Prisoners of War Read Online Free

stateside.”
    “
You’re
stateside.”
    “But I want to be, and he doesn’t.”
    “How do you know where he wants to be?”
    “I know
exactly.
He wants to be about a hundred yards beyond the last rung of a ladder barrage, where he can feel the ground shaking under his feet when them eighty-eights hit. Maybe even a little closer, so he can dodge some nonlethal debris while he barks orders into a field telephone. He wants to wave his arms around and point at a little rise in the distance with a machine-gun barrel poking up over it, then watch his boys run right at it. And when the two or three of ’em that don’t have their guts falling out their shirtfronts get close enough to pitch a few grenades and cause a little weeping and moaning someplace like Hamburg, he wants to run forward his own self. That’s where he wants to be. Not in Loring, Mississippi, commanding what looks like a run-down church camp.”
    His father was thumping the wheel with an index finger.
    “I was hoping for bedpan duty,” Marty said. “Could’ve got it, too, if the division psychiatrist hadn’t worried about me running loose in a base hospital, drinking all that rubbing alcohol. I figure if you can handle Mississippi ’shine, anything else ought to slide right down.”
    “Martin,” his father said, “I don’t know what to say to you.”
    “Well, to start with, you might tell me about how my great-granddaddy helped roll up Howard’s flank at Chancellorsville. You could put him on a big white stallion, with a bunch of gold braid on his uniform and a cavalry saber that’s got engraving on the hilt, and he’s right there beside Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrell when them Tarheels get all confused in the darkness and bring old Stonewall down. Hell, you could let Stonewall speak his dying words to
him.
What was it, now? ‘Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees’? Nobody I ever saw die said anything like that.”
    “Go on and get out, Martin,” his father said, then glanced over his shoulder to see if the lane behind him was clear. “I need to get down to the headquarters. Picking season’s coming, like it or not.”
    Marty climbed out, shut his door, then walked around and opened the trunk. Reaching for his duffel bag, he noticed the corner of a red foil wrapper sticking out from under the mat next to one of the wheel wells, and he pulled it loose. A Trojan, designed for both comfort and protection.
    Lifting the mat, he discovered four more, all of which he stuffed into his pocket. Then he hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder, slammed the trunk shut and snapped off a salute while staring at the rearview mirror.
    If his father noticed, he didn’t let on. He put the car in gear, made a U-turn and drove back toward town, quite possibly to visit Mrs. Bivens.

FIVE

    THE COMMANDING officer—Captain Munson—appeared to be about thirty, a short sandy-haired man decked out in class A’s, his tie tucked in between the second and third buttons.
    Two color photographs in easel frames occupied a corner of his desk, positioned at an angle, so you could see the faces while awaiting your orders. One picture showed an attractive young woman whose chin was propped against her fist, the other a little red-haired girl with an enormous smile that revealed she was missing all but one of her front teeth. Just a few inches from the second photo lay a bone-handled .45, snug in its canvas holster.
    Munson made a point of staring at the file open before him. He paged backwards through it a couple times, as if he couldn’t quite believe something he’d read and was looking to correct his misunderstanding. Finally, he raised his head. “This is a little bit unusual.”
    “What is, sir?”
    “Sending a man to pull MP duty in his hometown. Especially one with your particular . . . experiences.”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Though I’m sure Fourth Service has good reasons.”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Any idea what those reasons