USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Cannes France 1961

Excerpt from "The Last Gun Ship - History of USS Mullinnix DD-944"
A Historical Novel By Frank A. Wood

In the late 1930s French writer Philippe Erlanger proposed the creation of an international film festival for France, with the intention of rivalling the well-established Venice Film Festival. With support from the British and American film industries, Jean Zay - the French Minister of National Education - took up Erlanger's suggestion and an international film festival was organized for September 1939, with Louis Lumèire as the festival's president. But like so many things in Europe during the late 1930s/early 1940s, the outbreak of the second World War put a stop to that idea.

Fast forward seven years to post-war France and on 20th September 1946, the first ever Cannes Film Festival was held in the Casino de Cannes. Spanning 15 days the festival showcased over 40 feature-length films including Hitchcock’s Notorious, and Roma Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City) by Roberto Rossellini, as well as more than 50 short films including entries from Walt Disney and Luigi Comencini, both masters of their respective genres.

The Mediterranean was at its bluest, a startling contrast to the golden mimosas that were everywhere. Gannets plunged offshore. The tide was out and the sky was a hazy gray dome speckled with screaming gulls.

Everybody was in the streets, which were glowing in the heat - children, teenagers, the middle-aged, senior citizens, gigolos, whores, pimps, drunks, police, junkies, lunatics, all on their way from nothing to nowhere. He was no different. Phil Larkin was a rarity in that he didn't have a nickname. He was born Phil Larkin and his shipmates called him just that. Phil or Larkin. Once, over drinks in the Outermost bar in Norfolk, they decided to have a contest to come up with a proper nickname. With no rules and no time limit, the results were the same: Phil Larkin, plain and simple.

Larkin was from a little piney-woods village in Georgia. He had his Jewish mother's narrow eyes and chestnut hair, and he combed it straight back in a hump, like a character out of a 1930s movie. Rail of a man with dandruff and glasses that made his eyes look like a goldfish's. His face was narrow, a grin typically tugging at one corner of his mouth. He was pleasant enough, although it was clear he had no close relatives who were dentists or dermatologists.

However, he was a little short on fun. He was just...dependable. Good shipmate but no good on liberty. He'd joined the Navy, escaping a sorrow that he thought would cost him his life. He wasn't a screwball. Rather, a character with few social skills. Instead of engaging in small talk, he handed out warnings.

That's what comes of a misspent youth at sea. There was a scar at the corner of his eye and his nose had been broken at least once. He was wiry, with a scrubby beard, a knife on his belt, and a crumpled once-white Dixie cup on the back of his head. When he joined the Navy, he'd promised his mama that he would watch the swearing and drinking. Unfortunately, without either it left him dimwitted and nearly speechless.

Where was the nearest bistro he wondered? It was late morning. Larkin walked by a man fishing into a drawer and watch as he handed a couple of heavily worn franc notes to a customer through the bars of his corrugated iron shop. Women in brightly-colored dresses hustled down the dirty street lined with the rundown metal shacks containing local businesses, making last minute purchases before the oppressive midday heat settled in. Tailors step on foot-pedaled Singer sewing machines, and barbers sat in salons under hand painted signs. Butchers hang goat meat under metal awnings, and fresh goods arrive in giant trucks that carefully make their way under the tangle of electricity cables strung up on wooden poles. A fine dust clung to every surface.

Larkin stopped for a moment to buy a melon juice from a vendor, who pulled it out of a chest freezer that billowed condensation into the hot air. He then sat alone at a metal table, quietly sipping his drink. Most of the houses had walls made of wooden poles stripped from thorn trees, the roofs of vaulted tin sheet. He wasn't in the tourist part of town. Somewhere a radio was playing AM music. The word on the street was to stay away from all restaurants. Rumor had it you could get dysentery, crabs, and Hutchinson’s Disease, anything at all really.

So...he was headed to a bar. He'd have a pint, maybe two. Ale was his choice. The darker the better. And he could hold what he drank. No harm done. Taking a drink of his melon juice, his cuff rode upward on his arm to expose a tattoo of a curled viper cut into his wrist. He’d bought a cheap bottle of local wine. Some name he couldn't pronounce. Something like 'Chateau Traileur Parc'. His stomach gnawed at itself. The melon juice tasted worse than the bug juice on Mullinnix. Leaving the juice on the table, he got up, continued his search for a bar with his name on it.

A seedy little bar named 'The Yardarm' was on a side street just off the main marketplace. There were a few tables outside, shaded by a covered awning. Patrons had a good view of …well, nothing really.

Inside, the bar was deeper than it looked outside. There was a long bar to the right and the atmosphere of dank melancholy where sailors like to get drunk in. There was a range of liquors on display behind the bar, nowhere to dance and a rustic old-fashioned jukebox, small tables where American sailors could have their bullshit sessions over bottles of beer and the inevitable dart board on the back wall. In the far back corner was some narrow winding stairs to the second floor, and a third.

A wood-bladed fan revolved slowly from the blackened ceiling, the incandescence of the light bulbs attached to it reduced to a dim yellow smudge inside frosted-glass shades that were fluted to resemble flowers.

The walls were lacquered with red paint that gave off the soiled brightness of burning coal. The booths were cracked vinyl, the cushions split, the tables scorched with cigarette burns that in the gloom could have been mistaken for the bodies of calcified slugs. The atmosphere was not unlike a box, on whose doors and windows were perhaps painted on the walls and were never intended to be functional.

Larkin walked over to the bar. He could smell the cigarette smoke and bathroom disinfectant. The bar was nicked, split, gouged, and cigarette-burned. The boiled eggs behind the bar were prewar.

The bartender was medium height, with a long face and a big sloping nose at the center of it, with a fleshy sag under his chin. He had wet eyes, thin hair, and ears like bird wings. He wasn't what you'd call ugly, but he probably would be someday. A tired, dried-up whore-cook was serving food. She was ugly enough to turn even powdered milk.

The bartender, asking only with his raised eyebrows, what Larkin wanted. As the selection of ale looked limited, he ordered whiskey. Larkin noticed a cigarette in a tin ashtray and watched it slowly burn to ash. He almost reached over to pick it up. It had been nearly 3 years since he'd smoked and he was still like this. What was it, he wondered, that was hidden in those ashes?

The bartender, with a permanent twitch below is left eye, studied Larkin like a multiple-choice question. His breath smell so bad his teeth ducked every time he breathed out. Larkin had seen some strange ones before, but this bartender was acting funny. As he drank, the old man's lips moved over his gums in a nervous frenzy. He reminded Larkin of a dog with peanut butter on his tongue.

He knocked back two doubles. You could see the color bloom in his cheeks and his eyes take on a warm shine. He reached over and grabbed the abandoned pack of Lucky Strikes - 'Luckies'. Lucky Strike brand was introduced in 1871 as chewing tobacco but by the early 1900s, it had evolved into a cigarette. He sat on a tall bar stool, smoking, with a faraway look in his eyes.

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her long legs and dropped her head slightly. Her hair fell across one eye. She lifted her head slowly and smiled a sexy grin, knowing the effect this had. Being a sailor is a full-time, and sometimes trying, job.

She had a strawberry birthmark that bled down the back of her neck. She had a wide mouth that looked made of rubber like the mouth of a frog or an inflatable doll. As she walked over towards Larkin, he noticed a tiny bluebird, its wings spread, was tattooed above one breast. She handed him a glass with barely enough whiskey to copper-line the bottom.

She leaned over, put both hands on Larkin's face, and kissed him. Hard. Her left hand moved around his neck while the right slipped a mickey-finn in his drink. She sat next to him and drained the remainder of her drink. With a slight nod, ordered another like she'd known the bartender forever.

He finished smoking and let the butt of the filter less cigarette burn itself out between his fingers and fall, bouncing, between the stool's rungs, finally coming to rest on the filthy floor.

You can buy knockout drops, or chloral hydrate, back in Norfolk for the right price if you know the right people. Drop'em in a drink and you have a Mickey Finn. Guaranteed to put anyone out, temporary or permanent, depending on how many drops.

It didn't take long. Her voice seemed like a tropical sing-song that caused her vowels to lengthen. Larkin, groggy, felt himself being lifted and carried. A slight nausea rose in his throat, and he struggled to fight it back. He heard the sound of a heavy bolt sliding against metal and felt himself drop onto a hard surface. He fell to his side and felt the bonds on his wrists loosen. Then a heavy door shut and he again heard the bolt slide into its traces. He couldn't see anything. He wriggled his hands and discovered he had limited range of movement in his arms. Suddenly the nausea increased, as well as a sense that he was suffocating. His hands clawed at the bag that enveloped his head, his nails tearing a rip in the fabric. He sat up, gasping and retching.

Someone hit him and the floor came up and smothered him. He felt the gritty concrete floor slam into his cheekbone as someone picked up the floor and hit him with it. His reaction time was like a snake in winter. When you're semi-unconscious, where does the mind go? Functioning somewhere beyond reality, or simply floating in white? Or black.

Black. For how long? He managed to crawl to the door, open it, his eyes fixed on the far-away front door. He heard it first, a soft whoosh, then the back of his head exploded with a lightning pain, jagged, so fast there was no time to know what was happening. A pulsing afterimage, like staring into a flashbulb, darkening, then another pain, a crack as his knees hit the floor and he realized he was falling. He put his hands out to break the fall but couldn't find them, off somewhere to his side as his face met the floor, a louder thump, then nothing at all.

Then something struck him from behind and he knew only blackness. Something tickled Larkin's ear. He tried to sit up, but the dull, throbbing plain pulsed from the back of his head and across his shoulders. What the hell happened? A droning hum continued. Am I still at the bar? He shifted again and swatted the annoying fly from his ear. What is that jangling noise? The fly resettled around his nostril, searching for moisture. He snorted and shook his head. Bad idea. Son-of-a-bitch, that hurt.

Everything was still dark when he felt someone pawing at him, brushing his clothes aside to get at his money. Hands, puling at his jacket, digging into the pockets, still too dark to see, now at his collar, dragging him. Larkin felt his head scrape on the ground, then a welling, slick, and he knew it was blood but couldn’t stop it, everything beyond his control. Blackness again.

The narrow street was as dark as a sewer - almost black. It resembled a sordid medieval alley. The wall of a cemetery's foundations on one side and a row of little houses on the other, old stone everywhere, and in lieu of a lamppost, an unlit lantern made of wrought iron, creaked softly in the wind. Larkin realized that he didn't have a flashlight to light his way or even allow him to keep an eye on which way to head back to the ship. His hands draped over his knees like banana peels. He swallowed his saliva, and it went down his throat with a moist echo.

At a few minutes before 4 A.M. as most of the bars were closing, the streets briefly sparked new life. Vehicles and bicycles filled the streets. The walkways were crowded with staggering sailors, bartenders, street vendors, and working girls. A sailor bent over and emptied his stomach into the gutter. Shaking the last of the drugs out of his head, Larkin joined the wondering stream of sailors back to the docks.

Larkin tramped onto the quarterdeck looking like a pair of worn saddlebags. His wrinkled uniform was laden in dust, which permeated his hair, skin, and shoes. Blood dried cuts tainted the portion of his faces where bruises failed to sprout. All that was missing was a circle of flies buzzing around his heads.

"Larkin, you look like shit!" yelled the Ensign.

"No shit Sherlock, what was your first clue? Sir."

The next morning, while donning his white hat for quarters, Larkin noticed a small bullet hole in the brim. As quarters was being dismissed, the IMC crackled to life.

"Attention. Attention. This is the XO. The title of this speech is nobody torpedoes the USS Mullinnix. I want every schmo, nitwit, dirt-bag, snitch in this port with wax in their ears on shore patrol to find out who beat up our shipmate. Got it? Get mov'in! That is all."

To be continued...

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