The Scummers

Twenty-One

112 Twenty-One Fort Gordon, Georgia January 1961 Somewhere along the way—I thought it was just after basic training —Christmas had come and gone. They did not let me go home during the holidays; I was one of the few who did not get Christmas leave. I needed the additional training, they said, and so I heard Christmas carols played over the scratchy public address systems of Fort Ord, California. I painted part of a colonel’s house, repaired two vintage motorcycles owned by a major, and then spent a week-and-a-half on KP. But it was okay, I told myself. I wouldn’t have gone home, anyway. Besides, where the hell was home? If they had turned me loose, where would I have gone? Anywhere. Anywhere at all. Once, and only once, did they give me a day pass to go off the post. I went into town and found a small jewelry store. I knew the army blamed me for the Indian’s disappearance. I tried to explain that no one had to help Wendell Klah disappear, that the Indian could disappear whenever he damn well felt like it, mentally and physically. The army didn’t buy it. They were sure that, somehow, I had been in on it, only they couldn’t figure out how. In the end, they didn’t care. They couldn’t court martial me— there was absolutely no evidence that I had done anything wrong. But I was beginning to realize there were worse things in the army than court martial. Yes, there was. 113 In a classic piece of irony, especially for the army, they told me they were sending me to Fort Gordon, Georgia. U.S. Army Military Police Training School. I laughed for ten minutes straight. The sergeant who handed me the orders tried to get me straightened up, shouted at me, ordered me, but nothing worked. I fell on the floor, rolled over, gripped my sides. My God, I thought, the army has one messed up sense of humor. Still, I really couldn’t figure out why they were sending me to MP school. I thought maybe MPs, as a group, were probably hated by all the other branches of the army, and maybe the worst thing the army could do to someone it didn’t like—and it sure as hell didn’t like me—was to make an MP of him. But maybe it wasn’t the worst thing the army could do. Maybe it was just the funniest thing. So, for whatever reason, they shipped me to Fort Gordon. I didn’t go with other graduating recruits. All the others going to Gordon had been sent home for Christmas and would go to Georgia when their Christmas leave was over. I traveled alone. But it didn’t matter. At least I was away from Starker. Actually, that was my one regret. After Starker ripped me with the training grenade, I spent days toying with different ideas on how to get payback. It couldn’t be just any old way—I couldn’t just walk up to him and kick him down the stairs. Too simple. Too easy. No real creativity. Or so I thought. Finally, I just got tired of trying to figure it out. One morning, on the way out of the squad bay, I saw Starker in front of me. “Hey, asshole.” Starker turned to face me—and I raised my leg and kicked the son of a bitch backward down the stairs. He tumbled, elbows, knees, feet, head all smacking into the hard surfaces. 114 For a moment, no one moved. And then I heard the slow, rhythmic sound of forty men, clapping in unison. My reputation preceded me. Some sergeant at Fort Ord knew some sergeant at Fort Gordon, and I was marked for shit details from the first day I arrived in Georgia. During my first four days at Gordon I was kept on KP eighteen hours a day. And then the army seemed to forget about me. I sat for two days in an empty barracks building, waiting to be assigned to a training company. As far as I had been able to tell, all the barracks buildings in the entire training area were the same: thin, frail, wooden, and built before World War II. The planks didn’t fit and the windows hung loose...