turned to the colonel of the artillery battalion he'd served in during the war, the same man who had pinned the Bronze Star on Sam for blowing up the German armored column.
But Russell K. Parsons was a brigadier general now, and he worked in that strange new building that was so singular it inspired awe, a skyscraper on the ground, broken down into five units, called by its geometric shape the Pentagon.
A phone call got through easily enough; the general headed something called the Army Logistics Command, designed to hustle toothpaste and tin cups and condoms and Lucky Strikes and packs and Garand rifles over to Korea or wherever.
'Well, Sam,' said the general, 'I'll be damned, how are you.' 'Sir, I am fine,' said Sam, realizing again that the colonel, now the general, was three years younger than he was.
The two chatted; Sam had been a damned good artillery officer and the general had been happy to have him in his command. It was citizen soldiers like Sam, the then colonel often said, who won the war, not the few West Pointers such as himself salted through the ranks.
But of course the general knew this was not a social call, and got quickly enough to the point.
'Don't suppose you're calling me to set up a get-together for the families, are you, Sam?'
'No, sir. I probably couldn't stand your kids and I know you couldn't stand mine.'
'Well then, designate your target, set your coordinates and open fire.'
'Sir?'
'Sam, you really should call me Russell. Frankly, as an elected official you probably outrank me now.' Sam said nothing about being turned out at the polls last time; he just played the role.
'Sir, I could never call you by your first name. You were God to us, and I'm comfortable that way.'
'Well, then ask God for a favor and possibly God will look with pleasure upon it. It's nothing to do with manna from heaven.'
'Only information from the Pentagon.'
'Why, that's more valuable than manna from heaven, and probably harder to come by.'
'Even for a general?'
'Sam, in this place, they send brigadiers for sandwiches. I'm lucky to have a job.'
So Sam finally got to it.
'The 2809th,' said General Parsons, 'a medical research unit.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Major David Stone?'
'Major Stone, M. D.' Sam left out the detail that the man was dead. It wouldn't do to suggest that he already knew quite a bit.
'All right, Sam. I will have a sergeant look into it, and if that doesn't get it done, I'll send a captain. If that fails, some poor colonel is going to be working for you and not even know why.' It took a few days?anguished, of course, but Sam couldn't call to press, for he knew that would be a mistake?but finally the general got back to him.
'Now, explain to me why you need this information again?' There was an edge to his voice that Sam picked up on right away, even as he launched into his new cover story about a lawsuit against the state of Mississippi regarding the wrongful death of a man in the vicinity of 'I see.'
'Yes.' I! 'Sir, is it known of what cause?'
'No.'
'No, it's not known, or no, you don't know.' 'It's not known,' said the general, a certain distance coming into his voice.
'Is something wrong, sir?'
'Sam, this thing isn't well documented. In fact, it's unusually poorly documented.'
'I see, sir.'
'Well, possibly you don't. In fact, I did have to send a sergeant, a captain and finally a colonel on this errand, and even that didn't work.
So finally I went to Records myself, and of course it turned out I was at the Point with the OIC. We'd played football there together in the early thirties.'
'Yes, sir.'
'So he looked. He himself, a full bird colonel, he looked. Sam, we got David Stone's personnel file out of the storage room.'
'Is it classified?'
'Sam, it's more than classified. It's nonexistent.'
'I don't?'
'The jacket is there, but inside there's nothing. The contents of the file have been physically removed. That's highly irregular.'
'There was no reference, no note, no explanation or anything?'
'Not a thing.'
'Could such a thing simply be lost?'
They led Earl in, and in the jamb of the door, the guards unlocked his chains.
As the men bent with the ancient keys and he felt the locks yield and the sudden weightlessness as the chains that had been his companions for so long disappeared, Bigboy leaned in close.
'You're on the levee tomorrow,' said Bigboy. 'And the day after that.
And all the days after that 'I'll you either come clean or you kill yourself or your new pals in here kill you. You know what? It doesn't really make a shit's worth of difference to me. It does to the warden, who gets paid to worry about such things, but it doesn't to me.'
He stepped back, and the door was opened, and the two men propelled Earl inward with a shove.
He entered a different world.
He knew it immediately from the smell. It was the smell of ancient sweat and blood, hammered into the wood. He knew from the darkness, because no details swam into his vision, but only indistinct impressions, mainly of rows of bunks, most full of men, and an open space at one end, near to him, where some men played cards.
But he knew mostly from the eyes.
At least thirty sets drilled into him. He could feel their weight. In the Marines, he'd felt such a thing when he moved to a new outfit, and the men he would be responsible for watched him out of fear or curiosity or in defiance or to test him. That was all right; that was human.
That was recognizable.
What he felt now was fury. The eyes spoke eloquently. They were narrowed but intent, close to warriors' concentration, tracking his every movement, the details, committing them to memory, and most of all expressing hate. He could feel the mass will of obliteration upon him, unleashed, unbroken, unmitigated. These weren't the Negro eyes as white people experienced them, obedient, ready to please, hoping for a compliment or a tip. Earl had never seen eyes like these.
But as he looked he saw some eyes past caring. It became clear that sick men were in here too, or mentals or the feeble-headed, for a certain segment of the population was apart and it was men in strange states.
One stood, arms clasped about himself, jabbering madly.
Another rocked back and forth, shaking his head, a spume of drool running down his chin. Still another was lashed crudely to his bed, and thrashed, though with the diminished energy of the exhausted, against his bonds. One was stark naked, standing frozen in the corner.
Earl looked away; it would not do to stare.
It was fine for them to stare, and stare they did, as all the cards being played were set down, and the Negroes just looked at him. There was no greeting, no acknowledgment, no anything, only the sullen looks of an anger so pure and deep and old it was beyond reckoning.
Tentatively, he walked the rows of bunks, until he found one that was empty.
He unrolled the mattress, which had no sheets and only a thin stretch of blanket and a rough pillow, and sat.
'Dat my place,' a voice came out of the darkness.
Without speaking or looking Earl rose and found another bunk like the one he'd tried, and he sat there.
