HERO SHIP
2015; Wiley; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tyr.2015.0103
ISSN1467-9736
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis
Resumo1 2 6 Y H E R O S H I P H A N N A H B A K E R S A L T M A R S H Called that after a kamikaze and a torpedo struck, after she herself bombarded and reduced the enemy at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. To bombard a filet of venison is to stu√ it with oysters, day-old bread crumbs, marjoram, sea salt, capers, lemon peel, and egg yolks, and then sew it up. Mutilating the venison, detaching its defensive bones, stabbing a foreign object inside it so that it broils down to a husk of its singularity, absorbing the salty dew of oyster dressing until it surrenders in the oven its gamey deer-ness. My grandfather’s ship bullied flesh and vessel, bombarding its way to three battle stars, yet held a flaming plane. Could anyone taste the last thoughts a man su√ering takes refuge in, taking in enemy fire? Were they even like themselves as they faded and felt the bright shock of shrapnel and blast make them swoon? After the war, the ship survived our own atomic bombs as part of training before they finally sunk her, needing extra torpedoes and sixteen hours to bury her at sea, a hanger-on. My grandfather still carries a piece of the kamikaze that dove into his ship. How many lives does a glint of plane wound? The ship is inked on my brother’s 1 2 7 R bicep, with three ridges of sea, roses, and a skull with butterfly wings. The first U.S.S. New York fired three cannons from her wooden gondola. From wood to steel, a Marine ship takes her name in the West Bank in New Orleans where I live, and embarks on her maiden voyage from the Avondale shipyard. I imagine in another life she was a boot-shaped vessel, the color of dark golden pie crust, with wet black paint markings, jagged triangle monster teeth at the heel, X’s doodled on the tongue, and a curled toe. Like the shoe in the storybook, a hatted woman reigned with a dozen children living everywhere inside, popping from rows of airplane windows. The Discovery Channel now calls the ship a hero, but one hit with other disasters, fatalities, other dead. With a prow of World Trade Center steel, in the shadow of Katrina because of where she’s built, this billion-dollar transport ship that New Orleanians, waving flags, line the levee for, arrives in New York in November for the war vets’ reunion. My father took his father, who talked to everyone forever. My father still lives part time in the ocean, testing military missiles. When the submarine, dockside, prepares for its mission, seals pile on top, right above the nuclear reactor where it’s hottest, twenty of them crowning the edifice, snarling, barking for the best spot. Finally, fire hoses slick down the sub, and the seals lose traction, dwindling into the water. Greenpeace, who sometimes huddle in the missile’s path, battling four-hundred 1 2 8 Y reactors in warships and subs circling the globe, fueling a new arms race, might find these sea animals bombarded with peals of water – yet drawn to nukes like rocks to sleep on – symbolic of man’s abysmal design on the universe. When my father’s mission is over, the sub bobs to the top, and the crew has barbecue chicken and takes turns high diving from the towering platform. As a child, this is how I pictured my father at the o≈ce, with all those rambunctious navy o≈cers, braving the tide’s hectic nods. That order of work before play. He wrote the words, Embark and Disembark, for each of his ops, on our family calendar such that he and those boats were indistinguishable to me, as he’d come in the door a missed hero wearing a black hat with yellow lettering. ...
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