Time and Grade

In the army, all GI’s are ranked E1 in basic training and are naturally promoted to E2 upon completion. He tells me now there is something called time and grade, if you mind your p’s and q’s for awhile you are naturally promoted over time. E1, E2, E3, etc.

My father was promoted to an E2 and demoted back to E1 more times than he can count, for fighting, going AWOL, assaulting an officer. The first time he was demoted he tells me the fight was with a crazy fucker. He says the guy randomly picked him and attacked. He tells me they started to throw punches, scuffled and were quickly pulled apart.

I have watched my father randomly confronted a dozen times in my life -- in a shoe store, at the zoo. He lets off a scent that draws people in, he is magnetic. They come to him and they want to argue, to hurt him, I always thought for no reason. After the fight he tells me the crazy guy had scratches on his face so they were called in by superiors. My dad says he was threatened with a demotion and told he had to write an essay on why fighting was wrong and apologize. He refused to do either and was bumped back to an E1. This was the first of many times, he tells me with a smile.

This time I question him.

“Do you know why he wanted to fight you?” I ask. Instead of answering he adds to his defense.

“A few weeks later that guy also attacked this other guy, a guy we called Preacher,” he says. “This kid was scrawny and carried his bible with him everywhere he went. Everyone was up in arms when he went after Preacher, everyone.

Several weeks after he was pushed back up to E2 my father and the crazy guy were walking down a staircase. He says the guy mouthed off to him, he doesn’t specify and I don’t ask. Called him a dickhead maybe? A pussy? Maybe he called him a spic, a wetback? Anyway, this man smarted off heading south on a staircase, and when he turned around to continue - or maybe to laugh - my father, four steps higher, kicked him squarely in the forehead. My father laughs at this memory. I laugh too and delight a little at our caveman nature. Marvel for a second at what brutality does: protection, admiration, courage, freedom. He cups his meathook over his face and says, “He had this huge knot.” We laugh again.

My father’s skin is deep brown, gold underneath. His fingers are thick and unforgiving, oil-stained and like tree bark. He can rub a pumice stone smooth. His hands are not built for moving across piano keys or fine handwork, he is a man you see holding a handsaw not a needle. However in the army GI’s are expected to sew on their own stripes, one for E1’s, a pair for E2’s. And the eight times my father was promoted to E2 and demoted again, I can see his thick hands holding steady, cradling a fine silver needle, and weaving in and out on that stripe. In and out of a place in between, like the space between heaven and hell, only easier it seems. Then I watch him pause a moment, lift the fabric and with a clean sharp razor blade rip those same stitches free, over and over and over.

His commanding officer also laughed when my dad was escorted back into his office He said, “I hope you haven’t sewn your stripes on all your uniforms.” I don’t know if he did or not, but he tells me he didn’t fight with that guy again. This whole conversation he is vague and paints this guy as a random freak, a violent predator, but when I ask him if he remembers his name, there is not a seconds hesitation, Barry Sanderson. When I ask him if he remembers everyone’s names, he says yes, the guys he hung out with anyway.

I see Barry Sanderson when he was six, a year after he lost his right big toe because his father couldn’t teach him to stay away from the ax used for splitting oak. Suddenly I imagine the small white rabbit he called Sundae and kept in a wood barrel in his closet, and the girl he raped when he was 13. How he cried when she wouldn’t be his friend anymore, how he swore he loved her like no other.