Voodoo Lounge

by Christian Bauman

  Tory gripped the rail at the bridge windows, holding on, watching the sea, bridge crew with her, the quiet hum of radios and radar. The morning was not so much light breaking as darkness receding, blackness fading to pale gray, white foam washing over the bow. Tory with her feet flat on the deck, riding it.

  After watch she felt charged, moving quickly down below, skipping breakfast. Dick Wags would be going on watch soon. They put on sweats and went forward to the bow-thruster room, lifting weights. They didn’t talk as they worked out, and she tried to gauge his mood. Then decided she didn’t care. Coming up on deck after, the early morning air was salty and thick, a weighty humid, but clear in smell, good pulled up in the lungs. She felt powerful, sweat running and muscles tight. They hadn’t worked out in more than a week, since leaving Virginia. She felt new this morning. She stretched her back muscles and felt powerful.

  Back in the cabin, Dick Wags grabbed a towel and his leather shaving bag and went to the shower. Tory clipped the cabin door open, stretched some more, then stepped into the passage, dropping for push-ups. She breathed through her mouth, back straight and head up, forcing out a set. Done, she let herself collapse, then rolled over, knees up and arms crossed for a set of sit-ups. Her belly burned and she closed her eyes, pushing through it. Done, she rolled over for push-ups again, face to face with Marc Hall, in the push-up position on the deck in front of her.

  “Good morning,” he said, smiling.

  She tensed every muscle to stop herself from jumping in surprise. Then she smiled back. “Is the captain looking to lead PT?”

  Hall bounced on his palms. “The captain was taught that sergeants are the guardians of fitness. I place this Army property into your care.”

  Oh, fuck you,she thought. “We’ll just count silently.”

  Tory nodded once, and they began, together, four inches between their faces, arms flexing with the push-ups. Well into her workout already, Tory sweat freely, dripping from face and chest to the deck. She watched his shaved skull, glistening. They didn’t blink, and when she realized neither of them had blinked she laughed, collapsing on the deck, twenty-some push-ups into it. He stopped, too, lowering himself slowly to rest on the deck. He said, “The sergeant is too easily distracted.”

  “The captain is too easily amused.”

  They both rolled over, a set of sit-ups, and these she counted off, quietly.One, two, three, one—one, two, three, two—one, two, three, three. Sliding on the smooth deck with their sit-ups, they banged heads, laughing again, both resting. Staring at the ceiling, he reached back with his right hand and found her short hair, moist with sweat and very soft, and then she stopped laughing, quiet, and his palm found her forehead, and her cheek. Tory lay very still, as if by not moving all would cease to move. She could see his hand, his skin, from the corner of her eye. She raised her own hand then, to place her hand on the back of his, bringing her arm up as the latrine door opened loud right behind them, Marc Hall sitting up quickly, grabbing his knees and pulling himself up.

  Dick Wags stepped out, shower done.

  “Careful of PT with Sergeant Harris, Sir,” he said. “She’ll smoke you like a cheap cigar.”

  Marc grabbed the rail over his head and pulled himself straight up, standing. He nodded at the other man. “I’ll bet.” Dick Wags stood there a moment, fresh cigarette tight between his lips, towel around his waist. His skin was red, water-beaded. He had a snake and dagger from the old Jungle Warfare School in Panama tattooed on his left arm, a sunset and palm tree on his right, andDICK in fancy swirled letters on his chest. “That’s a bold statement,” Hall said, pointing at the chest tattoo.

  “It’s not a statement,” Tory said, still prone on the deck. “It’s a definition.”

  Hall laughed and Dick Wags said, “I just like everyone to know where I stand.” He winked, then backed into the cabin. “Excuse me, Sir,” he said, “I go on watch in ten minutes.” He closed the door behind him.

  They were alone in the tight passage. Marc Hall reached his hand down to Tory. She gripped it and he pulled her up, face to face. Her eyes moved over him, thoughts moving, spinning. She wanted to devour him.

  You breathe in, you breathe out, youbreatheinyoubreathe—

  “This can’t—” she finally said, but he’d already started talking.

  “I have to go down to the deck, to see how my drivers are,” he said. “They had a rough night of it. Would you like to meet them?”

  His voice had the slightest sing-song quality to it, which she never would have placed forty-eight hours before but now knew was distinctly Haitian. Not an accent; his accent was pure New York. It was a lilt in the way he spoke. “Would you like to meet them?” carried with it, “Of course you would”; not an arrogant assumption, but an assumed delight—aren’t we all delighted? She watched his eyes. He still wasn’t blinking.Maybe he doesn’t blink.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like to meet them.”

  Tory held his gaze, then looked down. His eyes followed. She was looking at their hands. Marc still had his hand wrapped around hers, from pulling her up. They looked back up at each other, then he let her fingers go.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” he said, grabbing his shaving kit from where he’d dropped it on the deck, and disappeared into the latrine, leaving Tory alone in the passageway. She wiped a hand across her face, gripped the rail that ran the length of the passage, then lightly tapped her forehead against the bulkhead a few times. She dropped and started knocking out push-ups again.

  Tory had dropped for her first Army push-up during basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. The main exercise of punishment and torture there, though, had been the leg-lift, not the push-up. It was a sex-segregated training company—most were then—and the women’s standard for the push-up was much lower than for men. Almost nonexistent, really. Most of Tory’s platoon couldn’t do a handful of real Army push-ups, so getting dropped for them was mostly pointless. The four platoon drill sergeants—starched and looming, three of them men—had the platoon do “girl push-ups,” knees on the ground. Since those weren’t particularly tough, when pain was required the drills would drop them for leg-lifts—flat on your back, heels held four inches up. Then the drill would call the cadence and the trainees would alternate scissoring their legs then spreading them back and forth. There was a drill sergeant named Hoya and when he had the platoon alone they all knew he was looking up their shorts during the leg-lifts. Army PT shorts were loose, and they did a lot of leg-lifts for Drill Sergeant Hoya. They all knew it but there was nothing they could do. Tory’s bunkmate—battle buddy, they were supposed to call them—was a small, hard girl from Oakland, California, named Martins. She’d glance up from their leg-lifts, muttering so only Tory could hear, “I swear the pig’s holding his crotch up there. Sick fuck.” A quiet girl named Smith from first squad stopped wearing anything under her shorts. In a platoon of thirty, living close together like they did, everyone knew everything, especially a personal detail like that—Smith’s bunkmate saw her leaving an item out while getting dressed, same thing next day, then the bunkmate whispered it to someone in the chow line. Then everyone knew.

  “That girl’s a dim bulb,” Martins said. “She’s gonna get it.”

  Tory couldn’t tell if the statement was a threat or sympathetic, and didn’t really care. The upside of dim, pale, mousy Smith spreading her legs was Hoya didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the platoon during leg-lifts anymore. Allowing leeway for sham.

  “Sham-a-lam-a-ding-dong,” Martins would whisper, one leg raised, one resting comfortably on the ground, Hoya yelling out cadence but eyes burning a hole between Smith’s legs.

  “I don’t know what he’s looking at, anyway,” Martins clucked. “You seen that girl in the shower?”

  Tory shook her head no, blowing fast, painful breaths through her lips. She was one of only three or four in the platoon still doing the exercise for real.

  Martins, staring up at the sky, switched legs
in her sham leg-lifts and made a sound Tory had gotten to know well these past few weeks, a grunting sigh Martins used to express wonderment, amusement, or disgust with the Caucasian race—Tory included. “Girl needs a weed-whacker, Tory,” she said. “I don’t know how that pig Hoya can see the forest for the trees down there.”

  Evidently he saw enough. Within a few days of Smith deciding to fall out for PT sans undergarments, she stopped falling out for PT altogether. “Drill Sergeant Hoya wants me to take some paperwork to battalion,” she mumbled to her battle buddy, head down, then slipped down the back stairs from the second floor of the barracks. “Ain’t that some shit,” Martins said, shivering out on the parade field. The other trainees stopped talking to Smith, even her own battle buddy, but it didn’t mean much in an atmosphere where no one was supposed to talk to anyone else anyway, for any reason, at any time.

  Tory Harris paid little attention to Drill Sergeant Hoya, except to stay out of his way. She’d only had to deal with him personally once, called to the desk one night to give a progress report on a cleaning detail, standing at attention while his eyes crawled over her chest. She’d stood through it, about-faced, and tried not to think about it after. The other two male drill sergeants never betrayed their drill mask, never let an emotion through—other than anger or disgust, both professional and acceptable for a drill sergeant. If their minds went the way of Hoya’s, you’d never know it.

  The drill who mattered, the only drill who mattered to Tory, was Drill Sergeant Chase—“My first name is Drill, my middle name is Sergeant, my last name is Chase. You will address me, at all times, with my full, God-given, Pentagon-approved, Army-issue name.”

  The woman was short, five feet if she was lucky. There were trainee privates in the platoon who towered over her. Tory was a few inches taller. She never realized it, though, until after graduation, when her platoon picture arrived in the mail. She was in the first row, standing at attention directly next to Chase, and clearly taller. If you’d have asked, though, she would never have guessed. She would have bet money the woman was taller, taller than all of them. That’s how she carried herself, that’s how she got in your face.

  Tory Harris had never seen anything like her. Chase’s skin was dark, darker than Martins’s, hair as tight and close as it could get, a round, shaved cut. She looked, Tory thought, like a warrior. Not how the Army liked to throw around the word, but for real. A dangerous African warrior. Someone who could maybe kill her own dinner and eat it raw. She was small, but strength in miniature; round jaw, a long and muscled neck, large hands outsized for her body with fingers that shot out, pointing, signaling attention, jabbing painfully into folds of sloppy uniforms or loose, undisciplined flesh.

  “Hey there, female,” she’d yell, those fingers grabbing and pulling at an untucked T-shirt on a sweaty, panting trainee in PT formation. “Your exhaustion does not justify disgracing my Army. Tuck it in or take it off.”

  “I believe that woman could kick all their asses,” Martins whispered once when all four drills stood together in a line before formation. Tory thought, more precisely, Chase looked like a woman who would die trying. You rose to her standard or fell to her wrath. She suffered neither fools, malingerers, nor individualists—all of them crimes against her and her Army.

  She’d exploded all over Tory late on the first day of basic training, the first and last time she approached Chase. “Drill Sergeant, may I—” the rest of the question drowned in Chase’s fury: “I?I? Did you say I? There is NO goddamnI in my Army!” Her nose almost touching Tory’s eye, hissing in her ear: “Are you a dirty individualist, Private Harris?” The word rolled from her tongue like a Slinkee down the stairs, syllables popping,in-di-vid-u-al-ist dripping with a poison Tory identified withcommunist orchild molester. It required a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of looking at the world.

  The first few days of basic training, Drill Sergeant Hoya or Drill Sergeant Roland had led PT. They’d taught the standards for the official Army female push-up—knees on the ground—and that’s what got done. Not so much because no woman could do a man’s push-up—many of them could—but because uniformity reigned supreme in the Army. The first morning Drill Sergeant Chase took the platoon out they all did push-ups as taught, but Tory happened to glance up from the cold, wet grass to see Chase doing real push-ups. She hadn’t called for it, and didn’t expect it from her trainees—couldn’t, actually. Uniformity. But she was doing it, doing it for real. When they stood back to attention Tory really looked at her for the first time, at this little soldier with the square shoulders.

  “That’s a bad, bad woman,” Martins said.

  “Yeah,” Tory whispered. “Yes she is.”

  Tory began doing real push-ups, too. It wasn’t easy. Nothing in basic training is easy, but this was brutal. Her arms, after all, were getting worked out in other ways. This was a harder exercise, and on top of everything else they were doing. First time she could only do five before collapsing to her knees, barely able to keep up then with the girl push-ups. So she began doing them at night, in sets of five.

  “You’re sick,” Martins told her, then sighed and dropped from her bunk to knock them out best she could with her battle buddy.

  Tory tried her best to keep an eye on Chase during PT, watching what she would do, watching her form. She was a machine; oiled, calibrated, muscle movements precise and perfect.

  Alone with a mop in the latrine one night during week four, Tory paused in front of the mirror. She still surprised herself in mirrors, not used to no hair. Blond stubble, the only female trainee who’d shaved down her head. She looked over her face, raised her chin. She pushed up the sleeve of her T-shirt, curled her arm to make a muscle. Felt it with her other hand, then tensed and made it harder. Then jumped, as Chase’s long, black fingers curled around her bicep, the drill sergeant’s face appearing next to her own in the mirror.

  “Don’t think for a minute I don’t see everything,” she whispered, squeezing. “Them push-ups of yours are paying off, Private Harris.” Then she was gone.

  It was only the second time Chase spoke to her directly, and there was only one other occasion in the entire eight weeks. It was week eight, two days before graduation, the platoon working all night in the barracks bay cleaning and buffing. Some of the privates had asked Drill Sergeant Chase about a ritual they’d heard of, the drill sergeant deciding who among them would be the future drill sergeant.

  “Yeah, I know your game, I know who it is,” she said. A girl named Guerrin looked up, nodding her head. She was platoon leader, ranked highest in all things physical and mental. She’d been a sprinter in high school, and shot a perfect score on the M-16 range, the only one in the platoon. But Chase didn’t look at her. Nor did she name any of the girls in the top three. She named the private ranked fourth in the platoon of forty.

  “Six, seven years from now, Harris, you gonna make some trainee’s life miserable,” Chase said, smiling so her teeth showed. Tory, polishing boots on the other side of the bay, heard her name. “What?” she said, but Chase had already turned, bending to inspect the brass on a private’s uniform. Tory meant to talk to her the next day, their last day as trainees, the only day you could reasonably do something like that—ask a drill sergeant a civil question. But it didn’t go like that. That night Drill Sergeant Hoya and Private Smith were caught, CID busting them in action in an unused barracks office. Chase woke the platoon at 0300, standing the trainees into formation in the frigid night. No one ever saw Hoya; the MPs whisked him out the building quick. Tory caught a glimpse of Smith, head down in jeans and a baggy, purple sweater. She wasn’t in handcuffs—as they heard Hoya had been—and was put in a white van, not an MP car. The MPs finally left, the battalion commander and sergeant-major finally left, the company commander and first sergeant. When they were all gone, Drill Sergeant Chase emerged from the building, standing on the stairs a moment in the orange of the street light affixed to the side of the barracks, then walking down
slow to the hardstand and facing her platoon, breath from her mouth in frozen puffs. Tory remembered a strange thought, one that came back to her occasionally over the years, in other situations:No one left, she thought.Just me and the Army. It was terrifying.

  “Y’all disgust me,” Chase said.

  If any of them had thought about what might happen next, it wasn’t this. She smoked them, absolutely smoked them. They used muscles in their body they didn’t know they had, on their backs and on their knees and over and over and around the building and back through the 4:00A.M. mud and “God be my witness, we’re gonna keep running and pushing right through until this time tomorrow,” Chase yelled at one point.

  She didn’t, though. She stopped them as the sky lightened in the east, pale thin-cigar clouds pulling over the parade ground, the dawn of their graduation day. She put them at attention, girls bouncing off one another in exhaustion and confusion, a few weeping. Chase stood silent a moment, her previously perfect, starched BDUs filthy with the same mud smeared over her platoon, sweat running from her face, steam rising from her damp head.

  “How could you do it?” she asked them. “Is there a one of you, even one, who didn’t know what was going on?”

  No one answered. Chase spit on the ground.

  “That stupid girl,” she said, and her chin went up, tensed. “But I’ll tell you now, ain’t one among you this morning who’s not stupider, and weaker, than that poor girl. She was only one human being. You had the strength of twenty-nine.” Chase was stalking the front of the platoon now, pacing, as out of breath as they were. She never, not once in eight weeks, ordered them to do something she didn’t do herself. Even the punishments. “Let me tell you something, Privates,” she said finally, louder now, her usual bark restored. “Friendly fire don’t just happen in war.”