Jackson eased back into his chair and frowned. He’d just gotten an earful from Jimmy Suzuki, the ship’s chief engineer, who’d stopped in to say his goodbyes. Suzuki was much beloved among the troops and had den-mother instincts second only to Jackson’s. He’d met with the captain that morning to give him “some honest feedback.” Shared his views on the decision to call off the search for Schofield and its impact on morale.
“You’re a braver man than me, Jimmy,” he muttered.
Within the hour, Suzuki was reassigned to one of the other ships in the strike group.
Jackson sat back and looked around his office.
The place was surprisingly chaotic for a man so fiercely dedicated to order. His desk was covered with crude clay ashtrays, tie tacks, and paperweights, his bulkheads papered with crayon drawings, grade-school achievement awards, diplomas, and half a dozen God’s eyes of various sizes. He especially loved the God’s eyes, more for the little hands that had made them than for the supernatural protection they were alleged to impart.
Kids.
As the highest-ranking enlisted man on the ship, Jackson was responsible for the health, welfare, and morale of five thousand–plus men and women. The majority of these sailors were still kids, barely out of high school. Regular contact with family was next to impossible. Life on the carrier could feel impossibly busy, a blur of action and hustle. It could also be the loneliest place on earth. Sometimes people cracked.
Suicide was a major issue in the navy, growing worse each year. Active duty military were nearly 50 percent more likely to commit suicide than the national average.
How had they gotten to the point where they were losing more sailors each year to suicide than to combat?
He gazed over at the God’s eyes.
Decisions like canceling that SAR sure don’t help, they seemed to whisper back.
In the nineteenth century, so Jackson learned during his Master’s studies, some bright social theorists came up with this concept, the Great Man theory of history. Heroes emerged from time to time, so they said, individuals of exceptional virtue who singlehandedly shaped the course of human events. Others argued that this idea was naïve, simplistic. Great men, the critics said—and it was always men in these theories—were simply the products of their time, not the other way around.
Call it the “Great Societies theory.”
Jackson was a pragmatist. In his experience, the normal fabric of events would always give rise to thugs and petty tyrants. Influential, charismatic men—and yes, almost always men—of outsized ego and destructive impulse. Who, left to their own devices, would wreak unmitigated havoc.
Call it the “Terrible Man theory.”
Jackson did not believe in the Great Man theory because he did not believe in Great Men. He did not expect nor want his sailors to become Great. He wanted them to become decent, effective human beings. Lymphocytes of the body politic.
Like Jimmy.
“Miss you already, Suzuki,” Jackson murmured.
The chief engineer had also told him there was a rumor making the rounds, that a large shark had followed them out of the Gulf. That there was talk of the ship being under some kind of curse.
“Mère Marie,” Jackson murmured. This was exactly the kind of superstitious crap that messed with the societal immune system.
That made people do crazy things.