Trick Soldier

 

They stood looking at each other through the hot haze of evening, and as they stared ten years went by and they saw again the swirling dust of parade grounds and heard the monotonous voice of a drill sergeant counting cadence.

 

Ten years and three thousand miles to that sweaty field, but they bridged it and the jungle about them faded away, their bars were forgotten, their formalities swept aside by recognition. They were once again “boots,” not gendarmerie captain and gendarmerie lieutenant.

 

Brittle gray eyes clashed with arrogant brown ones. Fists doubled into white-knuckled knots.

 

The new arrival had said, saluting briskly, “Lieutenant Flint reports to Captain Turner for . . .” And then he had seen. His hand had dropped insolently, his mouth had curled thickly and recognition had come.

 

Captain Turner’s own hand had stopped halfway to his helmet. He too had remembered. And there they stood, facing each other, rank, jungle, command all thrown aside.

 

“They . . . they sent me you,” muttered Turner. “You!”

 

Flint’s dark face relaxed into a malicious smile. His glance roved up and down the gendarmerie captain, slowly, hatefully. “Turner,” said Flint, his voice thick. “Turner the trick soldier. So you’re here, huh? So they boosted you up, huh? Captain Turner, is it?”

 

Flint studied the smaller man. Turner’s face was finely molded, the face of a gentleman. Turner wore a small, spiked mustache, waxed to perfection. Turner’s shirt was obviously tailored, fitting in close to his slim hips. The man wore lace boots instead of leggings, and the boots were cordovan mirrors. Even the khaki tie looked stiff, too perfect.

 

“Captain Turner,” repeated Flint with a hard, ugly laugh. “The trick soldier. Boots, starch and wax.” Thereupon, Flint unfastened his tie and opened his collar, letting his beet-red throat shine through the gap. He removed his pith helmet with its black inverted chevron—the insignia of second lieutenant in the Gendarmerie d’Haiti—and thrust it under his arm. He took out a greasy handkerchief and swabbed at his narrow brow.

 

“And I marched all this way in all this rig, just to report to you!” Flint let his mouth curl with disdain as though he smelled something very odorous.

 

Turner straightened his spine. His nostrils quivered. “Attention, you fool! Take a hitch in that collar and put on your hat. I don’t care if you’re Jesus Christ, I’m in command here and you’re to be second in command. Second, do you hear me? Attention, I said. Those devils are watching us. Do you want to wreck half a year’s work in this damned jungle? Now, salute and report.”

 

Flint looked down upon the smaller man. Flint’s shoulders bulged under his issue shirt, Flint’s neck swelled as his anger mounted.

 

Flint’s close-set eyes, sunken into his bloated face, drew tight until only the dark pupil showed. “Military martinet. Trick soldier. Aw, get the hell off your high horse. This is the jungle. We’re fifteen miles from Cap-Haïtien. We’re lost as far as the regiment is concerned.”

 

Insolently he looked at the men who stood in a semicircle, at a respectful distance behind their commander. These men were soldiers of the gendarmerie, native Haitians, trained and temporarily commanded by transferred officers of the Marine Corps. Because they considered all whites as lower in the social scale, because they would even refuse to defile themselves by eating with a white man, they were hard to command, hard to keep under discipline.

 

But Flint grinned at them and caught the returning flash of white teeth in ebon faces. “Native soldiers,” commented Flint, “commanded by a tin general.” He gave a sudden start.

 

Turner’s black .45 had been swinging on his hip, flap buckled back, allowing the butt to protrude. The automatic was now in Turner’s slender, small boned hand and the muzzle was trained on Flint’s brass belt buckle which glinted in the patterns of sunlight that filtered through the trees.

 

“Salute,” said Turner. “Fast!”

 

Flint goggled at the gun and then replaced his hat. When he started to raise his hand, Turner rapped, “Fasten your tie. Button up those pockets.”

 

Flint buttoned the pockets and arranged the tie. Then, his size-eighteen neck straining at the collar, mouth warped in a half smile, he said in a mocking voice, “Lieutenant Flint wishes to report to Captain Turner, commanding Company X, gendarmerie. Lieutenant Flint requests an assignment to quarters and duties.”

 

“Go into my tent,” said Turner, putting the gun away. “I must clear out MacLeod’s quarters for the lieutenant’s occupancy.”

 

Flint looked at the men and grinned again. Then he bowed his head and entered the small field tent which faced the cleared square, the drill ground of the post.

 

Turner’s palms were sweaty, but not from heat. He was nervous. He turned on the men. “Get to your quarters!” he barked, and they scattered.

 

Walking with stiff, uncompromising stride, the diminutive Turner made his way to a tent some thirty feet away from his own. Behind the tent, watched over by a rudely lashed cross, was a red rectangle, bare earth, startling and gruesome against the green.

 

Turner entered the tent, trying not to glance at the blazoned earth. Not twenty-four hours past he had buried Sergeant MacLeod there. Lieutenant MacLeod of the gendarmerie.

 

The field locker was open beside the cot. The white blankets with USN stamped upon them were spread neatly on the bed, ready to be unrolled. A Springfield, shiny with polishing and burnishing, hung from the edge of the cot, upside down. A belted holster, sagging under the weight of the .45, coiled over the edge of an ammunition case MacLeod had used for a desk and dressing table. The razor, wiped dry, was laid out, ready for use. A cake of red soap was still damp in its saucer.

 

Turner stopped in the dim interior and stared about him. His chest was leaden. A girl’s face stared at him from the opened locker, smiling with promise—for MacLeod.

 

Turner’s knees felt wobbly. He seated himself on the cot and stared at the girl for a space of minutes. Then he fumbled with the Springfield’s lashing and saw that his hands shook. He sat still again, looking back at the girl.

 

Twenty-four hours before, MacLeod had died with the sun, his chest ripped open by a soft-nosed slug, never regaining consciousness. He had been killed on patrol, from ambush, by the cacos. He had been buried at sundown without taps, with a few half-remembered phrases, wrapped in an OD blanket, six feet down in the sticky clay soil.

 

Turner started. He thought he heard MacLeod’s explosive laugh outside. He had been hearing it for six months, and now he would hear it no more. But the echos were still there, haunting him.