Rules of the Road

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “It looks pretty good to me,” said Sam. At Fort Lewis, they had been quartered in college-style dormitories with huge college-style battalion mess halls, the whole battalion plonked down on a piece of asphalt, not a blade of grass to be seen. This was primitive, but this was better. Much better. Here platoons lived two to a building, and three of the old wood buildings formed a company area around the mess hall and company headquarters. It was silly, but the whole business … being out in the woods, collected together in platoons and companies, the battalion off by itself living an existence that was a virtual anachronism in the modern army … it seemed somehow cozy and wonderful.

  The colonel briefed Sam on what had been happening since he’d gotten there a couple of weeks ago—the training schedule, the class schedule, equipment shortcomings, AWOL (there were only two, and they had returned after one day), the attitude of the troops, the skill and leadership abilities of the officers. It was a good battalion that was about to get better. A lot better, it seemed to Sam after the colonel had finished. They carried their trays to the KP slot and walked into the company area.

  “I want you to take a few days to clear post finance and personnel and get settled downtown. I … uh … noticed in your paperwork that you are no longer married.”

  “I noticed, too, sir.”

  The colonel laughed and clapped Sam on the back.

  “Well, the BOQs suck,” said the colonel.

  “I noticed that, too, sir.”

  “You’re staying in one?”

  “I got here yesterday, sir.”

  “You should have given me a call, Sam,” said the colonel with mock sternness. “You could have stayed at our place.”

  “I was too pooped, sir. And it was early yesterday morning. I didn’t want to bother you on Sunday morning.”

  “Your car arrived yet?”

  “Still waiting, sir. It should be here in a couple of months.”

  “I’ll have the battalion duty vehicle drive you back to the BOQ and downtown. You can rent a jalopy on the strip for ten bucks a day at a place called Rent-a-Wreck.”

  “I saw it coming in, sir.”

  “Then get busy. I’ll expect you back here on Wednesday morning at reveille. Oh, yeah. A lot of the unmarried lieutenants are staying at an apartment complex called the Dorchester. It’s some kind of singles garden apartment deal with a pool and something called a goddamned party room.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  Major Butterfleld grinned.

  “They’re paying twice their housing allowance for half the space you could get about five miles down the highway south of the post. There’s a trailer park down there renting nice double-wides.”

  “I’ll take a look, sir.”

  “I’ll see you in forty-eight hours, Sam. Correction. Make that forty-six hours.”

  Major Butterfleld saluted, and the colonel double-timed off in the direction of battalion headquarters. A staff car materialized, driven by an impeccably clad young Ranger trooper. Sam climbed in. This time, fired-up from breakfast with the colonel, it seemed to Sam that the drive back to the main post was over in a moment. In another moment he was down on the strip and behind the wheel of a rented Ford. He headed south down the strip on the lookout for a trailer park on his left. He found it right where the colonel said it would be. It was a decent enough place, about forty double-wides interspersed with a few twelve-by-sixties. Nice asphalt roads, a smattering of pines here and there, and a little pool inside a chain-link fence in the middle of the place. A sign said it was the PULL-ON-IN TRAILER COURT, obviously a reference to its earlier days as a transient park.

  After what had happened to Sam on Saturday night, everything seemed almost too easy. He looked at three double-wides and then went back to the first one and took it. The trailer was parked in a little grove of pines at the far left corner of the park. It was ten bucks a month more than the others, but it had a washer-dryer, two bedrooms, a dishwasher, and a covered carport. What more could a divorced major ask for? He gave the man in the Peterbilt cap and cowboy boots a month’s rent and a month’s deposit. He inquired as to the whereabouts of a bank, a supermarket, a laundry where he could get his fatigues starched, a liquor store … the necessities. The man from the trailer park filled him in and welcomed him to Clarksville as he pocketed the neatly folded hundred-dollar bills. He asked about a phone. The man pointed down the street at a booth.

  “Thanks,” said Sam. He knew he was in an off-post town for sure now. They love your money but they couldn’t care less about all those nameless, placeless military faces just passing through. The trailer park cowboy would be there with his hand out for the rent on the first of every month, but you’d be lucky if he’d get up off his fat ass and pick up the phone and call the cops if he saw your car getting boosted. Jesus. Civilians. It was hard to believe he’d ever been one.

  He called his mother collect. She was relieved to find out that the nightmare of Saturday night was behind him, that he’d arrived safely at Fort Campbell and reported to his unit.

  “I’m not sure what it was all about, Ma, but I’m glad as hell to be out of there,” said Sam.

  “Sam, look.” His mother’s tone was alert, sure. He remembered, it seemed so long ago and he guessed it was, that as political as his father was, his mother was always the one he turned to for practical advice, the how-to-get-along-in-the-world stuff every boy needs more than he knows.

  “From what you told me, you did the right thing, Sam. Anything even marginally involving Harlan Greene … well, the more distance you put between yourself and that man, the better.”

  “I don’t know how deeply he was involved, Ma.”

  “You said he was the one the old man mentioned, right? The one who loaned him the money?”

  “Yes, he was the one.”

  “Did you see him on any of the videotapes?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Ma. I’ve never seen him.”

  “He’s as big around as a hot tub and just about as sweaty. Did you see anyone who looked like that?”

  “Yeah. There was a big fat man on two of the tapes. On one, he was surveying a field somewhere down south of our place, down near the Shawnee National Forest, in Rock County, as well as we could determine. And the other time he was in a hotel room in Springfield, only he didn’t say much.”

  “Did he have some jerk with him that kept saying, ‘That right?’ and he would answer, ‘That’s right’?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “That was Harlan Greene, Sam. That’s what he does at every meeting of the County Commission. One of his jerks gets up and talks for him, and he sits in the back of the room drinking a Coke, and every once in a while, the jerk turns to him and says, ‘That right?’ and Harlan says, ‘That’s right.”

  “Look, Ma, do you think you’re going to be all right? I mean, those guys were trying to kill us the other night. If they could have, they would have.”

  “What did you do with the surveillance tapes? You said you sent them to the attorney general?”

  “They’re going in the mail today.”

  “That ought to put the lid on Harlan Greene. I wouldn’t worry yourself too much about me, Sam. Harlan Greene knows if he tangles with me, he’s going to have his hands full. Your father and I made his life miserable for years, and I can do it again by myself, if need be. There’s one thing you’ve forgotten about politics, or maybe you never learned.”

  “What’s that, Ma?”

  “As much friction as politics causes, you’ve got to have insulation between yourself and the heat. And the only way you’re going to get it is by getting involved. Well, I’ve been involved for years, and by this time, I’ve got myself a hide built up thick as a buffalo’s. Your daddy taught me, Sam. Nothing is not political. I’m sure that sounds stupid, but it’s what I learned from him, the years we were together, and if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

  “I’m sure y
ou’re right. I’m just not sure Harlan Greene agrees with you.”

  “Look, Sam. Everyone around these parts knows we’ve been enemies for years. He won’t pull something stupid. Let some time go by, Sam. We’ll know soon enough whether or not we’ve got trouble. In the meantime, I think you ought to get yourself settled in down there and I think you ought to call Betsy. I know she’d like to hear from you.”

  “And may I ask how you came upon that little nugget of wisdom, Ma?”

  “I spoke to her yesterday. She said she’d heard you had been around, and she just wanted to know if you knew about the reunion you’ve got coming up. Your class reunion from S.I.U.”

  “I know about it.”

  “Good. I’ll tell her when I call her in the morning.”

  “Ma, look. You’re not going to get me and Betsy back together. What happened between us happened a long time ago.”

  “Nothing like memories to make the heart grow fonder, huh, Sam?”

  “Ma …” The phone went dead.

  Sam stared at the receiver for a moment and thought about what his mother had said. Maybe she was right. Maybe he ought to just put the last seventy-two hours behind him and sink himself neck deep into the battalion. It did feel good to be back in the warm bosom of the army, where everything was spelled out for you in black and white. These are the good guys, our guys, and those are the bad guys, their guys. This is what Rangers do to bad guys: they hunt them down and kill them. It made a kind of dark sense, the army did. What you did was live your life waiting and training for the day that you’d go out and put your skills to use on a field of battle where there would be only one winner and one loser, and everybody knew which one we would be. It was a comforting notion to those wearing fatigues and boots every day that if God wasn’t on your side, he sure as hell was looking over your olive drab shoulder.

  He headed back to the post to go through the bureaucratic nightmare that was post finance and post personnel, a bewildering maze filled with sluglike civilian federal civil servants who held the purse strings and the keys to the lockers that contained your records, which in the army amounted to your entire career. He had heard horror story after horror story about guys who had gotten mad during the finance/personnel nightmare and yelled at someone. Before you knew it, your finance records couldn’t be found, which meant that copies had to come from some bunker beneath Indianapolis, of all places, and that little paper shuffle was known to take at least three months.

  During which time, in the absence of such records, you could not be paid.

  Then, of course, there was your 201 personnel file, the loss of which could find you reassigned virtually anywhere, not to mention the potential loss of any letters of commendation, copies of which might not have yet found their way to your big 201 file in the sky at the Pentagon.

  So the civil service slugs were not to be fucked with, and fuck with them Major Butterfield did not. He was a good boy, and in a mere five hours, from noon until five, the twenty minutes of work necessary to clear finance and personnel got done. He felt lucky. He still had all his limbs, all his records, half his sanity, but he had no patience left at all. He drove back to the double-wide staring across white knuckles on the steering wheel. On the way he stopped for milk, eggs, beer, wine, and such. He pulled into the carport just in time to see headlights behind him.

  THE CAR BEHIND him cut its lights, and Sam’s eyes adjusted to the dark. It was a red Audi coupe. The driver’s door opened, and a tall fatigue-clad figure stepped onto the gravel drive.

  “Hey, Butterfield! That you in there?” a woman’s voice called.

  Sam climbed out of the car and squinted to see who it was.

  “It’s me, Sam. Hillary Conyers.” The figure strode into view. She approached six feet tall in bloused boots, and her full head of blond hair had been French braided and tucked up under her cap, which sported a major’s leaf just like Sam’s. She walked into the porch light, and smiled. Her face was tanned and adorned with pale lipstick and a minimum of makeup, in the manner prescribed for women in the military. Still, she was as beautiful as Sam remembered her, and it was obvious that she hadn’t lost any of the spunk she’d had as a lieutenant.

  “I heard you reported in yesterday, Sam, so I called your unit and your colonel said you might be out here. How’d you find this place, anyway?”

  Hillary Conyers had been stationed at Fort Benning with Sam when he went through the Basic Course. They’d had a mad, passionate, just-out-of-college affair during the two months of the Basic Course, then Sam’s first duty station a couple of thousand miles away had separated them, and they lost touch. Sam, of course, had gone on to get married and divorced, and a quick glance at Hillary’s ring finger confirmed that she was currently single as well.

  “Jesus, Hillary, what are you doing here?” asked Sam incredulously. “We haven’t seen each other in … how many …”

  “Ten years. It’s been a long time. I’m assigned to post headquarters. Public information officer. That’s how I knew you had signed in. One of my jobs is to check the book for new arrivals every once in a while, see if we can place an item in hometown newspapers … you know the routine. Major Sam Butterfield reports for duty at Fort Campbell, etc., etc. He will be serving with the blah-blah battalion. Fascinating stuff an information officer gets to crank out.”

  “Well, come on in, Hillary. Jeez, I don’t know what we’re doing standing out here in the cold.”

  Sam led the way into the double-wide. Hillary closed the door and doffed her cap, and a long braid unfolded. She reached back and plucked a tie from the braid and ran her fingers quickly through her hair, which fell around her face in soft folds.

  “You want a beer?” Sam opened the refrigerator and held up a couple of bottles of Beck’s. “It’s not the real German stuff, but it’s close enough for government work.”

  Hillary nodded and took one of the beers. Sam fumbled in a drawer and came up with an opener and cracked the caps off both bottles.

  “What shall we drink to after all this time?” he asked, still a little stunned at the appearance of someone out of his deep past, especially someone like Hillary Conyers, for chrissake.

  “Let’s drink to your beautiful quarters,” said Hillary, laughing. “What have we got here? An actual, for-real bark-a-lounger, as in, what dog in his whole sorry life would ever sit on this thing?” She pointed to a particularly hideous naugahyde recliner across the room, and Sam laughed aloud.

  “And over here, what do we have? Your obligatory Ethan Allen sofa in a delicious brown and orange plaid. What would you call this decorating scheme, Sam? Early American Trailer Park?”

  “Yeah, that’s about it,” he laughed.

  “And the kitchen. Are these actually gold flecks in this formica counter? Or are they perhaps gold-filled flecks? Isn’t this interesting. There appears to be an Egyptian motif to these cabinets … or is it Greek? I think these are the first green columns I’ve ever seen. Green columns on orange cabinets. Mmmm. Definitely classically inspired. Definitely.”

  Sam laughed. He tried a sip of beer, and then spat it across the room as he started laughing again.

  “We’ve got a green stove, a yellow dishwasher, and what is this color? A wine-colored refrigerator? What an interesting notion. I see the plan. The appliances match the colors of the linoleum floor. How exciting. And the linoleum floor is set off by windows done in rubberized nylon drapes that are … my goodness. What color is this, Sam? Could it be fuchsia? Yes, I think it is a fuchsia. It’s a kind of stone-washed fuchsia, or is it just faded?”

  “Hey … c’mon … Hillary,” Sam stuttered between guffaws. “I just got here.”

  “We must call Metropolitan Home, Sam. They won’t waste a moment sending a photographer. I can see it now. The military bachelor pad look. Is it real, or is it camouflage?”

  Sam, still laughing, staggered across the kitchen and wrapped an arm around Hillary’s fatigue-clad shoulder.

  “C’mon, Hill
ary. You’ve got to stop. I’m getting a pain in my side. Have you had supper yet?”

  “Of course not. I just got off.”

  “You’ve got to know where we can get a good steak around here. We’ll get drunk as skunks and try to understand the last ten years of our lives. What do you say?”

  “I say welcome to Campbell, Major,” said Hillary. She leaned over and planted a wet kiss on his lips. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against bachelor pads. In fact, I’ve got one of my own on the other side of town.”

  “I was wondering …”

  “Wonder no longer, Major Butterfield. I’m footloose and fancy-free once again.”

  “You’re divorced, too?”

  “Two years.”

  “C’mon, girl. I’ll use some of the Temporary Duty Pay they’re giving me and buy us enough martinis to jumpstart our memories. You tell me about yours and I’ll tell you about mine and maybe we can make sense out of what I’m doing in a trailer park at this late date in life.”

  “I know just the place,” she said. “But first, we’ve got to stop at my apartment so I can change.”

  “Lead the way, Major Conyers,” laughed Sam as he followed her out the door.

  The next morning Sam crept out of bed at four-thirty. Hillary didn’t have to be at headquarters until eight, but he had to make the five-fifteen reveille run. He pulled on a freshly laundered set of fatigues, laced up his boots, jumped into the Ford with sleep still in his eyes and raced for the battalion area. He made it.

  After five miles of sweat-stained double-timing along dirt roads winding through the woods surrounding the battalion area, he and Lieutenant Colonel Duchamp sat down to breakfast in the CCompany messhall. The colonel was slow talking and rather slow moving, but Sam knew there was a massive resolve beneath the gentility. Duchamp was gung-ho with a drawl.

  After breakfast, he took Sam back to the battalion orderly room and introduced him to the sergeant major, the personnel NCO, and the captains who served as S-1, S-2, S-3, and S-4. Then he called in his company commanders one by one for meetings with the new executive officer. The battalion was a congenial, businesslike place. Everybody had a job, and every job got done with a minimum of flapping and slapping. That was about as much as you could expect of the army: minimum hassle doing the myriad make-work jobs asked of you. Duchamp’s battalion was going to be a good place to work.