The Scummers

Twenty-Five

136 Twenty-Five Fort Gordon, Georgia March 1961 The early morning light had barely hit the tops of the barracks buildings but we already sat on the bus, more than twenty of us, waiting. Our stay at Military Police Training School was over. We were leaving . Even I was leaving. Swink had seen to that. The bus reminded me of the buses I once rode to high school, except that this one was painted olive drab. I sat at the very back. I hated buses, but if I had to ride one, I didn’t want anyone behind me. There was one consolation to being on the bus—Starker wasn’t there. In fact, I hadn’t seen Starker for a while. After that business with the pistol they had kept us locked up in an empty barracks building for a couple of days, then put me back in training as though nothing had happened. A few days after that, Starker’s uniforms were gone, and the mattress on his bunk had been rolled. He had simply disappeared from the barracks, just dropped out of sight. Those last couple of weeks were the only good ones I ever had at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Or any other place in the goddamn army. The bus was parked in front of the training company headquarters , another old barracks building propped up off the ground by ancient concrete blocks. We were waiting for Swink to come aboard and give his goodbye speech. Officers at training companies always had goodbye speeches. It was cold gray early morning and the sweat and warm breath of the men had already fogged up the windows. I took mental inventory of the men who sprawled in 137 the seats. With one or two exceptions I thought they were the scum of the training company graduating class, myself included. They were a total collection of misfits—too small, too thin, too fat, or too stupid to be real MPs. This was actually interesting, I thought. If these guys can’t be real MPs, what the hell can they be? I knew the whole bunch was headed to North Depot Activity, some lonely little storage depot in Upstate New York. Jesus, I wondered, what the hell kind of place is North Depot Activity, that it can make use of this bunch of total jerk-offs? Including me. But there were a couple of exceptions on the bus, men who could be real soldiers, real MPs. The only one I knew personally was Hays Tucker. They called him “Kansas.” He was handsome, serious, stood well over six feet, had the build of a linebacker, and carried himself with pride and dignity. He had been in a different platoon during training, but I spent so much time on KP I had gotten to know some of the other men. Tucker was one of the best men in the training company, always standing first in the classes, always prepared. He seemed to be the ideal career soldier, and he looked the part. He obviously liked the training, liked the work, liked the discipline. In spite of myself, I thought I might like Tucker. But how the hell did Tucker end up here, on this bus, with the sorriest bunch of newly minted MPs in the history of the army? It made no sense at all. I slid over to my right and wiped the window off with my sleeve. There was no one outside the bus, no one to see us off. The training company area was empty and silent. And then I saw Swink come out of the headquarters building. Behind him, two MPs were leading Starker to the bus. Shit, I said to myself. Shitshitshit. How the hell does he do it? How 138 the hell does he pull this shit on the army, time after time, and they still leave him in? It just doesn’t figure. Who the hell is this guy? The doors of the bus pushed open and Swink got on, standing at the head of the aisle. No one spoke. Swink stood there for a moment , staring in my general direction. His right arm hung angled in a cast, the plaster reaching from his fingertips to his shoulder. The cast had appeared the morning after he did the swan dive from the pile of ammo boxes. Arm was broken in four places, so we heard...