Dogfight by Michael Knight Page A

might inform the higher powers. These men walked a fine line. The ships had to be repaired in reasonable time, of course, or there would be no business at all, but if they were finished too quickly, it might seem as if fewer men were needed, or the interval before the next ship arrived might be long enough that layoffs became necessary. The work had to be timed perfectly, not too slow or too fast, or the balance would be upset. It wasn’t laziness that slowed the work, as my uncle complained, it was fear. Except Wishbone. I don’t know what slowed him down. Wishbone wasn’t afraid of anything that I could tell.
    I took off my hard hat, belly-crawled to the hatch, and hung myself silently over to watch them. Gerald and Wishbone were on their backs with their feet propped against the far wall, passing a joint between them, its glowing tip visible in the semidarkness. They were giggling like stoned schoolboys.
    â€œWhadju tell him?” Wishbone was talking now, holding the joint between two fingers, blowing lightly on the coal. He dragged, offered it to Gerald, but Gerald waved it away.
    â€œI said, ‘Yo dumbass, standing on a trip wire and you want me to stay and
talk?’
Boy want somebody to keep him company while we wait for the EOC. Don’t explode when you step on it, see. They blow when you step off, get the guy behind you, which in this case is me. I said, ‘You crazy as you are dumb.’”
    Gerald laughed a little, which got Wishbone started again too. It took a minute for him to get himself back under control. “You leave him?” he said, finally.
    â€œNaw,” Gerald said. “I stuck around a while. Guess I’m dumb as he was.”
    â€œShit, Gerald,” Wishbone said. “The Nam.”
    â€œIt wasn’t all bad,” Gerald said. “Saw my first live monkey in Vietnam.”
    They stared quietly at the ceiling for a moment. The sun cast a spotlight beam that fell just short of where they lay, and I could see my shadow in the dusty light. I could feel the blood behind my eyes, could smell all those dead fish that had been there before us. I had been thinking about crashing angrily into the hold, doing an impersonation of my uncle, shouting, “Heads are gonna roll around here,” and watching them scramble to their feet in panic, but I decided against it. I was already late with Wishbone’s cigarettes. I stood and tiptoed away from the hatch. Then, I approached again, saying, “I’m back, fellas. Sorry it took so long,” unnecessarily loud, making extra noise, the way you clomp around when coming home to a dark, empty house to give the burglars or ghosts or whatever time to clear out.
    When I got home, finally, I walked around the side of the house to the pool, stripping as I went. My sister was stretched on a lounge chair in her American flag bikini, one knee up, and a boy her age was lying on his side on a second chair, watching her, two sweating glasses of Coke on the table between them. I must have been a strange sight in my boxer shorts, my body pale from hours below deck, forearms and face smeared with sweat and grime, like an actor in blackface only partly painted. They looked up when I passed, and Virginia started to say something, but I didn’t give her a chance. I plunged into the clear water, cutting off the sound of her, and let myself glide, rubbing dirt from my arms and cheeks as I went, leaving a distinct, muddy trail in the water, like a jet stream. I floated to the surface in the deep end and hovered there, belly down like a drowned man, until I had to take a breath. The water was pure, cold energy on my skin.
    â€œMom’s gonna kill you for not washing first,” Virginia said.
    â€œMom’s not gonna find out, is she.” I paddled to the shallow end and stood looking her in the eyes. The pool was chest deep at this end, and my body felt almost weightless in the water.
    â€œShe