One to Count Cadence

6. Raid

The morning the Huk bandits tried to rob the Central Exchange, my trick was on the last of a set of mids. The six mids had seemed like six months to me. It had been too hot too long. The work had long lost any magic for me. Even Town was too dreary to bear. Hot and dusty and dry. The manure dropping from calesa ponies raised small dust storms in the street, and the wet cakes dried before they could stink. It had been five months since Lt. Dottlinger had tried to take Town away from us, but we would have given it to him now.

At 0200 I telephoned the Flight Line, hoping that we had received courier mail on the 0100 flight from Travis, but there was nothing. I crossed a flying trip to the Flight Line with Cagle bulling the three-quarter all over the road from my list of possibilities to make the rest of the trick bearable. I wandered around the room several times, checking copy sheets, half-hoping Morning would start an argument or a word game or anything to pass the time. All the men were jabbering about the Trick's Break trip to the beach at Dagupan planned for the next three days, but I had heard about nothing else for the past week, and didn't want to hear any more. Back at my desk I wrote the 0300 entry in the log – something nonsensical, hoping for a laugh when it was read, but knowing no one ever read the damned thing anyway. The room and all its contents seemed to be turning gray. All the equipment, desks, chairs and consoles were already gray, and the faded green fatigues could have been gray in another light, and the cream walls were surely a shade of ashes. The same talk, the same faces. Without windows who could know if it was day or night outside? I might have been trapped in that square one-room building for months, even years, and not know it. The same work, the same non-work.

I sat down and allowed myself to enjoy the idea of soldiering again – usually I didn't think about it. I could have almost been excited about spit-shining my footgear, or laying out a full field inspection for myself. But I had my houseboy for those things, and no real reason to do them anyway. No more were the three fingers of my right hand stained soft and brown like those of the Negro shineboy in my home town. (Boy? Old Luke was sixty when I was ten. Morning must strain in his grave when I say that.) No longer the pleasant order of a perfect bunk, or me in khaki stiff armor and standing tall. But like most men, I fell easily into the easy life. Luxury is like a Sunday afternoon nap: "Oh, I meant to, ah…" but you are already dead for an hour or two, and you always wake with a filthy taste in your mouth. But you, and I, will sleep again next Sunday. If they took your houseboy away, Krummel, you'd cry like a baby. Besides, soldiering is for brutes and animals who don't understand, and you, Krummel, are an educated, sensitive and intelligent man, and…

A face appeared before me. Distraction, I shout! But who would it be but Peterson with a tale about a new girl at the Skylight, a real honest-to-God blond named Gloria who was an ex-movie star from Manila. He thought he might shack steady with her since she was the best thing eighteen years of life had found him. Or was it nineteen?

"Sure, Pete, I fucked her once. Her hair's bleached, she uses too much make-up to cover small-pox scars, and she gave a guy a blow-job in a blue movie once. Lovely girl," I shouted above the electronic whispering and the grinding of the damned malfunctioning air conditioner. Voices stopped, heads turned. Peterson, poorest son of Peter, frowned slightly and spoke to his friendly trick chief, "Geez. I thought she was a nice girl, Sarge," then quietly dissolved into a film of ashes. I swung out of my chair and up the ladder to the roof before I got soot in my eye. "Geez," he said behind me.

On the roof I slammed the trap door on the noisy square of light. Novotny turned from his post at the edge of the roof. I waved at him, and he turned around to lean on the waist-high wall which outlined the roof. The compound was as bright as a supermarket, vastly illuminated by new floodlights on poles around the fence and on the corners of the building. It seemed very sheltered in the dark square of the roof, a safe place to stroll, to watch the world without being seen; the only sounds a scattering of gravel across the tarred roof from your feet or a gentle thump as a rice bug discovered its fate against the brick wall below the beckoning lights. A pleasant and roomy crow's nest but with very little to spy upon – the spying went on below. The fences, the gate, the parked three-quarter, and fifty yards of cogon grass. Occasionally a small pig might be glimpsed racing across the thirty-yard swath cut around the fence, but where the grass wasn't cut, it waved higher than a man's hopes and anything you chose to see out there was a ghost of your own construction. A patch of darkness in a square of light in an eternity of darkness in a hole in the bottom of the sea. To the right in the distance were the lights of the Main Gate, to the left those of the Central Exchange, and behind were the dancing colored lights of the runways, dipping to the swinging baton of the endless beacon. But these were only lights, distant cold dots without the warmth of stars. The sullen night was no more pleasing than the eternal daylight below. Even the silence held a gritty whisper, and I walked around to hear the track of my boots and spoke for the sound of my voice, "Got a cigarette, Novotny?"

He shook his pack at me, scattering several across the roof. "Have some," he said. I could see the light gleaming off his cheeks and knew they were clenched in a grin.

"Thanks."

"You got a bug up your ass tonight?" he asked as we searched for the lost cigarettes. "Heard you holler all the way up here."

"Maybe I'm going Asiatic like the rest of you bastards. Who knows?"

"Told you this place wasn't home."

"You did, didn't you? Pete thinks it is."

"Huh."

"Pete's fallen in love with a new broad at the Skyview. Do you know who she is? He said she had blond hair."

"Yeah," he snorted, "she's got blond hair, but she ain't got pink nipples. She's okay in the dark, but in the daylight she's bad news." We stood up and leaned over the wall.

"He says he may steady shack with it," I said, flipping my cigarette among the pile of rice bugs on the sidewalk below. "Hope he doesn't bite off…"

An explosion and a clatter of automatic fire at the Main Gate interrupted me. We could see bouncing headlights and splashing bursts of automatic fire followed by their rattle.

"Jesus. What's happening?" Novotny asked quietly, grabbing my arm.

"I don't know, but load your weapon, anyway," I answered on my way to the trap door.

Later I learned that six jeeps of Huk bandits had hit the Main Gate with everything from a 20mm cannon stolen from a jet to a.25 caliber Nambu light machine left by the Japanese, and lots of swivel-mounted.50s and.30s. And they knew how to use them. They came through the gate without changing gears, knocked down six Air Policemen, two Filipino guards and a KP coming to work early; blew up the guard shack, a jeep and a three-quarter, and kept on moving. But we did not know any of this until later.

I hit the floor shouting, "Shut her down! Shut her down! Levenson! get on the phone to PMO and find out what's happening at the Main Gate!" I fielded seventy questions by not answering, then caught seventy more when I unlocked the weapons rack and the ammo locker. "Everybody get a weapon and ammo and get on the roof!" They stared at me with a single question furrowing every face: War? Then the same sadness touched every pair of eyes when the next thought followed, as had been promised since they were born: The Bomb? Oh, my God, the faces said, Oh my God! Nobody told us. We're not ready. There's too much left undone. We all stood very still for a long, long second, very quiet in the metallic hum and beep of our useless equipment, as if wondering why it hadn't warned us, listening again for a clue from the silent, glowing and smug tubes. I thought they would be all right. They were just stunned by the opening of the ammunition locker. None of them had ever seen the green footlocker opened. The weapons' rack was okay, even familiar, an ordinary thing of day to day inspections or alerts, but live ammunition was only for the range or standing roof guard and being very careful not to accidently fire a round because old Johnson had caught a Special Court for firing one round. But this was different. Frightening, exciting, but mainly different, and it grabbed them and held them silent and still. But like all captured moments, this one was as short as it was long, and it ended as I shoved several bandoleers of M-1 clips into Morning's stomach, and shouted, "On the roof! Move! Move! Move! Cagle, get the outside lights. Move!"

They moved.

I grabbed a rifle, some ammo and swung up the ladder, shouting once more for Levenson to call PMO. "Busy! Busy! Busy!" he screamed back, his voice as high and irritated as the signal he was getting.

On the roof madness was unleashed as everyone tried to load, look, and run around knocking each other off the roof. A line of headlights had already turned off the main highway on the side road coming toward us. I could barely keep my mind on the men: the rifle in my hands kept begging to be fired. Another jeep followed the line at a distance which I later judged to be the effective range plus one hundred of a.50 caliber at night from the back of a speeding vehicle. Two sets of headlights were coming across the grass from the runways behind us, and more along the fence next to the Exchange. It looked as if we were being attacked from all sides, and since I had forgotten about the money in the Exchange half a mile east of us, this attacking fear did more than I could with all my pushing and shouting to make the men stay in one place. Peterson still stood in the center of the roof, lost, holding an M-l in one hand, a carbine in the other, and he looked doubly helpless because it was obvious he was not about to turn loose of either rifle long enough to get both hands on one. Novotny led him to the wall, and sat him down behind it. Collins, Quinn and Morning were kneeling behind the wall and at least had their weapons pointed in the general direction of the lights stringing swiftly closer. Levenson popped through the trap door and screamed, "A holdup! A holdup! A Huk holdup!" He giggled and ran to the wall loading a carbine. One of the jeeps from the runaway patrol swept through our lights, an AP hanging out of either side, shouting and shooting, one with a.38 revolver, the other with a shotgun, at the jeeps over a thousand yards away. They were having a grand time. Once more my rifle pleaded to be fired.

Suddenly the floodlights went out, fading quickly away, and the headlights and muzzle flashes leapt closer out of the blinking darkness. "Where was Moses when the lights went out?" Morning said. I could not see him now, but I remembered how he looked a moment before, cold in his poise and readiness. "Down in the cellar with his shirttail out," he answered himself. He sounded drunk, but I knew he wasn't. Until I saw him at the wall, a faint question had been tickling the back of my neck. But now I knew he would fight as the lights and firing came on us like a squall line:

Cagle came up, shut away the last bit of light, and said, "Hey, Slag-baby, you boys didn't leave me a gun."

"Little fart don't need one," Novotny said beside me.

"Pete's got two."

Cagle shuffled to the wall. "Gimme one, you stingy bastard."

"What now?" everyone asked in one way or another – except Morning.

What could I answer? Me with my trembling fingers knocking on the hard wood stock and me with a fine quiver in my guts and the blood in my ears like thunder…

"Shit. Shoot the bastards."

No one cheered, but they listened quietly as I did all that Hollywood crap about firing on my signal and short bursts, and made a Jimmy Cagney joke about not shooting any AP dirty rats by mistake. I didn't get any laughs either. A snort from Quinn, a few nervous shuffles, a slap or two at bugs, a muffled cough or prayer, then everyone was quiet, watching the racing lights.

I waited until the line was what seemed close enough, and slid my rifle over the wall. Then I wondered how Pete had climbed the ladder with two weapons, then I worried about not mentioning setting battle sights at three hundred yards. The lights of the first jeep were fuzzy in my peep sight, and I waited, and then I screamed.

The crash of my shot seemed like an explosion in my hands, loud, too loud, and the recoil knocked me back like an unexpected blow. The whole complexion of the night changed. The walled roof, secure and safe as it had seemed earlier, became a naked, frightened place, as if some unnamed part of me had been launched into the distant battle, leaping across the border between a safe here and an unbelievably dangerous there. It wasn't like I thought it would be. It wasn't easy to shoot at men, or a grinding noise and light which betrays where men are. I had never thought that it would be otherwise – but it was so frightening, as if I had to cross that time and space and stand stupid and scared and shooting at myself. I was numb, but all the nerves of my body were on fire, fire.

The others must have felt the shock too. Novotny and Quinn had fired only one or two rounds, Collins a couple more, and Cagle had split the night with a clip-long burst which had jammed his carbine. But Morning fired steadily, rocking with the recoil, then back into firing position, his rhythm broken only by the ping of his clip as the last round ejected and the click and snap as he loaded another.

I whipped back to the jeeps, sorry they must be gone, and found they had barely moved. I fired again, and again, and the more times I pulled the trigger, the easier it was, the more numb my nerves became. Quickly the rifle was as light as a wand and magically waved, cleanly leading the first jeep, the recoil gone, and I knew, knew, knew I was hitting the jeep, and fired again. Then we were firing and screaming and laughing and lost.

The beams of many vehicles now splashed everywhere, up and down and around, swinging and bouncing over the grass as if hundreds of hunting giants were running with flashlights. But some jeeps had stopped, and burned like jubilant bonfires. As the Huks passed the gravel road which led to Ops, the first jeep skidded and the second hit it, turning it over in the road, and it rode its passengers for awhile. The third clipped the left rear of the second, trying to swing around it, so both stalled in opposite ditches near where the first burned. The remaining three whipped off the road in a tight, dusty circle, then came back going in the other direction. They caught an AP three-quarter which was following with its lights out, and knocked it off the road. Other vehicles behind it scattered like frightened quail, flying faster the further away they got from the hunters.

One down, two stopped, three away, and our side stood up to cheer, to shout and fire off-hand at the cluster of wrecked jeeps. We had drawn only a casual answering fire: once or twice a bass string had been plucked over our heads but who knew where it had been aimed, or even come from. The Huks were busy with the Air Police who now had eight or ten jeeps and three-quarters and two small armored riot cars, but they still had a moment for my bunch. Just a moment, but they hit the front of the building with six.50 caliber rounds. The building rocked as the slugs snipped through the cinder blocks as if they were gingerbread. A brick chip or a ricochet kicked Quinn's M-l out of his hands, but nothing else was hit on the roof. Quinn cursed and crawled after the weapon. There was noticeably less cheering and absolutely no standing any more. A grunt and gurgle came from the other side of Novotny, followed by Cagle's surprised voice, "I didn't know I was scared. I didn't know."

Fewer bursts seared away from the two fallen jeeps, then they stopped completely after the two riot cars fired tear gas grenades with their cannon. Gradually all the firing stopped as three men ran out of the gas cloud. Two had their hands in their faces, but one held a rifle. Single rounds and short, concise bursts rattled again until the one with the rifle and one without did flip-flop dances across the road into the ditches. Morning still rocked and fired until he finished the clip. The ping, as his last round ejected, seemed too small a punctuation to end so much noise.

But of course the night was not over yet. A grinding crash came from the fence behind us. I ran to the back wall. A jeep had hit the corner of the fence and now sat with its right rear wheel hanging three feet up in the wire like a little dog cocking its leg to pee.

"Who is it?" I shouted down.

"Why don't ya'll turn your goddamn lights on?" a tired voice drawled.

"Didn't want any you dumb-ass airmen shooting us," Cagle sneered.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "It's all over now."

"She-it," the voice said from behind the tilted headlights, "She-it." Two APs climbed out the driver's side, then walked toward the road. "Fuckin' ground-pounders hidin' in the dark like a bunch a fuckin' niggers."

"Might jes be a might careful callin' a man that when he got a gun pointed right at ya'll's lily white ass," Morning sang out. "'Member ya'll can't see my ass in th' dark." The airmen hurried on.

I stopped the laughter and chatter before it could start. "Cagle, downstairs and turn on the floodlights. Novotny, Quinn, stay up here. You spot anyone in the grass, don't fire, but sing out so I'll know. Collins, Levenson, Haddad, take the inside of the compound, one by the jeep, one at the gate, and one walking." The lights came on; most of the fires around the wrecks were being extinguished, and headlights were bounding down our road. Things were trying to reach normal, when the jeep slid up behind our three-quarter, and Lt. Dottlinger leaped out and ran for the gate and shouted, "Open up!" as if he were under fire.

"Of all the bastards in the world…" Morning mused.

"You didn't show your badge, sir," I answered, agreeing with Morning. I had forgotten that Dottlinger was the OD, but I should have known.

"I haven't got it. Is that you Krummel? What are you doing on the roof? Sightseeing?"

"No sir. The Trick is up here." Jesus, I thought, here we go again, around the chickenshitberry bush.

"What for?" He peered harder into the lights, a muddled, myopic chicken. "Are those weapons loaded, sergeant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you fire? Did you? I want to know. I'll have to report this."

"Yes, sir."

"Who authorized you to open the ammunition locker? Who ordered you to open fire? Just who, Sgt. Krummel?"

"Good question," I muttered. Levenson giggled.

"What's that, sergeant? Damn those lights, anyway," he said, shielding his eyes.

"He must really be pissed," Morning whispered. "He cursed."

"We were fired upon, sir. I assumed in an emergency that I was authorized to answer. I couldn't reach the major, Capt. Saunders, or you, so I assumed responsibility myself."

"Oh," he said, tugging at his ear to let us know he was thinking. "All right," he said, obviously disappointed. "I suppose we can find a regulation to cover the situation for our report. Open the gate."

"Sir, I can't unlock the gate from here unless you put your badge in the key-box."

"I told you, I didn't have it. I didn't have time to get it."

"Then I'll have to come down to let you in." It curdled my blood to lie to the bastard about being fired upon first, changed me from a man to a kid with his fly open. And I didn't really have to. I had said that I was not worrying about my stripes any more. There must have been guilt on that Apple Tree instead of knowledge – or maybe they are the same. Take two men, stick them in uniforms, tack bars on one, and the other one will find himself guilty. To hell with this man's army, I thought, Just to hell with it.

"Okay, the guards I posted, move out. All the rest of you shitheads, downstairs. Clear your weapons before you try to climb down. I don't want you shooting your own tender asses off."

"We'll back you up, Slag," Haddad said, slapping me on the shoulder. He could smell trouble for all of them if I got stuck. "All the way."

"Just move out, shopkeeper. Just move out."

Downstairs was a mess. Six three-thousand-dollar radios had taken slugs through their respective consoles, and now were bits of wire, plastic, and glass. A couple of typewriters had been hit; type scattered like broken twigs. A swivel chair had been blown over a desk, and the desk's drawers were hanging out. A sixty-thousand-dollar piece of equipment, our message encoder, had gained a new eye but lost a rectum the size of a basketball.

"Fourteen chickens and a hand grenade," Cagle chanted. Levenson hammered at a typewriter with a clenched fist and a wide grin, but the mill answered with only a tilted "E." Haddad was clucking through the radios like an old woman at a fruit stand looking for a rotten tomato she might get for free. I pushed the three guards out, took the weapons from the rest, and started them unplugging equipment before a fire started, and policing up the junk.

"Hey, Cagle," I said casually on my way to the door, "If Dottlinger asks – we were fired on first, okay?"

"Fuck you, Slag-baby. I ain't lying to save no lifer's stripes," he answered without stopping his broom.

Where would a man be without friends, I wondered on my way out. They keep us from taking ourselves too seriously, keep silly little things from becoming big…

But then there are the Lt. Dottlingers whose worlds are constructed of mountainous molehills. He complained about my slowness, then wouldn't come in. He wanted a look at these Huks, and also thought I'd best fetch a couple of weapons and another man. I went back, got Morning and two carbines.

"Is Slutfinger very pissed?" Morning asked.

"Who cares."

"You do. All you fucking lifers do." He had a deadly stillness to his face.

"Not so much as you think. Besides, he's too curious to be pissed now. Wants to observe the disaster firsthand, get an eyeful and claim it for a bellyful…"

"And we have to guard him against dead little fuckers. Where was he, when the lights went out?"

"I don't know. He doesn't go to the Officer's Club."

"I hear he has the thing going again with Reid's wife, the turd."

"Just be glad Saunders wasn't here. Trick Two would have charged those jeeps."

"I thought you might." He wasn't smiling.

"Huh?"

"How long have you been waiting for a chance like this."

"No longer than you, Morning."

"Fuck," he muttered, his voice tired, as we followed Dottlinger toward the clustered headlights.

But Morning's mood couldn't stop the grin on my face. The carbine seemed very small in my hand, like a toy outgrown. My body was tight, hard, as it was after a workout with the weights, solid. Dottlinger's nose, Morning's mood, the lie before – these no longer clouded the night. Not them, nor the sick, greasy nudge of fear. The enemy had risen out of darkness, had stood erect and dared me, and if he paid a price, it seemed only what he owed for the honor of standing. I had been afraid but had acted, and the action transcended, as ever, the emotion. Morality did not matter, nor mortality, only the act, the duty, simple and clear. I could not have chosen otherwise. Hundreds of lines through the space of time had converged in that fire-seared, light-spitted night, and one of the lines was me. Some stopped, some dodged the impact, and others could not have crashed if they wanted to; but mine endured. I too stood and dared, then, now, and forever. The cool night air blessed my face, and whatever throats gagged on the odors of the night, mine didn't. I breathed only victory as I strode over the gravel into the smoky circle of light.

People moved in all directions: hospital orderlies tended the wounded, gathered the dead; photographers recorded the scene from all angles; a priest with a pale, yearning face blessed friend and foe alike. A tall Air Force captain came over to Dottlinger, smiling, and extended a congratulatory hand.

"Lieutenant! I was just on my way down to thank you and your men for their timely help. Understand your men knocked off the first jeep, the one with the cannon on it," he said, shaking Dottlinger's surprised hand. I might have been crazy, but this captain was a fool. What had been, however perversely, salvation for me, became a golf match in his mouth. His voice, prideful voice, sullied the world.

"Sorry, sir, but all the credit goes to Sgt. Krummel here," Dottlinger answered. I was surprised he didn't lie. Then he lied. "I was making the courier-run."

"Well, I guess I owe you a great big 'thanks,' sergeant," he gleamed.

"Don't forget God," Morning whispered in my ear.

"No telling how many lives you saved."

"Or took," came the whisper.

"We really broke their backs this time," the captain continued. "Three jeeps and ten men here, and another jeep and four men at the gate." He smiled. "We were waiting for them, all right."

"Sir?" I asked.

"Trap," he answered, quickly, proudly. "But they pulled a fast one on us." He frowned slightly. "Came through the gate instead of busting the fence as we expected. But we broke their back, all right."

Morning whispered again. "Who the fuck trapped whom?" I heard him walk away. Looking around the field, I couldn't answer him.

The captain discussed the Communist problem in Asia, and Dottlinger agreed, but before they resolved it, Tetrick and Capt. Saunders, just back from the States, came wandering across the crowd in civilian clothes. They looked like Town. Capt. Harry smiled as if he loved the entire concept of humanity, and Tetrick frowned as if he were worried about it.

"Any of our men hurt?" he asked as soon as he saw me. I shook my head but he kept frowning.

"Everyone all right?" Capt. Harry asked. "Looks like the men got a little action tonight." He rocked his large body, smiled and slapped me on the shoulder as if I were his brother.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, goddamnit, that's all right. Trick Two's a good bunch, and I knew they would do all right." Dottlinger stopped trying to get his attention, and huffed off. "But wish to hell I'd been here. We'd have run right out and knocked the bastards right off the road. Yes, sir, by God."

"Sgt. Rummel did a fine job, Harry. One hell of a fine job," the airman captain said. Morning was gone, but I heard him whisper, "Yeah, yeah."

"Sir," I asked while he still remembered me, "You don't need my men for anything tomorrow, do you?"

"Why?" He and I were no longer comrades-at-arms, but were returned to suspicious officer and crafty sergeant.

"Well, sir, they've had a trip planned for over a month, and I'd hate to see them miss it, after doing such a good job tonight, and they planned to leave tomorrow morning."

"Oh. Well, I don't know…"

"Come on, Fred," Capt. Harry interrupted the captain, "Ease up. You know you slice the ball when you tighten up." He laughed and slapped the captain on the back.

"Oh, all right. Take off. We can get statements from you later. You've earned a break," he said. "And thanks again, sergeant."

"And thank you, sir." I excused myself, thanked Capt. Harry, reassured Tetrick, and went to find Morning. The kiss was off the flesh now, and I wanted very much to get to the beach tomorrow and forget… or remember.

I found Morning squatting in the ditch, watching some debris, a gutted jeep and a half-naked body lying on its face. Exit wounds covered the back like black roses with an occasional gristle petal. But for all the poetry of death, he looked no different than the charred jeep. Morning was alone. The crowd hadn't found this body yet.

"Maybe that's why man invented God," he said as I walked up behind him. "They saw dead men and understood that dead men weren't men any more. They had to have something in man they couldn't kill, something holy in man alive, someplace for man dead to go, something that couldn't die. Couldn't die." He had been waiting for me.

"Don't eat on it, Joe."

"A man needs to know what the hell he's done."

"You won't find out eating his liver. Or yours."

"You smug son of a bitch. You've got all the answers, don't you?" He stood up. He was crying. No sobs, just tears. We both remembered who had had the last shots.

"I only know what questions not to ask," I said.

"Slick, smooth counter-puncher, aren't you? You take all the shots on your shoulders. But you never miss, do you? You fucking bastard." His voice was quiet and grim. I could only wait.

"Come on let's go back to Ops."

"Shit," he sighed. "Shit."

Neither of us spoke as he followed me through the high thick grass toward the lights of our building. The air hung warm and heavy in the grass, and the insects swarmed up about our legs, circling and rising to our faces. The tough roots clutched at our feet, and we stumbled and cursed the heat, the bugs, the grass scratching at our eyes, and the darkness. And later we cursed the light when it blinded us.