Day LXXX

An Angry Man

     In a flash I remembered he had been in the Army, then amid the madness, I recalled he once told me an old Army saying,

     “They can only kills ya once, but ya can take out a whole bunch of adem, befo they gits ya!”

     Everyone was lighting up, even though some of us already had a lit butt. From the window in his office, the lieutenant saw Sergeant Thomas waving his gun around in the station. He figured it out, and lucky for Ken, there was another door which led out towards Pinatubo in the lieutenant’s office. He rushed him out that way, and sent him back to the group. Then he went outside, and somehow calmed the sarge down.

      “Hey sarge, I share your pain fella!”

      “Wada ya na?”

      “While I was at OTC…a sailor ran off with my old lady- it broke me in two.”

     The sarge put the gun down, and we all rushed out of the station as the lieutenant calmed him down. He should have received a medal as far as we were concerned.

     That very afternoon Ken was on the next flight back to the states. I never saw the sarge again, and never found out what happened to him. Man, if there ever was an anxious moment for me to light up a smoke that was it. To be looking down the barrel of a loaded, cocked .45, aimed at you by an angry, mad man…damn.

     The first time I quit for a year, I did so for economic reasons. I was sending half my money back, directly to a bank. I hoped to go to school when my time was over, when I got discharged. That didn’t leave me much for anything.