“Sorry, sir!” Rucker said, and the bush fell to his knees, and with his bare hands began scratching at the dirt around the heelprint until it was obliterated.
“Otherwise, wouldn’t you say?” McPherson asked me. “We covered our traces pretty well.”
“You sure did,” I said, beaming to find him again. “Where are you?” I asked, and realized it sounded as if I couldn’t even see him inside his bush when there he was, right before me! and the other bush Rucker still groveling in the earth. But Rucker finished the job and got to his feet and began looking for other places where he hadn’t covered his tracks. “I mean,” I clarified, “where is your bivouac?”
“Where are we?” McPherson repeated my question with a chuckle. “We’re all around you. See if you can find us.” He swept the grounds with his hands as if challenging me to find the bivouac. I looked all around, and saw nothing. The lieutenant took my arm and guided me, and we walked until we came to the first tent. The tent was covered with branches, totally concealed. The second tent also. At each of the tents, bushes turned into soldiers before my eyes, grinning at me. All the tents and soldiers were virtually invisible from a distance.
“Camouflage,” I said.
“That’s it, Donny,” he said, and showed me where several foxholes had been dug and carefully covered up with shrubbery, and even the excavated soil, lighter in color, had been evenly distributed and covered with topsoil. He showed where emplacements had been constructed for mortars, machine guns, and antitank guns, each concealed in a foxhole covered with branches that looked like natural bushes or weeds.
“You guys have been busy,” I remarked.
“What else is there to do?” he said. “But when you were hunting for us, just now,” he said, “you forgot something. You forgot one of us.”
I thought and thought. Then I remembered. “The mule! Where’d you hide the mule?”
“Where would you hide something as big as a mule?” he asked.
I looked around, and saw the old barn. It wasn’t actually a barn, not one of those gambrel-roof warehouses for storing hay but just a dilapidated cowshed with a rusty tin roof. It looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years, and there were still spiderwebs all over it, but, as McPherson showed me, it had a mule inside it. “Young Jarhead,” McPherson declared, grinning. “Formerly known as ASM 147, Army Special Mule. GI Moe, the men called him. Gypsy let us rename him.” He gave Young Jarhead an appreciative pat on the head, and Jarhead looked as if he wished he could raise a hoof in salute. “Speaking of which, the others will be here soon. Let’s see how they take it. Here, let’s get you ready.”
McPherson gathered up some assorted vegetation and netting and made me into a bush, and then we covered our tracks. His bush and my bush stood side by side near the old house, waiting, and sure enough before long Sammy Coe showed up. Sammy’s mouth dropped open in astonishment at finding that the bivouac had disappeared, and he began looking wildly around him, almost in panic. I wondered if my own face and attitude had conveyed such desperate surprise and disappointment minutes earlier. I started to giggle, but the bush next to me clamped its limb end over my mouth. Sammy looked up as if he had heard the beginning of my giggle and stared right at me for a brief moment before his eyes continued to wander all over creation in search of the bivouac. Sammy went inside the house, just as I had done, and I knew he might find the prints of my bare feet in the dust but nothing else. Soon he came back out, looking as if he were about to cry. Had I looked so forlorn and tragic? Just as I had done, he sat down on the edge of the porch, with his head in his hands. I knew he did not have the advantage I’d had, of being able to appeal to you. To whom then was he appealing? Maybe he was praying.
Soon Gypsy and Ella Jean came up the trail, arms around each other as usual. But their arms fell to their sides as they saw the place and then saw Sammy sitting in dejection on the edge of the porch. Gypsy shrieked and cried, “Lord have mercy! They’ve all done gone and gone!”
“It caint be!” Ella Jean cried. “They couldn’t’ve just cleared out dead and gone without no word!”
I had to raise two limbs to cover my mouth.
Sammy said woefully, “They aint nobody ever been here to begin with!” And I had a wave of fellow feeling for his sense of having dreamt it all.
Willard and Joe Don weren’t far behind. “What in the Sam Hill!?” said Joe Don.
“I’ll be jig swiggered!” said Willard, who glowered at Sammy as if Sammy had scared them all off, and demanded, “Where in tarnation is everbody?” I knew that Willard was smart enough to do what I had done: search for any remaining footprint on the path to the outhouse. But before he could think to do that, it was Gypsy who thought to call out for her new friend.
“JAARRRHEADDD!” Gypsy hollered.
And from the old barn came the loud bray of a mule.
Gypsy laughed and started for the barn.
But a bush stood in her way, and behold, the bush decreed loudly, “FALL IN!” And behold, twelve other bushes, thirteen if you count me, lined themselves up in formation before the commanding bush. We stood at attention, like good bushes. “AT EASE, SHRUBS!” ordered McPherson, and we not only relaxed but broke up in laughter.
Chapter sixteen
When all of us who had been woodland plants shed our vegetation and looked like human beings again, McPherson said, “Something will have to be done about Jarhead. He gave us away.”
“If you don’t want him, I’ll take him,” Gypsy said, and, I swear, batted her eyelashes at the lieutenant.
“No, I’d rather you had a talk with him and explain that he can’t just sound off whenever he wants.”
“He was just answerin me when I called him,” Gypsy said.
“Well, I hope the enemy doesn’t try to call him,” McPherson said.
“Are ye a-fixin to take him to Jay-pan with y’uns?” Joe Don asked.
“Joe Don,” McPherson said sternly, dropping his jovial tone, “you don’t know that we’re going to Japan.”
“Naw, but I can sure guess,” Joe Don said.
“Maybe that’s not the enemy he’s talkin about,” Willard said to Joe Don, then he said to the lieutenant, “Maybe the enemy is the one that you’re a-fixin to hide out from, right here. The play-like enemy.”
“Good boy,” McPherson said.
Willard bristled at the “boy.” He asked, “How big do they grow men where you come from?”
McPherson studied him as if trying to determine if Willard was being insubordinate. Or, since Willard wasn’t his subordinate and he couldn’t put him on KP duty or whatever you do to punish a soldier, he was trying to analyze the note of unfriendliness. It suddenly occurred to me: Willard was jealous of McPherson because Gypsy had developed a powerful attraction toward the lieutenant! Why does it take me so long to realize these things?
The lieutenant knew the way to Willard’s heart. “Would you people like a snack?” he offered.
While we were sitting around munching the fruit bars and chocolate bars, and Willard was working on his second helping, the other lieutenant, the one with the gold bar on his collar (and thus just a second lieutenant, although I couldn’t understand why gold was considered inferior to silver), came up and said “Mac, I’m sorry but this damn thing is killing me.” He was painfully clutching his arm, which had been broken when he piloted the glider to its crash landing.
I spoke up. “I broke my arm just like that not very long ago, and Doc Swain put a plaster cast on it, which I had to wear for several weeks, but it’s good as new now.” I held up my arm and twisted it every which way to demonstrate its flexibility and soundness.
McPherson addressed not me personally but the group at large. “You have a doctor in this town?”
Sammy said, “Doc Swain can fix anything what’s wrong with man or beast.”
I nodded, in rare agreement with Sammy, and added, “Besides, he’s the justice of the peace,” as if that helped matters.
McPher
son was thinking. Finally he asked, again not of me personally, “What would he charge to set Bosco’s arm and put it in a cast?”
“Heck,” I said, “oftentimes if you can’t pay him, he’ll take produce or livestock or something in trade.”
McPherson smiled. “Would he take Jarhead?”
“You just better not, mister!” Gypsy said.
“I was teasing you, Gypsy,” McPherson said. “I could pay the good doctor whatever he wants. But the problem is, of course, we don’t want any of the adults to—” he hesitated, realizing that he might be hurting our feelings by implying that we weren’t adults. “It’s crucial we keep our presence here a secret from all but you good people.”
“Doc won’t tell nobody, if we ask him not to,” I affirmed.
“He’ll tell his wife,” McPherson said, “and she’ll tell a friend, and that friend will tell—”
“Doc don’t have a wife,” I said. “He don’t have nobody. He lives all alone. He’s an old man,” I added, as if being old is a guarantee of being either alone or not gossipy.
McPherson was addressing me now instead of the group at large. “Would Bosco have to visit his office? Or could the doctor come out here?”
“He makes house calls,” I said, “if you got a house.” I grinned and pointed at the deserted building.
“Okay. Volunteers for a detail to go after Dr. Swain?” All six of us held up our hands. “Hmmm,” McPherson said. “We don’t need that many. You do it, Donny.” I saluted, and turned to go, pleased with the assignment. He called after me, “Himitsu! Shikyu no himitsu!”
I ran all the way to Doc Swain’s. He was sitting on his porch, no customers…or rather no clients…patients is the word. Patience. I was all out of breath. “Doc, there’s another broke arm needs fixed!”
“Didn’t I tell ye to play hide-and-go-seek from them Allies?” he said.
“It’s not mine,” I said. I looked up and down the main road of the village. Old Lola Ingledew was sitting on the front porch of her store, but she was too far off to hear us. “It’s a Army Air Force lieutenant. Can you keep a secret?”
“If I don’t have nothing better to do, I can,” he said.
“You know that glider that come down yesterday?”
“The one that burnt all up?”
“Yes, but the pilot lived. His arm is broke, though. He needs you.”
“His arm or his leg? Caint he walk? Why don’t he come to me?”
“That’s part of the secret,” I said.
“Let me get my bag and all,” Doc Swain said. He went into his house and returned quickly, carrying his bag and whatever plaster and stuff he needed to set and cast an arm. “Where’s my damn car?” he demanded, as if I’d stolen it.
“Every’s still workin on it, I reckon,” I said.
So we walked. Passing Dill’s Gas and Service, Doc called to Every, “Don’t tell me if the news is bad.”
“Piston ring is shot,” Every said. “You need it right now?”
“I can walk,” Doc said. “It will do me good.”
“Who’s ailing?” Every called.
“Nobody you know, I reckon,” Doc said. “Nor me neither.”
We walked on. Lieutenant Bosco wasn’t going to die before we got there. I wondered how much I could tell Doc about everything, but decided that any talking ought to be left to McPherson. At least I could say, without sounding too self-important, “This is all very secret.”
“You done told me that,” Doc said.
The last half mile was hardest for him, uphill and slow. We arrived at the old farmstead. As before, everything was camouflaged. There was no one in sight. “They’re hiding,” I said. “But they’re here.”
“Or else you got the wrong house, Dawny,” he said. “This is the old Stapleton place. Aint nobody lived here since—howdy!” McPherson came out of the house, and approached us.
I introduced them. “Doc Swain, Lieutenant McPherson, United States Army.”
“Should I salute or shake hands?” Doc Swain asked. “Not if it’s the broken one.”
McPherson laughed and shook Doc’s hand. “It’s not me. Could you come inside? Donny, the other Axis are out behind the barn, learning judo, if you’d like to join them.”
While McPherson was taking Doc Swain to fix Lieutenant Bosco’s arm, I moseyed out behind the barn to see what judo was. I’d heard of it. In the pasture, the soldiers were sitting on the ground in a circle with Gypsy and Ella Jean, watching Sergeant Harris and Corporal Rucker demonstrate the holds and armlocks and takedowns and strangles of elementary judo. They motioned for me to join them. I removed my slingshot from my neck. “Let me hold that for you, Scout,” one of the sitting soldiers requested, but he didn’t merely hold it; he tried it out, with pebbles. I didn’t mind. Harris and Rucker were experts at judo, and before having Willard, Joe Don, Sammy, and me try something on each other, they demonstrated. I could see why Harris outranked Rucker: there wasn’t any sort of stranglehold that Rucker could make on Harris that Harris couldn’t break loose from, and not only break loose from it but in the process trip Rucker up and throw him down and disable him. It was fun to watch, but not such fun to copy. Willard and Joe Don were paired off, and Sammy and I were paired off; Sergeant Harris would demonstrate an armlock on Corporal Rucker, and then Sammy would try to do it to me. Although Sammy and I were about the same size, he was tougher, I guess. There’s something about being a newspaperman, using one’s wits and one’s words to report a world, that keeps one from being athletic. I was embarrassed to have Gypsy and especially Ella Jean watching me get thrown and twisted and clobbered. But they never giggled, and after a while Sergeant Harris suggested that they ought to start learning these things too. “Women are better at judo than men,” the sergeant said, “because their arms are limber and they have a natural talent for pulling hair.” He started them off with all the various finger holds: wrist press, thumb lock, counter, and rear hammerlock with wrist pressure, but they graduated quickly from those simple holds to the various armlocks and then to “hacking.” Their hacking, the sergeant said, had to be mostly play-like, because they could easily hurt each other.
“Judo is serious business,” the sergeant told us. “It’s not a game of sportsmanship and play. Its purpose is to keep from being killed by killing. So you have to be careful in practice, because you could gouge an eye out, choke your opponent, make him deaf, paralyze him, give him a blackout as well as a black eye.”
We got so caught up in learning judo that we forgot what had been going on in the house. At one point when Sammy had thrown me over his back and I landed on mine, knocking the breath out of me, I looked up to see that our audience had increased: both lieutenants and Doc Swain were watching us. Lieutenant Bosco’s arm was in a plaster cast almost identical to the one I’d had. I wanted to tell him that as soon as the plaster hardened we would all sign our names on his cast.
“Somebody could get hurt, doing them things,” Doc Swain remarked about our activities. He stepped forward and grabbed Joe Don’s hand as he was strangling Willard and said, “You’ve got your thumb right smack on his sternoclavicular joint. You could kill him.”
“I’m jist doing what I was learnt, Doc,” Joe Don said. “But I wouldn’t do it real enough to kill him.”
From that point on, Doc’s kibitzing took some of the fun out of our judo practice. We got a whole lesson in anatomy from his intrusion. He showed where my kidney was located and warned against causing it pain. He said if Ella Jean hit Gypsy above her belly button it would make her puke. He pointed out the solar plexus and the carotid artery and larynx and cautioned against any blows to these vulnerable parts.
Eventually McPherson said to him, “Doctor, we need to talk,” and led him away. I assumed he was simply trying to remove him from interfering with the judo lessons, but that wasn’t it. McPherson needed, I eventually realized, to give Doc Swain the same kind of little chat he’d had with each of us the day before, to impress the need fo
r secrecy on him, perhaps even to bribe Doc Swain to keep this bivouac a secret. But what would he bribe him with?
It was getting on to suppertime but we were having so much fun with judo that we didn’t want to go home to eat. At least I didn’t, and I was probably having less fun than my more athletic friends. Eventually McPherson returned to us. Doc Swain was gone. Speaking on our behalf, Gypsy said, “Captain, can we just stay for supper?”
“I’m not a captain, Gypsy,” he said. “You can call me Mac if you like. We’d love to have you for supper, but our supply of rations could run out, especially in view of Willard’s fondness for them.”
“Could we just come back after supper, then, Mac?” she asked sweetly. And added: “Like last night?” I was jealous. I hadn’t come back the previous night.
“Don’t you think your mothers are going to wonder what you’re doing?” Mac asked. He grinned. “Where I come from, a good girl wouldn’t be out after dark.”
“How do you know I’m a good girl?” Gypsy said.
“Where do you come from?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer either of our questions. “After supper,” he declared, “my men have to practice their night movement and their night fighting.”
“Couldn’t we watch?” Gypsy asked.
Mac laughed. “The whole point of our exercises is to be invisible!”
So we had to wait for another day. It was impossible getting through school Friday, not simply because it was Friday but because we were impatient to return to the soldiers’ bivouac for more judo lessons or, as it turned out that afternoon when we got there, not simply more judo lessons but also what the lieutenant called “mass combatives” and his men thought of as “taking a break”: rough-and-tumble games. These games were even more dangerous than judo, and Gypsy and Ella Jean weren’t allowed to participate in some of them. The lieutenant explained that jungle fighting and Japanese trickery had been the mother of the invention of many of these free-for-all and team games. Only one of these games had we ever played before, Foxhole Fight, when Allies had tried to pull the Axis out of our foxholes and take our place. At the end of two minutes the winner was whoever had the most foxholes. But the way these soldiers played it, using their actual “official” foxholes excavated in the yards and fields of the old Stapleton place, there was a lot more pushing, shoving, pulling, and general hand tricks than we Axis or Allies had ever imagined.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2 Page 92