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By Root 14166 0

hot sandwiches for them. Andy, who as company bugler had to go with the CP, would ride over every night with his guitar from the CP in the light truck that brought the lieutenant to inspect the posts. The lieutenant always made a beeline for the kitchen. Andy did most of his eating then. The cooks would always feed him if he was with the lieutenant. Stark would always feed anybody anytime. Then while Lt Culpepper was off on foot with Old Ike and the corporal on duty, checking the posts, they would climb to the top of the embankment with the guitars where they could catch the breeze off Pearl Channel that helped keep the mosquitoes down, for an hour, just the three of them, and the guitars, or maybe just two of them, if either Prew or Friday happened to be on post.

Prew’s post was along the top of the embankment, two hundred yards down the other way, toward the Main Gate. He would roll up out of three or four hours sleep and back into the wadded blankets to the accompaniment of a hand shaking his foot through the mosquito bar, his mind rising slowly-dreamlike like a rubber ball under the water and then popping up out of the surface, into full alerted wakefulness to find Old Ike or The Chief cursing him monotonously in tempo to the shaking foot.

“Wake up. Wake up goddam it Prewitt. Wake up. Come on wake up. Your relief is on wake up.”

“Okay, I’m awake,” huskily sleepily. “Let go my goddam foot I’m awake.”

“You sure you’re awake?” still shaking. “Come on get up.”

“Let go my foot. I’m awake, I tell you,” sitting up to prove it and bumping his head mellowly against the canted, drumhead of the puptent wall, trying to rub the novocaine of sleep out of his paralyzed face muscles. Then fighting his way out of the blankets and mosquito bar carrying the shoes rolled up in his pants that had been his pillow and crawling out bareassed so he could stand up to put them on, squeezing past the tent pole trying not to wake Friday who was on the third relief, but always unable to keep from half-waking him, as Friday was always unable to keep from half-waking him when he went on post. Then standing barefooted in the thick dust of the clearing, the mosquitoes shrilling triumphantly over this new bonanza of bare rump while he hurried struggling into the pants and socks and shoes to save himself as many stabbings as he could, and reaching back inside the clutter for the wool OD shirt that felt thick prickly warm in the chilliness of night, putting it on gratefully over the T shirt he would not take off but maybe once during the whole two weeks. Protected now, he could take more time with the hook-and-lace intricacies of the leggins in the darkness. Then the web rifle belt to coil turgid pythonlike around the waist, and working the rifle out under the mosquito bar from among the blankets where it was protected from the dust and dew, somewhat protected anyway, then the helmet lying on the ground outside and damp-rusty with the dew, and stumbling heavy-footed under full equipment, irritably half-sleepily across the rootwebbed moondappled clearing under the always faintly sighing branches toward the light of the Coleman lantern in the cook tent showing dimly dull brown through the canvas.

And in the cook tent, the relief huddling silently gratefully around the gasoline field stove that was always warm for them by Stark’s order, drinking the scalding coffee with its coconut flavor of canned milk as if gulping spiritual inspiration, and munching between gulps on the Stark Specials of hot fried Spam and toasted cheese that the accusing cook (who held them, not Stark, responsible for his loss of sleep) fixed grudgingly for them, and that were as different to the belly from the cold Spam and cheese on untoasted bread of normal mess sergeants, as hot coffee was from cold.

The can of milk with its top sliced open by a cleaver butt. The thick white, dripping out past the congealed yellow of past pourings that had almost sealed the gash, into his canteen cup. A dipper of the rainbow-oil-spotted coffee out of the kettle black-waterfalling in on top of