The supply sergeant’s eyes narrowed, all but disappearing into his fleshy face as he leaned back in his chair.
“You know, Captain, that remark could be taken as more than a little racist. Are you sayin’ that you think all us colored folk steal?”
As might be implied by his name, Chocolate Harry was black, though his skin tended toward a soft brown rather than the deeper black sometimes associated with his race. He was also hairy, but it was in the form of a fierce, bristly beard, offsetting his close-cropped hairstyle. A pair of thick-lensed spectacles pushed up onto his forehead completed the picture he presented as he regarded his commander with a scowl that on a smaller person would have looked melodramatic.
“Hmmm?” Phule said, looking up from his notes at last. “Oh. Not really, C. H. I was basing my assumption on the fact that your files show that you’re well above average in intelligence. My thinking is that anyone with even half a brain in charge of supplies for this outfit would be supplementing his pay by at least dabbling in the black market. If I’m wrong, you of course have my apologies. “
Harry smiled broadly. “Thank you, Cap’n. An apology from an officer is something a grunt like me don’t get every day.”
“Excuse me, Sergeant,” the commander interrupted, returning the smile tooth for tooth, “but ‘l said ‘if I’m wrong.’ Before I’d feel right about extending that apology, I’d have to ask you to wait here while your files were confiscated and the supply warehouse padlocked so that an item-by-item physical inventory and audit could be performed to determine whether or not I was wrong.”