Spare Parts Read online

  After his set he dropped the dumbbells to the floor and spun around to face me.

  “I’m sorry about your brother and dad.”

  Caught off guard, I fumbled for a response. “How’d you know about them?”

  “For Christ’s sake! I’ve been listening to your soap opera for a year now. I think I know more about you than even you do.”

  He was right. I saw some of the men in the weight room every night, and they had become like family to me.

  Big Ray finished his last set, dropping the dumbbells to the floor with a crash. “I know that life dealt you some fucked up cards. . . .”

  Then he pulled something from his gym bag, and pressed it into my palm with both his hands.

  Squeezing my hand closed within his grip, he leaned down, his face softening with a smile. “See my friend if you want to learn how to play your hand.”

  He disappeared into the locker room.

  Looking down, I saw a business card with red and gold em-bossed letters that read:

  UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RECRUITING

  NORTH POINT BUSINESS PARK

  STAFF SGT. W.D. STONE

  P R O L O G U E

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  The encounter with Big Ray kept me awake late into the night as I lay in bed thinking about the motorcycle ride with Lenny when we had passed that same recruiting station, and just how far I had drifted away from my childhood dream of becoming a Marine.

  Just standing in the doorway of the recruiting office gave me chills.

  At the center of the room was a large oak desk, polished to high gloss, cleared except for a desk pad, mini–flag stand, and nameplate that read, STAFF SGT. W.D. STONE, USMC.

  The far wall was covered with photos of Marines under the sign PARRIS ISLAND GRADUATES. The wall on the right was covered with an assortment of posters:

  THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN.

  THE FEW. THE PROUD. THE MARINES.

  ONCE A MARINE ALWAYS A MARINE.

  MAYBE YOU CAN BE ONE OF US.

  The left wall was lined with bookshelves stocked with videos and binders with military acronyms stenciled onto their spines.

  Next to them was a gray metal wall locker with Marine uniforms organized meticulously enough to be on display at a museum. Atop the wall locker rested a white cap (I didn’t know that Marines called it a “cover” at this point) with a gold eagle-globe-anchor emblem, and a shiny black bill—the same cap the Marines wore in the photos on the graduation board. As I was imagining how I’d look wearing it, a hand squeezed my shoulder from behind and a powerful voice redirected my attention.

  “Good afternoon hard-charger,” he said. “I’m Staff Sgt. Stone.”

  He towered over me, bending over to look me in the eye with a handshake and a Hollywood smile from ear to ear. Although skinnier than the Marines in the posters, everything else was as expected—

  the square jaw, flattop haircut, perfect uniform, and radio-announcer voice.

  “What can I do for you today?” he asked.

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  P R O L O G U E

  “Good afternoon, Staff Sergeant.” I said. “I’m ready to enlist.”

  Staff Sgt. Stone looked at me curiously. “I don’t usually hear that kind of commitment from the get-go. What’s your story?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was undecided about joining,” I explained. “My brother was a Marine—aircraft ordnance at Cherry Point.”

  Then came the rapid-fire recruiting questions.

  Enlisted or officer?

  What jobs interest you?

  Have you taken the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery)?

  Any ROTC or college?

  Married?

  Dependants?

  When are you available to ship out?

  Who knew there was so much to it? I just wanted to be a Marine, and hadn’t thought the rest through. Staff Sgt. Stone spent the afternoon counseling me about my options. After learning that I was only one year from completing my associates degree, he tried to sell me the idea of going to Officer Candidates School. But as soon as I learned that officers didn’t go to Parris Island, I dismissed that option. For me, Parris Island was the only passage into the Marines.

  Changing his sales pitch to make active-duty enlistment attractive, he started talking about the aircraft ordnance MOS. My interest fizzled when I heard the minimum enlistment obligation was four years. Four years was a long time to be away, and after my tour I’d still have two years of college left to earn my teacher certification.

  I didn’t want to wait six years to begin teaching.

  Feeling suddenly overwhelmed, I stood up to leave. “Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about—”

  Reeling me back he said, “Whoa. Don’t leave yet. I haven’t even told you about the reserve option.”

  Although skeptical, I returned to his desk and listened.

  The staff sergeant explained how being in the reserves was like having a part-time job that would pay me a salary plus provide tuition money through the GI Bill. All I had to do to become a Marine P R O L O G U E

  xix

  was go to boot camp the summer between the spring and fall semesters. Then I would serve one weekend per month until the following summer, when I would attend my MOS school. After that my obligation would become one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. Altogether it would be a six-year obligation. It sounded like the perfect option, allowing me to stay in college, experience boot camp at Parris Island, and even get tuition money.

  “As a reservist . . . I would still be considered a real Marine, right?” I asked.

  The staff sergeant hesitated. “If you graduate from Parris Island, then you’re a Marine.”

  “Is there a special boot camp for reservists?”

  I wanted the same experience that Lenny had. I needed to stand on those yellow footprints.

  “All recruits are mixed together,” he said. “You’ll all be treated the same.”

  “Can I go to boot camp this summer?” I asked.

  “Nope; you missed the window for reservists this summer,” he answered. “But if you sign up in the delayed entry program today, I can guarantee you a boot camp slot next summer—June of ’89.”

  Satisfied with his answers, I asked what MOSs were available.

  He flipped through some papers on his clipboard, stared at a chart on the wall, and then back to his clipboard.

  “Looks like the only reserve billet available right now is armored infantry—0313, LAV Crewman.”

  I was disappointed there were no aircraft ordnance positions, but in seconds my hands were filled with stickers, book covers, posters, and videos featuring the LAV. It looked like an amphibious tank with four wheels on each side instead of tracks. The clincher, though, was the latest edition of Leatherneck magazine. His pointing to that LAV on the cover sealed the deal.

  “Makes my dick hard just looking at it. Can you see yourself firing that bad boy?”

  “Yeah—where do I sign?”

  xx

  P R O L O G U E

  A few days after enlisting in the Marine Reserves I first saw Gina, a petite Italian girl with silky black hair, tan skin, and an angelic face.

  She smiled whenever she passed me in the health club where I worked. Not only was she my type, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Gina was a beauty pageant winner, and way out of my dating league, which is why I never approached her. One evening, however, I took the advice of the health club matchmaker and asked her out. To my surprise she said yes.

  Gina embraced the idea of being a Marine’s girlfriend. During the six months leading up to boot camp she remained my steady girlfriend. It felt good to have someone who understood me, accepted me, and listened. Moreover, neither she, nor her parents, tolerated drinking. Since I wanted her more than I wanted to get drunk, I distanced myself from my beer buddies and dried out.

  With Gina’s support I was able to face my feelings about my brother�
�s and father’s deaths for the first time. She was the only person with whom I had ever shared Lenny’s boot camp letters, and she understood their significance.

  In the months leading to my departure for Parris Island I read them regularly. They transcended written words and became portals into the past. Their pages fueled my passionate desire to experience that mysterious place where my brother had been transformed, and as June approached, the yellow footprints began to call louder than ever.

  SPARE PARTS

  PART I

  RECRUIT

  ONE

  THE CONDENSATION FROM INSIDE the bus window made the foreign world outside barely visible. It was fitting that the first time I saw Parris Island it would be cast in a surreal haze. The interior lights came on, blacking out the windows. There was absolute silence.

  Then reality stepped aboard—a poster-perfect drill instructor.

  “Get off my friggin’ bus!” he barked.

  Suddenly there was mass hysteria and a panicked rush for the exit. I made my way out of the bus, riding a wave of human momentum that crested and crashed down right on top of them—sixty sets of footprints stenciled onto the road with bright yellow paint. To everyone else they were training aids laid out to teach disoriented recruits how to position their feet in the platoon formation. To me they were launch pads into the world I had longed to be a part of for most of my life.

  There we stood for the first time on Parris Island, four columns of fifteen bodies, perfectly aligned and covered. While most were shivering from fear and anxiety, I was in ecstasy. I was finally standing tall on the yellow footprints, as my brother had fourteen years before. The emotional rush lifted my spirits and cushioned my ego from the verbal assault being dealt by the receiving drill instructors.

  The rush was intoxicating. I was no longer just reading about recruit training. I was living it.

  The yelling and shouting of the drill instructors became muffled as my thoughts raced forward. We were arranged tallest to shortest, 3

  4

  B u z z W i l l i a m s

  which placed me farther back in formation than Lenny had been. If nothing else, I had to remember to say “sir” to avoid being jabbed with a rifle the way Lenny was. But none of the drill instructors had rifles. That thought reminded me that I hoped to qualify as a rifle expert too—if genetics played a part, I might.

  The pain that shook me from my thoughts didn’t register until I was facedown on the asphalt. I felt a dull ache at the back of my head from the drill instructor’s blow, then strangulation as the back of my collar was yanked upward. My feet never touched the deck on my way up to vertical, and as I hung suspended by my cotton shirt I came face to face with the man who would make me a Marine.

  Recruit Bell stood shaking at attention as Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley’s boots stopped and left-faced directly to his front. It was the first evening with our forming drill instructors, but each of the sixty rigid bodies of our platoon had already learned the bitter lesson that recruits should only look straight ahead. Bell’s skinny frame wobbled from anxiety directly across the squad bay from me, and I struggled to stay focused on the nothingness just beyond his head.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley was a thick-framed, muscular Marine, with dark brown skin. Standing over six feet tall, he towered above most of us. His face was rigid, and his eyebrows seemed to be permanently fixed in anger. Although his entire uniform was immacu-late, the thing that stood out most to me was the way his sleeves were folded so tightly that the veins bulged in his forearms.

  The uneasy silence ended with a room-jarring bellow directly into Bell’s face.

  “Why did you join my Corps, recruit?”

  I glanced for an instant to see his eyes widen, as his mind raced for a response.

  “I asked you a friggin’ question, boy . . . Now, why did you join my Corps?”

  A second hesitation evoked an explosive reaction from the drill instructor, who snatched Bell from his feet, clenching the front of his S P A R E P A R T S

  5

  collar with two fistfuls of material. Bell’s boots rose six inches off the floor, swinging violently. My peripheral vision showed a blur of camouflage as Bell was slung around into the side of the top rack.

  The metallic ring echoed as the right side of his cheekbone caught the steel frame squarely. Bell shriveled to the floor, instinctively regressing into the fetal position. Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley stood above him, hands on his hips, looking around to catch any undisciplined souls giving in to the temptation to glance over at Bell’s mis-fortune.

  “Now, listen up, recruits! Bell here is a nonhacker who apparently stumbled into our recruit training center without really knowing why he is here!”

  My eyes darted down as Bell wiped the blood dripping from his mouth and nose onto his sleeve. Jesus, I thought. . . . Staff Sgt. Stone had told me we wouldn’t be hit, or touched, or called names. This had to be a mistake.

  “How about you, Nasty One?” Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley demanded of the next recruit.

  Recruit Hart stood scared, eyes wide, as he searched for the words caught somewhere deep in his throat.

  Leaning into Hart’s face, nose to nose, Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley continued to escalate his volume with a rigor that shook the barracks’ window frames.

  “Well, any day!” he screamed.

  In desperation Hart blurted, “Sir, the recruit joined to be tough, sir!”

  Smiling wryly as if he finally had some new material, Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley backed off. He began pacing with his hands behind his back, staring at the floor as his heels struck the deck methodically with a hypnotic thud, thud, thud.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley was just warming up. “So you joined to be tough . . .”

  He paused to let silence work its evil.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you there, now, would I?”

  More anxious silence.

  “Well?” he screamed, waiting impatiently for a reply.

  6

  B u z z W i l l i a m s

  We did not know yet that this was the standard cue prompting us to answer in unison. It was a new skill, and one in that was paramount in the world of recruits.

  “Sir, no, sir!” rang out as every recruit gave it his best effort.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley refocused on Recruit Hart.

  “What’s your name, tough guy?”

  “Sir, the recruit’s name is Hart, sir!”

  “Pick up your footlocker and hold it over your head, tough guy!”

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley commanded, smiling. His evil grin widened when he ordered the other fifty-nine of us to raise our footlockers over our heads. “Look at all these tough guys!”

  The smile, we learned, was a deception. It always preceded a hellish series of games. The games were rote tasks, repetitive acts, and physical punishments designed to illicit frustration and rage within recruits. School was in session. Today’s lesson was “Why join the Marine Corps?”

  Sixty recruits wobbled under the stress of their twenty-pound wooden footlockers. The sweat cascading down my forehead and through my eyes made the footlockers look blurry green.

  “Deck!” he ordered, and sixty footlockers slammed to the mirrorlike reflection of the squad bay floor. “Nope, too slow. Get ’em back up, tough guys.”

  The looks of fatigue from the first few repetitions were soon replaced with frustrated faces. Sensing our insubordinate thoughts, Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley prepared to take us to the next level of game play. We stood frozen from anticipation in our places on-line.

  “On-line” is the default position for all recruits in the barracks—the position of attention with your boot heels touching the straight yellow line in front of the racks. The squad bay was a long rectangular room with thirty racks on each side, called starboard and port. That was where we stood, empathizing with Atlas under the increasing weight of our footlockers. Finally Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley gave us our nex
t command.

  “Pass!”

  Each of us handed our footlocker on to the next recruit to our right. The last recruit on the right passed his to the recruit opposite S P A R E P A R T S

  7

  him to keep the suffering cyclical and continuous. The first few passes were rhythmic and orderly, resembling a human chain organized to move things efficiently. Only, there was no efficiency.

  There was, however, the futile passage of rough wooden footlockers that scratched and splintered against our forearms, exposed by rolled camouflage sleeves. I naively believed we would stop after about a minute. We were pitiful.

  I would learn that pity was a foreign emotion to drill instructors.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley growled, “Feeling tough yet, girls?”

  A mixture of sir-yes-sirs and sir-no-sirs communicated our mounting confusion and signaled a breakdown in unity. Like trained dogs we would perform on command.

  “Move!” snapped Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

  Sixty salivating dogs barked, “Faster, sir!” reinforced by an accelerated series of commands.

  The directions came faster. “Move!”

  Our response kept pace. “Faster, Sir!”

  “Move!”

  “Faster, Sir!”

  Meanwhile the rhythm and order were giving way to the lactic acid building in our muscles and the desperation building in our minds. I was tossing each footlocker to my right and looking left without knowing, or caring, if Watkins managed to receive it. Wilson to my left was rushing, too, and I wanted to be ready.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley’s threats were painful to hear. “Go ahead . . . drop one of my footlockers . . . and I guarantee there will be hell to pay!”

  Those were the last words before the inevitable happened. In hindsight it’s clear that the goal of this was never success. Our drill instructors would push us to the physical, mental, and emotional breaking point many times at Parris Island over the coming weeks—

  in this case that point was a dropped footlocker. Failure fragments personal security. Consistent failure replaces self-confidence. Absolute failure erases identity.