“Second platoon, double time — march!”
Royal has put three imaginary shots through Sergeant Cade’s forehead by the time the second platoon comes huffing past—
“First platoon cease fire!”
The second line kicks sand back, Royal catching a noseful, as they double-time over and past the men lying on their bellies. They are down the far side and halfway up the next dune before Jacks calls out.
“Down! Hold fire! First platoon up, double time, march!”
His heart is hammering against his ribs by the time he reaches the upslope of the second dune, his grime-stiffened wool starting to loosen with his sweat, sand down his collar and in his pants and in his eyes and gritty in his teeth and Down! and firing, at will this time, Royal not aiming so much as pointing the barrel in the general direction of Cade and the second line slogging past and down and up to the crest of the next one and then Up! they are charging forward again, shirt soaked and stuck to his body, sand stuck to the wet on his face, the day suddenly very bright, legs leaden on the last slope and then Down! flopping at Sergeant Cade’s feet and heaving for breath, a flock of gulls mocking noisily overhead now, till the second platoon thumps down next to them.
“On your feet, gennemen!” calls Sergeant Cade. Cade has dull black skin that is creased with age and exposure, is missing several teeth and rumored to have fought the Confederates at Fort Wagner. “Form your skirmish lines! You all bunched up, dammit!”
Shuffling and side-stepping to get their intervals back. Little Earl is throwing up beside him, a thin yellow liquid that smells like coffee.
“About face! Rifles, port arms! First platoon—”
Sergeant Jacks stands back at the shore, waving his hat over his head.
“—observe the enemy position. Advancing by rushes, first platoon, double time—”
If you drop they let you lie there a bit but then there is kicking and shouting and even the ones who are carried from the field have to make it up later, in spades, and the veterans spit their tobacco and look at you like you’re nothing. “You can rest when you’re dead,” Sergeant Jacks will say, the toe of his boot digging into your ribs. “And there will be no dying without my permission.” There have been times, since the regiment has been here in Tampa, when Royal has been amazed to survive the day, amazed at what his body can endure, and thought this must be the last test, the worst they will ever put us through—
“—forward march!”
They charge back and forth between the sergeants in rushes, first by platoons and then by squads, till the sun is straight up in the sky. The only break is for the few men detailed, one at the shoulders and one at the feet, to lug the five troopers who collapse and lie motionless to the edge of the water and leave them there in the rising tide. All but one is able to stand by the time Sergeant Jacks has the company clean the sand out of their rifles and start the march back to camp.
The insects are out in force for the return, sand fleas and biting flies, and Royal’s rifle weighs twice what it did in the morning, digging into his shoulder. His eyes sting with sweat and they take a longer route, swinging well clear of the sunburned Georgia Volunteers learning the rudiments of their old trapdoor Springfields at the base of the Heights. When they trudge into camp the other companies are already sitting around confronting the midday meal.
“Yo, Junior,” calls Coop, fish-eying an open tin of stringy beef trimmings packed for the Japs four years ago, “hold your rifle on me so’s I got a reason to eat this shit.”
Tampa is a fever dream of commerce.
Tampa is a fever dream of war.
Jacks leads the detail of recruits along the trolley tracks that lead down Seventh to the railhead, old Patch following with the supply wagon. He likes Ybor, likes the noise and the pace and the mix of people. The white folks lord it over you in Tampa City, even now that they are outnumbered by soldiers, and the colored who live in the Scrub are a sorry-looking bunch, just scrabbling along, but here there is color and music and industry, more fun than anything he’s seen outside of Mexico.
The signs are in Spanish, of course, though there are hasty translations painted below them on the establishments catering to soldiers. Two little brown boys, barefoot, fall into step with the detail, thrusting forward an old shoebox filled with live baby alligators.
“Caimanes aquí, muy chicos, muy baratos!” they sing. “Caimanes vivas!”
“Para comer?” says Jacks, poker-faced, and the boys peal with laughter, both at the phenomenon of this yanqui speaking Spanish and at the idea of eating the lizards.
“Como quieres, hombre.”
The lingo here has a different music than border Mex, the Cubanos dropping their esses and never sounding like burros. Jacks puts his hand over his stomach to indicate he is full. “Acabo de almorzar,” he tells them. “Gracias, no.”
“You understand everything they’re saying?” asks Lunceford. Lunceford is a schoolboy, full of big words and big ideas.
“Picked some up in Arizona Territory, some in Texas. Know a little Apache too, not that it do any good here.”
A good half of the buildings are spanking new, unpainted board shacks tacked together to sell something to the soldiers while they last here, saloons and gambling dens and whore cribs and stands selling fresh fruit and candy and everything not provided for in Army rations, which is just about everything. The new structures are wedged in between the larger brick buildings — the cigar factories, the huge Centro Español, the Dago bakery where he likes to get bread and eavesdrop on the little gamecock Cubano patriots bragging on how they’ll fix the country up once it is liberated. Not the ones drilling, or their pitiful approximation of drilling, in the streets with their white linen uniforms and drawn machetes, but the vest-and-watch brigade who wave their arms and pound their fists, faces reddening, voices rising into what in any other language would be poetry about the plight of their isla desconsolada. Oaths are sworn, tears are shed, hours of entertainment for a three-cent loaf of bread. More little boys, even darker skinned, cluster at the corner of 14th selling deviled crab.
“Cangrejo, cangrejo, muy rico, muy fresco!” they shout, holding the platters over their heads. Jacks has tried it once, nice and spicy with a mug of beer, but a lot of work for the harvest. He waves the boys off and presses forward. The shavetails are dragging, the morning’s drill in the dunes knocking the go out of them. If there was time he’d have them all with their feet in pickling salts, he’d have started with shorter marches and built them up, he’d have really taught them how to shoot and not just fumble with their sights and blast away. But the regiment is under strength and there isn’t time. They’ve been split up all over the West for decades now, usually no more than three companies at any one post, and it is no great surprise the unit isn’t in step with itself.
“So Sergeant, give it to us straight—” Lunceford again, who they call Junior, a real barracks lawyer, with the same damn question they all been pestering him about. “How can they leave behind a company of highly trained regular soldiers to make way for some volunteer outfit with inferior weapons?”