The Scummers

Sixteen

87 Sixteen Fort Ord, California October 1960 Fort Ord, California. U.S. Army Basic Infantry Training. I don’t really have to explain basic training. If you ever saw Tab Hunter in the movie Battle Cry you get the idea. Sure, Tab was in the Marines and I was in the army, but it was all the same. Same bullshit, different uniform. Actually, I liked that movie. I liked Tab Hunter. Hell, I even like him now. Way to go, Tab. The walls of the three-story barracks building were raw cinder block, covered with some sort of white coating that crumbled and flaked in the dim sunlight of winter on the California coast. Inside, on the third floor, in the huge room that served as squad bay for our training platoon, the light played softly off the polished tile floor, bouncing along the edges of the two rows of double-decker metal bunks set perfectly aligned along each wall. I sat on my bunk, eyes fixed on the window and the gray clouds that hung on the horizon, over the rooftops and beyond the limits of the huge army base. I could smell the salt in the air from the ocean. I remembered the smell of salt air. It was the same air I had smelled back in South Carolina, back on a beach where the girls came down to sit in the sun, Kleenex stuffed down into the tops of their bathing suits, under their tits. The room was empty, as it almost always was when I was there. Which fit with everything I had seen of the army so far. From the very first, from the way they treated me, spoke to me—when they absolutely had to speak to me—the army made it clear that it knew 88 how I got there, made it clear that it didn’t particularly like guys who had been sentenced to service in the army, made it clear that I was nothing, that I would never be more than nothing. Made it clear that, at the first opportunity, they would cleanse the army of my presence. They had a simple way of showing their dislike, one that every other soldier would recognize—they kept me on KP and on other jobs that were called “shit details” Other than the Indian, I paid little attention to anyone in basic training. They were faces, numbers, carriers of rifles, shiners of boots, kissers of asses. I didn’t know them when I came in and I didn’t want to know them when I went out. The Indian? For some reason, while the army kept kicking my ass all the time, it paid little or no attention to the Indian. He was just there. Somewhere. Usually, they kept me and the Indian apart. We had been sentenced to the army together, and the army seemed afraid of that. In the squad bay, my bunk was on one side of the room, Wendell’s on the other. But I could see him in the weak light of California nights. In the hard hours of early morning we would leave our bunks and sit together against the wall and talk, and plan, and dream. Or at least talk as much as I could get Wendell to talk. And then there was Starker. Yeah, Starker. The asshole from the holding barracks. He had shown up in our training company during the first week. I was surprised to see him, thinking maybe the army had decided to dump the lying son of a bitch. No such luck. He was here, and they put him in our platoon. And I could see the pale remains of old, large bruises across his face. Starker never spoke to me. In fact, I never saw him speak to anyone . In the holding barracks he had made it clear how he felt about 89 me, Wendell, and other races in general. But now he said nothing, not to anybody. But I could tell he was watching me, trying to see what made me go, what made me stop. The bastard was studying me. When I eased out of my bunk in the middle of the night to sit with Wendell and talk, I had to move past Starker’s bunk. He lay on the bunk on his back, his arms down at his sides, stiffly, as though he were...