CH.8— The Crucible That Is Night-Fire

We climb into the cattle car for transport to night-fire where I’ll aim bullets more important, at least to me, than any fired at the Alamo.

And thanks to the moon pulling all the covers over its head, the shooting will take place in total darkness. We motor past the quick-fire range. There’s more light inside one of Bela Lugosi’s capes.

Ten shots into the blackness. I need three if I want to change addresses.

I try to intellectualize the situation.

The Armed Services of this great nation isn’t going to hold three lousy rounds against me. My paperwork has been processed. All our paperwork has been processed. Graduation is tomorrow. They need to know who’s going to be passing in front of the colonel’s reviewing stand and who isn’t. I’ve made it this far. They won’t deny me.

But there’s another scenario I can’t shake.

The screws must maintain discipline. Must maintain standards. Must not let anyone off easy.

Can’t shoot? Can’t go home. If they make an exception for one, they’d have to make exceptions for all the dickheads.

You want a free ride? Ha. No way, pal. Hit the prescribed number of targets or else we’ll be requesting the pleasure of your company at the next cycle.

The truck stops. It’s so dark the cadre guy has the driver aim his headlights so we’ll know where to go. I trudge up the hill like a cow going to the meat-packing plant.

The corporal of the bullets passes out 10-round clips with assorted tracer rounds. Because he can’t see anything either, he touches us on our shoulders first before working his way down to our hands.

One of the cadre guys introduces a former sharpshooter with Special Services who will show us how it’s done.

Duff assumes the prone-supported position, props the M-16 on the sandbag and looks out at the 25-meter target that’s disguised as a black cat.

The orange tracer whistles 10 feet over the silhouette.

“Having made visual contact, the shooter will now make the proper adjustments,” the PA drones.

Another shot rings out.

Cadre Guy № 2 walks halfway down range with a flashlight. He hollers back that the target is still standing.

Another shot. Another go-around with the flashlight. Another no-kill.

“Fuck,” the expert says loudly.

He empties the clip. The flashlight holder signals there is no need to call the silhouette’s next of kin.

“Fuck.”

A trained killer has gone 0 for 10. What possible hope is there for me?

None, I conclude.

Let’s just forget the whole thing. Take me to the reception center so I can meet the next batch of troops. Let them see my ammo pouch. Be a great icebreaker.

“Alpha Company, fall out left to right to the rear-numbered stakes.”

We can’t even see our knuckles, much less the feet of the guys in front of us. Some of us fall onto gravel that’s been sharpened and left here by skilled craftsmen.

The tower is a distant planet. There’s no permanent party to usher us to to our spots as in previous gun-it-down assignments. They’re drinking coffee by the butt cans. It’s late and they miss their fuck books.

I assign myself the final post. Peavey is beside me, but for all they know it could be Kissinger.

Naturally, somebody’s steel pot falls off. It sounds like incoming. We wait for a DI to holler that somebody’s gonna get court-martialed.

Nothing.

What is this? Free day?

There’s no last-second pep talk. No, let’s shoot one for the Gipper.

Our supervisory personnel are here in insignia only. It’s as if they’re as tired of the training as we are. It’s as if we aren’t the only ones who are short.

“Gotta piss,” Peavey declares.

He lets fly downwind of the sandbags. It’s like someone turned on the tap.

This is a major rules violation. We’re not supposed to urinate except inside factory-approved housing.

Looking every which way, Peavey starts out cautiously with two fingers against his tool and playing it off to the side.

Nothing.

This is unbelievable. His stream is coming down in sheets. Even if they can’t see what he’s doing, they sure as hell hear it.

Emboldened, the troop grabs hold with both hands like a fire hose.

This is freedom.

I join him.

We who are about to be recycled deserve empty bladders.

There are no clear mountain streams at this shit pit. We’ll have to settle for gurgling piss.

A sharp piece of gravel bites my ankle. The pugil-stick swinger deep inside me comes alive long enough to cuss out the night-fire permanent party for not policing their area.

The words bounce harmlessly off the rear-numbered stakes. But an idea is born, suckled by the night.

We have a disinterested cadre that can’t see and can’t hear.

We have rules that have been rules for two months that suddenly aren’t rules any more.

And we have huge amounts of gravel. That half-soldier 25 meters away doesn’t stand a chance. Any penetration is a hit, right? Bullet, act of God, stone — what does it matter?

I stuff the 10-round clip into the pocket of my field jacket . Won’t need it.

“Alpha Company, assume the firing position. The targets will stay up three seconds for each round. If you do not make contact, they will go down briefly and then reappear for Shot № 2 and so on until you’ve fired all 10 rounds. Everybody got that?”

I pay no attention. I’m too busy gathering gravel.

“Alpha Company, lock and load.”

I arm my right hand. I arm my left hand. Normally I’m not ambidextrous, but this is war.

“Alpha Company, sight your target and commence firing.”

I throw for all I’m worth. Fully grown stones. Pebbles. Boot residue. Anything that will render the silhouette mortally wounded.

A hail of gunfire up and down the line.

And a sound from my graveled end like a rain cloud formed above the target and let out the briefest of storms.

The troops reload.

I rerock.

The signal is given. They shoot. I hurl everything within hailing distance of my sandbags. I don’t care about molecular structure. If it has mass, I fling it the 25 meters.

I’m tossing Chapstick, clumps of grass and an empty tin of shoe polish. Got to pass rifle training. Got to leave Missouri.

Guys near me are doing like they’ve been taught. Breathing calmly. Squeezing the trigger calmly.

The hell with that.

I’m throwing gumballs, packs of shoelaces and fingernail clippers.

The whistle blows.

“Cease fire, Alpha Company.”

I put down my Fig Newtons from Skebo’s kitchen. This shows my level of desperation. I’m prepared to launch a basic food group.

We march back to the black hole of a control tower where we stand at parade rest and wait for our scores to come down the pike.

I try to relax. I did all I could do.

Litton receives the totals. A hand comes over his mouth. He cannot believe what he is reading.

The man summons his minions. This can’t be right. Better doublecheck.

We hear their whispered replies. Yes, it’s true, they tell him. Unbelievable as it may seem.

“The night-fire results were generally poor,” Litton says. “Apparently, you had difficulty seeing the targets.”

He looks skyward. There’s greater visibility inside dog hockey.

“But one trainee put that behind him. One trainee didn’t let the conditions affect his concentration. One trainee shot like it was broad daylight.

“This troop has not exactly been a success these past eight weeks. Hasn’t shot well. Hasn’t done well in morning inspections. In fact, he’s about this far from being a fuck-up.”

Litton puts his hands up by his crotch a dick-length apart. Ah, yes, peckers. Once again the Pentagon’s measuring stick.

“But when the pressure was on, this man rose to the occasion. This man said, ‘Goddammit, I’m gonna do what nobody expects me to do.’’’

Litton is really fired up now. His adam’s-apple hair is waving like a wheat field.

“This man came out here and shot the shit out of the targets. A perfect score. Ten out of ten. Tops in the entire company.”

I’m stuffing Fig Newtons back into my field jacket when he calls out my name.

My body goes into emergency shutdown. This is praise. I am not programmed for praise.

“Alpha Company, attention,” Litton orders. “Pay the proper respect to one of your own.”

I can’t walk to the front. That would require presence of mind. I waddle.

“What do you say to somebody who lit up night-fire?” the captain screams. “C’mon, what do you say?”

Alpha Company applauds. A couple guys go retro and let out huzzahs.

Jesus, they actually think I gunpowdered the silhouettes. They don’t know that all I did was reroute a quarry’s worth of fill.

I take a couple steps forward, tip my steel pot like Arnie walking to the 18th green at Pebble Beach and return to formation.

Litton will have none of that.

“Don’t be so modest. Get to the head of the platoon. I want to shake your hand.”

He pumps like there’s oil at my elbow.

“Duff couldn’t hit shit tonight and he was a goddamn superstar at Quantico. We got us a trainee who leaves him crapping in the wind.”

What can I say? I can throw like the Seventh Cavalry can ride.

Litton insists that I tell the men how I did it.

All I can think of are sports cliches.

“I made every round count,” I mumble. “I shot like there was no tomorrow. You’ve got to dance with the rifle that brung you.”

Not all the troops are buying it.

“Dumb bastard finally remembered to use his front sight,” somebody hollers.

But never mind that.

I’m going to depart these premises. Passed rifle fire. Passed PT. Passed the classroom crap.

Skebo gives a nudge.

“C’mon, you can tell me.”

I blow smoke off the barrel.

“Just good shooting, Tex.”

Some things you don’t tell until the military statue of limitations expires in 60 years when we’re both about to die.

They load us on the cattle car like always, but this is not like always.

We’re beating our steel helmets on the roof like we’re coming back to the fieldhouse after winning the big football game.

“I don’t want to be an airborne ranger,” Skebo shouts. “I don’t want a life of danger.”

The junior Echo Platoon DI is assigned to our truck. This exuberance is completely unauthorized. Nowhere in the field manuals does it say trainees can damn near beat a hole in the Army’s rolling stock while desecrating the Mekong River and all its tributaries.

But he says nothing. And even laughs. God, when it’s over out here, it’s really over.

I think back to the first night I sat in one of these things with Boil on my lap. I was convinced we were beginning the Bataan Death March, and they were giving us a break by letting us ride.

Something crazy has happened.

I have a sense of accomplishment for this place.

For the first time in my life I’ve done a hard thing.

The screaming. The marching. The shooting.

The going-to-bed dirty. The going-to-bed knowing I’ve screwed something up and I’ll find out in the morning. The going-to-bed hoping nobody has shit on the toilet seat so my first duty of the next day won’t be the worst.

No matter how stupid the past eight weeks have been.

No matter how irrelevant they have been to how I will spend the rest of my life.

I got to the end. I’ll soon see the colonel’s stupid dog.

Fair and square.

More or less.

While I have not earned the Army’s seal of excellence, I can accept its grudging checkmark.

The growing glimmer that is the writer inside me — OK, OK, deep inside — knows I needed this.

If your job is zeroing in on the human condition, you must have life’s experiences and I had precious few before shipping out here.

It’s like God said, hey, I could give you a 321 draft lottery number and you’d never know an operations shack. Never know bolt sliders come in groups. But it wouldn’t be in your best interests. Trust me on this, kid. You’ll cuss your № 71, but it’s all going to work out in the end. I’ve shown you a brand new world. Haddox. Peavey. The grenade range. The gas chamber. The importance of Brasso to the national defense. The cauldrons of plenty at the mess hall. The Little Vietnam at the NCO Club.

You’ll harken back to this world when you go to the work at the newspaper, God went on, even if it’s just to laugh like hell. You’ll write about what you went through during these eight weeks. Won’t have a choice. The words will stage a revolution inside your psyche until you put them on paper. Send me some bylines. I maintain the world’s largest clip file.

Someone points out that West Pointers celebrate graduation by tossing their hats high into the air.

We throw our steel pots inside the cattle car. They bounce perilously in the manner of small cannonballs. Several troops narrowly escape injury.

It’s hilarious.

Thanks, God.

An M&M wrapper is attached to the guidon.

“Long may it wave on high,” a trainee calls out.

“Now we’ve finally got something we can follow,” another guy says.

It’s like this all the way back to our brick homeplace. A hay ride without the scratching.

Inside the barracks, many of the RAs try on their Class A uniforms for the parade. They shine their low quarters, polish their buttons and iron their shirts. They march in place and practice what to do when Litton hollers, “Eyes right.”

Few NGs and ERs are in this camp. We’ll dress like D-minus students. Proud of every uncreased pleat. Proud of every rumpled shirttail. It’s our fashion statement.

The RAs don’t rag us for being sloppy. We don’t run them down for standing straight and tall.

We’re like an old married couple. Being together all the time, anything that comes up between us is an “Oh, pshaw, never mind. We’re all cool.”

They understand our perspective.

The several liberal arts profs who gave extra credit to students who participated in protest marches. The petitions passed out before Chaucer class calling for Nixon to quit. The midnight peace rally on the drillfield that drew thousands of students, so many they had to borrow extra candles from the Episcopal Church.

We understand their background.

They have peer groups who believe Vietnam is about honor and glory like all the other great wars. They figure to be factory workers for the rest of their lives, so why not join the Army, see the world and kill a few gooks before settling in with that lathe. And the reality that the Army, whatever else it may be, is a job. Three hots a day, a bunk and a uniform for every hanger in your closet.

Carouthers is primping like he’s going to the Percy Sledge concert and it’s 60 percent off if you’re wearing green.

I watch.

Not scared like I used to be.

But hoping he doesn’t get killed.

“You’re going to Vietnam and I’m going to a typewriter.”

Carouthers doesn’t know what to say. He can only react to inequity, not explain it.

“But you can make it,” I go on. “Your tour of duty is only 12 months. You can stand on your head that long.”

“Don’t know about that, man. Lot of shit can happen in the jungle.”

The same awkwardness swirls as when Ya and I visited this subject.

Carouthers didn’t have a well-placed, well-spoken someone to get him in the reserves or National Guard.

So he wins a free trip to Vietnam.

My dad worked the phones harder than Alexander Graham Bell.

And I’ll get no closer to Saigon than looking at a Rand McNally.

Living or dying. Decision by pedigree.

Carouthers gives me one of those soul handshakes with knuckles and fingers.

“I’ll get through it, cottontail. You just make sure you find all them typewriter keys.”

Skebo rubs his foot. It seems a steel pot came down for a landing.

“Cheeseburgers,” he concludes. “That’s it. Cheeseburgers.”

Say what?

“When you come back to Fort Leonard Wood in 40 years,” he wants to know, “what’s the thing you’ll most want to do?”

“Moot point,” I reply. “Coming back here isn’t going to happen. Not only will I never return to this military installation, I shall never again darken the state of Missouri. If my plane’s flight plan calls for a fly-over, I’ll have the pilot let me off.”

“You’ll be back,” Skebo continues. “We’ll all be back. Stroke our chins, push the ear hair back in and tell the grandchildren how rough we had it back in 1971.”

I shake my head vigorously.

“Not me. When I ride out that front gate, I’m gone. I don’t care if there’s a gold rush inside the main PX.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see about that,” Skebo says. “Me, I want to get a big bag of cheeseburgers and watch troops train. They’re running and grunting and sweating. I don’t have to do any of it. Just stand there and chew.

“What a beautiful moment. Don’t have to fall in. Don’t have to dress-right-dress. Don’t have the holler the stupid cadence about the pretty girl huffing weed in the latrine.

“Be like the spectator at the 50-yard line. Only thing missing is a seat cushion, a flask and a football game. I’d drive 400 miles for that. What am I saying? I’d drive 1,000. Just to see one troop with galoshes banging against his ass. Just to see one KP fall exhausted against a vat of lima beans. Just to stick my hands in my jacket pocket knowing there isn’t anything the DI can do about it.”

I counter.

“Not coming back of my own free will, but if the world got turned upside down and I landed here, I’d go out to the rifle range, wait until nobody is looking and steal a silhouette. Throw it in the back seat with the kids.

“The target was my sworn enemy for eight weeks and now I’ll consort with it in my den. Rig the apparatus to register a kill when I lob a beer bottle.”

Skebo goes to the PX to make sure he has enough snacks for the troops before the parade.

I take a seat in the hall where I cried that first day with Waldspurger when I just didn’t have any more move the fuck left in me.

Well, I’ve done reasonably all right.

Didn’t get mutilated by the buffing machine.

Only had to rake up the one rubber.

Shot better than a fox terrier.

Never had to be ball-checker.

Absorbed the endless body blows from panic and anxiety that sent me to emotional sick bay on more than one occasion.

But I didn’t die.

Something to build on.