Boot Camp Blues

The questions came hard and rapid; none with any clear sharp answers; none delivered with the slightest care how they were interpreted; no thought to asking for or expecting the truth.  They were merely questions for questions sake.  The answers and the answerer appeared irrelevant.

Some people lie more easily than others.  Some lie more easily than tell the truth.  Perhaps, it's due to a lack of experience, perhaps just a lack of ability.

No one could answer when life became constricted or when it appeared to glide as if in a vacuum tube, completely beyond anything but the backward direction of the wind.  The only resistance was the silent scrape of heels against a frictionless surface of indifference.

How did he rise to where he was?  The road was littered with bumps barely causing slight jars or slight changes of direction, never off course.  Bumps, or were those people?  He couldn't remember and he tried not to dwell.  He knew better.

The freefall of the vacuum was drawing him somewhere and he just wished he could care.  Imagine caring about the people he had hurt; the people he had ignored; the people he had used; the lives beyond repair.

He sat back in the wooden chair designed for discomfort and tried to feel something; tried to focus on what he was saying; tried to interject some emotion into the room.  He could see how the drones of the words and the lack of sensation was positively unsettling to the faces confronting him, the faces searching for something, some clue to his humanity.  He could see it.  He could hear it in the rise of the voices, the timber, and the cadence of their prefaces.  He could hear it.  He always could.

Usually, he knew to smile, to frown, to wink an eye and turn the tides.  He knew.  A pleasing face and a credible audience, light on intelligence, were a dangerous combination.  They all worked to his favor.  Why should today be any different?

He began to read panic on the faces of the attorneys lining the back of the chamber.  He saw their stoic facades imperceptibly crumble, as their well-prepared testimony could find no resonance in him.  Not a word, not a phrase, not a sentence, could he perfect.  All that came out was the sharpest of retorts, the meanest of intentions, and the absence of a questioning voice.  All delivered as though so obvious that none should elicit awe or wonder, only contempt.

Sadly, he couldn't feel it.

As his voice went dry and raspy, the judge asked if he needed water or needed a break.  He chose neither.  The court stenographer moved closer and the bailiff moved the mike directly below his five o'clock shadow, where the absence of spittle negated the possibility of soiling the microphone.

He continued on, describing each act, each time, with repeated dispassionate discourse, as though describing another, drenched in guiltless remorse and disconnected from the poisons he unleashed upon the world, not excluding himself.

The inevitability of their crimes appeared to elude everyone but himself, as again the frictionless vacuum came to mind.  His mother would be proud if not riveted with envy.  She had no guilt about what she'd created or about all that she'd done.

Ah, there it was, his first slip, his first fall.  The first imperfect lie was dealt.  Did anyone notice?  They must have.  He could discern a change in posture, a turn of the head, with the dominant ear cast forward.  He continued on, but was cut short by another question; a question more nuanced than absolutely necessary, meant to make clear the schism in his story.

It all began to unravel.  He couldn't keep up.  He couldn't keep out emotion.  The passion was there, continually stripped bare by question after question, innuendo after innuendo, and exposed lies.  He began to perspire.  He took the glass of water.  He swallowed hard gulping air as well as water.  The chair became more stone than wood.  His back hurt.  His thighs hurt from straining not to shake.  His eyes hurt from staring.  The mike was filled with spittle.  His hands were clenched tightly in his lap otherwise; they would have been shaking or worse yet, tapping.

He had failed.  He'd never failed before.  He was summarily dismissed.  No one looked at him as he stepped from the witness chair.  Now another would be summoned forth to testify, a tool not as skilled as he.  He was no longer his brother's keeper.  He was simply a man whose feet had stuck to the vacuum tube.  He could not go forward, though he could never go back.  It had worked.

As he sat in the rear of the courtroom, he was drawn back into his past.  The trashcans had stopped echoing in the barracks, though the yelling continued.  Young men were cast about in all directions, confused, half-dressed, shaking and full of fear.  He calmly climbed out of bed, fully dressed and clean-shaven.  Lying still in bed for the four-hour nap had left a cot very easily arranged to near-perfection.  It was too soon for perfection.  He knew that.

He walked outside and stood in the makeshift platoon, hours before daylight.  He knew that soon they would be arranged by height, and due to his height and build, he would be near the front, but he wanted more.  He'd be patient.  It would come.

He watched silently as his brother lumbered out, fairly close to the last person, the one who had two lumbering platoon sergeants yelling in his ears.  Close, but no cigar he noted, but that was his brother's way.  He'd soon have more evidence of that.  He'd find out his brother was more comfortable in the back than in the front, support rather than lead.  His shorter height guaranteed his placement in the coming days.  But, even from here, his brother stunned.  He was as neatly dressed, as cleanly shaven, and just as calm.  They were a dangerous duo, even if no one knew it, not even them.

The only evidence of their kindred spirit, if anyone noticed, was when they entered the chow hall.  They rushed in, grabbed their food, scarfed it down in gulps, and ran out, long before the screaming recommenced.  This was routine.  They'd been there before.  Doubtful that anyone noticed, why would he?

Later, standing in line, he was amazed to see these guys crying like babies as their heads were shaved.  He knew they should be happy to have one less thing to worry about over the coming weeks.  Hair was just hair.  Surviving boot camp was something else.  He'd never seen anyone so resistant to giving up a pair of jeans and a ragged shirt.  Uniforms were so much better.  In a uniform, you had to work to stand out; otherwise, you were just so much background.

That night, he called his father and wondered aloud if he had made a mistake.  Maybe, he should have taken the scholarship and gone to college, even if it was a second-tier school.  His father bade him goodnight and told him that looking back only revealed a reflection, not a reality.  It was the best advice he'd ever given him.  He decided to stick it out.  He never even knew he needed the support until many years later when his father was no longer around. The old man really knew something about life.  He spent many nights looking for that support again.

Something said in the courtroom brought him back to reality.  He felt it rather than heard it, and what he felt was an abrupt shift in the blame game.  He was now hearing his brother sling insults at the court and daring them to do the upstanding thing and send someone to prison.  He was daring them to send them all to prison.  They just needed to be sure they were accusing and sending the right people.

What was he doing?  They'd prepared in exquisite detail how they were going to pull this off and now this idiot was rocking the applecart. Or was he?  Neither of them had been accused of anything.  They'd been subpoenaed by the grand jury and treated as hostile witnesses.  Maybe a little hostility was in order.  He leaned forward to watch.

The first time he'd witnessed a spectacle such as this was during their final callisthenic drill, where they'd been placed in teams and told they would all be graded by their weakest link.  He learned that day that finishing first did not guarantee success; it only prolonged the agony of defeat as the minutes clicked away waiting for the last guy to cross the finish line.  It really sucked to watch your hard work dwindle into nothingness completely beyond your control.

His brother had chosen a different tact.  Even with his small body, he was powerfully built, swift of feet, and to his credit, able to encourage even the slowest guy in his troop to suffer gladly gasping for air, rather than disappoint the little firecracker.  Even the fat guy, who would go on to qualify for nuclear submariner school, huffed and puffed across the line with the little one actually bringing up the rear.  Their troop finished several minutes ahead of the next closest competitors.  It wasn't even funny; it was infuriating.  He found out later that the little dynamo had been working with the booger-eater for weeks preparing him for the finals.

He'd seen a different side of him that day and he wasn't sure he liked what he saw.  Sometimes he couldn't stand the little twerp second-guessing him, especially when it worked.  He'd been taught to toss dead weight, not draw it close enough to smother you.  And here he was, pushing the dust-ball eater across the line.  The company commander had been so impressed that he recommended the little twerp for officer's candidate school.  It looked like they were going to continue to be confined together like two peas in a pod.  He guessed he didn't mind, as long as he was the first pea.

He tried to relax himself and return to the spectacle.  He hoped the little worm wouldn't get them all killed.  Now he wasn't so sure keeping him in the dark was such a good idea.  Maybe he didn't realize the risk he was taking.  He probably thought he was just pushing the fat boy across the line.  Perhaps, he was.

To be continued...