One to Count Cadence

9. Preparation

Let me warn you now. Three days, then out of this damnable traction rigging. The warrior's necessity: Mobility, in the form of a wheel chair.

Gallard said: A wheel chair, fool, not a chariot, not a tank, not a war horse, but a wheel chair.

We do with what we can.

"No drinking," he said, "no fighting with the nurses. Understand."

"I always understand."

"You never understand," he said. "Don't drive it off the bluff."

"Don't drive what off the bluff," Abigail said, walking into the already crowded room, a childish grin bright on her face, her hands clasped behind her.

"Watch him," Gallard greeted her.

"Yes, watch me, wench. I get wheels."

"Rolling to hell," he said.

"My home," I said.

"Man's fate?" he asked.

"Destiny is a kinder word."

"Fate is death. Destiny is life. You've got them confused," he replied.

"God confused them, not me."

"What are you two talking about?" Abigail asked.

"Nothing," Gallard said, "Krummel's fly is down again, and his death wish is exposed." He smiled, but he couldn't meet my eyes.

"Impossible. You've got it in traction."

"I wish I could," he said, walking out. "I've got more idiots to repair, more fodder to rearm."

Abigail turned back to me, a question cocking one blond eyebrow, a question she was afraid to ask. She slipped a pale pink rose from behind her. "An offering, sire," she said, then curtsied.

"Thorny," I said. "A warning."

"A promise."

"Thank you," I said reaching for her hand.

"Three days, my liege, then I wheel you away to my flower castle." She kissed my hand. "Three days. But now I must hurry to prepare another room for another knight back from the crusades, a crippled knight from the Holy Land." She kissed my hand again, then bit the base of my thumb. "Three days…"

"Hey," I said, stopping her at the door. "You're as silly as I am."

"Yes," she said. "Don't you just love it." And then she was gone.

In three days, free, free of bed and burden, for then my confession will be over, the tale concluded, and the judgment will begin. I will be glad, I think, to be finished. To think about it makes me smile…

But even as I write these lines, a scream spears down the hall, holding my hands from the machine. Then words, slurred with pain and drugs: "Please, God, let me die." Then a closing door muffles the cries.

My guilt seems so petty next to that cry. I bear only the guilt of Joe Morning, but that voice bears the world.

As I write these pages, I find that I love him both more and less as I begin to see behind the masks he troubled to wear. And now my hands are heavy, and his voice whispers to me, "… too much, too much,…" Then another echo. "Now I come down at night to make sure I'm not making a face, just to be sure." The task of masks, never knowing whose face will meet your own in the mirror, then for Morning to find a woman's face where his used to shine. How did you stand it, Joe, how? Why did you let it happen, and once done, why did you let it matter? Evil is in the world, Joe Morning, and man isn't meant to play with it. You touched it so often, sinned against and sinner, true innocent because you thought the world innocent and you guilty. You asked me, Do you see evil everywhere, or reflect it? And I answer your ghost now, Both, like all men, even you. And now I remember something I had forgotten. You said that the most terrible, frightening thing about that woman's face in the mirror was that it was still you. You were right, but you misunderstood why. You were scared inside because you realized that everyone had always seen through all your masks. All your trouble in vain. Why wish yourself grief? And in a world where so many are so ready to give it. And, God, sometimes I think I gave the most, and sometimes I think I saved you from the worst grief of all, and sometimes I just don't know.

And again the echo: "Too much, too much." But it seems to be my voice I hear. Yes, I'll admit to it. Too much, too much. I said that, me, Jacob Slagsted Krummel, sometimes warrior, ofttimes clown. Too, too much.

But I have my duty… And damned little else, I hear you say, And damned little else. I'll even say it with you: and damned little else! But your voice was bitter, and I just laughed, laughed like hell, and now I'm ready to go again. So screw you. My duty makes me free; what chains of delusion do you wear?

Back at Base after the abortive Break in Manila, four bits of news awaited me. Capt. Saunders was back, from the second unexplained trip to the States. Novotny had made Spec/5 (Specialist 5th Class; same pay as a buck sergeant, but without the rank), and I had been promoted to Acting S/Sgt (Staff Sergeant, Acting; the rank without the pay, of course). The fourth piece of news had to wait until the next day.

I talked Novotny, rather Cagle did, into going to the NCO Club for a steak in celebration, and a few drinks in preparation. Cagle convinced him by saying, "Sure, Specialist 5th Class, run on to the fucking lifer's club, you fucking lifer." Novotny said, "Who's a fucking lifer? Screw you, I go where I want to." Thus we went, and there Capt. Saunders found us.

He made Novotny buy a round, then he bought two. He spoke about my beer gut, Novotny's Dear John and such, then asked, as we spoke about the Coke bottle crisis, "Why did you volunteer to be the goat?" But he didn't specify sacrificial or Judas.

"To keep Morning out of Leavenworth," Novotny answered for me, surprising me with his knowledge.

"Must be a good friend," Saunders said.

I answered his accusation with silence and a round of drinks, then I went on in silence as he asked about the cigarettes and the note from the adjutant in Manila waiting on his desk. He supposed he might work out Article 15s, Company Punishment, instead of courts-martial, purely because he didn't have time nor energy enough to draw the courts up. I kept my mouth shut again. Novotny asked why no time, but Saunders refused to answer. He asked me to bring Morning in after the company formation at 1300.

"Why are we having a formation?" I asked.

"What formation?" he said.

We soon managed to get drunk enough to forget about rank, privilege, and pay grades. Saunders was a strange officer, part buffoon, part drunk, and yet (with appropriate apologies to all concerned, particularly Joe Morning) he was the sort of man who would have had told of him in Georgia, "He runs his niggers so damn good 'cause he's part nigger himself." He treated Novotny like a son and me like a younger brother, with that familial respect and trust we couldn't resist. We would have, as they say, followed him into hell that night, but not necessarily the next day. He did give us a ride back to the barracks in his MGB. As he screamed away, Novotny said, "Might follow him to hell and back, cowboy, but I ain't ever riding with him again. Ain't ever."

The next morning at work I told Morning that Capt. Saunders wanted to see us. He said nothing, acting as if he were involved in copying. I added that we would probably get Article 15s because something was up. He, I, everyone had seen the four shiny new radio vans parked in the motor pool, had seen, and understood they meant Vietnam.

He turned to me, removed his cans and said, sneering like a phony villain, "It's so nice to know important people, Sgt. Krummel, to have friends in high places, friends who really care."

"Just show up in Capt. Saunders' office at 1430."

As I walked away, Novotny said, "Nice to have friends, huh?" Morning heard, but acted as if he didn't; I could do no less.

The company formation at 1300, for reasons of national security, was held in the mess hall. The Filipino KPs had been herded out to the volley-ball court, the louvers closed, and armed guards posted at every exit. The blackboard set up behind Saunders announced in small but clear letters: top secret. We were verbally reminded of the classification of the forthcoming talk, then it began.

It amounted, simply, to Vietnam for the 721st Communication Security Detachment, except that we became, in name only, the 1945th Communication Training Detachment (Provisional). Our assignment in the Republic of the Philippines was over, and our duties would be handled by Filipino operators now, ops that we would train as training for the time when we would begin training South Vietnamese ops. That time would come after we had set up a mobile det in Vietnam. But still things weren't simple.

Because of the political implications of snooping on one's own army in a country where the army is in almost constant stages of revolt against the government, Diem had demanded the highest sort of security for our operation. "We will not," Saunders said, "be used as an arm of the political police," but no one had suggested that we would. For reasons of national security, Vietnamese, South, our Det would have to be located, not in Saigon where lovely chicks paraded in au dais, but the south of the central highlands, west by southwest of Nha Trang in the foothills of the Lang Bian mountains, hopefully out of the way of both the Vietcong and the bulk of the South Vietnamese generals. We would also travel to Vietnam in civilian clothes, but our old uniforms would be waiting for us at the new Det.

The major burden of perimeter defense would fall on three reinforced companies of provincial militia (and their families), but due to lack of training and weapons, etc. (the "etc.," patriotism, I assumed), we would have to be ready to be responsible for our own defense. We were going to soldier as well as clerk, for a change.

Our present operations closed as of this day, and one month of intensive training would begin immediately. Basic combat infantryman training in the mornings, working in the new vans, training Filipino ops, listening to tapes of South Vietnamese army tapes, and learning new net operations in the afternoons.

"Remember," Saunders said at the end, "that even though we are advisers in this no-war war, we have the right to fight back if attacked, and if we aren't mentally and physically ready to fight back, a bunch of you are going to find yourselves dead. If you want to stay alive: get ready." If he expected a Hollywood cheer, his face didn't show any disappointment when he didn't get it. "And I'll be kicking asses and taking names to be sure you do get ready." He smiled at the Head Moles, out of their holes for today, but they didn't smile back. They didn't go to Vietnam either, or to Hill 527, which was all I saw of Vietnam.

Comments as we left:

Novotny: Sorry, man, I'm too short to go.

Cagle: Reenlist, stupid.

Quinn: Big rumble tonight. Kick some ass, huh, Frankie?

Franklin: I'm a lover, not a fighter. I got a purple heart for the clap to prove it.

Haddad: My God, it'll cost me a fortune to go, a fortune, my God.

Peterson: Geez…

Levenson and Collins:… (Nothing, because they both, like Novotny, had less than a month to go before their discharges.)

Morning: Fucking America off again to make the world safe for General Motors and AT &T. Tattletales to political spies in one easy step.

Quinn: I got lighter fluid and a lighter, mother, if you want to file your stinking protest right here in the hall.

Peterson: Geez…

Krummel: Knock it off, you idiots.

Morning: You're sick, Quinn, sick.

Haddad: Wonder if the chaplain would understand my situation.

Krummel: Knock it off.

Quinn: I ain't a coward, and I ain't a Commie, and I ain't so sick I can't bust you up in the middle, Morning.

Cagle: Save your verbal enemas for the enemy, you guys.

Someone: Ah, shit, who gives a good goddamn?

Krummel: (whispering) I do.

Morning: (shouting) Me, mother-fucker. I fucking won't go.

Someone: Ah, shit.

In his office, fired by the war lecture, Capt. Saunders was less friendly than the night before. He gave us a long lecture on the dangers of the black market. One might damage the Philippine economy; one might fall in with evil companions, be beaten, robbed, or even killed; one might also get his butt sacked in this man's army. But we were lucky this time, and we could accept company punishment under Article 15. I quickly answered yes, but Morning, as quickly, said no.

Rattled for a moment, then angry, Saunders shook his head, then said "Shit, Morning, go to your quarters. Confined till further orders." As Morning left, Saunders turned to me. "What's wrong with that kid, Krummel? I don't want to convene a court for him. Not now. Damn. What is wrong with him?"

"I understand his mother used to ask the same question, sir."

He smiled. "Can you get him to change his mind? Talk to him?" he asked, turning his chair around so he could stretch his legs.

"No, sir."

"You can't, or you won't?"

"Same thing, isn't it?"

The back of his neck wrinkled, then reddened. "The major will throw the book, the desk, and the chair at him, and there is no one else to sit," he mumbled without moving.

"Yes, sir."

We stayed that way, a sweat stain bleeding across his back, I standing at that mockery of ease, At easel, sharing a common burden, unable to name it, only at ease to acknowledge its mutuality with silence. He turned, blushed, said, "Get the hell out of here, Krummel. I've got a court-martial to draw up. Tell Sgt. Tetrick to come in on your way out."

I did as he said.

Tetrick said to me later, "You best let that kid fall back in his own shit. Here, he can only get you trouble; over there, he can get you killed."

"Nope."

"Why?" I asked him in his room. "For Christ's sake, why?"

"They can't hurt me, man."

"They're not trying." I shut the door behind me.

(I wanted to say, so many things… True, they can't hurt you; they don't need to. The world isn't unjust, it just doesn't care. You walk around expecting injustice, baby, you get it. Just because a man is on the other side doesn't mean he is your enemy. You already understand that about the Communists, but you won't give your friends the same understanding. You can't make the world fit you, you have to fit the world, and it'll crush you if you don't. You already know that, too. I don't ask you to stop fighting; just be sensible about the way you fight. But I don't suppose I've any right to ask him to be sensible; I never was either. I should have said: Okay, man, you're wrong, wrong, wrong, but I'm with you 'cause you got no one else. But I couldn't say that; I could only do it, and keep doing it, and keep doing it, until the end of time. Don't knock the artful cliché.)

In seven days he walked into his summary court-martial, charged with possession of more cigarettes than allowed under Clark Air Base Regulation 295-13. His face was as calm and resposed as only anger could make it, a smooth furious mask. I remembered the night he backed the airman against the wall and slapped him insensible. In the room (artfully enough, Lt. Dottlinger's office), he found our cigarettes, the younger of the two cops from Pasay City, and a very (and I've never quite figured this out), very frightened major. Confronted with the major's fright, and the cop's lack of cockiness and lack of ease, Morning became twice as calm. Though he claimed that he had a plan from the beginning, I believe he didn't know what he was going to do until he saw the major's flushed face, shaking hands, and a pulse that bounded even into the tiny whiskey-busted veins snaking across his pitted nose. I believe that as strongly as I've ever believed anything about him. This is important because I learned my greatest lesson about guerrilla warfare from this: attack establishments with absurdity.

The major read the charges and specifications in a halting voice, then asked Morning how he pleaded. Morning paused for a moment – I know this because I, like an idiot, was listening with a water glass against the office wall from the Day Room – then, in the voice he seemed to reserve for such occasions, blissfully, peacefully, arrogantly, innocently said, "Oh, not guilty, sir. Not guilty at all."

(I could barely contain my laughter, sure that he had discovered what I had about our arrest.)

The major went on, somehow, placing the damning evidence before Morning and his cocky smile.

"What are you grinning about, soldier?" the major asked. "What's so funny?"

"Isn't smiling permitted when at ease, sir?"

"Attention," the major hissed.

When he finished his presentation, the major then asked Morning what evidence he had of his innocence.

"Oh, no evidence, sir. I'm just not guilty, not guilty at all."

(I swear, I swear I heard the major's jaw hit the desk.)

"You don't… have… any evidence?" he asked, his words muffled as if his hands covered his face.

"Innocent men need no evidence, sir, none at all."

After a long silent minute, the major went on as if he hadn't heard, reading very quickly what he had already written on the back of the charge sheet: guilty, etc.; reduced in rank to private E-l; fined fifty dollars; and to be confined at hard labor for fifteen days; to be confined to quarters immediately pending approval of sentencing by approving authority.

Morning said, in a wonderfully bored way, "Oh, thank you, sir, very much."

As Morning left the Orderly Room, I came in from the Day Room. The major still sat at the desk. I asked to speak to him, and before he could say no, told him that I possessed evidence concerning Pfc Morning's court-martial, legal evidence, really, a statement from the Dartmouth lawyer suggesting that evidence against Pfc Morning had been obtained by illegal methods.

"Get out of here, Sgt. whoever you are," he said, dazed as if he had been sentenced, "Just get away from me."

"It's pertinent, sir," I said. "The approving authority will…"

But he cut me off. "Get out!"

I left, but I put the statement in the same mail to Okinawa, where it did prove to be pertinent. I dug the bird colonel's reply out of the files later. The findings of the summary court were, as I already knew, reversed. A handwritten personal note had been added at the bottom, addressed directly to the major, stating in effect that the bird colonel didn't know what the hell was going on down there, but if another screwed up court-martial like this one came through, he would fly down to find out. The major took a month's leave, for reasons of health, immediately afterward.

(Ah, Joe Morning, Joe Morning, what a team we were, what a team we could have been. I could have saved you from yourself, with a little help from you, but you never gave an inch. When the reversal came down you had to roar into my room, screaming about me getting off your back, then ran drunkenly back to your bed for another big sleep. I gave you two days, then a bucket of water in your face, and ran you all that day, till your tongue hung down like a dog's and you didn't have another word to say, ran you till blood dripped into your boots from scraped knees where you'd fallen rather than quit. I told you, "My name is Sgt. Krummel. My great-great grandfather was half Comanch', and they buried him with a blond scalp in his hands, and trooper I'm gonna have yours. You think I been on your back, son, well this child is gonna show what that means. I'm gonna give you something to cry about." But he, of course, wouldn't. He was like that. But I did make him sweat.)

We began to get ready. It wasn't bad. I found out why, in spite of my trouble in Manila, I had been promoted. Tetrick had made me Training NCOIC, which meant that I would also be in charge of perimeter defense when we set up the new Det. When asked why, he said, "I can trust you to fight. They didn't educate the guts out of you yet. Sometimes you're stupid, but you'll fight." How do you know? "Because I been there," he said. Will we have to fight? "You know how secret this move is. The girls at the Keyhole are talking about putting in 1040s for Saigon. If they know here, they'll know there. The Vietcong are good. They'll make these kids look like old ladies the first time. All we can hope is to out firepower them the first time, or there won't be a second time. Make them understand. They don't listen to me any more. Make them get ready. Make them. For my sake." He seemed already in mourning; he looked old for the first time I could remember, I believed him; I tried to get them ready.

The same sort of sadness, which had tinted Tetrick's voice, appeared in the troops. Morning called me Sgt. Krummel now, and was surly every chance he had, but his heart wasn't in the game. Novotny reenlisted, saying, one night drunk in the Keyhole, "Can't let the little fart go over by himself," and Cagle cried where no one could see him, whispering, "Dumb fucking cowboy." Collins and Levenson climbed on their flight home with sadness pinching their faces as if they would never forgive themselves for missing their war, but we were sad too and forgave them and sent our hopes home with them.

(Southern Wyoming in the spring, green hills rolling away, and the smell of the new grass as sharp as the winter cold still hiding in the wind, and new colts awkward as teen-age girls under a cobalt sky. Rain on the summer bricks in Brooklyn and thirty-five cent shots of raw whiskey in a sad old bar across from the Navy yard and Jersey girls smelling of Juicy Fruit and Johnson's baby powder. Pale blond faces and hands catching blond hair, girls whose faces glowed with politics equated with love, their breath laced by ripe beer and stale cigarettes, their eyes smiling at the sound of his guitar. Live oak trees gnarled along the Nueces bottoms, and my mother's cherry cobbler, my crazy brothers as innocent as puppies. Levi's, white cowboy shirts, handmade boots, and forty-dollar Stetsons jammed in the pickup, off for a VFW dance on Saturday night, Lone Star beer, long-legged girls named Regan Bell, Marybeth, and Jackie… all our hopes flying home on a silver C-124. There was mourning.)

But with the sadness came a wild elation, too. It may have been only the physical conditioning, or the release from the tedium of rotating trick, or merely the idea of a change of scenery, but there were nearly one hundred brown, happy faces looking up at me each morning at 0600 as I climbed on the platform to lead the exercises.

PT, then a five-mile run, and the rest of the morning whiled away learning about new ways to die. Tetrick lectured and lectured about booby traps, tried to teach us to make our own in the hope that we might understand the psychology behind Malayan Gates, Punji spikes, foot traps, and the ever-mined corpses. Two Special Forces sergeants came down from Okinawa to teach us a bit of the combination karate, judo, and barroom brawling they had learned. It wouldn't, as a few of the troops quickly learned, make a superman out of the average guy, but it did serve to remind us, John Wayne aside, that elbows, knees, feet, and teeth are more formidable weapons than the right cross.

A new shipment of M-14s had to be cleaned and fired again, since our usual armory consisted of old M-1s and.30 carbines, and even a few old grease guns. For sentimental reasons, Tetrick would not part with his grease gun, and a few of the officers preferred to keep the light carbine. We also picked up four M-60 machine guns, a supply of Claymore mines, five 81mm and two 60mm mortars, but we weren't able to find even one of the new M-79 grenade launchers. Someone in Okinawa kept promising them, but they never came. With the new equipment came new men to flesh out the tricks to fifteen men each, kids whose names I barely learned. Novotny had my old Trick now, and I was left with clichés about the loneliness of command. You can't have everything, Krummel.

At the range one afternoon, my old Trick was firing the M-14 on semi-automatic at pop-up silhouette targets at thirty to seventy yards. The targets stayed up for two seconds or less. Morning was on the line, and I was at the control panel, letting him fire until he missed. He had hit thirteen in a row when Tetrick came up. Morning hit five more in a row; like a cocky young gunfighter out of a bad western his movements were consciously slow and arrogant until the targets came up, and then arms and feet and rifle were slick and smooth and snake-quick. Tetrick told me to give him two at once, one thirty yards to the right, the other fifty to the left. Morning didn't even jump, but took the right one first, then hit in front of the second, but the ricochet took it down.

"Pretty good," Tetrick shouted to him. "But when it's for real, take the close one first."

Morning said sure, but with such sarcasm that I knew he would get killed, now, rather than do as Tetrick asked.

Tetrick took off his fatigue cap, then rubbed the fringe of hair, mumbling, "Kids like that took all my hair, Krummel. Now I'm bald. Shit, I'm getting old." He said that we had received a shipment of the new AR-15s that the Special Forces had been using in Vietnam and half a dozen shotguns. "Which do you want?" he asked as Morning walked up.

"Get one for each foot, Sgt. Krummel," Morning said. "Shit, that little old AR-15 bullet is better than a dum-dum. Shit, when it comes out of a man, it takes about fifty percent of the blood, bone, and flesh – no, that's semi-liquid gelatin I believe the Army calls it – right out the other side. And you know what shotguns do at twenty yards, don't you, Sarge? Shit, one for each hand."

"Morning, Morning, Morning," I said. "What am I going to do with you." I called him to attention. "What am I going to do with you."

"Push ups?" Tetrick inquired with a professional interest.

"He's already done about two hundred today," I said.

"Run him?"

"Another five miles?"

Tetrick laughed. "He is sure gonna be in some shape by the time we get over there. Well, do something with him. You do something; I don't want to see him." He shuffled away.

I turned back to Morning's face, which showed as little as did mine. "Pfc Morning, I want a hole, six feet long, six feet wide, and most of all six feet deep. You'll find an entrenching tool in the three-quarter and lots of dirt right where you're standing. Move." He moved with clean hate like a halo around him.

I went back out to the range at 2200. Morning sat on the pile of dirt, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the stars as if he were on a cruise ship.

"Lovely night, Sgt. Krummel," he said, but his body sagged in the harsh light from my jeep headlights.

"Did you dig me a beautiful hole, trooper?"

"Aw, cut that role-playing shit out, Krummel, you're driving me nuts." Sudden anger curled up with the smoke from the cigarette, and there was almost a plea in his fatigued voice.

"Fill it up."

"Fuck you."

"Fill it up. Right now."

"You're not going to break me. You can't even bend me." He waved the small shovel like a club. "You can't touch me."

"I already know that. Either fill up the hole, or get ready for a year in the stockade."

"You're joking."

"Try me, boy. I'll bust you wide open. Fill it up."

He hesitated, then began flinging dirt into the hole. I stood over him the whole time.

"There," he sighed, throwing a last shovelful onto the pile of loose dirt.

"There what?"

"There, sergeant."

"Fine. Would you like a ride back to the barracks, Pfc?"

"Not with you, sergeant. Not with you."

I double-timed him back to the barracks. He kept his mouth shut this time, but he couldn't close his face.

"You can hate me all you want to, trooper, but keep your mouth shut. You're going to die for being stupidly stubborn, but I don't want you rubbing off on anyone else. As long as you keep your mouth shut, only you are hurt. But what about Franklin and Peterson and those new kids? You want them dead because they won't obey orders on principle? Answer me, trooper."

"I'm sure I don't know, sergeant."

"Yeah, I'm sure you don't. Dismissed."

What could I do with him? Would he have been different if we exchanged places? Does power corrupt, not just morally, but mentally too? Not just the powerful, but the weak also? I didn't feel corruption creeping in my soul. All I could feel was responsibility, fatigue, and hopeless desire to fight for money and let the governments go to hell.

But then it was time to go.

We flew to Saigon at night, then were hustled into an empty hangar with all our equipment, including the four vans. For twenty-four hours we lounged in our cheap civilian suits provided by the government, ate cold C-rations, slept on piles of barracks bags, and used five-gallon buckets for latrines while Saunders tried to find the trucks which were to carry us to the new Det. Our tribulations were just beginning.

When the trucks came, they were driven in one end of the hangar, loaded, then driven out the other end. The vans were to go next, but two of them wouldn't start, so we spent another six hours without barracks bags to lie on, without cold C-rations to gag on, but we still had the clammy cans to shit in, and one Lister bag of tepid water which seemed to have absorbed the stink from our bodies and the bitterness of the constant bitching from the men.

But then it was time to go, again.

We were loaded in trucks whose beds were covered with sandbags, then laced tightly shut, locked in our own stink. I assigned myself to my old Trick's truck, since I was in charge of assigning NCOs to keep the men from getting out of the trucks. While doing this, I noticed that the lead truck in the convoy pushed a heavy trailer arrangement in front of it like a cowcatcher in front of a train. A mine-catcher, I supposed, but I kept my suppositions to myself. The sandbagged floors and the company of ARVN troops riding shotgun in armored personnel carriers had already started talk, thought about death. But, as usual, dying was going to seem the easy part.

Sixteen men secured in the course, heavy heat, the constant sift of the sand, and the stench of each other and the tarstink of the canvas isn't a Sunday afternoon drive. Piss calls were infrequent, and we ate more cold C-rations and drank more water tasting of tin and dirt and last week's wash. Uncomfortable trip but uneventful, we drove through the first night, the next day, and that evening. Men slept, but a rough, fitful sleep as they tried to rest on the sandbags, or lean against the ribs, or each other. When the feeble light creeping through the canvas belied the raging sun above, some of them tried to play cards, but sandy dust and sweaty fingers chewed all the spots from the deck. Others tried to read, but raw-rimmed eyes couldn't follow the leaping, bounding words. Most sat silent in the grime of their bodies and in the blackness of their thoughts, wondering about the sandbags and wishing for the heft of a weapon in their hands. We all cursed – bitterly, without jokes – at everything, until the curses became as much a sound of the trip as the random rattling of the truck. Even asleep, each bump, each rut, each chuck hole drew forth epithets from sleepy mouths which never noted words passing.

But when the cowcatcher caught a mine and the convoy slammed to a halt, no one said a word. A single drawn breath robbed the truck of air, and we gasped like dying men. One man farted, another belched. Stomachs grumbled, guts contracted and growled in protest.

A few rounds were fired in front, then steady chatter and little pops as if from toy guns, then silence again. The Trick tried to climb out of the truck over me, Franklin leading the way, shouting that he had to pee. I pushed him back into the crowd, kept pushing until they all were down, faces hugging the sandbags. Fear rose like a visible cloud from the huddled bodies, but I made them stay, while I dropped out the back and crouched under the truck. Inside, Franklin groaned, trying to hold his bladder, and Quinn shouted not to pee on him, but no one laughed, not even Quinn.

The road, a track through a jungled forest, was gray in the light from a moon as big and bright as a searchlight. No one ambushes by moonlight, I thought, never thinking that those who would would do it in a way I wasn't ready for yet. Murmurs, shrouded by canvas, seemed to fill the space between the darkened trucks. Bodyless voices swept on a ghostly wind, turned, then turned back, till they seemed my voice drifting away from me. For an instant I was drunk with fear, and I knew the only way I could control it was to do something, but there was nothing to do but hold my bladder, keep my peace, and wait. Someone ran down the road toward me, stopping at each truck, then angry, frightened whispers sawed the night like the alarm cries of huge insects. Tetrick ran flatfooted like an old cop chasing a young pickpocket, but an old cop who firmly intended to catch that pickpocket. I stood, whispered an order to stay down inside the truck, then stepped out to meet him, already feeling better.

"What's up?" I asked, my tone calmer than I expected.

"Nothing," he said. "Just a mine. No real damage, but it will take about half an hour to get the truck going again."

"Who fired?"

"Nervous fingers. One ARVN squad ran into another. One dead, four wounded, and lucky at that. Idiots," he said. "Let the troops out for piss call or they will be pissing all over themselves. Tell 'em, for God's sake, stay on the road; the ditches may be mined." But as he said this, two squads of ARVN troops ran past in both ditches heading toward the rear of the convoy.

"Guess not," I said. As I looked, I saw a white track disappearing quickly in the forest, a trail. "But I guess we're lucky."

"Keep 'em on the road anyway. Then get down to the weapons truck – first one in front of the vans – and get yours. Okay?" he asked, then ran off without an answer, his feet slapping against the dry road.

"Okay, you old ladies," I said, unlacing the canvas, "pull down your bloomers, and come out to pee-pee. Trouble's all over, but stay on the road. Novotny, keep them on the road." As I trotted away, I heard Franklin's voice, high and loud with relief, "Sgt. Krummel, Quinn tried to rape me while I was laying down," and Quinn's answer, "And I woulda, if you hadn't been shaking like a twelve-year-old virgin," and then his raw laughter. "Knock it off," I shouted over my shoulder, not even hoping that they would.

Coming back, I tried to be casual, carrying the Armalite by its handle like a suitcase, four grenades bagging the thin pockets of the civilian suit, two full clips sticking out of my back pockets like fifths of cheap whiskey. Morning commented, of course, "Mamma Krummel back to protect his little brood," but I laughed at him. He expected push-ups and an ass-chewing, and grumbled, "It wasn't a joke," and I said, "Yes, I don't think so either." We smoked and talked quietly, our talk like the chatter from behind the other trucks, relaxed, confident, safe, but this cool babble couldn't cover the raw grunt and moan which slipped out of the forest to the right. No one spoke, then everyone, but the metallic clang of a round snapping into the Armalite stopped the noise. I sent Cagle for Tetrick, Morning to the truck cab for a flashlight, and the men into the opposite ditch, then gave Novotny two of the grenades.

Quinn's tooth flashed in the moonlight as he said, "Frankie. Frankie? Where you at, you ugly bastard."

One of the new men mumbled that he had been seen drifting down the moonlit trail. I gave Quinn the third grenade, then Morning the last when he came back with the flashlight.

"Five yards apart on me," I said. "Quinn last. No light yet. Morning behind me. Let's go," I said, then stepped off down the trail.

The trail seemed twice as white as I moved between the dark walls of foliage, following the faint trail of sharp prints made by new shoes in the dust, then the wavering serpentine track where he had peed as he strolled. The trail bent to the left, and as I cautiously slipped around the corner, I didn't need Morning's flash to see.

Malayan Gates, they call them, a bamboo pole tied to a tree beside the trail, a bamboo pole with three or four twelve-inch bamboo stakes lashed to its end, then bent away from the trail and tied to another tree and a trip wire. Franklin hadn't finished, and urine still dripped into the black pool at his feet where he knelt, his grey face turned back toward me, one arm pegged to his stomach where he had been holding himself, and the points of the stakes gleamed out of his back two inches above his belt. His eyes were wide and alive when I first saw him, but before I could move, they were wide, white and dead in his face. A muscle spasm gripped his mouth, and a rumbling, sputtering release from the large bowel mocked the prayer his mouth seemed to form, but his eyes were dead in his face. Morning quietly said "Jesus Christ" behind me. Novotny, stricken, mumbled "Told him to stay on the road. Told him… Told him… Told…" Quinn dropped his grenade and started to run. I laid the butt of the rifle into his stomach as he reached my side, laid it harder than I should have, but a rage clutched at my muscles, and I wouldn't have been surprised if I had started firing into Franklin's offending body. Quinn dropped to his knees and gagged.

"Take him back," I said, my voice colder than I could remember it ever being. "Take the son of a bitch back." I slapped Morning's shoulder and pushed Novotny. Their eyes came back to me from Franklin, then they started to stumble toward him. "No, you bastards, no! Quinn! Quinn! Take him back. Take the son of a bitch back."

Lake two owls dazed by sudden lightning, they asked, "Who?"

"Quinn," I said once more. "Take him back. Have someone sit on him. Bring me a poncho and a roll of field wire. Now, goddamn you, now! Move!" I shoved at them until they moved, cursed them in various tongues, then they moved back down the trail, Quinn between them.

I waited with Franklin's body. God, he stunk. He offended me with his rankness, his malodorous halo clinging to the trees. He stunk worse than any animal I've ever gutted. If I hadn't been sure that he lay on a pressure release mine, I would have kicked him until he stopped emitting that fetid, slimy, smell. I might have anyway, but Tetrick ran up, two sergeants behind him.

He stopped, clicked on the safety of his grease gun, then said, softly, "The bastard."

We stood there, looking and feeling guilty for looking, until Novotny came back with the roll of wire and Morning with the poncho. I made a loop, then tossed it over Franklin's head, around his neck.

"Not his neck," Morning said, but nothing more.

We rolled the wire back to the road and made the troops lie back down in the ditch. Then I tried to pull the wire, flinching like a nine-year-old kid firing his first shotgun, flinching as he does until he learns that it is the flinch not the shotgun which hurts him. The second time I didn't flinch.

Nothing happened. The wire jumped toward me like a slim black snake. Each of us, in our own way, jerked away from it.

"It came untied," Tetrick said. "Or broke. I'll get it."

"I will."

Once more down that white trail dividing the darkness, the moon still bright in the sky, still searching, stars twinkling ordinarily, even the small sounds of the jungled forest peeping out once more. I tied a knot that would not slip, then walked back.

I pulled again, huddled with the others in the ditch. The explosion was lost, soft among limbs and leaves, but a naked flash climbed the sky, and the earth trembled under us. Novotny and I went for the body, but there was none: A charred log, not hard like wood, but soft and rubbery as we rolled it on the poncho, and it squeaked, rubber against rubber. Warm rain fell on my hands as I bent over the body, and it would be the next day before I remembered crying.

"Told him, told him to stay, stay on the road," Novotny gasped as we carried the surprising load, too light for man, too heavy for whatever it was.

"You told him; he didn't; forget it."

"Don't know how," was all he answered.

The troops, officers, non-coms and all, here is the first loss, forgot the standing orders against bunching up, bunched like cattle in the rain, lowing, and chewing their fearful lips.

"You?" Capt. Saunders said to Tetrick. Saunders stood among the troops, but they moved away when he spoke. He moved back among them.

Tetrick's head gleamed in the moonlight and his words were half lost under a dropped face. "Too tired," he said. "Krummel, Krummel will."

Sure, sure, Krummel will. Yes, Krummel, savior of his brood, mother-hen to the world and that miscarriage in the poncho. Fuck yes, Krummel will!

I stripped back the poncho, and waited until the sight stuck in every mind, then said, not too loud but loud enough:

"Not much to send home to Mamma, is it?"

No one misunderstood. Now we were ready.