Then word came that Capt. Saunders was going to take a month's leave after the school. That meant another six weeks without Town, and that was unbearable for the men. It is one thing to be a soldier, to live in a world of close order drill, of Physical Training each morning, equipment maintenance, maneuvers, training lectures, and another thing to be a clerk, a changer of typewriter ribbons, a cleaner of keys. Being a soldier gives you the feeling of accomplishment no matter how stupid you think the whole idea is: you survive in spite of everything they can do to you. Being a clerk has all the stupidities, all the same injustices as being a soldier, but none of the pride: anyone can survive being a clerk. It is the same problem which attacks men on assembly lines and in paper-shuffling office jobs when they discover that their life is as senseless as their work. They take to the bottle, join lodges, coach little league teams, have an affair – anything to forget what they are. The men in the 721st had Town to cover all these areas of memory-killing. Oh, sure, some of them made their tours in the Philippines on library books, camera trips and butterfly collections, but most needed Town. That is why it was there. And Lt. Dottlinger had taken it away. So what happened had to happen. (Or at least I like to tell myself that it did.)
If Morning had come to me with his idea in the beginning, I would have, as he so aptly noted, stopped him, but he came near the end, when it was ready for enactment, and it was too late to stop him.
He came in my room the night before the mass confession, grinning and excited, popping his fingers and pushing his glasses back up on his nose. "We got him," he said, opening my door without knocking.
"Who?"
"Slutfuckingfinger, man. Lt. Big Butt Dottlinger. Pinned to the wall by his mangy cock. Betrayed by his own words."
"What? Who?…"
"I got every one of them, man, every last swinging dick." He danced around my room as if he needed to pee.
"Wait a minute. Slow down. Sit down and let me know who has got whom where."
He swung a chair in front of the bunk, straddled it, and said, "The man said, 'No passes until the guilty one confesses.' Right? Right! Tomorrow he is going to confess."
"You know who it is?"
"No, but it doesn't make any difference."
"You elected a savior to sacrifice?" I laughed. I wondered who.
"No." He smiled and rubbed his thighs as if he had a magnificent secret. "Tomorrow morning at 0700, beginning with the day-trick before it goes to work and ending with the mid-trick, every enlisted man in the Operations section will go see the commanding officer and confess…"
"Don't tell me. Not another word."
"What do you mean? We got that son of a motherfucker dead. Dropped him down, man."
"Don't tell me. Jesus, Morning," I said, getting off the bunk. "This kind of crap is… damnit, it's mutiny or inciting to mutiny or conspiring to mutiny or something. I don't know the name, but I do know it is Leavenworth talk. Don't you know that? Goddamn don't tell me. I don't want to know. I can't know. Get the hell out of here. Now!"
"What's with you? He can't touch a hair on our heads. He hasn't got the guts to court martial the whole outfit, and he can't get me unless somebody breaks."
"Morning, don't you understand, somebody will shit out. Somebody will! Somebody always does. Even a single trick couldn't pull this off, much less forty men. They're going to send you to jail, babe, forever."
"Somebody shits, they get busted!" He popped his fingers loudly, and I knew it would happen. There was no doubt in his voice. "Besides, it will never get that far. Dottlinger will blow his stack, hit an enlisted man or have a heart attack or something. I go in first, and you know how he hates me, and he hasn't got the brains to think that I've got the guts to organize this and still go in first. He thinks I'm crazy."
"What if he takes just you."
"So fucking what? I only have one stripe to lose for my country."
"But what about…" I moaned, waving my arm in the general direction of heaven and hell. "Do any of the other trick chiefs know?"
"You're not even supposed to know. But I thought you'd want to."
"How sweet. I don't know! I don't know you! Get your ass out of here!" I took the cigarette he offered. "At Leavenworth, kid, they got even a literary magazine, but no women, no beer, but lots of walls. You won't like it there."
"It'll work. What are you afraid of? It will work."
"Don't tell me. I don't want it to work. I hope you guys never get your passes back. Never. You're all crazy. I hope they lock you up forever. Jesus, what a mess. Don't do it. Don't do it."
"What!" he shouted. "And let that half-assed Arkansas farmer do this to us. Man, we have to fight back, and now! What kind of men are we if we let him do this to us and we don't fight back."
"Write your congressman. Consult the chaplain. Shit in the air. But don't try to fight the Army. Don't."
"We tried that. A guy whose godfather is a senator wrote him. You know what he answered? 'Part of being a man, son, is learning that we all have to suffer for the misdeeds of a few misguided individuals. Why, I was in the Army, the Old Army, for two years before I even heard about passes, and then I didn't get one for another six months. Buck up, son, it will make you a better man.' How about that, huh? Great. And the chaplain told me to pray for strength. Me! Fuck they don't care. They're on the other side. They always will be." He stood up and started pacing around the room as I was. "You're not some old rummy sergeant who thinks the Army is his mother. You can see we have to do this. Cagle's shaving the palm of his hand, Novotny's screaming about Dear Johns in his sleep, and Franklin is sneaking out the gate with a pass and ID card he bought from an airman. We have to do something. You don't want to know…" – he shrugged – "… then you don't want to know. Okay. But don't tell me not to do it."
"Don't do it."
"Ah, shit, Krummel, there's more than just passes involved here. Damnit, there's principles, and dignity too. We're not animals. We have some rights. We're human beings, living, breathing, thinking people, and that dickhead needs to learn he can't get away with that nineteenth century Capt. Bligh shit. Who the hell does he think he is? And where's he going to stop? Gas chambers or…"
"Joe, sit down again," I interrupted. "Joe, you don't have any civil rights. None. Not a single one. So settle down. It's your pass he's pulled, not your pecker. You're going to make too much out of this – like that senator said, twenty years ago you wouldn't be worried about a pass 'cause you'd only see one twice a year – and the whole works is going to explode right in your face. There's no dignity: privates aren't allowed any. There aren't any principles involved. You're in the Army, and you're wrong on top of that. You joined, you swore, you made a contract to remove yourself from the human race for three years, and just because it's getting uncomfortable doesn't mean you have any right to break the contract. If you want dignity, there's dignity in being responsible, in not taking oaths lightly. As long as you stay straight, Lt. Dottlinger is wrong. Do this tomorrow, and you're wrong. You're in the Army, and they have your permission to do anything except cut your balls off. They can demand your life for no other reason than the fact that some dumb bastard wants it. You don't have to like it, don't have to believe in it, or even try to understand that armies are this way because they have to be, but you have to do what they say. Or pay for it." I sighed. His face had closed against me almost before I started.