IX. Weakness
Fort Benning, Georgia.
February 21, 1984.
Bryan Ford was twice my weight and girth, looking more like thirty than the young eighteen he claimed to be. He wore black leather gloves that only covered his palms and knuckles, a pair of the heavy camo cargo shorts we had all been commissioned, and nothing else. His torso was a knotted iron wall, striped with scars I had only seen in passing in the showers – but now they bulged pink in the harsh lights of the gym. He was a good runner because his family raised pigs and he was the one who chased them down when they broke out of their pens, but he only told me this morning that the pigs were wild boar, semi-feral, and their tusks had taken most of the feeling from his chest and back. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and he barely felt pain.
He was my sparring partner the first time we trained in unarmed combat.
With a drill sergeant named Swann bellowing in my ear about using my size as an advantage, and other recruits wrestling on the mats all around us, I tried my hand at taking Ford down. He was sturdy. When I charged him it was like running shoulder-first into a brick wall. Ford slapped his hands down on my shoulders and flung me backward, so I went sprawling off the mat.
McKinney stood over me, holding a hand out to help me up. He pulled me roughly to my feet and shoved me back onto the mat, so I staggered in front of my bigger opponent.
"Before the first colonist set foot in our beautiful country, the German monarchy picked the heaviest, tallest boys and started training them to be soldiers," McKinney said, circling the mat with his hands folded customarily behind his back. "People like to imagine that size is an indicator of skill, that the mean boys are the quickest to strike, that gentle boys can never be warriors. I see a fundamental disconnect in you, Westen. You could run at Ford a thousand times and he would swat you off just the same. Three days ago you beat my obstacle course weighed down by the scrawniest little son of a bitch to ever train at this base – where is that ingenuity at now?"
It must have been the most the man had ever said to me at one time. His tone was cutting, his words stung. He was right. Running face first at Ford was stupid. But McKinney was making it sound like I was as small and weak as Hart. "I'm not small," I objected.
McKinney paused and cocked a fine silvery eyebrow. "Where your opponent is concerned, you are. Everybody looks small to a giant, right, Ford?"
"Yes, drill sergeant," Ford responded dutifully.
"Has anybody ever taken you down, son?" McKinney asked.
"No, drill sergeant."
"So what do you think is different today, Westen?" McKinney continued his circle, striking my back as an indicator to stand straighter. I did, and the drill sergeant appeared at my right side. "When little boys try to play soldier the first thing they think of is brute strength. But fighting is a puzzle, just like that course, and a lot of these recruits were taken down a peg because they rushed into it." He raised his voice, so the other sets of partners could hear him, "Look at you all, locked together, wrestling for the upper hand. In a battlefield the longer the fight goes on the more likely you are to lose. You get tired. You get weak. A muscle stretches too far. Your opponent's allies show up, or they get a hand on a weapon. Break up and start over. If the fight lasts more than thirty seconds you both lose."
Everyone reset, and I faced Ford again, hot with frustration. McKinney said fighting was a puzzle of its own, but there was nothing someone my size could do against a monster like Ford. I couldn't help saying, "You haven't taught me any moves."
"Moves," McKinney snorted. "Get in the ring, Westen."
I lunged, getting low on the approach to try and lift him by the waist and slam him down. I had seen one of the more helpful drill sergeants teaching another pair to do it. Ford stumbled as I took his weight for a split second, but he got his hands on me and twisted my arm back until I yielded.
McKinney had taken over for Swann for good, to my horror. He sent the other drill sergeant away and loomed over Ford and I, shaking his head after each failure.
Over and over again, I threw myself at my opponent. Hours wound on and my sweat made the mat slick below my bare feet. Nothing I did worked. It was futile. It was hopeless.
When the lunch whistle blew I was frustrated enough to go straight for a punch, not caring if Ford intercepted it. He caught my fist with his palm, shoved my arm back, put one meaty hand on my collar, and slammed me into the mat so hard I saw black dots. The wind rushed out of me.
He released me and I lay there, dazed.
The other recruits started to leave the gym to take a short break before continuing with unarmed combat training. I could only sit up, holding my aching chest, and try to find a breath.
Ford crouched beside me, saying, "Sorry."
I waved him off without responding. He was the last person I wanted to look at right now. Just like when Hart left after the obstacle course, I felt like the day was one big failure. What had I really accomplished? Nothing but gaining more bruises. I had proven to McKinney and myself that I couldn't solve the puzzle he was talking about.
McKinney circled the gym, offering a few praises – and way more insults – to the recruits that were leaving. He spied me still sitting and came over, offering a hand. "Get up, kid."
His hand was leathery and he was a lot stronger than he looked. He hoisted me upright and slapped me hard on the shoulder again – a spot that was starting to get sore. "Sit out a few rounds when we come back, and you'll get it."
He was benching me. I couldn't stand the thought of food, so I climbed up the bleachers and sat alone at the top, fuming. My frustration over not being able to make Ford flinch boiled together with my anger at McKinney. He expected too much, without teaching me anything. The other sergeants walked around the area, offering advice and encouragement, and I got the drill sergeant who liked to tell cryptic stories without ever actually helping. Why did he keep fixating on me, anyway? He had much easier targets who would bob their heads along to his stories, boys who would probably melt under that cold gaze of his. I wanted to be anonymous in the army, to never know anyone like my father again. But the world must have been brimming with men like him.
When the gym filled up again, I did as I was told and sat out the first few rounds of fighting. Ford was partnered with the equally large, but not quite as ripped, former farmer Smith. While equal in size, Ford had the clear advantage in power. Smith did what I did, tried to get him off his feet, but Ford had a low center of gravity.
He was bending his knees.
I leaned over, watching his pose. Ford stood with a sharp angle in his knees. He held his arms at the same angle, like an ape waiting to strike at a fly. When Smith struck him, trying to shove him like a sumo wrestler, the bend in his knees deepened, his feet spread, and he held his ground. He stayed that way, rigid to pressure, until Smith let up a pinch. As soon as the weight of his opponent lessened, Ford would either shove him – knocking him over because his legs were so splayed, his feet unaligned, one knee straight and the other crooked – or grab him under the arms, twist sideways, and dump him onto the ground to his right. Whether pushing or pulling, Smith stood no chance against the sudden attack. I had never thought Ford could be so fast.
His strategy was unchanged with each opponent he faced, and I found myself figuring out what the other champions of the ring were doing. James was lightning fast and he usually attacked first, jerking one way and then the other like he was trying to fake someone out in basketball. He struck at the first vulnerability, sometimes smacking his opponent in the face with an open hand. If they stumbled, he tripped them. If they tried to attack as well, he retreated. Others had the same brute strength and steady center as Ford, only to a lesser degree, because Ford soon took them down as well. Oswald was the strangest, lightning fast and dodgy, getting a few opportunistic hits in, retreating, and then coming back to do the same over and over again until his target made a mistake.
By the time he beckoned me back to the mats, I knew what McKinney meant.
Fighting, it turned out, was just like the obstacle course. Each opponent was a new challenge but the laws of the world remained the same. Gravity, the weaknesses of the human body, the patterns trained fighters fell into. Each person I faced had their own style, but they also had the same weakness. Their bellies, their shins, their necks. Most recruits flinched away from a strike toward the face, making themselves vulnerable because they wanted to protect their head.
Smith was the first recruit I managed to take down. I waited like Ford had, baiting the water, and when he charged I slipped to his left side, catching his foot on mine and tripping him. I mimicked what I had seen another recruit do – a former wrestler – and dropped down immediately, grabbing Smith by his chunky leg and locking it against my body, pressing it to bend unnaturally.
He tapped out, and I cried out in glee.
"Smith, switch," McKinney ordered, giving the big boy a pained look. He brought James over for me next, saying, "Former boxer, real heavy hitter. Protect your face," before he left.
James was much faster when I was on the mat with him. He hit me in the shoulder, tripped me, and pinned me before I could think to exploit any of the weakness I thought he might have. As it turned out, he had none. Or, none that I could get to.
I staggered upright, took a moment to breathe, and then waved my consent for the fight to start.
James took me down a second time, in a similar fashion.
"Damn, man," I gasped, as he helped me up. "How?"
"Dad was a boxer, I was a champ in high school," James explained, stepping away from me to show me a few rapid jabs into the air. He was leaner like me, nearly the same height, but I could never imagine moving that fast. "It's all in the feet."
James was switched out. Everyone lost their partners and got new ones. McKinney paired me with another bruiser, a nearly seven-foot-tall former quarterback with a mean, jutting jaw. When he wasn't around, the other recruits called him Slack-Jaw Jensen. His fists were huge and he had a big rectangular head. Just looking at him gave me chills.
He was slower than me, but the power behind his blows took me to my knees before I could make a dent in him. He hit me again when I was down, with the underside of his fist, and the impact flattened me. I tasted blood and sweat, and plastic, and blacked out for a few seconds.
The day ended and we all limped away with bloody noses and fresh bruises. Jensen turned out to be a brutal and unyielding opponent, even when I managed to get him in an illegal chokehold. He struggled until he blacked out. He knocked me out two more times, until McKinney decided the two of us couldn't be partners anymore. I got two more, a smaller boy I was happy to dominate, and then Ford again, who was still too much for me. He didn't get me down quite so easily anymore, though, and that left me proud.
McKinney remarked to me on my way out, "Steel trap, that head of yours."
I was so blown away by that compliment that I stopped, and Ford plowed into me. I staggered three feet and nearly fell, but managed to keep my eyes on McKinney.
"If you make it through, you should look into ranger school. They need men like you," McKinney went on, hitting me in that same spot on my shoulder again. It made me flinch.
Men. It was the first time someone had used that word to describe me. Even if it came from McKinney it made me smile. His suggestion meant little to me until the day ended and we made it back to our bunks. I asked Ford about ranger school, since he was my source of military knowledge, and he gave me his best description.
"Rangers are leaders, and they go through the toughest training you can get in the army. Pushes everything – your body, your sanity – you come out a certified badass. I had an uncle who was a ranger. Toughest son of a bitch I ever knew."
"But what do they do? Where do they go?"
"Same stuff as us, except they're the leaders. Hostage rescue, infiltration, secret stuff."
He was vague, and he said nothing more about it no matter how much I asked. His words left me wondering about what McKinney had said. Did he really think I could be counted among men like that? The idea made me feel proud again, and determined. Next time we trained in combat, I was going to be an iron wall like Ford. Next time we went to the gun range, I was going to hit dead center in the target, every time. McKinney wouldn't have to tell anymore vague stories about small boys and big opponents, because that wasn't going to be me anymore.