Phoenix Island (5 page)

He could do it.

CARL STOOD ON THE SCALE,
wearing only boxer shorts.

“Freeman, Carl. Five feet, nine inches tall. One hundred and fifty-two pounds. Body type, meso-ecto,” Drill Sergeant Rivera, who seemed way nicer than the others, told the soldier with the clipboard. “Step off the scale, Freeman, and stick your arms out.”

Carl stretched his arms, pointing the fingertips.

“Seventy-four inches,” Rivera said, reading the tape. “What are you, kid, a bowler or a bellhop?”

Carl grinned. He’d always had a long reach.

“Target weight?” the soldier with the clipboard asked.

Rivera studied Carl. “No fat. Wide shoulders. Monkey arms. Put him down for one seventy-five.”

Carl could have laughed. One seventy-five? No way . . . and no thanks. At welterweight, he wrecked people, and nobody could rattle his chin. One seventy-five, though? That was a whole different game. Trading with light heavies was like punching a brick wall and then getting kicked by a mule.

“Get dressed and head outside, Freeman.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

Carl dressed quickly and hurried outside, where he joined a silent formation facing the loading dock of a large shed. They waited in the hot sun. That had been the pattern of the day: hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait.

“Quiet in the ranks!” Drill sergeants grabbed a kid and smoked him, front-back-go, for talking in formation.

Carl started thinking how stupid all this army-style discipline was, when he noticed Davis, who looked like the walking dead after only an hour in the sweatbox, and the gang guys nudging one another at the front of the formation. One bent and pulled something small and slender from the weeds at the base of the loading bay. It flashed in the sunlight, then disappeared into the kid’s pocket as the others in Davis’s crew grinned and nodded.

Great
, Carl thought. He didn’t know what the shiny thing was—a sliver of plastic or metal, probably—but he knew what they would do with it.

The metal shed door clacked and rolled open, and Skull-and-Crossbones—
Parker
, Carl reminded himself—emerged, already yelling. “Front rank, let’s go. Up the steps. Second rank, fill it in. I said hurry, orphans!”

The first rank filed into the shed and came back out carrying sheets and towels.

“Next rank, keep it tight!”

In the shed, Carl avoided eye contact with Parker. He would work on getting his medal back later. For now, he wanted to stay out of trouble. He couldn’t take another front-back-go session—his muscles still felt weak and shaky—and he definitely did not want to go to the sweatbox.

A soldier handed Carl a stack of towels and sheets, and Carl started to file away.

“Hold up, Hollywood,” Parker said.

Carl stopped, staring straight ahead.
What now?

“Hey, Rivera,” Parker said, taking linens from Carl’s stack. “Bet you a week’s pay Hollywood’s a bed wetter.”

Carl just stood there, doing his best to ignore the ache building in his knuckles.

“Just remember when you’re wetting your bunk tonight, Hollywood,”
Parker said, holding up a pillowcase, then a sheet. “This one’s for tears, and this one’s for wee-wee.” He shoved them both in Carl’s face and said, “Now get off my dock before I throw you off.”

Carl didn’t take the bait. He rejoined the ranks and stood there, holding his stack and staring at the dirty handprints on his pillowcase until the drill sergeants started yelling, “Move, orphans, move!”

Carl sprinted. Drill sergeants shouted from all sides, chewing out any kids who dropped their linens. They hustled everyone across a quad and into a two-story block building. “Up those stairs, orphans!”

The stairwell was hot and stuffy and sour with sweat. Drill sergeants shouted from above and below, and footsteps rang loudly as kids pounded upstairs, most of them badly out of breath. Up ahead, someone fell, and Carl barely stopped himself from barreling into the guy in front of him—the kid’s back so wide it practically filled the stairwell—and then someone crashed into Carl from behind and he did slam into the broad back.

Here we go,
he thought.

The big guy, who had long dreadlocks and a goatee, half turned and gave Carl a look that said nothing. No scowl, no smile, nothing.

“Sorry,” Carl said.

Without a word, the kid turned back around, and then they were moving again.

They passed shouting sergeants and ran down a long hall to where yet another shouting sergeant pointed through a doorway. “Into the bay! Two to a bunk! Move!”

Carl followed the others into a long room filled with bunk beds and freestanding lockers, four bunks to the right, four to the left. Behind him, sergeants yelled for other kids to keep moving down the hall to the next bay.

A soldier pointed to Carl and the huge guy, then to the bunk nearest the door. “You and you, there.”

Parker’s voice cursed in the distance.

Carl waited, sweating into his bedding and towels. The bay was old and smelled like a pine-tree car freshener. Most of them fighting to catch their breath, the other kids stood in pairs and exchanged glances but said nothing. Across the aisle, Ross squinted, gasping for air. The big guy
with dreads wasn’t breathing hard at all and exchanged glances with no one. He just stood there, staring straight ahead, steady as a statue.

Good idea,
Carl thought.

Drill Sergeant Rivera came into the bay and started walking the center aisle. “Welcome to your new home, orphans. Top bunk locker to the left, bottom bunk to the right. Hooah?”

A soldier in the doorway said, “When someone says ‘hooah,’ you hooah back! Hooah?”

“Hooah,” Carl and most of the kids responded.

Rivera paced up and down the aisle as the other soldier demanded louder hooahs until they were all screaming at the top of their lungs.

Down the hall, another bay hooah-ed.

They’re all using the same script,
Carl thought, and wasn’t surprised when a third group started hooah-ing.

Rivera paced, telling them how it was. This was their bay. They were going to keep it clean, hooah?

“Hooah!”

He told them they would make their beds and learn to use their combination locks and always, always, always secure all items. Tonight they would march back to the supply sheds, receive more gear, clean the barracks, and shower their filthy bodies. At some point there would be inoculations, chow, and something he called “drill and ceremony,” followed by an inspection. Once the barracks were clean—“and I mean shiny as your best girl’s choppers”—they might get some sleep. Hooah?

“Hooah!”

Rivera stopped in front of Carl’s bunk, regarding the big kid. “What’s your name, son?”

“Walker Campbell, Drill Sergeant,” the kid said in a deep voice.

“Take off your shirt, Campbell.”

Campbell hesitated for a second, then peeled off his shirt, revealing a physique worthy of an NFL fullback.

“What in the name of General George Patton have they been feeding you, son? Tanks?”

“Mostly fruits and vegetables, Drill Sergeant.”

“What’s this?” Rivera asked, pointing to his shoulder.

“A tattoo, Drill Sergeant.”

“Of?”

“My brother, Deonte, Drill Sergeant.”

“Deceased?”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Campbell. And tell me, where are your gang tats?”

Campbell looked puzzled. “Drill Sergeant?”

“Your gang tattoos.”

“I’m not in a gang, Drill Sergeant.”

“Never been in one?”

“No, Drill Sergeant.”

“Excellent, Campbell. You’re the platoon guide.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

“Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, Campbell?”

“No, Drill Sergeant.”

“Outstanding, Campbell. I like your attitude. The rest of you orphans, Campbell here is your head honcho. You have a problem, you talk to him, not me, hooah?”

“Hooah!”

“Spectacular,” Rivera said, and looked at Carl. “Freeman.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

“What’s the square root of two hundred and seventy-three?”

The what . . . ?

“Chop, chop, Freeman,” Rivera said.

“I don’t know, Drill Sergeant.”

“Neither do I, Freeman,” Rivera said, “but I do know how to make a bed properly. Orphans, eyes on me. I’m going to show you how a soldier makes his bed, hooah?”

“Hooah!”

Carl grinned, watching the demonstration. Rivera, at least, was cool.

LATER, AFTER TWO FAILED INSPECTIONS
and hours of cleaning, they got chow—a brown hash that looked like beans but smelled like old meat—and
then marched back to the barracks, where they showered and finally hit their racks. It was late. Carl was so exhausted, he was actually thankful that Campbell had claimed the top bunk. Saved him having to climb up.

“Good night, orphans!” Rivera shouted from the hall.

“Good night, Drill Sergeant!”

“Lights out!” Rivera said, and everything went dark.

The night air, hot and humid as a sauna, throbbed with a tropical chorus. Insects or frogs, or maybe both, pleading rhythmically in the darkness. Carl’s mattress was hard and lumpy, and he could feel springs pressing into his back, but he didn’t care. He was so tired he could sleep on the tile floor if he had to.

Maybe there really was something to the whole boot camp thing, he thought as he drifted toward sleep. Every second of their day, someone had told them where to go and what to do.
If every day is like this,
he thought,
we’ll be too busy and too tired for trouble.

It was a nice thought, the kind you could almost believe, lying in bed after a long, hard day.

But then he heard a soft sound in the darkness, a faint, repetitive grinding barely audible beneath the pulsing tropical chorus. It was a sound he had heard before, in other places he’d been put, and he sat up, instantly awake, listening, and knew that somewhere in the darkness, one of the gangbangers was scraping that sliver of found material against a bed frame, honing an edge, making a deadly shank.

P
ICK IT UP, FAT BODIES!”
a drill sergeant yelled toward the back of the pack.

They’d been on Phoenix Island for a few days, and despite all the yelling and very little rest, Carl was feeling all right. He liked the way the wind rushed over his freshly shaven head, and it felt great to run, even on two hours’ sleep. He was at the front of group, matching strides with Walker Campbell. The massive kid had arrived on Phoenix Island with dreadlocks, a goatee, and the build of a fullback. All he had left was the build.

They ran side by side in silence, following the trail marked here and there in yellow paint on roadside trees. They came to a fork in the road and hung a left. Carl broke the silence. “How are you doing?”

Campbell flashed him a look. “Me? I’m fine. I could run like this all day.”

“Yeah, me, too. What I meant, how are you doing, you know, your hair and everything?”

Campbell smoothed a hand over his head, frowning.

His
grape
, Carl thought, the drill sergeants’ word for
head
coming into his mind now.

“Okay, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“Look,” Campbell said. “I don’t need a buddy. I’m not looking for friends.”

“Fine by me,” Carl said. He remembered the “barbershop”—half a
dozen folding chairs set up on the loading dock where they’d been issued boots and bedding—and remembered the clear sense of that moment as a turning point, of the sergeants raising the stakes by actually shaving their heads, like they were really in the army or something. He remembered the buzz and whine of the razor, guys coming off the chair looking stunned, Campbell on deck, trying to talk his way out of it, calling the dreadlocks part of his religion. The barber—who was just another soldier—had laughed and said, “Religion? God’s on vacation until you leave Phoenix Island.”

After a few more moments of running together, Campbell shook his head a little sadly. “I knew my hair was history as soon as the judge said ‘boot camp.’ ” He ran a hand over his head again. “Man. I don’t feel like me.”

Carl heard footsteps, and Drill Sergeant Parker, his skull-and-cross-bones tattoo prominent as ever, pulled up alongside them. From the moment Carl had stepped off the bus, Parker hadn’t stopped giving him a hard time.

“Hollywood,” he said, using that nickname again. “Fall back. You’re on straggler patrol. Anybody slacking back there, motivate him.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.” Carl turned and jogged back down the road, annoyed by what felt like a demotion. Now he’d have to drop all the way back and shuffle with the fat kids, the smokers, the lazy ones, and the asthmatics.

The farther back he went, the worse people looked. A soldier whose name Carl didn’t know—he wasn’t a drill sergeant, but one of the guys who helped during PT—demanded to know what he was doing running the wrong way. When Carl told him, the soldier laughed: “Carry on, Tail-end Charlie.”

The gaps between the runners widened. Carl nodded at Ross, who looked like he was going to die. He saw a kid puking in the weeds alongside the road and reassured him he’d be all right. Near the back, he passed Davis and his buddies and was met with glares.