Lewis said precious little as they dressed and drove back to the company area. When he had parked nose-in and turned off the engine of the reconnaissance car, he said, “Moray, my boy, you punch like the kick of a fuckin’ mule, I swear to God you do! You learn you modern boxin’ and all, you’ll be champeen of whatever division you winds up in, I don’t doubt it one bit. I’m just thankin’ God you had them fuckin’ gloves on—you might of kilt me dead without them.
“When you gits back to your barracks, you tell Sergeant Cassidy I said to round up all the other platoon sergeants and bring them to my office, pronto. What you ain’t to tell him or anybody elst is why I wants to see them.
“I didn? do hardly any damage can be seen easily on you, see, and I don’t want none them takin’ it inta their heads to try workin’ you over, son, ‘cause you just might kill one or two of them or they might kill you, and I don’t want anyway to have to work out no L.O.D.s determinations on how a bunch of my cadre got themselfs beat half to fuckin’ death; no man what hadn’t fought you would believe it.
“A’right, Moray. You can go now. But you take care of yourself, hear? I’m gonna be keepin’ my eye on you.”
Milo never knew exactly how Lewis had phrased or explained his hands-off-Moray order to his cadremen, but from then on, Cassidy and the other noncoms treated him almost as an equal, and a few days prior to the completion of their basic training cycle, First Sergeant Lewis once more summoned him. This time, however, the senior noncom met him formally, in his office just off the orderly room.
When Milo had completed the required reporting ritual, he was told to close the door and stand at ease. “Moray, after you graduates Tuesday, you ain’t gonna have far to travel. You’re gonna go just down the road a ways to the advanced infantry basic battalion, and you do as good there as you done done here, your next stop is gonna be acrost the post to the NCO Academy. You’re prime, Moray, and I ain’t just flatterin’ you when I says it, neither, and so lotsa the other units is gonna want to grab you up for to fill out their cadres, but you tell any as talks about it or tries it that they’ll do ‘er over the dead body of First Sergeant James Evans Lewis. You hear me, son?”
Lewis smiled the first smile that Milo had ever seen on his lined, scarred face. “I wants you back here, boy, to be one of my platoon sergeants, see. You got you more brains nor the resta the bunch I has now put together, ‘ceptin’ my field first. You play your cards right and you’ll wind up as field first afore too fuckin’ long, under Stiles, as first. See, my thirty’s gonna be up in only ‘bout four years, come the thirteenth day of January, nineteen and forty-three, my hitch is up and I’m long gone. I means to leave thishere trainin’ company in good hands, though, and you and Stiles is the plumb best I seen sincet the last war. It’s damn fuckin’ seldom the Army gets men like you two, see, and I ain’t gonna let a prize like you get out of my hands. I ain’t that big of a fuckin’ fool, nosiree-bob, I ain’t!”
The Sergeant Moray, Milo (n.m.i.), who stood before Lewis’ desk after graduation with honors from both advanced infantry basic and the NCO Academy still could recall no single incident prior to his awakening in a Chicago hospital room, but he knew by then that Dr. Sam Osterreich and old Pat O’Shea had likely been accurate in their suppositions about him. The most of the business of soldiering just came far too easily to him for him not to have been one, somewhere, sometime, in some army, and probably for some little time, too.
Lewis had been obliged several times over to pull strings, call in IOUs for past favors, beg, wheedle, cajole and do everything except physically fight to retain his dibs on Moray. But he had done all of these gladly, partly for the joy of winning, of course, but also because the attempted shanghaiings of his peers reinforced his own statements and views as to the potential and value of the man.
He smiled up at the new-made buck sergeant. “Welcome home, son. Close the door and sit down.” With the door shut, Lewis arose and stepped over to his filing cabinet, opened the bottom drawer and drew from its rearmost recesses two canteen cups and a quart of bourbon, still better than half full.
Immediately after work call the next morning, Lew’s drove Milo down to the motor pool and introduced him to Master Sergeant O’Connor, the NCO-in-charge. “Teach him to drive, Harry. He missed learnin’ how, see, and I can’t spare him long enough to send him off to no fuckin’ school. I’ll be owin’ you one, if you do.”
A week under the motor sergeant’s often impatient tutelage gave Milo the rudiments of properly handling the smaller wheeled transport vehicles. This was followed by a week on the deuce-and-a-half, the general-purpose two-and-a-half-ton truck. Then, of a day toward the end of that second week, O’Connor drove one of the brand-new general-purpose one-quarter-ton vehicles (which very soon were to be nicknamed “jeeps”) up to Lewis’ training company and closeted with the first sergeant in his office.
When they were seated and O’Connor had had a swallow or two of the bourbon, Lewis asked, “You ain’t havin’ no fuckin’ trouble with my boy, Moray, are you, Harry?”
His hands seemingly absently occupied with a cigarette paper and his sack of Bull Durham tobacco, O’Connor replied, “Aw, naw, top, not him. He’s a’ready a right fair driver, for all he’s got him a kinda heavy foot now and then. I done got him famil’arized with alia the smaller stuff, four-wheel and two- and three-wheel, last week. This week I grounded him on the deuce-and-a-half, both the six-wheelers and the ten-wheelers, and he ain’t half bad in them, neither. Man learns quick and remembers good.”
The cigarette rolled to his careful satisfaction, the white-haired noncom cracked a wooden match alight with his thumbnail, lit up, took a puff and went on. “Thing is, top, I’d like to keep Moray down there at least another week, see. Right now, it’s too fuckin’ many drivers on thishere post don’t know how to do nuthin’ with a fuckin’ vehicle but drive the cocksucker. I wants to make damn fuckin’ sure this Moray knows at fuckin’ least how to do basic maint’nence, see. Can you spare him that much longer, top?”
Lewis, just then sipping at his whiskey, nodded as he took the canteen cup down from his lips. “Sure, Harry, take a week or even two, if you can make him better for it … but I’m servin’ a fuckin’ warnin’, too, Harry O’Connor. Don’t you and Mr, Cobb get you the fuckin’ idea you gonna make no OJT mechanic or suthin’ out’n him, neither. I done fought and beat bigger fish nor you and Warrant Officer Cobb to keep Moray for this comp’ny and I’ll fuckin’ well beat your fuckin’ asses, too, come to that.”
Lewis could see that this jab had connected good and proper. O’Connor and Cobb had been up to something, but he also knew that now they would both back off rather than tangle with him and his web of connections in the battalion and regiment.
“So give Moray all the training you think he needs, Harry. It’ll be three weeks afore the new bunch gets to us, and I’ll be needin’ him then. He’s gonna be takin’ over a trainin’ platoon, then. More bourbon, Harry?”
While Lewis splashed more of the whiskey into his steel cup, O’Connor queried, “But, top, I’d heard you was full up, cadre-wise.”
Lewis smiled. “The comp’ny is—we got all the Table’ll let us have, now, but I done found a way ‘round that, too. I’m shippin’ Sergeant Carbone out, transferrin’ him in grade.”
“Queer Guinea Guido?” asked O’Connor in patent amazement. “Who the hell did you find was dumb enough to take on that dago gut-butcher, top?”