SLPAD - 60

[Michael Bailey]

Rizzo seeming to inhabit a sergeant role, though he works some scholarly
flourishes into it.

Having stirred the pot for Baxter to expose a Levine sore spot, he brings
it up again for Baxter (who also may harbor some resentment) to sincerely
denigrate higher education & this time he uses an insult which (unlike
Bax’s probing) is calculated to roll painlessly off Levine’s back:

[Levine] is at least the laziest bastard in the
               army. He doesn’t want to work and therefore he is afraid to
let down roots. He is
               a seed that casts himself on stony places, with no deepness
of earth.”


            “And when the sun comes up,” Levine smiled, “it scorches me and
I wither away. Why
               the hell do you think I stay in the barracks so much?”


            “Rizzo’s right,” Baxter said, “they don’t come no stonier than
Ft. Roach, Louisiana.”

            “The sun don’t come any hotter, that’s for damn sure,” Picnic
said.

Rizzo’s comment has mollified Levine (to the point where he smiles) with
recourse to a New Testament parable (with which Levine is familiar despite
his Judaism, because of his college education, no doubt) and has explained
to Baxter enough to intercept any conversational foul balls heading towards
Levine; it’s also notable that the comments from Baxter and Picnic reify &
buttress the terms of the parable (stony ground and hot sun.)

That seems like good sergeanting, bringing them into amiable drinking mode
until 3 am.

Picnic comments to Levine as they head off to slumberland that Rizzo talks
a lot.

Levine comments that he reckons somebody has to.

When the helicopters take off at daybreak (about 628 am in Lake Charles, LA
on July 27) abbreviating their night’s sleep, Levine groans, feeling the
pain in his head, but Picnic is already outside watching them.