PHASE II
"He was the most prestigious Drill Instructor—he was the most fucking nuts of all the Drill Instructors in our series. He could run the farthest the fastest, jump the highest! He would Out-Crazy any of them."
|
Corporal
S. D’Alessio, Jr. USMC, ret., PEACE TIME |
Sam, when we kicked off Phase One, it was a real show. Just like the old Corps! Through the course of Formation Week, my DIs laid back towards the end. It calmed our herd right down. I never asked any of them, the Boots I mean, later on, but I'm certain they thought the hard part was done and it wasn't going to be so bad. We lined up all four platoons and I handed each one over to their Primary DI. Malacans always seemed to me to have expressionless faces most of the time, or maybe twenty years of hands‑on with an alien race isn't enough time to assimilate the nuances of facial movement.
But, baby, you should have seen those jaws drop!
* * *
"3030! Why, one of my late Gran'daddy's favorite rifles was a 30-30! HELL! I'LL BET THAT'S WHY I LIKE YOU BOYS SO… GA'DAMMIT, ROACH, YOU LITTLE PECKER HEAD, I WANNA SEE YOU HUMPIN’ AN’ JUMPIN' LIKE THE GREAT BY‑GOD MARINE I KNOW YOU ARE INSIDE THAT MISERABLE LITTLE BUGGY-EYED BODY!"
3030 had caught the bullet. Maysfield! He had received his troops at their barracks and without so much as a how‑the‑hell‑are‑you‑doin’ conducted his first of many anti‑dehydration drills. Recruits consumed canteen after canteen of water and, as Christopher had indicated, they began to saturate, skin puffing and eyes and tongue watering. A couple of them hit capacity at about two gallons and started yakking up.
And through it all, the demanding tones of Drill Instructor Master Sergeant Abner Willie Maysfield buzzed away. He was a true maker of Marines, and because he liked them, he would allow them to join his beloved Corps! There was no failure here—because he wouldn't allow them to fail! And what was more, there was no room for second best. 3030 was going to be THE platoon and that was all there was to it! Where others trained for three, they would train for four! Because the mind would quit before the body, despite the fact that they were all cretinous little morons now, they were going to have strong minds when he was finished with them and they would NEVER quit!
Old Abner Willie was in the wind down of an illustrious, if somewhat unheralded, career. He had seen his calling in life early on and had done duty to Corps & Country. His own Drill Instructors had been of the fading numbers of combat Marines to see action in the last great Terran conflict, Desert Storm. As they had seen the handwriting slowly appearing on the political wall, they had seen to it their Boots understood what their Corps was about, so Maysfield did so now too. He himself had sensed a mystical urgency in Griffen's manner. An ending of some sort was near to hand. So be it!
Through the months and years at the Island he had learned to use every tool available to him to build the best of the best. If a series needed a best friend, a bully, a leader, a priest, a warrior to find its potential as Marines, he had filled that post. He had motivated some of life's worst failures into "real by‑God Marines" as he called them. He had always been embarrassed by the accolades that had begun to amass as his troops entered into the fleet. What had been so difficult? ALL men wanted dignity, self-confidence, and pride. These were the Traditions most of these recruits had embraced as a reason to fight the battle of Parris Island in the first place. It was only the teaching of self-motivation that they required.
To some he had stood toe to toe, cajoling and challenging them to succeed. To some he had merely needed to encourage or nudge a bit to wipe out the confusion that is the enemy of confidence. But always he demanded more—more self, more effort, more confidence—more than most of these young men had been required to put forth in their previous life. After his first two series as DI, he had seen enough to know how to do the job.
But this platoon was ground zero! They weren't human. They were humanoid. Similar, but not same. Whe he'd been given the assignment, Griffen had made it clear that there wasn't going to be a second series to perfect the training of Malacan Marines. It had to be done right the first time, quickly and Marine. Maysfield had mulled over nearly three decades of experience in making Marines from human children, and could not determine a clear course of action. Indecision was an uncomfortable state of being for him.
He had walked absently through the center of the Parris Island complex until he found himself entering the Museum. He had always felt that the Marine Museum wasn't a viewing place of antiquity, but a place where the Corps kept its consciousness at the ready. He wandered aimlessly until he reached that portion of the gallery dedicated to the Vietnam era.
It had been a horrendous time in Marine history. Poor leadership on the national level had made final victory an impossibility. On and on it had dragged, taking more and more Marines to fill the rapidly widening void created by casualties. Parris Island and its then-sister station in San Diego had become factories cranking out more and more grunts for the grinder. Their foe was cunning, merciless, and hidden. Jungles worse than those of the South Pacific had called for a new kind of toughness. And the Drill Instructors had risen to the task. They had created a living nightmare, a world of shit and harsh discipline that only the jungles of East Asia could match. They had accepted criticisms for their harshness, and towards the end of the war the Press had climbed all over the Corps for their methods—"unreasonable," they had called it.
To the young Jarhead that had toughed it out and made it back alive and reasonably intact, it was a trade off and all things being equal, it was good, by definition of the Corps, to be alive. To hell with "reasonability", there was nothing about that war that was reasonable—or perhaps even rational—in the first damned place!
So it was with this mission. So it was, a choice had been made.
He had grown aggressive and intensely overbearing, and when he was finished they would be real by‑God Marines! So what if they weren't human? He took what he knew and he went with it, inventing new calisthenics to suit their needs, driving them ceaselessly, trying to kindle that spark that would tell him they were there. In full gear they'd run the ship, mile after mile, repeating his cadences to mark their time and rhythms. It damn near drove coHLI and his staff out of their minds as the 3030 flat‑footed their way from one end of the ship to the other in full battle gear at all hours of the day and night. He had taken to teaching them English by imitation and, as he knew of their fondness for music, he had taken to teaching them to sing as Marines as they ran. He had taken such old spirituals as "Give Me That Old Time Religion" and replaced the lyrics (as Drill Instructors had done for over a century) with "Give Me That Anchor, Globe and Eagle,” figuring that God wouldn't mind as it was for the Corps and all things still being equal, in Maysfield’s opinion, God owed the Corps a few favors.
When coHLI finally complained about the noise to Christopher, Christopher had offered him two choices. Drop the project or get out of his damned office. coHLI had wanted Marines from his command. He was now getting them!
|
"LEF AT to lo two, three atoh loh! At to lo two, three atoh loh! THE NEXT EXERCISE
WILL BE JACKS AND HAMMERS! RRAAHH! MOVE! ONE! ONE SIR! TWO! TWO SIR! LO RHI LAY–EFF LO RHI LAY–EFF LEF RHI LAY–EFF LEF RHI LAY–EFF LO RHI LEF LO RHI LEF A LEFTY RHI LAY–EFF A LEFTY RHI LAY–EFF MAHREEEN CAW! MAHREEN CAW! MY CAW! MY CAW! YOUR CAW! YOUR CAW! OUR CAW! OUR CAW! GIMME DAT OOOLE MAHREEN CAW SPIRIT! GIMME DAT OOOLE MAHREEN CAW SPIRIT! GIMME DAT OOOLE MAHREEN CAW SPIRIT! GIMME DAT OOOLE MAHREEN CAW SPIRIT! GIMME DAT OOOLE MAHREEN CAW SPIRIT! GIMME DAT OOOLE MAHREEN CAW SPIRIT! 'CAUSE ITS GOOD ENUFF FOR ME! 'CAUSE IT’S GOOD ENUFF FOR ME! IT WAS GOOD FOR ‘CHESTY’ PULLER! IT WAS GOOD FOR ‘CHESTY’ PULLER! IT WAS GOOD FOR DA–AN DAILY! IT WAS GOOD FOR DA–AN DAILY! IT WAS GOOD FOR OLE ABE GRIFFEN! IT WAS GOOD FOR OLE ABE GRIFFEN! AND ITS GOOD ENUFF FOR ME! AND ITS GOOD ENUFF FOR ME! IT WAS GOOD AT THE CHOISEN RESERVOIR! IT WAS GOOD AT THE CHOISEN RESERVOIR! IT WAS GOOD AT GUADALCANAL! IT WAS GOOD AT GUADALCANAL! IT WAS GOOD IN VIET NAM! IT WAS GOOD IN VIET NAM! AND IT'S GOOD ENUFF FOR ME! AND IT'S GOOD ENUFF FOR ME! |
* * *
If 3031 had thought they were catching a break with newly‑made Sergeant Daniel Sabott, they were sadly mistaken and rather rudely corrected. Of all five Marines on ship, he was the closest to them in age. Unlike the human requirement of 18 to 28 years for prime entrance age, Malacan physiology had dictated a slightly older candidate of 21 to 34 years. Sabott fell mid‑curve. The heavy snapping sounds in his speech pattern seemed to the recruits almost a foreign tongue unto itself. Of course, Sabott never told them that his second heritage was the odd half‑French Cajun of the Louisiana Bayou he had grown up in, and in periods of excitement or displeasure words would surface that neither they (nor most other non‑Cajuns) could understand. Of all the Terrans with the Campaign Covers though, he had begun to seem the most reasonable.
But that in itself was a set up. He had received his platoon from formation in one of the large bay areas that had become useful as a drill field and double-timed them right back to their barracks and immediately called inspection. Standing at attention at the end of their bunks, it didn't take long for 3031 to realize that Drill Instructor Sergeant Sabott was crazier than a latrine rat. Perhaps more crazy than the other four Marines rolled into one.
He had barely made it to the third footlocker when he found a half-burned cigarette from a box of "K" rations under a pair of socks he had turned over. The immediate loser was recruit B. Lewis, of recent fire watch fame. The fact that Lewis was fucking‑up surprised no one, as he had been blessed with an unfailing ability to attract the attention and displeasure of anything wearing a Smokey Bear. Unlike most, recruit Blue Lewis lived in a permanent barrel… 3031 was already referring to him as XOllopa—cursed by fate. And just because no one in the platoon had ever actually seen him light one of those tobacco things up, the idea that he might be innocent never entered their minds. And when the stunned recruit raised the possibility to his DI, Sabott went off like a bomb.
"You lyin' sack‑o‑rat droppings! You no‑count, spineless... little... ARE YOU CALLIN' ME A LIAR!" Sabott began stammering and his face began turning a bright red. "You... you... Lewis! You got dem ears h'open?"
"SIR! This recruit has both his ears... "
"DON'T LIE TO ME LEWIS! YOU GOT DEM WEIRD LI'L WORD CATCHERS OPEN, Lewis!"
"SIR! THE RECRU—"
"GA’DAMMIT, RECRUIT! I HATE BEING CALLED A LIAR!" Sabott exploded. He kicked the lid down on the footlocker and in a wild fury, raised it over his head. At full speed he whirled around and ran screaming towards the hatch, foot locker still high overhead.
If the Marine Corps allowed betting in boot camp, 3031 would have wagered a year's wages that DI Sergeant Sabott was going through the hatch, footlocker and all. And they would have lost. Only the footlocker made the trip. And of course, the hatch did too. BAM! Down it went, telegraphing through the ship's decks and overheads in a series of repetitive explosions that caused ship's engineers all over the phEY‑QUAD to jump from their bunks and dinner tables and break towards engine four in fear of meltdown. But Sabott was still on a roll.
Where the hatch had splintered off from the frame, the Hell and Damnated Sergeant ripped out a wooden door post and, cussin' like the true son of a blue‑assed Cajun and the seasoned Marine he was, began running up and down the row between the columns of bunks and attached recruits. The post was swinging in rhythm to the constant flow of belittlements, missing alien chins by inches. Every light fixture the pole came within a foot of caught a shot sending glass fragments in all direction.
With every dying fixture, the future of 3031 seemed to grow darker and darker. In time they would learn to like this gyrating maniac, and as their knowledge of Marine Corps history increased, 3031 would (after a history lesson on the Korean Conflict) begin to compare Sabott to the great "Chesty" Puller himself. He would stand in their midst as they groaned away at PT and shout "you can't get away from me now!" until the last one of them had finished their tasks. Whatever and wherever 3031 went, Sabott went first. If he ate, they ate, if they ran, he ran. And while they may have been the worst herd he'd ever seen, anybody else choosing to express a similar sentiment answered to Sabott! His belief in the Corps and the individual Marines that comprised it was unshakable and easily apparent.
* * *
"DON'T GIVE ME YOUR BULLSHIT, 3033. WHEN YOU HEAR... EYEBALLS!... LIKE I GOT ALL DAY TO WAIT FOR YOU TO LOOK IN MY DIRECTION? DOES ANYBODY HERE EVEN KNOW WHICH END OF THE WEAPON IS THE BUSINESS END?... WHY DON'T YOU ANSWER ME?"
3033 was certain they had fallen over the edge of the universe. There was the slightest of hesitation in the group's return of "Sir, yes, sir, Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Stone!”… and Stoney made them pay for it.
"GET YOUR FAT LITTLE STILL‑CIVILIAN ASSES ON THE QUARTER DECK, I WANNA SEE JACKS AND HAMMERS AND I MEAN NOW!" Jacks and Hammers, as it had been dubbed, was a Maysfield invention that took two men to do and utilized legs, backs and shoulders in a way counter to their original intent. It was a back‑breaker and they hated it. 3033 would soon believe that the name Stone was a synonym for quarterdeck.
Stone had come up the hard way. The Marine Corps hadn't been his first choice in life—a trip or two around the Olympic track at Phoenix and a long successful career as a wide receiver for the Chicago Bears had been. But a snapped ligament had taken not only his scholarship but Phoenix too right out from under him, and the Bears were not interested in an untested rookie with suspect knees.
He had lost his identity at that point, moving from one meaningless job to another and starting to get into more and more trouble. But then, in a small seedy bar in a forgotten inner city neighborhood one night, he crossed paths with a salty old southern boy with a flat top haircut and a chewed up old sweatshirt (that may have at one time said Marine Corps on it) who was down to his last ten months as a recruiter and a Marine. Sam Farley was by nature as nasty an old pecker head as you could hope to avoid, and when Stone tried to light him up, Farley went off in his face. He'd done one too many tours to let this wild-eyed, half-drunken youngster jerk his chain.
There was a twenty-minute shouting match, followed by a twenty-five minute truce as beers were had by all involved, followed by another twenty minutes of more heated debate with strong racial innuendo being inferred by both combatants. This went on for about two hours with Stone venting more and more fury and Farley sizing up a Prime Victim for the Corps. By last call (much to the disappointment of the crowd that had actually lost interest about and hour earlier when they realized that, for whatever their personal reasons, neither warrior was actually going to throw one damned punch), they sat there in the dark emptying bar throwing verbal barbs at each other as if they had been friends for years,
"You know what your problem is, Redneck?" Stone began his last dictum. "You hate niggers!"
Before Stone could really build a roll up, Farley had turned to an immense black man who had been sitting quietly next to him all evening. "Hey, Staff Sergeant Moss! Do I hate niggers?" he asked quizzically.
The man had been caught in mid glass‑raise. The vessel froze in mid-air, then crushed down on the bar in a way that let the bar know he was being disturbed.
"How many times do I have to tell you? Master Sergeant, you hate greasers, chinks, gooks, wasps, camel‑jockeys, Scandinavians, the Army, the Navy, Eskimos, eye‑talions, cripples, the New York Jets, the Boston Red Sox, Democrats... and niggers!"
"Oh!" Farley said pensively. "Staff Sergeant Moss... are you a nigger?"
"Uh‑uh! Never have been, never will be, Master Sergeant."
"Well, you're the same damn color as this kid. And he says I hate him 'cause he's a nig... "
Stone's jaw had dropped. "Hey! I never... "
Before he had finished, Farley had flown off his stool and grabbed him by the collar pinning him to the bar.
"Yeah! You never is right. What the hell's your problem? You come in here looking for a fight which I wouldn't give you, then you try a foul shot like that? C'mon fool, you gotta be smarter than that. Moss may be the same color as you, but I know you're not like him. He's a Staff Sergeant in the USMC. He earned that title. He knows who and what he is. That's what I expect of the Marines under me, and that's what they expect of me." Farley's hands snapped off of Stone's collar and waited, palms open, on either side of his face. If there was any thought in Stone's mind about doing something physical, the two huge paws waiving on either side of his head and the half-wild look in Farley's eyes convinced him of just how poor a decision that would be.
They were frozen in that position for nearly a minute. Slowly, as if being drawn by a magnet, Farley tilted backward and fell onto his bar stool, his hands resting on his knees. There was a slightly sour expression on the older man's face. "Hurts like a bitch, don't it, asshole? You think you got it nailed, then bang! It's gone. And every time you look in the mirror to shave you ask yourself, "Was it me? Was it them?" And you keep looking for something to blame for the problems eating you away. And when you can't find something or someone else to blame, you take it out on yourself, instead of just accepting it and movin' on."
"What are you talking about?" Stone queried cautiously.
Farley never answered him, just gave him a kind of sad smile and reached into a pocket under his sweatshirt for a sweat-stained card and handed it to him. "Come on down and see me if you want a way out." Without another word to Stone, Farley slid off the seat, slapped Moss on the shoulder, said "I'm gone," and disappeared.
Stone sat there for another ten minutes or so with a stunned expression on his face and turning the card over and over in his fingers, almost as if daring himself to look at it. The last round had been won by Farley and it was sobering Stone up quickly. Finally, he had glanced at the card. Margined from the left it read "Samuel M. Farley ‑ Master Sergeant ‑ Marine Recruiter" followed by the address of the Recruiting Station. On the right-hand side of the card was an anchor, globe, and eagle.
On an overcast afternoon about a week later, Stone showed up at the Station. It was an old office, tight and neat, in an older building. When he entered the room, directly in front of him was the black man that had been at the bar with Farley. Despite the brown military-style shirt, Stone had recognized him immediately. Moss looked up from the stack of pink cards he was rummaging through, did a double take at Stone, then looked right back down at the cards. "Take a seat, son, he should be back in a few," was all he said. Stone found a non‑descript old chair and dropped into it. There were two other guys in the room dressed in running clothes going through files.
As Stone sat there watching the three figures chug through their paperwork, he began to wonder if this was any sort of an answer at all. As he was about to rise to leave, a figure clad in Marine dress blues entered. Moss looked up at him, swung his head in Stone's direction, and lowered his face into the cards again. The Marine in front of him shot a hand between Moss's eyes and the cards, snapped his fingers loudly and turned his palm face up under his chin, wiggling his fingers in a "gimme, gimme" motion. Moss reached for his wallet and produced a ten‑spot, which he dropped into the open palm. The blue and white clad figure turned and faced Stone directly. Only then did Stone fully recognize Farley.
"Get off my seat, asshole," was the first thing out of his mouth and Stone, caught off guard, jumped up. Farley swung the chair behind a battered looking desk and produced a padded type of folding chair. "We're a little crushed for space here,” he said, opening it for Stone, "but take a seat for a minute and I'll buy you a cup a coffee." He snapped the bill loudly in Moss's direction.
Stone sat there amazed as Farley disappeared into a closet and emerged a few minutes later clad in running clothes and plopped down behind the desk. "You were the easiest ten bucks I ever made in my life!"
Stone looked blankly across the desk, not knowing what to say.
"What the hell did you think I was gonna do?" Farley asked. "Jump over the desk with my Kabar drawn... in my Blues?"
Ice had been broken, and they sat there and talked for several hours. Stone went through the story of his life. Farley went through his. Married three times over nineteen years, shipped all over the world and most recently with Griffen's Alien Support Team, Marine Competition Rifle Team—and now working on twenty and out.
In the following three or four months, Stone began meeting Farley two or three times a week to work out, maybe have a few beers. They began running together, Stone being somewhat surprised on Farley's ability to keep up with him. On Sundays Farley would travel up to the public rifle ranges of northeastern Pennsylvania, and he began taking Stone along. In the frozen Pennsy January, he had started teaching the youngster the handling of firearms. It didn't take Farley long to realize that his young friend had a natural ability.
By the end of the fourth month of their acquaintance, their talk had turned to the Corps as a career. It took a little doing to waiver the surgery to Stone's leg, but Farley managed to do it and on the second Tuesday in April, Stone had shipped to Parris Island.
He wasn't in the bulk numbers of eighteen year old recruits. Nearly twenty‑two, his DIs referred to his as "Gran'pa Stone,” a name that would change to “Killer” in Phase Two of his training. At rifle qualification, Stone tied the course record by shooting a perfect score. It seemed like anything that fired a projectile when a trigger was squeezed had Stone’s name written on it.
The Corps had taken up the open contract he had gone down to the Island under and made him 0300, basic Infantry. He had gotten in under the wire. After his class graduated, the MOS was retired. He tried and qualified for the Corps shooting team and in a short while, moved up to a national competition level. At the end of his second tour, he had applied for and been given the job of a Primary Marksman Instructor (much to the delight of an old retired Jarhead who still kept in touch) and spent the next two years at the ranges of Parris Island. At the request of one Colonel A. Griffen, Stone entered the Drill Instructors School where he earned the respect of another nasty old gyrene named Maysfield. It had taken Walter Stone years to put discipline and self-control back into his life and in so doing, had learned how to give it to other men—and that was the quality Maysfield loved in his Jr. DIs.
Stone stood there in front of his platoon, a disgusted look on his face as befitted the occasion. The Jacks & Hammers had broken them down again. They'd move quicker the next time to be certain! He looked at the alien faces. They seemed to be shaken. Now to drive it home!
"Just try to remember," he said, "WHEN YOU GO TO LOAD YOUR WEAPON... THE FRIGGIN' POINTY END OF THE BULLET FACES AWAY FROM YOU!"
* * *
"GO! GO! GO... GA’DAMMIT FRIDAY, DON'T LEMME SEE YOU HOLDIN' BACK!" One by one, they raced past the short Terran Marine. He was like a clock. At exactly five-second intervals a naseled "GO!" echoed through the bay, and another Boot sprang forward on his timed two-mile run. The platoon Scribble, a former engine stoker, barely had time to record the name and start time of the launching runner. But everything with Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Rojas was a scramble, a double time. It was a relentless drive towards a goal. And the fact that only he seemed to know what that goal was, or what the great rush to get there was, didn't seem to matter. When he shouted MOVE, they moved. And it did matter. As Rojas saw it, it mattered not only to him, it mattered to his Boots, their Corps, and the Country they now served.
When Christopher had come aboard, it had been the first real contact that most of these new recruits ever had with a Terran, let alone a Marine. They had nothing to measure him against, so they assumed that all earth beings must be like him. Straight-legged, thin-chested—imposingly tall! (Their others were tall, but that was different—they were thick-hipped and light-framed.) This creature was thick on both sides and had a voice that boomed and crashed against your ears like asteroids hitting the forward hull of your vessel in a storm. But Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Rojas (who's name got pronounced as "Roe‑jess" because of the unequal shape of a tongue that had difficulty with 'H' sounds) was different. He wasn't a whole lot taller than they were, perhaps three or four inches. He was short-legged, by comparison, and soft‑spoken by human standards. Except when he was angry, which wasn't very often—much to the surprise and relief of 3032. They knew he was tough enough. His toughness seemed to be buried just underneath his skin, it was always there—but there were times when he actually even smiled.
If he had been asked about it, Rojas would have defended himself simply by saying he had a lot to smile about. He liked his life. He liked being One of The Few.
Reuben Rojas had been a product of east L.A. He had dropped out of high school in his junior year and wandered through the mire of tough Hispanic gangs, drugs, violence, and crime that the white press would have called stereotypical but he called home. He began to find himself drowning in a world of anonymous perpetuity. When he looked around him, he could assess himself only as one of the many. His completion of the GED for his High School equivalency did little to whittle the numbers down. It began to work against him when he realized that the only thing his newfound diploma qualified him for was flipping half-frozen meat patties in a burger joint.
Things were at their desperate worst when he got taken off of patty‑duty and sent out to the parking lot with a broom. With every push of the broom the flow of obscenities became louder and louder and the bend in the broom handle more and more pronounced every time it slapped the pavement. Only the shout of the store manager threatening dismissal, brought on by a customer complaint, snapped him awake. He made no response, but folded both hands over the tip of the broom handle and rested on it. His mind was blank, as if a single thought trying to take shape in it would cause it to explode. He found himself looking absently into the pile of rubble he was pushing. Amidst the burger wrappers and bits of broken wine bottles he had unearthed a poster torn down from some forgotten wall with an incongruous message scrawled across it:
Los Pocos – Los Orgullosos
The Few ‑ The Proud
He read the lines over and over slowly as his mind began ascertaining their meaning. Behind the words was a very Hispanic face beneath a white hat, eyes focused hard ahead. In the midst of it all was an insignia that required little explanation. He had thought about the military as a way out, but never the Corps.
When he had gotten home that evening, it was almost midnight. The apartment was dead silent as he made his way quietly towards his parents’ bed. He hadn't quite gotten halfway to the bed when his mother's head lifted.
"Reuben, what's wrong?"
"Nothing Ma. But get up, I need to talk. And for Chris'sake, don't wake the old man!"
Through the still darkness, Reuben could see his mother's eyes. There was alarm in them. Oh, shit! he thought. He didn't wait for her to fully rise, but turned and went the kitchen.
When Mrs. Rojas found her way into the room, she found her son staring out the window. On the table were two small shakes, one vanilla and one strawberry, taken from the burger place her son worked at. He waited to see which flavor his mother preferred.
There was an audible sigh of relief from the woman. She knew her sons, and this one in particular. He wasn't in trouble again. This was a bribe! He wanted something. She quietly sat down, and while she fingered both containers, she chose neither.
"So, Reuben," she said absently, her eyes studying the containers and refusing to meet his, "what is so important that you have to get me up in the middle of the night?" She had expected an immediate response, but got none. They sat there in the quiet dark, her son looking out into the blackness of the street for a full minute.
"Mama, I'm gonna join the Marine Corps!" he blurted out and braced himself for the barrage of arguments he was certain would follow. But for another minute there was nothing but silence. He turned his head away from the window. His mother had brought the strawberry shake in closer to her and was gently stroking the container's lip with the index fingers of both hands that were cuffed around it. Finally, she made eye contact.
"This is what you want? To be a Marine?" The boy nodded. She nodded back. "So many good things for a young man to become, Reuben, but not here. Not in this place. Here there are many more bad things to become. Your father's brother, your uncle Phil, he was a Marine. Did you know that?" The boy's eyes widened. "And he was a good man, Reuben. God took him away too soon. He was a good man." She rose, nodding. "Tell your father when you think the time is right for you. I think he will like having a son in the Marine Corps." She rose and headed back to bed, but stopped by the kitchen door. "Please leave the strawberry shake in the refrigerator," she added, as if the choosing of the drink had been the bigger of the problems. He knew then that the hard part was past. He had gotten his mother's blessing.
All that remained was to enlist! He rose the next day and went to the closest Recruiting Office he could find. He walked into the office and strode confidently up to the first person he could find in a Marine uniform sitting behind a desk.
"I'm Reuben Rojas, I wanna sign up to be a Marine! I'll leave today if you want!" The face behind the desk looked up.
"Well, Reuben Rojas, I'm Gunnery Sergeant Abner Willie Maysfield and what the hell makes you think I'm gonna sign your skinny ass up to be a Marine?"
It hadn't occurred to Rojas that the Corps might have something to say about things.
Gunny Maysfield knew the flow better than the next man. Everything was being cut back. To get a candidate through the pool and shipped was about 50/50 nowadays—once at the Island, the odds of him or her making it through to graduation was about two to one. He handed Rojas the usual forms and pointed to a small desk in the corner. "Start with these and we'll talk."
Since the end of the Vietnam period, the Corps had grown more and more stringent in its qualifications of candidates. Things that would fly in the other services wouldn't fly here. And things were worse now that the Corps had been split from the department of the Navy. With the advent of space flight, there had been a major trade-off. The traditional heart of the Corps, the Infantryman, had been replaced by what was, in Maysfield's opinion, a flying cop. In the old days, this kid could have been a grunt with no problem. Today?
Rojas set to work on the maze of paper traps in front of him. Math, science, and personal questions that he'd never thought would have any bearing on anything rose up time and again. One question, reworded slightly differently, showed up at least four times. He was being made more and more uncomfortable by the fixed gaze of Maysfield, who had put his feet up on the desk, folded his hands on his lap, and didn't so much as blink in the hour or so it took to complete the forms. At last, Rojas looked up.
"Done?"
"Yes, sir."
"You gonna wait a little while or are you gonna bring those things over here?"
Rojas could tell a push when he felt one. This guy was an asshole of the first order and it was starting to irritate him. He handed the papers over and the Marine promptly went to the sheets on his personal life.
"Ever been in jail?"
"No!"
"Do drugs?"
"No!"
"Ever?"
"NO!"
"Arrested?"
"No!"
"Outstanding traffic violations?"
"No!"
"Ever had a venereal disease?"
"No!"
"Got any children you know of?"
"No!"
"Green card?"
"No!"
"Natural born citizen?"
"No, I'm a friggin' two headed alien from Mars, cara de culo, and I'm outa here!" He jumped up. These questions were stupid and senseless, and this clown was a joint snapper of the highest caliber.
"SID'DOWN!" The voice boomed through the office and hallways. Rojas froze in his tracks and just glared at the man behind the desk. Maysfield pushed back in his chair, opened a draw in the desk. and began fishing around with one hand. He pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and began to light one up, using a coffee cup as an ashtray. His eyes never left Rojas.
"Sit! Down!"
The lad wavered a bit, then reluctantly returned to his chair.
"Reuben Rojas, you got any idea what you're doing? What you're asking to get into?"
"Yeah, I wanna be a Marine!"
"Son, the Marines ain't the Marines no more. At least, not like they use to be. Not like you saw in the movies. The Army wants to absorb us and turn us into porters, we had to give up most of our infantry units to cover the most recent government cutbacks, and anybody left over is going to get shot into space or haul cargo to be shot into space. Less than one tenth of us are going into space, and that's the Air Wing… or what's left of it. I got guys with college degrees fighting it out in my hallways over open motor platoon spots, just to try and advance to the Space program. Drill Instructors at the Island are told 'only the Best', so one out three sent down gets blown out. They can't take it! You tough enough for that?"
There was an eerie silence from the seat on the short side of the desk.
"Hell, kid. You couldn't even take a little heat in here without wanting to leave!"
"I can take anything you got!"
"Oh, yeah? You working? Going to school?"
"Uhhh... "
"Burger tosser, huh? All right, Rambo, be here tomorrow at 0800 hours—that's 8:00 A.M. to you. Running shorts and sneakers. Let's see what you can take." Maysfield fished through a pile of papers on his desk and pulled out three or four poorly photocopied forms. "Sign the top page and give it back to me, you're now property of this here Marine Recruit Pool. Start memorizing the rest. You know EVERYTHING on those sheets when you walk in here tomorrow!"
The reference to an old movie action hero was about the only thing he heard, but he gathered the small parcel of papers together and left the office. He didn't realize it then, but Rojas had embarked on the first leg of his chosen career. The sheets Maysfield had given him were filled with things most guys never think of as part of the military. Rank structures, General Orders—the Language of the Marine Corps. He called in sick to work and spent the rest of the day and most of the night studying the sheets.
The next morning, he entered the office at 0730 hours to find Maysfield and two other Marines already shifting papers that were amassing on their desks. Maysfield looked up.
"You know those sheets?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
"Good! Now! Do an about face and walk directly to the far wall. Stand there and recite everything on those sheets to the wall! 8:00 means 08:00!"
Rojas never said a word, did an about face and—except for an occasional pause when Maysfield would shout, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!”—recited the General Orders, the COC, and every scrap of information on the sheets he had been given to the bricks in front of him. About a half dozen times.
There were a lot of things that could have been said about Gunny Maysfield. He was over‑bearing, opinionated, out‑right nasty when he had to be, in great physical shape for a 34-year old man, and fair. He knew when the paper worked for and when the paper worked against. And this kid just might be one of the times the paper worked against. Maysfield had studied the kid's paperwork and made the mandatory phone calls to friends in high places to check out the background of Reuben Rojas. At this station in L.A., the only guys who walked in your door and wanted to join up were looking to beat a rap. But Rojas wasn't, or at least not as far as the Gunny could tell. Okay, he was under‑qualified by what the book was calling for, but… hell, if you went by The Book, Jesus Christ didn't qualify as Marine material! It was decision time.
When push came to press, Maysfield would resort to what he called the Lou Diamond One‑Shot Marvel Method. Lou Diamond had been a slightly over‑aged Marine mortar man on Guadalcanal. He had sent a round off after a Japanese ship and put it down the ship's smoke stack, sinking it. On paper, it wasn't possible. Nobody had told Lou Diamond that, so he had taken a shot anyway and beaten astronomical odds—it seemed as good a way as any to see what kind of heart this kid had going for him.
They launched from the Recruiter's Station at exactly 0800 hours—and proceeded to run through some of the worst streets and neighborhoods in L.A. Through alleys, over fences, up hills, down drainage ditches, through school yards, past drug houses any self‑respecting rat wouldn't have gone by, and over turf owned by some of the toughest gangs in L.A... it was a show worth watching. The worse the location, the faster the tempo Maysfield set. If Rojas started slowing down, Maysfield pulled away, threatening to leave him there. Somehow Rojas always found something inside to get back in it and keep up. The climax of the trip was a spectacular eight-block sprint with a pit bull in hot pursuit. It was nearly 0930 hours when they pulled up at the Station.
Rojas crumpled on the stoop in front of the building, sucking wind as hard as he could, blowing out chunks of his last two meals. Maysfield, while in good condition for a thirty-four year old, wasn't exactly in brass hat shape to run a nineteen year old to ground, but knew how to hide it better. He had to admit, it'd been one hell of a run and the little bastard hadn't fallen off once. They sat there on the step, bullshitting each other as to how good a shape they were in.
Maysfield bundled his little package up, threw out some paperwork, and mailed him off to Parris Island a week later. Maysfield figured that whatever this kid had was about as much as he was going to get. He was also short one shipper due to a slightly off-center background check on another candidate. There was little sense dragging Rojas to pool meetings just to get panicked by guys who towered over him and were a damn sight closer to what the USMC wanted.
The reasoning was sound. Standing on the yellow footprints in front of the receiving building at three o'clock in the morning, Rojas began to notice just how much larger everybody else there was. Okay, he thought, they're bigger, but I'm tougher! The question of toughness came up on the Initial Strength Test. Street tough is one thing, eight Marine pull‑ups is another. Toughness doesn't mean squat if you can't make the count.
As he hung there on the bar, struggling for the third pull‑up under a crisp South Carolina sun, Rojas received his first true lesson in motivation and his own personal devil to keep him highly motivated for as long as he was on the Island.
"You gold brickin' spic son‑of‑a‑bitch, get that skinny chicken face of yours over my bar. UP! GET IT UP!" The blistering voice screaming at him in Spanish was rapidly moving in toward him and under the bar. Rojas strained to rise over the bar. "ONE MORE, IDIOTA,” the voice said in English, "ONE MORE. YOU CAN BULLSHIT THESE GUYS, BUT YOU AIN'T BULLSHITTIN' ME! NOW GET OVER THE BAR, RECRUIT!" Rojas pulled forward. He was sweating profusely and as he struggled to get his chin over the rod, his hands slipped loose and off he went.
"You greasy little bastard! You did that to make me look bad!" Rojas had come down hard, hitting on his knees and falling over forward on his face. He looked up at the voice. The source was not more than six inches from him. Drill Instructor Sergeant Irrazarry was almost on top of him. "You ain't foolin' me, shitbird. You changed your mind! You’re lookin' to get out. Well, I'll give you all the opportunity any loser could want!"
For the next ten weeks, Irrazarry lived in Rojas' hair. He went out of his way to make things twice as hard as it had to be. One morning in the squad bay, he went off on a tangent on troublemakers, and needless to say he knew who they were... which meant Rojas was about to earn his first pair of stripes. Across the back of every tee shirt, blouse, or fatigue Rojas had, Irrazarry placed a large X of red tape so he could find Rojas from any point of view. The quarterdeck became Rojas' home‑away‑from‑home. It got to the point where Irrazarry couldn't give out enough calisthenics to even phase Rojas. On runs, Rojas became the platoon Gunga Din, carrying webbed belts of innumerable canteens filled to the brim. Because Irrazarry felt Rojas wasn't singing out loudly enough on the runs, for a three-week period Rojas wasn't allowed to speak to him at all, and had to carry placards with responses written on them. It became evident to the entire platoon that as hard as Irrazarry was going to hammer, the short guy from California wasn't going to break.
What amazed the platoon was how Irrazarry was refusing to lighten up. With most of the DIs, once you got with the program they'd back off. But Rojas was getting hammered from every side for virtually no reason. All right, he was short, but he wasn't a bad guy. By the middle of Second Phase, the entire platoon was starting to resent Irrazarry. Any opportunity to stick it in his face or pull heat off of Rojas was worth the trip to the quarterdeck. The harder Irrazarry pushed, the harder they'd push themselves to surpass whatever goals had been set. It wasn't until the start of Third Phase that any of them noticed that while the training Battalion in general had diminished by a third or more, their platoon was basically intact. And despite the fact that Rojas had started growing eyes in the back of his head, a third arm, and a definite attitude about being challenged, he was still there with them.
At the final Physical Fitness Test, Rojas counted thirty-seven pull‑ups with Irrizarry standing right underneath him. When he came off, Irrizarry never said a word and just walked away from him. Until the day he graduated, Irrizarry never said another word to Rojas other than what was required as part of his job.
As Rojas was preparing to dress for Graduation, Irrizarry called him off the bay and into the DI hut. "I figure you earned this," he said and handed Rojas a small piece of paper. "I got this a couple of days after you arrived." The slip of paper was a note. It read quite simply, "Mr. Rojas is from your old neighborhood. He has a lot of heart and wants to be a Marine. See to it." It was signed Gunny Maysfield. Before Rojas could say anything, Irrizarry was pointing him towards the hatch. "You're runnin' behind as usual, Rojas. Get outa here.”
His open contract was given over to the Avionics MOS, 6133, Electrical System Trainee. He managed an associate’s degree over the next four years, made sergeant, did a stint as a DI, and started moving into the space program. He had just signed up for his third tour when he had a phone call from a voice he hadn't heard in almost nine years, but remembered well.
"There's an opening for a DI that can outrun a pit bull soon,” the voice said. "You interested?"
