W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

McCoy was writhing around on the ground, gasping for breath, moaning as he held his scrotum.

Zimmerman, his arms folded on his chest, watched silently. After several minutes, McCoy managed to sit up.

"Are you getting the message, tough guy? Or do you want some more?"

"You don't fight fair," McCoy said, righteously indignant. "You kicked me, for Christ's sake!"

"Get up then, Joe Louis," Zimmerman said. "Try it with your fists."

McCoy took several deep breaths, and then got nimbly to his feet, balled his fists, and took up a crouched fighting posture.

"I must have missed," Zimmerman said, almost wonderingly. "Usually when I kick people, they stay down."

"You cocksucker!" McCoy said, and charged him. He threw a punch. Zimmerman caught the arm, spun around, and threw McCoy over his back. McCoy landed flat on his back. The air was knocked out of him.

Zimmerman walked to him and kicked him in the side.

"I told you," he said. "Don't call me a cocksucker."

With a massive effort, McCoy got his wind back and straggled to his knees. And then he heaved himself upright.

Zimmerman slapped him twice with the back of his left hand across the face, and then with the heel of his right hand across the throat. The first blow was hard enough to make McCoy reel, and the second sent him flying backward, his hands to his throat, gasping for breath. And then he fell heavily onto his backside.

Zimmerman stepped up to him and kicked him in the side again. McCoy bent double and threw up.

"I hit you with my open hand," Zimmerman said, conversationally. "If I had hit you with the side of it,"-he demonstrated with his left hand-"you would have a broken nose, and you wouldn't be able to talk for a week. If I had hit you hard enough, I would have crushed your Adam's apple and you would choke. The only reason I didn't do that is because your brother is a friend of mine, and he might feel bad about it."

"Jesus Christ!" McCoy said, barely audibly.

"The next time, McCoy, that I hear that you said one fucking word out of line, or that you took a poke at anybody, I'm going to be back and give you a real working over. Tough guy, my ass!"

He walked over to McCoy and raised his foot to kick him again.

McCoy scurried away as best as he could.

Zimmerman lowered his foot and laughed.

"Shit!" he said, contemptuously. And then he walked to the small building, put his dungaree jacket back on, and walked off.

PFC Thomas McCoy waited until he was really sure that he was gone, and then he got to his feet. His balls hurt, and his sides, and inside, and it hurt him to breathe.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the vomitus on his jacket and trousers and boots. Then, gagging, he staggered off toward his barrack.

(Two)

The Foster Peachtree Hotel

Atlanta, Georgia

14 March 1942

Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC, stood with a glass of Dickel's 100-proof twelve-year-old Kentucky sour mash bourbon whiskey in his hand, looking out the window of his bedroom in the General J. E. B. Stuart suite. It was raining-it looked as if it couldn't make up its mind to snow or rain-and the wind had blown the rain against the window-pane. Stecker idly traced a raindrop as it slid down.

He was more than a little pissed with his buddy, Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, for a number of reasons, all attributable to Pick's infatuation with the female Stecker thought of alternately as "the Admiral's Daughter" and "the Widow."

Stecker was either sorry for the poor sonofabitch-who really had a bad case of puppy love for Martha Sayre Culhane, or unrequited love, or the hots, or whatever the hell it was-or pissed off with him about it.

At the moment, the latter condition prevailed.

From yesterday at noon until fifteen minutes ago, there had come a ray of hope:

At noon yesterday, using a concrete beam foundation of one of the hangars at Saufley Field for a table, they had been having their lunch (a barbecue sandwich and a pint container of milk) when Pick, out of the blue, spoke up. "How would you like to get laid?"

"Are you seeking to increase your general fund of knowledge, Pickering, or do you have some specific course of action in mind?"

"I was thinking we might drive to Atlanta," Pick said, "and take in the historical sights. They have a panorama of the Battle of Atlanta, which should be fascinating to a professional warrior such as yourself. There are also a number of statues of heroes on horseback, which I'm sure you would find inspirational."

"I thought you said something about getting laid?"

"That, too," Pick said.

"You realize, of course, that if we go to Atlanta, you won't be able to hang around the lobby of the San Carlos panting for a glimpse of the fair Martha?"

"Fuck fair Martha," Pick said, just a little bitterly, and then quickly recovered. "Which might be a good idea, come to think of it."

"I heard it takes two," Dick said.

"Do you want to go to Atlanta, or not?"

It was necessary to get permission to travel more than a hundred miles from the Pensacola Navy Air Station. And before they could run down Captain Mustache and obtain his approval, it was after six. As a result they got to the Foster Peachtree Hotel after midnight. The bar wasn't closed, but there were no females dewy-eyed with the thought of consorting with two handsome and dashing young Marine officers.

That didn't seem to bother Pick. He was interested in drinking, and the two of them closed the bar long after everyone else had left. Stecker wondered why the bartender hadn't thrown them out, until he remembered that Pick's grandfather owned the hotel.

And Pick of course waxed drunkenly philosophic about his inability to get together with the Admiral's Daughter. Dick Stecker had heard it all before, and he was bored with it.

"I'll make a deal with you, Pick," he said. "You won't mention Whatshername's name all weekend, and I will not pour lighter fluid on your pubic region and set it on fire while you sleep."

In the morning, Pick slept soundly, snoring loudly, until long after ten.

Then, determinedly bright and cheerful, he went into Stecker's room, ordered an enormous breakfast from room service, and then explained that they really shouldn't eat too much, for they were meeting his Aunt Ramona for lunch at quarter to one.

"Your Aunt Ramona?" Dick asked, disgustedly.

"My Aunt Ramona loves me," Pick said. "And I always try to see her when I am in Atlanta. Only the cynical would suggest I do this because dear Aunt Ramona usually is accompanied by two or more delightful young belles, straight from Gone with the Wind." _

"No shit?"

"You will have to watch your foul mouth, Stecker," Pick said. "There is nothing that will chase away a well-reared South'ren lady quicker than a foul-mouthed Marine. And if you talk dirty, my Aunt Ramona will rap you over the head with her cane."

Aunt Ramona was not what Dick Stecker had been led to expect. She turned out to be a good-looking redhead, wearing a silver fox hat to match her knee-length silver fox coat. She was in her thirties, Stecker judged, as he watched her give her cheek to Pick to kiss.

"Aunt Ramona," Pick said, on his very good manners, "may I present my good friend, Lieutenant Richard Stecker? Dick, this is Mrs. Heath."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Lieutenant," she said, extending a diamond-heavy hand with a gesture that would have done credit to the Queen of England.

"My pleasure, ma'am," Stecker said.

"If I had known you were coming, before ten o'clock this morning, Pick," Aunt Ramona said, "I would have set something up."

"I realize this has inconvenienced you," Pick said politely.

"You have always been an imp," Aunt Ramona said. "But I am glad to see you."