The priest is mumbling away on the altar and when I whisper the Latin responses Di Angelo nudges me and wants to know if I’m all right, if I’m hung over from my beer night with Dunphy. I wish I could be like Di Angelo, making up my own mind about everything, not giving a fiddler’s fart like my Uncle Pa Keating back in Limerick. I know Di Angelo would laugh if I told him I’m so steeped in sin I’m afraid to go to confession for fear of being told I’m so far gone that only a bishop or a cardinal could give me absolution. He’d laugh if I told him that some nights I’m afraid to fall asleep in case I die and go to hell. How could hell be invented by a God who’s in the next room with a beer and a cigarette?
This is when the dark clouds flutter like bats in my head and I wish I could open a window and release them.
Now the priest is asking for volunteers to pick up baskets from the back of the chapel and make the collection. Di Angelo gives me a little push and we’re out in the aisle genuflecting and sending the baskets along the pews. Officers and noncoms with families always hand their contributions to their children to drop in the basket and that makes everyone smile, the little one is so proud and the parents are so proud of the little one. Officers’ wives and noncoms’ wives smile at each other as if to say, We’re all one under the roof of the Catholic Church, though you know once they’re outside they know they’re different.
The basket goes from pew to pew till it’s taken by a sergeant who will count the money and pass it on to the chaplain. Di Angelo whispers he knows this sergeant and when the money is counted it’s two for you and one for me.
I tell Di Angelo I’m not going to Mass anymore. What’s the use when I’m in such a state of sin for impurity and everything else? I can’t be in the chapel with all those clean American families and their state of grace. I’ll wait till I get the courage to go to confession and Communion and if I keep committing mortal sins by not going to Mass it won’t matter since I’m doomed anyway. One mortal sin will get you into hell just as easily as ten mortal sins.
Di Angelo tells me I’m full of shit. He says I should go to Mass if I want to, that the priests don’t own the Church.
I can’t think like Di Angelo, not yet. I’m afraid of the priests and the nuns and the bishops and the cardinals and the Pope. I’m afraid of God.
Monday morning I’m told report to Master Sergeant Tole in his room at Company B. He’s sitting in an armchair and sweating so much his khaki uniform is dark. I want to ask him about the book on the table next to him, Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky, and I’d like to tell him about Raskolnikov but you have to be careful what you say to master sergeants and the army in general. Say the wrong thing and you’re back with the pots and pans.
He tells me stand easy and wants to know why I disobeyed a direct order and who the hell do I think I am defying a superior noncom even if he is training cadre, eh?
I don’t know what to say because he knows everything and I’m afraid if I open my mouth I might be shipped to Korea tomorrow. He says Corporal Sneed or whatever the hell his Polish name is had every right to discipline me but he went too far especially when it was a three-day pass for the colonel’s orderly. I’m entitled to that pass and if I still want it he’ll arrange it for the coming weekend.
Thanks, Sergeant.
Okay. Dismissed.
Sergeant?
Yeah?
I read Crime and Punishment.
Oh, yeah? Well, I could have guessed you’re not as dumb as you look. Dismissed.
In our fourteenth week of basic training there are rumors we’re being shipped to Europe. In the fifteenth week the rumors say we’re going to Korea. In the sixteenth week we’re told we’re definitely going to Europe.
14
We’re shipped to Hamburg and from there to Sonthofen, a replacement depot in Bavaria. My outfit from Fort Dix is broken up and sent all over the European Command. I’m hoping they’ll send me to England so that I can travel easily to Ireland. Instead they send me to a caserne in Lenggries, a small Bavarian village, where I’m assigned to dog training, the canine corps. I tell the captain I don’t like dogs, they chewed my ankles to bits when I delivered telegrams in Limerick, but the captain says, Who asked you? He turns me over to a corporal chopping up great slabs of bloody red meat who tells me, Stop whining, fill that goddam tin plate with meat, get in that cage and feed your animal. Put the plate down and get your hand outa the way case your animal thinks it’s his dinner.
I have to stay in the cage and watch my dog eating. The corporal calls this familiarization. He says, This animal will be your wife while you’re on this base, well, not your wife exactly, because it’s not a bitch, you know what I mean. Your M1 rifle and your animal will be all you’ll have for a family.
My dog is a black German shepherd and I don’t like him. His name is Ivan and he’s not like the other dogs, the shepherds and Dobermans, who howl at anything that moves. When he’s finished eating he looks at me, licks his lips and backs away, baring his teeth. The corporal is outside the cage telling me that’s a hell of a goddam dog I have there, doesn’t howl and make a lotta bullshit noise, the kinda dog you want in combat when one bark will get you killed. He tells me bend slowly, pick up the plate, tell my dog he’s a good dog, good Ivan, nice Ivan, see you in the morning, honey, back out nice and easy, close the gate, drop that lock, get your hand outa the way. He tells me I did okay. He can see Ivan and I are already asshole buddies.
Every morning at eight I turn out with a platoon of dog handlers from all over Europe. We march in a circle with the corporal in the middle calling hup ho hup ho hup hup hup ho heel, and when we yank on the dogs’ leashes we’re glad they’re growling behind muzzles.
For six weeks we march and run with the dogs. We climb the mountains behind Lenggries and race along the banks of rivers. We feed and groom them till we’re ready to remove their muzzles. We’re told this is the big day, like graduation or marriage.
And then the company commander sends for me. His company clerk, Corporal George Shemanski, is going stateside on furlough in three months and they’re sending me to company clerk school for six weeks so that I can replace him. Dismissed.
I don’t want to go to company clerk school. I want to stay with Ivan. Six weeks together and we’re pals. I know when he growls at me he’s just telling me he loves me though he still has a head of teeth in case I displease him. I love Ivan and I’m ready to remove his muzzle. No one else can remove his muzzle without losing a hand. I want to take him on maneuvers with the Seventh Army in Stuttgart where I’ll dig a hole in the snow and we’ll be warm and comfortable. I want to see what it would be like to turn him loose on a soldier pretending to be Russian and watch Ivan tear his protective clothing to bits before I bring him to heel. Or watch him lunge for the crotch and not the throat when I swing a dummy Russian at him. They can’t send me to company clerk school for six weeks and let someone else handle Ivan. Everyone knows it’s one man, one dog, and it takes months to break in another handler.
I don’t know why they have to pick me for company clerk school when I never even went to high school and the base is filled with high school graduates. It makes me wonder if company clerk school is punishment for never going to high school.
My head is filled with dark clouds and I wish I could bang it against the wall. The only word in my head is fuck and that’s a word I hate because it means hate. I’d like to kill the company commander, and now here’s this second lieutenant barking at me because I passed him without saluting.