Born on the Fourth of July (8 page)

“Good afternoon men,” the tall marine said. “We have come today because they told us that some of you want to become marines.” He told us that the marines took nothing but the best, that if any of us did not think we were good enough, we should not even think of joining. The tall marine spoke in a very beautiful way about the exciting history of the marines and how they had never lost and America had never been defeated.

“The marines have been the first in everything, first to fight and first to uphold the honor of our country. We have served on distant shores and at home, and we have always come when our country has called. There is nothing finer, nothing prouder, than a United States Marine.”

When they were finished, they efficiently picked up their papers and marched together down the steps of the stage to where a small crowd of boys began to gather. I couldn't wait to run down after them, meet with them and shake their hands. And as I shook their hands and stared up into their eyes, I couldn't help but feel I was shaking hands with John Wayne and Audie Murphy. They told us that day that the Marine Corps built men—body, mind, and spirit. And that we could serve our country like the young president had asked us to do.

We were all going in different directions and we had our whole lives ahead of us, and a million different dreams. I can still remember the last stickball game. I stood at home plate with the sun in my face and looked out at Richie, Pete, and the rest. It was our last summer together and the last stickball game we ever played on Hamilton Avenue.

One day that summer I quit my job at the food store and went to the little red, white, and blue shack in Levittown. My father and I went down together. It was September by the time all the paperwork was completed, September 1964. I was going to leave on a train one morning and become a marine.

I stayed up most of the night before I left, watching the late movie. Then “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. I remember standing up and feeling very patriotic, chills running up and down my spine. I put my hand over my heart and stood rigid at attention until the screen went blank.

A
WRIGHT, LADIES!”
shouted the sergeant again. “My name is Staff Sergeant Joseph. This—” he said, pointing to the short sergeant at the end of the formation, “this is Sergeant Mullins. I am your senior drill instructor and he is your junior drill instructor. You will obey both of us. You will listen to everything we say. You will do everything we tell you to do. Your souls today may belong to God, but your asses belong to the United States Marine Corps!” The sergeant swaggered sharply back and forth in front of the formation, almost bouncing up and down on his heels, his long thin hands sliding up and down against his hips. “I want you swinging dicks to stand straight at attention, do you hear me? I don't want you people to look left or right, I want you people to stand straight ahead.”

It was unbearably hot. He could feel the sweat rolling off his face. He was afraid to look either way and he stared straight ahead like he'd been told.

“Left face!” screamed the sergeant.

“You goddamned idiots!” screamed the short sergeant again. “You're turned the wrong way. You goddamned fucking people, you goddamned scum, when are you people gonna listen, when are you people gonna learn? You came here to be marines.”

The short sergeant was laughing now. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, picking out one of the young boys, the tips of his shiny shoes almost touching the tips of the ones the boy wore. “You no good fucking civilian maggot,” he screamed in the boy's ears. “You're worthless, do you understand? And I'm gonna kill you. There are eighty of you, eighty young warm bodies, eighty sweet little ladies, eighty sweetpeas, and I want you maggots to know today that you belong to me and you will belong to me until I have made you into marines.”

The formation was very sloppy. It didn't look to him like a military formation at all. He was trying so hard, standing straight and looking straight ahead and cupping his hands right along the seams of his trousers the way the guidebook had taught him, the way Richie and he had practiced it so many times. He was straining till he felt his hands almost go numb, he was trying so hard to be a good marine and do what they said and boot camp hadn't even started yet. But he was determined, even though he didn't understand why they had to be so angry and so mean, why they had to scream and shout and curse the way they did. He couldn't understand that, but it didn't matter. He was going to make it, he was going to do what they said, like a good marine.

They took them from the place where they had stayed that night and marched them and ran them shouting and screaming, eighty of them, dressed in suits and ties and sweatshirts and T-shirts, long-haired and short-haired, short ones and fat ones, kids from New Jersey, kids from Detroit, the drill instructor almost stepping on the boys' heels, taunting and threatening, “Let's go! Let's go!” He looked up at the sky as he ran; he could hardly breathe.

“Awright, awright, all you maggots, get in there!”

They had come to what looked like a large hangar. And they marched, all eighty, single file, with their heads straight ahead, into the aluminum structure, with the chrome-domes they had just gotten spinning on their heads, their cartridge belts loosely fitted, jumping and dangling from their waists. They didn't look like marines, he thought, they looked like Richie and Pete and the rest of the guys, running into Sally's Woods for a game of guns. What was going on here? he thought. What was happening? It wasn't anything like he thought it would be. Why did they have to push them and shove them and kick them and scream and shout? But before he could even get his thoughts together, they put them in a long line and made them face a line of large wooden boxes. He saw that each box had a number painted on it.

“I want you to take your clothes off,” the sergeant shouted. “I want you to take off everything that ever reminded you of being a civilian and put it in the box. Do you see that box in front of you and that number? I want everything!” he said. “Now do it, ladies! Quickly, now, quickly!”

As soon as the sergeant had said it, all the young boys began tearing their clothing off, unbuckling their belts, pulling off their shirts, their pants, their shoes, their socks. Everything went. Everything. And as they took their last bits of clothing off, the short sergeant began racing back and forth along the line, screaming into the ears of the young boys, cursing them and jabbing his hands hard into their backs.

He had a small medal around his neck. It was the one Mom had given him for Christmas. He had kept it on for years, all through high school, and even down in the basement wrestling practice, he had never taken it off. And now the short sergeant was pointing at it with his finger, laughing, then shouting for him to throw it in the box that had the number painted on the side.

“Can I keep it?” he said.

“Don't talk back to me,” screamed the sergeant. “You fucking maggot. Don't you ever talk back to me!” The sergeant grabbed the medal from his hand and threw it in the box. And now he found himself turning slowly to where the thunderous sound of the drill instructor's voice came from, and he was moving now, stepping and marching, almost running, and then stepping again. He didn't know what to do. They were screaming in his ears again, shouting, cursing. The short guy punched him again and again, and he felt his breath burst from his lungs, twisting and bending him over.

“I'm trying,” he said.

“Get in step!” screamed the sergeant.

Stepping, marching, running. “Get in step, people! Come on, people! Let's go, people!” He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to do it. He wanted to go home, then he didn't. Then he wanted to, then he didn't know what he wanted to do. They were driving him and pushing him and shoving him, screaming and bullying him through this whole crazy thing. He kept thinking over and over and over again that this day, this place, the screaming shouting voices in his ears, in all their ears, roaring like thunder were like angry hate! Oh get us out! Get us out! God, help us!

And they threw them into a barbershop that was more like a factory where there was hair flying all over the place, his hair, everyone's hair, all the hair of the boys who had come to be marines that day. Men as angry and as cold as the sergeants shaved the hair off their heads until he could feel the warm soft wind that swept through the hangar on his head too. They had made them completely bald, and he looked around as he sat on the chair, and the guys who were cutting, the guys who were shaving all their hair off, weren't even looking at the heads, but just cutting like guys shearing sheep.

“Get the fuck up!” screamed the barber. “Next!” he shouted, and the next young boy jumped into the chair staring straight ahead.

He found himself being swept along with all the young boys, now strange looking, naked like himself. Young bodies tense and twisted naked together, grasping on to each other, holding on like children. Where were they going? he thought. What were they becoming? Shoved and pushed by the drill instructors, they continued to move, from the barbershop where their heads had been shaved, through the long metal hallways of the hangar into the showers.

“Wash all that scum off!” screamed the sergeant. “I want you maggots to wash all that civilian scum off your bodies forever!” And now he felt the soothing hot water streaming down his back and onto his legs. Oh, he could feel it splash hot against his bald head. It felt so good, so warm and different from their angry screams. And before he could begin to even feel comfortable, someone was shouting at him again and telling him to get out of the shower, back into the place where he had been before, in front of his box again. And he ran with the others, their bodies naked and dripping with water, all eighty shaved and washed clean and their clothing packed tightly to be mailed back home. And now they all stood rigid at attention, their hands at their sides, facing the boxes with the painted numbers.

“Awright people, awright people!” said the sergeant. “We're gonna issue you clothing.” There were marine privates walking past the boxes throwing in green belts and trousers, utility caps and long black socks. “Awright ladies!” screamed the sergeant. “We are going to begin today by learning how to dress. I want you to look down into your boxes and I want you to look for a pair of black socks. Do you see that pair of black socks, ladies?”

“Yessir!” screamed the eighty boys.

“Again!” shouted the sergeant.

“Yessir!” screamed the young men.

“Now I want you to grab that pair of black socks, when I tell you to,” he said, almost hesitating. “And when I tell you to grab them I want you to put them on. Do you understand that, ladies?”

“Yessir!”

“Do it!” shouted the short sergeant. And one hundred and sixty hands reached into the boxes, searching for the black socks and putting them on their feet as quickly as they could.

“Grab your trousers!” shouted the sergeant. “These are trousers,” he shouted. “Not pants! Pants are for little girls!
Trousers
are for marines! Put your trousers on!” he commanded.

“Yessir!” they screamed and they grabbed their trousers and then their belts and then their skivvy shirts and jackets and utility caps, until they all stood dressed together inside that hangar. Many of the uniforms didn't fit. He could feel his cap covering his face, he was almost swimming in it, and his enormous pants hung down below his boots that didn't fit either. He felt like a ragamuffin doll. He thought he must look like some kind of painter, with his painting cap turned all sideways on his head. He felt so silly. He looked around him and some of the others looked worse than he did. There was one short kid who seemed to have his belt buckle up to his chest and his hat seemed to cover his whole face too.

Why, there was a tall guy, to the right of him down at the end, yeah there was a tall guy whose pants were way too short and his shirt, he thought, belonged on the little kid who was swimming in his stuff. There was a fat kid who couldn't get his pants on at all and the drill instructor was screaming at him, cursing him, and telling him he'd never make it through boot camp alive, he'd never become a marine.

They were all crowding around the fat guy, all the drill instructors, there must have been six of them standing all around that fat kid, circling him for the kill with their angry stares and one at a time they'd scream into his ears, laughing at him and cursing him because he couldn't fit into his pants.

He kept looking from the corner of his eye, and all of them, all of them on the other side of the fat kid, they all seemed to be looking the way he was, trying to see what was going to happen next. And now he remembered that kid, he was the same one on the bus after they had landed in Raleigh, he was the same kid that had stood up and boasted on the bus, with both hands on his hips, that his father had won a whole lot of medals in World War II and he'd killed a whole bunch of Germans. Yeah, it was the same kid. The same one who told everyone he wasn't afraid of anything. Now they had him surrounded so you couldn't see what was happening, and they were punching him, yeah punching, he could hear that fat kid shout every time they jabbed their tight fists into his gut. And now he sounded like a little whining three-year-old, he sounded like a little baby, he was just like a little frightened baby.

“Are you gonna cry?” screamed the sergeant. “Is that what's gonna happen? Everybody, I want you to look at this, look over here, people, I want you to see the baby cry!”

Everyone looked over to where the fat kid was.

“Are those tears?” screamed the sergeant. They were all laughing now, laughing, rocking back and forth on their heels, their hands on their hips.

“Cry!” screamed the sergeant. “Cry Cry Cry you little baby! That's what we want, we want you people to cry like little babies because that's all you maggots are. You are nothing!”