by Chris Offutt
Chapter Two
Tucker had lied about his age and enlisted eleven months before the Korean war ended. Everyone in the hills of home looked alike—short, thick, squinty-eyed, and strong. For the past year Tucker had lived and worked with people from off—Italians, Jews, Negroes, Poles, and Indians—and saw little difference beyond tint of skin and accent. They all missed home. The black soldiers tested him initially, trying to learn if he was a southern racist, but Tucker passed their reckonings and wound up preferring their company. They had grown up as poor as him, hunted the same game, lived separately from fancy people, and needed little in the way of resources. Strangest of all were the white soldiers who despised Tucker for buddying around with black men. It made no sense and strengthened his resolve to avoid people in general.
After specialist training at Fort Campbell, the most outstanding soldiers were mustered in formation. Tucker stood in the front row of the army’s best recruits—marksmen, machine gunners, BAR men, close-combat experts, precision grenade throwers—all of them turned out in their BDUs under a sallow sun. They faced two officers: a colonel they’d never seen before and Major Buckner, a man they called a prick with ears. Buckner maintained a spit shine to his boots and bloused his trousers in a way that kept the sharp creases intact. Belted snugly beneath his chin was a strap holding a pristine wool hat with a polished visor. He carried a brass-tipped swagger stick, which he twirled and spun in a fashion that indicated hours of practice.
The major blathered on for many minutes, taking credit for the soldiers’ accomplishments while managing to toady up to Colonel Anderson, who stood by with a forced patience, barely concealed. Tucker clenched his teeth to prevent any expression. Eyes straight ahead, he noticed the colonel’s muddy boots, wrinkled fatigues, and crusher-style wool hat with a dull leather brim.
The major ended his prolonged remarks and stepped aside for the colonel, who regarded the men carefully. Tucker’s shoulders squared themselves as if working on their own, chin rising slightly to offer the illusion of tallness. The colonel’s head was lipless and long-necked, his back straight as a fence post. His sloped shoulders hunched forward as if his face led the rest of his body. Three deep lines furrowed both sides of his face, with shorter creases hooking around his mouth, linked by many other lines like the dried remains of tributaries. He wore a small gray mustache. He stood stalwart as stone, then walked with the fluidity of a creek. Tucker couldn’t figure where on God’s green earth the colonel had upped from. He seemed young and old simultaneously, the same way a newborn resembled his great-grandpa.
Colonel Anderson spoke in a soft tone, almost mild, but he clipped each word at its end, enabling his voice to reach all the soldiers. He offered the men an opportunity to join a special operations group. They’d work behind enemy lines against the Chinese who were reinforcing North Korean troops. The training included basic medical care, sabotage, explosives, hand-to-hand combat techniques, evasion, and orienteering. Operations would be vital, difficult, and dangerous.
“Your job,” he said matter-of-factly, “is to jump out of airplanes and kill the enemy. I’m looking for volunteers.”
Tucker raised his hand immediately. Behind him came the swift rustle of cloth as other men lifted their arms. The colonel scanned the formation, his face expressionless. The sun rose behind him, throwing his long shadow across the dirt. Tucker slitted his eyes against the glare. He’d never been in a plane, had never seen one except from a distance on the base airfield.
Major Buckner’s head intensified its hue from pink to red to crimson as if sustaining a sunburn’s full effects in a few seconds. His upper lip lifted in contempt as he saw seven men still with their arms down.
“When the colonel asks for volunteers,” he said, “you damn well volunteer.”
An insect veered from the sky and he swatted at it without contact. Red flesh bulged around the chin strap of his hat. He pointed at a large man beside Tucker, blonde-haired from Minnesota, the ghost of his Viking ancestry coursing through his veins.
“You.” The major’s voice became shrill with indignation. “Why didn’t you raise your hand?”
The man blinked rapidly, his pale eyelashes fluttering. Outraged, the major lifted his swagger stick and struck the big man’s leg a sharp blow that echoed across the drill yard. The soldier grimaced and stared straight ahead. Buckner hit the man twice more, the sound loud as an ax chop. The major turned to Tucker.
“What’s your fucking buddy’s fucking problem?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Tucker said.
“Find out.”
Rivulets of sweat flowed down Swede’s ruddy face. He could run all day with a full ruck, carrying the heavy BAR, and never complain. He was shy due to a speech impediment, compounded by a fourth-grade education. Swede took everything literally.
“Tell me,” Tucker said to him. “Or he’ll beat on us both.”
“Pa-a-toot,” Swede said.
“Parachute, sir,” Tucker said to Major Buckner.
“What? Speak up.”
“The colonel,” Tucker said, “he didn’t say nothing about a parachute.”
The major lifted his swagger stick but Colonel Anderson was tired of the preening martinet. “Stop,” he ordered, his voice edged with hardness.
Major Buckner stiffened, slowly bringing his stick to parade rest, tucked tightly beneath his left arm, parallel to the hard ground. He took two steps backward and returned to the colonel.
“Sir,” the major said, “these men are a disgrace. They will be disciplined severely.”
The colonel ignored him. “Volunteers stay,” he said, and pointed at the big man from Minnesota. “You stay.”
“Ten hut,” the major said, watching in smug satisfaction as the soldiers saluted in unison. “Cowards dismissed.”
Colonel Anderson waited until the six soldiers were out of sight before speaking. “Give me your stick.”
The major presented his burnished swagger stick with a slight flourish. Colonel Anderson lifted his leg and snapped the stick across his knee. He dropped the splintered sections to the earth.
“Never hit a soldier in my army,” he said. “Dismissed, Major.”
Face blanched and eyes wide, the major saluted with an uncontrollable tremor to his hand. He pivoted and marched away, his gait slightly off-kilter as if the lack of his beloved instrument affected his balance.
Colonel Anderson approached the big Minnesotan.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“Lund.”
“Do they call you ‘Swede’?”
Lund nodded, perplexed that the colonel was so prescient.
“Would it make a difference if you received paratrooper training?”
“Uh …”
“Would you jump out of a plane if I gave you a parachute?”
Lund frowned briefly, then his face relaxed with comprehension. He raised his hand, nodding his head.
“How’s your leg?” the colonel said.
Lund shrugged. Colonel Anderson circled the formation, now ragged with holes from missing men. He faced the miniature soldier in the center who’d spoken, smooth-faced and short, like a child wearing fatigues. His arm was still high, fingers extended to the sky.
“How tall are you?” the colonel said.
“Five foot five and one-quarter, sir,” Tucker said.
“You positive about that one-quarter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You full grown?”
“I don’t know, sir. I hope not.”
The colonel nodded as if turning over the answer in his mind while concealing his amusement.
“Why’d you join my army, soldier?” the colonel said.
“To get away from home, sir.”
“Where’s home?”
“Just this side of the Rowan County line, here in Kentucky.”
“You didn’t get very far.”
“No, sir. But there’s more sky here.”
“Is that why
you volunteered for Airborne?”
“No, sir.”
“Tell me why, son.”
“I like birds.”
The colonel nodded. Kids, he thought. Three years into war and he was left with kids. The advent of Chinese reinforcements for North Korea had resulted in a stalemate on the ground. The United States was not taking advantage of its air superiority. The Americans had made only two drops, both large scale and both successful, but afterward the paratroopers were used as infantry. The colonel believed that helicopters could drop small independent forces into carefully chosen regions. It had required a great deal of politicking on his part to arrange for the creation of a small, specialized force of paratroopers. The boys standing before him represented his first effort at assembling a ferocious new force.
Tucker and the other men trained for eight weeks, then began fast-moving operations in Korea. They fought and advanced, fought and advanced. Each action proved successful, despite severe losses. Within four months Tucker was combat-hardened and promoted in rank. He’d jumped twenty-four times and shot many enemy. Other men kept track of their kills, the same ones who bragged about the number of whores they’d had on leave. Tucker avoided those men. He maintained his weapons and his health. Everything about army life bored him except battle. Then the war ended.
He was shipped to a San Diego port, and put on a train going east. Military men were on every car, mostly wearing some version of their uniforms, eager to discuss their plans, their hometowns, and their women. They drank and fought in the club car. The passenger seats stank like drains. Tucker reached the end of his tolerance at Cincinnati’s Union Station. He left the train and began walking home. He figured it was about a hundred miles, shorter if he avoided roads and traveled overland. If he got tired, he’d use part of his army pay to buy a horse.
Now, Tucker awoke hungry in Kentucky, momentarily bewildered, believing that the hills and heavy woods were the vestige of a dream and he was still in Korea. He lit a cigarette and relaxed in the familiar landscape. Swede was dead. Two-thirds of the men he knew were dead. Tucker attributed his own survival to a combination of luck and cunning. He shot quicker. In hand-to-hand combat, he struck first.
The morning woods reverberated with the droning hum of locusts, rising and falling as if they were a chorus led by a master insect. They stopped abruptly. The silence lasted half a minute, then they began again, confounding him with their ability, like a flock of birds changing direction as a group. He ate a piece of dried meat, sipped from his canteen, and began walking. After half a mile he cut a section of morning glory vine and used it to tie the Ka-Bar knife scabbard to his thigh. Freeman’s pistol was snugged neatly into his belt, covered by his shirttail.
The dogwoods had already lost their blossoms, but the redbud still hazed the lower tree line. He avoided roads, traversing the open fields of dogbane and burdock. The occasional fence alerted him to the possibility of people. He followed a deer trail, wishing for a rifle. He kept himself aimed southeast, and came upon a dirt lane that led to a road covered with creek rock. His supplies had dwindled but he’d be all right. Anybody who couldn’t live in the woods shouldn’t be drawing breath.
At midday he rested in the cool shade of a copse of oak. He held the pistol in his lap and listened for the rattle of branches overhead. A tree limb dipped as a squirrel leaped from an adjacent oak. Tucker aimed at the gap where the tree trunk made its first split. He pursed his lips and made a short whirring noise. The squirrel’s head rose in the oak’s crotch, curious about the foreign sound. Tucker shot and the animal vanished in a brief crimson spray. He retrieved the squirrel and left the woods for an open field, picking henbit and dandelion. He hunted for the folded leaves of wood sorrel, and dug fourteen of the tuberous roots. A cluster of wild ramps drew him by their heavy garlicky scent. He took several plants.
Three hours later he encountered a tight run of barbed wire that held a piece of hide torn from a cow. He crossed the fence, alert to a possible bull, and followed the winding depression left by hooves, figuring the path led to a pond fed by a spring. At the source, he filled his canteen and washed the wood sorrel bulbs and wild greens.
The afternoon sun eased toward the horizon in ragged strips of scarlet. He left the pasture for the woods. A whip-poor-will’s mournful call slid through the trees. On a rise in the land he found a limestone outcrop suitable to bivouac. Twin ruts of an old dirt road ran nearby, the middle rounded by high weeds, and he figured the road was used in fall for deer hunting. The cliff offered a commanding view of a field with a few trees and high grasses.
He dumped his ruck and rested. Dusk was coming on. The squirrel wasn’t autumn-plump, but it had gained a little spring weight. He skinned and gutted it, then rinsed the carcass with canteen water, wishing he had his helmet to cook in. He fed hardwood sticks to the fire, a few at a time, while slicing the wood sorrel roots, using a flat rock for a cutting board. When the blade dulled, he sharpened it on the rock, an expedience he admired—the surface that dulled it could refresh it as well.
Darkness arrived gradually, then in a rush, shutting the space between the trees, dulling the limestone’s sheen, draping the field below. He skewered the squirrel carcass on the green stick and cooked it slowly. The moon rose. He placed the ramps beside the fire, turning them several times. After thirty minutes he ate the best meal he’d had in a year.
The night air cooled quickly. He extinguished the fire with dirt, lit a Lucky, and reclined. Maybe he’d stay here a couple of days. Home wasn’t going anywhere, and wasn’t all that much anyhow—two hundred people in the woods, their houses linked by dirt roads and paths along the ridgelines. He knew everyone who lived there. A barred owl called and he listened for the higher-pitched squawking of a female but none answered. The owl was as alone as he was. He smoked the cigarette to the nub and saved it for later. He closed his eyes and slept.
Chapter Three
The sound of morning birds awoke Tucker early and he lay watching the sky change from indigo to pink to sheer light. He spent most of the day scouting his location. It was a good spot, safe and away from people, sheltered on high ground against rain. He could trap rabbits with a simple snare. He’d never eaten acorns but knew people had during the Depression. Families had fared better in the hills than elsewhere—they were already accustomed to living without much money and relying on the woods to get by.
Tucker filled his canteen at the creek and searched the bank until he found a turtle shell, bleached from the sun, the exterior panels of color having peeled away long ago. He slipped it in his ruck. He circled a limestone outcrop facing west, moving slowly and watching the brown rock mottled by sun. Late in the day he saw his prey—a heavy-bodied timber rattlesnake basking in the sun, docile as if it had recently come out of hibernation. Tucker counted eight rattles, which meant a young snake, maybe three years old.
Tucker withdrew his knife. He moved carefully, staying in the shade to prevent his shadow from falling over the snake. In a sudden motion, he stomped his boot just behind the snake’s head and chopped its head off. Tucker leaped back, watching the severed head. It twisted on the rock, opening and closing its jaws, still fighting in a way he admired. For a full five minutes the body coiled and uncoiled, the rattles clicking in the air.
He carried the snake’s body to his camp, skinned it, and cleaned it. He built a fire, poured water into the turtle shell, boiled the milkweed shoots, then added snake meat. After eating he sprawled on the ground, admiring the night sky and smoking a Lucky.
In the morning, Tucker ate the last of the snake and went to the creek to refill his canteen and wash the turtle shell. After walking a series of concentric circles in a mile radius, he was satisfied by the lack of human sign. He removed his clothes and bathed in a pool. The clear water magnified sight, making the smooth flat rocks that lined the bottom appear large and close. Crawdads scuttled backward, tiny claws poised in defense. He used sandstone as a crude sponge to scrub his skin red. His feet we
re still marked by combat boots like the scar on a tree where barbed wire had been nailed for years. He relaxed, letting the fresh water wash away the days of filth.
Tucker dressed in the sun and headed back to camp. Late-morning light spread overhead, sifting through the trees like golden liquid. He stopped moving in mid-stride. Something was off-kilter. He listened intently, twitching his head in different directions, sniffing the air. His body calmed itself, a trait developed in combat. He became utterly still. His intuition had kept him alive in Korea and he’d learned to obey it, letting a kind of hidden awareness of the world govern his actions. He saw nothing, smelled nothing, and heard nothing. Abruptly he knew what was wrong—the lack of sound. The birds had ceased.
He moved upslope and climbed a low maple. Parked on the road two hundred yards away was a Chevrolet two-door Fleetmaster, black and shiny in the sun. Tucker eased down the tree and walked on the downwind side of the road. He needed to break camp before discovery. He heard the car’s engine and rolled into a blackberry thicket beside the road. Thorns stabbed his face and arms. Bees lifted momentarily, then returned, and he sustained six stings but remained silent.
A young woman in a dark blue dress ran along the road as if fleeing the car behind her. The rocky road slowed her pace. A silver ribbon in her hair bobbed behind her as she ran. The Chevy overtook her easily, the driver yelling. She ran faster but the car swerved around her, bouncing over the uneven ground, and stopped sideways in the road. The driver emerged, a freshly shaved man in his thirties wearing a tight suit, hair slicked back with grease. He moved toward her and she slapped him twice, the second time hooking her fingers into claws. The man grabbed her hair, yanked her backward, and pushed her onto her hands and knees. With his free hand he grasped the hem of her dress and jerked it. The fabric tore, and half the dress slid off her body.