Testimony and Demeanor

“Arresting and distinctive.… Completely convincing.… The four stories in this collection are extremely impressive.”

—
The Miami Herald

“Each of the stories contains small gems.… The first, ‘A More Complete Cross-Section,’ is a masterpiece, beautifully written in every line.”

—Joyce Carol Oates,
The New Republic

“A major novelist at the top of his form, Casey captures not only the texture of individual lives, but the shape and momentum of all lives that begin with the best intentions, then stray off course.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“[Casey] is an astute observer of the ruses as well as the private confrontations that govern our behavior.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“
Testimony and Demeanor
is serious writing that deserves serious reading.”

—
Washington Star

“[Casey’s] descriptions of nature and feelings are tautly lyric.… He is reclaiming and extending a rich tradition of American literature.”

—
Newsweek

“Casey … is an accomplished craftsman and a delight to read. No mode seems beyond him … all is understated and imbued with a powerful grace.”

—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of
The Writing on the Wall

“Even better reading the second time.”

—
Houston Chronicle

John Casey was born in 1939 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the University of Iowa. His novel
Spartina
won the National Book Award in 1989. He lives with his wife in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia.

The Half-life of Happiness

Spartina

Supper at the
Black Pearl

Testimony and Demeanor

An American Romance

TRANSLATIONS

Enchantments
by Linda Ferri

You’re an Animal, Viskovitz!
by Alessandro Boffa

W
HEN I FIRST HEARD THAT I WAS TO
go on active duty in the Army—specifically at Fort Knox, Kentucky—I welcomed the news. I regarded the ensuing six months’ military service as an opportunity to see a more complete cross-section of my fellow man.

I was cheated at first. There were only surfaces. The people circled me like the moon the earth, always presenting the same face, keeping the dark side hidden.

Moreover, the shock of being suddenly piled together in Fort Knox distorted even the surface appearances; I saw them as though through a prismatic kaleidoscope, their true colors and shapes scattered. No one was in his natural setting. I don’t know why I had expected at least some of the people to be at home, but I could see that they were not—just by the way they fingered their stiff fatigue uniforms and ran their hands fitfully over their shaved heads. One man fainted when they clipped off his hair. That was interesting, but he disappeared from the reception center. There was only the prevailing fabric of the Army that held steady. That, however, was somewhat more richly textured than I had imagined. When I arrived at Fort Knox, the commanding general’s name was Wonder. General Wonder. There were a number of coincidences of name, all of them equally hauntingly unperceived. The master sergeant who lectured us on military courtesy, company formations, and the meaning of bugle calls was named Roland. The supply sergeant who came to supervise us while we dyed our brown government-issue boots with black government-issue dye was named Glissen. If we had been asked to paint white roses red, I could not have been more delighted.

The first week of basic training we continued to be rushed about. There was always a great flurry, but our roles were so undemanding and passive that it was soothing. I did note that we had an apparently authentic sergeant. He was small and thin, with a rather unpleasant, fair—almost hairless—face.
“My name is McQueen,” he said, underlining his name tag with the chewed end of his cigar. “My first name is Sergeant.” He walked down the front row, looking up into our faces, and stopped in front of the boy next to me. “Ellridge,” he said, reading the name tag in front of his nose.

“Yes, sir,” Ellridge said.

“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I earn my money.”

“All right.” Ellridge was a Southerner with a soft agreeable voice.

McQueen spun on his heel and whistled. I turned to look at Ellridge while the sergeant’s back was turned. His thin neck drooped forward as he watched McQueen with puzzlement. McQueen, facing him again, reached out. I rolled my eyes to watch. His fingers grasped the middle button of Ellridge’s fatigue shirt. The button was unbuttoned. In the sergeant’s belt buckle I could see the reflection of Ellridge’s left hand as it moved. I turned and saw him cover the top of his own left thigh with it.

“You’re pretty sloppy, Ellridge. Do you really want that button?”

Ellridge smiled nervously.

McQueen ripped it off. “You’d better sew it on, then,” he said.

“I could have just buttoned it,” Ellridge said.

McQueen stared at him. Then his eyes lighted on Ellridge’s left hand. “What’s your hand doing there, Ellridge? You going to play with yourself?”

There was general laughter. Ellridge looked at me with dismay, and I looked curiously at McQueen.

He stared back at me. “What’re you staring at, troop? You want to get in on it too?”

There was more laughter.

“You better get your eyes front!” he said, grunting the last word so that it had a rather attractive nasal resonance.

But he also disappeared. The first sergeant told me that he
had been flown to Walter Reed Hospital on compassionate leave to be with his Korean stepdaughter while she had an eye operation.

First Sergeant Plisetsky was a large man. His chest was at least fifty inches around, as were his waist and hips. He invited me to his office at Company HQ. He told me McQueen was gone and that there was no one in charge of my barracks. He invited me to sit down.

“I see you smoke cigars,” he said, pointing to the large flat tin in my breast pocket. I offered him one. He took the tin and said with benevolence, “Have one yourself.” We puffed in silence. “You didn’t get these at the PX,” he said, handing me back the package.

“No,” I answered.

“Very fine,” he said, “very fine. I like cigars. Kipling liked cigars. I like Kipling too.”

“Yes,” I said.

“So you used to wrestle up at college,” he said, tapping my 201 file with his finger. “Fine sport. That why you dropped R.O.T.C.?”

“In a way.”

“I understand,” he said. “It’s all right.”

He reached in a drawer of his desk and pulled out a navy-blue brassard with three chevrons on it and handed it to me. “This is just field stripes,” he said. “No pay.” He paused and then added with satisfaction, “But that won’t bother you.”

I pinned the brassard on with the safety pins hanging from the worn felt.

He sighed. “I used to be first sergeant for a training company of clerk-typists. They used to play bridge. You don’t play bridge, do you? I thought we could get up a foursome. I often spend the night here,” he said, pointing to the cot behind him. “I’m a bachelor.”

“No,” I said.

“The best bridge player I ever met was a Harvard man too.
Big fellow, dark hair. But that was some years back. You wouldn’t know him.”

We smoked awhile.

“You won’t have to stand guard, or do any KP,” he said. “But try to stop the fighting. They’re lonely, they’re nervous, they’re”—he stopped to knock a cigar ash into the saucer of his coffee cup—“pent up. We used to run. Even my clerk-typists used to run. If they run, they just go to bed. But we can’t run anymore while it’s warm. A boy died of heat stroke running up a hill. More likely it was a weak heart. Not in our regiment, but still we can’t run. So try to control the horseplay in the barracks. I’ll stop by before the evening meal and tell them you’re the platoon guide. As far as they’re concerned, you’re just like a sergeant.” He started to sigh again but yawned. “It’s not so bad. Not so bad as they all say. I do my job. You do your job. We all do a job. You’ll all be gone soon.”

I went slightly and pleasantly mad during the next three weeks. The sun shone through the dust in such a mysterious way that I could not believe what we were all doing. I had looked forward to the time in the Army as one of disembodied observation, but I found I still couldn’t see the people as I had hoped. It was arranged that we rarely talked, but I also couldn’t see them because the sun only seemed to shine on things. I saw the black high gloss on the rows of boot tips melt into dullness under the sun. I saw sweat spreading across the softened fibers of fatigue shirts, squeezed out from under the suspenders of the pack harness. I saw hands groping with pieces of rifle. Interminably. And I was dazzled by looking at my shiny thumbnail through the bores of all their rifles. When I looked down the spirals, I had no idea how far away the other end was. I could feel my left hand around the barrel, and I could see my right thumbnail flicking the sunlight at my eye—but sometimes so close it was only the distance through a keyhole, sometimes so far that my
stomach lunged up to my chest. Pleasurably, I think. It was a beautiful sight—the glistening foreshortened rifling—and I was often hypnotized.

The roads we walked on were sometimes soft. The asphalt gave off colorless heat waves reminiscent of the beams in the rifle barrel, but the road itself was velvet, velvet gray as it climbed the hill ahead of us toward the sun.

I was a half ghost when the sun went down. I could not tell the men from shadows then. There was nothing to do. It seemed a profanation of the place to read. I could hear voices calling to each other. “Him? He don’t care. Just as long as your shit don’t smell.” There were also many small radios that tissue-papered a song—“Come-a come-a come-a come-a to me”—while steam poured out of the shower room, through the latrine (bearing with it the smell of mentholated shaving cream), and out the double screen doors in the flank of the barracks.