Colin W. Sargent
Close Quarters
“Great to meet you,” the lieutenant said, glancing at his watch. “You’re Ensign Peterson, right? Good. We’ve got something for you.”
Duncan Peterson straightened his new khakis, still creased from the Navy Exchange. “Sir, I just checked in.”
“That’s what makes you perfect. You’re fresh.” The lieutenant rubbed his temples. “Yesterday morning, one of our sailors broke ranks at quarters.” He looked down, covered his mouth, and coughed. “Ran fifty yards across the tarmac.” He took a deep breath. “Straight into a P-3 prop arc during maintenance. Died instantly.”
Duncan blinked. “Sir, that’s—was it an accident?” He pictured splatters of imperial red spurting from the victim’s decapitated torso.
“We’re all shaken,” the lieutenant cut him off. “What we need from you is this: go to his room in the enlisted barracks. Inventory everything before the clean-up crew arrives. Books, medicine, radio station—whatever he left behind. Think of it as… a suicide checklist.”
He slid a clipboard across the desk. “We want your impressions. You’re unacquainted with the deceased. That’s your advantage, our trump card.”
Duncan stared at the clipboard. “Why me, sir?”
“Because you’re new,” the lieutenant said. “You still have eyes.”
*
The enlisted barracks were quiet, the kind of quiet that carried voices you didn’t want to hear. The room number matched the clipboard: B-204. Jack Blaumberg, AE3.
The door was ajar. Inside, the air smelled faintly of pine soap and cheap detergent. The bed was made tight enough to bounce a coin.
Duncan wrote:
Bed: tight. Clean. Room: orderly.
He crouched to inspect the shelves. Three books.
Bluebeard, Vonnegut. The Stranger, Camus. Friendly Faeries, vintage.
He ran a finger along Bluebeard’s spine. He had the same copy back in his duffel. Same dog-eared page halfway through.
The radio was still on—low static between stations. He turned the dial slightly. 91.3 FM, a Portland jazz station he’d listened to that morning.
He wrote: Radio: 91.3 FM (jazz). Then paused.
Was this supposed to mean something? Some mirrored reflection of his own habits? The same book, the same station. The same pine soap, for God’s sake. He didn’t mean to say it out loud: “Jack, you’re dead!”
A knock at the door startled him. A sailor leaned against the frame, broad-shouldered, a maintenance patch on his sleeve.
“You the new dude?” the man said.
Duncan nodded. “I’m making an inventory.”
“Yeah, heard about that.” A shrug. “Knock yourself out.” The sailor stepped inside, eyes scanning the room like it still belonged to someone. “He was quiet, Blaumberg. A little odd. But solid. Always said the Navy was a long swim to nowhere.”
Duncan looked up. “You think he meant to—?”
The sailor shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone, now and then?”
Duncan wrote nothing. He wondered if this was some sort of test.
“Funny thing,” the sailor said, looking around. “You even smell like him. That soap. Irish Spring, right?”
Duncan laughed lightly, though it came out more like a cough. “Yeah.”
The sailor smiled without humor. “Navy issue. One smell fits all.”
He walked out, leaving the door open behind him.
*
Duncan sat on the bunk. The springs creaked like something alive beneath him. He stared at the books again. Vonnegut, Camus, Faeries. The radio whispered static, as though it had slipped back to its rightful place between worlds.
He picked up Bluebeard, flipped to the first underlined passage:
To be alive is to be a guest of existence.
He closed the book. The room felt smaller.
His pen shrieked across the clipboard:
Mood: expectant, restrained. Possibly rehearsed.
He thought of the lieutenant’s face—the flat tone, the impatience. “We were too stunned to move,” the lieutenant had said. “He just ran.”
What would it be like to run into a spinning prop instead of away from it? To feel every muscle whisper go?
Duncan looked out the narrow window toward the airfield. Beyond the pines, the propellers shimmered in the afternoon light, spinning like thought itself.
He closed his eyes.
*
At dusk, he returned to the squadron office. The lieutenant was still there, jacket off, sleeves rolled up. “You get what we need?”
Duncan handed over the clipboard.
The lieutenant flipped through the pages. “Efficient. A bit terse, maybe.” He stared at Duncan and seemed to relent. “I just want you to know, I’m not always like this.” He slid the clipboard back. In a lower tone, he suggested, “Take the night to think it over. Why don’t you start with what you didn’t write down?”
Duncan hesitated. “He was… organized. Maybe too much so. It felt like he was staging something.”
The lieutenant nodded slowly. “That’s usually how it starts.”
Duncan took a breath. “Sir, if you don’t mind my asking—why assign this to a new ensign? Shouldn’t NIS handle it?”
The lieutenant didn’t look up. “They’re more interested in the living.”
Duncan managed a smile. “Aren’t we all.”
He turned to go.
“Peterson,” the lieutenant called after him. “You did fine work today.”
Duncan paused in the doorway. “Yes, sir.”
Outside, the pines swayed like a metronome. The smell of jet fuel mixed with the sea air. He started his car, headlights slicing the dusk.
The clipboard sat beside him on the seat, his own handwriting stark in the dim light. He flipped to the final page and, almost without thinking, wrote:
Subject’s name: Jack Blaumberg.
Then beneath it—
Alternate name: Duncan Peterson.
What the hell? He stared at it, the letters bleeding together in the faint yellow glow.
Somewhere beyond the pines, another P-3 started up, its engines rising, the air vibrating through his chest.
He didn’t turn the key.
The prop wash hummed, steady as a heartbeat, waiting.
“Just three months ago, I reconnected with my mentor at VP-26, who finished his distinguished career as a Navy captain. He showed me what it is to be an officer and a gentleman.” —Colin Sargent
Colin W. Sargent is the founding editor and publisher of Portland Monthly, est. 1985. He flew Navy helicopters in the Indian Ocean (including Diego Garcia) before editing Approach Magazine, earning his PhD, and teaching writing at William and Mary. His novel Museum of Human Beings is distributed by Simon and Schuster.
