by J. L. Salter
“Glad to meet you. You the one writing the article on the Honor Guard?”
Kelly nodded. “Interviews for the special issue coming up, Veterans Day.”
“Let me get everybody situated and we can talk.” Henley looked around. “Over there.” It was a shady spot beneath a large poplar tree, where a cracked cement bench sat at a slight angle. Henley walked toward his station wagon which had an empty rifle rack lying flat inside the back.
“Pete’s the chaplain of our legion post and coordinates the Honor Guard.” Chet rubbed a few specks of dust from his eyes. “He knew Wade’s granddad, by the way.”
“How? When? Where?” All good reporter questions.
“They was in the army tagether during the war. Europe.” Chet looked around the small, dusty graveyard. “After I turn in my rifle, I’m heading back ta the house. Ya going ta the lunch?”
“If I can find the place. Don says it’s a great event.”
“Just look for the big flag. Irene knows how ta feed people.”
“Are you going, Pop?”
“I guess. But I’m gonna change clothes first. Ellie’s picking me up. I think the Suttons are coming.”
Kelly frowned with puzzlement. “How many people are going to be there?”
“Few dozen, I expect. Firing squad, flag detail, bugler, wives, friends, neighbors.”
“Sounds like a community event.”
Chet grunted, turned, and made his way slowly toward the station wagon.
The Honor Guard members without rifles were already gathering at one of the vehicles driven by another colleague. Typically, most of them parked at the funeral home and carpooled to the gravesite. That day, the largest capacity vehicle was Stanley’s minivan. Others would drift over when they handed in their rifles and got through visiting.
Kelly moved to the slanted, cracked bench to wait as Sergeant Henley checked in the seven M-1 Garands.
Seven old men in uniform stood around the tailgate of Henley’s nearby station wagon. The man in back of the line peered into the breech of his rifle. “Couldn’t find my brass,” he said to no one in particular. He had ejected prematurely. He continued to look around even though their firing site was more than fifty feet from Henley’s vehicle.
Despite having seen each man clear his own Garand’s chamber, Henley pulled back the bolts and eyeballed every one. Then he closed the bolt with a loud clack and set each rifle down in the reclining rack.
Henley was clean-shaven, with a strong jaw, thinning hair that was mostly gray, with only a few streaks of charcoal. No glasses. Imagine having good eyes after eighty-five years. It was hard for a man to remain nice-looking in his mid-eighties, but Henley was. Seemed surprisingly fit and just a bit stooped over. Henley was about six feet tall now, so he must have been six-foot-two, or more, in his prime.
The only black soldier present said his blank had not fired and handed that cartridge to Henley.
“Don’t see any contact on the primer. I’ll check out your firing pin later.” Henley put that rifle to one side of the rack and patted his colleague on the back. When all the M-1s were accounted for, Henley lifted the tailgate and then locked his station wagon.
Chapter Seventeen
October 10 — Wednesday — 10:35 a.m.
It had already warmed considerably since Kelly left her cabin.
Henley looked toward the concrete bench and headed in Kelly’s direction. “Sorry about the wait. Where do you want to start?”
“Start with the shooters before they scatter any more.”
“Well, any you miss here, you’ll be able to catch at Irene’s lunch thing.” Henley unfolded a single page with typed names and phone numbers and handed it to Kelly; nine of the names were checked off. “Irene made a list of the Honor Guard and ran some copies down at the church office. She sometimes does the calling and we mark who commits for each funeral, so we’re sure we have enough men.” He rubbed sweat from his eyes with a knuckle. “Sometimes she has to call back the maybes and only-if-you-absolutely-need-me’s because not enough men are available and willing.”
“What does the ‘L’ mean?” Kelly pointed.
Henley looked. “Oh, that’s probably her count of how many plan to attend her luncheon, after.”
“Can I get a copy of this list?”
“Keep that one. They’re pretty much the same ones that show up for most all of these funerals.” Henley exhaled loudly. “Since you’ve got that roster, I’ll just introduce everybody by their first name and you can put it together later. If you need any follow-ups with anybody, just call them. They won’t care.”
“Okay, start with that black guy. He kind of sticks out.” She pointed discreetly.
“Isaiah. Some folks call him the Prophet. During the war, he started talking about the Bible a lot. And kept on talking. Since he’s retired, he even preaches a little here and there.”
Kelly checked off his name on her new list and made a few notes in the margin.
Isaiah was about five feet eleven inches tall and maybe one hundred ninety pounds. Solidly and muscularly built, he had the long strong arms of a boxer. Handsome face with a firm jaw and semi-slender nose. His dark skin was complemented by a ring of gray-white hair around the sides and back. Bald on the top and in front, he wore his curly hair slightly longer than many men his age, though without any sheen or other attempt to plaster it down. He’d played football at an all-black college for the two years he attended on the G.I. Bill. Then he left college to work for a small family insurance company, from which he retired at age seventy. In retirement, his main activity was fishing.
“Isaiah enlisted in ‘44 when he graduated high school,” Henley stole a glance at his watch. “Same reason most fellers went to war — loved his country, hated the oppressive Axis powers, and there weren’t any jobs for black men except hard manual labor.”
“Where did he serve?”
“He was a driver for the Red Ball Express — six thousand vehicles hauled nearly a half million tons of supplies, mostly fuel. Those guys drove from Normandy beach all the way to the Rhine, among other places.”
“I’d gotten the idea that most all the black soldiers were cooks.”
“Lots of them were. It was a big struggle for them to get into operational units. But eventually there were black engineers, tankers, pilots and even paratroops. During Korea, there was an all-black Ranger unit. All segregated, of course. Though sometimes they had white officers.”
“That’s a big difference from the stereotype.”
“Well, they still had a lot of hassles. Sometimes it developed in training, in rear areas, or even on leaves.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I never participated, of course, and I didn’t even witness any. But it was common knowledge.” Henley shook his head. “There was usually drinking. Then some white guy would get a notion that he ought to beat up a black guy.”
“Why? They’re in the same uniform.”
“I don’t guess I can explain it. At that time, things weren’t too far along in race relations. Some whites thought they were allowed to punish blacks just because of their skin.” He shrugged. “Isaiah got into at least one real bad scuffle.”
“What happened?”
“See that scar on his left temple? Looks like an asterisk. He got hit by a beer bottle. And if you look close, you’ll see the tip of his right ear is missing. Some white punk bit it off, so they say.”
“That’s barbaric. A drunk just hauls off and breaks a bottle over Isaiah’s face… then bites his ear off?”
“That’s the result, but it doesn’t really tell the story. They say the Prophet was minding his own business having a beer in a pub in England. Still training. Some drunk white guys were hassling an off-duty black cook. Isaiah went over and asked them to please leave the cook alone. So they turned on him — all four of them.”
“Four against one?”
Henley nodded. “Well, that’s the story, you understand. But I f
igure Isaiah could’ve handled two or three regular guys pretty easily, because he was a boxer in high school. They say he’d already decked two when he was whacked with the beer bottle. Then the Prophet hit that one so hard he landed a dozen feet away. The fourth man jumped on his back and had already bit his ear by the time Isaiah threw him off and then busted a couple of his ribs.”
Kelly was out of breath just from hearing the account. “So what happened?”
“About the time that a few more brave white drunks were about to take his measure, the MPs busted in. They arrested Isaiah and he later lost a stripe.”
“And the white drunks went to the stockade, I hope.”
Henley shook his head. “Not back then. There’s wasn’t a lot of justice when it was black against white. The Prophet got the shaft.”
Kelly thought a moment. “I think I could write an entire article just about Isaiah. But tell me some more names before everyone leaves.”
“Let’s see, over yonder is Norman… call him Norm. Army infantry, Ninth Division, officer in charge of a mortar platoon. Norm had about two years training stateside and landed in France on V-E Day. From then on, he was part of the army of occupation.”
Kelly checked off another name. “No danger for him then.”
“Common misconception. After France, Norm went all through Germany. They still had their Nazi Werewolf teams blowing up trains and other infrastructure. They were targeting Allied soldiers, but also killed German folks who were cooperating with the Allies.”
“Werewolves?”
“The German words were something else, but that’s the way it translated. They were guerillas — die-hard Nazis who rejected the concept of the Third Reich’s surrender. Refused to give up.”
“How widespread?” Kelly made some notes on her tablet. “Just a few, here and there?”
“I don’t know how many Werewolves but I know a lot of good American soldiers died after the newspapers said the European war was over.”
Henley went on to explain more about Norm.
Norm was in the Honor Guard and was also Henley’s neighbor across the street, so they saw a lot of each other. Norm liked to fix things and liked to collect. That was a good combination since most of his collected antique telephones also needed repairs. If the residents of the Community were allowed to leave their garages open, Norm would be seen — at least a couple of hours almost every day — perched on a tall stool next to some portion of the twenty-foot counter he’d built along one wall. On the shelf nearest the utility room door, an old radio usually played music that he didn’t really listen to.
Norm was not married at present, though he had been… at least once. Nobody knew much about his ex-wife, or wives, since Norm’s working life had been in Illinois, near Rock Island. It was only in retirement he’d moved to Kentucky, supposedly because the garage sales and flea markets in that region had better old phones.
Physically, Norm was just about as average as a man can be in his mid-eighties. Average height, weight, and amount of hair; average paunch and apparently average health. He even wore average looking glasses. But his incredibly bushy eyebrows reminded Kelly of a photo she’d seen of Mark Twain in his later years.
As Kelly watched, Norm folded his average frame into the last empty seat in the minivan and Stanley drove away slowly.
“That’s Gary coming over.” Henley pointed discreetly with his chin.
Kelly marked off another name on the roster.
Gary moved toward the bench, his starched camo fatigues making a slight swishing noise as he walked. Kelly wondered why all the others had dress uniforms and Gary wore BDUs with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows.
“Who’s your good-looking girlfriend, Pete?” Gary was about five feet six inches tall and stocky — probably about one hundred eighty-five pounds. He had thick, strong arms with tattoos — not visible while in uniform — on his shoulders. Those who’d seen the tattoos said one shoulder had a map of Vietnam with adjacent Laos and Cambodia in different colors. The other upper arm had a Special Forces banner with a list of seven names, all in different colors. Most viewers supposed they were code names for special operations or covert assignments he was involved with, or maybe the names of certain fallen comrades. Gary himself never would say.
Henley answered Gary’s question. “She’s a reporter, writing an article about our Honor Guard.”
“Not so much about the Honor Guard per se, but I’m interviewing some of its members.”
“You gonna interview me too?” Gary kept his head shaved, which probably meant he had very little remaining hair. His scalp was lightly tanned and had a thick fold of excess skin in the back, near the top of his neck.
It almost makes me want to wrap it with something.
“She just wants general stuff, Gary, no detailed biographies.”
“I was Special Forces. Two tours in-country — Vietnam and Cambodia. We got ambushed once and I was left for dead. Still have shrapnel in my shoulder and knee. Let me show you.” He quickly un-bloused his left cuff and raised his pants leg high enough so Kelly could see the bumps. “Go ahead, touch it.” She lightly placed her finger tip. “No, feel it.” He grabbed Kelly’s hand and pressed her fingers to his knee until he was certain she could feel the chunks.
“Thanks, I guess.” She wondered if Don Norman was watching. “But like Mister Henley said, no in-depth bios in this particular article. Maybe in another feature, later.”
“Okay, sure. Just let me know. I got a million stories about ‘Nam.” Gary re-bloused his pant leg over the top of his polished combat boot and stomped the ground firmly. Then he turned and walked away. The faint swishing noise followed him.
“My, he’s friendly.”
Henley chuckled. “He shows that shrapnel to everybody.”
Good thing I didn’t bet with Don. “Is Gary coming to your luncheon?”
“Probably not. I heard him say he was heading back to the Legion Post. Several of the men decided to hang out together this afternoon because of the big drill.”
“Aren’t they supposed to group in the voting precinct sites or something?” Kelly thought for a second. “Oh, maybe they vote there.”
Henley shrugged. “Ah, I don’t know. Don’t think any of them vote there. They’ve been making fun of the exercise today. Gary and Steve and some of the others are convinced it’ll be a big dud, so they want to be together to laugh about it, I suppose.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “I just remembered, they might be going to a meeting at the Hall today, about the Veterans Day programs in the Pulaski schools. I’d be there if it wasn’t for Irene’s lunch thing.”
Kelly made a few notes about Gary on her tablet. He might make a good feature for something, if he could keep his knee to himself.
Henley tapped her elbow. “Now this feller coming over. That’s Herbert, goes by Herb. Don’t get him started about that mangy goat.”
Telling an inquisitive writer not to ask about Herb’s goat was like saying, Here’s some chocolate, but don’t eat any. For a moment Kelly couldn’t think about anything else. Then she marked his name on the roster and wrote “goat” beside it.
“Herb’s another World War II vet. Navy crewman on troop ships. Attack transport ships, I think they’re called. Don’t remember his rating, but all those guys were trained in three or four jobs. I know he fired .50 caliber machine guns a lot. Herb and his Navy buddies were always fighting with Army men being carried on board. Not sure what they had to fight about. Well, he caught mumps somehow and they went ‘down’ on him, because the ship doctors didn’t diagnose it right.”
“You mean he became sterile?” She’d blurted the question before she realized how personal it was.
Henley didn’t seem to notice her breach of etiquette. He turned and watched Herb approach.
Herb was maybe five foot four inches tall and a hundred sixty-five pounds — shorter and lighter than Gary, but with a similar build: stocky with a short, thick neck.
“
He’s always been strong as an ox. Until he passed eighty, he’d hurt you when you’d shake hands.” Henley turned his head. “Herb, this is Kelly. Writing a story for the paper. You have a seat and let me go say a word to the mortician.” Henley left.
Herb sat with a loud output of breath. “Nice day, ain’t it.” The cracked bench shifted considerably. There was a fine sprinkling of sawdust in the dense hairs on the back of Herb’s hands and knuckles. The lenses of his glasses were similarly covered.
Kelly looked around briefly and nodded. “Is that a pet?” She pointed to the goat she’d been cautioned not to mention.
“Naw. I’m trying to sell him. Figured it’s good advertising to take him places with me.”
“Maybe if you add a For Sale sign.”
“I had signs on both side rails for a dadgum week. People kept trying to buy my truck.”
Kelly couldn’t help smiling.
“So I took the signs off. And now I just tote the old goat with me, just about every where except church.”
Kelly thought she had problems with Perra wanting to ride. “How about a sign saying Goat for Sale?”
“Yeah!” When Herb smacked one fist into his other palm, tiny particles of sawdust flew about. “Great idea. Goat for Sale or Trade. You know where I can find a sign like that?”
Kelly shrugged and then questioned the goat’s comfort, practically living in the back of a pickup truck.
“Oh, don’t worry about Billie. He’s got food and water back there. Plus straw to bed in if he’s got a mind to lay down, which he don’t much. And I got a tarp to cover his scrawny butt if it rains.”
“Life of Riley.”
Kelly asked a few questions about Herb’s military time. He served mostly in an Atlantic fleet and was on ships in convoys with U-boat attacks, but he’d also served in a Pacific fleet near the end of the war and faced kamikaze attacks.
Hard to imagine he’s survived two very different deadly enemies.
But, sooner or later, Herb kept returning to a topic he preferred — the goat he was trying to get rid of.
Henley returned and Herb got up to leave. They shook hands and Henley winced. Kelly saw a faint twinkle in Herb’s eyes — men with powerful handshakes usually know when they cause pain. Somehow, though — at least in Herb’s case — it didn’t seem malicious. It looked more like it reminded Herb of how strong and virile he used to be, and that made a brief infliction of hand pain seem rather innocent somehow.