The Suicide Song of the 2nd Lanai

Sometimes I run out of juice and the words just won’t come. Usually when this happens I can see the images in my head and I can hear at least a few good phrases but I just can’t transfer the thoughts from my brain and onto the blank page. Lately it’s been worse. Lately I’ve had no love for my story, characters, or the written word and staring at a cursor blinking on a blank screen is maddening. When I do force the words out they don’t work, they’re lifeless and limp. The only good news is, I’ve finally gotten smart enough not to delete everything. Now I cut and paste paragraphs into a file I’ve titled “cut material.” Sometimes I can dig a few lines out and make something of them but mostly the words just sit there and rot like egg shells in a compost bin.

It bothers me, it always will, but it would bother me significantly less if I hadn’t started this blog and felt like I had an obligation to my “audience." I feel like I owe my readers something, but the tank is empty, I don’t have any ideas, so in desperation I reached out to my friends on Bluesky and asked them what I should write about. The suggestions were, honestly, better than I deserved. I’ve got a few ideas for the coming weeks but one idea leapt out at me. A person I know only as “Rufus” suggested I write what I think are the “best George Strait songs." I could easily do that. I could probably even stir a little controversy and get some cheap heat but internet listicles don't really jibe with my writing style.

But I love country music and I want to write about it, so after racking my brain for days I think I’ve found an idea I like better.

When I think about the quads on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii the first thing I remember is the light at night. There was something different about it there. Maybe it was because our barracks were so old. Built in the early 1900s, strafed by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, it was rumored that the quads were on the national historic register and the reason they were falling apart was because it required a literal act of congress to make repairs. While the renovated parts, our offices, latrines, rooms, and the hallways between lanais were lit with newer fluorescent lamps that flickered and hummed and put off a harsh white light when they worked, the lanais were lit with older, incandescent bulbs that put off a soft yellow light. The lanais floors, railings, and a quarter of the walls were painted a chocolate brown and the rest of the walls a pinkish tan that helped mute that yellow light.

Maybe it was just Hawaii. There was something different about the air out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The days were bright and green until around fifteen hundred when the sky darkened and it poured rain. The nights were often cool and clear; the sky more Navy blue than inky black. It was hot in the jungles. It was dusty on the ranges. It was cold on the mountaintops in the mornings. But on Schofield, at night, it was cool and there was always a breeze rustling through the palm fronds. The lights of Waikiki and Honolulu couldn’t drown out the stars and on a cloudless night there seemed to be millions of them in the sky. The moon seemed brighter and closer. One week there was a comet.

When I write fiction about Schofield barracks I describe night time on the lanais this way, soft, yellow light, friendly shadows, cool breezes. It’s a warm, comfortable memory for me but I know that’s a trick of memory. I know for the first few months that night time light was anything but welcoming.

On my first day a bored Specialist in a wrinkled uniform met us at the Replacement detachment and led us across the street to our new home, F Quad, 2/5 Infantry. He led us down the full length of the quad, past Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie Companies to the Battalion Headquarters at the end of the street. The bottom floor were the company offices, Charge of Quarters desk, training room, arms room, platoon CPs, officer country and the soldiers milling around there paid little attention to the gaggle of replacements.

The second and third lanais were where the business of soldiering was conducted during the duty day on Schofield Barracks. It was there the lower enlisted cleaned weapons, taught classes, swept floors, and in the afternoons hid in their rooms and watched porn. The lanai’s over looked the company street like prison tiers and as we waddled along, carrying all our worldly possessions, the railings filled with strange faces, watching our arrival like inmates in a prison movie. One soldiers hooted “CHEERIES!” and soon they were all jeering at us, yelling “Welcome to hell!” and “Don’t let them send you to Bravo Company!” and “Fresh meaaaaaaaaat!” until we dropped our things and stepped into the relative safety of the S-1's office.

By the time the paperwork was done and I’d been assigned to Charlie Company the duty day had ended and the lower enlisted were released for the evening. By the time I’d met my new CO and First Sergeant, been assigned a platoon, and issued a room key, the sun had set and those soft, yellow lights lit the lanais. The CQ, a senior Specialist from my new platoon took us down a hallway to the supply room to get us linens for the night. As soon as we were safely out of view of the CO he stopped and asked, “You new guys ever see Mickey Mouse?” Then he exposed his penis to us, wrenching his testicles around until they were above the shaft in a grotesque impersonation of mouse ears. He laughed at our horrified response and called us “fags” for looking. Welcome to the real Army.

Senior specialists and sergeants had the few private rooms in the hallways and at the corners of the building, their windows faced outward, to the exterior of the building. The rest of the rooms were on the front and the back of the building, their door and one window opening outward onto the lanai like rooms in a cheap motel. The lanai light poured through gaps in the Army issued curtains and beams of that yellow light lit the front of every room. It was there, in the front of the room, closer to the light and the noise and the foot traffic by the door, that new soldiers slept and I was no exception. Between the nerves, the uncomfortable Army linens, and the light pouring through the window it was almost impossible to sleep on that first night. 0530 first call came too fast and that yellow light was disorienting on that first morning as I stumbled out of my room and to the latrine to shave, completely lost and unsure of where to go or what to do or what to expect.

It was worse on a weekend.

The quads were originally built as open bays and modified over the years to create individual rooms but, like most things in the Army, the modifications were cheaply done. Our walls were two by four and sheet rock with no insulation. The original open bays had twelve foot ceilings but the new rooms were built to eight feet with a drop ceiling, leaving a four foot open space between the top of the walls and the floor of the room above. A skilled thief could climb into the roof and make his way into any room in the barracks and burglary was endemic. So much so that we stole concertina wire from the field and put it in our ceilings to deter burglars. Those paper thin walls and open ceiling meant every noise traveled from one end of the building to the other. On the weekends, from around noon when the first soldier sobered up until 0200 when the Charge of Quarters put his foot down and enforced quiet hours, the noise was unending. TV. Music. Video games. Laughter. Beer bottles clinking. Glass breaking. Fist fights. Sex. You heard it all. Many nights I went to sleep with the pictures on my wall shaking from the thumping bass of a stereo three doors down.

This was the Army of the late 90s when hazing was officially discouraged but widespread and largely ignored. For the first few weeks in the barracks a new private lived in constant fear. I had friends in other units that were duct taped into a sleeping bag and dangled off the second lanai. I had friends who were put in flak vest and helmet and used as dart boards. I had friends who were locked in wall lockers. I had friends who were beaten. I had friends that were sexually assaulted. During the duty day a new soldier was punished for every mistake, but at least you understood it as military discipline, at least you were learning. At night? In that soft yellow light? The noise and the laughter and the clinking of beer bottles took on an ominous, warning, tone. As a cherry the smart move was to lock yourself in your room and hope your new roommate was decent enough to at least keep the wolves out on the lanai. Or, on payday, you could flee to the hotels and bars of Honolulu and Waikiki where you’d have to deal with a different type of predator.

As a brand new private it was overwhelming and frightening, but I was lucky. My first room mate, Daryl, was a decent guy. More importantly he was a country music fan. He didn’t run with the animals that held orgies, and instead we spent our weekends drinking Coors Light or Jack Daniels, smoking Marlboro Lights, and listening to Garth Brooks on his stereo. I suffered hazing at the hand of my platoon, but it was light, mostly good natured, and largely tied to my job performance. The first few months quickly passed, winter became spring, and then summer. One evening the soft yellow light on the lanai and the sound of laughter stopped making me nervous. I’d paid my dues. I’d suffered the hazing and taken my licks. I’d been to the Kahukus, Australia, PTA and Makua Valley. I’d gotten some red dirt stains on my BDUs and was officially one of the boys. F Quad had become my home.

It’s this time that I like to remember. Friday night on a cool winter evening during a training cycle. The entire battalion would spend the week in the field, leaving Monday morning and ruck marching back late Thursday night. We’d be released for a long weekend as soon as our weapons were cleaned and turned in on Friday morning. Once the guidon was taken in, signaling that the company commander was gone for the day, doors would start to open onto the lanai and the noise would start. Soon the sun would go down and those soft, yellow, lights would come on and the party would begin in earnest. In one room the headbangers would be drinking Jack Daniels, smoking Camels and listening to Pantera. In the next the preppies were drinking Vodka, smoking Marlboro Lights and listening to The Spice Girls and Britney Spears. In the next the wannabe gangsters were drinking Hennessy, smoking Newports and listening to Tupac. Around front the Puerto Ricans were playing Dominoes while the hippies dropped acid and listened to Phish. You could wander from room to room like strolling down a miniature version of Bourbon, or Beale, or 6th Street stopping in for a drink almost anywhere the door was open.

By then, Daryl had introduced me to the Navy run cowboy bar on Pearl Harbor that would be the center of my social life until I left Oahu and we were hanging out with every hardcore country music fan in 2/5 Infantry but our core group was me, Daryl and our buddy Evan. I was the redneck kid from the deep south, into the classics and outlaws, Patsy Cline and Waylon Jennings. Daryl was from Upstate New York but he dressed like a cowboy, with the newest western shirts and silverbelly cowboy hat that he protected like a beloved heirloom. He was into the “new” stuff, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw, though I remember him one night laying on the backseat of a Ford Mustang like he was Hank Williams in a Cadillac, drunkenly belting out “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound.” Evan was prior service and older. A large, mixed race, soldier from Missouri he wore Levi's, a Scooby Doo polo shirt and expensive Dan Post boots to the club and listened to eighties bands like Restless Heart. Between the three of us we could create one hell of a country music play list.

On Friday and Saturday nights before the club, on Saturday and Sunday during the day, and on the weekends when we were broke, you could find us at the far end of the back lanai where Evan had a small private room. In that tiny space he had a bed, a wall locker, a mini fridge, a comfortable couch and an expensive stereo with a one hundred disc CD changer filled with country music. We’d sit with the door open, drinking, joking, and listening to country music.

Anyone who wandered by was welcome to join us, but Evan had two rules: First, every visitor had to take a shot of Southern Comfort. Second, every visitor had to pick a country song to listen to. People wandered in and out of that room all weekend, cowboys, punks, emo kids, wannabe rappers, surfers, Guatemalan refugees, Samoan natives, Native Americans and every last one of them picked a country song to listen to. Our Mexican buddy picked Freddy Fender. Our Deadhead friend chose Willie Nelson. Punk kids always seemed to go for the hardest core country music, Lefty Frizzell or Hank Williams. A legitimate Baltimore gang banger who’d gotten a real life “join the Army or go to jail” speech chose Alabama’s “Tennessee River” because his maternal grandmother was raised in Tennessee and was a fan of the band. It was often genuinely moving to hear the songs non-country music fans picked.

I, on the other hand, brought the mood down every night.

My song, was Mark Chestnut’s cover of “I’ll Think of Something.” There’s something either very wrong or very right in me because I love a sad country song. While my elementary school class mates were listening to Guns and Roses I listed to the Hank Williams Jr. original. In 1992, while my middle school class mates were getting into hip hop, I got the "Longnecks and Short Stories" cassette in my Easter Basket and I immediately fell in love with that track. Even now, decades later, middle class, happily married, and content "I'll Think of Something" is still a favorite but in 1997 I was far from happily married and content. Sitting on that comfortable couch, in Evan’s private room, I’d just broken up with my first ever girlfriend and she did a fucking number on me. Worse, I’d just met “Lorrie” right there on that couch. I had a crush on her right away but she had a crush on Daryl and after three or four shots of Southern Comfort that shit was crushing me. At twenty years old I felt every fucking bar of that song and I loved it. I wallowed in it. For me that sad song was like a purification ritual, like picking at a scab. It hurt, and yet I felt better listening to those lyrics and knowing somewhere, someone once had it as bad as poor Pfc Hammett did.

My buddies didn’t find catharsis in sad country songs. Inevitably it would be my turn to pick and Daryl would try to talk me out of what he knew was coming. But rules were rules and every night Evan handed me the remote and every night I plugged in the numbers and they’d all groan before the CD even whirred into place and began playing.

“Goddamned suicide song.” Evan called it one night. “Makes me want to suck start my M16.”

But the next night he handed me the remote, knowing full well what song I was going to play, but before I could push the button he stopped me. “You’re gonna play that fucking song aren’t you?”

“I like it.”

“Aright.” He ordered in his duty day sergeant’s voice. “If you’ve got a pocket knife put it on the floor where I can see it. I don’t want any of you motherfuckers hurting yourselves.”

He took his Leatherman off his desk and tossed it onto the floor and a second later someone else followed his lead and tossed a Gerber. One by one we emptied our pockets of pocket knives and multitools until there was a pile of edged weapons sitting on Evan’s rug. “Go ahead.” He announced once all the weapons were secure. “Play your fucking suicide song.”

And I did, almost every night until Evan PCS’d and every time we’d toss our pocket knives and multi-tools onto the rug until the song was over and I passed the stereo remote to someone else.

Evan eventually left Hawaii for a unit on the mainland. I gave him a lift to the airport on his last day and then met “Lorrie” and “Cathy” so we could go to the club. I moved out of Daryl’s room and eventually into my own private room in the hallway. Daryl ended up engaged to a medic and re-enlisted to stay in Hawaii. We remained friends until the day I left, though we saw each other less and less as he settled down and started an adult relationship. Eventually “Lorrie” was gone and my next big relationship imploded and I spent the remainder of my time in Hawaii running with a group of Navy guys that I'd met at the club and a wild man from our Scout Platoon who was a friend of a friend of Daryl's. I was lucky I survived. In December of 1999 I left Oahu.

I’d see Evan again, one last time at Fort Drum, sometime in late winter of 2000. The barracks there were new, white cinder block walls, waxed tile floors, fire doors that closed automatically, private latrines. By every measure they were nicer and more comfortable than the quads at Schofield and yet, looking back now, I have no fond memory of them. There was no natural light. The hallways were all lit with fluorescent bulbs, quiet, clean and sterile. Every door stayed closed. On Friday and Saturday nights the barracks parties were little more than a murmur. The laughter muted. The music unidentifiable, just the faintest hum in the background. We rarely opened our drapes to look outside where the snow stayed piled high for half the year. Compared to F Quad and 2/5 Infantry the barracks at Fort Drum felt soulless.

I didn’t play the suicide song at Fort Drum because Evan was once again packing to leave and his stereo was gone. Instead we drank Southern Comfort and he took me to the brigade headquarters to show me an Army Values poster that featured a friend of ours. On the poster our buddy was laying, tangled in concertina wire, looking like he was heroically barking orders and waving us through the breach as yellow smoke swirled around him. The picture looked bad ass, but we laughed uproariously because maybe thirty people Army wide knew the truth. Our buddy wasn’t heroically barking orders. He was screaming in intense pain because he’d somehow gotten his foreskin caught on the concertina wire and torn it so badly he later had to undergo an emergency circumcision. The next night we drove to a “country” bar off post but Watertown, New York wasn’t a country music town and the bar wasn’t anywhere as good as the club on Pearl Harbor. We listened to a bad cover band, drank too much, danced too little, and went home alone. We said our goodbyes in the parking lot and Evan left the next week.

I don’t know if Evan or Daryl went to war. They were lifers, so I’m betting they deployed at least once. I hope they survived. Some days I consider looking at casualty lists, just to see, but I’m afraid of which names I might find. Thirty years later I still remember Daryl and Evan fondly. When I think of the Army, and Hawaii, and my youth that’s where I go in my head. I remember that soft, yellow, light on the lanai. I hear the laughter, clinking beer bottles, music, and their groans as once again Pfc Hammett chose to play a depressing country song. When I was a sad young man “I’ll Think of Something” made me feel better because it told me someone else had been there too. Now that I’m an old man “I’ll Think of Something” makes me sad because it reminds me of a time when it was the suicide song of the second lanai and I know I can never go back to that time and place.

Yet I still love it because young or old, full of juvenile angst or content, I will always be a sucker for a sad ass country song.