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Comments as we left:
Novotny: Sorry, man, I'm too short to go.
Cagle: Reenlist, stupid.
Qui
Franklin: I'm a lover, not a fighter. I got a purple heart for the clap to prove it.
Haddad: My God, it'll cost me a fortune to go, a fortune, my God.
Peterson: Geez…
Levenson and Collins:… (Nothing, because they both, like Novotny, had less than a month to go before their discharges.)
Morning: Fucking America off again to make the world safe for General Motors and AT &T. Tattletales to political spies in one easy step.
Qui
Peterson: Geez…
Krummel: Knock it off, you idiots.
Morning: You're sick, Qui
Haddad: Wonder if the chaplain would understand my situation.
Krummel: Knock it off.
Qui
Cagle: Save your verbal enemas for the enemy, you guys.
Someone: Ah, shit, who gives a good goddamn?
Krummel: (whispering) I do.
Morning: (shouting) Me, mother-fucker. I fucking won't go.
Someone: Ah, shit.
In his office, fired by the war lecture, Capt. Saunders was less friendly than the night before. He gave us a long lecture on the dangers of the black market. One might damage the Philippine economy; one might fall in with evil companions, be beaten, robbed, or even killed; one might also get his butt sacked in this man's army. But we were lucky this time, and we could accept company punishment under Article 15. I quickly answered yes, but Morning, as quickly, said no.
Rattled for a moment, then angry, Saunders shook his head, then said "Shit, Morning, go to your quarters. Confined till further orders." As Morning left, Saunders turned to me. "What's wrong with that kid, Krummel? I don't want to convene a court for him. Not now. Damn. What is wrong with him?"
"I understand his mother used to ask the same question, sir."
He smiled. "Can you get him to change his mind? Talk to him?" he asked, turning his chair around so he could stretch his legs.
"No, sir."
"You can't, or you won't?"
"Same thing, isn't it?"
The back of his neck wrinkled, then reddened. "The major will throw the book, the desk, and the chair at him, and there is no one else to sit," he mumbled without moving.
"Yes, sir."
We stayed that way, a sweat stain bleeding across his back, I standing at that mockery of ease, At easel, sharing a common burden, unable to name it, only at ease to acknowledge its mutuality with silence. He turned, blushed, said, "Get the hell out of here, Krummel. I've got a court-martial to draw up. Tell Sgt. Tetrick to come in on your way out."
I did as he said.
Tetrick said to me later, "You best let that kid fall back in his own shit. Here, he can only get you trouble; over there, he can get you killed."
"Nope."
"Why?" I asked him in his room. "For Christ's sake, why?"
"They can't hurt me, man."
"They're not trying." I shut the door behind me.
(I wanted to say, so many things… True, they can't hurt you; they don't need to. The world isn't unjust, it just doesn't care. You walk around expecting injustice, baby, you get it. Just because a man is on the other side doesn't mean he is your enemy. You already understand that about the Communists, but you won't give your friends the same understanding. You can't make the world fit you, you have to fit the world, and it'll crush you if you don't. You already know that, too. I don't ask you to stop fighting; just be sensible about the way you fight. But I don't suppose I've any right to ask him to be sensible; I never was either. I should have said: Okay, man, you're wrong, wrong, wrong, but I'm with you 'cause you got no one else. But I couldn't say that; I could only do it, and keep doing it, and keep doing it, until the end of time. Don't knock the artful cliché.)
In seven days he walked into his summary court-martial, charged with possession of more cigarettes than allowed under Clark Air Base Regulation 295-13. His face was as calm and resposed as only anger could make it, a smooth furious mask. I remembered the night he backed the airman against the wall and slapped him insensible. In the room (artfully enough, Lt. Dottlinger's office), he found our cigarettes, the younger of the two cops from Pasay City, and a very (and I've never quite figured this out), very frightened major. Confronted with the major's fright, and the cop's lack of cockiness and lack of ease, Morning became twice as calm. Though he claimed that he had a plan from the begi
The major read the charges and specifications in a halting voice, then asked Morning how he pleaded. Morning paused for a moment – I know this because I, like an idiot, was listening with a water glass against the office wall from the Day Room – then, in the voice he seemed to reserve for such occasions, blissfully, peacefully, arrogantly, i
(I could barely contain my laughter, sure that he had discovered what I had about our arrest.)
The major went on, somehow, placing the damning evidence before Morning and his cocky smile.
"What are you gri
"Isn't smiling permitted when at ease, sir?"
"Attention," the major hissed.
When he finished his presentation, the major then asked Morning what evidence he had of his i
"Oh, no evidence, sir. I'm just not guilty, not guilty at all."
(I swear, I swear I heard the major's jaw hit the desk.)
"You don't… have… any evidence?" he asked, his words muffled as if his hands covered his face.
"I
After a long silent minute, the major went on as if he hadn't heard, reading very quickly what he had already written on the back of the charge sheet: guilty, etc.; reduced in rank to private E-l; fined fifty dollars; and to be confined at hard labor for fifteen days; to be confined to quarters immediately pending approval of sentencing by approving authority.
Morning said, in a wonderfully bored way, "Oh, thank you, sir, very much."
As Morning left the Orderly Room, I came in from the Day Room. The major still sat at the desk. I asked to speak to him, and before he could say no, told him that I possessed evidence concerning Pfc Morning's court-martial, legal evidence, really, a statement from the Dartmouth lawyer suggesting that evidence against Pfc Morning had been obtained by illegal methods.
"Get out of here, Sgt. whoever you are," he said, dazed as if he had been sentenced, "Just get away from me."
"It's pertinent, sir," I said. "The approving authority will…"
But he cut me off. "Get out!"
I left, but I put the statement in the same mail to Okinawa, where it did prove to be pertinent. I dug the bird colonel's reply out of the files later. The findings of the summary court were, as I already knew, reversed. A handwritten personal note had been added at the bottom, addressed directly to the major, stating in effect that the bird colonel didn't know what the hell was going on down there, but if another screwed up court-martial like this one came through, he would fly down to find out. The major took a month's leave, for reasons of health, immediately afterward.