by Mac Hyman
So I figgered I would go ahead and try to work things out before he woke up so he wouldnt have that to worry with and I got up and went down to the wash room where I had seen some folks going in, thinking maybe I could find the conductor and see if there warnt some way me and Ben could work on the train or something in return for some tickets the rest of the way to Martinville. Anyhow the conductor warnt down there but there was a fellow with a guitar sitting over in the corner strumming at it, so I sat down and listened to him for a bit and kind of got to enjoying it. He was pretty good on it, I thought. There was a blind man with a beard sitting in there too and then a fellow come in with a juice harp, and we had a right good time of it. They got to going together on a few songs and the blind man started patting his foot up and down and got right excited about it, letting the tobacco drip down over his beard while he tried to hum along with the music, making noises down in his throat; and then me and him got together on a couple of them. We done “Honky-Tonking” with the blind fellow singing most of it and me just coming in a little bit on the chorus, and then we made a duet out of it. They’d play the first part and he’d yell out, “If you got the money, honey,” and I’d come in on: “I’ve got the ti-hi-hime!” and then we’d both sing the last part together: “We’ll go honky-tonking and have a great big time!” and then we’d go back and do the other part all together, so we had a nice time on that one until we done it two or three more times and kind of wore it out. But then we done that one that goes: “That little ole chile of Galilee!” and he’d sing that part and I’d come in on the “Dee, dee, di, dee!” and he’d holler out, “Yessir, that little ole chile of Galilee!” and I’d hit the other part, and we had a right big time on that one until we switched around and I done the part about the little ole chile of Galilee, and he kind of got too excited on the other part and throwed back his head and went, “Dee, dee, di, dee!” and mighty near swallowed his plug of tobacco he had in his mouth and kept choking for the longest sort of time before we found out he warnt still singing and hit him on the back a few times to keep him from strangling to death.
We got him some water and he got all right again, and then I borrowed a mouth organ off the boy that had the juice harp and done the Fox Hunt for them and put in the baying of the hounds and the hunters and the horses and all like that; and by that time the old man had rested up some and said had we ever heered anybody go like a train with their feet. Well, I had, and I guess the others had too, but we all said No, and he got up and got to shuffling his feet around, back and forth, getting faster and faster with it until he really was doing it pretty good, except that I have heered it done better, but not no better by a blind man, I dont think. Anyhow, he was getting into it pretty good making the whistles and the sounds and all like that with his mouth when the conductor stuck his head in and told him he was waking everybody up, and that made him kind of mad and he cussed the conductor and the conductor cussed him back, and then he drawed back and spit a whole mouthful of tobacco all the way across the room but missed the conductor and hit the boy with the juice harp on the side of the face instead, which made the boy kind of mad so that he got riled up and said he’d seen folks do that train thing a lot better than the blind man had done it; anyhow they got to arguing some about it so me and the fellow with the guitar got to going on “Just a Little Walk with Jesus,” which kind of settled them down again, so then I got up and excused myself and went back to look for the conductor like I had started off to do in the first place.
Anyhow, I went back and found the conductor in another car so I went up and told him how it was that me and Ben had to go all the way to Martinville and didnt have money enough to make it and what did he think was the best thing for us to do about it, and all like that, and talked to him a good while about it. And he was mighty nice about it too. He said, “Well, you know, that certainly is a coincidence because I remember one time when I was in the 342nd Infantry and me and some boys went into Paris on leave, and we was coming back, only we didnt have enough money for tickets all the way neither, and . . . why dont you set down here, young fellow? I dont get to talk to many service men nowadays nohow . . .” So we shook hands and I set down across from him and we had a nice long chat about when he was in Paris which was a right long story that lasted for nearly an hour, I guess. And it was right interesting too, only the fellow kind of leaned over talking to you and got his face up about a foot from yourn and got his head to bobbing around so that after a while you couldnt see nothing but just the outline of him, and hear his voice way off somewheres. But he kept on, saying, “Yessir, I like to help out a service man when I have a chance because I remember one time when I was in London, and I always had guard duty there, it seemed like, and we used to have this dog we kept around the post and took him on guard duty with us, and this dog had a head that was too big for his body, and I believe that it was the biggest head I ever seen on a dog in my life because when he was standing still, the head would start going down and the tail would start coming up and the first thing you knowed, its head would be resting on the ground and the tail would be about a foot up in the air with his legs just dangling there, and one night when I was on guard duty, I had this here dog out there with me and . . .” and he went on like that for about another hour until I got so dizzy I almost couldnt think and couldnt keep up with the rest of it at all. And then I got to feeling like I couldnt move somehow, but after a while he reached out and slapped me on the shoulder, which kind of brought me to again.
Anyhow, he said it was mighty nice being able to talk with a service man again, and all like that, and was real polite about it, and then he wanted me to go along with him while he made his round on the train. So I went along, and he told me about this and that, and about a lot of other things he done in the service, and after we got through making the rounds, he took me back to another one of the train men and said, “Charlie, I want you to meet a service man.” So me and Charlie shook hands for a while and talked a bit too; he said he had a cousin in the army by the name of Dan Baker and did I know him? and I said I didnt, and he said that Dan was in the Third Army Division, and I said I still didnt believe I knowed him, and he told me what all Dan looked like and said he knowed good and well that Dan was in, but I still didnt know him, so he finally got kind of mean about it and said he doubted if Dan would know me either.
So anyhow we talked with Charlie for a while, and then the conductor took me back to another fellow and pointed to me and said I was a service man, and this other fellow was a little mean-looking, narrow-faced man, and he said he knowed it and went on off; so then me and the conductor went off to talk some more, only I couldnt set at it long this time because something kept happening to my eyes so I couldnt see too good with his head bobbing up and down in front of you that way, so finally I asked him if he wouldnt like to meet Ben because Ben’s daddy was a soldier too, and he said, “Oh, an old military family, eh?” and we went back and woke Ben up and the conductor set down, and I got a little bit of rest for a while.
And I guess I must have dozed off because when I woke up it was already daylight; there was red in the east where the sun was coming up and the man was still talking even though he was right hoarse by this time, but he was still going at it with his face poked right up in Ben’s, and when I got a look at Ben, I felt kind of bad about going off to sleep like that because he looked about as bad as I ever seen him. His eyes was kind of glazed something like a fish’s eyes, and his neck was twisted sideways and his mouth was hanging open, and for a minute there, I didnt think I was going to be able to get him out of it because he kept setting and staring that way even after the man stopped talking at him. But I reached over and shook him and finally his eyes come back to focus, and then I got started on how we had to figger out something to do. I said, “Look, it’s nearly day already and it’s about time for us to get off. And we got to figger out some way to make out the rest of the way. We been riding this train nearly five hours now and . . .”
“Five hours,” the conductor said. “Well, as for myself I been riding this train thirty-two years now and I guess in thirty-two years ifn you stop and figger it out, well that come to quite a few hours altogether . . .”
So then he started figgering out how many trips he had made in thirty-two years and how many hours that would be; he got out his pencil and paper and started working on it, explaining just how he was figgering it, and I seen then that he was going to get started again, so I figgered I would go back to the rest room a minute and come back and try to get him onto something else so I could find out something, only he got up and followed me when I left with his pencil and paper wanting to know how old I was. And when I told him he started figgering to see if he had spent more time on the train than I had been alive, and then he started figgering how much he made per hour and then how much he would have made if he had of made ten cents more per hour, and how much all that come to; he followed me along down to the rest room and I listened as much as I could because it looked to me after he got through with that one he would have to slow down a while because he was so hoarse by then, you could barely make out what he said; and I think it would have worked that way too, only when we come into the room, he was still talking and woke up the blind man who was setting in the corner so that he took another long shot at him and hit right on the paper the man was figgering on. It was about as good spitting as I ever seen a blind man do in my life, but it made the conductor kind of mad and he got to fussing around about it, and when I asked him, “What do you think we ought to do about getting on to Martinville?” he turned around and looked at me and said, “How do I know what you ought to do? Why dont you git off the train and git a job and make some money or something?” and turned around and stomped on out of the place and wouldnt even talk about it no more.
And so that’s what we done, once the train stopped. We got off and I found a job that day pushing a wheelbarrow and Ben kept count of the number I had to push; and it took us six whole days before we ever got up money enough to buy another ticket.
22
Anyhow, when we got back there that next Saturday, there warnt nobody around. It was as empty as I ever seen it in my life. We caught the bus out to the field from town, me and Ben the only ones on it, and when we got off we didnt see nobody, and I think Ben kind of halfway got it in his head that they was probably all out hunting for us. After the bus left, he stood around looking up and down the streets, not seeing nobody, and his face got right pale. The only thing we even seen alive was this old dog laying on the steps in front of the post office. Ben kept looking around saying, “I wonder where everybody is. They couldnt have all gone on passes at the same time, it dont seem like,” and he kind of whispered it when he said it, because it was a funny kind of feeling coming back to a place where there was usually lots of folks around and not see a soul. It made everything kind of lonesome and quiet and peculiar feeling.
Anyhow, we stood around like that for a while, and then decided to head on down to the Orderly Room, and we went on down street after street, not seeing a soul. I mean there warnt nobody around the PX or the drill field or nowhere, and the only sound you could hear was the footsteps you were taking; and you couldnt hear much of that neither because before we had gone a couple of blocks, we was both kind of tiptoeing along.
Anyhow, we were kind of creeping along that way down next to the hangars when we heered this bellow that would mighty near knock your ears out. It blared out, “Ten-shun!” so loud that it seemed to be just hanging in the air, and Ben froze right where he was standing. He give a gasp and come to attention and I done the same, and we both just stood there for a second. I mean there warnt a soul around nowhere and when we heered that bellow, it was pretty much of a shock all right. Ben stood there stiff at attention with his eyes about double their usual size, and I done the same.
But then all of a sudden, the noise started blaring again, saying this time: “Attention to orderrrrrs! Thirty-Eighty-oh-Ninth Training Wing, by Orders of the Commanding Officer!” and some more stuff like that with the words just echoing out in the air; and about that time Ben said to me, “It’s on the other side of the hangars. It’s . . .” and stopped and listened again. “It’s a parade, by gosh! That was just the loud-speaker, that’s all. Come on, Will, inside the hangar—we can see it from there!”
So we took off and run inside the hangar and climbed up on some boxes to look out, and there was the whole field out there on the ramp in formation. I never seen so many of them in my life, and they was mighty good to see too.
“My Gosh,” Ben said, “that really is a parade, aint it?”
Then about that time the band struck up with the drums going and everything and this fellow that had been bellowing over the loud-speaker turned and started walking real fast with his chest poked out past the window and on down toward the reviewing stand where we couldnt see him no more. Ben kept looking this way and that, saying, “I never seen such a crowd of people! Come on, let’s go over to the other window so we can see the reviewing stand!”
So we scrambled down off of those boxes and went over to the other window and scrambled up some more, and from there we was looking right down on the platform. “Look, Will,” Ben said. “There’s the Commanding Officer and there’s another Colonel, and looker there, Will: There’s a General! And who is that other one, I wonder . . .”
“I never seen him before.”
“It’s the Mayor,” Ben said, all excited about it. “Sho it is. I’ve seen his pictures in the paper and look . . . look . . .” and then he stopped all of a sudden. He looked at me with his mouth falling open, and then he looked back out again trying to point but just getting his hand about halfway up and just letting it dangle there, and then I seen what he was talking about. Because there they all were, standing there in a row so bandaged up you couldnt tell who they were at first—all four of them. There was Lieutenant Bridges with his head all bandaged up, and Lieutenant Gardella on a crutch, and Lieutenant Cover and Lieutenant Kendall, all of them wrapped up in so much gauze you wouldnt hardly know them. They was lined up there on the reviewing stand next to the General and the Mayor and the Commanding Officer. It was such a surprise to Ben that he just looked and looked and couldnt say a word for a minute. Then he turned to me with this big grin on his face, and then he looked back out again and the grin started coming off. Then it come back again, then went off again, so for a while there you couldnt make out what he thought. He seemed mighty glad they was alive, but not so glad that he was. He started to say something, but about that time the band struck up and then there was some more talking over the loud-speaker, and we seen Lieutenant Bridges and Lieutenant Gardella and them filing down off the stand and walking in front of it. And then the General stepped down there with them holding a piece of paper in his hand; then some other people followed and there was a lot of picture-taking and so on while Lieutenant Bridges and them tried to stand at attention with all them bandages and crutches and things. And then the General stepped up to the loud-speaker and started talking, and I mean it was something to listen to. Ben looked at me with his face kind of funny, and said, “They are going to decorate them, Will! Listen to that! Listen . . .”
And it was worth listening to, too. The General got to reading off this paper some of the most powerful sounding words I ever heered, all about how the Air Force was mighty proud to have such men as they was, and how it was because of such men that we had the greatest Air Force in the world, and all such things as that. He took on about it until there just seemed there warnt nothing else he could say about them; so then he started back and went through it again, and then after he wore that out, he got started on them one at a time. He called out Lieutenant Bridges’ name and said how it was that Lieutenant Bridges had landed the plane and had helped to pull the co-pilot out of the burning wreckage of the airplane, and how this reflected glory on himself and on the Air Force too, and so on like that. It was really something to hear too. It made you proud just th
inking that you knowed such a man by the time he got through with him, I turned to Ben to say so, but his face was all wrinkled up again, and then I heered him mumbling, “That’s right too, because he done it too, and he deserves it. Because he stayed there and we run off like cowards and . . .”
“Ben, that aint so! You aint no coward and besides I was the one that got us on that bus and . . .”
“Listen,” Ben said, looking out the window again. “He’s going to get started again.”
So I looked back out just as the General was beginning to take on over Lieutenant Gardella, and this time he kept at it a good while too. He said a lot of good things about him and went on to tell how it was that he had gone back in the plane and pulled Lieutenant Cover out of the burning wreckage after Lieutenant Bridges had pulled him out, and how this was beyond the call of duty and how it reflected glory and all: and then he got to going on Lieutenant Cover and the way he navigated and how he pulled Lieutenant Kendall out of the burning wreckage, which was beyond the call of duty too: and then he started in on Lieutenant Kendall who didnt pull nobody out of the burning wreckage but who at least went back in the plane to pull somebody out, only there warnt nobody else to pull out, which warnt his fault, so he had done things beyond the call of duty too and had reflected some glory; and then he went on for a while longer that way saying things that you never would have thought could happen with them in the airplane. It made you right proud just to be amongst them when you stopped to think of them running in and out of that plane, pulling each other out, and I really would have been enjoying it ifn it hadnt of been for Ben, so miserable the way he was.
But he was hating himself a good bit, and when the General said, “In view of the boldness and daring of the above named officers who have reflected honor on themselves and on the Air Force, each of these officers is being awarded the Air Medal,” I thought it was going to be too much for him.