The Long March Read Free

gathered, to that outfit. It was a battalion made up mostly of young reserves and it was one in which, he suddenly thanked God, he knew no one. Then he heard the Colonel go on calmly—to promise more aid, to promise to come down himself, shortly. “Does it look rough, Luke?” Culver heard him say, “Hold on tight, Luke boy"—all in the cool and leisurely, almost bored, tones of a man to whom the greatest embarrassment would be a show of emotion, and to whom, because of this quality, had been given, in the midst of some strained and violent combat situation long ago, the name “Old Rocky.” He was not yet forty-five, yet the adjective “old” applied, for there was a gray sheen in his hair and a bemused, unshakable look in his tranquil eyes that made him seem, like certain young ecclesiastics, prematurely aged and perhaps even wise. Culver saw him put the headset down and get up, walking off toward the operations tent with a springy, slim-hipped, boyish stride, calling out over his shoulder as he went: “Mannix.” Simply that: Mannix. A voice neither harsh nor peremptory nor, on the other hand, particularly gentle. It was merely a voice which expected to be obeyed, and Culver felt Mannix’s big weight against him as the Captain put a hand on his shoulder and pried himself up from the ground, muttering, “Jesus, lemme digest a bit, Jack.”
    Mannix despised the Colonel. Yet, Culver thought, as the Captain hulked stiff-kneed behind the Colonel and disappeared after him into the operations tent, Mannix despised everything about the Marine Corps. In this attitude he was like nearly all the reserves, it was true, but Mannix was more noisily frank in regard to his position. He detested Templeton not because of any slight or injustice, but because Templeton was a lieutenant colonel, because he was a regular, and because he possessed over Mannix—after six years of freedom—an absolute and unquestioned authority. Mannix would have hated any battalion commander, had he the benignity of Santa Claus, and Culver, listening to Mannix’s frequently comical but often too audible complaints, as just now, was kept in a constant state of mild suspense—half amusement, half horror. Culver settled himself against the tree. Apparently there was nothing, for the moment at least, that he could do. Above him an airplane droned through the stillness. A truck grumbled across the clearing, carrying a group of languid hospital corpsmen, was gone; around him the men lay against their packs in crumpled attitudes of sleep. A heavy drowsiness came over him, and he let his eyes slide closed. Suddenly he yearned, with all of the hunger of a schoolboy in a classroom on a May afternoon, to be able to collapse into slumber. For the three days they had been on the problem he had averaged only four hours of sleep a night— almost none last night—and gratefully he knew he’d be able to sleep this evening. He began to doze, dreaming fitfully of home, of white cottages, of a summer by the sea. Long walk tonight . And his eyes snapped open then —on what seemed to be the repeated echo, from afar, of that faint anguished shriek he had heard before—in the horrid remembrance that there would be no sleep tonight. For anyone at all. Only a few seconds had passed.
    “Long walk tonight,” the voice repeated. Culver stared upward through a dazzling patchwork of leaves and light to see the broad pink face of Sergeant O’Leary, smiling down.
    “Christ, O’Leary,” he said, “don’t remind me.”
    The Sergeant, still grinning, gestured with his shoulder in the direction of the operations tent. “The Colonel’s really got a wild hair, ain’t he?” He chuckled and reached down and clutched one of his feet, with an elaborate groan.
    Culver abruptly felt cloaked in a gloom that was almost tangible, and he was in no mood to laugh. “You’ll be really holding that foot tomorrow morning,” he said, “and that’s no joke.”
    The grin persisted.