Jersey Tough

by Wayne Bradshaw

  No one ever reported the incident, and there was no indication that it was ever investigated by anyone. Sadly, I was among those who saw the fight and did nothing. I never even considered reporting the matter, because I knew that doing so would put me in grave danger. My personal survival took precedence over my sense of honor and morality that day, a fact that still sickens me. The immortal Dante tells us that the deepest ring of Hell is reserved for those who protect their neutrality in times of danger. I suppose I knew at the time that, no matter what I did, no single individual would be capable of affecting any change in the violent environment in which I lived.

  The U.S. Army would have to make sweeping changes in policy impacting all levels of the force, ranging from the rank-and-file troops up to the officers, who needed to be more hands-on and confront what was really happening in the ranks. Alcoholic NCOs had to be treated and dealt with. Violent and verbally abusive soldiers had to pay a real and harsh yet fair punishment for their transgressions. And everyone needed to accept that the only color that could be recognized for any reason was green—the color of our uniforms. Personally, I believe that the army made dramatic changes, and that a soldier’s world today is far different than the dysfunctional environment I experienced. One thing is clear: U.S. forces have been very effective in the battlefield since 9/11.

  I had no idea how the army would treat me if I stabbed someone with a switchblade knife. Yet I rarely went anywhere without one. I certainly had never stabbed anyone before and was quite certain a very long jail sentence would await me if I did. The real reason I carried it was simple: I was frequently scared, and I hoped that the nasty presence of the blade would preempt its use. I should have realized that carrying it for a long enough period of time almost guaranteed I’d end up in a perilous no-win situation. Still, fear often trumps sound reasoning, and the fear I felt was real.

  Some weeks later, I was walking alone on the base on a Saturday afternoon, off duty, and was about to enter my dorm. I had been assigned a new roommate, a black guy who had some time in and seemed like a decent roommate. A group of black soldiers in civilian clothes was hanging around the entrance to Cooke Barracks, mostly members of my company. Big T was among them, holding court and passing around a couple of bottles of Thunderbird. I foolishly had hopes of making it inside unnoticed.

  “Hey, Bradshaw, how the fuck are you,” Kane shouted as I walked past him and headed into the barracks. “Lookin’ forward to catchin’ up with you later, bro!”

  After being court-martialed for beating up the sergeant in the motor pool at Hohenfels, Kane was back—and in my face. I was the sole witness who’d testified against him, and he’d spent some hard time in a military prison before returning to base and hooking up with his old buddies, including Big T. I’d spoken up and done the right thing, and now I was in serious danger once again. I really had only myself to blame.

  My new roommate was still putting his locker in order, and we chatted briefly before I dug out my well-worn copy of Frederick Forsyth’s The Dogs of War and dropped onto my bunk to read. Minutes later, I heard a group of loud and drunk men outside my door. I put the book down on the green blanket and waited for the inevitable.

  The door burst open, with Big T and Kane leading the way. The other wine-drinking members of the group followed close behind. Kane was holding the heavy end of a broken pool cue.

  “Bro, ya know that 90 percent of all black men go to jail,” Big T said, looking in Kane’s direction. “Jail is part of the black experience, and you need to be part of that. This is the white fucker who should be dealt with. So be black and do what you know has to be done.”

  My roommate stood still, not certain of what he should do—if anything. The men behind Kane were shouting encouragement, urging him to take me on. For a split second, I sat paralyzed on my bunk. Then I grabbed the switchblade from under the pillow, stood and flipped the blade out, ready to finish whatever Kane started.

  Kane stared at me, looking euphoric. He glanced down at the blade, lunged at me with the pool cue and missed. I lunged, too, but struck air.

  A sergeant who was part of the group tackled Kane and urged him to give it up. Kane looked determined to continue even as some of the men grabbed him and dragged him out of the room. Big T looked at me with a smirk before turning and exiting the room with the others.

  Someone closed the door as they exited, and I stood there, still firmly holding the switchblade in my right hand. My roommate and I looked at each other but said nothing.

  It was almost as if Kane and I had become gladiators, forced to play roles that neither of us wanted, in a very real game that we couldn’t stop. Kane had no choice but to demonstrate that he wasn’t going to let me get away with testifying against him in court-martial proceedings. And I had no choice but to defend myself by whatever means were necessary, even if that meant using a weapon that I should never have had. Kane and I had both entered the army to be soldiers, pure and simple. Yet we were fighting against each other, and not some enemy, real or perceived, of the United States. We were both in our own personal hell.

  I was fortunate that the sergeant had broken up the fight when he did. Had I stabbed Kane, everyone in the room that night would have testified against me, and I would have gone to prison, disgraced and dishonorably discharged. No one would have dared to speak in my defense, especially since the switchblade that probably saved my life was illegal to possess.

  Curiously, no one said anything to me afterwards—not my roommate or any of the other witnesses. It didn’t seem to make any difference in how I was treated by the men, either. In the end, it was just another day in the army. No blood had been shed, and so it was hardly worth the bother of conversation.

  One night during the late fall of 1975, I was hanging out in the barracks, pleasantly intoxicated and drifting off to sleep, when my friend Steve Comer got into a heated exchange with another soldier from C Company about some small thing. The two of them began to grapple, but the other soldier was able to break free and take off, with Comer in hot pursuit. Wondering what was going on, and thinking that my buddy may need some help, I took off after him.

  Chasing across the grassy commons after Steve, I ran headlong into an off-duty NCO from C Company who was walking with a bunch of soldiers, all of whom happened to be African-American. The NCO fired a slick left jab to my eye, the opening salvo in a serious beat-down. I never left my feet, but went to a knee a couple of times, only to recover and get hit with another brutal onslaught.

  I fought back, but it was immediately clear to all of us on the field that night who the victor was. Still, the fight continued long after the NCO had demonstrated to everyone present that he was a stronger, tougher, more able fighter than I was at the time. There was no reason for the NCO to continue, and yet he did, inflicting blow after blow against someone who had made the unforgivable mistake of crashing into him in the dark.

  Afterwards, Comer and some of the guys took me to the emergency medical facility on the base, where I learned that my orbital socket was fractured. The next day, I learned that the NCO in question was a member in good standing at Smokin’ Joe Frazier’s gym in Philadelphia. Perhaps not surprisingly, I learned, he had studied with savage diligence.

  MPs were dispatched to investigate, and I told them that I’d taken a bad fall down the stairs in the barracks. Not believing the story for a second, they chuckled and left, shaking their heads.

  I lost an important part of myself that day. When the fight was over, my sense of compassion for others was gone, replaced by an emptiness and a steel resolve to protect myself no matter what the cost, and no matter who might get hurt. I had become so inured to the perpetual violence surrounding me that I simply accepted it. There was no point for me to hope for justice or dream of some kinder, gentler world. Life was a brutal struggle, interspersed with a few brief periods of fun to keep you ready to get back into the fray. Weakness in any form is the en
emy, and fear is a weapon that can be used against you. In my Brave New World, the rules were simple: prepare for battle, and never show weakness. Author Joseph Conrad was right—most men went to their graves ignorant to the last of what the world held in perfidy and violence.

  The NCO felt the need to demonstrate his boxing prowess on the unskilled and vulnerable. Even if he had justification to strike me, and perhaps he did, he went way too far. Filled with his own bloodlust and adrenaline, my attacker was perhaps the most important teacher I could have had. Through all the blood and pain, I had learned to break through and see life in a radically different way, to live each day as a warrior, to be the proverbial tough guy.

  It seemed an eternity since I’d lain in bed with the flu in my parents’ house, reading Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. I’d revered Sam Croft at the time as the cold-blooded killer who looked death and hardship straight in the eye. Now I embodied some of the same elements as the character I had once revered; I had learned to put my feelings and conscience aside, to file them away for a while and forget about them. It wouldn’t be until another great teacher, Renzo Gracie, entered my life that I would once again find my soul.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  QUIET DAYS IN KEY WEST

  I was psyched to be 90 days to ETS, or End Term of Service, when I would be discharged from the army and head back to the States. The closer I got to my discharge, the more careful I became about my behavior—and avoiding any sort of altercation that could delay ETS.

  I’d saved up about a month of leave time, which would allow me to get out earlier than normal. As I counted down the days, I circled the base with clipboard and papers in hand, going through the army’s elaborate and time-consuming process of making sure that everything was in order before I was discharged. That meant paying off my tab at the base commissary, returning gear and making sure that all my service medical records and administrative/personnel files were in order—performance evaluations, certificates, and DD Form 2586, “Verification of Military Experience and Training.”

  Finally, my time was up and I grabbed a train from Göppingen back to Frankfurt and hopped on a plane for the eight-hour flight back to Newark. I needed to go back to Fort Dix to complete the final step of the discharge process. In one of life’s little ironies, someone failed to call my name from the long list of men and women being discharged, and I sat in a waiting room for six hours. It was only after I stood up and started asking what was going on that the clerk realized I’d been forgotten and got things straightened out.

  I headed back to my parents’ house and moved back into my old bedroom, which looked just the way it did when I’d left three years earlier. But I was different, and it felt weird to be back. My parents probably felt the same way. None of us were at ease.

  One morning, my mother quietly walked into my room—probably to drop off some laundry that she’d done—and woke me from a deep sleep. I snapped awake and jumped up, ready to attack her. She was stunned and promptly left the room. The moment affirmed what both of us already knew: I was different from the teenage boy she’d said goodbye to after I enlisted.

  My always-reserved dad looked at me differently, too. Bud had something to celebrate now with his buddies at his weekly poker games: his son was a veteran, just back from Germany. I knew I’d fallen short of his expectations by quitting the high school football team. He’d wanted—no, expected—me to become a county or state football champ. But at least I’d served our great nation and was a veteran. That was something. Otherwise, Dad was the same as he’d always been.

  I’d been home for about three weeks when a friend of mine, Henry Rathmaker, suggested that we take his Camaro, drive down to Key West, Florida, and have some fun. I had no idea at the time what the Florida Keys were. Still, with no job and nothing holding me in New Jersey, I gladly accepted, and we headed south together. It didn’t take long to pack, because I had next to nothing.

  Rathmaker and I rented a cheap two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of the Marine Hotel, with a balcony overlooking the turquoise waters of the Straits of Florida, for just $175 a month, including utilities. The hotel, with its Spartan accommodations and peeling paint, was far from a four-star resort. Still, it had its own swimming pool, and the receptionist promised that if you showed your key across the street at the Sands, you could get access to the small private beach there. I wound up spending countless hours on that gem of a beach and the adjacent wooden pier, hanging out, drinking beer and enjoying some of the passing sights—including the attractive female tourists. Palm-tree-studded beaches, bikini-wearing American girls; I felt like I had died and gone to Heaven.

  My buddy and I shared the apartment for about two months until he got a job offer up north and hit the road. I kept the place even though it was bigger than I needed. But I realized that I had to stick to a budget if I intended to keep living the good life without a job. My skills, limited to soldiering and fighting, were not in high demand in sleepy Key West.

  I bought a used 10-speed bike for transportation and calculated that if I limited myself to just one meal a day, I could hold out pretty much indefinitely. I knew I could grab cheap takeout food from a Cuban place in town. I allowed myself a generous $6 a day for booze. The Blue Parrot sold cheap beer and even provided a container to go for my bike ride home. After all, it wasn’t like I could get into much trouble pedaling my rusty 10-speed. While the tourists were watching the sunset at Mallory Square, I was visiting the low-end bars, where you could buy six shots of tequila for a dollar.

  With Rathmaker gone, my apartment felt more humble and emptier than before. I had a black-and-white TV with a wire antenna on top, and a sleeping bag on the bed. Most of my clothing was army surplus—two pairs of fatigue pants cut into shorts, some green T-shirts, a couple of sleeveless undershirts and a pair of sneakers. No underwear. The women who shared my bachelor lair didn’t find it all that quaint and cozy, which helped to ensure that they weren’t overly interested in returning.

  I went to the unemployment office to collect what I felt was my just due. I hadn’t yet acquired my current belief that it’s abhorrent to collect unemployment insurance when able and healthy.

  The office clerk reasonably explained that, in order to stay eligible, I needed to show proof that I’d attempted to find work at a minimum of five locations a week. The skills of bayoneting, shooting, drunken brawling and topographical land navigation were nowhere to be found in the want ads. I had no comment for the clerk but likely looked perturbed, as I had no idea how to find work in Key West—or any of the Florida Keys for that matter.

  The clerk cocked his head to one side, frowned and asked me what was bothering me. I told him what I had been doing for the last three years.

  Could I prove it? he asked.

  I showed him my Department of Defense DD214 separation papers.

  The clerk acquiesced and agreed to give me the benefits, job search or no job search. Come in every other Friday with the papers filled out, he instructed, promising not to look too closely. It was worth about $75 a week to me, which wasn’t bad given my $175-a-month rent.

  Key West had an amusing Conch Train that gave tourists a pleasant, low-speed ride around the island. It ran on rubber tires, not steel wheels, and was powered by a V8 gasoline engine, not steam. But tourists seemed to like it, in part because it was cheap and ran right by all the island’s places of note, including Hemingway’s former home. The train typically carried a mix of elderly retirees, milk-white tourists who’d just arrived from the mainland, a handful of lonely and bored single women and the occasional stoned freak laughing like a hyena. I watched it for a while and devised a battle plan to identify and then meet women who might find a well-tanned young stud interesting—well, at least for an afternoon or evening.

  I’d noticed that the train picked up speed in front of Smathers Beach. I learned to get on my bike in advance and then race the train as it went pa
st the beach, passing it at full speed, shirtless and sweating from exertion in the hot sun. If I saw anyone of interest, I’d just happen to stop for a cold beverage at the very point where the train stopped to let off its passengers. Admittedly, my act was extremely shallow. But it was also great fun, and an excellent way to pick up women in this era before AIDS. Of course, if I couldn’t find anyone of interest on the Conch Train, there were plenty of other places to look, including the beach, swimming pool and bars.

  I affected a sort of sad yet heroic pose. Deeply scarred by life’s injustices and moving on from a tragic love affair, I was in need of the right tourist woman to fuck me into being a whole man. It’s a role that’s been done a thousand times, but as with good cop/bad cop, simple playacting often works. The target just needed to have the seed of wanting to believe. I suffered my fair share of rejections. But rejection never bothered me for long since there were plenty of other transient women in Key West. It wouldn’t take long before another sexy woman would come along, and I’d move on to my next target.

  My time in Key West was certainly pleasant enough. I’d recharged my batteries and found out what it was like to sleep deeply in the clean salt air without worrying that some armed man was going to bust into my room and try to murder me. But in time, chasing the Conch Train grew lame. If I didn’t live there, I would have found it difficult to believe a small city could be so tolerant, laid-back and peaceful. I didn’t even make it a year. Relaxing in paradise didn’t fit, kind of like a dinner jacket with one sleeve too long. I missed the adrenaline rush that I’d gotten on almost a daily basis in the army. I missed the action, and maybe I even missed the danger. Whatever the issue, staying in Key West was not in the cards for me.