One to Count Cadence (4 page)

“Your trick is on break now,” he said, “and they’re all in Town — that’s what they call Angeles — drinking and whoring and anything else they can think of to get in trouble. Town is bad. Three-fourths of it is off-limits forever, two-thirds of it after 1800, and all of it after 2400. But will they be back before curfew? Shit, no. They got to run and hide from the APs and laugh about how much fun it is. And if they can get knived by a
calesa
driver or run over by a jeepny or drown in a sewer for all I know — or care.” He shrugged, sighed, then walked back to his desk and continued, “But somehow all the bastards will get back in one piece just in time to wash off the crud, shave, brush their teeth maybe, and get to the three-quarter before it leaves for the Ops Building.” He shook his head and folded his long arms, then stared at the rain beyond the half-screened passageway. “It rains all the goddamned time, too.”

1/Sgt. Tetrick, ex-marauder, twenty-two years service — the last twelve as a first-shirt — was of medium height, but because of his heavy, sloping shoulders and long arms, seemed much shorter. A little hair adorned his head, a gratuitous bit of sun-bleached fuzz circling from ear to ear and no more. This too was another small reminder of Burma, but he wore his baldness as if it were dictated by military expediency. A golf tan, his single vice, didn’t cover the rich ocher-yellow malaria stain on his skin.

“But they’re a good bunch, damnit,” he said quickly, out of his reverie as if the distant bugle he heard had stopped. “And it’s our job to keep them out of the stockade — damned Air Force calls it the Confinement Facility — and the hospital so they can do their work.” He glanced back at the rain and shook his shining head again. “You just can’t run an Army outfit on an air base anyway. Damned airmen don’t blouse their boots and wear baseball caps and bus-driver uniforms. Shit.” He shuffled behind his desk. “You were in an infantry outfit on your last hitch?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Six years ago.”

“Long time to stay out. How come you came back in?”

“Like you said: it’s a long time.”

He dropped it. “Don’t expect this to be like a line outfit. Not at all.”

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but it ain’t soldiering.”

Tetrick continued explaining the 721st Com Sec Det as he deftly handled my paperwork. His voice was roughly concerned, even irritated, but still tender as he spoke of the outfit; like a Nebraska farmer whose four grown sons had left the land for the cement and money of the city, leaving only his swollen hands to toil in the land of
his
father: he could not understand, but his dust-thickened voice kept whispering, “God love ‘em. God love ‘em.” The Army had not issued Tetrick a wife, as the saying goes, but it had these sons. And me too, for that matter. Everything I needed from the supply room — bunk, mattress, field gear — had already been carried to my quarters on the second floor. Tetrick apologized for not having any regular NCO quarters, then added that he liked for his trick chiefs to bunk with the men. I was pleasantly surprised when I was assigned a houseboy, a young Filipino who, for five pesos a week, would clean my quarters, take care of my laundry and shine my boots, etc. Enlisted men also were allowed houseboys and even the KP was pulled by Filipino workers. It all seemed very British, darkly faithful Indian batman and all that, but the houseboys were all hard-core finger-popping black-marketeers, already more Western than Oriental. Tetrick then took me in to meet the company commander, Capt. Harry Saunders, and the executive officer, Lt. Dottlinger. The lieutenant merely grunted and squeezed my hand, giving me the impression that he didn’t care for me before he met me. It took longer to meet Capt. Saunders.

Capt. Harry, as he liked to be called, came from Brunswick, Georgia, and his lifetime ambition was to win a medal of some, of any, sort, then retire to home and become a Republican. All this, and the additional “u” in his name, was to prove that he was more than a redneck kid who had gone to college on a football scholarship, arriving with only a single pair of shoes, tennis shoes at that. In spite of all his posturing, he was a happy, shambling bear of a man whose only real fault lay in the unsophisticated nature of his dreams. He had a tendency to say “men” in all capital letters, but he had an easy, open-armed way and a smile which said he truly loved everyone in the world. Except his wife. And Lt. Dottlinger. Capt. Harry seemed pleased with me, mainly because I was both a Southerner and a “collegeman.”

“A master’s degree, huh?” he said several times. “How about that, Sgt. Tetrick? How about that? We damn well need more NCOs with a college background in this outfit. They seem to get along better with the men. What’s it in?”

“Sir?”

“Your degree.”

“Soviet Studies, sir.”

“Well, how about that? I’ll bet you’re the only sergeant in the whole Army with a master’s degree in Russian… what was that? History?

“Yes, sir.”

Capt. Harry went on and on about the degree until I wished that I had not listed the thing on my 201 file. There was a painful irony in being faced with my own vanity, in being asked why, with the degree, I had reenlisted. “A man’s wife leaves him for the civil-rights movement, for an ideal not another man, then it is certainly no wonder whatever he does,” I often told myself. But no one else. No, nor Capt. Harry when he asked that day.

I accepted their good luck wishes, and left, again asking “Why?” as I had for the two months of basic and the six months at Fort Carlton. But I had no answer, and perhaps wanted no answer. I had the rain and the random barracks noise and time… time clicking past like a pale young whore popping her gum behind too bright lips, endlessly unconcerned and unsatisfying, hopelessly desirable.

* * *

The 721st resided in a single two-story concrete building. The mess hall, the day room, orderly and supply rooms, and quarters for the First, Supply and Mess Sergeants filled the first floor. The second contained fifty two-man rooms divided by a long hallway. Each room had an outside wall of adjustable aluminum louvers and an inside wall of wooden ones. The rooms were quite large and, except for the usual bareness, were not too military in effect. No metal foot- or wall-lockers knifed the space. Instead there were two large closets, a gray metal table with two office chairs, and a three-quarter-bed-size bunk.

My cot sat next to the adjustable louvers, lengthwise to catch any breeze. I had never seen one of the new, larger bunks before. Ordinarily only the Air Force used them. I dropped my gear on the floor, kicked off my shoes, stripped out of the heavy green wool uniform I had been shrouded in for two miserable days on the MATS flight from California, and then stretched out on the bunk. None of those thin, cotton-lumpy racks the Army called a mattress, but a thick, foam rubber one to hold my weary bones. Yep, Sgt. Tetrick, I thought, scratching one foot with the other, This is a strange outfit. All I need now is a swimming pool and a spot of sunshine to be a real recruiting-poster ground pounder. Hoping for some sign of the sun (it had been raining since my flight arrived), I cranked open one set of louvers. The rain still fell heavily, but across the street a small building was visible. I hadn’t noticed it when I ran from the jeep to the barracks, but there it was, my swimming pool. Not exactly mine, but right across the street, and I could use it anytime. Okay, I thought, If the sun comes out, I’ll just take a goddamned swim. It didn’t, so I unpacked my gear, showered, then slept through evening chow.

I awoke after sundown. The rain had disappeared into a mist which gathered in fuzzy balls around the street Lights. My watch had stopped. Across the hall I heard the whirr and click of a record changer and very faintly the opening bars of
Bolero,
The hall was empty, quiet and solemn, as if everyone had gone away. I knocked and entered when a voice said, “Come in.”

A very tan young man in his shorts sat on one of the cots, resting his back against the wall and a writing pad on his knees. He had one of those clean muscular bodies in hope of which ten million little boys eat Wheaties, skin the color of butterscotch pudding, crystal-white teeth flashing in his quick grin, and one left leg entirely masked in scar tissue. A burn, obviously, puckered and crisp-bacon brown scrambled with rotten off-white. (A bucket of roofing tar had been dumped on his leg from atop a new supermarket in Laramie, Wyoming one summer.) A magnetic deformity which drew a curious eye, a lingering look, perhaps even a poke with an inquiring finger to see if, Like a burnt marshmallow, the outside would crumble and reveal a soft, sticky white core. The rest of his body seemed so perfect as if to compensate for that leg.

“Seven-thirty,” he said cheerfully when I asked for the time. He paused. “You Sgt. Darly’s replacement?” I nodded. He paused again, then did a good thing: he stood up, reached out a hand, and said, “Tom Novotny.”

“Jake Krummel,” I answered, though “Jake” sounded odd in my mouth after so many years of being “Slag.” Never Jake, but always Slag, I no longer had the self-confidence or, more likely, conceit, to introduce myself by that audacious nickname. (All this a waste of time, though. I exposed my real identity the first time I got drunk.)

He offered me a smoke, handling the ritual of the pack and matches as if he had just begun smoking, though he had been for years. I think he realized how odd a cigarette looked in his healthy face. He and I sat on opposite bunks, exchanging the amenities of strangers to the increasing volume of the music.

Novotny reached to the only odd piece of furniture in the room, a chest-high mahogany cabinet, and eased the volumn down. The cabinet was rich Filipino mahogany, with carved jungle scenes on every flat surface which, when examined very closely, revealed a large number of couples, triples and daisy-chains in various stages, states and forms of — intercourse is not strong enough; fucking too crude for the artistry of the carving; copulation too limited; so I choose — cohabitation, for the figures did forever live in the wood. I had to laugh: a sexual stereo system able to handle LPs, 45’s and 78’s, tapes, AM-FM radio and Freudian nightmares.

“Hey, is this setup yours?” I asked.

“Naw. Belongs to Morning. Matter of fact, this isn’t even my room. I just come here to write letters to my girl,” Tom said. “She likes classical music.”

A nice thought, I mused as I rubbed the wood. Three shelves above were filled with paperback books, perhaps arranged too neatly, too organized by subject and author. Dostoevski, of course, but no Chekhov or Tolstoy. Sartre, but no Camus. Just a shade off-center of what I would have chosen. Too French, too black, and too avant-garde for my tastes, the books still made me want to talk to their owner.

“What’s this guy’s name?”

“Morning. Joe Morning.”

“He on my trick?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems to read a lot.”

“Yeah. Says he writes poetry too, but I haven’t seen any of it. He spends too much time in Town to do much of anything else.”

“Say, are you on my trick?”

“Sure.”

“Tetrick said you all were in Town.”

“Didn’t go. Go to Town ‘cause I’m tired of base. Sometimes I stay on base ‘cause I’m tired of Town. Ain’t new anymore. Only so many ways a man can get laid.”

“I wonder,” I said, touching a wooden maiden who clutched a small and hairy object to her crotch which I assumed to be a monkey, “after seeing this thing. There may be something new under the covers.” We chuckled together in that easy way which told both of us we would be friends.

It pleased me that Novotny did not seem ill at ease or in any way treat me as a sergeant, and at the same time we understood that the moment would come when I would have to tell him to do something or other which he did not want to do. If he respected me, he would do it and not, as others would, dislike me for the accidents of time and place which made me his sergeant. The months at Fort Carlton in training school had been unpleasant because I had been a barracks sergeant, a bad barracks sergeant, too easy at first, then too hard later when the man tried to take advantage of me. I had no business being a sergeant anyway. I was just a guy who had stayed in the reserves for the hell of it and the money (and maybe because I hoped I wouldn’t miss the next war as I had the Korean one). That lack of experience, and my attempts to be intellectual about something which isn’t, caused me much trouble. There is no rationale about orders: they have to be given and taken, but never can make much sense if thought about. Given a choice, I would have preferred to forge my tiny link on the chain of command out of mutual understanding of and respect for the necessity and value of discipline, but men who defied God certainly were not going to bow to any abstract discipline. But oddly enough, my foolishness was going to work in the 721st because the men were good. Not all, I guess, but enough. Like Novotny: good men whatever their educational or personal differences.

As our conversation faltered, I asked Tom about a place to eat on base.

“Say the food is okay at the NCO Club,” he said, giving me an out if I wanted it.

“No club tonight.”

“Pretty fair steaks at the Kelly Restaurant.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’m going up, if you want to come along.”

“Sure. What about your letter? I’ll wait if you want to finish it.”

“Fuck it,” he laughed. “She’ll marry some prick before I get stateside anyway. Get ready.”

As we walked down the hall to the central stairwell to call a cab, I was again struck by the quiet, the sense of desertion, but as I moved between those rooms, those walls which could not hold even a breeze, I realized they provided an unusual privacy for enlisted men. People were behind those walls — signaled by a muffled laugh or cough, a book falling from sleepy hands, a radio humming, a bunk groaning under a restless sleeper — privately behind them. I could not remember a single moment during my first hitch of being alone in the barracks, not even in the latrines.

“You people live good,” I said.

“Ain’t home,” Tom said, turning into the stairwell.