The Barracks by Richard Seltzer
Building
3926, Fort Polk, Louisiana, was a "temporary" structure -- a
white
clapboard oblong rectangle, hurriedly thrown together, like hundreds of other army
barracks. Its first
tenants were recruits and draftees
bound for the Pacific in World War II. Cycle after cycle were
trained and
shipped. Then the war
ended, and the
barracks fell silent, except for the bats that
nested under the eaves, like ghosts returning to curse
drill
sergeants who had
not pushed them hard
enough, and not taught them what could
have kept them alive.
Later,
when a "temporary" war broke out in Viet Nam, the "temporary"
barracks was reopened. Exterminators were called in to eliminate the bats,
but while individuals
could be killed, their kind
was
indestructible. At dawn and at sunset, their eerie forms hovered high above the eaves,
and vanished one by one
into the depths of the building.
Aside
from the bats, the barracks was now in better shape than when it
was first
built. Cycle after cycle of trainees had kept it in shape for
inspections. Some
had even made improvements to get bonus points.
For instance, there was a red rack for the red helmet
liner that the
fire guard wore each night. Two magazine racks hung on the
latrine wall beside
the toilets. And on the wall above the water fountain, hung a
home-made plaque
that one group of trainees had presented to the drill sergeant
they reviled and
respected.
Downstairs,
between two long rows of parallel bunks, was the masterpiece of
the barracks --
the red linoleum center aisle. Thanks to the special efforts of
cycle after
cycle of trainees, it shone mirror-bright. No other barracks in
Echo Company
could hope to match it. As long as they continued to take care
of it and didn't
get gigs for foolish oversights, the third platoon would always
win
inspections. That was a source of pride and confidence --
feelings that were
hard to come by in basic training.
Everyone
in the platoon took their boots off at the door, but even in
stocking feet no
one in the platoon crossed the yellow lines that defined the
center aisle --
nobody but the chosen few entrusted with taking care of it.
In
this cycle of trainees, Evans did the buffing upstairs. The
all-important
downstairs floor was in the keeping of Powell. Tagliatti helped
him with the
buffer cord. Schneider tended the plug.
At
first it had been a continual annoyance having to walk all the
way around to
get to a bunk that was just three feet away across the aisle.
But by now it was
second nature. If anyone forgot, there was always somebody else
around to shout
a reminder and preserve the sanctity of the center aisle.
The
screen door slammed, and Beaulieu, a tall, tired National Guard
trainee from
the University of Maryland, shuffled in. The latrine lay to his
right, the staircase
straight ahead, and the downstairs bunkroom stretched out far to
his left.
"Where's
Roberts?" he shouted across the bunks, shuffling his stocking
feet lazily
as he walked in.
"How
should I know?" shouted Hathaway from the far end. A
football-playing
college boy from Alabama, he was stretched out on his belly on a
top bunk,
writing letters.
"You're
his squad leader, aren't you?"
"Yeah,
but not his nursemaid."
"He's
got CQ from four to six."
"Big
deal."
"Somebody's
got to take it. Shit'll hit the fan if only one guy's on CQ."
"If
you're so goddamned uptight about it, do it yourself. You can't
go anywhere
anyway."
Hathaway
kept writing.
Beaulieu
turned, stepped toward the door.
"Keep
your goddamned feet off that center aisle," shouted Hathaway,
without
looking up from his letter.
Beaulieu
stopped short of the yellow line, kicked a footlocker, turned
and plodded and
shuffled behind the bunks.
"Pick
up your feet," shouted Hathaway.
He
stopped, then continued to shuffle. The screen door slammed
again.
"Goddamned
trouble-maker," mumbled Hathaway.
"He's only
trying to do right,"
offered Schneider, a fat farm boy from Iowa, in the next bunk.
"No,
I mean Roberts. Why the hell'd they ever put draftees in this
company?
And
why did they have to stick us with them?"
"You know
damned well -- they were
recycled."
"Yeah,
four fucking fuck-offs, and we got all of them."
Hathaway kept
writing.
Schneider
lifted his huge bulk, carefully
lowered it to the floor, then waddled quietly behind the bunks,
past the stairs
and into the latrine. Straight ahead were the platoon's two
washing machines,
with dozens of bags of laundry lined up waiting their turn.
Beside them
stretched a row of sinks, leading to the showers. Along the
other walls were
urinals and a line of toilets, about two feet apart, without
partitions. All
but one toilet was occupied, like seats in the reading room at a
college library
just before exam time. Although everybody had his pants down to
justify his
presence in these plush accommodations, most were reading books,
newspapers, or
magazines, or writing letters home.
Roberts, a tall thin black boy from Mississippi, was
standing by a sink,
staring at himself in the mirror as he carefullly shaved the top
of his head.
"Hey,
Roberts, aren't you supposed to be on CQ?"
"May
be."
"Well,
what are you doing then?"
"Giving
myself a haircut. Got to look pretty for the sergeant."
Roberts kept
shaving his head.
"Well,
they're looking for you, Roberts. Don't say I didn't tell you."
"Yeah,
everybody's looking for the old Bob tonight. I got me a date.
Got me a couple
of them. I'm going to have me a big night."
"You're going
to have big trouble is all,
if you don't hightail it over to CQ."
Schneider
lowered himself on the only empty john, between Tagliatti and
Waslewski.
"Hey, Tag," he asked, "are you through with the sports?"
"Yeah, but
it's four days old."
"Well, that's
two days better than
anything I've seen."
Alec, a
short, tough ex-cop from Chicago,
entered the latrine. "Ah, shit."
"Yeah, Alec,"
said Cohen, a college
kid from Berkeley "It's a full house. Maybe you can catch the
next
show."
"Bunch
of damned exhibitionists. Got to spend the whole day with your
pants down, in
full view of the world."
"A good
craps's one of the few pleasures
allowed us," replied Cohen.
"Then shit and get
done with
it. This place looks like a fucking library."
"I say, sir,
are the libraries like this
in Chicago?"
"Get off it,
Cohen."
"When I'm
done, I will, indeed, get off
it. But right now that's a bit premature. I might risk staining
this immaculate
concrete, the pride of the third platoon latrine crew."
"Cut the
bull."
"Me Big Chief
Shitting Bull."
"Tag." said
Schneider, "can you
toss me the toilet paper, please? Thanks."
He
caught it, circus-style, on his big toe. He used some, then
tossed the roll to
Alec and stood up. "Here you go, Alec; it's all yours."
"Just
shit right down and write yourself a letter," mocked Cohen.
"Formation!"
the shout from outside echoed and reechoed throughout the
barracks.
"Ah, shit,"
groaned Alec.
"No, my boy,
self-control,
self-control," Cohen kept ribbing him. "That's the first lesson
of the
Army. Self-control. Potty-training 101. It's all part of basic
training. We
must learn to adapt to the shituation."
"Well, you
don't seem to have learned it
-- with that goddamned diarrhea of the mouth."
All
five platoons of Echo Company lined up quickly on the exercise
field. There
were forty-seven men in the third platoon. Forty-three were
National Guard and
Reservists -- all white. Four were draftees -- all black --
Roberts, Armstrong,
and two new guys, recently recycled, that nobody knew by name.
In the summer
of 1970, the Viet Nam War was
being scaled down. Fort Polk, which had been, as the big
welcoming sign still
announced, "Birthplace of combat infantrymen for Viet Nam," was
starting to train National Guardsmen instead. This was the
summer after the
Cambodian Invasion and Kent State.
These
trainees came from all over the country,
from all walks of life. They were given uniform clothes and
uniform poverty.
Their uniform haircuts even seemed to wipe out age differences.
It was like an
experiment in elemental democracy.
They
were a surprisingly well-educated group. Several had been to
grad school. Most
had some college. Most of the rest intended to go to college as
soon as this
was over.
There
were no real troublemakers in the group. No National Guardsman
or Reservist
would want to get into trouble. They just wanted to get out of
the Army as
quickly as possible; and, if nothing out of the ordinary
happened, they'd all
be out, after basic and AIT or MOS training, in two to four
months.
An
artificial hierarchy had been imposed on this realm of social
equality. The
drill sergeant picked a platoon leader, an assistant platoon
leader, and four
squad leaders. It seemed he deliberately chose a pompous,
overweight coward as
platoon leader, to teach the trainees to obey someone just
because of rank, not
because of personal respect. This way they'd be learning to
follow the system,
to obey any stranger with rank, rather than a specific
individual.
But the group
was so small that they knew each
other too well for artificial distinctions to matter. When the
drill sergeant
was around and when they were with the rest of the company, they
observed the
forms. But in the barracks, the platoon leader, Rawlings, was a
joke, an
outcast, the victim of repeated practical jokes, a convenient
symbol of hated
authority that could be mocked and mildly abused with impunity.
MacFarland,
the assistant platoon leader, was exempted from fire guard, KP,
etc. He had no
responsibilities and did nothing.
Hathaway,
the leader of the first squad, was the real leader of the
platoon. Vassavion,
Sullivan, and Powell were bigger than he was, but ordering
people came
naturally to Hathaway. When something needed to be done, he took
it upon
himself to make the decisions that had to be made. Without
debate or
hesitation, he simply gave orders, and he was obeyed or evaded,
but never
overtly disobeyed.
Sanderson
and little Evans always backed Hathaway, without his ever having
to ask for
help.
Powell was an
exception to every rule. Nobody
in the platoon ever told him what to do. And he never ordered
anyone else
about, unless they asked his advice, as they sometimes did, even
Hathaway, when
the barracks was a mess and they had little time to get it in
shape for
inspection.
At formation,
the Captain of Echo Company
presided as the drill sergeants read their rosters and checked
off the names
quickly and mechanically. At the name "Roberts," several voices
sounded off "CQ," and one voice said "KP."
The
sergeant moved on to the next name without a pause. The roll
completed, most
raced to the mess hall to line up and wait for dinner.
A few went
back to the barracks.
Frank
Arnold and Alec headed straight to the latrine. Tagliatti,
Waslewski,
MacFarland, and Delaney stretched out on their bunks.
Halfway down
the aisle, Powell sat on his bed,
his powerful frame bowed, a Bible on his lap.
Waslewski
spat out, "Goddamn piss-assed
shit-hole. They treat prisoners of war better than this. I'd
like to shove that
Bill-of-Rights crap right up that mother-fucking drill
sergeant's ass."
"That's the
system for you,"
explained Delaney. "Here we are, supposedly free citizens, and
they've
revoked our civil rights and subjected us to this torture
without there ever
having been a declaration of war, without the express consent of
Congress."
"All I want's
a goddamn beer. It's
piss-assed hot, and there's a PX a block away."
"Have a drink
of water," suggested
MacFarland.
"Water?"
asked Waslewski. "You
call that piss 'water?' All I want's a goddamned beer. Is that
too much to
ask?"
"Okay, Waz,
okay. We're all in the same
boat. You don't have to remind us."
"I don't see
how that Sanderson does
it," said Tag, "running laps in this heat."
"He's nuts,"
concluded Waslewski.
"He thrives
on this shit."
"That's what
I said: he's nuts."
"Good thing
that Dietz can't count,"
noted MacFarland. "Sounded awful funny three guys on CQ."
"And somebody
claimed he was on KP,
too."
"Where the
hell is Roberts?" asked
Delaney.
Waslewski
licked his lips, "Maybe he just
slipped over to the PX for a beer."
"Yeah," said
Tag, "if nobody
sees him, it'll be all right."
"Don't
anybody tell Rawlings," added
MacFarland. "That bastard would turn him in."
"Here comes
Rawlings."
Everybody
left in a hurry -- everybody but
Powell.
Rawlings
laughed, weakly. "They sure got
hungry fast."
Powell
smiled. Rawlings looked like he wanted
to say more, but he turned to the water fountain instead, took a
swallow, and
spit it out.
"It ought to
get cool while everybody's
at supper," he said. "It needs a rest. We all need a rest."
Rawlings
skipped supper. For him, the rare quiet was well worth the price
of hunger.
Powell stayed
too, reading the Bible -- at
peace in his own world.
Twenty
minutes later, Vassavion came staggering
into the latrine, leaning on Waslewski. He had the flabbiness of
a natural
athlete who had given up exercise in favor of beer and repose.
"At great
personal risk," he announced to himself in the mirror, "and
exercising considerable self-restraint, I have brought you a
six-pack -- six
bright, sparkling, lukewarm, unopened, certified virgin cans of
Schlitz."
Waslewski
grabbed a can. "Drink up, my boy, drink up,"
Vassavion
continued. "I feel the thirst coming on me. Man lives not by
bread alone.
Give me one of those cans. Booze and broads -- it takes taste,
refinement, and
years of education to properly wallow in such shit. You must be
a connoisseur,
a kind of sewer. They have fine sewers in this city, full of
certified grade A,
government-inspected shit. The whole world is shit. But few are
those with
taste refined enough to enjoy it, to savor the taste, the odor,
the warm moist
feel of it. Shit."
He
threw down his half-empty can. "It tastes like shit. Lukewarm
diarrhetic
shit."
He
stumbled to one of the empty johns and vomited.
"I do believe my constipation is over. Now I can even
shit through
my mouth."
Waslewski
opened the last can. "You lucky
bastard. I'd give my right ball to get out of this place."
Tag entered
with his four-day-old newspaper.
"Where's Evans?"
"Evans?"
asked Vassavion. "He
was with me a minute ago. While I was painting the town, he was
looking for
paint. The man has the soul of an artist."
Rawlings
joined them in the latrine and nearly
tripped over a beer can.
Vassavion
greeted him magnificently,
"Welcome, Prince Hal."
"You're
drunk."
"Then be ye
crowned king already? A
hollow crown and an empty noodle. 'tis true 'tis pity, and pity
'tis 'tis
you."
"You're
drunk," stated Rawlings.
"Amen. And
hallowed be thy name. And
hollowed be thy head. Howl, howl, howl, the beer is foul. A foul
ball. We had a
ball, and the beer was foul. Out of line, your highness, most
definitely out of
line. But I'll go straight from honest to goodness. Just don't
'arry me, me
boy; I'll do it at me own speed."
"Please stay
out of sight,"
Rawlings
requested patiently while pissing at the urinal. Then he quickly
buttoned up
his fatigues and left.
Vassavion
shook his head. "I do believe the old boy's pissed off.
He
has no sense of humor, no sense at all."
As
Rawlings quietly climbed the stairs, Delaney, Armstrong, Alec,
and Cohen
stormed in and gathered by the water fountain.
"Okay,
Armstrong, where's Roberts?" asked Delaney. "You're his
bunkmate. You
should know."
"Said he was
going home."
"Home? Is
something wrong at home?
Somebody sick or something? He should have told somebody. They'd
call the Red Cross
and have them check it out. If it was really bad, they'd give
him a pass."
"Nobody's
sick. He said nothing about
being sick. Just said he was going home."
"Freedom,"
said Alec. "You talk
about freedom, Delaney. There's your fucking freedom. He wants
to go, so he
goes. And what can they do to him? Send him to Nam? He's fucking
eleven
bang-bang. Fucking mortars. He's going to Nam all right. No
place but Nam.
There's your fucking freedom -- being so low you've got nothing
to lose."
"That's
fucking profound, Alec."
Cohen started to sing softly,
"Freedom's
just another word for nothing left to lose..."
"Is he coming
back?" asked Delaney.
"Did he say he was coming back?"
"He'll be
back," said Armstrong.
"When he's good and ready, he'll be back."
"He's got
thirty days," offered
Alec. "I heard a hold-over talking
about it. One of the
ones waiting for
court-martial. Thirty days and you're still AWOL. But one minute
more, and
you're a deserter, and they'll have the FBI after you."
"Fuck the
FBI," said Delaney.
"These days there are so many deserters the FBI can't hope to
touch them.
But when the drill sergeant finds out that Roberts is gone,
he'll have the
whole lot of us lowcrawling from one end of the company area to
the other. And
we can forget about ever getting PX privileges or passes. Shit.
I can't take
five more weeks of this fucking hell-hole."
"You're not
going to rat on him, are you,
Delaney?"
"Hell, no.
What's to gain by ratting on
him? As soon as they know he's AWOL, we've had it. But if we can
cover it up
till he gets back,
we'll be all right."
"That little
bastard."
"How long do
you figure he'll be,
Armstrong?"
"Don't know.
But I do know that Jackson,
Mississippi's a long ways from here. And he don't have no
money."
"Shit
almighty."
Frank
walked past, pulled his notebook out from under his pillow, and
went to the
latrine to write.
"Delaney is a
self-centered ass. He talks
about principles, but he has none himself. What he says is
unrelated to what he
does. If he thought he could get anything out of it, he wouldn't
hesitate to
turn Roberts in. But what bugs me most is that he wouldn't
bother to
rationalize it. He'd just do it and keep making the same
speeches about freedom
and human rights.
"When
I first got here, I thought I'd found moral simplicity. The
world was reduced
to just this barracks and the barren sandy ground around it. We
were all
confronted with direct and simple rules and orders: you obey or
disobey; you
cross the line or you don't; you are forced to act -- to submit
or rebel -- in
full knowledge of the immediate consequences. The setup was
artificial, but it
resembled a scientific experiment -- take away all class
distinctions; and, in
a limited, controlled environment, examine human nature. But
there's nothing
natural about Delaney -- his words and his acts simply don't
match."
Frank heard
the door slam and stocking feet
slowly shuffle toward the bunkroom. He didn't look up. He knew
it was his
bunkmate Beaulieu. He half expected to hear Hathaway hollering
at him for
dragging his feet. But Hathaway was still at supper.
Beaulieu
got pen and paper from his locker and shuffled off to the
latrine where he sat
on a john across from Frank and continued a multi-page letter to
his wife
Debbie:
"I just got
off CQ. It's a bit early, but
Sullivan can cover for me, say I'm at supper. Damn that Roberts.
He'd never
cover for me, you can be damn sure. But I had to cover for him
or we'd all have
been screwed. That's the way they work things here: everybody
gets punished for
what one guy does.
"But
Roberts doesn't give a damn. With no sweat at ll, he got perfect
scores in all
the PT events but the mile. The mile he did in ten minutes,
jogging and walking
beside Schneider. Poor Schneider was huffing and struggling
every inch of the
way, his heavy lard bouncing up and down and nearly throwing him
off balance.
And there was Roberts taking his jolly good time, laughing and
joking. The
drill sergeant blew his top; put Roberts on night KP for a week.
I'm sure he
didn't go. He just doesn't give a damn, the bastard.
"I'm still
sore all over. Never thought
I'd live through it. We had those damned plague shots the day
before, and I
could have sworn I couldn't move my arm or swallow any food. But
the bastards
had us out there doing another PT test and laughed at our moans
and groans;
wouldn't let anybody go on sick call, the bastards. Needless to
say, I didn't
do well. And they'll probably have me doing extra PT all week
because of it.
"Damn those
bars. I can do the bars.
Enough of them, at least. If you give me half a chance. But that
first time,
they took us to a field where the rusty bars spun free so you
couldn't get a
grip on them, and they ripped your hands apart. Mine had just
healed by
yesterday, and then they got ripped open again on another
stinking set of bars.
Nobody could do them right, not even the guys who show off back
at the company
area. Nobody, that is, but that bastard Roberts and that runt
Evans.
"Everything's
topsy-turvy here. It's the
big guys that are hurting, guys like Hathaway, Sullivan, and
Vassavion -- the
football player types. Waslewski, too. They're strong all right,
but they've
got a lot of weight to lift, and they have to struggle to pass
that damned
test. And, of course, the fat ones, like Schneider, take a
beating.
"It's
the little guys that have it easy. That runt Evans got a 490 on
the PT test.
Just missed a little on the grenade throw and the rifle, or his
score would
have been perfect. It doesn't take any muscle to squeeze a
trigger.
"So
Evans came out tops. He and Vassavion. Evans with ease and
Vassavion in agony.
They got the first two passes. They just got back. Late. Little
Evans was
leading the lumbering Vassavion. We covered for them, all right.
It's hard to
get mad at them. Vassavion's so magnificent in his drunkenness.
I've never seen
him in better spirits. And Evans was lucky to have gotten him
back so close to
on time.
"That Evans
is quite a guy. Like a monkey
the way he swings through those bars. Delaney nearly exploded
when he heard the
runt was getting a pass. I forget what he said exactly, but
somehow it was an
example of the absolute injustice of the system, the
topsy-turnviness of
rewarding the weak and tearing down the strong. However he put
it, it hit home
-- how they're breaking us in mind and body, reducing us all to
a general
anonymous mass of weaklings. And something about runts being in
collusion with
them, being taken in and used. He says that's how the system
perpetuates itself
-- putting runts and cowards in positions of authority, people
who know damned
well that their authority comes to them not for any merit of
their own, but
just because of the system.
"Listening
to Delaney, I found myself hating little Evans and Rawlings,
too. Rawlings
isn't a runt. On the contrary, he's just as big and has just as
much trouble at
PT as Waslewski and Sullivan. I guess I lump him together with
Evans because
he's so self-effacing, so meek and retiring that you never
notice his size. You
naturally think of him as a weakling or a coward.
"I've
got nothing personal against Evans or Rawlings, but the
frustration and anger
and hurt and sleeplessness all build up. And all the groveling
in the dirt.
You've got to let it out sometimes. It's easy for you to focus
all that hate on
somebody, almost at random, to take it out on him. And Delaney
has such a way
with words.
"I'm glad
Hathaway was around then.
Hathaway treats Evans like a kid brother, joshes him, knocks him
around a bit,
and looks out for him. I'm glad Hathaway was there then, or I
might have taken
a not-so-friendly poke at the kid.
"Here comes
Sanderson. He takes it all in
stride, as if this were pre-season football training, or as if
all his life
he'd wanted to break the five-minute mile in combat boots. When
they pack a
hundred or a hundred and twenty of us in a school bus or cattle
truck and the
rest of us are groaning, Sanderson coaxes Cohen to start up a
song, and he
sings with all his heart and lungs. And, God, he has quite a set
of heart and
lungs from all that running.
"It's a crazy
world, Deb, that makes such
crazy places as this, reducing men to chunks of sweating, aching
flesh. Even
trying to shit hurts. If you were here, or, rather, if you were
near and I
could see you, sleep with you, it would be tolerable. With you,
I could
tolerate most anything. We could just lie there and laugh about
it. This shit
should never be taken seriously. It's just one huge practical
joke. I'm sure
that's the way the drill sergeants take it -- like a fraternity
initiation.
Cohen manages to see it that way too, manages to bring out the
humor in things.
"But it's
degrading. The only way to
release all this pressure, aside from taking a poke at somebody
(which would
land you with an Article Fifteen or a court martial and get you
recycled and
stuck in this damned army another month or two) is to
masturbate. There's just
no other way, and it's so damned degrading. In a barracks full
of guys, the
bunks no more than three feet apart, the firelight on all the
time, the
fireguard pacing back and forth, and somebody else in the upper
bunk getting
shaken by your every move. And you try to do it quietly, as
unobtrusively as
possible -- one hell of a way to get a release, lying there
stock-still,
squeezing yourself with a sheet; but it works, after a fashion.
"The
imagination takes charge, and I'm
far, far from here, this place never existed, and I'm holding
you so warm and
close. Damn it, I'm horny as hell, and it'll be at least three
months before I
see you again. You can't imagine what this place does to a guy.
I think of you
constantly, whenever we get a five minute break, and I can lean
against a tree
and shut my eyes (they won't let us stretch out, ever), or even
running laps
around the block at 5 AM, before breakfast, and the thought of
you gets me away
from this place, and it's something to look forward to -- the
next moment when
I'll be able to let my mind drift to you.
"Or maybe
it's the body that does the
remembering. Our minds have been reduced to pulp by no sleep,
maybe four hours
at most. (As Delaney points out, a soldier is entitled to eight
hours of sleep.
But the drill sergeants always cover for themselves. Officially
it's always
eight hours from lights-out to lights-on. Officially, it's our
own doing if we
don't get enough sleep. But there's always a half dozen chores
that still need
to be done after lights-out. And then they wake you up for fire
guard or CQ,
and you have to break the rules again, getting up an hour before
lights-on to
clean the barracks or we'd never make it through inspection).
Without
sleep, the mind loses the power to control what it's thinking,
to tie thoughts
together by anything more than simple association. It becomes a
passive inert
mass.
"It's
the body that does the remembering. My muscles stop aching as
they remember
your shape, the pressure of you close to me, the texture of your
skin, the
delightful, unexpected ways you move. My eye muscles relive with
my hands the
fullness of your breasts. I remember directly, completely, not
like before, the
electric touch of your fingers, the playful flip of your tongue,
the way you
toss back your head to toss back your hair, your buttocks as you
climb the stairs
ahead of me (that's why it's always ladies first -- so men can
watch them as
they move), your long legs rubbing softly against mine.
"Damn
it. I want you. I ache for you. These aches have nothing to do
with ten mile
hikes and PT and lying prone in the dust and the 90o sun for
endless hours. No,
it's my every muscle longing to be with you, straining to break
away from these
stupid bones and rush home to you. These bones are so stupid.
This mind is so
stupid. This nation is so stupid for having invented such a
thing as basic
training. How could anybody or anything ever sanction anything
that might keep
me away from you? My body can't understand. But here I sit and
shit and write
you endless letters.
"My bunkmate,
Frank, is on the john here
across from me. There are no partitions. He's writing too. Maybe
it's a letter.
He doesn't talk much to me. Hangs around with that Delaney
character. But I
know he probably feels the same as I do. I can feel the bed
shake at night.
That's not nightmares. We're all reduced to a common
denominator.
"It
may well be that in the real world this Frank is an intelligent
guy, but here
he spends his every free moment sitting on the john, shitting
and writing. I
guess it's diarrhea of the mind. Everything here seems to get
diarrhea on
Sunday. That's the only time we can afford the luxury.
"I slept till
noon, shat till two, had CQ
till four, filled in for that damned Roberts till 5:40, and now
I'm shitting
agin. It's been a luxurious day of self-indulgence. But in about
two and a half
hours the lights will go out, even though it's still light
outside. And we'll
all toddle obediently to bed. And it'll all begin again.
"Damn
it. I need you. My body needs you. The pulp that was my mind
needs you. Hell.
"You know how
I always bitch to you and
get it out of my system, then I forget it as we laugh together.
It's great the
way you make me realize what a fool I am for bitching all the
time. You'd hate
me the way I am now. I hate myself the way I am now. I can't
even write you a
decent letter. All I do is write about the shit around me. But
damn it,
darling, I'm caught up in this shit. All those stupid rules they
threw at us
five weeks ago are now a part of me. I take this nonsense
seriously. My joys,
fears, hopes, and miseries all stem from this world they've
thrown me in.
Somehow Sanderson and maybe Powell (I don't know much about
Powell) have managed
to keep living in their own worlds. But my world has been torn
down.
"My
body remembers your every move vividly. but it's hard for me to
imagine the
world we used to live in. It's all unreal and far away. The only
world I've got
is this shit. And I hate this shit. And I hate myself for
letting myself be
reduced to this.
"Damn it. I
love you and miss you, and
I'm sorry this is the way I write and the way I think, but
they've done it to
me, damn it. They've reduced me to this. When I get back it'll
be different,
and I'll be different. And I'll be able to forget all this and
go back to being
me -- whoever that was. But wherever I am and whoever I am, I
love you."
Waslewski tumbled into the latrine, picked up the empty beer
cans, poured the
few remaining drops down his throat, then absent-mindedly
crushed the cans in
his hand, as if they were paper cups.
"Evans, would
you believe that Evans?"
he bellowed for the benefit of Beaulieu, Sanderson, and Frank
Arnold.
"Never so much as tasted a beer. A weekend pass. Thirty-two
hours of
freedom. That runt had thirty-two hours in the land of bars and
brothels, and
he spent it chasing after paint so he can pretty up the
barracks. What a
waste." Beaulieu
looked up from his
letter. "Paint?"
"Yeah.
And that ain't the half of it. You know what color he got?"
"What?"
"Yellow."
"What the
hell can he paint yellow?"
"The lines.
The fucking lines for the
center aisle. Those fucking lines we're not supposed to step
over. He wants to
repaint them so they'll be nice and neat and pretty. He thinks
it'll be worth
bonus points for inspection. Bonus points. God, that runt's out
of his
ever-fucking mind."
Waslewski
tripped on a laundry bag, then sat
down on it and stretched out on the long line of laundry bags,
swallowing the
last drop of the last can with a cherubic grin on his face.
The
screen door slammed and Alec walked into the bunkroom.
"Take
your damned boots off," hollered Hathaway.
"Don't be a
pain in the ass," whined
Alec. "It's Sunday. Cool it."
"I don't give
a damn if it's Doomsday.
Take off those fucking boots."
"Go ahead,
Alec," Schneider added
gently. "We all do it."
"And get your
damned foot off that center
aisle," snarled Hathaway.
"What
do you think you are? Special or something? If everybody else
can walk around,
you can too.
*****
The
door slammed and slammed again. Rawlings walked in the latrine.
"Where's
Roberts? Has anybody seen Roberts? He isn't on CQ."
"KP,"
answered Delaney.
"Remember. He got night KP for a week."
As Rawlings
left and headed upstairs, Alvardo
came in, kicked aside a crushed beer can, took a look at the
washing machine
and shouted, "Sullivan!
Sullivan!"
Beaulieu
answered, "He's still on CQ."
"Then fuck
him. I've got to get this wash
done tonight."
"Cool it,
buster," said Delaney.
"My bag's ahead of yours."
"Fuck. All my
fatigues stink. The sweat's
been fermenting on them for weeks. Sometimes I think they're
more alive than I
am."
"Well, don't
blame it on me," said
Delaney. "Mine stink just as much as yours do. It's the fucking
system's
fault, giving us one washer for forty-seven stinking guys."
"When I get
out of here," said
Beaulieu, "I'm going to write a book about this shit-hole."
Frank looked
up from his notebook. "Just
remember not to make a big deal about all this. It isn't like
we've got a bad
deal. Afterall, we're Reservists and National Guard. It isn't
like we're going
to be shipped to Nam. We aren't that low in hell. We all have
homes and jobs or
school we expect to get back to in a few months. We've got to be
careful
because we've got something to lose. This isn't your usual basic
training."
"Yeah,"
Delaney added, "we've
got it easy. The system has given us a few advantages, and we've
taken them, so
we've got a stake in the system. We don't have as much of a
stake as the runts
and cowards, but we can be counted on not to shout too loud, not
to be too
violent. That's how the system perpetuates itself -- by giving
us things we'd
be afraid to part with. We have to be willing to lose
everything, to destroy
everything, if we ever hope to attain freedom.
"That's
what's holding us here, you know -- our little compromises with
the system. There
aren't any walls or armed guards -- just imaginary lines. One
step beyond the
line from this tree to this building and you're AWOL. One step
over that yellow
line into the center aisle and...
"We don't
worry about the drill sergeant
anymore. It isn't a question of what he'd do to us. We've
internalized it all.
We react automatically. It's like they took out our minds and
replaced them
with machines. Or rather, we did it to ourselves so we could be
good little
boys without having to think about it. We form 'good habits,'
like good little
boys."
Waslewski
casually crushed the last beer can, raised himself from the
laundry bags, and
stumbled out of the latrine toward his bunk. He nearly bumped
into Alec and
Evans by the water fountain.
"What the
hell's this paint crap?"
Alec asked Evans.
"If you've
got to play the game, why not
play to win?"
"God, I don't
see how you can take this
crap seriously."
"But I don't
So they say, don't cross
that line. What the hell should I care? Do I really need to
cross that line?
Hell no. If it were something important, that would be
different. But this is
all nonsense. So why not play along and beat them at their own
game?"
"Don't you
have any guts?" asked
Alec. "You just buckle under and do everything they tell you.
Don't you
have any self-respect? Damn it, why don't you stand up for
yourself sometime.
Rebel."
"Rebel? What
the hell for, Alec? Why the
hell should you want to walk there? Why make a big deal of it?
It only takes a
minute to walk around. If they're dumb enough to want to make a
rule about it,
okay -- humor them a bit. If you see it as a game and get into
the swing of it,
you can have some fun, instead of just griping all the time. You
sound like you
want to break rules just because they are rules. Whatever
anybody said not to
do, you'd want to do it. There's nothing more childish."
"Whatever
anybody said to do, you'd do
it. There's nothing mroe childish," Alec mocked.
"Hell, Alec,
get the old team spirit.
With freshly painted lines, we'll be sure to win the Monday
inspection by a
wide enough margin to win for the week. That'll give us three
weeks we've won
and two ties. One more win after that, and we'll have clinched
the barracks
competition. The second platoon will probably take the PT
competition. But we
have a good shot at the rifle and the G3, and a damn good chance
to come out
best overall platoon."
"Maybe you've
got a stronger stomach than
me," said Alec. "Maybe you can eat more shit than I can without
getting sick. Maybe you can even learn to love eating shit. But
I've reached my
limit. Just one bit more and I'll... I'll..."
"Gripe some
more?" offered Evans.
Alec clinched
his fist, glanced toward
Hathaway's bunk, leaned over the water fountain, took a swallow,
spit it out
with a grimace, and stomped to the latrine, sliding a bit in his
stocking feet.
Rawlings sat up in his bunk, and stretched his arms. There was
too much noise
in the barracks to sleep, even with the door to his and
MacFarland's room shut.
It almost seemed like they yelled and stomped about on purpose
to annoy him. He
wrote a letter to Madeline:
"I know it
must seem funny getting these
letters from me. Sure, we parted as 'friends.' I haven't
forgotten. There's no
way I could forget it. But you have no idea what it's like here,
what hell it
is. I need someone to write to, someone to dream of. Just to
keep my sanity, I
need it. Please let me delude myself a bit. Please don't keep
hitting me over
the head with a sledgehammer. Afterall, how can either of us
know what things will
be like in three months? People change. Just let me believe
there might be a
chance.
"Sometimes I
regret ever having gotten
myself into this mess. I should have paid some dentist to put
braces on my
teeth and avoided the military altogether. But I've always
planned to go into
politics after law school. I hate the Army. I know there's no
moral
justification for Nam. But to get elected to a position of
authority so I can
do something to prevent future Nams, I have to have served in
the military.
It's one of the unfortunate facts of politics, one of the
compromises that have
to be made.
"There's
nobody here I can talk to, except maybe Powell. And there are
very few
occasions I feel free to talk to Powell.
"The
rest of the platoon hates me for not standing up to the drill
sergeant, for not
voicing their wants and opinions. They have little direct
contact with him or with
the senior drill except for receiving commands. They have little
notion of what
those sergeants are like, how they think and react, how you have
to deal with
them.
"Friday night
while I was sleeping,
someone sprayed shaving cream in my open mouth. They've played
pranks before,
but that one shook me up. I might have smothered to death or
gone into shock. I
think it was MacFarland, the assistant platoon leader who shares
this small
room with me. It took so long to wake him that he must have been
faking that he
was asleep. It gives me a creepy feeling knowing that the guy
I've been living
so close to could do such a thing.
"I've
been on my guard since then. So many of them have it in for me.
Delaney,
especially, hates me; and he makes no attempt to disguise it. I
wouldn't trust
Alec or Waslewski either.
"There's no
way for me to find out who
got me with the shaving cream. I'm sure all the others know who
did it, but
none of them would tell me. I knew they wouldn't and that it
would be best not
to say anything. If they thought they'd gotten my goat, it would
encourage them
to do more of the same. So I pulled myself together, told
MacFarland -- 'It was
nothing, go back to sleep, just some practical joke.'
"Then
at Saturday morning's inspection I got a gig for shaving cream
on my bedpost. I
hadn't noticed it. If I'd told the drill sergeant how it got
there, he'd have
made trouble for everybody. He's had it in for me lately. I've
gotten several
gigs -- just little things I'd absent-mindedly overlooked, like
forgetting to
hang a towel at the base of the bed or not displaying a laundry
bag. It's bad
enough when we don't win an inspection, (he'd put anybody with a
gig on night
KP for a week), but when the platoon leader gets gigged, he
blows his top.
"He's
been riding me for not being more strict, for not asserting my
authority, for
not giving him the names of slackers so he can punish them. He
claims there's
no excuse for me getting a gig, that I should have two or three
of the others
make my bed, straighten my area, check and recheck. But I can't
see burdening
the others with my problems. They've got little enough time to
do their own
work.
"Anyway,
the sergeant has clearly reached his limit. If anything more
goes wrong, no
matter how minor, there's no telling what torture he might put
us all
through."
The
screen door slammed. Sullivan shouted, "Has anybody seen
Roberts?"
"Keep it
down," whispered Delaney.
"He's AWOL, but he might come back. If Rawlings hears about it,
he'll rat
on him and we'll all get screwed."
"But what if
he doesn't come back? We
can't cover for him forever, and it's a serious offense if they
find out we've
been covering for him."
"Cool it.
Just cool it," whispered
Delaney. Then out loud he said,
"What
were you saying Beaulieu?"
"Just that
somewhere there's got to be a
good place to live, where you can really be yourself."
"No, don't
kid yourself," explained
Delaney. "It's Catch-22. The world of business and the world of
the army.
Milo Minderbinder runs the whole show. The army's just a big
business, an equal
opportunity employer -- with all the bureaucracy and waste and
impersonal
cruelty of a big business.
"Read
the papers, man. They want junior officers for management
positions. The
foremen are no different from old sergeants. They are sucked in
by the gradual
increments in pay, the pension plans, and all that crap.
"From
the outside the Army looks like a bunch of guys who shoot and
get shot at. But
from the inside it's padded with bureaucrats trapped in a web of
slowly accruing
benefits. All you've got to do to be able to cash in your chips
at age 65 is
cover your ass. You never have to do anything that might tax
your mind or your
energy. Just never make a blunder without covering up for it.
"The whole
setup breeds paranoids,
security-hungry paranoids spending all their time trying to
divest themselves
of responsibility, following the letter of the regulations and
passing the
papers to the next desk. It's dangerous to make a decision. Any
change is
dangerous, shifting the rhythm of covering up activities. You
might miss
something.
"The Army's
probably the most
conservative institution in the world. It has carried the
inherent tendencies
of big business to their natural extreme. It's the epitome of
business.
"If
you feel crushed and oppressed here, if you feel they've torn
down your world
and thrown you naked and helpless into a world of their making,
well, it's just
a model of what goes on out there -- what you're going to go
back to."
As
Rawlings was licking the envelope, he glanced down at the floor
beside his bed.
His boots were missing -- his second pair of boots, the ones
that he never
wore, the ones with the special glossy shine for inspections,
the ones that
every morning he had to remember to dust off or he'd get a gig.
He stood up
suddenly, dropped the letter on
his bunk, got down on his belly and crawled under the bed. He
could see
nothing. He reached and reached again through empty space.
He checked
MacFarland's boots. They had
MacFarland's name tag.
He checked
under MacFarland's bed.
He
checked his own wall locker.
MacFarland's
wall locker was locked.
With
his strength, he'd have had no trouble breaking it open. But a
bent locker,
too, would be a gig.
He
checked his footlocker. He knew the boots couldn't be there, but
he checked
under the underwear he'd never worn, so carefully rolled for
inspection. He
checked under the handkerchiefs he'd never used, behind the
shaving cream,
under the razor he'd never used, under the shaving brush that he
wouldn't even know
how to use.
There
were no boots. MacFarland's
footlocker
was locked.
"Where the
hell are my boots?"
Rawlings bellowed. The whole barracks fell silent.
He stood at
the top of the stairs as half a
dozen puzzled trainees gathered below. "This has gone far
enough," he
announced. "I want my boots back."
Another dozen
gathered to watch and listen.
"Where are
they?" he repeated. His voice
was getting shrill.
"Where are
what?" asked Tag.
"My boots,
you fool."
"On your
fucking feet," said Tag.
"Why didn't you leave them at the door like the rest of us?"
Everybody but
Rawlings broke out laughing.
Attracted by the laughter, the crowd grew larger.
Rawlings
slowly and deliberately came down the
stairs. "Where the hell is MacFarland?" he insisted.
"Right here,
Fats," MacFarland
answered, winning a few laughs.
"Well, give
them to me."
"What?"
Rawlings now
stood face to face with him. The
rest of the platoon crowded close around.
"The boots.
Give me the fucking
boots!"
MacFarland
stared him hard in the eye.
Rawlings started shifting his weight from foot to foot
and clenching and
unclenching his fists.
"Give him the
boots!" shouted a
voice from the front steps. "The boss wants boots."
Suddenly, a
hail of boots came flying through
the door at Rawlings.
One
hit him hard on the side of the head. He lost his balance and
fell backward.
Rather than catch him or cushion his fall, the crowd moved back.
His back hit
the floor; his head the bottom step.
He grabbed
the bannister and pulled himself to
a sitting position on the stairs. "Where are my boots?" he
insisted.
"I bet
Roberts has them," came a
shout from the crowd.
"Or maybe the
boots have Roberts,"
suggested someone else.
"Yeah,"
shouted the first, "I
hear the boots went AWOL and took Roberts with them."
"Just where
is Roberts, anyway?"
Rawlings asked. He pulled himself to his feet and tried to
reassert his authority.
"Where is he?"
Cohen started
humming the tune "Freedom's
just another word for nothing left to lose."
"Yeah, man,"
somebody whispered.
"He's free, free as a bird."
"Down with
the king!" shouted
drunken Vassavion. "Give me liberty or give me MacBeth!"
"Shut up!"
shouted Rawlings.
"Now is the
summer of our
discontent," Vassavion continued.
"I said --
shut up!" Rawlings shoved
him. Vassavion shoved back. Rawlings shoved Hathaway by mistake.
Hathaway swung
wildly. Rawlings ducked and rammed his shoulder into Hathaway's
belly.
Waslewski punched Rawlings in the back. Rawlings fell, swinging
boots and feet
wildly, tripping Vassavion, Hathaway and Waslewski. They rolled
and slid down
the sacred center aisle.
The whole
platoon gathered round, standing and
leaning on the bunks, watching the fight. They were a mob ready
to erupt, to
release its pent-up hate and fear and frustration on this petty
platoon leader.
Delaney
jumped up on a footlocker, raised high a fist, like a lightning
rod and shouted:
"Power
to the people!"
"Power!"
repeated a dozen others.
"Power!"
chanted dozens more.
"Down with
all pigs!" shouted
Delaney.
"Right on!"
chanted the chorus.
"Kill the
fucking bastard," someone
mumbled.
The chorus
laughed nervously.
Rawlings
tried to stand up, was tripped by
Waslewski. Hathaway dove on top of him, pinned arms with knees,
and started
slapping his face back and forth, harder and harder.
"Give him one
for me!" shouted
someone.
"And for me."
"And
me," echoed up and down the room.
"Give him one
for the Gipper!"
shouted Cohen. Everyone laughed, so
Cohen
continued, clapping his hands, "Go team, go!"
The crowd
responded, "Push him back, push
him back, way back."
Cohen
grabbed two of the many boots lying on the floor, pulled them on
untied, and
started jumping and dancing like a cheerleader.
"Power!"
repeated Delaney.
"Power!"
repeated the chorus.
Vassavion
stumbled to his feet, waving his
arms drunkenly. "For mine is the power and the glory!" he
yelled.
"Go get him,
Vass!" shouted the
crowd.
"Give
him that boot he wanted," someone offered.
"Give
him this one!" shouted someone else throwing a boot to him. Vassavion pulled it on
his right foot, and
stood, unsteadily between Rawling's spread-eagled legs, his toe
near Rawling's
crotch.
"Give him a
Vass-ectomy," someone
muttered.
Then the room
was quiet, except the slap of
palm against cheek, as Hathaway kept hitting mechanically and
rhythmically.
Everyone watched, both hoping and fearing the drunken giant with
the boot would
kick.
The
quiet was becoming oppressive. "Hold that line! Hold that line!"
Cohen chanted loudly, wanting to be the center of attention
again. No one
responded.
Then
Cohen took three running steps and slid heels-first down the
center aisle, tumbling
into Waslewski, who knocked over Vassavion.
He left a long ugly gash down the middle of the floor.
"The time has
come!" shouted
Delaney, raising his hand high. And once again attention focused
on Delaney. It
was like he was taking them up the steepest incline of a giant
rollercoaster,
and they both feared and wanted to reach the peak and race to
the finish.
"The time has come!" he repeated for emphasis. "Now we
must..."
Suddenly he
was lifted high in the air. Powell
had grabbed him by the seat of the pants, and dangled him, like
a rag doll,
over the center aisle.
"Help!"
gasped Delaney, when he
finally realized what had happened.
"Enough,"
announced Powell, softly
and firmly. Then he tossed Delaney on the floor, like throwing a
bag of garbage
in a dumpster.
Hathaway
stood up. Schneider helped Rawlings
get back on his feet.
Delaney,
crouched by a footlocker, murmured,
"I told you so. I told you about the system..." but quietly and
cautiously.
The
screen door slammed. "Half an hour till lights out!" shouted the
CQ,
a squad leader from second platoon. "God. What the hell
happened?"
"Nothing,
buddy," growled Hathaway. "Nothing at all. Just turn yourself
around
and get the hell out of here."
"God, looks
like you had an explosion or
an orgy. Somebody sabotage the place or something?"
"Get your
goddamned boots off that center
aisle," roared Hathaway.
"You've got
to be kidding. There's
nothing I could do to it that hasn't been done already. Whoever
did that sure
did a hell of a job. Was it the first platoon?"
Hathaway
picked the stranger up by the
shoulder of his fatigues.
"Okay, okay,
I'm going. It wasn't me that
did it. You don't have to take it out on me."
The screen
door slammed behind him.
Quiet,
subdued, without anyone having to give the orders, they pushed
the bunks back
to the walls and got on with their chores. Powell, Schneider,
Tag, and three others
were soon on their hands and knees rubbing a new coat of wax on
the floor,
while Evans carefully repainted the yellow lines.
Alec,
Alvardo, and even Delaney went to work
on the stairs with toothbrushes, scrubbing away at the corners
and crevices. Frank
and the latrine crew started to work on the johns and urinals. Alec whined, "Those
damned shitheads
have closed off the latrine again. One damned urinal and one
damned john is all
they ever leave us. Shit. When I have to shit, I have to shit."
"That's the
system for you,"
muttered Delaney. "They have barracks inspections theoretically
for the
sake of hygiene. But in the Army, what matters is the looks, not
the facts --
just what can be neatly filled in on an official form. That
latrine will be
clean. It'll be spotless. But to keep it as spotless as we have
to, we can only
use it half the time. The rest of the time we've got to go piss
under the
trees.
"There's no
place on the official form to
indicate whether the latrine is used or not or to indicate the
level of the
stench out there under the trees. So we pollute the one bit of
shade where we
can rest for a break, and we end up sitting on our own piss.
"They told us
to keep the latrine
spotless. That's how the system works. We wind up seeming to do
this to
ourselves. And we are, afterall, guilty -- guilty of going along
with the game,
playing by their rules. And every time we do, we wind up sitting
in our own
piss."
"That's
sounds fine, Delaney,"
admitted Alec. "But let's face it -- we all can't be Roberts. We
were born
comfortable, and we're going to want to stay comfortable. We
sold our souls
long ago. And cheap, too, goddamn it. Of the whole bunch of us,
only Roberts is
free." Delaney just
kept scrubbing.
He looked weary. There was a bad bruise under his left eye. It
was swelling.
MacFarland was one of the few who were just trying to look busy.
He kept
washing and rewashing the same clean, easily reachable
windowpane. But even
that was an improvement -- he had never before felt obliged to
act like he was
working. As assistant platoon leader, he was officially exempted
from such
tasks. But now he kept glancing about guiltily; and when he
thought someone was
looking, he made a show of putting tremendous effort into the
cleaning of that
one clean windowpane.
Everybody but
Rawlings was working. Rawlings
had shut himself in his room to tend to his wound, to try to
make the scratches
and bruises as inconspicuous as possible. His display boots had
miraculously
reappeared, with a few minor scuffs, on top of his bed.
While
buffing those boots, he tried to reconstruct a poem -- something
he had written
that May in the midst of the frustration of Cambodia and Kent
State. He wished
he could have remembered it, could have recited it before, to
have let the
other guys know that he felt the same anxieties and frustrations
they did, that
he was with them, not with the system, that he was and wanted to
be one of
them.
The
effort of trying to remember helped him to calm down and pull
himself together,
helped him to feel again that he was a college student among
college students.
Once again, the complex and baffling world was painted in bright
colors --
right and wrong, good and evil. Once again, he knew what to hate
and hated in
unison with thousands of others.
He
grabbed paper and pen and wrote from memory:
In
May the bombs blossom.
The
sweet aroma of gas fills the air.
The
sing-song
Mekong
May
song me
doe
ray
me
lie me down to sleep, and pray the Lord (what else can one two
three four,
right
face
the
press
of
the crowd,
shouting,
mad
men giving orders
on
the borders of insanity,
a
neutral nation,
at
least officially,
but
everyone knows thyself
is
an archaic term in jail, waiting for trial,
by
hook or by crook, we'll pull this impotent giant to a hard line
on and on and
on and onward,
Christian
humility in defense of freedom is no situation comedy, featuring
Nixon,
Mitchell, Agnew, and a fourth horseman of the Apocalypse to be
announced,
so
stay tuned to looney tunes, on most of our network stations,
brought
to you by,
bye
happiness
is a warm gun,
in
the age of hilarious,
who
cannot wash away our sins with a flood of tear
gas,
for
there was a limited supply of war,
one
day
in
May the bombs blossom.
It
was clever. Ever since he first wrote it, he was proud of how
clever it was.
But now it sounded false and hollow. Now that he had been at
Polk, had slept in
the same barracks, shat in the same johns, low-crawled over the
same gravelly
field as men who had died in that war he wrote so cleverly
about...
He
felt ashamed and embarrassed. It was like he'd been behaving
like a
five-year-old brat, whining in a candy store because he couldn't
have exactly
what he wanted.
What
right did he have to feel sorry for himself? Just a few more
weeks of hell and
he and the rest of the platoon -- all but Roberts and Armstrong
and those two
new guys -- would be going home. Who
could
blame Roberts for running? Chances were that in a few months
he'd be in
the jungle waiting for the booby trap or bullet that would turn
him into
rotting meat. And, by then, Rawlings would be starting law
school.
He
crossed himself, then went over to the window and stared out at
the row of
barracks and the scrub pine forest beyond.
Polishing the water fountain, Sullivan wondered what the
folks back home
were doing to his car. He'd bought it new, and from the very
beginning there
had been some crazy link between his life and its.
It
was a bright red convertible. He'd bought it the summer he
thought he was going
to marry Diane. Whatever it was in him that urged him to buy
that car knew damn
well that he wasn't ready to get married. And when Diane saw it,
she knew too,
and it wasn't long before they went their separate ways. That car -- a '53
Chevy with an exterior in
mint condition -- always broke down when he was supposed to go
some place but
really didn't want to go. At those moments, from a sense of
responsibility, he
would go to great lengths to try to get it running, but much to
his relief, it
was mechanically impossible.
There was
something wrong with the electrical
system. He'd gotten a new battery, a new generator, a new
voltage regulator, a
new solenoid -- but still it would happen. He'd turn the
ignition and get a
feeble click.
But he really
wanted to go somewhere, without
fail, the car would turn right over.
This
had happened so many times that when the car failed to start,
Sullivan no
longer got mad. He just sat and thought about it for a while and
tried to
figure out why he really didn't want to go where he was going
since the car was
clearly telling him he didn't.
So
when he had to go to basic training, he had grave misgivings
leaving that car
behind. He'd grown to depend on it for his social life, as a
relief from
recurring restlessness, as a source of freedom, and as the
physical
manifestation of his inmost desires.
He
couldn't help but wonder what his parents were doing with his
car. It seemed
almost obscene giving them control over that secret part of him.
But he had had
no choice but to leave it. That was one of things about basic --
as Delaney
said, they made you surrender body and soul, every parcel of
your dignity and
freedom.
Cohen
started singing again, softly, till others joined in. Even
Sanderson joined in.
"I
got to get out of this place..."
"Oh Lord, how
I want to go home..."
"Freedom's
just another word for nothing
left to lose..."
"On the first
day of Christmas my drill
sarge gave to me..."
"Fuck the
army, fuck the army, fuck the
army..."
"For he's a
jolly good fuck-off..."
"Power to the
people..."
Alvardo did
some drill sergeant imitations on
the staircase.
"He sounds
more like a drill sergeant
than the drill sergeant does," commented Beaulieu.
It was then
that Sullivan took down the plaque
to polish it. Looking it over, he exclaimed, "Shit! It's all
here. The
same damned wisecracks. They scribbled them here on the back
with all their
signatures. This thing must be twenty, twenty-five years old,
and they were
making the same dumb wisecracks we are."
Everybody
knew what they had to do, and they'd all done it, quickly and
efficiently, like
a well-drilled team. The floor still had to be buffed, but first
the wax would
have to sit for a while, and the paint would have to dry.
While
waiting, Tag read his four-day-old newspaper. It appealed to his
imagination
that it was old. Everything could have changed in the meantime,
like they were
in a time warp: living in the same world as everybody else, but
four days
behind. The rest of the world might already be a better place.
Beaulieu lay
on his bunk and wrote to Marge:
"I want to
put it all down while it's
still fresh in my mind, even though I don't know what it means.
I just want to
get it down on paper before I forget it.
"I forget so
fast here. Usually, that's a
God-send, but this time I want to remember, so maybe later when
I look at it,
when my head's rested and clear, when I'm me again, I'll be able
to make sense
of it, rework it into a story, maybe learn something so all this
hell won't
have been for nothing.
"God, we get
used to it quick. Just five
fucking weeks I've been here, and half the time I forget I've
got a fucking
uniform on. Five fucking weeks and I have a hard time imagining
myself back
home in civies, going to work in the morning, sleeping with you
at night. Seems
like some fucking dream, doesn't it. Something far, far away.
Just five fucking
weeks, and it's like I've never been anything but a fucking
solider.
"Delaney was
right about the system and
what it does to people. But there's something else going on
here, too.
"Through
all this muck and shit, it had been damned good hearing Cohen
cut up the drill
sergeants and hearing Alvardo imitate them to a tee. We had them
pegged. We
knew who they were, knew how petty and mechanical and
predictable their minds
were. No matter what they might do to us, we had that knowledge,
that feeling
of superiority.
But
now we see the same damn crap on a World War II plaque. Some
originality. Wind
up the toy soldier and listen to the noises they make. Hell.
"Schneider,
(he's been hanging around
with Powell a lot), said something about there's nothing new
under the sun.
"Vassavion
sobered up a bit in the
shower. He said something pompous about history. And he was
right. All along
we've been acting like this was something new, like nobody'd
ever been through
basic before. This was our drill sergeant, our barracks, our
army, our country.
But we're just here for a little while. We're just transients.
There have been
millions before us, and there will be millions after us, and
there's nothing
particularly noteworthy about us and what we've said and done.
It's all been
said and done before.
"Our
'revolution' was no big deal. We
scuffed up the floor a bit. By the time Powell gets done with
it, it'll all be
good as new, almost -- all but that jagged mark down the middle.
He can't get
rid of that. The linoleum was scratched.
"And
we should be proud of that? That's what we'll leave for
posterity: a jagged
scratch on a piece of linoleum.
"Silly though
this competition business
is, it is a shame to leave a blemish like that for the next
cycle of trainees.
The guys that came before us did such a good job on it that we
hardly had to
touch that center aisle for it come out shining unbeatable. I
wonder how much
work went into that, how many years of work by generations of
trainees that
never met each other, that knew that they would never meet each
other, but who
left this as a legacy to whoever might come after them -- this
so fragile shine
that was, ridiculously, such a source of comfort and security
and pride.
"Even
though we had done nothing for it, or practically nothing,
except refraining
from messing it up, it was 'our' floor; it was 'our' barracks.
We did take
pride in it.
"I hope that
Powell can do something. He
has such a way with that buffer. If anyone can do it, he can.
And I certainly
do hope he can erase or at least hide it.
"We've
got four weeks left. Maybe by then it'll be all right, and the
next cycle will
get it good as new, as good as we got it, as good as if we'd
never been here
and messed things up. Maybe a little better, with those yellow
lines repainted.
"Yes,
it looks really sharp with those bright yellow lines."
The
screendoor slammed, "Five minutes to lights out!" shouted the
CQ.
"God, it looks good now. When the buffing's done, you guys could
be in
good shape."
"Maybe there
won't be an
inspection," offered Schneider, as the CQ went away.
"Yeah,"
whined Alec, "you can
count on it: if we get the place in shape, they won't inspect
it."
"And if we
didn't, they would. We'll be
ready," affirmed Evans. "I just hope those damned bat
exterminators
don't come again." Hathaway
laughed,
"Have you grown to like the bats?"
"We can live
with bats. I just don't want
the exterminators messing the place up. We can still win
tomorrow."
Long
after "lights out," the barracks still hummed with the sound of
the
buffer and clanked with the sound of opening and closing
lockers. Everybody had
something that still had to be done.
The screen
door closed softly, almost imperceptibly.
A whispered, "The drill sergeant's coming," echoed and reechoed
through the muffled scrambling of feet and creaking of
bedsprings. Whispers
followed, racing up and down both sides.
"He's going
upstairs."
"It's
Rawlings he's after, Rawlings. He's
bawling out Rawlings."
"Now the
shit's going to hit the
fan."
"He probably
heard..."
"No, it's
Roberts."
"Roberts?"
"Shit."
"You say
Rawlings is ratting on
Roberts?"
"That
goddamned Roberts."
"Goddamned my
foot. He's the only one of
us with an ounce of guts."
Footsteps echoed on the stairs again. The screen door
closed again,
softly.
Silence. A
full minute of absolute silence.
"Roberts!"
came a loud whisper from
the bunk nearest the door.
"God! It's
Roberts," was repeated up
and down.
In
the conflicting shadows of the fire light and the stair light,
Roberts slowly
rubbed his freshly shaved head with his towel.
"Quick,
Roberts, catch the drill
sergeant. Rawlings just ratted on you. You're in a heap of
trouble. Catch him
and let him know you're here."
"He knows I'm
here all right. What's this
bit about ratting, man? What've I done that somebody's ratting
on me?"
"This is the
Army. You don't just go home
when you feel like it."
"Home? Who
the hell went home?"
"Well,
where've you been?"
"Taking a
shower."
"Yeah, but
where've you been all
night?"
"Look, man,
cool it. I just got off
KP."
"Well, then
what was the sergeant pissed
off at?"
"Me. He saw
me in the shower. You know,
man -- no showers after lights out. But I'll be damned if I'm
going to bed
stinking of garbage and shit. Hell no, man."
"There's your
freedom, Alec. There's your
dignity."
"Yeah, damn
it, I didn't have guts enough
to take a shower."
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