Control Slips Away in the Night

May 31^st started out as a pleasant morning, only 72 degrees, a bit cooler than the previous weeks had been, but I knew what that meant. The 1^st of June would bring heat, wind and dust. But May 31^st was a gift that I wasn’t going to overlook. I broke away from the office routine at my first opportunity and, instead of driving across the base to the dining facility, I decided to walk. The DFAC was only a mile and a half across the wide, flat landscape and it was always a joyful time to look at the sparse plant life and the unusually abundant animals and birds that made their homes in the Syrian Desert.

About a half mile before I reached the dining facility I walked past the Service Desk, the contact point between the military and the civilian contractors. As a matter of habit I stopped by to see if any orders had come in during the night that I needed to be aware of. I walked through the plywood building’s screened door and was met by two large soldiers who were huddled over the counter in a state of serious concentration. The soldier who was writing glanced back to see who had just come in behind him and John, the Service Desk attendant stood up from his desk. “Morning, John. Is there anything here for me?” John hadn’t been at the service desk for long, but he lived next to me in the shipping container apartments. “Jed! You’re just the man we needed to talk to here! This is Staff Sergeant Pullen and he has a mission for the Transportation Department.” The big sergeant turned again and we shook hands this time. “I’ve got 18 people coming in next week and we need to move them from the air terminal to their living area. The problem is that we don’t know what day the flight is arriving for sure and we still don’t know what time the flight will arrive.” His description of the mission was typical. Because of military operational security the details and schedules of arriving and departing flights were never made public. I knew that two hours before the flight arrived I’d get my first notice that things were about to happen and I’d have to get out and round up the drivers who had previously been assigned. Sometimes the drivers were sitting at the bus hub waiting for their next departure and the entire process would take a few minutes. But sometimes they were somewhere out on the base in the middle of their routes and it would take some time to find them and prepare them for the upcoming mission.

“Sergeant Pullen, I understand how this works for you. If you’ll just come to the Service Desk as soon as you find out about the flight, they can call me on the radio and I can get the bus to the flight line.” He was pleased at the simplicity of the process. “That’s all? You don’t need extra memos from my chain of command?” I understood how he felt. Everything needed more paper than Brazil could possibly produce in a year. The Syrian Desert was probably the result of millennia of military invasion and occupation. Any trees that had once been there were long gone as a result of the constant pile of memoranda moving from inbox to outbox and from office to office. I always saw my job as facilitating the military by cutting down on the craziness of the bureaucracy, but it was always a fine line, too. Without good paperwork the government wouldn’t be able to reimburse the civilian contractors, so I had to make certain that the necessary papers were submitted.

I put SSG Pullen’s bus mission on the calendar and made a large note of it on the white board at the office so that everyone would be aware of the upcoming mission because to miss a mission for the military was an unforgiveable offense. We’d never missed a mission since I’d been in Tal Afar, and I wasn’t about to begin now.

June 1^st was exactly the way I’d expected it. The morning was unusually warm and a wind was beginning to kick up from the east. “Here it comes,” I thought to myself as I walked to the office. “In about two hours we won’t be able to see anything or breathe. I’d better warn the drivers about opening vehicle doors in the wind.”

It turned dark by ten in the morning and the dust was choking. It was a physical precursor to the mental and emotional roller coaster that had already begun its ascent toward the top of the first big drop in a ride that was, by far, one of the scariest and worst of my adult life.

Five more days ticked away, normally for the greater part, but there was an undercurrent of anger and frustration that I couldn’t put my finger on. Bling still seemed angry about being caught at the Tank Wash office and Grumpy had gotten very quiet. Lumpy was eerily silent, something that was completely out of character for him and I kept wondering what was going on. “What’s happening, Grumpy?” “Nothin’.” “Hey, Bling, what’s going on?” “Nothin’.” “So, Lumpy, how are things going?” “Uh, I dunno. Nuttin’ much, I guess.” How many more days would Maxx be gone? I was counting the days until his return from R&R so that I could get back to my normal routine and leave all of the office politics to the boss.

On the morning of June 6^th I was shocked by an early phone call from the Service Desk. “Your buses missed a movement last night. Staff Sergeant Pullin called for the buses and Grumpy didn’t get them to the air field in time. The entire group of soldiers borrowed some trucks to carry them to their living areas.” Our department had just committed the unforgiveable sin! We had left the military standing out in the darkness in the middle of the night!

When Grumpy walked through the door I asked him, “Did you know that you missed a troop movement last night?” His answer was too casual and it raised the hair on the back of my neck. “It’s all right. They got to where they were supposed to go.” I couldn’t believe that this foreman was nonchalantly tossing this missed movement around the office! This was exactly the kind of thing that sucked corporate managers and directors into the field from Baghdad and left headless employees in their wake! What could he possibly be thinking! This could end up as a level 4 CAR! (That means a “corrective action request.”) A level 4 CAR was the kind of thing that shut entire corporations down in the theater of operations.

My stomach was in a tight knot through the rest of the morning. I finally reached Staff Sergeant Pullin just before noon to apologize. “It’s all right. We made it to where we needed to go.” His use of the same type of language that Grumpy had used sent another chill up my spine. Had they planned this? Had Grumpy already talked to Sergeant Pullin? Was this an effort to discredit the Transportation Department? Sergeant Pullin’s reaction was too benign. He knew the serious nature of the missed movement. Why wasn’t he bothered by it?

Later that afternoon Lalith Dahal came into the office. His eyes were deep red from the tears that he’d been fighting back. “What’s happening?” I questioned. Lalith sobbed pitifully, “Sir, Mr. Bling yelling at me. He telling me I go home. He telling me my bus jump too much at bus hub. I go slow but ground have too many holes. You like my father, but Mr. Bling yelling too much. Telling me I go home.”

Lalith’s words and emotions swirled in the room. Why was Bling yelling at the drivers knowing that they weren’t even his responsibility. Why did he think that it was so important to make a big deal out of the rough surface at the bus hub parking area? I tried to calm Lalith down, “Lalith, don’t worry. You’re not going home. I’ll check with Bling and see what’s going on.” Lalith began to cry again, “Thank you, sir. You good man. You like my father.”

It wasn't more than five minutes before Bling walked into the office. "I just had a driver come in crying because you'd been yelling at him." He bristled and blasted back, "That's BULL____!" I worked to calm the air. "I'm not accusing anyone. I'm just trying to find out what's going on." "He was speeding through the bus hub! He was bouncing the bus so hard that it looked like it was going to roll over!" I thanked him and added that I'd check it out.

Questions were suddenly blossoming in my mind. What EXACTLY was going on in our department? Something was just not right. It was as if the idea of a chain of command had completely evaporated and each American employee was now assuming the role of Supreme Executor of Departmental Command and Authority. It was a growing anarchy and I was struggling to maintain my small corner of the American Republic and hold it all together. I checked the bus over as it sat in the parking area. It turned out to be a huge problem with the front suspension. I drove it to the maintenance shop and the boss exclaimed, "I can't believe these guys have been driving this bus! The front end is absolutely shot! I'm going to have to deadline it."

The roller coaster car was still an agonizing week away from the summit where it would finally level out at the top of that first giant hump, and the other side would be a drop so steep that my gut would certainly careen through the hot, empty air and crater into the dusty desert below.

Moving Day

The Spring Gardens Nursery has been situated on a prime piece of real estate on FM 2920 for two years. Richard Gieseke, the owner of the nursery, has worked his little plot with his own hands while growing his business from a seedling and the acres of ground are covered with thousands of trees and bushes that he sells mostly to commercial landscapers. Across the street there are new strip centers filled with new businesses. Next door is a brand new, large emergency medical building to serve the fast-growing communities that surround it.

Richard's landlord took notice that his real estate has grown dramatically in value and has now decided that it should be leased to someone else with a higher profit potential. Richard's lease is finished on the 30^th of this month and the landlord is not willing to renew. Richard was devastated by the news. His nursery is covered with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of large commercial plants and he was on the brink of losing everything he'd worked for over the decades. He brought a plea to his brothers in church two weeks ago. “I need to ask for your help. I'm about to lose my nursery because the land owner refuses to renew my lease. I've found a new piece of property, only four miles away, but by the end of the month I need to have all of my plants moved to the new location and I need help moving all of my plants.” He set Saturday aside as his moving day and asked for as many volunteers as possible to come and help with the arduous move, not knowing whether anyone would even bother to show up. Richard had spent the previous week installing the huge irrigation system at his new site that would be needed to water the thousands of growing trees and shrubs.

On Saturday morning at nine o'clock a group of strong men and at least one strong woman appeared, some with their sons, at the nursery gate armed with gloves and an attitude to do whatever they needed to do in order to get the nursery moved. Before the commotion began it was hushed on the wide, flourishing forest of quiet beauty. A lark was singing mellifluously in the top of one of the huge Magnolia trees and it seemed as if the bustle of the road outside had vanished for a time. Then the moment was broken by big trucks moving into position to pick up their massive loads.

“One, two, three, lift!” Over and over the count rose up as men lifted the burdensome thirty gallon pots onto the trailers and into the tall vans. “Oh, no! I lost my glasses!” Brother Grabau had lifted one of the pots into the tall van and the tree had dragged his glasses from his face, flipping them deep inside the already dense load. They were buried somewhere in that sea of thick greenery inside the dark van. “I'll never find them in here! I can't see without them and it's too dark.” Ken Hubnik calmed him. “We'll tell the guys at the other end to keep their eyes open for them as they unload the van.”

Dustin Hubnik, all 40 pounds of him, huffed and puffed to drag a giant 70 pound pot down the aisle. “Dustin! You can do better than that! Put some breakfast into it!” someone called. “I think it would help if you weighted 200 pounds, like most of the rest of us,” someone else said. Dustin only attempted the task once but his observation of this service project was teaching him a valuable lesson.

“Fire ants! They're biting me!” A new caution was raised to everyone in the crowd and the rest of the men began to examine their feet to see if they were standing in a fire ant bed. “Bruce! Hold still!” A quick swipe of a glove brushed a large black spider from his shirt back onto the ground. “Watch out for snakes, too.”

For several hours the group pushed, pulled, dragged and lifted the heavy pots, covering themselves with the dark, stinky mud that continually splashed from the black weed mats covering the ground. Truck after truck moved the big trees out of the gate and toward their new home. By lunch time it was hard to tell whether it was the thick, black mud or the soaking perspiration that raised the mightiest stench, but no one felt burdened by the work. The brothers chatted about their work and about the upcoming game. Everyone chatted about the things that made them smile between the shouts of “One! Two! Three! Lift!”

Brother Grabau recovered his glasses because someone unloading at the other end spotted them when they fell from one of the trees coming out of the van. In the end, service is something we love to do and what makes it even better is that we do it as a matter of personal choice. We give up a Saturday morning at home in favor of helping a brother in real need. No one has to cajole us. No one has to pay us. No one has to legislate or regulate us. We do it purely out of love. It's what makes us great as Americans and as Latter-day Saints and it's just what friends do.

Day of Remembrance

This morning I drove my school bus to pick up my elementary students. I pulled up in front of Kassie and Steven at their stop and as they climbed on the bus they both smiled and said, “Happy Nine Eleven.” Their little brother who was standing next to Mom blurted out, “Happy Birthday!”

I was born on December 9, 1948, seven years and two days following the attack on Pearl Harbor. My mother used to tell me that I was born two days after Pearl Harbor Day and I always looked at that as a great privilege, even though I didn't understand what Pearl Harbor Day was for several years. Along the way I gathered little bits of information about the attack and began to form a picture in my mind about what it really meant, but it wasn't until August of 2006 that the picture came with real clarity into my heart and mind. That August Candace and I went to Hawaii to photograph a wedding on the north end of Oahu. We took a few days to enjoy the island and to see the sights and the most profound experience that I had that August was our visit to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. We watched films of the attack in horror as the great American naval fleet was sunk by Japanese bombers on what had begun as a quiet Sunday morning in 1941.

Kassie and Steven aren't old enough to comprehend what was going on eight years ago when four jet airplanes were hijacked by murderers and used to target buildings, killing nearly 3,000 Americans who were quietly beginning their day. Kassie and Steven will gather bits and pieces of information over the next few years until they begin to understand what happened that morning. Until they come to that understanding, though, I'm grateful for their innocence and their youthful joy at a National Day of Remembrance. I have a hard time feeling their joy because, like most of my fellow Americans, I still remember where I was on that morning and what I was doing when Candace told me to come and look at the TV and what I felt as we both watched, still not yet fully comprehending, as the second airplane crashed into the World Trade Center. The realization crashed like a bolt of lightning that comes with the immediate explosion of thunder and we understood that the country had changed and that it would never be the same place again.

In February of 2002 I had an opportunity to talk with Senator Orin Hatch and I begged him, “Please tell the President that there's an old Marine who's ready to do what needs to be done.” Senator Hatch pooh-poohed my plea with, “War is a young man's game. Let's hope that you don't need to go.” Now, as a 60-year-old and having returned from Iraq and having served our country's real heroes for two years I just say to Senator Hatch, “You don't know what you're talking about. War is everyone's game and even old men can make a valuable contribution.”

The innocence of Kassie and Steven is different than the innocence that my generation had. They can't experience what we did because parents hold their children a little closer now in a world that seems just a little bit darker—a little bit more sinister. I still have hope, though, that we can get some of that old America back, but we'll all have to come together as Americans and take a hard look at just how much we've lost—and just how much we've gained.

The Aztec secret

This morning is the day that the garbage truck picks up tree prunings along with the regular garbage and so I spent a little time cutting the dead leaves from our Mexican Fan Palms. The leaves are tricky to work around because they have razor sharp spikes along the fronds and I've been caught by surprise on many occasions. One morning I was mowing the lawn near one of the palms when a spike caught my thumb as I passed by. The mower kept my hand moving forward and the spike made its best attempt to hold my hand back, but the Honda 5 horse power engine won out and my poor thumb lost a large patch of skin. Anyway, as I was trimming the palm trees this morning I was suddenly grabbed by one of the sharp spikes as my head was rubbing against the leaf above me, or at least that's what I imagined until I heard a loud buzzing very close to my right ear. The spot where I'd been spiked was in my right temple and it turned out that a large Yellow Jacket, part of a small nest of Yellow Jackets, had stung my temple. There was sudden fire and my right eye closed instinctively as I jumped out of the palm tree's umbrage yelling “The little booger! The little booger!”

I walked into the house, my face on fire, and continued to repeat “The little booger!” Candace asked me what was going on, half horrified and half chuckling. “I was just stung by a wasp and my face is on fire. Do we have some Calamine lotion?” I always kept a large bottle of Calamine in the medicine closet for just such emergencies but it was no longer there. My two years in Iraq and moving our home and going through Hurricane Ike had somehow made my large bottle disappear. “I don't think we have any Calamine, but I have some healing mud from Egypt.” I wasn't sure about what to think. Healing mud from Egypt? Sounded fishy. Candace removed a large jar from the closet but her eyes must be suffering a little bit because there was, indeed, a pyramid on the label but the name of the product was “Aztec Secret.” My confidence level dropped a bit. I've lived in Latin America and I've been around the places where the Aztec civilization once flourished, but I suddenly wondered why, if this was the “Aztec Secret,” did all of the Aztecs disappear? Maybe this was the secret of their sudden, mystifying disappearance and Candace was plotting something.

She opened the jar and handed it to me. It was full of fine dust. “Just put some into a little dish and mix it with water.” My right eye was pegged closed because of the continuous fiery pain and I realized that maybe death wouldn't have been so bad right then. I tapped some dust onto the edge of the sink (since I didn't want to waste my time looking for some tiny porcelain apothecary bowl) and mixed a little water with it. I picked up the thick paste on the end of my finger and, closing the other eye, rubbed it onto my flaming temple. The pain vanished! It was immediate! It was a miracle! Or maybe I had just died and all of my pain had suddenly ceased! No, I was still alive! My right eye popped open.

When I went back to investigate the palm tree I found a nest of Yellow Jackets adding on to their mud hut on the underside of the leaf that I'd been rubbing against during my pruning episode. I'll use more caution the next time I prune. That's what wisdom is—learning from our mistakes and our lack of wisdom in order to acquire the ability to correctly apply knowledge. And, of course, there's always the “Aztec Secret.”

The Secret Combination Begins

“And it came to pass that they formed a secret combination, even as they of old; which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God;” (Book of Mormon, Ether 8:18)

“You don’t have to put up with Maxx. I can’t stand him either. He thinks he controls everyone in the department.” Rabbit sat with Grumpy at midnight chow as the two of them seethed about Maxx. “He came and told me that I’m going to be at the top of his cut list because of my reputation on the internet. He’s nothing but an a__hole.” The discussion heated even more each time one of them spoke. It was open season on Maxx and there were no limits to what they were saying about him. They had even ceased speaking in low tones and now the soldiers sitting at the next table were listening to the venomous words. “I don’t think you could find anyone in the department who even likes that a__hole.” Rabbit’s wheels were turning. He’d begun to recognize an opportunity and now he was going to turn it to his advantage. “I’ll bet you could get everyone in the department to sign a statement against Maxx. If H. R. had a stack of statements on their desk they wouldn’t keep that bastard around for a minute.”

A new phase of the plot was hatching. Grumpy could save himself if he could recruit the other Americans. It could work. “There’s only one guy who wouldn’t go along with this. Jed and Maxx are friends. I don’t think we could get Jed to go along with it.” Rabbit was an expert manipulator and he could artfully stay ahead of the jackals just long enough to get to his hole in the ground. “You don’t need Jed. If you could get statements from everyone else, Jed by himself wouldn’t be able to save Maxx.”

“Let’s get together with Lumpy and Bling tomorrow night and talk this thing over. I’ll bet we could overthrow this S. O. B. Whatever you do, though, don’t say anything to Jed about it or this whole thing will blow up in our faces.”

By morning the idea had blossomed in Grumpy’s mind until he began to feel a little more confident. He stood through the shift change monitoring his watch and waiting for his first opportunity to capture Lumpy and Bling together. After the shift change I pulled up all of the important items for the daily report and told Aslam that I’d be going to breakfast. It was the moment that Grumpy had waited for. He gathered Lumpy and Bling together and asked them to meet with him at the DFAC in the evening.

The day passed as usual. It was getting hot on the base, reaching 106 degrees in the afternoon, and there was no air conditioning in most of the trucks. The wind had blown for two days, kicking up dust and making the heat even more unbearable. The drivers were hot and tired by the time they came in that evening and they were anxious to go home. The shift change went by and I signed my time sheet and left for the evening. I never went to dinner at the dining facility because the food was rich and heavy and it never settled well on my stomach just before bed time. It was a good opportunity for the conspirators to gather.

“If we all sign statements that Maxx has been abusive and intimidating we can get him thrown out as supervisor.” Grumpy had started the discussion. “Lumpy, you don’t like Maxx. What can you say about him in a statement?” “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t like Maxx but I don’t know if I have anything that I can put in a statement. I gotta think about dat one.” Lumpy felt a bit uneasy about the meeting, but he didn’t want to be the one to say anything. He wasn’t a real leader and it surprised nearly everyone that he’d ever been promoted to a foreman’s position.

“Look, you guys, we all need to stand together to get this thing done. We can get rid of that big S. O. B. if we just send in our statements together. We don’t have to put up with him any more. This is our chance to get him good.” The white rabbit poked his head out of his hole long enough to add a few words. Bling chimed in, “That bastard told me that I couldn’t get paid for the extra time that I put in here. He wants me to work for free. I ain’t goin’ along wid dat. I’ll sign a statement. Let’s get that bastard good!” Grumpy grinned when he heard Bling join in, but the voice in his head didn’t go away. “You’re a dead man! You’d better pull this off! You’re a dead man!” Grumpy continued, “I printed some blank statements for us. You guys fill them out and sign them and I’ll turn them in tomorrow morning. Whatever you do, though, don’t say anything to Jed about this or it could kill the whole scheme.” He passed out the blank statement forms to each of the conspirators. “Give them to me in the morning,” he concluded.

Rabbit talked to Scalawag at the morning shift change in the Fuel Department. “I don’t think I need to add my statement. Yours will be enough.” Scalawag was playing his normal political game—stay in the middle and don’t get caught on either side. It was a game that had served him well for a long time, but he was never a person of real conviction. No one trusted him because no one ever knew what he stood for.

As the morning shift change concluded I sat at the computer, gathering the information together for the daily report when Lumpy walked into the office. “I ain’t getting’ into dem discussions at de Dee-fack at night. Uh-uh. Dey ain’t talkin’ ‘bout nothin’ good down dere. I ain’t even gettin’ involved. It’s some bad stuff dat dey’re talkin’ ‘bout. I don’t even want to be around it. Uh-uh. Dat Rabbit likes to talk ‘bout some bad stuff.” The words spilled out of his mouth just as they normally did. He hardly ever gave any thought to what spilled out. I stared at him, trying to understand the meaning behind what he was mumbling. “What’s Rabbit saying?” I asked the question, but I was fearful that the answer was going to go on for the next half hour. “He’s sayin’ some bad stuff. I don’t even want to be a part of it. Uh-uh.” He walked out of the office and I breathed a sigh of relief that the conversation with him was over, but I wondered what kinds of things Rabbit was talking about at the DFAC in the evenings.

Grumpy came into the office, signed his time sheet to end his night shift and walked out again. He held a small stack of papers in his hand as he headed across the gravel parking area toward the Human Resources office.