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GOOD SOLDIER AND OTHER STORIES
By

Thomas White McGohey

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS CREATIVE WRITING

Department of English

1987

ABSTRACT
GOOD SOLDIER AND OTHER STORIES
By

Thomas White McGohey

"Good Soldier" is a collection of original short
stories written between 1984 and 1987.

These stories are meant to stand alone as well as a
whole. Together they are unified by a theme of young men
whose actions fail to realize the illusion of the American

Warrior.

In memory of my mother whose spirit was with me always

when writing.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Sheila Roberts for her
encouragement and invaluable editing with my thesis
writing.

Thanks also to Gary Gildner for his insightful

comments on GOOD SOLDIER.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
THE WAR OF NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
TERMINATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
GOOD SOLDIER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

THE GHOST OF CORPORAL BILLY "TIRED T" TOWNSEND . . . 86

THE WAR OF NAMES

When Angela Torzini was born her father had insisted
on naming her Calphurnia with the hope that she would
inherit the same traits of beauty and dignity as the noble
wife of Julius Caesar. Her mother would have none of this.
Instead, she wanted to name her Maria in honor of the
Virgin Mary.

Although they had officially christened her, Angela,
so that she would be cleansed of original sin, Mr. and Mrs.
Torzini argued fiercely for years about what to call their
daughter. The fighting was so intense at times——her mother
pitched clay cups across the living room of their small
apartment where they shattered against the wall with a loud
whump, like exploding mortar shells, and her father
threatened to drag Mrs. Torzini through the streets of
Vicenza to the Piazza dei Signori on a busy market day to
have her condemned as a collaborator for her wayward habits
with the enemy during the war-—that the ever-watchful Mrs.
Federico, who lived in the ground floor apartment below
them, feared that Angela would not survive her childhood.
When asked about Angela's life today, Mrs. Federico and the
other old women of the naighborhood would shake their heads
and sigh that such a fate, although certainly tragic at the

time, may have been more merciful in the long run.

2
Sitting on the front steps of the Cafe Settembre,

gazing out across the Piazza degli Angeli, Angela tried to
sort out the chain of events that had brought her to a life
the exact opposite of the one so enthusiastically
envisioned by her parents nearly thirty years ago. The
marble column with the handsome and athletic, winged angel
thrust high into the evening summer sky was a constant
reminder that she had achieved neither the saintliness
fervently desired by her mother nor the fame and glory
demanded by her father.

Angela had fallen far short in acquiring the beauty
and grace of an emperor's wife. Her face had the
exaggerated comic sadness of a clown with dropping eyes
which always seemed on the verge of tearing, and a large
bulbous nose protruding from her flaccid face like a golf
ball placed on a stubby tee. She was slightly over five
feet tall and quite fat, not stolid and bulky like an old
mother who had ballooned with the birth of too many
children and family meals that went on for hours, rather
she had thick rolls of flab tied around her waist like
sandbags which seemed to drag her downwards. With her
bottom heavy physique and a noticeable lack of
coordination, she had the appearance of a nautical buoy
bobbing in the ocean when walking down the street.

The few times she did encounter her father on the
street, he would always joke sarcastically that she did

indeed command soldiers from the greatest army in the world

3

after all, even if it was only for a half an hour at a
time. And even though she always went to the same mass as
her mother on Sundays, Angela had not heard a spoken word
nor received even a slight nod of the head from the
mortified Mrs. Torzini in the nearly ten years that she had
been walking the streets for a living.

The falling sun buried the marble angel atop the
column in shadows from the buildings across the street,and
the narrow, cobblestone streets that fed into the Piazza
became dark and cool. As night descended, the habitual
changing of the guard took place. The stolid, solitary
figures of old widows, dressed in black and wrapped in long
shawls, scurried home for evening prayers, passing as they
went the girls who worked the Contra Porta Padova area, all
done up and strutting in their allluring evening costumes
of mini-skirts and knee-high leather boots.

Angela decided to move inside and get something to
eat. She was more tired than hungry, but she would need
some food to keep her going. It was going to be a busy
night. The Airborne Battalion from the American base at
Caserma Ederle was returning after thirty days of maneuvers
in Germany, and the swaggering paratroopers, filled with
fresh arrogance because they had survived another jump,
would descend upon the city like an invasion, their pockets
filled with money from unspent paychecks, and craving
excitement and pleasure of anykind. It would be the kind of

night the other girls complained about, and yet when the

4

soldiers arrived, they all flocked to the Cafe Settembre
and Johnnie's where the men gathered. There was much money
to be made, but the night often ended in drunken brawls and
with the Carabinieri arriving to arrest soldiers and some
of the girls. Angela preferred to work the quieter
evenings during the week even though she made less money.
But she could not afford to pass up a night like this. If
she worked late enough, she could make enough money to last
through the month.

At the bar Angela ordered a sandwich and a cup of
expresso. She carefully counted out a few lire from an old
coin purse. A tall man with a thick, black moustache that
covered his mouth pushed the plate and cup across the bar
top, held up his hands and smiled knowingly. At the end of
the month when business was slow for everyone, Tony, the
owner of the Cafe Settembre, let most of the girls and
preferred customers keep a running tab.

"After tonight we'll be in a better position to pay
our bills, eh, cara. Everyone gets better when the
Americans come back to town."

Angela nodded her head slowly and tucked the coin
purse inside her snug red sweater.

She sat in a booth near a window so that she could
watch the street and ate slowly, without enjoyment, picking
off flakes from the crust of the roll. The sight of a
young girl across the street, wobbling down the sidewalk in

a pair of high—heeled boots, like a baby flamingo trying to

5

use its reedy legs for the first time, drew her attention.
She wore too much makeup, even for a prostitute, and
affected a cynical and provocative pose that belied her
otherwise obvious youth. She didn't look to be older than
16 or 17. Angela couldn't remember having ever seen the
girl in this area before. A small, blue car with white
lettering on the side wheeled up to the curb where the girl
was standing, and a stocky man wearing the blue uniform of
the Carabinieri jumped out. He waved his arms at the girl
and began to lecture her sternly like a father who had
caught his daughter out late at night with a forbidden
boyfriend. The girl stood her ground and argued with the
officer in a high, screechy voice. Angela watched with
surprise as she waved an obscene gesture to the car pulling
away.

The young ones are much bolder than I was at that age,
she thought, and then laughed, they're bolder than I am now
or ever will be. Who am I kidding, no wonder I never make
very much money. I'm not pretty like Lina who simply
smiles and the men pay her more, and I'm not witty and
clever like Gigi who teases the soldiers and makes them
laugh.

The cafe began to fill with customers, and Angela
turned around in her seat to watch the door. Lina and Gigi
entered and moved over to the bar where they stood arguing
with each other. Angela watched with curiosity as Gigi

kept glancing over and motioning in her direction. Finally

6

the two stopped arguing and began to walk over to the booth
where she was sitting. Angela shifted uneasilly. She
couldn't imagine what they might possibly want with her.
Because she charged a much lower price for her services,
Angela was not very popular with the other girls who felt
that she was undercutting them. Although a few of the girls
felt sorry for her and at times were cordial, if in a cold
way, towards her, the others openly snubbed her, refusing
to speak to or even acknowledge her, except for some
cutting comment about her appearance.

The two women stood stiffly in front of Angela,
glancing at her and each other. Lina was a tall red-head
with a full-hipped body and an attractive, but haughty,
face which resembled a plastic mask because of all the
makeup she wore. Gigi was the oldest of the girls who
worked the Contra Porta Padova area and her faded blonde
hair and lined face were beginning to betray the endless
late nights spent prowling the bars. But she still had a
slender figure and her gruff voice and lewd sense of humor
made her popular with the 613.

Gigi spoke first, "Angela, we got a good deal we think

you might like, right Lina,"

she nudged her friend who

stared out the window at the street. "There's a group of
four GIs, Americans, down at Johnnie's having a farewell
party for one of their friends who's going home and they

want to buy him a girl."

Angela didn't say anything, still unsure of what was

wanted of her.

"Well, it's like this, Lina says they don't have
enough money for her, and you know me, I'm too old to take
on four guys like that. So we thought maybe you'd like to
go out with them, right, Lina?"

Lina shook her head, still refusing to look at Angela.
"I don't know why you want to give that pig anything, she
steals dates from us all the time."

"Shut up will you, just shut up. Don't pay any
attention to her, Angela. Look, I'll be honest with you.
These guys are going to keep bothering us until they get
some action, and me and Lina can't work Johnnie's with them
hanging all over us. So do us a favor and go out with
them, okay? They look like decent guys, a little drunk,
but they're just kids, they won't give you any trouble."

Angela thought carefully about the proposal. She
didn't like to go out with large groups. Somebody always
got too drunk.

" Gigi's voice became serious. "Nights like

"Angela,
this don't come so often you know, we all have to work."

She looked up at the two women. She didn't like Lina,
the snobby bitch, and would've refused the offer just to
spite her. But something in Gigi's tired voice and face
kept her from saying no. The old girl is past her prime,

she thought. Every date is like a small pension for her

Old age. That's me ten years from now, too tired to take

8

on the big jobs. Maybe if I make some good money to start,
I won't have to work so late tonight.

"Sure, I'll do it."

"Ah, good," Gigi sighed with relief. "Come on, we'll
show you where they are."

Like a wasp nest stuck under an opera house balcony,
Johnnie's was tucked below the overhanging facade of an
elegant, gothic house built during the Renaissance, and
once inhabited by the old nobility of Vicenza. An arcade
formed a windowed tunnel over the sidewalk in front of the
bar which was just around the corner from Contra San
Domenico where Angela grew up. As a child, she had always
been curious about this dark cave gouged into the wall
beneath the Pallazo Regau which was so ornate with its
intricately carved scrolls and windows, and faded frescoes
covering the front. But whenever they passed through the
arcade on their way to church, her mother prevented Angela
from peering into the open doorway of the bar with a jerk
of the arm, and gave her a stern warning. "Maria, stay
away from soldiers, they are evil angels of the devil,
especially the crazy ones who jump from the sky. During
the war they used to eat babies after a big victory. If
you ever go into that evil den, they will devour you as
well and swallow your soul. And Maria, God the Father will
not accept your soul into Heaven if it has bobbed around
in the sewer stomachs of the soldiers. Do you understand

me, Maria?"

9

Angela had not understood her mother's excessive fear
of Johnnie's and the soldiers who visited there. The sight
of the bar, hidden in the shadows of the overhanging
facade, with its heavy wooden doors and shutters and the
smoky light inside, was a little scary to Angela, like a
haunted house. But there was always so much noise and
laughter from within that she thought that it must have
been a fun place to visit. The few glimpses she did manage
to steal inside, while her mother wasn't looking, revealed
groups of young men about the same age as her cousins
playfully punching each other in the arm and tossing jokes
at the bartender. To her they had looked like a bunch of
older, mischievous schoolboys. Still, for weeks after her
mother's terrifying admonishment, whenever she had to walk
through the arcade and pass Johnnie's, she would rush past
with her eyes clamped shut and clutching both her hands
over her chest so that the soldiers could not steal and eat
her soul.

"That's them over there, see?" Gigi pointed through
the window to a corner booth at the far end of Johnnie's
where four young men sat. Angela could not distinguish
their faces, but even at that distance the group had a look
of barely contained rowdiness, like racehorses jostling in
the starting gate, waiting for the bell to release energy
and anticipation built up over several weeks, and she felt
suddenly apprehensive.

"Well, what are you waiting for, gorgeous, go get

lO

them" said Lina, grinning at her.

Gigi pushed a 500 lire note in her hand and whispered
in her ear, "Old Gigi does not forget favors,we all have to
work together, right? This will get you started, buy
yourself a drink. We'll be waiting outside the Cafe
Settembre to see you leave. Good luck."

The two women turned and started walking back to the
corner.

Angela sat on a cornerstone of a column with her legs
stretched out into the street. Staring at her scuffed,
white shoes and the worn, rutted cobblestones of the
street, she tried to press down the fear that swept over
her like a sudden chill beforore the first date each night.
The prospect of starting out with four dates at once
increased her dread. It didn't happen too often, but there
were those ugly times when a working girl would get shoved
around or beaten up by an angry, drunk soldier who was
unhappy with the action he had just bought. Angela had
never had any real trouble. She found the American GIs to
be more boastful than harmful, but a queasy nervousness
stayed with her on nights like this one when the bars were
crowded with soldiers celebrating their return. She pulled
a small mirror out of her pocket and checked herself
quickly. Standing up, she glanced at the stone relief
figures of four women representing the Cardinal Virtues of
Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance carved into

the facade below the balcony.

11

I

"A lot of good you ladies do,' Angela joked, trying to
lighten her mood. "Well, Mama, the soldiers have feated on
my soul so much there isn't much left. I don't think one
more night is going to make much difference."

The interior of Johnnie's was every bit the den that
the cave-like entrance hinted at strongly. The room was
long and narrow with a low ceiling, and poorly lit with
dull lights. The booths and tables were made of rough,
pitted wood, like furniture pulled from a burned-out
building, and the wooden floor boards were covered with
sawdust and cigarette butts. Except for a couple of old,
Italian men sitting at the bar, a look of wry amusement on
their faces, the room was filled with American GIs. Angela
looked around to see if any other women were present and
spottted the young girl she had seen earlier arguing with
the Carabinieri seated at a large round table with several
GIs, chattering away in rapid Italian, pausing now and then
to smile coyly. She moved over to the bar, bought a drink
with the lire note Gigi had given her still crumpled in her
hand and observed the group she was supposed to entertain.
There was nothing significant or peculiar about their
appearance: they had short hair and wore colored t—shirts,
and their faces and arms were tanned from weeks spent in
the field. She detected a familiar look in their faces, a
look she had seen before in many of the other soldiers that
puzzled her. It was a combination of innocence and

hardness that at times made her either want to coddle them

12

or run away. They were so two-sided, either laughing or
swearing, smiling or acting tough and mean.

Three of them directed all their attention to a large
fellow in the corner of the booth. He must be the lucky
boy going home, she thought, he's the reason I'm sitting
here watching them. She noticed the table was littered
with several beer bottles. It was still early and they had
already had much to drink. This might be more than she
could handle. She wanted to leave and then remembered Lina
and Gigi who were waiting on the corner. To hell with
them, what favors have they ever done for me? I'm doing
this for me. Just do it and get it over with, and maybe
they'll pay me enough so I can go home early.

Angela walked over to the booth and stood off to the
side, waiting for them to notice her. Up close they were
much younger looking, not more than twenty or twenty-one,
she figured. The tall one in the corner was also much
bigger than she had realized. He was muscular and sturdy
looking, like a giant tree, with red hair and a gap-toothed
grin. Across from him was a short, Spanish—looking boy
with a round face and heavy eyelids, and a
stocky-blonde-haired boy who constantly drummed his fingers
on the table to the tune of a song playing on the jukebox.
The fourth member of the group was a lean, handsome boy
with the fuzzy outline of a first moustache over his lip.

"Hey, look who's here, it's Sophia. What's happening

Sophia?" the handsome one spoke to her first.

13

The others laughed at the sarcastic comparison to the
famous Italian actress.

"It's Angela," she replied.

"Yeah, sure, Sophia, whatever you say."

Angela bristled for a moment, but decided not to let
the comment on her homeliness bother her. She had heard
much worse insults. Like a boxer with a weak chin and no
knockout power in his fists who dances away from his more
dangerous opponent, fighting enough only to survive the
match and collect his pay, Angela was well aware of her
limitations as a lady of the night, and took an accordingly
self—effacing and pragmatic attitude with her into the bars
and streets. She knew that the soldiers did not find her
attractive and agreed to go out with her usually as a last
resort. If that's the worst that happens to me tonight, I
can't complain, she thought. If it keeps them in a good
mood, calling me Sophia well then, fine. Besides, even her
parents called her Angela only when in the presence of each
other. As a child she was likely to hear any or all three
of the names in the course of the day.

"You having a party, want some company, maybe?"

"Yeah, we're looking for some company," said the
handsome one. "What happened to Lina and Gigi?"

"Lina take Gigi home, she not feel good. They say you
no have much money, maybe you buy me instead, I no charge

much."

14

"You got to be kidding,’ the handsome one spoke again.
He appeared to be the leader of the party. Angela did not
like him, but she kept smiling.

The big one with the red hair was staring at Angela
and pulled at his friend's arm. "Wait a minute, Sweet
Frank, this is my party, right?" The four of them
conferred for several moments, heads bowed together,
mumbling and snickering. At that moment Angela wished she
were pretty like Lina, then she could just smile and get
whatever she wanted or walk away if she felt like it; if
she were tough and had a sharp tongue like Gigi, she would
tell off this smart kid and maybe cuff him on the ear. She
would teach him a lesson all right.

"Okay, this is the deal," said Sweet Frank. "You do
the Big Kid here, Ricardo and me——Asher says he doesn't
want any part of you——for twenty—five dollars. That's the
offer, take it or leave it."

Angela thought for a moment. The other girls would
laugh at her for accepting such a small fee for turning
three tricks, but she knew where she could get a good
exchange rate for the American dollars, and it wasn't too
bad of a price. She agreed.

Outside Johnnie's, Angela looked down the street
towards the Cafe Settembre, trying to see if Lina and Gigi
were still waiting. She recognized their darkened forms
sitting on the column steps in the Piazza degli Angeli.

The five of them got into a large, white van, the

15

soldiers grabbing the seats up front while Angela perched
on the metal hump of the rear wheel well in the dark. The
makeshift seat was slippery and hard, and she bounced and
slid off everytime the van hit a bump or rut in the road.
The soldiers had borrowed the use of their Platoon
Sergeant's apartment and the ride there took several
minutes, during which they talked and laughed among
themselves, never once looking back at Angela, as though
she were not there. As the van passed Caserma Ederle,
Angela looked out the rear window and could see the
Military Police in their crisp, green uniforms and white
gloves and spats glowing in the dark, like electric doves
diving and slashing through the night as they directed
traffic at the front gate.

Angela was surprised at what she considered to be a
luxurious apartment, especially when she compared it to the
dingy closet of a room she rented. It was spacious and
filled with nice furniture and a large stereo and
television set. She dug her toes into the thick carpeting
in the bedroom as she got undressed. Stretched out on the
wide bed, her body sank into the mattress and the sheets
felt cool and clean next to her body.

From the living room she could hear the voices of the
boys as they badgered and taunted one another with jokes
and rude comments. She wondered how long they were going
to play around before getting to her. She wanted to get

this over with as soon as possible. The bedroom door

l6

opened, revealing the silhouetted figure of the one they
called Big Kid as he moved into the room quietly like a
giant shadow. She watched him as he leaned against the
wall and removed his clothes with surprising ease,
considering the amount of beer he'd had to drink. In the
dark his muscular arms and chest looked even larger. Papa
would approve of him, she thought, he looks like he

could've fought as a legionnaire in one of Caesar's armies.

He stood over the bed staring at her without speaking,
and then pounced, pulling at her limbs as though he were in
a wrestling match. Under his hard, heavy body, she felt
her own plump flesh flatten and spread out as though it
were flowing away from her, like a pail of water poured out
on a smooth, flat sidewalk. Her eyes wandered around the
room, stopping at a small, metal gondola, the kind sold by
the dozens in 3 Venice gift shop, on top of a dresser. She
strained through the dark for something else on which she
could glue her attention, but the rhythmic scraping of an
unshaven chin along the side of her neck prevented her
from escaping.

He finished with her as abruptly as he had begun and
sat up on the edge of the bed. Angela felt her own flesh
return to her slowly, as if with fear and suspicion, like a
frightened child creeping warily towards the rim of a large
crater where once there had stood a magnificent castle.

She wanted to go into the bathroom and wash, but as she

17

tried to get up, she felt strangely weightless and without
form. Watching Big Kid retrieve his clothes, she thought
he appeared much larger and heavier than before. It was as
if he had somehow managed to take Angela's weight and stuff
it inside his own frame, leaving her an airy shell
incapable of coordinated movement. My God, she thought,
he's stolen my body. Mama was right. This soldier has
swallowed my soul and now there is nothing left inside of
me.

Big Kid's face furrowed with puzzlement when he saw
the panic in Angela's eyes. He moved over to the bed and
shook her foot. "Hey, you okay?" Angela felt nothing.
Give it back, she screamed, but he couldn't hear her. It's
mine, you can't have it. Big Kid gave her an embarrassed
grin, "Well, uh, thanks," and left the room. Angela
squeezed her eyes shut. Oh God, it's come to this. How can
I get my body back?

The door opened slightly and a shaft of light cut
across her chest and face and then disappeared. The short,
Spanish-looking boy called Ricardo stumbled into the room
and plopped on the bed. His hands fumbled with a short,
flat pipe as he tried to rekindle the fading glow in the
bowl with a match. Angela recognized the thick, sweet odor
in his clothes. With practiced deftness, he nudged a small
chunk of hash into the bowl, held a match to it, and sucked
with measured force and exhaled. He smiled behind a cloud

of smoke that hung over the bed and offered the pipe to

18
Angela.

"Want some?"
Angela shook her head. The heavy smell was making her
nauseous.

' Ricardo

"Aw, come on, try it, this is good stuff,‘
held the pipe under her nose.

Angela hated hashish and had always refused to try it
even though she knew it was fairly harmless. Most of the
other girls got high and they often derided her pious
refusal to smoke. She didn't care. Some of them were
wasted junkies now, bony ghosts spending all their earnings
on hard drugs which the GIs always seemed to have a supply
of, which, in turn, forced them to work even more in the
bars and streets to support their habit. They were caught
in a never-ending circle, like a dog gone mad with
starvation trying to eat its own tail. Angela clung to her
adamant resistance to any kind of drug as though it were a
rope holding her above a chasm, as if her refusal to get
high in some way kept her apart from them.

She pinched her nose and mouth shut as Ricardo tried
to pry the pipe between her lips like a father trying to
force-feed a baby. Her weightless arms hung limp at her
sides.

"Relax, just take a little toke," he pushed harder
into her mouth.

"No," she hissed through her lips and jerked her leg

against him, trying to push him off the bed.

19

" said Ricardo.

"Hey, be cool will you,

Angela brought her knee up into his side and knocked
him off the bed.

"Get out."

Ricardo sat on the floor with a dumb look on his face.
"What do you mean, get out, it's my turn."

"Get out," Angela swung her leg awkwardly over the
side of the bed, like a heavy whip, and Ricardo rolled back
out of reach and stood up.

"Okay, okay, don't get so pissed." He slid through
the door, peering back over his shoulder.

Lying on the bed, Angela tested her arms and legs.
They still felt light and clumsy. She had barely felt the
jolt she gave Ricardo with her knee. She was afraid that
as she tried to get up, she would float about the room like
an astronaut lost in space.

The bedroom door swung open and banged against the
wall, and the light came on, hurting Angela's eyes. Sweet
Frank stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his
hips.

"What's the problem here, how come you threw out
Ricardo?"

Arms folded across her heavy breasts, Angela stared
angrily in front of her. She made no effort to cover
herself.

"The little one is bad, I no do it with him."

20

"Now look, Sophia, we paid you up front, fair and
square, you can't back out now."

' she would not look at Sweet Frank.

"I don't care,'
"The little one is bad, he smoke drugs, he try to make me
smoke drugs, I don't do that, it's bad, he is bad, I don't
like him."

"Is that all? Jesus, come on, it's no big thing, you
don't have to get high if you don't want to. Besides, what
do you care? You're just a . . .," he stopped short.
Angela looked up sharply.

"What you say! What! I am just a what?"

Although she knew prostitution was wrong, Angela had
never thought of herself as a bad or evil person. She did
not enjoy it, but did it just for the money and because she
didn't know what else to do. She had never had a real job.
And now this arrogant kid, dismissing her as some dumb
animal, wanted to cut the rope that kept her from plunging
completely into a bottomless hole. Her weight came back to
her in a rush. She jumped off the bed and bounced in front
of Sweet Frank.

"You think I am bad because I do it with soldiers.

You think I am bad so I do anything. I do this to . . . to
live," she struggled for the right words in English and
became more frustrated and angry. "Get out! Go!" She
grabbed a sheet off the bed, wrapped it around her like a

toga, and went into the bathroom.

Confused by the sudden outburst, Sweet Frank stood in

21
the middle of the room shaking his head. He pushed open

the bathroom door and tried to step in while Angela was
splashing her face and armpits with water.

"Hey, look I didn't mean anything, come on."

She kicked the door shut, nearly catching his arm and
shouted, "Get out!"

Angela came out of the bedroom a few minutes later,
dressed, and ready to leave. "Come, we go. Take me back
to Cafe Settembre."

The other three looked at Sweet Frank.

"Look, Sophia, we paid you . . ."

She pulled ten dollars out of her small purse,
crumpled it up, and tossed it to Sweet Frank. "The big one
was fifteen dollars."

He grabbed the money and glanced at his friends. "Ah,
what the hell, let's get rid of her and we'll hit another
bar."

On the drive back through the city, Angela insisted on
sitting in the front, forcing Ricardo to ride in the back
of the van.

It was close to midnight when they reached the Cafe
Settembre, and the bar was still crowded and music and loud
voices poured out of the windows. The lights inside and
over the front door illuminated the base of the column in
the Piazza degli Angeli a dull yellow. Angela looked up at

the statue, but could not make out the face of the angel

lost in the night. On the front steps of the cafe where

22
she had sat earlier in the evening, several GIs stood in a
group watching the van.

' said Sweet

"All right, we're here, come on get out,'
Frank who was driving.

"Take me to the Arco delle Scalette," Angela said
looking out the window.

"The what?"

' answered Ricardo from the

"She means the stairs, man,’
back. "You know, those big stairs by Monte Berico, the
mountain with the old church where the Lieutenant makes us
run sometimes."

"You're nuts, sweetheart, we brought you back where we

0

found your ugly ass, now get out,' Sweet Frank jerked his
thumb towards the street.

Angela yelled at him in Italian and the two began to
argue, neither one understanding what the other was saying.
A blue car of the Carabinieri, attracted by the commotion
inside, pulled along side the van.

"Take me to the Scalette or I scream and tell
Carabinieri you are hurting me."

The soldiers tensed, waiting for the police to bang on
the door. Asher spoke up, "Do it, Frank, if we get busted
down here, we're screwed."

"Okay, Okay," Sweet Frank smiled and waved to the
police, and pulled the van away slowly from the curb,

checking the rear view mirror. The Carabinieri did not

follow.

23

Angela called out directions in short commands as the
van turned and crawled through a maze of side streets.
Within minutes they were on the Viale Margherita, a wide
boulevard lined with cypress trees and large, elegant
stucco homes. There was much traffic with people driving
about, enjoying the warm, weekend night, and the steady
flow of headlights and the glow from the street lamps made
it seem almost like afternoon. Standing behind a circular
intersection at the end of the boulevard, like a throne at
the end of a long, sunlit hallway in a palace, was the Arco
delle Scalette.

Angela told Sweet Frank to pull over and park. Just
as he stopped, she reached over, yanked the keys out of the
ignition, and hopped out of the van. It was an old trick
Gigi had taught her to use if she ever had trouble getting
a customer to pay. The soldiers jumped out after her, but
she already had started toward the monument with short,
brisk strides, her portly figure bouncing side to side.
Glancing over her shoulder, she called to them as they
stood next to the van with a look of dumbfounded confusion

in their faces. "Come with me,"

and they scrambled after
her in a single file formation.

The soldiers finally caught up with her on the far
side of the intersection, panting, and swearing furiously,
after having had to stop several times to dodge speeding

cars.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

24

"Shut up," she ordered them, and the group fell
silent, surprised by the sharp, gruff tone in her voice.

Standing on the first landing under the arch, several
steps up, Angela looked down at the befuddled soldiers.
Behind her, stretching up a steep mountain into the night
was a wide stairway of stone steps. The warring between
parents had often ended in Angela's capture for long,
instructional tours of the city which were conducted
alternately by her mother and father without the knowledge
of the other. The Arco delle Scalette was the one common
place where both of them had brought her.

For centuries women had come to the monument to pray
for seriously ill family members, ascending the stairs on
their knees to the church on the top of the mountain. Most
women simply walked the stairs now, but Angela and her
mother had always climbed them on their knees. She still
had long bumps where her shins rubbed against the stone.

For her father, however, the monument had a very
different significance. When the Austrians had tried to
capture the city more than a hundred years ago, the
citizens of Vicenza built their main defense atop Monte
Berico. With Angela sitting on his shoulders Mr. Torzini
would climb the stairs, relating tales of how the invaders
were beaten back in hand—to—hand combat on these very
steps. Mama and Papa would have had a fit if they had
known the other one brought me here also, she smiled to

herself now.

25

' said Sweet Frank.

"get the keys from her, Big Kid,'

The tall red—head started to move towards Angela and
she held up her hand.

"The keys are in my pants, I don't think you take them
in front of all the cars."

The soldiers glanced uneasily at each other, suddenly
aware of how isolated and vulnerable they were away from
the base, and how they must stand out with their short hair
and ragged jeans, like alien creatures in another world,
drowning in the glare of the cars coming straight at them
down the boulevard and quickly revolving through the
intersection.

"Okay, Sophia, what is it?" asked Sweet Frank. "You
want more money? Fine, we'll give you a few extra dollars,
call it a tip, and you give us the keys."

"No," said Angela. "I want you to carry me up the
scalette."

"What? We're not carrying you anywhere."

"You, Sweet Franco, your friends go, via," she waved
them off. "You carry me up the scalette and I give you the
keys."

"Do you believe this bitch?" Sweet Frank turned and
laughed to his friends.

Big Kid, Asher, and Ricardo looked at him without
smiling.

"This ain't a joke no more, Frank," said Asher.

26

"Sergeant Thurston don't have his van back at first
formation tomorrow morning and our butts are in a sling,
big time. You got us into this shit, now you get the keys
back. I don't care if you have to carry her to Rome and
back."

The three of them started back across the
intersection.

Sweet Frank turned to face Angela. "Do you know just
how many steps there are on this old fashioned escalator?"
he asked. "Well I do-—192--and that's a fact. I ought to
know, I've had to run these suckers enough times to make

even you skinny, Sophia,"

he laughed and struck a defiant
pose, arms folded across his chest, and hip cocked at an
angle.

Angela nodded curtly, watching him with an expression
as cold and motionless as the frozen gaze on the Winged
Lion atop the arch. It was a fact she too had memorized,
imbedded in her mind and legs from having climbed the
stairs on her knees, seeking forgiveness for sins she was
unaware of. Sweet Frank's stance reminded her of an old
photograph of Mussolini in his balcony posturing before
throngs of people that her father kept hanging in their
apartment. But without his friends around him, she could
almost see Sweet Frank's inflated pride seeping out of him.
Ah, he is losing his weight, she thought. He looks as
light as a paper soldier. Now he will know what it is like

to lose one's body. Don't lose it all, Sweet Franco, we

27

have work to do.

"What the hell," he shrugged and forced a laugh.
"It'll be good eXercise, the Lieutenant would love this."

He walked up the first few steps, turned around, and
bent over so Angela could climb on his back. With her arms
wrapped about his neck, he hefted her up as though he were
trying to adjust the weight of a heavy rucksack. "Christ,
don't choke me. I'll show you, bitch," he muttered and
charged up the steps with a sudden burst, legs pumping in
short, choppy steps. Angela jiggled up and down and
tightened her armlock around his shoulders and wrapped her
legs around his waist. Every fifty steps was another
landing. Sweet Frank stopped at the first one to catch his
breath, and Angela slapped her feet against his thighs,
ordering him, "Go." He swore and attacked the steps two at
a time with another angry burst.

Reaching the second landing, Sweet Frank dropped his
arms to let Angela slip off, but she clung to him fiercely,
ordering him again, "Go." The air was warm and muggy, and
Sweet Frank was sweating profusely and breathing heavily.
He spun around trying to shake off his rider, but Angela

hung on. "Christ, give me a breather, will you."

Angela
refused. Looking down behind them, she could no longer see
the lights from the traffic. They were surrounded by the
dark, a wall of thick scrub brush and trees on both sides

of the stairs, and the steps, dropping into a black pit in

one direction and climbing into an unlit attic of night in

28

the other. "You go or I scream, and the Carabinieri come."

With head bowed, Sweet Frank slowed his pace, taking
the steps one at a time. At the third landing he caught
his toe on a step and sprawled forward, spilling Angela who
rolled over against the next tier of steps and quickly
stood up. She watched Sweet Frank carefully as he lay in a
heap next to the wall, his face red and streaked with
sweat, chest heaving. From this level she could just make
out the skyline of the city. She stared hard at a point
where she thought the Piazza degli Angeli would be, but
could not find the marble angel. She let Sweet Frank rest
for another minute, not out of pity, but to enable him to
finish the climb. "Okay, we go."

On his hands and knees now, Sweet Frank was glaring at
her.

"You think I'm going to quit. Yeah, I know your game,
just like those bastard Black Hat instructors at jump
school riding the stragglers to get them to quit. You want
me to quit, don't you?"

Angela did not know who the men with black hats were.

"You quit, no keys."

"You can't beat me, honey."

He crawled over and sat on the first step while Angela
climbed on his back. The last tier of steps took almost as
long to climb as the first three. Twice Sweet Frank, his
legs wobbling now and shoulders sagging, lost his balance

and teetered on the edge of a step, nearly tumbling

29

backwards, and each time Angela leaned over his head,
preventing them both from crashing down the steps like two
loose boulders bouncing down the side of a mountain. On
the last step at the top, Sweet Frank tumbled down on one
knee and Angela slid off his back.

The top landing opened onto a winding, black-top road
lined with trees. Except for a skyful of stars and a
quarter moon above them, they were still immersed in
darkness. Sweet Frank stood up and peeled off his
sweat—drenched shirt, sucking down the warm night air and
grinning stupidly.

"Gimme the keys."

Angela stood several feet away. "Not yet, we go."

"I'm not carrying you another goddamn inch!"

"We walk, you want the keys, you come."

"Damn you,"

Sweet Frank sat on the ground, and Angela
started walking down the road.

The trees ended abruptly and the road continued up
another steep hill. Angela stopped at the bottom and
looked up at the buidings before her. The Porticos of
Monte Berico, a seemingly endless arcade under a single
tile roof, ran along the side of the road. Under the glow
of yellOw lamps across the road, the perfectly ordered
arches, interrupted only by a series of small chapels,
resembled a golden ladder turned on its side. As if

balanced on the far end of the ladder, awash in bright,

white lights, stood the Basilica de Monte Berico, a huge

30

cathedral with a wide dome.

She had been up here many times, and the sight never
failed to fill her with awe. The church had always been
the final destination of the pilgrimages with her mother.
According to folklore, in 1425 an old woman who climbed the
mountain daily to pray for the end of the plague and famine
that had been ravaging Vicenza for months, was visited by
the Madonna twice who instructed her to have the townsfolk
build a church in Her honor. As soon as the work had
begun, the plague vanished. To Mrs. Torzini, the church
was evidence of the power of prayer and perseverance to
overcome evil.

Reaching the top, Angela scanned the wide, circular
parking lot for cars. On the far side was another road
that led up from the city. Some of the girls would bring
their dates up here to avoid the police. The lot was
empty.

With his head hanging and feet dragging, Sweet Frank
caught up with her. She stood with her back to him, gazing
at the white, marble facade of the church covered with
statues of saints and angels.

"What'd you bring me up here for?"

Angela ignored him and kept staring at the church.

"You see this church, Sweet Franco? Sweet Franco,"
she repeated the name to herself. "Is a funny name for you
Franco. You are handsome, but not so sweet. This church

was made for the best woman, the most good woman, the

31

Madonna. I come to this church every Sunday, Sweet Franco.
My Mama does not talk to me, but the Madonna, She does not
tell me, 'No, go away Angela, you are bad,‘ the priest
calls me Angela too, not Sophia or Calphurnia or Maria. My
name is Angela. Say it, Sweet Franco . . . Angela."

A breeze blew across the lot, and Sweet Frank, still
without his shirt on, shivered.

Y

"Angela,' he whispered the name.

"Tell your friends too. If they want me, they find me
at the Piazza degli Angeli. Then they don't forget my
name. Angela, You hear?"

She pulled the keys out from her pants and flung them
down the hill they had just climbed.

"Go away, leave me."

Sweet Frank avoided her eyes and walked back down the
hill.

In a small courtyard to the left of the church was a
monument to the citizens of Vicenza who had died fighting
the Austrians atop Monte Berico. Her father brought her
nearly as often as her mother did to the church, to look at
the statue of a tall, noble woman wearing a Roman toga and
laurel wreath, with one arm upraised and the other holding
a sword. "Be strong and valiant like this woman and

' he would exhort her.

victory will be yours, Calphurnia,'
She wondered if he would consider this night a victory for

her.

TERMINATE

Colonel Darling made us jump again, only a week after
two men from Alpha Co. had been killed. Somehow they got
entangled going out the door and fell a thousand feet.

I was scared. I mean really scared. Do you
understand? No. How can I explain scared if you've never
jumped from an airplane?

Remember sneaking in the abandoned house at the end of
the street when you were a kid? Every neighborhood has
one, an old wood frame building with boarded up windows,
broken porch steps, swallowed up in tall grass that hasn't
been cut in years. You'd sit out front with your buddies,
leaning against the fence with rusted iron slats and spear
tips, and trade ghost stories about the crazy old man who
used to live there. The place was haunted, you believed.
He still lives there, someone would say. Only comes out at
night to bury his victims in the big oil tank in the back
yard. Then the dares would come: you go, why don't you, I
will if you will, and you'd all go together, following your
older brother, and climb through a window in the back. You
were terrified, right? Admit it. I was. Never knew what
was coming next, the feeling of imminent danger, invisible
creepy-crawlies brushing against the back of your neck.

All those stories about other kids who got lost inside and

32

33

never came out, fell through rotted floor boards into the
basement. Scared to death in the haunted house. The only
thing that got you through was knowing that outside, past
the heavy wooden doors and dark corners, past the rows of
empty bottles covered with cobwebs, was bright sunshine and
your little sister guarding your bicycle for a quick
getaway. Then someone would scream, and everyone scrambled
for the back window, and you'd panic, terrified at the
thought of being left behind, not being able to climb out
the window without help. Outside, you'd rush through the
grass, the old man's growl echoing in your ear, then hop on
your bike and squeeze the handlebars for reassurance,
jabbering to your sister about hearing foot steps in the
house. Being outside again felt like waking up from a bad
dream. And then you wanted to go right back in and do it
all over again, because your brother and his friends were
going back and you didn't want to be the sissy, the
crybaby. But mostly you went because you knew Mom and Dad
were just down the street, their presence like a safety
line hooked through your Indian bead belt.

Now try to imagine what it would've been like trapped
inside the house, without Mom and Dad waiting at home, no
safety line, without your big brother to help you.
Scared—-the kind that reduces you to a kid alone inside a
haunted house.

I can still see the two men falling, stuck together in

a lumpy ball, malfunctioned parachutes twisted above their

34

heads like a pair of snakes trying to stangle each other.
I turned away just before the end.

They bounced when they hit the ground, according to
one of the medics on the drop zone. "Just like rubber
dolls," he said.

Scared——the kind that makes your stomach feel like a
wet towel being wrung out.

It wasn't fair. I had it all planned out. You were
supposed to jump at least once every three months to keep
your status and collect jump pay-—fifty—five dollars a
month. One last big jump, a battalion operation in
Wildflecken, Germany——"Wild-fuckin'," Woofman Zack called
it. I was short, a two-digit-midget. I had sixty-five
days left in the Army. With a little luck I wouldn't have
to jump again. My Airborne days were over. All I had to
do was hump the bush for a couple of weeks, be careful not
to wander down range during the live—fire exercises, and I
was all set. Back to sunny Italy for two months of
garrison duty, and I was gone, civilian for life.

But the Colonel ruined my plans. He immediately
scheduled another jump after the accient, said he didn't
want anyone getting gun shy. You know the theory: fall
off a horse, you're supposed to climb right back on,
otherwise you'll be too scared later. The Colonel didn't
want us to have time to think about the casualties. It
would just make the next jump that much worse, he said.

Can you imagine? A formation of C—l30s flying over a wide

35

open field, a man standing in each door, the green light
blinks one, and nobody moves. An empty sky. A battalion
full of paratroopers and no jumpers. That would look
pretty bad, like going to the Indy 500 and watching the
drivers refuse to leave pit row. The thing is, it made
sense to me. I probably would have done the same thing if
I'd been the C.O. I couldn't blame him. It was a smart
move, really, a sign of strong leadership.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no coward. Made just about
every kind of blast you can: C—13O with full equipment,
C—141 jet—-like being shot out of a cannon, choppers, night
jumps; I even jumped from a balloon—-a rollercoaster with
no up and all down. I jumped in winds strong enough to
blow you to the Land of Oz, hit drop zones covered with
rocks, the whole shot. I'm not bragging, it's just that
you get to a certain point where you feel like you've done
your bit. When you're so close to going home you start to
get superstitious. After fifty jumps with nothing more
serious than riser burns on the neck and a bruised thigh,
you worry about the law of averages catching up. Large
rips in the canopy, a snapped static line, a reserve that
won't open, anything is possible. Thoughts of major
malfunctions creep into your head and whisper, "what if,
what if?"

I thought about quitting. Airborne was strictly
voluntary, you could terminate your status anytime, no

questions asked. But there was always a high price to pay

36

for weasling out of a jump. Razzing from your friends in
the platoon, stinging jokes, but behind the words was a
tone of loss of respect. You choked, chickened out.
Woofman especially could be brutal. "You sucked the big

' he'd say, and smack his lips.

thumb, champ,’

That fear of embarrassing yourself, it's what keeps
you from losing control when the jump masters throw open
the doors and the roar of the wind fills the plane. To
unhook your static line and climb up on the nylon web seats
would ruin it for everyone else, remind them of how scared
they are. Better to stay composed behind the mask of
greased, olive drab tiger stripes painted on your face,
even if your chest aches and head feels light from
hyperventilating.

It might not have been so bad if they had treated the
whole thing as just another jump, but word came down that
Colonel Darling wanted some intensive pre-jump training.
For two days we hid out in the Black Forest. Supply rigged
up several mock exit doors out of tent poles. The jump
masters bellowed out jump commands in a deep bass that
echoed through the trees and stirred up the birds. We
practiced exit procedures, hooking up imaginary static
lines and shuffling towards the door, leaving trails of
bull-dozed pine needles on the ground. Back to basics was
the order of the day, sharpen the fundamentals. The
Colonel walked by as I was preparing to make my exit. He

held up his hand and stopped me just as I was about to

37

spring forward and made me hold my door position for two
minutes. He noticed everything, said my knees weren't bent
far enough, then my back wasn't straight enough. My thighs
burned from crouching so long, and I cursed him silently.
After I leaped out he made me go back and do it over again
because I didn't hold the tuck position for four seconds
and failed to reach up and check the risers of the
parachute upon deployment. He didn't yell or wave his
arms; that wasn't his style. He spoke in a firm but even
voice, like a school teacher patiently explaining a math
problem. He even looked like a high school teacher, short,
horn rim glasses, rigid back. His uniform was always
inspection clean, even his field fatigues, starched
creases, shiny boots; on him it looked like a costume, like
he wasn't really a battalion commander, but an actor
playing the role. He had stiff white hair that stood up
like whiskers, and a big nose. Woofman had dubbed him the
White Rat and the name stuck.

In the afternoon we practiced parachute landing falls,
jumping off rotted tree stumps. It was like jump school
all over. Again and again we hit the ground and rolled,
front, side, back. A small rock dug into my knee and every
time I landed on my left side a jolt of pain ran down my
leg. Woofman cracked jokes, "What is this, Big Ten
practicing for the Rose Bowl? What the hell, they always

lose anyway.' We laughed but not too loud. The officers

were edgy and impatient and wouldn't let anyone smoke.

38

Instead of a football game, it felt like we were preparing
for a suicide mission. By the end of the day I was hot,
tired and dirty. We needed the practice, there was no
doubt about that. Some of the guys looked weak hitting the
ground, like school kids attempting tumbling for the first
time. But I still didn't like being treated like a
trainee. I was an old—timer, not some cherry straight out
of basic training.

The night before the jump we moved over to the air
base. Sleeping inside the jet hangers didn't help my mood
any. The sight of the long sloping cement bunkers reminded
me of an Indian burial mound. The mess tent trucked out
hot chow to us. It was too hot to eat inside the hangers
so Stanley Pifer, Woofman and I loaded up two paper plates
each and sat out on the grass between the runways,
surrounded by rows of C-130 planes.

"I seen the White Rat fuckin' with today, Myles,"
Woofman said, grinning. His real name was Mike Zechman; we
called him Woofman because he was always woofing lies,
bragging about how tough he was. He added the Zack part,
after his favorite deejay, Wolfman Jack, who he would
imitate by throwing his head back and howling after one of
his outrageous lies. "I would've told him to sit on my
door position. I didn't see him practicing no PLFs."

Stanley Pifer patted me on the arm. "That's rough,

Myles, having to make your last jump twice.' He was a tall

39

lanky kid with large tired eyes who enlisted because he had
flunked a free agent try—out with a Red Sox minor league
team. He drank too much the night before trying to calm
his nerves, and booted five straight ground balls. Told
them I wasn't a shortstop, he'd explain, shaking his head.
"If I was short, I'd terminate, in a heartbeat."

" I said. "Thought about it."

"That's a possibility,
I was hoping he'd say more.

"Oh bullshit, you would not, Stanley," Woffman said.
"The only one who should do any terminating is Colonel

' He dragged out the Colonel's name in sappy

Darling.'
voice. "Someone should terminate his ass permanently.
Terminate with extreme prejudice," he laughed. He'd heard
the line in a spy movie and used it all the time.

"So what's Myles got to prove, huh?" Pifer said.

"Seventy—five days and a wake-up ..."

" I corrected him.

"Sixty-five,

"There you go, sixty—five days and a wake-up. Why
risk it? I say give it up. Who wants to die in a country
where they don't even speak English?"

He was right, I thought. I'd done my share of hard‘
core jumps. Why not bag it and just wait for my discharge
orders? I'd probably never see the guys again anyway.

Woofman jabbed his white plastic knife at my shirt.
"Look, you been Airborne for almost three years. You going

to throw away them wings after all this time, and because

of the White Rat?" His voice got a high—pitched, sharp

4O

edge to it when he was excited.

"I said the thought crossed my mind, that's all."

"I don't care. You going to let a no—jump cherry make
you quit? That's some tired shit, I'm not going to say
anymore." He picked delicately at the chicken on his
plate, like a surgeon operating on a baby.

"What do you mean, no-jump?" I said. "Who?"

"Who do you think? Colonel Lovely."

"Don't be stupid, Zack," Pifer said. "Of course he
jumps."

"You seen him jump?"

"I saw him on the drop zone after the last jump," I
said.

"You see him land?"

"No."

"He have his chute with him?"

I had to stop and think. "No."

"Uh huh." He licked a bone clean and smacked his
lips."

" Pifer said. "He was

"That doesn't mean anything,
probably in the lead plane on the first pass, stashed his
gear in a jeep and stayed to watch the next pass."

"You think so?" Woofman said. "How come he always
looks so spiffy? You ever notice how nice and neat his
uniform is, like he walked out of a store window. Has

anayone ever actually seen him get in the door and g2_it?

I never even seen the man fuckin' sweat. I bet he ain't

41
made a blast since the day he left jump school. What do
you think?"

The sun was going down, and the shadows from the wings
of the aircraft edged across the infield where we were
sitting.

"I say any man can collect jump pay without leaving
the ground is pretty smart," Stanley Pifer said.

"What do you say to that, Myles?" Woofman nudged me
with his boot.

I was watching a mechanic work on one of the planes.
He walked up the tailgate and disappeared inside. "I say
you're going to see one happy dude running off the dz
tomorrow."

Pifer slid his chocolate cake onto my plate. "Don't
worry, brother. What are the odds against back to back
jump with fatalities? It just couldn't happen, I mean,
this isn't a war zone or anaything like that. It's not
like we're making a combat blast into the Golan Heights."

Woofman clapped his hands and let a short howl. "I
hope to God we get on the same plane as Darling. You and
me, Myles, we'll get behind him and ride his ass right out
the door. Sweet." He stood up, glanced around, and
started pitching chicken bones at the tires of the closest
plane.

The day of the jump was filled with bad omens. For
starters, the temperature hit the nineties for the tenth

straight day. Everything looked brittle and sickly, the

42
trees, the grass. The planes looked like giant desert
lizards shimmering in the heat rising from the runways.
Then the Colonel announced there would be a memorial
service on the drop zone for the two men who'd been killed.
The thought of attending a funeral after a jump was not
reassuring. Over time I had developed a routine for
preparing for a jump, a kind of superstitious ritual that
had become more eccentric as I got closer to going home. I
botched the whole procedure, couldn't remember anything. I
forgot what length to adjust the leg straps on the harness
so they wouldn't pinch my crotch; I couldn't remember the
phone number of my old highschool girlfriend, my father's
birthday, or in which pocket I kept the religious medal my
mother had given me when I enlisted.

After we loaded the plane the crew chief came aboard
and said we had to get off. Something wrong with the
engines but he wouldn't say what. The bird wouldn't fly.
So we filed off and hobbled fifty yards down the runway to
another plane. As a result we were in reverse order, and I
was the third man to board, which meant that I would be one
of the last men out on the jump. I hated being at the end,
just prolonged the anxiety, stumbling forward, watching
everyone in front of you get sucked out the door.

Inside the plane it was hot and stuffy and smelled
like fuel. Stanley Pifer pulled out his worn copy of
Baseball Digest from the pocket of his field pants and

started reciting the lifetime statistics of his favorite

43

Red Sox players.
"Man, oh man, Ted Williams missed five seasons in the
Air Force and still hit 521 homers. Five prime homers."

H

"Well, you're in luck, slugger, Woofman said.

"You'll only miss three prime seasons. You can still catch
old Teddy."

"Not me, man, but I bet Tony Conigliaro could've come
close if he hadn't gotten beaned. Rookie of the Year, hit
for average and power, strong arm, good glove, he could do
it all." He flipped the page and made a face. "Whoa, look
at this," he said, and handed me the book open to a picture
of Conigliaro after he'd been hit in the face with a
fastball. His left eye was swollen shut and bruised a dark
color, like the photo of a torture victim.

"Show it to Woofman. Hey, Zack, check this out."

Woofman was craning his neck, looking back at the tail
of the plane. He glanced at the picture and said, "He
should've ducked."

Pifer looked at me and shook his head. "Tony C.,
brother, he had all the tools. He was never the same, you
know?"

"Yeah, I know," I said. "It's too bad." I closed the
book and handed it back to him.

Woofman squirmed in his seat, trying to look behind
him to the other side of the plane. We were packed in so
tightly that his parachute pressed into my shoulder.

"What the hell are you doing?" I said.

44

"Can't find the White Rat. I know that Chump is gonna
snivel out of the jump" He turned back and wedged himself
down on the seat. "That's okay, guy I know in Charlie Co.
is going out on the first pass. He's going to watch for
him."

"It's a big drop zone," I said.

"No problem, the Woofman's got informants. Big Zack
is everywhere."

I didn't want to argue with him. The whole idea was
ridiculous, of course Colonel Darling made the jumps. He'd
better make this one, I thought, he ordered the damn thing.
Because of him I was putting my ass on the line again.

The tailgate closed, sealing out the sunlight.

Stanley Pifer read his book to himself. "If Williams had

played in Yankee Stadium,"

he said softly, "that short
porch in right." Woofman painted his fingers with a
camouflage stick, alternating the light and dark ends.
Every man had his own way of dealing with the tension
before a jump, but when the engines started and the plane
took off there was too much noise and we were too cramped
to do much of anything except sit and wait.

Flight time to the drop zone was only about twenty
minutes. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but I kept
thinking about Tony Conigliaro and how he must have felt
the first time he went to bat in a real game after the
beaning.

Why did he try a comeback? Did he have a manager

45

like the Colonel who ordered him to play, or did he try to
inspire him by appealing to his sense of loyalty to uphold
the tradition of past Red Sox heroes like Ted Williams?
Did he challenge Tony C. with war stories about Mickey
Mantle returning from crippling injuries to continue the
fight for a pennant? Tony C. could've quit and no one
would have blamed him. He'd done his bit. Did he do it
for the money? I kept asking myself why was I making this
jump? Was it the money? Not for a lousy fifty-five bucks
a month. I had spent nearly three years building this
image of a tough paratrooper. All the killer schools,
Belgian Commando, mountain warfare, extra jumps, you name
it, I volunteered for it. And in the end none of it meant
a thing. I would rather face the danger of another jump
than have anyone think I was a puss, a wimp. Nothing had
changed, I was right back where I'd started. I resented
that more than anything, more than the jump, being made to
feel like a frightened child again.

I don't remember too much about exiting the plane.
Don't remember the jump commands, the countdown or what I
was thinking. Woofman was behind me, I do remember that,
could feel his heavy body pushing against me when he leaned
over my shoulder and said, "If you was the Rat, I'd tie a
big time knot in your static line." I focused on the metal
cable that ran the length of the plane and watched the
static lines slide along it. Tried to block out everything

else, didn't want to see the exit door and the bodies

46
slipping out of sight. Must've hesitated in the door, I
could hear Woofman's high—pitched voice shouting, "Go,
goddammit, go!" It was dark, hit a brick wall of wind and
spun around. When I opened my eyes, tried to look up and
check the canopy, but the risers and lines were twisted all
the way down behind my neck, pushing my head down. Stay
calm, I stayed calm and thought: twisted lines, you pedal
your legs, a normal pace, like riding the bike around the
block, the instructors said. I bicycled, slowly, then
faster, maybe too fast, but I had lots of twists to
untwist. I was calm, started to laugh even, silly,
pedaling legs furiously, like a cartoon character, Wiley
Coyote chasing Roadrunner over the edge of a cliff. I was
spinning, a top without a table, unwinding, maybe too fast,
but I was calm, util I got the dizzies and thought I was
falling too fast, couldn't focus on the others around me.
Was I falling too fast? Couldn't see the canopy.
Malfunction, I thought, couldn't check the canopy for a
malfunction. A blown panel, maybe. What if, what if? I'm
falling too fast, I thought, but I stayed calm, talk
yourself through it. Pull the reserve, no problem. Fifty
jumps and never had to use the reserve. Jesus, please cut
me some slack, fifty jumps without a malfunction, and now
this. Why? Terminate, why didn't I terminate? I'm going
to terminate now, terminate with extreme prejudice. Jesus,
pull the fucking reserve now. White silk sprang out,

fluttered in front of me, a dancing white snake. Feed it

47
out, you've got to feed it out, the instructors said, can't
just sit and watch. Hands flailing, twisting, pulling,
throw it out. Pull it in and do it again. White silk
balled up in my arms, flapping in my face, like wrestling
with bed sheets on a windy day. A strange feeling, legs
folding underneath me, like a puppet dropped lazily on the
stage.

After landing, I lay on my back, afraid to move.
Softly, I patted myself to make sure everything still
worked. There was no need, I had touched down so lightly I
could've landed standing. No broken back or legs, I could
move. It was all over, I thought, no more jumps.

Survival, how do you describe the feeling of survival? I
was relieved, but scared still, shaking, like when you spin
out in your car on the expressway in a snowstorm and
somehow end up right without a scratch. My stomach was all
light and tingling. I watched one of the C—130s fly over,
spitting out jumpers like popcorn and wondered if we
weren't all a bit demented for walking out the door of a
perfectly good airplane while it was still in the air.
Never again, unh, unh, not me.

Stanley Pifer came running over to me, out of breath.
"You okay, Myles?" He looked down at the white silk of the
reserve bunched up with the main canopy. "I thought that
was you who pulled. What was the problem?"

"I don't know, I couldn't see, really." There had

been no malfunction, I realized. "Seemed like I was

48

dropping too fast."

Pifer looked confused. "Yeah, well, maybe someone
slipped beneath you, stole your air."

"That was probably it." I took off the harness and
quickly rolled up both canopies.

"Sure, happened to me at DZ Rock, remember? Some jerk
slipped beneath me at the last minute, collapsed my chute,
big time. Fifty feet from the ground, zoom, dropped like a
broken elevator. Twisted my knee bad, remember?"

"Yeah."

Woofman walked up, dragging his chute on the ground
behind him. "Hey, Hollywood, what were you doing up there,
posing for pictures?"

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"If I'd known you was going to take a nap in the door,
I'd have switched places with you."

Pifer was watching me. My fatigue shirt was soaked
with sweat, and I wanted to strip right there. My face
felt like it was burning up. "Jump masters said they
wanted everyone to take a door position for a full count,
remember?"

"Yeah, one second, not an hour."

"Lay off him, man,‘ Pifer said. "He had a rough

blast, some cherry stole his air."
"I'll say he had a rough blast. Never seen anyone
pedal his legs so hard." He started laughing. "I'm sorry,

man, but that shit was too funny. You looked like that

49

crazy bitch in the Wizard of Oz. What was her name, the
one rode her bicycle across the sky in a tornado?"

A medic's jeep wheeled up next to us, and the driver
leaned out. "You okay, troop? I saw the reserve pop,
looked like you were having troubles."

Some of the men walking off the drop zone slowed down
and stared as they passed the jeep.

"I'm all right, thought I had a malfunction, no big
thing."

The driver nodded and smiled. He waved and drove off.

There was a long silence. Woofman turned in a circle,
looking out over the drop zone. "Well, I don't see the Rat
anywhere."

Pifer was pretending to watch the last of the planes
disappear in the sky. "Tell you what," he said. "On my
last jump, I hope I have three reserves, and I'll pull
every one. The more protection the better." He nodded his
head stiffly. "Damn straight."

Woofman unbuttoned his shirt and started fanning
himself. "Fuckin' heat, man, too much. Never gets this
hot back home in Maine. You know what I'm going to do,
Myles? Seeing as how this was your last jump, I'm going to
carry your rig off the dz for you. What do you think of
that?"

"I can carry it,’ I said.

"No really, we should make it a tradition, starting

50

with you,"

he said, reaching down for the handles on
the kit bag.

"I got it," I said, and slid the bag away from him.

As we walked off the drop zone, Pifer and Woofman
traded stories about rough landings of the past. They were
doing it to make me feel better. Because I froze in the
door, I had a weak exit and twisted my lines. I panicked
and popped the reserve when there was no need for it,
reacted like a cherry on his first jump. My last jump.

I'd always imagined how it would go: confident, almost
cocky, stretched out on the ground, smoking a cigarette
while the cherries in the platoon nervously checked and
rechecked their equipment. I'd slip on the harness at the
last minute, stroll over to the plane. during the flight
to the dz, I'd doze off, Pifer would have to wake me when
the jump commands started. When the green light blinked
on, I'd approach the exit smoothly, look the jump master in
the eye, toss him my static line, and hop out the door.
Flashy but cool, nonchalant, like the Lone Ranger jumping
off a saloon porch onto Silver's back. My last jump, never
thought I'd humilate myself.

The battalion formed up in a long sloping hollow with
tall brown grass that crackled under our boots. A woodline
of naked trees with broken branches ran across the crown of
the front slope. Bravo Co. was in the rear with Charlie

Co., behind Alpha and Headquarters.

51

"Another one of the Rat's great ideas," Woofman said,
"A fake funeral out here. Alot of good that's going to do
those poor bastards splattered on the dz."

I thought it was a good gesture, the least we could
do, but I didn't say anything. I hadn't said a word since
we walked off the drop zone. I was too embarrassed, didn't
want to draw any attention to myself.

Pifer stretched and squinted into the sky. A line of
thick clouds was gathering in the sky behind us, and the
wind began to blow slightly. "We could pray for rain if
nothing else. They been predicting it for the last few
days. Something has got to give."

What does he know about dying?" Woofman said. He was
digging a hole in the ground with the heel of his boot.

"Darling has a combat infantry badge, Zack," Pifer
said. "He was in Nam, you know."

"Big fucking deal. I heard he was strictly admin, sat
in an air conditioned office in Saigon, ordering beans and
weenies for the troops." He lengthened the hole he was
digging and shoveled out the loose dirt with the toe of his
boot. "My cousin Ricky got wasted on a hunting trip. Took
a bullet right between the eyes, no lie. I was standing
next to him when it happened. And this man is going to
tell me about dying? Shit."

Colonel Darling called the battalion to attention, and
the Chaplain walked up the front slope and stood on a berm

in front of the treeline to deliver his eulogy. He was a

52

big man with a soft voice, and it was hard to hear exactly
what he was saying. The sun was shining in my eyes, and I
couldn't see his face. Some of the men strained to hear,
but most lowered their heads to keep the sun out of their
eyes. I tried to remember if I'd ever met the two men
who'd been killed. Veech and Monoghan were their names.
I'd probably seen them a dozen times on the base, passed
them in the mess hall or in a bar downtown. Were they
short, too? Maybe that was supposed to have been their
last scheduled jump. Were they friends? Where were they
from? What were they planning to do when they got out of
the Army? Did they have girlfriends back home? What were
their parents thinking right now? What did the letters say
informing them of the deaths of their sons? Who wrote the
letters? I stood on my tip toes to find the Colonel. He
was standing off to the side, head bowed, arms folded
across his chest. His shadow was twice as long as his
figure.

The service lasted for several minutes. I recognized
some of the prayers and followed along to myself. When the
Chaplain finished Colonel took his place on the berm. It
was only natural that he should say something. The sun
slipped behind the woodline, and through the trees sparks
of light popped around him as he moved.

"Look at him," Woofman whispered in my ear. "Clean as
a Homecoming Queen. I'm telling you, that son of a bitch

did not make the jump."

53

I stared hard at the Colonel. He did look pretty
neat, but from that distance I couldn't tell for certain.
Besides, I noticed long before that any officer above the
rank of captain had a real knack for staying clean in the
field.

Colonel Darling raised his head and stared into the
sky behind the formation. "I see for once the Hawk is

going to give us a break,"

he said in a voice much stronger
than the Chaplain's. I peeked over my shoulder. The wind
blew harder, pushing the clouds across the sky, and the air
felt cooler. "I want you men to know that I've had enough
of this heat, and that I've personally ordered a cloud
cover from the Man upstairs."

"Airborne, got it made in the shade,"

someone yelled.

There was some brief laughter.

"Ha, ha," Woofman said. "The man's a real comic."

The deaths were a freak accident, the Colonel said.
One of the men was a tow jumper, and the second man
collided with him when he exited the door. "Oh, Jesus,"
Pifer whistled softly. "Can you believe it, a tow jumper."
Both men were probably stunned unconscious before they hit
the ground, he said. The odds against that combination of
malfunctions were one in a million. He said this with
empahsis and looked directly at us. A full investigation
was under way to determine exactly what happened.

"One in a milllion, my ass," Woofman hissed. "I know

what happened, they try to put out too many men on each

54
pass, every damn jump. Surprised it didn't happen before
now." The Lieutenant turned around and gave a threatening
look to the platoon. Pifer nudged Woofman to keep quiet.

Darling paused for a moment. Then he started talking
about famous Airborne units in World War Two. He told us
the story of how the lOlst Screaming Eagles, surrounded by
German tanks, refused to surrender at Bastogne. Some
private from the original 509th, our unit, was the first
paratrOOper to win the congressional medal of honor, he
said. "Do you believe this bullshit," Woofman muttered.

A tow jumper, I thought, towed outside the plane,
flapping in the prop blast like a rag doll. I could almost
hear the sound of him banging against the metal skin of the
plane. I was shivering from the wind, got goosbumps all
over, and couldn't shake the image of them falling through
the sky. Darling's voice sounded distant. American
paratroopers always reacted to adversity with courage,
determination, he said. "I can't listen to any more of
this shit," Woofman said, grinding his toe into the hole he
was digging. A tow jumper, I could've been a tow jumper,
easily, after such a sloppy exit. The jump wings on our
fatigue shirts meant we were the elite, a cut above the
ordinary soldier, he said, his voice fading even more.

"Someone should rip the wings off his chest,‘ Woofman

again, in a high pitched whisper. "Terminate him,

terminate with extreme fucking prejudice. I got a nice

I

little grave all ready for him,’ he said, packing down the

55

sides of the hole. They bounced when they hit the ground,
the medic said. Now Darling: we had conducted ourselves
with honor during the jump, he felt privileged to serve
with us. You choked, sucked the big thumb, froze in the
door, like a trainee on the twenty—four foot tower for the
first time, afraid to move. A cartoon character, Elvira
Gulch pedaling her bicycle across the sky. Crying into the
reserve, a giant hanky. "It's bullshit," I said, not loud,
but not a whisper. "You got it, brother, big time
bullshit. Tell it, tell it loud," Woofman said, squeezing
my arm. My last jump, it shouldn't have ended that way,

not in humiliation. "Terminate,' I said. "Yeah, yeah,
tell the White Rat, tell him to terminate. A desk jockey,

a no-jump paper eater. Shits paper clips. What does he

know about Airborne, a goddamn supply officer," "Woofman's
voice hissing in my ear. "Terminate," I said again, a
little louder. The Lieutenant wheeled around. "Take it

' Pifer said. "Sweet, sweet sound, say it

easy, Myles,'
again, louder," Woofman out of the side of his mouth.

"Terminate," I shouted. The rest of the platoon turned and

stared. "Terminate," as loud as I could. Wind blowing in
my face, and it started to rain. "Terminate, terminate,
terminate," I chanted. "Sweet," Woofman snickered.

Darling left the slope and walked quickly down the middle
of the formation. The whole battalion turned and watched.
He pushed his way through the ranks and stood in front of

me. He started to say something, hesitated, and then took

56
off his glasses and wiped them dry. "Alright, son, what's
the matter?" he said. My cheeks were burning and the rain

" I said, a

felt cool. His face blurred. "Terminate,
muffled sound, a kid's voice coming up from the basement of

an abandoned house.

GOOD SOLDIER

There was a memorial service on the drop zone for the
two men from Alpha Co. who'd been killed on a jump the week
before. Somehow they got entangled going out the door and
fell a thousand feet.

We had just made another jump that afternoon. Colonel
Darling, the battalion commander, scheduled it immediately
after the accident, said he didn't want anyone getting gun
shy. Which was a smart move when you think about it,
really. A sign of strong leadership. I probably would
have done the same thing if I'd been the C.O.

After the jump the battalion formed up in a long
sloping hollow. The Chaplain delivered a short eulogy.
When he finished the Colonel took his place on top of a
berm on the front slope. It was only natural that he
should say something. He started off with a joke about the
heat, which had been wicked. One hundred degrees for ten
straight days, a record for Germany. No rain for weeks,
though it was predicted for any day now. A warm breeze
picked up, and a line of thick clouds was gathering to the
east. The Colonel said he had personally ordered a cloud
cover from the Man upstairs. "Airborne, got it made in the

'

shade,' someone shouted, and a few men laughed. The

accident was a freak incident, he said, and reminded us

57

58

that the jump wings on our fatigue shirts meant one thing:
elite. He remembered the great airborne units of World War
Two. American paratroopers always reacted to adversity
with courage, determination. We had conducted ourselves
with honor during the jump, he said; he felt privileged to
serve with us. I got a few goosebumps listening to him; I
also couldn't block out of my mind the image of two men
wrapped around each other, plunging a thousand feet. Then
he announced the battalion would march the twenty-five
miles back to base camp.

I couldn't understand the Colonel's decision to march.
Even the officers were surprised and upset by the sudden
announcement. He must have had in his mind the whole time,
ever since the first jump. We had just finished a rough
week of maneuvers, lots of humping with heavy rucks, all
night patrols and ambushes. On top of that the shock of
the casualties, the heat and the extra jump had left us
feeling pretty burned out. In two days we had platoon
level exercises, day long battles with live ammo against
mock fortifications to gauge how well we could perform
during the real thing. This should have been our slack
time, a chance to rest up, pull weapon's maintenance and
rehearse squad tactics in a walk through. Nothing intense.
I don't know, maybe there was some tactical justification
for marching twenty-five miles. You could look at the
march as a good training exercise. What if the battalion

ever had to jump into the Sinai or the Golan Heights and

59

march twenty-five miles or even more to relieve a beseiged
embassy? The scenario was not so unlikely. Our primary
unit mission was to protect American interests in the
Middle East in case of war. It would be nice to know you
could do it if you had to. What would you do, say you were
too tired to fight?

At least the Colonel had hot chow trucked out to us.
Everything, including iced milk and cake, all you could
eat. A good thing, too. Everyone was pissed off about the
march, but the swearing died down when the food was served.

I loaded up my plate and joined Stanley Pifer, Asher
and Long Eye Meiner at the top of the slope.

Asher sat cross legged on the ground, balancing two
sagging paper plates on his knees. "Do you believe this
feast?"

'

"Fattening us up for the kill,‘ Long Eye said, wiping
a dribble of chocolate milk from his chin. "Darling has
got to be high. He's pulled some weird shit before, but
he's out of control now."

You bitch too much, Long Eye,‘ I said. "What did you
expect when you enlisted, take the bus everywhere?"

"Oh yeah, let's hear some tough talk. What are you, a
lifer all of a sudden?"

"Lay off him," Asher said.

"And I suppose you're just dying to make this little

stroll? We'll probably get pissed on all night," Long Eye

said, looking up at the sky. More dark clouds had moved in

60

and covered the drop zone with a low ceiling.

"Look, the main thing is not to get excited,"

Stanley
Pifer said. "There's nothing we can do about it. Grunts
have marched the world since Alexander the Great. At least
we're not carrying rucksacks. Sergeant Zechman says just
weapons and web gear."

Long Eye smiled and picked his teeth with a pork chop
bone. "Just weapons and web gear, huh? That's just fine,
that's all I'll need. I got me a little surprise for the

Colonel." He patted the left pocket of his fatigue shirt.

"What could you possibly have that the Colonel would

want?" Asher said. "Except your stripes, and he's already
taken two of those." He stuffed a potato in his mouth and
laughed. "You can't go much lower in rank."

Long Eye dipped his fingers into the pocket. He
stopped and looked around. Bravo Company was spread out
along the slope in small groups, and everyone was busy
eating. He pulled out a live round of M-16 ammo and held it
against his chest, turning it over in his fingers like a
prize marble. It had the red tip of a tracer round.

"Where in the hell did you get that?" Asher said.

"The rifle range. Thought it might come in handy."

Stanley Pifer put his plate to the side and leaned
forward. "I don't recommend you flash that thing around."

Long Eye slipped the round back into his pocket.
"Relax, it's cool."

"You get caught with that and it's an automatic

 

61

Article-15," I said.

"Who's going to tell?" He stared hard at me.

I didn't say anything.

"What are you going to do with it?" Pifer asked.

Long Eye lit a cigarette and lay back, stretching his
legs next to my plate. "The mess sergeant says he'd like
to get his hands on one of them wild boars running around

H

here. Thought I might do some hunting. He inhaled deeply
and blew smoke rings at me. "But I've had a change of
plans, think I'll hunt a West Point rat instead. They're
both rodents, ain't they?"

Asher lowered a forkful of food from his mouth.

"Shoot the Colonel?"

Long Eye nodded.

I looked at Pifer, hoping he would say something. He
was gazing calmly at Long Eye, as if he were trying to
assess a bluff in a card game.

"What are you crazy?" I said. "You can't go around
shooting people just because you don't like the orders they
give."

Long Eye sat up abruptly and flicked the cigarette
against my knee. "Bullshit. He's gone too far this time.
All that garbage about airborn spirit, the only thing he
cares about is his record, which don't look so good after
losing two men on a jump. So now he's trying to cover up,
suck ass with some general by showing off, having his boys

marching twenty-five miles. You know I'm right, admit it,"

 

62

he said, looking from Asher to Pifer to me.

I was too stunned by the sudden outburst to say
anything.

As quickly as he had exploded, he grew calm again and

looked over his shoulder. A couple of the men in the

platoon were watching us. "Myles here, says he's gonna
walk circles around me tonight," he yelled. "Ain't that a
joke?" The men went back to eating.

Long Eye lit another cigarette and leaned into our
circle. He lowered his voice so that I had to bend over to
hear him. "Besides, the way I figure it, Darling is
responsible for those two guys dying. The way they cram us
in those planes, barely enough room to move your legs.

This was bound to happen, and a C.O. is responsible for the
safety of his men, right? Well, now he's got to pay. Am I
right?"

I could still see those two men falling, stuck
together in a lumpy ball, malfunctioned parachutes twisted
above their heads like a pair of snakes trying to strangle
each other. I turned away just before the end.

They bounced when they hit the ground, according to
one of the medics on the drop zone. "Just like rubber
dolls," he said.

Stanley Pifer shrugged. "I suppose you could make an
argument for that."

"Maybe the Colonel is partly responsible," I said.

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean you kill him."

63

No one said anything for a minute.

Asher laughed. "Don't worry, Myles. He couldn't hit a
tank at thirty feet. It'll be dark in an hour, and he'll
never get close enough to see him, much less get off a good
shot."

1

"Oh, I'll see him, no problem. I got vision,' Long
Eye said, tapping a finger at the corner of his right eye.

Long Eye claimed he had received his nickname hunting
deer in the Ozarks where he grew up. According to him, he
never used a scope on his rifle, and his friends, amazed at
his uncanny ability to hit a target at a great distance,
said he must have had "long eyes." The name did not fit
his appearance. Instead of the narrow, sharp hawk eyes that
one would expect of a big hunter, he had small, round and
dull black holes, like the eyes of a shark, spread far
apart on his face. Another thing about him reminded me of
a shark. I thought he was an insomniac. I used to hear
him pacing restlessly in and out of the squad bay late at
night, like a predator that couldn't stand still,
constantly moving, on the hunt, driven by some pre-historic
instinct for survival.

"I'll tell you what, Long Eye," Asher said. "If the
Colonel doesn't make the march, you can shoot him with my
blessing. Deal?"

Long Eye thought for a moment and was about to answer

when Sergeant Zechman walked over and told us to get our

64

gear on and get ready to fall in.

Asher waited until Sergeant moved far enough away.

"So how about it? I say Colonel Darling marches. If he
does, you owe me a six-pack, and no shooting. If he
doesn't march, he's all yours."

Long Eye didn't answer. He was slowly peeling tape
off the muzzle of his M—16. He always taped the muzzle and
magazine well if he knew he wasn't going to have to fire
his weapon to keep dirt out of the barrel and the bolt.

"You want your cake, Myles?" Asher asked, reaching for
my plate.

Before he could pick it up, Long Eye stuck his finger
in the middle of the cake.

"You fucker," Asher swore at him.

Long Eye pulled out his finger, licked off the icing
and smiled. "Maybe."

In the beginning the pace was agonizingly slow. If
each company had been allowed to march on its own, we
could've covered the distance in seven plus hours,
including breaks. But the Colonel wanted the entire
battalion to march together, which meant we wouldn't make
it back to base camp until early the next morning. It was
stop and go from the start with two columns on either side
of a dirt road, bunching up like an accordion, and forcing
us to stand and wait for the lead company to stretch things
out. Sergeant Zechman was all over the place, like a

Sheepdog, snapping at us to maintain five meter intervals

 

65

between men.

Long Eye was three spots in front of me, and in the
growing darkness his lean figure reminded me of the
mysterious hired killer dressed in black from an old
detective movie. I wasn't sure what to make of his threat
to shoot the Colonel. I never felt very comfortable around
him and probably wouldn't have had much to do with him if
we had been in different squads. We never talked much in
the way of personal conversation, but I could tell by the
way he would point those shark eyes at me and the crooked
smirk on his face that he thought I was soft. All that
great stuff about comraderie, you know, heroic bonds forged
during hardship, didn't really apply to Long Eye and me. I
didn't know him like I knew Asher and Stanley Pifer.

Still, even if you don't like a guy, you spend enough time
with him, especially in the bush, sharing a poncho liner,
or in the barracks, playing cards on Christmas Eve, well,
you give him the benefit of the doubt.

I knew that Long Eye held a grudge against the Colonel
because he'd busted him from Spec Four to Private for
starting a fight with a Carabinieri officer in a bar back
in Italy. Even Sergeant Zechman had said taking two
stripes was too harsh of a punishment, and most of us felt
that Colonel Darling, because he was new at the time, was
making an example out of Long Eye. Maybe the Colonel had
gone too far ordering a twenty-five mile forced march, but

that was no excuse to kill the man. He had to walk just

 

66

like the rest of us. Asher was only joking, I was sure
he'd be right there, marching with us. Whether you liked
him or not, you couldn't ignore the fact that the Colonel
always did everything he ordered his troops to do. He
wouldn't dare miss the march, would he? I'd heard about
officers in Vietnam who were shot by their own men for
taking too many risks. But this was just a training
exercise, not a war.

About two miles into the march it started to rain.
Not a driving thunderstorm like you might expect after a
long drought, just a steady and even falling rain. Chinese
water torture rain we called it—-slow but nonstop, the kind
that will drive you crazy because you think it's never
going to end. The kind of rain that makes you look for
someone to blame.

The Colonel did make the march, at least he started
it. The first time I saw him he was walking towards the
rear. Every so often he would pick out one of the men and
walk along side him. With water heavy ponchos drooping
below the knees, we looked like rows of trick—or—treaters
dressed as ghosts on Halloween, soggy goblins whose only
concern was to keep our costumes from leaking and ruining
our bags of candy. The Colonel wasn't wearing his poncho;
it remained rolled in a tight bun on the back of his web
gear. His heavily starched and creased fatigues repelled
the rain like a suit of armor. He had the look of someone

who hadn't spent much time in the rain and therefore found

67

it adventurous, a challenge and thrill to combat the
elements. His enthusiasm reminded me of myself in basic
training at Ft. Knox, slogging through fields, knee deep in
muck, screaming death to the aggressors in red arm bands.

I don't know when, but I'd lost the feeling somewhere along
the way.

The Colonel slowly worked his way to the front. Fifty
meters or so ahead the road turned slightly and led into a
dense forest. I could just make out the front of the
column disappearing into the dark trees. When the Colonel
passed him, Long Eye stopped and turned, bending over and
cupping his hands to light a cigarette. A quick glow from
the match and the first drag of the burning tip lit up his
face briefly. He looked back at me and I thought I saw him
grin and tap a finger to the corner of his eye, but it was
too dark to tell for certain. He tossed the match and
started walking again. Then it hit me, this was it, he was
actually going to do it. He was going to wait until he got
inside the woods and shoot the Colonel. Of course, he'd
seen the bend in the road, the near black woodline, and
decided that this was his best chance. Once inside the
woods, it would be too dark and there would be too much
confusion to tell where the shot had come from. Would
someone see him raise his rifle? If the Colonel was close
enough, he could shoot from the hip and no one would have
enough time to stop him.

Colonel Darling was on the other side of the road,

68

walking next to Willet from the First Platoon,. The
columns were supposed to be staggered but the stop and go
pace had jumbled any semblance of order, and the Colonel
and Willet were nearly even with Long Eye, a step or two
ahead. No, it wouldn't work, I thought. Long Eye couldn't
possibly expect that no one would see him shoot, the muzzle
flash would give him away, stand out like a bonfire in the
darkness. Maybe he thought he could slip into the woods
and escape, live off the countryside, practice escape and
evasion, just like they taught us in the swamps at Ft.
Polk. Or maybe he didn't even care if he got caught; he
was like one of those psychos who go on a shooting spree
and then either give up or kill themselves. I looked for
Sergeant Zechman. He would see Long Eye and stop him, he
saw everything. I could hear his voice several yards to
the rear, ordering someone to keep it spread. Stanley
Pifer would do something. He was two spots behind me, head
bowed, staring at his boots as they slapped the ground.

Had he seen Long Eye point to his eye, did he see the
forest coming up? I wanted him to look up, but he kept
staring at the ground. He'd be too far away to see Long
Eye and do anything.

I watched Long Eye's back to detect any movement, see
if he was reaching for the round in his pocket. The poncho
clung to his body in heavy folds, but it was too baggy to
see if he was doing anything. He had both his arms tucked

inside and his M-16 slung upside down beneath the poncho,

69

like a good soldier should to keep the rain out of the
barrel.

Maybe the forest was just a thick tree line and he
wouldn't have time to pick his spot, aim and fire; or maybe
he'd fumble the round and drop it on the ground-—it would
be hard to load a single round in the dark, with wet hands,
and without being able to look at the magazine. Or maybe
he'd chicken out; sure, he was one of those country oafs
who talk tough in a crowd, but who always back down when
they're alone.

The Colonel was still walking next to Willet. Long Eye
wouldn't take a chance on hitting Willet in the dark, I
thought. The Colonel and Willet entered the woods and
vanished from sight, and Long Eye disappeared after them,
like someone slipping through a fold in a black curtain.

Inside the woods, the road dipped three or four feet,
and the column was buried in the darkness of a blacked out
subway. The thick canopy overhead blocked out the sky and
stopped the rain, and the tunnel of trees amplified the
smallest sounds. I couldn't see Long Eye. I wondered how
long he would wait? He couldn't possibly see the Colonel;
I could barely see three feet in front of me. I listened
for the sound of the bolt on his M—16 move forward--that
would be the only warning that he was getting ready to
shoot. He'd have to let the bolt forward with full force

to make sure he seated the round properly. I strained to

 

7O
listen, but all I could hear was the sound of boots
scuffling and grasps of swearing as someone stumbled over a
tree root.

After we walked for what seemed several minutes, the
road curved sharply to the right. In the distance there
was a block of gray, hazy light, a break in the tree line
where the woods ended. We'd be out in the open soon. To
the left of the road there was a sound of dried leaves
cracking and branches breaking. The noise came from ahead,
close to where the Colonel and Willet had been, and it
seemed to be moving forward, keeping pace with the column.
It was Long Eye, I knew it. He had sneaked into the woods
and was tracking the Colonel from the other side. He had
seen the break in the trees and decided to make his move.

I could see his plan in my mind as clear as a vivid dream,
as if I could read his mind and anticipate his every
thought. He'd work his way ahead of the Colonel and set an
ambush. It was a smart move, I thought. He'd have two
choices: after he shot the Colonel, he could slip back
into his spot in the column in the confusion and darkness
without being seen, or he could just fade away into the
woods, like a ghost, and make his escape. No one would
discover he was missing for several minutes, possibly half
an hour or longer. By then he'd have a good head start. A
country boy like him who had spent most of his life in the
woods and mountains could probably survive for days on his

own.

71

Behind me I could hear Sergeant Zechman's voice
hissing to keep it spread, five meter intervals. The man
was amazing, even in the dark he could tell if the column
was bunching up. He seemed able to sense when the
slightest thing went wrong. Didn't he hear Long Eye
stalking the Colonel in the woods? Couldn't he feel that
someone had left the column, that there was a gap instead
of a soldier, a ten meter interval instead of five? I
wanted to tell-him to go check on Long Eye, watch out for
him, he couldn't be trusted. Maybe his acute sensory
perceptions had rusted in the rain, like the wiring of a
radio left outside for years. He didn't really know if we
maintained our intervals or not; he just repeated the order
automatically, a rhythmic chant to keep his own feet
moving. I wanted to shout at him, "Goddamn it, leave us
alone and go check on Long Eye, see if he's keeping your

precious five meter interval,"

but my jaw was stiff from
the cool rain and I couldn't make myself move my mouth.
Besides, what if I was wrong? What if Long Eye was still
in the column, plodding along in soaked misery like the
rest of us, his main worry that he not walk into a low
hanging branch or step into a hole in the road. Maybe it
was just some wild animal foraging in the woods. Then I'd
look like a fool for shouting, or worse, a snitch.

We came out of the woods and I looked immediately for

Long Eye. He was in the column, three spots ahead of

me——just like before. He was aiming his M-16 across the

 

72

road. Willet was still in his spot, but the Colonel was
gone. I was about to shout at him when Sergent Zechman
brushed past me.

"Meiner, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Long Eye lowered his rifle and turned around. "Just
keeping my eye sharp with a little target practice."

In a field, on the other side of the road, trotted a
large boar. They were mean and ugly creatures and often
trailed a unit on maneuvers, looking for scraps and garbage
to eat.

"Put it away, son," Sergeant Zechman said. "Save it
for the real thing."

The pace of the march lapsed into a numbing monotony.
Even the accordion effect of bunching up seemed to come at
regular intervals. And the rain continued, only harder. I
gave up spying on Long Eye. I could tell from the way he
walked, head drooping, feet sloshing the ground, that he
was too miserable to think about any thing except getting
back to the base camp and dry fatigues. To amuse myself I
would stare at the ground and watch the tips of my boots
kick out in front of me, slap the puddles of water and
splatter the mud in a ragged arch, trying to recapture the
feeling of fantasy and freedom that only a child playing in
the rain can experience. It didn't work. Every hour we
stopped for a ten minute break, just like the manual
states, and the men would move off the road, looking for a

tree to lean against. And if there were no trees around,

73
we would just squat and disappear inside our ponchos.
During one break, after everyone had left the road, the
Colonel drove by in a jeep, heading for the front of the
column. He was wearing a poncho.

Some time well after midnight, I think it was around 2
a.m., we passed through a small German town with narrow,
brick-paved streets and old stone buildings. We'd been
marching for close to six hours, but I heard Sergeant
Zechman say that we were only a little better than half way
to the base camp, about eleven plus miles to go.

We stopped for a break and everyone looked for cover
from the rain. Groups of three and four squeezed into
doorways, while others crowded under balconies, down
stairwells or flattened themselves against a wall, trying
to find a dry strip under the eaves.

I found the lighted entrance to a tavern that was
still open. Laughter and the sound of furniture moving
came from inside. Through a small window with bars in the
door I could see a tall man with white hair turning chairs
up on tables. A young man and woman were playfully
wrestling against the bar, laughing as they grabbed and
hugged each other. Watching them reminded me of my friends
back home who'd gone to college. I imagined them sitting
in the favorite campus bar, listening to the jukebox or
watching a football game on the TV; they'd be talking about
their classes or making plans for a party or vacation in

Florida. They were all shocked when I enlisted in the

74
Army, thought I was nuts. Vietnam was winding down, no
more draft to worry about. Why go? they asked.

Stanley Pifer and Asher appeared and ducked inside the
entrance.

"I can't believe I'm actually out of the rain," Asher
said, shaking his poncho like a wet dog. "This stuff is
too damn much."

I hadn't talked to either of them during the march.
They both looked weary, pissed of and weary.

"Where's Long Eye?" Pifer asked.

"Don't know, haven't seen him since we left,' I said.

" Asher said. "Doesn't want to

"He's probably hiding,
admit he's wrong, the Colonel is marching. I knew I should
have bet him."

Across the street, Long Eye climbed out of a stairwell
and rushed over to the tavern entrance. Poncho flapping
behind him, he looked like a phantom rising from the grave.
He could've loaded the round in his M-16 while he was below
the street, I thought.

As soon as he reached us, Asher started in on him.
"Disappointed, Long Eye?" he asked, nudging me with his
elbow.

"About what?"

"Your buddy, the Colonel, made the march, now you
can't shoot him."

"Shit, first off, we didn't make no damn bet." He

stopped and coughed for several seconds, a deep hack that

75

made him shake. "And second, I seen him riding in the
jeep. He ain't marched the whole way."
"He's using the jeep to check out different parts of

' I said.

the column,'

"Still sticking up for your daddy, huh?" Long Eye
said. He coughed again and untied the cravat around his
neck and wiped his face.

"You all right?" Pifer asked.

"Feel like hell." He lit a cigarette and inhaled
deeply, and the cough settled into a wheeze. "But I still

H

feel good enough to go hunting, he said, looking at me.
His poncho puffed out where he patted his shirt pocket.

He looked sick, really sick, the shakes, face
sweating, like he had pneumonia or something. But those
eyes, those shark eyes were dancing, laughing at me. I
wanted to grab him, get in his face and call him an
ignorant, red neck, son of a bitch, and tell him this
wasn't some stupid family feud over the rights to a still
out in the boonies of the Ozarks. And he knew it, he knew
what I was thinking. That's what made it worse, those
eyes, filled with contempt because he thought I was too
soft for his direct form of justice.

' Asher said. "All you do is woof

"Woof, woof,'
bullshit, Long Eye. I never seen you back up anything."
"Sit on it."

"See what I mean, more woofing. Put some money behind

 

76
that mouth. I'll bet you next month's jump pay that you
don't have the balls to shoot the Colonel. Fifty—five
bucks, how about it, mister big game hunter?"

Long Eye hesitated and nibbled on his cigarette.

"You're on, faggott."

Asher took a quick poke at him, but Long Eye ducked
and hopped off the entrance landing and moved down the
street.

"Big mouth chump, I got him this time. You guys are
witnesses, you heard it. He bet me one month's jump pay,
yes?"

"Duly noted," Pifer said.

Sergeant Zechman called for the platoon to fall in,
and Asher left the tavern steps. Pifer turned to follow,
but I held him by the elbow.

"I can't believe you're going along with this. It's
crazy, Long Eye can't shoot the Colonel and you know it.
It's murder. We're soldiers, we're supposed to follow
orders."

Pifer listened quietly and thought for a moment.

"Well, he can do it, Myles. There is historical
precedent, you know. Even the German High Command, who got
high on strict military discipline, tried to assassinate
Hitler when they realized he'd gone mad and the war was
lost." He said it with a straight face and a glib tone of
voice as if his meaning should be perfectly obvious.

"Jesus, Stanley, it's not the same thing. Colonel

77
Darling is not Hitler. We're talking about a dumb road
march, not a world war."

Pifer nodded as he tied the hood of his poncho snugly
around his face. "True, but the Romans killed Caesar
because they thought he was becoming a dictator, and I
think that most people would agree that Caesar was a great
man. It's all relative, Myles. History usually looks
kindly on such rebellions, assertions of independence, all
that kind of thing." He tapped the barrel of his M—16
against the tavern door, like a teacher explaining a point
at the blackboard.

"I don't care about history, and neither does Long
Eye, he's just a bragging punk. Why don't you stop him?
Say something to him. Do you want him to shoot the
Colonel?"

Pifer looked puzzled and stifled a laugh. "Don't
you?" he said.

The question so surprised me that I didn't answer.

"If you really think he's going to do it, why don't
you warn someone? Warn the Colonel. Tell Sergeant

Zechman, he's coming over here now,"

he said, nodding
toward the street behind me.
Sergeant Zechman walked up to the steps. "You men
care to join the rest of us? What's the problem here?"
I didn't say anything right away. Pifer looked down

and started fiddling with the sling on his rifle. I

glanced up the street. Long Eye was leaning against a

78
wall, watching us. In the rainy haze and darkness his
silhouette looked like a pop-up target at the rifle range.
I couldn't see his face clearly, but I knew he must be
laughing inside, those eyes rolling with delight. Go
ahead, little boy, he was thinking, be a good mama's boy
and tell on bad Long Eye.

"Long Eye is going to shoot the Colonel," I said
finally.

Sergeant Zechman laughed. "Well, he better hurry
before someone beats him to it. He's got at least a
hundred pissed of grunts ahead of him, including me. Tell
him to take a number. Let's go, the column is starting to

move,"

he said and walked away.

Pifer raised his eyebrows and patted me on the
shoulder. "Can't say you didn't try, feel better?"

Maybe I should've pressed the issue, worded it
differently. No. He wouldn't have believed me anyway, and
even if Sergeant Zechman did check him out, Long Eye had
probably hidden the round on his body somewhere. He was
too smart to get caught so easily. Then I'd look like a
fool again.

I took my place in the column. Sergeant Zechman
walked over to Long Eye and said something to him and they
both laughed. After Sergeant Zechman moved ahead, Long Eye
turned around and grinned at me and tapped his eye.

I didn't care anymore. Technically, it was Sergeant

Zechman's responsibility now. I had used the chain of

79

command, like a good soldier should,

just like I was taught
jgn beasic training. Now it was up to Sergeant Zechman to

eeit:he3r handle the situation himself, or tell Lieutenant

Powell, the platoon leader,

who would tell the Captain,

Trigght: on up the line to the Colonel, who would send orders

knack: down for someone to take appropriate action. That's

tile \vay the system worked.

For the most part I kept to myself for the rest of the

InarCJI. I had sixty-eight days left and all I wanted to

thijflc about was going home and what I might do with my

life. As far as I was concerned, I was through with the

Army and this march would be the last difficult thing I

would have to do.

I would go to college when I got home,

maybe the big state university, study philosophy, or

literature, or whatever, it didn't matter. I would spend

my time reading books and talking to intelligent, rational

people who abided by the laws of a civilized world. In my

new life there would be no crazy red necks like Long Eye to
deal with.

The rain finally stopped around 4 a.m., and the pace

ofthe march picked up. The wind began to blow hard and

thetemperature dropped several degrees in the next hour.

Themarch became a race,

not to finish so much, as to keep
mum. My right knee was hurting pretty bad, and I thought

abmm getting on one of the aid station trucks that were

foNowing the column. The knee had started to bother me a

hwmonths earlier after a series of weekly road marches

 

 

8O

tlle Cholonel ordered when he first took command of the

battalnm.

I really wanted to get on that truck, but I couldn't.
I head. this strange idea that if I quit the march, somehow
triat: would make it okay for Long Eye,

at last in his mind,
to shoot the Colonel.

It wasn't just my knee. If I sat

(ioww1 during the breaks, my legs would stiffen up so much

tliat. they hurt even more when we started marching again

thaml if we'd never stopped. After the fourth or fifth

‘break;I stayed on my feet the whole time, walking in little

and waiting impatiently for the call to move out.

During one break,

circles,

after the rain had stopped, I

wandered up the road, looking for a friend of mine from the

Mortar Platoon, but I couldn't find him.

On the way back I
saw Long Eye in a shallow ditch a few feet off the road.

He was on his hands and knees, throwing up. I called to
one of the medics to come help him.

The medic kept telling

him to get on one of the aid station trucks,

but Long Eye
waved him away. When the order came to move out, I stayed

Muue I was and watched Long Eye stumble out of the ditch,
ban over slightly,

like an old man, clutching his stomach.

Helooked at me through narrowed eyes and wiped the spit

frmnhis chin. I offered him my canteen.

"Thanks." He took a long drink of water and rinsed
outhis mouth. "Ain't this some shit?"

"Big time," I said. "Worst I can remember."

 

 

81

He started to say something but then doubled over with
a coughing fit.

"You should get on the truck, Long Eye. This march
isn't worth killing yourself over."

"Yeah, you're right." He paused and rubbed his eyes.
"Naw, I don't shoot so good from the prone position, much
better on my feet."

The column started to move and he took his spot on the
road. I didn't know if I should interpret his
determination to finish the march as part of his resolve to
get the Colonel, or if he was doing it just to spite me.

He was tough, I had to admit.

It was light out when we came to a wooded area at the
foot of a mountain. The base camp was at the top, a few
hundred feet up. The column stopped and moved into the
woods to take a break.

Twenty minutes later we were still waiting. A heavy
mist made the air damp and cold. The ground was spongy
from the rain and water seeped into my boots everywhere I
stepped. When it became apparent that this was not just a
short break before finishing the march, the company
dispersed farther into the woods, and the men sought out
dry spots to get comfortable. Pifer and Asher curled up
next to each other under a bush nearby.

Another fifteen minutes passed and nothing happened.

I couldn't understand what we were waiting for. Why stop

82
now when we were almost there? It would take twenty
minutes, a half an hour tops, to walk up the mountain. I
had worked up a good sweat from the faster pace of the last
few miles, and now I was cold and my legs stiffened from
having to stand still. I tried sitting on a fallen tree,
but the damp bark and wet fatigues pressing against my skin
sent shivers through me. I paced between two trees and
chain smoked three cigarettes——C—ration cigarettes,
packaged during the Korean War probably. Chesterfields, no
filter, the worst you could get, "Chest—busters" we called
them. I had been promising myself that I would quit
smoking, but there was no point in even trying before I got
home. All the waiting, it drove you crazy. Wait, wait,
hurry up and wait. If someone back home asked me what the
Army was like, I would tell them, "lots of waiting." It
was the one thing I hated the most, the waiting for no
apparent reason. I had recognized early on that if we ever
had to go to war, I would rather be killed than taken
prisoner. I would not make a good prisoner of war. I'd be
one of those guys who suddenly goes mad, sprints across the
prison compound and hurls himself on the barbed wire.

Long Eye was on the other side of the road, squatting
against a tree, hugging his knees to his chest. He looked
in my direction, and I thought I saw him tap his eye, but
the gesture was weak, a half-hearted attempt to shoo away
an insect.

After an hour of waiting the order came to move out.

83
It took

nearly ten minutes for the company to line up on

ttie r()ad as the men drifted slowly out of the woods.

Long
Eye fell in two spots behind me,

between Asher and Pifer.
I headri't seen the Colonel since he drove past a few miles

back, headed for the front of the column.

My legs were so
st;iiff ‘that I had trouble walking at first, and my knee was

throbbing. The mountain was steep,

and the road rose
sharply like a giant slide.

I kept telling myself that
thijs climb would be the last difficult thing I would have
to (h) in the Army.

Higher up the tree lines sloped away from the road,

revealing more of the sky.

The weather was beginning to
clear,

and it looked like it might be a good day. If it
warmed up, I thought I might pull my canvas cot outside and
sleep in the sun. That's all I wanted to do,

just sleep
and forget the night,

forget the march,

the jump,
the whole damn operation.

forget

I wanted to dream and forget

abmn;Long Eye, forget the Colonel.

Closer to the top
themawas a dim sound of music playing in the distance.

Thesmund was rough, like an old radio with bad reception,

audit was too close to be coming from the tents in the
(mmp. I thought it might be a work detail from the mess

twntdigging a food pit for garbage. I wondered how long

itwmfld take before the boars found their way up here.

The Colonel was waiting for us at the top.

He stood
inaclearing to the left of the road,

hands on hips,
SMIMg and nodding as the column filed past. He was

 

7-“

84

wxealririg neatly pressed fatigues and his boots were clean

811d skiiny. His face looked fresh and clean shaven. Next
tc> lliJn, on top of a tree stump, was a small record player,

tile kxind that folds up into a carrying case. I had one

‘liJce it when I was a kid and used to listen to 455 of Walt

'DiAsneay characters telling stories. I recognized the song;

'it \vas a morbid but humorous number about a trainee who

(lies; on his first jump played to the tune of the Battle

Hynu1 of the Republic. It was the kind of thing we used to

lifldgh at whenever someone played the song on a jukebox in

the bars around Ft. Benning.

I understood then, but I couldn't believe it. We had

waited for an hour in the woods at the bottom of the

mountain so that the Colonel could clean up and review us

properly as we dragged by.

The sun had risen above the trees, and the sky was

clear and blue.

It was going to be a beautiful day. Down

the road I could see the pole tops and swooping half moon

curves of the tents in the camp.

Behind me came the hollow click of an M-16 bolt

slhfing forward, like the sound of a screen door closing.

Thmlit was quiet except for the shuffle of boots and the

remnd player. A woodpecker drilled a tree with a long

raMd fire pecking. I waited for the pop of the rifle. Do

it,do it, do it now, I thought, shoot him now. Sergeant

Zedman yelled Long Eye's name. There was a thud, a rifle

flmt,and the music stopped with a screech. I turned

 

 

85

around. Sergeant Zechman was wrestling with Long Eye on
the ground. He had him pinned with his knees on Long Eye's
chest, but Long Eye kept struggling, squirming, thrashing
his legs and swearing, "You son of a bitch, you lying son
of a bitch." The Colonel stood immobile, hands hanging
loosely at his sides. The record player was at his feet,

flipped upside down. There was a slight breeze, and I

could smell the sour odor of rotting food.

 

THE GHOST OF CORPORAL BILLY "TIRED T" TOWNSEND

It was the same kind of morning as when Tired T had
disappeared into the fog, chasing the bus that was to have
been the first leg of his trip home. Myles recognized the
cold wet air the moment he stepped out of the barracks.
Like an invading army which had crept in silently from its
hideout in the rocky face of the Dolomites, the fog
surrounded and smothered the American base at Caserma
Ederle. The fog was so thick that the overweight and
breathless lifers of the Company who ran at the rear of the
platoon formations during physical training needed only to
slow their labored strides for a half minute or so before
slipping out of sight, engulfed by the milky mist, with the
ease and stealth of a ghost passing through walls.

Thanks to the new Lieutenant, the First Platoon had an
unusually hard run that morning. In an effort to impress
the Captain, he kept them running long after the rest of
the Company had stopped, circling the base one more time
before turning out through the front gate and heading
downtown. Like a ship lost at sea, the platoon cruised
carefully but steadily through the narrow deserted streets,
navigating by the ancient monuments of Vicenza which loomed
out of the fog just as the formation was about to crash

headlong into a wall.

86

87

After a lengthy journey through limbo, witnessed only
the marble gazes of the saints and heroes lining the
rooftops and facades of buildings, like silent spectators
at an event they had seen performed by dozens of foreign
armies throughout the city's stormy past, the First Platoon
drifted back on to the Company compound.

The Lieutenant dismissed the platoon with a salute
that cut through the air and the tight formation of four
even ranks dissolved. The soldiers moved into the barracks
and up the stairs, each squad filing into its own room.
While the rest of the Second Squad undressed slowly,
peeling off the sweaty fatigues that clung to one's body
like plastic wrap, Myles slumped on his bunk, staring
vacantly at the ceiling. Pifer and Doughboy sat across
from him, heads hanging, eyes lined up over their feet as
if attempting the boots to remove themselves. Without
saying so, Myles knew what each of them was thinking. the
seemingly endless run had made it impossible not to think
about Tired T, and the heavy fog cast a spell over them,
hypnotizing them with memories of that strange morning
several months ago.

Pifer spoke first, "Whew, that was a 'Tired T run' if
I've ever been on one. I thought we'd never turn around.
That damn cherry Lieutenant wanted to make us run forever,
just like old T."

Myles and Doughboy nodded in agreement.

I!

"I saw him, Doughboy said, picking at a torn eyelet

88

in one of his boots. He looked up at Myles, the usual
dimpled grin that widened his round face was drawn into a
flat slit. "For real, I saw him twice. The last time we
passed the parade field he came out of nowhere. All of a
sudden he was running next to me. He whispered something
in my ear, but I couldn't hear it because of the singing of
the platoon. Then he disappeared, ran back into the fog,
just like when he chased the bus."

The rest of the squad, naked except for small white
towels wrapped around their waists, stood by the door,
eyeing Doughboy with suspicion.

"No bullshit," he started again. "I saw him at the
Arch of Stairs, too. Goddamn stairs. I knew we were in
trouble when he headed towards Monte Berico," he said,
shaking his head at the thought of the marble steps that
ran up the side of the mountain at the edge of the city
where old widows went to pray. Droplets of sweat flipped
off the tip of his nose.

"Those stairs were gagging me. Halfway up that damn
mountain I was about to die. Then I looked up and saw
Tired T standing at the top, waving his arms, and I
thought, 'Christ, poor old T has been running all this
time, I can make it,' and I started pumping my arms and
legs, and not for no cherry Lieutenant either. I did it
for Tired T. But you know, when we got to the top, he was
gone. But I saw him, for real, no bullshit."

Myles nodded his head in sympathy. He had not seen

89
Tired T that morning, but he had no reason to doubt the
word of Doughboy. He knew Tired T was out there somewhere,
still running.

"You guys are so full of shit. How long are you going
to fuck with the rest of us just because we're new around
here?" Schenk, a tall spindly kid with a nasal voice,
spoke up from the group clustered around the door. The new
troops had heard the term 'Tired T run' before, but they
could not connect a face or personality to it. In the
months since Tired T had evaporated and become part of the
fog, the old—timers of the squad rarely mentioned his name,
speaking in whispered tones of reverence when they did.

The others were gone now. Triplett, Big Kid, Navarro,
Sweet Frank and Asher had all been discharged. Myles,
Pifer and Doughboy were the only ones left who knew.

"What was so great about this Tired T guy that you
keep his stupid duffel bag in the room?" Schenk asked.

"I'm getting tired of having to move the damn thing every
time I sweep around my bunk and wall locker. You know what
I think? I don't think there ever was a Tired T. I think
he's just something you guys made up to mess with the rest
of us."

I

"Shut up, you dumb cherry,' Pifer said, jumping up
from his bunk. "You don't know anything. Straight out of
Jump School and you think you're bad. The duffel bag stays

as long as we say so."

Myles looked at the duffel bag standing in the corner

90

next to Tired T's old bunk which now belonged to Schenk.
Big Kid had brought the duffel bag back to the barracks
after Tired T had vanished, and they left it next to his
bunk, packed with all his civilian belongings, in case he
came back for it.

At first Myles had consoled and cheered the others
with the thought that Tired T had run all the way home.

But when Tired T never sent for his duffel bag or wrote to
tell them how wonderful life was on the outside, Myles
began to worry. Big Kid, Triplett, Navarro and the others
had written after their discharge, encouraging their
friends to hang on because life after the Army was indeed
everything they dreamed. But, like an asterisk in a record
book, qualifying and somehow diminishing an heroic
accomplishment, their letters all contained a dampening
post script: no one had seen Tired T. And now Doughboy's
sighting had confirmed his growing fear that Tired T was
still here, trapped in time and place.

To make matters worse Myles, Pifer and Doughboy were
rapidly approaching their own discharged dates. They were
the last of the old-timers who had known Tired T and soon
they would be transported to another world and new lives.
Myles was alarmed by the thought that there would be no one
left behind to act as a beacon for Tired T. Who would
guide his lost soul out of the fog should he ever escape
from the infinite treadmill upon which he ran and guide him

home where he belonged? The old-timers of the squad had

91

always kept the incident to themselves. there was no point
in telling the Army. Orders had been issued for Tired T's
discharge, and whether or not he made it all the way home
was his problem. As far as the Army was concerned his file
was closed. And because one doesn't really understand
until he's been through it all, the old-timers never told
the new arrivals about Tired T. Myles realized now that
may have been a mistake for there were skeptics, like
Schenk, who were so doubtful that Tired T was in danger of
becoming extinct. He recognized that, unlike the dinosaurs
that once roamed the planet, floating memories did not
leave behind fossils as testament to their former grand
sources of existence. After Myles departed Tired T would
dry up under the ignorance of the new troops, like the fog
burning away under the fierce Italian sun. If Tired T were
to have any chance of survival, the others would have to be
told.

"No, Schenk, we're not messing with you," Myles said.
"There really was a Tired T and he still exists. You've
been here long enough and now it's important for you to
know about him. Some day you may find yourself in the same
position."

Schenk looked warily at Myles. His cocky and
rebellious attitude seemed to soften with Myles' acceptance
of his still infant but growing tenure in the squad. He
moved over to his bunk, sat down and waited while the rest

of the squad pulled up foot lockers and chairs in a circle

 

92

around Myles' bunk.

**************

93

THE STORY OF TIRED T

No one in the entire Battalion could figure out what
was wrong with Tired T. Everyone in Bravo Company, even
the officers, called him Tired T. His last name was
Townsend, which is where the "T" came from, "Tired,"
because he was, quite simply, always tired. Whenever

possible he would sneak away to his bunk for a nap. Tired

 

T took to twenty minute snoozes-—"power naps" he called

.1“

them because he claimed they helped sustain him through the
long duty day-like a compuslive eater takes to snacks
between meals.

To look at him one would never have guessed his name
to be Tired T or anything implying laziness or ill health.
He wasn't fat or malnourished; he didn't slouch or drag his
feet when he walked; his skin wasn't sallow and there were
no dark circles around his eyes.

To the contrary, Tired T appeared the epitome of what
a young soldier should be, especially one in such a
demanding field as the paratroops. He was short and sturdy
and extremely muscular, without so much as a pinch or
ripple of fat on his body. His dark complexion was a rich
brown, like a coffee bean, and his posture was perfectly
erect, and he walked with a quiet, smooth and slightly

rocking motion as if he were protecting his balance.

94

Padding softly down the barracks hallway, barefoot and
wearing only a pair of gym shorts, he looked like a
halfback on a football team.

Discovering the root of Tired T's fatigue was the
favorite pastime of everyone who even remotely knew of him.
Sweet Frank and Asher went so far as to form a lottery.
"Hurry, hurry, step right up and buy a ticket, take a
chance on finding out why Tired T is always so tired and
win a three-day pass to Rome," they barked to all. Many
offered an explanation but nobody won the grand prize.
Thinking he could use the rest, his friends gave the pass
to Tired T who in turn refused it. He was too tired to go.

Even the Battalion Surgeon had a keen interest in
Tired T's condition. Believing he was on to something as
profound as the discovery of penicillin, perhaps a
scientific breakthrough that would allow soldiers to fight
tirelessly without sleep or food, he ran poor Tired T
through a lengthy series of tests to reveal just what it
was that wore out the elite of the American fighting men.
After two days of visual dissection, during which he used
the most advanced medical equipment and found absolutely
nothing wrong, the Surgeon gave up and took a more direct
approach to solving TiredT's fatigue.

"Townsend, do you feel okay?"

"Yeah, I feel okay, except I'm kind of tired most of
the time, sir."

With a shrug, he gave Tired T a prescription for

95
antibiotics and sent him back to the barracks.

Tired T was not a big talker. The few words that did
come out, he spoke in a slow mumble, as if he were talking
in his sleep. Nobody knew for certain if this was because
Tired T came from a small rural town in Alabama, where even
the flies buzzed slowly under the sweltering sun, or if his
languid speech was just another sysmptom of his tiredness.
He even laughed tiredly, a slow breathy chuckle that
sounded like an old locomotive chugging to a halt.

No, poor health could not have been the reason for
Tired T's condition. He was certainly quite fit, and he
had very modest and clean living habits. He did not smoke
or drink. Navarro and Triplett repeatedly tried to
persuade him to accompany them for a few drinks in the bars
and cafes of Vicenza. But true to form, Tired T always
declined with his famous slogan, "Naw, man, I'm too tired."
To this he would add in a slow Southern drawl, "That stuff

" and shake his head. Navarro blamed

is no good for you,
all that clean living for his slumbering symptoms. Not
enough artificial stimulation to rouse him, he insisted.
Too much abstinence had left him sluggish, Triplett argued.
As a birthday surprise one year, Navarro, Triplett and
Big Kid kidnapped Tired T and dragged him downtown for a
small celebration. "Hey, man, how you know you won't like
it?" Navarro, a slightly built Chicano with mischievous

eyes, asked the protesting hostage. Tired T was not

unsociable or dour by nature, he simply never had the

96
energy for much recreation. He always worried that alcohol
and late nights on the town would drain his already
depleted reserve of vitality. Still, he was glad his
friends had remembered his birthday, and so he accepted his
virginal plunge into an evening of dissipation with
resigned calm. Maybe a little hell—raising would do him
some good, he had said at the time. Besides, Triplett, the
oldest of the group at twenty-four with a craggy face that
made him look twenty years older, and Big Kid, a Titan with
red hair and a boyish freckled face, held Tired T in an
arm-lock on either side of him as they rode the bus
downtown.

The evening at the Cafe Settembre definitely roused
Tired T, but whether or not it was good for him remained
debatable. After two beers he was quite drunk. He
stumbled out of the bar, tripped over the cobblestone
street and caromed off the wall opposite the Cafe as he
tried to navigate his way back to the base. As Navarro
tried to prop him up, Tired T slumped to his knees,
laughing as he had not laughed since joining the Army.
Breaking away from his friend, he careened across the
Piazza degli Angeli before collapsing on the tiered
pedestal upholding the marble statue of an angel. Triplett
and Navarro tried to help him back across the piazza and
into the cafe, but Tired T giggled that he was too tired
and insisted on sleeping right there draped around the feet

of a marble guardian holding a torch high overhead.

97
Finally Big Kid slung him over his massive shoulder and
carried him back to the barracks with Navarro and Triplett
bringing up the rear, shaking their heads in confusion.
They had felt certain that a little libation was just the
thing to inject some vigor into Tired T.

No, artificial stimulation was certainly not the
answer to Tired T's ceaseless fatigue. His one outburst of
drunken revelry, which took place on a Thursday night, had
left him so tired and ill that he reported to sick call the
next morning and proceeded to sleep away the entire
weekend. Wrapped up in a heavy, wool Army blanket on his
bunk, he resembled a caterpillar woven inside an olive drab
cocoon, waiting for warmer weather.

Tired T had been with the 509th Airborne for a long
time. His legendary tiredness was already an ingrained
characteristic of Bravo Company when the unit moved down
from Germany into northern Italy. Before the big move the
509th had been stationed in Mainz, Germany where it was
part of the old Eighth Infantry Division, fondly known as
the "Crazy Eights." The paratroopers at Lee Barracks had a
bad reputation for drug use and robbery against the
townspeople of Mainz. New recruits, or "cherries", found
themselves entering a world that was similar to the
ganglands of a big city ghetto. During their first week in
the Company, cherries were pulled aside and forced to
announce their allegiance. Either one got high or he

didn't. Anyone who wilfully sought to be a good soldier

98

was sentenced to a tour of harassement, taunting, theft,
anxiety and possibly beatings.

Lee Barracks was so bad that a group of enlisted men
once grabbed a Duty Officer of the Day, who had walked in
on them while they were smoking hash and announced that
they were all under arrest, stuffed him inside a wall
locker and shoved it out a third story window. The officer
was found the next morning, standing at attention in the
narrow confines of the wall locker, quite dead.

Veterans of the old "Crazy 85" 509th, because of their
association with and survival of that infamous unit, became
legendary figures in the eyes of those who had never been
there. An air of cool toughness and invincibility
surrounded these soldiers, as though they were survivors of
some terrible battle. Even quiet Tired T had this air
about him, although it was something he clearly did not
cherish. When asked about the old 509th and Lee Barracks,
Tired T would respond with the familiar and eXpected slow
shake of the head and blank stare, "Whew, man, that place
was crazy, be glad you never had to be there," followed by
a nervous chuckle, like a survivor talking about a fatal
accident from which he had just escaped.

Tired T's length of stay with the 509th was another
puzzle that bordered on the mystical. No one, not even the
Company clerk who knew all factual information about
everyone, seemed to know when Tired T had arrived. Like

God and the great void of the universe, Tired T and his

99

tiredness just seemed always to have been. When Lieutenant
Powell, the new platoon leader, first arrived, he had asked
Tired T about the date of his origin with the 509th. Tired
T just stared over the Lieutenant's head with a pained
expression on his face, as though he were being forced to
recall a traumatic accident from his childhood.

' he said.

"Long time, sir, I been here a long time,'

Certainly everyone knew how many days he had left to
his discharge. It was rumored that Tired T's Personnel
Records had been lost.

"I think the Army just forgot about Tired T, sir,"
Ryder, the clerk, confided to Captain Newman. "I mean it's
possible, you read all the time in 'Stars and Stripes'
about veterans who were awarded some medal or promotion
during World War One or Two and just now were told about
it. Maybe that's why the poor guy is so worn out. He's
doing overtime for Uncle Sam when he should be back home,
going out with girls, drinking pop at the corner store,
sleeping or whatever it is he likes to do."

"Nonsense," the Captain replied. "The Army is never
wrong. Besides, even if they did make a mistake, those
stories prove that the Army always takes care of their own.
They'll catch up to him eventually."

Despite his dislike of the Army, Tired T was by no
means a trouble—maker. He was, as usual, too tired to ever

create dissension. He had made the rank of corporal and

100
that was all the ambition he had for advancement in the
military. But because he had been with the unit so long,
the Army eventually tried to promote Tired T to sergeant.

Sergeant Thurston, the platoon sergeant, thought he
was doing Tired T a favor by nominating him for promotion,
a kind of reward for all his silent suffering, for all his
fatigue. After all, Tired T was not a bad soldier. His
productivity was high in that he always did what he was
told, albeit accompanied by a wide complaining yawn.
Perhaps Sergeant Thurston had thought that the promotion
would be an antidote for Tired T's fatigue. Maybe the
responsibility of being a Non-Commissioned Officer and the
attendant feelings of importance and power would act as an
elixir, a fountain of youth for poor, young and ever so
tired Tired T.

The announcement of the impending promotion had a
profound and mixed effect on Tired T. He at once became
energetic and animated such as no one in the 509th had ever
seen. He shook his head so violently that Navarro worried
that his wide staring eyes might pop out. At the very
least he was going to give himself a severe headache.

"Unh, unh, man, no way. No way, unh, unh,"

he repeated
over and over in a deep loud voice. Tired T was beside
himself with anger and anxiety, pacing back and forth in
the small confines of the squad bay. When he finally

calmed down or wore himself out from bouncing off the metal

bedposts of the doubledecker bunks, Tired T was engulfed by

101
a morose fatigue the likes of which his comrades had never
witnessed.

The very thought of all the work involved with being a
sergeant, attending scores of meetings, giving precise
orders, organizing work details, conducting night patrols,
and worst of all, having to get up earlier each day to wake
up the rest of the squad, paralyzed Tired T with fatigue.
He didn't think much of a reward that deprived him of
sleep. That was a punishment, not a reward.

That evening a pall of sorrow fell over the squad bay,
transforming it into a funeral parlor, and the night became
a wake. Navarro, Triplett, Big Kid and the rest of the
squad pulled chairs and foot lockers around Tired T's bunk
where they sat and commiserated with him, mourning his
passing from corporal to sergeant. Tired T just sat on the

edge of his bunk, shaking his head and muttering, unh,

unh, no way, man."

Once he was promoted he would no longer
be a part of their world. Instead of grumbling about
nonsensical orders, he would have to give those same
irrational commands; instead of trying to slide through the
morning inspection without having ironed his fatigues, he
would have to scrutinize the uniforms of his friends for
wrinkles; instead of feigning illness to avoid physical
training or a major field exercise, he would have to play
truant officer and track down malingerers reporting to sick

call; he would have to report his friends AWOL if they

missed the first formation of the day.

102

Sweet Frank brought in a case of beer and Doughboy
threw a blanket over a foot locker and started a game of
spades. Asher switched on the stereo and turned it up
loud. Harsh music rumbled through the room. Navarro
puffed on a small hand made pipe and passed it around the
group, and the heavy, sweet smell of hash clouded and hung
in the air, like foggy incense during a religious ceremony.
Slumped over on his bunk, Tired T sat immobile, a dejected
Bhudda, around which his mourners circled, heads bowed as
they paid their last respects.

The lamentation lasted all night as the bereaved
drank, smoked and swapped old war stories about the dearly
departed. "Remember the time he fell asleep on the plane
on the way to Sardinia, and the pilot had to make another
pass over the jump zone just so's Tired T could make his
jump? Goddamn, the Old Man was shittin' grenades he was so
pissed off, remember?" The four card players rocked
rhythmically to the music as they flipped down their cards
one at a time. Occasionally they turned and gazed solemnly
at Tired T, as though he were a corpse freshly prepared for
burial, and his bunk a casket, and nodded their heads.

Standing wearily in formation the next morning,
stiffly—starched fatigues and jump boots laced tightly the
only things holding his body erect, Tired T awaited the
confirmation of promotion, like a condemned prisoner
waiting to hear his final sentence.

Sergeant Thurston walked up to Tired T.

103

"Look, Townsend, I know you're not too hot on this
promotion business, but think of it this way, it will look
great on your record when you get back to the States.
Could help you get a job even... maybe. Think of it,years
from now you'll be able to tell your kids with pride that
you were a real sergeant in the U.S.Army."

Standing at parade rest, head down, Tired T stared at
his fuzzy reflection in the gleaming toes of his
spit—shined boots and shook his head slowly.

"Besides, T, you got to make sergeant," Sergeant
Thurston lowered his voice, almost pleading. "You've been
a corporal too long, man, and now the Army says we got to
do something with you."

Tired T made no response. From the corner of his eye
he saw a cigarette butt on the ground. Second Squad had
police duty that morning. The Captain would have a fit if
he found it.

"So what do you say, Tired T, it's no big thing
really. Just do it, okay?" Sergeant Thurston said.

The sun slid out from behind a tree and stabbed Tired
T with a searing brightness. He watched his face dissolve
as the glossy shine of his boots clouded from the heat and
mumbled the same hypnotic chant he had repeated since he
first learned about the promotion, "Unh, unh, man, no way."

Sergeant Thurston was exasperated. There was no
belligerence or rebellion in Tired T's voice, just a tired

sadness with a trace of stubborness. He couldn't be angry

104

with this quiet, clean, likeable kid who just wanted to go
home and not bother anyone or have anyone bother him.

"Why, Townsend, why?" asked Sergeant Thurston, his
palms raised upwards, as though he were beseeching the
heavens for divine explanation for this obstinancy. "Just
give me one good reason, T, and don't give me any of this
'I'm too tired' crap. One good reason and I'll withdraw
the promotion papers before they reach Battalion H.Q."

There was a pause that seemed as long as the agonizing
interval between jumping out of an airplane and the moment
the parachute opens.

Tired T raised his head and looked Sergeant Thurston
straight in the face. His own eyes were wide and alert,
not drooping and tired. The muscles in his jaw quivered
and his face shook as he blurted out, "I'm too short! Man,
I'm too short! You can't make me no sergeant now after all
this time, can't you see? I been in the Army for four
years and it's time for me to go home. I ain't got but
sixty—eight days left and NOW you want to make me a damn
sergeant? No way, man, I'm too short."

And so there it was, the mystery of Tired T's length
of time in the 509th and his ageless fatigue had been
unravelled. Using the promotion as a chainsaw, Sergeant
Thurston had inadvertantly cut through Tired T's trunk, as
though he were an ancient, rotting tree, and discovered the
secret of his tiredness and enlistment by counting the

grainy rings on the flat top of his shorn stump.

105

A low murmur rose from the formation. The Second
Squad bent over and peered down the end of the row where
Tired T and Sergeant Thurston stood.

"Wow, man, four years, four fucking long years."
Navarro was stupefied at the thought. "That cat has been
on boo-coo field exercises. Think of all the heavy
rucksacks he's humped. That dude has carried some Big Time
poundage in his time, you know what I mean."

"Poundage my ass,‘ Triplett cut in. "We're talking

about tonnage here."

"Think of all the rain he's soaked up,"

Big Kid added.
"Damn, Tired T, it's a wonder you haven't turned into a
mushroom or grown some gills."

"How many latrines he's scrubbed."

"All the guard duty he's pulled."

"How many miles of P.T. he's run."

"How many rifles he's cleaned."

"Don't forget all the cigarette butts he's had to pick

up."
"How much boot polish and starch he's gone through."
The rest of the platoon added to the list of evidence
in rapid fire succession.
Tired T had good reason to be tired.
Sergeant Thurston stood for several moments without

saying a word, blinking his eyes. He seemed confused, as

though he was having trouble understanding the punch line

106

to a joke. He nodded his head slowly at first, and then
more quickly, with greater assertion, as if it was all
clear to him now.

"Yeah, sure, T, you're right. No sense in promoting
you to sergeant now if you're going home soon, especially
if you don't want the stripes. No problem, I'll have the
First Sergeant withdraw the promotion orders right after
the morning inspection."

Sergeant Thurston smiled and patted Tired T on the
shoulder, relieved and delighted at having understood his
adamant refusal of promotion, and walked back to the front
of the formation. The First Platoon whooped and cheered.
Tired T would not have to be a sergeant.

A strange transformation overcame Tired T in the next
few days, a change so radical and complete that the
old—timers of the Company barely recognized him, and yet so
subtle that the new arrivals saw nothing unusual in the
short, muscular soldier named Townsend, whom everyone
called Tired T. If anything they were confused by the
nickname. Tired T now moved with a quick bouncing step,
like a boxer in training who constantly dances on his toes,
and a white, toothy grin filled the bottom half of his
face. Whereas before he had to drag himself from his bunk
and stumble down to the first formation for P.T., Tired T
now sprang off his mattress and skipped down the stairs and
out to the Company compound.

Tired T even began to talk more. In fact he became

107

quite gabby. At the P.T. formation when it was still dark
and the dense fog made one shiver, the First Platoon,
wearing rumpled fatigues and bent over, heads drooping,
shoulders slumped, hands thrust deep into pockets and eyes
half open, resembled a rectangle of sagging trees after a
heavy rain. But the new Tired T rocked back and forth on
the heels of his boots, head erect and turning around,
chattering away to his sleepy mates. And most surprising
of all he began to venture downtown for an occasional beer.
Tired T saw more of Vicenza in those last two months than
during his entire tour with the 509th in Italy.

His last week in the Army, with clipboard and
discharge papers in hand, Tired T was free to roam about
the post, collecting initials, signatures and turning in
equipment as he processed out of the 509th. His only
requirements were to attend the daily formations. Most
soldiers take their time with their discharge processing,
strolling from building to building, savoring the freedom
of moving as slowly as they wish, while around them blocks
of green march and double-time. Not so Tired T. The
former sleeper bounced around the post, like the ball
inside a pinball machine, zipping from one end to the other
in minutes. The Army gives a soldier one week to get his
oficial affairs in order. Tired T completed the procedure
in a day and a half. He had three and a half days left in
the Army with nothing to do except stand in three

formations a day.

;__

108

"You mean I can do whatever I want just so long as I
make the formations?" Tired T asked, eyes wide in
disbelief.

"That's right, Tired T," Sergeant Thurston replied.

"Just think of it,T," Navarro shouted and slapped him
on the back. "You can sleep all day if you want, goddamn,
T, you can sleep on Uncle Sam's time and not get in
trouble."

Three and a half days with nothing to do but sprawl on
his bunk and nap. It was a final and superbly fitting
reward for the Great Sleeper, the most tired soldier in
military history from the seige of Troy to the fall of
Saigon, His Tiredness, Tired T.

But to the great surprise of his squad mates, Tired T
did not spend the next three and a half days cemented to
his bunk. In fact, he hardly slept at all, only a few
hours at night, before popping up at six a.m. to dash
outside for P.T.

Instead, he spent his time scurrying around the post,
scrutinizing all the barracks in the Battalion, the
Comissary, the P.X., the motor pool, even the streets, like
a detective searching for clues. Triplett said he saw him
one night standing in front of the big stone statue of
Saint Michael the Archangel, the patron saint of the
Airborne, near the front gate. He just stood there,
according to Triplett, staring in awe at the wide wings,

the frozen face and the broad muscular shoulders.

109

At night Tired T walked downtown, inspecting the old
stone buidings of Vicenza he had passed a hundred times
aboard a truck in convoy on the way to or returning from a
field exercise. He visited the Cafe Settembre where most
of the paratroopers gathered, not to celebrate his
discharge, but to sit and watch and listen. After an hour
or so he would ask one of his friends from the platoon
about some long past Company operation.

"Hey, man," he nudged Willard, a pudgy private from
the Third Squad. "Tell me about that big jump at DZ Rock."

"What are you talking about, T? You made that jump.
You and me jumped on the same pass, we were the first ones
to hit the drop zone, a goddamn, dried up river bed full of
rocks, don't you remember?"

"Yeah, I remember, but tell me about it anyway."

On his last night in the Army Tired T went to the Cafe
Settembre for a final visit. Inside, he found "Crazy" Ted
Daly, one of the few remaining old-timers from the 509th in
Germany, slumped on a stool at the end of the bar.

"Hey, Daly, hey, man,‘ he said, shaking the drunken
Daly who looked more fatigued than Tired T ever had.

Daly rolled his head to one side on the bar top and
peered up at Tired T with his left eye.

"Tell me about Lee Barracks," said Tired T. "Tell me
about the lieutenant that got tossed out the window."

It was suspected but never proven that "Crazy" Daly

had been an accomplice in the ejection of the Duty Officer

110

in a wall locker from the third floor. He lifted his head
and stared suspiciously at Tired T.

"What do you mean, tell you about Lee Barracks?
You're an old-timer,you were there longer than me. You
know as much as me about that dumb, cherry lieutenant.
Besies, why do you want to remember anything about that
piss-hole zoo?"

"I don't know," said Tired T, shrugging his shoulders.
"We spent a lot of time there, you know, that's all. Tell
me anyway, I want to hear again just to be sure."

Too drunk to defend himself, Daly let his head drop on
the bar with a thud.

A young, Italian woman entered the Cafe and slid past
the crowded bar. Tired T watched her as she slid across
the floor. She wore a long, black cape, loose-fitting
jeans and black, heeled boots. Women rarely came into the
Cafe Settembre, and the presence of a tall, slender figure
made heads turn immediately. She made a circular tour of
the Cafe, appraising each group of leering men. Several
GIs called to her to come sit with them and have a drink,
which she ignored or refused with a dark sneer. She
stopped at a table with four soldiers and smiled at one of
them, a heavy set man with blonde hair, who nodded and
returnd the smile. The woman cocked her head to one side
and arched her eyebrows. Shaking his head, the soldier
held out his hands, palms up. She shrugged and left the

table with a wink.

111

The hooker completed her tour, bought a drink at the
bar and moved over to a corner by the doorway. Tired T
stared at her as she leaned back into the dark and sipped
on a straw in the glass. Her name was Angela. He had met
her a long time ago through his friend, Al Jenkins, who had
lived with her. She had straight black hair that covered
her forehead and framed her face, large dark eyes that did
most of her talking and long full lips. She usually
demanded drugs instead of money for her services, and the
profits from a successful business had taken its toll on
her body. Tired T remembered her as having a full figure
which she flaunted with tight jeans and an open blouse; now
she hid her frail frame under a cape. She was still
attractive, he thought. In the dimly lighted haze of the
Cafe she looked like an exotic seductress he had seen in a
movie about Cleopatra.

Tired T continued to stare, almost longingly, at
Angela. He didn't want her or lust after her, but looking
at her gave him a feeling of nostalgic warmth. Her former
lover, Alfred "Kool Kid" Jenkins, had been Tired T's best
friend in the First Platoon. Navarro had given him the
name "Kool Kid" because when he was off duty he always wore
fashionable clothes like the young Italian men, and he was
never afraid to approach a pretty Italian girl even though
he did not speak the language very well. Except for

ordering food and beer or asking directions, most GIs never

112

attempted to speak Italian. But Jenkins wasn't afraid to
sound awkward, and he learned as much of the language as
possible, practicing his accent and gestures on Tired T
during road marches. While the rest of the squad stayed
around the barracks playing cards or shooting pool, Kool
Kid was downtown mingling with the Italians. Dressed in
tailored flashy clothes, a tall slender figure with a
carmel complexion, he looked and acted the part of a Latin
lover.

Jenkins was the only GI Tired T had known who never
complained of being homesick.

"Shit, man, why miss some place where you're going to
spend the rest of your life," Jenkins would say to Tired T
whenever he griped about being stuck in a foreign country
so far from home. "Alabama ain't going no place, I
guarantee you. It'll still be there when you get home and
you'll end up doing the same old thing, hanging out,
pissing and moaning about some boring job. This is what
you should worry about missing. This place, Italy. Before
you know it, you'll be gone, and you'll never be back. I
ain't no barracks rat, no sir. I plan on seeing everything
and having a good time."

Jenkins was long gone now, having been discharged over
a year ago, and Tired T suddenly found it difficult to
remember his face. Memories of his daring friend flashed
through his mind like sparks, bright and dazzling but

impossible to hold. He stared harder, trying to force an

113

image of Jenkins standing next to Angela in the corner.
He'd be wearing something fancy, thought Tired T, just like
the Italians, with Angela on his arm looking just as sharp.
The image formed momentarily, wavered in the smoky air and
vanished. All that was left was Angela, looking weary and
bored, sipping her drink and pulling up the worn baggy
jeans that used to cover her hips like a fresh coat of
paint.

Angela caught him staring at her and smiled, and Tired
T, still held captive in his reverie of Jenkins, smiled
back at her. Angela sent her callling card with the
practiced cock of the head and arched eyebrows, and Tired
T, embarrassed, looked down at his feet.

When he looked up again Angela was standing next to
him. A strong smell of perfume and body odor filled his
nose.

"Hello, Signore T, how are you? Something you would
like, maybe, hmmm?" Angela asked, smiling.

"Naw, naw, man... I mean, no, like..." Tired T
stammered, flustered and embarrassed that Angela thought he
wanted to buy her.

"You were looking at me very much, si? I think maybe
you want something."

"Naw, you don't understand. I was just thinking, you
know... I mean just looking."

Angela laughed and patted him on the shoulder. "It's

okay, Signore T, you buy me a drink, okay."

114

"Yeah, sure, whatever you want."

Angela perched herself on a stool next to Tired T and
ordered a glass of wine. "So, Signore T, how are things?
I no see you for a long time."

"I'm okay, pretty good really. I'm going home
tomorrow."

"Home. That is nice, 51, a good boy should go home."

"You bet, I'm pretty excited, you know. Listen,
Angela, I was kind of thinking, I mean you and K001 Kid,
you know, Jenkins, were pretty close, huh?"

Angela's face brightened. "Alfredo? Si, Alfredo and
me were very much lovers. He was very good to me. He buy

me boo—coo clothes,"

she said, giggling at the sound of the
GI slang. "He buy me other good things too, you know."
She winked at Tired T.

"You ever hear from him?" asked Tired T.

Angela frowned and looked away. "No, Townsend, I
don't hear from Alfredo. When he leave, he promise to take
me to America later to see him in New York where he live,
you know, but I never hear from him."

Up close, Angela did not look so appealing, thought
Tired T. Her face was pale and drawn, and the eyes which
seemed so expressive from a distance were small and wan,
deepset behind protruding cheekbones. Her fingers were
thin and frail, like leafless twigs on a tree. He tried

not to look as she scratched at a pattern of bruised needle

marks on her forearm.

115

"Angela, tell me about Jenkins."

Angela looked puzzled. "But, Townsend, you knew him,
he was your best friend, no? What can I tell you?"

"Tell me about the trips you two used to take to Rome
and Venice, tell me what he looked like, you know."

Tired T watched Angela as she stared into the mirror
behind the bar, hoping to catch a glimpse of his friend's
face in her eyes.

I don't know, Townsend,"

Angela shrugged. "Alfredo
was nice, good looking, too. He always have good stuff,
you know. I don't know, it was a long time ago." She
waved a bony hand through the air, shooing away the memory
of Jenkins and gave up trying to remember.

"It's not important, eh Townsend, the past. I do not
think much about the past. What do you think?"

"I don't know, yeah, I guess not."

Angela emptied her glass. "Hey, you buy me another
drink, okay?"

Tired T did not answer her. He felt suddenly emptied,
weak and worn. It was not the same fatigue that had
haunted him throughout his tour with the 509th but a
weariness of remorse for now he regretted not having
travelled and done more like Jenkins. He should've gone to
see for himself all the wonderful and exotic places and
people that his friend had described to him. Pangs of
urgency hit him and he felt panicky. He wanted to rush

down to the station and take the train to Venice. He

116

should at least see Venice once. How many hours would it
take to go to Rome, he wondered. It was too late. There
was not enough time. Jenkins had been right. He would
miss this place. Germany, Italy, even the Army had been
his home for the last four years, and he had squandered his
time tucked away in the safety of the squad bay like a
sickly child. There had been nothing really wrong with
him. Sure, all the orders and rules, all the time spent in
the bush, the sleepless nights, the rain, the jumps and the
endless road marches had made him feel as though he was
about to unravel at times, but he always recovered. He
should not have let it paralyze him with fatigue. He had
wasted away, just like Angela, the same as if he too had
sucked himself dry with needles. He was still strong
physically, but his insides felt as though they had rotted.

Angela nudged him.

"Hey, Signore T, you okay? You don't think about the
past so much, think about tomorrow. Come, you buy me
another drink, okay?"

Tired T bought her another glass of wine and got up to
leave.

"Signore T, where are you going? We must celebrate,
si. A toast for you because you are leaving this place to
go home."

She raised her glass in the air. "Salute."

Tired T spent the rest of the night walking around the

city, trying to memorize the old buildings built hundreds

117

of years ago, the greenish creamy color of the
weather—stained marble, the high arches and towering
columns, the faces and poses of statues.

The Day had arrived. The one day he was expected to
shake off his lethargy for good and arise early, Tired T
overslept. The Second Squad stood in a circle around his
bunk and yelled in chorus, "Wake up, Tired T, you're going
home!" Burrowed beneath a blanket, with a pillow covering
his head, Tired T barely moved. They grabbed and hoisted
him out of bed and dragged his limp body over to his wall
locker where his dress uniform hung, neatly pressed, the
brass insignia, marksman badge and silver jump wings
shining and glittering in the morning sunlight. Still half
asleep, he looked at the uniform through blurred eyes,
unsure of what to do with it.

"Come on, T, get the lead out, bro, you don't want to
be late for that bus."

"That's our Tired T, true to form even to the last,
too tired to put on the old dress greens one last time."

His squad mates began to dress him like a mannequin in
a store window, holding out his arms for the shirt, lifting
his legs for the pants. They tied his tie, buttoned his
jacket, and even laced his boots for him.

Big Kid played a record from Jump School, and at the
refrain they all joined in:

"And he ain't gonna jump no more!"

118

Navarro marched ceremoniously in front of Tired T,
arms outstretched, holding a maroon beret gently in his
hands as though it was a crown. Triplett lifted the beret
gingerly, and with a severe look on his face and
exaggerated pomp, placed it lightly on Tired T's head.
Navarro reached up and tugged at the corner of the beret so
that it sat at a jaunty angle across his forehead. The
squad stood back and applauded.

"Goddamn, look at Tired T, John Wayne himself."

They grabbed his duffel bag and whisked him down the
hallway and out of the barracks. Outside, the squad formed
a cordon around Tired T. Triplett stood in front of the
human square and called the formation to attention.

"Squad--ten HUT! Forward--HAARCH!"

The squad stepped out crisply, backs straight, arms
swinging in precise arcs.

"Double time--come on, T, one more Airborne run for
the World-—HAARCH!"

Navarro and Big Kid each grabbed an arm and carried
Tired T along as the squad broke into an ordered run. He
was awake now but tired from a lack of sleep. He felt his
body borne along by the slapping sound of boots hitting the
pavement in unison, as though it was moving on its own
without his aid. It was a feeling he had experienced many
times before during the morning P.T. runs when it was still
dark and cold and his body was stiff, his mind groggy, and

he would dream about lying in an open field under the sun

119
back home in Alabama. Just follow the man in front of you,
hypnotized by the cadence and synchronized stride of many
legs moving as one, like a giant beetle with sixty legs
scurrying down the street. Divorce the mind from the body.
It was a simple trick everyone used at one time or another
to get through P.T. when he was hung over, or like Tired T,
just too tired to run. He milked the feeling for all it
was worth, as the squad cruised down the streets of the
post.

"Let's have some music here, yeah."

Triplett led them in the Airborne anthem.

"Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, have you heard,

I'm gonna jump from a big iron bird,"

A landscape of dozens of jumps flashed through his
mind. The parched white stones in the dried up river bed
of the infamous DZ Rock; snow capped peaks and the brown
and green sides of the Dolomites, like a curtain stretched
across the sky, so close it looked like he could reach out
and touch them.

"If I die on the old drop zone,

box me up and ship me home,"
The first night jump, mushroom capped parachutes
illuminated an eerie green under the light of a full moon,
drifting down into a dark well of night.

"Pin my wings upon my chest,

tell my gal I did my best."

The last big jump in Germany when two guys from Alpha Co.

 

120

became entangled and slammed into the countryside, killed
instantly.

He thought about the time he and Pifer sat huddled
together inside an abandoned drain pipe during a rain
storm, sharing his last heat tab as they tried to warm a
C-ration can of chopped ham and eggs, and he remembered the
time he'd stolen some apples from a farmer's orchard and
eaten them without washing them off first and how sick he
got and how Navarro gave him his last canteen of water to
rinse the acid taste from his mouth.

He remembered the jump in Holland to commemorate the
liberation of the town of Eindhoven from the Germans during
the war and the tiny old woman with tears streaming down
her wrinkled face who had rushed out on the drop zone and
hugged him.

The angle and brightness of the morning sun hurt his
eyes and made him squint, but he liked how it warmed his
face. It was the one thing he had enjoyed the most about
Italy. The intensity of the sun reminded him of home. The
winters here hadn't been too harsh either, not like Germany
where the cold crept into his bones in October and stayed
there until May. The fog was the only bad part. It always
reminded him how far from home he was and gave him a
feeling of being lost in another world. An old gypsy man
had told him once that if the fog came after a day had
begun clear and bright, it meant that the people of the

city were being punished for not halting their pursuit of

121
wealth and power to enjoy the gift of life given by the
sun. But at least the fog was predictable, arriving
usually in the darkness of early morning. The reassurance
of knowing that it would disappear by noon always calmed
his fear and loneliness during the P.T. run.

The bus that would take him to Milano, from where he
would fly home, was parked in front of the mess hall. He
could see a line of soldiers waiting to board and his heart
began to race. He tried to run faster but was boxed in by
the squad. Suddenly, as if someone had ignited a crate
filled with smoke bombs, thick coils of gray mist began
pouring into the street. The fog snaked its way around
buildings and trees as if it were trying to choke
everything in sight. Tired T and the rest of the squad
were quickly surrounded. He could just make out the rear
of the bus. It appeared farther away than when he'd first
spotted it. In another minute the fog caught and swallowed
the bus.

Tired T ran into Sweet Frank's back and the rest of the
squad began to stumble, tripping over each other's legs.
They had come this way hundreds of times on the way to eat,
but now they had no idea in which direction to go. Navarro
said to follow him and tripped over a curb. Triplett said
he knew the way and rushed headlong into a lamppost. In
the middle of the shouting and cursing, Tired T heard the
rumble of the bus engines starting.

"Quiet! Quiet!" he yelled and cupped his ears. The

122

others stopped and listened.

"The bus! The bus is leaving without me, oh man, I'm
gonna miss the bus."

Tired T bolted from their midst and was immediately
buried in the fog, and the Second Squad was left with his
duffel bag, the clicking sound of his boots hitting the
ground, the drone of the bus, and his tired voice calling,
"wait, wait, wait," receding into the fog like the
diminishing refrain at the end of a song skipping on a

record.

**************

Myles became silent and leaned back, watching the
others who were looking at him, eyes wide and mouths
hanging open. Doughboy had covered his face with his
hands. Pifer was sucking heavily on a cigarette.

A sharp knock at the door made Schenk jump and
everyone looked up quickly. The door opened slightly and
the smooth narrow face of Ryder the clerk craned into the
room. He scanned the group, stopped, and grinned and
pointed at Myles, holding his index finger and thumb an
inch apart.

"Hey, old—timer, you're so short I bet you could march

between my fingers."

123

"What do you want, rimp?" Doughboy snapped. "Nobody
invited your skinny ass in here."

'

"Relax, I got big news for Mr. Myles,' Ryder said,
pronouncing the title with exaggeration. "Your orders just
arrived. You start out-processing in two weeks." Ryder
shook his head. "Some guys have all the luck."

The door closed.

Schenk stared in awe at Myles.

"You're going home?"

"Sounds like it," Myles said.

"That's great, Myles,"

Pifer said. He dropped the
cigarette on the floor and watched the smoke spiral up.
"So, how does it feel to be almost a civilian?"

Myles shrugged. "Feels good... I guess. I don't
know, tell you the truth, I don't feel that much different
than an hour ago. Except I was running P.T. an hour ago
and now I'm not... that feels good."

' Pifer said. "Just give it

"Give it time to sink in,'
time."

"Sure," Myles said. "Just need a little time to get
used to the idea. But as soon as I feel a change, I'll let
you know. Tell you all about it."

"You better, you chump. I'd cut your static line if I
thought you were holding out on me and Doughboy. Give us a

taste of that sweet stuff."

Myles smiled. "Don't worry, you'll get it soon

124

enough. Your orders should be coming real soon. You got
here a bit after me. About a month, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, that sounds right." Pifer nodded and ground
out the cigarette with the toe of his boot. "Just about a
month after you. Or was it two months?"

"No, I'm positive it was a month. See, Doughboy got
here just before the jump at DZ Rock-—that was your cherry
blast, right, Doughboy?"

"I think so," Doughboy answered. "That was in
September, wasn't it?"

"No, late August, because we went to Turkey in
September, right after the Greeks and Turks shot up Cyprus.
'74, I think."

' Pifer said. "Rock was a month after

"You're right,’
the jump at DZ Hardcore in Sardinia. That was my cherry
blast. Goddamn, hell of a place to make your first jump.
Four hour flight, drop zone covered with boulders and scrub
brush, and hot, hotter than a bitch, hot enough to melt
your steel pot over your ears. Oh, man, you wouldn't
beleive that place, Doughboy. It was rough, big time
rough." He shook his head and kicked the crushed cigarette
out into the middle of the room. "Wasn't it rough, Myles?
Remember?"

"Sure I remember. Guys were puking left and right
during the flight. Major Beckett broke his back." Myles

stretched out on his bunk and spoke to the ceiling. "The

chutes didn't open on a jeep. Tires bounced fifty feet in

125

the air, just like in the cartoons."

Doughboy got up and walked over to the window. "I
guess we all got here about the same time, give or take a
month or two. Trip, Big Kid, Navarro, Sweet Frank. All of
us."

"Except for Tired T," Pifer said.

"Except for old T," Myles said. "He was always here."

The others began to shuffle towards the door.

Schenk walked over to Myles' bunk and tapped him on
the knee.

"Congratulations, Myles. I'd say you've done your
time. You won't have to put up with smart cherries like me
anymore."

Myles propped himself up on his elbows. "No, I guess
not. I'll be the cherry now, cherry civilian."

"Well, anyway." Schenk turned around and picked up
the cigarette butt in the middle of the floor. Slowly, he
peeled the paper and stripped the filter. "Good luck.
Hope you don't get lost on the way home like your buddy
Tired T." He laughed and looked for the wastebasket.

"Hell no, he won't get lost,' Pifer said, standing up
and clapping his hands together. "We'll get Mr. Myles here
some lights, some big old C—130 landing lights to hang
around his neck. Light a path a klick wide. Just make

sure you hang them on the flag pole at Ft. Dix in Jersey so

me and Doughboy can find the way after you. What do you

 

126

think, Doughboy, great idea, eh?"

Doughboy turned away from the window.

"Venice."

Pifer looked at him.

"What about Venice?"

"We should celebrate. Go to Venice for the weekend,
do it up right. Give Myles a big time sendoff."

"Venice." Myles nodded. "Right."

"Venice. Sure, why not? Sounds good to me, Pifer
said. "I've never been there before. Do you know how to
get there, Myles?"

Myles bent over to unlace his boots. "I went once.
When I first got here." For some reason he'd worn his
inspection boots during P.T., and a long scratch marred the
shiny surface of the right toe, slicing across the mirrored
reflection of his eyes. He kicked off the boot in a high
arc that landed near Tired T's sagging duffel bag. "Pretty

sure I remember the way."

,. MIAMI!!!

3 "1‘2 93 "1'1

         

 

WW

'1.