The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  Nobody’s life returned to “normal” after the lives of Doris and Jelena were ended. Doc Swain withdrew into a kind of depression that no one could explain other than speculating that in his long experience of signing death certificates he had signed one too many. I wrote in my Indian Chief: “(5) The History of Doc Swain” but when I tried to get started on that, Latha just said, “Now why would you want to be thinking about that at a time like this?” I didn’t see my new assistant editor for several days after the funeral, so I assumed she had withdrawn into some kind of depression too. Each evening after supper I made a pilgrimage to that sacred hidden spot on Banty Creek where she took her bar of Palmolive for baths, but she was never there. Perhaps she and Gypsy had used up all of that bar of Palmolive. Gypsy, too, had tried to cheer up McPherson, but he had said to her irritably, “Gypsy, will you please stop calling me Captain?” And she had withdrawn into her own kind of depression. Her brother Joe Don somehow persuaded the hermit’s lovely daughter Annie to invite the lieutenant to dinner, and Joe Don personally carried the invitation to McPherson but, since Joe Don himself wasn’t invited, we had nobody to report to us on the success of that endeavor.

  Miss Jerram was the only person who seemed to be not unhappy, and that must have been because of Sergeant Harris, who was waiting for her every day after school and was seen walking with her on the roads and sitting with her on her porch, and, according to the rumors, not coming out of her house after suppertime. She canceled school for the day of the funeral, and the next day too, and the following week was the last week anyhow, so she gave all of us some tests and then said “Have a happy summer,” and that was the end of school.

  A postcard came addressed c/o General Delivery to McPherson, and Latha let me deliver it to him. Of course I read it first: “Hey, Mac! Hope I didn’t get your Irish up telling them your coordinates. They tortured the info out of me. Figured what the hell, they couldn’t get any good pix of your installation anyhow. Stoving and those chumps in the tank corps can’t even find the place! They want me to show ’em. See you in Okinawa, hell. See you in Staymore! Bosco.” When I gave this card to McPherson and he read it, I was happy to see him smile for the first time in days.

  In fact, he not only smiled but laughed over the thought of just what those reconnaissance photos would reveal to the “enemy.” They would show the soldiers firing their funeral salute, of course, but not their well-concealed bivouac up on the mountain. They would show a hundred-odd (some very odd) Stay Morons surrounding the grave (there was but one, and only one coffin, in which the sisters lay enfolded). The sleepy, decaying village, with numerous foxholes. A double-pen house high up in a sycamore tree in a broad meadow, surrounded by foxholes. McPherson said those photographs were going to be “our best possible ammunition.”

  “You know those wings he wears?” I asked McPherson, realizing the question made Bosco into some kind of angel. “I just wondered what that ‘G’ stands for, between the wings, you know?”

  “Guts,” said McPherson. “Sheer guts. I hope when our glider lands on a mountain in Kyushu that Bosco will be at the controls.” Then McPherson picked himself up out of his gloom and summoned his men to him and said, “Time to get ready.” Later he clapped me on the back as if I’d written the postcard myself and said expansively, “Good job, Donny. No, the ‘G’ just stands for ‘glider’ because Lieutenant Bosco is an Army Air Force glider pilot. But you can let it stand for anything you like.”

  The postcard was just a day ahead of its author. We heard the trucks and the jeep long before we saw them, coming up the twisting road from Parthenon. By the time the trucks and car arrived in the village, a good crowd of us were assembled on and around the porch of Latha’s store. None of the soldiers were there. Miss Jerram was abandoned. It could have been any early summer’s afternoon on a country store porch, except for the absence of menfolk. There were a lot of boys, Yanks and Japs both, and several girls. Ella Jean and Gypsy had both emerged from their sadness, at least enough to pay attention to what was going on in the world. Gypsy had given up on her flirtation with McPherson and had started spending time with Willard, which of course left poor Ella Jean feeling lonely.

  The jeep and the trucks came into view and pulled to a stop right in front of the store. The jeep wasn’t black like all the cars I’d seen but a kind of greenish brown. So were the trucks, three of them, but the trucks had tops of canvas. Then three more trucks came in behind, one of them with metal sides and top and two flatbed trucks carrying a bulldozer and road grader.

  The driver of the jeep was a private first class, and sitting beside him was Second Lieutenant Bosco. Sitting in the back seat were two men with officer’s service caps on their heads, and on his shoulders one man was wearing the double silver bars of a real captain (did Gypsy realize?) and the other some kind of gold ornament in the shape of a leaf.

  Lieutenant Bosco turned in his seat and addressed the latter, “This is it, sir.”

  The gold-leaf man looked at us. “Who’s in charge of this burg?” he asked. When no one answered, he looked around at the village, the deserted bank across the road, a vacant house north of Doc Plowright’s, whatever he could see. “This town,” he said. “This place. Is there a headman or somebody?” When this too was met with silence, he asked, “You people do speak English, don’t you?”

  I spoke up. “Hanashimásu Nippon-no. Kore-wa yoi hon-de su.”

  “What?” said the gold-leaf. “Is that some kind of redskin lingo?”

  “Japanese,” said Willard. “He’s trying to tell you that we’re Japanese. But I reckon you caint speak it.”

  The gold-leaf turned to the captain and said, “I thought all the Japs in Arkansas were kept at Rohwer or Jerome.”

  “I think they’re just kidding, sir,” the captain said.

  “Bosco?” the gold-leaf said. “You said they were just hillbillies.”

  “Yes sir,” said Bosco. “But they’re real smart hillbillies, and for the duration of this exercise they are Japanese.”

  Larry Duckworth spoke up. “I aint no Jap! I’m two hunurd percent American.” And the rest of the Yanks nodded their heads in agreement. “Three hunurd,” Jim John added.

  “Well,” said the gold-leaf, “which of you can tell me how to find a squad of soldiers who are camping out somewhere around here?”

  None of us answered, until finally Larry said, “I don’t rightly know but they’re some’ers hereabouts, I can tell ye. I seen ’em.”

  “Bosco?” the gold-leaf said. “Why don’t you just take us and show us their bivouac?”

  “Sir, I agreed to bring you to the town,” Bosco said. “But I don’t have any obligation to show you where the bivouac is located.”

  “Are you disobeying orders, lieutenant?”

  “If this were an actual situation, sir,” Bosco said, “my loyalties would be with the aggressor force.”

  “Goddamn it, Bosco!” the gold-leaf said. “We’re not the strike team. I’m the umpire, for godsakes, and Captain Billings’s men are the engineers. I assume they’re just as neutral as I am, right, Billings?”

  “Yes sir,” Captain Billings said. “We’re not taking sides in this fray. Or rather, we’re working for both sides.”

  “Okay, Bosco!” the gold-leaf yelled. “So why don’t you show us the fucking bivouac?”

  Lieutenant Bosco, whose arm was still in a cast, crooked the finger of his good hand at me, and when I approached, he said, “Donny, how about you go down the road that way”—he pointed in the opposite direction from the bivouac—“and see if you can’t find Mac, and tell him that Major Evans, the exercise umpire, is here?”

  So the gold leaf indicated a major, which was a cut above a captain. Major Evans said, “So the kid doesn’t really speak Japanese, huh?”

  “As much as he pals around with McPherson,” Bosco said, “he could probably talk Hirohito into surrendering. Well, Donny?”

  I saluted and took off, running down the main road until
I was around the bend beyond Banty Creek and then leaving the road and cutting back through the woods, along a trail that would return me to the road that led eastward from the village up the mountain to the bivouac. I knew all these trails like the palm of my hand. And in no time at all I had reached the bivouac.

  To my surprise, my hero had changed clothes. He was dressed in what I quickly supposed was the combat uniform of a Japanese chui, or lieutenant, complete with ceremonial sword. Or maybe it wasn’t just ceremonial; he probably knew how to use it.

  “They’re here!” I said. “Bosco is back! And a whole bunch of others. There’s a Major Evans, who says he’s the umpire. And a Captain Billings with six trucks full of engineers and stuff.”

  “I heard trucks. I didn’t hear tanks,” he said.

  “No tanks. These guys say they’re all neutral,” I said. “The strike force comes later, I guess.”

  “Harris!” McPherson summoned his top noncom. “If I don’t come back, if I’m taken prisoner, you know what to do.”

  “Yes sir!” The sergeant saluted.

  But McPherson was not taken prisoner, and all of those other soldiers really were neutral. Captain Billings and his company of engineer corps were already establishing their bivouac near the same place where the WPA boys had camped out back in 1939 to build their little cement bridge over Banty Creek, and some of them were already taking measurements of that bridge. To make sure it would support heavy tanks, McPherson explained, as we approached the village from the same circuitous direction I had left it.

  Major Evans had set up his headquarters at the old Ingledew hotel, and was sitting in a rocker on its broad front porch. McPherson saluted him, but with the same Japanese salute he had demonstrated to Joe Don.

  “Cut the crap, McPherson!” Major Evans said, with a dismissive American salute. “You don’t have to be a Jap, for godsakes!”

  “You want realism, we got realism,” McPherson said, and added, “Sir.”

  “If that’s the case, why can’t you do a better job of digging foxholes?” The major swept his arm to indicate all of our pits and craters.

  “Those aren’t ours, sir,” McPherson said. “We didn’t invent war games, you know. The local kids have been playing War for years.” He smiled at me.

  “Oh? Well, I can’t tell you anything about your opponent’s strategy, but I can tell you that they are expecting you to defend the village.”

  “Defend the village?” McPherson said. “That wasn’t discussed. I don’t have the personnel for that. I’ve just got one platoon, you know, and the enemy is supposed to find us, and they won’t find us anywhere near this village.”

  “But if they ‘take’ the village,” Major Evans said, “I’ve got to score points for them. You can’t expect to win in the ninth inning if the score is already impossible.”

  “I’d need to lay a minefield, sir,” McPherson said. “We weren’t issued mines.”

  “We can give you mines,” Major Evans said. “Tell the engineers what you want, and let’s get ready.”

  “We will defend the village,” I said. The thought of laying a minefield around Stay More, even with fake explosives, made me angry. The Japs could keep the tanks out without any mines.

  Both men looked at me, McPherson with pride, Evans with annoyance. “Get lost, kid,” the latter said.

  “Sir,” McPherson said, “this gentleman is the editor of the local newspaper, and I would watch my tongue if I were you, sir.”

  “Oh, shit, lieutenant,” the major said. “And you’ve taught him how to speak Jap too, huh? Well, listen, your job was to make a beachhead here, not to civilize the natives. You and I have a few things to discuss in private and I’m asking the kid to beat it.”

  “Donny, would you mind?” McPherson said.

  “Okay, I think I’ll go watch those guys trying to blow up our bridge.” I turned to go, but said one more thing to McPherson, a thing I’d heard around the bivouac: “Don’t let him pull rank on you.”

  I went to watch the engineers measuring the WPA bridge, which I had watched the construction of in the summer of 1939. It wasn’t much of a bridge, six concrete tunnels just large enough to let the water of Banty Creek flow under the roadbed, and often not large enough for that because already the annual floods had jammed driftwood against the side of the bridge so that the cement crenelation along its side had to be sledgehammered away. But one pier of that crenelation remained, with its cement stamped like a tombstone forever: BUILT BY W.P.A. 1939.

  I went up to Captain Billings and asked, “Think it will hold an M-6? Or just M-4 Shermans?”

  “Oh, hi, Donny is it?” he said. “Where’d you learn about tanks? From McPherson?”

  I quoted Sergeant Harris, “The tank hasn’t been built that he can’t destroy.”

  The captain laughed. “That’s what I hear. But you’re a Jap, right? So the strength of this bridge is classified information.”

  “You said you’re working for both sides,” I reminded him.

  “That we are, son,” the captain said. “And we’re also working for you people. We aren’t going to let the tanks tear down your bridge if your bridge won’t hold ’em.”

  “You’re going to lay mines all over,” I said.

  “We are? I haven’t heard that yet. But if we lay mines, they won’t hurt anybody when they blow. Might scare a few dogs and cats and cows.” He chuckled at the image, but I didn’t think it was funny. “Our main job is bridges, though. We may have to get up into those hills and put some bridges across the brooks and streams.” He was pointing toward the south.

  “Is that the direction the tanks are coming from?” I asked.

  “Now there you go!” he said, quickly sticking his pointing hand into his pocket. “Trying to get information out of me. No, as far as I know, the tanks might come from that way.” He took out his pointing hand and pointed it toward the west.

  “How will they get across Swains Creek?” I asked. It was my turn to point, at the water that separated us from the schoolhouse, the road that went westward up to Sidehill. There had never been a bridge across that creek other than footbridges.

  “Guess we’ll have to put a pontoon on it. No trouble at all.” But he shook his head. “That doesn’t mean the tanks are coming from that direction.”

  They put a pontoon bridge across Swains Creek, which was just a temporary floating bridge, on the tops of boatlike things, but mighty enough to support at least an M-3 if not an M-6. The Japs and the Yanks revived our neglected pastimes in order to stage a battle over that pontoon bridge, with the Japs attempting to prevent the Yanks from crossing it. Since we outnumbered them so much now, our defense of the bridge was successful. We generously allowed the Yanks to run back and forth across the bridge after we had secured it.

  The grown-ups of Stay More congregated on the porch of Latha’s store to talk about the forthcoming invasion of the town, or, as far as most of them were concerned, the invasion that had already occurred—although the engineers and the umpire’s staff were polite, respectful of property, and eager to have our goodwill. Doc Swain came out of his funk to serve as “headman” of the village for discussions with Major Evans, although Oren Duckworth, father of Larry and Rosa Faye and the town’s lone industrialist when his canning factory was operating before the war, felt that he ought to be considered the headman, and insisted on participating in the discussions. Of course all of us Japs felt that Willard, who was vice mayor when Mare was still here and therefore now the mayor since Mare’s death, ought to be considered the headman, but he wasn’t quite yet a man, and he didn’t insist on participating. It was Oren Duckworth who grabbed the privilege of reporting to all of us on the discussions, of telling us not to be alarmed by the presence of all the soldiers or the coming of the tanks, to stay in our homes and not get in their way, to understand that all of this activity was intended for a good cause, the training of U.S. soldiers, and to remember that if any damage occurred the U.S. Army would reimburse u
s. He didn’t say a word about defending the village.

  I told Willard and Joe Don that McPherson’s samurai might have to defend the village and we ought to do whatever we could to help, starting with this: we would find out just which of the roads leading southward or westward out of the village were being “improved” by the engineers, with bridges or grading or widening or whatever, and we’d let McPherson know. Spying on those roads, the three of us determined that the enemy was definitely coming from the south, from the old road that meandered through the forests to Demijohn and Swain along the upper course of Swains Creek.

  It took the engineers several days to get that road ready to support tanks.

  Chapter twenty-one

  When the road to Swain was ready, we were ready to tell McPherson, and the three of us reported to him at the bivouac. He said it stood to reason that the invaders would come from the south, since that was the direction, at a great distance, of their base, Camp Chaffee. But since Major Evans and all the engineers and their convoy had arrived from the north, and McPherson had requested a minefield be laid with the northern direction in mind, the mines weren’t going to help anyhow. “Who needs mines?” Sergeant Harris asked.