Petty bastard, I thought, no longer quite so understanding. "Yes, sir, I'll get the shit-house mouse on it right away."
He turned back. "I'd prefer if you didn't refer to the Operation's orderly in that manner, Sgt. Krummel. This is not the old Army, you know. We realize that profanity exhibits a vocabulary deficiency, and I don't think a man with a master's degree should suffer from that particular problem, do you?"
"You're quite correct, sir. Not that particular problem."
"Well, goodnight, sergeant. Ah, and don't neglect the major's desk."
"No, sir. The major's desk. Yes, sir."
As the heavy door slammed behind Dottlinger, Cagle slipped from his chair and up the ladder as quickly as a monkey to let him out the gate, then lowered Franklin through the trap. He was still out. Novotny lodged him in his chair and slapped his face with cold water until he came around. He woke, mumbling, "Fuck 'em, goddamnit, fuck 'em," then staggered to the latrine. He returned in better shape, his eyes puffy but awake and a silly grin on his face.
"Jesus Christ, it's four-thirty," he said, stretching his arms and yawning. As he rubbed the back of his neck, he found a few pieces of gravel. "Hey, where'd this come from?" Novotny explained. "You guys did that for me? Jesus…" He started to say something smart, then stopped. "Jesus. Thanks… Thanks." He started to cry, bewildered tears. "Nobody ever…" He stammered, then sat down and put his headsets on.
I put things in order, caught up the hourly log, then grabbed a can of wax, a mop and the buffer out of the utility closet. I took an hour on the major's floor, waxing and buffing until the tile was as shining hard and brittle as my anger.
When I went back upstairs, everything was clean and glistening except the floor, and Franklin was waiting for the mop and buffer. "I'm sorry, sarge," he said, taking the gear from me, "I promise you, if it ever happens again, I'll turn myself in. Promise. Thanks."
"Don't sweat it, kid. It won't happen again," I said, admiring the immaculate room. You, Krummel, you got troubles? A Trick-ful. It was different now, easier and more relaxed, like a family, now that I had pulled Franklin into the Trick by his shirt front, stepping into the living room myself. We knew where we stood, for better or worse: together.
But Joe Morning and I were friends from the beginning. Perhaps it was as simple as two men just liking the look of each other, or as complex as covering hate with love. We looked somewhat alike, enough so that we often passed for brothers in Town, except for our coloring, Joe fair and I dark, and our noses, mine hooked and crooked as sin, his straight as an arrow. I affected a ferocious, drooping moustache, and Morning his scholarly spectacles. We stood the same six feet, but I was thirty pounds heavier than his 195, and I suppose it was the size which started us.
"You ever play any football, Sgt. Krummel?" he asked on his fourth trip to the coffee pot that first morning at work. I could tell he wanted to say something, to start a conversation, but he didn't, so I waited.
"I played a little in college."
"Where?"
I told him. He had heard of the small South Texas school. They had been NAIA contenders two seasons before.
"You play on that team?" he asked.
"No. I was at the University of Washington by then." We went through the routine about what I was doing in the Army, and then I pulled a quick history out of him. (Actually no one ever had to pull anything out of Morning. He told everything, which is a nice way to lie.)
He had been born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but spent his first ten years or so in Phoenix, then back to Spartanburg for the rest of high school. He went to a large Southern university as a single-wing tail-back and Accounting major until he changed to drinking and Philosophy in his second semester, which he continued until he was expelled in his junior year. Then he commuted between Phoenix where he sang folk songs in a bar and the South where he sang in demonstrations, until, so he said, an Alabama judge, at Mrs. Momma Morning's request, sentenced him to three years in prison or the Army on an assault charge. Morning had forgotten how to passively resist. He took the Army as the greater of two evils, gave the judge as a reference on his security clearance application, and after nine months at Fort Carlton, he came to the 721st. (The Alabama judge bit was only half a lie, and Joe Morning told it with such skill and a great ability to laugh at his troubles, that everyone, including me, believed it. Only Quinn ever suspected, and he was crazy. Even as I know the truth, I still think Morning told a fine story.)
Morning was open and friendly with me from the start, as he was with nearly everyone, but I never knew quite what to make of him in the early days. Surely he hated the world order, the capitalist system, the American miscarriage of democracy, the slavery of the Army, the Philippines, Clark Air Base and the 721st; but not necessarily in that order, because his moods would change. But I don't think he hated any single man. He would rail for hours against Southerners, but would defend the other Southerner on our Trick, Collins, to any and all comers. But to the South in general he shouted, "Freedom Now! Fuck understanding your particular problems!" It was the same with Filipinos: he thought them thieving, sneaky bastards. But each trick he risked a court martial for some Filipino private he didn't even know. Morning hated Christians, particularly Catholics, but he would defend the Catholic Church against the accusation of holding back education three hundred years during the Middle Ages; and he probably knew his Bible better than any man I knew, but he hid his knowledge, and only shouted verses of damnation when he was crazy drunk. His friends never knew quite where he stood, but they did know that Joe Morning would do anything they asked, and seldom ask anything of them. When he did, it was with such great shyness that no one could refuse him. He was thoughtful to boot and kind in the bargain, and easily forgave the thoughtless and unkind acts of his friends. He could be cruel, moody, but he endured these things with a wry, self-effacing humor which took the bite out of the bitterness. Ordinarily he was a happy, perfect drunk, but once each month or so, he would lose control in a wild, insane night, and cry and fight and scream and beat his head on the floor till no one knew who or what he was…
Such was Joe Morning, Joseph Jabez Morning, hanging between the sun and the moon, a man of great tides. Like all men without roots, direction or patience, he was a revolutionary, not a rebel but a revolutionary, a destroyer, a reacher for all or nothing for anyone. (It would be easier, so much easier, this history I record, if Joe Morning could have been a bad man, an evil heart, but he was good, and in his misguided virtue drove me to the evil of excess and even to murder, and in the end passed the avenging, burning, falling stone of revolution to me.)
He came to me the morning of Franklin's salvation and asked, "Sgt. Krummel, the Trick is having a Roll Call in Town today, if you'd like to come." Roll Calls were for the men, and no trick chiefs allowed unless asked by the men.
"Thank you. I'd like that."
3. Town
By the time I ate and walked up to my room, the Trick had already changed out of their uniforms and gathered in my room.
"What's the hurry? I'm going to shower first," I drawled.
"Shower!" they screamed. "What are you? a preacher? You don't shower before you go to Town!"