Missile Rats

Missile Rats

By

C.L. Bevill

Dedicated to Woody,

who once was a Nike-Hercules Electronics Missile Mechanic,

and God alone knows why a nuclear incident didn’t happen.

Thanks to Palma Beckett, Jana DeLeon, Shelia Salinas,

and my two cats, Bug and Tokyo Rose, may they rest in peace.

Missile Rats

Published by C.L. Bevill at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Caren L. Bevill

1981

Chapter One –

Twelve days after John Hinckley II tried to blow a hole in the President of the United States of America, I went to an Army recruiter. Back to Hinckley II. He used a .22 caliber pistol and managed to wound a bunch of other people in the process of presidential assassination, including James Brady and a secret service guy. My father said that if the twenty-five year old, certifiable loon had really wanted to do some damage he would have used a Dirty Harry special, instead of a twenty-two. In any case, he did nail Ronnie in the chest and my high school announced it on the overhead speakers in the gravest manner, just so, "The President was shot today. He was not killed and is expected to recover. But he was shot."

I don’t think any of us knew exactly what to do. I could have debated the matter. Was I supposed to scream with joy? Denounce the NRA? Cry because Nancy was having a bad day? Argue on the quality of the secret service? So instead, we all sat numbly around staring at the desks and the walls while the teacher, a social-studies instructor, looked at the chalkboard without saying a word. His lips were set in a face that was dourly grim. After a minute, and I watched every second pass on the clock, he went back to talking about local politicians as though everything was just peachy-keen. He wiped a tear out of his eye, and it occurred to me to wonder if he were crying because Reagan had been shot or because Reagan hadn’t been killed. I don’t know why that thought came to me. But it did and it stuck out in my mind.

But I remember that day really well; it reminded me of people telling me where they were when they found out Kennedy had been assassinated. I was eating the vanilla ice cream, my mother told me once, holding you in my arms. You were maybe five months old, but a quiet baby, no fuss at all, so I took you everywhere. And the manager of the soda shop came out of his office to tell everyone. President Kennedy was dead in Dallas, he said, and everyone shut right up. My ice cream dripped all over my hand. That’s what melting vanilla ice cream reminded my mother of, and she never failed to bring it up when she had a cone in her hand. But the announcement over the loud speakers about Reagan reminded me of where-was-I-when-stories.

I knew exactly where I was when they announced that Reagan had been shot, even what I had been thinking about; sitting in my social-studies class, surreptitiously picking my nose and trying to figure out how I could avoid eating dinner with the parents that night. Mostly I was thinking about what to do with the rest of my life. Picking one’s nose always helped a person to think more clearly.

However, the thing with Reagan getting shot and how I was thinking about what to do with the rest of my life made a strange kind of correlation. Except there wasn’t any correlation at all. Reagan was shot; I should go and be all I could be. Yeppers. My grand solution to the dilemma of President of these here United States being shot in the chest. Not a bit of connection there. Don’t know why I decided what I did right then and there.

It popped into my head. Maybe I thought it would be a Private Benjamin kind of thing, maybe a Stripes thing. Except I was Catholic, a boy, and I had all kinds of experience with working hard in my short life. No one had died on me, not even the President, and life wasn’t as bad as some of the song writers had proclaimed it would be.

So twelve days after Reagan got nailed by John Hinckley II, a fella they said had once told his psychiatrist that he was going to go out and shoot someone in a similar manner that Charles Whitman had done, I went to the Army recruiter. It took twelve days to get past the inner voice that warned me what would happen when my mother found out. So I looked up the address of a recruiter and it was there in the yellow pages bigger than life.

I don’t remember much about that visit except that he was a tall guy with blonde hair cut so short you could see his flesh was pink underneath the hair. He reminded me of a large white rabbit. But he wouldn’t say much to me except I had to take something called an armed services vocational battery test. Apparently, the Army was turning men away in droves who were coming to join the military. Because the economy was shaky, the military was looking good to a lot of people. So take the test and bring back the results. Then we’ll talk turkey, said the Army recruiter amicably.

The Air Force guy said pretty much the same thing. Those recruiters were a convenient bunch. They had all their offices in the same little business complex. All the doors faced into a little, open garden in the middle. The Air Force people were opposite the Marines. The Army was off on the north side. The Navy faced the Army and I certainly don’t know if that had been intentional or not. And the Coast Guard had an office around the side, the red-headed step-child, I guess. Apparently the Coast Guard wasn’t good enough to be in the main complex proper. Or maybe their guy had signed up too late to get one of the better office spaces.

The Marine guy took a look at me with his beady, little, bloodshot eyes and locked his square jaw into place. I looked back at him, positive that my eyes weren’t little or beady and my jaw wasn’t locked. I rather liked the thought of having a square jaw, but then there was this large, muscular man in a khaki uniform staring at me like maybe I was lunch. Not a very tasty lunch, but lunch all the same. Then I decided that the Marine’s hair was shorter than Sergeant Rabbit’s in the Army office and knew right away that the Marines weren’t for me. The Marine guy took a little more convincing than I did. Son, he said, and he said it in a deep, rough voice that spoke of too many cigarettes and too much whiskey. Not only that but he liked saying, ‘Son,’ because he repeated it thirty-two times in our twenty minute conversation. I knew because I started counting after the third time. I look at you and I see that you having the making of a fine Marine. A position that shows pride in your country and a willingness to show all those slack-jawed queers you went to high school with that you are a real man. Do you know what I mean, son?

I nodded. But honestly I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t think there were any slack-jawed queers in my classes. I don’t think I would have recognized one even if one bit me on my ass.

Good. Here’s the thing. You sign on the dotted line. Son, you go to boot, you come out a lean, mean, fighting machine. You’ll be the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the whole damn state of Louisiana. He pounded on his desk for emphasis. Then he made this noise. It was kind of a grunt combination yell-of-triumph. "Oww-Ooo-Aah." The emphasis was on the ‘Ooo.’ I took it to mean that he was pleased, and I made the assumption that this was a noise that all regular Marine guys make when they were happy or had just farted or maybe when they didn’t have a clue as to what else to say. I think pretty much all I could have done was to nod my head, which I did. Again.

Then I had to go and ruin his spiel. When the ‘Oww-Ooo-Aah’ had faded away, I asked, But do I get to pick what I get to do?

The Marine stared at me as if I were a cockroach and he were the spit-shined boot that was about to smear my body into the pavement upon which I scuttled. He must have practiced that look in the mirror in his home. He said imperiously, "Son, you get the privilege of serving in those first to fight, the first men off the boat to win the battle, the Corps, son. The Corps. You’ll be a Marine. And there’s nothing better than being a Marine. Then he said that thing again, Oww-Ooo-Aah."

That was a big hell-no-you-don’t-get-to-choose-your-job-son-you-big-goober-and-how-dare-you-even-ask-me-you-walking-talking-piece-of-maggot-shit. However, in real life I guess he didn’t get to say that to someone before they actually joined the Corps. In any case, the recruiter, whose name was DeSoto, wasted at least six more ‘sons’ on me before he gave up. Patriotism wasn’t going to do it. Having a bona fide ticket to becoming a big, bad motherfucker wasn’t going to do it. Glaring down at me and implying that if I didn’t join the Marines then I was a big, sloppy pussy wasn’t going to do it. I wanted to pick my job. I didn’t know what but I wanted something I could use in the future. Some kind of job that was cool. And in my mind I said ‘cool’ just like when he emphasized the ‘Corps.’ Cool.

The Marine recruiter finally figured out that I wasn’t going to fall over like dominos and passed me one of his business cards with a sneer on his angular, military face. He added as I went out the door, "Give me a call when you want to join the real military. Then when the door shut I swear I heard in a voice that had become three octaves higher, You little prick."

That was okay. I was a tall, geeky, seventeen year old. My father had moved us around the Gulf of Mexico for the last ten years from Florida to Mississippi to Alabama to Louisiana while he worked the oil rigs. I was used to being called names because I was the new kid. I played the trumpet in band. I got to drive an old pick-up truck that had more rust on it than not, and I didn’t like high school a whole helluvalot. I had just gotten turned down from the one college I really wanted to go to because my grades weren’t the best ever, and other than working in a pipe yard for the rest of my life, didn’t have much to look forward to. My mother called me Richard when she was aggravated. My father called me Rickie even if he wasn’t. Kids in high school giggled when they found out my last name was Skeet, and made the same tired, old jokes about hunting for you-know-what.

All in all I still checked my appearance in a window before trotting into see the Navy recruiter to make sure I didn’t look like I imagined a ‘little prick’ would look like. Feathered, dark-brown hair, down to my shoulders. Brown eyes. Trucker’s tan from working in the pipe yard after school except on both arms. No zits on my nose. No boogers hanging off the same. Tee shirt was clean and proclaimed that Bourbon Street was the place to go on a Saturday night. Levi 501s were properly faded and buttoned up. Nikes were worn, but serviceable. No toilet paper sticking to the bottom of my shoe. No paper sign taped to the back of shirt lauding the lack of size of my pecker. Every thing seemed to be okee-dokey.

The Navy guy was a Navy gal. Short, rounded, and about thirty years old. She had blonde hair and blue eyes but she looked like she liked other women. My father called these women, Lesbian-butch-dykes, when the subject infrequently came up. Except he said it all in one word and quickly as if the saying of it would taint him in some manner, lesbianbutchdykes. Me, I didn’t care if she could bench-press twice my weight and ate lollipops buck naked on the levee at midnight with Gloria Steinem, if that was what floated her boat, well okay then.

Hell, I didn’t even try to flirt, to ascertain the accuracy of the assumption, although I should have been ashamed to admit I was a seventeen year old boy with raging hormones. She gave me the same spiel as the Marine, less intense. That was okay. Being out in the middle of the ocean didn’t exactly appeal to me anyway.

I didn’t even stop to see the Coast Guard recruiter. I guess he was the low recruiter on the military totem pole. Should have gotten his office sooner.

The next step was to take that armed services vocational battery test. So I called up the number the Army recruiter gave me and scheduled myself for the test. No problem. My sister supplied the dope before the test and I toked up a little herb before taking that bad boy. My sister didn’t know I was taking what might be considered a pivotal test in my life, but we shared the weed and off I went to an old building that looked like it was built around the time of the Second World War. It sat on the edge of the National Guard complex and the parking lot was full.

I didn’t care. I was buzzed. I took the test from a proctor, grabbed some scratch sheets which I never used, and a partially chewed No. 2 pencil. They did the fill-in-the-little-oval-completely patter, talked about time, and how we should finish the tests if we could, if it was getting close to time-up, then by golly-gee-whiz start filling in circles like crazy on the off chance of getting some correct anyway.

The room was full of guys, mostly my age, some a little older. None younger. A few girls in the back and they both looked way out of place. The guy sitting next to me looked like he stepped out of the chapter of the biology book depicting Neanderthal Man. He put the pencil down on the table and scratched his pits as if this process would save his life. Then he grunted. I suspected that he would make a fine soldier, probably just the kind of fella the Marine recruiter liked best. Sign here, son, would say the Marine guy with the square jaw and the beady eyes. "Oww-Ooo-Aah, would reply Fred Flintstone’s hairy brother, and then he would belch. Good boy, would congratulate the Marine recruiter. You’re going to make a helluva Marine. Semper Fi."

I almost giggled but I didn’t want to get thrown out of the test because they cottoned to the fact that I was high. Also because I didn’t want the big guy to decide to pound me into mincemeat because it eventually occurred to him that I was laughing at him.

So I did the test. They called it the ASVAB, and said it like that, Az-Vab. They asked questions about math, general reading knowledge, some technical stuff, and some stuff I couldn’t remember even if I had wanted to. My hirsute table companion grunted many times throughout the test and started to sweat near the end. I had long since put my pencil down and concentrated on riding my buzz to a gentle decline.

Somehow, somewhere, I was aware that I wasn’t taking the test to the best of my ability, that getting stoned and going for a test wasn’t exactly the thing to do. But hey, I was stoned and when a teenager is toked, it suddenly became an oh-the-hell-with-it-kind of thing.

When I got the results back, I didn’t exactly know what to do with them, or even how to interpret them. There were a bunch of initials on one side and scores matching the sets of initials. But the envelope came in the mail about a month before I graduated from high school, and it was sitting on the kitchen counter, propped against the fruit bowl, and I knew that my worst nightmare had happened.

My mother was on to me.

I should have taken my rusting piece of crap truck down to the dock and gotten on the first outgoing ship to South America. I should have driven north to Alaska, going to live in the wilds. I should have fled immediately to anyplace but there. I really should have.

I knew my Dad was going to be ambivalent. I think he would go with whatever I decided I wanted to do, barring ballet-dancing or hair-dressing. And maybe he would have gotten used to those, too, eventually. Not Ma. No, God alone knew what a burden Ma had. She had a wayward husband, two wayward children, and a wayward job. God was testing her and she intended to be clean and sober while she took her test. No fatties for Ma before she filled in her little oval circles and she would make sure each and every part of those oval circles were filled in so that no damn-frigging computer would screw her over.

My sister, Lizbeth, got the majority of the dressing down. She was older by four years and Ma had worn herself out on Lizbeth. Meanwhile I learned by the error of Lizbeth’s ways and proceeded down my own path to inequity. Ditching school was a fine art that I accomplished as early as sixth grade. One had to evade the roving patrols in the high school. Then one had to get to his vehicle and avoid the security dude with the golf cart. Finally, upon returning to the scene one had to produce a document which clearly and accurately explained one’s absence. Forgery of Ma’s signature was the supreme manner in which I excelled to my level of bedevilment. I could write her signature so well she couldn’t tell the difference. Then there was living in New Orleans which was a temptation in itself. The drinking age was eighteen. Nobody checked IDs in the French Quarter because the bartenders didn’t care. The bouncers didn’t care. I don’t think the cops cared as long as women kept flashing boobies at them. Me and my friend, David, would ride our bikes down to the Quarter and drink beer until we closed the place down. I don’t remember my mother or my father ever asking where we were or what that funny Listerine smell was on our breaths the next morning either.

This was because she had her eagle eye on Lizbeth, who did pretty much the same things I did, but got caught on a regular basis. By the time she graduated high school she was living with a biker named Thor in Algiers and Ma had lost a little hope. Somehow I didn’t feel sorry for her.

Ma had picked up the mail and opened the test scores to see what I’d gotten from the Army. Not very respecting of the Constitution, my mother. She left the opened envelope with test scores put neatly back inside and was waiting for me in the living room. With a glass of white wine in one hand and her other on her rosary, she sat next to a large framed picture of Jesus Christ on the cross, waiting for me.

Hey, Ma, I said and scuttled past the living room toward my bedroom. I had to get changed to make it to work on time at four P.M.

Richard, she said. It sounded a little like the Marine recruiter. Not to mention it held a whole lot of threat and dire promise in it. Richard, she said again. Come in here.

I tried to evade once more. Gotta go to work. Lou’s expecting me a little early...

Richard, she said once more and it was the death knell. It tolled for thee. I mean, for me.

I stepped inside the sacred living room, where plastic adorned the couch and settee, and no one but guests were ever permitted to sit. Ma herself sat in a cherry, high-backed chair which gave her an excellent view of the hallway and the kitchen. She had obviously positioned the chair with great malice and aforethought. She wasn’t a big woman. Maybe five foot even. Didn’t weigh a lot either. A hundred pounds soaking wet. Her hair was the same color as mine and her eyes were as blue as the sky. Forty years old and practicing to be the next saint, if only everyone would appreciate her.

I prayed. I prayed that she had had time to consume more than a half-glass of wine. Ma wasn’t a drunk, but wine did slow down the anger factor. But she hadn’t had time.

Ma had a tried and true method to wearing down a child. Direct confrontation was her frontal assault. What does this mean? she asked as she poked a bony finger at the envelope I still held in my hand.

I told her.

Reasoning was her secondary ploy. A smart boy like you doesn’t really want to join the military.

I said I did.

She followed reasoning by elaborate explanation of what happens to smart boys when they make bad decisions. This is her third tactic and often entertains a similar scene on each occasion. Boy joins military. Boy is maimed by military. Boy gets screwed by military. Boy made bad decision. Another example would be: Boy does something. Boy makes poor decision. Boy is maimed by something. Boy gets screwed in general. The boy can easily be substituted for girl and she has many varied examples of said-screwing in order to illustrate her point of view on a basis which she called out at will.

I said I wasn’t going to get screwed. I didn’t know that, of course. The military does have a rather poor reputation for screwing over individuals. But then it has its perks too. The college fund. G.I. benefits. Veteran’s Administration stuff. Free burial in a national cemetery.

I shouldn’t have mentioned the last one. Big mistake on my part. That little so-called ‘perk’ immediately spurred Ma to bypass elaborate explanation for the advanced step of guilt-manipulation. Truthfully this was not a good time to mention to her that: Boy takes test from military to qualify. Boy allows mother to see test results. Mother realizes Boy is going to do something without her permission. Boy makes Big Mistake in mentioning burial and national cemetery in same sentence. Boy is completely screwed.

Guilt-manipulation is Ma’s finest hour. Long practice and years of being manipulated by her own parents have enabled my mother to be a master at this technique. She should have had a sheepskin on the wall disclosing her extreme skill at it. She can bring on tears at will, dabbing at her eyes, even while she swings her rosary in such a manner as to catch the light exactly in the way she knows will catch my eye. She even has a layer-system which she follows here. On the lower level she pulls out personal guilt. Personal guilt is followed by the more serious religious guilt. If she can’t convince me that I’m wrong then my eternal soul is potentially damned to hellfire and brimstone. But then comes the part where not only is my soul damned, but her soul is damned as well. So eventually, if I let her go on long enough, I’m responsible for her going to hell because I’m going to hell. Not only that but when she really gets going there’s a thing about how my grandmother, who died in 1972, will automatically transport herself out of heaven and directly into hell on my account because of my actions.

When it was all said and done, I said the only thing that could calm her down: I haven’t signed anything yet.

Ma perked right up. She wiped a tear from her eye. She drank a gulp of wine and crossed herself with the rosary. Apparently she was content that I had made the right decision. Her decision. But you’ll tell me...before. Right, Richard?

I lied. Sure, Ma. Then I kissed her cheek. It’s only a test. It doesn’t mean anything.

She patted me on my cheek. My son. My only son. Of course he’s a clever boy.

Then I changed my clothes and went to work. I worked in a pipe yard inspecting pipes for oil rigs. We made sure that lots of pipe weren’t cracked nor had internal damage that would rupture once they were being used under thousands of pounds of sea water pressure. Good job. Got sunburnt a lot.

Lou was my boss. He was a fat guy from New York with an eternally red face and reeked of beer and garlic. I told him I was going to join the military and he said, Youse guys hear that. Rickie’s joining the military. He was talking to Pete and to me, not a bunch of guys. We were the only ones there. Pete was a coonass from Terrebonne Parish. He winked at me and kept on setting up the equipment to X-ray a new lot of pipes.

Lou went on, Youse could woirk for me for twelve-fifty-foive an hour, just like I’m paying youse now. Them other guys. They makes three-sixty-five. Youse can’t even buy a couple packs of smokes and a Hustler with that. Them Army guys. They ain’t gonna pay youse no twelve-fifty-foive an hour and youse gonna work your ass off.

Ain’t no women around either, no, added Pete. He was in his thirties and was working on wife number four. Women were a high priority to him.

Yeah, agreed Lou. Youse ain’t gonna get laid in a month of Sundays. And some of those guys, they as queer as a three dollar bill. Don’t youse bend ovah in the showah, Rickie.

I agreed that I wouldn’t do that.

But the next day I went to see the Army recruiter again. I didn’t bother with the Air Force at all. I sat down with Staff-Sergeant Walter Macky, also known as Sergeant Rabbit, and he took a look at my test scores, did a double take on the scores, adjusting his glasses on his nose, and finally flipped open a book that had been lying on his desk. He said, You have a very high electronics score.

I said, That’s good, right?

He said, Yeah, that’s good. He was almost drooling down his green uniform. I gathered that he didn’t see many potential recruits that had a high score in that area but I was naive. I didn’t know it then, but I could have picked from about a hundred jobs if I had really pushed. However, he had a quota, and the quota for that month had been a certain field, a field he intended me to go into, if he could get me to sign on the dotted line.

Macky went down a list of jobs I could fill. He explained to me that these were called MOSs or Military Occupational Specialties. It was the first time that I would realize that the military would never use a short word when they could use three long words and put it into a neat acronym. Hawk is available.

What’s Hawk?

An air defense artillery system. Missiles and stuff. Bang. Boom. Ker-plode.

Oh.

So’s Chaparral.

What’s that?

Another missile system. Think it shoots down planes. That could be a lotta fun.

Something caught my eye on the list, as if it were calling to me. I pointed. What’s that one?

Macky adjusted his glasses on his nose again. A Nike-Hercules Missile Electronics Mechanic.

I like the sound of that.

He read the description to himself and then glanced up at me with serious eyes. It’s a nuke.

I didn’t even hesitate. That’s the one.

Macky closed the book without looking away from