James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

Lost, tired, afraid, I can't go on. I sit next to the old, the skinny old man, reach for a cigarette in a shirt I no longer wore, or, no, I had quit, hadn't I; I don't know. One of the dead new guys had some in his shirt. How can a new guy be dead? No, no. How can a dead guy be new? I take his package. He's quit smoking for his health. The old man doesn't want one for his health either. Smoking fouls his sense of smell, and he can smell an American five hundred yards away; Americans don't smell like the earth but stink to high heaven. I shove a butt in his mouth anyway. Universal peace offering between men of war, but it won't stay lit. any more.

"There you go, pops," I say. His short flat nose was all mangled and bloody, his eyes were silent as his voice. "No place to get shot, pops, right in the snoot. And in the chest too. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and one in the snoot for eight. Somebody had a grudge on you, old man. Say, what's an old fart like you doing mixed up in this shit, anyway?…

"Not telling, huh? Maybe you don't know either. By God, old Joe Morning knows. Knew. Generals, politicians, captains of industry want us here, he says. But you could have stayed in your rice paddy, and I could have stayed home. But you weren't meant to be a rice farmer, nor I a college man. We're here 'cause we're afraid, old man. Joe Morning didn't know shit. That's why he's dead. I don't know why you're dead, but that's why he is. He thought he knew. You ever meet him? Too bad, 'cause he's lying out there now, deader than shit, deader than shit…"

But now I slept, my left arm cradling the old man, and I let my dreams tell him all I knew about Joe Morning, all I knew.

I woke in faint light, blinking in the shadows as a shaft of bright air fell across the open door. There were voices outside, Tetrick, Saunders, Dottlinger, making a KIA and damage report, and a loud throbbing of choppers as they lifted out the last of the wounded. The three came in the door, and I started to get up, but Dottlinger shot me before I could stand. The old man's body had fallen across me and took two.30 carbine slugs for me, but one knocked my right arm back against the wall, and another slammed my right leg hard against the metal floor. Dottlinger saw, almost as he did it, who I was, and he dropped the carbine.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "You got the machine gun, Krummel; you'll get the distinguished… you know… cross… something… commissioned in the field… I didn't…"

Tetrick and Saunders stood on either side of him, fatigue tugging at their faces. Tetrick cried. Saunders turned and knocked Dottlinger back out the door with the clipboard in his hand.

Stunned, sleepy-drunk, but in no pain yet, I pushed the old man off me, and thought I would stand and salute. It seemed the perfect gesture, which is to say, what Joe Morning would have done, but as I shouted Attention! through the tears clogging my throat and tried to stand, the bone grated in my leg, and not the pain but the sound knocked me out with disgust…

… and I woke here in this bed, determined to tell someone the truth. All this leading up to the truth. But it has taken too long. I find myself trapped by my own confession. The scene, the moment of extreme truth, swept past without me, the keys of my old machine clacking like knitting needles, and I without blade to cut the thread.

Turn back, turn back, dear reader: "Then he ran into the midst of them, firing from the hip like a hero, but he hit at least three more before I swung my sights across his middle and blew out the base of his spine with three quick rounds, and he folded like a waiter giving a surly bow, folded, fell, lay still."

There it is. I killed Joe Morning. I shot Cock Robin. Rah, rah, rah.

But you already suspected that, didn't you? That's all right. The whole purpose of any confession is to make the confessor, the guilty party, feel better. One whispers his crimes into the ear of a priest, or shouts them at his friends, or lends them to paper. Murderers tend to think they are poets; how distressing to discover that they were poets all along. It wasn't guilt that made me hesitate to confess my murder of Joe Morning, but my vanity. I knew it would affect you if it seemed that I couldn't bring myself to confess. Nonsense. I cared more when I killed him on paper than I did when I killed him for real. I also thought about letting him live. I wanted to kill him for a reason, rather than on a whim. No such luck, you say, He's dead. Nonsense. He's not dead at all.

I've known for three days that the voice screaming down the hall belonged to my friendly enemy, Joseph Morning, but the momentum of the confession, once confided to paper, carried me on, leaving me in the rather absurd position of confessing to a murder that didn't take place, yet. Art deceives as well as History; Life imitates Art as often as Art does Life; History seems to have little connection to either one. I can't apologize for lying, for only an accident of timing kept my confession from being as true as I knew. Should I confess just intent, or should I admit only life-like confusion? Art, History, Life: traitorous knaves. Don't blame me; I'm just their foolish pawn chained to my machine.

That infinite number of monkeys somewhere out there pounding at their machines for an infinite time surely will re-create Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and me, but God knows if they'll ever finish writing the truth.

Please don't despair because it's not over at all.

I must admit that I was glad to see the bastard again. He lay, pale after the long still months in a Saigon hospital, immobilized like a huge turtle by a large cast from toes to chest, thinner, and somehow older, in his hospital bed.

"Off your ass, soldier," I said as I rolled into his room.

"Krummel?" he asked, his head unable to turn to see me.

"Joe, Joe, how are you?"

"Bad, man," he said. "Really bad. Crippled. Can't walk, can't get a hard-on, can't do anything." Tears seeped out of the corner of his eye, the one I could see.

"They'll fix you. Uncle Sam owes you that," I said, trying to joke. I'd rather see him dead than crippled, I thought.

"No, man. All the king's whores and all the king's men can't put old Joe Morning back together again." He forced a chuckle.

"Cut it out," I said. "This guy Gallard is a magician, man. Hell, he tied my leg back on, didn't he? He's all right. He'll fix it up for you."

"There's just nothing left to fix, Krummel. Nothing."

Nothing to say either, so I shut up for a while. Morning talked, but said nothing, and I wouldn't have heard it if he had.

"Well, guess I'll take off, kid. Got a heavy date," I said, but he didn't seem to hear me.

"Krummel," he said. "I need you to help me. You'll help me, won't you? Won't you?"

"Sure. You know I will."

"Get me… some sleeping pills or something like that," he mumbled.

"Why?"

"Why do you think? I can't stand this… crippled… bad scene, man… not for me… please…" he choked.

"Ah, Christ," I said. "To hell with you, Morning, just to hell with you. You're the most melodramatic mother in the world." I rolled away from the bed. "Please help me, Krummel, please," I mocked. "I'm tempted, by God, I'm tempted, if only because you're such a pain in the ass. You want to die, just rot then. To hell with you." I turned the chair, knocked a pitcher off the nightstand, then moved out the door. "To hell with you."

I met Abigail in the hall outside.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "I thought we had a date." In a brown, red, and gold tweed skirt and soft brown sweater with the sleeves pushed back around her elbows and loafers, she was as lovely as a fall coed in autumn. "What's the matter?"

"Wasting my time," I said. "I knocked a pitcher off the table in Pfc Morning's room. Would you pick it up for me?"