The Bullet Garden: An Earl Swagger Novel (4)

Chapter 1: Parris in the Summer CHAPTER 1 Parris in the Summer
God was late.

For six weeks he had been everywhere on the firing line. He was a deity with far-seeing eyes and an eerie professional calmness that separated him from every man any of them had known. He lectured, he taught, he named the parts and took them through the ceremonial intricacies of disassembly and assembly, and when the young recruits found themselves behind their spanking-new M1 Garand rifles, it seemed like he found time to kneel next to every boy-there were three hundred of them-issue gentle sight corrections, adjust a grip, test for a dominant eye, tighten a sling, slap a recalcitrant bolt handle forward, jiggle an en bloc clip of Government .30 into a breech, or press on the trigger-guard safety to which young fingers-the average recruit was 19.7 years old-were unaccustomed.

He never seemed to sweat, as if that human attribute was itself too intimidated to perform. He never cursed or humiliated or threatened, as did endlessly their daily custodians, the drill instructors; his way was soothing, as if he knew enough real bad shit lay ahead for them and had determined not to add to it. This disposition was part of a legend that was growing toward the ecclesiastical, while in fact he wore no ribbons on his tunics and never spoke of the islands he'd been on.

Though it was barely halfway through the year of our war 1944, it was said he'd already been on three. Most could name them: Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and Tarawa. The former was famous for its triple-canopy tropical rain forest, just the neighborhood for hiding the wily Japanese; the latter for its thousand-yard walk through the chest-high surf from amtracs hung up on unseen reefs while blue tracers flicked murderously through the air, killing randomly. He got through that. On the third day he'd been badly wounded, it was said, spending six months in the hospital. The Corps believed he'd seen enough combat and had assigned him here on Parris Island, the smudge of marshy land just south of Beaufort, South Carolina, and north of Georgia where young men were brutalized into Marines. He was the senior NCO in charge of Rifle Marksmanship, that central faith of the Marine Corps.

But where was he?

Did something dare impede the great Gunnery Sergeant Earl Swagger, or was this part of Marine stagecraft, designed to increase the aura around the man? They would never know. They swatted flies and sand fleas, glad of the island's singular mercy, which was a ramshackle roof built over the amphitheater that somewhat distilled the near-lethal sun, and talked among themselves, waiting, waiting, waiting. They were full of piss and venom. Culled hard over the weeks, those that remained yearned themselves to get to the islands and kill a bucketful of Japs. All considered themselves invulnerable, whether they were Harvard graduates-there were fourteen of those-or had flunked out of Frog Snot High School in Swampbilge, Mississippi. They thought they were crack shots on the nine pounds of Garand rifle death they lived with; they thought they could toss a grenade through a gun slot in a pillbox forty yards hence or go all Errol Flynn with their bayonets, outdueling the yellow enemy and their cruel samurai swords. All knew they would be heroes or die trying; none knew they might just die by whimsy, accident, or tropic fever. That was too much heaviness to the spirit to bear.

"Here he comes," came a call that became a ripple and then a wave as it coursed through the group. Indeed, a jeep came down Range Road through a meadowland of rifle acreage from a squad of administrative Quonsets a mile off, pulling up dust from the unpaved track. A PFC drove. Next to him had to be the gunnery sergeant his own self, big as life, maybe bigger, certainly the most interesting man any of them had ever met.

The sergeant bailed briskly from the vehicle, to be instantly attended by the DIs who supervised each platoon of the 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, and each gave a smart report to the effect that all were present and accounted for, meaning that the recruits were seated and rapt. This would be Swagger's last time to address the battalion as a whole and he had words for them.

Swagger was a solid six feet, immaculate in class A khaki shirt and, for the occasion, blue dress trousers with Marine red stripes, ending cufflessly in black oxfords so bright with shine you could signal a plane with them. His visored cap was white. He wore no tie but the shirt was starched hard, its array of pockets and plackets arranged to form a metaphor for perfect USMC-style order on the chest, and a perfect pie of T-shirt showed in the valley of the collar. No ribbons, just the dark three up and two...