Chapter 9

"You know Bill, we're fifty five years old."

'Holy Shit! It IS true! 1946, Baby Boomers! The landlord was born in 1947. I'm older than my landlord! If anybody knew ... I mean Actually KNEW, I'd be in jail in an instant.'

Pedophile took on a whole new meaning.

'Looking at those little girls ... lusting after the redhead ... Megan!! She was probably, what? Sixteen? Remember the time you responded '1946' when someone ... who was it? ... asked his birthdate.' Bill scratched his head just above his right ear. 'Fuck! I don't remember!'

Bill was in a panic. Inside his mind, he was born in 1946. The second child of a dad who still suffered from the memories of the Second World War.

Those weeks in the pine forests of Western Michigan, "Camping" Dad called it. Long walks along the Lake Michigan shore, sometimes with Wili on his shoulders and 'Billyboy' running circles around the two of them ... those walks weren't for fun.

Daddy was trying to find a place where the hot salt water wasn't crowded with dead facedown Marines ... sullen in the small surf.

Where some of the second wave of landing craft weren't landing sideways and turning over because the helmsman was standing bolt upright, hands clenched tightly to the spokes of the wheel but missing everything from the neck up. Turning over and spilling bloody screaming body parts, unrecognizable as the 36 buddies he'd shared a last cigarette with and then climbed down the nets to the first wave of LCP's Those flat nosed ramped coffins that always smelled of the shit and piss of Marines so scared they lost control of their bowels.

And that was after one landing with those ridiculous boats with the stairs ... by god ... stairs! on each side that the men had to march down in SINGLE file, perfect targets for a Type 99 machinegun. Watching the line of spouts advance towards the boat and walk right up the stairs ... knowing that one less ranging shot would have hit you instead of the first man before you. Luck? God? ... Kick the still writhing bloody mess over the side and get OFF that deathtrap ... quick ... before the loader got a second magazine in place.

The LCP 'armored ramp'? As soon as those Smart, Tall, Well Trained, and Excellently visioned Imperial Marines, those damned fanatics, realized the 7.7 round of the Type 99 bounced off, they brought out the Type 97 antitank MACHINEGUN, fer Christsake! A Twenty Millimeter armor piercing bullet that cut through that joke of an armored ramp and right out the back of the boat ... and sometimes right through the engine as well. Let's, please, please, dear god ... let me forget about the 11 sturdy and stalwart Marines standing between the ramp and the motor. The third man had just lit his LAST cigarette..."I'm quitting after this last one," he said, an instant before his entire chest dissolved ... the grizzled Veteran, the man who JOINED when he was15 so he could go to France and spank the Hun, grabbed the cigarette before it hit the piss laden water on deck, picked off a piece of still quivering lung and SMOKED IT!!

These Marines weren't volunteers ... drafted, these Marines never saw dress blues after the single picture sent home to the parents ... the dress uniform with the snapped elastic back that made you look so much like the pretty, square jawed hunk the girls dreamed about. No girl dreamed about Greens ... you were a Marine ... of course you wore the Blues with the white hat! You carried a sword ... not a rifle. The ARMY wore Green!

Sometimes ... actually quite often ... Daddy scared him ... he'd start to wade out in the water with Wili on his shoulders and scream, "I'm coming, Mack!." He never found Mack. Mack had drifted out to sea where he became one of the 'missing' instead of the dead. The missing had insurance that didn't have to be paid for seven years. He might show up and his ex widow would have to pay it back.

But there were other times ... times when Daddy and Mommy sat around the fire with other campers, other Marines trying to find peace. They watched the lights of the lake boats reflected on still waters, watched the loom of the lighthouse, and sang the songs of Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey, along with "Three little fishes in the bottom of the pool." and "Marsidotes and Doesedoats and Lttlelamsedivie." That one was fun.

The world, that world, came to an end the day a newcomer and his beautiful wife showed up. He played a really fine, and practiced guitar ... they sang all the neat songs, the driftwood fire burned down to embers and he and his wife stood, "Maybe you know this one ... sing it with me.

"I have started for a city
on that bright eternal shore.
Where the saved of God shall gather
and live on forever more.
'Tis a land of love and beauty
like my Bible says in Psalms.
Bound for the land of Canaan
when I die.
Oh yes I'm bound for the land of Canaan
Canaan's happy land
By the love and grace of God
I surely am gaining.
Some happy day
with all the ransomed I'll stand
and praise his name for ever
in Canaan's happy land."

The harmony was FANTASTIC...

The preacher, for he surely was, a preacher, called on the power of God in the midst of that group of lost and struggling Veterans ... those beaten, bloody, but unbowed Marines saw something that could make their lives whole again. Hope! Hope for forgiveness for the terrible things they had seen ... Hope and forgiveness for the terrible things they had done ... and all of it in the name of a God who was 'surely' on our side.