Chapter 7: Attitude Adjustment

The minute I arrived back at school all hell broke out. It started when someone goosed me on the way up the stairs. I turned to see a fat kid with a shit-eating grin on his face, like he had just gotten away with robbing a bank. I did the only thing I knew; tried to kick him in the balls. I got in a pretty good shot too. What I had failed to notice was Dale Porter, our room chief coming up the stairs right behind the fat kid.

"I want to see you after roll call Oldham," said Dale. We left the fat kid on the stairs, screaming obscenities at me and hurried to our room, which was abuzz with activity. Everyone was getting into his uniform, making belt buckles align with their zipper and putting the final touch on shoe shines.

I couldn't remember the combination to the lock on my locker. I started kicking the locker door out of frustration. Dale came over to calm me down, telling me to breathe deeply and think of the first number to the combination. I called out the numbers as he spun the knob. When the lock clicked he turned to me and repeated what he had said before, "I want to see you after roll call."

Craig, whose locker was next to mine, ridiculed me, calling me a "tenderfoot pilgrim," whatever that meant. Carter begrudgingly helped me with my tie. My roommates all blamed me for making Room 3 C late for formation. But I think they were just nervous; we weren't really late, just the last room to get down to the courtyard where the rest of the school was assembled.

Promptly at seven PM, Colonel Travers addressed the formation, introducing himself as the Commandant of Cromwell Military Academy.

Student Commander Parsons reported Company C "All Present," followed by the Commander of Company D, which was "All Present," also but Company E reported "two cadets unaccounted for."

The 'Band, ' which consisted of sixteen cadets from rooms 3 and 4 in Company A, equipped with three trumpets, five bugles, six snare drums and a bass drummer played its rendition of a march which I was not familiar with. The student commander of the band stepped out ahead of the musicians, setting the cadence with a long baton. Company C fell in behind Company B and we marched around the two football fields twice before returning to the courtyard where we were dismissed.

Dale Porter took me into the bathroom so we would have some privacy for our talk. To my surprise, he didn't bring up the stairway incident. "Oldham, you're not going to get away with bringing down my command, do you understand?"

"Yes sir," I answered.

He paused as if he were collecting his thoughts when two guys came in to take a piss. Dale waited for them to leave. He seemed to take pity on me. "A chain is as strong as its weakest link; you're not going to be that link, understand?"

"Yes sir."

Someone else was coming into the rest room. Dale must have decided it was not a private place to meet and adjourned the meeting. "Okay, I'm glad we got that cleared up."

On the way back to the room he whispered to me, "Let's get you shaped up before Foster learns about this." His hand gripped my shoulder like it was our secret that I was getting off to a substandard start.

Back in the room Dale made 'tutor' assignments. "Who wants to take Oldham?"

"What do I get if I take him?" Craig spoke up. I gave him an intense stare, which drew a sneer back from him.

After a discussion among the senior cadets it was decided Harold Smith would be my tutor and Jarvis would work with Charlie. Dale rearranged our desks so Harold and I sat side by side. Once that was settled the atmosphere in the room became relaxed.

We stripped down to our boxer shorts and spit shined our shoes while the older guys tried to outdo one another with tales of their sexual exploits over the summer. It got so bad that even I knew they were bullshitting us.

The talk turned to life at C.M.A. It was mainly about the instructors' quirks and what you had to watch out for. A few girls' names were mentioned and my ears perked up. Ned hadn't said anything about there being girls nearby. All the instructors, kitchen staff and janitors were male. As it turned out Speedwell School for Young Women was our sister school, located just across a very fast moving stream at the back of our school property. I wanted to find out more about the girls' school but the conversation turned back to what everyone did during the summer.

Jarvis kept us laughing, telling us one story after another about all the pussy he got over the summer. Even I knew he was bullshitting us and had a hard time keeping a straight face.

Demerits were announced at evening roll call on Tuesday, the first day of school. A sinking feeling came over me when my name was called out, "Oldham, one demerit, bed."

My bed was perfect when we left the room that morning. Craig confirmed my suspicion that he had messed up one corner of the blanket when he said something about square corners at dinner that evening. I swore to get even with him.

On Wednesday I was assessed my second demerit for not standing at attention while reciting an answer in Mr. Benson's algebra class. I was standing but according to Mr. Benson I was slouching.

"I told you to pick it up," room leader Dale Porter squawked at me after he heard about my second demerit. "One more and you'll be confined to quarters this weekend. I don't care if you have to stay here and rot while the rest of us go home and get laid, but it will reflect badly on the room's performance record if you get another one. Got it?"

I got it. So did our roommates because he didn't take me to the restroom for our talk this time. He chewed me out in front of them.

Smitty practically had to prop my head up as we studied. I was tired, hungry and too nervous to study. Football practice only lasted two hours per day but it was intense. The coaches kept us moving. If we weren't running we were doing pushups and if we weren't doing pushups we were running in place. If we were caught not moving we did pushups as punishment for not moving. We didn't get a moment's rest. The shoes they gave me were too large and the shoulder pads had to be held together with tape and a shoelace. We weren't hitting yet but just getting used to running around with cleats on our shoes, and the extra weight from the pads was tiring.

And I couldn't get enough to eat. The portions were generous, but not big enough to fill me up. There had been times at home when rations were scarce, but I had never been hungry before, not like this.

I had a hard time keeping tears from rolling down my cheeks on Thursday evening when I spoke to Ned on the phone. I took out my frustrations on him. "This place is chicken shit. They're out to get me. Someone fucked with my blanket and this asshole teacher said I was slouching and then today the commandant got me for not shaving."

"You have a razor Sammy. I'm sorry I didn't show you how to use it," Ned said, trying to sooth the dissatisfaction I felt for being confined to quarters for the weekend.

"That ain't all," I said, angrily.

"What else, Sam?"

"The other guys have two pair of shoes so they always have a spare."

"We'll take care of that when you come home next weekend," Ned assured me.

"That ain't home to me," I countered. He didn't say anything so I continued my rant. "You should see the football shoes and pads they gave me. The shoes are two sizes too big and the shoulder pads are falling apart. Most of the other guys have their own shoes and pads."

"I'm sorry about that too, Sam. We'll get you fixed up next weekend."

I felt a little foolish. What did I have to be angry with him about? I didn't want him to be sorry for me. "Thanks Ned," I said, hoping he would hear the sincerity in my voice.

Dale decided I needed more than an academic tutor to bring me up to speed. He assigned Craig the responsibility of teaching me fundamentals of what he called military bearing. In short, Craig was to keep me out of demerit trouble, an assignment he resented having. I wasn't too happy about it either. I still blamed him for the bed demerit.

My roommates wished me well as they shuffled out of the room on Friday evening, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying their dirty laundry bags.

We had to sit at the table assigned to our company at meals. There were six of us, one sophomore and five freshmen, sitting alone at our respective tables; all feeling sorry for ourselves. The kitchen staff had left a pot of hot soup; the rest of the meal consisted of cold sandwiches and lime Jell-O for dessert. Mr. Borden sat at the instructor's table at one end of the room where he could watch us. I was still hungry when we carried our trays to the kitchen where we placed our dirty dishes in the dishwasher before being told to return to our rooms.

Mr. Borden stuck his head in my room at about eight o'clock. He was my English instructor and also coached freshmen football. "You need to have Smitty work with you on sentence structure," he said. Apparently he knew about my tutor arrangement with Harold Smith. I made a note to remind myself to talk to Harold about 'sentence structure' before looking back to Mr. Borden to see if he wanted to tell me anything else.

"Look, I don't like being here any more than you do. We'll have some fun tomorrow. We're going to play some three-on-three touch football," he said, looking pleased with the news.

The next time he knocked on my door before sticking his head in to say it was ten o'clock. "Lights out," he said and I nodded.

Ten minutes later I was sitting at my desk, waiting for the building to quiet down before I would turn on my flashlight and put my plan in motion. Mr. Borden would probably be in his room on the third floor, watching television. The only other detainee on my floor was the fat kid, but he was in Company B on the other side of the building beyond the restrooms. The sophomore was a member of the band in Company A on the first floor. The others were from Company D and E on the third floor.

My only obstacle was getting past the kid in the band. I would dress in my civilian clothes and sneak down the stairs carrying my shoes. If an alarm went off when I opened the outside door I would turn on my flashlight and run like hell. This would give me a five-minute lead on Mr. Borden who would have to come from the third floor to investigate the alarm. If I was out of sight when he got downstairs it would take ten more minutes for him to do a bed check and discover I was missing. I didn't think the band kid would give me any trouble.

I heard the floor in the hall creak and froze. My door opened and I watched the fat kid back into my room. He shut the door and the room became dark again. Then I heard a thud and knew it was his fist hitting my pillow. I made the mistake of turning on my flashlight.

He turned; surprised at first but when he saw me a smile came to his face. He was dressed the same as me, in shorts, except that he was wearing shoes. I felt naked, regretting that my shoes were under Craig's bunk. I switched off the flashlight but I couldn't hide; he easily found me in the dark.

That is how I formally met Russell Bertram, the Third, him with his arms around me in a bear hug, me grunting in my struggle to get free. My arms were at my side, useless and he was squeezing the air out of me. One of his shoes was on my foot, mashing it to the floor. But my right leg was free and I swung it backwards. He must have thought I was going to try to knee him in the balls because he released his hold on me and shoved me onto the bunk behind me. I was breathing hard, trying to get some air in my lungs. My foot felt like it was broken.