Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  After chow there was a company formation. The four platoons lined up separately and in order. Sergeant Kovacs, the platoon sergeant, and Preston, the right guide, stood in front of Second Platoon. Each platoon was divided into four ranks; the three rifle squads in front and the guns and rocket squad in the rear. Being in Alpha, Chalice stood in the front rank. Kovacs yelled for everybody to cover down and shut up. Hearing a lot of laughter and talking behind him, Chalice looked over his shoulder. A few of the men were shoving each other, somebody in Charlie Squad was trying to get his hat back while it was being tossed from man to man, and Ski, oblivious to everything else going on around him, was playing with a Yo-Yo.

  “KNOCK IT OFF!” Kovacs shouted, and shouted again until everybody quieted down. He continued to glare at his men, sure that someone was missing. “Hemrick?”

  “Here.”

  “Get in the right rank. . . . Ramirez?"

  “Here.”

  “Payne?”

  No one answered until Ski said, “I saw him sleeping behind the air tower a half hour ago.”

  “JESUS CHRIST!”

  “Here," Forsythe answered, sending off a new round of laughter and shoving.

  Kovacs stood glaring at him, teeth clenched and eyes appearing even more slanted than usual, finally yelling, “Forsythe, you motherfucker, why do you always have to be the biggest shitbird in the platoon?”

  Forsythe returned the stare, and said in a serious, determined tone, “It’s a dirty job, Sarge; but somebody’s got to do it.” Kovacs spun around before it became too obvious that he was about to laugh.

  A stocky, ruggedly built man came out of the company office and walked briskly toward the front of the formation. He appeared to be about thirty-five and his ruddy face was the scowling type that can be found brooding over a glass of beer in practically any rundown bar. He held a large brown bottle in the stubby finger of his right hand.

  Forsythe nudged Chalice. “Here comes your Sunday Surprise.”

  “I’ve noticed you men have been getting a little slack,” Gunny Martin shouted in a whiskey tenor. “Yesterday I caught two of you walking around without covers. Not only don’t I like to see men ignoring a Marine Corps tradition like keeping covered at all times, but I also don’t like to see anybody with hair longer than mine.” He took off his cover, exposing a red scalp with just enough hair on it to keep it from shining. “And as long as we’re on this fucking hill, you will not wear bush covers or rain hats. If you don’t have a utility cover, wear your helmet liner. Another goddamn thing: no one, except squad leaders and above, can have mustaches; and you will shave everyday as long as there’s water.

  “It seems we can’t trust you men to take your malaria tabs every week, so we’re starting a new system. From now on we’ll all take our tabs together. I don’t care if they do give you the shits. Which would you rather have, the shits or malaria?” There were numerous mumblings of “malaria” from the ranks. Martin ignored them and continued, “Now you know why you were told to bring canteens to this formation. Platoon Sergeants, come up here and get the tabs for your men.”

  When each man had been given a tablet, the gunny continued, “All right, I want everybody to hold their tabs in their right hands and their canteens in their left.” Chalice did so, but noticed that both Payne and Forsythe had theirs in the opposite hands. He started to switch before realizing that they were just fooling around. “Okay, now swallow them.” Chalice did so in time to see Forsythe flip his past his ear. Somebody behind them said in an irritated voice, “Goddamn you, Forsythe. That hit me right in the face. How ’bout droppin’ ’em on the ground like everybody else?”

  “All right,” the Gunny shouted, “church call goes in fifteen minutes. I wanna see most of you there. A little religion never hurt anybody. . . . DISmissed!”

  “Never did ’em much good,” somebody in the back mumbled.

  The members of the company broke formation and milled around the area. The ground was sprinkled with orange malaria tablets. Harmon walked around pressing them into the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  Chalice grabbed Forsythe’s arm, “Hey, how come nobody takes the malaria tabs?” Before Forsythe could reply, a knowing look came across Chalice’s face and he answered his own question. “Oh, I get it. Malaria’s a ticket outa this place.”

  “You shiftin’ me? You can’t get outa here with malaria, not unless you get it for the third time.”

  “Then how come no —”

  “Cause they don’t do any fucking good. Just give ya the shits. There’s one type of malaria they don’t prevent. It just so happens that’s the type everybody gets around here.”

  “Can’t they fix the pill up?”

  “They got another one, a white one.”

  “When do we get it?”

  “We don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Forsythe shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. The captain and the rest of of the CP get it.” He looked past Chalice and yelled, “Childs, you motherfucker.”

  Tony 5 added, “Well, no shit, look who’s here.”

  They were referring to a skinny Marine approaching them wearing a pack, helmet, and the rest of his fighting gear. He had obviously just gotten off a convoy or a helicopter. Childs shook hands with a few of the men while Chalice stood ignored off to the side. His skinny neck tilted forward, making him appear slightly hunchbacked, and his eyes squinted from behind a pair of thick, dirty glasses. He removed them, exposing two large, blanched circles, spat on the lenses, and wiped them on his shirt.

  Forsythe reached out and jabbed Childs’s shoulder. “You sonofabitch, are you just visiting or do you plan to stay a while?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet. I was getting kind of bored in the rear. Let’s go inside so I can drop this gear.” They followed him into the hootch and sat down around him.

  Forsythe asked, “How long were you in the rear? It must of been two months.”

  “No, ten weeks. Anything happen while I was gone?”

  “Not much,” Tony 5 answered. “We still haven’t gotten a new lieutenant.”

  “Good!”

  “How’d you manage to skate that long?” Forsythe asked.

  “Well, my R and R in Japan was two weeks. I brought the clap back so that was another week. Then I lost my glasses and it took about ten days to get a new pair. I was really in bad shape; couldn’t go on working parties, couldn’t stand lines, just about the only thing I could do was fuck around. Then the heel fell off one of my boots. They didn’t have my size so I had to walk around in Gook sandals. By the time they got my boots in, I got this thing.” He pointed to a lump on his forearm the size of half a golf ball.

  Forsythe leaned closer. “Hey man, that’s a real work of art. How’d you grow it?”

  “I don’t know. It grew by itself.”

  “What do you feed it when it gets hungry?”

  “Oh, it’s not picky. It eats anything I do. Anyway, they sent me to Da Nang. I felt kinda important because I thought I was making medical history, but the doctors there acted like it wasn’t much — like some postpuberty thing that happens to everybody. They’d come around, look at it, say ‘Very interesting,’ then walk away. They weren’t sure what it was, but they all agreed I wasn’t pregnant.

  “Anyway, they got tired of looking at it, so they medivacked me to a hospital ship to get it removed. What an abortion that was. After waitin’ around about a week, I asked when they were going to operate. They said they’d do it when they got a chance. ‘A chance for what?’ I asked. They said, ‘When we get the time.’ I told them that that was a real load off my mind, and that I’d originally thought they were gonna do it when they didn’t have the time.

  “Anyway, the hospital got to be a real drag. We had to eat after the crew did, and they never left anything good. We couldn’t buy anything in the PX except cigarettes — we were Marines and the PX was for the crew, they said. And we had these ass-busting working parties every fucki
ng day.”

  “Are you shiftin’ us?”

  “That’s where the trouble started. We were doing the squid’s work. One day me and a guy named Simpson were swabbing the squid’s recreation room. Here we were mopping their floor while these lazy sailors were playing Ping-Pong, shooting pool, and watching TV —”

  “War is hell,” Forsythe commented.

  “— Simpson had one arm in a cast and was having a heck of a time with the mop. When he was doing the floor in front of the TV set, some fat sailor said, ‘How ’bout hurrying up so we can watch the program?’ Simpson answered real friendlylike, ‘How ’bout kissin’ my ass?’ Well anyway, this squid forgot he didn’t have any guts and told Simpson he was lucky his arm was in a cast or he’d get his ass kicked. Naturally I didn’t want to see any trouble start so, quick thinker that I am, I tried to cool things off by sticking the end of my mop in the squid’s face. I told him there was a fly on his nose, but he didn’t believe it and came charging at me. I’m not saying this guy was big, but when he got up, the ship started to rock. Before he reached me, Simpson came on like Tarzan and flung his mop between the fat slob’s legs. The big turd hit the deck so hard he slid ten yards on the water from the bucket he knocked over on the way down —”

  Hamilton nodded his head while saying, “Served the fucking squid right.”

  “— Five of his friends started after me. Luckily, Simpson was an all-state pitcher in high school, because by this time he was over at one of the pool tables flinging billiard balls. Only the United States Navy would be stupid enough to put pool tables on a ship —”

  “That’s ’cause the Marine Corps doesn’t have any ships,” Forsythe pointed out.

  “Anyway, I saw one of the squids look towards the other pool table. Realizing the tactical danger of such weapons in the hands of the enemy, I hauled ass to the table and jumped on top of it. Luckily, the last slob to use it hadn’t put his cue back in the rack. I’m not bragging, but I put on a display of swordsmanship that would have made Errol Flynn drool. The only guy able to touch a ball was the first guy that tried. I caught him reaching for the five ball. His wrist’ll never be the same. I don’t wanna give you the idea that I was fightin’ ’em off single-handed, Simpson was really on target. Boy, did he have a fast ball. One of those guys is gonna have an earache for the rest of his life. Anyway, Simpson got two lying on the floor at the same time, so the others ran. You shoulda seen the faces of the two on the floor when they realized the others had hauled ass. It didn’t take ’em long to follow. In the meantime, Fatboy, who started the whole thing, finally got up. He decided to leave also. He could really run, considering he was dragging one leg behind him. Didn’t run quite fast enough though. Simpson bounced a cue ball off his head just before he got out the door.

  “So here was me and Simpson all alone in the rec room. We had to decide whether we were going to hold the ground we’d taken, or retreat to a more strategic position.”

  “You shoulda taken over the whole ship,” Hamilton suggested.

  “We were pretty fagged out, so we decided to hold what we had. We stuck a Ping-Pong table in front of the hatch and sat with our backs up against it. After resting a minute, I left Simpson at the hatch and started collecting the pool balls in my empty bucket. It wasn’t ten minutes before some guy starts banging on the table like a maniac, saying he’s an officer and to let him in. We didn’t know whether it was a trick or not, so Simpson moved a card table near the door, put the bucket of pool balls on it, then climbed on himself. When I got the Ping-Pong table moved back far enough, Simpson, who was standin’ on the card table with his arm cocked, said it was okay, the guy was an officer. Anyway, we let the funny-looking fag in, and he was really pissed. Not only because of what had happened, but also because Simpson couldn’t stop laughin’ because of the look on the weirdo’s face when I pulled the table away and he saw Simpson ready to let go with the billiard ball.

  “Anyway, they kept me around for another week trying to figure out what to do with me. My attitude was gettin’ bad and I wasn’t gettin’ along too well with the doctors because they kept on tellin’ me I had a bad attitude —”

  “How long did it take them to come up with that diagnosis?” Tony 5 asked.

  “They must have worked overtime,” Forsythe added.

  “— They finally decided the reason I was givin’ them so much trouble was that I didn’t wanna go back to the bush. I guess they figured it was the worst thing they could do to me, so they sent me back here. They said they were doing it because I was a bad influence on the other patients and the growth on my arm was full grown now and it wouldn’t get any bigger.”

  The men sat around nodding their heads until Hamilton asked, “How you gonna get it cut off?”

  “They said I can have it done when I rotate back to the States. To tell the truth, I kinda like it — it’s grown on me.”

  “Yeah, it sure looks that way,” Forsythe commented. “Tell me, did anything interesting happen to you while you were gone?”

  “A lot of things, but you guys probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Forsythe looked at Childs with admiration. “I gotta admit it, that was some fancy skating. Anyway you can get out of it, do it. You owe it to yourself.”

  Tony 5 nodded agreement and stood up. “There it is: You owe it to yourself. . . . C’mon, let’s go to the chapel.”

  “Wait a minute,” Childs said. “I gotta get somethin’ outa my pack.” While he was digging in his pack, a pool ball rolled out on the cot. He ignored it, and continued to rummage through his gear.

  Forsythe picked it up. “What’s this?”

  Childs found what he was looking for and put it in his pocket. “Oh, just a souvenir. It had some blood on it, but it rubbed off.” They tossed it around as they walked to the door.

  Hamilton looked back and noticed Chalice still sitting down. “C’mon, aren’t you going to chapel?”

  “Naw, I’m not interested.”

  Forsythe cut in, “You think we are? It’s better than working parties. C’mon.” Chalice got up and followed them out the door.

  The chapel was a converted field barracks. Except for crude benches in place of cots and the presence of an altar, it looked exactly like the platoon hootch. There were empty seats towards the front, but they sat in the last row. Tony 5 was on the aisle with Childs next to him. Forsythe sat next to Childs, and Chalice was between Forsythe and Hamilton. Forsythe began juggling the cue ball from hand to hand. Hamilton reached across Chalice and tried to grab it. He ended up with Forsythe’s wrist instead. They were struggling over it as the chaplain walked in. Well over six feet tall, he was extremely broad and powerful looking. His thin black hair, cut skin close on the sides, was squared off into a crew cut on top. It had obviously been waxed in front to make it stand up. He walked towards the altar smiling and shaking hands with a few of the men on the way. His boots and the holster to his .45 were polished to a mirrored finish.

  Forsythe and Hamilton were still struggling over the cue ball when the chaplain started speaking in a folksy, good-natured voice. “I’m glad to see all of you here today. I notice a lot of new faces so I’ll introduce myself. I’m Captain Hindman, your battalion chaplain.” There was a loud thud as Hamilton got yanked across Chalice’s knees and onto the floor. Forsythe grinned as he held the cue ball between two fingers right in front of Hamilton’s face. Hamilton grabbed for it and missed.

  A dark Marine turned around and scowled, “How about showing a little respect?”

  Hamilton looked up with a big, friendly grin on his face. “Sure, man.” He got up off the floor and sat back down on the bench.

  The chaplain hadn’t noticed what had happened and was starting his sermon. “Men, today I want to talk to you about victory. Not the type of victory your company commanders usually talk about, but a type of victory related to it. I want to tell you about Jesus’ victory over Satan. Jesus had fasted in the wilderness for forty days and forty n
ights. Imagine that. We complain when the choppers don’t supply us and we have to go without C-rations for a day or two. Jesus didn’t have any C-rations. Satan came to him and said, ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.’ Jesus answered him by saying, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ ”

  Chalice noticed Hamilton looking across him towards Forsythe, eyes focused on the cue ball as Forsythe rubbed it in his hands. Childs sat with his head down, kneading the lump on his forearm. Tony 5’s huge body was leaning forward, arms dangling between his knees. His eyes slowly closed and his chin fell against his chest, causing his head to bob up and down as his lungs expanded and contracted. As he fell into a deeper sleep, his breathing became louder. Chalice heard a change in the chaplain’s tone indicating he was about to make a point.

  “You men are probably asking yourselves what this sermon has to do with you. Satan never came up to you and asked you to change stones to bread or offered you all the kingdoms of the world. No, he hasn’t, but he tempts you in other ways with other things — like marijuana.”

  Forsythe stared disgustedly at Hindman. Childs stopped playing with his lump long enough to raise his head and mumble audibly, “Are you shiftin’ me, Fred?” Hamilton was still looking at the cue ball, and Tony 5 continued to sleep.

  The chaplain went on, “You start out smoking marijuana, then you get hooked on other narcotics. Pretty soon you’re stealing and doing other works of the Devil just so you can buy more narcotics. Think about it: You start out smoking a little marijuana to get high and before you know it you’re a full-time employee of the Devil. All you wanted to do was get high. I’ll tell you a better way to get high, the way I do it. I get high on Jesus.”

  There was a sharp crack. Chalice shot a glance towards Forsythe in time to see the cue ball bouncing between his feet. Tony 5 woke up with a jolt, his eyes nervously shifting from side to side. Hamilton watched the ball as it rolled into the aisle before Forsythe could pick it up. Practically everybody in front of them had turned around to see what had happened. The dark Marine gave Forsythe a hard stare. Forsythe, sitting with a big, guilty grin on his face, said to him in a childlike voice, “I dropped it.” The dark Marine turned back towards the front with a less than satisfied look on his face. Childs strolled nonchalantly into the aisle to pick up the cue ball. Distracted, Chaplain Hindman lost his train of thought. He stood silent for a few moments before continuing the sermon. “As I was saying, I get high when I think about the wonderful things He does, when I think about how much He loves us all, when I think how He loves our country . . . ”