Corporal Reid, one of Eastridge’s henchmen and the lead hand-to-hand combat expert, had just completed an extreme combat training session. He stood boldly at the podium and challenged a bleacher full of about fifty sailors to come up front and fight him if we had any doubts. Everything stopped. For a brief instant, there were no takers. But his ass was among those at the top of my ass-kicking list. What a gift horse!
I gave others a chance to be first, but still no takers. So I, sitting way back in the very last row of the bleachers, raised my hand. This was supposed to be the part where the combat drill instructor humiliates and makes an example of Little Grasshopper.
Although a silence hushed the scene, no one said a word. I could sense that my fellow navy sailors appreciated me at least for this one instance. Milking the situation for as much drama as possible and savoring the anticipation of getting paid to officially kick this punk ass, I took my sweet ever-lovin’ time to stroll up front to the podium. Reid’s face flushed with panic, and he gasped with relief when Gunny Sergeant Malina waved me off, ordering me back to my seat. I smirked and chuckled all the way back.
But everyone knew this ain’t over.
Swindler had a big voice that boomed all over base, throughout the bar, louder than any band or jukebox or restaurant, or even all over town whenever he talked about even the most casual topic. He had only one volume, could only speak in the loudest decibels, accentuated with pronounced stuttering. He and I were sidekicks, along with his volatile buddy Shaky Bates, who smashed up the dishes in the chow hall because he didn’t like the menu. Bates and “Schwin” came in the same buddy package. For the most part, we hung out in the township of Kenitra. We’d venture into the (off-limits) medina, catch buses to Casablanca or Rabat, or just show up at the train station, catch a train, and see where we’d wind up.
To Schwin, every topic was exuberantly exciting. When he was just talking about the weather, people would say, “Schwin, calm down!” But the thing I loved the most about Schwin was that he was a compulsive habitual pathological liar. He had stories about how back home he had some kind of car (that didn’t exist), a trained monkey that went to the store for his wife Brenda, and a father who was a “full bird general” and visited him by helicopter in boot camp, publicly chastising the drill sergeant for asking him to do push-ups.
Swindler ’n’ me.
My favorite lie was about the time he was home alone drinking wine when his doorbell rang. It was his next-door neighbor, whose wife was in the process of giving birth. Schwin grabbed his bottle of wine and swung into action. Racing to the scene, he ordered the husband to boil some water. He then had two helpers grab her feet and pull her legs apart as hard as they could. He sterilized the vaginal area, pouring wine between her legs, then took a long hard swig. He reenacted reaching inside her, finding and tugging the unborn baby’s head. But the baby was stuck, would not come out. So he illustrated how, standing on one foot, placing his other foot inside of her thigh, he grabbed the baby by the head and continued to pull harder and harder. The mother screamed in agony, so he slammed another swig of wine and yelled to the helpers pulling her legs apart to “pull harder.”
Suddenly, the story slowed down and came to an end. He smiled, announced, “It was a boy,” and took a bow.
Shocked, amazed, and amused, I was so grateful. After all, we were isolated and secluded, completely cut off from family and friends, with no English-speaking television or radio, not even a newspaper. Beyond mail call and new guys, there was no contact with the outside world, no entertainment. Somehow, Swindler compensated. There was nothing that he wouldn’t lie about, and I regarded him as precious.
Perhaps the one thing Swindler and I had in common was our love for Aretha Franklin. I, the real Dr. Feelgood, made her feel like a natural woman. I was gonna ask her for her hand in holy matrimony as soon as I got back to The World. It was just that simple.
“Man, that was an odious conundrum!”
Nezz suddenly paused while taking a long hit off the joint. The joint burned down to exploding seeds, accentuating the stall in time. My big new word for this day was the last straw.
Maybe I spoke out of turn. Or maybe everybody just needed something to do. Nesbitt gagged on his hit of the joint, exhaling smoke. “The mah’fukkin what? The what? … We’re kickin’ this squid’s ass!” Everybody jumped up at the same time. I grabbed the one closest to me, placing him with a behind-the-back armlock.
These play fights became as painfully vicious as “playing” could possibly be and still be playing. My strategy was to capture one of them and apply pain on my captive until they let me go. They’d pry him loose. I’d grab another.
But Nesbitt had this homemade torture hold. Clenching, squeezing, pinching skin with some kind of claw hold on both sides of my stomach, he applied pain, yelling in my face. “Let go, Squid! Let go, Schquiddd! I know it hurts! It hurts, don’t it?”
They roughed me up a little bit, and we all had a good laugh. “Squid, you coulda been a Ji-rene” (a term of endearment which marines use to describe themselves).
Most everyone understood this as playing. But among US fighting men fresh off combat, it could trigger flashbacks. I had pretended not to notice Lance Corporal Shaky Bates’s eyes staring me down from across the tiny room. I kept looking down and away in submission, glancing back to see if he was still staring. Glazed eyes glared stronger and stronger; his face started to shake; his body started to tremble. “Carter!” he shouted. “I’ve been watching you. You one of the hardest mahfukkahz I’ve ever seen!” He launched at my throat with a bladed viper-strike-like motion.
The brothers grabbed him and held him back, “Schquid! I know who you are! I know where you get your powers! You the devil!” And so with that I departed.
I was making some friends, and sports helped. “Carter! Are you nuts?” Petty Officer Johnson was sincerely perplexed. “I hear that you’re fighting Corporal Guillotine in the boxing tournament! Word is that he’s under official orders from Captain Jones to smash you into the canvas or be punished with restriction!” Johnson, one of the sailors Guillotine had bullied out of his bus seat that night, was intimidated on my behalf. “You aren’t gonna fight him, are you, Carter?”
That was the first I heard of it. I shrugged. I didn’t even know there was a tournament. But finally America offered me some kind of direct man-to-man challenge, instead of all that behind-the-back throat slicing, belly slicing, backstabbing; I finally had somebody, something to attack. Besides, Guillotine had squared off against me that day in the marine barracks. Of course, the odds were against me. And I was the only sailor to compete in the entire marine-sponsored event. This fight was a bad deal for me, challenging me beyond the core of my being, but it was the only deal I got.
“No offense, Carter, but you should be fighting someone closer to your size! You could bow out now, ask for a more reasonable opponent.”
In my world, you don’t get to choose your opposition. You take on all comers. To follow Johnson’s advice would have been to punk out, forever to lose face.
Next few days, like everyone else, I trained for the tournament with push-ups, sit-ups, skipping rope, and roadwork. But I worked out and shadowboxed only in privacy.
Once I happened by when Guillotine had just finished sparring. He leaped from the ring and called me out. “Carter, I hear you’re kinda fast!” He put up his dukes and took a fighting stance. “Let me see how you hold your hands when you fight!”
My mental camera took a series of snapshots, visualizing how he would come at me. I didn’t want to give him nothing, not even the slightest sneak preview. “Naw, you gonna find out when the time comes!” Guillotine, a heavyweight fighter, boasted never to have been knocked down, and he was proud of his fifty-fifty win-loss record.
I shadowboxed late at night, alone on duty, practicing footwork, changing directions, stickin’ and movin’. Using the glass covering the switchboard gauges as a mirror, I got too close and smashed the cove
r glass with my fist, slightly cutting up my knuckles. For hand speed, I practiced catching houseflies with my bare hands.
For Guillotine, it was just another routine tough-guy outing. For me, it was the test of my worthiness as a human being. I was fighting to salvage the tiniest morsel of human dignity or some kind of justification for occupying space on the planet. This was a personal public grudge match! All the glory—or public shame. Everything on the line. Winner take all!
Stripped of my St. Paul identity in boot camp, with my hair cut off and all my civilian clothes shipped home in a cardboard box, I had no idea what was left. Everything about myself, who I was, was a big question mark. The sense of worthiness I had from my family, community, and spirituality was in direct conflict with the worthless-piece-of-shit, academic, secular global American assessment that the world was shoving at me.
Every factor that could be weighed, measured, or counted was in his favor. This Guillotine fellow was a true warhorse with an iron chin who loved to bang. He’d been in so many fights, brawls, and bouts that he’d lost count. And he advertised the fact that he’d never been knocked down.
But the luxury of raw desperation was on my side. I had always been plagued with anger issues, enough for a shrink to have a field day, and suppressed rage bubbled beneath my feet. My mind was made up—not this day! I’m coming out of this ring either wide-awake or belly-up!
His power, a huge advantage, meant going toe to toe was not an option. Even getting caught with a glancing shot could mean instant nap time. He was expected to come in as a one-man wrecking machine. This was perceived as mismatch of the year.
It was a bright sunshiny North African festive day. Hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, popcorn, and soda were served. Buses from town and other bases lazily pulled into Bouk. Long wooden benches and folding chairs surrounded the boxing ring, which was centered in the huge outdoor grass area mid-base. Gradually bleachers and chairs began to fill with spectators.
Stoically, I watched the preliminary fights in an out-of-body daze at ringside. I had Vaselined up my face and body real good, to reduce his punches to grazing and glancing blows. Big Jones, from Texas, wrapped my hands and taped up my knuckles, assisting me in putting on the gloves. Hecklers heckled and booers booed. “Good night, Carter! Nap time! Better take your teddy bear. Where’s your pj’s? See ya when you wake up!”
Eventually it was time to fight.
“A-a-a-nd in the blue cooh-naah, weighin’ in at a hundred sixty-five pounds”—I had claimed an extra fifteen—“from St. Paul, Minnesotaaaa … Mel Pur-dee Boy … Caah-taaahhhh.” Somebody clapped. Most booed.
“That schquid don’t weigh no damn-ass hundred sixty-five!”
“He gonna git hort! He gonna git hort real bad.”
“He’ll get knocked out early.”
“Aaa-and in the red connah, weighing in at one eighty-five”—reducing his weight by twenty—“from New Orleans, Louisiana! Our own Stan the Raging Bull Guilloteeene.”
The ref, Capt’n Jones, brought us to mid-ring, man-to-man, eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose, face-to-face, for the big stare-down. Tensions became tangible. Flashbacks of Guillotine squaring off against me during the showdown in the marine barracks flickered in my mind. Eagles soaring high above swooped down and landed on nearby branches. Pelicans perched on top of the water tower. Vultures circled overhead just in case; buzzards, too. All activity stopped—except for one nearby buzzing fly. “Protect yourself at all times,” Capt’n Jones instructed. “Obey my commands at all times. In the event of a knockdown, go to a neutral corner and wait for the count. Good luck. Shake hands, and may the best man win.”
Just as the bell was about to ring, my self-induced trance was interrupted. A voice anxiously shouted from far away—“Quarter! Quarter! Quarter!”—penetrating like a fire alarm. Huff, restricted to kitchen duty for the entire day, keeping one foot inside the building, was yelling my name, wishing me good luck from way across the huge lawn area.
Ding!
I came in cautiously, fluttering in unpredictable syncopated patterns and rhythms, cloaking real plans to attack his left. I feinted a left jab. It wasn’t that I didn’t see his incoming straight left, his hard-right cross, his finishing left hook to my face. I just couldn’t duck it. A split instant became an eternity standing still in front of incoming bazookas, watching them, bracing myself for the big clobber to come.
This is gonna be bad! my mind told my body. Real bad. Prepare for impact! My upper body relaxed from the waist up, going completely limp, rolling with the incoming blow.
The audience murmured, “It’s over! It’s over! See, I told’ja!”
Surely there must have been pain somewhere, but I’d feel it later. Right now I was in urgent need of a new better best. Getting smashed would confirm the role the world assigned me—“You ain’t shit”—and finish off every smoldering illusion that I am somebody.
And to everyone’s astonishment, especially my own, I was still standin’! What?! That’s it? That’s all you got, mahfukkah? My legs stayed under me; my face had absorbed the fullest brunt of his best shots. Perfect timing and rolling with the punch had taken almost half the torque.
Perhaps it was at that point my whole life came together. The kid running from the Thompson boys, the sixteen-year-old who lifted the huge stone off Tommy Brown’s hand, the teenager who outran the bullets, the nephew who faced Pitbull, the “Black devil” facing down the attacking dog and its owners. My inner beast awakened, fully alerted and released! Adrenaline erupted from the inner volcano, combined with goo-gobs of unofficial inner-city back-alley on-the-job training, plus preexisting physical strength, took me to an apex of best. My fists and feet functioned at supersonic speed. My left jab, a machine gun, a surgical instrument. The sheer force of speed and torque generated enough power to stun a charging bull in its tracks.
The bull huffed, puffed, stomped, closing in, trapping me, setting up to maul me in the corner. The matador taunted. Now when your opponent is angry, make him madder! Once mad, his thinking is impaired. Now he’s reactionary. Once reactionary, he’s predictable. The bull charged, stampeded, mad with rage and overeager to smash my pretty face, easily lured, committing the mortal sin of all competition—predictability.
I created distance as he charged and rampaged. My unorthodox style of fighting was a little like Muhammad Ali’s: float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. I was bobbin’, weavin’, slippin’ ’n’ slidin’, while getting caught mostly with glancing blows that marginalized his goliath power. He charged, stalked, closing in, walking me down.
But my fists became rapid firing pistons, stunning him in his tracks, which caused him to wobble, about to topple. Seizing the instant, the alley cat pounced, sticking, stabbing, flashing flurries, the bull stunned and off-balance.
I was on him like white on rice, like cold on ice, like wood on a log, like ham on a hog, my right repeatedly pounding his face, his body sloped sideways, held up by the ropes, almost ready to drop. I was poised to strike the finishing blow, but he somehow recovered his balance. I dodged a haymaker from hell that would have sent me to la-la land.
The first fight at Bouknadel, August 1969. “Carter staggers Guillotine with a right hand.”
The audience—ambushed, even more than he—leaped to their feet. “Gawt day-aam!” “Oh my Gaawd!” Soul brothers chanted, “THUMP CALL!” White sailors, now on my side, chanted and echoed, “GQ!” (general quarters battle stations). His fighting DNA had been revealed to me. I was reading his mind. I knew what he was gonna do and when he was going to do it. I was baiting and luring him in, giving false targets, taking them away, and making him pay.
Adding to his confusion, I turned southpaw in the second round, giving him a little razzle-dazzle. His eyes flashed anger, confusion, frustration.
Eventually, it was I who became the stalker, walking him down. It was he who was taking evasive measures, avoiding the wrath of the ghetto. It was I, stalking, steering him into trap after trap, pouncing, playi
ng capture and release. I stuck ’n’ bled him real good! At the end of the fight, his face and torso were purple, black, and blue. Even his arms were discolored from absorbing the brunt of my manpower. Blood was all over both of us, even on the canvas, but not a single drop of it was mine. I was still “Pur-dee Boy.”
Sincerely, I had absolute respect for this magnificent opponent. The decision went to the ref and the judges. We stood mid-ring, on opposite sides of Captain Jones, waiting for the announcement. The decision was a DRAW. A tie.
Immediately the ring flooded with fans, navy chiefs, dads, fathers, and sons, all rushing into the ring congratulating me and taking turns posing with me for photos. Most significantly, Warrant Officer Lear, the most respected naval officer on base, made it a point to greet me fondly. This was the best fight ever in the history of all fights anywhere.
Good ol’ MacGuinness and Corporal Brim, who had also hated me at first sight, were waiting as I climbed out of the ring. “Your squid ass still ain’t shit!” and “Yeah, Carter, you ain’t nuthin’ but a street fighter!” Yesterday that might have contributed to my self-doubt. But nothing could have been more validating than haters working so hard at hating. Now it was affirmation, confirmation, even flattery.
When two men are in a fight, they know who is the best. Guillotine challenged me as we left the ring to go between the barracks and “finish this,” and that was confirmation enough. But as far as I was concerned, it was finished. I had done my thang to him, inflicted my will on him. Any other day, he might have kicked my ass. But not today. Truth be told, nothing could have possibly beat me this day. This day I had learned the power of mind over matter.
For several months to follow, people told me, “Honest to God, I never thought you had anything like that in you!” This was astonishing. It let me see the contrast between how others saw me and how I saw myself. What was revealed to me was that I am not, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be that person presumed unworthy of human dignity, spontaneously targeted with disrespect. I was never the invisible nobody these people presumed me to be. That was somebody else. In some inexplicable way, Big Momma’s—Clara May Smith’s—unspoken promise was being fulfilled. I am who my momma, my siblings said I was, my own version of the son my dad wanted me to be.
Diesel Heart Page 12
