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The boy didn't answer. Fuselli walked away. "He's crazy," he muttered. The lieutenant was a stoutish red-faced man who came in puffing followed by the tall sergeant. He stopped and shook the water off his Campaign hat. The rain kept up its deafening patter on the roof. "Look here, are you sick? If you are, report sick call at once," said the lieutenant in an elaborately kind voice.
Fuselli went to sleep on the hard floor, feeling the comfortable warmth of Grey's body along the side of him, hearing the endless, monotonous patter of the rain on the drenched canvas above his head. He tried to stay awake a minute to remember what Mabe looked like, but sleep closed down on him suddenly. The bugle wrenched them out of their blankets before it was light. It was not raining.
Fuselli hurried towards the gate, brandishing his pass with an important swagger. Once out on the asphalt of the street, he looked down the long row of lawns and porches where violet arc lamps already contested the faint afterglow, drooping from their iron stalks far above the recently planted saplings of the avenue.
Whistling "There's a long, long trail a-winding," Fuselli strode back into the inner room. "Combien chocolate?" he asked. When he had received the money, he sat down at his place at table again, smiling importantly. He must write Al about all this, he was thinking, and he was wondering vaguely whether Al had been drafted yet.
They sat a long while looking at each other and giggling, while Eisenstein and the Frenchman talked. Suddenly Fuselli caught a phrase that startled him. "What would you Americans do if revolution broke out in France?" "We'd do what we were ordered to," said Eisenstein bitterly. "We're a bunch of slaves."
"The white-faced little kid who's clerk in that outfit that has the other end of the barracks?" "That's him," said Eisenstein. "I wish I could do something to help that kid. He just can't stand the discipline.... You ought to see him wince when the red-haired sergeant over there yells at him.... The kid looks sicker every day." "Well, he's got a good soft job: clerk," said Fuselli.
"Anything in our mailbox this morning?" he asked Fuselli in a hoarse voice. "It's all there, sergeant," said Fuselli. The sergeant peered about the desk some more. "Ye'll have to wash that window today," he said after a pause. "Major's likely to come round here any time.... Ought to have been done yesterday." "All right," said Fuselli dully.
"I came near bawlin' at the picture of the feller leavin' his girl to go off to the war," said Fuselli. "Did yer?" "It was just like it was with me. Ever been in Frisco, Powers?" The tall youth shook his head. Then he took off his broad-brimmed hat and ran his fingers over his stubby tow-head. "Gee, it was some hot in there," he muttered. "Well, it's like this," said Fuselli.
Behind her was the dark stove and above it a row of copper kettles that gleamed through the bluish obscurity. She flicked the omelette out of the pan into the white dish that stood in the middle of the table, full in the yellow lamplight. "Tiens," she said, brushing a few stray hairs off her forehead with the back of her hand. "You're some cook," said Fuselli getting to his feet.
"It wouldn't be right if I took sick an' died of this sickness, after keepin' myself clean on account of that girl.... It wouldn't be right," the man muttered again to Fuselli. Fuselli was picturing himself lying in his bunk with a swollen neck, while his arms and legs stiffened, stiffened.
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