by Ginger Booth
Ava pushed her face away, flat-handed. “You stole my chopstick. Give it back.”
“Cat fight!” Yoda called from the hall. The rooms were claustrophobic, so they left the door open during the day.
“Chopstick Chinese, White Trash!” Lotus shoved Ava.
“Chopstick mine, thief!” Ava used a right cross punch into Lotus’ shoulder, not exactly gentle, but not damaging.
By the time Sergeant Clarke squeezed into the room, the girls were on the floor, with scratched faces. He pulled them apart, and told off the guys who hung on the door frame to enjoy the show. “Why didn’t you stop this yourselves? Ow!” Lotus caught him with a back hand slap meant for Ava. “Stop that! What is this about?”
“She stole my chopstick and won’t give it back,” Ava accused.
“Chopstick Chinese!” Lotus screeched.
“You’re fighting over a chopstick?” Clarke shoved them apart to sit on Hijab’s bed and the desk chair. “Where is the damned chopstick?”
Hijab climbed up to Lotus’ bunk and felt around the box edges around the mattress, while Lotus swore in Cantonese. Hijab presented the sergeant with a sharpened gold stick.
“For crying out loud, recruits,” Clarke complained. Then he tested its point, which drew blood. “Panic, this is a weapon.”
“I use it in my hair,” Ava replied. She held a hand out to request the chopstick, then quickly roped her hair into a bun and skewered it with the stick. “Like that.”
“OK, the weapon is clearly yours,” Clarke acknowledged with sarcasm.
“Self defense hairpin,” Ava said.
Clarke slipped it out of her hair, and waved it at her. “No weapons in barracks.” He waggled it at Lotus. “No stealing from brother recruits.”
“Girl.”
“Brother. We’ve been over this. You’re all men, all brothers, male and female. Women maybe. No girls here.”
“Stupid.”
“Men, how are we going to get past this?” Clarke demanded of the pair of girls, both about eighteen.
“I transfer,” Lotus demanded, arms crossed on her chest. “Want out! Not platoon with boyfriend. Fang asshole. White Trash queen bitch asshole!”
“You’ll watch your language, recruit. In this platoon or any other.”
“Fuck you.”
Clarke sighed. “Brig overnight. Hell of a way to meet the commandant tomorrow morning.”
Ava held her breath, but apparently the sergeant only meant to throw Lotus in the brig. As he dragged the Chinese girl to the door, Ava asked meekly, “Sergeant? My chopstick?”
“You could kill someone with this, Panic. Don’t push your luck.”
Ava didn’t see Lotus again, even in another platoon. She was the first of the Downtown squad to get kicked out for defiance. Two from Midtown were already gone.
The sharpened chopstick reappeared under her pillow that night. No one explained who lifted it from the sergeant and slipped it back to her. Ava suspected Puño. She’d wielded that chopstick in a couple memorable fights in Chelsea. He might have heard about them. But she didn’t care to ask. Puño might claim credit if he wanted something. He already seemed to think he had more claim over her than she’d concede. Besides, it might have been Sergeant Clarke. Their overworked den mother had a surprisingly decent streak.
“Settle down,” Sergeant Clarke ordered, as the ‘platoon’ scuttled into seats in the floor’s common room.
Four new sergeants stood with him at the front of the room. One of them Ava had seen before, sitting in the hall after light’s-out. She assumed he covered night shift so nanny-sergeant Clarke could sleep. They probably hadn’t anticipated the recruits’ night terrors.
“First off, I hope you had a nice holiday weekend here at camp West Point. I mean that. I hope you had fun. That was the goal. Give you a chance to eat, settle down a little, relax, catch your breath. I know some of you came from some not-so-safe conditions. You needed a breather. And honestly, we needed a chance to kick out anyone we couldn’t deal with. I’m not saying you guys are perfect. Some of you belong in maximum security.”
The room laughed with him. Some took it as a compliment.
“The fact you’re still here doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. But you’ve got a shot. We’re willing to work with you.
“But now everything is going to change. This weekend, Sergeant Awalo and I gave up our holidays to give you a good start.” The mystery night sergeant, a slighter man with reddish black skin, nodded neutrally. “Awalo and Sergeant Michaelson there,” a white sergeant nodded, “will continue on night shift to relieve the squad leaders. Awalo will take this squad, starting tonight.
“Sergeant Calderon,” a black guy nodded, “has you guys effective tomorrow morning. Any minute now, Sergeant Singh’s new squad should be thundering up the stairs to move in. Aren’t they supposed to be here already?”
“I’ll go find them,” Singh said. He raised a hand at the room. “Good to meet you. We’ll talk sometime.” He left, drawing Michaelson in his wake.
“Yeah, good to meet you,” Calderon offered, in a fruity Dominican accent, posture erect. Awalo leaned back against a whiteboard, arms folded, and nodded to the recruits as well.
“Anyway, I’m your platoon commander,” Clarke resumed. “If you need anything, talk to Calderon or Awalo. If you have a problem with them, solve it with them. If they want you to talk to me, they’ll let you know.” The sergeants chuckled.
“Starting tomorrow, bright and early, training gets real, recruits. A few words of advice. The ones who left will not be the last to go. I know it’s hard for you. You’ve been on your own. Had to rely on yourselves. Build your street rep. Not take any crap from anybody, like your life depended on it. Because it did.
“Not anymore. Boys and girls, it’s time to grow up. You need to obey orders. Some of those orders will suck. Hell, most of them will. But you must obey them.
“Other advice. The Hudson Army is still revising rules. We’ve only been a country for a couple months now. Be prepared for the rules to change on you. You got to roll with the punches – and not come up fighting. Just take it five minutes at a time. That gets too hairy, take it one minute at a time. Nothing is unbearable for one minute. Just focus on what you’re supposed to do, right here and now.
“Learn your lessons and obey orders. Oh, and one other bit of advice. The Army decided you don’t need crew-cuts. My advice? Guys, get your hair cut anyway, like to my length.” Clarke had short hair, but nothing extreme, just shaped to his head, an inch on the sides, a bit longer on top, just enough to keep his ears from sticking out, trim around the neckline. “Female guys, most of your hair is short enough. Except Panic. You might want to cut it to shoulder length. Just, you know, do it as a way of telling yourself, hey, I’m serious about this. I’m becoming a soldier now.
“Because, squad, it’s a mind game. Sure, there are objective standards. Rules, things to memorize, moves to perform, a bazillion details, a whole lot of physical body-building. But to succeed? That’s all in your head.” He shrugged, and gave them an affable smile. “I recommend a haircut. And I will see you tomorrow as platoon commander. Remember not to say hi.”
A herd of thundering elephants arrived on the stairs, pushing and swearing at each other. Clarke left to greet them and provide backup for the other squad’s sergeants.
Calderon took his place. “And starting tomorrow, I’ll be your squad leader. Don’t say hi to me, either. Tomorrow you start acting like soldiers. Tonight, you get to your rooms, lock your doors, and sleep well. Do not, repeat not, engage with the new squad tonight.” He looked grim. “You can make friends with them tomorrow. Dismissed.”
12
Interesting fact: The only typical U.S. Army base Hudson did possess was Fort Drum, home to the 10th Mountain Division, light infantry for mountain and arctic conditions. Fort Drum was located east of the head of Lake Ontario, 30 miles from the Canadian border. Hudson retired the facility due to inadequate transpo
rtation to ‘snowy nowhere.’
Everything certainly changed that Monday. Their clothes, for one thing. In a frustrating few hours of uncontrolled chaos, the recruits were issued uniforms, boots, and exercise outfits, including sports bras and athletic supporters. These proceedings were diabolically designed to force Ava’s squad to climb up, and down, from the fifth floor of Pershing Barracks four times before lunch.
This athletic feat was hampered by tens of mostly black recruits from North Jersey sitting on the staircases. Maybe they could have climbed those stairs three times in a day, fortified with a good meal and time to recuperate between each assault on the mountain. But Ava doubted it. Her latest trip up the damned stairs was carrying full kit for four, including boots.
Ava’s legs gave out on the 4th floor. She sat abruptly next to a black girl she recognized from the first harangue in the driving rain after breakfast. The girl’s physique was familiar. She looked like thousands of Manhattan gang rats from nine months ago, before the food distribution reached them – protruding eyes and belly, skeleton all too visible.
“Panic,” Ava introduced herself. “I’m in your platoon, other squad. Are you Lewis, Williams, Washington, or Washington?” Those were the uniforms in her hefty pile.
“Fox,” she replied.
“I’m a Washington,” a guy called down from halfway up the stair flight.
“Cool. I’ve got your uniforms. What room are you in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right,” Ava said. “I’ll carry them up for you. In a minute.”
“That some kind of punishment?” Fox inquired.
Ava considered the heavy pile of uniforms. “Just stupidity, so far as I can tell.”
“Lot of that,” Fox said. “I’d quit right now if I could climb down the stairs.”
Ava creaked back to her feet. “I’ll give your regards to the sergeants.”
With no way to tell which uniform went to which room – the Jersey newcomers hadn’t labeled their doors yet – Ava separated the clothes into piles by person, and left them against the wall on the Jersey end of the hall. Then she picked her way back downstairs between exhausted bodies, and into Central Area, the quadrangle between the barracks.
The evil psychopath was still on a megaphone in the square, barking out instructions and insults. Most of the recruits had long since simply lain down on their backs in the driving rain. Maybe a third, like Ava, were still more-or-less trying to obey his insane demands. The ones on their feet attempted to master marching.
Marching is harder than it looks. In natural walking, the arms counter-balance the feet. But to march on parade, the front arm is on the same side as the front foot. They stumbled a lot. The smarter ones simply walked.
Ava bypassed all that and approached Sergeant Calderon, her new squad leader. She waited at the edge of his peripheral vision while he barked at people.
“Panic, get in there and march!” he ordered.
“Yes, sergeant, in a moment. I just delivered uniforms to our floor.”
“Congratulations. Get in line and march.”
“No, sergeant. The thing is, Sergeant Singh’s squad is clogging the staircase. They can’t climb down here. In fact, if I climb those stairs one more goddamn time, I’ll pass out.”
“You want to go to the brig, Panic?”
“No thank you, sergeant. But I believe this is ridiculous and counter-productive, and someone needs to help the Jersey squad back to bed. Or downstairs for lunch. They aren’t strong enough yet to be housed on the fifth floor.”
Calderon frowned at the ‘Master Fitness Trainer’, the psychopath on the megaphone. “Duly noted, Panic. Get in line and march. And keep marching. You call the steps. I need a word with the master sergeant.”
“Who?”
“I said get in line and march, recruit Panic.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
As Calderon wandered off, Ava inserted herself mid-line between Marquis and Puño.
“Butting in on a private conversation, Panic,” Marquis noted.
“Under orders,” she returned. “I’m supposed to call the steps. Wanna help? I say we stop now.”
“Fuck yeah,” Puño concurred. With no further ado, he called out, “Platoon, halt!”
“Right face!” Marquis sang out. With a few false starts and corrections, that turned everyone facing away from the ‘Master Fitness Trainer’ on the megaphone.
“At ease!” Ava called out as loud as she could.
The few Jersey kids still standing, at the far end of the line, peered back at her with hand to ear, to signal they couldn’t hear her over the megaphone. Marquis strode down the line, aping Sergeant Calderon. “At ease, men! At ease posture looks like this.” He stood relaxed, hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders hunched, looking like your basic hood loitering on a street corner. The group gratefully mimicked that.
“Shall we tell them to sit next?” Puño suggested. “Roll over? Beg?”
“Then we’d have to stand up again,” Ava pointed out. “But if you want to sit in the puddles, be my guest.” Megaphone psycho had noted their deviance from pattern and was yelling at them. “Eyes forward, platoon!” she called out. “Do not look behind you!”
Marquis, still strutting up and down, made sure everyone got the message. Ava envied him. He still had the strength left to ham it up. He leaned into someone, pointing two fingers at his own eyes, then theirs. He jutted out chin and lower lip to make a bulldog face. “Are you laughing at me, recruit Panic?” he barked.
“I am, recruit Marquis!”
“Damn straight!”
“Calderon incoming,” Puño warned.
“The fuck are you doing?” Calderon demanded.
Ava envied his volume, his fit and buffed twenty-eight year old physique in its prime. Calderon could actually trot all the way up to the fifth floor, back ramrod straight, barely touching the handrail, the bastard. But she stepped forward gamely. “Sergeant, you ordered me to lead the march in your absence.”
The squad leader waited a few heartbeats. “Is there a punchline coming, Panic?”
“I led the platoon to stand and take a breather. Until lunch. Sergeant. Recruits Marquis and Puño assisted. My voice couldn’t carry over the idiot with the megaphone. Sergeant.”
“That’s what you thought you should do, huh?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“We concurred, sergeant,” Marquis offered, now slipped back in line beside her.
Puño nodded firmly, and added, “Is lunch soon, sir? We’re beat. And cold. Also wet.”
“My name is instructor, or sergeant, recruit. Not sir,” Calderon reminded him, without heat. In his opinion, a sensible first morning would have been spent mastering simple instructions like that, not the marching madness in the rain, and trips up and down the staircases, until his recruits were collapsed in the cold puddles. But maintaining his command authority required him not to say so.
Sergeant Calderon stepped back so the entire line could see him. “Platoon, listen up! I am not in fact angry with you!” he barked at them angrily. “But I am going to dress you down! In an angry voice! Do you understand? Say ‘yes, sergeant!’”
“No, sergeant!”
“Louder, for practice!”
“NO, SERGEANT!”
“Well done. Lunch!” he spat at them. “Is in twelve minutes! You will stand here, dripping and cold in the rain! For several more minutes! You will catch your breath! Then we will march to the cafeteria! At funeral speed! And after lunch, you will obey me! Not recruit Panic and Marquis! Do you understand?”
“NO, SERGEANT!”
Calderon had to pause, pinching the bridge of his nose, to control incipient laughter. “Good!” he barked at them again. He started strolling along the line, much the way Marquis had. “In an angry voice, I will now explain to you how to stand ‘at ease.’ Say ‘yes, sergeant,’ just once, to make me feel better.”
“NO, SERGEANT!”
“
You don’t want to make me feel better?” he barked.
“NO, SERGEANT!”
“Yeah, alright, fuck you, too.” Calderon paused to count heads. “New plan. There are eighteen of you, and you four on the end don’t belong in my squad. No, don’t go anywhere,” he held up a hand to stop them before the Jersey kids could bolt. “I’ll re-introduce you to your own sergeant at lunch. Nine of my squad are missing! With the remaining nine minutes, you will go find your squad mates here in Central Area. If the recruit can march, bring him here to march to lunch. If you need to carry your comrade, proceed directly to the dining hall.”
Ava had to concede, Sergeant Calderon showed promise in leadership. She and Puño pulled Yoda and Doc up from the puddled pavement and strolled to the dining hall.
The recruits probably would have followed Calderon willingly enough after this bout of sanity, and given him the benefit of the doubt, if it wasn’t for the Master Fitness Trainer butting in again.
“You!” Captain Stevens boomed, making everyone at their table jump. Oblivious to how he was taking his life in his hands, the MFT pushed Fang out of the way by his shoulder and pointed an accusing finger at Hijab. “You are out of uniform! Take that scarf off!”
Hijab lowered her eyes to her plate, shaking beside Ava. Ava bet the other girl’s heart was pounding as hard as her own after that jarring interruption. She’d been eating, completely oblivious to the world, when Stevens intruded out of the blue.
Their own sergeants came on the bounce, but not quick enough.
“I said, take that damned thing off!” Stevens leaned all the way across the table – Ava admired Fang’s restraint, though he did grasp a fork in his fist, tines poised to stab the MFT – and snatched Hijab’s khaki scarf from her head.
Hijab – Dima – huddled down, chin to her chest, arms crossed, hugging her shoulders. Ava hissed in sympathy. She’d never seen her room-mate without the scarf before. The scarf framed her face beautifully, made the most of her liquid brown eyes and long dark lashes. Like everyone else, Ava assumed the headpiece was for Muslim modesty.