MARINE CORPS BOOT
Excerpt

"And out there, you stupid civilian shitbirds... "

At this point in our dis-orienting orientation, we boots found ourselves at the mercy of yet another brawny Marine NCO, this one brandishing Burt Lancaster's cliff-sharp shoulders, Kirk Douglas's cave-cleft chin, and Ernest Borgnine's homicidal stare.

"Out there, girlie-boys," yelled the nameless sergeant I dubbed Threat, "what you are looking at is Ribbon-fuckin-Crick."

Huh? Even to my urban eyes, that was no creek. Soggy and sluggish as a swamp, smelly and stagnant as a sewer, that--call it what you will--was a river. Shallow but broad, that waterway offered only false hope of relief from Parris Island's hellishly smothering humidity. Here it was, only April, barely minutes past dawn, and the South Carolina sun, sand, and asphalt were already threatening hours of still heavier heat by noon. Who among us dared think ahead to the temperature-torture of May, June, and July? Adding to our immediate misery: a squadron of mosquitoes sensing fresh blood. Defenseless against their blitz, I refocused on Sergeant Threat.

"Take a good, hard gander," said Threat, flaunting his battered swagger-stick like a sabre, "because maybe, just maybe, what I tell you will save your useless goddam asses some day." With that, Sergeant Threat sidled his way off to the right of his huddled wards, giving us an open, word-free view of Ribbon's deceptive menace.

"What you idiots may fail to see," he said, "is the gators.

They're out there all right, better believe it, and them mothers is hungry. Smart too; too smart to show their ugly faces, and just itching for some home-sick boobs like you to start getting ideas, like, 'Hey, that crick's no problem for me; soon's it gets dark, I'm crossing over t'other side and hitching me a ride back home.' Try it, you pathetic little peons, and that's all she wrote!"

Threat's suicide scenario was wasted on me. I was no Johnny "Tarzan" Weismuller, so, breast-stroking my way out of PI wasn't part of my catalog of panic possibilities.

"Pull a coo-coo stunt like that," the three-striper warned,

"and I've got one word of wisdom for you: Forget it or you're

gonna end up alligator goulash, 'cause nobody--and by that I mean no man, no boot, no horse, no dog, no broad, much less no bunch of half-assed slobs like you--has ever swam old Ribbon and lived to brag about it." He let that sink in before adding, "Better believe it."

Strutting among us with right hand on his weathered Colt 45 holster, left hand twirling his black baton, he mutely dared any of us to make eye contact with him--a boot camp blunder I'd never commit again. He took his time working his way back to the power position up front, where, sticking to his doomsday script, he shouted...

"If for some crazy reason you decide to go to That Big PX In The Sky, ladies, don't do it here. Cash in your worthless chips someplace else, like over in Korea or Indo. Just don't--and I repeat again--do not deep-six your ass in Ribbon Crick. Uh-uh, not on my watch. Do you verstehen sie me, my little Napoleons?"

Even while Sarge was ranting away, I couldn't block out my thoughts of Irish. God but she's sexy. Wonder if she's a virgin. And that guy she mentioned when we were drinking, is he really an old friend or is he still somewhere in the picture? And who's supposed to write first, me or her? And if...

PRICK! BANG! WHOOSH! went the monologue balloon in my brain.

"Pardon me, puh-leez, Eye-talian boy," taunted Sergeant T. "Am I disturbing your cozy little day-dream? You looked, oh, so peaceful there, prob'ly thinking about all that greasy quiff you left behind you back home. Well, listen up, lover boy; your next piece of tail is a l-o-o-n-n-g ways off from Parris Island USA!"

Turning from me, Threat aimed his wrath at the rest of the throng. "That goes for all you other faggots, too. So, to remind you of that fuckin physical fact of Marine Corps life, get your goony-bird bodies down--all of you--and give me thirty, you grab-assers. Thirty seconds, thirty push-ups. Now!"

Mass punishment. Way to go, Chris. Elected yourself screw-up of the day. First day. How to lose friends and guarantee enemies.

Because academic life had thrown me out of shape, my grunts and groans under the strain of sudden exertion were probably the loudest of all. But above the clamor, another set of sounds--about 30 or 40 yards behind our formation--drifted into earshot: idle conversation over an idling Jeep engine. Even without swiveling to look--a no-no much too risky now--I could tell that one of those voices belonged to a higher-up, because the other party kept inserting sir-this and sir-that into their banter. What I couldn't piece together, though, was where I had heard that officer's Buffalo twang before. Catching stray words and phrases of his, like ginzo and payback time, I began to feel more paranoiac than usual.

Just when our bedraggled ranks had settled back down from our unwanted workout, the four-wheeler churning behind us erupted into first gear and made a rubbery U-turn. Grinding loudly into second, off it roared into the stirred up screen of its own exhaust and dust.

Questions about that vague, chauffeured observer could wait; I had tougher puzzles to solve. A more mysterious figure--one I hadn't foreseen--loomed immediately ahead in my new future, soon to add his own peculiar tile to my personal Marine Corps mosaic: A Shrink.