Battle Dress

by Amy Efaw

  I leaned against the window ledge above the radiator and peered out one of the half-open windows. A green field of closely cropped grass spread before me. Granite buildings bordered the field, their long shadows stretching over the grass like cool fingers. And beyond the buildings, I could make out a faint outline of tree-covered ridges gently curving in the distance—a beautiful contrast to the bright-blue sky. It made me feel better.

  I walked over to my bed and stared at all the equipment covering it. Orange pegs, folded canvas, a scratchy dark-green wool blanket, green pouches and straps of all shapes and sizes.

  My mouth was parched. I walked over to the sink and slurped out of the faucet, just like I used to do in the bathroom at home in the middle of the night.

  My watch said that I had been there nine minutes. I couldn’t wait any longer for my roommate to show up. I just knew that somebody was watching my door, hoping that I’d stay a second longer than ten minutes so he’d have an excuse to throw a temper tantrum.

  I took a deep breath, grabbed the doorknob, and slithered along the wall to the stairwell.

  The stairwell emptied out into the sally port containing the Cadet in the Red Sash. He greeted me with a scowl and said with disgust, “Pretty weak salute, New Cadet. Your next station is Drill.” Then he had me join a row of about ten new cadets standing in North Area.

  A black cadet faced us. “The position of attention,” he announced as if he were introducing the President. “Keep your head straight, roll your shoulders back. Arms to your side, elbows in, hands loosely cupped.”

  I squinted, trying to protect my eyes from his white shirt and hat, which reflected the blinding sun pounding down on us.

  “Heels together, feet at forty-five degrees. Now assume the position.” We rearranged our bodies until we somewhat resembled our teacher.

  “For those of you who just joined us,” he said, looking right at me, “I am Cadet Black. No pun intended.” His lips twitched. “I am going to teach you sorry smacks how to march. When I’m through with you, you will look, act, and perform like soldiers. Got that?”

  “YES, SIR!”

  “You’ll be standing tall and looking good, marching for your mommas and daddies later on today.” Cadet Black grinned. “Let’s play follow the leader. LEFT FACE!”

  When we had all turned left, he yelled, “FORWARD, MARCH! With every beat of that drum, your left foot hits the ground, Knuckleheads!”

  Now in single file, each of us frantically tried to keep in sync with the persistent BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! of the bass drum coming from some corner of North Area—some corner where we weren’t allowed to “gaze.”

  Cadet Black continued to shout in a singsong voice, “LEFT! LEFT! LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT! ON YOUR LEFT!” He marched along to the left of us, shouting out new commands while maneuvering us around other new cadets who were charging through North Area with bulging bags in their arms or marching like we were. He taught us how to mark time, halt, present arms, order arms, and stand at parade rest. He also taught us to “ping”—West Point’s version of speed-walking with stiff legs and hands cupped at our sides.

  “Learn to love it, Smacks,” he said. “That’s how you’ll get around this place for a year. Pinging everywhere you go!”

  When we were finished, Cadet Black marked our tags and marched us through another sally port, up some wide granite steps, and into a high-ceilinged, medieval-fortress-like building, which he called Washington Hall. He led us into a huge, dimly lit hall filled with long tables where miserable-looking new cadets were choking down sandwiches and guzzling water. Lunch.

  He finally stopped at the head of an empty table, set like a table in a classy restaurant with its white linen tablecloth and carefully positioned place settings, and commanded us to sit.

  “You see this place, Smacks?” Cadet Black asked. “It’s called the mess hall. The place where you’ll get to come three times a day to watch the upperclassmen eat.” He gestured to the plates before us, laid bottoms up, and ordered, “Flip your plates over and pass the food around.” He leaned forward and looked at each of us around the table. “You will all drain at least two glasses of water before leaving here. Do I make myself absolutely clear?”

  “YES, SIR!”

  “Good. Eat up, Smacks. And take a good gaze around this place. Eat and gaze.” A smile crept over his face. “This will be the last time you will get to do much of either for a long, long time.”

  I looked around. I had never eaten in a castle before. Never even been in one, except those I’d imagined while reading Shakespeare in English class. That’s exactly what this place looked like—a huge, cavernous castle, complete with exquisite murals and stained-glass windows, gargoyles and statues, flags and banners, stone pillars and balconies, a ceiling at least two stories high, and heavy wooden double doors.

  Mess hall. That’s what Cadet Black had said this place was called—the “mess hall.” The name just didn’t fit. Now, if he had walked into my house and said, “This place is called the mess hall,” I would have understood. Anybody would. But this incredible place?

  I passed the wheat bread and a heaping plate of ham to the new cadet next to me, not bothering to drop any on my plate. My stomach was already full of jumpy intestines. I sipped water and watched my lunch companions eat in silence. I wondered if any of their mothers had taught them how to chew with their mouths closed. I smiled to myself. Mine hadn’t.

  After lunch Cadet Black marked our tags and sent each of us on a mad shopping spree with two dark-green cloth bags, which looked sort of like Santa sacks minus the toys. We entered building after building and were funneled into line after line, where my bags grew heavy with sheets and towels, uniforms and boots, brown and white undershirts, socks, razors, bars of Dial soap, and Johnson’s baby shampoo.

  I hauled my bags back to my room and dumped them just inside the doorway, shutting the door with relief. My roommate still hadn’t arrived, but I didn’t have time to think about it. I wiped my sweaty face on my white T-shirt, slurped out of the sink, and left again to report back to the Cadet in the Red Sash. He snatched my tags and glared at me. His good humor from earlier had disappeared completely.

  “Did you get lost between here and the haircut line, Miss?”

  Haircut? I resisted the impulse to touch my head. But I just got it cut last week! I had wanted it short, easier to deal with. “Sir, I—”

  “No excuse, right?” he growled. “Report to the haircut line. POST!”

  Before I made it to the short line formed at the edge of the sally port, I heard a cadet with a familiar voice say behind me, “You made it through half a day at West Point walking around in those?”

  I turned around. I tried to place him. Tan face. Green eyes. Dark hair, cut real short. The First Sergeant? No ...

  The cadet pointed to my shoes with disgust. “Where do you think you are, Miss? Prancing around in some fashion magazine? Preppy and West Point don’t go together. This is not the Ivy League. This is the Uncollege.”

  I looked down at my shoes. I had been so careful to follow the instructions in the admissions packet. It said if you didn’t have a pair of black shoes, you could dye a pair black. I had sacrificed my favorite pair that I got from American Eagle—brown boat shoes—meticulously placing masking tape over the shoes’ white soles to keep the dye from turning them black, too. They looked practically brand-new. What did I do wrong?

  “I’m not having one of my smacks be the biggest joke on R-Day.”

  One of his smacks? My eyes jerked from his face to his name tag. DAILY. The hairs on my arms stood at attention.

  “Remember me, Davis?” He leaned closer, peering into my face. “I remember you!” he sneered. “Surprise! I’m your squad leader!” And as he marched me away, he said, “Yes, siree. We’re going to have some fun this summer, you and me. I can hardly wait.”

  After fitting me with a pair of new black shoes so ugly that even my mother would have tossed into the Goodwill Dumpster, Cadet Dail
y said, “Double-time to your room, Davis. Dig White Over Gray out of your barracks bag and get it on.” I must have had a clueless look on my face, because he shook his head and said, very slowly and deliberately, like he was talking to someone who was speaking English for the first time, “White Over Gray. That would be a uniform ... this uniform.” He pointed to each piece of his uniform. “White shirt. Gray trou. Get it? White Over Gray.” He tugged on the pieces of gray fabric stuck on each of his shoulders. “Epaulets. Yours are plain gray. No gold stripes or upperclass brass for you,” he added, pointing to his shiny gray crests. “Black belt. Gold buckle. Hat.” He tapped his with his index finger. “Mine’s white. Yours is gray. Name tag. And white gloves.” He checked his watch. “I’ll be by your room to check you off in a while. MOVE OUT!”

  Back in the safety of my room I frantically tore into my barracks bags. By the time Cadet Daily knocked on my door, my pants and shirt were on, and I had found my hat and black belt, but no gold buckle. My black shorts and white undershirt were crumpled on the vinyl chair, and the contents of my barracks bags were strewn on the floor from the foot of my bed to the wardrobe closets.

  “You need a V-neck T-shirt under your shirt, Davis,” he said. “Gold buckle for your belt, gold crest for your hat, your name tag, and white gloves. I’ll be back in a minute, and you better have them in your hot little hands.” He slammed the door.

  I had just thrown the undershirt over my head and was slipping on my shirt when Cadet Daily once again announced his presence with three hard knocks.

  “You decent, Davis?”

  “Uh—” I started fumbling with the buttons of my shirt. “Yes, sir!”

  Cadet Daily banged the door open. Six new cadets, all guys, tripped in behind him.

  “These are your squadmates, Davis,” Cadet Daily said. He turned to the line of new cadets standing behind him in the position of attention. “Square her away, Third Squad. You’ve got five minutes.” He stuck his head back through the doorway. “And keep the door open. At ninety degrees. That’s not a request. I don’t want any hanky panky going on in here!” He disappeared down the hallway.

  “We got to keep the door open ’cause there’s a girl in here?” asked one of the guys. “Man, that blows! With the door hanging wide open and all, that’s just askin’ for abuse. We might as well have one of us stand out in the hallway, waving those guys right in here.”

  “Yeah, well, Hickman,” said a guy who looked like a tall Jimmy Fallon with a buzz haircut, “we’ll be asking for abuse if we don’t get her ready by the time Cadet Daily gets back.” He looked at me. I was stuffing my shirt into my pants. My undershirt was already soaked, and the wool pants clung to my sweaty legs, making the task nearly impossible. “What do you need?” he asked.

  I bit my lip. “Well, my hat”—I pointed an elbow toward the hat at my feet—“needs that gold thing on it. But I can’t find it. Or my belt buckle. My gloves are, uh ...” I looked around the room. “Oh, on my desk. And I need to put my name tag on my shirt.” I finished cramming my shirt into my pants and shoved my hand down into my back pocket. “I got it here.” I looked at the unhappy faces in front of me. These guys were going to be with me all summer. We were supposed to be a team. And here I was already dragging them down. Not exactly the kind of first impression I wanted to make. I cocked my head to one side and whispered, “Sorry, guys.”

  “No problem,” Jimmy Fallon’s lookalike said, gazing around the room. “Looks like your roommate didn’t show. We all had ours to help us out.” He smiled, offering me his hand to shake. “I’m Christopher Boguslavsky. My friends call me Kit.”

  “Hi ... Kit,” I said, shaking his hand. “Andi Davis.” I was impressed. No one my age had ever shaken my hand before.

  “Cool. Uh ... hey, Cero,” he said over his shoulder to a black guy standing near my sink. “Help me find that crest and belt buckle.” They started tossing stuff all over the place.

  An Asian guy with the name tag PING walked over to me. “You need to pin your name tag on your right pocket,” he said, pointing to the pocket that covered my right breast. “Line it up with this seam”—he pointed to the flap—“centered on the button.”

  I took the clasps off the name tag and tried to stick the plastic pin onto my pocket the way he told me. “Like this?”

  He shook his head. “It’s crooked. You kind of have to eyeball it.” He pulled the name tag off my shirt, his hand brushing against my pocket. “Oh, sorry,” he said, his face turning an interesting shade of red.

  A guy with sun-bleached hair, a lifeguard tan, and the name tag McGILL stood behind Ping and waved my gloves. “Don’t forget these!”

  “Thanks.” I took the gloves from him and held them between my knees so my hands would be free.

  “Found the crest!” Cero yelled, holding it up.

  “Great!” Boguslavsky said. He tossed Cero my hat. “Screw it on the hat.”

  “The name tag needs to go about here,” Ping said. He reached his hand toward my pocket again, then pulled it back.

  “We only have two minutes left, guys!” shouted a tall guy with dark-brown hair, looking nervously toward the door.

  Cero was fumbling with the gold crest and my hat, swearing furiously under his breath.

  I looked at Ping. “Hurry up! Just stick that name tag on, then I’ll put the claspy things on—”

  “Dammits,” Ping said.

  “What?” I looked at Ping. Is he mad at me?

  “Quick! Somebody! Throw me the belt!” Boguslavsky yelled.

  “Dammits,” Ping said. “Those clasps are called ‘dammits. ’ Um, could you, like, unbutton your pocket?”

  The guy called Hickman, who had complained about the door being open, tossed Boguslavsky my belt.

  “Sure. ...” I attacked the button.

  Boguslavsky jumped over to me and started shoving the belt through the belt loops on my pants. “Hope you don’t mind, Andi, but I need to know how long this has to be ...”

  “Uh ... no. It’s okay ...” I held my stomach in.

  “You know, ’cause they’re such a pain in the butt.” Ping pulled at the flap of my pocket and stuck one end of the name tag into the fabric. “You lose them, they’re small, they pinch your fingers.” He grinned. “Dammits.”

  “Hey, watch it,” Boguslavsky said. “We’ve got a lady in the room.”

  “Oops, sorry,” Ping said. “Then again, some people call them ‘frogs.‘”

  “What are you, Ping?” Hickman sneered. “Some kind of walking military manual?” He went to stand behind Ping. “Oh, that’s right.” He looked around the room. “Y’all, this guy’s a sergeant in the U.S. Army!”

  “Correction,” Ping said, stabbing the flap with the other end of the name tag. “Was a sergeant. Now I’m a knucklehead.”

  “Anyone got a knife?” Boguslavsky sighed. “Yeah, right. A knife in this place. This thing could wrap twice around her waist. I need to cut—”

  “WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?” Cadet Daily stomped into the room.

  My attendants melted away from me and slid to attention. The half-pinned name tag dangled from my shirt pocket.

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WEAK, LILY-LIVERED PERVERTS HAVE BEEN DOING WITH THAT FEMALE CLASSMATE OF YOURS, BUT I DO KNOW THAT I GAVE YOU FIVE MINUTES TO SQUARE HER AWAY, THIRD SQUAD! FIVE MINUTES!” He paced back and forth, back and forth in front of the wardrobe closets, kicking my newly issued items out of his path. “I DIDN’T GIVE YOU SIX MINUTES, THIRD SQUAD, AND I DIDN’T GIVE YOU FIVE AND A HALF. I GAVE YOU FIVE. FIVE MEANS FIVE!” He rubbed the back of his neck and continued to pace. “ARE YOU GONNA LEAVE A MINUTE LATE WHEN YOU KNOW THAT ARTILLERY’S COMING INTO YOUR POSITION? ARTILLERY’S ON TIME, ON TARGET. AND YOU’RE DEAD!” Then he stopped and faced us with his hands on his hips. “Time management’s everything, Third Squad.”

  Our chattering teeth and knocking knees applauded appropriately.

  4:25 P.M.

  Ten minutes later we were standing at
attention in North Area among a mass of other new cadets. Nothing shaded us from the blazing sun that beat down on our dripping heads. Cadet Daily had told us that we new cadets weren’t wearing our hats to the Oath Ceremony. We were too incompetent to march and wear hats on our heads, he had said. I blinked over and over to keep the sweat out of my eyes.

  Cadet Daily’s face suddenly appeared an inch from mine. “Davis, you need a haircut! Big time.” He looked around my left shoulder, then my right. “You look like a powder puff! Come on.” He nudged me out of line. “We have fifteen minutes till first call.”

  He led me across North Area, dodging pinging beanheads and bellowing cadets. “You’re not going to be my problem child, are you, Davis?” He paused. “You show up in some kind of preppy boat shoes, I have to get you shoes. You show up with a poofy hairdo, and I have to take you to get your hair cut. You blab your whole life story to another female waiting to see the Cadet in the Red Sash. You let every guy in your squad put his hands all over you!” He looked at me. “You have no clue what this place is about, do you, Davis?”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “No, sir.”

  We walked down some stairs into an underground tunnel.

  “It’s about killing people,” he said, his voice echoing in the tunnel.

  We walked through a door and into a room with three barber chairs. A Hispanic woman stood with a female cadet, the first upperclass female cadet I had seen all day. The cadet was taller than I and had short blond hair. Her lips twisted into a sort of grimace when she saw me, and turning to the woman beside her, she said, “Looks like you’ve got yourself another victim, Maria.”

  Cadet Daily nodded at the female cadet, then looked at Maria. “Do you have time before the parade?”

  “No problem,” Maria said, selecting a comb from her pocket and motioning me into a chair. “Should only take me five minutes.”

  Five minutes?

  Maria must have seen my eyes, because she spun me away from the mirror before grabbing big chunks of my hair and chopping them off. I watched my sixty-five-dollar haircut, less than a week old, flutter to the floor. When she finished, she turned me around so I could see the result. I’m normally not the kind of person who’ll throw a fit if her hair doesn’t turn out exactly how she wants it. But when I saw the straight, flat hair cropped close to my head where my short, bouncy bob had been, I could feel my throat tighten and tears form in the corners of my eyes.