Two frame doors provided access to our majors and colonels. The one that was kept open was guarded by an E-7 and could be used by anyone he approved--enlisted people, lieutenants, captains, civilians, and other riffraff. The second door was kept shut, was unguarded, and was intended only for majors, colonels, generals, and vice-presidents.
I was carrying a document that had to be signed two months faster than ASAP, and when I saw a long queue at the E-7’s desk, I pivoted on my combat boots and flew through the wrong door, on the theory that if I moved faster than the speed of light I might not be seen. Plus, one of the majors was “my” major. I didn’t think I would be shot. But I’d been wrong before.
****
“David, Mike’s out of the office, could you grab Bill and shred some computer printouts?”
“Sure,” I said, because I had no idea of what was involved.
First, we loaded the printouts onto two wheelbarrows. Bill won the first four races, I won the next five, then we both pushed the same wheelbarrow for the last three.
****
“Where’re you going, don’t you want to stay and talk?”
“One of us has to stand outside and watch.”
“Watch for what?” I asked, but Bill was out the door and mumbling. Within two minutes, I heard Steve calling for Bill.
Horrifying screeching noise as if metal dinosaurs were grinding each other to pieces, but since the paper seemed to shred just fine, I rushed all 74 stacks through.
All I had left to do was return the key to the headshed. But snow? Snow in southern Texas in July? Not only was the field around the shredder covered to a depth of three inches, but so were the cars, jeeps, and cattle-trucks in the parking lot behind the headquarters building and for as far as I could see. I went for the broom.
****
Since I wasn’t an officer, I wasn’t familiar with their system of rank insignia. I used a simplified system. If I met anyone older than 30, I saluted. Most officers my age didn’t care or, especially at quitting time, didn’t have the energy to chase me and beat me. Also, because I passed him every day, I saluted a certain elderly African-American gentleman, a janitor and a civilian. He sometimes saluted back, but I also heard behind my back, “Some fool crazy white boys we have on this base.”
****
I had learned one officer rank insignia as a result of a certain encounter and composed a multiple-choice exam for my fellow enlisted men and women. Sample question: Colonels wear birds because a. they like to be called “Tweety,” b. they think they can fly, and so on.
****
Jim, Gary, and Tommy helped conduct background checks of applicants for security clearances. Jim was a lieutenant, Gary and Tommy were E-4’s, but Gary was the looker and the talker. Every female spoke with Gary, instead of with Jim. Both Jim and Gary began visiting me in my cubicle, which I shared with six other people, and told stories on each other. Jim told me that he intended to get Gary kicked out of our building and reassigned as a morning report clerk for a grunt company on the border between North Vietnam and Laos.
Gary described an application that they were investigating: A senior NCO, who needed a top secret clearance before he could assume his new job, had a homicide on his record. He hadn’t been convicted of a felony, but he had, almost certainly, beaten his first wife to death, and had hit his second wife on several occasions. Hundreds of pages of messy depositions, in which the NCO contradicted some of his own prior statements. Although Gary wasn’t supposed to speak to anyone about such cases, he read to me every afternoon from the depositions.
“The stupid sonofabitch murdered his spouse and lied about it, and now we’re going to grant him the highest level clearance.”
“Got away with it, didn’t he? Proves he can keep a secret. Give him the goddamn clearance.”
****
Mrs. Jones, who worked in our cubicle, was the office champion at acerbic wit, sometimes without the wit. But as my desk was next to hers, she never commented on me in my hearing, perhaps because she feared that massive retaliation would be easy for me, or more probably because she was fanatically loyal to whoever was in her cubicle and therefore was one of “her boys.”
****
The Coca-Cola machine took my change and didn’t give me either a soda or a refund. As I was punching and kicking, I heard Williams from down the hall, “God, I don’t care about him, I’m worried about the Coke machine.”
****
Gary asked if I wanted to join a poker game and bullshitting session they had going. I told him I couldn’t. The third such refusal on my part. Gary wrote me off as a faggot and didn’t speak to me again. Thus, I never learned if the homicidal NCO did or did not get his top secret clearance.
Now that I appeared to be Gary’s enemy, Jim asked me to go to the officer’s club with them. Since I had never seen the place, I said, “Sure.” Bad habit of mine.
Margaret was the loudest of our group. And even though she was a captain, she looked too young, so the bartender asked her to show her ID. She told him to go fuck himself and then get her a drink. He went for the MP’s.
****
“But, David, you’re an E-4. What were you doing at the bar in the officer’s club to begin with? I don’t think it’s a good idea for enlisted people to mix with officers socially. We’ll take care of it for you, but I don’t want any more of my E-4’s mixing it up with the MP’s at the goddamn officer’s club, you understand me, young man?”
Wasn’t I who had been mixing it up with the MP’s, but I couldn’t say that without telling what really happened. I grumbled the rest of the day about how people shouldn’t be divided into two groups, officers and enlisted, nobility and commoners, white-collar and blue-collar, whatever. Archaic, especially for a country that had repudiated ancien régime caste systems. I became so polemical and historically-confused that Mrs. Jones told me to go back to my barracks and sleep it off.
****
I worked all day, then pulled CQ-runner all night, on the one night in a thousand when CQ’s and their runners actually had to do something. The next day I came to work to finish my report. Officially classified info, but about as important to the war effort as the latest baseball scores and body counts.
As it was near Christmas and thus the start of our half-day schedule, I planned to finish the report, then sleep for 12 hours, but in the meantime I was curious to see if I might develop sleep-deprivation symptoms.
“Dave, buddy, you’re on this afternoon.”
“Huh?”
“You just have to sweep and mop, buff, then go sit in the colonel’s outer office and answer the phone.”
That was his job. I was getting stuck because he wanted to take his share of afternoons off. Moreover, he had called me “Dave, buddy.” I bitched. I lost. I swept, mopped, and buffed the entire building in fifteen minutes, then sat before the great man’s door and bitched so much more that the rest of them couldn’t stand me and sent me to my barracks and my bed.
****
I loathed Donny, an 18-year-old E-4 with a whiny voice who wanted to become a career soldier. In accordance with the usual good judgment of the Army, he served as acting-sergeant to my floor in the barracks.
He’d tell me to get my shit together, get my locker ship-shape, get a better haircut, shave closer, shine my boots, break starch more often, and march in step with everybody else. I didn’t see that the Army would benefit from my doing any of those things, so I didn’t do them. I prepared monthly reports and found missing records--50% of the time I found the people and their records, the other 50% of the time I wound up saying, “Fuck this.” Seemed like half the sergeants on our base took every workday afternoon off to go to the gym and work out. If the more experienced sergeants were out of their offices, there was no way an E-4 like myself could get to the senior officers, and most of the E-4’s, lieutenants, and captains who were left didn’t know shit.
****
Bradley called a summit, actually two summits, but I was informed of only the first. Everyone on the base who wrote any kind of report, from Lieutenant-General to my co-peons, cited my data in their reports. If my report was a day late, everybody else’s was, too.
I explained that, first, we needed a 95% turnover in personnel. One lieutenant-colonel, for example, was supposed to write a quarterly report explaining the reasons for the decline or rise in the number of AWOLs. In four quarters, the gentleman had never sent me such a report, so I always had to write it for him and sign his name.
I recommended that the Army abolish the officer/enlisted person distinction, then offer better salaries, provide better living conditions, and phase out Basic Training, weapons, saluting, KP, uniforms, and all that military shit and try to attract university graduates who were well-motivated and who knew how to do something. Then they threw me out and went on with their meeting.
The eight main report-makers were supposed to assemble before my desk so that we could fix the problems and submit our reports on time. Two people half-showed up, Ralph and Willie, who stepped inside our doorway, turned back around, and said, “Well, we did that. You want to go for Cokes and the lake and see if we can pick up some women?” Before I could get to the door to see what they wanted, they were driving off.
Christianson congratulated me on the success of the meeting.
****
The next morning, when everybody received a day-off, I grabbed the little Polaroid camera my grandma had given me and rode with Tony who wanted to look for a 35mm SLR at the pawnshop, but the best deal on a Nikon was $35, and Tony didn’t have that much, so we stood at the counter and looked a while, in case the prices went down.
****
I said hello to Gena, but since I couldn’t see spending the day watching a two-year-old do cute things such as throwing up on his mommy, I hitched to the lake.
Rancher in a pickup gave me a ride. Asked me who I was, who I was related to, where I lived, what I was doing out there. “You didn’t escape from the prison or from that mental hospital, did you?”
I was tempted to say “yes,” but, since the gentleman outweighed me by 100 pounds, I said, “Same thing, I’m from the Army Base.”
“You escape from the stockade?”
“Same thing, I’m a clerk at one of the headquarters buildings.”
The gentleman stared at me as if “headquarters” was a euphemism for “nut ward” until I was afraid he was going to go into the ditch, and I put my hand on the steering wheel. Wasn’t a smart move on my part.
****
Jim, Gary, and Donny were with four women, but the only conversation was between Gary and one of the women; the other two men were out of the loop and fidgeting. The woman who talked stood with her shoulders drawn back and her face thrust toward Gary. A fellow myope, no doubt. When one of her friends started to light a cigarette, Gary looked deep in her eyes, asked, “May I light your fire?” and had already lit her cigarette.
****
Back in the barracks, Donny was recounting how he visited a brothel and paid “only” $50 for one whore one time. I lay on my butt and read until it became too dark, then switched on the light. “Who the fuck turned on that light?”
I went downstairs and swapped stories with the CQ. Dennis, who would talk to anybody, even me, had re-enlisted for a $10,000 bonus because he had a new baby to support.
Gary came bounding up the stairs at 4:00 a.m. and turned on the light. At first everybody was dazed, then we thought it was one of Morris’s surprise inspections. Defiant murmurs of “asshole.” Several men waiting under covers or otherwise covering up their groins to avoid embarrassment. Then someone saw that it was Gary. “Kill the cocksucker.” Benny wasn’t capable of killing anybody, just of shooting off his mouth. Not necessarily a sweet disposition, more lack of coordination.
Gary’s admirers gathered to listen to his story. “We were talking up these four foxy girls when Jim and Donny gave up and left, but I kept talking and making eye contact until I went home with them and got a free knock from each of them.”
As a result, the joke around my barracks was that Gary had gotten four “knocks” for free, while Donny had paid $50 for one. Donny retaliated against me, but he lacked the acting talent for effective drill-sergeanting.
****
I found out about the scheme to kill Gary when Jim slipped into my barracks to conspire with Harold. I liked Harold. Built like Wilt Chamberlain, but with talent and motivation only for smoking dope and pimping girls. So far gone, he was cool, at least, in the opinion of the local whores. He’d take one of them away from her usual “boyfriend” for a few days, and the pimp would ride the bus around our base, switchblade in hand, looking for Harold. But Harold never got found, maybe because he spent 85% of his time sleeping off whatever substance he had in him. I once made the mistake of paying him $20 to pull my KP for me so I could finish my report on time. The next morning, when I was ass-deep in papers, an African-American gentleman dressed in white, Geoffrey, our cook, snatched my right ear and yanked. “You get your college-educated dick in my kitchen and clean my grease-traps. Ain’t no better than anyone else.” I agreed, but I didn’t understand what had happened to my $20.
****
I’d been detailed for my monthly (actually, never before or afterward) practice at the rifle range and my yearly fitness test. I was lying on my belly button in the sand, facing the targets, but without a rifle. Only a third of the gentlemen with me had weapons and that included some revolvers and one water pistol.
“Good enough. Now for the fitness test. Everybody who doesn’t have a medical condition run two laps around the field. If you don’t fall down, you pass.”
I asked if schizophrenia was considered a medical condition. He told me to start running.
****
I obtained a 1040 for Harold and helped him fill it out, without mentioning the $20. When I told him he’d receive his refund in two months, he said it had only taken five weeks the last time and showed me a refund check, dated two weeks before, scotch-taped to the inside of his locker door. I explained that he couldn’t file for a refund twice in one year on the same income. He told me they’d send him the money, white people never checked things like that, but if they did, federal prisons were nice places, better than old frame Army barracks.
He also told me that, because he and Jim hadn’t been able to find a hitman for under $40, he was going to do it himself. But, as Harold usually fell down the stairs whenever he got out of bed, I wasn’t worried. Wasn’t thinking that, sometimes at least, he managed to get far enough to pick up a whore and take her away from her pimp. What he did for the Army I never learned. Maybe his MOS was barracks guard.
****
Office gossip: Gary’s body had been found in the lake, weighed down by an auto engine. Harold was also missing, and that worried me. But, according to the TV news, Gary was alive and in the civilian hospital downtown. He had been attacked by an unidentified, very tall black man who resembled Wilt Chamberlain, according to some witnesses. Stunned, I nevertheless asked if anybody knew where Wilt Chamberlain had been at the time of the attempted murder. Groans, and I had to dodge pillows and hand grenade dummies.
But the body of a tall African-American had been pulled from the lake. Harold, of course, but the reporter said it wasn’t known if the two incidents were connected.
So, Gary was alive, and Harold was dead. Donny, the ichthyoid little sonofabitch, was watching TV with us. What about Jim?
The next morning I found Jim and Tommy in their office. When I said that they would have it all to themselves for a week, Tommy asked, “Why? Is Gary ill?”
****
I considered putting out a few contracts of my own, but then got sidetracked by two more important matters.
Richard Nixon, or somebody, had decided to downsize the Army in preparation for getting out of Vietnam. I was eligible for a six-months early-out, thus for immediate release as soon as I could get the 600 or so required signatures on my checkout forms, without an automobile. Also, my paycheck was three weeks overdue. I, who worked to find lost records and batted only .500, knew that if I didn’t get my money before I passed through transfer point, I never would get it. I descended on Major Smythe.
****
“Yes, sir, what . . . . Oh, it’s you, Thompson. Goddammit, haven’t I told you that you are not to use that door? You see this? Do you have one of these on your collars? Next time you come through that door, you’re not coming out.”
“Sir, I’m trying to serve my country during wartime, and now I’m going to be homeless and die on the streets, and you don’t give a shit.”
“Watch your goddamn language. Go see Henderson, don’t bother me about that sort of thing. And remember, you’re serving your country in Texas, hundreds of thousands of other young men and women have served in Vietnam.”
“I know, lucky bastards.”
I ran before he had a time to think what to do to me.
****
“Shut the fuck up, Thompson. Tell you what, we can loan you the money.”
“Will I have to repay the loan if I never get my check? Can I expect the FBI to break down my door someday and. . . .”
“Shit, I’ll give you the money out of my own pocket to shut you up. Satisfied?”
****
I counted it, then crammed it in my jeans. No need to wear a uniform when I was less than a week from freedom, far as I could understand.
I didn’t know the PX closed early on Fridays because I never shopped there, preferring the stores downtown when I needed anything. But now that I was about to lose the privilege, I wanted to make sure I had gotten my fair share, whether it was good or bad.
****
It was too dark, I couldn’t understand why the outside lights of the PX weren’t on.
“Hey, you know where we can buy some good shit?”
I hadn’t seen him until he spoke. I suddenly was afraid, even before one of his partners grabbed me from behind and put a knife against my throat. I thought, “This is it, this is how my life’s going to end, right now.”
“Give us your money.”
I did, but I kept my empty wallet. The knife was gone, and one man was hitting me in the stomach, pulling his punches, but I doubled up to fake his partners out. I was afraid to fight back because the other two might have joined in, including the one with the knife.
“He gave us his money,” one of the nonhitters pleaded. Without being aware how I escaped, I was sprinting headlong down a slope through Johnson grass. After 100 feet, I glanced back, but didn’t see them. After returning to where I’d been robbed, I cut across country to my barracks.
“What you been doing?” “Got robbed at knife-point.” “That so?”
I lay down without taking my clothes off, couldn’t sleep, bounced back up and headed for the CQ. Johnnie advised me to report the robbery to the CID.
****
“They had US Army jackets on, and you didn’t see their name tags? Describe them.”
I hadn’t seen the man with the knife, but he had sounded and smelled like he had been drinking beer. All had Army caps and wore their hair short.
****
A CID officer accompanied me to the site of the robbery near where we found a pile of beer cans, and I thought they could take fingerprints off the cans, but he left them where they were.
****
Next morning, Captain Morris made a speech.
“Whatever happens in this company stays in this company. I don’t want anybody reporting anything to anybody. You want to stay alive and go home, you bring things to me and nobody else. You get robbed, and you’re not man enough to prevent it, that means the thief deserves the money more than you do. You have to kill the other sonofabitch before he kills you. Don’t want any more of this going to the police bullshit.”
Captain Morris always commented on how I wore “hippie glasses” (a style of eyeglasses often chosen by hippies, I presumed). But I knew my glasses weren’t hippie because my mother bought them and mailed them to me.
****
“See this? You don’t have enough respect for other people to get your dress-slacks dry-cleaned before you turn them in.”
Because I figured the Army would fumigate before they issued my pants to some other poor bastard, I hadn’t seen the point of spending $2 to get them cleaned. Moreover, it might have delayed my early-out and, since the robbery, I didn’t have $2. I called my mom and asked her to send enough by Western Union for a bus ticket home.
“Let’s get this straight. If I don’t send the money, you won’t be able to come home? That true?”
“Mother!”
****
At transfer point, when I received my overdue money, I tried to give it back, but they wouldn’t take it. Since I also received money for unused leave-time and my mom had sent $70, I was rich.
****
Through my window on the Greyhound, the sun was setting “like a penny in a slot.” I thought about how a real Lincoln-head penny looked when pushed into a slot and decided my simile was inexact, but it kept echoing in my head. I played at being happy about getting out of the Army, but instead, I felt super-keyed-up and awkward. As if I had earned something good, but I already suspected that I wasn’t likely to get it.
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