Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford

by Charles Willeford

  Powell was the only air mechanic from Clark Field to go to Spain, but the recruiting officer got three more mechanics from Nichols Field. If I had been a skilled airplane mechanic I think I would have signed up, because $200 a month is an enormous sum. But I may be saying that because I didn't have the skills the man needed. Canavin said he tried to talk Powell out of going for two reasons: one, you can never trust outlaws who rebel against their legitimate government; and two, you can't trust Roman Catholics. And the Rebels were all Catholics. Canavin had some other reasons, too. For example, if Powell happened to make a mistake, and an airplane he had worked on had a mechanical failure, he would undoubtedly be shot. But Powell had such confidence in his ability he just laughed. His mind was made up before Canavin talked to him, and he only listened to Canavin out of respect. But at least Powell had provided us with something to talk about for a change.

  Old Ramirez, who had been in the United States for twenty years and in the Air Corps for fifteen, was proud of his Rebel son, and he bragged about him every day on the porch as we waited for the chow bell. Finally, to shut him up, Pussgut Morris reminded Ramirez that he had deserted his wife and four children to emigrate to the United States, and that the boy had become a Rebel without any spiritual or financial help from Ramirez. This remark made Ramirez a little huffy, but he had no answer for it, so after that he quit bragging about the fighting blood his son had inherited from him.

  Every now and then, however, Canavin and Ramirez would talk together, because he was the only guy around that Canavin could practice his Spanish on. Canavin told me that Ramirez spoke pure Castilian Spanish, including the patrician lisp, which Canavin was trying to perfect himself. Once I asked Canavin what they talked about, because they seemed to have so little in common. Canavin laughed. "We're both lapsed Catholics," he said, "which means we'll never run out of something to talk about. What we do, we reinforce ourselves in our hatred for the church."

  He didn't have to elaborate, because I had already noted that phenomenon. All lapsed Catholics talk against the church; it's their main topic of conversation, and as soon as they've had a few drinks they start in on it. When I saw these two together, lisping away in Spanish, I concluded that their disbeliefs were undoubtedly nourished by their uncertainty.

  By my third day in the Philippines I had developed a case of prickly heat, and I had it continuously from then on. The unrelieved heat and humidity caused tiny red bumps on your belt-line and belly and between your legs. There was a constant burning and prickling. There is no relief from this prickling, except for the time you are standing under a cold shower. Even then, the water was never cold enough to give a man much more than minimal relief. As soon as you got out of the shower and tried to dry off (it was impossible to get completely dry), the prickles pricked worse than ever as the sweat began to flow freely again. It was best not to scratch, because scratching only aggravated it, and you could get an infection from scraping your skin with your fingernails. We could get free foot powder, and we used that on our dobie itch (or athlete's foot), rubbing the powder between our toes until they were raw and sore, but there was no way to get rid of the dobie itch either. It was always there, just like the prickly heat, and there was nothing a man could do about it. The prickly heat was a constant because we wore coveralls to work every day. The coveralls were thick and heavy, designed for a temperate climate, and the cinched belt in front caused a red line of prickly, burning bumps across your belly.

  There was only one way of getting rid of prickly heat, and that was by going to Baguio for a month or so of R. & R. Camp John Hay, in Baguio, was a rest and recreation camp for soldiers in P.I. In Baguio, up in the mountains of Luzon, the temperature was in the low seventies in the daytime and often dropped to forty degrees at night. The cool temperature made prickly heat disappear. I wanted to go to Manila again, because Manila, like San Francisco, is a place where interesting things can happen to a man. All you have to do is be there, just walking around. On the other hand, I wanted some relief from my prickly heat, and I wouldn't get it in Manila. I was fair, and my skin was white. I didn't tan very well, and prickly heat bothered me more than it did people with darker skins. Canavin with his red hair was as fair as I, and his skin was much lighter, but he didn't suffer as much because he worked in an air-conditioned office in the mornings, and he wore a khaki uniform instead of coveralls.

  In two months I saved another forty pesos, giving the money to Canavin to hold for me, as I had done before, and then I lost the blackjack game. It came as a nasty surprise. Right after pay call, as soon as I got my money, I headed for the day-room to set up the table. Padre Hershey stopped me at the door. .

  "Wi1leford," he said, "I'm taking the game away from you. Pussgut Morris is going to run it for me."

  "I don't understand? ‘

  "I don't have any choice." He shrugged. "I don't like you very well, but that's got nothing to do with it. I thought you did a good job running the game, and I know you're honest. But a lot of guys don't like you, Will. They think you're an arrogant sonofabitch, and you hang around with Canavin all the time. They resent having you there to cut a game. And more than one guy has mentioned to me that you don't even draw five percent. A lot of the older men won't play blackjack because you're still a recruit, and they don't want to gamble with recruits."

  "I've got almost two years in. I'm not exactly a recruit, and I don't play in the game, I just cut it."

  "Pussgut's got seven years in. He's a private, and he needs the money worse than you. Anyway, you're out and he's in."

  That was all there was to it. There was no appeal from his flimsy reasoning, because the day-room orderly owned the gambling concessions. It was unfair, but then one gets used to unfair treatment in the Army.

  My only comeback would be to quit selling cheap gas to Padre for his Ford phaeton, but if I did that, I'd be losing one of my best customers. At any rate, I was out, and I knew that Pussgut Morris could cut the game as well as I.

  I went upstairs and stretched out on my bunk to wait for noon chow. Canavin arrived about eleven-thirty, leaving his office early because it was payday. He was surprised to see me.

  "I thought you'd be in the day-room."

  "Padre gave the game to Pussgut Morris. I'm out. No reason except, he said, a lot of guys don't like me."

  "It could be worse, Will. Suppose all of these guys did like you? Think about the kind of asshole you'd be then. You're lucky they don't like you."

  "I know what you mean, but that's not going to make me any money. Counting my year at March Field, and my time here at Clark, I've got almost seven weeks of furlough time coming. I'd like to take a furlough to Baguio."

  "What's stopping you? I'm holding forty pesos for you, and you just got paid. How much do you need?"

  I "I don't know for sure. The railroad fare's about eight pesos round trip, I think, and then there's the bus ride from Dagupan."

  "Then that's all you need. You'l1 eat and sleep free at Camp John Hay, and you'll have money left over. And you can get paid up there on furlough?

  I saw the first sergeant and put in for a six-week furlough. Five days later I was on the train for Dagupan, on the Lingayen Gulf, where I would transfer to a bus for Baguio.

  THIRTEEN

  CAMP JOHN HAY, AS A REST AND RECREATION CAMP for enlisted men and officers, was open to all Army personnel serving in the Philippine Department. Almost everything there was free. Golf clubs could be checked out for nothing, but a man had to buy his own golf balls because they were so easily lost on this championship course.

  There was even a free ride from the camp into Baguio and back on a two-and-a-half-ton truck, so a man only had to pay bus fare if he preferred to ride the bus. A free bunk, with Filipino houseboys to make your bunk and clean the barracks, three excellent meals a day, and a day-room furnished with checkers, Monopoly games, and a pool table, plus miles of asphalt walkways through the woods and mountains, completed the facilities, with some of the most beau
tiful scenery in the world to look at and enjoy. Charlie Corn had a restaurant-bar in the camp, too, and there was a four-lane bowling alley right next to Charlie Com's.

  When I caught the train in Angeles, I was exhilarated by my sense of freedom. I was traveling light, having packed one uniform and two pairs of khaki shorts in my barracks bag with my underwear and socks. I wore my powder blue suit, but not the jacket, and had stuffed my necktie into a jacket pocket. After paying for my round—trip ticket I still had fifty-seven pesos left, having borrowed ten pesos from Sergeant Peralta, the squadron twenty-percent man.

  There is a twenty-percent man in every outfit, and Peralta lent money at this rate, the amount depending upon the borrower's rank. I was a private, so he would only lend me ten pesos maximum because I would have to pay him back twelve. If I couldn't pay the entire twelve, I would pay him two pesos on payday and still owe twelve pesos the next month. I shouldn't have borrowed the ten pesos, because for the rest of the time I was in the Philippines I had to pay Peralta two pesos every month and never paid off the principal. By the time I left I had paid him twenty-six pesos and still owed him twelve. But on the train that morning, with fifty-seven pesos in my pocket, I felt very secure.

  That morning I had lingered at the breakfast table, making four toast and bacon sandwiches to take with me on the train. I bought two lemonadas at the Angeles station. The Philippine Railroad is a narrow-gauge track, but the train seemed to make good time between stops. There were frequent halts at small villages and at places where there seemed to be nothing to stop for, and the farther we traveled, the poorer the villages seemed to get. The farther one got from Manila, in any direction, the poorer the country seemed to be; but I think the peasants in the country ate better than their fellows in Manila, because there were plenty of rice fields and a great many animals and chickens in the country. And every small shack had

  a vegetable garden. Dagupan was a fairly large city, right on Lingayen Gulf, and fishing was apparently the main occupation. I discovered that I would have to wait two more days for the bus to Baguio; I had just missed it because the train came in two hours late. That was all right with me because it gave me a chance to explore the town. I checked into the Dagupan Hotel, a two-story wooden building, and got a room on the second floor with a veranda that overlooked the street. The bathroom, with a headless shower, was downstairs. I had a sagging double bed and a mosquito net that was too tattered and torn to keep any mosquitoes out. But the price was right, only one and a half pesos per night. The manager also had four girls for hire, and the price was six pesos for all night with any one of them.

  I left my barracks bag and jacket in my room and walked down to the docks. Men were pulling in fish, and big ones, as fast as they threw in their lines. I bought a grande of A1—1A San Miguel gin at a Chinaman's before I went back to the hotel, and sat on the downstairs veranda, drinking iced gin highballs with lemonada and watching the people go by in the busy street. About four-thirty I tapered off, not wanting to get too drunk, and then the manager, a grinning, gray-haired Filipino, came out of the hotel with his fishing pole.

  "You want fish for dinner?"

  "Sure."

  He walked away, and he was back within a half hour with an enormous red fish he had caught off the dock. Except for abalone steaks and fried shrimp, I don't care much for seafood, but I liked the way this fish tasted, even though I don't know what kind it was. He broiled the fish whole (it was about two feet long) over a charcoal brazier and served it with a mixture of rice and coconut milk, and yams. I liked it even better when I found out that the dinner, and my breakfast, were included in the 1.50 per day tab.

  That night I pulled a fast one on the girl I picked out. I opted for a two peso short time instead of an all-night session, because it was too hot to have another body with me in bed all night. I used condoms, of course, and told the girl, who was only sixteen or seventeen, that I hadn't come. I lied, but she didn't know it; a few minutes later, when I said I wanted to try again, I got in a second fuck without her knowing about it. I only paid for one. I think I tricked her, but maybe I didn't. It's possible that she just let me get away with it, but I did get away with it, and that was the important thing at the time. At any rate, the mosquitoes got their revenge on me that night, because even though I covered myself with the sheet, head and all, by morning I was dotted with mosquito bites.

  I was the only white man staying at the hotel, but the next morning, after a breakfast of pancakes, goat butter, and shredded coconut, I met another white man when I walked down to the docks to watch the activity. He was an old guy in his sixties, a retired Army buck sergeant. He had been living in Dagupan for almost five years, he told me, and he intended to stay there for the rest of his life. He was married to a Filipino woman, but he didn't have any children, and he said there was no place in the United States where he could live as well on his retirement check as he could in Dagupan. He had a house, a mango tree, and all the fish he wanted, and his income, as small as it was, was at least twice as much as that of the average native resident of the town. He wore a pair of khaki shorts, but no shirt, and skivvy slippers. He was so burnished from the sun you wouldn't have known that he was a white man unless you noticed his height and blue eyes. He had a white beard; the lower part was a streaky red from chewing betel nut. If you chew enough betel nut, you can stay mildly euphoric most of the time, and this old guy thought he had the world by the tail.

  I asked him back to the hotel for a drink, and we sat on the veranda and drank gin highballs for about an hour. He told me some stories about shooting Apaches in the last Indian war near Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and how he had got busted from sergeant down to corporal once, by

  a candy-assed captain, for scalping one of the Apaches he had killed. He also told me that Edgar Rice Burroughs, the writer who wrote the Tarzan and Mars books, had been in his same troop in the 7th Cavalry, although Burroughs had not, at that time, written any books. I don't know how he expected me to swallow a whopper like that one, but I didn't challenge him on it. He hadn't talked to any white men in a long time, and I think he was lonelier than he was willing to admit. I didn't mind his bullshit; I had nothing else to do, so I let him ramble on.

  A Chinaman came along, leading ten dogs. The dogs were separated from each other because he had strung cotton ropes through ten bamboo poles before tying nooses around their necks. The bamboo poles, being straight, made it simpler for him to keep the dogs away from one

  another. The dogs were all clean and apparently well fed, although there were no recognizable breeds—just mongrel mixtures.

  "Where's he going with all these dogs?" I asked.

  "Those are eating dogs," the old sergeant said. "Did you ever eat any dog?"

  "Not yet."

  "Pick one out. The manager here will be glad to cook it for you."

  We went down off the porch and examined the dogs. I picked out a white dog that looked like it was part spitz, as well as something else—beagle, maybe—and listened to the retired sergeant as he bargained with the Chinaman in Tagalog.

  "Okay," the sergeant said, "I got him down to three pesos, and that's a fair price."

  I paid the Chinaman three pesos, and we turned the dog over to the manager. I told the manager to invite himself and the girls to the feast, and the other hotel guests. I also invited the retired sergeant.

  "You can bring your wife, too," I said.

  He grinned, exposing his bright betel-red teeth and gums.

  "Not her. I'l1 come, but not my wife. She used to be the secretary for the mayor of San Fernando, and she's too civilized to eat dog. But I'll be back."

  The manager, with the help of his wife, an old woman who was bent almost double, killed, skinned, and roasted the dog over a charcoal pit fire in the backyard of the hotel. They also roasted yams, and there was rice, mixed with some kind of hot onion sauce, and a huge bowl of noodles to go with the roast dog. I slept most of the afternoon, but when dinner was ready, about five,
I told the manager to round up his other two hotel guests. They were both Filipinos, wearing white suits, from Manila. One was a lawyer, and the other was an insurance man who specialized in marine policies. The insurance man ate his share but the prissy lawyer wouldn't eat any dog meat. The expression on his face made me laugh. The retired sergeant

  came back, wearing an embroidered camilsa and linen slacks with his skivvy slippers, and the four girls from upstairs came down to the table. The manager and his wife served, but I made them sit with us too, and the old sergeant bought everyone, including the four girls, a bottle of San Miguel beer.

  I wasn't particularly eager to eat roasted dog, but I had a generous leg portion which tasted all right, although it was a little sweet and more than a little stringy. But the cooked animal, which looked something like a sheep, had been basted with garlic and lime juice, and was a lot better eating than fish.

  Everybody was smiling and chewing away, and I said,

  "Damnit, I'm having a good time!"

  The old sergeant wiped his greasy mouth and grinned.

  "I wonder what the poor people are doing?"

  "Working," I said. And we both laughed.

  ***

  SOMETIME DURING THE DAY, PERHAPS THAT MORNING when I was talking to the old sergeant on the porch, the girl I had screwed the night before sewed up the tears in my mosquito bar. I think she did it because she wanted to go to bed with me again, but somehow or other I had picked up a case of dysentery. And when a man has to make frequent trips to the john he isn't interested in sex. I slept fairly well that night in the sagging bed and felt fine again in the morning. I would have liked to spend a few more days in Dagupan, but I had orders to report to Camp John Hay. I had a legitimate excuse for not getting there on the first date, because the train had made me miss the bus. But I didn't want to risk a reprimand by waiting two more days for another.