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"It's cheap at the price. I'll pay. They may take my life someday, but I'm sure as hell not going to give it to them, nor my dignity. You think I'm going to fight if they send troops to Vietnam? Fuck no. Maybe you can kiss that bastard's ass, but not me." He stood up again.
"Okay. You know what you're going to do – then get the hell out of here. You don't want my advice – then shove off." I had been afraid he wouldn't listen, but this was not just a case of not hearing. He believed, which I admired, but which was sad too. He came too late in time to be part of any of the great, violent revolutions, and now had to waste himself on a foolishness.
"I came because I thought you would understand, not to ask advice."
"And maybe brag a little bit? But I do understand. That's why I'm afraid. There's a good chance nothing will happen to anyone except you. I'd be sorry to see that, but it might as well happen now as later. You'll end up in jail or dead someday, anyway. Might as well be now. But what if other men who don't know what they really want, or are doing, follow you into the shit."
"You afraid of losing your stripes?" He looked for a moment as if he had found the answer, but then thought not.
"Maybe a little. I didn't come back to lose them over anything like this. Right now they're heavy on my arm, but I like the money, the things they buy. And they are on my arm." I sat in the chair he had vacated.
"What are you – for sale?" He flopped on the bunk.
"Until I get a better offer. I fight for the best price."
"Bullshit." He gri
"It's the same thing."
"Okay," he said, standing up. "Maybe they'll make me editor of the magazine in Leavenworth, and I can get my shitty poetry published."
"Bullshit. Not even you have such bad taste." It was my turn to smile.
"Wish me luck," he said, lazily strolling toward the door.
"Aren't you going to ask if I'm going to turn you in?"
"Of course not. You're a revolutionary too. I just haven't convinced you yet," he said, then smiled and left. His confidence in my silence, his trust, was quite a compliment, and no one's head can be turned any easier than mine, but it was also a burden I would just as soon not have.
Only Joe Morning had the personality, the voice and the gall to convince so many men to even agree to such madness, much less carry it out. But he did it. He talked in private to every enlisted man in the Operations section, and then hit them again with a band of converts. I learned from Novotny that Morning had first mentioned the idea during the wee hours of a ditch party, but only mentioned it. Then the next day, when everyone had forgotten, he spoke about it again in the back of the three-quarter going to work, and then again coming back. He convinced Novotny in a long talk that night. Qui
It was beautiful and fu
I was blasted out about midmorning by Lt. Dottlinger on the handle of a bull horn. It was so loud I didn't understand what had been screamed, and I charged out in my shorts, thinking partly of Pearl Harbor and partly of a public execution. Lt. Dottlinger stood at my end of the hall calmly a
The Company had been assembled on the volleyball court between the barracks and the drainage ditches for nearly an hour before Lt. Dottlinger came out. He was walking from the waist down, a smug, arrogant strut like Brando in The Wild One. Ah, he was loose. I thought for a moment he might mumble too, but he had added an English undertone to his Southern accent to strut a bit more. He accepted Tetrick's "Hall pre'nt an' 'counted for, sir," with a salute of languid grace. I wanted to laugh. But it would have been a nervous giggle. I, the whole Company too, was caught by that creepy version of fear which only comes when you're faced with someone who is crazy. It isn't so much that you're frightened that you might come to physical harm, but that you're faced with something not human anymore. You don't know what it is, and you don't care because you realize what it isn't, and you can only run and run until you wipe the face of insanity from the deepest regions of your memory; but as you run, you understand that some unsuspecting night you will dream that tormented, twisted face, and wake, oh my God, scream for the savior you had forgotten, and scream again, for the face is yours. Dottlinger scared us like that. If he had taken a rifle and shot the first rank of men or snatched a rose from his shirt and sniffed, none of us would have blinked.
"Well," he began, striding along the Company front, his hands clasped casually behind him. For once he didn't have his ball-point swagger stick. "It seems we have a small mutiny on our hands, troopers. Or at least a conspiracy to mutiny, troopers, which carries an equally harsh penalty. I would only guess, but I could probably put each and every one of you behind bars for the rest of your natural lives." He pivoted, paused and reflected. It wasn't a particularly hot day, but two large sweat stains were slowly creeping from under Lt. Dottlinger's arms like cancerous stigmata. He wasn't quite so frightening now. He was begi