One to Count Cadence

by James Crumley

  “Yes, Sgt. Krummel?”

  “Sir. Sir, I know I’m off base, but the events of this morning seem to call for unusual actions.”

  “They are unusual events.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, sergeant, what did you want?” he inquired when I hadn’t spoken for several seconds.

  “Well, sir, it’s about the restriction to the Company Area.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, sir, ah, I’m worried about the quality of the work at Operations. It is already low due to the tension, and this harsher restriction, sir, will probably lower it even further. The Filipino liaison officer has already threatened to go to the major if the work doesn’t pick up.” One lie. “And the men are terribly on edge, sir, already. Might even say they’re horny as hell, sir.” I giggled like a high school virgin. I was willing to be anything.

  “I think the men can curb their physical appetites, sergeant. There’s too much of that sort of thing happening in this Company anyway. And as for the quality of the work — send them to me if it doesn’t pick up. This outfit is getting soft. It needs a little iron, and I intend to see that they get it.”

  “Yes, sir, I agree.” Two lies. “But the men feel that if the man who broke the bottles…” (God, I thought, is this really about some broken bottles.) “… is in the Company, sir, then he has confessed and, sir, no matter how silly this logic sounds, or how much a play on words it is, that’s the way the men feel, sir, and…”

  “Well, if they think I’m going to be threatened…”

  “Excuse me, sir, but they don’t mean that, I’m sure.” Three lies. “They’re just desperate, sir, and I’m afraid, sir, that we might have a real mutiny on our hands. I saw one in Korea, sir, and it was bad.” Four lies. “Everyone’s record took a permanent blemish, sir.”

  He nodded. He knew who was threatening whom, and he didn’t like it. He thought for a bit, then smiled slowly as if he knew something. “You’re perfectly correct, sergeant, a real mutiny would be quite disastrous. But I don’t see how I can go back on my word, do you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Well, everyone hasn’t confessed.”

  “Sir?”

  “You haven’t confessed, Sgt. Krummel. You might have done it, for all I know.” He smiled again, a smile which said, “I’ve got you Mr. Master’s Degree.”

  “Sir, I’d like to make a statement. I’m the one, sir, who broke your Coke bottles in the Day Room.” Five lies. “I’ll make restitution to the Company Fund, sir, and plead guilty to any charges you would like to make in connection with the actual destruction of the bottles, sir.”

  “Were you drunk, sergeant?” Oh, he was loving this.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why did you do it?” His best fatherly tone.

  “Momentary loss of perspective, sir. The machine took my coin and refused me a Coke, and since the machine was unbreakable, I avenged myself on the innocent bottles, sir.”

  “Sounds as if you might be mentally unbalanced, sergeant.” How he would like me to plead that.

  “No, not at all, sir. Like all good soldiers, sir, I have a quick temper and a strong sense of right which, under the direction of competent officers, can be a formidable weapon in combat, sir.”

  For a second he had forgotten whom he was playing with. “Well… Well, this isn’t combat. Return to your Trick, and report to me after this formation.”

  “Right, sir.” I saluted sharply, whirled and marched back.

  Lt. Dottlinger turned to Tetrick, told him to dismiss the Company after informing the men that all prior restrictions were lifted and the pass box would be open immediately. The Day Room would be reopened after proper cleaning. The men had already heard the lieutenant’s words, and they cheered when Tetrick dismissed them. Most ran for the barracks to change for Town, but a few paused to ask unanswered questions of me.

  I told Tetrick what I had done before I went in to see Dottlinger. He assured me that Dottlinger would not dare any more than an Article 15, Company Punishment. Tetrick seemed resigned that someone would be slaughtered for the greatest good, and seemed not to mind particularly that that someone was me. His attitude seemed to say, “It’s for the best.”

  “To hell with it,” I said. “Maybe I’ll kiss the bastard and let him queer me out, or maybe bust his pussylick face for him and let him hang my stripes for teeth he ain’t going to have.”

  “If you do, holler, so I can be a witness that he hit you first,” Tetrick laughed.

  But I had already thought of the worst thing he could do: ignore my confession, let me go, and then single out any enlisted man and bust him with evidence he would say I’d given; and if I didn’t agree to this, then the Company would be back on restriction again. I was surprised how much I hated Dottlinger at that moment, but even more surprised to discover that I wasn’t worried about my stripes and that I cared about the respect of my men. I had said, when I reenlisted back in Seattle, that God couldn’t involve me with anything or anybody again; I wanted to be a happy, stupid, payday drunk. But what God couldn’t do, Joe Morning managed.

  Dottlinger did, as Tetrick had predicted, give me Company Punishment: two hours extra duty for fifteen days. One hour policing the Day Room and one hour marching in front of the barracks as an example with full field pack and blanket roll. “To begin immediately,” he had said. He unlocked the Day Room, had me open the louvers, and gloated while I swept the floor with a short broom.

  So for fifteen days no one spoke to me for fear I’d take their heads off. The whole thing was so public, marching in daylight, squatting in the Day Room like a recruit. Once at a particularly bleak moment Tetrick had said, “Tell him to fuck himself. He hasn’t got a leg to stand on. He can’t touch you within the regs.”

  “For a man with no legs, he’s stepping on my toes pretty heavily,” I answered — but thought about his suggestion more than I care to admit.

  I had nearly decided that what I had done wasn’t worth it when the only good thing of the time happened. This kid from Trick One came out of the barracks one day when the sun was pouring into my fatigues like lava, and at that dark, sun-bunded moment, had said, “Look at the little tin soldier. It walks, it talks, it’s almost human.” I don’t suppose he intended that I hear him, but I had. Someone else had too. From the second floor above the door an invisible voice roared like the wrath of Jehovah. “Shut your wise mouth, fuckhead!” The kid jumped, looked around, then dashed back in the barracks, perhaps wondering if God hadn’t spoken to him.

  I glowed. I sparkled. I felt heroic for a change, instead of dumb. (I’m not ashamed: pride has turned better heads than mine.) Someone understood.

  “Ah ‘tis a kind voice I hear above me,” I said, but only a deep laugh answered me.

  But by the time my hour was over I had lost that quick lift under the sun. The sun wasn’t merely in the sky, it was the sky. From horizon to zenith the heavens burned in my honor, and in my chest and back and head. And in the shattering light all clear things lost themselves. Colors faded into pale imitations of themselves and became dust.

  I had come back to be alone, to find simplicity, and had found trouble, and in this trouble found I must fall back on that which I was, that which I would be, that which I had always tried not to be.

  I am the eldest son of generations of eldest sons, the final moment of a proud descent of professional killers, warriors, men of strength whose only concern with virtue lay in personal honor. But I still misunderstood a bit that day, I still confused being a soldier with being a warrior. That small, mean part of me which had wanted to care about rank and security and privilege was dying, and with the death of order began the birth of something in me monstrous, ah, but so beautiful. My heritage called, and though it would be many long moons before I answered, the song had burst my cold, ordered heart and I hated in the ringing sweep of the sun, and I lived.

  Historical Note 1

  There are days, whole, long, lov
ely days in the mountains which have nothing to do with the sun. A thick damp fog drifts in, draping the peaks and the high valleys in eternal mourning, gray, misty mourning. The fog limits my view but increases my perspective (that is, I suppose, what limits are for), and though I can only see the two dripping pines and an occasional bird, I can hear the world on such days. Not that I stop staring out the windows; perhaps I hope to see a sound. On my own, of course; you know how I hate drugs. But the sounds, clean, sharp tones… they pierce the blanket. I am convinced (sadly so, according to Abigail, or perhaps she said madly; she tends toward an insecure mumble when she speaks) that the only reason I can’t hear watches ticking on golfers’ wrists is because of the pounding of their pulses as they stride confidently past the windows. I still live out those windows. They have become my connection with life, except for Lt. Abigail Light, because Capt. Gallard hasn’t spoken to me since the day of the incident with Lt. Hewitt.

  But as much as I stare out those windows, I didn’t see Gallard creep up while I was reading the Sunday Stars and Stripes.

  “The present may be captured in those limp pages, my friend, but the past, and the future too, are out here, across this dim, gray, timeless mist,” a voice tolled in the window. I started, but caught only a glimpse of a golf cap, and wondered who the hell was playing tricks on a sick man. I should have known: a doctor.

  In a few minutes the voice came again, disembodied, from the hall. “Yes, the past, dim, bloody past, my poor, mad fellow.” Gallard stepped in, wearing rumpled short pants, a knit shirt, crepe-soled canvas shoes, and a nifty new golfing cap. He looked half-pleased, as if he had just made a hole-in-one which no one saw, and a drowsy smile lifted the sagging skin along his jaw line. His face always seemed to me well-used: Whatever the expression, from grin to scowl, and whatever the extent of his emotion, his face had a wrinkle for it.

  “Jesus shit. I thought I was having a visitation,” I said.

  “You are, you are,” he chuckled, smiling still more. “May I come in?”

  “Please do, kind spirit. I’d rather have you where I can keep an eye on you, than prowling around in the fog scaring hell out of me,” I answered, folding the paper. The pages were limp at that.

  “It’s hell I’m scaring in, not out. Murder must pay.”

  “On the installment plan?”

  “Don’t read that crap,” he said, gesturing with a large thermos bottle from behind his back. “Isn’t it enough that you give life, limb and dignity to the Army? You don’t have to wipe your mind with their version of the news.” He took the paper out of my hands and tossed it into the trash can.

  “Okay. What are you up to, besides collecting newspapers for Great Britain?”

  He explained that he wouldn’t gather manure for the English, claiming that they were too hesitant about commiting their troops in World War II.

  “Sorry,” I interrupted. “But why are you creeping about the clouds?”

  “Well,” he said, paused, then got up to shut the door. “I was supposed to play golf with the Base Commander but, as you can well see, we were fogged out. So I’ve been at the Club, crying over a dozen vodka martinis with the old man. And since he gave me some good news about you, I thought you’d want to know. So here I am. Hate golf anyway. I’ll give you a drink if you promise to stay sane.” He poured two small ones out of the thermos. “Cheers?”

  “Cheers?”

  “You should be happier than that.” He seemed almost angry, and sailed his new cap into the trash.

  “Why tell?”

  “Because our leaders have decided not to send you to jail.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Well, mainly because I’ve managed, at great expense, to convince everyone from Lt. Hewitt to the Base Commander to an angry Air Police sergeant that you should be forgiven on the grounds of post-combat reaction or some other bit of jargon.

  “We haven’t had so many Vietnam casualties that we’ve gotten casual about them yet, and since one of the ones we had died under rather suspicious circumstances — a drunken doctor and the wrong shot and all that sort of stuff. So everybody has a tinge of a guilty conscience right now which they will surely soon get over quickly…”

  “Thanks. Who died?”

  “Nobody you know. It’s always nobody nobody knows.” Gallard paused, his shoulders and chest, usually puffed in a knot of intense energy, seemed to be caving in upon themselves, sucked down in the wake of a sigh like a temple falling into the waves. “He wasn’t from your outfit. With the usual attempt at security, they scattered your outfit’s wounded like illegitimate children all over the Pacific. There are even, I hear, three guys in a British hospital in Singapore or someplace. Security, yes.”

  “The bastards notified my old man that I was injured in an aircraft accident.”

  “The security officer hasn’t gotten to you yet to swear you to silence; that’s why you have a private room. Less contact with uncleared personnel. Christ. Now everyone in the Far East knows about it.” He sighed again. “I had to make a deal, though.”

  “What? What about?”

  “Your court martial. As soon as you are marked fit for duty, as if you ever were, you will…”

  “Get shipped back to Vietnam?” I interrupted.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course not. A medical discharge will be drawn up, I’ll sign it; you get out, plus a twenty-five percent disability which you will lose at your first reexamination. So you get away free; like you always will, I suppose.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” His face brightened for a moment.

  “I’ll tell you someday.”

  “Please don’t.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say; thank him or curse him. I didn’t even know what to think about him. His concern was obvious, even bordering on fascination… What was Marlowe’s line? “The fascination of the abomination — you know.” I understood it, even welcomed it as far as I understood it. An odd relationship, doctor to patient, savior to warrior, officer to man. But I never said “Sir” to him, not because of the friendship, but because it was unthinkable. His innate kindness, his curiosity, his love gently thrust him outside the officer, the uniform and made him a man, a man to whom I could say, “How about another drink?”, a man who would answer, “I’m sorry, I didn’t notice that you were empty.”

  As he poured, I asked. “Why?”

  “It’s seldom men know why they do things,” he said, then reflected a bit. How like him to know what I was asking. “Maybe because I hated to see anyone, even you, railroaded into Leavenworth.”

  “Not much of a reason.”

  “No, I guess not.” He sat his drink down, then dug into his hair and continued with a nervous chuckle, “And not even the real one either.”

  I waited. I had time.

  “You might say I did it because I used to dream about you when I was a child. Or have nightmares, I guess, would be more accurate.” His face drifted through a series of frowns and half-smiles as he leaned back in the chair and clasped his hands behind his neck.

  “I suppose I’m obligated to be flattered or something, but I don’t really know what the hell you mean.”

  “Oh, not you really. It’s a funny thing, a long story. You see, I’ve got this thing… ha! got… had this thing for World War I airplanes when I was a kid. I must have built thirty or forty models of them — it took ten tries to get one to fly; but it did finally fly. Perfectly. Nearly a quarter of a mile down the road to a neighbor’s place and made this perfect landing. I ran all the way with it. God, I ran. But it landed, as I said, perfectly, but in a hog pen, of course, and the damned hogs trampled it and chewed it and ate it, rubber bands and all.” He smiled to himself; he had forgotten about me. “God knows why. Maybe they liked the way the glue smelled or maybe they just didn’t care for their pen to be used as a landing strip. Who the hell knows? They ate it though, every bit of it, and all the while I was crying and throwing clods at them, but they just
bounced off their fat, complacent rumps. I ran home and cried to my mother that it wasn’t fair, but she said that God didn’t promise that life would be fair, but that He would have mercy. Well, I said so much for a guy who doesn’t play fair, and that was the end of that.

  “Where was I? Oh, yes. Anyway, in spite of God in heaven and pigs in the world, I kept building airplanes, tried some design modifications on the plans I got out of Popular Mechanics, even designed a few of my own,” he said with pride. “And when I hurt my hand, the worst pain came from not being able to work on the airplanes. And then I became so wrapped up, so obsessed, that I began to dream about them. Every night. Every time I closed my eyes I was in the cold, blue air over France in a Camel. God, I was a gay, rake-hell dog, too. Theatrical smudges of grease here and there, a scuffed leather jacket. But no scarf. I had better taste even then.” He laughed, then drank, perhaps dreaming of the thundering wind, the rainbow circling his biplane’s shadow as it leaped and ran and leaped again over the hedges.

  “I, of course, was an ace at thirteen; but there was always a single dark cloud in my dreaming sky. Perhaps I’d learned something from the hogs. The cloud didn’t show up often, but often enough, and always so damned unexpectedly. I called him the Black Baron of Beirut, for reasons I’ve long since forgotten, but I think his name was Baron von Rumplested or something silly like that. He was always dropping out of the sun just after I had vanquished six Fokkers and wham! down I’d go in one of those awful falling dreams and then wake up in cold, heaving sweats. Not a dogfight, no contest, just wham! and down I’d go. He never bothered with finesse or fancy maneuvers or anything, he just swooped down and shot hell out of me. Once when my guns had jammed, he had the gall to pour sheep-dip all over me, and while I was trying to get it out of my eyes, he dropped the five gallon can on my right wing and broke it off.