Six
before
Cary’s mom had needed her car, so Shiloh and Cary were walking home from school. It was a forty-minute walk, and they had
to go through rough neighborhoods where nobody knew them. (North Omaha was a collection of rough neighborhoods, but it was
different when it was your own.)
Cary was wearing his ROTC uniform, which made everything worse.
Shiloh hated his ROTC uniform. She hated what it stood for—like, wars and killing babies, and the obvious Hitler Youth resonance—and
she also hated it because it was so ugly . The boxy green poly-blend suit, the pale green shirt, the black polyester tie.
The pants didn’t fit anyone correctly, especially not the girls. They were too wide at the bottom, and Cary’s were too short—because
he’d gotten his uniform while he was still growing. He was still growing.
People in ROTC had to wear their uniforms every Monday, even when it was hot, and they always sort of smelled. Like, in the
car with Cary on a Monday morning, Shiloh could smell his uniform. The staleness. The old sweat. It’s not like anyone ever
had their ROTC jacket professionally cleaned. Cary had a bunch of ribbons and medals on his chest, and Shiloh was so grossed
out by ROTC that she never even messed with them.
Shiloh hated that Cary was in ROTC. She hated it. She generally tried not to think about it—but she couldn’t not think about it right now, because they were out of their neighborhood, and he was in his stupid uniform. The high-water pants. The short-sleeved shirt that drew attention to his bruised-looking elbows. He was carrying his jacket over his arm. Somebody had already leaned out of a car and shouted, “What’s up, Beetle Bailey?” And that was probably the nicest bad thing that could possibly happen at the moment, but it was still so humiliating. It reminded Shiloh of the time she’d
been walking home with Cary in junior high, and someone had driven by and yelled, “Your girl has a fat ass!” And both of them had been too embarrassed to even talk to each other for the rest of the way home—Shiloh could hardly look at Cary, and when she had, she could tell that he was just as mortified as she was.
“I don’t know why you have to wear that all day,” Shiloh said now. Ten minutes after “Beetle Bailey!” and with at least fifteen minutes left on their walk. They were finally on familiar territory, walking past the pawnshop
and the liquor store and the barbershop where all the old white guys in the neighborhood got their hair cut too short. (Almost
no one in the world did anything right. Everyone’s hair was too long or too short. Everyone was too loud or too quiet. Nothing
was the right color. Music was embarrassing. Movies were confusing. Shiloh hated it. She hated it all.)
“It’s required.”
“You could change your clothes after ROTC class.”
“It’s required that we stay in uniform all day.”
“ I would change,” she said, “if it were me .”
“You’d get a demerit.”
“Perish the thought.”
Cary didn’t reply to that. He probably didn’t think there was anything more to say. Shiloh felt like hitting him. She felt
like tripping him. She felt like pushing him off the sidewalk.
“I don’t understand why you want this all the time,” she said. “Like, for your whole life .”
Cary was joining the Navy after graduation. He’d already been accepted. He was going to get free college, Shiloh didn’t know
the details—because she didn’t ask about it. Because she hated that it was happening.
“It’s only six years,” Cary said.
“ years of following orders and...” Shiloh tried to find a way to say the worst of it. “And being a tool .”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a tool. Tools are necessary.”
“A tool of... of a corrupt government.”
He didn’t say anything, so Shiloh kept going. “Like, you know that the military has committed atrocities. Atrocities. And you still want to be part of it.”
“I’m not going to commit atrocities,” Cary said flatly.
Shiloh had never said anything flatly. “You don’t get a choice . They don’t consult with you. It’s not like there’s an atrocity track and a non-atrocity track. Do you think the soldiers at My Lai opted in ?”
“You don’t know anything about My Lai,” he said.
Cary knew all about it. He read military books and watched war movies. The teacher who headed up ROTC had served in Vietnam,
and he told the ROTC kids real battle stories.
It was pretty fucked up that their school had two ROTC teachers, and they were in uniform all the time, and it was like they
had their own unit, right at the high school! Why did public schools need military units? Starting in seventh grade? Twelve-year-olds in uniform!
Doing rifle training! It was pretty shocking when you thought about it. It turned your stomach. Shiloh should write a column
about it for the school newspaper.
Cary had been in ROTC since seventh grade. He was one of the highest-ranked high school kids in the entire city. He’d been
awarded a ceremonial saber.
“I just don’t understand why you’d give someone else agency over your life,” Shiloh said. “Why you’d let them use you.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Serve.”
Serve. Oh my god. She hated that word. She hated that way of thinking about it. Why should Cary serve anyone, why would he want to? “I mean, one,” she said, “I question the truth of that. That someone has to do it. And, two, it doesn’t have to be you .”
“Are you suggesting that we don’t need a standing military?”
Shiloh didn’t know the difference between a standing and a sitting military, but yeah, she figured the whole world would be
a lot better off without American boots on the ground. “I’m suggesting that we don’t need to devote so much of our money and
blood into dominating the world by force.”
“Okay, John Lennon.”
“I’m not being John Lennon.”
“It just seems like, all you are saying is give peace a chance.”
“I’m not John Lennon. John Lennon beat his wife.”
“That wasn’t very peaceful of him...”
“What I’m saying, ” Shiloh said, “is that we have a military so that we can kill people who disagree with us. And I don’t understand why you
want to be a part of that. You could kill people, Cary. You’re going to work on a submarine with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are an atrocity .”
“The goal is to never use them.”
“So we spend jillions of dollars on missiles, hoping we don’t have to use them?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that I don’t want you to kill people!”
Cary stopped walking. Shiloh didn’t want him to stop. They were about to cross Thirtieth Street, and there wasn’t a traffic
light, and they needed to focus and then make a run for it.
“Wouldn’t you rather it be me?” he asked. His eyebrows were bunched over his yellow-brown eyes. “When you think about those
submarines, and the bombers, and the machine guns... wouldn’t you rather know that there was someone like me there, someone
you trust?”
“ No. I don’t want you anywhere near there!” Just thinking about it made Shiloh feel out of breath. “If the military has to exist, if we’re stuck with this situation, let someone else corrupt their soul.”
“You really think it’s going to corrupt my soul?”
“You really think that killing babies won’t corrupt your soul?”
“I’m not killing babies !”
“There are no baby-free bombs . Bombs don’t discriminate .”
They were standing by the 7-Eleven on Thirtieth Street. And Cary was wearing his Beetle Bailey uniform and carrying his fifty-pound
backpack. And Shiloh was wearing a vintage dress, something a big-boned housewife had worn in 1952, over long-underwear bottoms.
And Shiloh was shouting, and Cary was practically shouting back, “I just don’t understand who you think should protect this country! Whose responsibility it is!”
“Not yours!”
“If not me, who ?”
“I don’t actually care!”
Cary shook his head, and then he walked into traffic.
“Cary!” Shiloh screamed.
The street was four lanes wide, and he crossed them one at a time. People honked at him, and he ignored them. When he got
to the other side, he kept walking.
It took forever for a break in traffic. Cary was long gone by the time Shiloh got across.