Robert B. Parker by Love, Glory Page A

the regiment. We could take code and receive it without even listening, the right hand marking down the meaningless letters as the sounds went from ear to hand without interference from the brain. I liked being good at it. The battalion commander used to brag about us, the regimental hotshots. We were still shorthanded and dePietro and I were still working to voice nets and one CW net alone, taking turns, eight on, eight off. Officers didn’t bother us. No one else understood the code and we were in our way indispensable. There was always traffic on the CW net and whenever an officer appeared we’d listen to the traffic, break in with a Q signal to ask if there was any traffic for this station, ask net control to repeat the negative, and generally look busy until the officer left.
    “Knowledge is power,” dePietro said to me one dayafter we’d frightened away an NG captain from S-2 with a blast of Q and Z signals that sounded vital and signified nothing. He was leaving and I was coming on. He hung around and drank coffee with me before he went to sleep.
    “New batch of magazines from the Red Cross,” dePietro said as he finished his coffee. “Movie magazines,
True Romance
. Who the fuck do they think is over here?”
    “It’s okay,” I said. “I got letters to write.”
    “Your girl?”
    “Yeah.”
    DePietro nodded and picked up his rifle and went out of the bunker. I read the new call letters for my station, checked in with an any-traffic-for-this-station call just to limber up, and settled in to write Jennifer. I did it in a kind of notebook now, a journal, I suppose you could call it, but always I addressed her, and as I wrote I imagined her and felt her presence and the force of her, the richness and energy. Writing her, I could remember what her mouth felt like and what she smelled like.
    My Darling Jennifer
,
    The army is good for keeping you from falling apart. There’s enough organization to sort of push all your pieces together. My fatigues are tailored and starched, my pants have a blousing ring and are bloused stylishly low on my shiny combat boots. The boots are jump-laced. My fatigue cap has a fifty-missions crush to it and is kept stiff by soap. I keep my bunk made so tight you can in fact bounce a coin on it (except there aren’t any coins, just paper scrip—mpc). When I salute I have a nice honor-guard flourish to it. I can carry a rifle and a prc-10 for 15 miles in full battle dress and swagger when I’m through
.
I got the second highest score in the battalion, last week, at the range. If there’s a fight at the NCO club, there’s twenty guys will jump in on my side. I’m the only guy in the battalion who’s been to college and they think I’m a genius (except the officers). I run the radios on auto pilot and think almost not at all. I pay attention to detail. I do what I’m told. I go when they say go and stop when they say stop. I initiate nothing. At night I get drunk. If it weren’t for missing you, it’s not such a bad life. Time passes and I can walk through it without having to feel anything or decide anything. Good place for a hollow man
.
    I always signed them,
I love you
, and I put the date at the bottom each day.
    I just dated today’s when the weather report started coming in from I Corps. They sent it in clear text, which meant I had to pay more attention than usual, but even then so much of it was boiler plate that I could write out the word after I’d heard the first letter most of the time, and I only really had to pay attention to the wind direction and the numbers—velocity, temperature, that stuff.
    In a poker game in early March, dePietro won more than the battalion sergeant major had. He traded the IOUs for R&R for him and me. The sergeant major TDY’d two radio operators in from Division and dePietro and I went to Tokyo.
    We were taking showers and drinking daiquiris and smoking cigars in a hotel near Shinigawa station, the water cascading over us in hot