Battle Dress (6 page)

One of his smacks?
My eyes jerked from his face to his name tag. DAILY. The hairs on my arms stood at attention.

“Remember me, Davis?” He leaned closer, peering into my face. “I remember you!” he sneered. “Surprise! I’m your squad leader!” And as he marched me away, he said, “Yes, siree. We’re going to have
some
fun this summer, you and me. I can hardly wait.”

After fitting me with a pair of new black shoes so ugly that even my mother would have tossed into the Goodwill Dumpster, Cadet Daily said, “Double-time to your room, Davis. Dig White Over Gray out of your barracks bag and get it on.” I must have had a clueless look on my face, because he shook his head and said, very slowly and deliberately, like he was talking to someone who was speaking English for the first time, “White Over Gray. That would be a uniform ...
this
uniform.” He pointed to each piece of his uniform. “White shirt. Gray trou. Get it? White
Over
Gray.” He tugged on the pieces of gray fabric stuck on each of his shoulders. “Epaulets. Yours are plain gray. No gold stripes or upperclass brass for you,” he added, pointing to his shiny gray crests. “Black belt. Gold buckle. Hat.” He tapped his with his index finger. “Mine’s white.
Yours
is gray. Name tag. And white gloves.” He checked his watch. “I’ll be by your room to check you off in a while. MOVE OUT!”

Back in the safety of my room I frantically tore into my barracks bags. By the time Cadet Daily knocked on my door, my pants and shirt were on, and I had found my hat and black belt, but no gold buckle. My black shorts and white undershirt were crumpled on the vinyl chair, and the contents of my barracks bags were strewn on the floor from the foot of my bed to the wardrobe closets.

“You need a V-neck T-shirt under your shirt, Davis,” he said. “Gold buckle for your belt, gold crest for your hat, your name tag, and white gloves. I’ll be back in a minute, and you better have them in your hot little hands.” He slammed the door.

I had just thrown the undershirt over my head and was slipping on my shirt when Cadet Daily once again announced his presence with three hard knocks.

“You decent, Davis?”

“Uh—” I started fumbling with the buttons of my shirt. “Yes, sir!”

Cadet Daily banged the door open. Six new cadets, all guys, tripped in behind him.

“These are your squadmates, Davis,” Cadet Daily said. He turned to the line of new cadets standing behind him in the position of attention. “Square her away, Third Squad. You’ve got
five
minutes.” He stuck his head back through the doorway. “And keep the door open. At ninety degrees. That’s
not
a request. I don’t want any hanky panky going on in here!” He disappeared down the hallway.

“We got to keep the door open ’cause there’s a girl in here?” asked one of the guys. “Man, that
blows!
With the door hanging wide open and all, that’s just askin’ for abuse. We might as well have one of us stand out in the hallway, waving those guys right in here.”

“Yeah, well, Hickman,” said a guy who looked like a tall Jimmy Fallon with a buzz haircut, “we’ll be asking for abuse if we don’t get her ready by the time Cadet Daily gets back.” He looked at me. I was stuffing my shirt into my pants. My undershirt was already soaked, and the wool pants clung to my sweaty legs, making the task nearly impossible. “What do you need?” he asked.

I bit my lip. “Well, my hat”—I pointed an elbow toward the hat at my feet—“needs that gold thing on it. But I can’t find it. Or my belt buckle. My gloves are, uh ...” I looked around the room. “Oh, on my desk. And I need to put my name tag on my shirt.” I finished cramming my shirt into my pants and shoved my hand down into my back pocket. “I got it here.” I looked at the unhappy faces in front of me. These guys were going to be with me all summer. We were supposed to be a team. And here I was already dragging them down. Not exactly the kind of first impression I wanted to make. I cocked my head to one side and whispered, “Sorry, guys.”

“No problem,” Jimmy Fallon’s lookalike said, gazing around the room. “Looks like your roommate didn’t show. We all had ours to help us out.” He smiled, offering me his hand to shake. “I’m Christopher Boguslavsky. My friends call me Kit.”

“Hi ... Kit,” I said, shaking his hand. “Andi Davis.” I was impressed. No one my age had ever shaken my hand before.

“Cool. Uh ... hey, Cero,” he said over his shoulder to a black guy standing near my sink. “Help me find that crest and belt buckle.” They started tossing stuff all over the place.

An Asian guy with the name tag PING walked over to me. “You need to pin your name tag on your right pocket,” he said, pointing to the pocket that covered my right breast. “Line it up with this seam”—he pointed to the flap—“centered on the button.”

I took the clasps off the name tag and tried to stick the plastic pin onto my pocket the way he told me. “Like this?”

He shook his head. “It’s crooked. You kind of have to eyeball it.” He pulled the name tag off my shirt, his hand brushing against my pocket. “Oh, sorry,” he said, his face turning an interesting shade of red.

A guy with sun-bleached hair, a lifeguard tan, and the name tag McGILL stood behind Ping and waved my gloves. “Don’t forget these!”

“Thanks.” I took the gloves from him and held them between my knees so my hands would be free.

“Found the crest!” Cero yelled, holding it up.

“Great!” Boguslavsky said. He tossed Cero my hat. “Screw it on the hat.”

“The name tag needs to go about here,” Ping said. He reached his hand toward my pocket again, then pulled it back.

“We only have two minutes left, guys!” shouted a tall guy with dark-brown hair, looking nervously toward the door.

Cero was fumbling with the gold crest and my hat, swearing furiously under his breath.

I looked at Ping. “Hurry up! Just stick that name tag on, then I’ll put the claspy things on—”

“Dammits,” Ping said.

“What?” I looked at Ping.
Is he mad at me?

“Quick! Somebody! Throw me the belt!” Boguslavsky yelled.

“Dammits,” Ping said. “Those clasps are called ‘dammits. ’ Um, could you, like, unbutton your pocket?”

The guy called Hickman, who had complained about the door being open, tossed Boguslavsky my belt.

“Sure. ...” I attacked the button.

Boguslavsky jumped over to me and started shoving the belt through the belt loops on my pants. “Hope you don’t mind, Andi, but I need to know how long this has to be ...”

“Uh ... no. It’s okay ...” I held my stomach in.

“You know, ’cause they’re such a pain in the butt.” Ping pulled at the flap of my pocket and stuck one end of the name tag into the fabric. “You lose them, they’re small, they pinch your fingers.” He grinned. “Dammits.”

“Hey, watch it,” Boguslavsky said. “We’ve got a lady in the room.”

“Oops, sorry,” Ping said. “Then again, some people call them ‘frogs.‘”

“What are you, Ping?” Hickman sneered. “Some kind of walking military manual?” He went to stand behind Ping. “Oh, that’s right.” He looked around the room. “Y’all, this guy’s a sergeant in the U.S. Army!”

“Correction,” Ping said, stabbing the flap with the other end of the name tag. “Was a sergeant. Now I’m a knucklehead.”

“Anyone got a knife?” Boguslavsky sighed. “Yeah, right. A knife in this place. This thing could wrap twice around her waist. I need to cut—”

“WHAT IS GOING
ON
IN HERE?” Cadet Daily stomped into the room.

My attendants melted away from me and slid to attention. The half-pinned name tag dangled from my shirt pocket.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WEAK, LILY-LIVERED PERVERTS HAVE BEEN DOING WITH THAT FEMALE CLASSMATE OF YOURS, BUT I
DO
KNOW THAT I GAVE YOU FIVE MINUTES TO SQUARE HER AWAY, THIRD SQUAD!
FIVE MINUTES!
” He paced back and forth, back and forth in front of the wardrobe closets, kicking my newly issued items out of his path. “I DIDN’T GIVE YOU SIX MINUTES, THIRD SQUAD, AND I DIDN’T GIVE YOU FIVE AND A HALF. I GAVE YOU
FIVE
. FIVE MEANS
FIVE!
” He rubbed the back of his neck and continued to pace. “ARE YOU GONNA LEAVE A MINUTE LATE WHEN YOU KNOW THAT ARTILLERY’S COMING INTO YOUR POSITION? ARTILLERY’S ON TIME, ON TARGET. AND YOU’RE
DEAD!
” Then he stopped and faced us with his hands on his hips. “Time management’s everything, Third Squad.”

Our chattering teeth and knocking knees applauded appropriately.

4:25 P.M.

Ten minutes later we were standing at attention in North Area among a mass of other new cadets. Nothing shaded us from the blazing sun that beat down on our dripping heads. Cadet Daily had told us that we new cadets weren’t wearing our hats to the Oath Ceremony. We were too incompetent to march and wear hats on our heads, he had said. I blinked over and over to keep the sweat out of my eyes.

Cadet Daily’s face suddenly appeared an inch from mine. “Davis, you need a haircut! Big time.” He looked around my left shoulder, then my right. “You look like a powder puff! Come on.” He nudged me out of line. “We have fifteen minutes till first call.”

He led me across North Area, dodging pinging beanheads and bellowing cadets. “You’re not going to be my problem child, are you, Davis?” He paused. “You show up in some kind of preppy boat shoes, I have to get you shoes. You show up with a poofy hairdo, and I have to take you to get your hair cut. You blab your whole life story to another female waiting to see the Cadet in the Red Sash. You let every guy in your squad put his hands all over you!” He looked at me. “You have no clue what this place is about, do you, Davis?”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “No, sir.”

We walked down some stairs into an underground tunnel.

“It’s about killing people,” he said, his voice echoing in the tunnel.

We walked through a door and into a room with three barber chairs. A Hispanic woman stood with a female cadet, the first upperclass female cadet I had seen all day. The cadet was taller than I and had short blond hair. Her lips twisted into a sort of grimace when she saw me, and turning to the woman beside her, she said, “Looks like you’ve got yourself another victim, Maria.”

Cadet Daily nodded at the female cadet, then looked at Maria. “Do you have time before the parade?”

“No problem,” Maria said, selecting a comb from her pocket and motioning me into a chair. “Should only take me five minutes.”

Five minutes?

Maria must have seen my eyes, because she spun me away from the mirror before grabbing big chunks of my hair and chopping them off. I watched my sixty-five-dollar haircut, less than a week old, flutter to the floor. When she finished, she turned me around so I could see the result. I’m normally not the kind of person who’ll throw a fit if her hair doesn’t turn out exactly how she wants it. But when I saw the straight, flat hair cropped close to my head where my short, bouncy bob had been, I could feel my throat tighten and tears form in the corners of my eyes.

“You don’t want to be too cute here, Miss,” the female cadet said to my reflection. She looked almost triumphant, like Cinderella’s stepsisters must have looked after ripping her pretty dress to rags before the ball. The cadet leaned closer, her blue eyes locking with my brown. “Be outstanding,” she whispered. “But don’t stand out.”

CHAPTER 4

MONDAY, JUNE 28 5:00 P.M.

The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty, and want are the best school for a soldier.

—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, THE ART OF WAR, MAXIM LVIII

A
THOUSAND NEW CADETS AND I marched onto the Plain. Standing at attention in perfect rows, we faced our families. About eight hours had passed since we’d last seen them. We’d spent those hours transforming while they’d been busy waiting. I could feel the excitement all around me.

I quickly scanned the crowd for a glimpse of my family, wondering if they’d even bothered to stay. But I didn’t spot them. I was actually a little disappointed—I wanted them to see me standing here, to know that I had made it through this day.

Together we raised our right hands and pledged to “support the Constitution of the United States and bear true allegiance to the National Government. ...” Then, marching in four columns, we moved off the parade field. Left behind was the cheering, waving, picture-taking throng. Rank after rank marched forward for as far as I could see—down a road, away from the granite buildings, North Area, and the Plain.

Well, that’s it. No going back now.

“DRESS IT RIGHT AND COVER DOWN ...”
sang an upperclass cadet, marching to the left of Third Platoon, my platoon. All the members of Third Platoon echoed him, imitating his inflection and volume. Four squads made up Third Platoon; Cadet Daily and the three other squad leaders marched abreast, leading their squads of new cadets behind them. I remembered “dress right” and “cover down” from marching practice earlier in the day.
Stay on line with the guys on your left and right, and directly behind the guy marching in front of you.

“FORTY INCHES ALL AROUND!”
Third Platoon new cadets surrounded me on all sides. I felt as if I were just one bottle among many within a living, breathing Coke crate, rolling down a conveyer belt. And the space between me and any of them—“forty inches all around.”

“MOMMA, MOMMA, CAN’T YOU SEE?”
The cadet who marched alongside us had a great voice, smooth and soulful. A voice that should’ve been captured on a CD somewhere, breaking hearts.

“WHAT THIS ARMY’S DONE TO ME!”
I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye.
He’s the guy who taught us how to march !
The only person who had smiled today, who had joked.
Cadet Black—no pun intended.