Solly almost said aloud, “The colored heads are on the block.” He almost felt sorry for Buckethead Baker.
He heard the captain like off in a distance. “Lieutenant Samuels is accompanying the cadre. I hope he likes the idea—he loves you boys so much. It woulda been a shame to leave him behind. And I’m going to get Scott out of the stockade to go along with you, to make sure you get some good home cooking.” He laughed. “This is a whole heap better than court-martial, isn’t it, Saunders?”
It was a victory for Rutherford all the way. That’s what Samuels got for trying to pass for colored.
The next few days Camp Johnson Henry was a madder madhouse than ever to the ten cadre men of Hell Company and their somber-faced lieutenant. The eleventh man was Jim Larker of the Tenth Engineers. He got his CO to transfer him to H Company with the understanding that Rutherford would send him out on cadre. Larker was the pretty-faced boy who’d stepped out of line with Solly at the Ebbensville bus station. Solly and Jimmy had visited each other a couple of times since Solly came out of the hospital. They had hit it off with one another. The only trouble was, Jimmy was much too idealistic for Solly’s present frame of mind. But they were buddies, and he was glad for Jim to come along to California.
It was almost like when they first came into the Army, with the shots-in-the-arms and the Short-arm Inspections and Showdown Inspections, two and three times a day, and Dental Inspections. A latrine rumor got started that they were being readied to be shipped overseas and directly to the front. Solly wouldn’t put it past them. He thought very seriously about becoming a conscientious objector, but it was too late for that. The thought even entered his head to desert, but he was not a deserter, and he could never desert. He would go to California precisely as the other men were going to do, and spend a few days or weeks or months of training—special training, the captain said on the day following the initial announcement—and just like the others he would go overseas to God-knows-where, where civilized people were killing each other by the thousands every day.
One day over at the base hospital all of the men from all of the cadres from all of the companies in the regiment were standing in a poorly ventilated room in their birthday suits, with raincoats thrown around their shoulders for the sake of modesty and rubber boots on their feet for whatever reason. Bookworm said to Solly, “Let me out of this funky place before I suffocate.” Solly told him, “This is a gas drill, buddy boy. Might as well die here as in the trenches.” The medics came in and one of them, a major, told them, “Don’t be bashful, men. Pull off your raincoats. Let’s see what you’re hiding.” Some of the men chuckled nervously, they were all uneasy. When the major got to Buck Rogers he looked Buck up and down and sideways, as bashful Buck stood stiffly at attention, as naked as he came into the world. The major said, “All right, soldier, bend over and spread your cheeks.” Buck said, “Yes, sir!” And he bent forward and made a perfect right angle from the waist and placed the middle fingers of both hands into his mouth and pulled it back almost up to his ears. Through the howling laughter of the cadre men you could hear the major. “No, no, soldier, I’m not the dentist. I’m strictly a back-door man.”
After lunch, back to the hospital and the dental clinic. It was like climbing into an electric chair. Solly sat in a chair next to Bookworm. The dentist, a middle-aging gray-haired lieutenant, told Worm to open his mouth wide. Worm complied.
“Wider—” the lieutenant urged.
Worm said, “How’s that?”
“Wider, a little wider.”
Worm widened his mouth a little wider.
“You can do better than that,” the lieutenant said. “Wider, boy.”
Worm threw away his fear and caution and gave it all he had and stretched his mouth from ear to ear, and something went click like a purse snapping shut and Worm tried to close his mouth and couldn’t, his jaws had unhinged, and he yelled bloody murder and grabbed one of the sharp dental instruments and went for the lieutenant, who danced quickly out of Worm’s reach. It took five men to hold Worm down while the dentist put his jaws in line again. When Worm left the hospital his head was so bound with bandages, the men in the company thought he had been hit by an Army truck.
All during this time Captain Rutherford was in the best of spirits, pink-faced and smiling all of the time, and every time he met Solly in the office, on the stairs or the company street, he had something pleasant to say like, “I just know you and Lieutenant Samuels are just tickled to death to be leaving dear old Dixieland.”
Two days later they left the regimental area in two-and-a-half-ton Army trucks with bags and baggage, along with cadre from the other companies, and went to the post railhead to be shipped across the country to California. They boarded the train and after an hour and a half of now-we’re-leaving and not-yet-a-while, they finally pulled out of Camp Johnson Henry. They went through Ebbensville and Solly felt a pain tear into his stomach and move upwards through his body his chest and into his throat; he could not keep the image of Fannie Mae away from the eyes of his mind, nor could he get her out of his guts, and she seemed to be all inside of him and all around him, and he was a fool to feel this way, it was over and done with, he was a married man, and it was all over and done with, and in a few days he would be three thousand miles away and in a few months maybe six or seven thousand miles away, and he would never see Fannie Mae Branton again, and it was the best thing for all concerned. She would forget and he would forget, but it was easier said than done. He felt he was leaving an important part of himself in this little Southern town, but he was taking something with him he had never had before. So much had happened.
He was so different from the man he was four months ago. He had lived a thousand years since then. He had died a thousand times. He felt he’d been like an innocent virgin when he came into the service, and the Army had brutishly raped him of his youth, his faith, his idealism. His great ambition. He’d never believe in anything again. Never ever. He was old and disillusioned. He would never dream again. Millie was wonderful and loved him, but she did not know the Army. He thought of Fannie Mae again and thought his eyes were getting wet, and he had to get away from Worm and his yackety-yack that went on and on and everlastingly on. He’d never known anyone like Fannie Mae before Camp Johnson Henry. Thank you, Uncle Samuel. He got up out of his seat and walked to the end of the coach, and he met his Great White Buddy out on the platform between the coaches.
“I got good news for you, Corporal.”
They were out of Ebbensville now and the train was reeling and rocking and the gleaming tracks were screeching and screaming and Fannie Mae and Fannie Mae and the earth lay green and red around them, as away off in the distance fall came raging out of the hills like forest fire.
Solly forced a mechanical laugh. “Don’t tell me, Lieutenant, the war just ended.”
“Better news than that, Corporal Saunders. Colonel Spiggel-miser thought we’d all be happier if our friend went along with us to make up the cadre. You’ll find Captain Rutherford in the car up ahead. He’s still our company commander.”
Solly took a long protracted breath. “Now ain’t that good news?” He did not really care about company commanders or lieutenants or executive officers. Screw them all.
He thought of Fannie Mae again and his face filled up and he turned his back to the lieutenant, as the train gave out a low and mournful wail, reeling and rocking and almost leaping from the tracks, dashing headlong out of Georgia through a dark-green jungle slowly turning golden brown.
Fall was finally here and he was leaving.
Good-by, Fannie Mae. Dearly beloved Fannie Mae.
With the large warm black eyes vast and deep and knowledge-seeking, and the misty lips curving sensuous soft and firm and saying everything profoundly of love and understanding, with the body warm and black and brown as dark-brown burnt toast and slim and sweet as sugar cane and sapling. You and your Double-V for Victory. By now you know it’s all a fraud. The War, the Army,
the Home Front, Democracy, ambition, the whole damn shooting match. Nothing’s real but you and me. And I will have my manhood. Believe me when I say so.
His face was filling up now and almost spilling over. Fannie Mae, dear Fannie Mae, with the tough and tender strength.
Good-bye, beloved, good-bye.
PART II—CULTIVATION
CHAPTER 1
Solly relaxed for the very first time since he came into the Army.
They spent five hysterical days killing time in self-defense, doing nothing with a vengeance and seeing America first and chasing the dying days of autumn, he wore the world like a loose garment, and they arrived at Monterey, California, just as day gave up the ghost in a blaze of fire and brimstone away out over the wide Pacific at the edge of the Western world. Solly’s face filled up and a chill danced madly over his shoulders as he watched the final Tuesday spasms, and he was not aware the train had stopped. How many million trillion days lay at the bottom of this mighty ocean?
Whistles blowing all around him. Rogers screaming: “All right! All right! Every living with a swinging!” Worm said, “You better wake up outa that daydream, Solly. Here come that bubble-eyed prissy-tail Field Sergeant Buck Rogers!” Buck was sounding off like a rusty foghorn. “Off the train and onto the trucks! Off the train and onto the trucks. Come on, soldier, take your finger outcha ass!” The holiday was over.
They got nervously off the train and onto the trucks and rode beside the rolling sea, which was frothing madly at the mouth and licking the salty edge of the continent and slapping the jutting rocks of ages and running out to sea and back again. The awesome beauty of the coastline cast a spell on the weary GI travelers that even took the Bookworm’s voice away—temporarily of course. Even Scotty’s. They followed the zigzagging ocean for a short time, and then a wide sweeping curve took them out of sight of the bluish graying sea and onto a sweeping plateau, and off to the left on another level below them was God’s most gorgeous countryside, green and yellow and orange and red and blue and purple and sexy and full of giving birth and peacefully restless was the land and unashamedly beautiful and growing under your very eyes. The grumbling trucks took them eastward from the sea to Fort Ord, California. And the next few weeks were fast and furious and many times more frenzied than the race across the continent.
The following day right after lunch more than fifteen hundred colored soldiers, black and dark-brown and medium and light-complexioned, tall and short and in-between, Northerners and Easterners and Southerners and not-so-many Westerners and sad sacks and GFUs and good soldiers and goldbricks and earnest soldiers and intelligent ones and even a few dedicated Section-8-ers, every living stood ill at ease on a wide green glittering field that sounded off like summertime. They were gathered there to listen to their new regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Casanova Busby. He was a round stumpy nervous man of middle age and middle class, with overeager expectations. Standing on a wooden platform six feet off the ground, he reminded Solly of a few pampered middle-class bulldogs he had seen in life, strutting pompously along Central Park West and East at the end of milady’s leash. His neck short and thick and fat and his voice thick and gravelly and as husky as a bulldog’s. Every now and then throughout his speech he would remind the tired sweaty men of the importance of the task before them.
“’You’re special men,
Amphibi-ens—‘”
He told them they had to compress four months of amphibian training into a period of four or five weeks. Maybe less. “You people constitute the first colored amphibious regiment in the Army of the United States, and I hope you people realize the importance of the job that lies ahead of you. You’re special men—Amphibi-ens.”
Like he was huckstering soap on a radio commercial.
“In four or five weeks you have to become the best swimmers, the best marksmen, the best drivers, the best damn soldiers in the Army of the U.S.A.” A soft-soap huckster for real.
He paused and mopped his brow and his juicy mouth with a large white handkerchief and let his hazel eyes rove nervously over the field of weary sweating restless soldiers. A grasshopper hedgehopped close to the ground like a P-38 past the bottom of Solly’s trouser legs. The colonel really sounds like a bullfrog, Solly decided. A frog instead of a dog. A froggy-sounding frog at that.
“’You’re special men,
Amphibi-ens—‘“
They lived in the eastern section of Fort Ord in pyramid-shaped huts, five special men to a hut. There were twelve companies in the Fifteenth Amphibious Regiment. The first hut in each company was the orderly room, located at the top of a hill, and the other huts ran in twelve neat rows fanlike down to the bottom of the hill where a huge Post Exchange squatted amongst a grove of tall green swaying palms like a sprawling supermarket. With a background of heavy shining foliage it looked like a hopped-up Hollywood version of the South Pacific in a Bob Hope-Dorothy Lamour musical comedy. But at the crest of the hill beyond the company streets was a little hut, brown and unpretentious and humble and sincere, which was the Post Exchange for the special men of the Fifteenth Amphibious Regiment. The pretty one down at the bottom of the street was strictly for white folks only.
That evening they went to the Booker T. Washington Post Exchange, and it was so crowded they had to work their jaws up and down when they talked instead of sideways (Bookworm’s description of it). It was like the IRT subway at five p.m. at Union Square and Fourteenth Street. You had to fight your way all the way to the counter where four young colored ladies, smiling and harassed, tried to cater to a couple of hundred soldiers, angry and laughing and evil and colored and some of them cussing and some of them sweet-talking, and by the time you got up to the counter they were out of what you wanted, if by then you remembered what you wanted. When Solly and Jimmy Larker and Bookworm finally pushed and shoved their way back out of the place, Solly felt like his sides had caved in on him. And he remembered vividly the jail in Georgia and the white-haired Army colonel and the nightsticks beating against his flaming thighs, and very very especially the feeling of hopeless helpless desperation.
They went without even thinking about it down the company street past the huts toward the supermarket Post Exchange, which was lit up like Times Square and almost empty with white soldiers, and a giant jukebox blasting the air with the Ink Spots morale building for the Special Men. And the palm trees doing a weird dance giving themselves completely and grotesquely to a cool breeze that was always blowing.
The MP at the entrance said, “Sorry, fellers, you’re out of bounds.” Solly wrote his own lyrics.
Listen to the pretty song.
“What you mean—out-of-bounds?” the Worm demanded. “I don’t see no border lines.”
This is what we’re fighting for.
“I don’t make the regulations, friend. I’m a soldier just like you. I’m just doing my job like they tell me to do.”
A fire was building in his stomach. Solly said, “What is this anyhow? An exclusive country club or something?”
We must learn the reasons why.
“Look, boys, I don’t have a thing against you people,” the nervous MP said, “and I don’t want no trouble. There’s a PX right up the top of the hill.” He’s an amiable courageous bastard, Solly thought, with his nightstick on one hip and his forty-five on the other.
And be bitter never.
The Ink Spots sang inside the jukebox inside the supermarket Post Exchange where the blond-haired blue-eyed young ladies and the brunettes and the dark-eyed pale-faced ladies stood behind the counters doing nothing. There were not more than twenty soldiers in the place.
Solly said with heat in his voice, “This one right here doesn’t seem to be doing much business at present. The ladies are falling asleep on their feet . . . . We figured we might do a good deed and patronize them a little. Liven things up just a little old biddy bit.”
Jimmy said quietly, “We’re soldiers, you know, and this would appear to be a Post Exchange.�
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The MP was rapidly losing his patience and the color in his freckled face. “But it’s not for you soldiers,” he said belligerently. “So why don’t you wise guys beat it, honh? Why don’t you just knock it off?”
Worm said, “Suppose we just want to stand right here and look at you? You a pretty handsome boy.”
The freckle-faced MP stared at Bookworm and then at Solly and Jimmy and back to Worm. He put his hand on his nightstick and seemed to be debating with himself the knotty question of how to deal with these arrogant-acting colored soldiers who didn’t have anything else to do but to give him a bad time and didn’t have any better sense.
He said, “Suit yourself.” He folded his arms and glared at them and they glared back and the heat collected in all of their faces and forgotten was the California evening breeze. Finally the MP gave them his back and placed his hands upon his hips. They stood there for a time, hot and frustrated, and then they turned about and went back up the company street, Worm saying aloud, “We oughta take that forty-five from Junior and whip his head till it rope like okry.”
When they reached the top of the street they looked into the orderly room. Lieutenant Samuels was the Officer of the Day and was poring over some official papers. Solly started to say, “Excuse—” but Samuels said, “Come right in, fellers. I wasn’t doing anything world-shaking.” They hesitated at the door and he said, “I mean it. Come on in. I haven’t had a stimulating discussion since we left good old Camp Johnson Henry.”
They came into the hut. He said, “Well, men, tell me how do you like California, the land of sunshine and ocean breezes? Or is that Florida’s slogan?”
“It don’t seem to make much difference,” Worm said.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 25