Last Man Out (3 page)

The Professor was sitting on his bed, awkwardly bent over, shining his shoes. He stopped often to push his glasses back up his nose. “You know,” Van Pelt said with a smile, “it makes me feel better about myself here when I see how out of place the ol’ Professor is over there. Relative to him, I’m okay.”

I told Van Pelt that it was because he was basically a blunt instrument—primal man, comparable to Tate, the Neanderthal-looking black man. Van Pelt said that was a clever observation. “Not correct,” he added, “but a good comment anyway, about a three on a scale of one to five. Above average. Maybe you should be the one dealing with the Professor since you’re so clever.”

“No,” I said, “you are the one with the mother instinct. I’m here to learn to kill.”

“You, my friend,” said Van Pelt, “are the blunt instrument, but I like you anyway.”

The next morning when we fell out for reveille, Sergeant McGee inspected the barracks. He came out and addressed us from the top of the stairs before we marched off to the mess hall.

“Okay, slimeballs, I walked into da barracks just now and hit
smelt like a urinal. Like a goddamned piss pot. Ya hear me. A fucking piss pot. Someone peed in dere bed last night!”

McGee was talking so loud that people standing in formation by other barracks could hear.

“Then goddammit made da bed up on top of da stinking piss!” He walked down the stairs and up to the platoon. “My fucking platoon. We got ourselves a bed wetter. In da fucking Army.” Softer, meaner, he asked, “Guess who it is?” He walked through the first squad line to the Professor. “Who Molly-Wolly? Who?” McGee fixed a hard, steady look at the man.

“Me, Sergeant,” said the Professor softly.

“Ya go in dere while da rest of us are in da chow hall and ya get dat stinking mess and ya exchange it for clean stuff and ya have yar bed made before we get back. And ya take a shower. And, Molly-Wolly, I ain’t finished.” McGee grabbed his arm. “I am going to help ya get over dis. I’m going to stop ya from wetting da bed. Tonight. Ya’ll stop. I’ll show ya. I done it before.”

That evening, Sergeant McGee walked into the barracks and everyone quickly braced to attention. The drill sergeant’s footfalls were loud as he walked toward the Professor’s bunk. McGee scowled at him a moment, then went down the line to Tate’s bunk. He told the man who slept on the bunk over Tate to trade places with the Professor.

Van Pelt was standing across from me. He pursed his lips and squinted his eyes, as if in pain, when he realized what McGee was doing. Tate was possibly the most ill-tempered individual in the world. Not only did people leave the shower room when he entered, they were reluctant to stand behind him in the chow line for fear they might accidentally bump into him and set him off. He was an animal. No one even tried to get along with him.

After McGee left, Tate grabbed the Professor’s T-shirt and told him in words that were hard to understand but whose tone was expressively clear what would happen to him if he peed in the top bunk. One of the black men suggested that Tate kill the honky “right now” rather than later, because he was sure to piss in his sleep again.

The last thing we heard that night after lights out was Tate’s muttered warning, “Okay, mudder fucker, wet da bed and I’ll knock ya fucking head off, ya hear?”

The next morning the Professor was up and dressed before anyone else. He looked tired. Van Pelt guessed he had not slept at all that night. And he did not sleep the next night. The Professor went on sick call the following morning after breakfast. When we returned from training before lunch, his equipment was gone. We never saw him again.

A couple days later we drew our rifles, the venerable M-14s. As we gathered outside the armory, I inspected my issue and tested its balance. It was an older rifle that had probably been handled by young recruits for years. Its stock had been restained and revarnished many times; the butt plate was scratched from hard landings in the manual of arms. The trigger mechanism was worn from a thousand training disassemblies and assemblies. The weapon looked like a tired old piece of rental equipment with no character, and I remembered the love affair I had with the Springfield at Oak Ridge Military Institute. The shoulder strap was old, tattered webbing, and I tightened it as much as I could so the strap would slap smartly against the stock when I handled it.

McGee called us into ranks and talked about the value of the rifle, the main tool of our trade. He said that before we learned to shoot it, we had to learn to respect it and handle it correctly. Our training for the next couple of days would be in the manual of arms—moving the weapon from the ground at our side, as we stood at attention, to “port arms” and then to “right shoulder arms” and “left shoulder arms” and finally back to the ground, “order arms.” I stood in the middle of the platoon and thought about going through the manual of arms a hundred thousand times at Oak Ridge. McGee’s description was like explaining the fundamentals of walking to an experienced hiker.

Taking a rifle from a man in the first squad, McGee demonstrated the movements. He gave himself the commands and brought the weapon up and then back to the ground again, with a bit too much waggle in his movement, I thought; he would have been reprimanded at Oak Ridge. Then he talked us through them slowly—count one, port arms; count two, right shoulder arms; count three, back to port arms; count four, left shoulder arms; count five, order arms—before giving the commands at regular speed.

The rifle movement felt familiar, and I slapped the rifle strap
as I brought it up and down. I also snapped the butt plate with my thumb as I went to right shoulder arms so that it twisted quickly into the crevice of my shoulder. I was careful to move only my arms and to keep the rest of my body absolutely still, as we had been taught on the drill team. With some pleasure, I noticed that the men in front of me were awkwardly moving their shoulders and heads as they lumbered through the drill. McGee was counting cadence as we repeated the movement. He abruptly stopped counting in mid-movement, and the platoon finished with the random clamoring of metal butt plates hitting the company street.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw McGee looking in my direction. Without a word he came through the first two ranks and stood directly in front of me. He cocked his head to one side and eyed me quizzically.

My face flushed. I had been found out. I had not stayed out of sight, and I had come to McGee’s attention. He looked at my name tag, then down at my M-14, and slowly up my uniform back to my face.

“Parker,” he said, “do dat again.”

I brought the weapon back to my right shoulder, but I did not slap the strap or snap my thumb on the butt plate. McGee told me no, do it again and make it pop, and I did. He told me to come out in front of the platoon and gave me the manual of arms orders there. When I returned the rifle to the ground, he came around in front of me and got very close to my face.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “Where’d ya learn to do dat shit?” I told him military school, and he said, “Huh.”

He stepped away and ordered me to do a left face, right face, about face, and then the manual of arms again. I moved with precision. McGee moved in front of me and again said, “Huh.”

It was altogether a grand moment, enhanced, I realized, by Van Pelt’s explanation of “the theory of relativity.” I forced myself not to smile. In the hot Georgia sun that day I had done a simple thing very well, and I felt good about myself.

“I would equate your little majorette act today as the high point so far in our little adventure here,” Van Pelt told me. We were sitting on the barracks steps and smoking after the dinner meal. “Life will not be the same for you around here, my friend.
McGee actually said something nice to you. Who knows the consequences.”

“What did he say? Tell me again.”

“He said, ‘Huh,’ like in ‘Huh, that’s pretty good.’ He’s never said ‘Huh’ to anyone I know.”

At the end of the second week we received classroom instruction on guard duties and the eleven General Orders. We had the weekend and most of the next week to memorize all of the orders. A test was scheduled for the end of the following week. McGee talked to us before we were dismissed that day and said that platoons in the company would be ranked against each other based on the test scores. The General Orders were just simple English sentences. He wanted the platoon to make the best scores in the company, and he ordered everyone to learn the General Orders perfectly. He walked up to Tate and said, “Even ya, fat lips, perfectly. I’m going to call ya out da morning of da test and ya going to recite ya General Orders. And if dis man can do hit—and he’s going to do hit—each and every one of ya can learn dese eleven very simple little sentences.”

It did not take long to memorize the orders, and I sat on my bunk during study time over the next week and read other manuals. I noticed Tate slowly, painfully reading his General Orders, over and over again. He moved his lips and occasionally squinted his eyes as he focused on a particular phrase or word. After supper the night before the test, he returned to the manual with dogged determination, but his efforts remained the same—slowly reading the orders over and over again. I walked down to his bunk.

“How’s it going?”

He looked up quickly, angrily. “Ain’t none of ya fucking business,” he said. “Why ya wanta know?”

“I know that learning the General Orders can be tough, but there are tricks to memorizing things for tests.”

“Fuck ya,” he said flatly.

“Listen.” I sat down on the end of his bunk, which I got away with because Tate was desperate. “Number one, you got to play games with your mind, Tate. Take General Order number one, for example. I say to myself, what’s the first thing I do in the morning? I charge—Charge—out of bed and take a shit on government
property. First General Order? To take charge of this post and all government property in view. The second thing I do is to walk—walk back to my bunk by that post near the head and look at everybody. That’s the second General Order: to walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing. First General Order, I charge. Second General Order, I walk. First thing I do in the morning, charge—government property. Second thing I do in the morning, walk—observe.”

Tate looked away, but he was listening to me.

“First General Order, to take charge of this post and all government property in view. Come outside in the back and we’ll go over the rest. I’m going to smoke a cigarette anyway.”

I got up and walked out by the latrine. The only light outside came from the barracks door. I sat on the stairs and lit a cigarette. Tate soon appeared at the door and walked down the few stairs to where I was sitting.

“What’s the first thing you do in the morning?” I asked without looking his way.

“I charge out da bed for a shit on government property.”

We went over each order, making nonsense out of them, but connecting them in sequence. Slowly at first and then with confidence he repeated them in order, then randomly as I called out the numbers. I told him he would do fine the next day and went inside and went to bed.

The next morning McGee called Tate in front of the platoon and asked him to give the fifth General Order. Tate hesitated a moment, then spoke clearly and loudly, “To quit my post only when properly relieved, Sergeant.”

McGee asked him the seventh and Tate responded quickly, “To talk to no one except in the line of duty, Sergeant.”

McGee said “Huh” as he backed away from Tate and looked at him. He sent Tate back into ranks and walked up to Van Pelt. “OK, Molly-Wolly, what’s da fucking tenth General Order?”

Van Pelt hesitated. Then in a short burst he said, “To give the alarm in case of fire or disorder, Sergeant.”

“Asshole, dat’s da eighth fucking order, you jack shit Molly-Wolly idiot!” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tate smiling despite himself, as he rocked back and forth slightly on his heels.

At breakfast Van Pelt asked me if I thought being a “jack shit Molly-Wolly idiot” was hereditary.

The next week Cassius Clay was to fight Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship of the world, and Tate and I decided that Liston would break Clay’s smart-ass face. Liston was a three-to-one favorite, and it was hard to get a bet on Clay in our company. I offered five-to-one. Ten dollars on Clay would get fifty if he won, and I had some takers. No money passed hands before the fight, but Van Pelt kept the books. I had almost five hundred dollars of my money at risk, having taken in one hundred dollars in committed bets on Clay. I was slightly overextended; we were making only eighty-four dollars a month as army privates. I would be about three hundred dollars short if Liston lost, but I saw no problem. Liston was absolutely a sure bet. Tate promised to help me collect.

We listened to the fight on the radio. Liston did not answer the bell for the seventh round—despite my desperate yells—and I was suddenly surrounded by people who wanted to collect on their bets. I had to scurry around that night and borrow money from McDiarmid, Tate, and Van Pelt to cover my losses. Van Pelt said it was a typical lowlife maneuver to lay long odds on a loser. He reckoned it did not bode well for my life as a risk taker, as in being a soldier or fighting a war. To do any soldiering, one needed to be lucky. He wasn’t sure this line of work was up my alley—“You lost five hundred dollars—that’s more than you make in six months, you dumb Molly-Wolly.”

Tate became something of a shadow, sitting beside me in class and in the mess hall. He simply had no social skills, and I often acted as his spokesman. In turn, he provided security and an intimidating presence to others when we were together, an enhanced status not lost on Sergeant McGee. I was awarded “Outstanding Trainee” at graduation from basic training. As we were packing up to go to separate advanced infantry training (AIT) companies, I went down to Tate’s bunk. He was reading a comic book. I wished him well in life. “Yeah,” he said, but he did not smile, as if our brief friendship was over and he was going back to his more hostile, antisocial nature, the only way he knew to meet the challenges ahead.