For those of you that are interested, a peek at the first chapter of my next Naval Investigative Service murder / suspense novel, 'Hole in the Bottom of the Sea'. I expect this out in ebook format in September-October 2019

Cheers

Bill  

ONE

23:17 Hours

August 21, 1975

CV-62, USS Independence

215 Nautical Miles South Southwest of Catania, Sicily

DRUGGED-UP LIKE ON SHORE leave and naked as the day he was born, Earle Jack Hadley stumbled up out of the catwalks, wobbled across the flight deck, and was sliced into cutlets by Clem Button’s port propeller.  Chief Warrant Officer Button had just pounded his ancient, twin-engined cargo plane onto the flight deck.  The Trader’s tail hook even hit the ‘sweet spot’ – the third of the four arresting cables – a feat the overweight, cigar chomping old man hadn’t managed in weeks.  Washed-up, am I?  Take that, you motherfuc- 

The windscreen turned red.

Clem knew what the red meant.  Button was a thirty year man, a lifer, one of the Navy’s last non-commissioned pilots.  He had had his share of accidents over those thirty years, but this was the first time he’d ever by God actually managed to kill anybody.  The unlit stogie fell from his mouth.  He stood on the brakes.  The ensign in the copilot seat did the same before leaning forward and throwing up on the instrument panel.  Neither raised the aircraft’s tail hook.  The petty officer in charge of the arresting gear stood shock-still in the catwalks while the retraction motor kept grinding away, trying to roll up the thick steel cable.  The combination of locked brakes, snagged hook, and moving wire forced Button’s tail down and his nose up, all the while dragging his aircraft back over what remained of E. J. Hadley.

The petty officer finally hit the emergency switch.  The cable went slack.  The Trader’s nose gear slammed down onto the deck, bounced back in the air, came down a second time and collapsed.  Button’s engines were still at full military power.  The propeller tips splintered as they hit the deck, sending angry shards of aluminum slashing away into the dark sky.

Sixteen crewmen worked the flight deck that night, another thirty one stood on Vulchers Row high on the ship’s island.  A few of the people up on the Row were air wing staffers grading the night’s recoveries, but most of them were there because the ship’s air conditioning had crapped-out again and it was too goddamn hot below decks to sleep.  Nine men were wounded, three seriously.  The others spent the next several moments crouched behind flight deck tractors or face down on the deck plates thanking Christ, Jehovah, or some sainted ancestor that they had survived in one piece. 

Lieutenant (junior grade) Patrick Chase was particularly fervent in his thanks.  His cheek was pressed hard against the dirty steel decking of Vulchers Row.   He was horrified by what he had seen, and grateful unto the heaven he didn’t quite believe in for not having been sliced to bits by flying shrapnel.  But most important, Patrick had recognized the naked boy who stumbled into Clem Button’s propeller.  It was difficult not to – three nights earlier, he and Airman Apprentice Hadley had together violated whole chapters of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Patrick had barely slept since.  He knew enough to keep his mouth shut, but Hadley?  Patrick was up on the Row trying to come up with a plan - any plan - that might save his career, or at the very least keep him out of the Portsmouth Naval Prison.    

And now, with his face rubbed raw against the deck plates, a lieutenant commander’s bony knee grinding into the small of his back, and the horror that was E. J. Hadley still lying on the flight deck, a small but insistent voice in the back of Patrick's head told him he no longer needed to worry about Hadley’s big mouth.  He no longer needed a plan.  His nightmare was over.  Over. 

That voice couldn’t have been more wrong.

Been a while.

In recompense, I present an excerpt from the third of the three novels I'm currently working on.  I expect this one to be out the end of 2019.  It involves the Chicago mob, a town full of farmers, a motorcycle gang / French and Indian War reinactor club,  a bar featuring scantily-clad young women and an overweight, lovelorn accountant named Honeyboy Fish.  Following is the sad, sad story of Honeyboy Fish.

Honeyboy Fish

Honeyboy Edward Fish hated his job almost as much as he hated his name.  And he really, really hated his name.  ‘Honeyboy’ was his mother’s idea.  Naomi was the only child of a mild-mannered accountant; a petite, demure Skokie princess enrolled in psychology at Northwestern.  One day she signed-up for an after-hours session labeled Jews and Blues, which she assumed was a symposium on clinical depression.  It was anything but.  The music was a glorious revelation, and she soon began neglecting her studies for long afternoons at various and increasingly rough venues around the greater Chicago area.  She discovered cigarettes, whiskey, weed and pills – with the exception of birth control – and eventually found herself pregnant by one member or another of an off-tune five piece ensemble from the South Side.  Figuring it was Clyde, the rail thin guitar player, she named her offspring after one of Chicago’s greatest blues guitarists – Honeyboy Edwards.

Unfortunately, Eddie’s father turned out to be the three hundred pound drummer.  In addition to the man’s inability to keep a beat, Honeyboy inherited his father’s temper and proclivity towards girth.  The band broke up.  Naomi split for the Coast, leaving the infant in the care of her befuddled parents.  Ester and Irving gave it their best, but by the age of eighteen Honeyboy Fish was a silent, two hundred fifty pound ball of semi-suppressed rage destined to be a fixture in the Cook County juvvie system, until his hulking presence was noted by one Michael Connolly; gambler, mid-level bookie, and spittle-faced Aurora University football fan.  Eddie’s size just screamed defensive linesman.

Connolly befriended Eddie’s grandparents and convinced them that football would be the young man’s salvation, or the Jewish version thereof.  Irving and Ester were desperate to retire to Florida and needed little prompting.  Eddie soon found himself enrolled in the school’s sports management program and ensconced in an off-campus apartment with a plasma TV and well- stocked refrigerator.  Sadly, he proved much less adept at football than Connolly expected, until the boy instinctively slammed him up against a wall after a disparaging mention of his full name, which gave Connolly both a mild concussion and a brilliant idea.  For the remainder of Eddie’s freshman season, Connolly could be found Friday evenings schmoozing the opposing teams’ offensive linemen at various hotels and bars while liberally dropping the Aurora nose guard’s full name.  ‘Honeyboy’ inevitably became an on-field taunt, and as a result, Aurora had its best season in years, despite Eddie’s massive accumulation of off-side penalties. 

The streak fell apart Eddie’s sophomore year, once all the conference teams were wise to the scheme, but in the meantime Honeyboy Fish had come to the attention of Connolly’s bosses.  A two hundred fifty pound ex-football player could make a name for himself in ‘enforcement.’  Eddie dropped out of college and enrolled as an apprentice.  Three months later, his mid-term  exam - and first official job - was to put the fear of God into a skinny, middle-aged pimp who had been shorting the weekly take to support his coke habit.  Eddie’s instructions were to drive the man to the edge of the Chicago River, wrap him in a steel chain and dangle him over the water at the foot of the abandoned Kinzie Street railway bridge behind the Sun-Times building as a means of expressing the organization’s displeasure.  The event was scheduled for three in the morning.  Honeyboy’s instructors had thoughtfully procured a Sun-Times parking pass and had arranged for the parking lot and bridge lights to short out at 2:45.  The hapless pimp would be sedated and stuffed into the trunk of a late-model Chevy along with ten feet of rusty chain.    

Given all the prep work, the actual job should have been straightforward - Eddie had merely to pick up the car, drive to the parking lot, slap the man around, wrap him in chain then drag him to the bridge and hold him over the ten foot deep water until he begged for mercy.  Things started well enough - Eddie pulled into the darkened parking lot right on time and found a spot only a few feet from the dense trees and scrub that lined the river bank.  But when he popped the trunk open he found that long years of drug abuse had enhanced his victim’s pharmacological immunity to the extent that he was nowhere near as comatose as expected.  “The fak you doin, maa!” the pimp hollered.

Eddie was taken aback, but remembering his training, he grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and rolled him out onto the ground, where he planted the sole of his left shoe and at least one hundred of his two hundred fifty pounds on the pimp’s face, essentially reducing the man’s voice to a gargle.  He reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted a silenced Ruger, then bent down and placed the barrel against the side of the pimp’s head.  “You gonna be quiet now, right?” he asked.

The man couldn’t reply, Eddie’s shoe having mushed his cheek into the macadam.  Eddie took the silence – and smell of urine – for fear and submission, so he stepped back and motioned with the gun for the man to stand up.  Instead he let forth with a string of slurred profanity and vigorous, if poorly aimed, kicks to Eddie’s shins.  Stifling an oath of his own, Eddie reached down with his free hand and snatched the pimp up by his neck, holding him at arm’s length.  In the dim light of far away street lamps, Eddie saw the man’s eyes bulging.  “You gonna be quiet?” he repeated.

The pimp’s head bobbled up and down.  Eddie released him.  The man bent forward from the waist, gasping for air.  “Jesus, what the fuck is this?”  He straightened up and for the first time looked closely at Eddie.  “Wait a minute.  I know you!”

Which, as Eddie had been taught, was the oldest trick in the book.  Keeping the Ruger pointed at the old man, he reached into the trunk and grabbed the chain.  “No, seriously, man,” the pimp continued, “I seen you ‘round.”

 Eddie reached for another handful of chain as the man began rattling off the names and addresses of bars, barbecue joints, drug houses, whorehouses, all the time searching for that one place that would make a personal connection to the overweight young man with the silenced pistol.  Eddie stopped listening halfway through, though, and began wondering instead what was it with the fucking chain?  He kept yanking it out of the trunk, but it never ended, it was like the whole goddamn back of the car was full of metal!  Those mother fuckers, he thought, they’re playing with me!  He was sure there was a group of his so-called associates up in one of the dark apartment buildings across the River watching him with binoculars in one hand and a whiskey in another, all of them having a good laugh.  Bastards! 

The chain finally ended.  Eddie had the pimp gather it up in his arms and, prodding him in the back of the neck with the gun, led him into the bushes and down the steep bank to the pitted concrete bridge footing under the massive, rusting girders until they came to the wooden pilings at the foot of the river.  In the meantime, the old man had moved on to possible sightings at sports venues: bowling alleys, cock-fighting houses, the concession stand at Wrigley Field -

“I got it!” the pimp shouted, dropping the forty feet of chain and twirling around to face Eddie.  “I knew it!  You play college ball, don’tcha?  Northwestern, right?  No, U of Chicago.  Aurora?  You ever play for-”

The pimp’s eyes grew wider.  “Damn,” he exclaimed.  “Honeyboy!”  He opened his arms wide.  “It’s me!  Me!  Your old uncle Clyde!”

It was true.  The skinny man was an only slightly seedier version of an photo Eddie remembered from his youth.  The news shook him to his core.  His resolve waivered.  His new found relative sensed an opportunity and tried to dart away, but tripped over the mountain of chain and fell into the river.  Eddie heard the splash and then a sound not unlike that of a toilet flushing.  He rushed to the pilings and saw his uncle three feet below in a swirl of black water.  The old man went around and around.  “Help me, Honeyboy!” he screamed, and then he was swallowed by the whirlpool.  

Eddie couldn’t think of what else to do.  He dove in. 

The Kinzie Street railroad bridge had opened in 1909 and was, for a time, the longest and heaviest drawbridge in Chicago.  It was unfortunately built above an abandoned light rail tunnel.  Over the decades the bridge had slowly settled into the underlying strata, applying more and more pressure to the top of the tunnel until the evening of Honeyboy’s mid-term, when the masonry ruptured and sucked Eddie’s uncle away.  The tunnel shot straight towards the Sun-Times building, where it took a sharp turn to the west.  There had been a circular opening, rather like an oversized porthole, in the Sun-Times foundation right where the abandoned rail line made its swing.  The opening had been inexpertly bricked-up a hundred years ago by a crew of inebriated Irish workmen, but no one remembered that, or if they knew, would have particularly cared.

Until now.

The weight and speed of the river water blew-out the brickwork.  It exploded into the building’s lower level, bowling over a trio of computer operators in the middle of a game of three handed Rummy.   A tsunami of fetid water shot into the paper’s computer center, followed by Eddie’s uncle, who flew like a Jamaican luge rider, feet first between two rows of expensive - and rapidly submerging - Hewlett-Packard file servers.  He came to a stop next to the emergency exit, shook his head clear and bolted out the door only a few feet behind the operators.  The electric mains shorted, but the backup circuits came on, activating the emergency lights and keeping the security cameras rolling, which captured Honeyboy Edward Fish as his head and torso blew into the room, then came to a jarring stop, the remainder of his two hundred fifty pounds plugging the hole perfectly.   His shirt remained in place, but everything below his navel was stripped away in the torrent. 

It took the combined efforts of the Chicago police and fire departments to free Honeyboy.  This included every member of the dive squad, including several off-duty officers who begged their superiors not to pop the kid loose until they could get there and see it for themselves.  Luckily for Eddie, Connolly and his cronies had been in an apartment across the river and they watched, mystified as the Eddie and his uncle were swallowed by a massive and sudden whirlpool.  “I swear,” Connolly said later.  “It was like somebody flushing the can.”  They managed to beat the cops and the fire department to the scene, grab Eddie’s gun and the forty feet of chain, stick them in the trunk of the Chevy and drive away.  One of the Sun-Times security guards who was a friend of a buddy of a cousin of a mid-level loan shark was told to wade into the computer center and give Eddie his alibi – he had been walking down the street and had to go take a wiz.  What he was doing walking down Kinzie at three in the morning, that was up to him. 

Eddie had several hours to work on his alibi, the police and firemen coming to the conclusion that he was not in any immediate danger once the tunnel had filled and the rush of water subsided, with the exception perhaps of fish bites.  Sun-Times management was aghast, but mostly by the possibility that prematurely dislodging the young man could completely flood the computer room, which, for reasons of economy, was where they had also housed their backup servers and all their backup data.  One of their junior lawyers was sent to wade out in the knee-deep water in his Brooks Brothers pinstripe to present Eddie with a proposal of five thousand dollars and a lifetime subscription if he would simply agree to stay where he was until the tunnel could be sealed and drained.  Eddie was in a quandary.  He assumed that he would be wacked the minute he left the building for being such a dumbshit, but he didn’t even have the money or the trousers necessary to catch a cab.  He and the lawyer – cell phone pressed to his ear - eventually settled on a five thousand dollar minimum and an extra five for every hour after the first three – all in cash, a hot meal every hour, unlimited coffee, and a set of clothes from the nearest big and tall shop. 

By late afternoon the computer center had been pumped dry, and a watertight cofferdam  erected around Eddie’s backside.  The water was drained, Eddie was greased and carefully pulled through the hole into the computer center.  His first instinct was to run, but he was surrounded by cops, firemen and lawyers, and besides they were still trying to come up with a pair of pants with a 56 inch waist, and his legs, puffy and wrinkled from the water, were useless.  The cops put him on a gurney, stuck him in an ambulance and took him to Northwestern Memorial where he was given a private room, courtesy of the Sun-Times, and a private guard to keep away the gawkers and personal injury lawyers.  The doctors gave the terrified, caffeine-saturated young man a course of increasingly potent sedatives until he fell asleep.  As he drifted off he assumed he would not be waking up. 

He woke up.  Michael Connolly was sitting in the chair next to the bed.  It was three in the morning, exactly 24 hours after he blew his exam.  “Eddie, kiddo,” Connolly said.  “How you doing?”

Eddie tried to shout for the guard, but Connolly put his meaty paw over Eddie’s mouth.  “None of that, now, kid.  There’s nobody to hear you, anyways.  Your man’s off in a closet getting a freebie, care of the boys from the home office.”

Eddie started crying, the first time in years.

Connolly looked confused.  “Need another pillow?”  He grabbed a big fluffy one in both hands.  He held it up about a foot in front of Eddie’s head. “How’s this?”

Eddie began screaming.  All Connolly could think to do was jump on the bed and mush the pillow down on Eddie’s face to try to get him to shut him the fuck up.  Honeyboy Fish began flopping around like a hooked tuna.  Connolly was suddenly wise to the problem.  He threw the pillow off in a corner and clamped his hand back around Eddie’s jaw.  “Jesus Christ,” he stage whispered.  “I’m not here to pop you, Eddie!  Shit, if that’s what we wanted, you’d be fucking dead by now!”

Connolly waited until Eddie quieted down, then cautiously released his jaw.  “You’re . . .  not?” Eddie asked.

“Why’d we do that?  You’re the man of the hour!”

Honeyboy was dumbfounded.  Connolly explained.  “I only learned this today, kid.  I’m not so sure of the details, but the long and short is, we are into the internet big time: gambling, videos, scheduling the ladies.  These require computers, but for reasons of security and keeping our asses out of jail, the tech guys prefer we not keep this stuff on our own equipment.  Plus, these kinds of systems got to be up 24/7 to make any money so things gotta be redundant.”

“Redundant?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah,” Connolly said, nodding his head.

“What’s that mean, redundant?”

“What?  You don’t know what redundant means?”  Connolly, of course, wasn’t sure of that himself.

Eddie sat up in bed.  “Yeah, I know what redundant means!  My grandpa, he was an accountant, remember?  He was using big words all the time: accrual, amortization, overhead. . .    redundant.  What I’m saying is, what does redundant have to do with metaking a swim in the goddamn river?”

 Connolly shrugged.  “All they said about redundant was it costs money.  And the Sun-Times, we thought they had redundant, but it turns out not so much.”

The unstated implication was not lost on Eddie.  “We run our stuff on their computers?”

“In a manner of speaking, is what the tech guys told me.  They also said that last night, in the middle of prime mid-west get-your-rocks-off time, the lights flickered, but they didn’t go out.  Exact quote.  They didn’t go out.  The systems stayed up.  The videos ran, the ladies showed up on time, the johns got laid.  And all because of you.  You, my friend, are a fucking hero!”  Connolly leaned over and gave Eddie a first-class noogie.

“It don’t matter I fucked up, you know, the exam?”  Eddie had recovered sufficient wits not to mention that the subject of the exam was his long lost old uncle.

“Skinny Ass Clyde?  He was into us for what, twenty, thirty grand over a couple years?    Chump change.  Plus he was buying the nose candy from us anyway, so what’s the big deal, I want to know.  But the videos, man, the video alone is worth a million an hour.  An hour!”

Connolly reached out to give Eddie another noogie, but Eddie grabbed his wrist.  “So what happens to me?  I get another chance?  Maybe not near the water this time?”

Connolly’s face grew serious.  “I’m thinking not, kiddo.  Buttonmen got to be – what’s the word – innocuous?”

“Inconspicuous.”

“Yeah, that’s it.    They need to blend in.  You – sorry, but I got to say it – do not blend.  Plus you are a hero, so your name is known and probably your face.  So, what I’m thinking is you’ll be laying low for a while, then maybe something will open up.  You’re a smart guy.  Something where. . .  where you can use those big words, you know?”  Connolly looked at his watch.  “Hey, I gotta go.  Your buddy out front was authorized ten minutes, it’s going on fifteen.  Time’s money, know what I mean.  You hang tight, kiddo.  And keep your mouth shut.”

Appearances and performance to-date aside, Honeyboy Fish was not an unintelligent young man.  He knew, for example, how to keep his mouth shut.  And, as he showed Connolly, he knew a great many big words – especially words having to do with accounting.  His grandfather had run his own accounting firm and did much of the firm’s business from the dining room table.  As a result, little Eddie couldn’t help but absorb the vocabulary and arcania of the profession.  These were on display three weeks after the Kinzie Street incident when Eddie accompanied Connolly to a meeting with Connolly’s boss.  The excitement had died down, the cops had had other things to do than continually question the young man who needed to take a pee at three in the morning, and the Sun-Times had been more than happy to move on to other stories of corporate stupidity, in particular stories that didn’t involve them.    

Nick Mucci, Connolly’s boss, was impressed.  He thought the boy showed promise, just not in enforcement.  Also, like Connolly, Mucci was an Aurora football fan and had made a killing Eddie’s freshman year.  He was thus in an appreciative mood and after a few phone calls he had Eddie Fish enrolled in Aurora’s accounting program; tuition, fees, living expenses all on the house.  “Four years,” he told Eddie, “Lay low.  Get your degree.  There’ll be openings in accounting.”

“You sure, Mr. Mucci?”  Eddie had asked.

Nick Mucci gave Eddie the fish-eye.  “There will be openings in accounting.”

Eddie, being a smart kid, knew this was the time to shut up.  He went to school, laid low, became a solid B student – so as to not attract the attention of the more prestigious accounting firms or the feds – dropped a few pounds, and when the money from the Sun-Times finally showed, he stuck it in the bank.   Eddie grew in confidence, if not girth, had weekly encounters with the ladies, care of Connolly, and developed an appreciation for expensive yet understated business attire.  He was looking forward to going to work, but sadly, a month before graduation, there was a reorganization.

Nick Mucci was retired in such a way as severance would not be an issue.  Connolly kept his job and his skin, but was demoted back to bookie.  Worse, the new boss, Ralph Appleton, was from downstate and a diehard Illini fan.  He was aware of Eddie and the valuable service he had provided four summers before, but felt that the tuition, fees and a more than generous stipend had pretty much evened the score.  Senior management however was on an equal opportunity kick, and it would look good to keep an up and coming black kid on the payroll.  There were no immediate openings in accounting, so H. Edward Fish – as he now preferred to be called - his BA and his closet full of Brooks Brothers suits were put to use counting inventory at various clandestine warehouses.      

This was the job Eddie hated almost as much as his given name.  For four and a half months – May to September – Eddie either sat in hard plastic chairs behind rusty, wobbly metal desks in un-airconditioned back rooms, or walked oil-stained floors counting pallets of toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, carburetor cleaners and the occasional engine block.  Lunch, if he was lucky, was a hamburger.  His co-workers were lifers, middle-aged Italians and Irishmen for the most part who had little use for the big black kid with the accounting degree.  Not one of them gave a damn about Aurora football.   And Eddie lived in constant fear that one of them might connect him to the Skinny Ass Clyde Incident, or to the kid stuck in basement of the Sun-Times building, and if discovered he would become what he was when he was growing up – an object of ridicule.  It was in such an agitated state of mind that Michael Connolly found him and took Honeyboy to meet Mr. Appleton.

The Chuck Hagel Rants - Part the Third: What is it this time??

The honeymoon is definitely over. What is it with these Republican? They're going to filibuster a war hero, a man wounded in action twice? And all because he dared to call the Iraq war what everyone else in American except John McCain and the hard right fully understands - that it was a monumental piece of stupidity? Or is it because some Republican staffer made up this group called 'Friends of Hamas' and spread the word that they and Chuck Hagel are BFFs? Or is it because the Republicans are now basically the evangelical party and their base is absolutely convinced that unless Netanyahu gobbles up all the West Bank, then the end of days will never come, and if the end of days never comes they won’t get - dang, I forget the word! - yanked up out of their cars and through their kitchen windows by the Anti-Christ or whomever and fly on up to heaven while the rest of us poor suckers – including, I assume, Jews, who (sorry Pat Robertson) aren’t going to be magically converted to Christianity on that day - just sit around down here wondering where the crazies went, while secretly breathing sighs of relief that come what may we might at least now have some sanity in our government? Is that it?

The Repubs are beneath contempt. A short while ago Bobby Jindal said the Republicans would never be back in the majority until they learned to stop being the Party of Stupid. Given the events of this past week, I think liberals (and this Eisenhower Republican) can rest easy for a while longer.

The Chuck Hagel Rant - Part the Second

I was prepared to work myself into a lather over further Republican intransigence on the Chuck Hagel nomination.  Our buddy and heroic Gulf War veteran Senator Lindsey Graham (who served his country sitting at a desk in South Carolina processing wills for soldiers who did deploy) says “Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream on most issues regarding foreign policy.”  That's fine, if by mainstream you mean current Tea Bag, Evangelical Christian, Neo-Con borderline insane foreign policy positions, then yeah, the man is way out of the mainstream.  But so, I hope, are most Americans after a decade of ill-advised war.  At least this Eisenhower Republican / Obama Democrat is.  I prefer a little - what's the word - oh yeah, realism in my foreign policy.

Anyhow, as I said, I was prepared to write a diatribe, when I happened to stumble on a speech Chuck Hagel gave at the University of Nebraska almost six years ago.  The man seems plenty real and plenty mainstream to me.  Some excerpts (the snotty parenthetical remarks are my own):    

"In the Middle East of the 21st Century, Iran will be a key center of gravity…a significant regional power. The United States cannot change that reality.  To acknowledge that reality in no way confuses Iran’s dangerous, destabilizing and threatening behavior in the region. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and provides material support to Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups. Iran publicly threatens Israel and is developing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Iran has not helped stabilize the current chaos in Iraq and is responsible for weapons and explosives being used against U.S. and Iraqi military forces in Iraq (yeah, the man sounds like a milquetoast, doesn't he?).

Our understanding of Iran is limited and incomplete. We have not had formal diplomatic relations with Iran for nearly three decades. Diplomatic contact at all levels is severely limited. We have no constructive military contact. Economic ties remain essentially severed as well. There is deep distrust and suspicion on both sides regarding intentions and motivations. Put simply, the United States and Iran do not know one another. This unfamiliarity, distrust, and lack of engagement risks producing disastrous consequences. When countries do not engage, the risk of misperception based on faulty judgments spawns uninformed and dangerous decisions.

The United States needs to weigh very carefully its actions regarding Iran. In a hazy, hair-triggered environment, careless rhetoric and military movements that one side may believe are required to demonstrate resolve and strength…can be misinterpreted as preparations for military options. The risk of inadvertent conflict because of miscalculation is great (Remember World War I, anybody?).  The United States must be cautious and wise not to follow the same destructive path on Iran as we did on Iraq. We blundered into Iraq because of flawed intelligence, flawed assumptions, flawed judgments, and questionable intentions (the man's a born diplomat, he didn't say 'out and out lies').  The United States must find a new regional diplomatic strategy to deal with Iran that integrates our regional allies, military power and economic leverage."

Sorry, Lindsay (and John McCain) but the man sounds eminently reasonable and - dare I say it - mainsteam to me.  And the man got two Purple Hearts - always a plus in my book.  That's as compared to Senator Graham, whose Gulf War wounds consisted of hemorrhoids from sitting at that desk all day long (yeah, I've got 'em too, Lindsay, and damn do they hurt - maybe not as much as a bullet, but ouch!  I feel your pain, fellow veteran).

Said my piece.  And now, back to the taxes.

Garveys and Guns - It's Complicated

My late father was a sportsman.  That term had a particular meaning back in the ‘40s, ‘50’s and 60’s.  It didn’t mean he played basketball (the man was 5’ 5’’ for God’s sake) or sat on a couch Sunday afternoons watching football.  It meant he took to the woods and fields each November, and for men of his generation, taking to the woods in the late fall involved rifles and pistols and shotguns.  It wasn’t remarkable, or questioned, it’s what Midwestern guys did – they went hunting, or if it wasn’t hunting season, you found them knee deep in cold, running water, stalking the wild trout.  And if they weren’t hunting or fishing, they were reading about hunting and fishing.  Dad had dozens of outdoor magazines lying around the house, things like Michigan Out of Doors, The Michigan Sportsman, Game and Fish.  I believe I even saw a few copies of American Hunter from the National Rifle Association, back from the time when Wayne LaPierre had his own hair and the NRA hadn’t turned batshit crazy.   No one thought it unusual, or evidence of a flawed character.

In fact, the only character flaw in the Garvey household was my own – I couldn’t stand hunting.  It wasn’t so much the killing – which didn’t happen all that often – but for me, hunting was 1) boring and 2) cold!   We didn’t have the nice synthetic / cotton blend thermal long johns back in the ‘60s when I was invited to join the men out on the back 40.  No sir, what they had were good ol’ prickly union suits you wore under baggy corduroy pants that you tucked into cracked, rubberized boots, which you attempted to insulate with three pairs of wool socks.  You wore a wool shirt, a couple of old sweaters, and last year’s good coat that you grew out of, all of which bulked you up to the point you looked pretty much like Ralphie’s kid brother in “A Christmas Story”.  And I still froze.  I quickly began looking for any excuse to avoid the annual trips Up North.  Eventually, Dad stopped asking.  Thank God, my brother Glenn – the next in line in the Garvey brood – took to it with the same zeal as the old man.

But the thing was – and is – that while I hated the cold, I loved to shoot.  Bing, Bang, Boom!  Music to a kid’s ear.  Dad took me skeet shooting a half dozen times over the years, and it turned out I wasn’t half bad.  Of course, I haven’t shot skeet in something like 16 years, not since the summer I was failing as a manager at the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand, yet somehow got included in a department outing to a private club in the middle of Lake St. Clair.  I spent the time being my usual embarrassing self, sucking at three hole golf, nearly falling down a ladderway on the partner’s yacht, spilling lunch on the new walking shorts my wife got me especially for this occasion.  Late in the afternoon, the partner took us over to a wooden walkway built along the shoreline, where some of the club attendants had lugged a couple large metal trunks.  He unlocked one, reached in and pulled out a polished, oiled shotgun.  There were four of us, I recall.  Each got a gun and a little box of shells.  One of the club house guys stood behind us and launched little clay discs out into the lake.  And I nailed ‘em.  By God, I nailed ‘em.  Everyone else got one or two; me, something like eight out of ten.  No one could believe it.  One day of glory out of four miserable years.  They let me go the following spring. 

But I digress.

 This last summer, Pat and I visited our son Rob, Captain W. R. Garvey, at Whiteman Air Force Base outside of Kansas City.  He had a little treat for me.  Bright and early Sunday morning, we drove a half hour out into the countryside to a local firing range.  It was nine, nine thirty in the morning, and already 90 degrees.  The place was tres rustic, a field of dried-out weeds surrounded  by trees.  It had three shooting lanes, each with a wooden table at one end and a big mound of dirt to catch the shots at the other.  One was short, one was medium, and the third was long – although I can’t remember the lengths.  The short lane was already in use by four young men Rob recognized as part of the security detail at Whiteman.  A thin, ancient, bent over man in bib coveralls had taken the long one.  He had a cardboard box set down about twenty feet in front of him, and was proceeding to shoot it with the smallest pistol I have ever seen.  The studs to our left, on the other hand, were equipped with serious firepower.  They had two rifles and one short, thick, black thing with a removable magazine sticking down below it.  The sounds around us went plink, plink, boom, boom, KAPOW!!  And when the dust settled, plink, plink, boom, boom, KAPOW!! again.    

 

Rob’s weapons were more mundane, a Ruger 22 caliber rifle with a 10 round magazine, and a Beretta M9 with a clip that holds 15 rounds if you squeeze them in, but usually no more than twelve.  (And yeah, Wayne, I’m using ‘clip’ and ‘magazine’ interchangeably – so sue me, it doesn’t make one damn bit of difference to what I’m writing.)  According to Rob, the Ruger is a "classic" rifle that a lot of kids learn to shoot on, and the M9 is the government-issue sidearm for officers.  Both are semi-automatics.  And way, way more fun because they were.  If I could’ve fit a 30 round clip / magazine / bullet holding thingie to the Beretta, it woulda been even more fun.  And I’m guessing I’m not the only person feels that way.  Couple the fun part with the Midwestern (or name your region) hunting ethos, and a general ‘mind yer own goddamn bidness’ attitude’ and you get an idea where some of the reasonable resistance comes from.   Of course, I’m omitting the Tea Party, Second Amendment-er, mouth frothing, Obama-is-a-Muslim /  fascist / communist-aching-to-deliver-this-country-to-the-devil contingent that drives the rest of the resistance.  My fear is that the combination of the two will be enough to stifle any reforms.  And unless those fighting for change can win over the reasonable opposition, we may be in for a couple more Columbines, Virginia Techs and Newtowns before we get serious about changes to gun laws. 

There, said my piece.  Now back to doing the damn taxes.   

The Chuck Hagel Rant, Part the First

I was using the new iPhone at work this afternoon to surreptitiously surf the web and see what was up with the Chuck Hagel confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense.   (So sue me, beloved current employer, why else do you have a guest network, eh?).  What a farce.  Is there anyone - ANYONE - left in these United States besides John McCain and six Republican senators who thinks the Iraq war was anything other than an unmitigated disaster?  4,488 of our sons / daughters / mothers / fathers killed.  Thirty three thousand wounded.  Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed.   Ethnic cleansing of Sunni and Shia, not to mention Christian and Jew.  $757.8 billion spent in direct cost alone, per Pentagon estimates, which don't include the billions spent on indirect costs like servicing the debt on money we borrowed to pay for the damn thing.  And for what?  So W could prove he was just as much of a man as his father?  So Dick “I had other priorities” Cheney could make up for blowing off the Vietnam War?  So we could overthrow a secular dictator who hated Islamic terrorists, and who waged a ten-year war to the death against Iran and the Ayatollahs?  (A war that ended in a tie, but you get my drift.)

 But Saddam was a murderous tyrant, you say.  And it is our moral duty to depose murderous tyrants!  Well, if that were the case we would've invaded half a dozen Central American countries where we installed our own thugs, wouldn't we, Senator McCain?  Or maybe Egypt, and gotten rid of Mubarak.  Dang, didn't see us doing that, did you?  It's like the saying goes - he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard.  And if you only off the bastards you don't approve of (a policy I happen to approve of) then you surrender all pretense of morality, and by the way, welcome to the world as it actually exists.   

 The worst of it, in my jaded view, is that we took a “force in being” and turned it into a force in reality, and for no good reason.  A force in being?  It's a play on an old naval term - a fleet in being.  A fleet in being, as in Kaiser Bill's Germany early in the 20th century, is a couple dozen big ships with big guns sitting in a harbor and maybe occasionally sailing out to sea for a firing exercise and then returning to port to drink schnapps and eat schnitzel.  The mere fact of this fleet and the threat that it might be used drove the English mad with worry.  Until, of course, war came, and despite early losses, the Englanders figured out how to master the Germans, and the High Seas Fleet ended up scuttled at the bottom of Scapa Flow.  It's the same on land.  A big, powerful army is at its most imposing and fearful before it is used.  Once it's in battle - especially a battle far from home - if the enemy can last long enough, it figures out that army's weak spots and begins to hold its own.

In my view, that's what happened in Iraq:  we took the world's most powerful force in being, turned it into a force in reality and proceeded through a series of incredible blunders to end up looking less like the liberators we assumed we were, and more like your garden variety conquerors, i.e.:

1. Not stopping the looting after Baghdad fell,
2. Dismissing thousands of Iraqi army officers and civil servants because they were members of Saddam's Baathist party, even though a man couldn't get a decent job in Saddam's Iraq if he wasn't a Baathist - thank YOU, Paul Bremmer - thus destroying the two groups we needed to help keep the country under control, and
3. Locking up and abusing prisoners in Saddam's old torture palace (an excellent piece of P.R. - NOT!)

All of which gave the opposition - and there were bucket loads of opposition - time to figure out our weak spots.  They could never defeat us, but we could never quite defeat them.  Until, of course John McCain's beloved surge.  Was it a success, the surge?  Yes or no, Senator Hagel?  Yes or No?  Yeah, John, it was a success.  That plus the Sunni Awakening in Anbar Province plus U.S. military payments to Sunni leadership (nothing like bribing your enemy to lay low - another tactic I heartily agree with) allowed us get out of that hell hole with a semblance of honor.  And in that, Johnny Boy, the Surge succeeded.  But in nothing more.
 

Up North

And always capitalized, as every good Michigander knows.  Where Up North begins is a matter of some conjecture.  For some, it's hard and fast - the 45th parallel of latitude, which cuts through Michigan at the tip of the ring finger.  The line runs through Sutton's Bay on the west shore of the Grand Traverse, reportedly bisecting the griddle at the 45th Parallel Cafe.  For others, it's the Mackinac Bridge, another seventy-odd miles to the north.  But for Pat and me, Up North is more a state of mind than a line on a map.  And states of mind - especially at my age - can be a little fuzzy.  There's a point on M-127 north of St. Johns where the road narrows and you come to Uncle John's Cider Mill and maybe stop for a break.  If you get out of the car when the wind is blowing just right (by which I mean due south from the Straits of Mackinac, still 200 miles away) you may sense something different in the air: a molecule or two of something tangy and fresh mixed in there with the stale coffee and the diesel fumes.  You're not quite Up North, but you're getting close.  And so you keep driving and you notice - actually, now you're looking for it - that there's pines, and spruce and junipers lurking around in the oaks and maples on the side of the road.  You are definitely closer.  You pull off onto M-115 for the diagonal 50 mile shot into Cadillac, and then somewhere on that two (occasionally three) lane road as you close in on the Manistee National Forest, you sense that you've crossed the divide.  Your breath comes easier.  Your heart rate goes down.  That tang in the air is palpable.
You pop some oldies into the Malibu's CD player and sing along with Don and Carol and Carley and if you can find it, Revolver.  Then you turn north at Mesick and 15 minutes later you're driving through Buckley, and you turn in your seat to tell Pat about the twin sisters from Buckley who won a trip to Shanghai for a modeling competition and got so drunk on the plane that it turned around in the middle of the north Pacific and the crew kicked them off in Fairbanks, and Pat just listens and smiles even though she's heard the same exact story every single trip for the past ten years, both on the way up and on the way down.
Another thirty minutes and you hit the far south end of Traverse City and continue on until you bump into the Bay and you 'oooh' and 'aaah' at the blue water for five minutes while you turn left and left again at Tom's Market and then start the mile drive uphill, and you don't even remember to curse the fact that Pat talked you into a ridiculous little four cylinder engine, which presently sounds like it's tearing itself apart while every other car on the road, and a guy on a bicycle, passes you by.  You head west, past a few gas stations, and developments that - thank God - never ever got developed, and the lone home of the proud mother of three Marines with a flag pole for each and then, if it's spring, you look into the ditches and the shade at the side of the road, and there's the trillium - first dozens, then hundreds of them, delicate white flowers growing in the grass and weeds.  If by now you're totally in the Up North zone you miss the abrupt turn that points you to Glen Arbor, but if you're truly in The Zone, you don't care 'cause it's a state of mind - not a state of miles - and you keep going straight because you know the sand dunes are somewhere ahead of you and they will be glorious because they're always glorious.  If you made the turn, though, then it's up the hill, past the scenic turnoff that hasn't had a decent view in 50 years because of the riot of trees, then up and down and down some more until the stop sign, then the right and immediate left across the bridge that separates the two Glen lakes, then through the woods next to Glen Lake and past the houses - some from the turn of the last century, some from the mid - until the road opens and Anderson's Market appears, along with - if you're lucky, a fox or a deer.  You catch a glimpse of Lake Michigan as you turn left, but it disappears in the trees as you take M-22 west, not certain whether you want to speed up and get there ten seconds sooner, of just enjoy the ride.  Then you see the sign on the side of the road.  It doesn't say Up North.  It doesn't need to.  You slow down and take the winding, quarter mile drive through the tamarack.  You get out of the car.  You breathe.  You smell pine needles, bark, water.  You stretch.  If you are not completely in The Zone, you unpack the car.  But if you are, you leave the car - unlocked! - and run to the front of the house and then down through the dune grass and the sand to the narrow wooden walkway past the fire pit almost to the beach.  You may find you have your camera in your hand.  If you do, you take a picture.  If you don't, it doesn't matter.  Nothing matters.   For a week, nothing will matter.  You're Up North. 

Glen Arbor, MI.  November 2012.  Late Afternoon