Prisoners of War

by Steve Yarbrough

  The lieutenant sighed, stepped over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Where you from, Private?”

  “Sir?”

  Evidently, the lieutenant didn’t like the look on his face or the tone of his voice, because he repeated the question sharply. “I said where are you from?”

  “Mississippi. Sir.”

  “Where in Mississippi?”

  “Loring.”

  “That doesn’t tell me much.”

  One of the flies lit on the old man’s tongue, which was swollen and distended, a big piece of blood sausage.

  “It’s in the Delta. Sir. North of Jackson.”

  “What’s the main form of wildlife down there?”

  “Sir?”

  “Wildlife. You know—creatures of field and forest.”

  “We got deer.”

  “You ever shoot one?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It died.”

  “Well, that’s what happened to Giuseppe Verdi there,” the lieutenant observed. “He died because somebody fired a weapon in his direction. And he’s just as dead standing up as he’d be lying down.”

  Marty didn’t argue with the lieutenant, but somehow made his feet move and got through the door into the dusty lane, where he saw Raymond Sample step out of another hut, one in which an entire family had been killed when a shell smashed through the roof. He’d found the body of a little girl in there, both legs separated from her trunk. “You tell me,” he said, “what the big difference is between them and us.”

  At the time, Marty took the question in the most obvious way and answered it in kind, saying, “They were on the wrong side.” Now, however, he understood the question differently, and would have answered it differently if Raymond had been with him there in the tower. Our hearts are still beating, he would have said, and theirs aren’t.

  On that island, it was the only difference that mattered.

  Around 0200, fog settled in, blanketing the camp, muffling sound and dampening the tower’s floorboards and railings. Instantly, it got a lot colder, and before long he was fairly uncomfortable.

  Having nothing better to do, he swung the searchlight over the compound, letting it pass quickly over the other tower. Through the swirling mist, he saw Brinley, who didn’t seem to realize he’d been illuminated: he stood with his back to the light, perfectly still, his rifle nowhere to be seen. He was probably over there thinking about his dead aunt, and it was a safe bet that if he had his hands on anything, it was not his weapon.

  Marty rotated the beam past the duty hut, the captain’s quarters, the supply shed, the infirmary, the mess hall. He swept it over the long rows of tents where the prisoners lay sleeping, played it over his tent, too, in hopes of disrupting Kimball’s dreams of California. He moved on to the latrines, then the showers—and it was there, near the entrance to the shower room used by the prisoners, that his eye detected motion.

  Swinging backwards, the beam froze a figure in frosty gray light.

  The prisoner made no attempt to hide, though he could easily have ducked around a corner. Instead, after a few seconds had elapsed, he stepped forward, his motions stiff and mechanical.

  Marty swiveled the searchlight, keeping the prisoner in the center of the circle. The man took another step, and then another, each step distinct from the one that had preceded it and the one that would follow. You could almost hear his bones creaking.

  Marty kept moving the light, until finally his hands began to shake. “Don’t you take another step,” he called, but the prisoner with the stained face came closer and closer. Marty might have swung the rifle off his shoulder for the second time that night, if not for his reluctance to turn loose of the searchlight. For whatever reason, it suddenly seemed important to achieve the clearest-possible view of the other man’s face.

  A short distance from the base of the tower, the prisoner stopped moving. For a few seconds, he stared straight ahead, as if he were looking at something on the far side of the fence, beyond the camp’s perimeter. Then he slowly rotated his head.

  You could say, if you wanted to, that the dense fog, electrified by the blazing searchlight, had the effect of distorting his features, that his eyes were not as far back in their sockets as they looked, that the stain on his neck and cheek was merely that and not the suppurating wound it appeared to be. You could note, if you so chose, that under his own power he had just crossed the rec area, a distance of some sixty or seventy yards, and that as he came ever closer, his chest rose and fell with each step he took. You could consult medical books, theological texts, works of philosophy or psychology, assemble a jury of preachers and rabbis, doctors and lawyers, prophets and linguists, and they could vote and publish their findings, but to Marty that wouldn’t have mattered. He knew damn well what he was seeing, since he’d seen it before.

  THIRTY TWO

  JASPER SPROLES loved showy cars, and his love sometimes led—as love sometimes will—to his falling prey to the unscrupulous. Back before he got rich, he’d bought a used Ford roadster from Ben Pope at Loring Auto, despite Alvin’s warning that Ben was little more than a bandit dressed in a suit. The car, one of the fancy 1932 models with a customized V-12 under the hood, ran fine for almost a week. Then, over on the outskirts of Greenville, the engine caught fire. The mechanic who examined it discovered that somebody had filled the crankcase with transmission fluid to boost the oil pressure—one way, he said, to get a bad engine running long enough for the car to be sold. Jasper Sproles rode Trailways home. When he attempted to get his money back, the dealer claimed ignorance and reminded Jasper that, in any case, he’d bought the roadster “as is.”

  All three of Ben Pope’s sons were among the first in Loring to receive draft notices. When their father appeared at the selective service office to plead, on various grounds, for their exemptions, Jasper grinned and said, “Uncle Sam needs ’em, Ben. And he’ll take ’em as is.”

  Jasper had a fine car now, a Buick Century convertible, one of the last ones built before the War Production Board prohibited the manufacture of civilian automobiles. Alvin was eating breakfast and reading the Memphis paper when the car pulled into his driveway. He took his time chewing his toast, knowing that you didn’t want anything caught in your throat when you dealt with Jasper Sproles.

  It was raining again, but Jasper wasn’t wearing a raincoat and didn’t seem too worried about the prospect of getting wet. He climbed out of the Buick and walked across the yard, stepping in three or four puddles, bending his legs slightly, as was his habit, and moving a lot faster than it appeared. On the playground, Alvin had once heard his grammar-school teacher tell the principal, “That Sproles boy aims to walk when other folks run, but he still plans to beat them to their destination.” She’d made the remark in a disparaging manner, as if she expected Jasper to come in last in every endeavor. But it had struck Alvin, even then, that being able to walk when other folks had to run was not such a bad thing. After crossing the finish line, they’d be winded and you wouldn’t.

  He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, drained his coffee cup, then went to the front door.

  “You know I wouldn’t be here,” Jasper said before the screen had even been unlatched, “if there wasn’t a big mess.”

  Alvin stepped aside to let him enter, but Jasper meant to talk first and engage in niceties later, or not at all. “The can of worms you done opened,” he said, “is so damn stinky, a mud cat won’t bite ’em.”

  “You want to come in, Jasper? Or you want to stand out there on the porch, so that everybody passing by’ll have his imagination ignited by the sight of you and me talking?”

  “Piss on them,” Jasper said, though he did step inside.

  Alvin shut the door and motioned at the kitchen. “I got the pot on. Want you a little coffee?”

  “Naw, I don’t want no coffee. Did, I’d buy a cup. I can buy a cup of coffee.”

  “Yeah, I know you can, Jasper. You can buy lots of
coffee. So what’s your problem this rainy morning?”

  Jasper looked into the living room, where several weeks’ worth of newspapers lay scattered across the furniture. “You ain’t gone ask me to sit down?”

  “You want to sit down, Jasper?”

  “Naw, I’d just as soon stand. But I don’t want you to leave a single stone unturned when it comes to making me feel welcome, Alvin, because you’ve caused me a slew of problems, and I’m mad as a crippled rattler.”

  Sighing, Alvin walked into the living room, shoved some newspapers off the couch and sat down. Jasper had followed him out of the hallway but remained on his feet, studying the bookshelves that lined the walls. There were a few books, but most of the space was taken up by tall stacks of magazines— Harper’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Collier’s.

  “It’s too goddamn dark in here,” Jasper said.

  “You want me to open the blinds?”

  “No, I like it dark. What are you doing with all them magazines? I never figured you for a reader.”

  “Got to find my entertainment somewhere.”

  “That’s the problem with you, Alvin. For all your underhanded ways, the only thing that really interests you’s having a big time. You was always like that. Me, I ain’t out to have fun. I’m out to conduct business. What good can them magazines do you? They tell you anything about dealing with a bootlegger?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t want ’em to. I know how to deal with a bootlegger—been doing it half my life. I want the magazines to tell me about some fellow living out in the Hamptons, wearing the latest all-wool pacesetter, taking a train into Manhattan on Saturday night to meet a chorus girl for a drink in the Village.”

  “Now that’s just about as useful as a three-legged mare.” Jasper threw his hat down on the coffee table and took a seat in an armchair. “You ever heard of an individual named Benny L. Johnson?”

  “Can’t say as I have. Not that the name’s particularly unusual.”

  “Naw, the name ain’t unusual, and that’s one thing that bothers me—its ordinariness. My name’s one you remember. Jasper Sproles. You ever run across anybody else called that?”

  Alvin shook his head.

  “Naw, and you won’t. Not unless he’s some chintzy place like them Hamptons you’re so hepped up about.” Jasper crossed his legs, then shifted around in the chair, trying to get comfortable. “The bastard works for Bilbo. And apparently he come up here the other day investigating you and your colored boy.”

  “Oh,” Alvin said. “So he’s the one.”

  “Yes, the very goddamn one. And he didn’t like the reception he got in Loring County, so he wasted no time getting back to Jackson and on the blower to Washington. Then just yesterday, I got a phone call myself. Some son of a bitch comes on the line asking if it’s me, and I say yes, and then he tells me to hold on, and another son of a bitch comes on the line and asks me the same damn question, and I tell him yes, too, and that son of a bitch says to hold on, and then the biggest son of a bitch of all’s on there, name of Theodore G. Bilbo.”

  According to Jasper, the senator hadn’t fooled around. He said the list of folks he’d have to work through if forced to follow official channels was so long, he’d get tired just reading it. “Got the secretary that’s under the secretary to the secretary’s secretary,” the senator said. “I ain’t a young man, nor a very healthy one, neither, and if I have to put myself out, my disposition’s gone fray. I say that because, unlike some, I know Theodore G. Bilbo mighty well.”

  The senator didn’t appreciate having his personal representative mistreated. Mr. Johnson had been sent to Loring County to ferret out misconduct, of which he’d discovered no moderate amount. In the process, he’d been attacked and beaten by a colored draft evader and then had his life threatened by some Italian who could be living here as some kind of spy. The senator deemed it outrageous that a man like Jasper, who’d secured a lucrative federal contract, would aid and abet those who either opposed or refused to support the United States government.

  “He made it pretty clear,” Jasper said, “that he wants that boy in uniform. Either there or in jail.”

  “How soon?”

  “Sounded to me like yesterday may be too late.”

  “Well, I guess we’ve got Frank Holder to thank.”

  Jasper’s jaw locked so hard, it must have ground a layer off his molars. “Yeah,” he said, rapping the arm of his chair, “and the hell of it is, there ain’t no easy way to settle that score. The poor bastard’s son’s already dead.”

  He eventually left, but not until he’d been prevailed upon to sample four or five different bourbons and eat a box of bonbons.

  Before going, he told Alvin that L.C. would be receiving a notice within “the next few days”—the bonbons, rather than the bourbon, having pushed the timetable back—unless, of course, he chose to show up and volunteer. After Alvin said he’d talk to L.C. and his momma, Jasper warned him that any shady dealing he was involved in—“and let’s face it, Alvin, you’re a fellow that ghosts the darkest corners”—had better be curtailed, at least until Benny L. Johnson and his master turned their attention elsewhere.

  Promising to take precautionary measures, Alvin then presented Jasper a case of brandy, which he himself carried through the rain to the Buick, because his guest’s legs were wobbly and his hands had gone numb.

  THIRTY THREE

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, after spending a few hours back in bed and then taking a long bath, Alvin climbed into his pickup, intending to drive by the store and talk to Rosetta, if she happened to be alone.

  A couple of cars and three or four trucks were parked out front, and several Negro kids were running around and hurling mud pies at one another. When Alvin pulled in, they stopped playing and, dropping their heads, shuffled into the grass along the road ditch. He sat there for a moment, letting the engine idle and watching the children whose fun his mere presence had disrupted. Every minute or two, one of them would cast a swift glance in his direction, then look back down.

  He put the truck in gear and pulled into the road too fast, throwing up a storm of gravel. Looking in his rearview mirror, he could see the kids running back to the parking area and waving their arms.

  He’d made love for the first time, when he was seventeen years old, to a woman named Ernestine Grider, whose husband had bled to death after a gin saw caught his arm and pulled him in. She was small, thin and angular, with dark hair that had started to turn gray at the roots. To call her face plain would have been kind but misleading. The night The Wizard of Oz opened in Loring and the Wicked Witch of the West appeared on-screen, more than one person in the darkened theater thought she looked just like Ernestine.

  She’d taught Alvin and his brother at Sunday school. She spoke with a nasal twang and was reputed to be stern, so nobody wanted to be in her class. Yet from the first time he found himself in the same room with her, Alvin had not been able to look at her without feeling a certain warmth in his temples.

  Once, on the steps of the post office, when he was thirteen or fourteen and had begun to miss church, she asked him if he’d kept up with his Bible reading, and though he knew she expected him to say yes, he couldn’t bring himself to lie. When he said “No ma’am,” the lines deepened around her mouth and in a very low voice, she said, “To tell you the truth, Alvin, I haven’t, either, but I wouldn’t want anybody to know it.” She laid her hand on the back of his neck that day, and he almost said to her right then and there, on Front Street, what he would say at her kitchen table a few years later, after his father sent him over to pay for a mule.

  “Mrs. Grider, I get a funny feeling when I see you.”

  He said that to her over the cup of coffee she’d inexplicably offered him as he stood on her front porch with his cap in his hands. After he said it, those deep lines reappeared. She reached over and touched him again, laying her hand atop his, and he looked down and saw how red and rough her knuckles were. “Alvin,” she
said, “the day’ll come when you’ll think twice before you make a statement like that to a woman like me. But we’re not there yet, I guess. Which accrues to my advantage as well as your own.”

  It was quick, and it was messy, but he didn’t have the sense to know it. Lying next to him in bed, with the covers pulled up to her neck, she said, “You’re going to disappoint me real bad, Alvin, if you start thinking you love me and coming over here after tonight, because it would be the worst thing in the world you could do. It would be as bad, in its own way, as what we just did was good.”

  He did not disappoint her: he never went to her house again. But whenever he saw her on the street, he stopped to talk, asking how her farm was doing or, later on, after she remarried, how her husband, who’d come from Alabama, was liking Loring. In a manner of speaking, he supposed he’d come to love her, not least because she’d taught him an important lesson about the limits of engagement and the art of restraint.

  What he’d learned back then from Ernestine Grider had come in useful in his dealings with Shirley. And dealings, he thought, driving down the road toward her house, as he so often had, at all hours of the day and night, was exactly the right word. An air of negotiation, of proposal and counterproposal, surrounded their every encounter. When a straightforward declaration of intent might have sufficed, they were both too wary to make it.

  The pickup truck wasn’t there, since it was Wednesday and Dan had probably taken it to town for Guard drill. What surprised him was the green Plymouth, which someone had parked next to the porch.

  His mouth went dry. His first urge was to let the clutch out and stomp the accelerator, dig two deep ruts in the road and make as much noise as he could in hopes of ruining whatever pleasure she might be having. Then he looked at the car more closely and realized that he’d seen it before, standing on the street in front of the telephone company.