“AT HOME FIGHTING THE HEATHENS”
by OPOVV, ©2015
(Sep. 4, 2015) — ACT I
The curtain rises on a moonlit night. There are five men dressed in dungarees lounging around on blankets beneath the missile launcher on the fantail of a US Navy destroyer leisurely patrolling at 5 knots. A sailor enters from stage right.
Petty Officer Clark: “Well, now, look who’s joining the party. What’s wrong, Henderson, couldn’t sleep?”
Seaman Henderson: “Nah, it’s that gosh-darn air conditioning. They got it turned up so high that I get all dehydrated and feel like a prune when I wake up.”
Seaman Jordon: “I could never get that right. You mean they have it turned down too much.”
Chief Rich: “No, Henderson’s right: higher is lower.”
Petty Officer Nichols: “Go on with what we were talking about, Chief.”
Chief Rich: “Right. All I’m saying is that it’s better to fire and be wrong than not to fire and get yourself killed, or worse.”
Seaman Oaks: “Great. ‘Lower is higher,’ and there’s worse things than getting killed.”
Chief Rich: “Worse as in getting taken prisoner, okay? Look, this isn’t some John Wayne hero movie we’re in: this is for real and these rag-heads are crazy.
“You know what those people were thinking, the ones who had to jump out of those busted windows in the Twin Towers on 9-11? Last thoughts were of their loved ones, what they didn’t say the last time they saw them; how much they meant to them. So the last thing you want is to have your loved ones watch you being beheaded on the 6 o’clock news. That’s no way to check out.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I’ll tell you this: don’t be no hero. Just follow the lead of the person you’re under. And save the last round for yourself.”
Seaman Oaks: “Jeez, Chief, you make it sound like we’re going into Injun country.”
Petty Officer Nichols: “Listen up, Oaks. He’s trying to save your life.”
Chief Rich: “Look, I’ve served with this captain before. He’s going to do it by the book, but that doesn’t mean to take any crazy unnecessary chances.”
Petty Officer Nichols: “So what’s the game plan?”
Chief Rich: “It’s a small port with a lot of nighttime nefarious activity. One beautiful concrete and steel-reinforced dock, about 600 feet long. Small village, maybe a couple of thousand. Electricity supplied by generators.
“We’re going in fast and quiet, but they’ll know it so it’ll be no surprise party. We’ll be going in forward, and when we hightail it out of there we’ll be backing out so as to protect our #1 defense, this-here missile launcher. (pats launcher)
“Henderson and Jordon will be carrying the satchels of explosive; Clark will attach them to the piers; and the rest of the crew will be at battle stations.
“We’ll have five snipers backing the expendables up. Face it: fact of life. Henderson and Jordon will be Clark’s Guardian Angels with M4 carbines. I’ll be on the pier, at the end, right where the bow will be, with the BAR that my dad brought back with him from Vietnam. No, he didn’t steal it; he borrowed it so I get to protect you guys with it. He even named it, believe it or not. He calls it ‘Moose.’ It saved him and his men once, and I believe it’ll do the same for us. Consider it our ‘Good Luck” piece.
“Now, I know you guys got a lot of questions but we don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll turn it over to Clark.”
Petty Officer Clark: “Remember last month when I was flown off to visit ‘my sick mother’? I wasn’t: what I was doing was learning how to place the charges so that these concrete piers would blow up in such a way as to make it very difficult for them to clean out the deep water channel next to the pier, which is why we don’t send a cruise missile in or an F-16 with a bunker buster. It’s got to be done with finesse.”
The men applaud while Clark stands and bows.
Chief Rich: “That’s enough for now. Let’s get a couple of hours of shut-eye and I’ll be seeing you all on the mess decks at 0600.”
Choruses of ‘Night, Chief’ ring out as the men straighten their blankets, take off their shoes, lay on their backs and place the shoes under their heads, as a pillow, as the curtain closes.
End of ACT I
ACT II
The curtain rises on a chaotic scene: tracer rounds, grenades exploding, smoke. The pier stretches beyond stage left and ends at stage right, where we see the bow of the destroyer on the far side. The Chief is lying on his stomach firing away with the BAR. Far stage left are Clark, Henderson and Jordon, on their stomachs, slowly inching backwards. Henderson and Jordon are firing their M4’s, while Clark has a Beretta M9.
Seaman Henderson: “She told you that?”
Seaman Jordon: “That’s right. She said that she tells her mother everything. So I said, ‘Everything’, and she says, ‘Everything.’”
Seaman Henderson: “You’re not going to see her again. Tell me you’re not going to see her again.”
Petty Officer Clark: “Excuse me for interrupting your important conversation, gentlemen, but we happen to be in what the manual defines as a ‘Firefight,’ which means shots are being exchanged.”
Seaman Henderson: “Excuse me, Petty Officer Clark, but we’re quite aware that we may expire at any moment; but, then again, we may not. What I’m trying to do is to save this young man’s life, in a manner of speaking.”
Petty Officer Clark: “Come on, guys, could you possibly back up just a little bit faster?”
Seaman Henderson: “Here’s one for you, Clark. Clerk in Kentucky refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and they throw her in jail. So my question is: I guess a Civil Union wasn’t good enough for these same-sex couples, was it?”
Petty Officer Clark: “You guys, do you think we can concentrate on killing those people who are trying to kill us?”
Seaman Jordon: “Ahhh! And I just got this shirt last week, and now it’s got a hole in it. And look, besides the hole, it’s getting stained with someone’s blood.”
Seaman Henderson: “I was wondering about that. I was going to ask you if you bought it at the Ship’s Store. You didn’t, did you? You had it custom-fitted from one of those Hong Kong tailors, I bet.”
Seaman Jordon: “So what? I want to look good, and looking good costs money. Fact of life.”
Seaman Henderson: “About that blood? Here’s my sock. Hold it right there and keep pressure on it. Give the gun to Clark and I’ll pull you back.”
Seaman Jordon: “Without a sock? You do that for me?”
Seaman Henderson: “Clark was right: just shut up and let’s see if we can make it back to the ship.”
Curtain lowers.
End of Act II
ACT III
Curtain rises on the mess decks of the destroyer. The men are sitting at a table, in dungarees, except for Seaman Jordon, who is wearing a Sick Bay smock with his arm in a sling.
Seaman Oaks: “So how’d it feel to have a bullet go through your arm? You’re lucky it missed a bone.”
Seaman Jordon: “The truth? Take a real healthy wasp, have it sting you and then take a red-hot knitting needle and push it all the way through. End of story.”
Chief Rich: “Does it hurt now?”
Seaman Jordon: “Aches, is all. Sore as all get-out but better than when it happened, that I can tell you.”
Petty Officer Clark: “So, you going to see her again? The one that tells her mother everything?”
Seaman Jordon: “Enough. So this county clerk in Kentucky gets sent to jail for refusing to uphold a law that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over in the first place, and we’re fighting these heathens over here while we should be back home fighting the heathens there.”
Chief Rich: “My sediments exactly. Looks as if the Ship of State is a ship without a rudder.”
Curtain lowers.
End of ACT III
FINI