Jacks calls their names and the men bark out in response and then he announces Sick Call, which nobody who can stand dares report for since the Doc has taken to dosing all internal complaints with a ginger-root concoction that cleans you out, and not gently, at both ends.
“We have the healthiest regiment in the camp,” muses Sergeant Jacks with the tone in his voice that substitutes for a smile. “Fall out.”
They make their way to the chow-line then, and as Junior is first it falls on him to do the honors.
“What have we today?” he says, raising his voice to be heard by all. “Sowbelly with no bread or sowbelly with no eggs?”
“No breakfast,” says Stewpot Sims. Thick, stumplike Sims, who if he even hears the kicking anymore does not respond to it. “Coffee if you want it.”
Royal dips in, coffee scalding in his pint can, dark coffee this morning, with an acid taste that lingers for an hour after but is better than nothing. He tried to drill one day with nothing in his stomach, hung over from a night in Ybor, and by noon his legs were jelly.
“No breakfast. Maybe they packed it all up on the transports, we be leaving today.” Little Earl is the source of many camp rumors. Royal likes to hear how they have grown, have sprouted arms and legs by the time they’ve circled back to the company at the end of the day.
“Maybe it just smelt so bad they had to bury it,” says Corporal Puckett, one of the veterans from Fort Missoula.
“Not yet, they haven’t,” says Coop. “Don’t no hole get dug in this camp but what I digs it. Something to eat got buried, I’d know.”
The men laugh. Coop is the sergeants’ favorite goat, though there is nothing visibly wrong with his soldiering. He jumps when jump is called for and flops on command. Something in his eye, though, the way he stands, an attitude. I am here, it says. Royal and the other greenhorns all with their shoulders pinned back, chins down, guts pulled in, trying to be invisible to the officer of the moment while Coop stands there taking up his space as if it belonged to him. As if he still belonged to himself and not the 25th Regular Infantry, Colored.
“You ever been hanged, Cooper?” Sergeant Jacks asked him just the other day at muster, body almost pressed up against the taller private.
“Not yet, Sergeant.” Voice innocent of tone, but steady.
“Must be an oversight.”
The men who smoke keep one eye on the bugler, Kid Mabley, trying to burn one down before he brings the metal to his lips. The sand crabs are up now, skittering from hole to hole as if their business, whatever it might be, needs finishing before sunrise. Royal forces the coffee down and takes a few steps in place. The blisters are still there, no chance to heal, but not too angry yet. The worst is taking the boots off at the end of the day, something Junior and he help each other with, comparing the size and state of their raw spots.
Dellum from Company C moves close to him. “Any tobacco on you, rookie?”
“Don’t use it.”
“That’s no reason not to have it.”
“I get hold of any,” says Royal, “I’ll let you know.”
The veterans ragged them pretty hard at first, pushing at the new recruits to see how far they’d give, but there was nothing mean in it. Except with Coop sometimes, coming back weary from whatever punitive duty he’s caught that day, Coop will go right back after them. Even Scout, the little spaniel they keep for a mascot, spoiled on mess-hall scraps and stolen biscuits, knows enough to slink away when he sees Coop with that look on his body. Once he held Little Earl by the throat so hard, over a remark that had nothing to do with him, that there were bruises the next day, bruises that showed on a black man’s neck.
At a nod from the lieutenant, Kid Mabley blasts into Drill, humping his chest down hard to let the whole camp hear. Mabley is the best on the Heights and knows it, all the other buglers, even the white boys, coming by in the evenings to trade licks with him, holding their campaign hats over the horns to mute their playing in case someone wants to get a head start on their shuteye. No shots have been fired in camp so far, that’s what town is for, but a few men have been left bloody in the sand.
“Spaniards don’t get him,” says Dellum, a nervous sleeper, eyeing Mabley as he starts away, “Imonna kill that boy.”
Tampa is a fever dream, fever rising with the sun.
The Krag, even unloaded, makes it seem real. The weight of it in his hands, the heat of the barrel once the sun comes up, the way every action must be altered to accommodate the ever-present fact of it makes Royal feel like a soldier. Sergeant Jacks makes sure the Krag never leaves their grasp from the instant drill begins till Kid blows Recall. They are drilling by companies today, Junior and Royal and Little Earl in Company L marched with most of the other recruits, four abreast, two miles south of camp skirting the City of Tampa to end up in the dunes facing Davis Island across the bay.
“Company halt!”
To the east, in a jumble of masts and stacks and flagpoles, is the mongrel fleet of coastal packets and converted yachts that word has it will take them to fight the Spanish. Some of them. The men are winded from keeping up with Sergeant Jacks, but stand as steady as they can at right-shoulder arms, waiting. Royal casts a glance at the surrounding dunes, deep pockets of shadow forming among them as the sun begins to creep over the horizon, and wishes there had been something to eat.
“Form by platoon — march!”
They separate into their two platoons. The lieutenant hasn’t come along. Drill is shorter when he comes — he gets hot or bored and pulls out his pocket watch which Sergeant Jacks somehow senses without looking and wraps things up. Without the lieutenant it could be a long morning.
“First platoon, deploy as skirmishers, on the flank — march!”
Royal pivots around Corporal Pickney and the rest follow, stepping off their two paces from the next man, each squad spread out fifteen paces from the other. It seems a waste, now that they’ve gotten the hang of it, of the manual of arms, of close and extended-order marching and maneuver, now that they’ve learned to stack and take arms, to clean, repair, and fire their weapons, to adjust sights and judge distances, to respond correctly and with dispatch to vocal, whistle, or bugle commands, to make and break camp and dig entrenchments and all of the thousand daily duties of the Regular Army soldier, a waste for their Company L to be the one left behind in Tampa to look after equipment and maintain a base of operations. But that is the order, straight from the Colonel.
“Second platoon, in support, as skirmishers — march.”
The rest of the company spreads out behind them. They have their backs to the bay, facing a series of dunes.
“Observe Sergeant Cade.”
Cade appears at the top of a dune over a hundred yards away, waves his hat.
“That is the enemy position. You will advance by rushes, maintaining your lines, on my command. Company, port arms!”
The shadows of a phalanx of pelicans ripple over the sand in front of them. Royal feels the first little bit of heat on his cheek.
“First platoon, double time, forward — march!” shouts Sergeant Jacks and they are off, Royal aware only of the other seven men in his squad strung out beside him, boots sinking into the soft sand as the dune slides away beneath their feet, stubbornly surrendering as they lift their knees and pound it under, climbing till Cade is just visible over the crest and—
“Down!”
Royal flops forward, easier on the uphill slope than on flat ground, raising the Krag to aim—
“Three rounds — fire!”
A metallic clicking all down the line as the men sight their weapons and pull the trigger. Sergeant Jacks always has them check the magazine and set the cutoff before they leave camp, and Royal has only had two brief sessions with live rounds back at Chickamauga. Jacks calls behind them.