Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

  “We can lay it in the fire to cook it,” Emmett says.

  “No way, we’ll cook it like hot dogs.”

  Cochran cuts off a chunk and spears it with a sharpened stick.

  “Who died and left you boss?” Emmett growls.

  “Hey, who’s fucking this puppy?”

  Before Emmett gets his dander up too high I say, “Better this way. You don’t want to get any ashes on the meat. That’s gritty shit. What you might call abradant.” I spear a chunk and stick it over the fire.

  “How do you spell that?” Cochran says.

  “G-R-I-T—“ I start in, but he interrupts, “You know what I mean, wiseass,” so I spell it for him and he doesn’t argue; there’s another point for me in the neverending spelling bee.

  We’re blowing on the hot dripping chunks and nibbling at the edges, so Emmett, snarling and grumpy, gives in and starts roasting a piece on a stick.

  One of the rules of the training exercise is we’re not to have any contact with the natives. A river runs along the far edge of the training area and while we’re using a shoelace and a bent paper clip to try and catch a fish, a boat floats past with two locals aboard. Cochran hails them, and after a short palaver, he gets us to empty our pockets and pool the change we’ve got left after our captors confiscated our wallets. Emmett bitches about breaking the rules, but the snake is history and he’s as hungry as we are. Cochran buys a small sack of grits and a bucket of lard from the fishermen and we are relishing eating a good meal before we head out on a speed run to the pickup spot.

  We build a fire and start cooking.

  The smell of the grits and the lard is driving us nuts but Cochran insists we can’t eat until it is completely cooked, otherwise we’ll be swelly belly and hobbling like goats with the cramps. Emmett has put up with being outvoted every time there’s a conflict long enough. This is beyond democracy.

  “Hell with you, you fucking gorilla. I’m going to eat those grits and eat them right now.”

  He sticks his knife in the bucket and jams a mouthful down. Then gulps the glop until he is full. Cochran and I wait until the grits are cooked and lick up what’s left.

  At dawn’s light we spring from our hidey-hole and sprint for the chopper, a shitting, farting, belching, puking run for Emmett, but he is determined to make it in spite of his stomach being swole up like a pregnant sow. With the make-believe enemy Marine grunts chasing close behind, Emmett collapses after us into the chopper and we settle aboard and return to the base to the cheers of the welcoming pilots and the grumbles of the disguntled grunts, irked they didn’t get a chance to work us over in the POW camp.

  “It was touch and glow there for a while,” Cochran says, “but Grits here sucked it up and we were able to come home allee allee in free.”

  What’s in a name? A Grits by any other name would swell as much.

  “No thanks to you, you fucking gorilla,” Emmett grouses.

  “Hey, where’s my rattle?” Cochran says, feeling around his belt. Everyone laughs.

  “Your baby rattle?” One of the pilots says.

  “No, from the rattlesnake we killed and ate …” He eyeballs Emmett. “Grits, did you? …”

  Emmett won’t have any of it, he’s still cramped up, shakes his head and turns away. Cochran eyes him, suspicious, but lets it go. Now that we’re back on base, Emmett is again the experienced pilot, we’re the newbies.

  Emmett is an all-American American. Always ready to give a quick coach’s halftime pep talk to the squadron, his topic the threat of the Red Horde—they win in Korea, they win in Southeast Asia, next thing you know it’s the Phillipines, then Hawaii and finally, San Francisco, raping and brainwashing and fathering a new horde of commie bastards. Not on Emmett’s watch, and he figures hard, clean, dynamic team play will win the war against the Red Horde just as it won the big games in high school and college.

  He subscribes to congressional reports so he can keep track of movie stars and authors and members of Red front activities. He keeps a list of Commie publications in his desk drawer in order to hip the pilots to them and warn them not to buy or read them. As squadron training officer I figure I can use his info in a lecture, spice up the training schedule with some bueno saludable, good healthy hate. I ask Emmett for some names and addresses of pertinent publications.

  “Are you crazy? The FBI keeps close tabs on people who order those things. They’ll put you on their suspect list.”

  “I’m getting the material to use against the Red Horde. You have to know them to defeat them.”

  “Write the FBI first. Tell them what you’re doing. That way you’ll be covered.”

  “He’s right,” Cochran tells me, putting down his newspaper. “That’s the way the feds keep tabs, through those orders. But they’re slicker than you think. They’ve got a much better way of keeping track.”

  “How’s that?” says Emmett, suspicious.

  “Simple. The FBI runs the publishing houses that print the Red Horde magazines and newspapers.”

  “Ah, bullshit, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh yeah? What could be simpler? They print the stuff then investigate everyone who orders the rags. At the small cost of running the presses which they already use to print wanted posters, they keep their fingers on a whole bunch of subverts.”

  Cochran gives me a knowing wave. “Sure, Huck, write the FBI. They’ll send you everything you need.”

  Emmett turns away in disgust. “You’re so full of shit your eyes are as brown as your hairy gorilla ass.”

  What’s in a name? A gorilla by any other name would be as hairy.

  We turn to squadron maneuvers en masse, including a deployment in Yuma, Arizona, where we fly all day and play poker all night. On the way home we’re ordered to sit down at March Air Force base on the desert side of the Santa Ana Range to wait for a coastal storm to lift. Six sections of four choppers, flying in the squadron vee, we break and form into one line and land on the runway.

  When we’re parked, the pilots and crew chiefs get out and begin their card games and bullshit sessions. A hot desert wind whips across the field, picking up dirt and tufts of dry weeds and splattering the cards with sand. The squadron Operations Officer, Captain Beamus, stands with his back to the biting wind.

  Captain Beamus is a strict, squared-away banty rooster, shorter than even my sawed-off frame. A former ground pounder, he maintains the rigid posture that prevails in the ranks of the Marines in the trenches, and it is his duty to impart their discipline, excellence of character and impeccable appearance to a loosey-goosey gaggle of ill-bred, slovenly, joke-a-billy helicopter pilots.

  He turns to Emmett, his number-two man: “Let’s get over to windward, out of this dust.”

  “That’s not windward,” I say. “That’s leeward.”

  He keeps walking. Cochran stands behind me. He nudges me in the ribs.

  “He’s ignoring you. He can hear alright.”

  “Leeward!” I holler.

  Beamus keeps walking, unperturbed. You abeza estupidez, crud-head. I’ll make damn sure you hear. I yell in his ear: “LEEward, not Windward!”

  Captain Beamus stops, his back to me. Cochran’s laugh swirls in the wind. Emmett stares. I grab my baseball cap and am about to beat Captain Beamus on the back of his head when he turns and skewers me with an icy glare.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Lieutenant?”

  “Ah, I didn’t think you heard me, sir.” Twisting my hat in my hands.

  “I don’t find it necessary to reply to every inanity uttered behind my back. You have something to say, say it to my face. Do I have to spell that out?”

  “Yes, sir, I mean”—spine snapping straight, thumbs along pants leg, heels clack together—“roger that, that’s a rajah, suh!”

  He strides away. I slap on my hat and search for Cochran. I find him behind a chopper, pretending to inspect the wheel.

  “Where’s your tire gauge, gre
ase gorilla?” I snarl.

  Cochran grins. “I knew he could hear you.”

  “Lapsong Chung say man who pull trick on friend fall flat on his own face.”

  “Oh yeah? Who he who say dat? Some black sheep in the Confucius family?”

  “Older ancestor, recently unearthed in an archeology excavation. Chinese government’s not sure whether to embrace or disparage him. You better take his message to heart.”

  Cochran throws up his hairy arms in mock innocence. “Not even Lapsong Chung would associate me with such explosive, back-head, hat-beating behavior. You better rajah that, mister, or you’ll be in deep doo-doo with the Rajah.”

  What’s in a name? A rajah by any other name would rule the same.

  Nicknames come about in unplanned and unexpected ways. Our skipper, Lt. Colonel Arthur Rappler, is stern visaged and a hard worker, meticulous to the extreme. Lean and boney, fingers yellowed from nicotine, his dark eyes are set back in his skull. His rare smiles are thin grins.

  He flew fighters in the Big One and the Police Action. The Korean War’s end brought his combat flying to a halt and he was ordered to a helicopter squadron for retraining in the slower, dual-piloted choppers. Now he’s the top man of his own squadron and he’s determined to whip us into the best flying outfit in the entire Wing.

  After our desert deployment in Yuma he has us flying so much we’re broke before the end of the fiscal quarter, gas funds bouncing around the bottom of the money barrel like loose marbles.

  “Slash the training hops to the minimum,” he orders. “Don’t cut them off completely though. One of the other squadrons might insinuate we mismanaged our funds.”

  Every morning we rush to the flight line to get airborne before Rajah Beamus runs into the C.O.’s office and slaps his tally sheet on the desk.

  “Sir. Spotted it just in time. We’ve exceeded our allotment for this week.”

  Lt. Col. Rappler scowls. “I’ll take care of it. You’re excused.”

  The C.O. picks up the phone to the line shack. “I don’t give a shit if they have already started engines. Get those pilots back in here. The launch is cancelled.”

  I meet Cochran rambling back from the flight line,

  “What happened?” I ask, “Run out of gas?”

  “Got thumped by the hammer.”

  The hammer strikes indiscriminately. A hand-scrawled notice appears on the bulletin board: “All loose change spilled out of pockets will be contributed to the fuel fund. By authority of THE HAMMER.” The acetate schedules board is splashed with a grease pencil message: “Everything cancelled. Go home. Write your Congressman.” Signed, “THE HAMMER.”

  It’s all bullshit, and we keep flying, just not as much.

  The next day, Cochran and I are making a practice instrument landing into El Toro and hear on the radio that an A-4D just flamed out on its approach to the field and crashed in an orange grove. The pilot ejected and landed alongside a dirt road. His wingman is orbiting overhead. We’re diverted to pick up the downed pilot.

  Cochran calls the orbiting jet on the radio, “Marine jet, this is Yankee Victor Three Seven approaching your position.”

  “Roger, Yankee Victor, have you in sight.”

  “Hey, Gordo,” Cochran exclaims. “Is that you?”

  “Roger that.”

  Cochran gives me a big grin and says over the intercom, “Buddy of mine I went through officer candidate school with.”

  He keys the radio button. “Okay Gordo, we have the pilot in sight. Now don’t let those stovepipe jocks give you any static about idle radio chatter, we’re all in this crotch, er, Corps, together.

  Two clicks on the mike button is Gordo’s response.

  We set down next to the pilot. He gets in the belly and we fly him to El Toro and let him out on the flight line, next to his ready room.

  That night at the El Toro O Club we’re treated to free drinks by the fighter-bomber squadron.

  “So did they give you any shit about me yakking with you on the radio?” Cochran asks Gordo.

  “They tried to but I shut them up by saying it wasn’t me doing the yakking, it was those chopper assholes.”

  Two days later, Lt. Col. Rappler discovers a footprint on his chair. The chair is the seat from the jet that crashed on approach to El Toro. In appreciation for our picking up the pilot, the jet jock’s C.O. gave us the ejection seat and the Skipper had it installed in the ready room, front row, center seat.

  The footprint in the chair is covered with dust. Someone wrote a word in the dust with his finger: HAMMER. Lt. Col. Rappler wipes the seat clean. He rubs his hands and gazes at the chair.

  “Now that’s pretty good. Yep, the man who did it has a darned fine sense of humor. That’s the sort of person I like to have around to keep up the squadron morale.”

  He eyes the room, scanning every face.

  “I’d appreciate having that man drop around my office. I figure he’s a valuable asset to the outfit, maybe even ripe for a slot in career and welfare.”

  His lips tighten. A twitch. It’s his grin. We laugh, out of relief. No one drops around his office.

  Instead, the next morning, at eye level, in gray navy ship paint, directly in front of Lt. Col. Rappler’s ejection seat, a claw-hammer, caught in the act of striking, is drawn on the lectern. And underneath, printed in block letters, the words: “THE FLIGHT OF THE HAMMER.”

  Lt. Col. Rappler contemplates the artwork for a few minutes, then amiably addresses the squadron: “Say, this Hammer nickname is the kind of thing that holds a squadron together. Unites it into a real tight group.”

  Again the thin grin. Then a dark scowl. “Let’s level with one another. I know what this crap is all about, but I don’t mind. I thought I made myself clear on that point. I tell you what, though. Let’s keep it in the family. No one else would understand. It will be our squadron’s secret. And we’ll keep the choppers in the air. We’ll find the money somewhere.”

  Give the dude his due. He changes the squadron nickname from the Flying Eights to the Hammering Eights.

  We spend two weeks aboard an aircraft carrier making practice heliborne landings off the California coast. Two drag-ass weeks that start ominously poor right from the get-go when, because there are more pilots than choppers, some of us have to ride out to the carrier as passengers.

  Belly riders. The lowest of the low. The ignominy. To have righteously earned the wings and then not be allowed to fly. No wonder tempers are in torment. And whom, that’s right, whom do we blame?

  Captain Beamus, that’s who. The Rajah. Because he’s the Operations Officer, he makes out the list of who flies and who rides. That cock of the walk, struttin’ with his shoulders back, chest out, hup two, hup two, like a ground-pounding drill sergeant instead of a Marine officer aviator. A hardass. A Marine’s Marine. Sticks with the regs like a martinet. Lives alone, no dame, no pain. Abides by mas el stricto, military code. And you better do the same, Mistah!

  His uniforms are hand tailored. His creased trousers break over spitshined shoes. A vertically rodded spine snaps him upright like he’s got a coat rack stuck up his ass. Coming from an old military family myself, I can appreciate the squared-away officer. The sight of a master player titillates my jowls, my hair bristles like a hog’s, my eyes glare like wrestlers’ facing off, replicas of scowls. Captain Beamus can dig the compatriotism. Else why does he continuously make the effort to set me straight?

  “You know, Huckelbee, you’re a bright boy. It’s too bad you don’t apply yourself instead of fooling around with your little spelling bees.”

  Ha ha. Force a laugh. Burned me there. Very clever, Captain. Spelling bees. Rhymes with Huckelbees. He’s a poet but doesn’t know it. Although his shoes show it. They’re spitshined. He doesn’t fool me though. I know his game. He’s trying to undo the undue influence of that crude, unmilitary, crass, obnoxious and disrespectful bastard, Cochran. Before he can apply any more pressure on me, Captain Beamus gets suckered by the grunts. />
  Because of his prior ground time, the Rajah feels like he’s particularly tight with the Pathfinders, the Marines who live below decks, the troops we carry ashore during mock landing exercises. They convince Captain Beamus that if he were truly a Marine, a real Marine, he would have a Marine haircut, not one of those aviator’s excuses for a haircut. Too long. Too unkempt. And the only one who can correct this situation is their very own battalion barber. Can’t trust an important job like that to a sailor.

  “Not too short, boys.”

  He sits in a chair in the troop compartment. A sheet is draped around his neck. “Leave a little for the ladies to run their fingers through.”

  What he really means is, leave me enough to comb over my bald spot.

  “Sure thing, Cap’n.”

  The electric clippers hum and buzz. The barber steps back and appraises his artistry. The infantry officers whistle in appreciation. Sneaking a peek from outside the door, we snortle into our hands. True to his word, the barber left a little something: a monk’s tonsure around his dome. The Pathfinders turn Captain Beamus loose unknowing and unawares. Normal curiosity and a glimmer of suspicion sends him scurrying through the innards of the ship seeking a mirror before anyone sees him.

  The passageways are painted sea-green. A petroleum smell lingers. Blowers hum. Captain Beamus’s face is covered with a film of greasy sweat. After checking himself in the mirror he almost makes it home free but is caught rounding the corner of the wardroom by four squadron pilots who were lounging in the coffee mess, swilling java and passing scuttlebutt.

  “Why, sink the Titanic, if it isn’t Captain Beamus.”

  “Isn’t he the rough looking customer?”

  “Gruntish, I’d say.”

  “I do believe, sirrah, you’ve proved once and for all that it takes a born aviator to ride herd on the Pathfinders.”

  Captain Beamus doesn’t dawdle to bandy.

  “As you were, gentlenen!”

  He lays low the rest of the shipboard deployment and, with no one to tell him differently, his assistant, Lieutenant Emmett, copies the same schedule going ashore as we used coming aboard. Same pilots and same belly riders, and we take Emmett’s act of laziness straight to our prickling, overheated hearts.