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
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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.