Cronies (Perry County)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Their only trouble with Carson Long was because of Sis. In their first year of high school, Mickey took offense at a cadet's rough teasing of Sis Ruby. That was before Mickey's interest sharpened, but Sis was one of them and the cadet was an outsider.

  Mickey hollered, "Hey, cut that out." The cadet, about Logan's size, took a look at the smaller Mickey Weston and kept right on pulling at Sis's stocking cap. Sis called for the boy to stop and Mickey thought she meant it.

  Not knowing how else to handle it, Mickey gave the tormentor a good shove and planted himself in front of Sis. The cadet was quick to recover and got himself nose to nose with Mickey—only Mickey had to crane his neck back and the cadet had to look down.

  "Nobody pushes Jim Hanson, you little poop." The boy easily shoved Mickey a step backward and, despite Mickey's bracing himself, pushed him another.

  Mickey heard Sis demand, "You leave him alone!"

  For his companions, watching with ill-concealed glee, Hanson mimicked, "You leave him alone!" His act got laughs and Mickey felt helpless and foolish. Mickey remembered how, in their first fight, Logan had just gone ahead and popped Bart Ruby in the nose. Try as he might, Mickey couldn't do it. The cadet shoved him again and he took it. Like a hog, he thought, dumb and too scared to fight.

  Then Logan was there. He shoved the cadet half into the street and went after him. It wasn't necessary because Jim Hanson was already coming back. They went at it, punching, wrestling, down onto the sidewalk bricks with people coming in a hurry to watch.

  Hanson and Logan were well matched. The cadet kept trying to get distance to take up a boxer's stance, but Logan bored in and the pair thrashed and wrestled until they broke apart to start again.

  It went on without anyone trying to stop it, but surprisingly quickly, both Hanson and Logan were gasping tired and stood a distance apart, hands on hips, just wheezing and glaring at the other.

  The fight went out of them at about the same time. Hanson took to brushing ineffectually at his fouled uniform, and Logan pressed a hand to a bloody lip.

  Another cadet said anxiously, "You'd better get back on campus the back way, Jim. If he finds out about this, the Major will give you a hundred hours."

  Jim Hanson didn't like just walking away. He glowered a little at Logan. "You're a good fighter, for a townie."

  Still holding his lip Logan managed. "You hit awful good. I was busy trying to keep you wrestling."

  Hanson seemed pleased. "I take boxing lessons. You wouldn't have a chance in the ring."

  Logan snorted a little, "Well, I'm not figuring on getting in one."

  Mollified, the cadet stepped forward with his hand out for shaking. "Look, I'm Jim Hanson. We had a good fight and I'm for leaving it there."

  It took Logan a moment to adjust because he wasn't trained to gentlemanly ways. Then he took the proffered hand and said, "I'm Logan Dell."

  Hanson turned toward Mickey with his hand out. Mick managed to mumble, "I'm Mickey Weston," and made it a point to squeeze hard in the handshake.

  The cadet peered around a bit anxiously. "I've got to get off the street before a faculty officer sees me all wrinkled up."

  Turning away with his friends, Hanson added, "We'll see you around, Logan. Without fighting next time, I hope."

  Logan answered, "See you, Jim." Mickey managed a wave.

  Sis was solicitous of Logan's lip and ripped elbow. She said, "Jim Hanson seems like a polite boy."

  Mickey was furious until Sis thanked him for coming to her rescue. He guessed he hadn't done much compared to Logan's fighting, but Sis did seem appreciative.

  Logan was already thinking ahead. "I wonder if that Hanson would teach me boxing, Mick. He knows some stuff. I could tell when we got separated."

  "You licked him, Logan."

  "Then how come I'm bleeding and he isn't?" But Logan was pleased that Mickey thought he had won.

  +++

  At graduation, Mickey Weston got the highest boy marks, but two girls beat him out. Logan didn't do as well as he usually did. His mind was already on soldiering—and getting off the farm forever.

  They had a last evening together because Logan was heading into Harrisburg on the early train. He planned to sign up and hoped he would be sent to the Philippines, where jungle fighting still went on once in a while.

  Mickey said, "It's going to be different around here, Logan."

  "Never be the same, Mick. I'll get back now and again but you'll be busy with farming and I'll just be visiting.

  Nope, it'll be different, all right."

  After a minute Logan said, "Look Mick, we don't want to be corny, but let's shake on staying best friends, no matter what happens or how many years go by."

  Mickey felt himself a little chokey, and he squeezed Logan's hand as hard as he could. "We'll always be best friends, Logan. Hell, who else would want you?"

  Their laughter eased emotions. Logan turned philosophical.

  "Think you'll marry up with Sis, Mick?"

  Mickey felt himself flushing but he tried to answer straight. "She isn't like the rest of the Rubys, Logan."

  "No, she isn't."

  "I doubt she'll wait until I'm done with college and all."

  "She might. Who else is there with any prospects around here?"

  Then he added, "Of course, you not being a real Perry Countian is against you, but Sis may not care."

  Mickey felt his cheeks pucker. That damned Logan never would forget that he had been born outside the county. Made you wonder how long it took to become a gen-u-Wine Perry Countian. He could imagine the two of them, about seventy years old, with beards white as snow, and Logan still claiming Mickey Weston wasn't a real Perry Countian. Logan could be galling sometimes.

  Logan was back the next evening and he hung around for two days before swearing in. Mickey saw him off the last time. The Sergeant said to bring nothing extra. Logan wore pants and an old sweater over his shirt. He carried his razor and a few things in a cardboard briefcase that looked as though it might not last out the day.

  They waved and Logan was gone.

  Mickey felt suddenly alone. College loomed like a cliff to be struggled up for years to come. He trudged homeward, feeling directionless. Logan was off for great adventures while he had years and years of difficult study. For what? At the moment, Mickey didn't know.

  1939 - Panama

  Corporal Dell's nine man squad crouched in a half circle with their Buck Sergeant instructor in the center. Field uniforms were sweat-soaked with salty rime at collars and ringed armpits. Beard stubble showed along jaw lines leaned from long days and short nights, interrupted by guard duty, patrolling, and canned rations—so old some had World War dates on them.

  The three-stripe Sergeant sweated, too. His sweat stank of whiskey and stale beer. Instructors went home at night. Line infantry did not.

  When the instructor spoke, Logan Dell listened. Despite his boozy ways, the Sergeant had fought in war. He had killed Moros on Luzon with his 30/40 Krag. In the big war he had survived Bella Woods with a bayonet and his Remington-made Enfield rifle. Old and out of shape he might be, but the sergeant had seen the elephant, and Corporal Dell wished to know what real soldiers knew. The squad listened because Corporal Dell would make them suffer if they did not.

  The Sergeant was ranging in his final talk, tossing about ideas neglected by the manuals or in the pre-planned field exercises that some called jungle fighting.

  "Don't wear a helmet on patrol. You can't see from under it and the iron clanks against everything. Lean close to whisper and your helmets strike. A man can't hear as good under a tin hat. Unless your chin strap is just right, the damned things'll fall off. Watch troops run and you'll see half of them holding their helmets on with one hand. Helmets are comforting when artillery is falling. Otherwise they aren't worth a belch in a windstorm.

  "Don't plan on doing much with hand grenades. Throw up-hill and they're apt to roll down on you. Toss down hill and they'll likely dribble right p
ast your target. An air burst is best, if you've got the right man throwing. Send grenades along to your best arm and don't waste 'em on throwers that couldn't hit a barn from the inside.

  "If you get separated from your outfit, take careful stock of your situation. A man can get killed trying to get back through the lines. Take a long view and wait your chance. It's better to miss a few meals and get a mite lonesome than it is to be shot dead."

  Logan Dell stored the information and cataloged the ideas. The tritest saying in the whole U.S. Army was: "This information could save your life." Trite, but often true. A time could come, and by then he planned on being Sergeant Dell, with a platoon of forty men following his commands.

  Logan had made corporal in three years. That was good, but it might take another four before a sergeant's slot opened up. The army was down to 190,000 men and promotion came slow and hard.

  Still, there were rumors about. War noises came from Europe and the Pacific. A draft was starting up that would mean new units activating. Cadre would be selected to start the new outfits and rank should come quickly.

  Logan figured to be ready. Following this training he would rejoin his outfit at Fort Benning. Then he might even get his transfer to the Philippines. He had volunteered so many times that he had to be high on the list.

  Overseas was the place to be. There, units had real missions, beyond the everlasting training cycles.

  +++

  In 1936, Logan Dell's enlistment had been for three years. The train had taken him to New York. He had been sworn in and issued one ill-fitting uniform. The recruit muster had boarded a troop ship named the Chateau-Thierry, and off to Panama they had sailed.

  Recruit training was stiff but the challenges were mainly to learn army ways. Logan suffered through the wool shirt and breeches miseries. He learned to polish brass and wind wrap-leggings so that they would stay. He spit shined and pulled KP.

  Logan shot bull's-eyes with an ease appealing to the riflery instructors. He devoured the bayonet courses, and his strong arm was uncannily accurate with the blue painted practice grenades. Logan improved the palm smacking manual of arms that Cadet Lieutenant Jim Hanson had taught him. He owned a flat pan in which his wool campaign hat's brim could be immersed in sugar water. When ironed dry, the brim was board flat and stiff as a cracker, except when it rained: then the brim melted and sticky syrup soaked his head and ran inside his shirt.

  Private Dell was reassigned to infantry at Fort Benning, Georgia. His test battery qualified him for schools, but Logan had come for soldiering. Infantry was the Queen of Battle. All other arms supported the infantry. Logan had learned that from studying Jim Hanson's "The ROTC Manual for Essentially Military Schools." The book said it, so Logan believed it.

  By his second tour in Panama, Logan's idealism had faded. The Queen was a whore, manned by the army's most incompetent. Infantry was the military's bottom rung; anybody with good sense got out of it.

  Logan Dell stayed in. If he was surrounded by drunks and dullards, it figured his light would shine brighter. In that Logan was correct, but the road was hard and most of the time it was boring. He slugged away, wondering sometimes if soldiering was all that much better than farming.

  Logan's correspondence was slim. His folks returned dutiful letters, and Mickey Weston wrote with some regularity. In his own writing, Logan made army life sound exciting with special challenges and adventures. The army had those occasions. Logan just failed to include the mindless routines and ingrained drudgery. Cleaning a kitchen grease pit was amusing as a story. Long marches and winter bivouacs became adventurous in telling. Logan supposed Mickey believed his best friend was having a great time.

  Because he held a high school diploma, Logan Dell fought a constant rear guard action against being sucked into administration. Infantry needed clerks in orderly rooms, personnel sections, and supply rooms.

  Logan read and wrote with ease. Most of his companions did not. Despite Private Dell's protests, he often found his weapon to be a clipboard. To escape, Logan volunteered for even the most unpopular training. Jungle fighting was one of those courses.

  To fill the vacuum of barracks life, Private First Class Dell took correspondence courses from the Infantry School: Corporal Dell attended a leader's course, a non-coms' academy, and a military instructor's school.

  Each month, Logan Dell officially requested transfer to the Philippines. Philippine service offered Salt Water Stripes, promotion good only while overseas. Foreign service paid extra and time over there was doubled as retirement credit. The best soldiers went overseas.

  Logan's transfer requests were routinely denied. Occasionally a request received an endorsement or two before bouncing. Logan believed that by perseverance he would one day get through.

  Until then, Logan studied the Philippine Islands and the army's role there. He acquired a thin booklet titled Spoken Spanish and studied it. When his transfer came through, Logan Dell would be ready. Once overseas, in the real army, he would settle into an outfit and aim for First Sergeant. He knew a man who had made top kick in only eleven years. Logan picked that record as his goal.

  +++

  1940 - Boalsburg

  The Ford tractor clogged itself to silence, and Mickey Weston again clambered down to find the trouble. They had a twenty-bale pallet block-and-tackled to raise hay to Boyd Shaeffer's loft, but the old Ford died so often it would not have taken much more time to muscle the bales into the big barn.

  Across the fields Mickey could see the Allis Chalmers and the John Deere both about filled. They would be coming in before he had their previous loads lofted.

  Because he had planned the loading system and lobbied Shaeffer to give it a try, Mickey inherited a responsibility to keep it working. The cranky old Ford was making his task painful.

  Mickey's plan had wooden pallets placed in the wagon beds. Hay bales, themselves a recent innovation, were stacked onto the pallets and brought to the barn. The tractors left their loaded wagons and hooked onto empties. Mickey attached the pallets to his tackle, and the Ford lifted the load to the hay mow. Men heaved the bales inside and the empty pallet came down into the waiting wagon. The old Ford had its rear end jacked up and a wooden drum attached to a wheel. A loop around the slowly turning drum tightened the rope and sent the pulleys to creaking.

  Heaving countless hundreds of hay bales or hand winching them in pairs to Shaeffer's cavernous lofts took time and wore men down. Mickey's system allowed Boyd Shaeffer to hire six fewer men. The tractor never wearied, except when the cantankerous old engine died on them. Mickey wasn't his best with mechanical things, but it was his idea, so he had to fix it.

  Of course, Boyd Shaeffer had gone for only a part of his hired man's scheme. Although half was better than nothing, Mickey knew the neglected parts could have made a difference.

  Boyd did a lot of looking on, so Mickey knew the owner must also be recognizing how haying could have gone even faster. Good haying days needed fast work because there weren't really enough of them.

  Boyd Shaeffer sold his hay to the college under written contract. He made more hay than any ten other farmers and when the hay was ready, it needed immediate baling and barning. Wet hay could burn down a barn. Green hay ... well, any farmer knew about hay. The trick was to get the stuff in at just the right time.

  By rights, the pallets should have been castered and rolled across the loft floors to the handiest positions. Instead, bales were off-loaded onto a hanging platform that rolled down the barn center, where the hay was again restacked for storage.

  Too many handlings slowed progress. Maybe next year—only next year, Mickey Weston would be graduated and gone.

  Boyd would have to make his own improvements.

  The Ford had starved out. Mickey emptied the glass bowled fuel filter. It looked as though someone had again filled the tank without straining the gas. Gasoline might look all right, but sometimes it had enough sand and water in it to kill an engine dead. You had to run your gas thro
ugh a fine copper screen and a good chamois cloth or two. Some didn't filter and some paid for it, like he was paying right now.

  At twenty-two, Mickey Weston still weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Hard work and harder study had made him a sober and seldom smiling man. Weston was all business. He was a hands-on farmer, who wished to plow and harvest.

  Mickey was also a calculating sort, the kind who listened and learned and acted on what he discovered. Most farmers still worked loose hay. Boyd Shaeffer baled his hay because Mickey Weston showed him the savings.

  Keeping his ears, eyes, and mind busy showed Mickey the way to make his first important money.

  Electricity had come to the Pennsylvania farmer. It was now convenient to have an electric bulb in most rooms. Farmers put in running water and a lot of them already had indoor toilets. But, barns and houses burned down from faulty electricity. A few people died learning, but no one doubted that Edison's marvel made life better.

  Electricity was behind Mickey Weston's idea. The common man had a refrigerator, with a small freezing compartment that made ice. Meat, it was discovered, could be readily frozen, to be thawed when needed. The idea was novel, but available to those with refrigeration.

  The wealthy, Mickey reasoned, should be interested in owning large freezers in which fine cuts of meat might be stored. Rather than going to market and accepting what was available, the moneyed could have choice cuts stocked and waiting. The rich often sought what others could not afford, and Mickey saw a market ... if he worked it right.

  The problems, as Mickey saw them, were to convince the wealthy that they should purchase such freezers from Mister Weston and that they should regularly buy, from the same Mister Weston, fine, grain-fed beef, pork, and lamb to stock their freezers.

  Mickey had discovered his scheme in his junior year. He had rolled it around in his methodical way until he knew just how to begin. He had located the right freezer and understood its selling points. He also knew who would have prime meat animals.