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Show Flying - 3 prefers higher rank at the wheel for the greater speeds ahead. At sixty miles an hour in an Army jeep the road humps and rolls and bucks under you and tries its damnedest to hustle you into the ditch. John Henry clings with panic to the sides of the jeep, the back of the front seats, the ribs holding up the canvas top. The lieutenant sits white and grim and holds on to the grab bar in front of him. The sergeant, half asleep and hung over, flops around in the seat with each bump and hangs on to the steering wheel to keep from falling out. The road is steeply crowned to cope with the Texas rains and at this speed in a top-heavy vehicle you either ride down the middle and hope nobody's coming the other way or scramble desperately to stay half-way up the slope and out of the beckoning ditch. "Dear God, how the fuck did I ever get into this," says John Henry, scrabbling with booted toes for a foothold on the smooth steel floor. "What did I do wrong?" Twenty minutes and almost twenty miles later, a little west of Richland Springs, they find the lieutenant's truck stalled by the side of the road, hood up and helpless. Soldiers stand all around-the driver and co-driver worried and responsible, the passengers smiling, for who knows what a break in the prescribed course of events can bring in the way of happiness? But this yet-cool morning it brings only |
