Scout’s Dishonor
I was in the Boy Scouts when I was a kid.
I was only in a couple of years before I got out, and I was one of the younger kids. Keep in mind, I was a tiny kid. I describe myself as a living hummel. I wasn’t so much afraid of being picked on as much as being stepped on.
But some kids did enjoy picking on the little guy. Even those “morally straight” Boy Scouts.
The kid who loved picking on me the most was a few years older, named Jon. Just so happened he was also the troop leader. So, if he did it, of course, it was all right for everyone to do it.
Any wonder why I was only in for a couple of years?
I enjoyed a cornucopia of Indian burns, wedgies, frogs in the arm, got asked if I “Had a nice Spring” quite a bit, and of course, always got to be the proverbial “queer” in a game of smear the queer.
One would think that the scoutmaster would keep all of that in line, but not with us. Our scoutmaster was an old guy named Mr. Dunagan, probably pushing 80 and on his very last legs. He had emphysema that necessitated the use of an oxygen tank and would run the meetings with the rubber tubes in his nose and a cigarette in his mouth. It was only much later that I realized just how close we came to seeing a human rocket take off every single meeting.
We had our meetings in an actual log cabin in the middle of a park, which was a good thing because it was almost the closest we ever got to real camping. Mr. Dunagan’s condition didn’t really allow for much “roughing it”.
I do remember one time that we actually camped out. It was two people to a tent and they put the first-time campers in with kids that had some experience so they could learn from them.
I, of course, got paired up with Jon. I knew nothing good would come of it.
We set up camp next to a small creek and did some activities, including a hike up a nearby hill. Beans and hot dogs for dinner. For some reason we didn’t do a traditional camp fire, as much as I as looking forward the experience. As dusk fell and we started getting ready to tuck in for the night, Jon came out of the tent and walked over to me, angry.
He asked me where his wallet was. I told him I didn’t know. He said he left it in the tent and wanted to know what I did with it. I told him I didn’t do anything to it and asked if he was sure it wasn’t in a bag somewhere. He insisted it wasn’t and that if I didn’t tell him what I did with it, I’d be in trouble. I swore that I hadn’t touched it and that I would help him look for it as soon as I was done with what I was doing. With a snarl, he went back into the tent.
I took my time finishing what I was doing. I’d been dreading going to bed all day, knowing he was going to do something to me. Of course I hadn’t touched his wallet, why give him a reason to be pissed off at me? Now that he did have a reason, even if I didn’t have anything to do with it, I knew my night was going to suck.
When I got back to the tent, he was laying down, facing away from me. I asked if he found it, he said no. I did a cursory search with my flashlight on my side of the tent before deciding it would turn up during the day and laid down for the night.
I don’t know what time it was. Much later, after I’d fallen asleep, a noise outside the tent woke me up. As soon as I looked up, Jon and another kid jumped on top of me, pinning me down. The other kid sat on top of me, knees in my chest so I could barely breathe and a dirty sock over my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I struggled in vain to get up as Jon grabbed my arm and violently twisted it out to the side.
My shoulder and lungs burned as the sock still moist with foot sweat pulled the corners of my mouth apart. I tried as hard as I could to scream, but it was all I could do to pull in any air at all with his knee in my chest, pressing so hard I could feel my ribs bending to the breaking point. Over and over again, Jon asked what I did with his wallet, and over and over again, I told him nothing. Each time, he hit me in the head with his hiking stick and twisted my arm harder, asking the question again.
I knew he wouldn’t stop until he got an answer, and I was afraid to say I’d done something for fear they would hurt me even more. But the hits to my head were getting harder and harder, I was sure it would crack soon. My shoulder had popped and I didn’t know if it had come out of socket, and the lack of oxygen made me feel like I was going to pass out. I began to panic. It occurred to me that we were in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. They could dump my lifeless body somewhere nobody would find it for a long time. I actually thought I might die.
So I cracked. I told him I threw it in the creek.
He punched me as hard as he could in the side of the head. “I knew you were f*cking lying.”
And they kicked me out of the tent in my underwear. I felt my head to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t. Knotted as hell, but not bleeding. I sat down on the rocky ground, cradling my useless arm, wiping away tears but trying not to cry.
I slept on the cold ground, freezing in my underwear. And when everyone woke up in the morning, Jon told them that I walked in my sleep.
I wonder sometimes whatever happened to Jon. Maybe he joined the CIA.
I think about that day. For me, it was just a sucky day. But what if it was important? What if someone’s life was on the line? What if they forced out of me information that wasn’t true and wasted time chasing down faulty information?
The only thing that torturing a person does is it gets them to say what you want to hear.
Me, I want to hear that I have the largest penis on Earth. Pretty sure it’s not true, though.
If our representatives in Congress pass through a law saying that our government can torture, all the gloves will come off. We won’t get any better leads than we’re getting now and we’ll spend billions of dollars and man-hours chasing down false leads while the truth scurries around, unseen. And it will be seen the world over as an act of incredible ego, of a country that thinks it can do anything it wants to any country and any person of any country the world over.
And believe it or not, that’s a bad thing.
This “compromise” that you’re hearing about is a joke. The three “rebel” Republicans in the Senate offered basically the same torture bill as the President’s with a few minor differences in semantics. They were still arguing for torture, and the President got just what he wanted. Maybe this was the next big fat one I’d talked about before.
Monday, September 25, 2006
