Missile Rats, page 1
Missile Rats
By
C.L. Bevill
Dedicated to Woody,
who once was a Nike-Hercules Electronics Missile Mechanic,
and God alone knows why a nuclear incident didn’t happen.
Thanks to Palma Beckett, Jana DeLeon, Shelia Salinas,
and my two cats, Bug and Tokyo Rose, may they rest in peace.
Missile Rats
Published by C.L. Bevill at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Caren L. Bevill
1981
Chapter One –
Twelve days after John Hinckley II tried to blow a hole in the President of the United States of America, I went to an Army recruiter. Back to Hinckley II. He used a .22 caliber pistol and managed to wound a bunch of other people in the process of presidential assassination, including James Brady and a secret service guy. My father said that if the twenty-five year old, certifiable loon had really wanted to do some damage he would have used a Dirty Harry special, instead of a twenty-two. In any case, he did nail Ronnie in the chest and my high school announced it on the overhead speakers in the gravest manner, just so, “The President was shot today. He was not killed and is expected to recover. But he was shot.”
I don’t think any of us knew exactly what to do. I could have debated the matter. Was I supposed to scream with joy? Denounce the NRA? Cry because Nancy was having a bad day? Argue on the quality of the secret service? So instead, we all sat numbly around staring at the desks and the walls while the teacher, a social-studies instructor, looked at the chalkboard without saying a word. His lips were set in a face that was dourly grim. After a minute, and I watched every second pass on the clock, he went back to talking about local politicians as though everything was just peachy-keen. He wiped a tear out of his eye, and it occurred to me to wonder if he were crying because Reagan had been shot or because Reagan hadn’t been killed. I don’t know why that thought came to me. But it did and it stuck out in my mind.
But I remember that day really well; it reminded me of people telling me where they were when they found out Kennedy had been assassinated. “I was eating the vanilla ice cream,” my mother told me once, “holding you in my arms. You were maybe five months old, but a quiet baby, no fuss at all, so I took you everywhere. And the manager of the soda shop came out of his office to tell everyone. President Kennedy was dead in Dallas, he said, and everyone shut right up. My ice cream dripped all over my hand.” That’s what melting vanilla ice cream reminded my mother of, and she never failed to bring it up when she had a cone in her hand. But the announcement over the loud speakers about Reagan reminded me of where-was-I-when-stories.
I knew exactly where I was when they announced that Reagan had been shot, even what I had been thinking about; sitting in my social-studies class, surreptitiously picking my nose and trying to figure out how I could avoid eating dinner with the parents that night. Mostly I was thinking about what to do with the rest of my life. Picking one’s nose always helped a person to think more clearly.
However, the thing with Reagan getting shot and how I was thinking about what to do with the rest of my life made a strange kind of correlation. Except there wasn’t any correlation at all. Reagan was shot; I should go and be all I could be. Yeppers. My grand solution to the dilemma of President of these here United States being shot in the chest. Not a bit of connection there. Don’t know why I decided what I did right then and there.
It popped into my head. Maybe I thought it would be a Private Benjamin kind of thing, maybe a Stripes thing. Except I was Catholic, a boy, and I had all kinds of experience with working hard in my short life. No one had died on me, not even the President, and life wasn’t as bad as some of the song writers had proclaimed it would be.
So twelve days after Reagan got nailed by John Hinckley II, a fella they said had once told his psychiatrist that he was going to go out and shoot someone in a similar manner that Charles Whitman had done, I went to the Army recruiter. It took twelve days to get past the inner voice that warned me what would happen when my mother found out. So I looked up the address of a recruiter and it was there in the yellow pages bigger than life.
I don’t remember much about that visit except that he was a tall guy with blonde hair cut so short you could see his flesh was pink underneath the hair. He reminded me of a large white rabbit. But he wouldn’t say much to me except I had to take something called an armed services vocational battery test. Apparently, the Army was turning men away in droves who were coming to join the military. Because the economy was shaky, the military was looking good to a lot of people. “So take the test and bring back the results. Then we’ll talk turkey,” said the Army recruiter amicably.
The Air Force guy said pretty much the same thing. Those recruiters were a convenient bunch. They had all their offices in the same little business complex. All the doors faced into a little, open garden in the middle. The Air Force people were opposite the Marines. The Army was off on the north side. The Navy faced the Army and I certainly don’t know if that had been intentional or not. And the Coast Guard had an office around the side, the red-headed step-child, I guess. Apparently the Coast Guard wasn’t good enough to be in the main complex proper. Or maybe their guy had signed up too late to get one of the better office spaces.
The Marine guy took a look at me with his beady, little, bloodshot eyes and locked his square jaw into place. I looked back at him, positive that my eyes weren’t little or beady and my jaw wasn’t locked. I rather liked the thought of having a square jaw, but then there was this large, muscular man in a khaki uniform staring at me like maybe I was lunch. Not a very tasty lunch, but lunch all the same. Then I decided that the Marine’s hair was shorter than Sergeant Rabbit’s in the Army office and knew right away that the Marines weren’t for me. The Marine guy took a little more convincing than I did. “Son,” he said, and he said it in a deep, rough voice that spoke of too many cigarettes and too much whiskey. Not only that but he liked saying, ‘Son,’ because he repeated it thirty-two times in our twenty minute conversation. I knew because I started counting after the third time. “I look at you and I see that you having the making of a fine Marine. A position that shows pride in your country and a willingness to show all those slack-jawed queers you went to high school with that you are a real man. Do you know what I mean, son?”
I nodded. But honestly I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t think there were any slack-jawed queers in my classes. I don’t think I would have recognized one even if one bit me on my ass.
“Good. Here’s the thing. You sign on the dotted line. Son, you go to boot, you come out a lean, mean, fighting machine. You’ll be the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the whole damn state of Louisiana.” He pounded on his desk for emphasis. Then he made this noise. It was kind of a grunt combination yell-of-triumph. “Oww-Ooo-Aah.” The emphasis was on the ‘Ooo.’ I took it to mean that he was pleased, and I made the assumption that this was a noise that all regular Marine guys make when they were happy or had just farted or maybe when they didn’t have a clue as to what else to say. I think pretty much all I could have done was to nod my head, which I did. Again.
Then I had to go and ruin his spiel. When the ‘Oww-Ooo-Aah’ had faded away, I asked, “But do I get to pick what I get to do?”
The Marine stared at me as if I were a cockroach and he were the spit-shined boot that was about to smear my body into the pavement upon which I scuttled. He must have practiced that look in the mirror in his home. He said imperiously, “Son, you get the privilege of serving in those first to fight, the first men off the boat to win the battle, the Corps, son. The Corps. You’ll be a Marine. And there’s nothing better than being a Marine.” Then he said that thing again, “Oww-Ooo-Aah.”
That was a big hell-no-you-don’t-get-to-choose-your-job-son-you-big-goober-and-how-dare-you-even-ask-me-you-walking-talking-piece-of-maggot-shit. However, in real life I guess he didn’t get to say that to someone before they actually joined the Corps. In any case, the recruiter, whose name was DeSoto, wasted at least six more ‘sons’ on me before he gave up. Patriotism wasn’t going to do it. Having a bona fide ticket to becoming a big, bad motherfucker wasn’t going to do it. Glaring down at me and implying that if I didn’t join the Marines then I was a big, sloppy pussy wasn’t going to do it. I wanted to pick my job. I didn’t know what but I wanted something I could use in the future. Some kind of job that was cool. And in my mind I said ‘cool’ just like when he emphasized the ‘Corps.’ Cool.
The Marine recruiter finally figured out that I wasn’t going to fall over like dominos and passed me one of his business cards with a sneer on his angular, military face. He added as I went out the door, “Give me a call when you want to join the real military.” Then when the door shut I swear I heard in a voice that had become three octaves higher, “You little prick.”
That was okay. I was a tall, geeky, seventeen year old. My father had moved us around the Gulf of Mexico for the last ten years from Florida to Mississippi to Alabama to Louisiana while he worked the oil rigs. I was used to being called names because I was the new kid. I played the trumpet in band. I got to drive an old pick-up truck that had more rust on it than not, and I didn’t like high school a whole helluvalot. I had just gotten turned down from the one college I really wanted to go to because my grades weren’t the best ever, and other than working in a pipe yard for the rest of my life, didn’t have much to look forward to. My mother called me Richard when she was aggravated. My father called me Rickie even if he wasn’t. Kids in high school giggled when they found out my last name was Skeet, and made the same tired, old jokes about hunting for you-know-what.
All in all I still checked my appearance in a window before trotting into see the Navy recruiter to make sure I didn’t look like I imagined a ‘little prick’ would look like. Feathered, dark-brown hair, down to my shoulders. Brown eyes. Trucker’s tan from working in the pipe yard after school except on both arms. No zits on my nose. No boogers hanging off the same. Tee shirt was clean and proclaimed that Bourbon Street was the place to go on a Saturday night. Levi 501s were properly faded and buttoned up. Nikes were worn, but serviceable. No toilet paper sticking to the bottom of my shoe. No paper sign taped to the back of shirt lauding the lack of size of my pecker. Every thing seemed to be okee-dokey.
The Navy guy was a Navy gal. Short, rounded, and about thirty years old. She had blonde hair and blue eyes but she looked like she liked other women. My father called these women, “Lesbian-butch-dykes,” when the subject infrequently came up. Except he said it all in one word and quickly as if the saying of it would taint him in some manner, “lesbianbutchdykes.” Me, I didn’t care if she could bench-press twice my weight and ate lollipops buck naked on the levee at midnight with Gloria Steinem, if that was what floated her boat, well okay then.
Hell, I didn’t even try to flirt, to ascertain the accuracy of the assumption, although I should have been ashamed to admit I was a seventeen year old boy with raging hormones. She gave me the same spiel as the Marine, less intense. That was okay. Being out in the middle of the ocean didn’t exactly appeal to me anyway.
I didn’t even stop to see the Coast Guard recruiter. I guess he was the low recruiter on the military totem pole. Should have gotten his office sooner.
The next step was to take that armed services vocational battery test. So I called up the number the Army recruiter gave me and scheduled myself for the test. No problem. My sister supplied the dope before the test and I toked up a little herb before taking that bad boy. My sister didn’t know I was taking what might be considered a pivotal test in my life, but we shared the weed and off I went to an old building that looked like it was built around the time of the Second World War. It sat on the edge of the National Guard complex and the parking lot was full.
I didn’t care. I was buzzed. I took the test from a proctor, grabbed some scratch sheets which I never used, and a partially chewed No. 2 pencil. They did the fill-in-the-little-oval-completely patter, talked about time, and how we should finish the tests if we could, if it was getting close to time-up, then by golly-gee-whiz start filling in circles like crazy on the off chance of getting some correct anyway.
The room was full of guys, mostly my age, some a little older. None younger. A few girls in the back and they both looked way out of place. The guy sitting next to me looked like he stepped out of the chapter of the biology book depicting Neanderthal Man. He put the pencil down on the table and scratched his pits as if this process would save his life. Then he grunted. I suspected that he would make a fine soldier, probably just the kind of fella the Marine recruiter liked best. “Sign here, son,” would say the Marine guy with the square jaw and the beady eyes. “Oww-Ooo-Aah,” would reply Fred Flintstone’s hairy brother, and then he would belch. “Good boy,” would congratulate the Marine recruiter. “You’re going to make a helluva Marine. Semper Fi.”
I almost giggled but I didn’t want to get thrown out of the test because they cottoned to the fact that I was high. Also because I didn’t want the big guy to decide to pound me into mincemeat because it eventually occurred to him that I was laughing at him.
So I did the test. They called it the ASVAB, and said it like that, “Az-Vab.” They asked questions about math, general reading knowledge, some technical stuff, and some stuff I couldn’t remember even if I had wanted to. My hirsute table companion grunted many times throughout the test and started to sweat near the end. I had long since put my pencil down and concentrated on riding my buzz to a gentle decline.
Somehow, somewhere, I was aware that I wasn’t taking the test to the best of my ability, that getting stoned and going for a test wasn’t exactly the thing to do. But hey, I was stoned and when a teenager is toked, it suddenly became an oh-the-hell-with-it-kind of thing.
When I got the results back, I didn’t exactly know what to do with them, or even how to interpret them. There were a bunch of initials on one side and scores matching the sets of initials. But the envelope came in the mail about a month before I graduated from high school, and it was sitting on the kitchen counter, propped against the fruit bowl, and I knew that my worst nightmare had happened.
My mother was on to me.
I should have taken my rusting piece of crap truck down to the dock and gotten on the first outgoing ship to South America. I should have driven north to Alaska, going to live in the wilds. I should have fled immediately to anyplace but there. I really should have.
I knew my Dad was going to be ambivalent. I think he would go with whatever I decided I wanted to do, barring ballet-dancing or hair-dressing. And maybe he would have gotten used to those, too, eventually. Not Ma. No, God alone knew what a burden Ma had. She had a wayward husband, two wayward children, and a wayward job. God was testing her and she intended to be clean and sober while she took her test. No fatties for Ma before she filled in her little oval circles and she would make sure each and every part of those oval circles were filled in so that no damn-frigging computer would screw her over.
My sister, Lizbeth, got the majority of the dressing down. She was older by four years and Ma had worn herself out on Lizbeth. Meanwhile I learned by the error of Lizbeth’s ways and proceeded down my own path to inequity. Ditching school was a fine art that I accomplished as early as sixth grade. One had to evade the roving patrols in the high school. Then one had to get to his vehicle and avoid the security dude with the golf cart. Finally, upon returning to the scene one had to produce a document which clearly and accurately explained one’s absence. Forgery of Ma’s signature was the supreme manner in which I excelled to my level of bedevilment. I could write her signature so well she couldn’t tell the difference. Then there was living in New Orleans which was a temptation in itself. The drinking age was eighteen. Nobody checked IDs in the French Quarter because the bartenders didn’t care. The bouncers didn’t care. I don’t think the cops cared as long as women kept flashing boobies at them. Me and my friend, David, would ride our bikes down to the Quarter and drink beer until we closed the place down. I don’t remember my mother or my father ever asking where we were or what that funny Listerine smell was on our breaths the next morning either.
This was because she had her eagle eye on Lizbeth, who did pretty much the same things I did, but got caught on a regular basis. By the time she graduated high school she was living with a biker named Thor in Algiers and Ma had lost a little hope. Somehow I didn’t feel sorry for her.
Ma had picked up the mail and opened the test scores to see what I’d gotten from the Army. Not very respecting of the Constitution, my mother. She left the opened envelope with test scores put neatly back inside and was waiting for me in the living room. With a glass of white wine in one hand and her other on her rosary, she sat next to a large framed picture of Jesus Christ on the cross, waiting for me.
“Hey, Ma,” I said and scuttled past the living room toward my bedroom. I had to get changed to make it to work on time at four P.M.
“Richard,” she said. It sounded a little like the Marine recruiter. Not to mention it held a whole lot of threat and dire promise in it. “Richard,” she said again. “Come in here.”
I tried to evade once more. “Gotta go to work. Lou’s expecting me a little early...”
“Richard,” she said once more and it was the death knell. It tolled for thee. I mean, for me.
I stepped inside the sacred living room, where plastic adorned the couch and settee, and no one but guests were ever permitted to sit. Ma herself sat in a cherry, high-backed chair which gave her an excellent view of the hallway and the kitchen. She had obviously positioned the chair with great malice and aforethought. She wasn’t a big woman. Maybe five foot even. Didn’t weigh a lot either. A hundred pounds soaking wet. Her hair was the same color as mine and her eyes were as blue as the sky. Forty years old and practicing to be the next saint, if only everyone would appreciate her.
