A Monumental Affair
Fiction
‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion’— Albert Camus
I met Radioman Second Dan Carter at the transient barracks on the sprawling Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia. We were both electronic communication specialists, a commonality that led to one of those barracks-and-shipboard friendships few civilians ever know.
Carter had returned to the States from a Vietnam gunboat tour. I was on shore duty after a routine fleet rotation and a SNAFU at BuPers — the navy’s Bureau of Personnel — that had two of us reporting for the same billet aboard a destroyer in the North Atlantic.
October brought relief from the summer heat and a weekend in which we both had a couple of free days. We used those two days of freedom from the incessant chatter and di-dah-dits of radio communications to get out of Norfolk and leave the US Navy behind for a few days. In Washington, D.C., I wanted to go shopping for civilian clothes, but Carter was impatient to see the Capitol Building and to tour the Capitol Mall, the stretch of green bordered by museums that runs from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. At the Capitol Building, we took seats in the Senate chamber where Carter expressed awe at the worldwide importance of the activities conducted there. I would have preferred to down some beers at the nearest tavern, but I went along with Carter’s sentimentality for the majesty of the mighty US government. He pulled his pipe out of his jersey pocket and held it to his lips.
A deep male voice boomed behind us. “Put that thing away, Sailor. There is no smoking in here.”
We turned to find a security guard in the aisle.
“It’s not lit,” Carter said. “I just hold it out of habit.”
“I don’t care. If you don’t put it away right now, I will throw you out of the building.”
The guy was apparently having a bad day. I wondered what would possess a minor employee of the building that housed the most powerful deliberating body of the most powerful government on the planet to act with such contempt toward visitors — especially members of the military of that same government, and during wartime yet.
To my disappointment, Carter offered profuse apologies to the big man. Me? I would have dared him to manhandle me out of the building. Jeez, the fucking pipe wasn’t lit. Holding it was Carter’s fetish, his security blanket. He was a Vietnam combat vet. I expected more of him. Once the security guy was satisfied that his victim was appropriately subdued and submissive, he wandered off. We left, dejected, embarrassed, self-conscious, and ashamed of the government that paid us.
A few beers at a hotel bar brightened the mood. We did the tourist thing: the Smithsonian Museum, the National Art Museum, and walked the Mall. At lunch, we asked a waitress what action we could find in the city.
“There is a big bash at the base of the Washington Monument every Friday and Saturday night,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun. Check it out.”
We did.
The crowd was bigger than we expected. Street musicians, strolling mimes, jugglers, and magic acts panhandling for tip entertained the hundreds of college-age hippies and hippie wannabes amid a cloud of reefer smoke that hung like a permanent part of the Monument.
I saw a handful of military uniforms in the crowd.
Carter smiled at a pretty girl in the crowd. “Have you guys been to Vietnam?” she asked.
“I haven’t,” I said as I turned to Carter. “But Carter has.”
She introduced herself as Angela and grilled Carter on his — and the navy’s — role in the war. Naturally, Carter played up his importance in his stories of the horrors of war. His first tour involved a minesweeper, his second, a gunboat.
I wandered off to give Carter room to make his play for the girl and to enjoy the circus-like atmosphere — my first hands-on experience of the Summer of Love that had passed only a couple of months earlier and still pervaded the news. He must have made a hit with her. I didn’t see either of them for the remainder of the evening. I made my way to the Soldiers-Sailors-Marines-and-Airmen’s Club to wait for him. He didn’t show up the following morning. I waited around the club for him; did some reading, shot some pool (lost four hard-earned dollars playing an army supply sergeant), and read some of a book from the club’s library. By early afternoon hunger and an urge to see the sights got me out of the building and onto the Mall to spend the afternoon at the Smithsonian Museum and the evening at a bar. Then, back to the SSMA.
Finally, a message from Carter scrawled on a page from the club’s letterhead notepad. “I’m staying in DC,” he wrote. “Meet me at the Washington Monument at noon Sunday.”
He showed up in torn and faded jeans and a Che Guevarra T-shirt with Angela, the girl from Friday night. “I’m not going back,” he said
“What are you talking about? Are you deserting?” I asked. Incredulity dripped from the question.
“I’m not going back,” he said. “Listen, man, there’s a new world out there. The world is turning upside down. We live in the age of Aquarius now. That bully we met back at the Capitol Building? His days are numbered. It’s not about ego and top dog thinking anymore. These kids are changing the world, they’re creating a new reality. No more wars, no more nine-to-five, and no more up-tight top-down bull shit. These people, this counter-culture movement is the wave of the future. The future is about turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. Come with me.”
The world turned upside down all right. “Dude, you’re going to get a dishonorable and time in the naval prison. Go get your uniform and let’s get back to Norfolk.”
“No way. I burned the uniform and my ID card. I’m free now.”
“You know, don’t you,” I said. “That when Command questions me, I’ll have to tell the truth.”
“It’s okay. The navy and the corporate bosses and the whole military-industrial complex are going to be non-existent by the time your enlistment is up. Can’t you see? Their time is up. Along with that bully back at the Capitol and corporate bosses and command structures everywhere.”
His eyes shined with enthusiasm for his Utopian dream and, maybe, with a little help from some of the drugs that were circulating the counter-culture world.
I pleaded, cajoled, begged, and appealed to his now lacking sense of duty and patriotism. There was no moving him. I returned to Norfolk to await the inevitable arrival of questions about the location and condition of one RM2 Daniel Carter, AWOL.
Carter’s absence was noted at Monday morning’s muster. The barracks quartermaster quizzed me that afternoon about Carter’s whereabouts. I tried to dodge his question for a while, but soon the story spilled out of me. The unit commander soon put me in the hot seat, and by Thursday the FBI had joined in.
I got letters and postcards over the years following that tour of the nation’s capital. He did not sign those missives though, knowing the military has a long memory and never forgets a deserter. The cards and letters slowed to a trickle. The last one, from a year ago, said he was at a Zen Buddhist compound in a western state. The promise of the Summer of Love fizzled out by the time of its tenth anniversary, but Carter continued to live by its anti-conformist, anti-authoritarian creed.
My association with Carter’s desertion kept me in transient for another four months, but I was then assigned to a Submarine tender in the South Atlantic. I made a career in the navy, tended bar when my twenty years were done, and collected my navy pension until retirement. The day I retired I packed up my car and went looking for a Zen Buddhist compound somewhere in the west.
