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he treated us to the kind of petty nagging we thought we had outgrown. On the drill field he braced little Fogarty and said, “When’d yew shave last?”
    Like many of our faces, Fogarty’s bore only a pale fuzz that hardly needed shaving at all. “About a week ago,” he said.
    “’Bout a week ago, Sah jint,” Reece corrected.
    “About a week ago, Sergeant,” Fogarty said.
    Reece curled back his thin lips. “Yew look lak a mangy ole mungrel bitch,” he said. “Doan yew know you’re s’posed to shave ever’ day?”
    “I wouldn’t have nothing to shave every day.”
    “Wouldn’t have nothin’ to shave, Sah jint.”
    Fogarty swallowed, blinking. “Nothing to shave, Sergeant,” he said.
    We all felt badly let down. “What the hell’s he think we are,” Schacht demanded that noon, “a bunch of rookies?” And D’Allessandro grumbled in mutinous agreement.
    A bad hangover might have excused Reece that day, but it could hardly have accounted for the next day and the day after that. He was bullying us without reason and without relief, and he was destroying everything he had built up so carefully in the many weeks before; the whole delicate structure of our respect for him crumbled and fell.
    “It’s final,” the company clerk said grimly at supper Wednesday night. “The orders are cut. Tomorrow’s his last day.”
    “So?” Schacht inquired. “Where’s he going?”
    “Keep your voice down,” the clerk said. “Gonna work with the instructors. Spend part of his time out on the bivouac area and part on the bayonet course.”
    Schacht laughed, nudging D’Allessandro. “Hot damn,” he said, “he’ll eat that up, won’t he? Specially the bayonet part. Bastard’ll get to show off every day. He’ll like that.”
    “Whaddya, kidding? ” the clerk asked, offended. “Like it my ass. That guy loved his job. You think I’m kidding? He loved his job, and it’s a lousy break. You kids don’t know when you’re well off.”
    D’Allessandro took up the argument, narrowing his eyes. “Yeah?” he said. “You think so? You oughta see him out there every day this week. Every day.”
    The clerk leaned forward so earnestly that some of his coffee spilled. “Listen,” he said. “He’s known about this all week— how the hellya want him to act? How the hell would you act if you knew somebody was screwing you out of the thing you liked best? Can’tcha see he’s under a strain?”
    But that, we all told him with our surly stares, was no excuse for being a dumb Rebel bastard.
    “Some of you kids act too big for your pants,” the clerk said, and went away in a sulk.
    “Ah, don’t believe everything you hear,” Schacht said. “I’ll believe he’s transferred when I see it.”
    But it was true. That night Reece sat up late in his room, drinking morosely with one of his cronies. We could hear their low, blurred voices in the darkness, and the occasional clink of their whiskey bottle. The following day he was neither easy nor hard on us in the field, but brooding and aloof as if he had other things on his mind. And when he marched us back that evening he kept us standing in formation in front of the barracks for a few moments, at ease, before dismissing us. His restless glance seemed to survey all our faces in turn. Then he began to speak in a voice more gentle than any we had ever heard him use. “I won’t be seein’ yew men any more after today,” he said. “I’m bein’ transferred. One thing yew can always count on in th’ Army, and that is, if yew find somethin’ good, some job yew like, they always transfer your ass somewheres else.”
    I think we were all touched—I know I was; it was the closest he had ever come to saying he liked us. But it was too late. Anything he said or did now would have been too late, and our predominant feeling was relief. Reece seemed to sense this, and seemed to cut short the things he had planned to say.
    “I know there ain’t no call for me to make