GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER 1 cont

and he added as an afterthought, “I myself have no quixotic impulses, so I might as well stay here.”  

 

1.26.  Might as well burn another one, Major Treat thinks.  Like the loot, the major is sitting at a desk.  The desk belonged to the squadron’s first commander, well, at least the guy in charge all through the war and when they deployed to Fusisachi.  The desk in his this guy’s Q-hut, near a window that gives a fantastic view of the pine bluff from which the very guy departed.  The major stares with a jaundiced eye.  They stopped the war on him, goddamnit, before he earned his hero’s reward.  

    He and the loot sit at a desk.  His desk is in a Q-hut, yeah, and the loot’s is in a homemade Fusaichian structure, yeah, the FuPegs helped build it, harvested the wood for it.  Little Mike, being the grandson of a mastercraftsman super crafty in woodcraft, gathered the materials and built the structure that will never rust, never bend, bend or warp or become boonified because it is made of the boonies, by the boonies, for the boonies.  Also a descendent of an old forester he harvested without depleting.  He knew how to take just what the boonies would allow for the job.  He knew and knows still.  He is a restless native and watches the troopers carefully.  Sees their sickness.  Their bowels are damned.  Sees their boredom.  Another day in the boonies doing nothing but being boonified.  Understands their distrust of the greenness though it confuses him because he hears them speak of the “mean green fighting machine” - but they are essentially homeless and so what else can they do but speak in confusing ways.  The homeless are often confused.  These boonies are not their home, they know and he knows, and he and they bide in it.  Get sick in it, they; nourish it, him.  

    There’s the handsome one who moves so smoothly, decidedly, with the highest regard and there is the one who moves so rarely, with so much rigidity when he does move, no, stomps through the boonies.  This one now sits and stares and smokes a Pall Mall down to a “corporal’s butt” - more than half-smoked - and then extinguishes it in an ash tray.  This is what is needed, he thinks, make more of Japan something you can put in an ash tray.  This is what he wanted:  a Japan that he could carry around and display in an ash tray.  Filthy yellow fucking FuPegs.  Drove their original commander away and now here he is, stuck with the top post thanks to a field commission.  He was the next in line in the line of David as in David Treat, medal of honor recipient for his honor and glory during the Civil War

 

1.27.  a.k.a. The War Between the States

 

1.28.  a.k.a. The War Between Brothers

 

1.29.  in which he established the Treat family’s history of getting some kind of honorific in combat.  This David Treat, who died in union rags, would have crawled through a Fusaichian field mined with exclusive native shit to complete a mission.  Major Dan “the tin man” Treat won’t leave his desk unless absolutely necessary like, say, to take a shit which, like for most of the troopers, is pissing out of the wrong hole.  Well, at least the burning brown piss didn’t dry and cake on their anal hairs.  Used to be the troopers had solid smooth class one downloads.  Not no more.  After the first couple of months their bowels rebelled and the moving of them wrenched the gut and sweated the brain.  Helluva thing.  They didn’t eat the FuPegs’ food, almost exclusively pescetarian supplemented by strange fruit native to the boonies.  Strange green fruit.  Eaten raw or pounded and boiled into a paste to smear over fish.  Sometimes the FuPegs put a dollop of the green paste on the fish and wrap it all up in a green leaf.  Other times the FuPegs simply forage.  Walk and pluck and eat.  They eat green and shit solid brown anywhere and anytime the urge takes them.  A smooth big brown cigar of a turd.  Something fundamentally wrong about that.  Wrong.  Like giving black caviar . . . 

 

1.30.  The major smokes and stares and resents.  For all the respect the troopers give him he might as well be workaday coal miner going in and going out of a mineshaft every working day.  Like the loot’s folks and like the folks of the loot’s darling.  If he were, hell, he might have more ambition.  Might even have a faraway dream to someday declare “I’m mining my own mine” and be his own man, not a forlorn commander of a squadron of troopers abandoned by their original commander.

 

1.31.  April the fifth, same year:  Colonel John Norman Asbjornson Zevley, affectionately “Zev,” took the squadron’s one gun boat, affectionately the Miss Kearney (stenciled in bold black under the guns) and motored away from the green hell one fine morning.  Well, Fusaichian fine.  Air less damp, humidity less thick, heat less hot.  Usually it’s like a Southern heat wave down in Dixie land, below the Mason Dixon, dig?  where it’s like breathing wet cotton or breathing with a damp towel over your head.  Subtropical and no doubt.  But that morning the humidity was thin and the breathing was easy.  The heat was weirdly stratified instead of uniformly thick heavy greenly suffocating, goddamn.  That fifth morning of April, Fusaichi was solemn and soft, light and forgiving.  Fusaichi is a bitch but that morning she was a beautiful bitch, not just some testy hussy.  And that morning they spied Zev.

    Say, trooper, is that Zev?

    Well, trooper, that’s Zev if I’ve ever seen him, alright.

He stood in the Miss Kearney, stiff and proud.  Determined and unchallenged, hell, who among the troopers could be a challenger to him.

    Say, trooper, is Zev motoring away in the Miss Kearney?

    That’s a man motoring away in a gun boat if I’ve ever seen one, alright.

He stood and saluted farewell with a hail, Columbia gusto.

Say, trooper, did Zev just salute farewell?

Well, trooper, that’s a farewell salute if I’ve ever seen one, alright.

Saluting and motoring away Zev had motored to a pin point on the horizon and before motoring out of sight he flashed the V sign.

Say, trooper, did Zev just flash the V sign?

Well, trooper, that’s the V sign if I’ve ever seen it flashed, alright.

He saluted and flashed and abandoned them to memories of the times gone by  when war memories were all about the brave old days when a hail to reason prevailed.  

Zev was gone.  Gone where?  Gone Hollywood (to have an affair with Sarah Lynx), gone north of Eden?  Gome to his secret getaway, his Pacific hideaway, just gone, baby, gone?  Simply gone astray.  Gone to a lizard island populated by natives with reptilian smarts to establish himself as some sort of cargo cultist?  some sort of whirlabout revolutionist who aims to whirlaway  like a dustwhirl unto death?   Also, hey, by the way, what is their mission?  To squat and squirt hot shit, to become boonified and say alive by the grace of God?

 

1.32.  The last words affirmed by Papa Clem between himself and Zev are:  

 

1.33.  Zev:  How do I reconcile the reckless killing of men with ascension to Heaven?

 

1.34.  Papa Clem:  My dear colonel, who says you’re going to Heaven?

 

1.35.  Who says any of them are, thinks Capt. Shuvee as he lef rye lefs to the quarters of Major Treat to give him the breaking news that the colonel is dead.  The colonel.  Who has more ultimate power in that definite article alone than Major Treat has ever had in the dregs of his imagination.  The colonel.  A law unto himself.  The ultimate man o’war.  A law unto himself and beholden to no man.  Hell, he looked down upon the foibles and weaknesses of men as easily as he looked down upon their heads.  

    The colonel

    The colonel

    Dead?

    And again the poets weep and the angels fall silent

    Wan tup threep fower lef rye lef hada lef rye lef to Major Treat.  The jaundiced sedentary commander of the squadron since Zev left.  Here’s the thing:  Zev at least had a plan even while knowing that no war plan survives contact with the enemy.  Zev understood and advocated his understanding that inside every ignorant FuPeg was an American awesome patriot fighting to get out and it was the duty of every American trooper to assist every fighting FuPeg, fit to fight.  Otherwise, fuck em.

    Lef rye lef hada liquid smooth lef.

    He should be aiming himself to the hospital but the dispatch about the colonel’s death has altered his aim.  He must report to the sedentary Major Treat.  

    Always sitting, always staring.  Always resenting his role.  On the verge of being boonified, to the captain’s judgement.  The major sleeps, eats, sits and shits and shits, sits, eats and sleeps and shits and stares out the window at the pine bluff, stares and smokes and rests a hand on his prematurely balding head.  Prematurely balding major now; full bird bald eagle not forever and what’s forever for?  Evidently, for wasting away in the boonies of Fusaichi.  Smoking and sitting and staring away the days while the green creeps and the stink imbeds and they all pray and wait even though all they ever get is disease and homesickness.  Fusaichi is always taking something from them:  their patience, their health, their fortitude.  Fusaichi is rapacious.  Pitiless and rapacious.  

    Major Treat needs a stiff drink.  The last time he drank was a couple of days after Zev’s sayonara to the squadron when he emptied a canteen of jungle juice.  Here, he was told, drink this and think of someplace far far away.   It'll put hair on your chest.  The spinning world became the hard spun world.  He felt like a demagogue in uniform.  He applauded the new and most cruel bombing of Japan back to the Triassic age.  

    Lef rye lef hada lef rye lef.

    Capt. Shuvee approaches with the news of the world.  A brushup of knuckles against the Q-hut door.  Permission to enter requested.  Permission granted.  He enters and  sees the major exactly where he expects to see him.  Wan tup threep fower lef rye lef to the desk.  He is making an official report and so salutes.  Perfect.  Major Treat returns his salute.  Imperfect.  Sloppy.  At ease, he says, but the captain eases only into the position of parade rest:  his feet shoulder-width apart, his knees straight but not locked and his hands clasped behind his back with his right hand over his left, fingers interlocked, his palms facing out and his face and eyes forward.  In a resting stance of a perfectly restful parade the captain comes straight to the point, “Sir, the colonel is dead.”

    Furrowed brows from the major, then, “Are you sure?”

    Double sure.

    “Positive?”

    Double positive.

    “Who received the dispatch?  It was a dispatch?”

    “Yes, sir.  The loot received it.”

    “And what did he say?”

    “The colonel’s dead, sir.”

    “Yes, captain, I heard you the first time.”

    “No, sir, the loot said that the colonel is dead.”

    The major’s eyebrows lifted way up high.  The colonel, the colonel, dead?  Might as well have been informed Sir, we lost the war.  Capt. Shuvee didn’t blame the major.  Anyone is liable to be suspicious of a con game when informed that the colonel is dead.  The same colonel who survived two world wars, is the winner of thirty out of thirty-one battles (his single upset didn’t cost him a single mark of esteem); same colonel with a son who became a crusader, another who became a drum major and another who became a great war admiral and famous patriot in his own right - that colonel is dead?      

    “He confirmed the information on the dispatch?”

    “Roger that, sir.”

    “Well, I’m sure he did.  I mean how did he confirm?”

    “Sir, he confirmed by saying ‘roger that,’ sir.”

    Capt. Shuvee thought that being brave and bold and brief (brevity - Hemingway’s key to good writing in vigorous English) would make his report an easy one but the major, evidently, is not an easy goer.  

    “Who else knows?”

    “Only our threeselves, sir.”

    “Very good.  Keep it secret.” 

    Keep it safe as the secret behind naming the fort Marcy.  

    “Yes, sir.”

    “We’ve already lost Zev.  I don’t think we’ve healed enough to take the loss of the colonel easily.”

    “Of course, sir.”

    “Well . . . “

    “Anything else, sir?”

    “No, captain.  Good morning.”

    “Good morning, sir.”