Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  The gangbanger DeMarcus Owens is before me. A day or two later, in an aisle at the commissary on base, he’s in fatigues browsing nachos, Cheez-Its, potato chips. My scalp jumps to life in terror and my impulse is to escape as quickly as possible, before we resume fighting and my army life goes entirely to hell.

  I withdraw, circle an aisle, exit the store at once. I hate to admit it, but the sight of him has shocked me with fear. As if, on sight alone, he will attack again. Will charge with a new shank. Will go for my throat and rip my other ear lobe against more cobblestones. Seek to gouge my eyes. To garrote my neck with a rope or shoelace or length of wire.

  I cross a street, moving in the direction of my barracks. Hackles alive and heart thumping, my impulse is to get away from the threatening dismount scout who, as experience has already shown, had to have acquired countless skills in basic hand-to-hand combat and fighting to the death. Carrying a shank. Choking opponents to death.

  Striding the sidewalk, however, I all at once say to myself: You can’t do this! You can’t go running every time you see that son of a bitch! I ask myself: What does it matter now? We’ve had it out. Isn’t it cowardly, and bad strategy besides, to go running off? Doesn’t he feel the same fear of me that I feel of him? Won’t he be emboldened if he sees me running? To think that I bit his arm, drew real blood, no matter that I was compelled to do so! Bit his arm as the son of a bitch was working to separate a length of my ear from my head!

  A weird bonding occurs when you fight somebody who fights back, as I well know. It’s almost like sex (yuck), and I can’t help giggling as I think of him taking off just as I’m taking off. Moving away, each of us, to avoid confrontation with an antagonist who was willing to go at it in the first place.

  I snicker. I see that running scared is no way to resolve anything…not something that has to be resolved! There’ll be other times in other locations, on base and off, as in Bayreuth, and running away is only a postponement that doesn’t solve anything. That leaves time in between to fret and worry and feel nervous. Each of us paying a price in fear over the other. What a farce that can be.

  Yeah, the thing to do is to face the greasy little bastard and settle accounts. Get things said. See where things stand and, if possible, bring hostilities to an end. That’s the thing to do…not run off in fear only to have him in my face again like a python needing, for survival, to be decapitated.

  My thinking has me pausing yet again on the sidewalk. Better to face up and have it done with, I keep thinking. Resolved. Better left behind and done so now, when the raw wounds remain fresh enough to be directed, persuaded, controlled.

  Just like that, I decide to go ahead and reverse direction. To meet him head on, even to smile if the spirit moves me. Ask how he’s doing. Put aside any lingering fears either one of us may have over running into the other.

  DeMarcus Owens. Dee, as his friends called him on encouraging him to end my life. Oddly enough, I don’t feel hate for him, now that we’ve fought. Fighting can do that, in the ring or out. I disapprove of his gangbanger immaturity and remain wary of his childish propensity to cut and kill without weighing any consequences. Kid stuff. Comic book and movie stuff. I disapprove of his street devotion to such mindlessness, to beliefs that define him, despite his age, as immature…as he should have learned years ago, at age nine or ten.

  On spotting him from the entryway, still shopping in the commissary, I move back out to wait unseen, half-concealed near the sidewalk by trees and parked cars. On exiting, he’ll have to come my way. Risky but smart, I think. Facing up. Getting on the other side of things. Not living in fear of having my throat slashed from behind, but sleeping well and living in peace. Teaching him about maturity, if he’s ready to grow up or not.

  When he appears (it doesn’t take long) my knees go weak for an instant just as they did on facing motivated thugs in the ring. As anticipated, there is no choice but to face him. As he approaches (oblivious) I linger just off the sidewalk, not to fight but to interrupt his movement and have my say.

  “Yo, Dee, how’s it goin’?” I say with a helpless grin.

  He pulls up in shock and terror, glares, doesn’t speak just yet.

  “How’re things?” I add as he holds before me, readying to defend himself, a guarded expression gripping his face. Eyes wide, he proceeds to move past me.

  “How’s the old arm?” I say.

  “Fucker…bit me!” he says.

  “Sorry about that,” I say while feeling helpless against giggling.

  “My ass youse sorry!”

  “Had to do it. You were gonna kill me!” I titter some more, to indicate that it’s behind us, was kid stuff, can be forgotten.

  “Had to, shit!” he says.

  “You saying you weren’t trying to choke me to death?”

  “I was trying,” he admits, all at once displaying a glimmer of humor of his own that makes me laugh.

  “Bite or die. Had no choice,” I say.

  As I’m tittering, so is he, saying, “One more minute I’da had yo ass.”

  Sensing hope after all in the affairs of mankind, I ask, “I really drew blood?”

  “You know you drew fuckin’ blood!” he tells me.

  I can’t help spilling added laughter, nor can he as we hoot like long-lost friends.

  “You get a tetanus shot?” I ask.

  “Get no fucking shot!” he snaps.

  “You’re probably okay. Get cut, draw blood, should get a tetanus shot, you know. Didn’t you learn anything in basic? Army shots’re probably protecting you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What choice did I have, knowing you were trying to kill me?”

  “At’s what I was trying,” he admits with pride.

  As before, neither of us can keep from tittering, and tittering some more, and I feel that our personal war is sliding away, that all, if not well, is far better than it was before.

  For inexplicable reasons of age and candor, and in the curious psychology of having fought, of not disliking him now as I had for a time, I say, “You never said why you was carrying a shank in Germany.”

  “You keep axin’ me that!”

  “I wanna know the answer! Had some fantasy of protecting yourself, fair enough, won’t ask again. Mean for the shank to say you’re a gangbanger…won’t be getting any sympathy from me. Write you off as a fucking moron thinks he’s still on the street and not ready to become a man.”

  He stares, appears ready to laugh and understand, while I fear I’ve not made myself either clear or funny and that I have no business getting righteous and trying to put him down.

  “Okay,” he says all at once.

  “Okay?”

  “Maybe I make a mistake,” he says.

  “Maybe?”

  “Thas what I say.”

  “Tell you what. Dee. I extend my hand in friendship. You’re man enough to say you made a mistake, I’m man enough to say fine.”

  “You what?”

  “No more fights. No more ill will. No shanks. I forgive you for being an idiot, and I extend my hand in friendship. I’ve been an idiot myself, more than once, is that I mean to say.”

  “You one crazy fucker,” he tells me.

  “I’ve had fights. And friends. Not many friends. I know what I’m talking about.”

  DeMarcus is grinning as if he doesn’t (like me) know what to make of what is happening. Nor is he willing to trust a white guy, not just yet. “You weird as shit,” he says.

  “I’ll say this. Thought I’d make friends in the army…like everybody at Knox said we would. Hasn’t happened. I’m ready. To make friends. I tell you the truth. You tell me the truth. That’ll make us friends.”

  “Wow.”

  “That’s how it is. I’m saying we can leave the shit behind. Be friends. Be buddies in the army.”

  “’At’s cool.”

  “Yeah? You think so?”

  “Thas what I say. Be friends. Cool.”

  “Dude,” I say
, to acknowledge agreement.

  DeMarcus is helpless against issuing an expression, a turn of the head, a grin indicating agreement from him.

  “You say the truth, I say the truth,” I repeat. “Will make us friends.”

  “Dude. Gotta go, man. Shank’s dumb. Got my black ass there. Make me feel like a fool, throwing it on Autobahn.”

  “Sorry about that. Just happened.”

  “Cool.”

  “Friends?”

  “Yeah. See you around.”

  As he walks on, I go on into the commissary, though my intended direction had been the same as his, back to the barracks and quads and afternoon duties. Best to let things settle, is my thought. I came around. And he came around!

  I marvel at the changes the army is adding to my life. Dee’s life, too, which I think it’s smart for each of us to see. To be accepting at last of a white guy! And of a black guy. To grow by leaps and bounds! No doubt about it. It’s the best place to be at this time in my life.

  Late october 1990

  According to Dr. Jerrold Post, founder of the CIA’s center for analyzing the psychology of world leaders, Saddam Hussein exhibits a well-documented syndrome called malignant narcissism. Among the elements are over-reaching arrogance and ambition. The crisis finally puts Saddam where he feels he should be, at the center of world attention, as befits a great historical figure.

  “We really think this man might take us into war without realizing what he is up against,” notes a senior Arab official. “He seems to think he’s still facing Iran. And no one who is close to him will tell him how it is.”

  –TIME Magazine, October 8, 1990

  Dear President Bush:

  I implore you not to go to war in the Persian Gulf. I believe that such a course will kill or maim at least 50,000 Americans; it will destroy our standing in the Middle East, undermine and demoralize our military services, waste tens of billions of dollars, disrupt oil production indefinitely, delay further the application of the peace dividend to the rebuilding of America, and in the end destroy your presidency.

  Former U.S. Senator George McGovern

  October 13, 1990

  It’s an odd and unfamiliar circumstance to not be believed in by so many at home. They seem to say what they wish without providing any evidence or really knowing what they’re talking about. All the same, they dominate the newspapers and magazines like members of an elite society who aren’t represented within the thousands in uniform about whom they have so many negative things to say.

  Could they be right, like smart kids in school? Like Sherman with his couple of years of college? They scare me with their doomsday beliefs and disrespectful commentary, and I can only hope, like others who manage to ignore them, that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

  Life on post. Worrying about DeMarcus while not worrying about him at all. He’s a friend now, isn’t he? Not only is the shank business behind us and all but forgotten, he’s crossed into becoming the closest thing to a buddy I’ve had so far in the army. Kid stuff, that shank business. Outgrown and left behind. You go through dumb growing-up phases, and DeMarcus has gone through one of his own.

  There comes an early morning on an off day, however, when I’m in the shower by 0500, ahead of morning chow, and have a nozzle going full blast, filling the tiled room with steam too thick to see through, when I hear someone enter the outer room of sinks and steamed-over mirrors.

  At first I pay little mind, only to glimpse a shadow in the gang shower doorway and expect another soldier to enter and turn on an adjacent nozzle. On this cool autumn morning, the windows have been left open, causing the hot water entering the space to create a cloud of steam. No one appears or gives any sign of being present. After a while I say, “Yo?” Then “Who goes there at zero-five-hundred hours?”

  Nothing. No one speaks through the steam. Then I believe I hear a shoe scraping the tile floor. “Who goes there?” I say again, soaping my shoulders within the steam while continuing to feel nervous. There is no reply.

  It’s then that my imagination starts getting the better of me. I can’t help envisioning DeMarcus and some of his criminal AA cronies about to rush through the steam with knives, straight razors, and shanks with which to send my life washing red down the drain with the gushing water. Believing I hear another shoe scraping tile, my hair stands on end.

  I half-panic.

  Tracing the wall, slipping past handles and pipes, I crouch before lowering to the floor as if to do push-ups, and gain knee-high visibility. No shoes or feet within the clear lower layer. Nothing appears present or moving.

  Returning along the wall, turning off the nozzle, I exit the gang shower and enter the room of sinks. I’m alone. The room is clear. It’s empty and, creating a puddle, I feel naked and foolish standing there. The wooden bench and hooks are holding my toilet articles and towel just as I left them. Relieved, I feel ashamed of having been so blindsided by terror. I force a grin. Some soldier boy, I think. Afraid of being attacked in the shower in a cloud of steam.

  I don’t breathe freely until I’m dressed and out in the safety of the open air, where other early birds are hiking to the mess hall. It’s in the mess hall (scarcely attended at this hour) that I realize I need to approach DeMarcus yet again to confirm that all is as cool as I thought he indicated. Moves to cut throats only produce losers. If we’re going to be buddies, it has to be real. I have to be certain he isn’t setting me up, planning an assault, can be trusted. What is a buddy, after all, if not a person to trust?

  Tracking down DeMarcus’s bunk area in a barracks housing dismount scouts (no one is in the room), I need to acknowledge that the muscular little running back is not a total zero as a soldier. His field pack is on top of his wall locker, his spit-shined shoes in a line under his bunk, his area orderly and squared away. Maybe not supernumerary, but more than sharp.

  I check around and have conversation at last with his roommate. It’s in a nearby john where, as a last shot before bagging my search, I see that a stall is occupied and say, “DeMarcus?”

  “Dee’s my roommate,” a voice says from within.

  “Know where he is?”

  “Gotta be in Bayreuth–who wants ta know?”

  “Jimmy Murphy, Geo Troop.”

  “Dee’s got hisself a woman in Bayreuth. Be where he spends days off. Whatchoo want him for?”

  “I’ll catch up with him. Need to talk about something. No big deal.”

  Backing off, I exit before the person who is so talkative sitting on the pot can ask more questions.

  When I return to the barracks later in the day, DeMarcus rises from his bunk–as does his roommate across the room–as I tap lightly on opening the door. “Gotta talk to you,” I say.

  DeMarcus declines to say anything, nor does his roommate speak, as if both are alarmed at a white soldier stepping into their space with a request of the kind. “Just need to make sure we’re on the same page,” I confide as his roommate grants us some privacy by leaving the room. “Gotta talk things out a bit.”

  As DeMarcus waits, I add, “Wanna be sure I can trust you. I got thinking about it, and wasn’t sure we were talking about the same thing.”

  “Wanna trust me? Why should I wanna trust you?”

  “Well…because I want you to. As a friend. Wanna be certain that things are settled. Can’t live like this, thinking you might be looking to come after me with a shank. Feel like it’s gotta be said.”

  DeMarcus laughs. “Thas what you think? I be comin’ after you with a shank when I say to you it’s cool?”

  “Did you say that? Maybe you did. Without trust, it’s a no-win deal. I want you to know–shoulda said this before–I don’t have the hots for your woman or anything like that. She’s neat. I like her…like a teacher. But she’s all yours.”

  “Don’t say stuff about her,” he warns me with an edge of anger and resentment.

  “Fair enough. Just want you to know that, as far as she’s concerned, yo
u can trust me as a friend.”

  “Cool. Like I say.”

  “You got a thing for that lady?”

  “I say we ain’t talkin about her!”

  “Fine. I only mean to say…as a friend…that you can trust me. Like I’d like to trust you. No more panic attacks over you coming after me with a shank!”

  “Got a thing for her,” is how DeMarcus all at once replies.

  “She’s good looking,” I say. “Smart. Mean as can be.”

  DeMarcus can’t help laughing. “She be smart,” he agrees. “I be with her a lot. Didn’t think it was nothing till you come along like she yours! Bust my balls. Thas why I meant to kill your ass.”

  This time I can’t help laughing. “You get hooked on somebody like that who’s good-looking and smart, doesn’t matter how old she is,” I say. “I can see that.”

  “You see that?”

  “Yeah. I see that.”

  “Bros rag me, messing with a woman that old,” DeMarcus says. “Old enough to be my mother.”

  “Bros got it wrong.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I saw something like that in a movie they showed in high school. This guy, he’s a corporal. Gets so strung out over Carmen Jones, has to kill her not to lose her to somebody else. Wow. Was so tough to watch, made it hard for me to breathe.”

  “Thas me you talkin’ about,” DeMarcus says, engendering new friendship between us.

  “Feel for you. I liked her. Liked talking to her.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You got it bad, is what you’re saying?”

  “Got it real bad. Sometime I don’t know what to do.”

  “Hear you talking.”

  “You know a woman like that?”

  “Not exactly like that. But I can see where you’re coming from. You get it bad, you get it bad.”

  “I ain’t said nothin’ to nobody.”

  “Hear you talkin’. How can you say something like that to anybody? I sure couldn’t.”

  “We friends?” DeMarcus wants then to know.

  “You tell me the truth, I tell you the truth,” I hear myself telling him. “Makes us friends.”