by Mac Hyman
“Yeah, I was kind of hoping he would make it,” I said. “The way I got everything fixed up for him.”
And I no sooner said it than this fellow called out, “Here they come! Here they come!” And I looked around ready to come to attention, but then I seen it warnt the officers he meant—it was Sergeant King and Polettie and P.J. and Chris, just coming in through the door. They come dragging in, water still spurting out of their shoes every step they took, their clothes still wet and their hair hanging down in their eyes. Sergeant King had one sleeve torn off his shirt and one of his eyes black, and the rest of them looked about the same—I guess about the worst-looking bunch I ever seen in my life. They stopped in the middle of the barracks, water dripping in little puddles on the floor, looking around at all the bunks and things and then Sergeant King looked up all of a sudden and said, “Aint inspection over with yet? Aint . . .”
But about that time, the door opened and somebody called out, “Attention!” and the Colonel and the Captain and the Lieutenants come walking in. Sergeant King’s head kind of snatched back and his eyes kind of popped, but then he snatched himself up to attention and stood there like the others done; and then the officers stopped right still too. They stood there right quiet, looking at Sergeant King and them, and for a few minutes it was so quiet that all you could hear was little drops of water dripping off their clothes and pattering on the floor.
Anyhow, I was standing there in the door with the wire around my foot and they come walking on back to where Sergeant King and them were standing, and I could see they was right disappointed in everything. Sergeant King and them stood real stiff, looking like tramps; and the Colonel first walked up to Sergeant King and looked him over, up and down while Sergeant King stood there so stiff he didnt even seem to be breathing, and the Colonel’s face looked all droopy and everything. Then he looked up and down Chris and P.J. and Polettie, and then he went back to Sergeant King and started all over again. Then the other officers done the same, and then the Colonel looked at the Captain and the Captain looked at the Lieutenants, and none of them even said a word. And I was right glad then I had gone to all the trouble of fixing up that latrine, too. I figgered at least that warnt going to disappoint them.
And it didnt, neither. You ought to have seen their faces when I give that wire a snatch! The Colonel finally come walking on back, just like I knowed he would, everything still right quiet, and then he come poking his face in the door, and about that time I yelled out, “Ten-shun!” just as loud as I could! He warnt standing but about two feet off at the time and I guess it kind of surprised him because he jumped back into one of the Lieutenants because it was such a surprise for him—anyhow, I yelled out that way and he jumped back and then I jerked up real straight and snatched my foot with the wire tied to it, and those seats popped up in the air just as nice as they could! They really banged too—they slammed up against the side of the wall so loud it sounded like the place was coming down.
So it really worked good that way, and finally the Colonel poked his head back in the door again because he had gone all the way outside when they started popping he was so surprised—he finally peeped back around at me and looked back in again, and me and those seats were standing just as straight as you could want, all of them right at attention! He just stared at them for a while. Then he looked at me for a minute, and he couldnt say a word he was so surprised. He stood there blinking his eyes for the longest sort of time.
But finally he got himself straightened out and nodded at me and said, “Yes, I remember you. I certainly do.”
“Yessir,” I said. “Sergeant King made me permanent latrine man.”
“Oh, yes. Sergeant King did that . . .”
“Yessir,” I said, and then I looked at Sergeant King and done the same thing I had done before. I knowed Sergeant King had asked me not to do him no more favors but the Colonel was right disappointed in him this time, so I told a flat lie. I said, “We thought you would like it. Me and him fixed it up for you.” I looked at Sergeant King out of the corner of my eye and you should have seen his face. It was the whitest I ever seen. He was right embarrassed about it. “He showed me how,” I said.
And then the Colonel looked at him and said, “Sergeant King ought to tell us some of these things. In fact, I think Sergeant King had better come over to the Orderly Room again and explain a few more things to us!” He stood there looking Sergeant King up and down and then he shouted out, “Right now, Sergeant. Right this minute! And dont bother to get dressed up. I want to talk to you just the way you are—I’ll enjoy what I’m going to do a lot more,” and then he turned and headed out the door.
Sergeant King followed them out and for a few minutes didnt nobody move. They all come and looked at the latrine and stared at it like they hadnt never seen nothing like it before. And then Chris come over and stood there and looked at me with his eyes kind of blank, and started to say something; he opened his mouth but nothing come out, and then he kind of stumbled over and flopped down on his bed. I said, “I was getting worried yall warnt going to make it back,” but none of them answered me; they just turned away, all of them but little P.J. who still hadnt come out of it, I guess. He hauled off and tried to kick at me but his foot got tangled up in the wire which tripped him up so that he hit flat on his back, which made the seats fly up and bang against the wall again, which kind of scared Chris because he come bounding up in the bed, looking wild-eyed this way and that, and then flopped back down again. So I picked little P.J. up and put him to bed; he was out like a light already.
Anyhow, I waited around for Sergeant King to get back and find out what happened with the Colonel, but they kept him over there for the longest sort of time. Some fellows who had passed by the Orderly Room came in and told everybody they still had him in there and that they had heered part of it. “He’s explaining how he was at the picture show and some sailors got to cussing the Air Force and when he told them they shouldnt talk like that, they jumped on him and beat him all night long. The only thing is, he cant remember what show he was supposed to be at.”
“He told them Forward March American Battalion!” the other fellow said.
“Yeah, but when they asked him who was in it, he said Willie Hoppe, and he warnt in it at all.”
“He’s sticking to it, though,” the other one said. “He said Willie Hoppe was dressed up like a Chinese.”
“They warnt even Chinese. They were Japs in that picture.”
“That’s what the Colonel claims.”
Anyhow, I finally begun worrying over what was keeping him so long and went over to the Orderly Room to find out. You couldnt hear nothing, though; the doors was closed and they had quieted down some. But all the clerks were setting around and while I was standing there, the First Sergeant come up to me and said, “Stockdale, I just wanted to tell you that you’re going to gunnery school all right. I think you ought to tell Sergeant King about it when he gets out. I think it’ll do him good.”
“Well, I be dogged,” I said. “I’m mighty glad to hear it.”
“You aint the only one,” the First Sergeant said; then he looked at the door to the office where they had Sergeant King and said, “I aint ever liked him too much, but anyhow you tell him when he gets back, will you? There’s just so much a man can take, and I think it might help a little bit.”
So I went back over to the barracks and waited until Sergeant King finally come back. We went up to his room and he was laying on the bunk with his hands over his eyes, holding his stripes in his other hand, and he didnt move when we come in. He said, “Stockdale, I give up. Just go away, will you?”
“I got some good news,” I said. “Guess what.”
“No,” he said. “I dont want to guess. I’ll tell you what I’ll do though. I’ll stay right here and keep my eyes closed for thirty seconds, and anything else you can do to me, just go ahead. All I ask is that it is quick and silent.”
“I just wanted to tell you I’m going to gun
nery school. I just heered.”
He took his hand away and looked at me a second, but then covered his face up again. “No,” he said. “No, you’re going to stay here forever and ever and ever. . . .”
“The First Sergeant just told me,” I said.
“That’s right,” another fellow said. “I heered it too.”
Sergeant King took his hand back off his face and looked around again. Then he set up real slow and looked at the others and said, “You mean he really is, and last night, all of it was for nothing? He was going anyhow?”
“It’s a fact,” the fellow said.
Sergeant King looked at me and shook his head; then he kind of smiled and shook his head some more and took a deep breath and said, “Well, no man can expect everything. I lost my stripes, but I can take it, I guess. I guess I can take it.” He stood up then and started walking up and down, kind of talking to himself. “You just have to put up with certain things,” he said. “There’s no getting around it.” Then he turned around to the others and said, “You think I’m bitter? Well, I’m not. Old King has a lot of juice in him yet. You think I’m going to let four little stripes ruin my life? Nosir, not old King! Nosir, I can take it, by God!” Then he turned to me and said, “So you’re going to gunnery school. You’re going to ship out far, far away and never come back no more and I wont ever see you no more . . . you think I cant take it? With that, I can take anything!”
“I’ll try to make it back every once in a while,” I said.
“Yessir, with that I can take anything,” he said. “Even my car . . . even . . .”
And then somebody yelled out, “Yeah, there it comes!” from the inside of the barracks and Sergeant King stopped and they yelled, “It’s outside, King! They just brought it in!”
He looked outside the door. “They just brought what in?”
“Your car,” they said. “They got it out there now. Look at that thing, will you? Hey, yall, look at that thing!” People were yelling to each other all over the place, running to the windows to get a look at it. It didnt look so good, neither. The seats was turned upside down and the back one was poking out through the rear window and all the other windows was broke, and it had weeds all over it and big dent in it, and it was the most peculiar-looking color I ever saw. It was hung on the back of a wrecker, parked in the front of the Orderly Room, and there was some APs going inside. Sergeant King looked at it; then turned away from the window real quick and lit a cigarette and begun walking up and down, puffing, and rubbing his hands over his face. Then one fellow said, “You could tell them you was going to a drive-in movie and you seen some boat lights and thought that was the movie, and you just happened to . . .” but about that time, the First Sergeant stuck his head in the door again and motioned with his finger to Sergeant King, and Sergeant King took a deep breath and started out again.
Well, it warnt until I got back from dinner that I found out what had happened. I stopped by his room on the way back to get my bags packed, and he was setting on the side of the bunk looking out the window. Some others was standing around but they quit when I come in, and turned and looked at me. I said, “Well, I guess I’ll start getting packed now. I guess I’ll see you around before I go so I can say good-bye, wont I?”
And then this fellow next to me said, “No use in that. He’s going to gunnery school himself. He’ll be right with you.”
Well, it was the most surprising thing! I looked at Sergeant King and he just kept setting there staring out the window, and I couldnt get over it for a little bit. Me and Ben and Sergeant King would all be together. “It just goes to show you,” I said, “that nothing bad ever happens, but what some good dont come out of it one way or the other,” and Sergeant King, he agreed, I think. But he still didnt say nothing, just set there staring out the window for the longest sort of time.
17
Anyhow, we went to gunnery, and me and Ben both got to be privates-first-class which means you wear a stripe on your arm, only we didnt get to wear it long because of this Captain that was in charge of our crew in transition. He was pilot of the plane and was always real particular, wanting you to wear neckties and such most of the time, which I didnt care nothing about. Anyhow, he stopped me and Ben up town one day and I didnt have my tie on, and we had a few words about that when I tried to explain to him how it was, which I found out later I warnt supposed to do—Ben said all I was supposed to do was stand there and say “No excuse, sir,” which sounded like a kind of foolish way to talk to a man—so one thing led to another and we was recruits again; and besides that he changed us off his crew and put us in another crew. And Ben didnt like that too much because he said we was now on the sorriest crew on the base. He said everybody knowed it was the worst crew there, but I didnt much think so myself because I got along with them pretty good. They was real easygoing compared to the other one; it didnt make much difference with them whether you showed up for a mission or not. Lieutenant Bridges was the pilot and he was a Reserve and was the only one of the officers I knowed much at first because the planes was so monstrously big and because we flew in the back and they flew in the front so that we didnt see much of the others, and didnt know them usually when we did. But Lieutenant Bridges was a mighty easygoing fellow and didnt care much what you done; he went around most of the time with his eyes about half-opened and half-closed, just kind of dragging himself around like he was walking in his sleep, only he just seemed that way, I think; he warnt really asleep but probably only half drunk, even though it was kind of hard to tell the difference most of the time. And as far as I was concerned, I had ruther been on his crew than the first one because he was so easy to work for. If you took it in your head you didnt want to go on a mission, he never would notice you warnt there nohow. I mean like this one fellow we had; he didnt fly hardly any and one day when he come out to the plane, Lieutenant Bridges didnt remember him and wouldnt let him fly with us until he went back to Operations and got a card showing he was supposed to be on our crew.
Anyhow, Sergeant King had got back to being a sergeant again by that time and had got himself a job in the Orderly Room, and me and Ben hung around a good bit, not doing much but going on practice missions, and Ben finally quit worrying about losing his stripe, and we had a right nice time. Ben still didnt like the crew much—he was mighty disappointed in them most of the time and said it was a good thing most of the officers warnt like them and all like that, but he liked flying a lot, so we went on most of the missions, not skipping them the way about half the crew did. And I didnt mind it much myself—it warnt much trouble because there warnt nothing to do in the back of the plane but sleep or play cards or set there and watch the country go under you. Finally I got a checkerboard and took that along, and me and Ben and this other fellow took turns playing each other, only the other fellow didnt play much because he was working on a model airplane that he took along with him. We never did get to know him too good, though, because he finally just quit coming altogether, and I guess he must have dropped off the crew because we didnt see him around nowhere for a long time.
Anyhow, there warnt much to it; when we was scheduled for a mission, me and Ben went and crawled in the back of the plane, and when it landed, we crawled back out, and never had anything to say to anybody except sometimes when Lieutenant Bridges would call back to see if anybody else was around, and I was kind of enjoying it. And then one day I happened to meet the co-pilot up in Operations, which was a right peculiar thing because we was just standing there talking together and his voice sounded familiar and he said mine did too, and finally we found out we was on the same crew together. His name was Lieutenant Gardella and he seemed like a real nice fellow, and when I asked him what they done up in the front of the plane, he said, “Nothing much. What do yall do in the back?”
So I told him about the checkers and the cards that we played sometimes and he said that sounded mighty good to him and that he would come back and play with us sometimes, and I told him I would lik
e to have him and that I wanted him to meet Ben besides. I asked him what his job was and he said, “Oh, I do different things. Mainly, I just let the wheels up and down and I stick to that pretty much as I dont care to take on anything more right now.”
“How long you been letting them up and down?”
“A pretty good while,” he said. “About six weeks now, ever since I got out of cadets. Next time we fly I’m going to let the flaps up and down too. Say, why dont you come up front and fly with us next time? Why dont you ask Bridges about it?”
“Well, that’s mighty nice of you. I’d sho like to see you let them wheels up and down.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll show you all about it.”
He was a real obliging kind of fellow that way and you wouldnt think he was an officer at all just to look at him—he looked like he was only about thirteen years old and you would probably think he was a Boy Scout instead of an officer if you seen him, only he always had this big cigar in his mouth and usually didnt seem real sober neither, which of course aint like most Boy Scouts as they usually seem right sober most of the time.
So I went out and finally found Lieutenant Bridges in the BOQ and he was laying down on his bunk and I had to stand around a while before I could tell whether he was asleep or awake with his eyes half open the way they always was, but finally he set up and looked at me, and I told him what I wanted. And he said, “Look here, you cant just go around flying here and there. Why dont you ask your own pilot?”
And I told him he was my pilot, and so he looked at me for a while and finally said, “Oh, yeah, I thought I had seen you around somewhere before. What did you say your name was now?”