Wall Street Ranger
Book 1
By Chris Veeter
Copyright © 2011 Chris Veeter
Smashwords Edition
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Author's Note
I have strived to provide the most accurate portrayal of a wealthy man building a career in the military. You will undoubtedly find mistakes and many of those are intentional and included for dramatic purposes. Also, while I'm by no means a financial wizard, the numbers such as stock prices and values are a matter of historical record. I was as surprised as you will be; getting rich in the 90s was almost easy.
I would like to thank William C. Martell for letting me use him as a character. He's real and he's awesome.
CHAPTER 1
A feisty fetus is what I was. I would punch and kick and wreak havoc inside my mother’s placenta like some ultimate fighting champion. Of course, back in 1977 there wasn’t any organized ultimate fighting. I like using that analogy because if I’d simply used boxing people would believe I was a dirty fighter on steroids owing to me drop-kicking my mom.
Then again, these stories of my feistiness come from my aunt Diana who’s never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. After all, she was the one who, during a camping trip, told me that if I was ever lost in the woods and I felt a headache coming on, I should eat little pellets of rabbit shit. It took me 11 years and one very odd question session in biology class to discover Aunt Diana’s true nature.
My parents have never been the complaining kind and according to them I was the perfect child, and that’s going back to my fetus days. You see, my folks got married late in life which means they were already in their mid-20s. In their Catholic families of the ‘60s, that was late. If it had been up to my dad, Harmon, he would have tied the knot earlier but there was a tiny problem. He couldn’t get the bride to say yes.
My mom, Frances, was two years older than my old man and she’d quit school at sixteen to become a hairdresser. Three years later, she owned her salon and was making good money. As young ladies are wont to do, she partied up a storm during the ‘60s. My father was much more sedentary, uptight some would say. Still, he had noticed Frances and was determined to marry her.
For five years he tried to get her to go out with him but she wasn’t inclined to be seen with such a nerd. By the time she was 27, she exhausted her partying energy and finally realized that she was ready for stability. She let my dad take her out to a picnic one sunny Sunday afternoon even though she had always vowed she would never get involved with someone from her own tiny hamlet of Woodcreek, NY.
And then something incredible happened. My mother came to the realization that she liked the guy. He wasn’t a party animal like her previous boyfriend, wasn’t spontaneous and artistic like her, but he was so loving and attentive to her needs that she understood she’d been looking for the wrong guy all along. His gentleness and unassuming ways won her over and this marked the beginning of a full year of courting. They were married in 1973.
Instead of moving out of Woodcreek like my mother had wished all her life, they settled in the town they had both grown up in. She sold her salon for a reasonable amount of money and they built a house by the lake. My father went to work for the phone company and rose to the level of regional director before he retired a short while ago. All in all, they could see they had a comfortable life ahead of them.
The hitch of course was the family which was unwilling to be enlarged. They both wanted at least a child, but no dice. They tried and tried and tried to the point where they actually once considered sneaking into the city to go see Deep Throat to get some pointers. The doctor told them just to relax and that nature would take care of itself when the time was right. I was finally conceived in August 1976 after my parents had drunk the last bottle of a case of Chardonnay my dad had bought to celebrate the Bicentennial.
I was born in May 1977 following four years of nail-biting anticipation. After having waited for so long, my mother couldn’t possibly find anything wrong with me. I might have been a feisty fetus but you’ll never hear it from my mom. She’s always touted me as a perfect child, and far from me the idea of being immodest, but she had a point. Growing up, it became a running joke between us that I would boast being a demigod.
Visitors who weren’t in on the joke might have thought I was delusional but my parents let me keep it up since it boosted my self-confidence. It’s something that really helped me out during my school days. From the first day of the first grade, I never had any problem making new friends. The problem was that I didn’t always want new friends.
I was a loner by nature. Being an only child -- my parents had tried for other kids but it was obvious I was all they were going to get -- I learned to play by myself, and I don’t mean in the Ron Jeremy sense. I played guns and war and doctor all by my lonesome and I never felt lonely. There were a few other kids down the street but whenever they came over I saw them as nuisances instead of playmates.
So it went pretty much the same way in school. Don’t get me wrong, I was never the ostracized sociopath who eats by himself in the cafeteria every day. I got along well with everyone and I had some schoolyard buddies but I just didn’t need them to feel happy. Knowing that I had the coolest toys, they always wanted to come to my place and a few times a year my mom forced me to invite them. But it’s when they were gone that I felt the best.
Continuing with the perfection motif, schoolwork wasn’t a problem for me. I didn’t need the teachers to explain something twice for me to get it. It was as if school was just some annoying -- though easy -- thing you have to do between birth and retirement, like bathing. At some point, the principal considered skipping me a grade because it was obvious the school program wasn’t designed for the likes of me. But my parents, party poopers that they were, decided against it. They didn’t want me to grow up with older kids and being like the ostracized sociopath who eats by himself in the cafeteria every day.
Still, being smart and self-confident means absolutely nothing once you get to high school senior year.
* * *
“You’re such a pussy, it’s incredible!”
That was what my good buddy Evan told me three times a day. I know it went against my no-friends-required policy but when you get to high school you can turn nuts pretty soon if you don’t have at least a friend.
“No, Evan, he’s not a pussy,” said Frisco, Evan’s best friend. “He’s just overly sensitive.”
“Yeah, like a pussy.”
On an average day, this was how 48% of our conversations went. I met these guys in the ninth grade when they let me sit with them in an especially crowded cafeteria. From then on, we always spent our school free time together. I was glad to go home alone at the end of the day but in school Evan and Frisco were good guys to have around.
I guess I considered them my best friends but it was clear that they were each other’s best friends. I was merely the third wheel. I liked them because they were a pleasant diversion and they tolerated me for my scholastic aptitudes and generosity; I never said no when Evan wanted to borrow a dollar to buy some fries.
Their language was crude and yet they were smart guys. Frisco, whose real name was Frank (I used to call him San Francisco and it naturally evolved into his current moniker), was more familiar with literature than a Harvard professor. He valued his library card more than his Moped, for which he had worked an entire summer at my uncle’s grocery store.
Evan had a future as a sumo wrestler if his weight was anything to go by. However, what he was into was science. Numbers and equations for him were like history and Spanish for me. He probably could have made a nuclear weapon in his basement if he had suddenly felt like the government had somehow wronged him.
For some reason, one of their favorite pastimes was making fun of me. Well, I was balanced enough, being the perfect person that I was, to realize they weren’t mean-spirited about it. It was friendly banter although my mother once heard us and Frisco nearly got himself torn a new one as she had failed to see the joke. God forbid she let her only son be insulted by his friends!
“Here’s what you should do, Sterling,” that’s me by the way. Sterling Rynes, how do you do? “You go up to her, look into her eyes, and-“
Evan jumped in. “You drop your pants and show her your incredibly small blue-veined prosciutto ham.”
This of course led both boys to a laughing fit. Even I had to chuckle.
Frisco shook his head. “No, seriously, tell her you like her. You think she’s hot and-“
“You want to sample her sushi!” Evan had trouble believing how funny he was and his glee was contagious.
“Shut up,” Frisco warned. “You just gotta be honest, man. Tell her how you feel, that you want to take her out to the prom, and you’ll be in like Flint.”
“Frisco, why should I take dating advice from you? I know priests who’ve seen more action than you.”
The fact of the matter was that I would have taken dating advice from just about anyone. My last relationship went back to the fifth grade when going steady meant passing notes in class and sharing the occasional chocolate bar. The fact that I was so comfortable when alone made it easy for me to not force myself to ask girls out. Some guys I know would ask out girls just to go to the movies. I was perfectly happy to go see a movie alone.
But by the time I turned 18, my inability to ask girls out on a date weighed on me. I wouldn’t say it was peer pressure because I was raised to not care about that but I must admit that I was hungry for love, as sappy as that sounds. Most of the guys in my class had girlfriends, or at the very least the ability to get one on short notice.
Oftentimes, when listening to dating advice shows, experts would say that the easiest part in the relationship is to meet the person. In spite of everything, what was hard for me was that first contact. I was on speaking terms with a number of females and I could tell they thought I was a nice guy but I wasn’t interested in them. It’s the chicks I had a Jones for I couldn’t bring myself to talk to. And when you have a Jones, that’s kind of a problem.
Stephanie Morris wasn’t the head cheerleader, she didn’t date the captain of the football team, she wasn’t the richest girl in town, and she wasn’t the most popular girl in school. In my eyes though, she was the prettiest. She had delicate features and a tight body I will never forget. More than that, she had style.
Some girls of that age, in that town, in that era, couldn’t care less what they looked like as long as everybody dressed the same. With Stephanie, you could tell everything she wore had been selected with care. She wasn’t snooty about it, it was natural. She had grace.
And I was in love with her.
There wasn’t really a caste system at Woodcreek High School. Obviously, the people on the various sports teams tended to hang out together, as did the artists, skaters, and nerds, but the groups were rather fluid and there was mobility between them. Nevertheless, I saw Stephanie as way out of my non-existent league.
We shared a history class in the eighth grade when I first noticed her. Not to be a sick pervert or anything but she reminded me of my father in the way she was constantly inconspicuous and charming in her quiet little way. I fell in love right there and then. After six months of painful harboring of feelings which I was sure would never be returned, I finally decided to do something about it.
Just as I was ready to make my move, I saw Stephanie walking hand-in-hand with Gus Sanford, a really nice guy, unfortunately. How can you hate a nice guy? Doesn’t that make you a bastard? For the remainder of my secondary education, I was a bastard.
Now it was a few months before prom and there was a rumor going around that Sanford had moved away from the angelic Stephanie to the kinkier ministrations of Rebecca Buchner. Public displays of affection between the latter and Sanford proved the rumors correct.
At last, I had a shot and as seemingly unhelpful as they were, Frisco and Evan really hoped I succeeded. It was still our lunch break and with 10 minutes left I set out to change my destiny.
CHAPTER 2
Never before had my heart beat so fast, and that includes riding the roller coaster at Six Flags and my first orgasm. Stephanie sat with a couple of her friends in the cafeteria as I walked toward her. My palms were so wet I could have saved a beached whale just by petting it. But nothing could have stopped me from my destiny.
I walked up to the group of females. I was so nervous that I couldn’t say what they were talking about. As I reached them, they fell silent. My eyes were glued to Stephanie’s and my focus was such that everything else just disappeared. For the first time in my life I was experiencing tunnel vision.
“Hi,” I said, unsure how to proceed. Woodcreek being a small town of roughly 4,000, everyone more or less knew each other. I knew I didn’t have to introduce myself.
“Hi,” she answered back.
Had I been older and wiser, I would have tried to analyze her tone of voice to gauge how I was doing. Unfortunately, I was so tense that such shrewdness was beyond me.
“I know it’s kind of out of the blue and everything,” I started. “But I was wondering if maybe... perhaps, if, I mean, you felt like it, you wanted to go to the prom with me.”
Still with my tunnel vision, I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me but Frisco would later tell me that Stephanie’s friends had trouble suppressing giggles at my Casanova moment.
I stopped breathing while I waited for Stephanie’s reply. I could see the faintest trace of a smile on her lips but she wasn’t making fun of me, that I could see. At that, I felt hope. If everything went well, maybe I’d be soon invited to run my fingers through her thick blond hair and kiss her inviting Scandinavian mouth.
“It’s Sterling, right?”
“Yes, uh-huh.”
“Sterling, I don’t think it would be such a good idea. But thanks for asking, okay?”
On the one hand, it would have been foolish for me to expect otherwise. Who was I to impose myself on the perfect Stephanie Morris? But on the other hand, it was a humiliating defeat. The moment for which I had been waiting for four years had come and gone in less than a minute. And I blew it big-time. The girl of my dreams had turned me down and that was that.
Even worse, I could have pressed the issue, asked her out for some other event, but it would only occur to me several hours later. No, I was screwed and not in the way I wanted to.
Baffled and crushed, I nodded my understanding, smiled politely, and walked away. I had just learned that as far as seduction goes, self-confidence isn’t worth anything if you don’t have a good pickup line handy.
Frisco and Evan tried to cheer me up with some standard issue you can’t win ‘em all encouragements. I told them it was no big deal and went back to class. For the rest of the day, I have no idea what the teachers said.
When I got home that evening, all I wanted was to crash on my bed and cry, but it wasn’t to be.
As soon as I walked in our pseudo-Victorian house I could smell something was wrong. For starters, I couldn’t smell any dinner cooking, which was odd. More importantly, I smelled the distinctive stench of Marlboro Light, my mother’s brand. It wouldn’t have alarmed me except that she had quit five years before.
As I got to the stairs to climb up to my room, I saw my parents sitting in the living room. My mother was indeed puffing on a death stick. I was about to ask what the problem was when I noticed some brochures on the coffee table. I could see the U.S. Army logo. My mother turned to me. She didn’t look happy.
“When were you gonna tell us about this?”
I had expected that fight for a while now but that didn’t mean I was prepared for it. I walked into the living room and sat down on the edge of the sofa. I wanted to come off as calm as possible.
“I told you about this a year ago, mom.”
My father nodded thoughtfully. “Sterling, we didn’t think you were serious.”
“I was dead serious, dad.”
My mother couldn’t stop staring at the brochures. She unfolded one but I could tell she wasn’t reading it. She was wondering how her perfect son could contemplate joining the military. “What about college?”
“I don’t wanna go.”
“But you’re so smart,” my father started. “You’ve always been the smartest guy in your class. We’ve set aside some money for you to go to university. Anywhere you choose to go, anywhere you get accepted, we’ll pay. You know that.”
“I’m tired of school. They don’t teach anything you can’t learn from a book.” I was always reading and educating myself, I never felt like school had to have the monopoly on education. After all, I had taught myself Spanish with some library books when I was thirteen.
My father continued, “It’s not about getting an education, it’s about getting a degree. Once you get a degree, you can do anything you want, there’ll never be anything to keep you from getting the job you want.”
None of my parents had college degrees and I know it was a chip on my father’s shoulder. According to him, he never got promoted past regional director because of it.
“I want to make a career in the Army, dad.”
“What about military college?” my mom said. “What about West Point?”
“I don’t know any congressman and I never did any extracurricular activities. They would never take me. Besides, I can go back to school anytime I want. But for now, that’s what I want.”
If truth be told, I probably could have gotten into West Point but I was so eager to get into the military that I couldn’t tolerate another four years of academics. I had wanted to be a soldier since I was a little boy watching old war movies.
At first, my parents were baffled because there had never been a military culture in our family. Well, one of my grandfathers had served in the Navy during World War II but he’d been a shore clerk. My father had not been drafted during the Vietnam War though he hadn’t been a peacenik either.
I changed my mind a few times about my future career while growing up -- I once considered becoming a travel agent, a stand-up comic, and a photographer for Playboy magazine -- but I always came back to the military. For me it was a noble calling and I saw it as a way to turn me into a man. I was often ashamed of the immaturity of young men, embarrassed by the childishness of frat boys. I was determined not to become one of them.
When a recruiter came to our school last year, I went and listened to his speech. I didn’t sign up right away but I carefully paid attention to what he had to say. I wasn’t charmed by his views on patriotism; what seduced me was the action that being a soldier entailed. Having grown up on war movies, what I wanted to do was fight my way through a war-torn city and save the world.
I went back to the local recruiting office and the recruiter gave me more details. He’d himself been too young for Vietnam so I got a great account of life in a peacetime Army. The many travels appealed to me. He was out of brochures but promised to have some sent to me.
My mother lit another cigarette. “It’s dangerous, Sterling. You could get hurt.”
“Mom, it’s not like there’s a war on. Besides, look at the Gulf War. It was over in like four days. It’s not dangerous anymore.” I slid a bit closer to her and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s something I’ve always dreamed about. I need to do this.”
There was a long silence and I didn’t dare look at them in the eyes. My mother wasn’t crying but I could tell she was close. After what seemed like an eternity, my father spoke.
“When’s the deadline for you to join up?”
“I don’t know, June I think.”
“In that case,” dad said. “I want you to promise me that you’ll wait until the last possible moment before you do it, okay?”
I was so relieved that I leapt from my seat and hugged him. I smiled back at my mother but she was avoiding my eyes. I climbed up to my room while I knew my dad would make my mother understand how important it was to me. I momentarily forgot about Stephanie and my earlier setback.
* * *
My father was almost 48 years old when he received The Letter from his company. Aside from congratulating him for his dedicated service, the long and the short of it was that they were offering him an opportunity to retire with interesting benefits. The company wasn’t downsizing him per se but it was the mid-‘90s and no self-respecting multinational corporation kept all its employees on the payroll. Hey, all the cool kids were doing it!
What they offered him was early retirement with a $60,000 parting gift. The problem was that my dad was only one year short of his 30th year of employment, which would have given him full retirement benefits. Since a day didn’t go by without some downsizing announcement someplace or other, my father was afraid that if he didn’t take the offer they would eventually fire him.
So in my senior year, dad joined my mom at home. For the first month or so, he treated it as a vacation. By Christmas however he was completely bored. Playing the lottery just wasn’t something you could do all day long on a pension. Too old to begin a new career, he finally convinced my mother to let him use his $60,000 to buy into his brother’s grocery store in town.
Having his own business, my dad was able to set his own hours which gave him the opportunity to stay with my mother a lot, explaining to her that I was becoming a man and that I had to make decisions for myself even if she didn’t agree with them. I don’t know if she ever accepted my decision but there was never another fight between us.
In early June, my dad took me aside and asked me again if I was sure about joining the Army. When I said I was, he himself drove me to the recruitment office and I signed up for four years. I was to report to Fort Benning on July 10.
I wasn’t just joining the Army but the Army Rangers. Half of the American military units will tell you that they have the most rigorous training in the world, and short of the Navy Seals and the Green Berets, the Rangers are the cat’s meow. I knew all about this and I was confident that I was in the right physical condition. I wasn’t on any of the school’s sports teams but being the loner that I was I was a fixture at the Woodcreek Fitness Center.
I’d wanted a career in the military from a young age but it took me a lot of time to decide which of the branches I was going to join. First of all, I eliminated the Air Force because flying aircrafts wasn’t something that appealed to me. And when you’re in the Air Force and you don’t fly, you’re pretty much like some third-string quarterback who will never see any action.
For a while, I seriously considered joining the Navy. As far as I’m concerned, they have the best looking uniforms and this New World Order we were living in made naval battles unlikely. So it would be a pretty safe job where I’d get to see the world. Plus there was this whole prestige associated with the Navy, hundreds of years of tradition. Still, no battles meant no action.
The Marine Corps boasted being the best of the best and I briefly toyed with the idea of joining them. But for my money, they were an obsolete entity. I can understand their relevance two centuries ago when the Navy needed shock troops to board other vessels and invade islands.
This was the 20th century and aircraft carriers and helicopters could take the Army anywhere. So why would they keep Marines around? I wasn’t to support this odd political decision by joining up. More to the point, there was no way in hell I was willing to sport one of those shavetail haircuts and be called a jarhead.
So that left the Army. By elimination, this was the right choice. Next I had to decide what type of job I wanted within the branch. I could be a mechanic, truck driver, signals analyst, tank gunner, dental hygienist, ordnance clerk, anything I wanted. Nonetheless, being honest with myself, I had to admit the main reason I was joining the military was for the ladies.
It was a known fact that women love a man in uniform. They see a soldier and instantly feel aroused. The soldier is mysterious, he’s seen danger, he’s a hero. It’s that whole rebel Fonzie attraction. When you’ve gone through your whole life without going on a date, much less sliding into third base, you start thinking that a military career might be the answer to your prayers.
You might get a woman interested in you by wearing a uniform but once she learns you’re a dental hygienist you’ll be back to banging your own bishop in a hurry. Consequently, I needed to be an infantryman. Knowing myself, I couldn’t just be an ordinary infantryman, the kind of stooge posted in Germany drinking beer all day and anxiously awaiting discharge papers. That didn’t fit into my dreams of heroic exploits.
This left me having to choose between the 10th Mountain Division, 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, and the Rangers. The Delta Force and the Green Berets were out of the question since they required years of experience in the service before applying. I chose the Rangers for their outstanding reputation and I was confident they were right for me. As far as I could tell, I was going to be the first Ranger in Woodcreek.
For the rest of the school year, I was excited. All the seniors were excited to be leaving high school but I was the only one in my hometown who would be joining the Army and that made me proud. It made me unique. Before long, most of the kids knew of my plans and I could tell they respected me for it. It was as if I was doing something none of them had the guts to do.
Once or twice, I caught Stephanie looking at me but I didn’t do anything about it. If she thought of me differently because I was joining up, then she wasn’t as terrific as I thought she was. I wanted her to like me for me, not for my status. Then again, maybe that was why I was still a virgin, too high standards. Anyway, I didn’t ask her out again. In fact, Frisco, Evan, and I didn’t go to the prom at all. We brought a case of beer to Frisco’s basement and played cards all night.
Finally, it was time for me to leave Woodcreek. The recruiter had offered me a bus ticket to Fort Benning but my parents would have none of it. If it was going to be the last time they would see their son in months, they would personally drive him down to Georgia.
On the early morning of July 8 1995, we packed my dad’s Buick and took off. I was aware that my mother was sad but she wasn’t angry anymore. We talked about future plans and such though none of us evoked the possibility of me getting hurt. We all knew it could happen; acknowledging it would have rekindled passions and it wasn’t the time for it.
We took our time driving so that I wouldn’t be too early at the base. We got to Columbus, GA on the evening of July 9 and got a hotel room for the night. Before we turned in, we stopped for gas, snacks, and a copy of the New York Times. My dad absolutely needed to check the lottery numbers. A few hours from getting my head shaved, I personally had other things on my mind.
For my father, checking the Lotto numbers was a ritual that went back 20 years. However, as he came out of the convenience store it was the first time I’d ever seen him drop the newspaper. He held his ticket tightly and froze in his tracks. My mom and I shared a look and the first thought in my mind was that he was having a heart attack. But then he smiled and came back to the car.
He turned to us both and whispered, “We just won the lottery jackpot.”
CHAPTER 3
Winning $14 million makes sleep difficult. We just couldn’t believe it. We sat in our motel room and we were just too excited to celebrate. For one thing, I didn’t want to show up at boot camp in the morning with a hangover. Moreover, you never think such luck could happen to you so it was shocking. My mom couldn’t stop giggling and neither could I. My father, his usual calm self, checked the ticket at least 73 times to make sure we had indeed won.
“We have to keep this to ourselves, right?” my dad said.
“Why?” I asked. “Are you afraid somebody’s gonna steal the ticket?”
“No, I mean we have to keep quiet for a long time. Not just this week but for as long as we can.”
My mother shook her head. “Are you nuts? This is the greatest thing that ever happened to us. You want us to bring this secret to the grave? We never do anything, Harmon. We never have any news when we meet our friends. For once we’d have something to brag about.”
My father took a deep breath and mixed himself a gin and tonic. “The moment somebody knows we won our lives will never be the same again. We’ll never be left alone. We’ll have salesmen and financial advisers up the ying yang. We’ll be in the papers, we’ll be hassled by every charitable organization in the country.”
“We’ll have to change our phone number,” my mom said almost to herself.
“Whoa, chill out, mom. How am I gonna be able to call home?”
My dad thought this over for a moment. “Call your aunt Diana next Sunday, she’ll have the new number. In the meantime, you can’t tell anyone.”
I nodded my agreement. At the same time, I started asking myself if I had made the wrong decision by joining the Army. What’s the use of being rich if you can’t spend the money, I thought.
“Are you sure you still want to go through with this?” my dad asked, reading my mind. “I’m sure there’d be a way to get you out of your Ranger contract if you didn’t want to do it anymore.”
For a moment, I was tempted to bail out but then I remembered that I wanted to taste the military life. Perhaps I wouldn’t spend my entire life in uniform but I had to try it out. “No, I’m positive. I wanna be a soldier. A rich soldier.”
We all cracked up and soon after we went to bed. It was 3 a.m. when I finally fell asleep. Thankfully, I didn’t have to be at Fort Benning until after dinner the next night.
We stayed at the motel all day, swam a bit, but never talked about the ticket in public. At last, after having supper at The Olive Garden -- where I could barely swallow two bites -- my parents drove me to the base.
Both of them were misty-eyed when they hugged me goodbye. The only time I had really been away from home was at the age of eight when I went to summer camp. I expected it would be difficult to leave my parents behind but I was so excited about beginning a man’s life in the Army that I didn’t cry at all.
Boot camp began way easier than I had expected. We were ushered into a reception hall where we sat on the floor. An officer welcomed us and thanked us for serving with the United States Army. Then, we watched an introduction video before heading to the Amnesty Room where we left behind all unauthorized items such as pocket knives and raunchy magazines. Then, we were issued our PT gear, bedding, and sent to bed.
For the rest of the week, everything went just as smoothly. It sure wasn’t what I had seen in the movies. We were issued our uniforms and IDs, got high-and-tight haircuts, and were given a medical exam along with five inoculations.
The tough part began on the fourth day when we had to take our first Physical Assessment Test. This meant we had to run a mile in less than eight and a half minutes and do 17 push-ups. For the following days, we got classes in barracks upkeep and drill marching. This was called Reception Week and was meant to get us used to boot camp.
On Sunday, I attended chapel service. My family wasn’t really religious, Christmas and Easter were the only celebrations that brought us to our Catholic Church. But this far away from home, the chapel was the only familiar thing in sight. That’s how I met Dickens Kovsky.
“You come here often?”
I turned to my right and saw this giant African-American sitting next to me. He had the face of a boxer mounted on the body of a basketball player. He didn’t look much older than I was. For a moment, I was afraid he was making a pass at me until I saw the faint smile on his face.
“Every chance I get,” I replied. “Didn’t you hear the preacher? If you come here often enough Jesus will save you.”
For a moment, I could see he thought I was a born-again Bible thumper. Then I smiled just enough to let him know he didn’t have a monopoly on jokes.
We remained quiet for a few more minutes and the service ended. As we filed out to leave, he extended his hand to me and I shook it.
“Dickens Kovsky,” he offered. “Boston, born and raised.”
“Sterling Rynes. Woodcreek, New York.”
Dickens displayed a toothy grin. “You wanna come have lunch?”
“It’s 10 a.m.,” I shot back.
“Well, not right now. Everybody in Woodcreek, New York, as dumb as you?”
I could tell he wasn’t insulting me. He would have fit in perfectly with Frisco and Evan. Right from the start, I liked the guy. “I have to go buy some razor blades and stuff. You coming along?”
He shrugged. “Might as well. If the Drill Sergeant finds me idle he’ll have me do some push-ups or something.”
As it turned out, Dickens was two years older than me. He had tried his hand at being a salesman for his brother’s T-shirt company but the two had a falling out over working hours. Impulsively, mostly to spite his brother, he joined the Army.
“It seemed like a smart move at the time,” he told me over some bologna sandwiches. “Three square meals a day, a place to stay, and they provide uniforms. The way the recruiter put it, it sounded like a beach resort. Without the beach.”
“You don’t like it anymore?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see myself taking orders very well. The way I see it, I got 50-50 chances. I’ll either make it through, become a Ranger, win medals, meet the president, shit like that. Or, they’ll flunk me and have me as a company clerk or something. I wanted to piss my brother off by joining the Army. Under these circumstances, I think it was pretty dumb. He don’t have to feed me no more and I’m sure he’s gonna use my car all the time.”
As he would later explain to me, Dickens had a 50-50 theory. As he saw it, everything in life was either going to happen or not. On any given day, it will either rain or not, snow or not if it’s winter. The girl you like will either like you back or not. He knew about the concept of probability but chose to dismiss it since, as he took pleasure in explaining, nothing will ever change the fact that there are always two possible outcomes. You fall on one side of the fence or the other.
At first glance, Dickens didn’t appear to be educated so his well articulated premise intrigued me. He had grown up in the notoriously tough neighborhood of South Boston. He avoided trouble by being on his school’s basketball team, something he wasn’t terribly good at. They kept him on the team because he was the tallest kid in school but he eventually realized the NBA would never come calling.
Seeing it as cutting his losses, Dickens quit the basketball team. Consequently, his teachers stopped giving him breaks and his GPA plummeted. A counselor assured him he had the smarts to get good grades but he would have to study. Dickens saw that as a waste of time since college wasn’t in his plans for the future.
He quit school at the age of 16 and worked a series of menial jobs washing dishes, busing tables, and stocking shelves. Two years later, his older brother founded a T-shirt company. He took in Dickens as a deliveryman. For the first year, things went smoothly. In early 1995, the company got a contract with the Boston Red Sox to make funny shirts about competing teams.
Dickens thought he was entitled to a share of the profits but his brother was of a different opinion. He started driving a BMW, albeit a used one, and moved to a better part of town. Dickens got a small raise but his brother made it clear that he wouldn’t see any of the profits. He then had the nerve to ask Dickens to work more hours. Seeing this as unacceptable, he left the company -- and the family -- in a huff.
A week later, Dickens met with an Army recruiter. As he told me all this, I could tell it saddened him to have turned his back on his brother. He was still mad at him for having been treated this way but he was somber nevertheless. After lunch, we were already good friends.
That afternoon, I called my aunt Diana and I was surprised when my mother answered. She had been awaiting my call anxiously. I assured her I wasn’t mistreated but I could tell she wasn’t at ease. After a few minutes, my dad came on the line and I repeated everything to him.
“Did you have the ticket cashed in?” I asked.
“I went to Syracuse yesterday and then met with a lawyer to get everything straightened out. There was a mandatory press conference. They took my picture and everything. Thankfully, it wasn’t the most impressive jackpot in history so there weren’t too many reporters. I was only a footnote on the evening news.”
“So we really got that much?” Until the money was in the bank, I still had trouble believing we were so rich.
“Well, we lost a chunk of it in taxes. Then, I’m paying off the grocery store and the car. Your mother and I talked about it and we decided to give away two million to your aunt and uncles. Is that okay with you?”
“Of course it is, dad.” For an instant I was disappointed that the original $14 million had dwindled to a mere $6 million but I was all for sharing the wealth with my relatives. After all, I figured that by doing so we wouldn’t be pestered.
“I’ve invested three million for five years at 7% interest. That means we’re getting about $121,000 a year after taxes. That’s more than enough for your mother and me to travel and live comfortably. We’ll even have some leftover change for charity and such.”
“What about the remaining three million?” I hadn’t been to college but I knew how to count.
“We’re putting it in your account. It’s your money now, Sterling.”
* * *
I was speechless. That was a lot of money to give an 18-year-old. I knew a lot of kids who would have been extremely happy but I honestly didn’t know how to feel. I was afraid that I would spend it all and end up on Social Security.
As it turned out, my father admitted he trusted my judgment and that if I was old enough to join the Army, spread peace and democracy throughout the world, and kill people, I was old enough to get my share of the family fortune. I think what really convinced him to do it is the fact that he knew I wouldn’t jump on it.
You don’t offer a cocktail to a thirsty alcoholic because he’ll drink your entire liquor cabinet; you offer a cocktail to a Mormon. That’s what my dad had done. And with me busy with military training for the next six months or so there was no way I would be able to squander all that money right away. I could use those six months to see how I wanted to spend my life.
But when you’re in boot camp, you don’t get to sit back and ponder the future while sipping exotic drinks on the beach. The next day, we met our senior Drill Sergeant, a skeletal soldier of about 30. He didn’t do anything to be liked right from the start. Waking up recruits at 4:30 a.m. tends to do that.
“Everybody up, you worthless bitches!” he screamed while banging the lid of a metallic garbage can with a wrench. “You lazy fags think this is a bed and fucking breakfast? You waiting for your complimentary newspaper? Nobody sleeps on Uncle Sam’s dime! Get up, get up, get up!”
As soon as he had burst into our barracks and turned on the lights, everyone was awake. From there, it was a question of shaking off the surprise and standing at attention at the foot of our beds. The Drill Sergeant walked up and down the room as recruits got out of bed.
“My grandmother could stand at attention faster than you dickless fairies and she’s a blind 97-year-old with a plastic hip!”
As I swung out of bed, I couldn’t help myself and yawned. The Drill Sergeant noticed my open mouth and walked quickly up to me just as I was standing at attention. The brim of his Smokey Bear campaign hat tickled my forehead while he leaned over me.
“Am I boring you, recruit?”
“No, Drill Sergeant!” I shouted as previously instructed.
“Then what’s your sorry-ass excuse for yawning in my distinguished presence?”
“No excuse, Drill Sergeant!” Another thing we had learned during Reception Week. Whatever you do wrong, there’s no excuse for it.
He came a little closer to me. Everyone in the barracks was watching from the corner of their eyes. “What’s your name, recruit?”
“Sterling Rynes, Drill Sergeant!”
The soldier smiled faintly. “I remember reading your medical file, Rynes. It said your no-good mother couldn’t give birth to a normal child. Apparently, you got no brains, just two slight lumps of steaming shit. Is that correct, recruit Shit Brain?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”
“Why are you always agreeing with me? You’re trying to get into my pants?”
“No, Drill Sergeant! It’s just that you’re always right, Drill Sergeant!”
“You goddamn Skippy, Shit Brain. As far as you’re concerned I am the beacon of truth.” He walked away from me and addressed the entire platoon. “For the next nine weeks, I will be your mother, your father, your teacher, your God, your Satan, and you’re 14-year-old next door virgin. I’m Drill Sergeant Sheffield, your senior instructor. It’s my job to turn civilian queers like you into soldiers of the United States Army. I can already see that it’s a hopeless job with you pathetic assholes but that’s what they pay me for so I might as well give it a shot. Your lives are now mine.”
Officially, boot camp is called Basic Combat Training. It’s a process which conditions recruits to lose their individuality for the greater good of the Army. We had been taught during Reception Week that it was essential for us to shed our distinctiveness in order to be rebuilt as a perfect soldier. The underlying principle was that military life contains a level of stress that will never be witnessed by civilians. If you’re not properly conditioned, you won’t be able to function while under fire.
By issuing us uniforms and shaving our heads, the Army instilled a feeling of cohesion with the recruits. Hell, I wasn’t even Sterling Rynes; I was recruit Shit Brain, service number 134368266. We were told our transformation to infantryman could be a traumatic experience, that even generals thought so. What’s more, I learned by talking with some of the guys that Navy recruits were mostly taught signals, fire fighting, basic engineering, and seamanship. In the Air Force, communications and basic aircraft maintenance is what they learned.
We poor Army recruits had the slimy end of the stick. Sure, we spent some time in the classroom learning about uniform care and wear as well as military courtesy, history, and tradition, but that was what we considered rest periods. Most of the time, we were doing physical fitness and drill.
Drill originated in the 18th century when soldiers were organized in fire lines. They had to be highly trained so that they could fire -- and more importantly, reload -- on cue. Even though the practice is now obsolete since military tactics have evolved, drill is still vital to teach the soldier to be obedient. Without this training, the soldiers in battle would act nothing more than an undisciplined mob.
To be sure, I enjoyed when we learned new skills such as first-aid, unarmed combat, basic survival, and land navigation. However, the bulk of our training consisted in marches and running obstacle courses. It seemed like Drill Sergeant Sheffield was always looking at me. Whenever I caught his eyes, he would get this angry look on his face.
“I’m on an assfucking spree, Shit Brain, and I’m taking names. So if you wanna quit right now you just go ahead.”
“No, Drill Sergeant!”
One time we were doing monkey bars after a night’s rain and I lost my grip, falling to the ground. Of course, Drill Sergeant Sheffield was there to lift my spirits.
“Get up, Shit Brain. I’ll fuck you up in ways you never even heard of.”
I knew that I shouldn’t let these insults get to me. After all, that was a high school ritual which had never bothered me. But to hear Sheffield verbally abuse me every day got to be wearing. I felt stripped naked, like a good car in a bad neighborhood. Yet, I knew that was to be expected. That was the point. I needed to let go of my old self and let the Army do what they wanted with me. I know this sounds weak but after sleeping only a few hours every night, you don’t care anymore.
We were introduced to weapons in the third week. Mercifully, this came naturally to me, which was odd considering I’d never fired a gun before. Most of my aunts and uncles were hunters; my parents were not and they never allowed me to go on a hunting trip with my relatives. That was one of the few things they had always denied me.
My marksmanship was more than satisfactory. While most recruits had trouble hitting the target, half my shots could be considered bull’s-eyes. My M16A2 became an extension of my body. It became a reflex for me to insert a magazine, pull the cocking handle, push the forward assist, switch the fire selector to semi, and fire at the paper target. One warm August morning, Sheffield noticed as, contrary to my fellow recruits, none of my rounds missed their destination.
“You think you’re smart, Shit Brain?”
“No, Drill Sergeant!”
“Let me tell you something, you’re nothing special. Your IQ is zilch plus my cock up your ass.”
Despite the dressing down, I couldn’t hide my pride and I grinned slightly. This enraged my instructor.
“Wipe that smile off your face, recruit! I’ll fuck you so far up the ass you won’t be able to hide from all those people offering you fresh mints on account of your cock breath.”
I 86ed the smirk but I wallowed in the knowledge that I was the best shot in the platoon. Two weeks later, I qualified as Expert on both rifle and pistol. This is the best marksmanship qualification, better than Marksman and Sharpshooter.
For the next four weeks, I didn’t let Sheffield bother me. We familiarized ourselves with other weapons of the American arsenal, took post detail, got instructions in buddy movement techniques, went on live-fire exercises, took our final Army Physical Fitness Test, and went on the three-day outing called Victory Forge.
During the ninth week, we tried on our new Class A uniforms, got haircuts, were inspected for the last time, and got outprocessed. My parents flew in for a couple of days in mid-September to see me graduate. Following the rather short ceremony at Pomeroy Field, I was welcomed into the United States Army and issued the Army Service Ribbon to wear along with my Expert badge.
The ribbon was nicknamed the Army Hygiene Ribbon and even the Heartbeat and Respiration Medal because you got it for doing nothing heroic. Many soldiers chose not to wear it at all since everybody had one. My uniform seemed bare without it.
After my parents left, Dickens and I had two things in mind for the next 24 hours: getting drunk and getting laid, although I doubted I could achieve in 24 hours what I couldn’t do in 18 years.
CHAPTER 4
At a time when most people considered what they were going to have for dessert, Dickens and I were already dancing to the sweet alcoholic tune. We had caught a taxi into Columbus and I paid for a couple of rooms at the Holiday Inn before we found a watering hole we liked. It’s not that we had high standards but we had to find a bar which would let in two underage soldiers. We found one on the first try. I’ll always cherish patriotic doormen.
After three beers, I was especially cheerful. With his size, I suspected Dickens would need a little more but as far as I was concerned I was feeling no pain. At the bar, I could see some of my fellow recruits had also found this establishment. They were doing shots and being loud about it.
“You see that babe over there?” My friend pointed to a dark-skinned beauty on the dance floor. “That’s the definition of ebony love.”
“I seriously doubt she’s in your league.”
Dickens frowned. “Whatcha talkin’ ‘bout? All the honeys are in my league, G. You’d put Halle Berry in front of me and within a half-hour she’d be on her knees waiting for an appraiser.”
“An appraiser?” I asked, not sure I had heard correctly.
“Yeah, that’s what you do when you’re about to handle the family jewels.”
I shook my head as I chuckled. “You go embarrass yourself, Private. I’m gonna enjoy watching you crash and burn.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and left the table. I went to the bar and when the bartender came to me I ordered another beer and some spicy chicken wings. I was generally a mild kind of guy but the three Heinekens whispered to me that I could handle spicy. I turned back to our table; Dickens had left. He was on the dance floor and he already had the girl bumping and grinding into him.
I couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t I be savvy like that? My crushing defeat with Stephanie Morris still weighed heavy. She had said no and I now lived in another state so I was aware that a relationship between us was hopeless. But I still caught myself thinking about her sometimes. Mostly, I thought about what I could have done differently.
In this time and place, brooding was stupid. It was supposed to be a celebration. I glanced at Dickens again as the song ended. He didn’t come back to our table, instead following the girl to hers. Dickens caught my eye and shrugged as he smiled mischievously. I took that as a sign I was going to spend the rest of the evening alone.
For a moment, I considered going back to the hotel, ordering some late-night pay-per-view, and having a little conversation with Dr. Jerkoff, something that was incredibly hard to do in the barracks with 39 other guys. Then again the desire to do it was almost inexistent during basic training.
Some guys said that it was because the Army secretly fed us potassium nitrate, also known as saltpetre. According to them, this suppressed the recruits’ sexual appetite, giving us a soft peter. I would later learn that this was only a legend. What really suppresses our sexual urges is the fact that we’re so tired all the time.
At any rate, I didn’t want to go back to the hotel. This was a party and, goddamn it, I was going to enjoy myself. I was starting a new life in the Army so I might as well start a new lifestyle as well. I would start doing things I’d never done before.
I looked around for a few seconds while I ate my first chicken wing. It was so spicy that I had to swallow a third of my beer to extinguish the fire in my throat. Needless to say, I didn’t eat another bite. I washed my hands with a wet nap and finally spotted a woman who was by herself at the other end of the bar. It was now or never.
I grabbed my beer and walked over to her. She was no more than 5’2”, had blond hair that flowed past her shoulders, and she wore jeans that left no room for imagination. She didn’t have the smallest butt I had ever seen, but this was no time to be picky.
“So,” I started. “How does it feel?”
She turned to me and was momentarily startled by my uniform. “How does what feel?” Her voice had the deepest southern drawl I had ever heard.
She was at least ten years older than me and her nose was severely crooked. The first thing I noticed though when she rotated toward me was the fact that the top two buttons of her blouse were undone which I took to mean that she wasn’t here for the music and chicken wings.