Clyde Mongate has to be the crudest bastard I’ve ever known. Fifty years ago, when I was in the National Guard up in Alaska, he was one of the platoon sergeants we all had to put up with. It was a raggedy-ass outfit of goofballs and screw-ups, like most Guard units back then, and we didn’t do much for the pay and retirement time we put in, but I guess we did serve as some president’s master plan for keeping the ol’ U.S. of A. totally safe from Communism, Canadians, Bellinghamsters--or something.
Most of the men just drifted in late to weekend meetings, played cards, watched TV, went out for beers and pizzas, and took turns wrestling with their honeys in the back of the deuce-an’-a-half trucks. Some of us officers went through the motions of giving training classes on current and future weapons, chemical-biological-radiological warfare, the enemy around us, physical security, equipment maintenance, and the like, and a few of us fiddled and diddled with records keeping, especially whenever a brigade or an I.G. inspection was coming up. Most of our work was rated “disgraceful” whenever these inspections were given, but most of us, as they say in the real military, “could care less.”
Sgt. Mongate was a man about my own age, 29, and about the same size, but in much better shape and seemingly fearless when it came to saying to everybody whatever was on his mind, including inspecting colonels. He also had a habit of getting physical with a lot of the men and some of the other sergeants, and none of us officers really dared to correct him, including our ol’ man, Major Ziller, who was a bit of a joke in his own right. He could never stay in step at summer-camp parades, and, because he was always giving a little jump every four or five steps to try to get synchronized with the rest of us, we nicknamed him Major Hippity-Hopper. But that’s another story.
Ol’ Clyde Mongate was fairly damn gross in his humor, too. Besides smiling in a squinty way while he was slapping someone around, he was full of the foulest so-called jokes and stories we’d ever heard, and he would come into the orderly room and tell ‘em non-stop some days, probably knowing that we, especially Major Z., didn’t like ‘em but didn’t dare say anything. At most, some of us lieutenants and captains would get up and say we had to give a class or had to go to the latrine or something.
Worst thing of all was Clyde seems to have been on a special diet designed to irritate us, because he’d often punctuate his stories by raising his leg and breaking wind in the loudest, longest, rippingest noises we’d ever heard come from a human body, and he would usually make some comment of self-congratulation such as “Boy, whatever died inside o’ me sure smells sweet now, don’t she, Major?” Usually some of us would open a couple of windows even in January, while Clyde laughed and fanned the air around his butt with Major Z.’s newspaper.
The closest thing to poetic justice came when we had one of those periodic earthquakes up here, and we were called out to assist, though some of us doubted anyone had the authority to do that to us. Our unit was sent to a nearby coastal town that had had heavy flooding destroy most of it. We were supposed to help keep looting to a minimum and assist in the recovery of any bodies. Sgt. Mongate looked forward to the duty as if it was literally a picnic. In fact, he made sure that the men under him had loaded six cases of beer and half a case of Canadian whiskey into his platoon’s truck before we left, though the ol’ man had expressly forbidden anybody to bring along alcoholic beverages of any kind. Before we moved out in our vehicles, Clyde even teased Major Z. by saying he was bringing one or two of his girlfriends with him, though he didn’t really do that.
When we arrive at the disaster site we’d been assigned to, it was all pretty grim and pathetic. Little cats and dogs and a few full-grown huskies were dead and bloated in the wet, slimy streets, and Sgt. Mongate strutted around and poked many of ‘em with an old ski pole he’d found to try to make ‘em pop. Some times he’d pick up the body of somebody’s pet and toss it at one of the men or at another sergeant as a kind of joke. Once he jumped up and down on a drowned collie to make its corpse fart when Major Z. was walking by.
We only found two human bodies, an old woman’s and a young Indian man’s. Clyde pulled the woman’s shirt open to expose her bare chest and bloated belly, and most of us shut our eyes and turned away. The man’s body, which had been in the sun, was even more bloated, and its right arm was nearly torn off from where a pickup truck had rolled over on him. While most of us stood back about ten feet from the ripe, water-soaked corpse, Clyde went right up to it, grabbed its right hand as if in greeting, shook it heartily, and laughed in his characteristic way. Then, fascinated by the looseness of the arm, he bent down to examine the cause.
“This son of a bitch will need to be fingerprinted for I.D. purposes, Major. And we don’t want any material evidence to fall off and get lost, do we?” said Clyde, as he put his right foot in the corpse’s armpit and pulled on the arm with both hands, the way doctors or medics do when they’re trying to put a dislocated shoulder back in place. Ol’ Clyde, of course, was just trying to rip the poor dead guy’s arm off.
Strong as he was, though, Clyde could not get the corpse’s tendons and muscles to give way, so he bent down with his large pocket knife and cut away the flannel shirt sleeve and then began jabbing and sawing away at the dead flesh. It must have taken him five minutes to succeed, and then he held the arm aloft and shook it as if in victory. Finally, Clyde undid the dead man’s wide leather belt and jeans. All of us watched and said nothing, as if hypnotized by the grossness of it. Clyde stuffed the severed arm, stump first, into the waist of the corpse’s undershorts, made a gross comment about him having a huge five-fingered penis that would please all the ladies, even when dead, and then he fastened the corpse’s belt tightly over its elbow.
“There, Chief,” he said. “That should hold you till the coroner gets y’! Just remember to shake it well next time y’ take a piss!”
The ol’ man just stood looking off at the low gray clouds hanging over the inlet and sucked on his unlit pipe while one of the lieutenants had the two bodies covered with blankets and carried up to the field ambulance on a couple of stretchers. We continued to look for more bodies but fortunately found no more, and around two in the afternoon we had our late noon meal.
Luke-warm burgers, cheese-covered sliced potatoes, boiled carrot wheels, G.I. coffee, and a couple of glazed donuts were served up from our so-called field kitchen. Most of us had little appetite for a couple of reasons, but Sgt. Mongate sent one of the privates back through the line twice to refill his tray for him. Then he openly poured whiskey into his coffee cup, looking straight at our commander.
“Really great chow, Major Z.!” he said. “The only thing I miss is the G.I. beans we get served every weekend back at the Guard center. No appetite, Captain? ‘S matter, Lieutenant? You ain’t touchin’ your food. ‘S a shame to waste good food!”
Clyde smirked and then looked up and saw that a couple of the privates were passing out large apples among the men.
“Hey, turd! Yeah, you! Gi’ me three o’ them apples--now!”
One by one, Clyde took the three apples, held them up above eye level as if he was appraising pearls or diamonds, and then he carefully peeled them, cut them into eighths, and devoured them. We watched his performance as if we were watching him having sex in a porno movie. Each of his moves was exaggerated and self-conscious because he had an audience’s attention. He was the only person still eating, and he licked each wedge of apple in an almost obscene manner. When he was done, he licked his pocket knife’s blade carefully on both sides.
“Don’t want to lose any o’ the healthy juices,” he said. “They’re the sweetest part, and I understand from my informants that they’re chock full o’ vitamins. Got t’ keep up my strength for this mission, right, Major?”
Sgt. Mongate was looking right at Major Z. in a familiar, insolent manner as they each sat on the running boards of two deuce-an’-a-half trucks about twelve feet apart. The ol’ man, like the rest of us, had watched Mongate’s performance in silence for the last ten minutes. Now Major Z. took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, smiled in his mild way, and cleared his throat.
“Sgt. Mongate,” he said, “isn’t that the same pocket knife you used only an hour ago to saw off the arm of that bloated wet cadaver down there?”
Clyde’s smile froze and his eyes became oddly unfocused as he considered his commander’s question. His mouth drooped open, and then suddenly pieces of his burgers, potatoes, half-chewed carrot wheels, whiskey-coffee, donuts, and chunks of apple all came up. Clyde tried to lean forward, but from his slouched position on the running board he was unsuccessful. Most of his meal landed on his lower chest and lap, and some went as far as his knees. By the time he was vertical, the dry heaves had begun.
The ol’ man smiled, struck a match, slowly drew in on his pipe, and nodded his head twice in satisfaction.
