One to Count Cadence

by James Crumley

  Clean, shaven and rested, I refused to remember, and thought life would be wonderful if I could get a drink. In my nightstand drawer were several letters, one from my father with a fifty-dollar money order in it. I just glanced at the letter, catching a few lines here and there, something about his understanding that I wouldn’t have any money in the hospital. It seemed that some rear-guard orderly in Cherbourg had stolen his money when he had come back from Bastogne with pneumonia in December of ‘44. Whatever his reason, Thank God, I thought, because I didn’t have any money.

  Lt. Light cashed it for me on her lunch hour, then I collared the orderly when he came back to pick up my lunch tray. He squirmed and complained a bit, then became so businesslike that I knew this was a regular business. I gave him enough scrip for a black-market fifth of Dewar’s, and promised him another five when he brought it to my window that evening.

  With nothing to do all afternoon except wait for that magic bottle, I read my mail. One was from my ex-wife, and opened with a small chapter on how nice it was that we were able to be friends even after our divorce — which wasn’t quite true, but it sounded nice when she told her friends. Then she chatted about all the fine work she was involved in among the Negro population of Mississippi. She spoke of Mississippi as if it were Madagascar, but I knew that in spite of the fashionable nature of her “idealistic commitment” as she called it, she was really a good-hearted woman in the best sense of the word, and most of the time I was sorry that she had left me. She also managed to hope that I wouldn’t get mixed up in that mess in Vietnam, and quoted the objections of a brilliant and dedicated young man she worked under. I wasn’t quite so sorry after all. She had been writing me for almost two years now, telling me how she suffered for my bitterness and bias, but she wasn’t about to give up, even if I never answered. In a drunk moment some months before, I had dropped her a postcard with one word on it, “Nigger-lover,” but I had forgotten to address it. I often wondered who received it; it was a photo of a Negrito pygmy.

  My father’s letter was the usual thing: it had or hadn’t rained, and the ranch was or wasn’t doing well; one of my younger brothers had done something to make him wonder why a man bothered to continue the family name (this time Claude, the youngest, had tried to ride a Brahma bull in a rodeo, and had been hooked in the mouth before he got out of the chute, and the old man had to cough up two hundred bucks for a dental bill, and that reminded him, parenthetically, of my first and last, ha, attempt at the bulls, when that bastard bull, named Sara Lou for some obscene reason, had eaten my lunch at the Tilden rodeo, cracked half a dozen ribs, broke my left arm, and left me with a four inch half-moon memento on my left cheek, and goddamn hadn’t that been funny); he wished I would get out of the Army because it was a shame to waste my education, but a man had to do what he wanted or never be happy, and the Army wasn’t really so bad, or he didn’t remember it being so. The last thing he mentioned (last so I wouldn’t think I had caused him any grief or worry) was the telegram and letter about me being hurt. It took a while, but I finally understood that he thought I had been injured in an aircraft accident.

  An aircraft accident, they were calling it. Well maybe it was. Surely the good old Army brass couldn’t admit that a little bitty batch of Vietcong had dropped in on the 721st Communication Security Detachment and its three-hundred-thousand-dollars worth of equipment on our first night of operation; dropped in and knocked hell out of us. Not even the American Congress was supposed to know we were in Vietnam, so how could the VC know? I didn’t know then how many casualties the 721st had taken, but I had seen enough to know that it had been bad. A plane crash. Shit.

  And here I was, shot in the arm and leg by an American first lieutenant three hours after the attack was over. I hadn’t been angry yet, partly because I had done a foolish thing, and partly because I had not thought about it. There were others dead, and I counted myself lucky to be alive, fortunate enough not to bitch about the conditions of being alive. But anger is easier than reflection, so I paced the afternoon remembering every stupid officer I had ever known, and learned to hate them all over again.

  After evening chow Ramon and I handled our transaction at the window. I had a snort, then hid the bottle under my pillow, and tried to sleep until taps. I, fool that I was, wanted a peaceful drink without any nosy nurses bothering me.

  It must have been three o’clock before I awoke. My leg hurt, my head ached, the scabs on my side itched and my mouth tasted like the inside of a tennis shoe. Like a wounded crab I managed to pour a large amount of tepid water on my nightstand and a small swallow in the glass which I drank without drowning. Now was the big moment, the drink I had been waiting for all day. Mellow Scotch to sooth an angry soul. It tasted like shit. Strange how that taste cuts through romantic notions.

  I choked on the first swallow and spit half of it on my bedclothes. Three more fast sips, then I rested, waiting for a little numbness. I wondered why I objected to being drugged with drugs, but not with alcohol. Matter of middle-class taste, I supposed. Another sip, then a swallow, then a real man-sized drink. It didn’t make any difference; I still gagged each time. I rested again.

  A delicate chill had touched the air, and it seemed too heavy and damp for the mountains. Slight rustlings and tiny chirps like drowsy questions peeped through my window from the two pines. Past the trees a misty fog slept in the hollows, solid and white under the moon, gauzy and glistening beneath the street lamps. I searched the drifting mist, waiting for the Scotch to nudge me into that magic world outside my window, but I quickly began to feel silly: like a midnight rendezvous that doesn’t come off, and by one o’clock you are tired, cold and wish to hell you had never come, and hate the day you met her. And as I thought of a woman, supposing one to be just what I needed, I wondered what a climax in traction might be like. In my shape? Why not? Anything Fredrick Henry can do, I can do better. But then she came, the one I had been waiting for. Pale and delightfully breathless, a virgin reborn in the cobweb tangle of moon in her hair, her mouth opening like a flower under mine… As if by magic I was drunk, the cold air bubbling in my nose, the hot kiss of Scotch in my belly.

  For fifteen minutes I laid waste to those fifteen hundred famous virgins whoever they were. Within the next five minutes I banished evil from the house of man, smashing mine enemies with my virtuously white right claw. I shot a little more time trying to say “white right claw.” I had had love, virtue and honor, so I tried wine again, and drank seriously for a while. But it all amounted to — within half an hour I was drunk and bored, securely immobilized, without a soul to talk to me, to see me, or even pity me. Just me, alone in the dark, with half a bottle left and too many hours until dawn. But even boredom lacked constancy. My mind ranged the wide world of all incoherencies. I was grief-stricken and appalled by my survival; then certain that it was only my due as the fittest. There was much guilt, then bountiful thanks, for the death of Joe Morning.

  All things are possible on dark mornings, and by the time dawn revealed the troubled corners of my room, I hated, hated Lt. Dottlinger, who I had never liked anyway, and then the bastard shot me… well. I dug a pen from the nightstand drawer and signed my own cast, scrawled FUCK YOU exactly over the hole in my thigh. I wanted to write SLUTFINGER, as Dottlinger was known in the 721st, but was too tired.

  Dawn is one thing, daylight another: I had several drinks during the difference. Sleepy groans announced the new day in the wards. All ambulatory patients were being awakened to make their beds and sweep and buff under them. If any managed a hundred-and-one degrees or a traction cast, they could sleep ten minutes longer. I thought this no way to treat sick men, so transferred hates from Dottlinger to the hospital. I was mad. (I say mad, in the literal sense, neither to excuse nor to account for the following adventure.)

  Lt. Hewitt came in. Poor Lt. Hewitt carrying her lack of flesh. She was always bright and cheery, her uniform so starched and white it glittered like an angel’s wing, her smile all teeth and well-
brushed gums, as if to say, “Look at me! I don’t care that I’m ugly and skinny. Oh, see how well I’m holding up! See!”

  “Good morning, Sgt. Krummel,” she sang as only she could. “And how are we this fine morning?” She held the thermometer out like a stick of candy. As I tried to answer her, she stabbed me under the tongue, and crowed, “There we are!”

  “Where?” I mumbled.

  “Now who’s autograph is that?” she asked as she saw my sign. “Now, that’s not very nice, Sgt. Krummel,” she said, stiffening her back and propping her fist on what passed for her hip. “Just what is it?”

  I spit the thermometer at her and answered, “A valentine?”

  She was not amused.

  “A proposal?” I offered. Her fist skied off her hip. Probably not angry before, she certainly was now, thinking I was making fun of her. “Sure,” I hurriedly said, trying to make it all into a joke, “The closer to the meat, the sweeter is the bone. Leap in here and we’ll make the beast with two backs.” I didn’t think her father would mind. I laughed. I should not have.

  “You son of a bitch! You smart-ass son of a bitch!” she screamed, then punched me right in the nose. With her fist like a large, bony knuckle. My nose started bleeding and that, for some sanitary reason, made her even angrier. She hit me again. On the nose. She must have smelled the liquor because she stepped back and accused me, “You’ve been drinking. You’re drunk, aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Her voice screeched like chalk on a blackboard and made my teeth ache.

  “A man’s gotta have a little fun in this shithole.” The blood had dripped through my moustache into my mouth, so I spit on the other side of the bed. Bones hit me again. In the eye.

  “Hey, will you cut that crap out?” I asked.

  She hit me on the nose again. I debated hitting her (one of my ancestors, so it was told, had once hit a woman, but she had had a knife after him), so I decided not to. I spit a mouthful of blood on her pure skirt. It splattered the white cloth like dark sin, and I could not have hit her hard enough to make her jump back the way she did. A dirty trick, I admit, but better than hitting her. Also easier.

  “You’ve ruined my uniform!” she shrieked. “You’ll be sorry! You’ll pay for that! And this too!”

  I reached under my pillow and had a drink on that.

  “Don’t you throw that bottle at me! Don’t you dare.”

  God knows I wouldn’t have. No telling what she would have done to me.

  “Get out of here, you silly bitch. Get out and let me die in peace.”

  “Don’t you threaten me!”

  “Ah, shit… Hawww!” I shouted, then threw the bottle in the opposite corner. She screeched and ran away like a wounded goat.

  It was so quiet after she left that I could hear an occasional early golfer driving off the fifteenth tee and snatches of conversation and laughter from the fairways. The morning seemed fresh and bright, the air clean, and I wished I were playing golf out there instead of hell in bed. Then I was sorry I had thrown the bottle away because I wanted another drink. The one I’d had was working like magic in my stomach; better than coffee or food, it had awakened me.

  Then Sgt. Larkin, the male nurse, rushed in, pushing a rattling tray of hypos. He was a short, stocky, hairy man who tried to give the impression he had seen everything. But he had not seen me.

  “Okay, son,” he said, “Take it easy. Everything’s going to be all right.” He advanced, needle held like a knife in his hand, and reached for my unbroken arm. “This’ll make everything all right.”

  “Then you take it. Keep off, man.” I jerked my arm away.

  “Okay, buddy, let’s stop with the games.” He had a low level of patience. He tried to make his voice cold and military; but I didn’t give a shit for that now.

  “Butt out, Larkin. Get that damned needle away.”

  He reached again, and I slapped the needle out of his hand. The swinging of my arm released something in my blood, something hot and clean. It hardened into a calm, mean thing, clear and clean now, and I liked it.

  “Okay, bud, we’re through with the games now,” he said, preparing another dose. “I don’t want to break your other arm, but you’re gonna get this one way or the other.”

  “Don’t talk so much, tough man. Get on with it.” I felt a smile like a dare on my face. Larkin hesitated, then shook his head as if wondering what there was to be afraid of. I caught him with a stiff thumb in the windpipe as he leaned over the bed. Not too hard. Not too easy either.

  He staggered backwards, his hands pleading at this throat, his eyes praying to me, then crashed into his tray. It danced drunkenly away on two legs, bounced off the wall, then swayed, throwing its glittering mad burden across the floor, then rolled slowly back towards Larkin. He gurgled and moaned, tossing.

  “Don’t fuck with the Phantom,” I said, and he heard me before he passed out. The spasm in his larynx relaxed, and his breathing started again. But I didn’t pay too much attention. Christ was a carpenter; he could afford to forgive his enemies; I’m a warrior, and can’t.

  It was quiet again, and I rested, testing the air with my bleeding nose. I pitied Bones for a moment, wondering how I might apologize. But kindness never really repays cruelty, I thought, Let her hate me. That might be the kindest thing of all. But then I laughed as I wondered what poor soul might rattle Bones together some day. “What a mess,” I whispered. “What a silly mess.” I was sure that somehow this was all Morning’s fault. Maybe the bastard was going to haunt me. I might have offered his ghost a drink of blood or Scotch, whatever its preference, but the Air Policeman Bones had called came in.

  He was so tall and strong, his face nearly all jaw under the shadow of his cap. His mouth was compressed into a thin, unbent line, and he stood as if he might challenge the gods of war themselves; but he was a soldier, not a warrior. All show and slow to boot.

  “All right,” he said, sharply. “What seems to be the trouble here.” He had glanced at Larkin and the scattering of glass with a look which said “inoperative” and dismissed them from his mind. “You there! What’s going on here?” He addressed an imaginary point where my head would have been if I could have stood.

  “Me? Geez, I don’t know. I just work here.”

  “You, fellow.”

  “Say, sonny, ya’ll tilt that there sombrero back jest a scrunch so’s Ah cain sees ya’ll’s eyeballs. Ain’t likely Ah’d talk with a man, ifn Ah cain’t sees his eyeballs.”

  He snapped to attention. “Cut the lip, huh.”

  “You taking me in, airman?”

  “No,” he answered in all seriousness. “Just going to hold your arm while they stick a needle in it. I’ve handled you nut-house cases before.”

  “Oh, really. Well, let me show you something before you start handling this nut-house case,” I said, holding up my left hand. “See that hand, sonny. That’s a real mean hand. Registered with the police in seven states as a dangerous weapon. See those calluses on the side there, and on the fingertips. That’s a killer’s hand, son. You’d best watch it.”

  “Ha, ha. You been seeing too many movies, fellow.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps so, young man. That may well be the case. But the visualization of a dream certainly does not alter the essence of its reality; it enhances the reality.”

  “You really are crazy, aren’t you? I guess you look sort of crazy.”

  Ah ha, I thought, a nonbeliever, a discounter of dreams. And a warrior must dream. “I’m warning you, watch that hand.”

  “You better stop going to those movies. You’re liable to get hurt,” he chuckled as the doctor entered, brisk, impatient, another blessing in hand.

  “Away! foul son of Priam or be split asunder,” I shouted, waving my arm. “And the smoke of your pyre will trample the night like the hot, raging breaths of a stallion and the flames lick the sky like the hounds at his flanks.”

  “Jesus,” the doctor said.

  The AP laughed and stepped to the side of th
e bed. “Okay, sir, I’ll handle this crazy bastard,” he said, smiling just enough to bend the line of his mouth. I sneered, bunched my arm on my chest. He reached for it, then hesitated and shook his head like Larkin, then reached again.

  But it wasn’t there. It had sped like a spear into that soft spot below the sternum, in, in to the knot of nerves, and quivered there. His eyes opened in the shadow of his visor. I had only intended a poke, a tap to let him know that I could, but my arm raised a soul of its own and spoke to something in mine. Again, swifter than thought, strengthened with a short grunt of nervous energy, my hand rejoined the battle. The AP’s mouth opened, though not in laughter, and the upper half of his body tilted over the bed. I raised the cast-bound arm, serious now, and swung, remembering a Paiute ghost dancer granted invulnerability by Wovoka, a Bulgarian under Krum seeking a Byzantine skull for his drinking cup, remembering every violent image dredged from the limitless memory of man, and the ghosts lent me strength. I took him on the side of the head above the ear. His cap flew away; his head and shoulder crammed against the wall, shattering plaster. He shivered in a spasmodic dance, then his eyeballs, visible now, rolled, and he joined Larkin on the floor. I, purged, lay back to ease my ragged breath. Then the pain came from my leg, twisted and sucked my soul back into the void, and I went thankfully away.

  * * *

  There was a bird, a woodpecker, standing on my head, pecking my nose. I clenched my eyes and rolled my head, but he kept up that incessant pecking. Each one came as a bright flash, tapping me out of the peaceful darkness. Goddamned bird. He wouldn’t get off my nose. He pecked exactly where it had been broken once, right in the tenderest spot. I strained to get my hands on him, but they would not move. Then a phrase from a bad Tennyson sonnet jumped into my head, something about a “still-recurring gnat.” But it wasn’t a gnat, it was a vulture… Then I woke.