But Private Scott went on and on and on: “Goddamn if she won’t be running after every brown-skin peter-pusher in Company H. Tell him what I say, Corporal Crute, goddammit!”
“I say shut up!” Solly shouted softly.
“Get him out of here! I gave you an order! Get him outa here before I kill him!”
The white-faced captain collapsed heavily back into his swivel chair. Maybe he was having a stroke. Solly started toward him.
The CO mumbled weakly, “Get him outa here!”
Solly turned to the little colored soldier with the bushy mustache. “Come on, Scotty.”
Scotty said humbly, “Okay, Corporal Crute. I don’t reckin you gon lead me wrong, beinst me and you both is colored.” And followed Solly into the orderly room.
They stood for a moment looking each other over and listening for signs of life to come from the captain’s office, but nothing came forth but a deafening roar of fearful silence.
Scotty smiled. “A cracker is a mama-jabbing mother-huncher.”
Solly said, “Why don’t you straighten up and fly right, soldier?” He went and sat down at his table and stared at the Guard Roster. Maybe the captain had passed out for real! Maybe he should call the base hospital! Maybe he should get a jeep and take him there.
A few minutes later the captain came quietly into the orderly room. He was as white as an unsalted soda cracker, with long deep ridges in his apoplectic forehead. He didn’t even glance in the direction of Scotty. “You keep the prisoner here. I’m late for a meeting at headquarters now,” he said in a weak flat voice that didn’t sound like the captain at all. “Don’t you let him out your sight—not a single second. I’ll get somebody to come over here and stand guard over him with a gun. Soon as the regimental meeting is over I’ll be back here to draw up the charges. But until you’re relieved you’re responsible for him—understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain turned and walked out of the office and down the stairs.
They heard the door slam downstairs, and Scotty started to laugh and Solly said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re laughing about. You’re really up the creek this time. They’re going to throw the book at you, and I don’t blame them. You begged him for it.”
Scotty stopped laughing. “I don’t give a shit about Long Boy. He tickles my royal hindparts. Boy, can I get under that mama-jabber’s skin—” He laughed some more.
“He’s going to get under your skin. I don’t know what the hell your story is, but I wish you’d stop tearing your ass when I’m around.”
“Man, Long Boy ain’t scared of me—and I know good and well I ain’t scared of Long Boy. They put me in this cracker Army against my will and had the nerve to put me under a peckerwood officer and send me to Georgia. Them Japs and Germans ain’t done me nothing. These crackers is my natural enemy,” Scotty said angrily. “And as long as I’m here I’m gonna fight ‘em, goddammit. You take Texas Slim Rutherford frinstance. It would do me all the good in the world to make that mama-jabber blow his stack. I would fìgger I’d won the war. And I’m working hard at it day and night—you better believe me.”
Solly stared at the little man. “You have the wrong slant on everything.”
“Hell naw,” Scotty told him. “I ain’t crazy—not by a long shot. And I ain’t gon let these pink mama-jabbers get me down. If there’s any getting down done, buddy boy, I’m gonna do it. And thank God for that,” Scotty added as if he just remembered it.
Solly stared at the little man and almost admired him against his will, even though he was convinced that Scott was absolutely wrong. Foolish wrong. Stupid wrong. Crazy wrong. Scotty was Fannie Mae’s Double-V taken to its ridiculous conclusion.
“Go ahead with your work,” Scotty said. “I ain’t going nowhere. You don’t have to worry about nothing. I don’t even have to pee this morning.”
“And thank God for that,” Solly said. And both of them laughed.
Scotty sat down in a chair near Solly and Solly looked at his Guard Duty Roster. He hoped Scotty would carry his spirit of cooperation one step further and keep quiet for a few minutes because he had to get his work done.
Scotty grinned and blinked his angry eyes. “Look at it this way. What the hell can Long Boy do to me?” He answered his own question before Solly could turn it over in his mind. “Not a goddamn thing. The baddest they can do is to throw my ass in the stockade. I ain’t gon do enough for ‘em to shoot me. I love me too much for that kinda shit. I don’t never desert, I just go AWOL. I always come back before they catch me. So between the stockade and the Army, I mean, what’s the big deal, McNeal? If I can get these fools to give me about two or three years straight at Leavenworth or some kinda shit like that, maybe by then the war’ll be over. Dig? They know what I’m putting down, but ain’t nothing they can do about it. When I came into the Army and they were giving me the oath, I was giving myself an oath. I was swearing to me, that I wasn’t going nowhere where any shooting was, less it was in Mississippi or Georgia in the United Snakes of America. And I don’t never go back on me.”
Solly said, “You got everything ass-backwards. This may be a cracker Army but this is not a cracker war. This is a war against the crackers. I don’t care what kind of war they think it is, this is our war goddammit!”
Scotty grinned. “All right—all right. Ain’t no needa getting your bowels in an uproar. I see they finally made you corporal. And that’s all right for you.”
Solly said belligerently, “And that’s not all I’m going to make, while you’ll be making private-first-class fuck-up.”
“I could be a mess sergeant with a master sergeant’s rating, and I ain’t got no education eetall. That’s how come I can’t understand a intelligent feller like you holding still for this peckerwood Army. Man! If I had as much up in my head as you got, I woulda got me a big civilian job behind a desk and kept that home fire burning. But I reckin the more education you get the more you look at things like white folks. You’re like the slave that lived in the Big House. I’m a field hand.”
Solly stood up and he was hot enough to start a full-scale war in the orderly room. He said, “Look, buddy, your opinions don’t interest me in the least. And do me one small favor. Keep your mouth shut for the next few minutes till the MP comes. I’ve got work to do. That’s your trouble anyhow. You run off at the mouth too much. And if the man throws the book at you, I don’t blame him, and don’t you blame me for typing up the charges. I only work here, I don’t make the rules.”
Scotty stared up at him smiling. “All right, Corporal Sandy. You and the white folks got everything.”
Solly sat back down again and glared at the Guard Duty Roster. Scotty was deathly quiet for a moment, and then he said gratuitously, “I believe the MPs is almost as stupid as the officers.”
Solly typed three more names on the Guard Duty Roster.
“I was on a train coming out of New York night before last with my first sergeant’s stripes on and a great big lieutenant MP comes over to me—”
Solly hoped that Scotty wouldn’t give him a bad time like before and run away again, and he laughed inwardly at the little soldier who was supposed to be dedicated to his contempt for the Army, and Army brass in particular, and yet outside of the camp, glorying in a Topkick’s uniform. Scotty stood up and Solly looked up.
“Don’t worry, Corporal Crute. I ain’t going nowhere. I ain’t gon get you in bad with Cap’n Charlie. I understand what you putting down. I just don’t wanna pick up on it.”
“I’m not worried about a thing,” Solly lied.
“This MP lieutenant comes over to me,” Scotty said, “and I’m telling you, man, I was scared shitless. He had a buck sergeant with him, understand? The MP pulled out his gun and I said to myself, ‘Oh my Lordy Lord, this is it!’ It got so quiet on that train you could have heard a rat pissing on cotton. He gave the gun to me and said, ‘Sergeant, will you guard this soldier for just a few minutes? I got to go through the
train and locate my girl friend.’” Scotty started to laugh and he couldn’t contain himself. “Get the damn picture, Crute,” he said. And he started to laugh again and finally Solly felt like laughing, but he brought himself up short. Maybe this was a trick—to get him to laughing and dash out of the door and leave him laughing.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Scotty continued. He laughed again involuntarily. “The MP said, ‘This soldier has been AWOL a whole week. I’m taking him back to Dix.’ I looked at the gun the MP was handing me, and I wanted to burst out laughing.” Scotty started to laugh again.
“Get the picture, Corporal Sandy. I’m sitting there a colored buck-ass private in the rear-damn-ranks, been over the hill a whole damn month already—impersonating a first-damn-sergeant—and this white mother-hunching M-damn-P putting me on guard over a cracker buck sergeant who had only been gone over the hill a week.” Scotty was laughing so hard that the tears spilled down his cheeks. “The Army is a bitch. I took the gun from the white boy and I said, ‘All right, Lieutenant, sir, as a first sergeant in the great Army of the United States, and proud of my stripes and my responsibilities, I will guard this prisoner with my very life, till death do us separate.’” He sat down and started to laugh again. “I almost overdone it, understand? The lieutenant didn’t know what to make of me. He said, ‘Thank you, Topkick. If all the men in the Army had your spirit, the war wouldn’t last very many more months.’ And I said: Thank you, sir, it certainly wouldn’t.’”
Scotty began to slap his thighs and laugh and laugh without restraint, and Solly could see the little soldier, who was a heavyweight from shoulder to shoulder, see him on the train with the first-sergeant stripes and with the bushy mustache that gave his big head a Stalin-like expression and the sarcasm in his light-brown eyes, and the white lieutenant MP and the white buck sergeant, and he looked at Scotty sitting in the chair and laughing like crazy, and he started to laugh; and both of them were howling with laughter when the armed MP sent by Texas Slim came striding into the orderly room.
Solly sobered quickly and turned the laughing soldier over to the Military Police.
. . .
Notwithstanding the captain’s admonitions, it was hard to keep your nose clean. You couldn’t live by yourself and only for yourself. You had to live with other people—especially in the Army. Somebody was always screwing up, somebody was always trying to involve you.
Sergeant Greer, the evil-eyed motor sergeant, went over into town one night with a pass and got roaring drunk and three white MPs tried to take his girl friend from him and he tried to whip all of them at once and he came back to the barracks about three in the morning, crying, bruised, cussing, bleeding. The next morning in the office, the CO accused the sergeant of disorderly conduct over in town and would not listen to Greer’s version of what happened. The MP’s report was enough for him. Greer, still drunk from alcohol and nightstick, cussed the captain and called him a liar to his face. Rutherford came from behind his desk and said, “Stand at attention, Sergeant!” And ripped the staff-sergeant stripes from his arm and said, “At ease, Private!” And ordered Solly to take Private Greer downstairs and give him a cold shower with all of his clothes on.
Next day Sergeant Anderson, the Topkick, led a group of non-coms in to see the captain on behalf of the broken motor sergeant, who was acknowledged to be the best motor man in the regiment. He insinuated Solly into being a part of the delegation. Solly tried to hedge at first. He told Solly quietly, “If non-coms don’t stick together they are nothing to themselves or to the Army. Right?”
Solly said, “Yes—but—” He was sweating. Somebody was always putting him on the spot.
“I’m the easiest-going bastard in the world, but when my best soldier gets busted for being a man, I mean, the company will go to the frigging dogs, inside of a week, if something isn’t done quick.”
Solly said, “Maybe if you spoke to the captain by yourself. You’re the first sergeant—maybe he’d listen to you.” Every day he was put on the spot like this.
Topkick said quietly, “Well, I don’t blame you for not sticking your neck out. I mean, after all, I’m just a jerk don’t know any better. That’s all right, the rest of the fellers agreed to go, excepting Rogers. That’ll be enough I reckin. Probably won’t do any good anyhow. I don’t blame you. It ain’t gon hardly ever happen to you. You don’t ever go into town.”
Solly went with the other NCOs. The reference to Rogers helped to force his hand more than he or the Topkick realized. But just as he suspected, it did no one any good.
The CO would not talk with them. There were eight of them including Sergeant Perry, the mess sergeant. He told them they constituted a mob and he was going to forget they had come to see him like that. He said to Sergeant Anderson, “I’m surprised at you, an old Army man. You’re my first sergeant. If you got anything on your mind you come and speak to me individually as my first sergeant, and not as part of an organized mob. And you too, Saunders, my company clerk. I should send the whole lot of you on a five-mile hike. Be dismissed and consider yourself lucky.”
Later that afternoon the captain called Solly into his office and reprimanded him personally and individually and even maybe fatherly.
“You want to be an officer, Saunders?”
Solly swallowed hard and said, “Yes, sir.”
“You sure got a funny way of showing it.”
“Is my work unsatisfactory, sir?” His company-clerk work was the best in the regiment and he knew it.
“Your work is excellent, but that’s not all of it, and you know it—I mean the attitude of an officer, and that’s what I’ve been trying to teach you ever since you came into the company, but you’d rather listen to the Jewish lawyer. Ever time I turn around you all got your heads together. Well I sure can’t make you, if it isn’t in you. You can lead a horse to the water but you sure can’t make him drink.” He stopped to breathe and glanced at the captain bars on his shoulders. He looked again at Solly.
And Solly stared back at Rutherford, wondering who had the most sense, Scotty or Solly, and was the officer attitude really worth the horse’s drinking? Or something.
“Have I treated you unfairly, Saunders?”
Solly looked the question in the face and on each side but did not look behind the question. And he said, “No, sir.”
“Well, then, by God, you listen to me. There’s no such thing as fair and unfair in the Army. There’s only order and discipline. There’re those who dish it out and those who take it. You have to make up your mind where you stand, one side or the other. You understand?”
Solly said, “Yes, sir.” In a very special way the CO reminded him of Millie. Everything either this or that and oversimplified. But life was much more complicated. Life was much more than this or that, black or white. Life was grayish.
“And don’t kid yourself, Saunders. You want to be an officer. I know you do. Any fool can be one of the mob. And I’m giving you an opportunity most colored boys don’t ever get.”
Solly had broken into an awful sweat now. There were many things he might have said and maybe even should have said, he knew what to do with words, but sometimes silence was the wisest course.
“I’m on your side. You understand that, don’t you, Saunders?”
He almost lost his voice. “Yes, sir.” And he hated his ambition. He was sick of saying yes sir.
That same night a few men sat in the orderly room with Solly talking about the Japanese giving ground in the South Pacific and the Germans catching hell on the Russian front and colored soldiers catching holy hell on the Southern front, particularly in Ebbensville and at Camp Johnson Henry and especially on Rutherford’s plantation.
Buckethead Baker said, “Man, a chicken ain’t nuthin but a bird and a soldier ain’t nuthin but a turd.”
Bookworm said, “And a colored turd at that.”
Solly said jokingly, “Maybe Scotty’s got something after all. Take up residence in the post stockade. Com
e out again, go home, and return to camp and back to the stockade again. Maybe he’s got something.” But he didn’t really mean it, not even jokingly. He was talking through his hat to impress the gang. He didn’t really understand the man who could have been a master sergeant. He didn’t want to understand him. He was afraid to.
Bookworm said, “Double-V for Victory. Tell ‘em about it, Solly. Miss Fannie Mae Branton is the greatest.”
Scotty was a damn fool pure and simple. Fannie Mae Branton was another question altogether. She was beautiful.
Buck Rogers came into the barracks with a bottle and he held it up to Worm’s nose and Worm followed him out of the orderly room and the rest of the men followed the Bookworm.
Buckethead said, “All you got to do to make a colored man happy is give him a drink of licker and a piece of hoecake.”
They were seated around Solly’s and Bookworm’s living quarters and passing the bottle from one to the other. Worm got up and started to hum “Tea for Two” and did a soft-shoe routine. He wasn’t built like a dancer but he could really move. Smooth and graceful.
Buck Rogers said, “Man, it’s a wonder the government don’t charge you extra tax for building your ass so close to the sidewalk.” The soldiers laughed.
“Jealous,” Bookworm said, without breaking his stride. “This is how I used to win that damn amateur contest at the Apollo every Wednesday night.”
Buck Rogers laughed and stomped his feet. “I knew I had seen you somewhere before. Goddamn, you’re the jerk Puerto Rico used to have so much trouble getting off the stage.”
The soldiers howled with laughter.
Buckethead said, “They ought to do you colored folks like they do the Indians. Pass a law against selling whiskey to you.”
The bottle was just about empty and the men were in their whiskey and the talk got around inevitably to Rutherford’s infamous plantation. The whiskey had gone to Solly’s head and he felt good. He saw Fannie’s face before him.
Buckethead said, “Yeah, Charlie’s got a plantation and you all his slaves and ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. You sure can’t rise up against him and make a revolution.”
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 12