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Show Flying - 67 Saturday and Sunday the men of C company see Tex and his parents in the PX, drinking beer and stacking the empties next to the table. In the light of day, Tex's father looks like a friendly man with a weatherbeaten face who sweats a lot and drinks too much beer, pioneer stock gone to seed in these soft times. His mother looks fat and mean and she laughs like a Southern sheriff. Saturday afternoon, John Henry walks by the table and smiles at Tex, but Tex doesn't look at him and he goes on by. "They got any nigger sergeants in your outfit?" Tex's father is saying. "Did you kill any of them gooks while you was over there?" And Tex, who has not seen his parents since the week's leave he got after basic training, who has not even written to them since he sailed for Korea fourteen months ago, tries to explain about Suzie. "I know how men are," his mother says as John Henry walks back with his beer, "but I sure hope you was careful with them women and didn't catch no disease." "Hey there, lifer, how does one hundred and sixty-two days grab you?" says O'Connell from a table in the corner, and John Henry goes over to join him. On Monday morning John Henry takes his turn at being barracks orderly. He empties the butt-cans in the toilets and sweeps hundreds of live and dead crickets out the front |
