

An American ship was on fire out in the channel and its Captain had already given orders to abandon ship. The bloated, burned and oil covered bodies of its sailors would wash ashore by morning.

The captain of Mac’s company called out for volunteers to paddle out there and make sure the enemy did not board that ship until it sank. It was a dangerous assignment as the Japanese patrol boats controlled the channel and twelve marines in rubber rafts could not put up much of a fight.

“When I didn’t raise my hand the captain came over and said ‘Mac I am surprised you aren’t volunteering for this assignment. I need you to go.

If you don’t go, your men won’t volunteer either. I would prefer that you volunteer for this assignment but if you don’t, I will order you to go. The Captain and I went way back together when I was in his outfit at New River.”
“I felt bad but I told him ‘you asked for volunteers Captain. I am not volunteering if Sgt. Johnson is leading this patrol. He couldn’t lead a lemming off a cliff and I am not risking my life and those of my men to follow him. The Captain thought about it and asked “well Sgt. If I pull Johnson off this detail will you lead it? I said yes sir”.

So he pulled Johnson out of the detail and we pushed off the rubber rafts in surf and paddled out into the darkness to protect the ship from being boarded until it sank. The water was real smooth and still with barely a ripple of current. These were four man inflatable rafts. We glided over the warm water out towards the ship which was in the process of sinking in the middle of the channel. As we paddled closer our faces were lit up by an explosion erupting from the center of the ship. Beneath its decks, munitions and fuel mixed with fire sent a fireball of flame into the air engulfing the bridge. We could feel the heat of the fire on our faces as we approached the ship. By the time our patrol reached a safe distance from the ship: it sank.

The water was covered by an oil slick and the smell of burning fuel burned in our nostrils. Other than the sound of the waters flowing against the side of the rafts it was completely silent. There was no evidence of any survivors in the area.

After the vessel finally submerged and the fire went out the whole world suddenly turned black. During the day these waters offered a100 feet of visibility but at night, in the darkness, it was impenetrable. The sea and sky turned into the color of ink not allowing a visible line on the horizon to see where the ocean ended and the heavens started.

Floating out in the void we began to feel the rafts moving with the currents which moved away from Guadalcanal out into open sea. With the little rafts drifting out to sea, I turned to look back towards the island. It too was invisible in the night. Without a radio, I figured that the Captain would have seen the ship sink and expect us to return to the beach. Could not have used a radio anyway or we would have given our position away. With Japanese patrol boats in the area we had no choice but to turn around and find our way back to the beach. Slowly we regained control of the drift and quietly paddled back by compass.

Our eyes were straining to see some sign on shore of the Marines. We knew we risked coming ashore near a Japanese position as they occupied most of the beach that was north of our position. If that happened we were dead as we knew the Marines would not be able to help us.

Following the directions of my compass, I finally could see the outline of the trees along the beach as we got closer when suddenly the sky filled with the hot red glow of tracers spewing from machine guns and rifle barrels. Bullets ricocheted off the waters and churned the sea in front of us into a froth of lead.

The sounds of the guns were American but nevertheless they were just as deadly, as the Marines on the beach fired to repel what they believed was a Japanese patrol. Bullets ricocheted off the water all around us. Immediately we turned back and paddled our ass’s way out into the slot to wait for morning before returning to our company.”

He laughed and said from that moment forward he said he go to hell if ordered but was not going to volunteer to go.
There were many nights that followed where the emergency room would be the place his sons would gather as it seemed each visit was to be his last. It was becoming apparent that soon he would not be able to return to the hotel as his diseases were increasingly more debilitating. His breathing had a morbid thick congestion to it. He sounded like his lungs were always full of fluid. He was unsteady when he stood. The towering figure he once had been was now showing the last stages of life.

When Bill made the call from an emergency room one night it was with the tone that this would be it. “It” how often had they heard that word? He fell and rose so often it made you doubt his claim of wanting to die. Being thwarted all time it must have occurred to him that life and death were not as easy as turning on a light switch.

The emergency room doctors had Mac lying in bed with tubes up his nose and down his throat. IV’s and monitors were all around him. He used to joke that IV tubes should be in every bar. He was conscious but barely breathing due to the amount of fluid in his lungs. Bob went over the bedside and his father eyes looked his direction he leaned down to his ear and said, “This isn’t your night Dad. You will be ok”. His father tried to talk but the obstruction of all the tubes down his throat made his voice almost inaudible. He asked “Is Steve here too? Where is Steve?”

“Steve? Yea he’s here. Bill said he is down in one of the empty patient rooms with your nurse.” He will be back when he is done. Mac’s eyes opened widely which conveyed the smile on his face that was hidden under the tubes. He was probably remembering some of the nurses that he encountered in his stories.

Eventually he reached the point where he could no longer take care of himself. His sons agreed to move him down the peninsula closer to Bob’s home. The doctor estimated that he had probably had one to three months to live.

After he was moved it became necessary to pack up his things at the hotel. The room was almost as empty as his key ring. He collected nothing in the 8 years that he lived there. The clothes in his closet were hung like a wall locker in his quarters. Starting on the left, it was raincoat, overcoat, suit, jacket, long sleeves shirts, short sleeve shirts then trousers. His shoes were lined up on the floor with shoetrees in each one. Next to them was a shoebox of shoe polish, brush and cloth. Bathroom toiletries were also grouped in order. Razor, shaving cream, mustache trimmer, comb and hair cream on one side and on the other, toothbrush, tooth paste, dental floss, and mouthwash.

Everything in his dresser was folded neatly. The drawer in his desk contained stationary, pen, pencil, nail clippers, eyeglasses. Lined up in row, were 4 joints neatly rolled and ready for use when he wanted to eat a slice of KFC lemon meringue pie late at night while watching Benny Hill.

There were no pictures found anywhere except in his wallet. His wallet contained his Military ID, a library card, a picture of his 3 boys, a newspaper clipping of all of the super-bowl teams and the career win loss record of Joe Louis’s 101 fights. On the end table sat the bible that his sister had sent him. It remained unopened but there was one little adornment that he had put on his wall.

It was a small poster a young blond headed boy of about 12 standing before a gorgeous pair of legs in high heels wearing a miniskirt. She was only visible from the waist down. The boy stood in front of her, slightly lifting the front of her skirt to look up her dress. His eyes were wide open in wonder. Underneath the two it said “Seeing is believing”.

Conversations with him now would be about small talk or last minute details about his burial. His instructions were clear. “You promise you will have me cremated. I am not a catholic like you mother and I don’t’ want any blessings or ceremonies. Second, I have a free burial but the only place they can bury me is in Washington and it is too damn cold up there. Third, don’t waste any money on newspapers or programs there isn’t going to be anyone around who remembers me.

These business matters seemed the direction that he wanted conversation to go. Bob was disappointed but he knew this would not the time to mend their relationship or to make apologies. Mac would dismiss it and say won’t matter. He would be dead and that would the end of it. Besides what would be the point? But the time to get to learn more about him was waning. How could he be so matter of fact about his dying?

He also knew there would not be a death bed “come to Jesus” awakening or a confession of guilt, sentimental display of affection or regret from his father. He had no burden to unload and wouldn’t discuss it with his children if he did. He looked like he was just waiting patiently for his name to be called.

His life had come full circle. Once again he was alone with no relief in sight. He knew too that he would not leave this room alive. This time, however there would be no great cataclysmic explosion or the violent perforating impact of bullets hitting his chest or head. Now it was just a slow and quiet leak. It seemed each shallow breath that left his body would not return and soon he would be out of life. He had no pain or need of any equipment. He just had to lie there and wait to be called. It was now just a matter of time.

He faced what was ahead as if he was just waiting for another landing craft to take him to another foreign island. He was calm. He was always calm and prepared. He had that look that a young marine needs to see from his platoon sergeant as he climbs down into a landing craft. It came from his character, well sharpened by Marine Corps training and the weight of responsibility for his men. It was not he that was wrapped in a blanket and quivering with the fear of dying on Guadalcanal.

His mind was clear and sharp. All around him he could hear the ambient noises of the dying or the cacophony of dementia on the ward without a change in his demeanor. Sometimes when amused or undistracted he could make small talk but in between his words, one sensed he was having another conversation in his mind.

The contrast of his life in the transit station of a convalescent hospital to the one he lead could not have been more extreme. On the ward, there were no men drinking, recounting stories of battle or remembering friends. There were no more brilliantly colored uniforms or music from the division band. There were no more ceremonies or parades. The pageantry which had so marked his life in the Corps was gone. No longer would his ears be assaulted by the sounds of battle or experience the terrifying uncertainty of war. Soon everything would be silent and still.

Now he would lie amidst the colorless sterility, flavorless hygiene and quiet efficiency of preparing people for the grave. In here he is now just a man waiting, once again to die. The proud symbol he once wore on his uniform of the 1st Marine Division with the word Guadalcanal in the number was unimportant now.

The sounds of dementia more than occasionally filled the halls with fear filled cries for help. Some patients screamed for help over and over again while others sat strapped in wheelchairs calling endlessly for the nurses, who undistracted, quietly continued working. The alarm on the doors would ring constantly as another patient wandered aimlessly outside senselessly searching for home or a familiar place to return to. The help they sought seldom came as there was little that could be done for them. They had lost contact with the world around them and their fearful pleas were based in some instinctual knowledge that they were lost and no one was coming to find them.

They were lost. They were lost in their minds as their world was transformed from the one they could see and understand to one of fantasy or dark nightmares of imagined phantoms appearing quickly and disappearing like flashing lights. They did understand that something was out of order and their vision of chaos magnified their fears. They weren’t crying out because of pain or neglect but rather from the unconscious knowledge of not knowing where they were and what was happening to them. Dying can be so ugly. Whether or not they could comprehend where they were, they knew they were helpless and there waiting to die.

Each day seemed to be his last but Mac always surprised everyone. It was a tough waiting period as the outcome of these reprieves would not be recovery but another day to wait for the inevitable.

One night his son Bill received a call from the convalescent hospital urging him to come down as they thought that his father was not going to make it through the night and he was asking to see him. When he arrived his father was lying still in the bed staring at the ceiling. All he could hear was his father’s shallow breathing. Bill sat patiently by his father’s side and waited for something to be said but Mac did not move for a long time. Finally, he turned his head and said to his son “Sorry kid. This looks like it is just a drill.” Without saying a word his son got up and walked an hour to catch the last train from the peninsula back to the city.

The end became visible when Bob came to visit and as always brought a pint of vodka for his father. This time however, when he opened the drawer he saw that the last he brought was unopened and he knew the end was near.
The pressure had finally gotten so great it became necessary take a few days out of town to relax. It was not pressure from the anxiety of watching his father die but from the long process that it took to bring him to this moment. He tried to remember that it was important to give all he could and take care of his father’s last days. He was comforted by the fact the when the end finally did arrive he could walk away knowing that he did all he could and then he could return to his life. But with the funereal services coming soon he expected that he had further to go before peace would come and life would find its equilibrium again. It would be a stressful and busy time.

Before leaving town he went and sat by his father’s bed. Mac lay still in the bed. Staring at the ceiling he spoke sparingly. His 6’ 2” body had shed all of the water weight that he had carried for the last few years. His faced though pale had recovered some of the lean skeletal structure that gave him both a handsome and fearsome look. He wanted to avoid sentiment in the conversation unless his father had something to say but he could not let these last moments pass without expressing some feelings. He told him he was going out of town for few days and wanted to talk with him before leaving town.

“Dad. I just want you to know what a great father you are and how much I love you. I am going to miss you very much Dad.”

Mac continued to stare at the ceiling. His eyes open and his skeletal face expressionless. He made no response.

“Dad”. “Did you hear what I said?”. Mac nodded and with a whisper said “yes.”

“Well is there anything you want to say to me?”

“Like what?” he asked.

“What do mean like what? Aren’t you going to miss me? Do you have anything you want to say to me?”

“How am I going to miss you if I am dead?”

“Jesus, don’t get funny with me now. Don’t you even want to tell me you love me or that I was good son?”

“You don’t know that already?”

“That is not the point. I would like to hear something from you.”

“Is that what this is all about? You don’t know it already so you have to try to pull it out of me now? You really want to make me do this?"

“Ok forget it”. Bob said in frustration. He stood up and standing at the end of the bed, he said to his Dad. “I am leaving now. I have got to get out town. I will be back in 4 days. If you are here when I return, I will see you then. If not, then this is goodbye.”

“His father lifted his arm and with a slight wave of his hand said. “Then this is goodbye”. Bob turned and walked out of the room. Two days later he died.

His youngest son Steve took over the watch and spent those last two days sitting by his bedside. When the nurses came in to change his sheets he told his father that he was going to go up the street to get a sandwich and that he would be right back. Mac looked at him with a strange look on his face almost telling him not to go. Steve left and returned a few minutes later to find his bed was made and he was gone. He asked the desk nurse where he where was he and she replied “he passed”. He was stunned. He wanted to be there for him and wasn’t. He realized that the look on his father’s face was telling him that this was the end.

He walked back to the store to get a can of beer and sat on a bench by a stream and tried to assimilate the thoughts and emotions of what he just experienced. As he sat trying to quell the upheaval of his emotions a nun walked up to him and asked if she could be of assistance. He told her no.

The family arranged for him to be buried at the National Cemetery in San Bruno rather than in Washington and receive a burial service from a detachment of Marines stationed at the Alameda Naval Air Station. He was entitled to a color guard, a flag, a chaplain and a bugler to blow taps. The cemetery assigned a spot on the mound which was watched over by the American flag at the top.

When the call was made to schedule the color guard for the day of burial the response from the 1st Sergeant was a perfect Marine Corps response “Sir. You call and tell me where and when you need us and we will be there.”

People waiting by the grave were watching a squad of Marines in their dress blues practicing their drill for the burial service. The slow cadence of the drill and the quiet movement of their rifles while marching in tight perfectly aligned formation gave the grounds an atmosphere of solemnity and respect. Looking at them lined up in single file with each Marine down the line standing perfectly behind the Marine in front of him they looked like one man rather than 12.

“You got to love those Marines. They look so handsome in those uniforms and don’t think they don’t know it. Mac sure knew it. If it was anyone else being the color guard, they would be standing around smoking while they waited.” Ellie remarked to a friend.

The Navy bugler dressed in white had reached the top of the mound and stood at the base of the flag pole. With the giant flag at half-mast the Colors stood guard over the thousands of graves under its watch.

People gathered around the grave site waiting for the service to start. Family members made a point of thanking each one for coming. The cemetery director came out to bring invite the sons into the office to sign the necessary papers for the internment and headstone. Once all the documentation of his discharge and retirement were turned in the director handed Bob the form for the inscription on the headstone. Without the color of stripes and ribbons the gravestone is like a uniform. In a small way it too tells a story of a someone’s life. The record on its marble page will forever commemorate the service and sacrifice of the warrior beneath the stone. Mac’s stone would read:

A cross
Robert A McLalan Sr
M SGT US Marine Corps
World War II Korea
Nov 10 1916 Aug 19 1986

Bob had added another line to the form. In the blank space beneath the dates would be chiseled the words that made sense of Mac’s life:

“Semper Fidelis”

The director politely pointed out that personal designations were not allowed on the stone. Cemetery policy only allowed official information could be inscribed.

His son reflected on the objection and responded “look if it is question of space, then take off the cross because he was not religious.

No, he said it was government policy that personal statements were not allowed.

“That is not a personal statement? That is the Marine Corps Motto.”

“For Christ sakes you put his birthdate on the stone. November 10 is also the Marine Corps birthday. Do you want to take his date of birth off too?”

The director responded “You don’t understand. This is a military cemetery and we have 115,000 graves here and we can’t allow everyone to have personal statements. If we allow it for one we would have to allow it for everyone.”

“When was the last time anybody buried here complained about anything? Who is going to go around and check to see if every grave is in conformity with government regulations? Semper Fidelis in the Marine Corps motto and is the summary of a Marines life and I insist it be on his headstone” Bob said with finality.

After much discussion and debate Bob finally said “No, you don’t understand. We can stand in here all afternoon and argue but I am telling you, that I will leave all those people sitting out there all day. I am not putting him in the ground until you sign off on the inclusion of ‘Semper Fidelis’ at the bottom of his headstone.”

The director finally relented and informed him that it would cost him more money and take longer to get carved. With a wave of his hand and the signed copy of the requisition in his pocket, Bob went to start the service.

He apologized to the Marine sergeant in charge of the detail about the delay. In describing why it took so long he asked, if he did the right thing to insist on it. The sergeant looked at him and said “Isn’t that why we are all here?” Bob thought, yes he is right. That is why we are all here. His father had been retired 30 years and the now the Marines and his friends and family came to bury him.

He didn’t need to die on the battlefield to be remembered. He needed to fight bravely and return home. Marines are taught that the Corps will live forever and therefore the memory of all Marines will never die. His service to the Marines recorded on that marble headstone would be a monument to that spirit.

Mac’s funeral overlooks and forgives his excesses and fallibility and as such he is redeemed by the risks he took so that others may live. His funeral recognizes that he was a remarkable man and one who lived his life faithfully to a standard of ideals that in and of themselves are very exceptional.

There is no question that Mac was not a religious man or lived his life according to a strict moral code like his sister but as different as they were, she with her strict religious faith motivating her to smuggle bibles into communist countries, coupled with her brother’s faith to defend her freedom to do so, is where their paths converge.

Faith is not a uniform. It manifests itself differently through every individual. His faith was predicated upon a motto that the Marine Corps has over the entrance to boot camp. It says a Marine is loyal to his God, his country and his corps.

The family gathered around the grave. Ellie and her 3 sons listened as Denny began his eulogy of Mac. His opening line captured Mac’s character perfectly. He chose one line for his eulogy that would resonate with everyone that knew him. A description that all would agree was Mac’s attitude about life perfectly.”

“Mac taught me one of the great lessons of life during a poker game one night. And that is that two pair can beat a straight”.

A friend who accompanied Ellie remarked to her.

“Boy that’s Mac alright. What a bull shitter he was.” After a good laugh, the Navy Chaplain gave a prayer after which everyone stood silently while the Marines carefully folded the flag of the United States and presented it to the family.

Facing the late afternoon sun, the bugler, dressed in his whites, raised his bugle to his lips and blew Taps. The polished brass of the bugle sparkled in the sunlight as he played the solemn notes.

These are the notes that travel around the world with every service man or woman in the military. It is played every evening when the Colors are struck, at every funeral service for the fallen and on any day of remembrance. Now today it is being played for him.

“Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.
Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright
From afar, drawing near
Falls the night.
Thanks and praise for our days
Neath the sun, neath the stars, neath the sky
As we go, this we know
God is nigh.”

Semper Fidelis

The End