Private Bay was an eighteen year old from somewhere in Delaware who had basic training in New Jersey, then Advanced Individual training in Maryland, and wound in at Fort Stewart as one of my room dogs.
Bay was terrified.
He signed up for the Army in high school, left for Basic two weeks after graduation, went home for a few days after basic, then spent a couple of months in Maryland. He went home for a long weekend after that, but here at Fort Stewart, Bay was in the Army now. Christmas was nine months away, and Bay knew he couldn’t afford a plane ticket home every time he missed mama’s cooking. For the first time in his life, Private Bay was looking at being away from home for nine months.
“What’s the longest you ever spent away from home, I mean, before the Army?” I asked.
“Three days at Summer Camp, once, I hated it,” Bay replied. He looked younger than eighteen. He could have passed for someone’s brother still in grade school. He was short, light, and scared to death.
“Wanna drink?” I offered him the bottle of vodka and he declined.
“I’ve never drank alcohol.” Bay was looking around the room as if it were a prison cell and he needed the best options for tunneling out.
“Christ a f**king virgin,” my other roommate, Bob said loudly and he left the room to smoke a cigarette outside. Bob napped late in the day so he and Bay had not quite met.
“Bob, Bay, Bay, Bob,” I laughed and so did Bay. But he was scared.
I was twenty-two, Bob was thirty-nine and about to retire from the military. He had stories. Some of them were likely true. But he had also put his face through the windshield of a car while drunk driving and looked a fright.
The usual drinkers arrived, met Bay, traumatized him without mercy, then we walked down to the PX and got Bay drunk for the first time in his life. He was more than a little green around the gills the next morning during PT.
I walked in after work and Bay was sitting on his bunk looking forlorn.
“Dude, you’re a man now. You’re in the Army,” I told Bay.
“Yeah, I know, and I know I have to grow up. I can’t live at home forever. Julie and I are going to get married and…” Bay was sniffing and trying not to cry.
“Julie? You have a girlfriend?” I was shocked. I was even more stunned that Julie looked younger than Bay. But she was a looker. The photo showed her lying on her back on a bed, one hand poised as if about to unbutton her shirt. Bay was clearly no virgin.
“Dammmmnnnn,” I said and Bay looked slightly annoyed.
“She’s, we’re engaged,” Bay said defensively.
“Julie is beautiful,” I nodded.
I went out drinking with the usual suspects, and while I was gone, Bay got into a cab that took him to the bus station, and he went back home. The Army didn’t make a big deal out of it, didn’t have him arrested, but simply processed him out. We never saw Bay again.
We sat around drinking after he was gone and Bob asked me if I ever thought about going AWOL.
“Nope, I always thought they’d send you to jail for it,” I replied.
“Yeahhhhh, they might, depending on how long you’ve been in. But if you got less than six months they’ll cut you loose sometimes,” Bob knew things. Some of them were true.
“You ever think about making a run for it, I mean when you first got in,” I asked, eyeing the bottle. Bob was bad about hanging on to the vodka.
“Nope.” Bob surrendered the alcohol.
“I wonder why the hell some guys just can’t cut the apron strings,” I said.
“Maybe they wonder why it’s so easy for us to do it,” Bob reached for the bottle and the metaphor formed even as Bob spoke, “Some people have family, some people have habits.”
Take Care,
Mike
