by B. K. Dell
Summers seemed to last forever for eight-year-old boys. Wesley’s brown hair would turn bright blond for four months and his freckles would come out. A capricious wind blew a wisp of hair vibrating against his forehead as he looked at Caleb and asked, “Have you ever been to Paris?” The two of them had been swimming all day and were now spread out shirtless in the dirt on the shore, happy and comfortable because no one ever told them that the dirt was dirty. They felt as clean as a new day, soaking up the Texas sun.
“No,” said Caleb.
“My daddy went to Paris when he joined the military, Parris Island.”
“I’ve never left Texas.”
“You haven’t? Why not?”
Caleb shrugged. “Don’t want to. I never want to leave Texas.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“What do you want to do?”
Caleb shrugged again. “I want to be great.”
“Great at what?”
“I don’t know. I just want to live an important life. I want to be extraordinary.”
“Then why live in a normal town?”
This frustrated Caleb, but he was too young to understand why. He didn’t like the word “normal” used as a pejorative and he didn’t like it used about his town. He watched a leaf blowing in the breeze as he searched his young mind for the proper response. With a bit of defiance, he said, “It’s not normal.”
“I want to live on an island,” Wesley said as he watched the clouds.
Caleb was silent for a moment then added, “Yeah, me too.”
Every time that Wesley got something, Caleb would suddenly want one. When Caleb was ten, Wesley came by the house to show off his motorbike. Caleb instantly wanted one, too.
“It’s too dangerous,” pleaded his mother.
“It’s just a dirt bike,” reasoned his father.
“What’s wrong with his bicycle?”
“Chicks don’t dig bicycles, chicks dig dirt bikes.”
“He will get hurt.”
“Chicks dig scars,” his father said.
Later that summer, Caleb laid his dirt bike down in the gravel. When half of the skin was torn from his right leg, his father’s only response was, “Chicks dig scars.”
When Wesley joined the junior high school football team, Caleb wanted to join, too.
“He’s too little,” protested his mother.
“He’ll be fine.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“It’s football,” his father stated, as if that one word contained all the information needed to dispel her irrational thoughts. In case she still didn’t understand, he added, “This is Texas.”
Caleb played with the energy and commitment of a kid twice his size, just with no strength or skill of any kind. “Jeez,” the coach said to the team’s equipment manager, “let’s hope no one tells that Hertz boy that he’s a shrimp; we might be able to use him on the team after all.”
Two months into the school year, Caleb had suffered more injuries than all the other players on the team put together. As much as she watched him suffer, the school nurse began to refer to him as Job. “I don’t know,” said the equipment manager, “maybe it is time that we tell Caleb he’s a shrimp before he gets himself killed.” When Caleb reported to the nurse for the fourth time in one week, she had completely run out of gauze. She was very concerned so she complained to the coach. When the coach did nothing, she complained to the principal. The principal went to Caleb’s father and Caleb’s father reasoned, “This is Texas,” and the issue was dropped.
It was the first real game of the year and the Lake Durham Junior High Muskrats were matched up with the Falcons from Eaton County. The Muskrats were down by six when Caleb got a hold of the ball. On the field, Caleb acted as if no impulse of self-preservation had ever existed in his brain. He was simply born without it. Unfortunately, he was also born without any coordination or timing. He saw a larger boy headed straight toward him and his first thought was not to run the other way, but rather if the school nurse would be on call for a Saturday game. It could have possibly been the most skillful thing that he’d ever done on the football field when he changed his trajectory just enough for one of his team’s blockers to slip by him and intercept the giant who was only seconds away from clobbering him. It took Caleb what felt like two or three seconds to realize that he was still on his feet and still running toward the end zone. How did that happen? Caleb must have had some of his father’s genes in him after all. Suddenly the field looked wide open; the future looked wide open. The sun was shining brighter. Caleb could be anything that he wanted to be. He could do anything that he wanted to do. Caleb Hertz was going to be the next Emmitt Smith, or Troy Aikman, or any of those other names that Caleb had heard his father talk about over Thanksgiving and Christmas.
All of a sudden, he saw three large boys materialize between him and the end zone. Caleb knew his instincts on the field were obtuse, but he could have sworn that these three ogres had just sprouted up from out of the grass. Each one of them stood so tall that they blocked Caleb’s view of the sun – that bright sun of limitless opportunity. In a fleeting split second of sanity, Caleb considered veering to his right. They would run me out of bounds, but the yards would still count or something, right? But Caleb was seldom sane on the field. It wasn’t an act of courage when he ran straight ahead into all three of them at the same time; it was a total disregard for reality. Caleb took on odds that he could never overcome, as if the inevitability of failure never occurred to him, or just didn’t concern him all that much. “Caleb never quits,” his teammates all knew by now, “Caleb sees nothing but the end zone.” But it wasn’t true. Caleb couldn’t care less about the end zone. His main goal was never about scoring and never about completing the play.
Caleb beamed with pride as his father rounded the foot of his hospital bed. He had a broken collar bone, broken humerus, and a dislocated shoulder. Caleb’s mother cried fretfully by the side of his bed, but neither of the men seemed to notice her. His dad felt more than pride; he felt vindicated. He felt like he had really succeeded as a father. He placed a hand on Caleb and said, “You are my greatest accomplishment.”
“I didn’t quit, Dad.”
“I know, Caleb.”
Caleb could feel the warmth of his father’s hand, and of his love, even through his cast. It was the best day of his life.
The summer before Caleb and Wesley were to start their first year of high school, Wesley got his first hickey. Caleb’s eyes were wide as Wesley drew his shirt collar down far enough for Caleb to see it. Wesley had his first girlfriend and every time Wesley got something, Caleb wanted one too. “I heard that Joann likes you,” Wesley said. Joann was Wesley’s new girlfriend’s best friend. The next step was when Wesley’s girlfriend said to Joann, “I heard that Caleb likes you,” and the deal was sealed. In a life full of long summers, this was to be the longest one yet. Their lives were changing. Rope swings and motorbikes no longer held the appeal they once had.
Adolescent boys in Lake Durham had to face living in a body that was changing in a setting that stayed monotonously the same. There was no place for hormonal young people to go, and nothing for them to do – the town could have benefited from a bowling alley. Instead, they turned to the classic free entertainment. The same girls that the boys had seen all their lives suddenly looked so different. The girls they had climbed trees with, raced bikes with, and pushed into the mud, now seemed strangely unfamiliar and the roles would never be the same again.
On a blanket by the wooded lake, Caleb held Joann in his arms. She was fragrant and mysterious. Caleb was overcome by a fascination with her beauty, one he had yet to understand. His heart overflowed with affection for her, like young hearts sometimes do, and like a babbling fool he told her that he loved her.
It was on that blanket, in the last days of summer, in that same spot where they had always met, that Caleb came face to face with an undeniable and insurmountable obstacle
– a rope that he could never climb. The stars seemed dim and the fire was growing cold. From out of that cold, Caleb’s mind broke free; thoughts came flowing out of his heart and out of his mouth without thinking. Feelings, long ignored, were becoming words for the first time. He told her of every pain, every shame. He told her every secret – even the secret that he had been keeping from himself. “This isn’t a choice,” he said. “It’s part of who I am. I have always been gay. I know that now.” He started to cry.
Joann was hurt. She was angry. There was no compassion in her heart for his tears. She had no concern about his sexual orientation. He was just the boy who rejected her, who embarrassed her, the boy who sentenced her to the lifelong title of Joann, the girl who turned Caleb gay. She did not give him the chance to see any of this in her face. She couldn’t endure another second. As Caleb continued to confess and analyze every emotion of his errant heart, Joann turned abruptly and ran away. He called after her and started to run, but he remembered that he could not leave a fire unattended. As he walked back to the fire, he knew what it all had meant. He knew what his loose lips had just done. He kicked enough dirt onto the fire to extinguish it, then watched as the last remaining embers burned out. He didn’t know what to do next. He was cold, surrounded by the dark and lonesome woods.
He ran down the road to see Wesley. When he knocked on the door, Wesley’s mom said he was on the phone. Caleb could guess who he was talking to. Wesley appeared in the doorway behind his mother. “Oh, here he is,” she said surprised. She invited Caleb in, but he shook his head. Wesley went out to join Caleb on the front porch and closed the door behind them.
Once alone, Wesley unleashed his anger. “Why did you tell Joann that?” he snapped.
“Because it’s true.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It’s true.” Caleb stressed both syllables. His tone was pleading.
Wesley’s face looked searching; he was remembering their lives together. He was remembering how close, physically close, they had always been. He felt enormously betrayed and bitter. “You’re a jerk,” Wesley said with the ferocity of a boy who had just lost his best friend, or as he saw himself in that moment, a boy who had his best friend torn from him. “I will never forgive you.” Wesley went in and slammed the door.
Caleb had no choice left but to return to his own home and to the father who always found out about everything.
That would end up being the worst day of Caleb’s life.
CHAPTER FIVE
At the end of the first week came their first inspection. The rumors were that no one ever passes the first inspection. The drill instructor stops searching the second he finds the smallest thing wrong.
“A long search is merely postponing the inevitable, and also builds too much tension,” Trey Tucker said.
“Then why try at all?” asked Jackson.
“Because no one wants it to be their stuff that is in violation.”
Each man stood at attention at the foot of his rack. SSgt Folsom checked every rack, every foot locker, every rifle, every uniform, every shoe. Any time the men saw him turn his shoulder to investigate something, they would turn slightly to try and see what he saw. As soon as his shoulders would turn back, they would snap back to attention. When he got to Caleb’s foot locker, he pulled out a pair of socks that had been folded incorrectly. Everyone saw it and braced themselves for his wrath. Instead, he placed them back where he found them and moved on to the next recruit. Terrence relaxed because he realized that he had made the same mistake. He simply concluded that it was not a big violation after all. Nevertheless, Terrence still hoped that SSgt Folsom would find something else from someone else before he got to him. But he didn’t. The barracks were eerily quiet when SSgt Folsom pulled out Terrence’s unsatisfactorily folded socks.
SSgt Folsom lost it! He went ballistic. It seemed from the way that he raged, that the simple mistake had been a deep personal insult that had cut to his very soul. He tossed all the racks, and blankets went flying. One by one, he emptied the contents of all the recruits’ footlockers into the same pile, leaving the recruits to sort them out. But when he reached Caleb’s footlocker, the only one so far left unmolested, he just turned and walked out.
Most of the men relaxed. The mess SSgt Folsom had made was irritating, but they had visions of doing more pushups and could not figure out why they had been spared.
“He’s coming back,” Jackson said flatly, like he was stating the obvious. “That’s why he messed everything up, so he can come back in and inspect it again.”
“When?” someone asked, feeling helpless.
“Soon,” Jackson said with urgency.
Immediately, every man in the platoon rushed to fix everything as quickly as they possibly could. No one knew how much time they had, but if they knew SSgt Folsom, it would not be enough. Caleb fixed the socks SSgt Folsom failed to gig him on, then shifted in his area, ill at ease; he did not want any attention brought to the fact that his belongings were the only ones left un-ransacked. He walked over to Terrence who was rummaging through a pile of items on the deck. Caleb picked a few things up to try to help him find his belongings, but Terrence angrily snatched everything straight back out of Caleb’s hands. Fine, Caleb thought and searched the room for someone who could use his help. Trey had returned his rack right side up from where SSgt Folsom had tipped it over, but had not yet noticed that the corner had come undone. When Caleb reached over to help tuck it in correctly, Trey stepped toward him and menacingly grabbed his wrist. He crushed it with a grip so strong that Caleb wondered for a second if Trey was secretly a robot.
“No fairy is ever going to lay a finger on my rack,” he said and threw Caleb’s hand back. Caleb averted his eyes. He didn’t know why, but as he turned around, he checked to see if Jackson had seen. Jackson was looking straight at him. Caleb turned away, sulked back to his rack and waited quietly.
It wasn’t long before SSgt Folsom came back, just as Jackson had predicted. This time he was unable to find anything wrong, so he walked over to Trey’s rack and pulled out a corner of his bed sheet. He said, “Recruit, is your name Tucker?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Then how come you can’t tuck?”
The entire platoon had to live through a nightmare round of physical training.
When the platoon finally got a chance to sleep that night, Jackson lay in bed confused about the whole point of it. “So what if the socks aren’t folded right?” he asked.
***
Caleb washed his hands as quickly as he could. There were surprisingly few recruits in the head and Caleb was thankful for that. He had a feeling of dread each time he went in there. It reminded him of the junior high school restrooms where he had encountered more than his fair share of bullies. It was the secluded spot away from teachers where boys would congregate, just waiting for a fly to fall into their web. Caleb always seemed to be that fly. He tried to shake the memories of unsuspectingly rounding the corner just to lock eyes with them – young boys standing with their arms folded, macho airs put on for the sake of each other. He would quickly head to the stall and lock the door. Sometimes he would stay in there for the rest of the period.
The stalls at the MCRD didn’t have doors. There was no small space in which Caleb could hide.
On his way out, he saw Jackson Brooks walk in. Caleb’s chest tightened. He tried to look right at him and to not show any fear. As the two men passed each other, Caleb intentionally straightened his shoulder, knocking Jackson’s shoulder back.
“Hey,” Jackson called back to him, but Caleb refused to turn around as he walked steadily out the door.
When Caleb returned to the squad bay, he was stunned to find it empty; rows and rows of racks empty, without a single recruit in sight. His gut instantly knew there was something off and it wasn’t going to be pretty. In the very next instant, he felt a man rush him from behind. He turned his head quickly to offer up some defense, but he was too late. He saw a
flash of olive drab, then darkness. In less than a second he could hear the boots approaching of what must have been nearly the entire platoon. He felt a cord being tied around his waist, followed by a firm blow to his abdomen. Caleb folded over. He wanted to scream from pain, but fought desperately to deny them the satisfaction. He could feel one man pulling on the cord around his waist. The man wanted to pull Caleb out the door, but the rest of the group seemed perfectly content to pulverize him right where he stood. Blows began to fall rapidly against his gut. Caleb tried to fight back but his arms were tangled in his blanket prison. Again the man pulled hard on the cord and was forced to speak, against his best efforts not to, when body language failed to get his point across. The man attempted to persuade the rest of the mob in as few words possible; he said simply, “Before he gets back.”
Caleb did not recognize the voice and did not have time to speculate on to whom the word he referred. Caleb understood that their desire was to get him out of the squad bay and he was determined to delay that as much as possible. He lowered his center of gravity but it was futile; in the next instant he was lifted off his feet and into the air as if he didn’t weigh a single pound. He heard the door slam hard against the wall as they all tried to clamor through it at the same time. That was the last indication of where his body was in relation to anything familiar to him. That was the last moment in which he could clearly identify which way was up.
He felt a hard collision. It was like a slab of hard concrete had just fallen from the sky and landed on his shoulder and the side of his head. He would not have believed it was the ground falling up at him. The rumble from the others’ steps sounded strangely like a pack of elephants. The crushing blows from the hard-soled combat boots impacted his ribs. He was also being struck by things he could not identify – a variety of heavy objects that had been shoved into the ends of empty pillow cases. The men were smart enough to avoid hitting or kicking his face, in hopes to avoid leaving any visible scars as evidence, but the force in which they were kicking him put them in danger of having to explain a body full of broken ribs, or worse, a recruit with a broken spine.