The Barracks Thief

Guy Bishop is a restless man who has drifted from job to job and woman to woman, yet finds peace sitting at night between his two sleeping sons, Philip and Keith. When an affair deepens into something he cannot end, he leaves his family in October. Keith, just starting high school, cannot stop grieving. Philip, a junior, copes by despising his father. A distance opens between the brothers, and Keith begins keeping his feelings to himself.

By February 1965, Guy Bishop loses his job at Boeing for undisclosed reasons. Philip's mother sells the house, gives away her cats, and takes work as a movie theater cashier. The family moves twice, ending up in Ballard, a Seattle neighborhood. Philip's grades collapse, and both Reed College and the University of Washington reject him. One night Philip sees his mother kissing the theater owner in his car. His fury the next day drives her to a breakdown: She cries out over the loss of her home, her garden, and the love of her family. Philip apologizes, and they walk together in a small park.

Philip enrolls at a junior college in Bremerton and works nights at the Navy Yard. He drinks with Marine guards back from Vietnam, envying their bond. At Christmas his mother asks him to talk to Keith, who has been suspended for smoking a joint. Philip announces his plan to enlist. His mother begs him to wait six months, and he agrees, but he breaks the promise after a confrontation with his father. Guy Bishop had come to the apartment and tried to break down the door when refused entry. Philip drives to his father's efficiency apartment in Bellevue and tells him to stay away. His father presents a belated graduation gift, a folding bicycle, rides it clumsily around the parking lot, crashes, and calls for help. Philip turns and walks away. The next morning he tries to enlist in the Marines, but the recruiting office is closed; he walks up the street and joins the Army instead. That night, moved by Keith's sincere good wishes over the phone, Philip gives him his car, a decision he comes to regret.

The narration shifts to first person, revealing Philip as the narrator. Five months later, at jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, his mother calls to say Keith has been missing for three days. She wants Philip to take emergency leave and search San Francisco, but he refuses: Leaving would mean missing his last two jumps and restarting the course. On the final night jump, a man is killed when his chute fails. Philip feels a troubling impulse to smile at the dead man. Someone passes a joint; he takes a hit and joins a jump song, looking up at the stars.

Assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Philip finds that the Vietnam veterans in his company ignore newcomers. He and two other new arrivals, Lewis and Hubbard, are treated as invisible and avoid one another to prevent being branded as outsiders. When all three draw guard duty at an ammunition dump on the Fourth of July, the assignment stings. A first sergeant drives them into a pine forest, fills their clips with live rounds, and orders them to shoot anyone who touches the fence. While Lewis patrols, Philip and Hubbard talk. Hubbard describes the friends he left behind. Philip shares a memory of swimming with Keith on the Fourth of July, watching fireworks from the water.

A civilian warns that a forest fire threatens the dump and urges them to leave. Lewis chambers a round and threatens to shoot the man. Philip grins, finding the standoff interesting. A second civilian, Deputy Chief Ellingboe, appeals to their reason. When he persists, Hubbard swings his rifle up and aims at the man's head. The two civilians drive away. Choking smoke rolls in, and Philip feels afraid for the first time. Then the wind changes, and the three start laughing. Outside the orderly room afterward, they linger, reluctant to part, believing they have proven themselves. Philip puts his arms around their shoulders.

The bond frays quickly. Lewis's loud behavior grates on Philip. The company bonds over a tense confrontation with antiwar protesters at the post gate, and Philip joins a general conversation for the first time. Lewis, who missed the protest, loudly asks Philip to a movie. Everyone falls silent. Philip declines.

A series of thefts fractures the company. A corporal's wallet disappears; then a man's fatigue pants are stolen while he sleeps. The intimate nature of the second theft tells everyone the thief is among them. The first sergeant addresses the barracks, comparing the company to a family. Soon after, Hubbard is attacked in the shower: The thief steals his pants and breaks his nose. Philip swears his innocence to Hubbard, who tells him their ammunition dump stand was stupid and that Philip has nobody truly close to him.

The narrative shifts to follow Lewis in third person. On earlier evenings, Lewis hitched rides to Fayetteville, where an encounter with a lonely schoolteacher left him shaken after a reminder of the first sergeant's emasculating nickname for him, Tinkerbell. Desperate for connection, Lewis pursued a hostile, troubled prostitute, stealing wallets and pants from the barracks to scrape together her price. Their encounters were degrading and violent; when Lewis told her he loved her, she pulled a knife and threw him out. It was Hubbard whose pants Lewis stole last, and Hubbard whom he struck in the shower. In the stolen wallet Lewis found a letter from Hubbard's mother describing the deaths of Hubbard's friends in a Fourth of July car crash. Lewis returned to the woman's bungalow only to find it empty. He stumbled outside and howled at the stars.

The next morning, the first sergeant calls a special formation and orders the men to empty their pockets into their helmets. Hubbard walks the ranks, stops in front of Lewis, and pulls out the folded letter. Lewis begins shaking convulsively, howls, then shrieks a wild laugh in Hubbard's face before curling on the red earth.

That evening, Philip tells Hubbard about a planned blanket party, an extrajudicial group beating in which a blanket is thrown over the victim's head. Hubbard refuses to participate. After lights-out, men walk to Lewis's bunk. The flashlight finds him sitting up, shirtless, cheeks wet, his face full of humiliation and fear. Philip believes Lewis is looking directly at him. The blanket goes over Lewis's head. Philip does not join the beating, but he does not try to stop it. He stays and watches.

Lewis is hospitalized and given a dishonorable discharge. Years later, Philip reflects on what became of everyone. His father settled in San Diego and runs a restaurant. Keith came home while Philip was in Vietnam and lived with their mother for twelve years; after she died, he became a security guard in the building where he lives. Philip once saw him wearing his uniform downtown, where there was no need for it. Hubbard received orders for Vietnam but crossed into Canada. Philip never saw him or Lewis again, though he imagines Lewis on the steps of a duplex, petting a black dog, watching a rainbow in a neighbor's sprinkler. Philip describes himself as conscientious and perhaps good, but careful and addicted to comfort. Yet he remembers what it felt like to be reckless among reckless friends: Lewis before he was a thief, Hubbard before he was a deserter, Philip before he was a good neighbor. Three men with rifles. It would have been something.