Sergeant Dickinson by Jerome Gold

mean?”
    â€œI don’t want to be your friend, Lieutenant.”
    I could see the anger working on her face, and the search for words. Finally she went away without having said anything.
    I tried to sleep. Someone must have walked by the sergeant in the Stryker frame; I heard him ask for a cigarette.
    In the evening we watched the news and
Star Trek
on television. We watched the news because it showed the war and we tried to identify the units we knew. We watched the news to try to determine who was still alive. There was the news and there was
Star Trek
. The rest of America hardly mattered. After
Star Trek
the television was left on because Wendell liked to go from one to the other, from his own television to the ward’s, so he could see two programs at the same time.
    I decided that I had had enough, I wasn’t going to cleanmy hand tonight. The morning would be soon enough. When the orderly brought in the basin of water I told him that I didn’t need it.
    â€œHave you washed your hand four times today?”
    â€œNo.”
    I glared at him until he removed the basin.
    Wendell was inspecting his pubic hair. He caught me looking at him and grinned at me lasciviously. The cancer sergeant wasn’t crying or whining yet. That came with the dark. Jeff lay asleep. He had slept the entire day except when they roused him to get him to urinate.
    I closed my eyes and lay my good arm across them. Soon they would turn off the television. Then the lights. Then it would be dark.
    Cigarette tips made tiny orange suns in the dark. Smythe told ethnic jokes. There was the Polish nurse joke again, and another one about the number of Polacks it takes to screw in a light bulb. And there was a Jewish one: you knew when you were in a Jewish neighborhood because you could see the toilet paper hanging out to dry.
    â€œJesus Christ, Smythe,” somebody said.
    â€œHey, Smythe, you still banging Laurel?”
    â€œHer roommate,” Smythe said.
    â€œChrist, Smythe. Her roommate. Ain’t you got no tact?”
    â€œA hard cock has no tact,” Smythe said.
    â€œLaurel was looking for you this afternoon,” I said.
    â€œShe found me. She wanted to tell me that her roommateis seeing somebody besides me.”
    â€œThat’s nice.”
    â€œYeah. Laurel’s a nice lady. Not much of a fuck, either.”
    â€œI got me a sixteen-year-old last weekend,” said the door gunner across from us. He had been shot in the foot. When he was in hospital in Japan his foot had infected because the medics refused to change his dressing, they thought he was a malingerer. No one had asked himself how someone could discharge a rifle into the bottom of his foot. Smythe was a door gunner too. He had a plastic hip now.
    â€œNo shit?” Smythe said.
    â€œYeah. She’s my brother’s wife’s sister.”
    â€œYou should be ashamed of yourself,” said a sergeant from MACV.
    â€œI’m not. She’s got the same philosophy I’ve got: If it feels good and it doesn’t hurt anybody, why not?”
    â€œI didn’t know you were a hippie.”
    â€œI’m not, man. I’m a killer, but I got love in my heart.”
    â€œHey, how’s Jeff doing?”
    â€œHe’s still asleep.”
    â€œThat guy. I don’t see how he’s taken as much as he has.”
    â€œWhat choice has he had?”
    â€œHey, Adams, were you really a POW?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œYou were a POW, Adams?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhat happened? Did you escape?”
    â€œThey let me go.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThey cut off four of my toes and then they let me go. After about six weeks. They put me out on the highway and some South Vietnamese came by and picked me up.”
    â€œWhy did they cut off your toes?”
    â€œWhen we were shot down my foot got fucked up in the crash. I think they thought they were saving my foot.”
    â€œWas it