The Golden Tooth

I was six years old.  My father was about to remove a tooth from my mouth. I was scared, and he knew how to calm me down.

"Joshua, I have a secret to tell you. It's the reason why I'm right: pulling a tooth is no big deal."

I knew he had secrets. I knew he was not going to tell me any of them. My heart jumped into my throat at the prospect of Norman unfolding some of this arcane wisdom I knew he possessed.

"Are you going to tell me?" I asked.

"Not until the tooth is in my hand," he replied.

I submitted. He put his big hand in my mouth and yanked out that loose tooth. It hurt, but I did not cry. I wanted to know the secret.

He had already forgotten the method he had used to pacify me. I stood there in silence, as he preferred. Waiting...

He just looked at me.

"What do you want?" He asked.

"Are you going to tell me the secret or not?"  I replied.

He laughed, with deep satisfaction. 

"Oh yes, the secret. The secret, Joshua, is that if you never place your tongue in the hole that was left by your tooth, a Golden tooth Will grow in its place," he said.

"Really? Are you sure?" I asked.

He was hurt that I didn't believe him. I was ashamed.  

"Have a look for yourself," he said.

He opened his mouth, and let me see The Golden teeth near the back on the bottom row. I was convinced.  

"Do you think I can do it? Are you sure it's possible?" I asked.

"You saw my golden teeth, didn't you?"  He answered.

I nodded, then hung my head. I walked away. Within a few minutes I was in tears. My tongue had violated the hole from which my father had yanked it. I didn't have the courage to tell him, but he saw me moping. He called me over.

"Joshua, what are you sniveling about?" He asked.

I couldn't tell him.

"Did you put your tongue in the hole? Is that what's wrong?" He asked. I cried harder and nodded yes. I had finally reached his limit, and gained admittance to his secret.

"Joshua, don't worry.  It is impossible for your tongue to avoid going back to the place where your tooth once was," he said.

"So, is the golden tooth true or not?" I asked.

"Joshua, it's just a story my father told me for the same reason: to calm me down when he had to pull a tooth from my mouth," he said. "One day, when you have a son of your own, you can use it for the same purpose," he said.

"Now, quit sniveling and go play.."

I was left to wonder where he got those gold teeth...

How Soldiers Are Made

We were in the hot room, sweating it out.  Some of us were boys, some of us were girls.  Every one of us was doing jumping jacks, and had been for quite a while.  In front of us, orchestrating this, was a five foot tall Drill Sergeant.  My hatred for her burned like a fire.  I looked into her face.  It was transformed into a wild beast’s; she became a shrill voiced she devil.

“One, Two, Three, One, Two, Three,” she said, keeping time for us as we exercised together.

When most of the privates had reached muscle failure, it was time to switch.  The goal was total exhaustion.  

“Front!”  She said.  She had explained earlier, this meant to assume a prone position and perform push ups frantically.  The floor was getting wetter with our sweat, and some of our tears.  The room was too small for all of us.  The walls were closing in.  We were slipping around.  Drill sergeant Washington brought a tissue to her forehead.  She was sweating.  She looked down at the sweaty tissue in her hand and snarled her lip.

The flutter kick is an exercise which is performed with the recruit in a supine position.  Then, the legs and arms are moved in a scissor like fashion.  The command for this is “Back.”

When she said, “Go,” we knew what to do.  We slipped and slid up onto our feet and attempted to run in place with their arms out in front of our bodies.  This three part workout was referred to as “Front, Back, Go” amongst all the privates.  It was a prevalent torture method.  There was a new name for the jumping jack.  It was now called the “side straddle hop.”

“Side straddle hop, move,” she screamed.  We were back to that, and I had already done much more than I thought I could.  A tall chubby boy walked to the front of the hot room.

“Drill Sergeant, I think I’m having a heart attack,” he said.  He was clutching at his chest, gasping for breath.  He looked half dead.  Just like the rest of us.  He echoed my sentiments exactly, but I did not have the courage he did, the courage to speak up.  I knew better than to set myself apart from the herd.

She started in on him, belittling him.

“Private Belcher’s having a fucking heart attack.  Maybe ‘cause you’re a fat boy,” she said.

“No Drill Sergeant.  I believe I am having a heart attack right now,” he replied.

“Who else is having a heart attack?  Who just wants to quit right now?”  She asked.

Every person in the room, including her, wanted to quit.  Only one spoke up.  Later in the same session, one boy told an elaborate story about stealing money from his father and running marijuana across the Mexican border.  He was taken away quickly, and never seen again. 

Later, I made fun of Private Belcher when I got the chance.  I mocked him.  I grabbed my chest and acted like I was dying.  Others did similar stuff.  He ended up watching us in that hot room, standing by Drill Sergeant Washington.  My face was in the sweat, now an ocean on the floor.

“Second Platoon, I want you to thank Private Belcher.  Because of him, we are going for a run around the water tower,” she said.

Our hate was being transferred.  We were becoming soldiers.  Private Belcher was the enemy.

“Thank you, Private Belcher!”  The platoon sang in unison.  

He watched us.  We ran and crawled and squatted to the water tower and back.  Over and over.  

Each of us would have our turn in Private Belcher’s position, as the lame duck, as the enemy, but he was the first.  It stuck with him.

Most of us made it through, slowly gaining confidence and privileges until we were very near the end.  The drill sergeants had accomplished their mission.

“We’re going to break you down to your lowest common denominator, and build you up again.  We will make you into soldiers!”  They said.  It was a common phrase they used, but our platoon hadn’t heard it in weeks.  It was time for the war games.  War games?

The drill sergeants were informal on this day.  They acknowledged we had reached soldier status.  I just felt like all my emotions were permanently dulled.  I did not want to participate in the war games day.  Luckily, it was my option.  I was watching from the sidelines, resting, breathing in the fresh springtime air, when my luck ran out.

“Private Crawford, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.  Your presence has been requested at the pugil stick ring,” he said.  It was Private Hernandez.  He was first generation American from Mexican stock.  He was about a foot shorter than me, but he was a better fighter.  I knew because he had thrown me over his shoulder during hand to hand combat training.  I resisted him. 

“I don’t have to go to the ring Hernandez.  I don’t want to go, and I’m not gonna go,” I said.  He crossed his arms over his chest.  He looked down his nose at me.

“Private Belcher has requested a one on one with you, and he said he’s not taking no for an answer,” said Private Hernandez.  There were a few others behind him.  

“What did he say?  Is he surrendering?  He’s not allowed to surrender,” they said.  These were the cries from the peanut gallery behind him.  I arose from my seat.

“Okay, let’s kick some ass,” I said.  The gallery dispersed and ran in the direction of the ring.  I walked slowly and methodically.  I counted my steps.  My pulse raced.  I said the Our Father Prayer I had learned in Sunday School.  It helped.  I began to calm down.  I thought perhaps I could still get out of this.

There were the drill sergeants.

“Private Crawford, glad you could make it.  Your opponent is Private Belcher,” said Drill Sergeant Washington.  It turned out she was a Buddhist, the same kind Tina Turner was.  That really surprised me.  Private Belcher was maddened with rage.  He acted like he was on some kind of stimulant.

“Who’s the pussy now, Crawford?  I’m gonna beat the living shit out of you,” he said.  I turned pale.  My mouth went dry.  My stomach was in my throat.  I turned around.  The drill sergeants gave me a helmet and a stick.  They pushed me into the ring and blew the whistle.  I held up my stick and all I saw was a flurry of death blows, all aimed at my helmet.  I was on the ground, looking up.  The whistles blew.

“Damn, Private Belcher, are you trying to kill him?”  Asked Drill Sergeant Washington, the Buddhist.  

“It’s a fair fight,” he said.  Private Belcher outweighed me by a hundred pounds.

They blew the whistle, two more rounds, until they called it.  Private Belcher had won.  I had cerebrospinal fluid leaking from my nose.  For hours later, a clear liquid drained from my nose, rendering me with a hungover feeling for weeks.  

“I’m pissing out of my nose!”  I kept saying that, punch drunk, anything to stay awake.  A woman came to help me, another private.  She was good-looking.  She and I had made secret eyes at each other in the chow hall, and now she wanted to help me.  However, I could not let her see me like this.

“I’m fine,” I said.  I changed my tune quickly, and sobered up.  I stumbled to the bathroom.  The pissing continued, on and off for a few hours.  Private Belcher had gotten me good.

Many of us in that company were headed to Texas for the various Medical field schools there.  I was going to be an X-ray technician.  So was the girl that tried to help me.  Private Belcher was going to be an Army Psychologist.  Their school was in Texas as well.  We all rode the bus together, with about twenty other people.

It was full into spring when the bus landed.  I was glad to be out of Basic Training, but I noticed a change inside me.  I felt empty.  Where I used to feel, now, I couldn’t.  That part of me was switched off.  I didn’t feel bad.  I didn’t feel good.  I didn’t feel anything.  I had survived.  I was a soldier.  I was ready for X-ray technician school.

Private Belcher and I had mutual respect now.  I knew he could deliver a punch, and he knew I could take one.  There was dignity and strength in both.  We were even.

The movie, Saving Private Ryan, came out in the theater.  Somehow, he and I went to see that movie together.  He snuck in a bottle of rum and we each poured some in out movie cokes.  Watching that movie, I did feel something.  I felt drunk and patriotic.  They really got me good in Basic.  I could see myself there, fighting the enemy.  I was willing to die for the cause.  I was willing to kill for the cause.  I felt like wrapping myself in an American flag and crying myself to sleep.  I had been brainwashed.

Belcher was misty eyed, too.  The movie was too much.  War was insane.  Man was not made for this.  We were all crazy.

We walked out of that dark theater into the bright heat with rum on our breaths and some of that bottle left.  We drank it, and walked down the road.

“Why’d you join the Army, Crawford?”  Asked Private Belcher.

“It was my Dad’s idea; I didn’t know what else to do, and it was his suggestion.  I asked him,” I replied.

“What about you?  Why did you join up?”  I asked him.

“I never told anybody the real story.  My dad made me do it,” he said.

“Why?  What happened?”  I asked.

I must have caught him at just the right time, in just the right place.

“I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.  If I tell you, you’ve got to promise you’ll never tell anybody,” he said.  With that, he held out his hand.  I shook it.  “Swear,” he said.

“Okay, I won’t tell anybody,” I said.

“You’ve got to fucking swear like you mean it, man!”  He said.

“Okay.  I swear I won’t tell anybody,” I said.  He glared into my eyes.  My hand was still around his, shaking it.  He squeezed harder.

“Okay then, let’s go sit down,” he said.

We went off in an alley way and sat down on a brick ledge.  I was on his left, listening.

“See Crawford, I used to play football.  I was on a full ride to Colorado State.  Motherfucker, I was good.  I was second string my freshman year, and the starter was graduating.  It was gonna be me, man.  I was gonna be the fucking starter,” he said.

“Are you shitting me?”  I asked.

“No, I’m not shitting you.  Shut the fuck up for a minute, would you?  Let me tell you what happened,” he said.  He had little tears in his eyes.  I didn’t say another word until he was finished.

“So, it was the summer after freshman year.  I was back home, hanging out with my boys.  Fucking around, you know?  I was on top of the world,” he said.

“One day we were all fucked up, walking around in the city, like you and me today.  I don’t know what made me do this, but I saw a black dude on the corner, probably slinging crack or something.  As I walked by I said, ‘fucking nigger.’  He just glared at me.  I said, ‘what the fuck are you gonna to about it?’  He just kept on looking,” he said.

“That was a dumb thing to do.  He didn’t do shit about it then.  But a few days later, I was down in that area by myself.  They must have been looking for me.  I heard a voice behind me.  ‘That’s the one.  Get his ass.’  The next thing I knew, there was a pack of six niggers racing after me and they were fast!”  He said.

“They got me cornered in an alley.  I put up a fight.  Fucked a couple of ‘em up.  Knocked out some teeth.  But they got me on the ground.  The last thing I remember was the one who I called a nigger standing there over me.  ‘Who’s the nigger now?’  Then he hit me in the head with a lead pipe,” he said.  

“Next thing I remember was waking up.  My mother was crying.  My father stood there, shaking his head.  It was eight days later,” he said.

“One month later, I was out of there.  I was still fucked up, but was out.  We found that motherfucker, me and my boys.  And when we did, we fucked his world up.  Then, I shot him.  Right in the face.  We all made a pact, right after we got the fuck out of there,” he said.

“I was gonna start back to school.  But, I don’t know why I did this, I ended up telling my dad what happened.  But I told him one of my boys shot that nigger.  I couldn’t tell him the truth.  He put his face in his hands and started crying,” he said.

“He didn’t say anything for a long time.  Then he looked up at me, and said, ‘Son, I’m going to give you a choice.  Your first choice is to go to jail forever.  Your other choice is to join the Army.  You will not continue down this road,’” he said.

“I was crying, too, just seeing him cry, and realizing what I had done,” he said.

“‘So, what’s it going to be?’  My Dad asked me.  Before the week was up, I was on the plane to the reception Battalion,” he said.

The One That Is Left

We Leave Traces

I had forgotten about my father’s statues.  They were in the basement in a box.  I didn’t know what to do with them, so that’s where they ended up.  One day last week, Melissa was cleaning and rearranging the house while I was at work.  When I got home, she had created a Buddhist shrine with these lost statues.

There are 6 of them.  They’re about eight inches tall.  They’re carved of wood and stained a dark cherry color.  Each one is a different character.  One is a man holding two buckets, each suspended from and end of a staff he holds on his shoulders.  One is a man carrying a large grassy pack on his head.  One is a crouching woman grabbing a rice plant in her left hand, her right hand now missing the scythe that is racing down to cut the grain.  One is an old man with a beard and a large hat, sitting.  One is a man holding a huge pack on his back.  The last one is a seated Buddha.

I never heard the story of how and why my father purchased these statues.  He bought them in a market from a local artisan and sent them home to his mother from Korea in 1973.  About 30 years later, my grandmother gave them back to Norman.  When he died, my mother gave them to me.  One day not that long before he died, I asked him about them.  He was a very stoic man, at least to me, so when he spoke, I listened.

We were sitting in the living room of the old house.  The television was loud, a western.  I was just visiting, watching westerns with him.  I remember now it was Petticoat Junction.  What was the fascination with the westerns?  I thought it must’ve been some comfort zone from his childhood.  I got into them with him, and smelled the dust of the tavern.  The thick whiskey smell mixed with horse manure and gunpowder.  We watched a few episodes and then I tried to talk to him.  I had to ease into it.

As long as I can remember, I thought my father knew something I needed to know.  I was very inquisitive with him, even as an adult.  I thought he possessed some arcane spiritual knowledge that had made him quiet and I wanted to know what it was.

I asked him about the statues and he got the faraway look in his eyes.

“I’ll do you one better.  Check this out. ”

He was actually a little exited about whatever he was about to unfold.  His bright blue eyes flashed.

“When I was in Korea, we were forever doing ftx.  Field Training Exercises.  We were always scouting out the countryside.  It was beautiful, Joshua.  All the rice fields and mountains and old gnarled up trees.”

“And the people.  They looked just like those statues, working out in those fields and in the villages.  I mean, they were poor, dirt poor.  But there was something special about them.  They just seemed really happy, especially the poorest ones.”

“There were Buddhist shrines everywhere.  I mean, they were into it.  I remember once, we were out on ftx in the mountains, way up there.  We were walking on a cliff dirt path.  It was really narrow, and off to the right was a deep canyon.  It was scary shit.  And we were carrying our rucksacks full of gear. ”

“But I remember, we kept going on this path and I looked up.  There was this huge, huge, huge Buddha statue, carved right into the side of this mountain.  It had a real weird feel to it.  The whole area was just quiet. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

I don’t know what I said.  I thought this might be one of those moments I was waiting for, but I didn’t know what I was missing.  Something, though, from the look in his eyes.  I did know what he was talking about, but I didn’t know what he wanted to hear or what to say.  he seemed hurt and I thought he might be mad for being dumb enough to open up to me.  We watched another western in silence then it was time to leave.  I gave him a hug, and told him I loved him.

Wherever you are Dad:  Thank you.  I miss you.  I love you.