Lewis smiled lazily, obviously enjoying deep satisfaction at reciting his triumph for a properly appreciative listener. “Regimental Head and Head, that’s who, Harry. If you go to old Martin, real quick-like, maybe he’ll let you two room together.”
Ignoring the last jibe, O’Connor looked pained, “Aw hell, top, ain’t we got enough trouble in regiment a’ready? I was jus’ talkin’ to Mr. Cobb ‘bout it the other day. Seems like we winds up with ever’ fuckin’ loony and loopleg, not to mention ever’ damn asshole goldbrick and moron comes along. We a’ready got us all the friggin’ cornholers and pegboys we can take in Head ‘n Head, top. For the lova God, what’d you go and do that to old Homer Martin for? What’d he ever do to you?”
Lewis’ smile evaporated. “Wished the wop carrot-grabber off on me’n this comp’ny to start off, that’s what. But he agreed to thishere, once’t I explained all to him, he did, Harry. I checked Carbone’s 201 file real close, see, and I come to find he useta give classes in wire-layin’ and stringin’, see. So Martin, he ain’t gonna keep the shit-stirrin’ bastard around hardly long enough to cut a fuckin’ fart. He’s gonna cut orders, if he ain’t done it a’ready, to ship Carbone over to Signal Comp’ny. Martin agrees with me that whatall happens when Sergeant Call, the first faggot of Signal Comp’ny, gets the fuckin’ Prussian Eyetie in his claws after all this time and all, what happens over to Signal’ll be a pure, fuckin’ joy to watch, Harry, a pure~, fuckin’ joy to watch!”
Harry O’Connor set down his cup and just stared at Lewis, cigarette ashes dribbling unnoticed down the front of his blue denim fatigue uniform. “Top,” he said finally, “that is the evilest, viciousest, rottenest scheme I ever heard tell of. Ever’body knows Guide’s done stole away or leastways got into three, four, maybe five or six or more of Plugger Call’s angelinas, and it ain’t nothin’ but bad blood between them two sods. Hey, ‘member, Call damn near got hisself busted when he broke a bottle and went at Carbone with it at the regimental beer garden, two years ago.
“It’s plumb beautiful, top. How much of all this does Queer Guido know about?”
“Not one damn thing, ‘cept for that he’s shippin’ out to regimental Head and Head. And he better not hear nothing neither, Harry. You don’t tell nobody, hear? Not Mr. Cobb, not your bunkie, nobody!”
O’Connor nodded, then chuckled, “Naw, nobody, top, not me. I wouldn’t want to miss this shit circus for the fuckin’ world. Wouldn’t surprise me none if them two plumb dehorned each other!” He chuckled again, grinning to show tobacco-stained teeth and rubbing the palms of his calloused, grease-stained hands together in an excess of anticipated glee.
“Milo, you done been taught how to run a trainin’ platoon,” said First Sergeant James Lewis, “so I ain’t gonna give you a whole fuckin’ shitpile of orders and all on it. The onliest thing’s gonna be diffrunt from your platoon and the others in this comp’ny is I’m gonna shift all the furriners over to you, since you can talk with them and the resta us cain’t. You gone have Corp’ral Perkins as long as you thinks you needs him with his first bunch, so you should oughta make out okay.”
And Milo did, of course, being a natural leader and having been thoroughly schooled in the NCO Academy. The only desertion was that of a gypsy, but despite the black mark against platoon, company and battalion, Milo, Lewis and the rest of the cadremen felt more relieved than anything else, for the decamped man’s appalling proclivity to petty theft from his mates and his utter aversion to even the basics of personal hygiene had earmarked him as a murder waiting to happen.
And all the regiment was gossiping already about the supposedly hushed-up affair in Signal Company, where First Sergeant Call had been attacked while asleep and horribly maimed, nearly killed, by none other than PFC Guido Carbone, who had been a platoon sergeant- in a training company for some years. Following the crime, PFC Carbone had taken French leave and now, like the unmissed gypsy, was listed as a deserter.
^Sergeant Jethro Stiles and Milo quickly became fast friends and buddies, a relationship strongly encouraged by First Sergeant Lewis, who occasionally joined them when his and their duties allowed for a weekend of ease and cards and talk and drink at Stiles’ comfortable rented bungalow off-post. Surrounded by bed on bed of roses, peonies, chrysanthemums, asters, altheas, irises, lilies, tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and a dozen or more other varieties of flowering plants, all springing up out of ground-covering cushions of phlox and baby’s breath and vinca minor, the bungalow had been Stiles’ home for years and fitted him like an old glove.
There were few rooms—living room, dining room, bedroom, bath, kitchen, a small room furnished with only a desk and chair and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with books; there was also a basement which housed a furnace and coalbin, a workbench and its tools and a varied, extensive wine cellar—but Jethro managed well, doing his own cooking, cleaning and gardening with obvious relish. The man was a superlative chef; Milo could not remember ever before having been treated to such culinary masterpieces, all of them served on a table agleam with crystal, sterling silver and fine china, the food invariably prepared with herbs from the garden.
After one such epicurean delight, he and Lewis both stuffed to repletion and beyond, all three of them sipping at hot coffee and a fine old cognac, Milo remarked, “Jethro, you are always referring to yourself and to me, too, as a ‘gentleman ranker.’ May I ask why? What does that term mean?”
But Lewis answered first. “Means just what it means, Milo. You and Jethro is gentlemen, no two ways about it. You should rightly oughta be off sers … prob’ly will be, too, afore long, when thishere shootin’ war that’s comin’ sure as God made us all gets around to gettin’ the U.S. of A. mixed up in it.”
But their host demurred, saying, “Milo, yes, he’ll make a splendid officer, but not me, James. If offered a commission, I’ll have to refuse it. I prefer the basic anonymity of the other ranks; also, it is a part of my penance.
“I know you all wonder about me, who I really am, why I am here among you, but being true friends you never have been so rude, so crude as to ask, nor would I have told you had you done so. All that I will tell you is this: When I was far younger and foolish and full with the arrogance and selfishness of being born to wealth and position, I did a terrible, monstrously evil thing, and worse, I did it carelessly, without so much as a thought for whom my act might hurt and how much it would hurt them.
“I was protected, of course, from my due punishment by the power and influence and wealth of my family. Nonetheless, it was considered in the best interests of all and sundry that I leave the country for a bit. I left for Europe with a letter which allowed me to draw any amount I might need out of family accounts in certain Swiss banks. I never have returned to my home. My father and mother are long dead, as too are all of the other principals in the tragedy I brought about so long ago, yet still I am not free to resume the life I inherited, the position I degraded.
“I am a self-exiled man, and I shall continue to pay the price for my misdeed for as long as God gives me to live.”
Then, in a soaring tenor voice, Stiles sang Kipling’s “Gentleman Rjankers” to them.
Milo was long in forgetting that evening.
The training cycles came and went, commenced and ended, grinding out replacement personnel to meet the meager requirements of the small standing army which was all that the Land of the Free felt that it needed to remain tha|: way, with the “war to end war” now more than two decades in the past.
Kept penurious by a depressed economy and an anti-military, tight-fisted Congress, they trained and drilled with the outdated, antique weapons and vehicles and equipment and tractics of the long-ago trenches of France. It was an army of orphans, threadbare and despised by the very people they were sworn to protect from enemies foreign or domestic. And the need to extend that sworn obligation would be upon them all too soon, and the soldiers all knew it, even if their employers chose to ignore the signs of the impending bloodbath.