Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)

After four more days of camp, my head became a mess of drill commands, work detail, and wishes for things I couldn't ever seem to get enough of…sleep and food. I wasn't the only one, either. Everybody sat down in the chow hall like they were speed drilling the Roster and ate in a "quick nine". Yeah. Nine minutes. And then you go up against the Roster afterward. A lot of guys puked the first few days, me included.

I started to understand that they were doing it on purpose, the drill sergeants. Nobody could finish a full meal in nine minutes, at least not at first. And if you were at the end of the line, you had more like five minutes. It got so you learned what food was the easiest to swallow without much chewing and you started with that.

We barely ate that first week, and most of us barely slept, too. Lights out was at ten-thirty each night, which most of us thought was pretty generous until reveille sounded at four in the morning. You get pretty short-tempered with that little of sleep, but you're too tired to do much about it. The guys even left Wade mostly alone after the first couple of days.

DS Kent continued to ride us, from morning inspection to the shortest hour of the day, rest, which was after p.m. chow. The only reason he left us alone during rest hour was because that's when he met with the other drill sergeants to plan out the next day's torture.

He didn't like Wade and he didn't like me. That by itself would have been enough to turn the other guys in the barracks against me, but I couldn't help stepping in on the third day of camp when our barracks got a brief introduction to KP duty. The tray returns are in the back of the kitchen, and the dishwasher back there is pretty isolated. Wade got stuck on dishes. I was just around the corner peeling about a million potatoes when Greg and Charlie wandered back there, grabbed Wade, and put him face first into the dirty dishwater. It was a little too close to close to a couple of socs holding me under in the fountain.

"Knock it off," I said loudly, and they paid me no mind. If they didn't let him up soon, he was gonna be in serious trouble. So I grabbed Charlie in a stranglehold and I threatened him with the potato peeler, wishing it was a knife. But I guess Greg realized it was sharp enough, because he let Wade go. And even though I didn't offer Wade any more help than that, it was enough to cross over that line I'd been dancing on. I was officially a target, just like skinny, wet Wade.

You might think I was exaggerating things with DS Kent, feeling picked on or singled out without cause. But with any new activity, you could expect him to put me or Wade through it first. When he posted the work details, most of ours were latrine (cleaning toilets) or fire watch. I figured it was pretty stupid to even have fire watch, seeing as how there wasn't anybody that was gonna get out of bed to make trouble and the camp was about a thousand miles from anywhere, but DS Kent just shouted about it being a necessity in any military installation. I wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him this wasn't a real military installation. It was a stupid place where a bunch of hot-headed Marines who thought they were tuff barked orders at a bunch of JD's, trying to scare them straight. It occurred to me that this might be their punishment for wrongdoing, and that we might all be at the mercy of a bunch of unstable misfits that the Marines couldn't figure out how to straighten out. It would sure explain a few things.

Anyway, you got so you could stumble through the day half-starved and half-asleep, because they were all the same: reveille, use the head, DDs (darkness drills, which was just a nice way of saying physical torture before sunup), a.m. shower, a.m. inspection, a.m. chow, a.m. work detail (usually a quick cleanup of the barracks, latrines, and the outside grounds), drill, the Roster, classes, mid-day chow, drill, a class, the Roster, afternoon work detail, drill, p.m. chow, drill, the Roster, p.m shower, rest (try to gather enough energy up to write a letter or just read one), lights out. Except if you're on fire watch, everyone else gets rack time and you get two hours of standing up on the Roster's top deck (you could see just about the whole camp from there) freezing your ass off in fifty degree weather with a pair of binoculars that you had no use for unless the moon was full. And then you got rack time. I found out it is possible to sleep standing up, though it was a good thing there was no one there to push me.

Every night, at rest, I waited and hoped for a letter from home, even though I knew that mine probably only just got to Darry & Soda. A guy would never admit it to anyone, but mail call made it obvious that all of us were wishing we were just about anyplace else.

That night, at rest, DS Kent didn't head out after dropping the mail on Paul's rack like usual. While Paul handed out the sorry two letters that came in (one for Kurt, and one for Greg), Kent barked at us that our Rosters were pathetic, and Red Flag (the barracks were named for the colors of the flags we stood by that first day) was going to suit up and run through it until he was happy with the results. I wanted to drop right then, but there was no escaping it.

There are flood lights out at the Roster, so the fact that it was pitch black outside didn't matter. Of course, as always, DS Kent had me go first. While Kent prepped his stopwatch, Charlie, who was standing right behind me, pressed his fist hard into my back and hissed, "You mess this up, you better sleep with one eye open tonight."

I gave it everything, and not because I was all that afraid of Charlie. I just wanted to be left alone. The thought of missing any rack time kicking the four of them off me had me running, climbing, and jumping like my fatigues were on fire. Even Kent could find nothing to say about it.

Kent always had us wait up on deck for the rest of the guys to finish, so I got a bird's eye view of Charlie's run. Tires. Mud run. Up the rope. Back down. Under the wire field. Over the short wall. Over the second wall. Mud slush. Ascending bars. Descending bars. He slid on the final walk up, because he forgot to stomp off after the descending bars. Picture a bowling lane pulled up perpendicular to the ground and trying to walk it with your feet while pulling yourself up a rope. Yeah. Worked about as well for Charlie.

When he finally made it up, I asked quietly, "What was that you were saying?"

We both watched Wade scramble his way through. It was painful to watch. Charlie started screaming down at him almost before he even grabbed the rope. Nothing like having a second DS.

By the time Greg and Paul made it up, I knew Kent was gonna make us do it again, so I started down off the top deck even before Paul started on the bars. Surprisingly, though, Kent just barked at me to get my ass to the barracks and "rack it". I wondered if he expected us to take a third shower, but then I figured since our barracks was on laundry detail the next day, it didn't make a difference. But I stomped mud off all the way back, and I made sure to polish my boots before the rest could dry. It was a real pain to get off when it caked.

I was grabbed from a sound sleep by Charlie and the others some time later. Even if I'd had a watch, I wouldn't have been able to read it. They had something in my mouth and tape over it before I could even halfway get up. I kicked and twisted and fought, but they slugged me hard a couple of times, and I couldn't get enough air with that gag on.

Before they even got me halfway there, I knew where we were headed. The guys in Blue Flag were on fire watch, and Greg and Charlie were friendly with them, so I knew they wouldn't get ratted out. Paul and Kurt tied my hands and feet, put me in a harness, and hung me on a grappling hook. Then Greg and Charlie hauled me all the way to top deck, two stories up, and tied me off there, hanging in the breeze.

I shivered there for what felt like hours until almost dawn when the DS's from Green Flag and Black Flag saw me and ordered their guys to get me down. Once they did and got me untied, I bulleted past them to the nearest latrine. When I came out, DS Miller, head of Black Flag, sternly told me to follow him. Barefoot and freezing, I did. We went to back to Black Flag. The DS's quarters are off down a short hallway, separated from the grunt racks by a screened door. And they looked more like a hotel room, except not as fancy.

DS Miller told me to sit down, but I was still filthy, so I hesitated. He noticed my predicament and tossed me a spare blanket from inside his footlocker, and then he tossed me another one to put around me. He disappeared for a minute, and while I was waiting for him to come back, I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was up and looked to have been for about an hour. DS Miller was calmly flipping through pages on his clipboard. The drill sergeants are almost never without them. The table between us had a hot plate on it, and he had a kettle on it. He poured me a mug of hot water and handed me a packet of instant coffee.

"Private Curtis, eh?" He nodded to himself. "Read about you and your brothers."

"Jesus," I said, before I remembered who I was with. He didn't light into me the way DS Kent would have, though he shot me a look. I just finished stirring the coffee and said, "Do the drill sergeants swap files or something?"

He poured his own mug. "No. I'm an Okie," he said, stirring two packets into the mug. Guess he liked sludge. "Tulsa," he added, "Same as you."

We drank in silence as I defrosted, grateful for the short break from hell. But then he spoke again.

"Little friendly advice," DS Miller said, fiddling with the handle on his mug, "Don't get on Kent's bad side. There are a lot of foul-tempered, passed-over men running this joint. The ones that aren't bad yet are getting there fast. I've been on this session three years running, so I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to build a case against this place, get it shut down. But it takes a lot of proof that I haven't got. The pitiful few guys that are still any good are too damn scared to rock the boat."

I just considered what he said. "Too late," I said finally. "DS Kent's already got it in for me. And Wade."

"Maybe," he agreed. After another lull, he said, "Kent's going to come here looking for you. I'll tell him what happened. He'll ask you who did it, but don't snitch. He'll see that as a weakness. Just suck it up and move on."

I nodded my agreement, and he tapped the table with his fingers and left me there as we both heard Kent enter Black Flag looking for him.

Sure enough, it happened just like Miller said. So I told Kent it was too dark out to see their faces, which was almost true. He gave me a pass to eat breakfast because if you don't show up at your barrack's chow time, you go without. And I had missed it by a half hour. Then he told me if I had a brain in my head, I'd be at the Roster at 0700 with the same sort of stuff I'd shown last night. After he left Black Flag, I stood up and started to fold the blankets, but DS Miller took them from me. He just looked at me, and I looked at him.

"Hustle, Private," he ordered, his voice cold and his eyes hard. I wondered then if I had dreamt the whole thing.