Read The Purple Decades Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
The Purple Decades (36 page)
Thereafter Bill Jackson could get down to the serious business, which was to use his official recognition to raise money for the sewing machines for his organization's dashiki factory ⦠black-designed, black-made, black-worn dashikis to be manufactured by the youth themselves ⦠There were no two ways about it. Bill Jackson and his
group were looking good. That particular scene gave a lot of people heart. It wasn't long before an enterprising brother named Ronnie started his own group. The New Thang.
group were looking good. That particular scene gave a lot of people heart. It wasn't long before an enterprising brother named Ronnie started his own group. The New Thang.
“The New
Thang?”
said Mayor Alioto, after they had put in their own unique and confounding appearance at City Hall.
Thang?”
said Mayor Alioto, after they had put in their own unique and confounding appearance at City Hall.
“That's right, The New Thang.”
The Mayor looked wigged out, as if the lights had gone out in his skull.
“Thang,” said Ronnie. “That's Thing in African.”
“Oh,” said the Mayor. There wasn't even the faintest shade of meaning in his voice.
Lillian Carter
D
own a perfectly green tunnel, as cool and quiet as you can possibly imagineâno, it's not a tunnel, it's more like a hall of mirrorsâbut they're not mirrors, those aren't reflections, they're openings, one after another, on and onâjust a minute! it's very familiar!âout of this cool green memory comes a steward, a tiny man, in uniform, a white jacket, perfectly starched and folded and creased like an envelope over his crisp little bones. Who doesn't know him! Here comes Bye Borty-bibeâ
own a perfectly green tunnel, as cool and quiet as you can possibly imagineâno, it's not a tunnel, it's more like a hall of mirrorsâbut they're not mirrors, those aren't reflections, they're openings, one after another, on and onâjust a minute! it's very familiar!âout of this cool green memory comes a steward, a tiny man, in uniform, a white jacket, perfectly starched and folded and creased like an envelope over his crisp little bones. Who doesn't know him! Here comes Bye Borty-bibeâ
“Bye borty-bibe!”
He's saying it!
Dowd wakes up and it's 5:45 on the button, as always, and he looks across the stateroom at the steward. The steward is a little Filipino in a white jacket who hesitates, so as to make sure Dowd actually wakes up at bye borty-bibe, as he always pronounces it, and then he disappears down the passageway.
There is something eccentric in the way the day begins. It's terribly genteel!âhaving a little servant in a white jacket come by and respectfully summon you into consciousness so you can go hang your hide out for human skeet and sweat horribly. More servants will come in after Dowd leaves and make up his bed and clean up the stateroom and dust off the TV and the safe and clean off the desk and take out the laundry.
Only your laundryman knows for sure!
That was the usual joke, but there were some men who came aboard for the first time, and after a couple of hops north they would actually wonder whether it could get so badâwhether a man could get so frightened that he would literally lose controlâ
only your laundryman knows for sure!
â
and whether later, in the bowels of the ship, in the laundry room, there might actually be some little laundry humper, some sweatback, some bye-bye steward of the soul, who would, in fact,
know.
Only your laundryman knows for sure!
That was the usual joke, but there were some men who came aboard for the first time, and after a couple of hops north they would actually wonder whether it could get so badâwhether a man could get so frightened that he would literally lose controlâ
only your laundryman knows for sure!
â
and whether later, in the bowels of the ship, in the laundry room, there might actually be some little laundry humper, some sweatback, some bye-bye steward of the soul, who would, in fact,
know.
In the first moments, when you wake up, it's as if you're furiously scanning, painting all the stray trash on the screen, although usually that begins to fade as soon as you're on your feet. In a moment Dowd would be out in the good green passageway. The passageway is a very cool and immaculate green, not luxurious, you understandâin fact, every twenty feet there is a hatchway with a kneeknocker you have to step over, and as you look on and on through these hatchways, one after the other, it's like a hall of mirrorsâbut it is green and generally pleasing to the nervous system. Actually ⦠that is not all there is to it. It is also good because, if the truth be known, being on this good green passageway means that you are traveling first-class, sleeping in a stateroom, with only one roommate, and you have the aforesaid servants standing by. It is not even a subject that one thinks about in so many words. And yet the ship is constructed in such an obvious fashion, in layers, that one can't help but know that down below ⦠they are living in quite another way, in compartments, with thirty to forty souls to a compartment, and they wake up to a loudspeaker and make up their own bunks and run along to a loudspeaker through gray-and-beige tunnels and eat in a gray-and-beige galley off trays with scullion gullies stamped into them, instead of in a wardroom.
A wardroom!âalso genteel in its way. Like the rest of them, Dowd is usually doing well if he gets up in time to make it to breakfast with his guy-in-back, Garth Flint, in the smaller wardroom, where they eat cafeteria-style. More than once he hasn't even managed that and has departed with nothing in his gullet but a couple of cups of coffee, notwithstanding all the lectures about the evil consequences this has for your blood-sugar level. But when they come back, Dowd and Flint and the others can enjoy the offerings of a proper wardroom, the formal one. They can take off the reeking zoom-bags, get dressed, sit down at a table with a white tablecloth on it, write out their orders on club slips, after the fashion of a men's club in New York or London, and more little Filipino stewards in white jackets will pick up the orders and serve dinner on china plates. The china has a certain dignity: it's white with a band of blue about the rim and a blue crest in the center. The silverwareânow, that's rather nice! It's ornamental and heavy, it has curlicues and a noble gravity, the sort of silverware one used to see in the dining room of the good hotel near the railroad station. So they have dinner on a field of white and silver, while little stewards in white jackets move about the edges. The bulkheads (as the walls are known here) are paneled with walnut rectangles framed
with more walnut; not actual wood, which is forbidden because it is inflammable, but similar enough to fool the eye. Off to the side are clusters of lounge chairs upholstered in leather and some acey-deucey tables. Silver and heavy glass wink out of a manly backdrop, rich as burled wood and Manila cigars; for here in the wardrooms of the
Coral Sea
the Navy has done everything that interior decoration and white mess jackets can do to live up to the idea of Officers & Gentlemen, within the natural limits of going to war on the high seas.
with more walnut; not actual wood, which is forbidden because it is inflammable, but similar enough to fool the eye. Off to the side are clusters of lounge chairs upholstered in leather and some acey-deucey tables. Silver and heavy glass wink out of a manly backdrop, rich as burled wood and Manila cigars; for here in the wardrooms of the
Coral Sea
the Navy has done everything that interior decoration and white mess jackets can do to live up to the idea of Officers & Gentlemen, within the natural limits of going to war on the high seas.
The notion often crosses Dowd's mind:
It's like jousting.
It's like jousting.
Every day they touch the napkins to their mouths, depart this gently stewarded place, and go forth, observing a checklist of written and unwritten rules of good form, to test their mettle, to go forth to battle, to hang their hides out over the skeet shooters of Hanoi-Haiphong ⦠thence to return, after no more than two hours ⦠to this linenfold club and its crisp starched white servitors.
One thing it is not good to think about is the fact that it would be even thus on the day when, finally, as has already happened to 799 other American aviators, radar-intercept officers, and helicopter crewmen, your hide is blown out of the sky. That day, too, would begin within this same gentlemanly envelope.
Fliers with premonitions are not healthy people. They are known as accidents waiting to happen. Now, John Dowd and Garth Flint are not given to premonitions, which is fortunate and a good sign; except that it won't make a great deal of difference today, because this is that day.
Â
To get up on the flight deck of the
Coral Sea,
Dowd and Flint usually went out through a hatch onto a catwalk. The catwalk hung out over the side of the ship just below the level of the deck. At about midships they climbed a few feet up a ladder and they would be on the deck itself. A simple, if slightly old-fashioned, procedure, and by now second natureâ
Coral Sea,
Dowd and Flint usually went out through a hatch onto a catwalk. The catwalk hung out over the side of the ship just below the level of the deck. At about midships they climbed a few feet up a ladder and they would be on the deck itself. A simple, if slightly old-fashioned, procedure, and by now second natureâ
âbut what a marvelous low-volt amusement was available if you were on the
Coral Sea
and you saw another mortal, some visitor, some summer reservist, whoever, make his first excursion out onto that deck. He takes a step out onto the catwalk, and right away the burglar alarm sounds in his central nervous system. Listen, Skipper!âthe integrity of the circuit has been violated somewhere! He looks out over the railing of the catwalk, and it might as well be the railing of the goddamned Golden Gate Bridge. It's a sixty-foot drop to the sea below, which is waterâbut what conceivable difference does that make? From this height the water looks like steel where it picks up reflections of the hull of the carrier, except that it ripples and breaks
up into queasy facetsâand in fact the horizon itself is pitching up and down ⦠The whole freaking Golden Gate Bridge is pitching up and down ⦠the big wallowing monster can't hold still ⦠Christ, let's get up on the deck, away from the edgeâbut it's only when he reaches the deck itself and stands with both feet planted flat that the full red alert takes over.
Coral Sea
and you saw another mortal, some visitor, some summer reservist, whoever, make his first excursion out onto that deck. He takes a step out onto the catwalk, and right away the burglar alarm sounds in his central nervous system. Listen, Skipper!âthe integrity of the circuit has been violated somewhere! He looks out over the railing of the catwalk, and it might as well be the railing of the goddamned Golden Gate Bridge. It's a sixty-foot drop to the sea below, which is waterâbut what conceivable difference does that make? From this height the water looks like steel where it picks up reflections of the hull of the carrier, except that it ripples and breaks
up into queasy facetsâand in fact the horizon itself is pitching up and down ⦠The whole freaking Golden Gate Bridge is pitching up and down ⦠the big wallowing monster can't hold still ⦠Christ, let's get up on the deck, away from the edgeâbut it's only when he reaches the deck itself and stands with both feet planted flat that the full red alert takes over.
This flight deckâin the movie or the training film the flight deck is a grand piece of gray geometry, perilous, to be sure, but an amazing abstract shape dominating the middle of the ocean as we look down upon it on the screenâand yet, once the newcomer's two feet are on itâ
geometry
âmy God, man, this is a ⦠skillet! It
heaves,
it moves up and down underneath his feet, it pitches up, it pitches down, as the ship moves into the wind and, therefore, into the waves, and the wind keeps sweeping across, sixty feet up in the air out in the open sea, and there are no railings whatsoeverâand no way whatsoever to cry out to another living soul for a helping hand, because on top of everything else the newcomer realizes that his sense of hearing has been
amputated entirely
and his voice is useless. This is a
skillet!
âa frying pan!âa short-order grill!ânot gray but black, smeared with skid marks from one end to the other and glistening with pools of hydraulic fluid and the occasional jet-fuel slick, all of it still hot, sticky, greasy, runny, virulent from God knows what traumasâstill ablaze!âconsumed in detonations, explosions, flames, combustion, roars, shrieks, whines, blasts, cyclones, dust storms, horrible shudders, fracturing impacts, all of it taking place out on the very edge of control, if in fact it can be contained at all, which seems extremely doubtful, because the whole scorched skillet is still
heaving
up and down the horizon and little men in screaming red and yellow and purple and green shirts with black Mickey Mouse helmets over their ears are skittering about on the surface as if for their very lives (you've said it now!), clustering about twin-engine F-4 fighter planes like little bees about the queen, rolling them up a stripe toward the catapult slot, which runs through the deck like the slot in the back of a piggy bank, hooking their bellies on to the shuttle that comes up through the slot and then running for cover as the two jet engines go into their shriek and a huge deflection plate rises up behind the plane because it is about to go into its explosion and quite enough gets blownâquite enough!âquite enough gets blown off this heaving grill as it is, and then they explodeâboth engines explode into full afterburn, 37,000 pounds of force, and a very storm of flame, heat, crazed winds, and a billion blown steely particlesâa very storm engulfs the deck, followed by an unbelievable shudderâ
kaboom!
âthat pounds through the skillet and destroys whatever may be left of the neophyte's
vestibular system, and the howling monster is flung up the deck like something out of a red-mad slingshot, and the F-4 is launched, dropping off the lip of the deck tail down with black smoke pouring out of both engines in its furious struggle to gain altitudeâand already
another
plane is ready on the
second
catapult and the screams and explosions have started again and the little screaming-yellow men with their Mouseketeer ears are running once moreâ
geometry
âmy God, man, this is a ⦠skillet! It
heaves,
it moves up and down underneath his feet, it pitches up, it pitches down, as the ship moves into the wind and, therefore, into the waves, and the wind keeps sweeping across, sixty feet up in the air out in the open sea, and there are no railings whatsoeverâand no way whatsoever to cry out to another living soul for a helping hand, because on top of everything else the newcomer realizes that his sense of hearing has been
amputated entirely
and his voice is useless. This is a
skillet!
âa frying pan!âa short-order grill!ânot gray but black, smeared with skid marks from one end to the other and glistening with pools of hydraulic fluid and the occasional jet-fuel slick, all of it still hot, sticky, greasy, runny, virulent from God knows what traumasâstill ablaze!âconsumed in detonations, explosions, flames, combustion, roars, shrieks, whines, blasts, cyclones, dust storms, horrible shudders, fracturing impacts, all of it taking place out on the very edge of control, if in fact it can be contained at all, which seems extremely doubtful, because the whole scorched skillet is still
heaving
up and down the horizon and little men in screaming red and yellow and purple and green shirts with black Mickey Mouse helmets over their ears are skittering about on the surface as if for their very lives (you've said it now!), clustering about twin-engine F-4 fighter planes like little bees about the queen, rolling them up a stripe toward the catapult slot, which runs through the deck like the slot in the back of a piggy bank, hooking their bellies on to the shuttle that comes up through the slot and then running for cover as the two jet engines go into their shriek and a huge deflection plate rises up behind the plane because it is about to go into its explosion and quite enough gets blownâquite enough!âquite enough gets blown off this heaving grill as it is, and then they explodeâboth engines explode into full afterburn, 37,000 pounds of force, and a very storm of flame, heat, crazed winds, and a billion blown steely particlesâa very storm engulfs the deck, followed by an unbelievable shudderâ
kaboom!
âthat pounds through the skillet and destroys whatever may be left of the neophyte's
vestibular system, and the howling monster is flung up the deck like something out of a red-mad slingshot, and the F-4 is launched, dropping off the lip of the deck tail down with black smoke pouring out of both engines in its furious struggle to gain altitudeâand already
another
plane is ready on the
second
catapult and the screams and explosions have started again and the little screaming-yellow men with their Mouseketeer ears are running once moreâ
âand yet this flaming bazooka assembly line will, in the newcomer's memory, seem orderly, sublimely well controlled, compared to the procedure he will witness as the F-4's, F-8's, A-4's, A-6's return to the ship for what in the engineering stoicisms of the military is known as recovery and arrest. To say that an F-4 is coming back onto this heaving barbecue from out of the sky at a speed of 135 knots ⦠that may be the truth on paper, but it doesn't begin to get across the idea of what a man sees from the deck itself, because it perhaps creates the notion that the plane is
gliding
in. On the deck one knows different! As the aircraft comes closer and the carrier heaves on into the waves and the plane's speed does
not
diminishâone experiences a neural alarm he has never in his wildest fears imagined before: This is not an
air
plane coming toward me, it's a brick, and it is not
gliding,
it's
falling,
a fifty-thousand-pound brick, headed not for a stripe on the deck, but for
me
âand with a horrible
smash!
it hits the skillet, and with a blur of momentum as big as a freight train's it hurtles toward the far end of the deckâanother blinding storm!âanother roar as the pilot pushes the throttle up to full military power and another smear of rubber screams out over the skilletâand this is normal!âquite okay!âa wire stretched across the deck has grabbed the hook on the end of the plane as it hit the deck tail down, and the smash was the rest of the twenty-five-ton brute slamming onto the deck, as if tripped up, so that it is now straining against the wire at full throttle, in case it hadn't held and the plane had “boltered” off the end of the deck and had to struggle up into the air again. And already the Mickey Mouse helmets are running toward their fiery monster â¦
gliding
in. On the deck one knows different! As the aircraft comes closer and the carrier heaves on into the waves and the plane's speed does
not
diminishâone experiences a neural alarm he has never in his wildest fears imagined before: This is not an
air
plane coming toward me, it's a brick, and it is not
gliding,
it's
falling,
a fifty-thousand-pound brick, headed not for a stripe on the deck, but for
me
âand with a horrible
smash!
it hits the skillet, and with a blur of momentum as big as a freight train's it hurtles toward the far end of the deckâanother blinding storm!âanother roar as the pilot pushes the throttle up to full military power and another smear of rubber screams out over the skilletâand this is normal!âquite okay!âa wire stretched across the deck has grabbed the hook on the end of the plane as it hit the deck tail down, and the smash was the rest of the twenty-five-ton brute slamming onto the deck, as if tripped up, so that it is now straining against the wire at full throttle, in case it hadn't held and the plane had “boltered” off the end of the deck and had to struggle up into the air again. And already the Mickey Mouse helmets are running toward their fiery monster â¦
The obvious dangers of the flight deck were the setting, the backdrop, the mental decor, the emotional scenery against which all that happened on the carrier was played out, and the aviator was he who lived in the very eye of the firestorm. This grill was
his
scenery. Its terrors rose out of his great moments: the launch and recovery. For that reason some crewmen liked to check out the demeanor of the aviators during these events, just as they might have in the heyday of the chivalric code.
his
scenery. Its terrors rose out of his great moments: the launch and recovery. For that reason some crewmen liked to check out the demeanor of the aviators during these events, just as they might have in the heyday of the chivalric code.
When John Dowd and Garth Flint came out on deck in their green flight suits, carrying their helmets and their knee-boards, they were an
unmistakable pair. Dowd was the tallest pilot on the ship, almost six feet five. Six years ago he was captain of the Yale basketball team. He was so tall, he had to slump his way through the physicals in order to get into flight training, where six four was the upper limit. He looked like a basketball player. His face, his Adam's apple, his shoulders, his elbowsâhe was a tower of sharp angles. Flint was Dowd's radar-intercept officer. He was five eight and rather solidly built. He was not small, but next to Dowd he looked like a little jockey.
unmistakable pair. Dowd was the tallest pilot on the ship, almost six feet five. Six years ago he was captain of the Yale basketball team. He was so tall, he had to slump his way through the physicals in order to get into flight training, where six four was the upper limit. He looked like a basketball player. His face, his Adam's apple, his shoulders, his elbowsâhe was a tower of sharp angles. Flint was Dowd's radar-intercept officer. He was five eight and rather solidly built. He was not small, but next to Dowd he looked like a little jockey.
Today they were to go out on a two-ship formation, with Dowd's roommate, Dick Brent, flying a second F-4B. Dowd's would be the lead ship; Brent's the wing. The usual monsoon overcast was down within about five hundred feet of the deck. It was another day inside the gray pearl: the ship, a tight circle of the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin around it, a dome of clouds, fog, mist, which was God's great gift to the North Vietnamese.
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