Place of duty--7

Place of duty—7

        “Well,” Hunter said, “I ain’t sayin I agree with where you did it, but, hey, when you get a chance to get some, take it.”

        Kincaid nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He laughed. “Hell, when she took that pin from her hair and her hair just kind of spilled all over her shoulders, I wasn’t thinking at all. I knew what she wanted to do, and I wasn’t about to argue with her. Anyway, when it was all done and we lay there, breathing hard, I heard a voice from across the room. It was Sergeant Miller. I don’t know when he came in. Verna and I weren’t exactly paying attention to anything except each other. Sergeant Miller stood in the door, and he said, ‘You about done there?’ I didn't say anything, I just got up and started putting my uniform back on. Sergeant Miller said, ‘Who’s this? Some hide you picked up?’ Verna said, ‘I’m Jimmy’s aunt.’ She lay there on the couch, not at all embarrassed. Sergeant Miller was, though. He said, ‘Oh. Well, ma’am, I suggest you get dressed and allow Specialist Kincaid to return to duty.’ He walked out of the room. When I was dressed, I went back to the room where the coffin was. I guess Verna got dressed and left. Sergeant Miller was in the room with the casket. He didn’t chew my ass or anything. He just said, ‘You left your place of duty.’ I said, ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ He said he wasn’t going to mention any of what happened to anybody. There was no need to embarrass the family, he said. Then he said, ‘But when we get back on post, you will immediately apply for transfer. Somewhere, anywhere.’ He said the post personnel NCO was a friend of his, and the transfer would be expedited with unusual speed.”

        “Well,” Hunter said, “the Man don’t like it when you fuck up. And you did fuck up.”

        “I did that,” Kincaid said.
         Billy D said, “Ol Jimmy didn’t care. I mean, if he’d been in your position and you’d been in his, you think he’d of passed it up?”

        Wizard laughed. “Billy D, for once I got to agree with you. There ain’t a one of us wouldn’t have done what Kincaid did.”

        Kincaid said, “That’s not the weirdest funeral I was at. I mean, yeah, I screwed up, and I’m paying for it.”

        “What,” Wizard said. “You had a funeral and two women threw themselves at you?”

        “It wasn’t like that at all,” Kincaid said. “Two weeks before, we’d done a funeral at some little town in Missouri. We attended the services at the church, and when we were at the cemetery, the deceased’s mother came up to Sergeant Miller. I was standing nearby, and I heard her say there was a problem. Sergeant Miller asked what the problem was, and this woman said ... she said, ‘One of those soldiers is colored. We can’t have a colored soldier at my boy’s funeral.’”

        “No shit?” Hunter said.

        Kincaid nodded. “That’s what she said. I wanted to walk over and ask her what she thought her son might have to say about a colored soldier at his funeral. I mean, the dead guy was a grunt, you know? But, that wouldn’t have been the proper thing to do.”

        Hunter asked, “What happened?”

        “Well,” Kincaid said, “Sergeant Miller talked to the soldier in question, Specialist Sam Parsons. Parsons was from somewhere in Georgia. I don’t know what Parsons really thought, but he told Sergeant Miller that if it would make the mother happy, he wouldn’t participate in the service.” Kincaid drank at his beer. “Like I said, things are different back home.”