One to Count Cadence Read Free Page B

the 721st, but was too tired.
    Dawn is one thing, daylight another: I had several drinks during the difference. Sleepy groans announced the new day in the wards. All ambulatory patients were being awakened to make their beds and sweep and buff under them. If any managed a hundred-and-one degrees or a traction cast, they could sleep ten minutes longer. I thought this no way to treat sick men, so transferred hates from Dottlinger to the hospital. I was mad. (I say mad, in the literal sense, neither to excuse nor to account for the following adventure.)
    Lt. Hewitt came in. Poor Lt. Hewitt carrying her lack of flesh. She was always bright and cheery, her uniform so starched and white it glittered like an angel’s wing, her smile all teeth and well-brushed gums, as if to say, “Look at me! I don’t care that I’m ugly and skinny. Oh, see how well I’m holding up! See!”
    “Good morning, Sgt. Krummel,” she sang as only she could. “And how are we this fine morning?” She held the thermometer out like a stick of candy. As I tried to answer her, she stabbed me under the tongue, and crowed, “There we are!”
    “Where?” I mumbled.
    “Now who’s autograph is that?” she asked as she saw my sign. “Now, that’s not very nice, Sgt. Krummel,” she said, stiffening her back and propping her fist on what passed for her hip. “Just what is it?”
    I spit the thermometer at her and answered, “A valentine?”
    She was not amused.
    “A proposal?” I offered. Her fist skied off her hip. Probably not angry before, she certainly was now, thinking I was making fun of her. “Sure,” I hurriedly said, trying to make it all into a joke, “The closer to the meat, the sweeter is the bone. Leap in here and we’ll make the beast with two backs.” I didn’t think her father would mind. I laughed. I should not have.
    “You son of a bitch! You smart-ass son of a bitch!” she screamed, then punched me right in the nose. With her fist like a large, bony knuckle. My nose started bleeding and that, for some sanitary reason, made her even angrier. She hit me again. On the nose. She must have smelled the liquor because she stepped back and accused me, “You’ve been drinking. You’re drunk, aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Her voice screeched like chalk on a blackboard and made my teeth ache.
    “A man’s gotta have a little fun in this shithole.” The blood had dripped through my moustache into my mouth, so I spit on the other side of the bed. Bones hit me again. In the eye.
    “Hey, will you cut that crap out?” I asked.
    She hit me on the nose again. I debated hitting her (one of my ancestors, so it was told, had once hit a woman, but she had had a knife after him), so I decided not to. I spit a mouthful of blood on her pure skirt. It splattered the white cloth like dark sin, and I could not have hit her hard enough to make her jump back the way she did. A dirty trick, I admit, but better than hitting her. Also easier.
    “You’ve ruined my uniform!” she shrieked. “You’ll be sorry! You’ll pay for that! And this too!”
    I reached under my pillow and had a drink on that.
    “Don’t you throw that bottle at me! Don’t you dare.”
    God knows I wouldn’t have. No telling what she would have done to me.
    “Get out of here, you silly bitch. Get out and let me die in peace.”
    “Don’t you threaten me!”
    “Ah, shit… Hawww!” I shouted, then threw the bottle in the opposite corner. She screeched and ran away like a wounded goat.
    It was so quiet after she left that I could hear an occasional early golfer driving off the fifteenth tee and snatches of conversation and laughter from the fairways. The morning seemed fresh and bright, the air clean, and I wished I were playing golf out there instead of hell in bed. Then I was sorry I had thrown the bottle away because I wanted another drink. The one I’d had was working like magic in my stomach; better than coffee or food, it had awakened me.
    Then Sgt. Larkin,