Early Warning

Sometime in week six — still no rain, but the weather was heating up — Private Wagner from Camden, South Carolina, went around asking everyone for money. Private Wagner was a tall, pasty guy, an inch taller than Tim, who was six two, with round blue eyes, glasses, and a self-confident manner that Tim at first respected — although he never actually said anything to a drill sergeant, he had been known to roll his eyes without being caught. He was going to sneak out, get a ride over to Juárez and pick up some weed. How a kid from South Carolina knew a dealer in Juárez, Tim could not imagine, but Private Wagner intimated that he knew just about everything there was to know. And, sure enough, on the designated night, after lights out, Private Wagner disappeared with fifty bucks. There was some whispering, but then Tim fell asleep. When he woke up at reveille, he glanced down the row of bunks, and there was Private Wagner, sliding out of bed as if he’d been there all night. The buzz went around that he had the stuff, and that night they smoked it. Tim, who had smoked a fair amount of dope with the Sloan boys and with Fiona, didn’t feel a thing, and thought the weed had an odd smell. Sure enough, the whisper went round two days later that the junk was weed — tumbleweed. After that, Private Wagner didn’t act quite as cocky, and Tim saw him for what he was, an eighteen-year-old kid who didn’t know his head from his ass. Tim didn’t mind basic training. The only time he was routed to KP, he didn’t have to peel potatoes — he had to get up early and smooth the frosting on the coffee cakes that had been baked the night before; every cake on the rack was covered with cockroach tracks.

—

THE BUS RIDE, sailing through the hot landscape with the windows open, seemed to Tim to go on for days instead of hours. Most of the soldiers were heading for commo, like Tim, but some (the fat ones) were looking at cooking detail. They were calmer and sat up front. Someone was in charge, and that might have been Tim himself, who had been made platoon leader for an unknown reason that probably had to do with the fact that he was over eighteen, did have some college (apparently, passing English and history was not critical to leadership abilities), and had tolerated the drilling well. They all wore their uniforms, including their helmets. They stopped here and there to drop off a few soldiers. Late in the afternoon, the bus pulled through the gates of Fort Huachuca, a much smaller complex than Fort Bliss, set in a blanker and more barren landscape. It was the beginning of April; there were wildflowers here and there — long branches of orange and red blooms struck his eye, and fields of something simple and also orange. These were, of course, interspersed with cactuses. He had seen Road Runner cartoons, he knew what a cactus was, but no pictures prepared you for what a cactus really looked like. Or Arizona, for that matter.

There was a stiff dry breeze when they got off the bus. It didn’t feel hot — it felt hot shading into cool. It was fragrant. Tim was told to report to an office across the road. He ordered his platoon to wait for him.

Whether he was tired or just disoriented, he couldn’t have said, but when he went into the designated office, he made a mistake — almost his first mistake in the army. He knew perfectly well that you didn’t have to salute indoors, and he was holding his helmet in his right hand, so when the lieutenant saluted him, he saluted him back — but it was his left hand that moved toward his forehead. You would have thought that he had raised a pistol and shot the lieutenant, who lunged across his desk, what is the matter with you, soldier, you been through basic or not? Don’t you know the first thing about the military? Tim stood there, his face straight and his eyes a little hooded, until the lieutenant’s top finished being blown. Then he said, “Private Manning reporting, sir.” He had switched his helmet to his left hand, and now he saluted with his right. Lieutenant Canette saluted him back and sat down again, as if nothing at all had taken place. That was the last time he was yelled at.