CHAPTER EIGHT ENLISTED
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Enlisted
Roscoe’s induction papers came through first, and as the days passed without a word for Benny, Benny started to worry.
When it was time for his friend to go, they exchanged awkward goodbyes, neither of them saying what both were thinking.
All Benny’s scheming had been for nothing, and now Roscoe was going without him.
‘It’s probably alphabetical or something,’ Cora said, ‘Roscoe Crane before Benny North,’ but Benny didn’t buy that.
It had to be that he’d failed the physical or the psych evaluation or some other test he hadn’t known he was taking.
He’d offered himself up to the army and the army had said, No thanks. Or so he thought.
Two days after Roscoe left, Benny’s papers finally came, and as he read the notice, he felt relief flood through him, accented with joy and terror in equal parts.
Momma wouldn’t speak to him that whole day, but she thawed in the days leading up to reporting for duty, and when he came down for breakfast the morning he was scheduled to leave, she’d put a pair of thick socks on his plate.
‘Momma?’ he asked, eyeing her.
‘I hear it’s cold over where you’re going.’
He pulled her into his arms for a hug. ‘I love you, Momma.’
‘You just come back to me, you hear? Ain’t nothing more important than that.’
After breakfast, he held out his car keys to Cora. ‘These are for you, on the condition that you drive me this morning.’
‘Don’t give me your car,’ she said. ‘That’s makes it seem like …’ She pinched her lips.
‘Oh, I’m not giving it to you. I’m letting you borrow it because I’m a nice brother, but if you put so much as a scratch on it, I’ll skin you alive when I get back.’ He pressed the keys into her hand.
She looked at him hard and, blinking back tears, she flung her wiry arms around him, squeezing fit to bust his lungs. ‘If you don’t come back, I’m going to push it off a cliff,’ she said into his chest.
‘That’ll show me.’
They drove through town over the low bridge where they’d once dared each other to jump into the river until Cora had spotted an alligator, half submerged, and they ran shrieking to safety.
They drove alongside the field where she’d timed his sprints, week after week, until he was fast enough to make the track team.
They passed the drug store where Benny first pretended to be white to buy an ice cream, and then went back to get one for Cora too.
When they got to the recruitment office, only a few white families stood around, saying their goodbyes. He moved to get out of the car, but she put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry I made this hard for you.’
He pulled her into a hug and the weeks of fighting melted to nothing. ‘I’m gonna miss you, Cora. But we’ll be okay.’
She cupped his cheeks with cold hands and stared fiercely into his eyes. ‘Make sure you write,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything.’
He nodded, his chest tightening, feeling the weight of his decision. ‘You write too. Let me know how you’re getting on.’ He swiped at his eyes and flashed her a smile. ‘The papers say we’ve got them on the run, so I’ll probably be home before you know it.’
She didn’t smile back. Instead, she whispered, ‘Be safe,’ with the intensity of a general’s command.
The ball of emotions building in his throat made him not trust his voice, so he nodded and stepped out of the car, squaring his shoulders and straightening his spine.
With counterfeit confidence, he strode to the recruitment center and gave his name to a man with a clipboard.
‘Go around back and get on a bus,’ he told Benny.
Three buses sat parked side by side, and Benny climbed on board the first one he came to.
Passing a handful of white men spread out in the first few rows, he sat in the rear and watched as the bus filled up with would-be soldiers.
When the driver climbed on board, closed the doors, and started the engine, not one other Negro soldier had boarded.
Benny’s nerves tensed as he tried to scan the other buses for dark faces before they pulled out onto the road.
When they got to the army induction center and filed off the bus, someone handed Benny a duffel bag and all the men traipsed from station to station stuffing their bags with army gear.
Benny craned his neck, searching for more colored soldiers, but the army guys hurried him along until he could barely keep track of where he was supposed to be going.
Bag full, he came to his final station, the clipper haircut, where they buzzed off his brown waves, leaving him with a thin layer of spiky fuzz.
The army guys herded the kitted-out soldiers onto a train and another bus, and four hours later, feeling edgy and nervous, Benny arrived at basic training camp, a sprawling settlement of cinderblock in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
Slouching and shuffling, the recruits stepped off the bus looking nothing like soldiers, despite their clothes and haircuts.
An army man motioned for Benny and the others to stand in line and a middle-aged man with a chest full of pins stepped forward, introducing himself as Captain Bale.
He gave a clumsy speech about stamping out tyranny before handing the whole group over to a broad-chested sergeant with buck teeth who yelled at them to straighten up their three crooked rows and follow him, marching left-right army style, to their new barracks.
Benny’s unease turned into a fist of panic squeezing his chest, and his stomach dropped to his toes. As the group marched off, he stepped out of line, clapping eyes on Captain Bale, who frowned at him.
‘What about me, sir?’ Benny said, trying to keep his voice even and calm.
Annoyance flashed through the captain’s eyes. ‘You looking for special treatment, Private? We don’t mollycoddle in the army.’ He flicked his chin at the rows of marching men already paces ahead, indicating that Benny should get back in line.
In the distance, men walked purposefully in twos and threes. A young soldier drove someone important-looking in an open-top jeep. A fleet of men in army green stood in neat rows waiting for someone or something. Every single man, every last one of them, white.
A tightness pulled at the back of Benny’s scalp and a rush of blood pricked his face. For the briefest moment he considered letting their assumptions play out – he’d pretended whiteness a hundred times in the past – but this was more than getting gas or using a toilet or buying some ice cream.
‘Did you see my paperwork, sir?’
The captain pursed his lips. The look he gave Benny was pure contempt. ‘What are you? Some kind of general’s kid? Regular army not good enough for you?’
He cleared his throat, but the tightness remained. ‘I’m colored, sir.’
The captain’s face clouded with confusion, followed by wariness, like suspecting a prank, then settled on a kind of angry disbelief.
He squinted at Benny, then barked, ‘Follow me,’ turning on his heels and striding off toward the main network of buildings.
Benny scrambled after him, his duffel bag bouncing against his back as he hurried.
Inside, Captain Bale stopped at a desk that looked to be guarding an office, then turned to glare at Benny. ‘Your name?’
‘Benny North, sir.’
‘Get North’s paperwork to me immediately,’ the captain said to the man at the desk. Then he stormed into the office behind, Benny trailing after him.
‘Close the door,’ he barked at Benny, and strode to the chair behind the desk.
Benny moved to obey, feeling the man’s intense stare like a bug under a microscope or an animal at the zoo.
The bag strap dug into his shoulder, and he adjusted it before standing in front of the desk.
He fixed his gaze past the probing eyes of the officer to a picture on the back wall.
The captain and three other military men smiled for the camera.
‘Is this a joke?’ Captain Bale said. ‘Someone put you up to this?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Was it Donaldson? Or Murphy?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Because if it’s a joke, I’m going to have you doing push-ups until your fucking arms fall off.’
In his northern accent it sounded like ‘ya fokinams’ and it took Benny a moment to piece together what he must have said. He shook his head. ‘Not a joke, sir.’
He drummed his fingers on the table and stared at Benny until the desk sergeant brought the paperwork into the awkwardly silent room.
Captain Bale dismissed him with an impatient wave of his hand and flipped through the pages to where the army asked about race.
He ran his nails along the stubble under his chin, making a scratching noise, staring at the small black X beside the word ‘colored’.
‘How’d you wind up at this camp?’ he mumbled, eyes glued to the papers in front of him. It didn’t seem he was really asking Benny, but Benny answered anyway.
‘They told me to get on the bus.’
He snorted and shook his head. ‘Nobody reads the fucking paperwork. Now, I’ve got this bullshit to deal with.
’ He drummed his fingers along his desk again, looking at Benny.
‘You don’t look like a Negro.’ He said it like it was something to be blamed for.
‘I mean, what kind of Negro’s got brown hair and light eyes? ’
Benny could have laughed in his face. Northerners had no idea how things were down south, where every second Negro he knew had some white in him, and no matter how much of it came to the surface, the One-Drop Rule made them all colored.
The captain picked up a pen and put it down again.
‘I could send you to a Negro camp, but some good-ole-boy colonel would blast my balls as soon as you stepped off the fucking bus.’ Benny kept his mouth shut and his eyes averted, focusing on the picture on the wall.
‘They’ll say I’m a Yankee wise-ass trying to desegregate things down here because,’ he jabbed a finger at Benny’s file, ‘no one reads the fucking paperwork.’
The captain tapped his desk, staring at the form in front of him. Then he looked up at Benny and picked up the pen. ‘Not worth the fucking headache,’ he said. He scratched out the black X and drew a new one beside the word ‘white’.
The air left Benny’s lungs. Every part of his body felt like he’d just been zapped with a live wire of electricity.
‘Congratulations, Private,’ Captain Bale said. ‘Now, get to your barracks with your bunkmates.’
‘But, sir, I’m … that’s not—’
The captain held up his hand, silencing him. ‘I’m your commanding officer giving you a direct order.’
Panic rose up his chest and into his throat as his protests died in his mouth. He went hot and then cold.
‘You got that, Private?’
Benny felt numb. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, in barely more than a whisper.
‘And, Private,’ Captain Bale said, standing and shooting Benny a warning glare, ‘I know I don’t need to mention that this stays between us.’
The blood in Benny’s veins felt like lead and his head a swarm of bees. But still he saluted, and the captain dismissed him with a wave of his hand.