“Happy to be out of that truck,” I tell him.
“Did the right thing…” he whispers.
“Fucking spades,” he says in an accent I recognize from Knox that says he’s from Tucson, Phoenix, some place like that. I have no wish for the talk, or for anything to be made of what happened on the truck. “It wasn’t because he’s black,” I say. “It’s illegal. I’m no racist.”
What this kid does is cock an eye and grin over his nose as if to say, ‘yeah, right, can I laugh now?’
Confused and ticked off, I move along with my duffel bag, and it’s then that the gangbanger himself passes close behind me and whispers, “Cut yo fucking throat.”
I look after him, but he doesn’t look back. He’s like one of those muscular little running backs blessed with strength, speed, foot moves. Then, as if he knows I have my eye on him, he looks back and sends a laser stare, saying his threat is real and not to be forgotten.
My thought is ‘man-to-man, anytime, asshole.’ At the same time I know that anyone carrying a shank in the army and into Germany is not going to be high on the face-to-face kind of thing I have in mind. Gangbangers are snakes in the grass, there’s no getting around it.
I do the blinking. I tell myself to let it go and look away, all the time my spine feeling like a squirmy worm of cowardice. Discretion vs. valor gets into it like advice from wishy-washy teachers in high school. I know that blinking is cowardly and not smart in the long run. Still I tell myself again to let it go, to believe it will disappear like smoke, while not believing for one second that it will. African Americans have been given every chance not to be jerks, as most of them aren’t in the army. At the same time, the army isn’t the street, where morons buy into the notion that doing well in school is a form of selling out.
A minivan pulls up, presenting another sergeant with a clipboard. He calls “Dismount scouts, Eagle Troop,” and reads a couple names, last name first, and watches as two soldiers, gear in hand, climb into the van, one of them the gangbanger who answers to “Owens, DeMarcus. DeMarcus Owens.”
The gangbanger’s a cav scout! Cav scouts ride Bradley Fighting Vehicles (almost tanks, but not quite), which they exit near front lines to conduct surveillance on foot with radios on their backs, carrying assault rifles and AT-4 anti-tank rockets. They have to be tough, athletic soldiers who can engage in hand-to-hand combat. I’m intimidated at once by the gangbanger’s dismount scout MOS, I have to admit, while I’m relieved to have him go on his way, hoping against hope that I won’t see him again, that with a little luck he’ll land at a distance from me on post. Maybe in a few days he’ll forget the shank stuff. Fat chance, I think, knowing full well that being in the same squadron, we can’t possibly end up living far apart.
Then, together with two other soldiers, my own name is called, followed by “Tanker, nineteen kilo,” and “Geo Troop.” Having trained to be a loader in an M1A1 crew of four (commander, gunner, loader, driver) I’m pleased to be on my way. I look around as our Humvee rolls along, thinking about the gangbanger and how he has me recalling a muscular guy with a shaved head I fought in Worcester, which fight I won on a third round TKO. Left-right combos to the head. Over and over until his head was mine to blast as I wished and the ref stopped the fight and signaled the TKO.
Hand speed was the thing. For no apparent reason the old challenge of hand speed plays in my mind as we unload and enter a building to have our paperwork processed and receive our room assignments. Hand speed can be everything, Kenny Washington always said. Peek-a-boo style, gloves to the cheeks, head bobbing and weaving, bobbing and weaving, hands exploding, carrying weight from the hips, using power that penetrates and hurts, power that maims and wins. A head and mind that don’t keep moving allow the other guy to focus. Hand speed is part and parcel of a well-trained fighter being on automatic pilot, as he has to be if he’s going to prevail.
Right, Bro, I know what you’re thinking as I carry on. Right in theory, you’re thinking. If I’m so smart, why was I whipped like a child by Hector Chavez? Yeah, I can laugh now, like you said I’d be able to when I was able to leave it behind.
I glimpse the hours of sweat and work I gave to developing hand-eye and hand speed. Power, too, by way of shifting my weight. Quickness. An impulse to counterpunch. All coming to an end (yeah, the beating in Portland was a good thing, just like you said it would be) in the face of Chavez owning more hand speed, like some guys own hairlines down to their eyebrows, or skinny ankles, or big dicks to flag around in locker rooms. Legs, you know, that can churn faster than any opponent. Hands that impact like drill presses slamming home bolts at a hundred pounds per square inch, like Mike Tyson and Sonny Liston. Mad dog eyes, mad dog hunger, mad dog fists loaded with rolls of quarters. Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Spurts to the head and heart from a drill press.
True, Chavez’s hand speed should have been the clue. His gloves flashed, popped, exploded on my forehead, caught my nose, mouth, cheekbones, made my head snap side to side as if I was being hit by two guys at once. That was the clue, like being in the ring with an oily animal with two heads, four eyes, four arms. Zap-zap-zap! Zap-zap-zap! Every zap doing its job. Stinging and hurting. I remember it well.
Only now (like you said) am I able to know a little pride on having gone three rounds with a fifteen-year-old contender and come out alive. Do it, man, is my thought in tribute to Chavez. I couldn’t, but I can see now where you came from and the price you paid to get where you were. Hats off to Hector.
It’s always struck me as strange that it was during that fight, near the end, when the ref called it a TKO, that I knew boxing was over for me. Sweat blurring my vision, my left eye bleeding and no longer doing much for me. It was then that I got the word. When you drove me home and let me off, I knew I was going to start preparing for enlistment and be done with boxing…though in the end I didn’t regret the training. To finish second in the ring is to finish last. You see that someone else is hungrier, faster, tougher, more ready to kill and die, no matter your own willingness to do so. It’s life. That’s what I saw. You have to get on with things or not have a life at all. I felt lucky having you as my Bro and having something else, like the army, that I wanted to do. Landing in Germany, starting over, is showing me that I was right. I have this gangbanger to look out for, but otherwise I love the army and wouldn’t be happier anywhere else.
Our tank, ‘The Claw,’ is not unlike those we trained in at Knox, but for one key difference: We own it as a crew. For me it’s my first, and it’s as we were told it would be. We’re a family and The Claw is our home. We live together like brothers and could die like hundreds have down through history. The payoff, as we also heard at Knox, was that as the head of any combat spear, as brothers under the skin who lead the way, we could never live so intensely. Once a tanker, everyone says, you’ll never be the same.
It’s a big deal for me to be brought on not only as loader (the most junior position) but as alternate gunner, even though this nod from Lt. Kline, the tank commander, may not be the best foot on which to start as a new team member. I get the word on this right away from the company clerk in the orderly room when we’re assigned to our rooms. “Yo, Sarge, fast gun’s here,” this corporal calls into an opened door.
I think it’s a crack aimed at every new tanker, but then a master sergeant (the first sergeant) comes from his office and says, “You the fast gun?”
“Private Murphy reporting,” I say.
“Soldier, I asked if you’re the fast gun.”
“Don’t know what you mean, Sarge. I’m a tanker. Nineteen Kilo. Private Murphy. Was dropped off out front and told to report to the orderly room.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re the fast gun. Irish kid, right? You didn’t know you had big time scores at Knox? Not a top gun…probably won’t ever be. Training’s one thing. Working in a mud belly with a live crew in combat is another. Corporal, show Murphy to his bunk area, get him his linens and so on. Welcome to Geo Troop, Murphy. You’ll get a c
hance in short order to verify those scores.”
Lugging my gear down the hallway behind the company clerk, I say, “What was that all about?”
“Going in days to Grafenwoehr for gunnery training. A whole mess of weeks in the field.”
“I mean the fast gun stuff.”
The corporal sketches it out as we walk on, and it’s news to me. I’m being brought on as loader but also as alternate gunner, which is a big deal. It’s due to the scores I racked up firing the Abrams 120 mm cannon and the 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun in armor school at Knox. I knew my scores were good, but no one ever said they were special.
“Lieutenant Kline, the Platoon Leader,” the corporal says. “He’s weird. Been looking to identify an alternate gunner (it’s a backup thing) and decided to go with you based on your scores, even though you’re otherwise a total unknown. Means some people who’ve been around for a while got passed over. Lieutenant’s big on scores, IQ, time in the two mile run, stuff like that. What’s happened is Second Platoon’s loader got drummed out as a tanker, gone off to work as a cook’s helper on the way to some kind of rear echelon shit work.”
“Means I come in with a strike against me?” I ask.
“Hey, you are quick,” the corporal says.
My roommate is The Claw’s driver, PFC Sherman Killebrew, though he’s not around when I’m left to unpack and make up the empty bunk in the small two-man room. All privates and PFCs at Christensen are assigned to two-man rooms, and I place my belongings in an empty foot locker and empty wall locker, and set up my bunk with my laundry bag and towel, my clogs and low quarters. When PFC Killebrew comes in, I say, “Hey, how you doing–Jimmy Murphy, new loader.”
The light-skinned black soldier looks at me, removes his field jacket, and hangs it in his wall locker before he says, “Looks like you’re getting settled.”
“Well, yeah,” I say, guessing from his diction that he’s a college guy no matter being in the army. “From Boston,” I say. “Where’re you from?”
“Philly,” he says and adds, “You been here how long?” as if to dismiss any where-you-from chitchat. “You’re how old?” he wants to know.
“Eighteen,” I say. “I squeeze your roommate out or something?”
“No big deal. He had it coming. But his cloud ain’t the cloud you’re coming in under. Lieutenant decided to shake things up, get our attention by going with a complete unknown as alternate gunner.”
For the first time, on a nod, Killebrew grins some and I think, well, maybe he’s not as unfriendly as he seems. You come in, take somebody’s place in a tank crew, people are going to be cautious, no doubt about it. Lose one loader, get another, who also comes in as alternate gunner. I’d be slow to warm up, too.
I’m less concerned about passing muster as a gunner than they seem to think I should be. As for being friend and comrade, it’ll come in time, is my thought. What I’m committed to is being a good soldier. I learned at Knox that I could unleash, as a gunner at his screen, not just real speed but hand-eye of the kind I developed for years under the guidance of Kenny Washington and Mr. Fallon.
As a potential friend, I need to admit that I’m something of a loner by nature anyway. My mother, my teachers and neighbors, my big brother (you! dude), everybody has told me to be the man of the house. Kids my age haven’t known quite what to do with me, just as I haven’t known what to do with them. Who can blame them for being slow to accept me as a friend when I’ve been so slow to accept myself? Boxing all the time, most every day after school, trying to grow up in a hurry and be the man everybody said I needed to be, the kids I’ve spent time with have come from other worlds and other hoods, like Leon Feathers, the lanky welterweight I clashed with in the locker room. Willis Webb, too, who lives in Roxbury and goes to a parochial school. I’ve misfired as often as not on trying to cross lines into friendship.
What I ask myself now is how I could have been dumb enough to think I could use the N-word with any of them and they would see me as a brother who happened to be white. I still think they’re like four-year-olds, saying it’s their word, that they can use it and I can’t, that if I don’t do as they say they won’t like me and will take steps to cut my throat. Is anything more hate-filled and immature than crap like that? I don’t think so. When I used the word in the locker room, I knew it was a risky thing to do, but also brotherly and funny, something that would have them ragging me for being a wigger who was a stablemate. Then, too–though I never told you this–when I kissed Dahlia Anderson underneath the stairwell, and she kissed me back, she whispered with more passion than I had ever heard, “Want you to be my nigger.”
It made my ears burn with excitement, my private parts, too, which wanted her like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe she skipped off, but hadn’t she confirmed that people are just people and everything can be cool? That’s what she said to me with her eyes the next time I looked at her in homeroom. Interracial dynamite with a sizzle I won’t forget. My secret girlfriend.
In the morning there is Lieutenant Kline, who tells me about my assignment. We’re in the motor pool where the huge mud-bellies are stored in bays and under big open-sided sheds. He says outright that he knew he was setting me up by making me alternate gunner sight unseen. He says I’ll have a chance to live up to it, or not. If not, no problem. Yeah, no problem for him. He says if I don’t cut it as alternate gunner he’ll return me to my job as loader and give someone else a shot. Or have me assigned to a rear echelon job. Hadn’t I known that my scores were big time and would gain attention?
“I knew they were good, sir, but nobody ever said they were special.”
“You do video games growing up?”
“Some, sir,” I say. “Not a lot.”
“Really? That’s a surprise.”
I know where he’s headed in wanting to explain quick reflexes in young soldiers. Everybody thinks that speed on laser-imaging screens and controls of an M1A1 firing mechanism come from playing video games for ten thousand hours throughout adolescence. Maybe they do, though not in my case. Having no wish to debate the subject or to disclose my background, I let it go. What I know is that in boxing it’s head movement in concert with hand and body movement, exercising patterns until they’re spontaneous and instinctual, practicing even when you appear otherwise to be walking down the street, or lying in bed at night, as I did for years. As it turns out, when I’m in focus and go aggressive, my eyes trigger my hands and make for rapid fire in a gunner’s grip and laser screen combo. You go around saying you got your hand-eye from being a fighter, people will begin gunning for you to prove one thing or another to the peanut gallery.
“It was your gunnery scores and your history reference that persuaded me to give you a shot,” the lieutenant lets me know.
“History reference…sir?” My dreaded thought is that my father dying in Vietnam may be a legacy deal that will cause even more embarrassment with my new brothers in The Claw.
“You indicated ‘reading history’ as your pastime when you enlisted,” the lieutenant says. “See, there are things in your file you don’t even remember putting down!”
“I got into history in high school, sir,” I say. “It’s something I’ve always liked.” What I want to do is avoid being identified as a sharpshooter or expert, or historian, when I’m really just a teenage amateur.
“At least you got into it,” the lieutenant says. “Sergeant Noordwink, our primary gunner, is an avid historian. He comes up missing, you’ll find him in Nuremberg sniffing out one of Goebbels’s mistress’s hideaway apartments along some cobblestone alley. I have a weakness for it myself, though early Egypt is my thing. Anyway, first and foremost, you need to prove yourself as a loader. Then maybe you can make it as a gunner, if you can back up those good scores for real. History was a bonus in your case. Was your gunnery scores that earned you a shot at alternate. Ever read Gunner Asch, by the way? Stories by Hans Helmut Kirst? German gunner, World War II? Some good stuff if you want to see what life
was like on the streets under the Nazis.”
Later that day Platoon Sergeant Plourde, commander of the tank named Roseanne, addresses everyone but especially the new soldiers in the Platoon. From the training schedule he lays out, he makes clear what we’ve heard, that cav tankers–nineteen kilos–as well as cav scouts–nineteen deltas–unless something unexpected comes down the pike, will be spending six months every year in the field in training exercises. “Forget the rumors you’ve heard about Saudi Arabia,” he says. “Rumors are like opinions, which are like assholes. Everybody has one and every one smells. It’s one thing to ship mud-bellies to Graf for gunnery practice and to Hohenfels for field maneuvers. Would be something else, you ask me, to ship them to the Persian Gulf over land and sea! Where the hell is the Persian Gulf, anyway? Not in my lifetime, is how I see it…while admitting that I didn’t see the Wall coming down either! What I see is our regular gunnery requalification at Graf and our regular maneuver training at Hohenfels no matter how many walls get knocked down in Europe or anywhere else.”
A shocking moment occurs, though I knew all along that it had to happen. In a shout-out adjacent to our tank crews, the presence in Eagle Troop of the gangbanger DeMarcus Owens gets confirmed. It’s a downer to see him, given my hope that the soldier who swore to cut my throat has not politely disappeared. Yes, he’s a cav scout, as I heard earlier. Dismount scouts, nineteen deltas, travel in pairs and get as close as possible to the action in their battle wagons before dismounting with radios on their backs to move on foot, using infrared in darkness. Dismount scouts, as I keep knowing, have to be very tough and athletic, able to hunker motionless for hours and whisper so quietly they won’t be heard two yards away.
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