We Were Beautiful Once (9 page)

***

For one month during the summer, ROTC students went off to Camp Davis to join hundreds of budding officers from dozens of colleges throughout the northeast.  At the end of freshmen year, arriving the same day— Jack O'Conner by bus, Trent Hamilton by car—, the two ended up among eighty other plebes in the same barracks, and, although they had never met, Jack recognized Trent from the football team.  Walking into the mess hall that night, the two boys talked and discovered that they were from adjoining towns.  In parting, Trent hollered back in an unexpected flash of solidarity, “Ridley guys stick together.”

Two regular army drill instructors ran the unit, and the custom was to assign an upperclassman as a barracks chief, who with help from four underclassmen squad leaders, took charge in their absence.  The DIs appointed Donny O. Greun, a twenty-two-year old, 5'5”, thick runt with a long, crooked nose and chipped teeth.  “I don't respond to no Donny, Greun, or Sir...  you guys call me Dog,” he snarled.

Dog took charge at night, putting the troops to bed by 9:30.  The recruits were into their second week when a cabal of Dog and his four squad leaders began holding kangaroo court after lights out.  Each night at ten, in a windowless room next to the latrine, Dog, wearing creased fatigues and spit shined boots, sat feet up on a wide oak desk, barking orders to his squad leaders.  “Hamilton, get Grabowski.  Let's see what he knows about Article 15.”

“Yes, sir!”

Hamilton went to the end of the barracks where Grabowski bunked above Jack.  He whispered in his ear.  “Wake up, Grabowski. Dog wants you...   pronto.”

Grabowski sat straight up.  “What? What's goin' on?”

“Dog wants to see you...  now.”

“'Bout what?”

Jack opened his eyes.  “What's up?”

“None of your business, Mister.  Go back to sleep.  Come on, Grabowski, let's not keep 'im waiting.”

Three minutes later, the tall, lanky, milk-white kid from New Jersey, stood in skivvies and a tee shirt before Dog and shivered.

“Grabowski, what's a summary court martial?”

“A way of givin' out punishment for small stuff.  A conviction that doesn't put ya in the brig...  .  Sir!”

“Good, dismissed,” Dog snapped.

After a week of holding court, Dog began probing the soldiers' sense of respect.  Dog turned to Lowell, a tall, quiet, undernourished kid with pinkish skin.  “Bring in O'Conner.”

Following Lowell, Jack stopped at the threshold separating Dog's quarters from the large bays.  He knocked once on the open door and waited.

“I can't hear you,” Dog clamored in a commanding voice. “I can't hear you!”  

Jack knocked harder.

Dog raised his voice to match the sound of the knock.  “Still can't hear you!”

Jack pounded with the side of his fist, cracking the wooden panel.  Remaining resolute, eyes forward, Trent appeared impassive.  Four rounds of pounding later, light burst through the fractured door.

“Enter, soldier,” Dog barked angrily.

Jack stepped over the threshold, blood dripping from his hand.

“Trent,” ordered Dog, “get a goddamn towel.  He's gettin' blood all over the floor.”

Flushed, Trent pitched a towel in Jack's direction, and said, “Hey, man, I've had enough of this bullshit.  Dig?”

Leaping to his feet, Dog peered up at the 6'4” recruit, howling, “You ain't with us, you're against us.  So fuck off,
comprendo
!”

With his head, Trent motioned to Jack.  “Come on, man.”

Dog hadn't finished.  “Stay where you are, soldier.  And you, big guy, get the hell out of here, now.”

Trent stopped.  Jack stood in front of Dog blinking rapidly.  “O'Conner, polish my boots,” Dog ordered.  

Jack wanted to tell him to screw himself, but could not get the words out.  Dog jumped from his chair.

“Polish my fucking boots,” he roared.

Jack crouched as if to obey, but instead drew back his left hand and punched Dog's soft belly.  Dog's fist dropped onto the back of his neck.  Stunned, Jack fell to one knee before shaking off the blow.  Dog backed up.  He reached for the polished hickory stick he used when he walked around the barracks.  Trent threw himself between the two as Dog sliced the air.  Missing Jack, the stick grazed Trent's head, forcing him into the wall.  Later, one guy said, “Felt like the barracks was shelled.”  The other squad leaders joined the fray, subduing Dog.  Jack applied the bloody towel to Trent's head.

Trent went to the infirmary for stitches.  Forty-eight hours later, Jack and Trent were cleared of any wrongdoing, and Dog lost his job as barracks chief.  One night over beer, Trent told Jack, “The brass knew what was going on.  They wanted it that way; we did their dirty work.”

“Dog should've been booted out,” Jack said hardheartedly.

“Nah,  the big deal was he got caught.”  

“I suppose that's why there's boot camp— to get us into a frame of mind.  How red-blooded American boys learn to kill...  I suppose.”

Following the fracas, the boys bunked together until camp ended, and when school started, they told war stories about the night court and how it ended in a minor mutiny.  What was left unsaid was that the incident joined the boys— about to turn men— into a brotherhood. The kind against which scripture admonishes: because brotherhoods bonded in blood can unravel through births, deaths, jealousy, and shame, and in this case, the added brutalities of a war half-way around the globe.  

***

Mary's high pitched voice echoed in the upstairs hallway.  “Jack, Jack!”  It grew louder and more insistent.  “Jack, where are you?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Aren't you supposed to be leaving?  You're gonna be late.”  After a few seconds, she added, “Don't forget to stop by Berell's and pick up Tracy's corsage.  She closes at 8:30.”

Jack admired himself in the mirror, combing his hair straight back and rubbing his hand over his cheek.  Tracy hated coarse five o'clock shadows like the one he had inherited from his grandfather Libero Prado.  But, even a heavy black brown beard did not change the fact that at twenty-two he could pass for eighteen.  Maybe it was the cowlick that he could not hide despite a thick dab of Brylcreem.

Julie saw Jack coming down the stairs.

“Well, man,” she said, “you look pretty swanky, hair straight back.  Look almost twenty!”  She pressed her finger into his cowlick.  “A little greasy, Jack?”

He would not be seeing Julie for the months he would be on active duty, so Jack let his eyes sweep over her.  She was becoming a young woman.

“So, Tracy's folks are having a send off for you and Trent — you look a little nervous.”

“Me? Nervous?  Not me.  But, I wish you'd come.”

Jack remembered how much they depended on each other as kids to get through the nights Charlie went half crazy.  Besides his mother, Julie was the most important woman in his life.

“Well, let me see that O'Conner grin,” Julie said, wanting to savor it before Jack pushed off for the Army.

“How's this?” Jack raised the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, Jack, stop, that makes you look scary.  I don't think I'm gonna see ya in the morning.  I'm gone by 6 to New Haven.”

“How come so early?”

“I have a recital in two weeks at the Klein Memorial— first violin.  They have me practicing double sessions. If I don't see ya, stay safe, brother.”

“No sweat, Julie, I'll be home in no time.  Take care of things while I'm gone.”  He looked in the hall mirror and resmoothed his hair.  “Have you heard from your boy Roger?”

“Of course.  Writes me twice a week.  A real writer, he is.  He thinks he's shipping out to Japan.”

The idea of the Orient passed through Jack's mind.  “Boy, lucky guy, I wish I could go over there, they say...  ”  He stopped, thinking his sister might not take kindly to what he was about to say.

Instead, Jack put his hands on Julie's shoulder and looked her in the eye.  “Love you, Sis.”  He pushed her long brown hair aside, brought her close, breathing in her washed hair.  The two hugged for a few seconds, something they hadn't done since their mother had left Charlie.

“You take care,” he said in a spirited tone, as he opened the screen door to the porch.

“Goodbye, Mom!” he yelled.  Then added, “Can I drop you off at church?”

“No, I'll walk, it's a short service.  I don't know if I'll stay.  Have a good time, an' come home safe and early...  .  Wait!”

Mary ran from the kitchen.

“You're not a little boy anymore,” her voice cracked.  Jack, self-conscious, shrugged and smiled. “And by the way, since you'll be the handsomest guy at that party...  don't let that go to your head!”

“I won't.”  He grinned, feeling awkward.

“And, make sure you stand up straight, ‘look 'em in the eye,' like your grandfather says.”

They hugged, and Jack felt her gently resist when he tried to let go.  As he walked away, Mary's eyes sparkled.  She shook her head, suddenly feeling melancholy.

“Jack, be careful.”

Driving Mary's black '37 Ford up Route 11, he thought how it would feel to be free, no longer having to answer to his parents or some prof' chasing him down for overdue assignments, yokes lifted by the Army, finally feeling like a grown up, like someone who could make his own way, his own decisions.  Deep in thought, he drove past
Berell's Flower Shop
.

Hamilton's main house sat three-quarters from the top of the highest of three hills that formed a semicircle around the colonial village of Fairview.  At night, from the mansion's second floor balcony, Bridgeport appeared as a sulphurous stain between the topographic vacancies of black lumps.  In daylight, it lay hidden behind a forest of hardwoods that blended into the far off leaden waters of Long Island Sound, a geography and environment separated by class and economics: someone who had never ventured beyond Fairview could understandably be apathetic to the existence of its industrial neighbor to the south.

 

 

TRENT DANA HAMILTON, AN AMALGAM OF grandfathers Hamilton and Dana, believed he could have things his way.  At Chalmers, ten miles north of Fairview, Anglicans taught him Protestant conceit and a clear separation between those with whom he shared a similar providence and those who served his ambitions.  For all the pedagogical advantages bestowed, he recorded no notable academic achievements, but racked up a record related to “comportment” for bullying, a behavior his father chose not to discourage since he saw it as constructive in someday dealing in a competitive world.  When time came for college, the boy insisted on attending a state school because it had the best football team in the Northeast, rather than Yale, his father's alma mater.

From infancy to adolescence he had a governess, Karen, a petite, meek Chinese woman, who had been educated
in Shanghai,
at
Ginling College, run by a consortium of American Presbyterian denominations. Karen, who had learned English at the college, had a desire to see America after she graduated and the president of the college, who knew the Hamiltons, arranged a visit. Linda Hamilton, pregnant with Trent, liked her and offered her a position as a governess.
 

Karen spoke English well, but held her homesickness at bay by speaking Chinese to Trent when they were alone.  Before he went to kindergarten, he spoke Mandarin as well as English, and rather than drawing pictures of misshapen houses and dogs larger than life, he learned to draw Chinese characters.  Trent's parents were delighted to let the boy acquire a second language in the way many immigrant children learned the dual languages of the homeland and the new society.

As Trent entered his senior year in college he had that age-old urge to search for ‘who knows what.'  He remembered how handsome his wimpy uncle Ronald had looked dressed in his WWII uniform.  Duty was neat, but he told his friends he wanted the Army to get away from — in order of priority — his father, mother and Fairview where his family's banking fortune lay secure beyond the reach of disastrous random events, economic and otherwise.

Trent had the personality of his old man, especially his need to be in control, on top.  He dominated all the sports teams in high school, but not in a friendly, sociable way that made room at the top for anybody else.  His classmates respected his prowess on the tennis court, the football field, the skating rink, but he had a way of doing things— of going for blood— that did not always sit well with his peers.  Lagging behind in a run for Ridley class president his sophomore year at college, Trent had poked his finger in his rival's face over a policy of drinking alcohol in the dorms, reinforcing his bully image.  Bobby Morris was an academic overachiever who stayed out of the sun and starved himself, but spoke impeccably.  Trent, very much his opposite, towered over him by a foot.  When a classmate's wallet was found minus the driver's license in Morris's locker, Morris claimed innocence, but resigned his candidacy nevertheless.  His supporters believed that Trent's reputation for winning at any cost played into the mess somehow.  The day after Morris's resignation, Trent defended his ex-opponent, saying he was a kid of spotless integrity, publicly urging him to reconsider.  Morris declined, but the student body, taken by Trent's high-minded gesture, moved him into first place.

At the end of the year, when Jack and Trent were cleaning out their lockers, a small blue-green card fell to the floor.  Before Jack could get it, Trent swept up the dog eared document.

“Hey, is that...  Brown's—?”

“What're you talking about?”

“Whoa, man, sorry I asked.”  Jack turned back to his own locker.