Things were going so well, like I had turned the corner and neared a level of respect with the cadre and other Privates. It did not last. That night I slipped again. While we sang cadence, I didn't hear the barracks door open and shut. I only heard someone say:
"Female on the floor!"
I said the first thing that came into my head.
"Female on the floor?" I asked. "How about female in my bunk?" Then I said to Shipman, Waters, and Major, "Know what I'm saying?"
But none of the others laughed. Instead, they moved away, tracking east, south, and west, leaving me to stand alone by the bunk. I said, "Where y'all going?"
A shadow fell upon me. The aura of a pressed uniform crackled the air around me. I didn't even need to turn to know it was a Drill. I faced the issue, and yes, a female Drill snorted at me, with her hair bunned tight as catgut. She had no make-up on, but I did detect a slight perfume, or deodorant. It was the scent of a mannish woman.
Her name was Drill Sergeant Radcliffe from third platoon, making a surprise visit to second platoon on a Saturday night. Up close she reminded me of Orta, from Panzer Dragoon on Xbox.
She grabbed me by the ear, like I was toddler. "Did you really just say," she orked, "what I think you said?"
My quiet night turned into a mess, a clusterbomb spilled wherever I walked. Drill Sergeant Orta summoned her Dragoons, her fellow Drills, from the four corners of Fort Leonard Wood and, honestly, she overreacted to my comment. I'm sure my fellow Privates felt the same way, but they misdirected their anger at me instead of Orta, blaming me for having to exercise all night. The whole company was rolled out of bed on a Saturday night for physical training by moonlight. Drill Sergeant Pfeffer, who was allegedly lounging at home, drove back to Leonard Wood simply to take part in the smoking of two hundred forty Privates.
Flutter-kicks can exhaust the stoutest soldier. After ten, I was bushed, but Pfeffer thought I could push out a few more, even though I warned him that I was prone to hernias.
"Flutter!" Pfeffer screamed with a vein jutting out of his forehead like a fault-line. "Flutter!" He called me fatty and other names, like manatee, beluga, and seacow, earning lots of laughs.
While lying on our backs and performing flutter-kicks, Orta delivered an impromptu lesson on Sexual Harassment, making a fuss over my transition from "Female on the floor" to "Female in my bunk." After a while I only heard certain words being repeated, like "explicitly," "victim," "appropriate actions," and "wrongdoing." On top of this, she said that "Free-Day-Away" was now cancelled, which drew a large gasp from the crowd and daggered eyes of Privates fell on me.
The barrage did not conclude when Orta finally called us to attention. We expected to hear, "Fall out" or "Dismissed" but Orta called, "Right, Face," and marched us off to a pit of dirt and wood chips. Pfeffer loped alongside, running backwards and laughing, with his tongue hanging out like a basset hound. He kept complimenting his friend Orta, calling her his hero.
For another hour, we rolled back and forth in the wood chips, left and right, did push-ups, flutter-kicks, and so forth. At this point, I started considering what I had said, and the more I thought about the words, the more I was convinced that Orta had definitely misquoted me. Even so, Orta had impressed my guilt so directly into the company, that later on, no one had a sense of humor.
Later, I had to plead my case in the Drill Sergeant's office, where Orta wrote up a sexual harassment counseling statement.
Pfeffer, shoveling in a late-night snack of potato salad, almost choked when I said I meant "female in my bunk" as a compliment to Orta. With his mouth full of a white and yellow half-chewed goop, he said, "Sprungli, the more your talk the worse it gets." His fork danced on the potato salad, and his head wobbled on his neck.
"I haven't quite figured you out yet, Sprungli," Orta said, watching me perform a push-up. "Either you will be drummed out of the Army, or you'll make Sergeant Major."
"Or," Pfeffer said, "I will stomp a mudhole in his chest."
Orta laughed. "Don't do him any favors."
They concocted the wording on my counseling statement while preaching advice to me. The longer I sat there, it began to make sense. Eventually Orta left the room to make rounds in the barracks. When she left, I worried that Pfeffer might destroy me. But he calmed and did not treat me like a maggot. For a bit, he seemed like a normal human. But even then I knew he was not - he was an Airborne Ranger. Whenever he spoke, I could only look at the Ranger Tab on his shoulder. God, how I wanted to tear it off and have some old woman sew it onto my uniform. When I responded to him, it was not to a man named Pfeffer, not to a Drill Sergeant, but to that small patch on his arm.
"Yes, Ranger Tab," I thought.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you, Sprungli, that you're an idiot?"
"Many times, Drill Sergeant"
"Too many times, that's the problem," he said. "You could do just fine here, Sprungli. Drill Sergeant Pint tells me that you have family in the military. So what's your problem then? Why can't you figure it out and fit in?"
"Slightly retarded, Drill Sergeant."
"That's not uncommon here, but you can still fall in line. Don't need to be a genius to show up on time and shine boots. Those things anyone can do. I didn't exactly excel in school, but I can soldier."
"Have you been to Iraq, Drill Sergeant?" I asked, worrying that I had crossed a line in asking him anything personal.
"Been there?" The toothpick fell out of his mouth but he caught it softly in his hand. "I'm trying to get back over there. Every day of the week I call the Regiment and ask my chain of command to find me a seat in the next unit rolling out, as long as it ain't with some Reserve rag. But this ain't a conversation, Sprungli. We're not girlfriends here. Don't get confused about how things work. Don't ask me any questions."
"Yes, Drill Sergeant."
"I want you to think about one thing Spungli. Look at my boots, Private. Just look at these boots."
The boots reflected the lights in the room. I could have used his toes as a mirror to comb my hair, if I had any hair. No polish smears whatsoever - gleaming in the light - waxed to perfection. I idolized those boots.
"Take pride in little things, like boots. Take one thing at a time and do it right." He adjusted his crotch with his non-toothpick hand.
"I'm not trying to screw up, I'm just…"
"Don't explain. Your explanations don't mean squat around here. Excuses are like assholes, everybody got one. I don't care if you know people that could buy and sell me, it don't matter here. If you need an extra maxi-pad to get you through the night, I can get you one. What you need to do, Sprungli, is plain as day if you open your eyes."
"What's that?" I asked.
"I'm sayin' that you need to wake up. Once you learn to love being a soldier, you got no problems. When I was your age, I got in a lot of trouble myself, but sooner or later, I figured it out. I love being a soldier. Not some toy-soldier in Class A uniform, but a grunt. Every morning when we march outside for PT, I can't wait to lie down in the cold, wet grass. I love it because I should hate it, because I know it makes me stronger, because I know weaker soldiers don't love it. I like snapping the starch in the elbows when I get dressed in the morning and going to bed crumpled and tired from a day well worn. Everything is simple in the Army, Sprungli. Life here has no unnecessary parts. All I need in this world is two liters of water and a mission.
"I'm not one for worrying about staining my deck and mowing the lawn, I'll tell you that. Give me a barracks, where you can eat off the floor, where every minute of the clock gets used and everyone shows up ten minutes early to formation, hungover and heartbroke. It's a big support group for you, Sprungli, if you get in line and close your mouth. There is no better group of people than those in the United States military. Ain't no such thing as race or creed here. If world peace happened, I would still be a soldier. No other job suits me. I don't even
need to have an enemy. I just need to be a soldier."
My throat was dry from listening to him.
"And that's the frame of mind you need to find, Sprungli." Pfeffer broke his toothpick. "Get rid of your old thinking. You grew up thinking you were something special, unique, thinking happiness is normal, something you deserved. But it's not real, it's a fantasy that's not coming." The bent toothpick sailed through the air and landed perfectly in the center of the trash can. "As far as I can tell you, the only thing that's worth thinking about is bringing honor to your unit and the United States Army."
I said, "Yes, Drill Sergeant."
Chapter 17. Free-Day-Away