A Solid Quarter

By Jimmie G. von Tungeln

             He was a quiet sort of person but one had the feeling that he didn’t want to be. He didn’t shy away—in fact, he would be the first to edge up to a group and, once there, would enjoy the fellowship as much as anyone. He just didn’t contribute. He was sort of a free-rider in the world of comradeship, one might say. Added to that was the fact that he didn’t stand out. He could slide through most situations unnoticed. In some situations, that could be a real talent.

            As for his appearance, he was stout without being fat and of medium height. He had that look of a person who had grown up on hard work and food cooked with lots of lard which gave him a dark and oily cast with a few signs of a poor complexion. Because of this, he never looked quite clean, but that didn’t cause any problems.

            His name was Dermot and he was from some little shit-hole town in Georgia where the people who were born there hardly ever left and they didn’t allow non-whites to stay after dark. The family trees weren’t particularly bushy and the few boys who were blessed with normal intelligence learned at an early age to hide the fact. Somehow Dermot had escaped the cultural gravity, headed west, and gone as far as physically possible without getting wet. He was one of 40 boys and men between the ages of 17 and 21 who had volunteered for the United States Navy. It was January 1966 and we were all in boot camp in San Diego, California. He was a recruit with a newly-shaved head and his life was changing very rapidly.

            The same could be said for all of us. We had arrived around the same time at the San Diego Airport and had been directed to a holding area outside the terminal and told to wait for a bus. A drunken First Class Bosun’s mate on shore leave wandered by and, taking command, told us to form a big circle on the airport parking lot and hold hands with our bags in front of us. When the bus driver arrived, he laughed and told us we had been had. It was the last time I would ever accept orders without clear proof of authority. But I was younger then. I wasn’t used to such things.

It was a foretaste of things to come. The bus had dropped us off inside the gate of the recruitment center and we lined up on little yellow footprints painted in the asphalt to begin our naval careers. Since that time, no one other than another “boot” in our own company had spoken a kind word to us. Three weeks into a nine-week ordeal, we were still a hive of individuals with no collective identity. That was all about to change, partly because of Dermont.

            He didn’t seem slow, just somehow out of his natural habitat. He would sit quietly and watch whatever was going on as if it was the first time in his life he had ever imagined such a thing could happen. Like most of the men, he had yet to form any individual personality. He marched as well as anyone. He learned to fold his navy-issue clothes correctly, and kept his locker in order. He made his bunk each morning and it always passed inspection. Except for not saying much, he seemed to be one of those recruits who would pass quietly through boot camp without a lot of notice and then disappear below decks for four years, or twenty. Who could tell?

            Since I had some education and was a little more mature, actually, because my voice had fully changed and I was taller than most, they had put me in charge of the other recruits. They called me the Recruit Chief Petty Officer, or RCPO. They even gave me a little miniature CPO emblem to wear. It was my job to round everyone up and see that the barracks was put in order before the Company Commander arrived each morning. It was sort of nice because I didn’t have to stand barracks watch or do some of the really crappy stuff. Of course they constantly threatened to “hold me back” if any of the other 39 fucked up. This was the deal: the company performed above average or I would have to go through the entire nine weeks again. At least that’s what the Company Commander told me and I had no choice but to believe him. The Navy had these time-honored methods of motivating a person.

            Things had evolved into something resembling a pattern when the seas of boot-camp began to heavy-up. One morning, I had gotten the company up, marched it to breakfast and, afterwards, to one of the interminable classes where we learned all sorts of naval lore, like how the navy had won World War Two despite the screw-ups of the other services. We had returned to our barracks and were waiting for the Company Commander to come and give us our daily ass-chewing before going to lunch. It was near the end of Week Two, and we were taking a break for mail call when a short, red-haired recruit named Causey eased up to me and asked if I wanted to know something interesting.

            I didn’t really but since I was sort of getting into this leadership role, I said, “Sure. What is it?”

            “You know that guy Dermont?”

            I more or less knew everyone since that was my job. I resisted stating the obvious, however, and simply nodded.

            “What’s he doing now? Causey asked mysteriously.

            I looked. Dermont was sitting on the steps of the barracks porch looking with awe at the recruits reading their letters from home.

            Could this be a trick question? I checked to make sure Causey wasn’t taking notes. There was a persistent rumor that Naval Intelligence would send youngish looking spies through training on occasion to check on the system and to catch Recruit Chief Petty Officers who weren’t sufficiently patriotic. Seeing nothing untoward, I ventured an answer.

            “Resting?” That seemed like a safe bet.

            Causey wasn’t going to let me off that easily. “What’s everbody else doing?”  He folded his arms on his chest and waited.

            I looked again. “Looks like every damned one of them is reading a letter,” I said. I hoped for an end to the questioning for I had a couple of letters to read myself.

            “But not Dermont,” Causey said with an air of finality.

            “No,” I said. “You are absolutely correct. No mail for Dermont today.”

            “He never gets any.” Causey said, beginning to get on my nerves.

            “What do you mean, ‘he never gets any,’” I asked.

            “As far as I and the other men can tell, he hasn’t gotten on piece of mail since we’ve been in Boot Camp.”

            “Really?” I said.

            “Not one. Not a letter, a package, a post card, or newspaper. Nothing.”

            “Maybe he doesn’t have a family.”

            “Nope. Heard him say myself he has a mother, a daddy and a sister and a brother. His daddy works at a sawmill. His brother and two uncles do too.”

            I watched Dermont. He started cleaning dust from his boondockers, those awful brogans we had to wear through Boot Camp, ones we had to shine until we could see the cracks between our teeth in the reflection.

            I started to ask if he got along with his family but Causey interrupted.

            “He’s the first one,” he said.

            “The first one what?”

            “First one in his family that can read or write,” Causey said. “He ain’t got nobody that can write him a letter. Just thought you might want to know.”

            I was depressed enough about owing this outfit, this grand and glorious United States Navy, four years of my life without this extra burden, no matter how trivial. But still—I silently cursed Lyndon Baines Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Ho Chi Mien—I didn’t have to go through it unconnected.

            I thought no more about it for the moment but I noticed things. When the mail arrived, Dermont would invariably make his way to the head. He wouldn’t emerge until the mail had been distributed and then he would take a seat near a man who was busy reading some piece. He would appear so interested in the other’s reading that it was hard to tell he didn’t have mail himself. On more than one occasion, I observed him accept a hometown newspaper from another recruit and start reading it as if he had owned it all along. I also noticed that he read slowly and his lips moved with every word. I should have sensed that trouble was brewing.

            At the third week of Boot Camp, the Navy slowed us down for an evaluation. This consisted of competition in marching and drilling followed by a written examination on what we had been learning in our classes. The Navy assumed a serious attitude about the ability of its sailors to know the rudiments of ship safety, rigging, fire control and general survival. So they gave us a book called The Blue Jacket’s Manual and pretty much expected us to know it along with a bunch of nautical terms and customs, such as going up and forward on the starboard side of a ship and down and aft on the port. They said that kind of shit was important in an emergency. So was discipline. They also had sort of this obsession with saluting officers.

            Now our company was pretty good with the discipline part as regards marching and all that. In fact, we were some marching and close-order drill “machines.” The Navy was becoming more and more integrated in its enlisted ranks by then and it didn’t hurt that we had a large contingent of “brothers” with a great deal of respect rhythm and such. We placed them in the more visible positions. Also, I had outstanding recruit squad leaders and a real asshole recruit Master-at-Arms named Chauncey who kept the barracks ship-shape. So at the halfway mark of the evaluation week, we had secured first place among the sister companies in our brigade. All sorts of people came by to brag on us and to promise us if we continued to excel we would win the coveted Brigade Flag which would allow us to go to the head of the chow line three times a day and to have a day off with a free movie. We would be tight-rigged and close-hauled, as the Navy would put it.

            Then we took the written exam.

            We had some bright spots. A few of the fellows had a year or so of college and a couple of those were good readers. We had a few in the middle, several below, and then we had Dermont.

            Lip-reading just wasn’t getting the job done. The way they gave the exam back then was to get everyone in a big classroom and flash multiple-choice questions on a screen in the front of the room. Everyone had the same amount of time to read the question and then all had to mark an answer at once and we went to the next slide together. Some of our boys, particularly Dermont, simply couldn’t read the questions fast enough. My ballast shifted slightly when they sent word by another company commander that our company had come in last and that Dermont had made the lowest score in the brigade on the written exam. I braced for the aftermath, readied for a major squall.

You see, the United States Navy can reverse the Law of Gravity at times and shit can truly flow uphill.

I was deep in worry about the test results the next morning when the Company Commander sent for me. He was a First Class Machinist’s Mate with Dolphins who had been shit-canned from the submarine service long enough to take a couple of companies through boot camp. He wasn’t happy about this. Being a true “Bubblehead,” he hated fresh air and surface sailors in equal portion. Now he had seen the results of the written exam. Having been mentally keelhauled above the ocean’s surface, he was double-mad. I could tell this after I had respectfully requested permission to enter his office and had been answered with “Get your fucking ass in here.”

It was going to be “gunnels awash.”

“RCPO,” he began, and I knew I was in trouble. He was that formal only when he was pissed. “RCPO,” he said it again and sort of let it drag out this time. He employed a fake southern drawl since he knew that I was from the south and that I knew he wasn’t. He continued.

            “You know that you won’t be an RCPO,” and he drawled it out even more this time. “When you go through Boot Camp the second time.”

            “I won’t?” I said. Then I caught myself. “Sir, of course not, Sir.”

            “In fact, I’ll see to it that you are in the “retard company.”

            “Sir, yes Sir” When the shit hits the fan, act the role of a “lifer.” That’s one of those navy regulations that doesn’t have a number.

            “What’s the answer, R – C – P - O? Mr. Recruit… Chief…Petty…Officer?”

            He was beginning to get on my nerves.

            “Sir, the Recruit does not know the question, Sir.”

            “Bullfuckinshit!” He roared it. I know the rest of the company was listening. I retreated.

            “Sir, is the Company Commander referring to the recruit exams, Sir?”

            “I can see to it that you go through this shit at least three times and that your four years don’t start until I say you have completed basic training, you fender-headed son of a bitch.” He leaned back in his chair.

            For a second, I felt complimented. Terms like “fender-head” were generally reserved for real sailors and considered too salty for mere recruits. He quickly disabused me of such thoughts.

            “Get the fuck out of my sight,” he said.

            I did as he requested and as I wandered through the barracks to the porch, I remember thinking that it had gone pretty well. At least I wasn’t on my knees scrubbing a toilet with my only toothbrush. It paid to be the Company Commander’s favorite.

            I sat on the porch steps and tried to collect my thoughts. Then who should wonder up and sit down next to me but Dermont?

            “Sir,” he began.

            “Don’t call me Sir,” I said. “I’m a goddam recruit just like you. I stopped at that. I knew that he felt miserable and that next he would start apologizing. I knew he felt badly for letting his shipmates down and wanted to beg for absolution. I didn’t want to make it any harder for him. I would let him grovel and promise to do better and then we could go to work on it. But first, he had to get the shame out of his system. I mentally prepared for it. That’s what leadership is all about.

            “Do you have a solid quarter?” he asked.

            “A solid quarter? I slammed the brakes on my imagination and descended from Leadership Central. “What the hell are you talking about?”

            “I need a solid quarter, “he said. “I have two nickels, a dime, and five pennies. I’ll trade them to you for a solid quarter.” He leaned back and waited.

            Now I knew what a “solid quarter” was but I had never, in my life, heard a white person use the term. “What in god’s name do you need with a solid quarter?”

            He looked at me for a moment as if wanting to say it wasn’t any of my business. I looked back and expressed resolve. That’s what leaders do. He looked off and told me.

            “I’ve pulled the mid-watch over by the mess hall.” He waited to see if he could get away with that. Sensing my continued resolve he added, “There’s a “geedunk” machine there and I can sneak a candy bar but it only takes a solid quarter.”

            When I didn’t respond, he sighed and turned his face away. “I shore would like one of them candy bars,” he said.

            “You mean one goddam candy bar costs a quarter?”

            “Almond Joys. There’s really two candy bars in there and that machine only takes a solid quarter. You can have the right amount of money and still not be able to get one.”

            Curiosity suddenly overtook me. “Dermont,” I said. “Why did you join the Navy?”

            He looked around as if he thought someone else might be listening. Then he looked at me as though I had asked him why he breathed.

            “Have you ever been to Cumming, Georgia?”

“Nope,” I said, although I got his point immediately. “But what motivated you to join the Navy of all things? I see you as this Marine sort of guy.”

            “Really? Well, I seen this picture show.”

            “A picture show?”

            “Yep. My cousin made me take her to see it. As soon as I saw it, I knew that the Navy was the one for me.”

“What picture show for chrissakes?”

“It was about these three sailors.”

            Getting information from Dermont wasn’t proving to be the easiest thing in the world. “Three sailors,” I said. “What did these three sailors do that made you want to join the Navy so bad?” Then I guessed. “Did they win the war or something?”

            “Nope.”

            “What then?”

            “They went to New York.”

            “New York?”

            “Well, their ship went to New York and they all three went ashore together. You ever been to New York?”

            “No,” I said. This was getting a little weird. “That’s all? They just went ashore in New York?”

            “That looked like some kind of place, New York did.”

            “I hear it is.”

            “They even went to a museum. You ever been to a museum before?”

            “A few times,” I said. “So you want to go to a museum?”

            “When I get to New York. Sure. You want to know what else? They met some girls.”

            “There would be some of those there too,” I said. “In addition to the museums.”

            “I just couldn’t get over thinkin’ that you could get paid for doing stuff like going to New York.” His voice evoked a great deal of satisfaction.

            Now, normally I would be the last person in the world to muddy up such a picture, but I blurted it out without thinking. “You do know that New York is on the east coast and we are on the west coast, don’t you?”

            “Oh, I know all about that. They was supposed to send us to boot camp closer to the east coast.” He leaned back. “They sent us here instead.” He said it as if I might not be aware of the fact.

            “So now you may spend your entire four years in WESTPAC and never get near New York,” I said.

            He leaned forward. “In that case, couldn’t I just save my money and go there on my own when I get out?”

            How could anyone address such logic? I changed the subject. “Wasn’t there a lot of singing and dancing in that movie?”

            “Yeah, but I didn’t pay it no mind. I just thought about New York. I still do.”

            I mulled this over. Then my natural leadership skills came to the fore. You can deal with a highly motivated man. “Tell you what,” I said.

            “Sir?” he answered.

            “Don’t call me Sir,” I said. “Tell you what, I’ll trade you the change for a solid quarter and you promise me two things.”

            “Two things?”

            “Two things. First, you don’t tell anyone about it if you get caught at the geedunk machine.”

            He nodded.

            “Second—and this is real important—we’re going to do better on the next exam, right?”

            “I reckon.”

            “Reckon hell!” I wasn’t going to stand for any of his north Georgia bullshit. “The sooner we get out of boot camp, the closer you are to New York. We’re going to do better, aren’t we?”

            “Yes Sir, we are,

            “Don’t call me Sir,” I said and I got up to retrieve a quarter from my locker.

            In the barracks, I handed him a shiny new coin that I had been saving for cigarettes and he handed me his odd assortment of change. “Enjoy your candy bar but understand it’s your ass if you get caught.”

            “If you have another quarter, I’ll get you one too,” he said.

            “You’re beginning to get on my nerves.”

            “Yes sir,” he said and was gone.

            I don’t guess he got caught for they would have awakened me and made me stand the rest of his watch if he had. I forgot about it and set about the task of raising the test scores for our final exams, a few short eternities away.

            First, I talked it over with the recruit chief petty officers. There were others that needed to do better as well, but Dermont was the real test. I mean last place? Chauncey wanted to make him stand under a cold shower while we thought up test questions and yelled them at him.

            “That makes a person concentrate,” he said. He said it with some authority since he had spent three years in military school. “It truly focuses your mind.” A couple of the others even agreed that it might be worth a try.

            Still, it didn’t seem quite right to me. He was a boot just like we were and though we had some degree of control over what went on in off-hours, I couldn’t see that we had the right to do anything like that.

            In the end, I put him and five others on extra study time although that didn’t amount to much. The Navy doesn’t really believe in spare time. I think it goes back to the old days and the fear of mutinies that could be hatched by idle minds. In the limited time we did have, I had some questions put on paper and we would flash them in front of the six of them and see how fast they could respond.

            Nothing worked. We found that a person reads as fast as a person reads and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot we could do about it. We did discover that it wasn’t stupidity. All six of the “extra help” boys could answer with some regularity if they had that few additional seconds to read the question. We kept trying. And they did try, especially Dermont. They words simply wouldn’t come any faster. I forced myself to accept the fact that going through boot camp twice, maybe even three times, might not be so bad.

            In some other areas, things were coming together. I was losing weight, what with the stress. I smoked too much but then I didn’t have to do all the heavy exercise the others did. Also, we boasted a couple of real stars in the company. One, a bright, blue-eyed, and gentle lad named Lawson, would ultimately be our Honorman. He was from Iowa and was in the Navy for the GI Bill. He had no dad and his mother was a waitress, he told us. The military provided his only hope for a good education. He said he was going to be a doctor and would prepare for that by going to Navy Corpsman School. I found out later that he bought the farm at Khe San and if you ask me, the world missed out on a fine physician.

            The other was an ebony-black youth from Atlanta named Armley. He was our color-bearer and the United States Navy never had a better one. I feel certain that he is in a boardroom somewhere today.

In short, the company represented a sample of the best, the near-best, the could-be’s, and some assorted characters. But even our characters were even better than the rest. For example, there was a runty little fellow named Caskins from west Texas. He swore that his sister had been in a Playboy Magazine spread called, “The Girls From Texas” and was forever trying to obtain a copy of the issue to show us. I finally saw one a year or two later. There was no girl named Caskins in it but I imagine they all use fake names. I surely hope one was his sister. Everyone deserves the right to be proud of something.

            Anyway, it was interesting to watch a collection of individuals start to form a unit. We survived firefighting school with soot in every orifice that took several days to get out. We completed weapons training without shooting one another. We passed our swimming and water survival tests with only a couple of near drownings. We even learned to moor a ship, a landlocked vessel christened the U.S.S. Recruit but known lovingly to generations of Naval heroes as the “U.S.S Neversail."

The company pulled its week of mess cooking although I was exempted, along with the other recruit petty officers, ostensibly so we could prepare for the final weeks of training. Mostly we screwed around and tried to figure out a way to ace the exams. Nothing came to mind.

We knew we were getting close to graduation when a fellow called “F-stop Willie” came by with and ancient Rolleiflex Camera and took a bunch of photographs of the boys acting happy to be in boot camp. It was for a book called The Anchor that they would give us when we graduated. The Company Commander wouldn’t let me in any of the pictures though. I think that he had been ragged about the test scores that day by the other company commanders. Anyway, he came back to the barracks with his battle flag hoisted and throwing a shit-hemorrhage fit. He said I didn’t deserve to get my goddam picture taken so I sat across from the Barracks and smoked one Camel after another while the boys ran through their poses. Not long after that, I started passing up breakfast.

            One of the better recruit petty officers, a fellow from South Carolina named Clark began to hold extra lunch-break sessions to tutor the slower recruits. Some of the others chipped in to help them with some minor tasks like shining their boondockers so they could spend the extra time studying. It was turning into a group effort but I couldn’t really see that much progress.

            Other than the shit-storm when the photographer was there, the Company Commander pretty much left me alone except for a few snotty comments, like the time he casually asked me if I might want to put in for Boot Camp at the Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago my second time around. I told him we were working very hard on the matter. This whole Boot Camp thing was really getting on my nerves.

            Time passed and we were only days from the final evaluations. I was having trouble with heartburn and was barely eating. As I wasted away, Dermont flourished with all the attention. He had, by now, become sort of a company mascot. His skin had completely cleared and he could flash a smile like a Filipino whore. Although he was on my nerves constantly, I couldn’t help feeling a little happy for him. Other than that, I just braced for the heavy seas just over the horizon.

            As I walked through the barracks one night, I couldn’t help but being struck by all the activity aimed at one goal, getting out. There were recruits “spit-shining” boondockers, cleaning their WWI vintage Springfield Rifles used for marching, and folding their clothes just so they met the standard of being folded ‘The Navy Way.” And of courses the “extra-help” boys were being tutored. I sat done at one of the tables that ran the length of the barracks. Chauncey was seated on the other side.

            “They’re not going to make it,” he said. “We should have beat it into them.”

            “They’ll make it,’ I said. Who the hell was I kidding?

            “I had a cousin who had to,” he said.

            “Had to what?”

            “Had to go through boot camp twice. I think they can make you do it if they want to.”

            “Bullshit.” In my weakened state, I knew I didn’t sound convincing. Everyone was aware by now that my rigging was loose.

            “At least they give you all the milk you want to drink,” Chauncey said, referring to a line from a recruiting pamphlet we had all seen before.

            “Fuck you,” I said. I wandered to the porch and smoked until they played taps. Now if you have never heard Taps played late at night on a military base, just know that it can reach in and tear the guts right out of the strongest of men. Imaging what it could do with someone whose anchor was dragging the way mine was. I wandered to my bunk and spent a fitful night alternating between staring at the ceiling and dreaming of being stuck in boot camp until I was a withered old man of thirty.

My mother always told me that the darkest part of night came just before dawn. I started believing that in Navy Boot Camp. It happened this way.

On the evening of the day before test time, a squad leader named Olson and I were returning from muster. It had taken a fraction of the time it normally did. The other recruits wouldn’t expect us back for a good while. Olson was one of those people who understood situations of a cosmic nature. I am sure he was trying cheer me up for he suggested that we sneak up and see what the company did when we weren’t there. I was sick with worry and anything was worth getting my mind off the exams. Maybe we could catch them lollygagging and raise a little hell. That always made me feel better, for a little while at least.

Recruits had either to run or march anytime they left the barracks area. Since there weren’t enough of us to march, Olson and I jogged as far as the barracks compound then stopped to catch our breath. We each sneaked a cigarette and plotted our strategy. We eased by to the parade ground and split up, approaching our barracks from opposite sides. We quietly eased around the end of the barracks and peeked through the back door, staying in the dark so they couldn’t see us but we could see them. It worked.

What we saw was as weird as it was inexplicable.

            There was Armley at the far end of the barrack with about ten of the smartest recruits, facing him. The rest of the company circled behind them facing Armley as well.

            ‘Now,” Armley said quietly, making a sign to the group in front that the rest of the company couldn’t see.

            Immediately, five heads cocked to one side. “Number!” Armley said.

            “One,” said the group in the rear, with Dermont barking it out first.

            “Now,” Armey said, giving another hidden signal.

            The row of heads cocked to the opposite side.

            “Three,” the rear group stated in unison.

            This was repeated a number of times until they had it down perfectly and we had it figured out. Each position of the head reflected a specific number, up to four.

            After that, they reviewed the names of the ones on the front row and made sure everyone recognized them by the back of their heads. Then Armley asked for questions.

            Dermont’s hand went up. “What if one of them don’t know the answer?”

            Armely thought for a moment but before he could speak, one of the recruits blurted out. “He could just move his head back and forth real slow and we’ll know to watch the others.”

            Armley looked at the rest of the company. Several nodded in agreement.

            “Fuckin’ A,” he said. “Now how about lining up?”

            “Bell-cows to the front,” said a big rawboned recruit from Arkansas named Holliman.

            “Right,” said Armly. The rest file in behind them and try to get a good view of these guys if you think you need help.”

            “We gonna tell the RCPO about all this?” someone asked.

            Lawson was in the front row with the good test-takers. He stood up and looked at Armley and Armley nodded. Lawson slowly turned to face the group. He looked toward the hallway to make sure no one was coming. “Let’s leave the RCPO out of this. He’s got enough burdens on him right now.” The recruits nodded in unison.

            “He’s got to get us out of this place,” Dermont said. “The whole company… I mean through graduation and mustering out and all. They’s a lot of other details he has to attend to.” The recruits nodded again.

            Olson and I backed away and looked at one another in awe. We kept backing farther into the darkness. I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was laughing. I wasn’t.

            We finally backed far enough away that we were in the light of the next barracks. I was right. He was smiling like it was his first night ashore at Subic Bay.

            In the barracks, the session broke up and bodies spilled onto the porch. We started to walk toward our shipmates. I still couldn’t speak. Olson, on the other hand, had somewhat of a flair for the dramatic.

            “Where will America ever find men like this again?” he said.

            “I don’t know I,” I said. “But godammit am I hungry.”