order?â
âIâm sorry, Sergeant Instructor!â shouted Thomas.
âSorry isnât enough,â yelled the instructor. âYou think thatâs all you have to do? Say youâre sorry? You think you can get into the Marine Corps by saying youâre sorry?â
âNo, Sergeant Instructor!â shouted Thomas.
There was a silence. The instructor folded his arms on his chest and stared at Thomas.
âWhat the heck is wrong with you, candidate? You still dreaming of having sex with those sheep on the farm at home? Is that what youâre thinking of?â
In fact, Thomas had come from a farm somewhere in Ohio. He stood still, staring straight ahead, but a deep red began to stain his neck, rising up to his face.
âNo, Sergeant Instructor,â he yelled.
âThis is no place for sheep lovers, candidate!â yelled the instructor. âDo you have sex with sheep?â
âNo, Sergeant Instructor!â yelled Thomas. His face had turned a deep brilliant red. The thought of it was in everyoneâs mind now. You couldnât help but wonder why this was so painful for Thomas. Had he actually ever fucked a sheep? It was an interesting idea. But they didnât have sheep anymore on those mega-farms in the Midwest, did they? Only two hundred miles of corn.
The drill instructor went on yelling, now about Thomasâs sexual activities with other farm animals.
âMaybe it was a cow, candidate. Maybe youâre dreaming about a cow.â
Thomas was glowing with red. They were all trapped at attention, arms at their sides, eyes straight ahead. All of them were watching Thomas with their peripheral vision.
âNo, Sergeant Instructor!â
The instructor unfolded his arms. âThen maybe itâs your parents who are dreaming, candidate. Maybe youâre thinking about your mother and that horse!â
Thomas stood rigid, arms at his side, head erect. âShut the fuck up, Sergeant Instructor!â he screamed. âLeave my mother out of this!â
The instructorâs face went dark. He threw himself into Thomasâs face, almost touching him. Thomas threw himself backward against his rack. His head made a clanging sound against it. What the instructor wanted to do was kill Thomas with his bare hands; everyone could feel it. He leaned into Thomasâs face and shouted at him.
âWhat the fug did you say to me?â he screamed, so loud and with such an explosion of violence that it seemed that heâd kill Thomas just with his voice.
The rest of them, motionless and silent, watching with their peripheral vision, were all part of this. Secretly they took both sides. They reveled in Thomasâs throttling rush of adrenaline, his brave and suicidal rebellion, but they also reveled in the awful excitement of the instructorâs swollen face pressed so close to Thomas, Thomas pressed against the rack.
The instructor did not kill him, but Thomas did push-ups out on the deck for most of the night. Somehow the rest of them felt as though he had been killed, as though theyâd watched it. Been in on the final, slavering moments. There was no call to civility or reason. Conrad thought of that later, that no one in charge insisted on restraint. There was no sense of restraint. When the instructor lunged at Thomas, there was no sense of limits.
They lived in the barracks, a nondescript two-story brick building with rows of bunks under a low ceiling. They marched for hours at a time. They drilled on the drill deck, a huge flat rectangle of trampled earth. They learned to call cadence, the singsong marching rhythms in which the leader lays out a line and the others respond.
Born in the woods, born in the woods,
Raised by a bear, raised by a bear.
Double set of sharksâ teeth, triple set of hair.
Iâm lean and mean, I got my M16, Iâm a U.S. Marine.
The cadence song dates back to an evening in 1944 at Fort Slocum, when a black