And if I’m a good colonel’s orderly and don’t fuck up I’ll get a three-day pass next week, Friday night to Monday night, and I can go to New York and get laid. The corporal says there isn’t a man in Fort Dix who wouldn’t pay fifty dollars to be colonel’s orderly and they don’t know why the hell I got it just for having a clean rifle barrel. Where the hell did I learn to clean a rifle like that?
In the morning the colonel has two long meetings and I have nothing to do but sit with and listen to his driver, Corporal Wade Hansen, complaining about the way the Vatican is taking over the world and if there’s ever a Catholic President in this country he’ll emigrate to Finland where they keep Catholics in their place. He’s from Maine and he’s a Congregationalist and proud of it and doesn’t hold with foreign religions. His second cousin married a Catholic and she had to move out of the state to Boston which is crawling with Catholics all leaving their money to the Pope and those cardinals who like little boys.
It’s a short day with the colonel because he gets drunk at lunch and dismisses us. Hansen drives him to his quarters and then tells me get out of the car, he wants no fish heads in his car. He’s a corporal and I don’t know what to say to him but even if he were a private I wouldn’t know what to say because it’s hard to understand people when they talk like that.
It’s only two o’clock and I’m free till chow time at five so I can go to the PX and read magazines, listen to Tony Bennett on the jukebox singing “Because of you there’s a song in my heart,” and I can dream about my three-day pass and seeing Emer, the girl in New York, and how we’ll go out to dinner and a movie and maybe an Irish dance where she’ll have to teach me the steps and it’s a lovely dream because the weekend of my three-day pass is my birthday and I’ll be twenty-one.
12
The Friday of my three-day pass I have to stand on line outside the orderly room with men waiting for ordinary weekend passes. A cadre corporal, Sneed, whose real name is a Polish name no one can pronounce, tells me, Hey, soldier, pick up that butt.
Oh, I don’t smoke, Corporal.
I didn’t ask you if you fuckin’ smoked. Pick up that butt.
Howie Abramowitz nudges me and whispers, Don’t be an asshole. Pick up the fuckin’ butt.
Sneed has his hands on his hips. Well?
I didn’t drop the butt, Corporal. I don’t smoke.
Okay, soldier, come with me.
I follow him into the orderly room and he picks up my pass. Now, he says, we’re going to your barracks and you’re changing into fatigues.
But, Corporal, I have a three-day pass. I was colonel’s orderly.
I don’t give a shit if you wiped the colonel’s ass. Get into your fatigues and on the double and get your entrenching tool.
It’s my birthday, Corporal.
On the double, soldier, or I’ll have you in the fuckin’ stockade.
He marches me past the men waiting on line. He waves my pass at them and tells them say bye bye to my pass and they laugh and wave because there’s nothing else to do and they don’t want to get into trouble. Only Howie Abramowitz shakes his head as if to say he’s sorry over what’s happening.
Sneed marches me across the parade ground and into a clearing in the woods beyond. Okay, asshole, dig.
Dig?
Yeah, dig me a nice hole three feet deep, two feet wide, and the faster you do it the better for you.
That must mean the sooner I finish this the sooner I can take my pass and go. Or is it something else? Everyone in the company knows Sneed is bitter because he was a big football star at Bucknell University and wanted to play for the Philadelphia Eagles only the Eagles wouldn’t have him and now he goes around making people dig holes. It’s unfair. I know men have been forced to dig holes and bury their passes and dig them up again and I don’t know why I should have to do that. I keep telling myself I wouldn’t mind if this were an ordinary weekend pass but this is a three-day pass and it’s my birthday and why do I have to do this? But there’s nothing I can do about it. I might as well dig as fast as I can and bury the pass and dig it up again.
And while I’m digging I’m dreaming that what I’d really like to do is wrap my little shovel around Sneed’s head and smash him till his head is raw and bloody and I wouldn’t mind one bit digging a hole for his big fat football body. That’s what I’d like to do.
He hands me the pass to bury and when I finish shoveling in the earth he tells me pat it with my entrenching tool. Make it nice, he says.
I don’t know why he wants me to make it nice when I’ll be digging it up in a minute but now he tells me, ’Bout face, forrard harch, and he marches me back the way we came, past the orderly room where the line of men waiting for passes is gone, and I’m wondering if he’s had enough satisfaction for the day so that he might march inside for a replacement pass but, no, he keeps me going right to the mess hall and tells the sergeant there I’m a candidate for KP, that I need a little lesson in obeying orders. They have a good laugh over that and the sergeant says they must have a drink together sometime and talk about the Philadelphia Eagles, isn’t that some goddam team. The sergeant calls over another man, Henderson, to show me my job, the worst job you can get in any mess hall, pots and pans.
Henderson tells me scrub those mothers till they shine because there’s constant inspection and one spot of grease on any utensil will get me another hour of KP and at that rate I could be here till the gooks and Chinese are long gone home to their families.
It’s dinnertime and the pots and pans are piled high around the sinks. Garbage cans lined up against the wall behind me are alive with the feasting flies of New Jersey. Mosquitoes buzz in through open windows and feast on me. Everywhere there is steam and smoke from gas burners and ovens and running hot water and I’m sodden with sweat and grease in no time. Corporals and sergeants pass through and run their fingers around the pots and pans and tell me do them over and I know that’s because Sneed is out in the mess hall telling football stories and telling them how they can have a little fun with the draftee on pots and pans.
When it grows quieter in the mess hall and the work slows the sergeant tells me I’m free for the night but I’m to report back here tomorrow morning, Saturday, 0600 hours and he means 0600. I want to tell him I’m supposed to have a three-day pass for being colonel’s orderly, that tomorrow is my birthday, that there’s a girl waiting for me in New York, but I know now it’s better to say nothing because every time I open my mouth things get worse. I know what the army means: Tell ’em nothing but your name, rank and serial number.
Emer cries on the phone, Oh, Frank, where are you now?
I’m in the PX.
What is the PX?
Post Exchange. It’s where we buy things and make phone calls.
And why aren’t you here? We have a little cake and everything.
I’m on KP, pots, pans, tonight, tomorrow, maybe Sunday.
What is that? What are you talking about? Are you all right?
I’m worn out from digging holes and washing pots and pans.
Why?
I didn’t pick up a butt.
Why didn’t you pick up a butt?
Because I don’t smoke. You know I don’t smoke.
But why would you have to pick up a butt?
Because a fucking corporal, excuse me, a cadre corporal who was rejected by the Philadelphia Eagles told me pick up the butt and I told him I didn’t smoke and that’s why I’m here when I should be with you on my fucking, excuse me, birthday.
Frank, I know it’s your birthday. Are you drinking?
No, I’m not drinking. How could I be drinking and digging holes and doing KP all at the same time?
But why were you digging holes?
Because they made me bury my damn pass.
Oh, Frank. When will I see you?