He passed out. I saw him resting his head on his mill, and I shook him to remind him of his next sked. The swivel chair rolled toward the wall, dumping him at my feet with a thump I felt through my boots. Cagle turned around and said, “God-damnit, Franklin! If I told you one time, I’ve told you a thousand, to leave those fucking kites alone.” He helped me lay him between the wall and console, then copied Franklin’s sked.
Morning, who acted as if he had invented mitigating circumstances, checked with me. “You going to turn him in, Krummel? If anyone’s had a tough deal out of life, that poor bastard has.”
“Morning, I don’t care if all you sons of bitches sleep. Forever.” I left Franklin to sleep it off. Several bad jokes were made to ease the tension, then everyone went about their business.
Around 0400 Cagle dropped through the trap door which led to the roof and shouted that a jeep was turning down our road. Lt. Dottlinger was the Officer of the Day. If he didn’t kill Franklin right then, he was sure to stick him in the stockade and prefer charges. Being the able leader of men that I was, I didn’t know what to do. But the Trick looked at me. It would be my decision. I tried not to think, but grabbed Franklin’s shirt front and dragged him over to the ladder. Morning helped me lift him to the roof. Cagle let Dottlinger in the gate, then followed us down the ladder and took his position.
Dottlinger entered to an “OH, no!” sigh of the compressor. He had been passed over for captain twice, and when the lists came out once more without his name on it, he would revert to his former enlisted rank of sergeant which he hadn’t really made but was a gratuitous benefit of OCS. He loved being an officer, and looked for chances to seem efficient.
“Sgt. Krummel,” he said, returning my greeting, “What are those men doing out of uniform?” Several of the men had removed their fatigue shirts.
“Operations policy, I understand, sir. The men on the mid-trick may remove their shirts while inside the building.”
“Not when I’m Officer of the Day, Sgt. Krummel.”
“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know. You men get your shirts on. And button up those flapping pockets.” Dottlinger didn’t like the pockets bit. He wanted to do it. He suspected me for finishing college. He hadn’t made it.
Morning was copying very intently, and had not stopped to put on his shirt, though he heard me.
“That man is still out of uniform, Sgt. Krummel.”
“He’s copying, sir. He has a sked.”
“I want his shirt on now, sergeant, right now.”
“Yes, sir.” I waved at Novotny to relieve him. He plugged his cans into Morning’s console, and picked up the man at the end of a line as Morning slipped out of his chair.
“Ahhhh,” he moaned, shaking out the muscles of his back as if he had been copying for hours instead of seconds. “Oh, hello, Lt. Dottlinger. How are you tonight? Or this morning, I should say. Haven’t seen you in quite some time, sir.” No trace of insolence in his voice. Nothing Dottlinger could hang a feather on.
“Get in uniform, Morning.”
“Sir?”
“Your shirt. Get it on.”
“Sir, we’re allowed to remove our shirts on mids.”
“I don’t want excuses, soldier. Get in uniform.” Dottlinger was red.
“Am I under arrest, sir? I don’t understand. A phone call from home, sir? Tell me.”
“What? Don’t be silly. Get your shirt on — now!”
“You had me scared there for a minute, sir. I was sure it must be trouble.” Morning started to walk away.
“Morning! Get your shirt on!”
“Yes, sir, right away. But I’ve been copying for over an hour and I ah… need to go to the latrine, sir.”
“Now!”
“Yes, sir!” Morning fumbled with his sleeves, put the wrong arm in once, then buttoned one button too high, then one too low, and all the time jumping from one foot to the other. As he undid his pants, he shouted, “Jesus!” and ran for the latrine, his shirt tails flapping and his pants tumbling around his ankles. He ran like a man trying to hold a balloon between his knees. He didn’t have any shorts on and the men laughed at his bobbing, bare white ass. He came back shortly, relieved, stretching and sighing, “Sorry about that, sir. But I just couldn’t wait another second.”
Dottlinger was twice as red in the face now, and he slapped his ball-point pen in his hand as if it were the swagger stick he couldn’t carry any more. “Why aren’t you wearing shorts, soldier?” he burst out. Levenson, our red-headed, freckled faced Jew, popped from behind the antenna patch panel, grinning like a weasel, giggling in his high-pitched voice, then ducked back as Dottlinger turned.
“Sir?” Morning asked.
“The Army went to great trouble to issue you underwear, and gives you a clothing allowance, so why aren’t you wearing shorts?” He shook his pen at Morning. “Don’t you have any, soldier?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do.”
“Why aren’t you wearing them?”
“I always wear them for inspections, sir. Always.”
“I don’t care about inspections. Why aren’t you wearing them now?”
“It’s quite personal, sir, and I’d rather not discuss it in front of the other men, if you don’t mind, sir.” Ordinarily Dottlinger would have understood personal modesty, but not now.
“I don’t care what you’d rather not do — I want to know why, soldier!”
Morning ducked his head and mumbled something.
“Speak up!”
“They crawl… they get in the…” He even managed a blush. “In the crack of…” He seemed overcome by shame. “The crack…” Not a sound.
Dottlinger sighed, and for a moment I had visions of him ordering all pants dropped to check the shorts situation, but he caught hold of himself. “Morning, don’t let me catch you without shorts again.” Levenson giggled. You could see the resolve in Dottlinger’s face to get Morning. “You think that’s funny, Levenson.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
Dottlinger started to say something, then paused as if to say, “What can you do with a crazy bastard who sits around naked all the time in the barracks.” He knew he had been taken for a ride, and a weary, familiar one at that. He looked like four o’clock in the morning. His face told of years of being the kid chosen last for the ball games, a fox first caught, a never successful hound, the kid who could never keep up, and he was behind again. He stayed a while longer, checking the building, listlessly searching for dust or dirt in a place cleaned and inspected three times a day. When he came up from the offices below, he said to me, “I believe the area under the major’s desk could use some wax and a buffing, Sgt. Krummel, especially where he puts his feet. If you’d take care of that, please…” he said walking toward the door.
Petty bastard, I thought, no longer quite so understanding. “Yes, sir, I’ll get the shit-house mouse on it right away.”
He turned back. “I’d prefer if you didn’t refer to the Operation’s orderly in that manner, Sgt. Krummel. This is not the old Army, you know. We realize that profanity exhibits a vocabulary deficiency, and I don’t think a man with a master’s degree should suffer from that particular problem, do you?”
“You’re quite correct, sir. Not that particular problem.”
“Well, goodnight, sergeant. Ah, and don’t neglect the major’s desk.”
“No, sir. The major’s desk. Yes, sir.”
As the heavy door slammed behind Dottlinger, Cagle slipped from his chair and up the ladder as quickly as a monkey to let him out the gate, then lowered Franklin through the trap. He was still out. Novotny lodged him in his chair and slapped his face with cold water until he came around. He woke, mumbling, “Fuck ‘em, goddamnit, fuck ‘em,” then staggered to the latrine. He returned in better shape, his eyes puffy but awake and a silly grin on his face.
“Jesus Christ, it’s four-thirty,” he said, stretching his arms and yawning. As he rubbed the back of his neck, he found a few piece
s of gravel. “Hey, where’d this come from?” Novotny explained. “You guys did that for me? Jesus…” He started to say something smart, then stopped. “Jesus. Thanks… Thanks.” He started to cry, bewildered tears. “Nobody ever …” He stammered, then sat down and put his headsets on.
I put things in order, caught up the hourly log, then grabbed a can of wax, a mop and the buffer out of the utility closet. I took an hour on the major’s floor, waxing and buffing until the tile was as shining hard and brittle as my anger.
When I went back upstairs, everything was clean and glistening except the floor, and Franklin was waiting for the mop and buffer. “I’m sorry, sarge,” he said, taking the gear from me, “I promise you, if it ever happens again, I’ll turn myself in. Promise. Thanks.”
“Don’t sweat it, kid. It won’t happen again,” I said, admiring the immaculate room. You, Krummel, you got troubles? A Trick-ful. It was different now, easier and more relaxed, like a family, now that I had pulled Franklin into the Trick by his shirt front, stepping into the living room myself. We knew where we stood, for better or worse: together.
* * *
But Joe Morning and I were friends from the beginning. Perhaps it was as simple as two men just liking the look of each other, or as complex as covering hate with love. We looked somewhat alike, enough so that we often passed for brothers in Town, except for our coloring, Joe fair and I dark, and our noses, mine hooked and crooked as sin, his straight as an arrow. I affected a ferocious, drooping moustache, and Morning his scholarly spectacles. We stood the same six feet, but I was thirty pounds heavier than his 195, and I suppose it was the size which started us.
“You ever play any football, Sgt. Krummel?” he asked on his fourth trip to the coffee pot that first morning at work. I could tell he wanted to say something, to start a conversation, but he didn’t, so I waited.
“I played a little in college.”
“Where?”
I told him. He had heard of the small South Texas school. They had been NAIA contenders two seasons before.
“You play on that team?” he asked.
“No. I was at the University of Washington by then.” We went through the routine about what I was doing in the Army, and then I pulled a quick history out of him. (Actually no one ever had to pull anything out of Morning. He told everything, which is a nice way to lie.)
He had been born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but spent his first ten years or so in Phoenix, then back to Spartanburg for the rest of high school. He went to a large Southern university as a single-wing tail-back and Accounting major until he changed to drinking and Philosophy in his second semester, which he continued until he was expelled in his junior year. Then he commuted between Phoenix where he sang folk songs in a bar and the South where he sang in demonstrations, until, so he said, an Alabama judge, at Mrs. Momma Morning’s request, sentenced him to three years in prison or the Army on an assault charge. Morning had forgotten how to passively resist. He took the Army as the greater of two evils, gave the judge as a reference on his security clearance application, and after nine months at Fort Carlton, he came to the 721st. (The Alabama judge bit was only half a lie, and Joe Morning told it with such skill and a great ability to laugh at his troubles, that everyone, including me, believed it. Only Quinn ever suspected, and he was crazy. Even as I know the truth, I still think Morning told a fine story.)
Morning was open and friendly with me from the start, as he was with nearly everyone, but I never knew quite what to make of him in the early days. Surely he hated the world order, the capitalist system, the American miscarriage of democracy, the slavery of the Army, the Philippines, Clark Air Base and the 721st; but not necessarily in that order, because his moods would change. But I don’t think he hated any single man. He would rail for hours against Southerners, but would defend the other Southerner on our Trick, Collins, to any and all comers. But to the South in general he shouted, “Freedom Now! Fuck understanding your particular problems!” It was the same with Filipinos: he thought them thieving, sneaky bastards. But each trick he risked a court martial for some Filipino private he didn’t even know. Morning hated Christians, particularly Catholics, but he would defend the Catholic Church against the accusation of holding back education three hundred years during the Middle Ages; and he probably knew his Bible better than any man I knew, but he hid his knowledge, and only shouted verses of damnation when he was crazy drunk. His friends never knew quite where he stood, but they did know that Joe Morning would do anything they asked, and seldom ask anything of them. When he did, it was with such great shyness that no one could refuse him. He was thoughtful to boot and kind in the bargain, and easily forgave the thoughtless and unkind acts of his friends. He could be cruel, moody, but he endured these things with a wry, self-effacing humor which took the bite out of the bitterness. Ordinarily he was a happy, perfect drunk, but once each month or so, he would lose control in a wild, insane night, and cry and fight and scream and beat his head on the floor till no one knew who or what he was…
Such was Joe Morning, Joseph Jabez Morning, hanging between the sun and the moon, a man of great tides. Like all men without roots, direction or patience, he was a revolutionary, not a rebel but a revolutionary, a destroyer, a reacher for all or nothing for anyone. (It would be easier, so much easier, this history I record, if Joe Morning could have been a bad man, an evil heart, but he was good, and in his misguided virtue drove me to the evil of excess and even to murder, and in the end passed the avenging, burning, falling stone of revolution to me.)
* * *
He came to me the morning of Franklin’s salvation and asked, “Sgt. Krummel, the Trick is having a Roll Call in Town today, if you’d like to come.” Roll Calls were for the men, and no trick chiefs allowed unless asked by the men.
“Thank you. I’d like that.”
3
Town
By the time I ate and walked up to my room, the Trick had already changed out of their uniforms and gathered in my room.
“What’s the hurry? I’m going to shower first,” I drawled.
“Shower!” they screamed. “What are you? a preacher? You don’t shower before you go to Town!”
Outvoiced, I reached in the closet for a pair of slacks.
“What are you? Got a date or something? You don’t wear slacks to Town.” They were dressed in Town clothes, that is, everything from shoes to shorts which could be ripped, stolen, or shit on for all they cared. I tried a pair of Levi’s.
“What are you, a new guy? No Levi’s, no blue jeans off base!”
I took another pair, light brown, a knit shirt and a pair of buff Wellingtons, and sat them on the table. “Okay, troops, out,” I said, opening the door. “You just wait in the Orderly Room, I’ll be right down. As soon as I shit, shower, and shave.”
They grumbled, but they left, and were waiting in the Day Room, playing pool and shuffleboard when I came down.
“So you’re lovely, Sarge,” Cagle said, “but Town is all used up by now.” It was 0745.
“I hear you’re going to Town,” Tetrick said from behind his desk. He handed me the sheaf of three-day passes. “Make ‘em sign out.” His face was pale and bloated from a hangover, but he smiled. “They’ll take care of you until you can take care of them. I hope. But watch yourselves. Capt. Saunders is going stateside for six weeks, and Lt. Dottlinger will have the Company. He don’t like guys who go to Town. So stay clean.
“You guys don’t let him fall in love,” Tetrick shouted as we left.
Lt. Dottlinger was coming in, his OD armband still crinkling his shirt sleeve, as we tumbled out front to wait for the cabs to take us to the gate. He answered our quick salutes with a crisp touch of ball-point pen to cap bill and a grim, brimstone eye.
* * *
Angeles, in spite of its reputation as a minor version of heaven, was a collection of bamboo huts, wooden, tin-roofed buildings, dusty streets, open sewers, and seventy-five or eighty bars. It wasn’t quite as modern
as a Mexican border town, which it very much resembled, nor as dirty as a large city slum. The streets always seemed festive in a way, filled with people, dogs and pigs wandering without the help of crosswalks or traffic lights. I liked the look of the people. They were cleaner than I had been led to expect, and without that wolfish, greedy glare of the citizens of Columbus, Georgia or Fayetteville, North Carolina or Kileen, Texas.
Our cabs stopped in the center of Town where five streets intersected. Three kiosks were around the plaza, three of the half-dozen or so enclosed ones. The others, and there seemed to be hundreds spotted around Town, were open to the weather. It was explained to me that kiosks were for serious drinking, since the barmaids were indecently nice and wouldn’t even meet an American eye on the street. The whores were in the bars or in houses. Trick Two, my Trick, usually gathered at the Plaza.
We filed into the narrow, high room, jammed ourselves around an elongated horseshoe bar on small, hard bamboo stools. Venetian blinds held off the early morning sun around one long and one short side, and three Edwardian fans ladled the air above the bar, buzzing and stirring as much breeze as fat, lazy blowflies. A huge hulk of chrome and plastic commanded the scene from a niche high in the end wall, contentedly bubbling, watching over her foolish children.
“Roll Call, mama-san,” Morning said to the large, middle-aged owner of the Plaza.