| and who was to blame and whose ass should be fragged. At times like these, Jack would say that he was bullshit (extremely angry and upset). I didn’t like being near Jack when he was bullshit, and neither did the senior buyers, Fred, Jim, and Willie. His secretary Gert, who understood and spoke Marine slang perfectly, might, on rare occasions, send out some forward intel (fresh information) to the boots (clueless idiots) that Jack was beaucoup bullshit, in which case we would all try to di-di (go very quickly) and get the parts shipped before Jack tore us new assholes (reprimanded us much more strongly than usual behind his closed office door). It occurred to me that the Berkey PD actually functioned like a miniature war and that Jack’s way of solving situations that were FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition) was by shouting, “Fire in the hole” (“Look out! I’m getting ready to set off an explosion”). To the best of my knowledge, the assembly line at Berkey never went down as a result of a PD FUBAR, not as long as Jack was there. Real War Jack didn’t always go out to lunch; many days, he ate in the company mess with the other COs. He never sat with the grunts and boots. Occasionally he would eat alone at his desk in his office, with Gert on post, so he could get a little R&R (rest and relaxation). Once a week all the senior buyers and production planners would meet in Jack’s office after lunch to map out the following months’ purchases. Jack had a lot of heated arguments with the CO of production planning, whose name was Vijay. Vijay was from India. One day after the weekly powwow (meeting), everyone left Jack’s office except for Vijay. I think Jack usually had a hard time understanding Vijay because of his thick Indian accent, but business was serious at Berkey and they were both professionals and usually seemed to get along. But that day Jack and Vijay had a big argument, and there was a lot of loud shouting coming through his closed door. Even Gert was alarmed at the level of yelling. Vijay came out in a huff and stormed out of our department cursing, “That fooking Yak! Fooking ash-hawl,” mispronouncing words and curses as if they were going out of style. He was beaucoup pissed off at Jack; we could all clearly see it. A few seconds later, Jack came bounding out of his office with his white sports coat slung over his shoulder, high-stepping, double time, with spit-shined white shoes. No matter how hot the weather was, even if his day was going like one big shit sandwich or if he had a killer hangover, his tie was always in place and never opened up at the neck or sloppy. His tie was always class A (dress uniform with ribbons) and perfect. But one look at his thundercloud face and I knew that he too was beaucoup tight-jawed, even worse than Vijay. I’d never seen him so fired up before. Vijay must have infiltrated his fire base (a fort built specifically to house one of more batteries of artillery) and pissed him off badly. He was not a happy Marine, and I thought for sure that he was looking to finish off his firefight (a fight or skirmish between ground units; a firefight could be two people shooting at each other with rifles or several blasting away with everything they had) with Vijay in the production-department office of XO (executive officer) Big George. But Jack was far too shrewd to let his skirmish with Vijay move up the chain of command and turn into one giant clusterfuck in front of the top brass (top commanders) at Berkey. Instead of tailing Vijay, Jack turned the opposite way—toward my desk and in the general direction of the main exit. “Michelle, saddle up riki-tik. We’re bugging out.” (“Michael, get your car in a hurry. We’re leaving the office.”) “Yes, sir. Okay, Jack.” |
| The Expeditor (continued) |