Chapter 2
DICKY DOO AND THE DON’TS
“QUESTION FOR YOU, Staff Sergeant Pride,” Jon
Kirkwood said to the defense section’s administrative chief and
senior legal clerk.
“What’s that, Skipper?” Derek Pride answered as he
led the pair of newly arrived lawyers from the bachelor officers’
quarters, where they had dropped their baggage on two open bunks.
The staff sergeant casually walked with Kirkwood and O’Connor
toward the legal office headquarters and an impatiently waiting
Major Dudley L. Dickinson, the military justice officer and the
staff judge advocate’s second in command.
“Today some kind of holiday?” Kirkwood asked,
looking at an attractive, middle-aged gentleman with dark hair and
an exquisite tan, dressed in white shorts, shoes, and polo shirt.
Violently swinging his racquet, alternating forehand and backhand
strokes, the fellow relentlessly pounded a tennis ball off a large
sheet of plywood wired against the court fence. With each loud whop
of the racquet striking the ball, the man let out a deep grunt that
echoed off the concrete and the nearby buildings.
Just outside the high chain-link enclosure where
the tanned, middle-aged man in white toiled at trying to blast a
hole in the plywood panel with his tennis ball, a much younger man
relaxed quietly on a chaise lounge. He, too, sported white athletic
shorts but wore no shirt. With black plastic sunglasses resting on
the bridge of his deeply tanned nose, hiding his
eyes, the fellow intently studied the fold-out feature photograph
of an issue of Penthouse magazine.
A few feet from the man lying on the web-mesh
reclining chair, an immaculately cleaned and polished jeep sat with
a portable radio on its hood, tuned to Da Nang’s American Forces,
Vietnam, broadcast station. The comedic toot of a steam calliope
playing Henry Mancini’s popular hit “Baby Elephant Walk” drifted
from the speakers, adding a tranquil accent to the placid afternoon
scene.
“Oh, that’s just the boss, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis
Prunella, there on the tennis court, and his driver, Lance Corporal
Dean, adhering to their regular afternoon physical training
schedule,” Staff Sergeant Pride said and cracked a wry smile.
“We should stop and introduce ourselves, then,”
Terry O’Connor said, stepping toward where the man reclined on the
lounge chair, soaking up sun and now turning the Penthouse
centerfold in various directions, examining every detail of the
photo.
“Sirs,” Pride said, and hastily stepped in front of
the two captains, “we don’t have a lot of time right now. I can see
Major Dickinson watching us from his window. He can get very
contentious when you keep him waiting.”
“Contentious, eh? Guess that means pissed off in
legal parlance. Don’t want to piss off the Mojo, Jon, do we?”
O’Connor said, looking toward the complex housing the First MAW
staff judge advocate’s offices, where he could clearly see the
silhouette of the military justice officer standing in a side
window. “At least not until he knows us better. Not in the first
five minutes, anyway.”
“You get a good look at that jeep?” Kirkwood said,
following behind his pal Terry O’Connor and Staff Sergeant Pride,
zagging at an angle across the grass, back to the gravel path and
resuming their trek from the BOQ to the legal offices.
“Yeah,” O’Connor said, “you could eat off the
tires. Even the wheel nuts were shiny. Like chrome. Did you catch
that?”
“Whole thing glistens like a diamond in a black
goat’s ass. How about that red license plate on the front with the
bolt-on chrome letters S-J-A mounted on it,” Kirkwood said. “At
first I thought it was General Cushman’s jeep, and the metal
letters were three silver stars.”
“From a distance, the colonel’s jeep can mislead a
person, unless you’ve been around here for a while and know it’s
just our boss,” Pride said.
“He play tennis like that every afternoon?”
O’Connor said, glancing a last look over his shoulder.
“Every morning, too,” Pride said. “From about seven
to nine he sharpens his game, then works in the office until noon,
takes a jog with Lance Corporal Dean for lunch, then at three
o’clock he has his afternoon P-T session. Almost daily, unless he
has to preside over a trial or attend a staff meeting.”
“Must be pretty laid back here then,” Kirkwood
said, cracking a hopeful smile at the apparent prospect of ample
free time.
“Hardly that, sir,” Pride said. “We stay quite
busy. The colonel just keeps out of our way, unless we need his
advice or help with something. Major Dickinson makes sure that
rarely happens.”
“So the major really runs the show at First MAW
Law,” O’Connor said.
“Colonel Prunella runs the show,” Pride quickly
spoke. “Don’t let his hands-off style mislead you. Lewis Prunella
is nobody’s fool, and is quite the gifted defense counsel or
prosecutor. Take your pick. He’s worked both sides of trials, and
is as sharp as they come.”
“So, what’s this?” Kirkwood said. “Retirement on
active duty?”
“Some people might say that, more or less, in some
respects,” Pride said. “But everyone here likes him, especially at
III MAF. The colonel expertly plays the political game, gentlemen,
and as a result, he keeps us well fixed. For example, we have six
people assigned to us from Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron-1
administrative section, just to do typing. Normally, any other SJA
would only get a couple of regular oh-one-five-ones. In fact,
during my six-year career I’ve seen JAG sections where we had just
one clerk-typist. Talk about getting backed up!
“Here in Da Nang, though, the colonel gets just
about anything he wants. Take his driver, for instance. On loan
from Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr., personally. Pulled
directly from the III Marine Amphibious Force command section’s
pool of drivers normally reserved for the senior staff. Some of the
MAF bird colonels don’t even have personal drivers assigned
specifically to them, but Lieutenant Colonel Prunella does.”
“That’s good to know,” Jon Kirkwood said,
appreciating the genuine respect and obvious loyalty that Pride
held toward Colonel Prunella.
“Now, if you ask me, that driver has the choicest
job of anyone I’ve seen so far,” O’Connor said, looking back at the
tall, tan Marine who now bent over an ice chest and took out two
cold sodas. He then turned and handed one of the canned pops to the
SJA, who had just walked out the tennis court gate, mopping his
face with a white towel and smiling at the man like they were best
friends.
“Lance Corporal James Dean from Malibu,
California,” Staff Sergeant Pride said. “The authentic beach boy.
All he does is drive Colonel Prunella, and do whatever the boss
needs him to get done. Otherwise, between runs, when he’s not
polishing his jeep, he lifts weights, or works on his tan while
improving his reading skills, as you may have observed.”
“Yeah, right,” Kirkwood snorted, picking up on the
staff sergeant’s subtle sarcasm. “Think he ever gets much past the
pictures?”
“No shit,” O’Connor said, and laughed. “James Dean.
That fits, too. As soon as I laid eyes on him, he struck me as a
regular Joe Hollywood sort—tall, good-looking, sporting that tan
and those Foster Grants. Even has that Troy Donahue sun-bleached
hair going for him. The name, James Dean, though, just seems a
little too ironic. That’s for real?”
“Yes, sir, that’s one of the reasons why most
people around here call him Movie Star,” Pride said, arching one
eyebrow and cracking a wise smile. “That and his background.
Supposedly his family has money. That’s why the Malibu address. His
dad’s some kind of big-time Hollywood studio executive. So typical
of those people, the boy went maverick on the old man and joined
the Marine Corps. You know, just to piss off the parents.
“However, Lance Corporal James ‘Movie Star’ Dean is
no great gift, and certainly no loss to Hollywood. I would say that
he has the mentality of a plate of noodles and the personality of a
department store mannequin. I think they invented the term
‘shallow-minded’ just for him. He will screw up anything more
complicated than wiping mud off his jeep or picking up the
colonel’s laundry. That’s why nobody hassles Movie Star to do
anything except piddly stuff. And that’s not much. Big,
good-looking and d-u-m-b, dumb. Colonel Prunella loves him, though.
Mostly because he keeps that jeep absolutely spotless and is always
right there, handy.”
“Movie Star, huh?” O’Connor said.
“Yes, sir, Movie Star,” Pride said, opening the
front door to the headquarters and leading the two captains
inside.
“I GET PAID to be the royal asshole here,” Major Dudley L. Dickinson said, casting a patronizing, fake smile at the pair of officers as he stepped from behind his desk while offering his hand for Captains O’Connor and Kirkwood to shake. “I like my work, too.”
“So I’ve heard, sir,” O’Connor said, giving the
major a one-pump shake and then letting go.
“Jonathan C. Kirkwood, sir, UCLA Law School class
of ’64,” Kirkwood said, giving the major a dutiful, multipump
handshake.
“Very good, Captain,” Dickinson said, and then
turned back to O’Connor, who stood staring up at the large,
posterboard sign thumb-tacked on the wall adjacent to the major’s
desk. On it someone had carefully handwritten in bold, inch-long,
black-marker-ink letters a list of a dozen sentences, each
beginning with the word “Don’t” written in red marker ink and
underlined with black. “You’re Terence B. O’Connor, then.”
“Yes, sir,” O’Connor said, still reading the
sign.
“The initial B in your name comes from Boyd, your
mother’s maiden name,” Dickinson said.
“Correct again, sir,” O’Connor said, now looking at
the major.
“Let’s see, Columbia University Law School, also
class of 1964,” Dickinson said. “Editor of the Columbia Law
Review. Very impressive. You passed the New York Bar, and did
it on the first try. Not bad at all. Father, a Marine sergeant,
World War II, awarded the Navy Cross for valor on Iwo Jima. Don’t
be so modest, Captain O’Connor. I have read all about both of you,
including the special note from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
regarding a minor hiccup with your secret clearance background
check, relating to the fact that your fiancée is a
Communist.”
“Girlfriend, sir,” O’Connor said, now looking
squarely at the major’s narrowed eyes. “Vibeke Ahlquist is my
girlfriend. She’s a very strong-minded liberal, a Social Democrat
from Sweden, and a journalism graduate student at Columbia
University. She freelances articles and commentaries from time to
time for the Daily Worker, a newspaper established by the
American Communist Party in 1924, which they publish and distribute
in the neighborhood just outside Columbia University. Not on
campus. She’s just a stupid student with no real-world experience.
Does that make me a Communist?”
“Apparently not,” Dickinson said, sitting behind
his desk and opening O’Connor’s Officer Qualification Record. “They
still gave you a secret clearance, in spite of this
relationship.”
“My relationship with Miss Ahlquist is my business
in the first place,” O’Connor said, now realizing that he had just
allowed Major Dicky Doo to push his one easy button.
“It’s my business when you are fraternizing with an
agent from a socialist country that is sympathetic to the enemy,”
Dickinson retorted.
Jon Kirkwood stepped away from O’Connor and began
reading the sign on the wall, knowing that any comment he might add
would only muddy the situation.
“Sir, with all due respect, Sweden is a friendly
power to the United States,” O’Connor fumed. “Applying your logic
would make Canada our enemy, too.”
“I didn’t say ‘enemy,’ Captain,” Dickinson said,
tossing O’Connor’s OQR on his desk. “Sympathetic. Just like
Canada.”
“Canada is one of America’s closest allies, sir!”
O’Connor said. “I cannot believe you would regard them as anything
less than a friendly nation.”
“They allow draft dodgers to run there; they give
them refuge and refuse to honor our requests for extradition. That
is not the conduct of an ally,” Dickinson huffed.
“Sweden is a social democracy, much like Canada.
They are our friends. Just like us, they fear the Russians. They
simply have a long-held tradition of neutrality,” O’Connor said.
“My girlfriend, a Swede, writes for a Communist newspaper from time
to time, big deal. She’s no Bolshevik!”
“Captain, I just pointed out that I was aware of
the issue,” Dickinson said, now trying to defuse the young lawyer’s
tirade.
“Major, sir, I happen to be a Republican. I cast
the first presidential vote of my lifetime for Senator Barry M.
Goldwater, for Pete sake!” O’Connor said. “If you look closer at my
background check, you will also see notes regarding my stormy and
often verbally combative relationship with Miss Ahlquist. All of
our conflicts specifically centered on our divergent political
perspectives. Although my father is a Marine veteran of World War
II and recipient of the Navy Cross, he is today a history professor
at the University of Pennsylvania, and a very liberal-thinking
Democrat. He nearly always agrees with Vibeke in our political
arguments. Does that make him a Communist, too?”
“Relax, Captain O’Connor,” Dickinson said. “Nobody
has called you a Communist.”
“Agreed, sir,” O’Connor said, taking hold of his
temper and now trying to extinguish the flames of his anger.
“Captain Kirkwood,” Dickinson said, looking at the
quiet officer who had taken several steps toward the wall and
busily read the posterboard sign attached to it.
“Yes, sir,” Kirkwood responded, wheeling on his
toes and striding quickly back to the major’s desk.
“I see your wife has gotten herself a job teaching
junior high social studies at the Department of Defense School
System on Okinawa,” Dickinson said, looking at a yellow note
paper-clipped to the manila cover of Kirkwood’s Officer
Qualification Record.
“Correct, sir,” Kirkwood said. “Her father knew
some people with the DOD school system, and they made some
arrangements for her to work there. Hopefully, occasions will arise
where I may have cases that take me to Okinawa, and might afford us
the opportunity to be together for a day or two during my thirteen
months here in ’Nam. Just a hope, sir. You know.”
“Any Okinawa junkets are plums that I award to only
our stellar performers, Captain,” Dickinson said. “Defense section
has yet to show me any stellar performances, so you will have a
precedent to set if you hope to get to Okinawa anytime soon.”
“I think I understand, sir,” Kirkwood said,
choosing to keep any potential for argument to himself while trying
not to show his stirring emotions and his immediate dislike for the
major.
“Like I said,” Dickinson said, and faked a laugh,
“I get paid to be the asshole at this office.”
“I understand, sir,” Kirkwood repeated.
“Your father-in-law is quite the man, isn’t he,
Captain Kirkwood?” Dickinson said, running his finger down the note
and then looking up at the flush-faced captain.
“Sir?” Kirkwood said carefully.
“Political power broker in California, Captain,”
Dickinson bellowed. “He and Governor Pat Brown are like Frank and
Jesse James. They run the California Democrat machine. Bernice
Layne Brown, the state’s first lady, is your wife’s godmother.
Don’t play so coy with me, Captain, you’re quite well
connected.”
“Sir,” Kirkwood said, “as you obviously know,
Governor Ronald Reagan, a Republican, succeeded Edmund G. Brown
this very year. So that California Democrat machine does not appear
to have as great a head of steam as you might regard. Besides, if I
have such clout, what am I doing in Vietnam?”
“Good question, Captain,” Dickinson said. “I’m all
ears.”
“Sir, I got drafted,” Kirkwood began to explain.
“Rather than face two years as a private in the army, I opted to
join the Marine Corps.”
“Right, right, right,” Major Dickinson said, waving
his hand as he looked back at the folder, turning off what might
develop into a long-winded explanation that he cared nothing to
hear. Then the major rocked back on his chair and looked up from
his desk at both captains. “Gentlemen, to get along here I ask only
that you keep out of trouble, and abide by my rules, posted on yon
wall.”
“Your infamous list of Don’ts,” O’Connor
said.
“Correct, Captain,” Dickinson said in a hot voice,
“the infamous Don’ts. Read them, make notes of them, learn to
recite them by heart if needed, but above all, abide by them. I’m
not here to get you to like me, and I am not your buddy. Ever.
Don’t make the mistake of believing something otherwise.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, sir,” Kirkwood
said, now grabbing the opportunity to mouth off before O’Connor
took it.
“Don’t leave our offices without first checking
out,” Dickinson said. “Rule number one. Don’t use the overseas
telephone without obtaining a chit from me first. That’s rule
number two. Most importantly, don’t ever, and I mean ever, take the
colonel’s jeep. Colonel Prunella’s vehicle and his driver are
exclusively off-limits to all hands. We have a staff jeep. Use the
staff jeep. No exceptions. No excuses. Period!”
“What if it’s out and we have an emergency?”
O’Connor said.
“Nothing in our profession requires that kind of
urgency, Captain,” Dickinson snubbed. “If the staff jeep is out,
then call the command taxi service or request a vehicle and driver
from the motor pool. However, and another rule: Don’t request a
vehicle without getting my authorization first.”
“How about a do?” O’Connor said smartly. “You have
any of those? A do this or a do that?”
Yes, I have a do for you, Captain O’Connor,”
Dickinson said wryly. “Do not piss me off!”
“Sir, ah, that’s not a do,” Kirkwood said,
gesturing with his index finger raised, trying to appear innocent
but feeling good with adding his smart, two cents’ worth. “You see,
don’t is simply a contraction of do not. That’s another don’t,
sir.”
“You just pissed me off!” Dickinson said, standing
from his six-wheeled swivel chair and sending it banging into the
government-gray steel credenza behind him. “Smart-ass behavior like
that will only buy you beaucoup trouble around here, bub. Given
your attitudes, you two clowns ought to fit in very nicely with the
rest of the misfits in the defense section.”
“No serious swimmers, then, I take it, sir, in the
defense pool?” O’Connor said, smiling, seeing the major’s anger and
reaching for a fresh nerve to grate raw.
“Not a one, Captain,” Dickinson hissed through his
clenched teeth. “Not a one.”
THE AFTERNOON SUN blazed across the steel matting,
concrete, and hard-packed dirt at the infantry base and air
facility at Chu Lai. The bustling aviation and ground complex
occupied by the U.S. Army’s Twenty-third Infantry “Americal”
Division headquarters along with other elements of Task Force
Oregon, and Marine Corps aviation and ground units of the First
Wing and First Division sat smack in the middle of a stretch of
nasty sand hills and hamlets that teamed with Viet Cong, just an
hour’s drive south of Da Nang on Highway One. While the South China
Sea washed its clear blue tide along Chu Lai’s east-side beaches,
hostile rice paddies, canals, and thickly forested hedgerows,
broken by a hillock here or a streambed there, stretched north,
south, and west from the American forces’ compound. Farther west,
the dangerous lands that the grunts had come to call Indian
country, places such as Happy Valley, Dodge City, and Charlie
Ridge, lay in the mountains and steep terrain that overlooked the
Chu Lai rice flats. Closer by, equally enemy rich haunts such as
the Riviera and Que Son Hills loomed just outside Chu Lai’s
fences.
Celestine Anderson had spent the past nine days
pounding holes in his boots, walking patrol in those dangerous
suburbs with catchy names. Now, as his chopper descended onto home
turf, he couldn’t remember the last time he had closed his eyes and
really slept. Slept with a good dream ending. Slept like a Saturday
night cold beer and hot steak dinner.
Chu Lai looked awfully good to him as his tired
eyes gazed out the back hatchway of the long, green
grasshopper-shaped twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter when it
finally set down at the Marines’ base, letting off his bedraggled
security platoon. He thought of how satisfying a real meal would
taste as he bounded down the rear ramp. So instead of going
straight to his hooch and crashing for a long and badly needed
sleep, he ambled up the dusty jeep road that led to the
headquarters complex’s dining facility.
He had stood listening post duty the last night on
patrol, so he hadn’t even gotten to shut his eyes in two days. As
the afternoon sun baked his shaved head and bare arms, he kept his
face turned down, following the tracks in the road, shielding his
bloodshot, sandpaper-feeling eyes. Just something warm in his
stomach. Something to make him sleep good. That’s all he needed
now.
“Yo, bro,” a familiar voice called from ahead.
Celestine cupped his hands along his forehead, shading his eyes,
and squinted to see which of his few friends shouted at him.
“Hey, blood,” Celestine called back when he saw the
Marine, a buddy named Wendell Carter, from Houston, his own
hometown. He hadn’t known the guy there, but knew of his
neighborhood. Just a bit south on Jensen Drive from Celestine’s own
set of blocks. Since they lived so close to each other back there,
both on Houston’s rough North Side, they called each other
“homey.”
Carter stood in a cluster with two other Marines
whom Celestine also knew well. The four of them worked at the
wing’s communications section, a unit in Marine Wing Support Group
17.
Although fully trained at coordinating air and
ground communications, and performing basic maintenance and repair
on a variety of radio and telephone equipment, Anderson and these
three other air wing Marines of African heritage had found
themselves mostly relegated out to security patrols, humping the
backache PRC-25 radios and carrying rifles.
“Celestine, my man,” Wendell called to his pal, and
put out his right fist.
Anderson put out his right fist, too, and rapped it
first on the top of Carter’s, then he tapped the bottom, and after
that knocked each side, and finished the greeting by butting his
knuckles against those of his friend. To complete the ritual, each
man then took his clenched fist and struck it across his own heart,
and lastly raised it defiantly above his head.
Dapping, they called it. Its meaning mimicked that
of the African Masai warriors’ ritual greeting of his fellow Moran,
and symbolized that neither man held status above or below the
other, that both were equal, side by side, brothers in spirit and
in blood. For Celestine, the greeting represented solidarity among
his cohorts who shared his African roots, and his heritage of
slavery in America from which his people still struggled to emerge
today, even though the chains had been legally broken now for 102
years.
“Look at those fucking niggers,” a skinny, darkly
tanned Marine named Leonard Cross said to three of his buddies
standing with him in a small circle near the chow hall. The surly
crew of four had spent the better part of the day filling sandbags
and burning shitters downwind from Chu Lai’s population.
Laddie, as Cross preferred that his friends call
him, wore no shirt, and had on scuffed-white combat boots and a
pair of filthy utility trousers with the seat ripped out, but
showed a failed attempt at a ragged patch job on the pants ass-end
and at both knees. As he spoke, he let fly a stream of
tobacco-brown spit that landed between his feet, making a small,
dark lump in the dust.
“Fucking niggers,” two other shirtless grunts
wearing similarly ragged, dirty trousers and scuffed-white boots
mumbled in agreement with him.
Harold Rein, the fourth man in the group, who also
dressed in the same filthy, disheveled fashion, said nothing, but
visibly fumed, staring hotly at the quartet of dark green Marines
dapping a dozen yards away from him, also waiting for the chow hall
to open for early supper.
Although his mother in Dothan, Alabama, had named
him Harold, after her father, nobody here called him by that
handle. If they did, he generally let the offender quickly know his
dislike for it in verbally harsh and sometimes physically brutal
terms. Officers and senior enlisted he let slide, but still set
them straight with some strongly worded slurs between “sirs.”
People who didn’t want a hard kick in the nuts from Private Rein,
or at the very least an earful of profanity, called him
Buster.
The nineteen-year-old, already twice promoted to
private first class, and likewise twice demoted back to buck
private, sported a cartoon bulldog wearing a Marine campaign hat
tilted over his eyes and then under-struck in a crescent below the
bulldog’s jowls the letters USMC tattooed on his right forearm. On
his left shoulder he had a rebel flag tattooed above a poker hand
that held three aces and two eights.
Like his father, Buster Rein’s skin didn’t tan. It
just burned. Then it mostly freckled and peeled. Constantly peeled.
Even his scalp pealed beneath his brush-cut red hair.
Rein sported a brawler’s knuckles—dry and hard and
heavily calloused. Black grease filled the many cracks that laced
over his hands’ thick skin, and embedded deeply under and around
the fingernails on both of his meaty, pink, and freckled
paws.
“Who the fuck do those porch monkeys think they
are, standing there all high and fucking mighty, beating their
nigger fists and shoving their black power, Mau Mau bullshit down
my throat?” Buster finally bellowed, making sure his voice carried
to the group that offended him.
“Fuck you niggers, you motherfuckers,” Laddie Cross
then called to them, not to have Buster outdo his racist
zeal.
With his thumbs hooked in his waistband and his
chin jutting upward, Buster Rein bellowed, “Jigass coons. Think
they own the whole fucking world since Lyndon Johnson freed ’em
all!”
Then Rein laughed hard and looked over his shoulder
for agreement from his buddies. They nervously cackled and flashed
toothy grins to show him that they supported his bravado. He took
another step forward, scuffing through the dust, and growled,
“Fucking black power! I ain’t scared of no black power
bullshit.”
“Hey, man, don’t let those peckerhead chuck
motherfuckers mess in your head,” Wendell Carter said to Celestine
Anderson, seeing the anger immediately flush bright red across his
normally deep honey-gold cheeks. “Don’t let those fucked-up slices
of white bread get to you, man. I mean it!”
“Shut the fuck up, and leave me to it,” Anderson
growled in a low voice, pulling his arm out of the sudden grasp of
his hometown buddy who wanted to stop any trouble before it broke
out.
“It’s no good, man. Not here. Not right now. We can
get those motherfuckers later on,” Carter said, again grabbing for
Celestine’s arm as Anderson now stepped toward the redneck quartet
and glared. He dared any of them to lock onto his eyes.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” Anderson said to Carter,
yanking his arm again from his buddy’s grasp, and now exchanging
napalm stares straight on with Buster Rein.
“Watch this,” Rein said to his now silent cohorts
as he cockwalked arrogantly toward Anderson.
Wendell Carter stepped in front of Celestine
Anderson, and looked at him nose to nose and whispered, “You got to
walk away from this shit, man. Right now! These fuckups is all bad
news. Bad all around, and not even any of the other white boys
around this camp likes any of them either. Let it go, man. Let it
go!”
“Hey!” Buster Rein called out, seeing Carter trying
to block off his buddy from a certain fight. He clenched a
cigarette in his teeth and bit down on its filter while smiling
widely as he spoke. “Hey, hey, you coons! You boys hear me? Any you
niggers got a light?”
“Sho!” Celestine called back, and shoved Carter out
of his way. Then under his breath he said to himself, “You dead
motherfucker.”
“What’s that, boy?” Buster called back.
“I said, sho, man,” Anderson bellowed. “I gots a
light.”
While Buster Rein spread a wide smile, clenching
the cigarette in his teeth, rolling in a spring step off the balls
of his feet, his fists both clenched ready for battle, Celestine
Anderson bounded straight at the cocky redneck.
Reaching in his left trouser pocket, the shaved
bald Houston Marine pulled out his Zippo lighter and flicked open
the lid. He thrust it toward Buster Rein’s nose and struck a spark
that licked out an orange fireball that leaped into the white boy’s
nostrils.
Rein automatically blinked his eyes shut and yanked
his head backward, putting the tip of his cigarette into the
four-inch flame, and then sucked hard on the filter.
In the same fluid motion that Celestine Anderson
had brought out the flashing chrome lighter and ignited it with his
left hand, he had reached behind his back with his right hand and
found where his field ax dangled from its pouch on his utility
belt. His thumb popped open the snap that closed the pouch over the
ax head, and his fingers lightly lifted the knife-sharp blade from
the pouch and found the tool’s short, curved handle.
While Buster Rein sucked happily on his cigarette,
satisfied that he had humiliated this uppity coon, and had shown
everyone standing around the chow hall’s entrance, watching the
exhibition of his white superiority over black power, his courage
and his boldness over what he regarded as black rebellion,
Celestine Anderson dropped the ax head toward the ground, letting
it slide down his palm, along the side of his leg, until his
fingers slipped down the grip where they took a firm hold at the
end of the handle’s curved hilt.
Then in one long, arching swing, the
African-American Marine brought down his field ax onto the top,
front, center of the Alabama Marine’s skull, and split it open
clear past his eyebrows.
Buster Rein never felt a thing. Then, or ever
after.