Chapter 42: Junior Year

And so ended my summer at the Fayetteville Camp For Incorrigible Boys. Most of us graduated, but not everybody. You have to meet various minimum standards to be considered as graduated. For some of us it was physical fitness, being able to run a distance in a maximum time, or pushups or swimming or something like that. (I recall Joe Bradley saying he had problems with the swimming; he could swim fine, but almost flunked the floating test!) You also needed to meet minimum qualifications with the weapons. Marksman is the minimum allowed for the M-16., then you move up to Sharpshooter, and then Expert. I initially qualified as Expert with the Colt .45 but only Sharpshooter with the M-16. Later I was able to requalify as Expert with the M-16.

If you fail, you have to come back next year and do it all over again. Fail a second time and you are history. Theoretically you have to pay the Army back for the cost of the scholarship, but I know that can change. Harry Mikulski was two years ahead of me and morbidly obese. He couldn’t even fit into a uniform. He got a waiver on both summers of boot camp, and just before graduation the Army tossed him out as unfit. He never had to pay back a cent, and never even got a bad type of discharge. He got a totally free RPI education. Of course, he probably had a heart attack by the time he was thirty but think of all the money he saved!

During our last week at basic we were given lessons in how to behave as an officer and a gentleman. It was like the army, after spending thousands of dollars and five weeks turning us into bloodthirsty killers, had suddenly decided that it wasn’t such a good idea to turn us loose on the general public again. We were taken down to the officer’s club and shown around (during off hours, of course!) and given other instruction as well. Much of this was done by the lieutenant Harlan and I had captured, so he and I slipped to the back for those lessons and hunkered down out of sight. I don’t know whether this stuff was the lieutenant’s regular job, or penance for being captured.

When it was finally time to go, it was with both a profound sense of relief, and also the sense I was going to miss a new friend. Harlan was heading back to Memphis on a different flight. We said that we would keep an eye out for each other in the service, and you never knew but we would run across each other. It couldn’t be any crazier than our fun in the bushes with the Orange Army!

Here’s the scary part - these were the same kids that sixteen years later, by now commanding battalions, went through the fourth largest army in the world like so much shit through a goose! I guess they learned a little more!

We had another long bus ride back to Raleigh, but this time nobody was doing pushups. At the airport I hooked up with Joe and Bruno again, the first chance I’d had to see them all summer. The flight back to Albany was just as long, but I slept through the entire thing, including the takeoffs, landings, and terminal waits. I was short on about four weeks’ worth of sleep. When we got into Albany, we got a cab to take us over to Kegs. My car was parked in back and looked to be in good shape. I didn’t know if Marty had driven it anywhere, but I really didn’t care, either. It just felt good to be back among civilians.

Once I was back, I called Marilyn and she drove over to see me. We spent a very enjoyable afternoon and evening at Kegs before she went home the next morning. The plan was that Friday she would come back, packed and ready to travel, and we would spend a couple of days staying with Tusker and Tessa before heading off to Ocean City again. I wanted to see her in that bikini and crocheted one piece I had bought her before.

Marilyn was still a little nervous about hanging out at the biker bar Tusker and Tessa worked at, but since we had survived the first time, she wasn’t as nervous as the last time. I was feeling young and dumb and full of cum like a good soldier should be, so it didn’t bother me at all. We got into town about eight in the evening, since we had started late and stopped for dinner before arriving. We parked out back and walked around, getting several hard stares, but nobody stopped us from going in. I didn’t yell out any smart-ass remarks this time, and we just bellied up to the bar.

It was smoky, not well lit, a bit dirty, and Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild was blaring from the speakers. If the brothers at Kegs wanted to scare the pants off the pledges, make them come in here for an autograph! This place was a hell of a lot scarier than the Hot Spot! What a great dive!

Tessa was working the beer tap, filling a pitcher, when she noticed us. She gave us a big smile and yelled, “Tusker, guess who finally showed!” Tusker came around the bar from the other end and grabbed me in a bear hug, which I returned.

“You made it!” he yelled over the racket.

“Wouldn’t miss this place for the world! Say hello to Marilyn! You met her last year, remember?”

Tusker gave Marilyn a big hug as well, and then went around the bar and set us up with a couple of beers. Marilyn and I sat at the bar for a few hours gabbing with both Tusker and Tessa as they became free, drinking our beers and eating peanuts off the bowl on the bar. We were a bit young for the crowd, but not by much, and we got more notice from my short hair and khakis than anything else. I don’t want to say we looked preppy, but we sure wouldn’t pass for bikers. A couple of guys looked like they wanted to start something, but Tusker warned them off, saying that we were friends from school, and nobody wanted to mess with Tusker. I was never worried in any case.

The bar closed eventually, and we followed Tusker and Tessa home. They had a nice little one-bedroom apartment in Towson off Joppa Road, with a convertible couch in the living room. It was well after midnight, so we simply sacked out and slept until late morning.

The next day, Saturday, we just hung out in the apartment and talked about what we had been doing in the last year. This was the first time that my friends had really had a chance to sit and talk with Marilyn. They decided to embarrass me by pulling out our high school yearbook. I returned the favor and found the pictures of Tusker and Tessa and managed to get a few laughs out of that. The nice thing about the yearbook is that it actually comes out a couple of weeks before graduation, so nothing was in there about me as valedictorian, other than a listing of proposed speakers somewhere in the back. No pictures, no copies of speeches, no reminders of the idiot speech I made way back when. What a presumptuous asshole I had been! In fact, there were very few pictures of me at all since I spent so much time over at Towson State. There were a lot more pictures of Tusker, since he was far more flamboyant than either Tessa or me, especially considering his long red hair and large build.

I asked Tessa if she was figuring to graduate from college in two years, and she said yes. “Tusker’s going to take a little longer, but he got started late, and only goes part time.”

I looked over at my old friend in surprise. “You’re going to college?”

“Don’t look so surprised! You’re the one who said I should.”

I nodded in agreement. That was true. A year ago, we had been talking and I had urged him to at least go part time to community college. “And you listened to me? Nobody listens to me!”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to hear it. I’m taking a couple of classes every semester over at Essex, in business.”

I blinked at that. “No shit? Good for you! What’s with business? What are you planning on doing?”

He glanced over at Tessa, and then turned back. “Remember how I told you about starting a business of our own. We still want to.”

“I remember you saying that!” agreed Marilyn. “Did you want a bar of your own?”

Tusker shrugged and Tessa gave a frown. “Actually, I would really love to have a Harley dealership, but that’s just crazy. I’ll never have the money to start something like that.”

I leaned back and thought about that for a minute. “Why not?”

“I don’t have that kind of cash! Do you have any idea how much money gets tied up in a place like that? Thousands - no, millions! Where would we ever find that kind of money?”

“Tusker, nobody has that kind of cash. You borrow it from a bank,” I told him.

“Who the hell is going to loan me that kind of money? Christ, I’m just a bartender at a biker bar!”

“And that’s all you’ll ever be with that kind of attitude!”

“Fuck you, Buckman!”

I laughed and leaned back on the couch. “Do you really want that dealership? I mean really, really, bust-your-ass-hard-work-want that dealership?”

He stared at me for a moment and then looked over at Tessa. “Are you serious?”

“No, are you serious?”

“Okay, yeah, I want it.”

“Then I know how to help you,” I told him.

“How?”

“Go get a piece of paper and a marker,” I ordered him.

“What for?”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Shit!” Tusker shook his head and stood up. He rummaged around in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, while Tessa and Marilyn eyed me curiously and asked each other what I was up to. Eventually Tusker returned with some lined paper and a black Magic Marker. “Yeah?”

“Now write down on a piece of paper ‘Harley Davidson dealership 1980’.” Tusker wrote it out in his block lettering and then looked up at me. I took the page and tore it off the tablet. “Now, go get some tape and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom.”

“What? What for?”

“Tusker, if you want to do this, then do it, otherwise just get us some beers, and forget about it, but I am dead serious. If you want that dealership, go put it on the bathroom mirror. Right the fuck now!”

He looked over at Tessa, but she just nodded. He got up and scrounged up some tape, and went into the bathroom, then returned a minute later. “Now what the fuck was that all about?”

“Now you have a goal. Before you just had a dream, but now you have a goal!”

“Huh?”

“Every day when you get up and shave and shower and brush your teeth, the first thing you’re going to see is that goal. The last thing you are going to see before you go to bed is that goal. When the sign wears out, put up a new one. Stick one on your bedroom wall. Paste one behind the bar. Write it on your books over at Essex. Everything you do now is aimed at that goal. It means you’re serious!” I told him.

“That’s going to get me a Harley dealership?” he asked incredulously.

“No, that’s going to keep you pushing yourself so that you’re not fucking off! When you want that extra beer, you’re going to see that sign and decide to finish your homework first. When you see that sign, you’re going to decide to save an extra dollar or two so you can get the cash for that dealership. When you see that sign, you’re going to remember to work for it and not fuck off that night or that weekend.”

“Bullshit! That’s crazy!”

I noticed Tessa was not arguing with me. I turned to Marilyn. “Do me a favor and run downstairs to your car and get me my briefcase. Please?”

Marilyn looked mystified, but she hopped up and got her keys, and then went down the stairs, with Tessa following. “What’s he up to?” I heard Tessa ask. I never caught Marilyn’s answer, but I’m sure it was, ‘I have no idea!’

“Buckman, I have to say, you have a real line of shit going! What are you up to?” asked my friend.

“You’ll see.”

After another couple of minutes, the two girls returned, with Marilyn lugging my battered leather briefcase. “Here you go!” she said.

“Hold onto it for a second. Open it up and pull out my note pad,” I asked. I kept my eyes on Tusker and smiled.