Free Sparta by Roxana Robinson

order?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Sergeant Instructor!” shouted Thomas.
    â€œSorry isn’t enough,” yelled the instructor. “You think that’s all you have to do? Say you’re sorry? You think you can get into the Marine Corps by saying you’re sorry?”
    â€œNo, Sergeant Instructor!” shouted Thomas.
    There was a silence. The instructor folded his arms on his chest and stared at Thomas.
    â€œWhat the heck is wrong with you, candidate? You still dreaming of having sex with those sheep on the farm at home? Is that what you’re thinking of?”
    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.
    â€œNo, Sergeant Instructor,” he yelled.
    â€œThis is no place for sheep lovers, candidate!” yelled the instructor. “Do you have sex with sheep?”
    â€œNo, Sergeant Instructor!” yelled Thomas. His face had turned a deep brilliant red. The thought of it was in everyone’s mind now. You couldn’t help but wonder why this was so painful for Thomas. Had he actually ever fucked a sheep? It was an interesting idea. But they didn’t 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 Thomas’s sexual activities with other farm animals.
    â€œMaybe it was a cow, candidate. Maybe you’re dreaming about a cow.”
    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.
    â€œNo, Sergeant Instructor!”
    The instructor unfolded his arms. “Then maybe it’s your parents who are dreaming, candidate. Maybe you’re thinking about your mother and that horse!”
    Thomas stood rigid, arms at his side, head erect. “Shut the fuck up, Sergeant Instructor!” he screamed. “Leave my mother out of this!”
    The instructor’s face went dark. He threw himself into Thomas’s 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 Thomas’s face and shouted at him.
    â€œWhat the fug did you say to me?” he screamed, so loud and with such an explosion of violence that it seemed that he’d 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 Thomas’s throttling rush of adrenaline, his brave and suicidal rebellion, but they also reveled in the awful excitement of the instructor’s 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 they’d 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 sharks’ teeth, triple set of hair.
    I’m lean and mean, I got my M16, I’m a U.S. Marine.
    The cadence song dates back to an evening in 1944 at Fort Slocum, when a black