One to Count Cadence (34 page)

“Yes, watch me, wench. I get wheels.”

“Rolling to hell,” he said.

“My home,” I said.

“Man’s fate?” he asked.

“Destiny is a kinder word.”

“Fate is death. Destiny is life. You’ve got them confused,” he replied.

“God confused them, not me.”

“What are you two talking about?” Abigail asked.

“Nothing,” Gallard said, “Krummel’s fly is down again, and his death wish is exposed.” He smiled, but he couldn’t meet my eyes.

“Impossible. You’ve got it in traction.”

“I wish I could,” he said, walking out. “I’ve got more idiots to repair, more fodder to rearm.”

Abigail turned back to me, a question cocking one blond eyebrow, a question she was afraid to ask. She slipped a pale pink rose from behind her. “An offering, sire,” she said, then curtsied.

“Thorny,” I said. “A warning.”

“A promise.”

“Thank you,” I said reaching for her hand.

“Three days, my liege, then I wheel you away to my flower castle.” She kissed my hand. “Three days. But now I must hurry to prepare another room for another knight back from the crusades, a crippled knight from the Holy Land.” She kissed my hand again, then bit the base of my thumb. “Three days…”

“Hey,” I said, stopping her at the door. “You’re as silly as I am.”

“Yes,” she said. “Don’t you just love it.” And then she was gone.

In three days, free, free of bed and burden, for then my confession will be over, the tale concluded, and the judgment will begin. I will be glad, I think, to be finished. To think about it makes me smile…

But even as I write these lines, a scream spears down the hall, holding my hands from the machine. Then words, slurred with pain and drugs: “Please, God, let me die.” Then a closing door muffles the cries.

My guilt seems so petty next to that cry. I bear only the guilt of Joe Morning, but that voice bears the world.

As I write these pages, I find that I love him both more and less as I begin to see behind the masks he troubled to wear. And now my hands are heavy, and his voice whispers to me, “… too much, too much, …” Then another echo. “Now I come down at night to make sure I’m not making a face, just to be sure.” The task of masks, never knowing whose face will meet your own in the mirror, then for Morning to find a woman’s face where his used to shine. How did you stand it, Joe, how? Why did you let it happen, and once done, why did you let it matter? Evil is in the world, Joe Morning, and man isn’t meant to play with it. You touched it so often, sinned against and sinner, true innocent because you thought the world innocent and you guilty. You asked me, Do you see evil everywhere, or reflect it? And I answer your ghost now, Both, like all men, even you. And now I remember something I had forgotten. You said that the most terrible, frightening thing about that woman’s face in the mirror was that it was still you. You were right, but you misunderstood why. You were scared inside because you realized that everyone had always seen through all your masks. All your trouble in vain. Why wish yourself grief? And in a world where so many are so ready to give it. And, God, sometimes I think I gave the most, and sometimes I think I saved you from the worst grief of all, and sometimes I just don’t know.

And again the echo: “Too much, too much.” But it seems to be my voice I hear. Yes, I’ll admit to it. Too much, too much. I said that, me, Jacob Slagsted Krummel, sometimes warrior, ofttimes clown. Too, too much.

But I have my duty… And damned little else, I hear you say, And damned little else. I’ll even say it with you: and damned little else! But your voice was bitter, and I just laughed, laughed like hell, and now I’m ready to go again. So screw you. My duty makes me free; what chains of delusion do you wear?

* * *

Back at Base after the abortive Break in Manila, four bits of news awaited me. Capt. Saunders was back, from the second unexplained trip to the States. Novotny had made Spec/5 (Specialist 5th Class; same pay as a buck sergeant, but without the rank), and I had been promoted to Acting S/Sgt (Staff Sergeant, Acting; the rank without the pay, of course). The fourth piece of news had to wait until the next day.

I talked Novotny, rather Cagle did, into going to the NCO Club for a steak in celebration, and a few drinks in preparation. Cagle convinced him by saying, “Sure, Specialist 5th Class, run on to the fucking lifer’s club, you fucking lifer.” Novotny said, “Who’s a fucking lifer? Screw you, I go where I want to.” Thus we went, and there Capt. Saunders found us.

He made Novotny buy a round, then he bought two. He spoke about my beer gut, Novotny’s Dear John and such, then asked, as we spoke about the Coke bottle crisis, “Why did you volunteer to be the goat?” But he didn’t specify sacrificial or Judas.

“To keep Morning out of Leavenworth,” Novotny answered for me, surprising me with his knowledge.

“Must be a good friend,” Saunders said.

I answered his accusation with silence and a round of drinks, then I went on in silence as he asked about the cigarettes and the note from the adjutant in Manila waiting on his desk. He supposed he might work out Article 15s, Company Punishment, instead of courts-martial, purely because he didn’t have time nor energy enough to draw the courts up. I kept my mouth shut again. Novotny asked why no time, but Saunders refused to answer. He asked me to bring Morning in after the company formation at 1300.

“Why are we having a formation?” I asked.

“What formation?” he said.

We soon managed to get drunk enough to forget about rank, privilege, and pay grades. Saunders was a strange officer, part buffoon, part drunk, and yet (with appropriate apologies to all concerned, particularly Joe Morning) he was the sort of man who would have had told of him in Georgia, “He runs his niggers so damn good ‘cause he’s part nigger himself.” He treated Novotny like a son and me like a younger brother, with that familial respect and trust we couldn’t resist. We would have, as they say, followed him into hell that night, but not necessarily the next day. He did give us a ride back to the barracks in his MGB. As he screamed away, Novotny said, “Might follow him to hell and back, cowboy, but I ain’t ever riding with him again. Ain’t ever.”

* * *

The next morning at work I told Morning that Capt. Saunders wanted to see us. He said nothing, acting as if he were involved in copying. I added that we would probably get Article 15s because something was up. He, I, everyone had seen the four shiny new radio vans parked in the motor pool, had seen, and understood they meant Vietnam.

He turned to me, removed his cans and said, sneering like a phony villain, “It’s so nice to know important people, Sgt. Krummel, to have friends in high places, friends who really care.”

“Just show up in Capt. Saunders’ office at 1430.”

As I walked away, Novotny said, “Nice to have friends, huh?” Morning heard, but acted as if he didn’t; I could do no less.

* * *

The company formation at 1300, for reasons of national security, was held in the mess hall. The Filipino KPs had been herded out to the volley-ball court, the louvers closed, and armed guards posted at every exit. The blackboard set up behind Saunders announced in small but clear letters: top secret. We were verbally reminded of the classification of the forthcoming talk, then it began.

It amounted, simply, to Vietnam for the 721st Communication Security Detachment, except that we became, in name only, the 1945th Communication Training Detachment (Provisional). Our assignment in the Republic of the Philippines was over, and our duties would be handled by Filipino operators now, ops that we would train as training for the time when we would begin training South Vietnamese ops. That time would come after we had set up a mobile det in Vietnam. But still things weren’t simple.

Because of the political implications of snooping on one’s own army in a country where the army is in almost constant stages of revolt against the government, Diem had demanded the highest sort of security for our operation. “We will not,” Saunders said, “be used as an arm of the political police,” but no one had suggested that we would. For reasons of national security, Vietnamese, South, our Det would have to be located, not in Saigon where lovely chicks paraded in
au dais,
but the south of the central highlands, west by southwest of Nha Trang in the foothills of the Lang Bian mountains, hopefully out of the way of both the Vietcong and the bulk of the South Vietnamese generals. We would also travel to Vietnam in civilian clothes, but our old uniforms would be waiting for us at the new Det.

The major burden of perimeter defense would fall on three reinforced companies of provincial militia (and their families), but due to lack of training and weapons, etc. (the “etc.,” patriotism, I assumed), we would have to be ready to be responsible for our own defense. We were going to soldier as well as clerk, for a change.

Our present operations closed as of this day, and one month of intensive training would begin immediately. Basic combat infantryman training in the mornings, working in the new vans, training Filipino ops, listening to tapes of South Vietnamese army tapes, and learning new net operations in the afternoons.

“Remember,” Saunders said at the end, “that even though we are advisers in this no-war war, we have the right to fight back if attacked, and if we aren’t mentally and physically ready to fight back, a bunch of you are going to find yourselves dead. If you want to stay alive: get ready.” If he expected a Hollywood cheer, his face didn’t show any disappointment when he didn’t get it. “And I’ll be kicking asses and taking names to be sure you do get ready.” He smiled at the Head Moles, out of their holes for today, but they didn’t smile back. They didn’t go to Vietnam either, or to Hill 527, which was all I saw of Vietnam.

Comments as we left:

Novotny: Sorry, man, I’m too short to go.

Cagle: Reenlist, stupid.

Quinn: Big rumble tonight. Kick some ass, huh, Frankie?

Franklin: I’m a lover, not a fighter. I got a purple heart for the clap to prove it.

Haddad: My God, it’ll cost me a fortune to go, a fortune, my God.

Peterson: Geez…

Levenson and Collins:… (Nothing, because they both, like Novotny, had less than a month to go before their discharges.)

Morning: Fucking America off again to make the world safe for General Motors and AT&T. Tattletales to political spies in one easy step.

Quinn: I got lighter fluid and a lighter, mother, if you want to file your stinking protest right here in the hall.

Peterson: Geez…

Krummel: Knock it off, you idiots.

Morning: You’re sick, Quinn, sick.

Haddad: Wonder if the chaplain would understand my situation.

Krummel: Knock it off.

Quinn: I ain’t a coward, and I ain’t a Commie, and I ain’t so sick I can’t bust you up in the middle, Morning.

Cagle: Save your verbal enemas for the enemy, you guys.

Someone: Ah, shit, who gives a good goddamn?

Krummel: (whispering) I do.

Morning: (shouting) Me, mother-fucker. I fucking won’t go.

Someone: Ah, shit.

* * *

In his office, fired by the war lecture, Capt. Saunders was less friendly than the night before. He gave us a long lecture on the dangers of the black market. One might damage the Philippine economy; one might fall in with evil companions, be beaten, robbed, or even killed; one might also get his butt sacked in this man’s army. But we were lucky this time, and we could accept company punishment under Article 15. I quickly answered yes, but Morning, as quickly, said no.

Rattled for a moment, then angry, Saunders shook his head, then said “Shit, Morning, go to your quarters. Confined till further orders.” As Morning left, Saunders turned to me. “What’s wrong with that kid, Krummel? I don’t want to convene a court for him. Not now. Damn. What is wrong with him?”

“I understand his mother used to ask the same question, sir.”

He smiled. “Can you get him to change his mind? Talk to him?” he asked, turning his chair around so he could stretch his legs.

“No, sir.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

The back of his neck wrinkled, then reddened. “The major will throw the book, the desk, and the chair at him, and there is no one else to sit,” he mumbled without moving.

“Yes, sir.”

We stayed that way, a sweat stain bleeding across his back, I standing at that mockery of ease, At easel, sharing a common burden, unable to name it, only at ease to acknowledge its mutuality with silence. He turned, blushed, said, “Get the hell out of here, Krummel. I’ve got a court-martial to draw up. Tell Sgt. Tetrick to come in on your way out.”

I did as he said.

Tetrick said to me later, “You best let that kid fall back in his own shit. Here, he can only get you trouble; over there, he can get you killed.”

“Nope.”

* * *

“Why?” I asked him in his room. “For Christ’s sake, why?”

“They can’t hurt me, man.”

“They’re not trying.” I shut the door behind me.

(I wanted to say, so many things…
True, they can’t hurt you; they don’t need to. The world isn’t unjust, it just doesn’t care. You walk around expecting injustice, baby, you get it. Just because a man is on the other side doesn’t mean he is your enemy. You already understand that about the Communists, but you won’t give your friends the same understanding. You can’t make the world fit you, you have to fit the world, and it’ll crush you if you don’t. You already know that, too. I don’t ask you to stop fighting; just be sensible about the way you fight.
But I don’t suppose I’ve any right to ask him to be sensible; I never was either. I should have said:
Okay, man, you’re wrong, wrong, wrong, but I’m with you ‘cause you got no one else.
But I couldn’t say that; I could only do it, and keep doing it, and keep doing it, until the end of time. Don’t knock the artful cliché.)

* * *

In seven days he walked into his summary court-martial, charged with possession of more cigarettes than allowed under Clark Air Base Regulation 295-13. His face was as calm and resposed as only anger could make it, a smooth furious mask. I remembered the night he backed the airman against the wall and slapped him insensible. In the room (artfully enough, Lt. Dottlinger’s office), he found our cigarettes, the younger of the two cops from Pasay City, and a very (and I’ve never quite figured this out), very frightened major. Confronted with the major’s fright, and the cop’s lack of cockiness and lack of ease, Morning became twice as calm. Though he claimed that he had a plan from the beginning, I believe he didn’t know what he was going to do until he saw the major’s flushed face, shaking hands, and a pulse that bounded even into the tiny whiskey-busted veins snaking across his pitted nose. I believe that as strongly as I’ve ever believed anything about him. This is important because I learned my greatest lesson about guerrilla warfare from this: attack establishments with absurdity.