If the crummy bastard could write!
That's how it should be.
It's those two fucken niggers!
Krist, I wish they could write!
Nigger pussy.
He thought of sweet wet nigger pussy.
Oh, sweet land of heaven, haint there just nothin like sweet nigger pussy!
He thought of her, the first one.
He had caught her coming out of the shack.
She was a juicy one.
Oh how they bounced!
Fresh, warm, sweet and juicy, sweet lovin sixteen, she was.
Man, how I love nigger pussy!
The snow came a little faster now, he noted.
He thought of Joe Harris, the nigger who had gone after his sister.
He chuckled, the memory vivid.
Jee-sus, We Fixed him!
Yooee, we fixed him!
The snow again.
If only the fucken weather wasn't so lousy!
Goddamn niggers, Lord.
What I have to put up with!
Sonuvabitch, I can't figure out what in hell for they went and put niggers in my squad for.
Only one worth a shit, and that's Brandon.
He ain't so bad.

His thoughts turned to other things.
The big shock everybody had when they found ol Slater and those others done for.
Kaboom for.

He had been pretty scared himself, wondering what the hell was coming off.
But he soon saw which way the ball was bouncing.
Soon came back to his senses.
"I soon came back to my senses", he said, aloud, to the young blizzard, proudly, drawing himself up, as if making a report to some important superior.
I was the first to get my squad on the ball, and anybody thinkin it was easy is pretty damn dumb.
Look at thum.
That goddamn redheader was the worst.
He kept sayin, not me, not me, I don't wanta wind up like em.
But I told him, goddammit.
"I told him", he said aloud They'll get the guys that done it.
That'll put the place back to normal.
Normal, by God.
Maybe it's a good thing it happened.
Maybe they'll stop it now, once for all.
Clean the place up.
They're doin it now.
I hear the whole bunch is croakin out in the snow.
They'll get the guys that done it.
There was something troubling him though: as yet they hadn't Five days.
Keerist.
Prickly twinges of annoyance ran through him.
His eyes blinked hard, snapping on and squashing some bad things that were trying to push their way into him.
A tune began to whirl inside his head.
One of his favorites: "Guitar Boogie".
It always came on, faithfully, just like a radio or juke box, whenever he started to worry too much about something, when the bad things tried to push their way into him.
The music drove them off, or away, and he was free to walk on air in a very few moments, humming and jiving within, beating the rhythm within.
He glowed with anticipation about what would happen to the culprits when they caught them.
Turn the bastards over to me -- to me and my boys -- no nigger ever got what would be comin to them -- reactionary bastards.
He had never heard the word reactionary before his life as a POW began.
It was a word he was proud of, a word that meant much to him, and he used it with great pleasure, almost as if it were an exclusive possession, and more: he sensed himself to be very highly educated, four cuts above any of the folks back home.
"Four cuts at least", he chuckled to himself, "and I owe it all to them".
The word also made him feel hate, sincere hate, for those so labeled.
He used it very effectively when he wanted to get his squad on the ball.
It came up again and again in the discussion sessions.
Lousy Reactionary bastards been tryin to fuck up the Program for months.
Months.
Hired, hard lackeys of the Warmongering capitalists.
Not captured, sent here.
To fuck up the program.
You guys remember that.
Remember that He heard himself haranguing them.
He saw himself before them delivering the speech.
He laughed, suddenly, feeling a surge of power telling him of his hold over them, seeing himself before them, receiving utmost respect and attention.
One day, Ching had told him (smiling, patting him on the back) as they walked to the weekly conference of squad leaders, "Keep it up, your squad is good, one of the best, keep it up, keep up the good work".
He would!
That was really something, coming from Ching.
"Really something", he said, aloud.
Dirty Reactionary bastards comin down here in the night and bumpin off ol Slater and those other poor bastards.
"They'll get them by God and let them bring them down here to me, just let them, God, I'll slice their balls right off."
His arm moved swiftly, violently, once, twice.
He felt intense satisfaction.
He was tingling within.
Before him, mutilated, bleeding to death, they lay.
It was as if it had been done.
"Bastards", he said aloud, spitting on them.
He halted, and looked around.
Rivers of cold sweat were suddenly unleashed within him.
The thought came back, the one nagging at him these past four days.
He tried to stifle it.
But the words were forming.
He knew he couldn't.
He braced himself.
Somebody'll hafta start thinkin.
He fought it, seeking to kill the last few words, but on they came out.
He was trembling, a strange feeling upon him, fully expecting some catastrophe to strike him dead on the spot.
But it didn't.
And he took heart;
the final word came forth.
Now he heard it, fully;
"bout takin his place" He listened, waited, nothing happened.
He felt good.
His old self.
The music arrived, taking him its rhythm.
Stroked him, snaked all through him, the lyrics lifted him, took him from one magic isle to another, stopping briefly at each Brandon.
He is good.
Damn good.
But a nigger.
Johnson.
Jesus, the guy says he is trying.
But he isn't with it, not at all with it.
When I talked to Ching about it, he said, Everyone can learn, if he is not a Reactionary or lazy.
No one is stupid.
That's what he said.
He oughta know.
It is plain as hell Johnson is no reactionary.
So you're not tryin, Johnson, you bastard you.
He looked over at him, lying there, asleep, and he felt a wave of revulsion.
How he loathed him.
Sleepy-eyed, soft-spoken Johnson, Biggest thorn in my side of the whole fucken squad.
He was the guy what always goofed at Question Time.
Why couldn't they have dumped him off on someone else?
Why me?
Why didn't the damn Reactionaries bump him off?
Why Slater?
Like a particle drawn to a magnet he returned to that which was pressing so hard in his mind.
The music surged up, but it failed to check it.
Who is the man to take His place?
The guy with most on the Ball.
Most on the ball.
Handle men.
Thoroughly Wised up.
Knows the score With a supreme effort, he broke it off.
He turned to the window again.
A gnawing and gnashing within him.
The snow was tumbling down furiously now.
Huge glob-flakes hitting the ground, piling higher and higher.
He stared at it, amazed, alarmed.
The whole fucken sky's cavin in!
Keeeerist!
Lookit it!
Cover the whole building, bury us all, by nightfall.
Jesus!
Somebody, got to be somebody If I don't put my two cents in soon, somebody else will I know they're waitin only for one thing: for the bastards what done it to be nailed.
Maybe they already got them.
He was again tingling with pleasure, seeing himself clearly in Slater's shoes.
Top dog, sleeping and eating right there with the Staff.
Ching, Tien, all of them.
Top dog.
Poor ol Slater.
Jesus, imagine, the crummy bastards, they'll get em, they'll get what's comin to em.
He whirled about suddenly.
It was nothing, though his heart was thumping wildly.
Somebody was up.
That was all.

"Boy, you're stirrin early", a sleepy voice said.

"Yehhh", said Coughlin, testily, eyeing him up and down.

"Lookit that come down, willya", said the man, scratching himself, yawning.

"Yehhh", said Coughlin, practically spitting on him.

The man moved away.

That's the way.
They'll toe the line.
Goddamn it.
Keep the chatter to a minimum, short answers, one word, if possible.
Less bull the more you can do with em.
That's Brown's trouble.
All he does is to bullshit with his squad, and they are the stupidest bastards around.
Just about to get their asses kicked into hut Seven.
Plenty of room there now.
All those dumb 8-Balls croaked.
You can do anything with these dumb fucks if you know how.
Anything.
They'd cut their mothers' belly open.
Give um the works.
See, he's already snapping it up, the dumb jerk.
Coughlin grinned, feeling supremely on top of things.
He watched the snow once again.
It infuriated him.
It made no sense to him.
He whirled around, suddenly hot all over, finding the man who had been standing before him a few moments back, nailing him to the spot on which he now stood, open-mouthed.

"You, Listen!
-- name William Foster's Four Internal Contradictions in Capitalism.
Quick -- Quick -- now"!

The man shrank before the hot fury, searching frantically for the answer.

Finnegan woke up.
There was a hell of a noise this time of morning.
He stared out the window.
For Christ's sake!
The whole fucken sky's caved in!
He looked for the source of the noise that had awakened him.
It was that prick Coughlin.
What the hell was he up to now?
Why didn't he drop dead?
How did they miss him when they got Slater?
How?
Then he was asking himself the usual early morning questions: What the Hell am I doin here?
Is this a nut-house?
Am I nuts?
Is this for real?
Am I dreamin?

From somewhere in the hut came Coughlin's voice.

"How long did you study?
How long, buddy"?

"For Christ's sake"!
A voice pleaded.

"Don't Christsake me, buddy!
Just answer.
C'mon -- 'mon!"

I'm no hero.
Did I start the damn war?
Automatically, Finnegan started going over today's lesson.
Capitalism rots from the core.
Did I start the damn war?
Who did?
That's a good one.
I thought I knew.
Why don't Uncle Sam mind his own fucken business?
I'll bet both together did.
I bet.
So fuck them both.
Goddamn.
Goddammit.
Just let me go home to Jersey, back to the shore, oh, Jesus, the shore.
The waves breakin in on you and your girl at night there on the warm beach in the moonlight.
If I hafta do this to stay alive by God I'll do it.
I hated the goddamn army from the first day I got in anyhow.
All pricks like Coughlin run it anyway, one way or another.
Fuck them.
He rolled over and tried to shut out the noise, now much louder.
He snuggled into the blanket.

Brandon dreamed.
He was sitting on top of a log which was spinning round and around in the water.
A river, wide as the Missouri, where it ran by his place.
The log was spinning.
But he was not.
So what?
Why should I be spinning just because the goddamn log is spinning?
(he asked this out loud, but no one heard it over the other noise in the hut).
Over on the bank, the west bank, a man stood, calling to him.
He couldn't make out what he was saying.
No doubt it had to do with the log.
Why should he be concerned?