Free A Special Providence by Richard Yates Page B

regiment, three companies plus a heavy-weapons company in each battalion, three platoons plus a weapons platoon in each company—”
    “I
know,
” Prentice said.
    “—three squads in each platoon, and twelve men in each squad.”
    “I
know
all that.”
    “Well if you know, why do you keep asking half-assed questions?”
    “I
don’t
keep asking. I
didn’t
ask.”
    “And for God’s sake don’t start forgetting where you belong. You’re in ‘A’ Company, First Battalion, One eighty-ninth Regiment. You’d better write it down.”
    “Goddam it, Quint, you don’t have to talk to me that way. I mean I’m not exactly an idiot, you know.”
    “I know you’re not—” and Quint went into a violent spasm of coughing. When it was over he said, “I know you’re not. That’s why it’s so goddam depressing when you keep acting like one all the time.”
    “You know what’s even more depressing? The way you keep acting like a real, royal, first-class little pain in the ass.”
    “Now, now, children,” said Sam Rand. “Quit your fussin’.” And there was a long, simmering-down silence around the stove, until Rand said, “How old’re you, Prentice? Eighteen?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Damn. My oldest boy’s half your age. Don’t that seem funny?”
    And Prentice said he guessed it did. “How many kids do you have again, Sam? Three, is it?”
    “Three, yeah. The girl’s seven, and then we got another boy four.” He eased one buttock off his chair and reached tentatively for his wallet. “You seen their pictures?”
    “No, I don’t believe I—”
    And out came a snapshot of them, blond and serious, lined up against the side of a bright clapboard house with the sun in their eyes.
    “Then this here’s my wife,” Sam said, and turned the plastic frame to reveal a thin, pleasant-looking girl in a flowered dress and a new permanent wave. Prentice examined both pictures long enough to make approving comments and then passed the wallet to Quint, who scowled at it, mumbled something agreeable, and handed it back.
    “And then look at this here,” Sam said, probing carefully in another part of the wallet. He pulled out a piece of ruled school paper, many times folded and stained brown from the sweated leather. “Somethin’ the oldest boy wrote in school.”
    It was an essay, written in pencil with many erasures and with periods that were almost as big as the letters:
    MY DADDY
    I love my Daddy because he is so kind to us. He gives us rides on the cultavater and takes us to the Fair and hardly ever gets mad. Now he is in the Army and I pray he will come home soon. He is a very good man. He is very fair. He is smart. This is why I love my father. Vernon Rand Grade 3.
    The teacher’s red pencil had corrected the spelling of “cultivator” and written “A” at the top of the page.
    “Well, I’ll be damned, Sam,” Prentice said. “That’s pretty great. I mean, really, that’s great.”
    Rand’s face was stiff with shyness as he stared at the stove, fiddling with his cigarette, picking a shred of tobacco from his lips with his social finger. “Well,” he said, “I mean, it’s pretty good writin’ for a nine-year-old. Or eight, I guess. That’s all he was when he wrote that, was eight.”
    “Very
good, Sam,” Quint said, handing the paper back. “That’s really very good.”
    All the tension was dissolved; they were ready for sleep, and as Prentice settled into his bedroll on the floor he began to draft the opening lines of a letter he might one day write:
Dear Vernon: I want you to know that your father was one of the finest men
I
have ever …
    On the following night both Quint and Rand were assigned to guard duty on the divisional headquarters perimeter, which left Prentice with nothing to do but sit cold and alone in the grain mill until a man named Reynolds came over to squat beside him and to confide, in a half whisper, that he knew a nice warm house down the road that was