“Did they hurt you anywhere else besides your face?”
“They hit me all over every damn where,” Worm said, “and I’m gonna get ‘em if it’s the last damn thing I do.”
“All right,” Solly said. “But the thing for you to do right now is to take a shower and hit the sack and get some rest and get on sick call in the morning. Let the doctor examine you. You’re going to be sore as a boil in the morning.”
He was crying again. “You know where I can get me a gun? Solly, you’re my buddy, aincha? Let’s get us a gun and go outa here and kill us a few sonofabitching peckerwoods. Let’s get us two or three guns.” Bleary-eyed, swollen face, sniffling and crying and snuffing his nose, he was a sorry-looking mess.
Solly felt like crying himself. And felt like really getting a gun and blowing a few MP brains out. The Army working overtime to emphasize to the Negro soldier that he had no stake in the war. But dammit-to-hell he believed in the war. They couldn’t stop him from believing. He was going to be a soldier, not a goof-off, and he was going to be an officer, in spite of the cracker MPs over in Ebbensville and the crackers in Camp Johnson Henry. In spite of Scotty and Bookworm too.
He said to the Worm, “All right—all right—”
Worm said, “This is the Army, ain’t it? There oughta be a gun around here some damn where. It’s supposed to be the Army.”
“Let’s get a good night’s rest tonight, Bookworm. Take a nice hot bath. We can’t even bring charges against the bastards, because you were wrong all the way. You were AWOL from the start.”
“Solly, I hate like hell for a sonofabitch just to pick on me for nothing.” He was crying like a baby. “Just cause I’m black—just cause they had guns and I didn’t have none. And night sticks too, goddammit! I hate to see somebody take advantage of somebody else, especially a cracker. I don’t like that shit, Solly. You know I don’t never bother no goddamn body! Let’s go kill both of the sonofabitches!”
“Okay, Bookworm, okay—but you wouldn’t be much help to me tonight. You couldn’t kill a gnat in your condition, let alone two pistol-toting crackers. Let’s go downstairs now and take a warm shower.”
“You can depend on me, Solly.” He wiped his nose with the back of his shirt sleeves and put his arm around Solly’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t let you down. You the best friend I ever had in the world. I’ll go over there with you right now and we can kill ourselfs gobs of peckerwoods. I’ll die right by your side. I ain’t never had a buddy like you before in all my life.”
Solly tried to keep the heat from his voice. “First of all, we don’t have any guns and nobody’s going to give us any guns, and—”
“This is the Army, ain’t it?”
“And secondly, if we went over there tonight, they would just whip hell out of both of us this time, and we would deserve it for not having any better sense. You were A W O L, absent without leave, and you’re lucky they didn’t ask you to show them a pass which you did not have.”
Worm sucked the tears back up his nostrils and glared at his buddy. “So now I’m lucky? They beat the hell out of me, and I guess I’m lucky they didn’t kill me. I should fall on my knees and thank the Lord.”
Solly said, “You know damn well I didn’t mean it that way.” They were the best friend each of them ever had, and they stood there violently hating each other.
Worm said, “I think you’re in love with this mama-hunching Army. You like it better’n you do me. You act like you a stockholder in this goddamn business.”
Solly was hot now. “Jump to any conclusions you want to jump to. You’re still in the Army and you got to be in the Army and you might as well stop fouling up and make the best of it.”
“It’s my fault my head ran into them MP nightsticks, I suppose. If they white everything they do is right, and I’m black and everything I do is wrong. I never thought I’d see the day you’d turn against me for the white man. I thought you was my bosom buddy—”
“I am your buddy,” Solly said. “But when my buddy’s wrong he’s wrong even if he is my buddy. And when you go into that cracker town without a pass, you’re asking for it.”
He took Bookworm downstairs and made him take a nice hot shower and put him to bed. Worm went to sleep the minute he hit the sack and snored loud enough to wake the dead.
Solly lay on his cot next to Worm’s cot staring up at the dark white ceiling. Maybe they should have gotten some guns and gone into town and shot up gobs of peckerwoods. Maybe the only way was to beat some sense into white people’s heads. He thought he heard Rogers laughing at him through the silence of the sleeping barracks. And he heard crickets laughing outside. To hell with Rogers. Maybe Worm was right though. You, Solomon Saunders, Junior, are the new-styled slicked-up uncle tom—the only thing you have cast aside is the Amos-and-Andy dialect. Face it. You value your Army prospects more than you do your buddy’s friendship. You just don’t want your buddy to catch you in the act. Why the hell not? Everybody’s doing it. Dog eat dog eat dog eat dog. Millie knew him like a book. He wanted to be accepted in the World of White Folks, but wanted nobody to catch him working at it. He hoped Worm would not turn against him.
Who in the hell do you think you’re kidding, Solly Saunders? You’re not really worried about the Bookworm. With Worm you could almost fall in a stinking outhouse and come out smelling like perfume. By tomorrow Worm will realize it would have made no sense to return to town. He’ll come to you and say, “You’re my real bosom buddy. You didn’t let me go back into that cracker town and tear my royal ass again. You saved my life.” And he’ll love you all the more for it. He’s your best friend and much too close to see you as you really are. It’s that handkerchief-head smiling Buck Rogers who jumps up and down like crazy on your tender nerves. You’re scared he really knows you like a book. Just like you’re scared that Millie knows you. At least Buck admits he’s a first-class phony. But you dress yours up in the Race Man and the anti-fascist—in the Democratic War—”in the bullshit, in the facts, the fiction—” He heard Buck roaring with laughter this time, and stamping his feet. Solly leaped from his cot and moved swiftly toward Buck’s bunk three cots away, and stared at the quietly sleeping round-faced soldier, sleeping like an innocent baby void of conscience. He wanted to dump the bastard onto the floor. He looked around him and down at the sleeping soldier again. He backed away embarrassed and moved toward the water cooler at the top of the stairs.
CHAPTER 6
Fall came late that year like it always does in Georgia, but when it came it fell in big and brown and golden-red. It started raining Thursday afternoon, and the men tracked red Georgia mud into the barracks all evening and half of the night. All night long it poured as if the sky would empty. It stopped the next morning around six o’clock, and the trees dripping with wetness seemed to be dying a thousand deaths, and in autumn death had a terrible beauty, as the dark green wet leaves crying and dying and turning golden-reddish-brown began to fall all over the camp, all over Georgia, and Scotty came home from the post stockade. Like a man come back from the dead.
Solly was in the CO’s office getting him to sign the Morning Report when Scott marched in dragging his barracks bag behind him. He removed his cap and smartly saluted both of them and humbly requested that the CO grant him a ten-day furlough, and when the CO refused him and almost had a stroke in the process, Scott turned to Solly. “Tell him I need to see my old lady, Corporal Sandy. You his boy. He’ll listen to you. I didn’t go for that he-ing and he-ing stuff they was putting down in the post stockade. I’m a solid man and thank God for that.”
Solly stood there silently sweating. Burning up. He stared at the soldier and shook his head. “I can’t do you any good.”
Later that night Scott cornered Solly, accused him of being an uncle tom. “Don’t be scared of white folks. They ain’t gon bite you.”
Solly told him quietly, in a clean hot rage, “Whenever you want to act the fool, go right ahead, only leave me out of it. Have a ball.
Blow your few brains out, for all I care, just don’t ask me to lend you the pistol.” He felt like punching the soldier in the mouth.
Scott said calmly, “All right—all right, Office Willie. You got the world in a job. I know you Cap’n Charlie’s boy. And that’s all right for you.”
“On second thought, I’d lend you the pistol. Stay away from me!” Solly shouted softly to the angry-headed soldier.
Scott backed away from him and left him in the orderly room. Solly thought, all these bastards are getting on my nerves. Scott—Rogers—Bookworm. Everybody’s trying to do me in. They’re jealous. That’s what it is. I’ll show them—I’ll show them. Then he thought, I’ve got to get hold of myself. I’m getting too jumpy. Worm had told him—wear the world like a loose garment. But Worm didn’t have his potential. Solly felt like running outside and screaming.
Everything got on Solly’s nerves. And almost everybody. Next morning Samuels came into the orderly room, looked over Solly’s shoulders as he typed the K.P. roster, fumbled in the files, complimented him on the neatness and efficiency of the company records, and offered him a cigarette.
“What’s the matter with the company, Corporal?” The lieutenant was seated behind the Topkick’s desk.
“Lieutenant, I wish you would not call me ‘Corporal.’” He felt a heat move around in his face. He took a long drag on the cigarette.
“You’re acting corporal and you’ll be corporal soon as the orders come from regimental. Just as soon as the colonel signs them. You typed them up. I recommended to Lieutenant Rutherford—”
“I typed the orders up and I was promoted to private first class. There were seven corporals made. Not one of them was Saunders.”
The lieutenant’s face flushed with his anger. He went to the files again and got a copy of the order. Solly went back to his typing. He heard the lieutenant swearing softly. The lieutenant stared at him again.
“Corporal, what in the hell is the matter with the outfit? We have good men in this company. They have high IQs in comparison with the rest of the men in the regiment. I checked at regimental this morning. But their morale is so goddamn low. They wouldn’t extend themselves a half an inch more than they have to.”
“Don’t ask me, sir. I work in the office.”
“Come on, Saunders. You’re with the men in the evening. You’re the company clerk. You’re in a key position.”
Solly thought, after all the jumping up and down, after all the hustling, Rogers is a corporal and I’m a private first-damn-class. And I’m an Army-loving stockholder and Cap’n Charlie’s boy and the executive officer’s confidante. Informer, if you please. He said, “I have no opinion on the subject.” Heat moved through his body now. He wished every living thing would leave him alone.
Samuels said, “Colonel Williamson from post headquarters was in the company area yesterday. He’s obviously a full colonel with eagle emblem and everything. He walked all over the area. Yet not one soldier called attention or saluted him. He heard one of our men on yard detail say to a couple of others, ‘Look at that soldier with the chicken on his shoulder. If he ain’t careful it’ll shit all over him.’”
Solly suddenly erupted with laughter. He couldn’t help himself, he tried to. All he could see was the picture of the soldiers and the self-important colonel with the shining eagle emblem on his shoulder. He laughed and laughed, as if he had been saving it up for years and years. Samuels stared at him and shook his head. Solly tried to stop. His eyes filled, his stomach hurt, but he could not stop laughing.
The high-pitched voice of the company commander came through the open window from down in the company area:
“ . . . NOT GOING TO STAND FOR ANY MORE FOOLISHNESS OUT OF NONE OF YOU. ALL THIS GOLDBRICKING AND GOOFING OFF ON DETAILS IS GOING TO STOP ELSE I’M GOING TO BURN EVERY LAST DAMN ONE OF YOU. NEXT BOY MESS UP WHEN HE GOES TO TOWN I’M GOING TO PUT HIM IN THE STOCKADE AND THROW THE KEY AWAY!”
Solly stopped laughing and went to the window and looked down at Rutherford standing tall and red-faced and slim and chinless facing the company of silent men, hitching up his long-legged trousers with his elbows, walking back and forth shouting to the top of his tenor-sometimes-soprano voice, his Adam’s apple moving up and down in his scrawny neck. Solly somehow felt free and loose like that garment Worm pretended always to wear. The CO must have gotten his ass eaten out up at regimental. His voice was strictly Southern now.
“ . . . THAT’S NO THREAT, GODDAMMIT, THAT’S A PROMISE!”
Solly turned from the window and moved back to the typewriter. He laughed a deep short laugh. “Lieutenant Charles Leander Rutherford—the greatest little old morale builder in the Army of the U.S.A.”
Samuels stared at him and opened his mouth as if to say something of significance, changed his mind, and went out the door.
Rutherford came into the orderly room. “Saunders, I want you to find Sergeant Anderson wherever he is and tell him I want the entire company to go on a ten-mile hike this afternoon. Every last one of them including them on Kitchen Police and everywhere else, even including the mess and motor sergeants.”
The men assembled in full field dress with pack and empty rifles and marched away from the company area. They marched with sullen angry faces and black and brown and sweaty faces till they reached the wooded area about a half a mile from the barracks. Lieutenant Samuels gave the order of Route Step, and the men immediately fell out of step with one another and began to talk. Laughing swearing mumbling grumbling. The day was scorching hot and the road was blazing red with heat and dust and Georgia sunlight, and the big heavy Army shoes kicked up clouds of red dust everywhere, and red dust on their sweaty faces.
The full field pack got heavier and heavier, as if Worm were riding Solly piggyback. Worm and Solly walked side by side, sweat and dust in their ears and eyes and in their mouths.
The pull of the pack on Solly’s neck made him feel like his neck would snap any minute. Yet somehow he felt good this day. And very close to Bookworm Taylor and his other comrades.
Somebody up near the front of the formation started singing and everybody picked it up:
“Glory, glory, Hallelujah,
Glory, glory, Hallelujah,
Glory, glory, Hallelujah,
His truth is marching on . . .”
They lit up the green woods with their singing, some in tune, some way out, and almost imperceptibly they began to march with a free and careless cadence. For the first time since he’d been in the Army, Solly knew a warm and honest feeling of belonging, of being a part of whatever it was that the other men were a part of. He forgot the field pack on his back. Somewhere somehow the words got changed—contribution of Private Jerry Abraham Lincoln Scott.
“’Glory, glory, Jody Grinder,
He’s got your old lady and gone—”
And then they sang:
“They say this is a mechanized war,
Parlez-vous;
They say this is a mechanized war,
Parlez-vous;
They say this is a mechanized war,
Well what the hell are we walking for?
Hinky, dinky, parlez-vous—”
Lieutenant Samuels and Topkick Anderson walked past them heading in the opposite direction. Worm said, “They must be trying to find Buckethead Baker bringing up the rear. He’s probably clean out of sight. That fathead sucker been trying to walk out of the Army with his bad feet ever since he got here.”
The men were still singing “Parlez-vous.” Solly looked back and saw Topkick and Samuels walking far behind the rear of the formation with Baker between them with his shoes tied together and hanging around his neck.
Somebody changed the lyrics of “Parlez-vous.”
“They say this is a white man’s war,
Parlez-vous;
They say this is a white man’s war,
Parlez-vous;
They say this is a white man’s war,
Well what the hell are we fighting for?
Hinky, dinky, parlez-vous—”
The men were laughing and shouting now. Solly laughed at first, but then he thought, this is not the white man’s war. This war belongs to everybody.
The lyrics changed again.
“Georgia is a helluva state,
Parlez-vous;
Georgia is a helluva state,
Parlez-vous;
Georgia is one helluva state,
The asshole of the forty-eight.
Hinky, dinky, parlez-vous—”
The singing and the laughter ceased and suddenly he remembered again he was a beast of burden. He thought his back would break, his neck would surely snap this time. His mouth and throat were dry and dusty, caked with mud. He was ready to drop, when the Topkick caught up with them and called a halt, and the lieutenant told the men to fall out and take ten, take a smoke and anything else, so long as they didn’t wander off out of sight. Some of the men dropped where they were on the side of the road, and some went a short distance into the bright green woods and stretched out on the glistening grass and leaned against the heavy trees. Bookworm sat with his head against a tall pine tree. Solly lay full length on the grass nearby as the sweat poured from him, gazing up through the top of the trees at the great vast empty blueness beyond. He took a long slow drag on a cigarette and it was delicious to his nostrils to his mouth to his throat and through his chest and shoulders to his stomach, and he was so tired he didn’t think he’d ever get rested. Newly made Corporal Buck Rogers walked about amongst the men cautioning them to be careful with their cigarettes. Buckethead Baker sat near Solly and Bookworm and pulled off his socks.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 9