The renunciate
A series of things had gone wrong, so I had been living in a basement room for several months before this particular morning, and like every morning for the past three months I woke up in the dark, because there were no windows at all in there.
The room was in a house owned by a guy named Ed. I don't know what Ed did for a living. He was somewhere in his 30s, he was tan, and he wore a lot of polo shirts. I was one of three other people who lived there with him. The others were 20-something and played a lot of games on the communal Sega Genesis.
One of them was dating a woman who looked vaguely familiar to me. We got to know each other over the months by going out on to the back patio for a cigarette at the same time. She was restless and always vaguely put out by her boyfriend's constant Sega playing. Her familiarity gnawed and gnawed at me until one day I finally broke and said, "sorry, but you look ..."
"I'm the lemon-juggling clown at the mall," she said.
I was delighted and she was embarrassed.
Anyhow, a few weeks after that conversation I was waking up in my basement room, in the dark.
I got dressed, and grabbed my gym bag.
A change of clothes, three pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, deodorant, soap, a razor, and two combination locks.
I sat in the living room as the sun came up, waiting for a knock on the door. My friend Bill showed up, and we got in his car and drove up to Indianapolis, an hour north. We got out of the car, he gave me a hug, and I turned and walked into the military processing center.
Inside, everyone was polite. I handed over some paperwork, confirmed that I had the basic packing list, and waited around until enough of us had arrived that they could take us all into a room with a flag and have us all swear the oath of enlistment. Then more waiting, and then the call for people headed to Ft. Knox.
Since we all had the same time in service—less than a day—they had us line up by age. That made me the group leader. Everyone gave me their paperwork and we got on the bus.
We arrived at Ft. Knox after dark. The driver dropped us off at a bus station that I recall consisting of a brick wall with a phone mounted on it. A placard said to pick up the phone and tell them you were a recruit waiting to be picked up. As the leader, I discharged that duty, then we stood around waiting for what ended up being over an hour.
Finally, an army green pickup truck rolled up, a man in a uniform got out and said "get the fuck in the back," and we did.
They took us to the mess hall and fed us, then we were taken into a room and administered another oath of enlistment. Then they took us down into the squad bay.
We were put in a small room off to the side, so there were only three or four bunks. I stowed my duffel bag under a bottom bunk, pointed my feet at the window, and stared out at the night sky made orange by the lights all around the barracks.
I woke up before reveille. The first thing I saw was the bunk over
me, dark in the pre-dawn gray, and I was pretty disoriented because I
hadn't woken up with any light in months and months. I felt under my
bunk and grabbed my gym bag, hefting it. Seemed like everything was in
there. Everything. The person who had moved into the house I had moved
out of—a friend of mine—had asked what to do with the pile of things I'd
left in the garage and I'd told them I didn't care, so I didn't have
anything else besides my locks, underwear, socks, toothpaste, soap,
razors, and toothbrush.
Nobody was moving around yet, so I settled back into bed and stared up at the bunk over me, my heart in my throat the littlest bit.
I said to myself, "this is where you are now. There's nothing else left."
My heart settled a little and I waited for someone to come tell us what to do.