Billy Summers

Billy decides he can’t. He pulls the curtain closed and goes back to the laptop, meaning to turn it off and spend the day watching TV. Ellen DeGeneres, Hot Bench, Kelly and Ryan, and The Price Is Right all before lunch. Then a nap and then some afternoon soap operas. He can finish with John Law, who tick-tocks his gavel like Coolio in the old music videos and takes no shit in his courtroom. But as he reaches for the off button, a thought comes from nowhere. It’s almost as if someone has whispered in his ear.

You’re free. You can do whatever you want.

Not physically free, God no. He’ll be cooped up in this apartment at least until the police decide to lift their roadblocks, and even then it would be wise to stay a few days longer just to be sure. But in terms of his story, he’s free to write whatever the fuck he wants. And how he wants. With no one looking over his shoulder, monitoring what he writes, he no longer has to pretend to be a dumb person writing about a dumb person. He can be a smart person writing about a young man (for that’s what Benjy will be if Billy picks up the narrative again) who is poorly educated and naïve, but far from stupid.

I can let go of the Faulkner shit, Billy thinks. I can write he and I instead of me and him. I can write can’t instead of cant. I can even use quotation marks for dialogue if I want to.

If he’s writing strictly for himself, he can tell what’s important to him and skip what isn’t. He doesn’t have to write about the jarhead haircut, even though he could. He doesn’t have to write about Uppington screaming in his face, although he might. He doesn’t have to write about the boy – Haggerty or Haverty, Billy can’t remember which – who had a heart attack running and was taken away to the base infirmary, and Sergeant Uppington said he was fine and maybe he was and maybe he died.

Billy discovers that despair has given way to a kind of bullheaded eagerness. Maybe it’s even arrogance. And so what if it is? He can tell whatever he wants. And will.

He begins by hitting global replace and changing Benjy to Billy and Compson to Summers.

3

I started my basic training at Parris Island. I was supposed to be there for three months but was only there for eight weeks. There was the usual shouting and bullshit and some of the boots quit or washed out but I wasn’t one of them. The quitters and washouts might have had someplace to go back to, but I did not.

The sixth week was Grass Week, when we learned how to break down our weapons and put them back together. I liked that and was good at it. When Sergeant Uppington had us do what he called ‘an arms race,’ I always came in first. Rudy Bell, of course everybody called him Taco, was usually second. He never beat me, but sometimes he came close. George Dinnerstein was usually last and had to hit it and give Sergeant ‘Up Yours’ Uppington twenty-five, with Up’s foot on George’s ass the whole time. But George could shoot. Not as good as I could, but yes, he could put three out of every four in the center mass of a paper target at three hundred yards. Me, I could put four out of four center mass at seven hundred yards, almost every time.

There was no shooting during Grass Week, though. That week we just took our guns apart and put them back together again, chanting the Rifleman’s Creed: ‘This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life.’ And so on. The part I remember best is the part that says ‘Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.’

The other thing we did during Grass Week was sit on our asses in the grass. Sometimes for six hours at a stretch.

Billy stops there, smiling a little and remembering Pete ‘Donk’ Cashman. Donk fell asleep sitting in the tall South Carolina grass and Up Yours got down on his knees and screamed in his face to wake him up. Is this boring you, Marine?

Donk bolted to his feet so hard and fast he almost fell over, yelling Sir no sir! even before he was fully awake. He was George Dinnerstein’s buddy and picked up the nickname Donk because he had a habit of grabbing his crotch and yelling Honk my donk. He never told Up to honk it, though.

The memories are piling in as Billy suspected they would – knew, really – but Grass Week isn’t what he wants to write about. He doesn’t want to write about Donk right now either, although he might later. He wants to write about Week 7, and all that happened after that.

Billy bends to it. The hours pass, unseen and unfelt. There’s magic in this room. He breathes it in and breathes it out.

4

After Grass Week came Firing Week. We used the M40A, which is the military version of the Remington 700. Five-shot box, tripod mounted, NATO bottleneck rounds.