James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

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.