“Jazz!” Melanie yelled from downstairs.
“What, hon?”
“Shirts! We have company!”
Jazz selected two shirts from one of the boy’s dressers and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen the Admiral handed him a beer.
“Let’s go outside.”
Jazz stood next to the picnic table on their back porch. He sipped his beer, waiting, feeling the Admiral had something important to say.
“It’s a hell of a thing you did today.”
Jazz could not tell by his father’s voice if this was a compliment or an admonition.
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“No, I mean it. You should be proud.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I have two gifts for you. The first is a piece of advice. Don’t worry as much about being a good EOD Tech because you’ll never measure up. Be a good officer, a good 1140, a good OIC. The bomb tech stuff will come, but your success or failure will be based upon your performance as an officer.”
“Thanks, sir. That is good advice.”
Both men drank in silence a few minutes more until Eleanor opened the door, interrupting them. She smiled and handed her husband a gift.
“Here’s the present dear.”
“Thanks, Eleanor. Give us a moment will you?”
When she closed the door he handed the box to Jazz.
“Open it.”
Jazz set his beer down on the picnic table. He took the parcel from his father’s hands. It was wrapped in shiny gold paper and blue ribbon. Jazz noticed that it had some weight to it.
He slid the ribbon off and peeled back the paper. Then he opened the box. Inside was a knife. It was a dive knife. Jazz recognized the black plastic handle and the darkened blade. It was the Mark-III, the mission knife used by UDT, SEALs, EOD, and other specialized diving units.
“Holy cow, sir! Where did you get this?”
“In my cruise box.”
“What?” Jazz was confused. “Uh, I didn’t put it there…”
“It’s mine. Was mine.”
“What!”
Admiral James J. Jascinski sat down at the table and took another long drag from his beer draining it.
“Sit down.”
Jazz sat.
“What I’m about to tell you is in confidence. Nobody in my family knows, probably nobody left on active duty. Only your mother, and now you, are aware of this.”
Jazz noticed that his father was whispering.
“I tried out for UDT.”
“What!” Jazz exclaimed.
“I washed out. I rang the bell. I quit.”
Now Jazz was speechless.
“I volunteered during my first tour aboard USS Spiegel Grove. I had heard of UDT, and had seen the guys around the base at Little Creek. I went from Spiegel Grove right to UDT Replacement Training.”
“Excuse my French, Admiral, but holy shit! I had no idea.”
“Yes well, I did not want anyone to know. I rang the bell after four weeks into it. Before the day was out, I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. I had never failed in anything in my whole life.
“I tried to get back into training, but of course they wouldn’t let me. It was too late. I was given orders to a new ship, and I never spoke of it to anyone again until now.”
The Admiral paused, letting what he just said to sink in. Jazz unsheathed the knife and looked at it.
“When I left UDT training, I had to turn in my gear. Fins, mask, UDT vest. But I couldn’t find the knife. I signed some paperwork for it and then discovered it in my sea bag weeks later. I almost threw it away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I decided to keep it as a memento of my failure, a symbol of my lack of fortitude. I put all my shame and weakness into that knife and locked it in my cruise box. I became determined to never again fail at anything.
“Not often, but periodically I would return to the knife. Sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose, to remind myself of what it felt like to fail… so that I would never fail again.”
“Damn.”
“Yes, well. Perhaps you know a little more about me now. James, I genuinely thought you were making a mistake by doing this. I wanted a career for you, command at sea, admiral, everything. I wanted you to have a career like mine. No, I’d hoped you’d accomplish more than I did in my career. I even dared to hope you’d become Chief of Naval Operations. Leaving the mainstream Navy, going into this EOD thing, well all that was gone.”
Jazz heard his father’s voice cracking. He looked up at the Admiral. Jazz saw moisture in his eyes and his skin had crimsoned.
“Remember that night that you and Melanie came to the house?” asked the Admiral.
“When I told you we were gong to Ingleside? Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, you’re mother and I had a knock-down-drag-out fight that night. She was angry with me for my behavior, said we’d never see you again. She gave me the full ‘Come to Jesus’ routine, a real hum-dinger. Of course I was having none of it. I swear it was the ugliest fight of our marriage.
“Afterward she banished me to my ‘At- Sea Cabin.’”
“The basement?”
“Precisely. I sat down on the couch to watch TV and put my feet up on my coffee table down there.”
“The cruise box.”
“Right. So anyway, I opened it and found that damn thing. I looked at it and thought about things for a long damn time. Finally I realized that the knife had changed. I no longer felt like a failure for quitting UDT training and more importantly that it didn’t matter that you were never going to be CNO.”
Then the Admiral began to openly weep. He looked down and held his breath for a moment.
“I realized that you already have accomplished the one thing I never could.”
A moment of silence passed before Jazz managed a, “Thanks, sir.”
Jazz then smiled at his father and sheathed the knife. He stood and stepped past him to the door. He knew that James J. Jascinski Sr. needed time to himself.
“Son.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Tell your mother I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jazz went inside and showed Melanie the knife his father found for him in an antique shop.
ELEVEN
It was a short drive from Portland to Ingleside but the two places seemed a world apart. Jazz left the manicured lawns and franchised restaurants of Portland’s suburbia and headed for Ingleside’s Oncelerville of oil refineries and chemical plants dotting the Corpus Christi Bay. On his left were cotton fields, Jazz’s proverbial grickle-grass. Their spots of white and brown reminded him of a spice cake. After a week Jazz was still amazed at how flat the land was. The miles upon miles of uninterrupted view reminded him of being at sea. You could see a pick-up truck, whipping up dust as it drove toward you from ten miles away.
Jazz guided the car down Ingleside’s Main Street for the third time in the past week. He drove past the breakfast burrito shop, a myriad of drinking establishments, and on towards the naval base.
A sign at the main gate read:
Naval Station Ingleside
Mine Warfare Center of Excellence
Two days before he visited the base just to orient himself. He had driven along the waterfront passing the piers and the quaywall slowly so that he could take a good look at all of the ships in port. Twenty-two Mine Coastal Hunters and Mine Countermeasures ships were stationed in Ingleside. At any given time two or three were at sea and one or two were in the shipyard, but there was always a flock in port.
The larger Mine Countermeasure Ships or MCMs were christened with names that denoted bravery; Avenger, Warrior, Chief. The MHCs were named for birds; Osprey, Black Hawk, Commorant. Many of the MHCs had the same logo as their professional sport counterparts, Oriole, Raven, Cardinal.