“Where I come from, Dury,“ he replied, with a little too much glee in my estimation, “ya hit the other guy first, with everything ya got, to disable the motherf—er so he can’t strike back.“

“How does it feel,“ I entreated, “knowing you’ve maimed another human being, possibly for life?“

“He’s a f—in’ animal,“ insisted Marty. “You saw how the motherf—er acted.“

“I also saw how you behaved,“ I rejoined. “Does that make you an animal too? No. Even though he acted like an animal, the other night, it doesn’t make him one either. You’ve dehumanized him, to justify your own cruelty towards animals. But I daresay you’d never consider treating an animal the way you treated that guy. Am I not right?“

“Get off my back, Dury,“ barked Marty. “You’ve been ridin’ my ass ever since I saved yours, the other night at the exchange.“

“Saved my ass!“ I exclaimed. “How d’ya think you saved my ass?“

“Seein’ how ya feel about strikin’ another person,“ Marty replied, “I knew you wouldna hit that guy back if he’da jumped ya. I couldna stood by ’n’ watched that happen, without doin’ somethin’ about it. So I stepped in to keep ya from gettin’ your ass kicked.“

Touched by his brand of chivalry, I didn’t quite know what to say. “Well I guess that about evens the score,“ I finally said.

“How’s that?“ he asked rather good-naturedly.

“After you saved my ass,“ I replied, “I saved yours from gettin’ thrown into the brig.“

And with that, we both laughed.

“Hey Dury,“ exclaimed Marty with the Mexican accent of Poncho.

“Hey Marty,“ I came back like Cisco the Kid.

As we laughed again, before parting, I was overcome by the warmest feelings of affection for him, for he was more than a good friend. He was that part of me for which I was still struggling to find a more conscious form of expression. In fact, he had so helped to put me back in touch with my animal roots, where lies true wisdom, that without the horse’s ass, I’d have probably gotten lost somewhere in the back pages of my mind.

“Dury,“ shouted Marty in a tone of voice that alarmed me.

“What’s the matter?“ I inquired.

“He’s plannin’ to kill ya, Dury!“ exclaimed Marty.

“Who’s plannin’ to kill me?“ I asked.

“Kraft,“ he answered. “He thinks you were behind the fiasco down on the mess decks. He’s so convinced you poisoned my mind and then turned me loose to make a fool out of him in front of everyone.“

“He’s made a fool out of himself,“ I exclaimed, “by choosin’ to live like an animal. He just didn’t like the way you pointed that out to him.

“So he thinks I set him up,“ I mused, for the whole thing’d really been quite spontaneous.

“And then,“ Marty continued, “when he plunked $50 down onto the table and offered it to whoever’d push you overboard, I thought I’d heard everything, until he called those who were standin’ there, all cowards cause no one’d taken him up on his offer. He shut up real quick when he was asked why he didn’t wanna do it himself.“

“Why that Judas priest!“ I exclaimed. “Who the hell does he think he is? Why no one in his right mind would kill another person for a measly fifty bucks!“

“They killed Jesus for less,“ rebutted Marty.

“Yeah, but thirty pieces of silver was a lot of money back then,“ I added. “Fifty dollars, today, ain’t nothin’.“

“I don’t know, Dury,“ rejoined Marty. “I wouldn’t put anything past the motherf___ers. Seein’ how you sit up here by yourself, night after night, why any one of them could sneak up behind ya and push you overboard.“

Unwilling to believe that anyone in his right mind could stoop so low, I concluded that Kraft’d just let off a little steam. “Look at how you act when you get mad at one of them,“ I finally said. “You go off on the poor son of a buck, rantin’ ’n’ ravin’ about how you’ll kill the motherf___er when you get your hands on him. But you don’t ever physically grab hold of him and wring his neck, like you said you would when you were still angry. Instead, you imagine what you’ll do, in order to vent your anger in much the same way you observed Kraft venting his.“

“Only, I don’t plunk money down on the goddamn table and ask someone else to do my dirty work,“ rejoined Marty. “I’m tellin’ ya Dury, you coulda heard a pin drop when Kraft told them you were a threat that had to be reckoned with, if they didn’t wanna see your rebelliousness spread around the ship, like some f___in’ infectious disease.“

“Why I’m impressed,“ I exclaimed.

“Don’t you see, Dury,“ Marty insisted, “If you piss enough of them off, they’re gonna do ya in.“

“I don’t know, Marty,“ I replied. “I just can’t believe they’d go that far. This is the twentieth century, ya know.“

“You can believe what you want, Dury,“ Marty persisted, “cause that don’t mean a goddamn thing to these medieval motherf___kers.“

“I have a hard time lookin’ at Kraft’s conversation any differently than the ones we had around mutiny,“ I rebutted. “While there was a lotta talk about mutinyin’, we never did cause that was not our real intention. Just as I don’t believe Kraft really intends to have me killed. I see his actions as the reaction of his animal nature to bein’ cornered by his own human nature, which he sees as belongin’ to me rather than himself. Unable to reconcile these two aspects of himself, he’s decided to go after his humanity before it takes away the double life he’s been leadin’ as an animal, for he has yet to learn that domestication’s really the only way out of the Jekyll/Hyde dilemma.“

“Listen, Dury,“ insisted Marty. “While all that may be true, you’ve forgotten one thing—the motherf___kers don’t know how to do anything else but live out their f___in’ fantasies on other people. You gotta realize, Dury, that you’re dealin’ with a bunch of f___in’ wild animals, who’ll turn on ya, the minute you think you’ve tamed them.“

“It is written, Marty, that ’the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all of my holy mountain; for the earth’ll be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’ Isaiah 11:6–9. The picture painted here, Marty, by the prophet, is one depictin’ the end of evolution, for it’s within man that these miraculous changes’ll take place.“

“You’re impossible, Dury,“ exclaimed Marty as we both looked at each other and smiled.

“Thanks for warnin’ me,“ I finally conceded. “I don’t know what I’d do without ya.“

So did I go below, that night, assured that harm was less likely to befall me as long as I had friends like Marty watching out for me.

Having arrived at our destination, somewhere off the coast of South Korea, about a week or so later, we encountered more than just our allies, as we almost literally ran into a Russian Naval vessel. For with the coming about of our ship to avoid a collision with the Russian vessel, was I slammed up against the bulkhead in the passageway where I had been assigned to work. Out of the sudden flurry of crewmen that descended upon the passageway from both directions, did I hear someone ask, “What the hell’s goin’ on?“

“We damn near hit a Russian ship,“ came the reply.

In a panic, I dropped what I was doing and raced up topside to see what was going on. Off the stern of the ship, I saw two Russian Naval vessels coming about to head us off. And sure enough, within moments, it seemed as if we were going to collide into one of them again. Only this time we reached the crash point first, forcing the Russian vessel to come about to avoid hitting us.

At one point, I went down below to retrieve my camera, to get some pictures of the Russian ships whenever we maneuvered close enough to get a good shot. As I continued to watch the game, the two of us were playing, I saw the Russians as the kid on the block who had not been invited over to play. Miffed at having been excluded from our games, he then goaded us into playing a dangerous game of chicken. Intimidated at first by his actions, we quickly decided that what this turkey needed was a dose of its own medicine. After getting in a few good licks, we finally drove the Russian kid back to the horizon, where he hung around for awhile to watch us play our precious little war games.

Deeply troubled by the dream, I lay awake for what seemed like an awfully long time. Upset with myself for having given into my sexual desires, I sincerely hoped the dream was not a portent of how I would be conducting myself in real life at some point in the near future.

As I fell back to dreaming again, I beheld a white knight riding towards me on the back of an incredibly beautiful white horse. Overcome by a tremendous fear of what I was seeing, I woke up wondering what I had been so afraid of. In my drowsiness, I managed to unearth some vague notion that the white knight and I were one and the same person, before I fell back to sleep.

This time, as I slipped back into the dream where I’d left it out of fear, I was not so afraid of the white knight when I saw him. Much to my consternation, I was informed by the white knight that I must serve She Who Must Be Obeyed, if I wished to free myself from the spell of the Great Gray Whore. Startled by this revelation, I woke up.

Unable to fall back to sleep, I got up, dressed myself and moseyed on up topside to my favorite perch to begin the painful process of trying to catch a glimpse into the meaning of these god-awful dreams. Not until I had let go of my own thoughts, long enough to hear those of my heart, did I realize my mistake. Having told the Temple Priest, under psychological duress, that I would eat again, I essentially gave myself back to the Navy. In other words, before it dawned on me that I must find out why I wanted out of the Navy, I fell victim to servicing a whore of the Great Gray Mother—to putting my energies back into a way of life which was not meant for me. Even though I had been enthralled by the incredible power I had briefly commanded in my new role as the white knight, I grew fearful of the price I might have to pay to play such an obscure part. Out of fear, I relinquished this new role, and fell back into an unconscious state of being. So did I, by emotionally distancing myself from the white knight, effectively rid myself of the fear of stepping into his shoes before I was ready. To my consternation, I was informed that I could serve only one mistress, either She Who Must Be Obeyed or her shadow, the Great Gray Whore.

Unable to crack the shell surrounding the truth of these images, I began to feel some regret over having ended my fast so soon, and wondered if more wouldn’t have been revealed to me had I continued it.

As I continued to listen to my feelings, I felt as if I were stuck on the threshold of a dream, only because I didn’t know how to enter it. While the Great Gray Whore drove me to act instinctively, like a wild animal, She and the white knight were trying to show me the way out, the doorway to my humanity. Only I just couldn’t take the first step—that big of a leap in faith. I was too afraid to simply walk into the unknown without having some idea of where I was going.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,“ I replied.

“If you were, I’d have asked ya to leave,“ he said. “As it is, I feel the need for some good company and a bit of stimulating conversation.“

Struck by not only his honesty but also his impeccable dress, an obviously freshly pressed set of tailor-made dungarees, I asked him, “Did ya get in trouble today?“

“Nah,“ he answered, “I’m too short. With less than a week to go on this godforsaken can, they (meaning the lifers) can’t touch me.“

I was deeply saddened by the news that he’d be leaving so soon. Even though he wasn’t as warm and vibrant as Van, I nonetheless took an immediate liking to him. For I experienced this young rebellious intellectual from Boston, Massachusetts, as a godsend. Envious of his impending discharge, I wished I were in his shoes instead.

“For four long years,“ he continued, “I’ve struggled against becoming an animal like the rest of these bastards. Next week when I walk off this ship for the last time, I’ll have prevailed.“

“I know the feeling,“ I interjected.

“From the first day of my enlistment,“ he rejoined, “they drummed the idea into my head that I had joined this outfit for one reason only: to fight for my country. But they lied to me, for I ended up spending four long years fightin’ to save my ass from them.

“Don’t believe a word of what the lyin’ vultures say, for they prey upon human flesh with talons made of lies. Resist the temptation to become one of them. And whatever you do, don’t let them rob you of the most precious gift you have, your humanity, for the wraiths will claw away at it until all that remains is the shadow of what was once you.“

“For almost a year,” he went on to say between fits of sobbing and outrage, “I’ve been forced to live like some goddamn animal, slitherin’ about the jungles of Southeast Asia on its belly, never knowin’, from one moment to the next, whether or not it’d survive the hunt. As both the hunter and the hunted I played the deadliest game of all, the survival of the fittest, killing other human beings—even women and children—fore they killed me. Like a beast, I trusted no one but the members of my pack and the gods back home, for whom I fought so diligently, that they might retain their dominion o’er the monsters they’d made outta me ‘n’ my cohorts in crime.

“Havin’ made a pact with the devil, early on, I traded lives with the other members of my pack, that I too might live as long as the gods back home. For unlike the Auddie Murphys and John Waynes, I held back to let the daredevils take the fall. As the face of my platoon changed, with the death of one after another of these poor fools, I imagined I was next in line to die. I musta died a thousand deaths fore I was released from this firestorm of bullets, for every time I watched one of these unsung heroes die, oddly enough, I saw a part of myself die…”