I ask no questions. The truck rolls on while I remain on guard and the throbbing fear persists between my temples. I don’t like having anger in my craw, given how hard it can be to control. Carrying in the army? Does he not know that other soldiers might be carrying, too, in more ways than one?
I gaze to the truck’s test pattern while the scene keeps thriving. Should I report the situation to the driver? Tap the window and get him to pull over, to let him know that a soldier in the truck bed has a shank in his sock?
Telling the teacher would be girlish, there’s no getting around it, and isn’t anything I’m going to do. Ratting out a fellow soldier just isn’t possible despite what we heard in basic about dereliction of duty if something was known to be endangering others. No, I won’t go whining to an E-4 driver, who wouldn’t know what to do anyway. Does anyone ever know what to do when things get racial?
Ask others for help?
That, too, would be an appeal that wouldn’t fly. Anywhere I’ve ever been, complaining about an African American has broken racial rules, and who knows what rules would come into play here and now?
The Command Master Sergeant at Rhein/Main, a stallion as impressive in his way as the Spec Five in lettuce green and brown sensibles, comes to mind. His surprising words. His talent as a speaker. His riveting intelligence.
Maybe six-six and three hundred pounds, the black giant covered with stripes appeared before several hundred of us in an auditorium, looking like an NFL star. Pacing. Intoning, “Welcome…young bloods…to the European Thee-ater!” Saying it like that, thee-ater, his voice so deep it could have been rising from a swamp in Florida.
“Welcome…to paradise!” he called out. “Welcome ’specially to the brothers and sisters among you!” he added in a whisper. “Thas what I said: Welcome to all but welcome ’specially! to the brothers and sisters among you!
“I know you have heard the stories,” he added as he paced. “I know ’cause I have heard them my own self. I hear them still, and they be true: Germany’s a good place for men of color… for women of color. There ain’t much prejudice in Germany, no matter what you ever heard on the radio in New York City or Chicago, Illinois.
“Ah’m telling you this, brothers and sisters, ’cause I want you to act accordingly. Want you to embarrass neither yo own selves, or myself, nor the U.S. Army that is affording you this unique opportunity.
“You will hear that in Germany the man of color is regarded as exotic! Can I tell you how I love that word? Exotic! I love it ’cause there is truth in the word, boys and girls, truth in the perception, truth enough to not be messing it up with your behavior on the street!
“I know you have heard that in Germany the soldier of color can get hisself a harem of women if he wants! There is truth in that, too…for better or worse…probably for worse.
“Why am I raising this issue of personal behavior with brothers and sisters arriving in the heart of the old world? I’m gonna tell you why. Want you to hear what I say. ’Cause I don’t want no crime, no drugs, no violence, no foolishness messin’ anything up. Not for you. Not for me. Not for brothers and sisters who be coming later! This is an opportunity of a lifetime. Do NOT be messin’ it up with no street shit from Harlem or Houston or Harrisburg, PA!
“Know what I want? Tell you straight out…don’t care you’re offended and wanna send it home to Momma or Montel. Open your ears, ’cause this is the closest you will come to hearing yo daddy talkin’ heart to heart: What I want is for you brothers and sisters to act like young ladies and gentlemen! Like boys and girls who are ladies and gentlemen!
“Is that what I said? Did I say what I know I said? Shut my mouth!” the huge man added as tittering soldiers could not help laughing with adoration.
“Hear me right! Want you bloods to show the world… which is watching! Want you bloods to show the world that as young men and young women of color you are as smart and polite! as mature and thoughtful! as deserving as anyone of being called exotic! Goddammit, I love that word! Y’all love it, too, hear me? Get a grip on being responsible. Don’t be messin’ nothin’ up. Grow up in the army as the young men and women I know you to be! Take night classes. Raise yo families. Be all you wanna be. Don’t be messin’ nothin’ up! Not when you got a chance to be exotic.”
The enormous man moved to exit, leaving us surprised, impressed, seized with love… only to pivot and raise to the heavens arms that were the size of most men’s legs. “WELCOME, YOUNG BLOODS, TO PARADISE!” he sang in deep-throated volume. “Villkomen an para-dies-ee-oh!” he repeated, opening my doubting heart all the more to the U.S. Army and mankind.
I sit in memory of the surprising performance as we roll on. The command master sergeant was an example, like the back-stepping spec five, of how happy I could be as a soldier. They were gifted and smart individuals, demanding in regard to standards, and with my fellow soldiers, I laughed with and applauded the giant man. His words made us brothers under the skin, made the army more than just a place to be. Not many in Southie or Roxbury would believe it, but I knew in my heart, in that moment, that this was so: Had I ever seen more clearly that what I wanted of brothers and sisters populating my life was not that they act like white boys and girls at all but that they stop conveying chip-on-the-shoulder threats and danger. That they meet me halfway and not with shanks in their shoes, ready to sever arteries, but with friendly smiles in their hearts and eyes.
I also realize that the responsibility is mine if only because the thought is within my foolish skull. The brother with the shank. Slumped again and dozing, giving no sign of life. The truck devouring the Autobahn. When I smile a bit, the girl with icicles smiles in turn. On another occasion, elsewhere, I would have asked her name and made a friend I might run into in a line at the PX, at the post library, sitting with friends in the snack bar…pleasures that are being pre-empted by a shank holding us all at bay. Gangbangers going psycho over the N-word and carrying weapons with which to kill. Doesn’t simple math tell them that the two will never add up?
I see all at once that I’m turning toward action. It would be great to be as big as the command master sergeant at Rhein/Main, to possess his fatherly size and indisputable authority. To disarm a brother and scorch his ass with fire for bringing a shank into the army, into Germany, into the lives of others. Yeah, slavery was brutal and unfair, but that was decades ago and committed by privileged people, not by me.
An NCO at armor school labeled several of us ‘vetters’ when it came out that no less than six boots in our training platoon were the offspring of soldiers who had served in Vietnam. “Six,” he counted, but when he asked “Names on the Wall?” and I raised a hand, I did not look to see how many might be doing the same and was surprised to hear him say, “Two.”
How was it that the fathers of two of six vetters in a training platoon of forty-eight had their names on the Wall? What I’d like is to have the vetters with me now, black or white, that we might weigh the shank and the code (I’m certain they have one) and decide if we were going to be men enough to keep a gangbanger from messing with our existence.
I sit clenching a fist, knowing from so many punches into so many heavy bags and muscular bodies the jackhammer power I’m capable of bringing, like a cannon ball, to blows. I’m capable of delivering messages emanating from the hips. I’ve had a punch for years. It’s one thing I know.
I recall the gym. The tedious hours working out with black guys likewise harboring dreams. Hot sweat in burning heat. Jumping rope, jumping rope, jumping rope. Taking the medicine ball in the gut over and over until my forehead was burning. My ratty life with my mother. As if winning would allow her to be happy and free again in her derailed life.
When I raise my butt to take action it’s with an out-of-body awareness that there are certain things you have to do if you’re going to go on living with yourself. Just as there were things black men had to do as defiant slaves long ago. I raise my palms to calm the others, as they may or may not be alert to w
hat is going down. “Don’t move!” I mouth.
They stare in startled silence.
Me, I’ve gone too far to reverse course. I’m doing what I believe elsewhere in my mind I shouldn’t be doing. I lift a foot over the legs of the dozing soldier’s legs, touch a toe to someone’s rucksack, pivot at once in silence, placing my other foot down beside his other leg. When you take action, you really have to take it all the way. Within one second I settle my feet, down-flex my knees until my butt nears his face–close enough that a fart could put him under–in awareness that I have but a nanosecond remaining in my lonely foolish life.
The target shoe is under my hands. Aware that I might be grabbed from behind, confident that my neck muscles are not likely to be compromised, I reach to the black-taped handle, steeling my nerves and holding my breath… whereupon I do it!
Gripping the toe, I grab the handle, pressing the toe while I send the shank sailing sidearm out onto the unrolling Autobahn…feeling immediate pressure from the awakened foot. Twirling, I drop into my seat oddly tickled with success, saying to his opened eyes, “You’re disarmed, dude! Make a move and I’ll knock you into fucking next year!”
He’s putting it together, confirming without reaching to his leg that a disarming has occurred. “Fuck you doing, man?” comes from his stupid mouth.
“Saving your stupid life,” I tell him.
He glares daggers and I sit grinning, inhaling and exhaling, knowing I’ve begun to sweat in the cool whistling air. I keep my eyes on his, ready to brawl if need be, desirous of taking him on.
“What’re you doing, bringing a shank into the army? Into Germany? You stupid?”
He reaches a hand to confirm the space on his ankle and keeps sending daggers my way. I return my grin, my invitation to try anything he’d like to try if he wishes to suffer.
We keep glaring at each other, and it’s in this moment that the driver bellows from the cab, “PIT STOP, FIVE MINUTES! WAKE IT UP BACK THERE, YOU DOG SOLDIERS! PIT STOP, FIVE MINUTES! WAKE IT UP BACK THERE! TIME TO GO WEE-WEE-WEE!”
I sit staring at him with my grin, aware that anything I say could become a thriving organism that will demand revenge from a gangbanger. It’s always like this, is my thought. You think you got it done, act like you got it done, then you open your eyes and everything is as it was before. For a long time it was due to racial injustice, now it’s due to racial myopia, and I hate it. Tell me, is racial myopia justified, or am I a dumb white guy from Southie who can’t see straight? Is racial myopia going to follow me, threaten me, seek to cut me forever? If white people throw up their hands and say “enough,” isn’t it time, at last, for black people to do the same?
CHAPTER TWO
A Lesson for the Teacher
Facing a tenure decision in my job (advancing from writer-in-residence to associate professor) I have troubles enough of my own, not dealing with gangbangers but with an academic world wherein (to tell an awkward truth) I’ve always been an awkward fit. I could say it’s a PC world gone mad (and I believe it is), while in better times, decades earlier when I was a graduate student and faculties were given to tweed, wine-tasting, and tolerance for working-class types like me, I would have been allowed, as a fish out of water, to sink or swim on my own. Now it’s all about speech and rules.
In my department, speaking with her, I touch the forearm of an office assistant with whom I’m friends, and find myself called in by the chair (our mother hen) for a “friendly chat about sexual harassment.” In a meeting at the college level that is chaired by an African American from Mass Comm whom I also regard as a friend, I remark, “You’re the man, Harrison…I’m here to hear what you have to say,” only to find myself criticized in the meeting by a petite linguistics professor to the tune of “Mr. Roth, when you said ‘You’re the man’ to Dr. Martin, I heard a street vernacular that was racial to my ear and as offensive to me as I imagine it was to Dr. Martin. I’m sorry, but it’s an offense that I feel compelled to register before this meeting concludes! Racism, however inadvertent, has to be confronted whenever it rears its head!”
Mortified on being called out in public, at a loss for how to defend myself, I knew in an instant that my tenure application would be denied. And so it has, not on a charge of not being PC enough (the reason) but on a pretext of not publishing enough. Thus do I soon find myself granted the balance of the present year and a year of grace during which to clear my office and, if possible, find a job elsewhere. Life with females in charge, is what it looks like to me, in an academic world going over almost entirely to women. In the meantime, across the Charles River, the female faculty at Harvard is forcing out a male administrator for a perceived slight having to do with women and science. As much as I enjoy teaching and as good as I am at it, I can see the writing on the wall and decide to leave college life once and for all, to either retire or seek work in some other area of existence, preferably in a small town that will allow me, in my senior years, to read and write several hours a day, even if it means getting up at four or five to do so before going to work.
Being passed over for tenure is not something I care to mention to my mentee in Germany, who continues, I believe, to regard me as his teacher, his big brother and reliable friend. I’ll keep him as an ultimate pupil in a tutorial I won’t let slide, knowing I’ll need him as much as he will need me. Struck all over again by the thoughtfulness and candor in his journal, my challenge is to encourage him to press on! It’s an easy position to adopt given how much I admire his talent for candid thinking. So it is that I write to tell him that I like his voluminous journal, to encourage him to read and write all the more, to include his thoughts and observations about the army, his pending deployment to Kuwait, the race relations he’s mentioned, every detail of his life as a soldier in Germany and on the face of the earth.
For my part, as I receive word of my tenure status, I decide not to fight it but to conserve my energy and resources by forgetting it. As mentioned earlier, college life has been an awkward fit for me from the beginning. Oil and water. So it is, on having amassed a modest pension and continuing to earn modest royalties, that I begin planning an inexpensive life elsewhere that will allow me to sleep soundly and be the productive person I’ve always wanted to be.
July 1990
Thanks, Bro, for encouraging me to read and write. Like I said before, I need all the encouragement I can get. It’s something I can use in what I’m seeing is the real education I’m undertaking, especially when it comes from someone who tells it like it is. That makes you one rare bird, Bro, in case you didn’t know it.
For now I’m settled in. Sort of. Have half of a two-man room to call my own. My roommate’s a PFC like me who’s been here five months. You make corporal you still get a two-man room, while first-three-graders get rooms of their own. I have a shot at making corporal early because I’ve been named alternate gunner in our 60-ton M1A1 due to my shooting scores at Knox. I had no idea the scores would follow me like they have. What I want is to make E-5, so when the present gunner rotates I’ll be able to move into his slot. It’s a ways off but is what I’m working for. Almost every night, for an hour or two, I visit the tank simulators and fire a dozen programs. They’re like video games and my scores are higher than they were at Knox, where they were pretty good. It’s why I was named alternate out of the gate, though I had no idea anything of the kind would happen. Thing is, the army offers a level playing field, like they keep saying. Do the work, earn the scores, get moved on. My kind of deal.
What I don’t like, what hasn’t gone away, is the racial thing over a shank I got into on the drive from Rhein/Main to Bindlach. The gangbanger I disarmed has scowled the couple times I’ve seen him and I know he has it in for me. His name is DeMarcus Owens, and luckily we’re not assigned to the same troop. If he’s a gangbanger for sure or just a would-have-been, I don’t know. I can tell from his scowl that he wants to take me out for making him look bad on the Autobahn. Truth is, I believe I saved his dumb ass, t
hough I don’t expect him to thank me for it. What would he have done with his shank if I hadn’t thrown it out? Ripped somebody’s throat? Mine? It could happen still, which is why I stay on my guard just in case he gets his hands on another shank and feels like he has to get even.
I’m not maxed out on African Americans, by the way, only gangbangers. Sad thing is, a swath of black kids and twenty-somethings in the U.S. are gangbangers or wannabees. When I get down on them, feel hate rising like a fever, I call to mind the command master sergeant who lectured us at Rhein/Main, and the spec five I mentioned who was so cool and smart she made me just about bawl with happiness on being in the army with her. Or I call up Willis Webb, from my PAL boxing squad in Southie. Or Dahlia Anderson in high school with her wit and humor, her ability to make everybody in U.S. History swallow tears of laughter, especially when the subject was slavery! I think of them and they keep me from letting a piece of street scum like this gangbanger DeMarcus get under my skin.
Before I forget, there’s another incident that went down when we arrived at Christensen Barracks that I want to tell you about. Here’s this big army base where we’re unloading. It’s bigger than any of us expected and looks like a college campus in the U.S. Busy streets, athletic fields, stone buildings, green squares, civilians and soldiers all over the place, people riding bicycles and even nice-looking ladies walking and pedaling by. We stand around where a staff sergeant with a clipboard has promised that transportation is on the way.
I’m watching my back, because the one time I’ve caught the gangbanger looking my way he’s got that scowl on his face that says he wants to kill me for dissing him on the truck. People are getting loosened up standing around, unlike in the back of the truck. They’re lightening up, asking the sergeant how far it is to town, how big the town is, if there are any SS ghosts in the buildings around us, goofy stuff like that. Then this white soldier from the truck, he comes up beside me and says, “Hey, whatcha know?”
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