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I went to the Provost Marshal's Office and found a smart Dartmouth lawyer serving his time with a wry smile and a wonderful ability to beat courts-martial. I explained, with some slight exaggeration, Morning's plight, and within the hour he had called Dottlinger, quoted some legal, Latin nonsense to him (I think I overheard Illegitimi Non Carborundum; I hope so), and Dottlinger dropped the whole idea the same day. (Morning I saved, but incidentally loosed two more idiots on the world. One later made it to Leavenworth anyway, but the other went straight. Two out of three will get a fellow out of the Sally League any season.) Morning acted his part with mock sadness, I with mock humility; but he spoke to me again.
Football practice began the next week, Capt. Saunders came back the next, and we slogged on through the tail end of the rainy season, crazy about down-field blocks, gang-tackling, and mud.
It all seems important now, and there was so much more… a great football season, an undefeated team with Morning at quarterback and me ru
So I spent New Year's Eve 1962 in Baguio in a cast. I should have never let Morning call that play. I had to drink left-handed. Morning found a bar, The New Hollywood Star Bar. It was a real place because there was no icebox for the beer, no one put money in the jukebox but lifted the face and punched the songs they wanted, and the other patrons were Communists, students, and gold-miners, representing the labor and radical wings of the party. Morning played Trotsky to their Stalin and Mao, and they loved it. No one spoke to me because Morning told them I was a major when I was gone to the latrine the first night. Morning also fell in love at The New Hollywood Star Bar. The girl was real too, a short, stocky Benguet girl; young, pleasantly plump, with a square face and square hands and fingers, and best of all (as Morning told me seventy-two times that night) dirty fingernails. He had visions of sleeping with her in a tiny nipa hut, surrounded by jungle, washed by rain, devoured by her muscular body. But she wouldn't go the first night, and on the second she had cleaned her fingernails and wanted lady's drinks and a trip to the Club on John Hay. The first night she drank beer from heavy glasses, drank like a man with dirty fingernails. The second night he argued louder and longer with the Communists, and I had visions of fighting our way out, but nothing came of it. Later, in our room at the Club over a bottle of Dewar's he insisted that I tell him about my wife. Insisted in that drunken, persistent, arrogant way he had; his fist clenched except for the forefinger, which he held up with his thumb. "You need to talk about it, Krummel. You need to." He kept it up until I threatened to bust him even with one arm tied around me. He believed me, though, and let it go. But the next day he blew up at Cagle (who was a hell-and-back-again better golfer) on the golf course, and Cagle took after him with a four wood. Morning was stu
There is so much to tell, so much…
6. Raid
The morning the Huk bandits tried to rob the Central Exchange, my trick was on the last of a set of mids. The six mids had seemed like six months to me. It had been too hot too long. The work had long lost any magic for me. Even Town was too dreary to bear. Hot and dusty and dry. The manure dropping from calesa ponies raised small dust storms in the street, and the wet cakes dried before they could stink. It had been five months since Lt. Dottlinger had tried to take Town away from us, but we would have given it to him now.
At 0200 I telephoned the Flight Line, hoping that we had received courier mail on the 0100 flight from Travis, but there was nothing. I crossed a flying trip to the Flight Line with Cagle bulling the three-quarter all over the road from my list of possibilities to make the rest of the trick bearable. I wandered around the room several times, checking copy sheets, half-hoping Morning would start an argument or a word game or anything to pass the time. All the men were jabbering about the Trick's Break trip to the beach at Dagupan pla
I sat down and allowed myself to enjoy the idea of soldiering again – usually I didn't think about it. I could have almost been excited about spit-shining my footgear, or laying out a full field inspection for myself. But I had my houseboy for those things, and no real reason to do them anyway. No more were the three fingers of my right hand stained soft and brown like those of the Negro shineboy in my home town. (Boy? Old Luke was sixty when I was ten. Morning must strain in his grave when I say that.) No longer the pleasant order of a perfect bunk, or me in khaki stiff armor and standing tall. But like most men, I fell easily into the easy life. Luxury is like a Sunday afternoon nap: "Oh, I meant to, ah…" but you are already dead for an hour or two, and you always wake with a filthy taste in your mouth. But you, and I, will sleep again next Sunday. If they took your houseboy away, Krummel, you'd cry like a baby. Besides, soldiering is for brutes and animals who don't understand, and you, Krummel, are an educated, sensitive and intelligent man, and…