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a room, pay child support and get a phone to hopefully find other work.
By that Friday afternoon, I realized the company was a scam and had
bailed on all of us.
That night the guard let me stay in the trailer and after buying me a
bit of Jack Daniels that I gulped down. I was done, fuck it. I got his .38 from
his desk and started to do the only right thing left. I saw myself reflected
in the window overlooking the ocean and started moon walking, and then
laughing at myself. I just passed out thinking, why would I want to bring
more pain to my daughter that if just hung on, I might see again. (It took
a few years but with success I got her back with full custody just in time
for her dreadlocked teenage “Whatever?” phase. We are very close.) I felt
absolutely free and a bit nauseous from the bourbon and headed back to
Princess Anne, my hometown about a one and one-half hour away, on
fumes. I met a desperate Black hitchhiker with ten bucks on him. In those
days you didn’t hitchhike while black on the Eastern Shore. We made it.
I claim no right as anything but a garrison trooper, but reading some
of the stories in your journal have brought back the names, feelings—from in
and out of service—along with the memories of the impossibly small metal
coffins I witnessed arriving at McGuire [Air Force Base, New Jersey] while
I was finishing Basic. The Army was one of my best and productive times
personally, but it was a different one than today’s: a draftee Army, not
a professional one; a forced mix of ethnicities, wealth, ages and attitudes.
Even at my level it was always about the people you were serving with and
nothing more.
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