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Volume XIII – drunkenest
This
Never Told Story
took The Judge four years
to tell me
in pieces.
He spoke first about
the pilot in the hangar
that died when his
ejection seat went off.
Two years later
he answered my question.
The guy pulled
his own lever,
just couldn't handle it
anymore, just couldn't
take it.
One long Friday night,
an eight-hour happy hour,
he told me about a long run
he and his guys went on
all over Vietnam and Cambodia
and a couple other places
I didn't recognize the names of.
They were bombing, transporting drugs,
dropping chemicals, drinking, the works.
And of course they were fucked up
on whatever the Air Force uses
to keep people awake for four days
at a time – behind the wheel of a
fighter jet. No hooker in the South Seas
was safe. They even found one
who jumped off furniture directly
onto their dicks.
A couple months later, and
a few weeks ago,
he told me about meeting a guy,
one of the ground soldiers, in a bar just
after coming home from a long run.
The guy is a real excitable type,
runs up to him with a beer, his chin
kinda cocked up, and shouts, 'Holy Shit
Chief, you guys fuckin creamed them
motherfuckers, I heard your shit scream in
just off my shoulder, I ducked the fuck down and bamm
the shit was fuckin flyin everygoddamned-where,
blew my fuckin glasses all cock-eyed and
fuckin exploded my fuckin J.'
"Now this guy was a stoner," The Judge said,
"made you look like nothin."
J.T. patted the hyper little dude on the back,
said something cordial ("You don't want to piss off
a crazy fucker like that.") and sat down next to
an older guy like himself, probably all of twenty-
six. He slammed a couple shots and turned around
to see a huge bleacher section full of chicks,
all different varieties, and shapes and skill levels.
There must've been over a hundred of them
sitting up there, posing and flirting.
"What’s with the girls?" He asked the guy next to him,
who he recognized as a doctor. The doc turned and said,
"They're for dancing. I danced with every girl up there."
He waved his arm at the girls, at least a dozen waved back.
The guy was toasted. The Judge was more interested in
whiskey shots. He had other shit going on, paperwork and…
He took another look at the bleachers, then the doc.
"No fuckin way. How long have you been here?"
"Four days."
"Holy shit." The Judge said, as he was telling me
the story, then he quickly covered his eyes,
punching a finger and a thumb into his deep, sorrowful
sockets just as he might have done then. "Four days,"
he repeated, "Remember the guy I told you about,
one of my guys … in the hangar?" I knew the one.
This doctor had cleaned it up after The Judge discovered it,
half an hour before the run. The Judge still hadn't made
the call home to inform the family. Isn't it strange
sometimes what you have in common with those
you've never met. As they drank they discovered
they knew many of the same people and a lot of the same
information, even though The Judge had flown to bases
all over hell and the doctor only left his stool to operate.
They drank on. They'd been responsible for deaths
and lives saved and plans and recovery plans.
They'd lost friends, possibly dead, to the excessive action
and movement of the war. The Judge claimed
that night, sharing the most nightmarish personal stories
of war and learning with detailed observational descriptions
of the tortures man's weapons can inflict on the human body,
was the drunkenest he'd ever been.
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