Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

One morning, after The General had come and gone, the unit had settled back into routine, a tall sunburned man, dirty from weeks in the field, dull from too many nights without sleep, came in through the front gate. All he could see before him was a cold shower and a clean bed so he failed to notice Major Holly exiting the orderly room and walking past in the opposite direction. “Forget something, soldier?” called a voice. The man turned. Major Holly stood in the middle of the company street, hands on his hips, his mouth twisted in an expression of childish disgust. The man shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Holly returned to the orderly room to find out just who this insubordinate troop could be. The First Sergeant, who had witnessed the little drama from his window, was delighted to inform him. The man’s name was Kraft, one of Quimby’s personal favorites.

Kraft unlocked the door to his room, dumped his gear in a corner, and was seated on the edge of his bed, unlacing his boots, when he heard the rustle behind his locker. Quietly he picked up his weapon. The last rat he discovered in his room escaped with half a tail. This one he’d beat to death with his rifle butt. He crept to the locker, raised his arm. That was how Claypool was finally found.

“Who are you?” Kraft demanded.

The figure huddled deeper into the dark.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

He hauled Claypool from his hiding place. There was a pile of shit on the floor. He shook him roughly. “Who are you, smudge?” Claypool’s mouth opened and closed, his eyes rolled backward, his body went limp in Kraft’s hands. He hadn’t eaten in over a week.

Sergeant Mars wasn’t surprised. He had begun his military career as a Fort Polk drill sergeant cultivating amoeba and jellyfish into sharks. He had recognized Claypool’s species immediately and knew that sooner or later much work would be required. Now he could begin. First, he hustled Claypool off to the showers, watched to be sure he got clean; then he escorted him back to his room, made sure he dressed in fresh fatigues; then he marched him to the mess hall, made sure he ate; then he took him to the office to type interrogation reports for the rest of the day. At 1700 he escorted him back to the mess hall, watched him eat dinner; then accompanied him back to his room, watched him get into bed and before he left, leaned over Claypool’s ear and whispered that if he Claypool were not up and ready to work by 0800 the next morning he would be treated to further on-the-job training, which might include experiencing certain interrogation techniques from the novel point of view of the “interrogatee.” Understand, cunt? Claypool’s head rubbed against the pillow. Yes.

That night was Griffin’s turn to pull guard duty in the tower. He sat, armed and alert, on an ammunition crate behind a low wall of sandbags high above the sleeping company. The tower always reminded him of the cab of a monstrous semitrailer truck. Bolted to the platform were a pair of huge arc lamps that searched the humid darkness for the center line and dangerous hitchhikers. Clouds of strange insects swarmed through the cones of light, the constant buzz loud and monotonous. It was always a struggle not to fall asleep at the wheel. Even the amphetaminelike thought that in the event of an “incident” the tower guard made the best target lost its effectiveness over the hours. The mind tended to wander. By two in the morning Griffin was Angst Angstrom, pilot, mystic, and lover, hovering at the controls of his star cruiser as it rocketed on to the rim of the universe and beyond. The insects were stars streaming past, the sizzling noise every few seconds as another careless bug cremated itself against the hot lamps was a laser explosion, the shattering of a world. Angst’s mission was to penetrate the edge, cross over into a realm where space was light, the stars were black, and death an eruption of color. Holes had appeared in the membrane of energy separating the two universes. Evil forces were seeping in. Angst had been sent to plug the dike. A risky business, but Angstrom wasn’t worried, in a tight situation he could transform himself simultaneously into both a wave and a corpuscle, slip undetected through enemy strongholds. Stars rushed at him. Angstrom checked his instruments. This was it. Insects crackled against the light shields, wisps of blue smoke sputtered up. He leaned forward. Ahead of him infinity began breaking down into doors. The field phone clattered.

“Hello,” said a voice.

“Hello,” said Griffin.

“Hello,” said Sergeant Mars, tonight’s CQ speaking from a desk in the orderly room.

“He’s here,” the voice announced.

“Who?” asked Sergeant Mars. “Who’s here? Who the hell is this? ”

“Hello?” said the voice.

“Noll,” said Sergeant Mars, “is that you?”

“Holy shit. His body was all white and glowy like.”

“Whose body? Noll, what are you on tonight?”

“It’s real, man. I could feel the wind when he flew over my head.”

“Say again.”

“I turned the corner and next thing he’s leaping out the back of a deuce and a half right at me. He’s here, I tell you, he’s really here.”

“Who, Noll? Who’s here?”

“I don’t know, Sarge, I think it’s God.”

From his elevated position between the latrine and the EM club Griffin had an unobstructed view into the motor pool. Phone in hand, he turned, curious for a glimpse of the Almighty down there among all those neat rows of jeeps and trucks and, as he did, was startled to see a naked man leap the sandbags behind the garage and come bounding up the hill back of the chapel. Griffin lost sight of him somewhere in the shadows between the cooks’ and mechanics’ hootches. That flash of skin was hardly a surprise; any day now he had been expecting one of them—Vegetable? Wurlitzer? Trips?—to unwrap, to go natural; you could feel the adhesive coming loose in the humidity, the edges beginning to curl, then you knew your own bare body hurtling through the night, limbs in flame, running from, running toward, the exhilarating fear of how easy it would be simply to keep on, past the regs, across the laws, over the code, boundaries bursting like ribbon, on into a jungle of hair and teeth, raking the darkness with extended claws.

At dawn the following morning a man dressed in plaid shirt, tan pants, gray Hush Puppies, and clutching a black leather briefcase was apprehended by Air Force security attempting to board a C-130 to Cam Ranh Bay. He carried no wallet, no identification card. “It is time to go,” he announced. “I am under orders.” Captain Marovicci, who happened to be at the terminal awaiting delivery of a package of contraband from a government connection in Thailand, recognized the prisoner and offered to take him off Air Force hands. Back at the 1069th orderly room the man was questioned. He smiled, contemplated his feet. The briefcase was opened. Inside was a miscellaneous jumble of wires, transistors, and tubes obviously stolen from the signal shack and, curiously, one used paint brush. “What is this?” demanded Major Holly. The man held a reel of recording tape to each ear. “Listen,” he said, staring into space, “stereo.” Major Holly and Captain Marovicci looked at one another. The man was driven over to the 92nd Evac. The diagnosis was back by the end of the day: acute alcoholic poisoning. The officers were relieved. The enlisted men laughed. Claypool had never once even swallowed a single sip of beer. The last the 1069th heard of him he had been bundled aboard a planeload of brain and spinal injuries for transport to a military hospital on Okinawa where, as Trips liked to joke, he could spend the remainder of the war, sitting in a closet and drooling in his shoe.