Larkin began laughing, the blood dripping from his chin onto the muddy front of his overcoat. “You tell ’em. Bull,” he said, coughing and gasping for breath. “Rip their asses off. You didn’t go to college for nothing. Not by a shit sight.”
Docker drew his .45 and flipped the safe lever to the off position.
Haskell grinned tightly. “Hold it, there’s no call...”
Docker turned to the mechanics. “Now get those lights out. If you’re not moving when I take care of the first truck you’ll spend Christmas in a stockade.”
Docker steadied the gun in both hands and squeezed off two rounds that smashed out the headlights of the truck nearest him. Before the flat reports had time to echo on the frosty air Haskell’s mechanics were running toward the other trucks.
Darkness now plunged over the courtyard, an almost weighable blackness relieved only by the spinning snow-flakes and the yellow glow from the kerosene lamp in the farmhouse. Docker put the .45 away and twisted the metal clip to lock the holster strap, then looked at Haskell. “Just how far do you want to take this?”
“Any fucking place you like. Docker.”
“We’ll see just how far.” He tossed the bottle of beet brandy to Rado, carefully smoothed his gloves across the backs of his knuckles. “Let’s go, you sorry meathead.”
“Fifty bucks on Docker,” Larkin said, his voice shaded with laughter. “Come on, you fuckers, let’s see some cash on your meathead. Another fifty says he don’t last three minutes.”
Docker dropped his helmet on the ground and walked toward Haskell.
“Just hear me first,” Haskell said, raising his open hands. “I’m goin’ for regular Army, Docker, I can’t afford to lose these stripes.” An uneasy frown clouded his heavy, stubbled features. “They don’t mean all that much to you college guys, you don’t have to—”
“Haskell, if you want to get dumped on your ass with your hands at your sides, that’s up to you.”
Haskell studied the deliberate anger in Docker’s eyes, then moved backward and squatted on the ground, picking up a handful of snow and letting the melting flakes sift slowly through his fingers. He frowned at the thin spill of snow, watching the starry particles melt into the crusted ground.
“I don’t want to keep it going,” he said without lifting his eyes to Docker’s.
“Well, be damned sure, Haskell.”
Haskell took the bottle from Rado but didn’t drink from it. He looked up at Docker then, his face sullen. “You and me know, sarge, this ain’t the right time for it.”
“You and I know something else, don’t we, Haskell?” Docker said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Larkin spoke up, “It means you’re a revolving shit-heel, Haskell, a shit-heel from any direction, a mothering, gutless shit-heel coward, that’s what it means—”
“Shut up, Larkin.” Docker picked up his helmet, put it on him and adjusted the chin strap. “Let’s go.”
“What Docker means, there’ll never be a right time for you, Haskell.”
“Goddamn it, at ease, Matt.”
“Hup-tup-thrup-four, boss. Movin’ out.”
They headed for the jeep through the grove of trees that flanked the battery street. “Okay, get the goddamn sermon over with,” Larkin said.
“You’re turning into a pain in the ass and a fuck-up.” Docker’s tone was casual but there was an edge of anger under it. “You probably can’t help the first, but you’re not going to foul up in my section anymore.”
“That’s the best kind of sermon. Bull, nice and short, then, bless the flock and cut ’em loose for a drink. That’s the best part of mass for us poor micks.”
“Listen, I don’t give one damn that your uncles got drunk and tore up their money on payday, or that landlords periodically kicked your Irish asses out into the snow.”
Larkin’s smile flashed through the smudge of dirt and beard on his face. “That’s pretty good. Bull. You got a real pair of brass knucks on your tongue when you want—” He was seized by a coughing fit, stopped walking and braced his hands on his knees, almost strangling in his effort to ease and soothe the hot ache in his lungs. Finally, breathing slowly and carefully, he straightened and brushed at the spittle and blood on his lips with a dirty handkerchief. Holding his sides against a contraction of pain, he hurried to catch up with Docker.
“You tell Whitter I was in charge of that detail?”
“No, but I’ll tell you something. I don’t care where you guys came from or what the hell you’re going back to... Trankic’s woman runs a boardinghouse in Chicago, that’s what he’s fighting for, to get back and help her. Schmitzer’s brother went down on the Lexington and he wants to make it home to keep his mother out of the poorhouse. Okay, that’s his trip to the chaplain. My business, as you may or may not have heard, is running this gun section.”
“You’re real sharp, got all of us tucked in pigeonholes,” Larkin said. “So what’s the morning line on Gel-nick? You got him figured out?”
Docker shook his head.
Larkin daubed again at his swollen lip. “All right, pay attention to your Uncle Matt. Gelnick took a shafting from Korbick from day one of basic. But I’ll say this for Gelnick, he took it like a sponge. KP every night after a full day on the firing range, scrubbing down grease tubs in the mess hall, his fatigues so dirty they stank. On weekends Korbick had him digging four-by-four holes in that red shit they call sand in Georgia, then filling them up again in sun that took the paint off the barracks. But the Hogman never broke, never slammed a shovel into the back of Korbick’s head, just took it and stayed out of the stockade.” He uncapped his canteen and took a short swig of whiskey, gagging at its raw heat, the black liquor running in icy trickles down his chin and throat. “You want a belt?”
“Put that away, you’ve had enough.”
“Okay, okay. So then it’s time for three-day passes after sixteen weeks at Camp Stewart, and damned if Gelnick didn’t jolt the bejesus out of everybody by scrubbing himself to the bone and then pulling a package from under his bunk and dumping out a new uniform, a tailor-made job he’d ordered from a military supply shop in Athens. So after more than three months of looking like somebody who slept in a slit trench, Gelnick comes up roses... And that had to be one of Korbick’s worst moments, Bull, watching a man whose guts he hated, a man he’d put the blocks to for months, marching off the post as smart as a fucking West Point cadet... He told everybody — Kohler, Solvis, Trank — that he was going to Atlanta but he didn’t. He went to Waycross. I know, because I was there. His wife was waiting for him, that’s right, his wife. A Jewish girl, Doris, I think her name was. Not your all-American cheerleader type with big tits, but little, almost thin, you could say, but great legs and great black hair. And brown eyes that made you think she could be Spanish or something. I met her when I walked into a bar and saw her sitting with Gelnick. He was so shocked, he damned near shit himself. He came up to my room that night, begged me not to tell any of the guys at camp about his wife. So I promised, but I asked him why didn’t he shape up and get off Korbick’s shit list. And he told me something I thought a lot about. Because it’s the way some Irish people think, my uncles anyway. They didn’t mind that the drunk wagon was called the paddy wagon. I mean, they pretended they didn’t mind, made jokes about it. That’s Gelnick for you. He knew he was going to get flak from Korbick no matter what he did. So he stayed sane by making sure he deserved what Korbick was handing out. He knew he was getting it because he was a Jew and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it. But he knew he couldn’t stand it if anybody started riding him about his wife. So you know what he did when he got back to camp? Made a bundle of his smart new gear and the next morning dumped it all in the trash fire behind the mess hall, and then he went straight back to being Korbick’s favorite fuck-up.”