No one else was caught or connected with the march. Hardcore Townies just were not caught by Air Policemen, and we were all professional Townies. There was a period, shortly before the Huk raid, which I haven't spoken about partly because it wasn't really important and partly because I'm somewhat ashamed of my conduct during these few weeks. Cagle, Novotny, Morning, Quinn, Franklin, and I would sit in the market after curfew, drinking beer, daring the APs to come in and get us. They never touched us. In fact, I'm the original Gingerbread Man. I had to relax sometimes. Dottlinger gave me foul looks, and Tetrick commented, "You guys are all going to get killed someday, and I'm gonna laugh like hell," but I'd learned from Morning how to play innocent too, so I did. The United States Government picked up the damage tab, as it should have: foreign affairs are strange and expensive adventures.
Okay, so we desecrated a holy day, insulted the people's religion, tore up the American image abroad, but what the hell; everyone already hated us when we got there. We ran with pimps and whores because nice Filipino families and their daughters spat at us on the street. Since we were not officers, we were scum, so we said to the world in generaclass="underline" suck. Suck to the good folks of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Kileen, Texas, Ayer, Massachusetts, Columbus, Georgia, Columbia, South Carolina, Norfolk, Virginia, etc. You name it, baby, I've been there, and it ain't good. Maybe soldiers in general, and Americans abroad, deserve the treatment they get. Maybe they've earned it. But soldiers in general, and Americans abroad, aren't any worse than the people they have to deal with, and most of the time they have to deal with bastards. Morning, Novotny, Cagle, none of my guys, not even Quinn, were Ugly Americans. When they were told that they had to pay the price of all the bastards before them, they said, Shove it up your ass, jack; we didn't make the world, baby, and we ain't paying for no mistakes but our own. I know I'm sounding like Morning (what an admission), but there are a lot of people in the world who should be dead. Morning said Hitler had the right idea, but the wrong criteria. My hate isn't as deep as his was, probably for good reason, but I almost agree with him.
And, too, what we had done that night – and I say this without apology – affirmed, said, shouted that men, even the most ordinary of men, will sometimes, in whatever way they can, refuse to be part of the system. In the defiance of that night, we bought back a bit of our individuality; shouted, as Quinn had shouted that night, "They can kill you, mother, but they can't eat you!" Goddamn, Morning never learned that. He knew they were always going to eat him alive. I know they'll never take me alive. Goddamn, goddamn, sometimes I miss him. Sometimes I do.
But relief is never a moment away.
It was all downhill after Easter, we said, not knowing quite how we meant it. I grew fat, fatter, slimy and oily in the heat, sucking beer after beer, crying, it didn't matter. And the money, too, down, down. In desperation I gathered a week's leave to spend with Teresita in Dagupan on the beach, but we both caught colds the second day and squandered most of my leave in fever sweats, sneezes, halfhearted love, and stale, gamy sheets. To recover, we fled back to Manila on an air-conditioned train to spend two days and nights in a luxury hotel. That helped, but on the second afternoon I refused to give any of my quickly vanishing money to a ragged beggarboy. Terri and I stupidly fought, and the whole leave was lost in anger.
Back to work. Air conditioning goes blink; major goes mad; repairman short circuits the whole Det, leaving the Head Moles to rage in sticky darkness, rage at me until I actually beat my head against a wall. At 1645 I left it in the hands of the next unfortunate, Sgt. Reid. He'd shucked his wife but hadn't found happiness, and his face killed me each time he relieved me. Then evening chow was ham. We had ham, frozen ham just this side of rotten, eighteen times a week. That could be endured. But the nineteenth time busted it. "You must have miscounted," the mess sergeant says. "Don't make mistakes," say I, handing him my plate. I sat in my quarters, the buttons on my khaki shirt straining to hold back the flood of beer gut jammed behind them. Sweat covered me, not running, but drifting like an oil slick. A Coke, I thought, I would have a Coke. Change in my pocket? No, only keys to doors behind me. Surely I had ten centavos somewhere. Less than a nickel. After fifteen minutes I came up with an old one, green with mis- and dis-use, lodged in the watch pocket of a pair of Town pants which stank like sin. Down to the Day Room like a kid after the ice-cream wagon in August. The damned machine (oh, foul machine, I ran astray of you before) took my last ten centavos silently, made no acknowledgment, gave me no cold Coke, made no apology, refused categorically to return my money. I hit the son of a bitch in the mouth. Bull-assed bastard of a machine. I shook the damned thing until Tetrick raced in from the Orderly Room to pull me off.
"What's wrong?" he asked. I don't believe I'd ever seen him concerned about me before.
"Lay twenty on me till payday," I said, and without a word he handed me two tens.
The Trick carried me back from Town that night. The next noon I took the seven hundred out of the bank.
Morning and I moved into the black market in high style, capital behind us, untold riches ahead. We bought cigarettes in the barracks for seven pesos a carton from the troops, made a run each break to Manila, carrying the cartons in the back of an AP's 1948 Dodge, and sold the cartons of Chesterfields and Salems for eleven pesos. One hundred cartons, four hundred pesos, between $135 and $150 U.S. depending on how you changed it. We also carried twenty new stereo albums, which paid well too. We had several people on our payroll, buyers in other outfits, two APs, a Manila drop man, but we still cleared about one hundred dollars a break. I usually spent my fifty in Manila, as did Morning, but the seven hundred stayed in reserve. Ah, we lived well… but it didn't help a thing.
Krummel, fatter, meaner, more sullen each week. Morning, more anxious for violence, for change, for something. The Army, far from being the peaceful sanctuary I had sought, had become more complicated than civilian life. Black markets and beer, and love once again, of a sort, and the Vietnam rumors flying again. I began to hope, then chided myself for being a dumb drunken lifer just waiting for a war, but still I hoped.
One Break after a set of mids, Morning and I were half asleep after the beers we'd had on the drive down. It wasn't quite noon, but it was hot as hell outside the hotel. I was waiting for him to go make the drop, deliver the two large suitcases sitting between the twin beds.
"You going to make the drop, Joe?" I asked, feeling like a bad movie gangster.
"You do it, man. It's too hot outside," he answered. We had been through this scene the last trip. I didn't know what was bugging him, and he wouldn't tell me.
"I don't know where to go. You know that," I said, my eyes closed in the cool conditioned air.
"Yeah, I know," he mumbled. "I'll tell you."
"That's your part of the deal," I said. "Remember."
"Well, why the fuck don't you do something, you fat lazy bastard," he said, only half in jest. "Swill beer like a pig all day."
I opened my eyes. He had sat up and now faced the windows, his sweat-stained back toward me. "What's up?"
"I'm just tired of doing all the work. Taking all the risks."