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In for a Pound

Bob Strother

    Lottie Grove lay on her lower bunk in the darkness of the barracks, waiting. The cicadas’ summer evening song drifted through the open window behind her, a soothing contrast to the exhausting bustle of another Parris Island day. Most nights, the rise and fall of the insects’ one-note melody lulled her to sleep. Not tonight, however. Tonight, after the fire watch duty recruit had made her first round, Lottie and thirty-seven of her fellow Marine recruits would join in their first clandestine assault.
    She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling the new cords of sinew in her biceps, then brought her hands down between her breasts and to her abdomen where slabs of muscle replaced the rolls of fat she’d once had. When she’d alighted from the bus at the island depot, she’d been immediately assigned to remedial physical training. In seven weeks she’d lost twenty-four pounds. By ten weeks she’d dropped another eleven. For the first time since fifth grade, she weighed less than two hundred pounds. And most of what was left was muscle.
    Grade school had been bad enough, but high school was far worse. Not simply a social outcast, she’d also been the butt of every fat joke imaginable. The girls snickered and rolled their eyes. The guys called her Gotta Lotta under their breath. Once, between classes, she’d overheard a classmate tell a group of students that watching her walk reminded him of “two hogs wrestling in a gunny sack.” Afterward, she’d hidden in a stall in the girls’ room for hours, humiliated, sobbing quietly. For the rest of the year, as she made her way down the hall between classes, she would hear a guttural “oink, oink” from somewhere behind her. Her humiliation gradually turned to hate. She’d wanted to kill her tormentors, to make them suffer the way she’d suffered at their hands, but that was impossible. So her hate had hardened into determination. Lottie had tried dieting and exercise time and time again over the years, but knew she lacked the discipline for either. She decided to fix that.
    The day after graduation, she’d shown up at the Marine recruiter’s office. The sergeant, a lean fifty-something with a sun-wrinkled face, looked her over—all over—then met her gaze. “What makes you think you could be a Marine, young lady? Basic training is hard on recruits, especially if you’re not physically ... fit.”
    “I’ve been living in hell for the last twelve years,” she told the sergeant. “I think I can last three months on Parris Island.”
    The recruiter had remained silent for almost a minute, then said, “We’ll see,” and passed her a sheaf of papers.
    Lottie pressed the stem of her watch and a soft blue light showed the time as one twenty- five. The girl who’d drawn fire watch duty would be coming through soon, and after that, the recruits had a score to settle.
    It was Lottie’s idea, something she remembered from watching a DVD of Full Metal Jacket. In one scene, a group of Marines in basic training exacted revenge upon a fellow recruit by pummeling him with socks filled with soap bars. The recruits in that movie had all hated their drill instructor, a common, even clichéreaction, often enhanced for effect by Hollywood filmmakers.
    It wasn’t that way for Lottie, though. She’d welcomed the incessant harangue and the strictly imposed discipline. She’d needed Drill Sergeant Saunders’ hanging at her shoulder during a three-mile run, screaming in her ear that she’d never be a Marine. It had made her angry enough to cry—but she hadn’t. Instead, she’d toughed it out, sweaty, exhausted, every muscle in her body trembling with exertion.
    Addressing the platoon after the run, Sergeant Saunders paced in front of them and said, “Get used to it, recruits; we’ll do four miles tomorrow.” Saunders had stopped in front of Lottie and asked, “Will you make it tomorrow, too, Recruit Grove, or would you rather just get on the straggler truck now?”
    “Ma’am, the recruit will make the run tomorrow, ma’am!”
    And Lottie wasn’t sure—the sun was in her eyes and Saunders’ face was hidden in shadow—but she thought the drill sergeant’s mouth had twitched in a momentary smile. After that, Lottie worked twice as hard, studied twice as long, and now, with less than two weeks to go, was sure she’d finally become the person she’d always wanted to be.
    But Sergeant Saunders would not be on hand to see her graduate. Recruit Gail Hardy, resting peacefully in her bunk at the moment, had seen to that. The same Gail Hardy who’d eyed Lottie that first morning on Parris Island and whispered behind her hand to another recruit, and whose shoulders had shook in silent laughter. Hardy, a whiner and complainer despised by the other recruits, had lodged a complaint against Sergeant Saunders, accusing her of making sexual advances. Lottie didn’t believe it was true. None of the girls did, not that it mattered. Their drill instructor had been removed from duty pending a full investigation.
    The door at the end of barracks opened, and the fire watch recruit walked slowly from one end of the barracks to the other, her flashlight beam painting the concrete floor like an artist’s brush strokes. The soft rustle of sheets followed her exit, thirty-seven pairs of legs swung out of their bunks, and shadowy figures slipped silently to the floor. Whispers filled the night. Two recruits crept to opposite sides of Hardy’s top bunk and gently placed a folded sheet over her still sleeping body. Others lined up, ghostly apparitions in USMC-issued underwear, soap-filled socks in hand, on either side of the bunk. Someone hissed, “Now!” and the sheet was pulled tight, pinning Hardy to the bunk while the recruits took their licks in turn, pounding her torso like men hammering railroad spikes, chanting, “This is for Sergeant Saunders.”
    Lottie couldn’t help smiling at Hardy’s muffled cries of pain. She’d gotten harder—inside and out, in large part because of Sergeant Saunders, the woman who’d broken her down and built her back up, who’d given her confidence and a new outlook on life. Now this whiny, complaining bitch, Hardy, had taken away the one person Lottie had come to respect above all others. “Marines don’t just get mad,” she whispered through clenched teeth, “they get even.”
    As she inched closer and closer to Hardy’s bunk, she hefted her boot sock in the palm of her hand. She’d filled it with a baseball-size rock she’d found at the edge of the parade ground. She wouldn’t kill Hardy with it, as she’d wanted to do to her high school classmates, but she’d inflict some serious damage, might even keep Hardy from graduating, too—a just reward.
    She wondered briefly if there might be repercussions—then decided the hell with it; we’re all in it together; no one’s going to be talking. She hefted the rock again and got ready to swing. In for a penny...

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