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Show Flying - 59 The third platoon marches everywhere it goes now, and looks starched and polished at all times. Every other morning they stand footlocker inspection before falling out for work formation. Platoon sergeant Karafa walks down the aisle and peers with beady brown eyes into the open lockers, followed by the corporal his assistant with a small notebook in which the names of offenders are recorded. "Your footlocker's a disgrace. Pierson," says Karafa one morning. "Take his name, corporal. Look at this mess, Pierson. Don't you have no self-respect?" "Yes, sergeant," says John Henry. Nine other men in the third platoon don't have no self-respect and in order to get. some the whole platoon spends forty-five minutes being marched around the barracks after chow that night. Round and round the barracks they go, crushing crickets underfoot with dry snaps (the crickets come to Fort Hood every year like a Biblical plague, but no general has ever let the people go), clockwise round the barracks with glassy eyes and precise feet, cutting sharp military corners four times each revolution and beginning to hate the booming voice of their sergeant as they toil and sweat in last fires of the evening sun. Later that night a couple of new men start yelling and chasing each other through the barracks. John Henry picks |
