Stas Mikoian looked at him as if he’d come up with a really stupid question. “As long as he wants to be, of course,” the Armenian said. Charlie nodded. That had been a stupid question, sure as hell.
* * *
Mike had been in the Army for months now. He still couldn’t decide whether he’d been smart to trade the wrecker’s shabby uniform for the soldier’s sharp one. You had to keep a soldier’s uniform neat. They gave you grief if you didn’t. They gave you grief for all kinds of stuff the Jeebies didn’t give a damn about.
The thing of it was, the Jeebies were making it up as they went along. The Army had ways of doing things that went back to George Washington’s day. Hell, the Army probably had ways of doing things that went back to Julius Caesar’s day, if not to King Tut’s. And most of those ways of doing things were designed to make sure you did exactly what your superiors told you to do, the second they told you to do it.
Saluting. Marching. Countermarching. Going through intricate maneuvers on the parade ground, all in perfect step. Keeping your uniform, well, uniform. Making your cot just so, with the sheets tight enough so you could bounce a quarter on them.
The cot’s mattress was softer than the sawdust-filled burlap sack he’d had in the wintertime-much softer than the bare slats he’d slept on during the summer. It still felt funny, wrong, to him after five years in the labor encampment. He wasn’t the only wrecker who bitched about that-nowhere close.
He also wasn’t the only wrecker who bitched about the weather. The Army encampment-no, the Army just called them camps-was right outside of Lubbock, Texas. The weather came as much of a shock as the discipline. After five years in the Montana Rockies, he’d forgotten there was weather like this.
One thing hadn’t changed a bit: they were still behind barbed wire. This was a punishment brigade. The War Department officials who’d created it figured anyone who got stuck in it might light out for the tall timber if he got half a chance.
As a wrecker, Mike had become a good lumberjack. As a soldier, he became a good killer. He surprised himself by proving a pretty fair shot. They gave him a marksman’s badge. He wore it with more pride than he would have expected. A top sergeant a couple of years older than he was taught bayonet fighting.
“This is what I learned last time around,” the noncom told his pupils. “I’m gonna work you guys harder than I would with most troops. Places you’re going, things you’ll do, you’ll need it.”
A younger fellow, a limey who wore his chevrons upside down, taught them the tricks of the trade with a different toy: the entrenching tool. You could, it turned out, do some really horrible things with an entrenching tool, especially if you ground down the edges to get them sharp.
They marched. They dug foxholes and trenches. They ran. They exercised. They trained against one another. Mike got a scar on his arm blocking a knife thrust that might have gutted him like a trout. Not at all by accident, he broke the other guy’s nose with an elbow a split second later. Then he said, “You fucking jackass.”
“Ah, your mudder,” the other man said. He didn’t have a speech impediment-only a rearranged snoot.
They went to the infirmary together. Mike got half a dozen stitches. A doc put the other soldier’s nose back roughly the way it had been before Mike broke it. A couple of burly attendants had to hold the fellow while the doctor attended to it.
The one thing the punishment brigade didn’t do was go fight the Germans or the Japs. Mike bitched about it to his company CO. Captain Luther Magnusson was a gloomy Swede. He’d been brought back from North Africa in disgrace after getting his company cut up when he gave stupid orders because he was drunk.
He still drank; Mike could smell it on him while he was complaining. Magnusson’s pale eyes were tracked with red. They could have shot him for screwing up the way he did; Joe Steele’s Army didn’t have many soft spots. Or they could have given him a sledgehammer to make big ones into little ones for the next thousand years.
Instead, he had one more chance. He would redeem himself or die trying. That was what punishment units were all about. His mouth quirked. “Why do you think they haven’t shipped us out?”
“I was hoping you’d know, sir,” Mike said. Military courtesy was one more thing they’d drilled into him. “You’ve been in this racket longer than the rest of us.”
“Yeah, I have, and a hell of a lot of good it’s done me,” Magnusson said. “But I can answer that one. So can you, if you think a minute. You’re no dope, Sullivan-I’ve seen that.”
“Thanks-I think.” Then Mike did think. He didn’t need long, once he remembered what a punishment brigade was all about. Like Luther Magnusson, they’d all redeem themselves or die trying. Odds were the stress lay on the last three words. “They still haven’t found any place that’s hot enough to make it worth their while to throw us in?” he suggested.
“I can’t prove a thing, you know, but that’s sure as hell the way it looks to me,” Magnusson said.
Mike shrugged. “Hey, it’s something to look forward to, right?” He won a chuckle from the dour, disgraced captain.
* * *
A troopship packed men together even tighter than the bunks in a labor-encampment barracks. Mike wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but there you were. And here he was, out on the Pacific. A faint whiff of vomit always hung in the air. Some guys’ stomachs couldn’t stand the motion. Mike didn’t think it was too bad, but that distant stink didn’t help his own insides settle down.
He wore two stripes on his left sleeve, two stripes and a P that announced what kind of outfit he was in. A T under your stripes-or between chevrons and rockers if you were a senior sergeant-meant you were a technician. That P meant you were vulture bait, assuming any of the miserable islands out in the Pacific boasted vultures.
He didn’t care about being a corporal. Oh, he was modestly pleased they didn’t think he was a screwup. He hadn’t joined the Army just to get out of the labor encampment. He’d joined because he honest to God wanted to fight for the United States in spite of the murderous tyrant infesting the White House.
But making corporal wouldn’t help him stay alive. That was going to be a matter of luck any which way. He’d need a big dose of it to come out the other side.
He made a few dollars more every month now, but he wasn’t jumping up and down about that, either. Were things different, he might have sent Stella some money. But things weren’t different. Part of him hoped she’d found somebody else and was happy. Part of him hoped she was sorry she’d dumped him every minute of the day and night.
Before they’d boarded the train to San Diego, they’d gone into Lubbock for a spree. He’d had about ten minutes with a Mexican-looking gal in a nasty crib-the first time he’d laid a woman since the Jeebies grabbed him. It was-what did they say? — more a catharsis than a rapture. Afterwards, he’d clumsily used the pro kit they issued him. Either the hooker was clean or the kit worked. He hadn’t come down with a drippy faucet.
Every fifteen or twenty minutes, the ship would zigzag to confuse any Jap subs that might be stalking them. More soldiers seemed to throw up when they headed straight into the swells. Waves hitting the bow tossed the ship up and down, up and down. You felt as if your stomach was going up and down, up and down, too.
They got to Hawaii ten days after they set out. The camp where they stayed was on the island of Maui. Except for the port, it might have been the only thing on the island of Maui. It was the only part of the island the punishment brigade saw, anyhow. A couple of guys had been to Honolulu. They talked with awe in their voices about the chances for debauchery there. On Maui, nobody got so much as a beer.