Chapter 6
Jimmy Scanlon and the other bored technical sergeants spaced themselves every few conscripts behind the firing line.
The gunnery range was quiet enough. Distant artillery fired: boomp boomp boomp. Everyone conspicuously ignored the explosions: already jaded; at least so you'd pretend. Then maybe you'd recall that rifle training was just a first step. Learn how to use a saw? You cut wood. Learn how to use a powerful man-killing device like a rifle? Eventually, you did what you were trained by the army to do.
He shouted, "You love your rifle like you love your very own mother."
"Yes, top sergeant!"
He paced the red dirt of Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. He was the cock and this was his walk.
"If you did not particularly love that bitch who pushed you without mercy into my god-forsaken world," he yelled down at them, because they were prone and he was upright, "then I pity you. But that is not the army's problem." This also sounded sincere, "I pity them, your mothers," top sergeant said. "Bless their hearts, I pity them. They had to push your empty, ungrateful heads out between their legs. The same road your da went in. And it hurt like hell. And you are all disappointments."
He got louder. "For all the disappointment those good women, your sainted mothers, have already suffered at your hands...." He seemed to run out of contempt. "You all were children. Now you must put aside childish things. Get your head out of your ass." Sounding blind angry now, past any reasonable anger.
A series of tropical storms had swept through; one queued up behind the next, making the draftees miserable. The pinewoods smelled strong as a fresh-bloomed rose.
It was one of the few things Jimmy truly liked about Louisiana, that