outstanding officer material.'
Bob knew the secret language of these things: where praise is the standard vocabulary, Case's belief in Donny clearly went beyond that into the eloquent.
Even Donny's loss of rating order, which demoted him from corporal to lance corporal, dated 12 May 71, was empty of information. It carried no meaning whatsoever: it simply stated the fact that a reduction in rank had occurred.
It was signed by his commanding officer, M. C. Dogwood, Captain, USMC.
No Article 15s, no Captain's Masts, nothing in the record suggesting any disciplinary problems.
Whatever had happened to him, it had left no records at all.
He stood up and went to the door of the sergeant major's aide.
'Is there a personnel specialist around? I'd like to run something by him.'
'I can get Mr. Ross. He worked personnel for six years before coming to headquarters.'
'That'd be great.'
In time the warrant officer arrived, and he too knew of Bob and treated him like a movie star. But he scanned the documents and could find nothing at all unusual except-'Now this is strange, Gunny.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Can't say I ever saw it before.'
'And what is that, Mr. Ross?'
'Well, sir, on this last order, the one that sent Fenn to Vietnam. See here'--he pointed--'it says 'DIST: 'N.'
That means, distribution to normal sources, i.e. the duty jacket, the new duty station. Pentagon personnel, MDW personnel and so forth, the usual grinding wheels of our great bureaucracy in action.'
'Yes, sir.'
'But what I see here is odd. In parentheses '(and WNY TEMPO C, RM 4598).'
' 'What would that mean?'
'Well, I'd guess Washington Naval Yard, Temporary Building C, Room 4598.'
'What's that?'
'I don't know. I was twelve in 1971' 'Any idea how I could find out?'
'Well, the only sure way is to go to the Pentagon, get an authorization, and try and dig up a Washington Naval Personnel logbook or phone book or at least an MDW phone book from the year 1971. They might have one over there. Then you'd just have to go through it entry by entry--it would take hours--until you came across that designation.'
'Oh, brother,' said Bob.
The next night, Bob drove his rented car out to a pleasant suburban house in the suburbs of America and there had dinner with his old pal the Command Sergeant Major of the United States Marine Corps, his wife and three of his four sons.
The sergeant major grilled steaks out on the patio while the two younger boys swam in the pool and the sergeant major's wife, Marge, threw together a salad, some South Carolina recipe for baked beans and stewed tomatoes. She was an old campaigner herself and Bob had met her twice before, at a reception after he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for Kham Due-1976, four years after the incident itself, a year after he finally left the physical therapy program and the year he decided he could no longer cut it as a Marine--and the next year, when he did retire.
'How's Suzy?' she asked, and Bob remembered that she and his first wife had had something of an acquaintanceship, at that point, he'd been higher in rank than the man who was hosting him.
'Oh, we don't talk too much. You heard, I went through some bad times, had a drinking problem. She left me, and was smart to do it. She's married to a Cadillac dealer now. I hope she's happy.'
'I actually ran into her last year,' Marge said.
'She seemed fine. She asked after you. You've had an adventurous few years.'
'I seem to have a knack for trouble.'
'Bob, you won't get Vern's career in any trouble? He retires this year after thirty-five years. I'd hate to see anything happen.'
'No, ma'am. I'll be leaving very shortly. My time here is done, I think.'
They had a nice dinner and Bob tried to hide the melancholy that seeped into him, here was the life he would have had if he hadn't gotten hit, if Donny hadn't gotten killed, if it all hadn't gone so sour on him. He yearned now for a drink, a soothing blur of bourbon to blunt the edge he felt, and he recalled a dozen times on active duty when he and this man or a man just like this man had spent the night recalling sergeants and officers and squids and ships and battles the world over, and enjoying immensely their lives in the place where they'd been born hard-wired to spend it, the United States Marine Corps.
But that was gone now. Face it, he thought. It's gone, it's finished, it's over.
That night they went to a baseball game, Legion Ball, where the youngest boy, a scholarship athlete at the University of Virginia, got three hits while giving up only two as pitcher over the game's seven innings. Again: a wonderful America, the best America--the suburbs on a spring evening, the weather warm, the night hazy, baseball, family and beer.
'Do you miss your wife?' asked the sergeant major's wife.
