Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  What suddenly happens, however, is that I find myself body-rushed and slammed to cobblestone, seeing that it isn’t boxing at all but a brawl after dark outside a bar in Germany. Impulse has me pushing/rolling/springing to my feet, circling hard. There’s no referee to dust gloves or call fouls as DeMarcus comes windmill-swinging again, grabbing and clawing as voices shout and some cry with racial venom, “Kill the fucking cracker!” “Kill him!” “Stomp his white ass!” “Do it!”

  I tuck and bob, flick fists and suck air, gasp and grin, utter between flicks, “Got me, man…got lucky. Try some more dirty shit…c’mon! Try some more!”

  DeMarcus accommodates. He comes in another cyclone rush that I meet to one side with an unleashing of uppercuts and crosses, several hitting bone, flesh, forearms, one straight-on jab rapping his forehead as if with a baseball bat. I keep moving, looking while pulling in air to stick and deal hurt to his ribs, kidneys, gut. I grin and giggle, gurgle air and keep feeling good, drunkenly relishing the action, knowing I made him pay with the straight shot to the head, hear Kenny Washington saying, “Be puttin’ the foo’ through the toll…make him pay! make him pay! make that body pay some more!”

  “Nailed your ass,” I sputter between peek-a-boo fists, snorting laughter on finding myself oddly hilarious, stand-up-comic funny, ducking, bobbing, weaving in pursuit as he seeks to escape on a twisting bicycle, tries–as I can see–to rally for another cyclone charge. “C’mon, don’t run! Where the fuck you goin’?”

  I remain dukes up, scoring punches as DeMarcus, as expected, explodes into another windmill. I duck left and under, drive a left that slams above his belt while missing with a right to the head that, if it had connected, would have dropped him like a sack of potatoes. We reverse, gasp, spit. I sense that my lungs are okay, allowing me to proceed (if my body punches will only drop his defenses). I know that on a solid score I can put him down, send him to dream land, that I need only guard against being caught in one of his mad grab rush clinches, knowing that if he gets a grip he’s strong enough to take advantage, to throttle me, to choke me to death.

  “KILL HIS HONKY ASS!” someone cries with tears of hate and passion. “STOMP THAT WHITE MOTHERFUCKER! STOMP HIM!”

  “Hey, take it easy,” I joke aside at the seized spectator while sensing the degree of racial hate he’s presenting, continuing to punch and gasp for air, anticipating another crazed charge that will allow an opportunity to stick, to Iron Mike his chest with a blast of dynamite, expelling his breath on the way to taking his head with rights and lefts and dropping him like a bag of momma’s laundry that needs to be washed again.

  All at once he explodes, no matter the consequences. Tucking to lash back as fast as I can, I whip one-two blows, and two more, to his shaved head, shoulder, and collarbone as he rages like a mad bull. I beat off his assault, side-step and suck in air. We re-face, gasp, snort, spit on circling as before, eyeing each other.

  “Gonna die, dumb asshole, stupid fucking gangbanger, carrier of a fucking shank into the army,” I have him know, as my anger rises and my hackles inflate where a moment earlier I had been amused.

  His next crazed rush is head-down, an attempt to get a grip no matter what. He is taking a risk in an attempt to gain a killer neck-lock, and I compel him to pay by down-chopping, chasing, clubbing, and down-chopping his greasy skull over and over…inflicting damage while avoiding being wrestled and made to pay big time.

  It’s a hell of a fight, and the mob continues shouting, shrinking, expanding, calling racial crap: “Honky!” “Bitch!” “White motherfucker!”

  DeMarcus explodes again, fists high, and I duck in while throwing blows, whip a left that hammer-scores against his ribs, stay on him, ready to take risks myself in exchange for hammer shots to the body until one shot or another makes him buckle and open his cupboard doors to assault and battery of the head.

  “KILL THE WHITE MOTHERFUCKER! KILL HIM!”

  It’s the bawling voice again, over the top in its hate and history of despair, its disappointment and dismay. “Get a life, Nancy,” I tell him aside, feeling oddly sorry for him, and it is then, to my surprise, that DeMarcus explodes again and gets a grip around my waist that tells me I’m in trouble. He has leverage, is forcing me down even as I whip at his skull and struggle to keep my legs, sensing inevitable doom as I’m forced to bend.

  When he pops upward, like a wrestler, he has an arm around my neck and I know my trouble is real as he twists about my straining torso, forcing me to bend all the more. With my neck in the V of his arm, he’s a mad machine grasping an opportunity and a coup de grace. His fingers on one hand dig into the side and back of my neck–my blows to his head are falling short–and I know we’re tumbling into a wrestling pile while he retains his grip, using his aroused strength to deliver a rush of fear into my mind as my back hits pavement, making me invoke all I have to avoid a deprivation of air, a hammering into a bloody pulp that will never breathe again.

  I twist and squirm, kick a foot, feel how weighty and powerful the killing machine is as it tries to make my neck its own and twist it into a lock of nothingness. I give all strength to butt-scooching, sliding to resist his neck grip, trying still to punch at his face, at the arm within which my neck is locked, give all strength again, on another breath, to keeping his greasy arm from forcing my face deeper into the cobblestones.

  As his skull grinds my right ear it makes the ear twist on itself and start tearing from my neck at the lobe, bleeding with stinging pain. There is his hard skull, his greasy perspiration, an oily fluid exuding from his mouth onto my trapped face. I seek a layer of air space, while my neck muscles have no choice but to relinquish my face to his mercy.

  I forgo trying to punch, hang on for dear life, grinding against pavement, trying to dig my half-free fingers into the slippery vise retaining my neck in a muscular V. I’m able to reach his elbow, where muscle and flesh are too strong and too slippery to surrender a fraction of an inch. He persists in locking my neck, cutting my breath, appropriating my dumb white ass like a pelt to hang from a porch in Roxbury. He tries a knee thrust in an attempt to crush my groin and shock me into surrendering any resistance my neck muscles might retain, making it clear–despite his knee glancing off–that he means to end my life there behind a bar in Bayreuth called Club Miami Beach.

  I decide to bite. I have no choice but to do so, or to die. My decision derives from an impulse to survive. I’ll need to surrender my neck muscles for the instant my mouth will need to bite his arm and lock teeth into his flesh. As I seize my chance, risking neck and breath on snapping my teeth into his flesh with all I have, he exudes a wail that has everyone present knowing he’s no longer delivering but paying suddenly for what he had been able for an endless minute to inflict.

  I dig with my teeth and jaw until the V of his arm around my neck unlocks. Only later will I see the sequence unfold as if in slow-motion. Mortal fear filled my heart. Damage occurred in the tearing of my ear lobe from my skull. Salty sweat and dirt pressed into my face where they inhibited my capacity to breathe. I had no choice.

  On ass-scooching–neck freed up to a degree–there comes a screaming female voice, “Polezei! Polezei!” which has me and DeMarcus both looking to the Gasthaus doorway, where a halo-lit barmaid has her hands in the air and her mouth open.

  On my glance at DeMarcus we know that enough is enough, that policemen and women are to be avoided at any cost. As he rises and someone tosses clothing his way, and I snatch my shirt from the pavement, we scramble with everyone else, back into the Gasthaus and around to the sidewalk. I head on into the Herrenzimmer where, after glancing in a mirror, I run cold water to wash stinging blood from my ear lobe and over abrasions on one side of my face and chin.

  Shirt and tie in hand, I push on into a stall, where I slide home the lock with the small of my back and stand sucking in air. Slipping into my shirt, buttoning, getting my necktie under my collar and my overseas cap sort of on my head, I begin unrolling wads of toilet pape
r with which to wipe my stinging ear and burning face, gaining no relief.

  Pivoting, I let blood-spit dribble into the toilet water, suck in more air, and dribble more blood-spit in a string. With bloody tears inside my mouth, I spit another gob and continue to salivate. My ear lobe tear keeps stinging, and I’m of a notion to disinfect as soon as possible while restraining myself from touching any exposed flesh.

  I re-button my shirt and think, Jesus, what a battle it was. Fighting in the ring is one thing, duking on the street is another. I adjust my tie, touch fingers at last to my neck, where my ear lobe was torn. Inspecting my fingers, I see a smear of blood. Unable to resist, I touch closer to the damage at the base of my ear. The pain is sharp, while the smear of blood is watery. Removing my handkerchief, I press it to my ear, relieved by a degree from the fire of sweat entering the wound. Maybe it wasn’t the police at all, I think, but a barmaid’s way of getting customers back inside, spending their money?

  The blood on my handkerchief is less than expected, and I guess that whatever length of lobe was separated (it feels like half an inch) was not enough to allow a flow. Stuffing the handkerchief into my pocket, I press my back to the door and re-fix my belt buckle while inhaling some added equilibrium. As I button my shirtsleeves someone enters and has me guessing from a crisp sliding of shoes over tile that policemen have arrived.

  German voices exchange jabs that I don’t understand. Striving to contain my breath, I get my shirttail squared away and am double-brushing my shirtfront when knocking suddenly whomps the stall door and a voice shouts too loudly: “OUS! OUS! OUS VON DA! Out from der! OUT!”

  I reach to square my cap. “What’s cookin’? What’re you shouting about?”

  “Out from der–pleeze!” the voice demands, followed by added baton whomps on the door. “Out, NOW!”

  “Give me a second. Take it easy.”

  “OUT! NOW! NO SECOND!”

  I slide the latch and emerge to instant inspection by two green-uniformed police officers. The older of the two says, “Here! In dis light! NOW!”

  I attempt to look ordinary and unruffled as I obey. “What’s the problem?” I ask, continuing to inhale.

  “You fighting! Look at dat! Identification, please–NOW!”

  I remove my wallet, hand over my ID. “Little scuffle is all,” I say. “Little disagreement. No big deal.”

  “You are intoxicated!” the policeman says while trying to read my face close up like small print in a book.

  “A little intoxicated,” I say. “Had a bit. I’m sober now. Nearly sober. Just a scuffle. No big deal.”

  The older policeman grins to a degree on asking, “You are driving der Auto?”

  “No, sir. Walking. Riding the bus. Not driving. Wouldn’t do that.”

  The older man hands my ID to the younger man, who says, “A racial riot vizz black guys?”

  “No sir, no racial riot. Over a woman. Words over a lady. No big deal.”

  The younger man, pressing my ID under his thumb on a steel-covered notebook, writes and says, “A vooman? Vhat vooman is dat? Her name, please.”

  “Her name…I don’t know her name. Heidi? I think her name was Heidi. I sort of picked her up on a stroll through the Bahnhof. We came here for drinks. Only this black guy didn’t like it for some reason. Don’t know why. Had some words. Everybody’s drinking. One thing led to another. A little scuffle. No big deal. I’d appreciate it, by the way, this did not get reported to my CO. If it’s possible.”

  “Vas not racial?”

  “No way. The black guy, he’ll verify it was just a flare-up over a woman. She was drunk. Guess we got kinda loud. I think she knew him from before. That was it. No big deal.”

  “Got loud?”

  “Yes sir, I’d say so. Got loud.”

  “This black soldier? His name, please?”

  “That I don’t know. Didn’t get his name.”

  “A trained fighter, yes? Is said you are trained fighter, a trouble-maker.”

  “No way. I boxed some, you know, as a kid. That’s all. I’m a soldier. Tanker. Geo Troop. 2nd ACR.”

  “Like Karl Mildenberg is no fighter?”

  “I’ve heard of him. Good German fighter. Karl Mildenberg. Heavyweight. Max Schmeling. Fought Joe Louis. I’ve heard of those guys.” To my surprise, I have the policemen smiling.

  “Please, that nose is not of der fighter?” the younger one inquires, giving no added response to Max Schmeling.

  “Like I said…did some boxing as a kid. Kid stuff…though I took some punches that sorta flattened my nose.”

  The older policeman angles to have a look at my nose and at my torn ear in a concerned way. “No good,” he says. “See der doktor. Verstehen Zie?”

  “I’ll see a doc on base,” I tell him.

  “Okay den,” he says. “No big deal. One time, yes? Joe Louis, nossing much? Floyd Patterson? Ingemar Johannsen? Mohammed Ali, nossing much? You a fighter, dat’s for sure, vid dat nose, no bullshit, yes?”

  “Hear you talking, sir.”

  “Vee make no report dis time. Vee haff your name, Mister Murphy. Your ID number. Vee know vhat is racial incident! Next time, not so good! No bullshit. Verstehen Zie?”

  “Yes, sir. Appreciate it.”

  “Vatch for dat Mike Tyson,” the older policeman says with another grin.

  I nod and smile. “Iron Mike’s the real thing,” I say.

  The younger officer returns my ID and, in quick three-fingered salutes from the bills of their caps–the gestures not unfriendly–the two exit the men’s room.

  Glancing to the mirror, I barely take in my face and ear as the door re-opens and a rush of GIs and Germans file in to use the facilities, posing no threat.

  A moment later, passing through the Gasthaus without making eye-contact, I slip into the chilly night air and walk away, being alert in case DeMarcus Owens is lying in wait to finish the job.

  Soon I’m breathing more normally while remaining chilled. All along there are cafe and hotel signs, and scores of Germans coming and going. Cooking smells. Beer and tobacco smells. Bass-thumping amplification humping the air on a cool autumn evening in multi-dimensional Bayreuth.

  Magdalena von Benschotten crosses my mind, though I have no wish to see her again just yet. What I want is to sit at a bus window and recover, to think out–as I like doing–how I’d like the rest of my life to go. Fighting a mad bull outside a beer joint isn’t part of it…though now that the clash is over, it’s over. What I want is to have my army dreams come true. To not be the object of anyone’s anger, but to have buddies, friends, admired leaders. Maybe a girlfriend. A girl who might like me. To avoid the fights and ill will that I have no wish to continue.

  September 1991

  Behind the steel curtain of Iraqi tanks and guns, occupied Kuwait is losing its national life. The uniformed invaders who declared the tiny country a province of Iraq are systematically destroying what remains of its identity, pillaging its economy and brutalizing its people. Everything of value, from furniture to computers to uprooted traffic lights, is being shipped to Iraq.

  –TIME Magazine, September 1, 1990

  All those precious weapons and gadgets and gizmos and stealth fighters are not going to make it possible to reconquer Kuwait without many thousands of casualties. The U.S. Army’s armored and mechanized forces can play no offensive role against the vast defensive strength of the Iraqi army.

  –Edward N. Luttwak,

  Georgetown University Center for Strategic Studies

  Our training resumes as before, giving me time to practice on the simulator, visit the library, plan outings and adventurous excursions into neighboring towns such as Nuremberg, Ingolstadt, Neuburg an der Donau. Time (it doesn’t take long) during which to have my torn ear scab over and heal, to hang as a tiny unnoticed flap.

  Sergeant Noordwink files to redeploy to the ZI (Zone of the Interior, as the U.S. is known to soldiers). His redeployment doesn’t happen yet, while my alternate gunner ro
le gets all the more solidified by the exercises we undertake as a crew. In truth, I’m faster than Sergeant Noordwink. My crewmates have gotten to know me, and despite Sherman’s competitive jealousy we click as a unit and draw praise from the lieutenant as well as from Captain Kinder.

  Rumors of deployment to Kuwait grow so prevalent that few other options are mentioned anymore in daily life. In training maneuvers we rehearse speed, firing, and acceleration in our mud-bellies and give pointed attention to night targeting. Sergeant Noordwink’s orders do not come in as anticipated, and rumor has it that all separations are on hold pending disposition of the situation in Kuwait. The lieutenant notes that the Iraqis better watch their ass, because Geo Troop, 2nd Armored Cav, is on its way all the same.

  Two-day passes become precious adventures to me. Somehow there’s nothing like passing an inspection, showering, shaving, dressing, and going off by train to one town or another. I also sign up for an evening class and begin to learn some basic German. Language by which to visit cafes and take trips on German trains. To make my way. To go through modest exchanges with locals when opportunities present themselves. To test the depths of Europe by way of Deutschland. To grow enamored, as I do, with the countryside beauty of Bavaria and its villages, curving streets, sidewalk cafes.

  On a lazy Sunday morning, Sherman invites me to walk into Bindlach for hot chocolate. Surprised by his invitation, I’m pleased to accept. Since Graf and Hohenfels, and my promotion to corporal and insertion as alternate gunner, Sherman has gone his own way, but for sitting together now and then in the mess hall. He’s declined my several invites to movies, the rec center, the gym, the simulators, until the quiet autumn Sunday when he says, “Yo, mon…walk into town…we get some heisse Schokolade?”