| There was never any ambiguity in our crack ten-person department with respect to general orders. (There are eleven general orders, and every Marine must memorize them. ) In the PD, once the clock struck 8:45, our CO (commanding officer) was on deck, and all swinging dicks (all men or all present) snapped to attention. Jack Cotton was a sharp dresser and neat as a pin. I was told, but I never dared ask him, that each and every morning he stopped on the way to work at the barber shop near his apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, to have his hair trimmed, combed, and sprayed so that every single strand of his ample white hair was perfectly in place. His fingernails were manicured and polished and his shoes were spit-shined (an unauthorized reference to “high- gloss footwear”; it was customary to use saliva when shining leather footwear and boots before Corfam, a shiny imitation leather, became the norm). In place of conservative business suits, he wore flashy, expensive, and sometimes colorful sport jackets, and rumor had it that he never wore the same tie twice. In the short two months I had been there and paying attention to Jack’s attire, I had never, in fact, seen him wearing the same field scarf (a necktie worn on a Marine uniform) twice. I was eighteen and broke, and I had on crummy tie to my name. Jack was sixty-three and, well, I tried to imagine what his wardrobe closet looked like with all those hundreds of expensive ties. Two aspects of his attire never changed, however; his tie pin was a small gold hand making the “okay” gesture. Between the thumb and pointer finger completing the O part of the “okay” was a petite sparkling diamond. On his wrist was his U.S. Marine Corps watch, its gold face emblazoned with the Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor logo and “Semper Fidelis” (Latin for “Always faithful,” the motto for the Marine Corps; it’s often abbreviated as “Semper Fi”). Jack checked his watch frequently. I didn’t think that he was always checking Zulu Time. (Zulu Time is Greenwich Mean Time. During World War II, the world was divided into twenty-four time zones, each assigned a letter, with Z, called Zulu, being the letter given to the meridian of Greenwich.) We had plenty of large, industrial clocks on the walls. Instead, I believed that that watch was his most prized possession, so he wanted those around him to be reminded of the fact that he was a tough, gung ho (eager and ready to accomplish whatever task was necessary—originally from a Chinese phrase meaning “working together”) leatherneck (a Marine, so nicknamed because enlisted men were given strips of leather to wear around their necks to keep them from slouching in uniform) from the big war. This was my best guess at eighteen, but what the hell did I know, dare to make out, or understand about Jack Cotton, other than that he generally represented a high pucker factor (a cause of stress in any situation) in my life and I never wanted to be the cause of any shit sandwiches (bad or intolerable events—usually missions or activities that have gone bad) at HQ (headquarters), especially first thing in the morning. “Michelle (Jack’s Marine slang for Michael), get me a cup of rusty old joe (strong, hot black coffee with no sugar), riki-tik” (“quickly,” from an Asian phrase adopted by the U.S. Marines). These were the words Jack threw my way, his voice gravelly, every morning as he paraded past my desk, his eyes shielded by darkened aviator sunglasses, on his way past the post (a place that a Marine is assigned to defend and protect, as when serving as a sentry in an embassy) of his loyal secretary Gert, down rows of the desks of junior buyers who sat out in the open with me, and to his private office toward the rear of HQ. The senior purchasing agents had offices across the hall, but glass half-walls stole their privacy, unlike the full walls of Jack’s office. He never called me Michael first thing in the morning—always Michelle. I quickly learned to respond to Michelle and get him a cup of joe, riki- tik. |
| The Expeditor (continued) |