Free Bless the Beasts & Children by Glendon Swarthout Page A

wiedersehen
."
    An about-face and he left Cotton alone by the truck, tramping down the road tilted a little on the rifle side, dissolving at length into mist. For a thorn of loss pierced Cotton, and his eyes misted. It was true: they no longer needed him. Standing there, he combed a hand through his red, matted hair. But after the pain a vast, ripe grape of joy burst in him and he had to hold on to keep from bounding after them, whooping and hollering, I didn't mean it, I wasn't flaking out, I was just putting you over a barrel to see what you'd do and now I know! You're great, you guys, great! Now we really can hack it, we can hack anything—because you finally don't need me or anybody any more! We're finally honest-to-God committed to something better than that peepot and we did it ourselves! So let's go, goddammit, come hell or high water or camp or the fuzz or our folks or the Viet Cong, let's go! Instead, he clapped on his helmet and took out after the troops. He marched, he did not run, counting a slow, dignified cadence and fighting down an undignified impulse to whistle. In a minute or two he picked them up by the white BC's on their jackets. He kept going, between and among them, and they cleared their throats in greeting and relief and closed ranks around him and had the grace, for which he was thankful, to leave everything obvious unsaid. But he was embarrassed and so were they and after a while he broke it. Step it up, he said sergeantly, get the lead out. Hup, hup, hup.
     

10
    Smartly they stepped out, full of beans again. But in a quarter-mile they halted in consternation. What halted them was the sound of their boots, scuffing, magnified— that sound and no other.
    For there was no other now. Out of pockets they hauled radios, thumping them and twiddling the controls, to no avail. Every station had gone off the air, every adenoid and A-string. They were orphaned.
    To divert them from this low, appalling blow, Cotton flashed his wrist. It was 3.02 in the a.m. Okay, he whispered, they must be nearly there, so no lights from here on out, no chatter or horsing around, and keep close together.
    This last was unnecessary. When he took the point, leading them, they ganged up behind, stumbling over his heels as he slowed and they slowed. Step by step they were turned from volunteers into conscripts. It was more than the loss of communication. In the cold and stillness at seven thousand feet they seemed skinny to themselves, and younger, and more vulnerable. And the presage of the night had changed. For three hours, through woods and towns and over mountains, they had been Godsped on their journey by the moon. It failed them now. It lay down in the west among some aged, August stars. A grumble of clouds blacked it out at intervals. Off the road and on again the Bedwetters yawed, directed this way and that by a senile breeze. They tripped on a secret. Weather might be born elsewhere, it occurred to them, weather might have its way with boys and nations elsewhere, but up here, on this plateau, at this lonesome elevation, it grew old and addled and weak. Up here, on the bald pate of Arizona, weather kicked the bucket.
    Then they were given a cloud gap, and good light. They were there. Another fifty yards and they would blunder into a closed gate. Beyond the gate the dirt road curved past the campground with its motor pool of vehicles, cars and campers and trailers and pickups and jeeps and refrigerator trucks, past smoldering fires, past the tents pitched by those who chose not to sleep in their cars, past the skinning shed and ranchhouse of stone and on into the range. The vehicles were more numerous than they had seemed yesterday, and the small army of lust and murder and indifference which, if aroused, would oppose them, seemed more formidable.
    Cotton held them at the gate. Beyond was the fenced lane to the pens and the killing ground where, in his dream, Goodenow had fallen first, then Lally 2, enclosed by the wire