Roi-Namur the Novel Chapter 2
Iakwe, it is time for chapter 2 of the novel I’m working on. Here it is:
Chapter 2
In the morning I found my own way to the cafeteria. I was told I needed a meal card but they decided to cut me a break recognizing I was new in these parts. After getting some hot cakes and eggs I sat myself down at one of the long tables by myself and started to eat. Shortly afterwards a friendly thin black man of medium height with a beard and dread locks sat down and introduced himself as RG Dread. I eventually learned his real name was Reginald Osbourne from Kingston Jamaica. He said he recognized me as new to the island by not recognizing me. It seems all the folks here know each other at least by name and face. “What’s your name mon?” he queried.“Matthew” I replied.“Well Matty it is a pleasure to meet you, I be honored should you let me show you around a bit.”“Thanks that’d be great and I go by Matthew usually.” Reggie worked in the optics lab but in his free time he ran the tiny 25 W radio station called KVZI 97.9 FM. In Reggie I had found a kindred spirit as we both loved reggae music and as time went on we would spend hours talking about it or else sitting back listening to some roots over a cold beer. He explained to me that having arrived the day before, a Saturday, that it was the last day of the work week on Kwajalein atoll. They work Tuesday through Saturday since they are on the other side of the date line and this allows them to line up with the people back in the states and allows better communication state-side. This being a Sunday morning he had free time to show me the island. After finishing our breakfast he walked me over to Gimbals, the tiny convenience store where the residents do all their shopping and helped me to buy a bicycle, which is the basic mode of transportation on Roi. Reggie had the tools to help me put my bike together. I had wanted to buy the 18 speed that was on sale but Reggie steered me to a ladies’ one speed Huffy as he said the gears would soon rust and be unusable and so would the hand brakes. Once the bike was together we started our tour. First we rode south out of the living area and past a well kept Japanese cemetery left over from their days of former occupation. Eventually reaching the extreme southern end we rounded past the runway and headed in an easterly direction. Along this end of the island is a beautiful white sand beach that once welcomed the US Marines when they liberated Roi during World War II. The Army has an adopt a beach program here and there were several lots that had been adopted and in some cases had a small structure or shack perhaps to retreat to during a storm. We stopped at one labeled “maintained by the rainbow connection” where a nice yet very straightforward woman named Ginger was sunning herself. We shook hands and she welcomed me to Roi asking me if I was certified to dive yet. I answered to the affirmative and she said she’d introduce me to other divers. I asked her if she was from Hawaii, the Rainbow State, but she didn’t seem to appreciate my humor but I’ve grown use to people not appreciating my humor. It was amazing to me to see such a long beautiful beach virtually deserted. Earlier we had rode past a shack where some of the Filipino workers were wading out in the water stringing a net to catch fish. We continued our tour which led us past the last shack before the airport building. This was maintained by the local yacht club which I was later to be president of. The road continues past a marina where the natives land to work during the day on the island and return to their island, Enniburr, known to Roi residents as third island as it is 3 islands away from Roi. Next on the tour we stopped at the SCUBA shack. There is an outbuilding with lockers to store gear in, and another building housing the tank filling machine. There is an open gazebo with picnic tables and a dock for one of the island’s Bayliners to pull up to for divers to start their trek. There were no divers at the time Reggie and I rode by. Soon after the SCUBA shack the asphalt rode becomes a dirt track. We turned up it having reached another terminus of the island and headed in a more northerly direction. We were in the jungle now. This was the least visited part of the island. The jungle grew thickly up to the road. I half expected to see monkeys swinging from the trees but saw nothing more than some crabs scurrying out of our path. Eventually the dirt path dumped us out in front of one of the radar antennas that was built on top of a non-descript postwar building. Reggie told me this was called ALCOR and was where I would work. It was connected to another building with an even larger antenna called TRADEX and across the parking lot was a third antenna called MMW. Down the road almost to the other side of the island was the largest antenna called ALTAIR. This was the big honcho of radar sensors on the island and was where the space trackers worked. Evidently there were men and women (or actually woman) who kept track of objects in space. This might include everything from meteorites to screwdrivers that astronauts had dropped while working on the space station. It also could include space launches from friendly and unfriendly nations as well as tracking our own satellites. The space trackers were a shadowy lot who kept to themselves. Initially I attributed this to the fact that they worked nights while the rest of us were sleeping. After passing ALTAIR we turned right and went down past the airport terminal passing some deserted buildings left over from the Japanese occupation of the island. Rounding the corner of the runway we passed back to the main living area where Reggie parked our truck. We walked over to his room to get some tools to assemble my new bike. While rooting about in his closet for them he filled me in some more. “What you have to know is that while most of da people here are pretty cool der’s a few that cannot cope with normal society so they live on dis here island. They’re the minority that can make a man’s life miserable. Dey got notink to do but suu suu on you while they sit on der ass in the bar. You know mon?” “I’ve met a few like that before.” “Not like these I hope. But dey may be bad people but dey not the one that scare dis rastaman. No, mon, it dem space tracker folk that scare me. I no be sure but dey have communion wit dem.” “With who?” “wit dem but not of our planet.” But with that he laughed so I did not know at the time whether he was serious or not. So the two of us assembled my new bike and I had transportation. We made plans to meet up after dinner at the Outrigger’s club, the local bar on Roi. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the beach. About 7 that night I found Reggie at the bar. He appeared to be trapped between Art and Lucy. Art ran the power plant and Lucy was a secretary at ALTAIR. They were in their late 50s and showed every sign of over indulgence and no exercise. To make it plain, they were quite over weight and had the hoarse voice of a life time smoker and the blood shot yellowed eyes of an alcoholic in the mid stages of liver cirrhosis. Even at this early hour Lucy’s voice was already slurred from the whiskey sours she was knocking back. Reggie smiled a grin of relief at my apparent rescue but it was not to be yet. “You must be Matthew” Lucy stated.
”I see my reputation has proceeded me?””Every body knows what everybody else is doing on this island” Art chuckled. We don’t have much to do here except drink and gossip so a new arrival is a news item. Can I buy you a drink?” “Sure I’ll take a Corona, it’s nice to meet you.” “Always good to get a new handsome face to look at, Lord knows it’s better than staring at Art’s mournful puss.” “My puss is better than what you see every morning in the mirror dear.” “F@% you if I wasn’t so fat I would leave you for this guy.”“He wouldn’t take you, at least not until he’d been out here awhile without a woman and got desperate. Listen Matt, there are 137 souls on this island plus Lucy who doesn’t have a soul. Of those 138 people, 124 are men and 5 of them are women. I’m not sure about the others, they’re somewhere in between. If you want to get any ass you’re going to either have to settle for one of the boys or else find yourself an island woman. There are plenty who would put up with you for a carton of cigarettes.” “Art, that’s no way to be disrespecting the Kari here. Kari means woman Mattie, and the women here for the most part are God fearing respectable women. It is just a minority that Art is talking about but those are the only ones he ever meets because he only goes in bars except to show up for work” I could tell Reggiof objects in space. This might include everything from meteorites to screwdrivers that astronauts had dropped while working on the space station. It also could include space launches from friendly and unfriendly nations as well as tracking our own satellites. The space trackers were a shadowy lot who kept to themselves. Initially I attributed this to the fact that they worked nights while the rest of us were sleeping. After passing ALTAIR we turned right and went down past the airport terminal passing some deserted buildings left over from the Japanese occupation of the island. Rounding the corner of the runway we passed back to the main living area where Reggie parked our truck. We walked over to his room to get some tools to assemble my new bike. While rooting about in his closet for them he filled me in some more. “What you have to know is that while most of da people here are pretty cool der’s a few that cannot cope with normal society so they live on dis here island. They’re the minority that can make a man’s life miserable. Dey got notink to do but suu suu on you while they sit on der ass in the bar. You know mon?” “I’ve met a few like that before.” “Not like these I hope. But dey may be bad people but dey not the one that scare dis rastaman. No, mon, it dem space tracker folk that scare me. I no be sure but dey have communion wit dem.” “With who?” “wit dem but not of our planet.” But with that he laughed so I did not know at the time whether he was serious or not. So the two of us assembled my new bike and I had transportation. We made plans to meet up after dinner at the Outrigger’s club, the local bar on Roi. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the beach. About 7 that night I found Reggie at the bar. He appeared to be trapped between Art and Lucy. Art ran the power plant and Lucy was a secretary at ALTAIR. They were in their late 50s and showed every sign of over indulgence and no exercise. To make it plain, they were quite over weight and had the hoarse voice of a life time smoker and the blood shot yellowed eyes of an alcoholic in the mid stages of liver cirrhosis. Even at this early hour Lucy’s voice was already slurred from the whiskey sours she was knocking back. Reggie smiled a grin of relief at my apparent rescue but it was not to be yet. “You must be Matthew” Lucy stated.
”I see my reputation has proceeded me?””Every body knows what everybody else is doing on this island” Art chuckled. We don’t have much to do here except drink and gossip so a new arrival is a news item. Can I buy you a drink?” “Sure I’ll take a Corona, it’s nice to meet you.” “Always good to get a new handsome face to look at, Lord knows it’s better than staring at Art’s mournful puss.” “My puss is better than what you see every morning in the mirror dear.” “F@#* you if I wasn’t so fat I would leave you for this guy.”“He wouldn’t take you, at least not until he’d been out here awhile without a woman and got desperate. Listen Matt, there are 137 souls on this island plus Lucy who doesn’t have a soul. Of those 138 people, 124 are men and 5 of them are women. I’m not sure about the others, they’re somewhere in between. If you want to get any ass you’re going to either have to settle for one of the boys or else find yourself an island woman. There are plenty who would put up with you for a carton of cigarettes.” “Art, that’s no way to be disrespecting the Kari here. Kari means woman Mattie, and the women here for the most part are God fearing respectable women. It is just a minority that Art is talking about but those are the only ones he ever meets because he only goes in bars except to show up for work” I could tell Reggie was taking this personal. “Reggie, do you have a Kari” I asked. “Sure do. She’s the finest woman on 3rd Island, she has long hair down to her knees and is a good Jah fearing woman. She reads her bible every day but isn’t self-righteous. Her name is Belenty. She doesn’t smoke and she doesn’t drink and she is faithful to me always.”“I hope some day I can meet this paragon.” “You will I’ll take you over there sometime.” “What’s it like on 3rd Island.” “Well dey don’t have no ‘lectricity for one ting. Their homes are mostly made of plywood that they scavenged from here or other places. There are around 800 folks on that island and it is much smaller than here, maybe a third the size. There are also some pigs and dogs roaming around. For these people there are 4 churches, the protestant Church, an Assembly of God, the Catholic church, and a smaller charismatic church that is just getting started, I tink it broke off from the Assembly of God but am not sure.” There is a small convenience store that is in one of the huts. It ain’t exactly a 7 eleven. You might see a large family living in a one or two room hut. But despite the size and the number of people all the homes I’ve been too are quite clean and organized. I guess you have to be under the circumstances.” “They got their pigs from our island. We use to have some here before an island manager’s old lady decided they weren’t sanitary and sent them all over there, all of them except Lucy here.” “Up yours Art” “Well der’s a lot more to know ‘bout 3rd island besides der pigs and I doubt Art or Lucy has ever set foot over der.” “Hell no, why would I want to go there they ain’t go no bars. That’s why you see Bobby over there getting plowed here and not going home to his wife and kids.” Art motioned to an obviously inebriated Marshallese man who was semi-comatose leaning back on a chair at a table at the other side of the club. “Hey Bobby, wake up dude and meet Matt.” “I know this may seem petty but I prefer to be called Matthew, not Matt or Mattie.” “Well whatever you’re called, ol’ Bobby there works for me at the power plant. I got him a C-card and a room over here so he could stay on the island and drink with me, plus I need him to work 2nd shift but not tonight he’s drunk as usual when he’s not working. Course I’m not sure he ain’t drunk when he is working either.” Bobby openned one eye, nodded his head in my direction, burped and fell back to sleep. “I’ve had enough of this bull shit for one night. Give me a shot for the road so I can sleep then I’m going home.” With that Lucy downed the shot and headed home to her trailer. Art called out to her “don’t be waiting up to get a piece of my ass tonight.” “In your dreams you old fat bastard. It will be a cold day in hell before I wait up for you, now Mattie there might be a different story.” She disappeard into the night. “Some dey married couples have dem a trailer whilst we single dudes just get a room or maybe a studio apartment after I been here a while.” I lived here for 5 years before I qualified but you be an engineer so you be getting a studio sooner in A or B building. B building for de smokers. A building the place for you. I be living in de B building. I know one guy in A building who be tinking the radar be harmful to I and I. He covered his walls in aluminum foil. Welcome to Roi-Namur, deys all kinds here.” We moved outside to a picnic table so Art and Reggie could smoke and were joined by several other island residents. There was Sam, a 60ish Hawaian man who ran the water treatment plant. He was quiet but friendly and invited me to visit his place down past the Japanese cemetary sometime. Across from him was Tom, a thin outgoing man who was the captain of the LCM that carried the workers back and forth from 3rd island. Tom would not drink having been a reformed alcoholic with strong Christian convictions. But he was a kind humble man not prone to pushing his beliefs on others though quite willing to share his view points. He talked to me about his shortwave radio that he enjoyed talking on at night. I suspect it was his life line to the outside world. It didn’t seem to bother him that we drank and seemed to enjoy our company. People always referred to him as Capt. Tom. There was Dave a young man who was in charge of community activities. He explained that the company hired him to help make the island less boring and thus more livable. He’d arrange softball games, concerts, and other community events. In a place where every day could melt into the next day it was invaluable to have someone to help keep us from going crazy. We sat around and talked story as the islanders would say. Inside there was one lone man sitting at the bar nursing a drink. I asked Reggie who he was and he replied. “Him the Roman soldier of Babylon on dis here island. But him alright but he plays it by the book.” “What Reggie is saying,” Capt. Tom interjected, “is that man is Lt. Greene the head of the island police here. He’s an ex marine and like Reggie says, he sticks to the rules and has little to do with most other people here but he’s not really a bad sort. He’s been on this island for 14 years without ever having left the atoll. I think he could benefit with some contact with normal society. “
“It wouldn’t hurt for him to relax a bit and realize we’re on an island thousands of miles from any civilization and maybe we don’t need things quite so strict.” added Dave.
I looked over at Lt. Greene and tried to imagine what sort of man he was. Physically he was about 6 foot 4 with a powerful built. He had blond hair cut in a crew cut and appeared to be in his early 40s. Needless to say he had a USMC tatoo on his arm. He did not look like a person who would understand Reggie or me and probably would be just as happy if we disappeared from his world. In fact, that night he did not look like he wanted anything to do with the world in general. When I bought a round for my new friends waiting outside I tried to introduce myself to him thinking it would be best to start out on his good side but apparently he did not have a good side and merely grunted in response. I decided to leave him to the company of the bartender and the sleeping Bobby and to rejoin the guys outside who were discussing a recent golf game they’d played. The night got later and our cups got empty so we headed back to our respective living quarters.
The next morning I sat at a table in the chow hall with Dave and several other guys making plans for a beach party later in the afternoon. I wanted to go diving but had to wait for a checkout dive and some red tape to work through. Despite being mostly civilians living here it was an Army base and followed all the nonsense typical of most government organizations. While eating our breakfast Art came in quite shaken, paused, and looked around the room till he spotted Lt. Greene sitting with a Marshallese cop a table away from us. He ambled over to their table and grabbed Lt. Greene by the arm.
“It’s Lucy, she never came home last night.”
“Why didn’t you notice it when you went to bed?”
“I passed out on the sofa and thought she was asleep in the bedroom. This morning I went in to wake her up and her bed was still made.”
“Could she have gotten up before you and went out?”
“No, she would have relished talking loud to annoy me with this hang-over. I’m sure something happened to her.”
For whatever else one might have thought of Lt. Greene he was a professional who took people serious. He replied“OK, we’ll first go down to the station and see if any of the staff on duty saw her last night or at all this morning, then we’ll search the island. It’s a small island she could not have gotten far.”
“We got to find her, I’d be lost without her.”
“Don’t worry we’ll find her Art.”
The two of them left the dining room and as it turned out Lt. Greene was true to his word. Late in the morning they found her on the jungle side of Namur. She was face down in the sand covered with crabs and insects enjoying their breakfast. Art was badly shaken and had to be sent to the nurse’s office. Officials on Kwajalein were called and sent up to investigate. If they ever figured out how she got to the far side of the island I never heard. The official word was she had a heart attack. We all believed something horrible must have scared her and with a heart that has suffered the ill effects of years of alcohol and smoking it was no wonder that it failed her.
Later the next day we had a memorial service for Lucy. Everyone on the island who wasn’t required to work to keep vital utilities and the radar working was at the funeral. There was no shortage of tears. Lucy was well loved despite her abrasiveness. A pastor from Kwaj came up to officiate at the funeral and to console the grieving which was about everyone. Art was a shambles. The day after, Art and Lucy’s mortal remains were shipped back to the states. The matter was quickly dealt with as the Army preferred to have everyone’s mind off it as soon as possible so the day Lucy made her last trip home the rest of us returned to work.