My Dark Places - James Ellroy [55]
I got on a plane with a dozen other enlistees. We flew to Houston, Texas, and caught a connecting flight to Fort Polk, Louisiana.
It was early May. Fort Polk was hot, humid and overrun with flying and crawling bugs. Hard-ass sergeants formed us into lines and harangued the shit out of us.
I knew that my freewheeling life was over. I wanted OUT immediately.
A sergeant got us squared away and settled into a reception center barracks. I wanted to say, “I changed my mind—please let me go home.” I knew I couldn’t take the hard work and discipline upcoming. I knew I had to get OUT.
I called home. The old man was incoherent. I panicked and buttonholed an officer. He heard me out, checked me out and walked me to the infirmary.
A doctor examined me. I was frantically agitated and into a performance mode already. I was afraid for my father and afraid of the army. I was calculating advantages in the middle of a panic attack.
The doctor shot me up with a high-powered tranquilizer. I weaved back to my barracks and passed out on my bunk.
I woke up after evening chow. I was woozy and my speech was slurred. A notion took tenuous hold.
All I had to do was crank my fear for my father’s safety up a few notches.
I started stuttering the next morning. I was convincing from the first tangled syllable on. I was a Method actor tapping into real-life resources.
My platoon sergeant bought the act. I was a stage ham—but not quite a scenery chewer. I wrote the sergeant a note and expressed grave concern for my father. The sergeant called him and told me, “He don’t sound good.”
I was assigned to a unit: Company A, 2nd Battalion, 5th Training Brigade. I was tagged as a probable nut case my first day in uniform. The company commander heard my tortured speech and said I was unfit for this man’s army.
Real fear shaped my performance. An innate dramatic sense honed it. I could have snapped for real in a hot second. My long twitchy body was a great actor’s tool.
I began basic training. I endured two days of marching and general army jive. My fellow trainees shined me on—I was a stuttering geek from Mars.
The company commander called me into his office. He said the Red Cross was flying me home for two weeks. My father just had another stroke.
The old man looked surprisingly good. He was sharing a room with another stroke victim.
The guy told me all the nurses were in awe of my dad’s jumbo whanger. They giggled about it and scoped it out while he was sleeping.
I visited my father every day for two weeks running. I told him I was coming home to take care of him. I meant it. The real outside world scared me back to loving him.
My furlough was a blast. I festooned my uniform with war surplus insignia and bopped around L.A. like I was King Shit. I wore paratrooper’s wings, the combat infantry badge and four rows of campaign ribbons. I was the most self-decorated buck private in military history.
I flew back to Fort Polk late in May. I resumed my stuttering act and ran it by an army psychiatrist. He recommended me for immediate discharge. His report cited my “overdependence on supportive figures,” “poor performance in stressful situations” and “marked unsuitability for military service.”
My discharge was approved. The paperwork would take a month to process.
I did it. I fooled them and duped them and made them believe me.
The Red Cross called a few days later. My father just had another stroke.
I saw him one last time. The Red Cross got me back right before he died.
He was emaciated. He had tubes in his nose and his arms. He was stuck full of holes and smeared with red disinfectant.
I held his right hand to the bed rail and told him he’d be fine. His last discernible words were, “Try to pick up every waitress who serves you.”
A nurse hustled me into a waiting room. A doctor walked in a few minutes later and told me my father was dead.
It was June 4, 1965. He outlived my mother by less than seven years.
I walked over to Wilshire and caught a bus back to my motel. I forced myself to cry—just like