Seaflower - 8

 

As Tye walked back he did a calculation in his head, if he had held this off for just 2 days it would be 30 years ago exactly.  The second Tye was in sight the crowed came to attention without even being called.  He walked to the platforms, having made the decision already; he stepped on the challenger’s.

 “Sit down, please; I have called this quarters to talk about things that have not been spoken above a whisper for the last 30 years, r close enough to it.  I feel it is time to bring it up.  Please forgive me if I go out of order, I did not want to bore you with a mindless speech but rather inspire you to listen by talking from the heart.”

Tye hesitated, everybody was paying attention to him, and even the aviation group had stayed for the quarters, which was a first. “Two days from now will be the 30th anniversary of my first steps onto this ship.  The navy was different then, this ship was much different then.  I was just a young recruit, 18, fresh out of basic training.  I had never seen a ship before, let alone a body of water so massive as the sea.  In fact, when the recruiters first told me about it I didn’t believe them.  But 30 years ago I stood on the dock, my sea bag on my back and my mouth wide open.”  Tye made an impression of himself, a lot of the men laughed. “Shit, this ship isn’t the oversized boat that I thought it was, this ship is an armored city that can float anywhere it freak’n wants to go.  It is amazing to think that every man sitting in front of me is not only a sailor that does his job, but when needs to can police our ship, fight fires, do other peoples jobs better than they could.”  Here a few men laughed, “Hell boys, I bet a few of you could probably run this ship better than I do.”  A few enlisted guys made some cat-calls, but most everybody else were saying “No”, “No way”, and “No one is better than you.”  Tye looked at his XO who was shaking his head no as well. “Oh whatever Richie, you know you cannot wait until I’m gone so you can take over.  Shit you have probably thought about taking me out yourself.”  The whole crowd was laughing, the XO shrugged with a smile that said “you caught me.”

“And while I really don’t have a clue what my chiefs do other than keep you shit-bags of sailors from standing in front of me in your best uniforms.  I appreciate that you do that at least.  That is in fact, if you don’t just push that on your leading petty officers.”  The enlisted men were laughing hard, including some of the chiefs.  “No, I’m kidding, I realize that the ship needs at least 90% of all of you to run it at the outstanding rate that it does.”  A few men seemed to catch what he said and snickered.

“Alright, alright.  I didn’t call this quarters to make jokes, nor was it about the fight.  The fight was a plus.  I am glad that it happened, it will make what I’m about to tell you a lot easier to believe.”  Tye took a second to fix his thoughts into an order that would be right.  Looking out into the crowd of faces, some of the guys were leaning forward, leaning to the side, but every one of them where watching him, waiting.  Tye considered testing how long they would wait; he brushed the idea out aside when he realized he was as ready to tell his story about what happened as they were to listen.

“Before I tell you my story from 30 years ago, lets talk about something a little more current. Did anybody here know that our ship does the least amount of man over board drills?  Go ahead, raise your hands.”  Most of the officers, some of the older enlisted raised there hands.  “Does anybody care to guess why that is?”

One very junior enlisted stood up.  “Because you trust all of us to know how to do it.  Because we have the fastest time?” Most of the senior guys chuckled, some of the junior ones as well.

Tye managed to keep his face serious, even though he wanted to smile, “Boy, you were stupid enough to join the navy, AND you want me to believe you are smart enough to remember how to do a drill?” The laughing got pretty loud, “If that was true we wouldn’t do half the other drills we do.  Though, he is right, this ship does have the fastest times.”  He winked at the kid and tossed him a coin.  “Nice try though.  Come on, anybody else want to guess?”  He waited a few seconds, no one else stood up.  “Come on Richie, I know you know.”

Richie looked him in the eye.  For the last few years he had kept it to himself out of respect.  The XO never dreamed there would be a day that he would be asked to share that information.  When Richie realized that Tye was serious he stood up, “You’re scared of that drill sir.”

Most of the crowd was in shock, a few whispers fluttered.  “It’s true.” Tye admitted, “I shake every time I hear it.  I’ll get to why in a minute.  Now, how many people were paying attention last night?  Who knew that last night wasn’t a drill, and that we didn’t throw the dummy?”  About half of the sailors attached to the ship hands were raised, all of the air dales were.  “Two of your shitbags of shipmates are not here right now, nor will you see them until we hit the next port.  These two shitbags did something unthinkable, they threw somebody overboard.  Who was the one who noticed someone got thrown?”  The second class stood up, “Good on you.” Tye threw him a coin.  “Who hear has heard of the cleaning girl?”  Most of the ones attached to the ship had there hands raised, a surprising number of the air dales hands where up.  “Keep your hand up if you have seen her.” Most of the hands fell. “How many of you have helped her?”  Only 8 hands stayed up, 5 of which where air dales.  The second class who had noticed the girl get thrown overboard was among the group, he threw the other 7 a coin.

“Believe it or not, the female that I just fought is the same little girl.”  There were murmurs, “How many of you have heard of the goddess of the sea?” All the officers and chiefs hands were raised, but the E6 and below where scattered.  Tye noticed a few people were getting offended.  “I am not talking about god of the land; I am talking about his counterpart.  Let us not get into that argument right now; we’ll save that for a captain’s call at a later date.”  Tye waited a few seconds, letting the ones who were getting mad to calm down. 

“Now, I want to give you a history lesson of when I first got on the ship.”  Tye took a deep breath, wondering where the girl was.