Parris Island, South Carolina
1971
Ben Berman had boarded the bus in New York twelve hours before, and there was no other way to say it—he was full of himself. Eighteen years old, two weeks out of high school, the night before he had told his latest steady not to wait for him.
In tears, she pleaded, promising to write several times a week. “I’ll stay true to you!”
“Don’t,” he said, “because I won’t do the same. A marine, on leave, in uniform? You think I’m gonna ignore all the possibilities?”
“Well, not if you don’t want to!”
“I don’t,” he said. “Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry!”
Not only was she right, but Ben had also been just as cold to his own parents the next morning before leaving for the bus station. For months he’d been doing just enough to graduate, while in his spare time he and his best friend, Jimmy, worked out like madmen to prepare for the rigors of marine boot camp. Clearly, neither parent believed he would go through with enlisting.
“You’re not happy with us, fine,” his dad said. “You feel guilty and want to turn your back on a life of privilege, okay, you’ve already done that. Three schools in four years, no interest in the foundation. But you don’t have to commit suicide.”
“Suicide?” Ben said. “Look at me! I’m gonna be a fighting machine.”
His mother dissolved. “You get sent to Vietnam and you’ll come home in a box!”
“I want to go to Nam! That’s where the action is. We’re about to wrap that thing up, and I can be part of it.”
“Do you hear yourself, Ben?” his father said. “What adult says such things?”
“A patriot.”
“Patriot-schmatriot,” his father said. “You don’t care any more about this country than you care about us.”
“Well, one out of two ain’t bad.”
“That’s cruel, Benz,” his mother said.
He had no comeback. That had been meaner than he’d intended. Ben tried changing the subject. “Jimmy’s as excited as I am.”
“That’s what you think,” his dad said. “I talked to Mr. Dunklebaum yesterday. He promised James a piece of the dealership, and the boy made the wise decision.”
“Oh, bull!” Ben said. “The last thing Jimmy wants is to sell cars the rest of his life. Can’t tell you the number of times he’s said that.”
“You’ve known him for what, one semester?” his dad said. “All you got in common is detentions and demerits.”
“We’re tight, Dad. Anyway, he couldn’t bail out of the buddy system now even if he wanted to.”
“Maybe if his father didn’t know somebody in the recruiting office and already got it squared away. Probably gave the guy a car at cost. I’m telling you, Ben, unless you want to ride that bus alone, there’s no sense going.”
“Nice try, Dad.”
“You don’t want to go to boot camp by yourself, do you, Benz?” his mother said.
“I won’t be going alone! But if it came to that, sure, why not?”
“You didn’t even like boarding school.”
“I was too young! You shouldn’t have sent me. How was that supposed to make me feel?”
“You didn’t even like summer camp,” she said.
“I didn’t like being sent,” he said. “This is my choice.”
“We’re not taking you to the bus station.”
“Seriously, Mom?”
“I told you and told you, I want no part of this. You want to delay college a year, work at the foundation. Then get your degree, and by then you’ll want to take over the foundation some day.”
“So I gotta take a cab?”
“You don’t have to go at all.”
“I’m going! I want to go. This is my life, not yours. Just for once, let me make my own decisions!”
“You haven’t earned that right.”
“I heard that, Dad. Too bad I’ve reached the age that gives me the right.”
Ben’s father waved him off, but his mother sat with a tissue pressed to her mouth as he called for a cab. “You don’t have to do this, Benz.”
Then he called Jimmy. “Hey, man! You bailin’ on me?”
“Huh? Nah.”
“You goin’ or what?”
“Hmm?”
“You heard me. Should I have the cabbie pick you up?”
“Me, no. I’ll find my own way.”
“You don’t have a ride yet?”
“Oh, you know,” Jimmy said, “there’s plenty of ways to get there. If Ma or Pa can’t take me, I can take the bus, the train, you know.”
“So I’ma see you in a hour, bro?”
“Um, yeah. ’Course. I told ya. See ya down there.”
“Semper fi, Jimmy!”
“Yup. Buddies all the way. Boot camp, then Nam.”
Ben hung up. “Told you! Jimmy’s on his way.”
“Care to put a wager on that?” his dad said.
“How ’bout a grand, Dad?”
“You don’t have a thousand, son, but sure. I win, and you’ll have to work for the foundation to pay me back. No way you’ll make that much with the marines.”
It turned out that the only thing close to a buddy on the Greyhound had been a middle-aged woman across the aisle who asked if Ben was a recruit and told him she was returning home to Beaufort after a family visit. Half a dozen dingy depot bathrooms and two stale vending machine sandwiches later, another dozen recruits had boarded here and there, but they were with family or friends—some with buddies—and they offered Ben no more than a nod, a Semper fi! or a subdued “Oohrah” on their way to the back.
One poor sap who instead said “Hoorah” immediately got razzed by the rest—including Ben—who said, “You’ll never live that down at Parris Island, man. Get it right!”
“What’d you say your name was, Ben?”
“Berman.”
“What’s that?”
“Berman.”
“I heard you. I’m askin’ you, what’s that, Jewish?”
“What if it is?”
The kid raised both hands and moved on with the others. They sat playing cards, insulting each other, and talking too loud. But they never invited Ben back. The woman across the way jabbered on and on about her visit to New York and never took a hint when Ben looked out the window or even dug in his bag for a book.
The farther the bus rolled from Manhattan, the stranger the landscape. Ben had only read about the south and did not look forward to its legendary heat, stickiness, or bugs. He sat sideways, grateful he didn’t have to share his seat, and that gave him a view of the guys behind him. He detected fear in their eyes and tight-lipped smiles. Wusses.
Once, he was sure he heard “Jew” and caught a couple of them glancing his way. Slurs had never really bothered him. They only exposed the limited intellect of the bigots. How a person could judge him for his origin, over which he had no control, was beyond Ben. If he had exercised his faith or came off somehow superior because of his heritage, he could see why others might resent him. But besides his name and bloodline, he didn’t feel any more Jewish than the WASPs he’d gone to school with. Like Ben, they played sports, loved the Mets or the Yankees but never both, lied about what girls let them get away with, enjoyed drinking, and hated hangovers. But he got a taste of what his black friends suffered—they for the color of their skin, he for no more than his name and ethnicity. Ben’s father even cautioned him never to insist on a kosher meal in public, as if he ever would. “We enjoy them because we enjoy them,” Mr. Berman would say. “Not because we’re observant. So we never draw attention to ourselves by insisting. If it’s on the menu and you want it, eat kosher. Otherwise, partake at home.”
The boys in the back of the bus ignited the rebel in Ben, the part of him that triggered the biggest controversy during his last semester. He had demanded a kosher meal in the cafeteria. “All of a sudden you’re Orthodox,” one of the lunch ladies said, and the storm began.
“Of course I know you’re Jewish,” the headmaster had told Ben’s father. “But at the beginning of his tenure with us, Ben declined the option of kosher meals. So why now?”
“I’ve become observant,” Ben said before his father silenced him with a stare.
“It won’t happen again,” his father said, and on the way out of the school he grumbled, “Why, Ben? Why must you always—”
“I have to do everything they say, Dad. Here was a chance to make them do what I said. Why can’t I—”
“Because you’re not in charge, son. You’re not even paying for school. You do what they say, and you do what I say.”
“Not for long,” Ben said.
And here he was, admittedly alone on the bus, but finally living the dream. Unfortunately, he had not been able to even doze as the Beaufort woman proceeded to bore him half to death. By the time Ben disembarked at Parris Island, he harbored a deep resentment—in fact, hatred—for his lying former buddy. As rough as marine basic training was supposed to be, he’d handle it with or without Jimmy.
Really, how hard could this be?