No. 32:		Mr. Fabulous Chicken Fricassee
Featured Titles Editors' note: No offense, Carlisle, but if we want an insider's look into the life of a soldier, we'll turn to one of the following reputable authorities. Jarhead by Anthony Swofford "By turns profane and lyrical, swaggering and ruminative, Jarhead...is not only the most powerful memoir to emerge thus far from the last gulf war, but also a searing contribution to the literature of combat, a book that combines the black humor of Catch-22 with the savagery of Full Metal Jacket and the visceral detail of The Things They Carried." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times $19.20 (Sale - Hardcover) check for other copies War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges "A brilliant, thoughtful, timely and unsettling book...it will rattle jingoists, pacifists, moralists, nihilists, politicians and professional soldiers equally." New York Times Book Review $23.00 (New - Hardcover) check for other copies The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien "The Things They Carried...is one of the finest books, fact or fiction, written about the Vietnam War." Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times Book Review $13.95 (New - Trade Paper) check for other copies Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945 by Stephen Ambrose "Destined to rank among the finest books about the American fighting experience in World War II." Carlo D'Este, New York Times Book Review $17.00 (New - Trade Paper) check for other copies The Black Flower by Howard Bahr "Powerful and elegiac....Readers will be reminded of Stephen Crane, of Faulkner's Civil War stories, and of John Brown's Body." Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe $13.00 (New - Trade Paper) check for other copies Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War by Paul Fussell "[Fussell exhibits] the true satarist's rage against humanity....Nobody who reads [this book] will come away thinking about the war complacently." Samuel Hynes, New Republic $16.95 (New - Trade Paper) check for other copies Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone "[Dog Soldiers] may be the strongest novel yet written about Vietnam — or more precisely, about the war's psychic and moral consequences." David Ansen, Newsweek $13.00 (New - Trade Paper) check for other copies Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. "Haunting... Irresistible reading... Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement." Boston Globe $7.50 (New - Trade Paper) check for other copies [an error occurred while processing this directive] E-mail this article to a friend		n my eleventh birthday, I got a Nerf football, two G. I. Joes, a model airplane, and a pair of cowboy boots. That was my please-God-don't-make-our-son-a-sissy birthday. The week before, my mother had found me up in my sister's room dressing Ken in Barbie's Girlfriend-a-Go-Go outfit. I tried to explain that Ken, posing as Pepper (a la Angie Dickinson), was a cop going undercover in the Kitty Kat Klub in order to put the sting on a gang of drug smugglers with bad skin, and that the happenin' wig, fringe leather jacket with matching mini-skirt, and white knee-high boots were all in the line of duty. But coming just two days after my bedtime prayers had taken a worrisome turn — "And please bless the pope and President Nixon and Mr. Rogers and Petula Clark and Paul Lynde " — my parents decided that enough was enough. It was time to take matters into their own hands. The very next day my mother went out and bought new linens and curtains for my room. The old ones were bland, noncommittal: a pattern of fleur-de-lis the color of hummus played over a pita-white background. Something more direct, more persuasive was called for. I returned home from school that afternoon to a room draped in powder blue flannel covered with tiny cowboys and bucking broncos. But when I asked a simple question, "Mom, what kind of pants is that cowboy wearing? Can I get some?" she shot me a steely, drastic-situations-require-drastic-measures look and proceeded to take everything down. They were just chaps. She didn't even look at me when I asked if I could use the old drapes to make play clothes. When I returned the next day, my room felt like it had been decorated by Patton himself. Tanks marched in neat rows across the freshly papered walls. The curtains were seas teeming with U-boats and battleships. On my sheets and pillowcases, flags were raised on dozens of Iwo Jimas. Even my Mickey Mouse lampshade had been replaced with one sporting a handful of helmeted green berets testing their mettle in the heat of battle. I have to say, it was a very effective scheme. Men in uniform monopolized my dreams for years to come. However, this redecoration was just the first phase in my parents' plan to take charge of my character. The next weekend, my father presented me with a .22 rifle and a beautiful red hunting jacket: "Son, I believe I owe you an apology. When your older brothers were your age, I did all the things a man ought to do with his sons. But I've been neglecting you. What I'm trying to say is, it's time we went out — just you and I — and killed us some deer." We got up the next morning hours before sunrise and set out. I had a great time traipsing about in the woods in my new hunting outfit. Did I mention that my father also bought me a darling red hat, just like the one Holden Caulfield wears in Catcher in the Rye? My father didn't get it when I called him a "crummy old phony," but it didn't matter. The important thing was that we were together and having a good time. But my father wasn't so satisfied. Maybe he was disappointed that we only saw one deer the entire day. And I don't think it helped that, despite his encouragement — or even his outright order — I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger. I explained that when I got a good close-up look at the deer through the scope, when I looked it in the eye, as it were, it was just too much. That deer had the exact same melancholy, trapped look in its eyes as Faye Dunaway in that scene in Chinatown ("She's my sister." Slap! "She's my daughter." Slap! "She's my sister." Slap! "She's my daughter."). "Daddy, you know how much I love Faye Dunaway. Don't make me shoot." My father gave a melancholy look of his own but said nothing. And that was the end of hunting. That wasn't the end of my parents' efforts to make a man of me, though. When I entered high school, a few short years later, my father convinced me to try out for football. I knew it made him happy to be able to talk with the other men at the barbershop about his son's team, so I stuck with it for all four years. I can't say I was much of a success at football, though. It wasn't that I was a bad player. In fact, I was a crackerjack field goal kicker. But Coach Lambert wouldn't actually put me on the field during the game. He was pretty up front with his reasons: "Carlisle, you kick field goals like Reggie Jackson hits home runs. But every time you kick one through the uprights, you prance about like a two-month-old filly, or take a bow like some opera queen. It's too demoralizing. I'd rather lose." Frankly, I couldn't have cared less. Sitting on the bench giving the other players neck rubs (until Coach Lambert put a stop to that) and doing the spirit cheers (until Coach Lambert put a stop to that) was fine by me. But my parents were frustrated: "The team was winning by forty points. Every single player on the bench made it onto the field except you. I'm going to have words with that coach." But this bluster was really for my benefit. As far as I know, neither of them complained to a single soul about my excessive time on the bench. I knew my parents loved me. But something about me left them vaguely perplexed, uneasy. I could see it in my father's eyes when my parents sat me down a few months before my high school graduation for a little chat. "Son, your grandfather once gave me a piece of advice that I have drawn on many times in my life. He told me that whenever you are at a crossroads in life you should ask yourself not what you want to do next, but what you need to learn next. Now, I know you're looking forward to going to college next year. But we're not sure that what you need to learn next you're going to find in books. Let me get to the point. Carlisle, we think that you should postpone college for a couple of years and join the army. You're young. You still need to find yourself. And for hundreds of years, the military has helped countless young men grow up. And who knows," he added, with exaggerated bravado, "they might even make a man out of you." We can all dream. But he was right about one thing. The military did help me find myself, though for a time all I could foresee was disaster. When I first met our drill sergeant, he didn't seem like much. Bald, chinless, short, and skinny, Manly Furrow looked more like a community college choral instructor than a boot camp sergeant. I thought, naively, I can do this. But the true strength of his personality became apparent the moment he opened his mouth. In fact, the contrast of his gentle breeze appearance only lent force to the category five hurricane of his voice. He could let loose on a cocky former football hero three times his size and within five minutes turn him into a stammering jumble of "yes, sirs" and "how highs." But he didn't need a football hero to turn into Jell-O. He had me. Sgt. Furrow didn't like me. No, let me be more specific. He loathed me. Or, at the very least, he needed someone to loathe, and I fit the bill. "You call that a helmet? That ain't no helmet. It's filthy; it stinks; must be a turd. A giant green turd. And you put that on your head? Disgusting. Drop and give me twenty." This was a trick. He knew just as well as everyone else did that after two weeks I could still only do three push ups. "You're pathetic, soldier. Two days doing laundry duty. Now get out of here." He didn't realize that he was actually doing me a favor. Most guys dreaded laundry duty. It was hot, hard work. But army uniforms are not only drab, they're also rough as sandpaper and stiff as Hugh Grant. I was dying for an opportunity to slip a little Downy into the laundry cycle. But the army doesn't stock fabric softener. Still, I have a few tricks up my sleeve, and the next morning, the laundry was soft as silk and spring fresh. I took special pleasure in the little smiles of surprise that crept over my comrades' faces as they were putting on their T-shirts. Unfortunately, Sgt. Furrow's mood was unimproved. "Does that look to you like the foot locker of a soldier in the United States army?" (The locker was about a half-inch off center.) "What are you, a gypsy? Soldier, you're a disgrace. Give me forty." This time he sent me to the kitchen to chop vegetables. Boy, I thought he'd never ask. I hadn't touched a fresh vegetable in weeks, and I was going through withdrawal. I wasn't allowed to touch the meat yet, but the vegetables for that night's dinner weren't boiled for twenty minutes. They were sautéed in butter and a little rosemary I found growing out behind the mess hall. I noticed that even Sgt. Furrow cleaned his plate. The next day just before inspections, I was horrified to find that someone had unmade my bed and poured shampoo on my shoes. I didn't have time to get angry, though, for there was Sgt. Furrow. When he saw the mess, all he did was call me a disgrace and a few other dirty words and tell me to report immediately to the kitchen. I guess he was so angry, he forgot the pushups. And that was how I found my place in the army. I kept getting mysteriously in trouble — I'd find peanut butter on my collar or a fish in my rucksack — and ended up spending every morning in the laundry and every afternoon in the kitchen. Which made everyone happy. No one had to march for hours in cardboard underwear or eat boiled meat again — and I never had to do another pushup. I wasn't necessarily Mr. Popular. But I was Mr. Appreciated (not to mention Mr. Fabulous Chicken Fricassee). And I made an important contribution to the community. And isn't that what growing up is really all about? But that was all a long time ago. Just a dim memory, really. I don't think about it much, except when I see that picture of me in full dress uniform displayed proudly on the mantle in my parents' house. Or when I get together with a few of my former army buddies from the mess hall to rehash old stories and watch a war movie or two, like On the Town or South Pacific. [an error occurred while processing this directive]