• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 9204 0

gone from mirth to boredom to resentment, and he was becoming a little desperate. I'm a good man, he told himself, I'm noncom material if they'd give me a chance, but not Croft. He likes to look at a guy and size him up right away. He kicked his blanket away. What should I work and break my ass for? I could do the job but there's no future in it. They got a good case if they think I'm going to work for nothing. He thought of the time in training when he had led the platoon in drill. There wasn't a soldier who could beat me, he thought, but you lose your ambition. I'm becoming a bum now. I know too much, that's my trouble. It ain't worth working for, 'cause the Army never gives you a break anyway. He became sad at this, and thought with a wistful pleasure of how his life had been ruined. I know what the score is, I'm too smart to waste my time trying for anything. When I get out of the Army I won't know what to do with myself. I won't be able to work, I'll be a failure. All I'll want is to go around tail-chasing. He turned over on his face. What the hell else is there in life? He sighed. It's like Polack says, the only thing to do is to get yourself a racket. This gave him a vindictive pleasure, and he imagined himself in prison, a killer, while tears of pity came into his eyes. He turned over again nervously. I got to get out of here. How long they gonna keep me without even looking at me or paying any attention? They gotta move me outa here soon or I'll really flip my lid. The stupidity of the Army amused him. They're gonna lose a soldier that way, just 'cause they don't give him any care.

He fell asleep, and was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of voices and the noise of orderlies moving patients into the tent. Occasionally he could see the red skeletal outline of a hand covering a flashlight, and once or twice a midgeon of light cast an eerie shadow across a patient's face. What's going on? Minetta wondered. He could hear a man groaning, and the sound formed goose flesh on his scalp. The doctor came in, and talked for a little while with one of the orderlies. "Watch the drain on that thoracic, and give him a hypo, twice the usual amount, if he's too restless."

"Yes, sir."

That's all they know, Minetta thought, hypo, hypo, I could be a sawbones myself. He was watching the scene through half-opened eyes, and he listened cautiously to the conversation between the two patients whose heads were bandaged. It was the first time he had heard them speak. "Hey, orderly," one of them was asking, "what's up?"

The orderly came over to them, and talked for a little while. "I hear there was a lot of patrolling today, and these guys just came from Battalion Aid."

"You know if E Company was in it?"

"Ask the General," the medic said.

"I'm glad I wasn't in it," one of the patients muttered.

"You ain't just a bird-turding, Jack," the orderly said.

Minetta turned over. What a way to get waked up, he thought. There was a patient at the far end of the tent who was weeping with loud thick sounds that seemed to writhe out of his chest and throat. Minetta closed his eyes. What a setup, he thought disgustedly. His annoyance was suppressing a great deal of fear; he had become conscious suddenly of the thrumming of the jungle night outside the tent, and he had the childish horror that comes from waking suddenly in the darkness. "Jesus," he muttered. With the exception of the minor exertions that had been required to use the bed pan under the cot and to eat the food that had been set before him, he had been completely inactive for two and a half days, and it made him extremely restless. I can't take this, he said to himself. The patient who had been weeping had begun to scream now, and the sounds had such terror that Minetta ground his teeth and held the blanket over his ears. "NEEEE-YOWWWWWWW, NEEEEEEE-YOWWWWWRR," the patient wailed, imitating the sound of a mortar, and then he screamed again, "God, you got to save me, you got to save me!'

There was a long silence afterward with no sound at all in the black tent, and then