The Missing Link

Then, one day, upon the breath of a sigh from Fate, Her­self, were a num­ber of new guys wafted onboard–reservists, like myself, who were still very much alive with the warmth and the feel­ing of their own humanity–a wel­come sight for sore eyes.

The first per­son I met was Greg. From Los Ange­les, he was the gre­gar­i­ous mag­net that drew us all together. In build, he reminded me of a lanky tur­tle with­out its shell, for from out of his rounded shoul­ders pro­truded a long skinny neck on top of which sat a head he always held cocked slightly for­ward and off to one side. He stood his ground, though, against the taunts he incurred around his slow, delib­er­ate move­ments and some­what effem­i­nate man­ner­isms. Gifted with an abil­ity to draw, he rose above the herd men­tal­ity of his tor­men­tors by draw­ing satir­i­cal car­i­ca­tures of them. In his hate for the Navy, he reg­u­larly smoked mar­i­juana and, on occa­sion, dropped acid with another ship­mate to escape the pain of it all.

Shortly there­after, Greg intro­duced me to Harold, a rabbity-​​looking fella from Collinsville, Illi­nois. Of slight build, Harold was a very warm and gen­tle per­son, who approached oth­ers with his nose twitch­ing as nib­bled on one of his fin­gers or puffed on a cig­a­rette, like a novice smoker. With his big watery brown eyes fixed else­where, on some dis­tant worry, he often had lit­tle to say. When he did, he never spoke an unkind word about any­one, even the lif­ers. For unlike Greg ’n’ I, his dis­like of the Navy had been tem­pered by the more sat­is­fy­ing posi­tion, he held, as a clerk typ­ist in the ship’s office. Besides, he had a wife and a new­born baby back home to think about. For he had appar­ently got­ten her preg­nant before they were married—before he was ready to assume that much respon­si­bil­ity in his life.

The next per­son, I met, was Marty, a wild and high-​​spirited stal­lion, who would soon prove much more dif­fi­cult to keep cor­ralled than either a boxed tur­tle or a caged rab­bit. For he would go on to become one of the most out­spo­ken mem­bers of the crew beside myself. While he could never accept such a posi­tion for him­self, he deeply respected the stand I had taken against the Navy and stood by me to the very end.

From a tough work­ing class neigh­bor­hood in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, Marty never cow­ered from speak­ing his mind and chal­leng­ing the other mem­bers of the crew. For he hated the Navy and the ani­mallike behav­ior of the lif­ers. A hard worker, he always fol­lowed orders, in spite of the abuse he suf­fered at the hands of some of the lif­ers for express­ing his views. And even though Marty stood up for what he believed, he always acted within the con­fines of the law he felt bound to obey. As an electrician’s mate did he short-​​circuit many a lie the lif­ers lived by. An answer to a prayer, Marty was more than a like-​​minded com­pan­ion, for he was another voice in the desert.

And even though I didn’t know it at the time, I was the miss­ing link, that hypo­thet­i­cal inter­me­di­ate between the myth of man and his ani­mal ances­try. Indeed, I was the next great step in the evo­lu­tion of mankind, which so many of us long to see and yet bit­terly detest when we do.