by B. K. Dell
When the men were all finally standing at proper attention, SSgt Folsom put them at ease and then began to explain the correct Marine way to do each of what he called the “daily dozen” – all the exercises a Marine needs to know for their daily physical training, and consequently, for incentive training. They had names such as side-straddle hops, mountain climber, trunk twisters, and squat benders. “Through pain you retain,” SSgt Folsom informed them. As he demonstrated each one, he did not pause his speech, but rather kept talking at a steady pace as no one exercise took any effort for him at all. At first he would illustrate and the recruits would mimic. Then, when he felt the recruits had each exercise down pretty well, he began to call out the name of one exercise after another, in quick procession, expecting each recruit to move easily from one to the next. The men scrambled frantically in every which way. The whole thing looked more like bad performance art than it did exercise.
The first person who fell behind was Jackson Brooks, known to Caleb as Fundamentalist.
“What is your problem, Churchie? You think that Jesus is going to walk through that hatch and save you from me?”
“Sir, no, sir,” Jackson said as he tried to speed up.
“Jesus may have your soul, recruit, but everything else belongs to me.” As the rest of the platoon suffered through mounting pain, SSgt Folsom called out, “If not for this God-boy, you all would be done by now.”
As the night continued, the recruits seemed to take turns getting singled out. One by one they were reported to be the cause of the entire platoon having to start over. No one could keep up. “This is my home. Do not throw up on the decks in my home. If you need to throw up, throw up into your own shirt,” SSgt Folsom hollered at the group as if seeing the future. Moments later men began throwing up from physical pain and exhaustion.
Caleb had been far behind from the beginning, even before Jackson was called out for just that. Every man in the platoon had since been chewed out, but not Caleb. Caleb was struggling through a pathetic pushup with his eyes toward the ground. He was too exhausted and confused to realize that everyone else, by the drill instructor’s order, had now moved on to steam engines. Caleb saw the tips of SSgt Folsom’s polished boots on the deck in front of him. The boots stopped and turned until they were inches from his nose. Caleb knew he was not cutting it and braced himself for the worst.
“Keep your rear down, son; that’s a girl’s pushup,” SSgt Folsom said simply and continued walking.
By the end of the night, every man’s muscles felt like worthless noodles, they barely had the strength to stand, and each felt a horrible sense of humiliation and vulnerability. They were all at the mercy of one man. After lights out, Caleb stared up at a ceiling that he could not see. He rubbed his shaved head with his hand. He could feel the smooth areas where the prickly stubble was interrupted by scar tissue. Caleb was trying to fight the urge to cry. He followed the path of the scar with the tip of his finger. Chicks dig scars. The words echoed through his head. Slowly he broke down. The men could hear the faint sniffles that Caleb tried to stifle. Just a few short sounds were enough to let the whole room know that someone was crying, and they all could guess who.
“Boo-Hoo,” Caleb heard whispered, followed by mocking fake cries.
He heard someone sneer, “What’s he crying for? It’s not like he had to work as hard as us.”
One anonymous voice called out the single word, “Faggot.”
***
A solitary lamp warmed the corner of the couch where Cheryl Hobbs sat crocheting. There was not another light on in the whole house. She had been working feverishly in that spot since before the sun set, stopping only once to grab her trusted “headlight” from her bag. She had purchased a small LED light attached to a headband at the local hardware store which came in handy when she worked in low light or with dark colors. Her thick black hair was parted down the middle and the headband held it tight to her head. If anyone saw her at that moment, they would have sworn she looked like a member of some native tribe, except for her blue eyes. They were surrounded by fine wrinkles now, but when she was a young beauty her vivid eyes drove all the boys in Lake Durham crazy. It was from his mother that Caleb inherited his unique combination of dark hair and crystal blue eyes.
Cheryl was working on a baby onesie that she knew would never be worn. A blister was starting to form on her finger and her stomach was growling, but she refused to break for even a second. She had been working non-stop ever since she hung up the phone with Caleb earlier. He had called her from Dallas to say goodbye. She wanted to make the drive over to see him off, but Caleb wouldn’t have it. “It’s no big deal,” he kept repeating.
But it was a big deal to her.
She counted the stitches. It was the counting that helped take her mind off things, as well as the repetition of motions. Making the same stitch over and over was a strange type of therapy. If she lost count, she would have to start the whole row over.
As an added distraction, the television was on for background noise. A group of young men and women in paper hats were hugging and crying. Cheryl Hobbs thought that she might have been watching a reality show where they swapped fast food employees from restaurants in small towns with restaurants in big cities, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t really watching; she just hated how quiet the house seemed to get these days. When she heard the news was starting, she couldn’t believe that it was already nine o’clock.
“Then we’ll introduce you to one of America’s newest Marines, Caleb Hertz.” Cheryl’s head snapped up. The lamp on her head illuminated the wood grain of the entertainment center beneath the image of Caleb’s face on TV. The crawler at the bottom of the screen read simply “Gay Marine?” Cheryl heard the voice of an unseen reporter, followed by Caleb:
“Are you worried about boot camp?”
“I don’t want to be looked at as just a gay man.”
“Next at nine,” said the anchor.
She didn’t move. Her hands lowered, but her crochet hook did not move from its position in the middle of the row. Her mouth hung open and her eyes became tired and heavy. He said it was no big deal, she pleaded with her television, No, no, no, he said it was no big deal.
The stream of commercials seemed never-ending. Cheryl Hobbs became irritated by their irrelevance. She just wanted to hear what they were prepared to tell the nation about her son.
Finally they returned to the news. Mitch McCarty was the man behind the news desk and the camera lights revealed that he was wearing too much make-up. The woman’s name was Veronica Cisneros, which was surprising to Cheryl who didn’t think she looked very Hispanic. Both of them smiled broadly and the man appeared to have too many teeth.
“Our next story is about one of Texas’s newest heroes – a cocker spaniel? A Fort Worth resident says that while Daisy, her cocker, was chewing on her cell phone, the pet accidently hit the emergency speed dial,” the man said.
Why are you telling me this?! Cheryl was shouting in her head. Who cares! Who could possibly care about this?!
“Police and fire officials came to the door to find there was no emergency, but were able to smell a gas leak that the elderly resident had been unaware of,” said Veronica Cisneros.
“Good boy!” said Mitch McCarty.
Cheryl held her head in her hands. She felt like it might pop.
“Coming up next, we meet a different kind of hero,” Veronica Cisneros said.
“Very different indeed,” said Mitch McCarty. “Caleb Hertz is fighting to make a difference…” McCarty hesitated the way one does before delivering a punch line, “as a US Marine?”
The crawler this time read, “Out of the closet and into the fire.” And again, they played the same edited clip:
“Are you worried about boot camp?”
“I don’t want to be looked at as just a gay man.”
A commercial for a new type of mop came on and Cheryl Hobbs felt like she could scream. She flipped through the other chan
nels but she could not find anything about her son. Her phone rang and she did not bother to check the caller ID. She answered it and said, “I know, I’m watching.” It was one of the girls from her crochet group. “I’ll call you back,” Cheryl told her and abruptly hung up. Another call came in the instant she hung the first one up. She reached to turn the ringer off, then pried the LED light off her head. A strand of hair fell into her face tickling her nose and she frantically brushed it aside. She kept flipping until she found her original channel. A frustrated woman was struggling to wring the water out of an old-fashion mop, ultimately throwing up her hands.
After four more commercials, they played the interview with Caleb, slightly edited. Cheryl watched anxiously.
“Are you worried about boot camp?”
“I’m going to war; boot camp is the least of my problems.”
“How do you think you will be received?”
“I think they are going to try to kill me,”
“I meant your fellow Marines.”
“So did I!”
“Texas resident, Caleb Hertz, is America’s first openly gay Marine. Caleb grew up in the small town of Lake Durham, Texas, and according to his boyfriend, Stacy Oliver, has always been a staunch fighter for gay rights.”
The screen cut to a shot of Stacy, recorded after Caleb’s bus had left, “Caleb believes that a gay person should have the right to do anything a straight person can do, even if that means joining a xenophobic and benighted military.”
Cheryl Hobbs growled.
As the news anchor spoke, they broadcasted a close up of Caleb talking with no sound, and a cut of him and Stacy holding hands. They concluded with Caleb’s statement, “I am no different than any man here. I don’t want to be looked at as just a gay man.”
“He was talking about you, not them. You are treating him like just a gay man!” Cheryl yelled at the TV.
They immediately cut to the shot of Stacy kissing him full on the mouth, the USO and Marine Corps bus behind them. Then they moved on to the next story.
Cheryl ran her fingers through her hair. She tried to steady her breathing. My dear Caleb. I know you hated that. My precious Caleb! She looked down at her crochet. She noticed that she had made a mistake three rows back, so she pulled the yarn to unravel it. In frantic motions she pulled the yarn from something made into something not made. Her movements were like a magician doing a never-ending handkerchief routine. They made it seem like he was only going to boot camp, she cursed to herself. They didn’t bother mentioning that he’ll be fighting for our country, risking his life for our freedom. She unraveled to the point where the error had been made, but could not stop her destruction. She kept pulling and pulling until she had unraveled the entire evening’s worth of work. In less than two minutes she undid everything that had taken her six hours to create. All that was left was a big clump of tangled, chaotic yarn.
“My Caleb. I am so sorry,” she said out loud, looking at her hands, but seeing nothing. “My sweet Caleb, I have never once been able to protect you.”
CHAPTER THREE
The area where Caleb’s platoon did their marching was called the parade deck. It was a vast expanse of gravel asphalt, the kind of asphalt where anyone who fell would likely stand up with a palm-full of bloody cuts and scrapes on the hand that broke his fall. SSgt Folsom called out cadence as the men marched. He yelled, “By the right flank…March,” and the whole formation, like a school of fish, turned right and continued marching. He yelled, “By the left flank…March,” and without missing a beat they all turned left. His voice was strong and loud. It amazed Caleb how powerful and authoritative it sounded.
Caleb was always nervous around men who were too loud and obstreperous. He was always nervous around men who stood and walked too tall, men who were his exact opposite.
Most people lack the ability to truly love that which they are not. Greatness has a way of inciting respect, but true greatness only hatred. When confronted with the truly great, most men’s egos will look franticly for any chink in such a shining suit of armor. Men must, for the sake of their egos, diligently seek out weakness in other men. True greatness is such a threat to all that behold it, that the beholder must find some consolation prize – real or fabricated – to convince his pride that the strength, beauty, wisdom, knowledge, talent, or ability that he just witnessed with his own eyes was actually somehow less than it seemed. An oyster does this when a sharp grain of sand irritates its soft flesh; it glosses it over into something smooth, something less menacing with no edge and no bite.
Caleb was the exception.
Caleb could honor greatness like no one else could, particularly the very type of greatness he lacked – straight iron posture, long confident gait, relaxed ease of motion; the kind of man who will look you in the eye; the kind of man who is known by his handshake; the kind of man who joins the Marines; the kind of man that Caleb wondered if he could ever be. Caleb could never act himself around men like this. He always seemed to act fidgety. He always seemed to act gay. He did his best impression of a masculine and assertive man, and could sometimes even get the words out, but there was a look behind his eyes, something that betrayed he had a secret. It meant his pain could not be hidden. It meant that he carried, day in and day out, a shame so deep in him that it contaminated even the way he walked, the way he stood, and the way he formed his words.
And so this particular grain of sand continued to sting him: envy for those who could hit that perfect pitch of rugged masculinity, envy for the kind of man his father always wanted for a son. This deficit in his life even spurred his unlikely relationship with Stacy; Stacy despised that kind of man. Stacy was never the type of man that Caleb wanted, but Caleb was the type of man that Stacy wanted. Caleb found someone who could love who he actually was, not who he wanted to be. Caleb never felt like he was good enough for anyone, except Stacy.
Good enough for Stacy, at least.
These were his thoughts when the rest of his platoon turned right and he turned left. Before he could stop himself, he collided with Buzz Cut as if he were Larry running into Curly. Immediately after the two collided, SSgt Folsom appeared magically hurling insults – Moe, except Moe was on steroids and wearing a Smokey Bear hat.
SSgt Folsom, to Caleb’s surprise, was cursing at Buzz Cut, not at Caleb.
“Recruit Tucker! What in God’s name do you think you are doing? You are not supposed to be out of file, recruit! Do you enjoy messing up my formation? Do you enjoy doing pushups, recruit?”
“Sir, no, sir!” Trey Tucker responded simply, without passing blame.
“I need your louse-infested body on my quarterdeck right now!” The drill instructors had something that they called IT, short for incentive training. It was also called quarterdecking because it was usually done on the quarterdeck, but the recruits learned quickly that the quarterdeck was wherever the DI’s said it was. SSgt Folsom pulled poor Trey Tucker over to a remote spot still on the parade deck.
This was the third interruption from marching that they had so far that day. Each time it had clearly been Caleb who caused it and each time SSgt Folsom deliberately chose someone else to blame.
Sgt Page continued to drill the recruits while SSgt Folsom was letting Trey Tucker have it. “Pushups, now!” yelled SSgt Folsom.
“Sir, pushups, aye sir,” Trey confirmed. He placed both hands on the sharp gravel. It was so sharp it caused him more pain than the pushups. Caleb’s eyes were perfectly straight forward but he had to listen to SSgt Folsom count off the cadence to Trey’s pushups. With a voice full of anguish he could hear Trey count off the repetitions. The wear on Trey’s muscles caused an excruciating burn in his shoulders, chest and arms. The loose gravel pressed deep pock marks into the palms of his hands.
“Side lunges, now!” called SSgt Folsom.
Trey instantly began doing side lunges. He made the mistake of not verbally confirming it. SSgt Folsom made him pay for that mistake. “Start over! Pushups, now!”<
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“Sir, pushups, aye sir,” called Trey Tucker.
Caleb had to listen helplessly.
“Side lunges, now!”
“Sir, side lunges, aye sir.”
“Leg lifts, now!”
“Sir, leg lifts, aye sir.”
It went on for fifteen more minutes.
It riddled Caleb with guilt. With each repetition that Trey called out, Caleb’s mind raced to figure out how he could pay better attention. When SSgt Folsom brought Trey back into formation, Caleb swore to himself that he would not mess up again.
He knew he was not supposed to do it, but his conscience was bothering him too much – the second that he thought SSgt Folsom wasn’t looking, he mouthed the word, “sorry” to Trey Tucker.
SSgt Folsom spotted him and instantly started yelling, “Recruit Tucker! Did I catch you mouthing something? Get your nasty hands down on my quarterdeck, right now! Right now!”
CHAPTER FOUR
His name was a complete sentence. Caleb Hertz. Caleb’s only mistake was being born; the punishment he received was life.
Lake Durham was the name of Caleb’s hometown, as well as the lake that Lake Durham surrounded. Small town Texas was a young boy’s paradise, provided that the young boy was straight. Caleb spent his youth idyllically, with the naked metal bed of his father’s pickup truck burning his bare calves; beside campfires under the stars; jumping off docks and tire swings into the lake; with so much dirt between his toes that his mamma would make him clean off with the garden hose before he was allowed to come into the house. Caleb spent his youth with Wesley Fletcher.
Wesley was his nearest neighbor. He lived in a large country house with a wraparound porch about a fifteen minute walk down Maple road, but Caleb and Wesley always ran it. They ran everywhere. From the moment they stepped out of the school house, to the moment they magically appeared just in time for dinner – Wesley at Caleb’s house or Caleb at Wesley’s house – they were inseparable.