One to Count Cadence Read Online Free PDF Page B

was, my swimming pool. Not exactly mine, but right across the street, and I could use it anytime. Okay, I thought, If the sun comes out, I’ll just take a goddamned swim. It didn’t, so I unpacked my gear, showered, then slept through evening chow.
    I awoke after sundown. The rain had disappeared into a mist which gathered in fuzzy balls around the street Lights. My watch had stopped. Across the hall I heard the whirr and click of a record changer and very faintly the opening bars of Bolero, The hall was empty, quiet and solemn, as if everyone had gone away. I knocked and entered when a voice said, “Come in.”
    A very tan young man in his shorts sat on one of the cots, resting his back against the wall and a writing pad on his knees. He had one of those clean muscular bodies in hope of which ten million little boys eat Wheaties, skin the color of butterscotch pudding, crystal-white teeth flashing in his quick grin, and one left leg entirely masked in scar tissue. A burn, obviously, puckered and crisp-bacon brown scrambled with rotten off-white. (A bucket of roofing tar had been dumped on his leg from atop a new supermarket in Laramie, Wyoming one summer.) A magnetic deformity which drew a curious eye, a lingering look, perhaps even a poke with an inquiring finger to see if, Like a burnt marshmallow, the outside would crumble and reveal a soft, sticky white core. The rest of his body seemed so perfect as if to compensate for that leg.
    “Seven-thirty,” he said cheerfully when I asked for the time. He paused. “You Sgt. Darly’s replacement?” I nodded. He paused again, then did a good thing: he stood up, reached out a hand, and said, “Tom Novotny.”
    “Jake Krummel,” I answered, though “Jake” sounded odd in my mouth after so many years of being “Slag.” Never Jake, but always Slag, I no longer had the self-confidence or, more likely, conceit, to introduce myself by that audacious nickname. (All this a waste of time, though. I exposed my real identity the first time I got drunk.)
    He offered me a smoke, handling the ritual of the pack and matches as if he had just begun smoking, though he had been for years. I think he realized how odd a cigarette looked in his healthy face. He and I sat on opposite bunks, exchanging the amenities of strangers to the increasing volume of the music.
    Novotny reached to the only odd piece of furniture in the room, a chest-high mahogany cabinet, and eased the volumn down. The cabinet was rich Filipino mahogany, with carved jungle scenes on every flat surface which, when examined very closely, revealed a large number of couples, triples and daisy-chains in various stages, states and forms of — intercourse is not strong enough; fucking too crude for the artistry of the carving; copulation too limited; so I choose — cohabitation, for the figures did forever live in the wood. I had to laugh: a sexual stereo system able to handle LPs, 45’s and 78’s, tapes, AM-FM radio and Freudian nightmares.
    “Hey, is this setup yours?” I asked.
    “Naw. Belongs to Morning. Matter of fact, this isn’t even my room. I just come here to write letters to my girl,” Tom said. “She likes classical music.”
    A nice thought, I mused as I rubbed the wood. Three shelves above were filled with paperback books, perhaps arranged too neatly, too organized by subject and author. Dostoevski, of course, but no Chekhov or Tolstoy. Sartre, but no Camus. Just a shade off-center of what I would have chosen. Too French, too black, and too avant-garde for my tastes, the books still made me want to talk to their owner.
    “What’s this guy’s name?”
    “Morning. Joe Morning.”
    “He on my trick?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Seems to read a lot.”
    “Yeah. Says he writes poetry too, but I haven’t seen any of it. He spends too much time in Town to do much of anything else.”
    “Say, are you on my trick?”
    “Sure.”
    “Tetrick said you all were in Town.”
    “Didn’t go. Go to Town ‘cause