Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [14]
“I’ll be keeping the peace, Ma,” I said. “Won’t never be no terrible wars no more, with just one army. Don’t that make you proud?”
“Makes me proud of what folks done done for peace,” Ma said. “That don’t make me love no army.”
“It’s a new, high-class kind of army, Ma,” I said. “You ain’t even allowed to curse. And if you don’t go to church regular, you don’t get no dessert.”
Ma shook her head. “You just remember one thing,” she said. “You just remember you was high-class.” She didn’t kiss me. She shook my hand. “As long as I had you,” she said, “you was.”
But when I sent Ma a shoulder patch from my first outfit after basic training, I heard she showed it around like it was a picture postcard from God. Wasn’t nothing but a piece of blue felt with a picture of a gold clock stitched in it, and green lightning was coming out of the clock.
I heard Ma was shooting off her bazoo to everbody about how her boy was in a time-screen company, just like she knowed what a time-screen company was, just like everbody knowed that was the grandest thing in the whole Army of the World.
Well, we was the first time-screen company and the last one, unless they gets the bugs out of time machines. What we was supposed to do was so secret, we couldn’t even find out what it was till it was too late to go over the hill.
Captain Poritsky was boss, and he wouldn’t tell us nothing except we should be very proud, since there was only two hundred men on the face of the earth entitled to wear them clocks.
He use to be a football player at Notre Dame, and he looked like a stack of cannonballs on a courthouse lawn. He use to like to feel hisself all over while he talked to us. He use to like to feel how hard all them cannonballs was.
He said he was real honored to be leading such a fine body of men on such a important mission. He said we’d find out what the mission was on maneuvers at a place called Château-Thierry in France.
Sometimes generals would come look at us like we was going to do something sad and beautiful, but didn’t nobody say boo about no time machine.
When we got to Château-Thierry, everbody was waiting for us. That’s when we found out we was supposed to be something extra-desperate. Everbody wanted to see the killers with the clocks on their sleeves, everbody wanted to see the big show we was going to put on.
If we looked wild when we got there, we got wilder as time went on. We still couldn’t find out what a time-screen company was supposed to do.
Wasn’t no use asking.
“Captain Poritsky, sir,” I said to him, just as respectful as I could be, “I hear we are going to demonstrate some new kind of attack tomorrow at dawn.”
“Smile like you was happy and proud, soldier!” he said to me. “It’s true!”
“Captain, sir,” I said, “our platoon done elected me to come ask you if we couldn’t find out now what we is supposed to do. We want to kind of get ready, sir.”
“Soldier,” Poritsky said, “ever man in that platoon got morale and esprit de corps and three grenades and a rifle and a bayonet and a hundred rounds of ammunition, don’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Soldier,” Poritsky said, “that platoon is ready. And to show you how much faith I got in that platoon, it is going to lead the attack.” He raised his eyebrows. “Well,” he said, “ain’t you going to say, ‘Thank you, sir’?”
I done it.
“And to show how much faith I got in you, soldier,” he said, “you are going to be the first man in the first squad in the first platoon.” His eyebrows went up again. “Ain’t you going to say, ‘Thank you, sir’?”
I done it again.
“Just pray the scientists is as ready as you are, soldier,” Poritsky said.
“There’s scientists mixed up in it, sir?” I said.
“End of interview, soldier,” Poritsky said. “Come to attention, soldier.”
I done it.
“Salute,” Poritsky said.
I done it.
“For’d harch!” he said.
Off