“Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go, darling! Don’t go—don’t go—don’t go!” She saw him killed in the early misty sun-kissed Sunday morning on the streets of her beloved Bainbridge, she saw him lying still and calm in peaceful death, his dearest-face-in-all-the-world calm and still in dreadful crazy death. And he must not go, she wouldn’t let him, she would not turn his legs loose, he would have to drag her with him if he went because she would not could not let him go. “No! No! No! My darling!”
He stared down at this sobbing woman whom seven or eight months ago he never knew existed, and he looked from her to Samuels, and he didn’t want to go into battle again, Lord knows he didn’t, he was sick of war and fighting, and he reached deep deep down inside of him in the foggy subterranean of his consciousness, he reached for anger against both of them. Didn’t they know he wanted to go home to his family? He said, “Turn my leg loose. What the hell do you want me to do? Run and hide underneath your bed?” Fannie Mae had called him and he had to go to battle for his dignity and manhood.
“Don’t be a hero, Solly darling! You don’t have to be a hero!”
He thought of his mother’s “Don’t be a hero,” and almost laughed. He reached down and pulled her up into his arms. He said gently roughly, “I’m no hero, Celia. Listen to me. I’m scared, you hear me? I’m really scared but that has nothing to do with anything. I’m scared for me. I’m scared for Jimmy and all the rest. I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t need to be a hero. I wish I didn’t know about it, but I do know, and I’ve got to go.” He looked from the sobbing woman to the reddened tan-faced captain. “Goddammit, Robert Samuels, will you tell her why I have to go?” Solly said, “I want to go home, I’m no hero, I want to go home to my child and my family and my and my and my and my—Why in the hell don’t you talk to this—this hysterical woman?”
Samuels’s voice was low and husky. “He has to go, Celia.”
She said, “No-no-no-no!”
Solly said in a strange gruff voice, “Celia,” and breathing deep short gaspy breaths. “Celia, all my life, everything that ever happened to me has brought me to this very moment, every place I ever was, everything and everybody, every street I ever walked.”
She sank to the couch as if he had slugged her. He leaned and kissed her gently on her cheek and said good-by. He turned to Samuels. “Now tell her why you also have to go, or be the phoniest bastard on God’s green earth. Tell her those guys out there are the noblest comrades you’ll ever know, and—and—and tell her that the Quiet Man is the finest of human beings—and—”
Samuels said in an almost whisper, “All right, Sergeant.” And came and kissed her on the cheek.
And the two men left the house together.
Out on the porch Solly turned to Samuels. “I have to go, you know that, don’t you? I have no choice. It’s my own life I’m defending. That’s my brother at the MP station. But you don’t have to go. I mean, you can stay here with Celia and say you didn’t know anything about it. Don’t let me push you into—”
“I know what I can do, Solly Saunders. Don’t be so goddamn high and mighty.”
They stared at each other for a moment and Samuels was the first to turn and start walking down the steps toward the jeep. And Solly felt like crying. She was so close to him this moment. He held her in his arms almost, his Fannie Mae, but he might never ever hold her. Damn dignity and manhood, Fannie Mae, and damn you and your piety!
CHAPTER 5
The town was in a heavy sleep, and out in the Bay, and further, way out over the Coral Sea, the sun was stirring fitfully, as daybreak made its first beachhead against the night-time in its final throes of dying. It was neither still-night nor yet-morning. The world a dark and gray and orange-pinkish thing, and the Ducks and trucks made awesome music humming down the King’s Highway, as they headed swiftly toward the city which was softly drugged in slumber. The tall slim stalks of sugar cane stood delicately handsome and dancing in the fore-day-in-the-morning breeze. Beyond the cane fields were the mountains clad warmly in their jungle garments.
Seven Ducks and three trucks all with machine guns mounted, and fifty-some odd men standing beneath their combat helmets, armed with rifles and carbines. The men were wide awake and sleepyish and falsely brave, and angry men, nervous, scared, and trigger-happy . . .
At the Farm one of the guards at the gate was running to the phone in a little office the size of a tool shed. He called the base headquarters. After a couple of impatient minutes he heard a sleepy voice on the other end. He told the muffled voice about the big convoy of colored soldiers.
The voice said, “What? What are you talking about?”
And then the voice no longer sleepy: “What! Are you crazy? Niggers on maneuvers?”
The timid guard repeated his story and when the charge-of-quarters hung up the phone, he ran through the slowly lifting darkness to find the officer of the day who was asleep, but should have been awake, and the officer of the day ran to wake the base adjutant who was in bed with the wife of the base commander who was in town in bed with a young sweet boy in the Signal Corps.
“You’ll find him there every Saturday night,” the adjutant said indignantly. “He’s a fucking degenerate of the lowest type.”
A few minutes later the adjutant and the O.D. and a disagreeable master sergeant were in a jeep tearing down the highway in pursuit of the colored convoy. The sleepy-headed master sergeant thinking to himself, he should have gone into town the night before. He should be lying up with Mary Wilson in his arms with his legs wrapped around her hairy legs. He should be snoring in her face.
The convoy with its lead truck driven by Scotty had come to a two-way fork in the road and had taken the wrong one and had gone a few miles before it realized its mistake and had made a wide sweeping U-turn and was heading back for the big intersection.
The lead truck got back to the intersection five seconds after the adjutant’s jeep. The adjutant, a handsome West-Pointed blondish dog-of-a-spitting-image of a slightly middle-aging All-American halfback, crew-cut and widow-peaked, Southern-born and bred and fed and thirty-fivish, straddled the middle of the road with his jeep and stood up in it and waved his field cap to halt the convoy. Scotty slammed on his brakes and swerved his Duck, barely missing the adjutant’s jeep, and you could hear brakes squawking and squealing and crying and screeching loud enough to awake the sleeping fish way out in the Coral Sea.
Scotty shouted at the colonel, “What’s the matter, mother-huncher? You tired of living? Oh, excuse me, Captain.” He was always handing out demotions.
“Watch your language, soldier,” the colonel said with dignity and Southern accent. “Who’s in charge here?”
“What’s it to you?”
The drivers in the other Ducks and trucks started blowing their horns.
“Let’s get the show on the road, goddammit!”
Sergeant Henry Williams, a proper-talking soft-voiced soldier from Boston, was in the lead Duck. He was the ranking non-com. “You might very well say that I’m in charge, Colonel, sir, if you insist on being technical.”
“What the hell do y’all think y’all up to, Sergeant?”
“We’re not up to anything, sir. You might say we’re going on a mission.”
The horns began to sound off impatiently up and down the convoy.
“Let’s get it on!”
“You’re holding up the frigging war!”
“I order you Sergeant, to take these men back to the base.”
“Come on! Let’s go get the Quiet Man!”
“He’s my mama-hunching boy!”
Some disrespectful soldier shouted from the second Duck, “I’d ruther kick a bloody MP’s ass than go home on rotation!” And up and down the line of Ducks and trucks they yelled.
“Hopjack, here we come!”
“Scat! Scat! Scat!”
“Come on! Let’s go if we going, goddammit!”
“What’s the mama-jabbing holdup?”
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p; The soldiers were whooping it up and the horns were blowing, and streaks of lightning flashed heavenly sparks out at the edge of the world where night and day were locked in bitter conflict. And the colonel was trying to shout above the noise and the sergeant said in a properly respectful tone, “Colonel, sir, even if I were disposed to follow your orders, I could not get these men to turn back now. They’ve been turned back too many times.”
All three in the jeep were standing now, the colonel, captain, and the sleepy sergeant, and the colonel was waving his arms and shouting.
He said, “Now, men, I order you now to go immediately back to the base without further ado!” He was cracker-red with rage.
Scotty raced his motor and the Ducks behind him followed suit as likewise did the trucks behind the Ducks. Scotty said, “Move out of our way now, Colonel Peckerwood, please, sir. We got business to attend to.”
The colonel pulled his gun, as did the captain, and they pointed them at Scotty in the lead Duck, and suddenly the shouting and honking died away, and a quiet came to the highway.
The colonel shouted, “You will order your men to return to the base, Sergeant, immediately, and you, Corporal-driver-whatever-your-name, you will proceed at once to lead this convoy back to Worthington Farms.”
Corporal General Grant stood crouched behind the machine gun in the lead Duck. He turned it on its tripod and trained it on the helpless jeep. The sweat poured from the trenches in his angry wrinkled forehead. And how was the adjutant to know that the old man wasn’t bluffing? How was he to even imagine that he was about to be blown unceremoniously into that other world where he would never have a care again?
It was so quiet you could hear the daybreak breaking, and Scotty leaped into the silence. “Colonel Peckerwood, whatever-your-name-is, sir—”
“My name is Colonel William Bradford the Third, Corporal,” the adjutant said with dignity.
Scotty got out of the driver’s seat and pulled off his helmet and stood at attention and saluted the colonel. The colonel had to return the salute.
“All right then, sir, Major Bad-fork, I’m going to follow your instructions. After all’s said and done, every last man in this convoy is loyal-abiding Americans, and if all the other soldiers felt the way we feel about it, this war would end tomorrow.”
The colonel was deeply moved by the simple honesty and childish patriotism in Scotty’s words and in his guileless face. He put his gun back in its holster without knowing. “All right, Corporal, I—the name is Colonel Bradford. I appre—”
Scotty shouted, “Captain Bad-cock, sir, where you lead us we will follow. All you got to do is show us the way to go home. I’m from down home jus’ like you are.” He saluted the colonel and the colonel stared at him and returned the salute.
Grant said angrily, “What the hell you doing, mawn?”
“Very well, Corporal. We shan’t forget the part you’re playing.” The colonel sat down in his jeep and ordered his master sergeant to turn around and head back to the Farm. And Scotty pompously signaled the other drivers in the convoy to turn their motors over and get ready to ride.
The jeep took off and headed swiftly down the King’s Highway back to the base, and the convoy followed suit, but when Scotty reached the three-way intersection, he said, “You close your eyes you lose sight on the world.” And he roared his motor and made a sweeping U-turn, and this time he headed down the other highway which would take them to the Elizabeth Bridge and across it into South Bainbridge. Duck after Duck after Duck after truck came roaring into the intersection and made their sweeping turns, some on three wheels, and the men on the Ducks and trucks were yelling and whooping, and the dust was flying.
The jeep had gone almost a hundred feet before the colonel could bring himself to realize he had been taken by such a simple colored man as Scotty. The jeep turned around and came back to the intersection as the Ducks and trucks roared into their sweeping turns. The colonel was standing in his jeep, waving his gun and shouting for them to stop and eating dust, and the men as they swept into the turn were yelling shouting
“’Blow it out your barracks bag!’
“’Scat! Scat! Scat! Scat!’“
“I’d ruther kick an MP in the ass than go home on rotation!”
It did not take the bright young colonel very long to realize that he looked foolish standing there airing his lungs needlessly and eating dust. He didn’t like the taste of dust. It tasted dusty. He sat down again and swore aloud and the jeep turned around again and sped toward the Farm. It went a few hundred yards and stopped at an all-night diner, and the colonel leaped out of the jeep and ran inside to the telephone and called back to the Farm, and he called the base commander at his week-end rendezvous in town and he called division headquarters at Camp Bainbridge on the other side of town. He called this place and the other, and he called the Jones Street station.
The corporal at the Jones Street station said sleepily, “So what?”
“This is Colonel Bradford speaking to you, Corporal.”
The corporal still not fully awake. “So some spooks went on maneuvers—so what? The fresh air’s good this time of morning. You wouldn’t begrudge them—”
The colonel said sharply, “Wake up, Corporal. This is Colonel William Bradford, base adjutant at Worthington Farms.”
The corporal said, “Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Excuse me, sir!”
The colonel said, “Is Captain Westover there?”
The corporal said, “No, sir. Almost everybody’s out making their final Saturday roundup. It’s routine, sir.”
The colonel snapped, “Let me speak to who’s in charge.”
As Scotty and his convoy reached the northern tip of Elizabeth Bridge, a truck of white soldiers approached it from another boulevard. The Amphibs got there first. They stopped and waited as the two-and-a-half-ton truck kept coming. Every Duck and truck in the convoy had its mounted guns trained on the truck. General Grant was itching. When the truck entered the last block before the bridge, Scotty sounded off a split second before the General would have.
“Halt, goddammit! Who goes there?” His great voice roared into the silence of the sleeping city.
And the truck kept coming, and Grant said to Scotty, “Don’t worry about nothing, mawn. Just let ‘em come a little bit closer, and I’ll blow every last one of ‘em some brand-new pinky holes.”
Scotty roared louder than ever, “I said, ‘Halt!’ Who goes there, mother-fuckers?”
He heard a familiar voice shout, “It’s me, goddammit! It’s me—it’s Dobbsy!” And the truck slowed down and stopped about fifty feet away. And Dobbsy jumped out and ran toward the lead Duck.
Scotty started laughing. “I thought so—goddammit—I thought so!” He tried to stop laughing. He stopped for a moment. “Hold your fire, men! These our comrades!” And he laughed and laughed and laughed.
When the bowlegged digger reached the lead Duck, Scotty told him, “Goddamn, buddy, you better learn how to talk quicker than that. We almost busted a cap in your ass.” He laughed some more. “Goddammit, what you doing up this time of morning?”
Dobbs said, “The same thing you doing. We figured you bloody well might need a little support at the Jones Street station.”
Scotty said, “Well good-on-ya, mytes. The more the more merrier.”
Dobbs said, “What’s the strategy and tactics?”
Scotty said to Sergeant Williams, “You tell him, Sarge.”
The sergeant explained the plan was to go across the bridge and go three more blocks and then spread out and move toward the station from all sides and angles, and when they reached the station, a delegation would go inside and demand Jimmy’s release, and that would be that. Of course, if the MPs refused to release him, they would take him by the sheer obvious force of their numbers. There would be no gunfire. Positively, there would be no shooting—unless it was absolutely necessary, in self-defense, as a very last resort.
Dobbs went back to his truck and the motors turne
d over and they started nervously across the bridge. Day had broken completely now out over the Coral Sea, and it was a soft and peaceful Sunday morning like Scotty remembered Sunday mornings back home where he came from. From Mississippi to Chicago to Harlem to Bainbridge. He had always been on the go ever since he could remember and Sunday mornings were Sunday mornings. The sky was a quiet ocean, deep and bluish and wide and far away and upside down. He’d seen Sunday skies before so many times. He was as nervous as a setting hen. His finest moment in the Army.
Worm was in the second Duck wondering at what lay ahead of them on the other side of the bridge and thinking of home and wondering would he ever get back to that other world which looked so pretty to him this morning. He was homesick, with the funny taste for home in his mouth and a home smell in his nostrils. It was Sunday morning and he could see his mother and his father. His mother, large in size and slow in movement but fast in her determination, getting ready for church. His father only went on Easter Sunday to cry for Jesus, and Worm went only when he could not get out of going. He could hear the sweet church music and he saw Harlem thronged with people in their Sunday-go-to-meetings. He saw the street-corner meetings. Think black I Buy black! Live black! The Apollo Theater. He laughed. He forgot the ugly side of it; he could only see the beauty. His Harlem, the city deep inside within a city. He forgot completely where he was and what he was doing. They were halfway across the bridge when he came to himself, and he thought about Solly. Where in the hell was Solly Saunders? Somehow he wished his friend were there in the Duck beside him, near him, or at least was somewhere in the convoy, and he would feel better about the whole damn thing. Solly Saunders, where are you in this sleepy river city ten thousand miles away from home? He and Solly had been through a gang of hells together and if he were going now to his death, he would like for Solly to at least know about it, and know the reasons why he had to go. His mouth was cold with the taste of fear. There won’t be any shooting at all. Well just go to the Jones Street MP station and demand that they release Quiet Man and tell them straight up and down what we will do if they don’t release him, and as Williams said, we’ll have them hopelessly outnumbered, and they’ll realize they’re outnumbered, and they’ll release him, and that’s all there’ll be to it. They were across the bridge now. They would get Jimmy and go back to camp and face the music afterward. Court-martial and all the rest of it. Solly ought to be with them, goddammit! They went three blocks up the empty Sunday street and then they split up, half of them going to the right and half to the left, and the Ducks and trucks crept cautiously and almost noiselessly along the empty streets as if they were afraid of waking up the city, as they converged on the Jones Street station.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 52