Bryr - Exercise #6

I’m eighth or so down on the right today. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the line-up; girls in pressed utilities, chests held up under tucked chins, shoulders back, thumbs along their pants seams. Tight ranks almost the whole way down. But Rubens is off – standing over the fucking pencil line. Again. I’ll kidney punch her in formation tomorrow, when we round a corner and the lines get bunched up and we’re out of the Petty Officer’s sight for that fraction of a moment. Just long enough to grab her shoulder, to keep her from stumbling, and drive my knuckles under her ribs. She won’t fall this time. Not to get kicked with a steel toe again too. I drew that pencil line at my own risk – we get caught marking up the floor and I’m swimming with the sharks again: face down on the tile floor of the head, my arms, head and legs held off the ground, not to ever touch it, flailing in a swimming motion while the Petty Officer watches the sweat drip off my face and into a puddle under my chin. But we need this inspection to go well, to be perfect. I had Gonzales use the sharpie to trace the grout around every tile in the floor after she scrubbed it with a toothbrush; Henderson polished the heads with one of her t-shirts since those cheap gritty paper towels always leave those almost microscopic bits of pulp that fuck us every time; Foskett, the savant with the spitshine, went over everybody’s boots. They’ll stink now like her rotten breath, but those fuckers gleam like nobody’s business. I sounded my own reveille, get the fuck up, at four thirty this morning, an hour and half early, to make sure everything was covered. Nobody got a shower. The shower takes too long to clean, especially if it’s wet. So they all scrubbed their necks, faces, pits and crotches with paper towels at the sinks. No towels allowed, they’d be counted at the inspection and I wanted them all dry and pressed. Chappy, Rogers, Bailer, and Michelson wiped down the head in their underwear, polished the fixtures, folded back the corners of each roll of toilet tissue, and dipped out cups of toilet water until the levels were all exactly the same. Samuels, Campell, and Fulton can’t iron for shit. Campbell can’t even get the lines straight on the back of her shirt. Green does it for them and all three spit polish the steel bed frames and take turns covering Green’s balls to two watch. Fair trade. I moved Fulton to the bunk opposite mine so I could keep an eye on the filthy slob. Something’s been wrong with that bitch from the beginning and we’ve all been praying for her to rock out of this division. But I haven’t come up with a plan that doesn’t involve the whole ship getting beat. She can’t wash herself, dress herself, or walk straight in formation. They don’t put containers in the head for tampons and such – you have to put them in the big garbage can outside – and this confused Fulton so much she started putting them in her mesh bag with her dirty laundry. I didn’t catch her before the RDC did. That was the first time we made it rain. They line us up by our bunks and work us out until the sweat and tears condensates on the closed windows and drips down the walls. Fulton hasn’t tucked her shirt in right and her fucking zipper isn’t lined up with her shirt front. I can’t give her extra duty, she’d fuck it up. I can’t give her an extra watch, she’d forget to fill in the watch log. She marches well behind me in ranks so I can’t correct her out there. I don’t know what the fuck to do with her. Fulton’s a puker. When we made it rain, she threw up in the middle of the eight-count body builders so she spent the rest of the beating slipping in it when she dropped to do push ups. By the end, it was all over her face and shirt front, which pissed the Petty Officers off even more. I’d already put her through a training of my own after the gas chamber cluster fuck. We lined up in five ranks along the back wall of the chamber, gas masks in hand, facing the huge glass window where the Petty Officers watched. It looked like a shower room, tiled, damp, with vents in the floors. We have thirty seconds to pull on the masks while the Petty Officer lights the tear gas tablet. Once the room is filled with the filthy cloud, the first rank steps up and pulls off their masks and then each recruit steps forward and states their full name and social. You cry, you writhe, you cough, and you puke – but everybody knows you pull out your collar and puke into your tucked shirt. You puke on the floor, and you’re stuck in there till you clean it up. Fulton pulled off her mask and immediately dropped to her knees, hurling up the huge lunch I told her not to eat. When she tried to run from the room, the masked Petty Officer handed her a mop and bucket and shoved her back. Her face swelled up and she made a sound like a sobbing hippo, gagging and heaving. By the time the last row, those of us with rank in the division, stepped up to do the extra duty of singing “Anchors Aweigh,” she had rolled on her side by the puddle of puke in pathetic convulsions. I tried to motivate her with a boot and they hauled her out to sick bay and ordered me to stay to clean the mess. So after that, I retrained her every day after last meal and before showers to stick her fat finger down her throat and puke like she should, down the inside of her shirt.