Read Online Brando by Marlon Brando - Free Book Online

asinsubordination. I was put on probation and confined to my room, which delighted me because it meant I wouldn’t have to take part in the extended close-order drill scheduled later in the day. But after an hour or so of being alone in my room, I got bored and decided to go into town. Unfortunately, my unauthorized absence was quickly discovered, and since I was on probation I was expelled.
    “Marlon, this school is not meant for a person like you,” Nuba the Tuba told me when he broke the news. “We can’t put up with you anymore.”
    Sadly I went from room to room saying good-bye to all my friends. When I got to Duke, he surprised me by saying, “Don’t worry, Marlon, everything will be all right. I know the world is going to hear from you.”
    I’ll never forget his words.
    My eyes suddenly filled with tears as he embraced me. I put my head on his shoulder and couldn’t stop sobbing. I hadn’t realized that I had been holding back a desire to be loved and reaffirmed. I guess I didn’t even realize it then. It was the only time anyone had ever been so loving and so directly encouraging and concerned about me. I looked into Duke’s eyes and saw that he really meant it. Even now, as I recall that moment, I am moved and touched by how much he meant to me.
       When I got home, I looked at the faces of my mother and my father and sensed their hopelessness and disappointment. But I was used to it by then.
    About two weeks later a letter arrived from Shattuck: “Dear Cadet Brando,” it said. “The Student Body and all the officers in the entire battalion have been on strike because we feel you were unfairly treated. We declared we will not go back to class until and unless you are reinstated.…” After describing the strike, the letter concluded: “We are happy to inform you that we have succeeded in winning your reinstatement. The administrationhave agreed to let you return to Shattuck and make up the time you lost in summer school.” The letter was signed by every cadet in the battalion.
    My mother was moved to tears by this, and I was proud. I was unconcerned about how my father reacted and I don’t recall his response.
    After thinking it over a day or so, I responded with the adolescent reply that I would always remember what the cadets had done and would forever be grateful to them for supporting me, but that I had decided not to return to Shattuck; I had reached a fork in the road and was going to take a different path.
    I got a job paying $35 a week with a small construction company digging trenches, laying pipe, setting tile and helping to build houses. For the first time in my life, I had money in my jeans that I had earned myself. I can still taste that first beer I bought with my own paycheck.
    There were only three of us at home now because both my sisters had moved to New York. Tiddy, who had done some acting in high school, was taking classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and Frannie was studying painting at the Art Students League and starting a career as an artist in Greenwich Village.
    Despite the bravado of my letter to the cadets, I didn’t know what that path I was going to take was or where I wanted it to lead me, but I suspected it wouldn’t be long before I was in uniform again. Most of the boys my age in Libertyville were being drafted, and others were volunteering. The army was snapping up students with military-school backgrounds and commissioning them as officers, so I decided to sign up.
    At the induction center, a doctor asked me if I had any physical problems.
    “Sometimes my knee bothers me a little,” I said.
    I’d injured it in a football scrimmage at Shattuck when someone tackled me from behind and snapped the semilunar cartilage,which had been removed. The doctor grabbed my leg and pulled it sideways, causing my knee to spin a little like a ball in a socket.
    “Sorry, son, you’ve got a trick knee,” he said. “You’re 4-F.”
       My parents bravely