At William Boyd’s Yankee Station
William Boyd’s On The Yankee Station is a series of short stories, the longest of which provides the title for the set. This particular story is an excellent piece of short fiction, much more than a short story, confronting, in less than twenty-five pages, several important themes and, at the same time, drawing its characters in considerable and complex detail.
Set on an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War, it depicts the antagonistic relationship between two crew members. Pfitz is a pilot, aware of and grateful for his perceived and real status, a status he does not hesitate to assert to his advantage. But this tendency is sometimes exercised excessively. It’s like he needs to feel the elevation of status from him to reinforce his own image. In short, he is a bully. This characteristic begins to dominate his thoughts and actions when events conspire to question his own competence, his right to that food status.
Lydecker is a member of the Pfitz ground crew. Suffice it to say that Lydecker is not on the intellectual end of the fighting machine. He doesn’t come from privilege either. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lydecker, if he hadn’t joined the navy, probably would have become a complete drifter, a step above wretched at best. He even in the military he can only aspire to the most menial tasks, but at least he is thorough and tries to keep his nose clean. But for Lydecker, events conspire to garner suspicion of his competence, a suspicion constantly fueled by a torrent of abuse and accusations flowing from Pfitz, the pilot it remains his responsibility to serve.
Pfitz likes his job. That’s clear. He is especially fond of napalm and revels in the idea of dropping tons of it from his plane onto the people of rural Vietnam. He takes an interest in the technical improvements to his weapon of choice, improvements that ensure that the fireball adheres firmly to whatever it encounters, thus guaranteeing that it will burn completely. If he were closer to the action, one feels Pfitz would revel in the smell, the mix of burnt organic matter with the suggestion of roast pork emanating from oxidized human flesh. He takes that kind of pride in a job well done.
Lydecker is demoted, effectively humiliated when given the chance for shore leave. During his week in Saigon, he remorselessly pursues two forms of recreation, one from a bottle and the other between the sheets offered to him. But there is a girl who is different, she stays out of other people’s business, taking care of her own business. She is treated with total and seemingly universal contempt, and she is the only hangout in the bar who is never on the menu, her meat not for sale. Harassed in the workplace himself, one might expect Lydecker to be sympathetic to his plight. But he treats her with as much – if not more – disdain than the others and, ultimately, it is more out of spite than sympathy or desire that he insists on a session with her, forcing himself on her simply to underscore his right to assert assumed control. What Lydecker subsequently experiences with that girl changes his worldview just a little, but enough to influence events elsewhere, his newfound awareness of him constructs a plan he could use back home. board.
In a short story, William Boyd illustrates the class systems embedded in America’s supposedly classless society. He confronts the so-called clinical nature of modern warfare by identifying the blunderbuss of maiming terror in its indiscriminate line of fire. He characterizes sadism, revenge, conscience and retribution. He draws sketches of exploitation, both economic and social, and illustrates how communities, even entire societies, can be seen to be built on a crude and ruthless assertion of domination for the sake of domination. And all this happens in less than twenty-five pages.
Other stories in the set are also of a very high standard. Going through them all would reproduce the book no less, for they are succinct, often surprising, sometimes humorous pieces that together form a crowning achievement.