| OCR Text |
Show 5~0 2 I read the d e t a i l s h u r r i e d l y , feeling that I was p a r t i c i p a t i ng in a nightmare-come-true. I couldn't believe that he wouldn't be home next month. I f e l t I had only t h a t much patience, that much lung-space l e f t , as though I would implode when his rotation date came if he was not on h i s way to buoy me up, keep me a l i v e. He had been coming back from the showers in a rear area where he'd been sent to await r o t a t i o n . He had put on a freshly-laundered set of u t i l i t i e s , just picked up from the base laundry. He walked toward his bunker behind a group of blacks who were 'jiving' - as he put i t - and smoking grass, marijuana. 'Then an MP jeep came up behind us and they threw about a dozen "partypacks" - l i t t l e p l a s t i c bags with about ten joints each - into a nearby f i e l d . The wind caught them and they scattered all around, like c o n f e t t i . The MP's saw i t , of course, and when they picked up the guys with the dope, they picked me up, too. I was clean, for a change - nothing on me, not even my wallet. But they took us to headquarters and searched us again. Then they let the blacks go and held me while they called my s t a t i o n. Then they searched me again and found a roach in one of the pockets. It wasn't mine - I swear i t . You know I wouldn't l ie about i t . It could have been mine, under any other circumstance. But i t wasn't' I didn't know whether to believe him or not. He had told me about the drugs in Hawaii, had even got me to smoke a l i t t l e grass with him. But I had been upset. " I t ' l l throw you off-balance and get you into other stuff," I had warned him. And from what he said, there was plenty of ' s t u f f ' to get into. But why would he l i e , when he know thnt I knew he had used marijuana? Almost everyone over there used i t , from what he - and the national media-said. It was easy to get and it |
