Changes:
That Was Then
Excerpt from a novel in progress - Part II by Roger Vaughan I. Play the Game Every so often, Peters and Brewer would go to opposite ends of the barracks, run at each other full speed, and collide with a bone-crunching thud. First there would be a warmup with lots of posturing, the trading of insults and threats shouted back and forth. They always picked a time when the rest of us were on hand. No point creating such an exciting macho scene without an audience. We never knew what exactly triggered it. Probably just steam escaping, an overflow of Army life, the immense amount of boot-camp BS that all of us were trying to endure. We all had our reactions to the Army’s endeavor to reduce us to mindless pawns known only by our last names, spoken harshly when at all, pawns who would respond without thinking to commands. “Instant obedience,” they called it. It was the bottom line. Each of us had our way of dealing with this sudden intrusion into what had been our freedom to do pretty much what we wanted, when we wanted. The 18-year-olds from
the Bronx resorted to what they knew, wise-ass rebellion, carrying on after lights-out, telling jokes, rapping junk. That would result in an hour standing at attention for the whole barracks, outside, in the cold, or in the rain if that was what was happening. That would slow the Bronx kids down for a few days. That, and the rest of us threatening to hurt them if they did it again. Others just got depressed as their identities slipped away along with their hair, or tried to laugh about it, or wrote another letter home. Peters was a wealthy kid from Connecticut. An Ivy Leaguer. Dartmouth, if I recall. The rumor that his family had bought him a seat on the Stock Exchange had been confirmed. Peters was a talker, and he had volume. You could hear him across the parade grounds. The Army was already working on that. Brewer was a quiet guy, and bigger than Peters. I always wondered how Peters survived those collisions with him. But the two of them played it right. They were friends, actually. They had no intention of
141
