“I don’t know just how you mean that, but I agree.” Zim tossed his badge of authority aside, then, so help me, they backed off, faced each other, and bowed.
After that they circled around each other in a half crouch, making tentative passes with their hands, and looking like a couple of roosters.
Suddenly they touched — and the little chap was down on the ground and Sergeant Zim was flying through the air over his head. But he didn’t land with the dull, breath-paralyzing thud that Meyer had; he lit rolling and was on his feet as fast as Shujumi was and facing him. “Banzai!” Zim yelled and grinned.
“Arigato,” Shujumi answered and grinned back.
They touched again almost without a pause and I thought the Sergeant was going to fly again. He didn’t; he slithered straight in, there was a confusion of arms and legs and when the motion slowed down you could see that Zim was tucking Shujumi’s left foot in his right ear — a poor fit.
Shujumi slapped the ground with a free hand; Zim let him up at once. They again bowed to each other.
“Another fall, sir?”
“Sorry. We’ve got work to do. Some other time, eh? For fun … and honor. Perhaps I should have told you; your honorable father trained me.”
“So I had already surmised, sir. Another time it is.”
Zim slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Back in ranks, soldier. C’pnee! ”
Then, for twenty minutes, we went through calisthenics that left me as dripping hot as I had been shivering cold. Zim led it himself, doing it all with us and shouting the count. He hadn’t been mussed that I could see; he wasn’t breathing hard as we finished. He never led the exercises after that morning (we never saw him again before breakfast; rank hath its privileges), but he did that morning, and when it was over and we were all bushed, he led us at a trot to the mess tent, shouting at us the whole way to “Step it up! On the bounce! You’re dragging your tails!”
We always trotted everywhere at Camp Arthur Currie. I never did find out who Currie was, but he must have been a trackman.
Breckinridge was already in the mess tent, with a cast on his wrist but thumb and fingers showing. I heard him say, “Naw, just a greenstick fractchuh — ah’ve played a whole quahtuh with wuss. But you wait — ah’ll fix him.”
I had my doubts. Shujumi, maybe — but not that big ape. He simply didn’t know when he was outclassed. I disliked Zim from the first moment I laid eyes on him. But he had style.
Breakfast was all right — all the meals were all right; there was none of that nonsense some boarding schools have of making your life miserable at the table. If you wanted to slump down and shovel it in with both hands, nobody bothered you — which was good, as meals were practically the only time somebody wasn’t riding you. The menu for breakfast wasn’t anything like what I had been used to at home and the civilians that waited on us slapped the food around in a fashion that would have made Mother grow pale and leave for her room — but it was hot and it was plentiful and the cooking was okay if plain. I ate about four times what I normally do and washed it down with mug after mug of coffee with cream and lots of sugar — I would have eaten a shark without stopping to skin him.
Jenkins showed up with Corporal Bronski behind him as I was starting on seconds. They stopped for a moment at a table where Zim was eating alone, then Jenkins slumped onto a vacant stool by mine. He looked mighty seedy — pale, exhausted, and his breath rasping. I said, “Here, let me pour you some coffee.”
He shook his head.
“You better eat,” I insisted. “Some scrambled eggs — they’ll go down easily.”
“Can’t eat. Oh, that dirty, dirty so-and-so.” He began cussing out Zim in a low, almost expressionless monotone. “All I asked him was to let me go lie down and skip breakfast. Bronski wouldn’t let me — said I had to see the company commander. So I did and I told him I was sick, I told him. He just felt my cheek and counted my pulse and told me sick call was nine o’clock. Wouldn’t let me go back to my tent. Oh, that rat! I’ll catch him on a dark night, I will.”
I spooned out some eggs for him anyway and poured coffee. Presently he began to eat. Sergeant Zim got up to leave while most of us were still eating, and stopped by our table. “Jenkins.”
“Uh? Yes, sir.”
“At oh-nine-hundred muster for sick call and see the doctor.”
Jenkins’ jaw muscles twitched. He answered slowly, “I don’t need any pills — sir. I’ll get by.”
“Oh-nine-hundred. That’s an order.” He left.
Jenkins started his monotonous chant again. Finally he slowed down, took a bite of eggs and said somewhat more loudly, “I can’t help wondering what kind of a mother produced that. I’d just like to have a look at her, that’s all. Did he ever have a mother?”
It was a rhetorical question but it got answered. At the head of our table, several stools away, was one of the instructor-corporals. He had finished eating and was smoking and picking his teeth, simultaneously; he had evidently been listening. “Jenkins—”
“Uh — sir?”
“Don’t you know about sergeants?”
“Well … I’m learning.”
“They don’t have mothers. Just ask any trained private.” He blew smoke toward us. “They reproduce by fission … like all bacteria.”
04
And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many … Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return … And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand.
And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there … so he brought down the people unto the water:
And the LORD said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise everyone that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that drank, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men …
And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred … will I save you … let all the other people go …
Two weeks after we got there they took our cots away from us. That is to say that we had the dubious pleasure of folding them, carrying them four miles, and stowing them in a warehouse. By then it didn’t matter; the ground seemed much warmer and quite soft — especially when the alert sounded in the middle of the night and we had to scramble out and play soldier. Which it did about three times a week. But I could get back to sleep after one of those mock exercises at once; I had learned to sleep any place, any time — sitting up, standing up, even marching in ranks. Why, I could even sleep through evening parade standing at attention, enjoy the music without being waked by it — and wake instantly at the command to pass in review.
I made a very important discovery at Camp Currie. Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you’ve ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don’t need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he’s as happy as a worm in an apple — asleep.
Theoretically you were given eight full hours of sack time every night and about an hour and a half after evening chow for your own use. But in fact your night sack time was subject to alerts, to night duty, to field marches, and to acts of God and the whims of those over you, and your evenings, if not ruined by awkward squad or extra duty for minor offenses, were likely to be taken up by shining shoes, doing laundry, swapping haircuts (some of us got to be pretty fair barbers but a clean sweep like a billiard ball was acceptable and anybody can do that)—not to mention a thousand other chores having to do with equipment, person, and the demands of sergeants. For example we learned to answer morning roll call with: “Bathed!” meaning you had taken at least one bath since last reveille. A man might lie about it and get away with it (I did, a couple of times) but at least one in our company who pulled that dodge in the face of convincing evidence that he was not recently bathed got scrubbed with stiff brushes and floor soap by his squad mates while a corporal-instructor chaperoned and made helpful suggestions.