“So you re-upped,” I said. “After your first four years.”
“Yeah. I kept picturing Saint needing that kind of support and I thought, why not? What’s waiting for me back home anyway? At that point, I truly thought I’d be a lifer.”
“So, what happened?”
“I liked my shipmates for the most part, but there was this guy named Ken who was a total ass. He and I split a rack space, which meant when I was on duty, it was his to sleep in and vice versa. It’s called hot racking, and it’s pretty common on a sub. But it meant I couldn’t avoid him. He was a major complainer. Hated serving on a boat, hated the food, hated his assignments, hated his shipmates. You name it, he hated it, and he let everyone around him hear about it. There were rumors that he was the kid of someone important, which is why he never got disciplined for his big mouth, but I’m not sure I believe that. He was just smart about when he smack-talked and when he chose to shut up.
“One night when I was coming off a shitty shift where a bunch of stuff went wrong, I lost my patience. The minute he bitched at me about something—I think that time it was the way the sheets were on the rack wrong—I lost my cool.”
I interrupted him. “That’s not like you. You usually get quieter when you’re truly pissed.”
“I know. It was just a bad day, and I was so tired, I’d lost my filter. So I told him to shut his fucking mouth before I shut it for him, and then I proceeded to tell him that he needed to learn when to keep it shut in general. That’s it; that’s all I did. The next thing I knew, I was waking up stuffed in this tiny closet cubby thing next to our rack, and there was smoke everywhere. When I finally managed to kick the closet door open, I saw the rack was on fire. I was so out of it, I didn’t know what the hell had happened at first. It wasn’t till later that I remembered fighting with Ken and then falling asleep. I had a vague sense that he was the one who trapped me in the cubby. He must have gotten me up and over to the closet while I was still half asleep. Who knows? I wasn’t even sure at first the fire had been deliberately set.”
I reached my arms around him and pulled him in for a hug, pressing my lips to his cheek before laying his head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. You must have been terrified.”
“That doesn’t even begin to describe it. When I thought I was trapped in the cubby space, I completely panicked, but then when I finally busted the door open and learned I was trapped behind a fire? Fuck, Seth. I thought that was it. There’s damned fire extinguishers everywhere on a sub, but I just happened to be in this tiny space where there was literally nothing to help me put out the fire. And I was a damage controlman, which meant putting out fires was my whole job on that boat. I’d never felt so useless in my life.”
“So what happened? How’d you get out? What’d you do?”
“I completely gave up. Like total panic, gone, see ya later. I curled up into a ball like a pill bug and just waited for it to be over. I remember hoping that if there was an afterlife, it at least had fresh air and a nice cold shower. I was hot and suffocating from the smoke. I had a balled-up T-shirt over my face, but it wasn’t going to help for long. Then suddenly I heard shouting—other shipmates trying to get the flames out so they could get to me. I don’t remember much after that until I was on board the bigger ship in their medical bay. Apparently the corpsman on my boat kept me pretty well sedated. I was lucky we were running close to a fleet, otherwise I would have been stuck on that fucking boat for god knows how long.”
I ran my hands over his back and arms in an attempt to soothe him while he spoke. “What happened after that? Did you tell them you’d fought with Ken? Did they know if it was deliberate?”
He straightened up and faced me. “When they put out the fire and found me, I was holding a lighter, Seth.”
“What? How? Why? That’s incredible. Did the guy plant it on you like some kind of bad fucking movie or something?” The idea of someone trying to pin a crime on Otto made me see red.
He shrugged. “I guess. But the first thing Ken did was make it very clear to everyone that I’d threatened several times previously to burn the rack. He told everyone he’d thought I was joking around so he didn’t report it.”