Drummer Boy

It was my third cruise in three summers, and I still could not get used to the cramped, windowless living situation that followed me onto every boat. I guess if I wanted to, I could have always splurged on a better room, but that always made things more than twice the price, and without the shitty room, it hardly even felt like a cruise.

I borrowed this attitude mostly from my wife, who did not enjoy cruises very much at all, and only came when I insisted.

This might come across as an odd contradiction for some people, seeing as I despise the living situation on a cruise, refuse to upgrade it, and still insist on doing a week-long one every single summer. I never found any issue with this—there were lots of things to do on cruises when you started, and having a small room and a smaller bed made it easier to get up in the morning to actually do those things. It reminded me of my first year in college, where my dormitory was notoriously cramped and grimy, and my roommate was a complete buffoon. I despised being there, but at the end of the day, it got me to see campus more than I ever would have in one of the cushier apartments.

So, it worked out— it was a poor living situation and a good living situation.

I liked to start my mornings on the starboard side of the upper deck, before my wife could get up, and when the sun was just starting to rise. I would take a book, get a coffee or a mimosa (depending on how I felt), and place myself on one of the long tanning chairs that faced away from the pool. I never liked pools on cruises. I understood the practical purpose for them, of course, but the idea of this tiny, controlled body of still water amidst an entire ocean always struck me as an oddity. One obviously can’t just go swimming in the Atlantic Ocean as they do in a pool on a cruise. Still, the contrast between the two waters always became glaring when they were near each other, and thus, the pool always felt too unnatural. Instead, I found a strange alcove in an untapped part of the ship that only had four or five chairs to be used, but besides that, complete peace and quiet.

It was the third morning of the third cruise that I had in three summers. I was on my fourth book of the trip—you go through them quickly when there’s not much else to do—and I decided to start with a mimosa that morning instead of a coffee. I had gotten into an argument with my wife the night before at one of the ship’s bars and figured that some alcohol would help set me straight.

My wife had recommended the book that I was reading, and I was just starting to find that I did not enjoy it at all. Pages and pages of prose seemed to meander all over the place, and at a certain point, I felt that I was deciphering some hidden pidgin, with no understanding of what the author was trying to describe.

At times like that, where I simply cannot penetrate the dense fog of whatever I’m reading, I’ve found it helpful to put the thing down and try to observe my surroundings.

This was harder to do on a cruise in the morning, especially given that I was facing the ocean, away from the pool and commotion. An unbound number of waves stretched around and under, ceaselessly striking against each other at unknowable lengths and speeds. That’s all I could really say about what was around me, because it was so early in the morning and in such an odd place on the ship.

In the midst of this faux meditative state, I heard another person climb into the alcove and set themselves on the other end of it. This was closer than it sounds; there were only four chairs in the place, and the presence of another person immediately rendered me uncomfortable.

The first thing I noticed about this intruder was his tattoos; he carried a long colorful sleeve of them along his right arm that depicted a number of things from the Bible, as well as, for some reason, several lions. On the right side of his chest, he bore the number two in Roman numerals, and all over his left leg, I could make out a sports logo. This was not a particularly striking combination. I could imagine the kind of person, one who carelessly disturbs my comfort, that would get all of those tattoos. If he still had any hair on his head, it would probably be slick and unkempt and greasy, and if the sports team he followed was any good, I could even imagine his disruptive presence in any number of bars during a game.

I must’ve been staring for a little too long, because the man, unfortunately, took notice and mistook my morbid curiosity for friendliness. He shifted, with great thundering labor over his thick stubby thighs, two seats to be next to me and extended a hand with fingers as wide as the sausages he doubtlessly gorged on every morning.

He introduced himself in a loud and gravelly voice, and I did him the polite favor of introducing myself and asking about his tattoos.

His eyes beamed with the ecstasy of a grade schooler doing his show-and-tell report at the end of the school day, and he made quick work to go through every single tattoo down his arm. Most were done when he was in college, he said, and he hardly remembered the meaning when he got them. Back then, he went to church nearly every Sunday with his girlfriend and his friends, so the stories and the ink took on very literal meanings that could be understood well in his circle. Now that all of them, besides his girlfriend, had moved on, and they went to church less and less often, the tattoos began to stray from when he first observed them.

“Now they mean what I want ‘em to,” he told me, and I found that idea rather liberating. He was just about to move on to the tattoos on his legs when I asked him about the one on his chest. It was starkly different from the rest of the tattoos, which were vivid and colorful and probably took lots and lots of ink and money, and time to get done. But “II” in straight black was cheap and quick.

“Now that,” he said, “is for Paolo and Beaumont,” he jabbed at each wrinkled “I” while he spoke. When I asked him who “Paolo and Beaumont” were, he got a little quieter than I expected, before returning to his previous boisterous tone and said, “these t’were my friends in Khafji.” And that was when it was confirmed to me that he was a veteran. From stereotypes alone, I had figured it out earlier, but having it fully established gave me a tight bit of confidence for the rest of the conversation.

By then, I could see where the story was going, but I felt obliged to let him explain anyway. After finishing his bachelor’s degree, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served in the Gulf War before returning to civilian life. Unlike most of the people around him, he maintained his college girlfriend through those years of service and was able to marry her.

“Iranians got ‘em both in Khafji,” he said— pronouncing it “Eye-ran.” I didn’t feel the need to correct him; it was his story, anyway. “T’ousands of us overseas, and only tens of us dying, but I knew two of ‘em that died well,” he frowned, “pretty bad luck, ain’t it?” Then he laughed.

“You survived,” I said, in some part as an act of reassurance. I did not feel comfortable enough around the obtuse stranger to engage in such cruel humor.

“Beaumont had him two kids and a wife already, and Paolo hadn’t so much as looked at a girl his age, but even though they were so different, good friends, they were.” He stroked the patchy spot of grey hair on his chin. “Which one's worse, do you think? To die with so much to lose, or to die having done nothing worth losing?”

“I’d rather not be dead at all,” I said.

He smiled. “Now, I like that answer,” and then leaned back in his chair, and for a moment, I thought he was done speaking. “Old Beau’s kids are mine now, for what it’s worth; they’re asleep somewhere around here.”

“No mom?”

“No mom that cared to raise ‘em alone, at least, damn shame.” He shook his head. “Sorry to interrupt your reading.” He made a gesture towards the book beside me.

“I’m not enjoying it,” I was honest, “my wife liked it, though.”

“You’re married? Isn’t that wonderful?” He spoke like a child; there was nothing particularly wonderful about my marriage; it could be described as perfectly adequate.

“It is,” I said, before pointing at his bottom leg and asking if he could describe the tattoos there. The ones on his arm and chest were more withered and faded by comparison, so I knew that his leg was the most recent, and he might actually remember the specific stories and reasonings behind it.

“Football,” he said, “there’s nothing better, is there?” I nodded along in agreement despite having no interest in sports. “I didn’t get so interested in following them until after I got home from Iran. I had better things to do with my time and money, I guess, but I remember Paolo was a big fan of this college team, and I was thinking it was only right to fight for them when I could.”

“To fight?”

“A man’s got to have something to fight for, he’ll go crazy otherwise. That’s something my own dad taught me. You pick a side, draw a line, and find something to fight for, or something to fight for will find you, and that’s not a pleasant feeling at all.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

Suddenly, he took a deep breath and got very serious. Up until that point, he seemed like a jovial type of guy that you’d find everywhere, a little simple, a little drunk, but still fun. The fun sapped away from his face quickly, like color from a fresh corpse.

“When I got home,” he said, “there t’was still three years that I wanted to fight.”

“Fight who?”

“Pretty much everyone, it had nothing to do with the war, I don’t think, but every night I’d go to bed wanting to hit someone, wanting to strangle the life out of something, anything, even the woman next to me.” Fear gripped me for a second. This man was large, and though he didn’t seem quick to anger, if he were, it could spell danger. “I never acted on any kind of impulse, mind you, but it was there. In the depths of my chest, it wouldn’t go away. I would sleep like that, with that binding around my heart, and I’d wake up like that.”

“I couldn’t tell anyone, that wouldn’t be good,” he continued. “They’d get scared, they’d leave, they’d try to lock me up, it wouldn’t be right, I don’t think. But I felt like I was losing myself, and my mind, for a bit. My wife had a child, and we adopted Beaumont’s two little ones, and the feeling didn’t go away. Nobody even noticed, my wife never commented on my behavior since getting home, and my kids grew and continue to grow to be perfectly normal, but the feeling wouldn’t go away at all. By all accounts, I was the same as always.”

“But the feeling’s gone now, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Well, yeah.” He sounded unsure. It got very quiet again, and I was left with the sound of waves striking each other beneath us, far off, on another world, in the distance.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Beaumont told me a story once.” He straightened his back suddenly, and I saw some of the color and jovial spirit return to his face. “He grew up in Louisiana, and it was a story his teachers would always tell about the Civil War, though there, it was the ‘War Between the States.’” He made heavy quotation marks with his hands. “It’s right after a battle at Charleston, and the Union boys have put the rout to all the southern folk, they’re driving them up and around all around the country, and hunting soldiers out of trenches and homes to capture or kill. There’s this kid on the run, maybe seventeen, and he holes himself up in a trench, blasts one Union man’s eye off with a musket, and stays put while more come to surround him.”

I was beginning to lose interest in the story, but I had the need to listen.

“A Union captain shouts out, ‘why are you doing this?’ and his men all shout too, that southern boy just shot one of their friends dead. But this kid didn’t care that much at all, but the south or the north, he was from Louisiana, as they tell it, and he was poor, and he didn’t own slaves, and he had hardly ever seen one. He wasn’t around for any of those big speeches about slaves, he didn’t read their constitutions— he hardly knew how to read at all. So, what is the kid supposed to say? He goes, ‘because you’re here!’”

“And then?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.” He scratched the bit of hair on his chin again. “They probably killed the kid and buried their friend somewhere, not many other ways they could’ve gone.”

“Because you’re here,” I repeated.

“Right, and I thought that was pretty stupid,” he said.

“Then why did you tell it?”

“Because Beaumont loved that story, he’d talk about it to pretty much everyone; it was his favorite story as a kid, and he got a better liking to it once he actually started shooting at folks himself. ‘Because you’re here.’ That’s all there is to it, I think.”

I was confused, this must’ve been obvious.

“Lots of stuff happens for a lot of different reasons,” he began, “some folks want to do things one way and others want to do it another way.” I could hear the ocean growing stronger and closer. “But the real core of it? The violence? It’s got nothing to do with all that. Why were we shooting at those folks in Khafji? I’m sure you could get into the strategic reasoning of it t’all and the scrupulous ideological details, but why was I, and why were they, Paolo and them? We were there for one reason or another, but the shooting and the killing? It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s just violence, and that’s got nothing to do with the rest of it.”

“Why were they shooting at you?” I asked rhetorically.

“You understand,” he said, pointing to me, “and when you get home, and all those bigger, loftier reasons disappear, and there ain't no orders or ideology separating yourself from your neighbor, you’ll find a reason, because the real reason is that you are there, and there ain’t nothing else to it.”

I considered that hard to believe, and to this day, I still do, but every time I get the chance, when I’m bored with a book and just want to close my eyes, I think about what he said, and I hear the sounds of the ocean moving in every direction, constantly, moving one way or the other, while waves bark orders and bring heaps of bloodless water against each other, far and farther away from anything I can see.

Sixty miles off the coast of Hawaii, in the midst of the sprawling Pacific Ocean, he spun the ship’s wheel around and around, while the tide rose and blustered against the steel drum of his new hull, beating the rhythm of a drummer boy at march. Nothing beside remains.