One to Count Cadence by James Crumley Read Free Book Online Page B

slopes. It was told that Huk bandits and headhunters shared the distant giant, secure in his hairy trunk, lost to man and his reckoning of time.
    At five it rained for eleven minutes, sudden heavy drops, and at five-thirty the sun disappeared into a deep purple mass of clouds rising soft and curved against a shell-pink sky. I paused to watch the sunset, the purple reaching for black, the pink easing to purple, as I strolled back from the pool, toasted, hungry, tired.
    After a silent meal I laid out a uniform, read for a bit, then dozed, awaking to the tickle of laughter, talk and the ringing of bottles. Never having been one to either stuff wax in my ears or tie myself to a mast, I slipped into my trousers and nosed down the hall toward the open door of Novotny’s room. As I passed, he called an invitation to me for a beer. I nodded, guessed that I would, and went on to the latrine.
    As I entered, I nearly stumbled over someone crawling toward the urinals. He had that odor and slept-in look which I assumed to be Town. In spite of the dirt, the stubble and the glasses, he appeared to be a clean-featured young man of perhaps twenty or twenty-one, handsome in a tall, muscular manner, but his unkempt face hung like a bad smell over his dirty clothes. I offered to help however I could. He stared at me for a moment as if he knew who I was, then looked very bored with me.
    “I’m Marduke the Mandrill and I play the mandolin with my mandible, baby, and I’m all right,” he said, holding up his right hand to show me the bloody, swollen knuckles. His voice, like his face, did not fit: his words were carefully enunciated, formed like bricks to be used in the construction of a Tower of Philosophy, absolutely undeniable. “Except for my left mandible, man,” he continued, examining the right hand under a pursed mouth, “I seem to be limping on it. I’m a cripple, you know, a fucking cripple, and there is no home in the American Army for a cripple crutch or a cripple creek or any other kind of deformity. Sorry about that, man. Suppose I’ll just be limping on home now,” he finished, crawling under the sinks toward the far end of the latrine, singing, “We shall overcome!”
    He seemed happy and harmless (he had a great ability to seem), so I left him alone. As I left, I heard him shout, “Overcome! You’ve heard of overkill? Well, this is Overcome! Sperm whales of the world, unite! We shall overcome!” Then laughter mixed with the spasmodic gurgle of vomit. Then: “And the angel of the Lord thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great wine press of God’s wrath.” I shook my head and walked back to Novotny’s room.
    If I had any questions as to the stability of the men of my trick after my encounter in the latrine, Novotny’s room answered them. They were, to the man, crazy. They called it “going Asiatic.” Six or seven drunks — they didn’t stand for counting — packed the room like an overcrowded cage of underfed monkeys. They chattered, they laughed and shouted in high, tired voices, they snatched squatty brown bottles of San Miguel beer from a waterproof bag filled with ice and drank them in quick selfish gulps as if afraid they might be stolen before finished. I accepted the offered beer and sat on the bunk next to Novotny.
    “There’s a drunk crawling around the latrine,” I said.
    “Don’t sweat it. That’s Mornin’ and he gets like that sometimes. He’s our demonstrator and Freedom Fucker.” He snipped off the ends of his words with the tight little grin of the night before.
    “Well, he said he was all right. Except for his left mandible,” I said, holding up my right hand.
    “I don’t give a shit who he calls it,” shouted a small fellow suddenly dancing in front of me. “Don’t care at all, just so he keeps decking them flyboys away. Deck ‘em away, away!” he said, slamming a fist into his other hand, ignoring the beer he held. Foam