I remember our first barracks inspection during the first week of basic training. The Drill Sergeants and their cadre stormed in, ripping apart bunks, spilling duffel bags, turning over foot lockers. One Drill Sergeant planted himself in front of my bunk mate, a thick-necked, muscular kid from Texas. (We called him Tex.)
“Where you from, trainee?” the Drill Sergeant roared.
“Texas, Drill Sergeant!”
“Texas? Ain’t nothin’ in Texas ‘cept steers and queers. And I don’t see no horns on you!”
I was next. The DI was a little shorter than me. The brim of his smokey the bear hat pressed against the bridge of my nose.
“Where you from, trainee?”
Without hesitation I answered, “Orange, Drill Sergeant!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’m from Pineapple! Orange what, trainee?”
“Oh, uh, Orange, uh, New Jersey, Drill Sergeant.”
“Are you a queer, Private Peck?” he asked, standing back an inch and allowing me to breath.
“No, Drill Sergeant!”
“What kind of name is Peck? Is that short for peckerwood?”
“No, Drill Sergeant!”
“I’m gonna keep an eye on you, Private Peckerwood!”
One thing basic trainees did have was respect. Not respect for themselves, but respect for everyone else. If you were in basic training for one week and you met someone who had been there two weeks, you had a lot of respect for that person. Corporals were God-like. Sergeants were God.
As I walked around the basic training companies that final week in the army I received a lot of respect. It didn’t matter if I didn’t have any rank on my sleeve, or ribbons on my chest, every trainee knew I was a force to be reckoned with. I walked at attention. I kept my lips tight, never smiling. I mastered the icy glare. Trainees all over camp moved out of my way, or held doors as I entered or exited snack bars. Some of them even saluted and called me “Sir”.
Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last long enough. I spent my last day at the hospital, getting instructions on when and where to have my cast removed. I was handed my General Discharge papers, received my last pay, and had my I.D. card cut in half. I was free.
I took the bus home.
After a year and a half of being away from home I thought at least some things would change in Orange; perhaps a new house here and there, or a new movie theater, a new store, or even a fresh paint job on the Old Towne Deli. But there was nothing new. It was just as if some omnipotent force had said, “Okay, everybody! Mackenzie Peck is leaving town. Stop all the clocks and don’t do anything till he gets back!” The only thing colorful about Orange was its name.
I was living at home again with my mom and dad. They were glad to see me; my mom especially showed relief that I was in relatively one piece. When my dad greeted me home that first day he shook my hand and handed me an application for the telephone company. For some strange reason my dad thought that working for the phone company would be the greatest job in the world.
“Good pay. Job security,” he told me.
Even before I joined the army he said I should consider working for the phone company. When I was growing up I used to see telephone men climb poles with nothing more than a single spike attached to the inside of each shoe. It seemed very dangerous to me, and everytime my dad mentioned phone company, all I thought about was having to climb one of those poles then falling off when I reached the top. Plus, there were so many wires to work with I would probably connect everything wrong, resulting in a mini A-bomb explosion, with its subsequent mini mushroom cloud, followed by me falling to the ground in a heap of smoldering flesh. I managed to convince my dad that I needed some R&R, maybe two weeks worth—maybe two months.
Four weeks after my discharge I went to the VA Hospital in East Orange to have my cast removed. If you didn’t know this place was a hospital you would swear it was a fortress. Granite blocks made up most of the exterior. Some of the windows had bars on them. The front doors looked as if they could withstand a direct hit from a .155 Howitzer. There were about five acres of moderately well-kept grounds, completely surrounded by an iron bar fence.
After receiving directions to the doctor’s office I made a right turn through an arched doorway, down a four mile long corridor, left at the end, walk ten feet, turn right, it’s the 32nd door on the right. It was a memorable trek. Not only had the linoleum floors just been waxed and polished, but I was also wearing new sneakers. It sounded like a cat being skinned alive.
The nurse took my DD forms and had me sit on the examining table in the doctor’s office. While waiting for the doctor I stared out the window. There were only one or two patients outside, probably because of the heat and humidy, but the hot weather didn’t stop two squirrels from chasing each other around a tree trunk. I always liked squirrels, and who wouldn’t? They never bother anyone. I never saw a squirrel chase a child down the street or dig up an entire flower garden. They just play amongst themselves, chattering in a friendly manner to all who pass. And they’re so cute the way they sit up and eat with human-like paws. I don’t think I saw a single squirrel while I was in Vietnam. I didn’t realize how much I missed them until I got home.
It’s funny how you take for granted the things you see every day. Without thinking about it you accept whatever is around you. You adapt yourself to every sight and situation. You adapt yourself to the things which are pleasant to look at, and you adapt to things which if you really studied them you would realize how ugly they are. Like telephone poles for instance. Have you ever taken a good look at a telephone pole? They epitomize ugliness. And those wires! It’s like living under a giant spider web. Just imagine if you woke up one morning and there were no more telephone poles. You would probably wonder what made you adapt to such an ugly sight in the first place. Even the squirrels wouldn’t mind if the telephone wires were gone. They’d just find another way of getting from place to place.
That’s another thing I like about squirrels. They’re so tolerable of humans. You can remove one part of their environment and they’ll adapt to another part. When’s the last time a squirrel woke you in the middle of the night and said, “Hey! Why the hell didja cut my tree down for?” No, if they lose one tree they simply move to another without a fuss. Talk about adaptability!
When the doctor finally came in I said, “Greetings, Bac si.”
He was an army doctor. A captain. He didn’t respond to my greeting him with the Vietnamese word for doctor, so I assumed he was never in Nam. He set about cutting off my cast without saying much of anything. I thought he might ask me how I was injured, but he probably already read how in my records. I’m glad he didn’t ask. I didn’t feel like explaining it.
Since my return home I hadn’t done much of anything. I thought about getting a job, but then decided to wait until I was out of money. I spent most of my nights at Henry’s Bar on Freeman Street. It felt good to be drinking Rheingold again. A lot of the guys I grew up with or had seen around school hung out at Henry’s, just as our dads had done when they were single men. Some of these guys were good friends, others I just knew by name. Most of them had not been in the military, opting instead for a draft deferment by going to a community college. Now they all had degrees in Liver Cirrhosis. One good friend was John. He had been out of the army nearly six months, after having served nineteen months in Germany. He was always trying to convince me he had seen more action in Germany than I had seen in Nam.
“Look,” John said, “do you have any idea what it’s like to sleep on the ground during a blizzard?”
“We didn’t have blizzards in Nam.”
“We were in constant training,” John whined. “Forced marches. Target practice. PT tests.”
“We were on alert twenty-four hours a day,” I said.
“Sometimes