I was working very hard. The fun and games were over. Annice drove my ass off in rehearsals but I didn’t resent it. She simply wanted to make it impossible for any of the other girls to say I was hired because I was white. I was hanging in—losing weight but hanging in. Even after rehearsals I would go back to my apartment and work out all over again. I even went down the street doing my snaky routine, once stopping a helluva lot of traffic coming out of a Safeway store on Stuyvesant Street.
I was really on top of things when it happened. I was fast asleep. Out cold in my apartment. So beat from the physicality of dancing that I was into something more nearly approaching a coma. I never heard a thing. Not the sirens, not the screaming, nothing. But I smelled it—the chickens, burning.
The smell came under my door and I knew immediately what was happening. I opened the door and the flames almost knocked me over. I’d never get out that way. I didn’t panic. Panic was not my style. There was still my window, my one window, but could I squeeze through it?
I pulled a chair over and stood on it. Though the window was about one foot by two feet, it just didn’t swing open enough for me to wiggle through. Six inches—that’s all. I pulled the window closed and then smashed it with a lamp. Then I knocked off all the ragged glass edges that remained. If I hadn’t done that, going through the window’s frame would have been like going through the mouth of a shark.
The flames were licking under my door, even through the keyhole, the smoke curling across the floor like a ground fog aimed at my ankles. There wasn’t too much I could take with me and not all that much time in which to make my selection. So I took things that seemed to have the most value—my workout clothes and Maggie’s portrait.
Hands helped pull me through my ex-window. Police, firemen, water, lights—it was like opening in Vegas. And there I stood, in all the noise and all the color, wet from the fire hoses, my legs shivering below my baby doll nightie, holding onto my leotards with one hand and my mommy with the other. I knew I looked forlorn, so I cried.
Good-bye, apartment. Good-bye, li’l haven, first sweet place of my own. And fuck you and your chickens, Mona. I hope you fry in Mazola.
CHAPTER NINE
Ben
1950
Let’s say it right off, clearing the air of all possible misconceptions: the Army and I, as a team, as a marriage and an act, closed after a long run during which all the critics agreed that the US would have been better advised to surrender than to attempt to mold Ben Webber into any kind of fighting machine, unless, of course, the purpose of such an attempt was the complete and total demolition of the United States itself, as an army, a nation, and an ideal.
It just didn’t work, gang, what else can I tell you? From the beginning it didn’t work. From the bus ride to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, during which two men vomited and the air-conditioning failed through the lunch stop at Springfield, where three men, sworn in that very morning, made for the woods with six MP’s in pursuit, it didn’t work.
Flashback. Young Benjamin Webber, on a bright and brisk morning at five A.M., takes the oath of allegiance, in which he promises to defend his country, is fingerprinted, pushed onto a bus with forty other similarly delighted lads, and is sent—through puke and desertion—to the Fort Devens Reception Center. It is eight degrees above zero and snowing. Five of the new recruits are crying, and young Benjamin has to wonder, “Are we being executed? What is this place? Where is the band playing Sousa? Where the smiling girls with the doughnuts and coffee? Where the grateful civilian populace clamoring its affection, covering us with kisses, offering us its women, its wine?”
Fraud. Fraud, deceit, misdemeanor, felony, coercion, and bullshit. There are no women, no doughnuts, no music, no wine. There is nothing but eight degrees, snow, and a fat southern sergeant shouting at us in something approximating English, but more nearly sounding like Pig Fart.
I was issued my clothing and assigned to my outfit, the 42nd Quartermaster Group, Headquarters Company. Basically, it was a Pennsylvania National Guard outfit that had been mobilized when no one was looking, clearing out the gyms, garages, sawmills and churches of all eligible men. The colonel in charge had a dry-cleaning business. The lieutenant colonel, second in command, was a bank teller. And none of the non-coms was over nineteen years of age. All of them were Pennsylvania Dutch, which meant that they washed regularly, said “fuck thee,” and were in for a big surprise.
Mixed in with the National Guardsmen (NG’s), were a sprinkling of Regular Army men (RA’s), all of them noncoms, and a handful of World War II Reservists (RES) who, stupidly, to hang onto their rank, joined the Reserves at the end of the war in 1945. Basically, the Reservists were good guys, in their thirties, but contemptuous of a situation that had them in their second war within five years.
Please understand the array: forty-five National Guardsmen, fifteen Regular Army men, six Reservists, to which are added thirty-five draftees (US’s). It was an impossible amalgam. The NG’s were painfully young, and if they had ever been laid, it would have had to have been with horses. The RA’s were old drunks who saw the Army as their home. The Reservists, Army-wise and pissed off, would rather America lose the war than serve another week. And the US’s were, for the most part, street smart, crafty, and not to be broken easily to the bit.
Of the NG’s, only Captain Francis Grace was for real. Despite the double feminine name, he had been a Marine officer in the Pacific theatre of operations and, following World War II, though properly mustered out, had somehow felt compelled to sign on with the Guard. When the Guard was activated, Captain Grace found himself attached to a unit in which he was the only officer with any combat experience. He could not have liked being billeted with those egg-pluckers.
The two colonels, I suppose, were all right, but they were distant. Colonel Cranston, as I said, had this dry-cleaning business and was very big on inspections. The band would play “Cruising Down The River,” he’d stand up in his jeep, salute, and then drive off. How he’d be in a war was anybody’s guess. Clean would be a good word; pressed would be a better one.
Lieutenant Colonel Beakins, our bank teller, always looked as though he was about to ask, “How would you like it, sir? All in fives?” As to the rest of the NG officers and men, they ran from “tolerable” to “middling” to “God help us,” though Master Sergeant Luther Holdoffer was easily the most inexcusably stupid human being whose canteen I ever had the pleasure of peeing in.
The RA’s and Reservists I’ll deal with as events unfold, but I would like to sketch out two of the US’s who, to this day, have my admiration, respect and affection. Raggedly individualistic, they could not knuckle under to authority any more than I could. As a result they helped make my Army life bearable and, on occasion, pleasurable.
Johnny Munez was half Spanish, half Italian, and all swarthy. He was from Brooklyn, drove an eighteen-wheel trailer truck as a civilian, stood five-foot-seven and was built like the stump of a Sequoia. Resourceful, intelligent, troubled by his lack of education, Johnny had determined that the real enemy was the National Guard. And together we waged a guerrilla war against the Guardsmen of such an intensity that, only now, years after the events took place, do I dare make the facts known.
My other good friend was a laughing man with sparse hair so blond as to seem either white or nonexistent. Painfully Polish, lantern-jawed and blue-eyed, why Tony Wesso laughed was forever beyond me because, of all the draftees, he had the most to lose by doing a stint in the Army. He had been the leading left-handed pitcher for the (now defunct) Jersey City Giants, but it was all behind him. He had been wrenched off the mound, put in a new uniform, and told to stay loose. Instinctively happy, Tony laughed because everything seemed truly funny to him. He never complained. He was so coordinated that nothing in our basic training ever truly tested his skills. But there was an impish side of him, a Halloween side, that of a born prankster.
Tony Wesso, Johnny Munez, Ben Webber—plus a few other carefully selected U
S’s—posed a greater problem to the security of the United States than did a dozen Communist Chinas.
Being attached to a quartermaster company can be, and usually is, a very cushy situation. But being attached to the headquarters company of a quartermaster outfit is beyond all of a drafted man’s wildest dreams. Easy jobs. Frequent passes. Clothing that fit. It had all the earmarks of an eighteen-month vacation at the expense of our rich uncle.
The fly in that ointment, we soon found out, was that all the rank, all the good jobs, were already spoken for and held down by the NG’s. That meant two things: no chance for advancement, and all the shit details were ours automatically. It was as though I was back in the mailroom of 20th Century-Fox.
Our basic training was a laugh riot. Most of us draftees were Limited Service, which was why we were assigned to the quartermaster in the first place. I mean, my body was a breakaway body, not unlike the suits that the old burlesque comics used to wear (pull a sleeve and the whole thing flies off). I could pull a hamstring, strain a back muscle, pop a knee, just from moving from a canter to a trot. My body could not be relied on in a stress situation. And all of it was made worse by the fact that my fists were clenched in frustration thirty-six hours a day.
Johnny Munez’s limited service was due to his being blind in one eye. Which eye, not even he knew. And Tony’s was due, believe it or not, to chronic athlete’s foot that he had allowed to fester for years because it felt so good when he scratched. However, some of the draftees were 1-A in that they had good bodies, weak minds, and were ideal candidates to have their heroic asses shot off.
Faced with this utter waste of time, what else could. Johnny, Tony, and I do but behave like bad little kids? Where could they transfer us to? All the so-called shit brigades were totally staffed by Negroes (the Army was segregated and blacks were seldom called upon to do anything that didn’t come under the heading of slavery).
So here’s what we did. We created a designation called Draftee of the Week. It was Tony’s idea and he kept the chart, hidden, of course. The idea behind it was simple enough. A dozen of only the most trusted draftees would meet every Thursday prior to whatever passed for the dinner meal, and we would vote in, as Draftee of the Week, the one US who had done the most to noticeably aggravate the shit out of the NG’s. If that draftee was not a member of the inner circle of twelve, he would be told of his award and would be offered full membership.
And what was the award for being Draftee of the Week? Simple. For the week following his award, the Draftee of the Week rated a full salute from all the other draftees in the program. That may not seem like much to you, but, it you had been there to see the faces of the officers and noncoms and NG’s and RA’s and Reservists, to watch them watch me walk down the company street in my dirtiest fatigues and have all the draftees snap to and salute me as if I were MacArthur, some of them doing it three and four times within a five-minute span—well, you would have realized the importance of such a program to our morale.
Now, you may ask, how does one earn Draftee of the Week? Well, in my case, here are just two of my accomplishments (directly from the commendations as written up by Private Marty Ransom, former star reporter of the Staten Island Herald and later to become a successful advertising executive).
1) On the day of a short twenty-mile hike, the men of the 42nd Group being required to complete that hike without being issued canteens of water, Master Sergeant Luther Holdoffer was seen pouring hot tea into a canteen that he then flaunted on his cartridge belt. Private Benjamin Webber, assuming great personal risk, somehow managed to exchange the tea for urine. Sgt. Holdoffer, true to form, was unable to detect the difference. Due to Private Webber’s courage and resourcefulness, the hike was enjoyed by one and all, especially as Sergeant Holdoffer vomited all night.
2) Before reveille on the morning of March 2, 1951, Private Benjamin Webber, US, noticing that the, Cadre Room door had been left ajar, slipped unnoticed therein and deposited into each of Master Sergeant Luther Holdoffer’s highly-lustred boots, a generous helping of ripe shit. He was assisted in this action and in the procurement of the excrement by Privates Stovall and Morelli who had eaten Mexican chili the night before while feeling somewhat adventurous. At the sound of reveille, Sgt. Holdoffer, as is his wont, leapt into both boots and shortly got the message. For your creativity and courage, Private Webber, the men of the 42nd salute you. Never has better use been made of Mexican cooking.
Much of my malice, as you may have picked up on, was directed at Master Sergeant Luther Holdoffer. This was no accident. Holdoffer personified everything wrong with the National Guard. He was thick in the coco, humorless, mean, and had the intelligence of a plant. He had green teeth and a reeking mouth. He had red dandruff, the body odor of a beached crab, scratched his crotch incessantly, had the blind strength of a pair of oxen, and was the quintessence of random sadism. But more upsetting than anything else, he had master sergeant’s stripes. He was topkick, sergeant of sergeants, cock of the walk, king of the hill, prick of pricks. He had authority. As such he could not be questioned and he could not be stopped. Nor could he be anticipated because he was never able to frame more than three thoughts in a row. In short, he was a sadistic Goliath who loved rubbing our noses on the rocks. On two separate occasions he had goaded a draftee into challenging him to a fight in an official ring, with an impartial referee. Both those draftees emerged so busted up that one of them took five weeks to recover, and the other, hung up with untraceable internal injuries that the army couldn’t treat, was given an honorable discharge with a twenty-five percent “service-induced disability.”
Bringing the cruel ogre to task for his crimes against humanity became my one consuming military aim. North Korea, China, Russia—they were too far away to mean anything to me. Holdoffer was visible, present, active. He was the consummate villain, the universal tormentor—and my one reason for being. I would have his hide.
And he would have mine, for somehow it had gotten through to him that I was the bee in his asshole (not surprising, as anyone of a dozen NG’s could have told him that). And one night he cornered me coming out of the PX, on one of his “drunk nights.” Nobody knew why, but Holdoffer always got drunk on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. When he was that drunk he never scared me. His sodden condition was such an equalizer that I’d be able to hold my own with him or, failing that, outdistance him. It was dark and his death-breath reached me before his words did. “Webber, you motherfucker…”
“Ah, Sergeant Holdoffer. I recognized your cologne.”
“You fuckin’ motherfucker.”
“That’s redundant.”
“I know it’s you, you fuckin’ kike.”
“Actually, I’m a fuckin’ Presbyterian.” I kept walking.
“If I say you’re a kike, you’re a kike.”
“Yazzah. Listen, Sarge, I’m off duty. Anything you want to say to me is going to have to wait till tomorrow.” I tried to walk around him but he blocked my way.
“Fuckin’ Hollywood smartass. Yeah, I looked at your file. You come from 20th Century-Kike in Holly-kike, Kike-a-fornia.”
I managed to walk around him. “Whatever you say, Sarge.” And I walked away.
But he was walking alongside me, a foot taller, and bumping me as if he were pushing me off the road. “You shit in my boots, dincha?”
“You kidding? I wouldn’t go near your boots.”
“And you pissed in my canteen.”
“That was tea. I don’t pee tea, see?”
“You mothers are doin’ somethin’ with all that salutin’. Don’t think I don’t see.”
I saw Johnny and Tony. They were right behind us, coming out of the PX, so I stopped and faced Holdoffer, figuring that they’d catch up. “Listen, imbecile, you lay a paw on me and you’ll be up on charges so fast your skin’ll clear up.”
He saw Johnny and Tony, too, and he included them in his remarks as they came up to flank me. “The three of you fuckin’ kikes, I’m gonna
make you eat shit. You’re gonna cook it, cut it, and eat it.”
Tony smiled at Johnny. “You mean that stuff they’re servin’ ain’t shit?”
And Johnny smiled at Tony. “I didn’t know you were a kike, Wesso. When did that happen?”
“Beats me. I don’t remember being barmitzvahed.” He felt around on the top of his head. “Jesus, I lost my beanie.”
I looked again at Tony and realized that, though he wasn’t as tall or as heavy as Holdoffer, he might easily be just as strong or stronger. Certainly he was in better shape, a better athlete. Also, he was a few years older, and the difference between nineteen and twenty-three could also be the difference between a boy and a man.
Holdoffer was not intimidated. “Wesso, you’re a motherfuckin’ Polack. And anytime you wanna step in the ring with me—”
Tony busted in with a smile. “Sarge, before you and I part company in this army, I’m gonna throw a forkball, two hundred miles an hour, right up your ass.”
“Try it, Polack,” said Holdoffer. “In the ring.”
“I wouldn’t last one minute in the ring with you, apeshit. The smell would knock me out.”
“Fuckin’ shit-eatin’ kikes.” Holdoffer slunk off, his various smells going with him, circling around him like fruit flies.
A few mornings later, Captain Grace called me in. He directed me to be at ease, closing the door and asking me to sit down as though we were chums. He began to talk, informally, lighting up a cigarette and clomping his feet up on his desk. “Explain something to me, Webber.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll try.”
“Why are you so angry? You’re not the only man being asked to serve. Everybody’s unhappy, as they should be. But you—you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry, sir.”
Captain Grace was not one for zig-zagging. He had the face of a Hollywood marine, lean, lined and leathery. He reminded me of Sammy Baugh who used to quarterback the Washington Redskins—not handsome, but riveting. And when he threw the ball at you, you either caught it or it went right through you. “Straight answers, Webber. I have no time for side trips.”
There Should Have Been Castles Page 12
