So the team turned to, under his guidance and soft but forcefully uttered commands: they walked through the precisely choreographed steps by which a flag-draped box of boy was smartly removed from the hearse, which in the rehearsal was only a steel rack, aligned by its bearers, carried with utter calm dignity to the grave site, laid upon a bier. Next came the tricky flag folding: the flag was snapped off the box by six pairs of disciplined hands and, beginning with the man at the boot of the casket, broken into a triangle which grew thicker with each rigid fold as it passed from man to man. If the folding went right, what was finally deposited in Corporal Fenn's hands was a per feet triangle, a tricorn, festooned on either side with stars, with no red stripe showing anywhere. This was not easy, and it took weeks for a good team to get it right and even longer to break in a new guy.
At this point, Corporal Fenn took the triangle of stars, marched with stiff precision to the seated mother or father or whoever, and in his white gloves presented it to her. An odd moment, always: some recipients were too stunned to respond. Some were too shattered to notice.
Some were awkward, some even a little star struck for a Marine as good-looking as Donny, with a chestful of medals hanging heavily from his dress tunic, his hair gone, his hat as white as his gloves, his dignity impenetrable, his theater craft immaculate, is indeed an awesome sight--almost like a movie star--and that charisma frequently cut through the grief of the moment. One broken mom even took his picture with an Instamatic as he approached.
But on this run-through, the corporal was not pleased with the performance of his squad. Of course it was PFC Crowe, not the best man on the team.
'All right, Crowe,' he said, after the sweat-soaked boys had stood down from the ritual, 'I saw you. You were out of step on the walk-to and you were half a beat behind on the left face-out of the wagon.'
'Ah,' said Crowe, searching for a quip to memorialize the moment, 'my damn knee. It's the junk I picked up at Khe Sahn.'
This did bring a chuckle, for as close as Crowe had come to Khe Sahn was reading about it in the New Haven Register.
'I forgot you were such a hero,' Donny said.
'So only drop and give me twenty-five, not fifty. Out of commemoration for your great sacrifice.'
Crowe muttered darkly but harmlessly and the other team members drew back to give him room to perform his absolution. He peeled off his gloves, dropped to the prone and banged out twenty-five Marine-regulation pushups.
The last six were somewhat sloppy.
'Excellent,' said Donny.
'Maybe you're not a girl after all. All right, let's--' But at this moment, the company commander's orderly, the bespectacled PFC Welch, suddenly appeared at Donny's right shoulder.
'Hey, Corporal,' he whispered, 'CO wants to see you.'
Shit, thought Donny, what the hell have I done now?
'Ohhh,' somebody sang, 'somebody's in trouble. ''Hey Donny, maybe they're going to give you another medal.'
'It's his Hollywood contract, it's finally come.'
'You know what it's about?' asked Donny of Welch, who was a prime source of scuttlebutt.
'No idea. Some Navy guys, that's all I know. It's ASAP, though.'
'I'm on my way. Bascombe, you take over. Another twenty minutes. Focus on the face-out of the hearse that seems to have Crowe so baffled. Then take 'em to chow.
I'll catch up when I can.'
'Yes, Corporal.'
Donny straightened his starched shirt, adjusted the gig line, wondered if he had time to change shirts, decided he didn't, and took off.
He headed across the parade deck, passing among other drilling Marines. The show boats of Company A, the silent drill rifle team, were going through their elaborate pantomime, the color guard people were mastering the intricacies of flag work, another platoon had moved on to riot control and was stomping furiously down Troop Walk, bent double under combat gear.
Donny reached Center Walk, turned and headed into the barracks proper, only crossing paths with half a dozen officers in the salute-crazed Corps and having to toss up a stiff right hand for their response. He entered the building, turned right and went through the open hatch (Marine for 'door') and down the hall. It was dark and the gleamy swirls of good buffer work on the wax of the linoleum shone up at him. Along the green government bulkheads were photos of various Marine activities supplied by an aggressive Public Information Office for morale purposes, at which they utterly failed. At last, he turned into the door marked commanding officer, and under that captain m. c. dogwood, usmc. The outer office was empty, because PFC Welch was still running errands.
'Fenn?' came the call from the inner office.
'In here.'
Donny stepped into the office, a kind of ghostly crypt to the joint vanities of Marine machismo and bureaucratic efficiency, to discover the ramrod-stiff Captain Morton Dogwood sitting with a slender young man in the summer tans of a lieutenant commander in the Navy and an even younger man in an ensign's uniform.
'Sir,' said Donny, going to attention, 'Corporal Fenn reporting as ordered, sir.'
As he was unarmed, he did not salute.
'Fenn, this is Commander Bonson and Ensign Weber,' said Dogwood.
'Sirs,' said Donny to the naval officers.
