There's a Man With a Gun Over There (24 page)

The drill sergeant halted our platoon and made us stand at attention in the sun. He culled Pudgy from our little herd and forced him to run alone. After a minute of this, the drill sergeant caught up with him and began screaming at him as they went along together.

“Look at them titties of yours, Peterson. If you're going to have titties, at least you should have good ones.”

“Suck in that pathetic gut, Peterson.”

“You look like Jell-O on legs, Peterson.”

Pudgy collapsed, and the drill sergeant assigned two men to walk him back to the company area while the rest of us continued our double-time run.

Pudgy couldn't do anything to please the drill sergeant, but at night, in the barrack, during one of those infrequent half hours of the day when no one was yelling at us, Pudgy was hilarious. He did imitations of Jackie Gleason characters— Reginald Van Gleason III going through the barrack doing a white glove inspection; but the one that always ripped us up was the voice of Andy Devine from a long-ago kiddy show. A character called Froggie greeting us, “Hi yah, hi yah, kiddies. Hi yah, hi yah, hi yah.” The absurdity of this voice left us doubled over in laughter.

While Pudgy's fat-man humor made us happy, he made Drill Sergeant Yankovic angrier and angrier as the weeks went by. Pudgy was too fat for almost anything requiring physical exertion. He was uncoordinated as well and couldn't master even the simplest marching orders, turning left when he should go right, always on the wrong foot, stumbling, tripping, falling down.

At first Drill Sergeant Yankovic solved the problem by assigning Peterson to the middle of the formation so no one would see him. But Pudgy was such a force of nature that he got everyone beside him out of step, and Drill Sergeant Yankovic's precious formation expanded and contracted like a caterpillar. Drill Sergeant Yankovic then put Pudgy on permanent KP, so he spent his days leaning on a mop in the mess hall, snacking, getting even fatter. The fabric around the buttons of his fatigues first puckered and eventually became unbuttonable.

“Peterson, you're a fucking disgrace to the United States Army. This is a pretty sad lot, but you're the worst of the worst.”

Drill Sergeant Yankovic had a private room at one end of the barrack. He kept it ready for inspections and seldom used it. Its bed was exactly made to inspection standards. A neat row of spotless uniforms hung there, each hanger the proper two inches from its neighbor. Beneath them, on the floor, was a row of dress shoes and combat boots belonging to some mythic soldier who was always ready for a surprise visit from the battalion commander. The real William Yankovic slept elsewhere—in the woods, we heard; in whorehouses, we heard. He never sleeps, we heard; he crawls the perimeter of Fort Polk all night long, we heard.

One evening, Pudgy discovered that the drill sergeant's room was unlocked. He went in and came out wearing the dress version of the drill sergeant's campaign hat.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Phil Danzig said, looking around, but Pudgy was on a roll. He put every stupid officer and sergeant into a single caricature.

“Mens,” Pudgy commanded, “listen up. Drop down and gimme ten! Mens, if your brains were paper, there wouldn't be enough to make a Kotex for a flea. Mens, gimme another ten. Mens, I want you to get your hands off your cocks and put on your socks and gimme another ten and tell me who's the commander of your battalion. Gimme ten more. Mens, we're gonna win that war in Vietnam if we have to kill everyone to do it. All at once now, with Drill Sergeant Froggie, ‘Hi yah, kiddies, hi yah, hi yah, hi yah.' Drop down and give Drill Sergeant Froggie ten, mens.”

No one laughed. No one said a word.

So busy chuckling over his own routine, Pudgy hadn't noticed the silence.

“On a count of three, now—all together, one, two, three. ‘Hi yah, kiddies, hi yah, hi yah, hi yah.' ”

Then, after another moment of silence, “You so much as get dust on that hat, Peterson, you'll wish you'd never been born.”

Pudgy lifted his right hand to his ear, Reginald Van Gleason III listening to the dulcet tones of his girlfriend.

Drill Sergeant Yankovic elbowed his way through the circle gathered around Pudgy. He was wearing a leather gun holster with a .45 inside. A belt holding a couple of grenades went across his chest.

“Here your dumb ole drill sergeant thought he was coming by to give his men a thrill with their cherry guard-duty assignments—up all night long in shacks filled with copperhead snakes, making sure no hippies or other undesirables break into Fort Polk and steal the hearts of your commanding officers. Please. No applause. I have your best interests always in my heart, but what are you doing here? Making fun of poor ole good-hearted Drill Sergeant Yankovic. Wearing Drill Sergeant Yankovic's hat. Drill Sergeant Yankovic, who answered his country's call and killed the yellow man to save us from the Russians. Now you think he's funny.”

Drill Sergeant Yankovic was walking round and round Pudgy, clearing a space.

“You fat fucker,” Drill Sergeant Yankovic said and grabbed the front of Pudgy's fatigue shirt, ripping the top two buttons off.

“Hey,” Pudgy said, his fat fingers chasing the falling buttons through the air. “You can't do this, can you?”

The drill sergeant actually lifted the enormous weight of Pudgy off the ground with his left hand. He pulled out the pistol with his right and let Pudgy drop to the floor, where he tried to pick up his fallen buttons.

“You fat fucker, we got demerits from the post commander because of you. He saw that little dance step you call a march. Do you know what that means? We don't win the Best-Platoon Award. Now Drill Sergeant Yankovic always wins the Best-Platoon Award. Get that, Peterson?”

He knelt down beside him and held the .45 to Pudgy's head.

“Come on,” Pudgy pleaded. “Quit kidding around. Can't one of you guys help me here? I'm in real trouble.”

I looked at my feet.

“Hey!” Art Kailas yelled. “That's a gun.”

“No, you dumb fucking Greek. That's not a gun. It's a piece. A sidearm. It's a Colt automatic. Designed to quell the yellow man in the Boxer Rebellion.”

He stood up and holstered the .45.

“You're so fucking smart, you hold one of these.”

Drill Sergeant Yankovic yanked one of the grenades from the strap across his chest and pulled the pin out. The grenade began to hiss. I tried to remember the class we'd had in grenades and what the hiss meant. I closed my eyes and squeezed them shut. I prayed to be transported out of there. When I opened them, we were all still there, and Art Kailas was holding the grenade.

“Here, Kailas, as long as you keep squeezing this handle closed, the grenade's like your hometown softball. You let go of it, though, you're gonna take the whole barrack out. We'll go up like a wet spray of flesh-tinted blood. The wind will give us life's last blow job. Got it, Kailas? You're a strong guy. You should be able to hang on.”

Drill Sergeant Yankovic grabbed Pudgy by the fabric of his fatigue shirt.

“Ten, hut, Peterson. We'll start with the basics.”

Pudgy pulled himself up and stared off into the middle distance with that blank look all at-attention soldiers had.

“Right face, Peterson.”

It was a beat too slow, but he did it. I began to smile. Maybe Pudgy would make it.

“Forward, march, Peterson.”

He did that, too. A space opened up, and he marched down toward the other end of the barrack.

“Halt! About face! Forward, march!”

Yes, he was doing it—or no, he did it about halfway back, and then his feet took on a spastic life of their own, wiggling suddenly and changing step and causing Pudgy to trip and then awkwardly right himself. He was sweating and breathing hard.

“You dumb fucker,” the Drill Sergeant screamed and walked toward him with the gun out. He pulled the top back, chambering a round. The room was quiet except for the metallic slide and click of the gun. “I should put you out of your misery.”

He pointed the gun at Pudgy, who simply bowed his head as if he'd been expecting this for years.

Drill Sergeant Yankovic dropped the gun to his side, and I felt sudden relief. Maybe now he'd quit, but no—no, he fired. And again he fired—into the floor. The sound of the shots rico-cheted back and forth through the barrack. A puff of smoke drifted among us.

“They're blanks, right?” someone asked.

Drill Sergeant Yankovic's head snapped toward the speaker, and he briefly pointed the .45 at him.

“You want to find out?”

Kailas dropped the grenade, and we all stood frozen there as it spun on the waxed red floor, which suddenly looked bloody.

A moment later a little smoke oozed from it. I held my face tight, waiting for the concussion from an explosion, but that puff of smoke was it.

“Kailas, if that had been a live grenade, you would have vaporized your buddies. You want to think about that?”

“Drill Sergeant, I'm sorry if I handled your hat. I'm sorry if I mess up your formations.”

It was Pudgy speaking in a clear, adult voice.

“I know I'm not much of a soldier, but you can't kill me for being awkward.”

I wished we were all sitting around chanting, “Hi yah, kiddies. Hi yah, hi yah, hi yah.”

Drill Sergeant Yankovic looked at Pudgy and then walked over to him. He put the muzzle of the gun right under Pudgy's chin and forced him to walk back to his room. He slammed the door. A moment later we heard crashing noises and whimpered yells and a series of commands. “Forward, march. In place, march. Left turn, march.”

One of the other drill sergeants marched the rest of us over to post headquarters, where we got our guard-duty assignments.

“Where's Private Peterson?” the NCO in charge asked.

“On sick leave, Sergeant,” one of us said.

“Fucking shirker is more like it.”

The next morning, after staying up all night, we stumbled back into our barrack. Pudgy's bed was stripped of its sheets and blankets, and his gear was stacked on the floor. When we returned from classes that afternoon, all his stuff was gone. I never saw him or his silver duffel bag again.

“To the moon, Alice!” Pudgy used to scream, running down the aisle in the middle of the barrack with his silver duffel bag as if he were going to hurl it into outer space. He sounded just like Jackie Gleason playing Ralph Kramden on the old
Honeymooners
television show. “To the moon!”

Pudgy's bed, down at the end of the row, stayed empty for the rest of our time in basic training, its striped mattress rolled up and tied, sitting on top of the mattress springs.

We used it once more the day of graduation.

That day, a sinewy colonel, with so many ribbons on his chest they seemed like they climbed over his shoulder and down his back, spoke to us while we stood at attention. How easy this is, I realized. I didn't even have to think about how to stand anymore.

“Men, in life, your first battle is with yourselves. The fact that you're here today means you've given yourself fiber by taking on discipline. You've tasted your first military victory, and your drill sergeants will give you your first medal. Wear it with pride.”