Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  “Shank was dumb, like I say. Nailed me there.”

  “Sorry about that. ”

  “It be done with.”

  “Friends?” I ask.

  “Yeah. See you around. No more shanks.”

  I’m so pleased as I walk down the stairs and exit the building that I nearly cry. In truth my eyes fill, as does my throat and chest. I have a friend, an army buddy, just like that. A former gangbanger! A kid who has seen the light (as I’ve seen the light!) and has balls enough to say so!

  To have a friend, you need to be a friend. The old saw is proving itself, making this one of the happiest moments I’ve known in uniform. An army buddy. Someone to whom to speak the truth. Being able to say so.

  The next time I see Dee, two days later, we’re bypassing each other on base as passengers in open-air Humvees, and I have to say how reassuring it is to have a friend, to have things settled between us. A buddy in the army. Do all soldiers have buddies to whom they can say anything? Are they relationships ever in the making?

  Spotting him, I call, “Hey, Dee, no snoozing on the job!” making him grin and reassuring me that we made it through to bonding in friendship…by way of fierce fighting, candor in our words, genuineness in avowals of camaraderie.

  A daily pleasure becomes mine in having an army buddy. (An African American former gangbanger, of all things!) On tracking him down in his barracks, I tell him I’m there to see if he’d like to shoot some hoops at the gym, which he agrees to do. So it is that we walk and talk, each of us meeting the other part way.

  Checking out a ball in the big field house, we have one of a dozen netted rims to ourselves, where we shoot HORSE and race around in games of one-on-one. Post-hoops we hit up the refreshment center for drinks, where Dee surprises me by saying “Tell you. I hear at Knox, too, that I’d make friends in the army. Never thought it’d be with no cracker!”

  His remark, and that he feels free enough to say it, has me howling with more pleasure than I’ve known in weeks. When I say, “Where’re you from?” he says, “Baltimore, man, and don’t be callin me no ‘Oreo.’”

  I gurgle with laughter. He’s being a friend, and I say, “Don’t worry…won’t be calling you names.”

  “Deal,” DeMarcus says.

  “Deal,” I say, and add, “Don’t be calling me no cracker. I may be white but I’m not a honky.”

  “Maybe you is…maybe you isn’t,” he teases.

  “I isn’t,” I have him know.

  October 1990

  Iraq must get the word: It will lose. Longstanding bad habits in U.S. public discourse on military matters treat Saddam Hussein to a continuous stream of stories that deflate the military capabilities of the coalition and inflate those of Iraq. But there probably will be a war in early 1991, and Iraq will likely suffer a terrible defeat.

  Although the coalition will be vastly superior militarily to Iraq, U.S. leaders have not found a way to explain this to Saddam Hussein. Absent such explanation, the media treat him to unreasonably high estimates of U.S. casualties, urgent concern about the lethal capability of Iraq’s Western-supplied military technologies, fragmentary tales of shortcomings in U.S. forces, and graphic descriptions of awesome Iraqi field fortifications. These misleading data are doubtless culled from the U.S. press by cowed functionaries too terrified to explain to Saddam Hussein what a rational military analysis suggests: In the event of war, Iraq’s forces in Kuwait are finished.

  Media coverage of defense issues has for years been occupied by budgetary politics. Tales of cost overruns, unreliable weaponry, and shortage of parts and munitions are the bread and butter of peacetime defense journalism. Bad news gets attention. But why has the press not explained that the U.S. spends six times as much on defense each year as the entire Iraqi gross national product? And that the U.S. military has devoted decades to preparing to defeat a hundred Warsaw Pact armored divisions in mobile warfare on the plains of central Europe, and probably could have done so?

  Second, U.S. military leaders have been educated and socialized with the values of a liberal society. Nothing could be more damaging to the peacetime process of the military than a reputation for bellicosity. Third, U.S. military leaders are unaccustomed to claiming credit for their capabilities. Most of the experience in public debate on defense matters has revolved around magnifying the Soviet threat and minimalizing U.S. capabilities to elicit appropriations from Congress.

  Sadly, the best way to contribute to a peaceful solution now is for American political leaders, journalists, and commentators to tell Saddam Hussein and the people of Iraq the truth: Unless Iraq withdraws from Kuwait, the coalition will attack this spring, and when it does Iraq’s forces will suffer a catastrophic defeat.

  –Barry R. Rosen, MIT Arms Control Study Program

  Boston Sunday Globe, October 27, 1990

  At last, a commentator named Barry Rosen who makes sense to me. Someone, that is, who sees what I’ve been seeing every day: First-class equipment, disciplined troops, a well-oiled machine.

  Of course, I could be wrong. If we do ship out to Iraq, the thousands of Iraqi soldiers we would face could turn out to be well-equipped and fierce, relentless and brutal, motivated and angry. Crazed Arabs with razor-sharp scimitars and a drooling desire to decapitate Americans and post their heads on stakes.

  Of a mind to visit Bayreuth on Saturday, I scout around looking for DeMarcus, to invite him to join forces. His room is empty, however, and I have no luck tracking him down. Issuing an invitation is a bit risky on racial grounds (de-facto segregation prevails); still, I believe our friendship is strong enough to deflect any awkwardness that might arise. Unable to find DeMarcus, I decide against going to Bayreuth and Club Miami Beach on my own–where I imagine he is hanging out with the bros (or with Magdalena von Benschotten)–rather to track him down during the week when I can make a pitch to go to Bayreuth together to avoid disrupting him and the bros with my uninvited presence.

  Given our armored cav schedule, going sixteen hours and as many, at times, as forty-eight, with corresponding times off, I clean up at midday on Saturday all the same, dress in Class A khakis while the weather allows, and walk into Bindlach to stroll about and have a look around, to treat myself to a bite of lunch or dinner when the urge occurs. Leaving base on a pass is always a small adventure, while walking in town on an autumn day is a lesser getaway that isn’t bad either, a reward for having worked for days, for having bunk area, physical fitness, and simulator scores all in order.

  Ever ahead of schedule in practice firing (I fire almost every day for an hour or more), what is on my mind as I stroll is a quickness of response I’ve been working up that lessens all the more the time between fixing on a target and firing the main gun. Success comes by way of split-second decisions. Target, fire, reload! Target, fire, reload! Bring on the Elite Republican Guard, I think. I’ll show them some speed and some pinpoint accuracy. At least I’ll be ready to hold my own if and when the lieutenant turns the gunner’s position over to me.

  My preoccupation takes me back to working the speed bag, working-working-working up to blasting with a left to the body, a hook to the head, again and again. The tools of the trade. Instinctive speed and accuracy. Like a pool shark practicing every day on a lighted table. Counter-punching. Developing an ability to aim and fire on an impulse residing in the fingers, eyes, brain. The more you practice, the luckier you get.

  In town at midday, it’s as I enter a Gasthaus under a wrought-iron sign of tree branches presenting ‘Weinprobierstube’ that I return to the present in a sudden realization that a young woman sitting with other young women at a tablecloth-covered table is familiar…is Lotte! The girl Sherman and I joined briefly at Konditorei Plumrose several weeks before.

  Yes, it’s Lotte. She didn’t give her last name. Still I recall liking her, being impressed with her incredible language skills and sense of humor…prior to the humiliation I experienced on being steered off by Sherman against my better judgment. The regret I
felt remains with me and has me wishing to make amends for any humiliation she may have suffered.

  Lotte. How to get her attention in this lunch-busy place and, if possible, exchange some words? Arrange, if I can, another meeting over, say, heisse Schokolade? A Sunday date? Might such a thing be possible? Or will she only feel added humiliation on seeing me again?

  Taking the last two-person table available, close to a wall, I scrutinize the menu until I’m able to translate what is apparently lentil soup. Together with Brotchen the size of my fist from the basket on the table and a glass of Bier, it will make up the bite to eat I had meant to order at the outset.

  While waiting for a waitress to come my way, I keep an eye on Lotte, fifteen feet away. My hope is that she might somehow approach my table. Or rise to use the ladies’ room, allowing me to intercept her as if by accident. Allowing me to suggest getting together at another time…as long as it’s soon, before we ship out for Saudi Arabia as we hear every day we are likely to do.

  When recognition occurs, it’s not as I had imagined. Lotte leaves her table, apparently to use the restroom, and spotting me, smiles at once and proceeds to where I’m sitting! “Hallo, is you!” she says, impressing me as before with her friendly personality.

  Getting awkwardly to my feet, I say, “I saw you when I came in! I’ve been waiting for you to get up…so I could intercept you…”

  “Please…?”

  “Can you sit for a minute?”

  “For one minute, yes,” she says, and does so, sort of flares her skirt to accommodate her movement, which gesture (I must admit) gives me a thrill and makes me smile with pleasure.

  “That hot chocolate thing on Sunday,” I try to explain. “I was with my roommate. I thought it was rude to get up and walk out like we did. I’m sorry about that. I thought you were neat…wanted to get to know you…didn’t want to just walk out.”

  “Birgitta and I have thought this,” she says. “A roommate…is understandable. The irony is that he is the one with whom we have been flirting! Then you are the one we see we have liked!”

  “That’s what you saw?”

  “That is what we saw. Quite so.”

  “You’re roommates…you and Birgitta?”

  “No, no. Birgitta lives at home with her parents. As do I. All the same we understand difficulties with friends who have other interests.”

  “Your English is really something, better than mine,” I say.

  “This I doubt, but thank you so much. I’ve put every effort into my studies.”

  “I’ve only been here a few months. I haven’t learned hardly any German.”

  “This means you must put effort into your studies as well. Yes?”

  There is her smile, bringing a prettiness to her face that makes my heart open as it did in Konditorei Plumrose. “I’ll get to work on it,” I tell her. “My training doesn’t allow much time, but the army does offer free classes I can take.”

  “I must go now, I think. So nice to speak to you.”

  “I was wondering if we could get together some time…like on a date? What do you think? We could meet at that hot chocolate place on Sunday?”

  “Allow me, please, to think for one moment.”

  “Are you…you do translations of both English and French into German?”

  “In English I am called a paralegal. I work for a German law firm here in Bindlach, translating from English but also from French. Legal documents. Terriblyboring. Now I must go.”

  “You needed a moment to think about a date?” I remind her.

  “I believe I can do this,” she says.

  “You believe you can?”

  “I believe I can, yes.”

  “That’s great! We can do…whatever. Get hot chocolate. Go to a movie. I can take you to an American movie on base, if that’s what you’d like…?”

  “This I would like very much.”

  “Can you give me a number to call, so I can see which movies are playing? They change just almost every day. And I need to check my duty schedule.”

  “A telephone number, yes. One moment. Excuse my nervousness. I don’t believe I know your name! We are making a date and I do not even know your name. I am Lotte Lengemann.”

  As I tell her my name, she says again, “One moment please,” and returns to her table to remove a pen and paper from her purse, where her friends would appear to not even notice what she is doing. Returning to my table, she writes ‘Lotte’ and a telephone number on the slip of paper. “Is my number at work. Please, I shall be waiting for your call.”

  On which word Lotte Lengemann proceeds to the Frauenzimmer a dozen yards away, and I sit in astonishment at what has happened, wondering if I might jump with glee on having a date…if I should ignore her when she returns to her table… if I should smile to have her know that all is well and I will be calling her soon?

  Word on base at one moment has been that 2nd Cav will go to the Persian Gulf to confront the Iraqi invaders, at another that we will not be going to the Persian Gulf. All the same our training grows ever more desert oriented, including water depravation/rationing, first aid with sand and heat everywhere, personal conditioning and endurance, NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) survival techniques should the Iraqi Republican Guard unleash the threatening weapons it’s known to have used on its own people…in a commitment to go all out in a war with Western forces.

  Lotte Lengemann is much on my mind during these days of training. On gaining a block of free time, as Monday comes around, I make my way to the telephone exchange to have an operator at a counter place a call and connect it to a booth against an opposite wall.

  Lotte is older than me, I’ve determined. Okay, maybe she’s a little desperate, as Sherman noted, but what am I if not a little desperate myself? Maybe she’s a German woman with a weakness for U.S. soldiers, of a category that I’ve heard described in the mess hall. What is she–twenty-three or twenty-four? Does it matter in any way if it doesn’t matter to me? Aren’t I more mature than most nineteen-year-olds? If not in the army, I think, certainly at home, where the nineteen-year-olds I knew (many of them college students) were fixated on being away from home and parents for the first time, drinking at every opportunity.

  As for Lotte, what do I care if she would have been a skinny language whiz in high school rather than a cheerleader? Who am I, Wayne Gretsky? Sugar Ray Leonard? In truth, I’m a young GI who has found himself turned on by a bright young German woman.

  On a sign from the lady behind the counter, I step into “boose number tree,” take down the receiver and say “Hello?”

  “Yes, is Lotte.”

  “Jimmy Murphy. Remember me?”

  “Of course I remember,” she says. “Is only hours since I have seen you in town.”

  It’s the humor I liked about her the first time we met, which has me saying, “I was afraid you might have forgotten me.”

  “This I do not believe.”

  “I’ve checked out the movie schedule at the post theater,” I have her know. “I’m free to go anytime. Would you like to hear what the choices are…for the coming week? Beyond that, I don’t know. I have lots of duty, I’m afraid.”

  “You are going to Saudia Arabia?” she wishes to know, responding, I imagine, to what she’s seen on TV or read in the news.

  “I don’t know about that. We haven’t heard anything positive.”

  “I’ve worried that you will have to go there.”

  Finding it awkward, even illegal to discuss army moves with a civilian, I say, “Let me tell you what movies are playing. First, on Wednesday. I’m on a twenty-four-hour training exercise that will take out Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, it’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. Saturday is Home Alone. Then Sunday is Cyrano de Bergerac. Monday, though I may have twenty-four-hour duty beginning that day, is Die Hard 2.”

  “As soon as possible,” she says, making me laugh. “I think anything will do.”

  “The sooner the better,” I say. “Which make
s it Crimes and Misdemeanors. Is that okay?”

  “Friday is perfect.”

  “How nice of you to say so,” I say.

  “Friday. We shall meet at a certain time, before going to your post theater?”

  “Time enough to have a drink?”

  “I think this is proper.”

  “Before and after?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Suppose we meet at the same place in Bindlach where you were having lunch? I can go early so I’ll be there when you show up. Would that be okay?”

  “Yes, on Friday is okay.”

  “I can’t wait,” I tell her.

  “Nor can I,” she says.

  “Six o’clock okay? The movie starts at eight.”

  “At six o’clock I shall enter your view,” she says, making me smile again.

  “Yes, Lotte. Can I call you Lotte so I can get over not calling you Lotte?”

  “Jimmy, yes. This name I like.”

  “Friday at six.”

  “Friday at six. Auf wiedersehen.”

  Saying nothing more, allowing her touch auf Deutsch to tweak my heart as it does, I hang up and pause a moment before leaving the booth. How is it that I’m so lucky? I wonder as I walk back across post to my barracks. This girl–as desperate as Sherman may believe her to be–has me in a twirl. I keep adoring her cleverness, her language skill, the prettiness in her face when she smiles.

  Auf wiedersehen, I say to myself, eager at once to take classes and learn some German. It’s what I’m going to do, I think. Learn some German. Be a person of whom Lotte Lengemann can be proud. At least one of whom she won’t be ashamed.

  That evening I eat chow in the mess hall yet again with Sherman. As it happens, he makes a reference to “these dogs we met in town,” adding that he will be seeing some “really classy” German girls from the university quarter in Nuremberg. If I’m tempted to speak in favor of Lotte Lengemann, I hold my tongue…at least for the moment.