Spare Parts

by Buzz Williams

  While the same significance is placed on rifle qualification in the reserves as the fleet, there is great disparity in preparation. Reservists get one day to snap in and qualify. Fleet Marines get a week or more. And we carried our scores, for better or worse, until our next qualification a year or two later.

  Third platoon was assigned duty in the butts to pull targets in the morning, firing in the afternoon. At 0600 the targets went up and the first rounds popped overhead. Pop! Crack! Zing! The privates and Pfc.’s next to me lowered the target, pasted the sticker over the bullet hole, flagged the score, and raised the target. They moved effort-lessly the way I once had in boot camp, ignoring the rounds just a few feet overhead. I offered little help. They were too busy to notice how I cringed and flinched and ducked when the sounds above matched the nightmare that was playing out in my head.

  After six hours of pulling targets it was our turn to shoot, and we climbed from the shadows of the butts to the brightness of the grass above. Active-duty shooting coaches fanned out across the firing lines, issuing rounds, helping us fit our slings and adjust our sights.

  The layout of the range was exactly the same as I remembered from boot camp. The targets. The distance markers. The rules. And the safety officer’s commands.

  “Ready on the right. Ready on the left. All ready on the firing line. Shooters commence firing when your dog targets appear.”

  The torso-shaped silhouette rose above the grassy berm and the rounds from my rifle drilled into the black—all kills. We moved back S P A R E P A R T S

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  a hundred yards and fired again. Another volley of rounds in the black. My good fortune carried me through to the last distance marker at five hundred yards. Walking back to the firing line, I realized my shots already qualified me as marksman, but I wanted to rate expert. Making all ten would give me a chance at high shooter.

  Waiting for the safety officer’s commands, I lay on my belly, sighting in on the target.

  Suddenly my nightmare resurfaced. I cannot explain why. . . .

  The wait . . . the pressure . . . the silhouettes . . .

  My shooting coach handed me ten rounds to load into my magazine, and I froze, struggling to ignore my nightmare and concentrate. A minute later the loudspeaker jarred me alert, the rounds still in my hand.

  “Ready on the right. . . .”

  Far from ready, my fingers trembled as I pushed the rounds into the slot in the magazine.

  “Ready on the left. . . .”

  The rounds were hanging up on the lip, going in crooked, sloppy, and misaligned.

  “All ready on the firing line.”

  I wasn’t ready. I was panicked.

  “Shooters, you may commence firing when your dog targets appear.”

  The Marine on my right fired first, and his silhouette dropped.

  Another popped up and he shot that one down as well. The Marine on my left fired too. The sound of rifle fire altered my perception, like the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers, trapping me between the real world and the nightmare world.

  No longer in reality, I imagined that my silhouette was closer than the others were. It seemed as if it were closing in—as it did in my nightmare. Thinking rationally now, I beat the magazine against my thigh to align the rounds. But my last slap was too hard, my fingers too shaky, and my magazine dropped to the grass.

  Dropping it sent me back into the nightmare. I thought the Marine on my right was looking at me, laughing. As my mind’s tricks continued, the silhouette looked closer still. Squinting hard to get a 264

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  grip on reality, I jammed the magazine back in, pulled the charging handle, and released. It didn’t sound right or feel right. It was supposed to clank, not clunk, slam home, not ease in.

  The sane half of me keyed in to the safety tower, the call to cease fire drawing near. The other half imagined the silhouettes were closer than ever. So I flipped the safety off and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Leaving reality, yet again, my silhouette was up now, and close.

  Marines around me were shooting theirs down, keeping theirs away, and laughing at my jammed rifle and me. Frustrated, I pounded my fist into the grass. The jolt shocked me back into reality, and I raised my hand to signal my jam to the shooting coaches. I looked right, but saw no shooting coach. I looked left. None were there either.

  The sweat rolled through my eyes and my heart pulsed in my trigger finger. I looked right again. Left again. No one was coming to help. Desperate, I left reality altogether.

  The silhouette was before me, and this time I was determined to get it before it got me. Now I was not just imagining the nightmare, I was living it. My adrenaline surged, and I decided not to wait any longer. After ejecting the lodged round with my finger I slammed the magazine back in. This time the charging handle sounded right and felt right. I was aware enough to recognize that the others’ rifles were quiet, their rounds expended, and their targets down. But I was not aware enough to know that time had expired, so my rifle came alive. One round traveled downrange. Yes! Then the second. I fired again and again and again, until the trigger clicked quietly, and the silhouette finally disappeared.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire! All clear on the firing line!”

  The range safety NCO ripped my rifle out of my hand while I was still dazed. Several Marines hovered over me.

  “What the fuck’s your problem, Crazy?”

  Still confused, I stayed quiet.

  “You can’t raise your hand and then continue firing. That’s a safety violation.”

  That shook me. Range safety violators are considered criminal almost.

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  Escorted from the range in disgrace, I waited for the CO.

  “What happened, Lance Corporal?”

  The truth was not an option. If he knew what was going on in my head he would have ordered me to get a psychiatric evaluation.

  “I didn’t know I couldn’t change my mind,” I said, hoping he’d buy into my excuse. “At first I thought I needed help, but then decided I could clear my own jam.”

  “Well, that was a costly mistake,” he said, shaking his head to show his disappointment. “You’ll go unqualified this cycle.”

  “Unqualified?” I challenged. “But I was qualified going into the last relay.”

  “Safety violators receive zero scores,” he said flatly. “Rules are rules. . . .”

  He could tell I was holding back steam and about to blow.

  “Go ahead, Marine, let it out. I know it hurts.”

  He had no idea.

  “I’m being punished for clearing my own jam.”

  He interrupted, “The rules are . . .”

  I tuned out, holding my tongue. The CO’s presence pissed me off more by the second.

  “Just give me my zero and leave me alone . . . sir.”

  He gave me a patronizing pat on the shoulder, and then de-briefed the instructor assigned to my relay.

  “These reservists are fucking clueless.”

  SEPTEMBER 1991

  Returning to campus at Towson State University let me know just how different I had become. The conversations of the students seemed much more juvenile and petty than I had remembered.

  Somehow the unfairness of pop quizzes, the latest fashions, and dating drama no longer seemed significant to me.

  Ms. Morse, the physical-education office secretary, was the first to greet me. She walked around her desk and held out her arms for a hug.

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  “Buuuzzz!” She exclaimed, dragging out my name the way she always had. “Welcome home. How are you?”

  “Well,” I said, wondering how to answer that, “no one’s shooting at me.”

  Ms. Morse looked shocked, not having expected that response.

  That “shocked” reaction was what I wanted from people when they asked the cursory “
How are you?” question. It was important that they hear something from me other than the standard responses, “OK,” “Good,” or “Fine.” People ignored those answers, and since I was still struggling to reintegrate into civilian life after the war, and felt neither OK, good, nor fine, I didn’t want to be ignored. That response would become a trademark answer of mine for years to come.

  My second encounter on campus happened in Professor Hayes’s office, where she pulled my file and reminded me what assignments had been left incomplete when I withdrew the previous fall. Those assignments were barely recognizable to me. Conducting a biome-chanical analysis of the placekick was the last thing I wanted to do.

  Then there was the observation journal, equipment modification, and final exam. Having to make up that work pissed me off. Was she serious? I barely remembered the name of the course, let alone all the textbook mumbo jumbo needed to complete it.

  Dr. Hayes understood.

  As I was preparing to leave, she gave me a hug and some off-the-record words of encouragement.

  “Just focus on the analysis and the journal,” she said, waiving the final exam. “I’m sure whatever you turn in will be A work.”

  Some of the other professors weren’t as understanding as Dr.

  Hayes. The more liberal ones made their antiwar statements by holding me strictly accountable to make up everything I had missed, including exams. The worst was Dr. Leigh, a left-wing professor, with whom I had clashed ever since our first meeting a year before.

  Her first words to me during class the previous year had been “I don’t like soldiers.”

  To that I had replied, “We should get along just fine, then. I’m a Marine.”

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  She hushed everyone’s laughter with a wave of her hand and a sharp retort. “I especially don’t like smart-aleck Marines with dumb nicknames.”

  Since that first class Dr. Leigh had always seemed to find creative ways to denigrate the president, his policies, or the military in my presence. The fact that I had just returned from combat hadn’t changed that.

  “Withdrawing to play soldier is no different than withdrawing for medical reasons,” Dr. Leigh said condescendingly. “Don’t expect special treatment from me.”

  After muddling through my makeup work from the semester I had missed, I was able to begin student teaching. During my assignment at Oliver Beach Elementary School, Mr. DiPasquale, the fifth-grade social studies teacher, asked me if I would be interested in visiting his class to talk about my experiences in the Middle East. Together, we sorted through my artifacts, outlined my experiences, and put together a one-hour presentation titled “Middle East Culture and Customs.”

  Talking about the war to anyone but children was difficult for me. In front of the students I was perfectly at ease, and never offended by their questions. Their curiosity was innocent and refreshing, and because I was not embarrassed to talk with them, it was liberating. Although we always started the presentation talking about things like Arab dress, religion, and the desert climate, we usually finished with their questions about the realities of war.

  “Did you kill anybody?”

  “Did you get shot?”

  “Did any of your friends die?”

  “Was it scary?”

  I developed creative answers that skirted the questions about killing and death, like “I didn’t ever shoot anyone with a gun,” and

  “No one in my platoon was killed.” It was easier to be direct about my personal experience, which provided a much-needed outlet for 268

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  me to express my feelings. That was something I could only do in front of a classroom.

  “It was very scary.”

  “Being away from home made me sad.”

  “Sometimes I have bad dreams.”

  Over the next three years I would travel to dozens of schools across Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania to share my “Middle East Culture and Customs” lesson. Sometimes I was in a classroom with thirty students, and sometimes I was in an auditorium with hundreds of students, parents, and teachers. There was even an occasional speech at a parade or high school graduation. My motivation then wasn’t totally selfless. Public speaking, especially to children, became therapeutic for me.

  After three years, however, interest in the Gulf War had waned.

  Students began confusing my war with wars past, and I soon found myself teaching history instead of discussing a relevant current event. In my mind the war was still relevant, and still current.

  Each drill weekend I was still trapped inside my wall locker and footlocker, hours before formation, organizing, counting, and arranging my gear. While my compulsions were embarrassing, I couldn’t stop myself. Nor could I stop my recurring trench nightmare from resurfacing. The dreams were most common as the drill weekend approached, as my mind was gearing up to enter Marine mode.

  During one of my worst nightmares I actually attacked Gina while she slept, punching her hard in her back. She played it off, making a joke out of it. It would be two more years until I faced the reality that my postwar anxiety was no joke.

  MAY 1992

  One of the prerequisites for earning a teaching certificate in Maryland is the completion of a course in special education: As part of the course requirement I was assigned to the Kennedy Krieger Middle School, a private school serving students with learning dis-abilities, autism, brain injuries, and behavioral disorders. Because S P A R E P A R T S

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  they hadn’t ever had a trained physical education teacher, I was welcomed enthusiastically by the students and faculty. That summer I was offered a job as the director of physical education for their new campus in East Baltimore. I accepted without realizing that one course in special education had hardly prepared me for the job—

  especially for teaching the students with behavioral disorders.

  Off the record I referred to them as the fuck-you kids because that was their standard response whenever a teacher, or any authority figure, gave them a direction that they didn’t like. At the time I hadn’t a clue how to teach them. In the months that followed, I made it my business to talk with their social workers, crisis counselors, and teachers, to learn as much as I could about them. What I learned was not in any textbook I had studied while preparing to be a teacher.

  Saying “Fuck you,” I would learn, was one of the best ways for them to get what they wanted—to get out of work, to get back at a peer, to get some teachers to give them attention, and to send others away. Cursing and threatening, for many of our students, were their only coping strategies for life. In school they lashed out at their peers and teachers. At home they fought with their siblings and parents. On the corners they battled gang bangers, thieves, and junkies.

  And they wrestled with themselves, too, swimming upstream against the currents of temptation—easy drug money, dreamy highs, and the adrenaline rush of chasing, or being chased.

  One of my favorite consultants back then was Dr. Sellers, our staff psychologist. We shared an interest in working with the fuck-you kids, although he used the more professional label “adolescents with conduct disorders.”

  “Being caring and compassionate is a good start,” he said. “But to really break through with them, you’ve gotta have a hook.”

  APRIL 1993

  Staff Sgt. Jackson parked the LAV right in front of our school, where it would rest as the featured attraction of our school’s Spring 270

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  Fling Fair. He was happy to get off the base for a day and even happier to meet the pretty, young, single teachers. By noon students were swarming the vehicle, climbing through the hull, sitting in the driver’s seat, and even traversing the turret. At one point Tavon, egged on by his buddies, traversed the barrel of the main gun so it followed our principal as he walked. Several teachers called for him to stop, but he didn’t. Instead he gave his usual reply, “Fuck you!”
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  as he kept the principal in his sights.

  Tavon stopped laughing, though, when he saw Staff Sgt. Jackson sprinting toward him across campus.

  “Get down here, son!” barked the staff sergeant, standing like a drill instructor, hands on his hips.

  Tavon stopped moving the barrel, but waited for the staff sergeant’s next move.

  “Boy,” he said, looking up to the turret like an angry father,

  “you’ve got five seconds to get down here or I’m coming up to drag you out.”

  To my surprise Tavon yelled out for everyone to hear, “Yes, sir!”

  Then he climbed down and spent the remainder of the afternoon clinging to the staff sergeant’s side. From time to time I heard him respond, “Sir,” and he behaved like a model student until the end of the fair.

  In the hallway walking back to class, though, Tavon was back to cursing at teachers, including me when I intervened.

  “Why were you so respectful around the staff sergeant?” I asked.

  His response would alter the course of my teaching career, and show me the hook I had been looking for.

  “Because he’s a Marine,” he said, as if I didn’t know. “That’s what you’re supposed to say to Marines.”

  Until then I had never considered mixing the Marine part of me with the teacher part of me. Most people in the school didn’t even know I was a Marine. That is, not until I showed up for work the next morning wearing my dress blue uniform.

  As I entered Tavon’s classroom all eyes were on me.

  Tavon decided to test me. “Look at Mr. Buzz, trying to look hard, yo.”

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  Ignoring his comments, I launched into a brief speech about how physical education class was going to be conducted for the remainder of the year.

  “Physical education as you know it is over,” I commanded, using my most serious voice. “Starting today, you will have a choice of which type of class to attend.”

  Our students liked choices, and I had their attention. On the floor before them I laid a camouflage uniform, complete with cover, belt, and boots.