The USS New Orleans was an amphibious attack ship, which is just a fancy way of saying it was a floating steel beast with a boiler room that went seven goddamn levels down into hell. You had boilermates down there, sweating and cursing as they refurbished the guts of the thing, laborers chiseling off old paint like tormented artists. And then there was us, the laggers, slapping on new insulation, wrapping pipes, and trying to stay sane in the belly of that iron monster.
I was twenty-two years old, running the whole damn show. No degree. No fancy education. Just a loud voice and a short temper.
And that’s where I learned my first real lesson about power: leadership is mostly just knowing how to yell until people start moving.
I remember walking into a finished compartment one day to inspect the insulation work. It looked good. Clean. Then I saw the floor. Aluminum caps. Everywhere. These little metal caps, worth a nickel each, scattered all over the deck plate like some lazy bastard had just taken a shit on my paycheck.
I snapped.
It wasn’t just about the work—it was about the waste. The disrespect. I saw my bonus lying in pieces on the floor. I saw money that should have gone to my household, to my kid, being thrown away.
I found the kid responsible and let him have it. Screamed at him until he was practically shrinking into himself like a scared dog. He dropped to his knees, scrambling to pick up the caps, his hands shaking, apologizing like his life depended on it. He grabbed what he could and ran.
And then I heard a chuckle from the corner.
It was Ron, the old shipyard hippie, rolling a cigarette, watching the whole show. He was the one who taught me the ropes when I first started. He leaned in, a sad, knowing look in his hazy eyes.
“You’re on the wrong path, kid,” he said, his voice quiet. “Guys like you, with that kind of fire, you either end up in prison or in a dumpster. You might wanna pick which one now.”
The words stuck. Because he was right. I was taking this shit home with me every night. Working twelve-hour shifts, screaming at grown men all day, and then trying to walk through my front door and pretend to be a normal husband to a woman who was probably already wondering what the hell she’d married. The stress was rotting me from the inside out.
So I tried to adjust. Lighten up. Explain things instead of just screaming them.
And then came the boilermaker.
I was doing my rounds, seven levels down in that boiler room. Hotter than a witch’s tit in a brass bra. And this one boilermaker—a big guy, the kind who was already pissed off at the world for letting him be born—decided today was his day.
I don’t remember exactly what I said to him. Probably something smart-assed about his work. But whatever it was, he snapped. He was in my face. Veins popping in his thick neck, his whole body rocking like a fighter before the bell. Spit flying as he screamed every curse in the book right into my face.
And then, the whole damn shipyard went silent. The grinders died. The hammers stopped. The insulation guys froze. A heavy, waiting kind of silence. Everyone knew the rule: you don’t yell at a supervisor. And here this guy was, going nuclear on me, in front of the entire goddamn ship.
He was gonna swing. I could feel it. He wanted it, needed it. He was just building up the courage.
So I gave him what he wanted.
I leaned in closer, looked him dead in his furious eyes, and in my calmest, most commanding voice, I said:
“Not here. Downstairs, motherfucker. Let’s go.”
He ripped off his hard hat, threw down his gloves, and stormed down the ladder like a goddamn warlord heading into battle.
I followed.
But I didn’t go all the way down.
Halfway down the ladder, I stopped. I looked down at him, standing there on the next platform, waiting for me. Fists clenched. Practically foaming at the mouth.
And then I yelled, my voice echoing in the steel tomb: “Not here, bitch. Next floor.”
And like the angry, predictable idiot he was, he bought it. He turned and stormed down to the next platform below.
And that’s when I did it.
As he turned his back to storm down that next ladder, I jumped into position right behind him, a shadow in his rage. Before he was even halfway down the rungs, I swung my steel-toed boot in a clean, simple arc and kicked him square in the back of the goddamn skull.
His hands, which had been clenched at his sides, stayed stiff. His whole body lifted just a little, flying forward like he’d been launched from a catapult. His head slammed into the steel knee-knocker of the platform below, a brutal, unforgiving stop. The impact snapped his head back, but the rest of his body, full of momentum, just kept going. It was not a good fall.
He was knocked out cold right then, just a slab of meat surrendering to Newton’s law of goddamn gravity, tumbling limp through open air. He fell two stories like that.
The sound was ugly. First, a wet crack of bone, then a ringing CLANG as he finally hit the diamond-plate steel floor below. When he landed, his body twisted like a broken marionette with its strings cut. His arms were bent the wrong way. His legs were mangled. He was just lying there, gasping for air, his eyes blinking in pure confusion, like he’d just been reborn into hell.
And then, with the man’s broken body still twitching on the steel floor below, I pulled out my walkie-talkie, my hand steady as a rock. Calm as a man ordering a goddamn coffee.
“We have a man down on the New Orleans,” I said into the radio, my voice flat, professional. “Looks like he slipped on the ladder. Bring an ambulance.”
Minutes later, management showed up, their faces a mask of worried corporate bullshit. I told them the story, clean and simple. “He was walking down the ladder, must have slipped, twisted his ankle, lost his balance, and fell.”
No one argued. No one questioned. In that iron kingdom, I was the supervisor. My word was law.
They loaded him onto a stretcher, slapped an “industrial accident” label on the paperwork, and hauled him away. The word I got later was that he never quite recovered, that he just sort of faded away, moved on to find an easier life somewhere else. I never got a visit from the cops. Nothing.
It was just like Ron, the old hippie, had said. His prophecy ringing in my ears. Jail, a dumpster, or change. That was the path I was on.
A few months later, the USS New Orleans project was done. The last pipe was wrapped, the last bill was signed.
And I walked away from the shipyard life forever.
I chose change.
