Marine green, with their 782 gear, their pistols, their M14s held at the high port.
'Squad, fix ... bayonets'.' and the rifle butts slammed into the ground, the blades were drawn from their scabbards and in a single clanking, machinelike click locked onto the weapon muzzles. Except one.
Crowe's bayonet skittered away. He had dropped it.
'Crowe, you idiot, give me fifty of the finest!'
Crowe was silenced by his clammy mask, but his body posture radiated sullen anger. He fell from the formation.
'At ease,' said Donny.
The squad relaxed.
'One, Corporal, two, Corporal, three, Corporal,' Crowe narrated through the mask as he banged out the push- ups. Donny let him go to fifteen, then said, 'All right, Crowe, back in line ASAP. Let's try it again.'
Crowe shot him a bitter look as he regathered his gear and rejoined the line.
Donny took them through it again. It was an extremely hot day and the darkness of his mood was such that he worked the men hard, breaking them down into standard line formation, flank marching them into an arrowhead riot element, counting cadence to govern their approach to the imagined riot, wheeling them left and right, getting them to fix and unfix bayonets over and over again.
He worked them straight through a break as great wet patches discolored their utilities until finally the platoon sergeant came over and said, 'All right, Corporal, you can give them a break.'
'Yes, Sergeant!' yelled Donny, and even the sergeant, a shit-together but fairly decent lifer named Ray Case, gave him a look.
'Fall out. Smoke em if you got 'em. If you don't got 'em, borrow 'em. If you can't borrow 'em, then get outta town because your buddies can't stand you.'
Then, instead of mingling with the silently furious, sweating men, he himself walked over to the shade of the barracks and declared himself off-limits. Let 'em grouse.
But soon Crowe detached himself and came over, cheekily enough, secretly irritating Donny.
'Man, you really put me through it.'
'I put the squad through it, Crowe, not you. We may have to do this shit for real next weekend.'
'Oh, shit, none of those guys is going to march with bayonets into a bunch of kids with flowers in their hair where the girls are showing their tits. We'll just hang here or go sit in some fucking building like the last time. What, you figure, the Treasury again?'
Donny let the question simmer in his mind a bit. Then he said, 'Crowe, I don't know. I just go where they tell me.'
'Donny, I got it straight from Trig. They're not even coming into DC. The whole thing's going to the Pentagon.
Let the Army handle it. We won't even leave the barracks.'
'If you say so.'
'I thought we were--' 'Crowe, I had fun last night. But out here, in the daylight, I'm still the corporal and squad leader, you're still a PFC, so you still play by my rules. Don't ever call me Donny in front of the men while we're on drill, okay?'
'Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Anyhow, some of us were going to Trig's tonight. I thought you might want to come.
You got to admit, he's an interesting guy.'
'He's okay for a peacenik.'
'Trig's not like that. He was beat up in Selma, he was a fucking hero in Chicago. Man, they say he went out twenty-five times and dragged kids in from the pigs. He saved lives.'
'I don't know,' said Donny.
'It'll be fun. You need to relax more, Corporal.'
Donny actually wished the invitation hadn't come, it was his half plan, dimly formed, just to let his secret assignment peter out, go away in vagueness and missed opportunities.
But here it was, big and hairy: a chance to do his job.
Trig, as it turned out, lived off upper Wisconsin, just above Georgetown, in a row house that was one in a tatty block of similar dwellings. The house was crowded, it could be no other way. The furniture was threadbare, almost ascetic. Still, the stench of grass almost levitated the house and made Donny's nostrils flare when he entered.
Everything was familiar but unfamiliar: lots of books, a wall full of shelved albums (classical and jazz, though, no Jimi H. or Bob D.). But also, no posters, no NVA flags, no commie posters. Instead: birds.
Jesus, the guy was a freak for birds. Some were his own paintings, and he had a considerable talent for capturing the glory of a bird in flight, all the details perfect, all the feathers precisely laid out, the colors all the hues of miracle. But others were older and darker, muted things that appeared to have been painted in another century.
Somehow he found himself talking to a girl about birds and told her that he, uh, hunted them. It wasn't the right thing to say but she was one of those snooty Eastern ones, who wore her hair long and straight and had a pinched look to her.
'You kill them?' she said.
