by Don DeNevi
Pulling a chain of keys off his belt, he unlocked the iron door and entered. Peter and Campbell followed. In the dim light from a single lightbulb, the three looked upon the single occupant standing next ot his cot. Peter silently noted the prisoner’s somber features.
“The strain of long days in solitude certainly have beaten this poor guy down. His mental state may be gone.”
No one said a word.
The only acknowledgement the incarcerated man offered the three was a cold, suspicious stare.
“Hello, Six-bits,” Campbell said softly, “How goes it?”
“…There’s no pity here.”
“How so? What’s your meaning?”
The imprisoned said nothing.
“Well,” continued Campbell, “Yes, I agree. That’s why we’ve come. One of your boys died in our arms a few minutes ago.”
For a 30-second moment, long and graveyard silent, no one said a word.
Then, in absolute silence within the small cell, Peter heard the man say gravely, without emotion or surprise,
“I know.”
“You know?” asked Campbell, stunned.
“Yes.”
“How can that be? It happened less than 30 minutes ago.”
“Bad news always travels fast.”
“Did you know the boy?”
“Like a son.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
Turning his attention to Peter, Six-bits asked calmly,
“Is this the partner of the Mad Ghoul?”
“I suppose so,” responded the Warrant Officer. “I don’t see it in him and I work with him every day. But we’re assigned to hold him for this forthcoming court-martial. He couldn’t step on a bug. He almost cried when your Navajo went down a few minutes ago.”
Peter blushed slightly as he studied Six-bits. The man was approximately 45. An unusual age for a recruit. He appeared as if he had slept in his fatigues for a month. Six-bits urgently needed a shave and a haircut.
Despite his dishevelment, his eyes were steely cold icy blue. His face seemed to have been chiseled from granite. Six-bits stood in a calm, dignified manner. He asked,
“You said you were there when he died. I already know how. Tell me.”
Campbell began by saying, “He was a sacrifice to human justice. He was beaten and kicked to death, although he was still breathing, barely, when he was dumped in front of us in the infirmary. His last words broke our hearts…”
“And, what were they?”
Campbell hesitated, as Peter looked on, then lowered his head and said,
“Why? Why? What did I do?”
With that, Campbell, with a look of extreme anger in his eyes, lifted his head to search the haunted face of Six-bits. He said,
“I hoped to spare you those words of a young Marine, a Navajo kin to you and the others.”
Leaning against the cell door downcast, an assortment of keys dangling on a ring chained to his belt, the MP ever-so-slightly recoiled. Both Campbell and Peter saw the flinch and each, noting the eyes of Six-bits, knew that the prisoner saw it too. All three then watched the guard cough, a hand raised to suppress it. The stockade MP turned away.
Campbell and Six-bits understood.
“He probably dropped a pent-up tear, too,” the warrant office smiled at Six-bits. “The Navajo prisoner knew the MP had listened to every word, thinking hard when it was said, feeling every emotion of its impact.
Six-bits nodded.
“Scarce. His skin is very white, the kind that can never brown up. Yet, he knows his own had no cause for that and enjoyed it. No, that one there is too soft for killing his own. My people know if nothing else, how to read the nature of an animal, or a man. We do it fast and without failure. He is with the others, but he is of human heart, feelings and straight words.”
“Officer,” Campbell called out to the MP now standing in the middle or the corridor, “Come in for a few minutes.”
As he did so, somewhat startled to be included in the conversation, the MP was asked,
“Aren’t you the man guarding the holding pen just outside the brig area, away from the rest of the camp?”
“Yes. I worked that detail. The new recruits were all placed there at one time or another,” answered the MP.
“Yeah,” responded Campbell. “And, they all had to run the gamut of the inner yard.”
“When they planned that, and I was assigned to duty at the ‘holding pen’, I refused the assignment. Got into hot water with people…”
“And why was that?” Peter interjected. Campbell glanced at Navajo Six-bits, who nodded with a slight smile.
“Initiation ritual that was unauthorized,” responded the MP, stonily calm, pretending indifference to hide angry disapproval.
“How so?” Peter demanded. “I may be incarcerated awaiting court-martial, but I’m still an officer of the United States Navy, one of our Nation’s armed forces.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a game the other MPs like to play, except it’s not funny. Marines get hurt, putting some in painful conditions, others in the hospital.”
“Goddamn it, officer, HOW SO?”
“Me, when on duty, or the others on rotation duty would love to open the main gate of the brig, escort us into the pen, about 10 other MPs following us. When me, or the others, were given the signal, I would release the bolt that locked the recruits in the pen. One man was released, and someone would scream, ‘Run! Run, Marine! Run! Run! Run! Run your ass back into the brig gate, about 15 yards away.’ Guards were on the walls, or inside from the windows, watching the fun as the poor Marine started running as fast as he could toward the main gate.”
“Where was the amusement in that?” Peter continued his questions.
“Well, without interferences, and it being deep into the late-night hours, the 15 yards normally would require 20 or more seconds! As soon as the Marine began his dash, running as hard as he could muster, out of nowhere, he was blindsided by an MP waiting in the dark shadows of the stockade walls. Knocked flat on his back, most suffered damage, some serious. The MPs always enjoyed themselves.”
“I imagine they did. Defenseless men, unknowing, trusting, but picked on by the base MPs,” Peter said angrily.
“And,” added Campbell, “when questioned by our officers, the MPs who took turns broadsiding the men would respond by saying, ‘Well, the son-of-a-bitch was making a break for it, SIR!”
“You left out the part of the MPs enjoying kicking, punching, kicking and punching the poor man. I heard that as many as seven MPs would be involved in beating the Marine to near death. Boot and fist marks all over the head and body, by six or seven brutal MPs, each trying his best of beat any pulse of life from a kid who is too weak and defenseless to protect himself. If only my looking at them could kill,” interjected Navajo Six-bits.
“Exactly,” continued the MP. “I would watch each Marine instinctively cover his head and face with his arms. It seemed the guards deliberately were aiming their blows above, not below, their shoulders. The MPs didn’t care if marks and wounds were observable. There was nothing any of the victims could do, except take it, and then shut up about it, even to fellow Marines! This is the standard routine for most prisoner incomers. The MPs looked forward to every incoming shipment of prisoners because they could get their exercise running and tackling the Marines sprinting toward the gate. The harder the hit, the better, they figured.”
“Did that happen to you, Peter?” asked Campbell, turning to the Lieutenant.
“Didn’t happen to me because I was taken out of the incoming group early. But vaguely I remember hearing someone say, ‘Our violent introduction was just the first hint of things to come.’”
“Well, that boy who died today wasn’t killed by tackling guards. He was kicked and beaten to death. Not outside the prison walls, but in the prison basement.”
“And, by the way,” continued Six-bits, snappishly, “are you aware there’s one job nobody wants in here?”
“What’s that?” Campbell asked, peering intently into the incarcerated man’s red-slitted, weary eyes.
“Working at the incinerator next to the garbage dump.”
“Yeah, I heard that,” the warrant officer responded morosely. “If the guards think you deserve extra punishment because you’ve done something to piss them off, you’re sent to the furnace dump.”
The MP bent forward slightly to listen intently, suddenly interrupted,
“Yes. There are not too many words around here that strike fear into the hearts of the prisoners like ‘furnace dump’.”
“What? Why is that?” demanded Peter. “I don’t understand. Is it dangerous work, possible sharp object, diseases, wild animals? I imagine it’s a disgusting job, being around it all day. But life-threatening?”
Campbell, patiently, looked at Peter and said calmly, “The thing that scares the inmates the most about the dump are the stories.”
“What stories?” Peter persisted.
The MP, moving from the cell door, joined the three for the first time, commented,
“The dump is away from the main camp, away from the stockade, so no one can see or hear anything that happens over there. But rumors have been heard in the deepest part of the stockade of Marines getting weights dropped on them, of young Marines being sodomized with broom handles, beaten with thick boards, all kinds of horrible things. There are stories of Marines being killed at the dump, intentionally killed. I heard accounts from other MPs of a few Marines actually beaten to death at the furnace site. I refused duty there after being assigned. My superiors had no problems with my refusal.”
“So,” concluded Peter, shocked and dismayed, “you mean that our own Marines were…”
“Yes,” Six-bits said loudly, taking a step forward, fists clenched. “Marines murdered, then thrown into the furnaces. The smell of burning flesh reached us here, almost a mile away.”
With that, Six-bits turned away, and lowered his head. He would say no further word.
As the MP exited the cell with Campbell followed by Peter, right behind him, they bumped into Captain Hofmeister, with two MPs batons in hand. Immediately, Hofmeister walked up from a few feet away, and looked into the faces of the three men.
“Oh, no! What’s this? A cell search or cell extraction? Speak up MP, speak up.”
“I escorted the two corpsmen to the provident leader of the Code Talkers to inform him of the death of the young Marine downstairs on the floor of the infirmary.”
For a very long moment, Hofmeister studied the three, grimly determined. Since the steel cell door was still open, Six-bits stood back in the shadows listening to every word of the unusual proceedings coldly. Finally, addressing the MP,
“Any other words you have to spill?”
“Yes, I do. But I need not bother to say them of everyone in here, you know the cruelties that happen in here.”
Hofmeister stiffened visibly. His face fixed in a grave expression of angry defiance, the Captain said slowly, almost stoically,
“Report to your quarters this very moment. Await for my summons. I will deal with you later.”
The MP, in a defying, bold response of resistance to authority, said quietly with a sly smile,
“To prepare me for my burial place among the forgotten, unnamed, vanished Marines in the furnace dump?”
“I don’t even know the boy’s name and he died at my feet, one hand in mine,” Peter said angrily. “He died as he was speaking.”
“Six-bits referred to him as ‘Smelly’. Why, I don’t know,” responded Campbell as the two continued walking back to the infirmary, unescorted.
“So, when the MP said there were others…”
“Yes,” answered Campbell, “there were without question. I saw them when they invariably wound up in the infirmary. Given the opportunity, as he often said, Six-bits would personally clip the wings of the killers, and, he knows who they are, I’m certain. he may have already set the killers in motion.”
“How would he know who, and then plan their deaths?” Peter asked, realizing this was the first time since arriving that someone was finally talking, informing on the brutal Elliott staff.
“Explain why Six-bits refers to himself as a ‘providential’ leader, a half-breed. When he breathed ‘half-breed’, if you recall, he actually growled. Such an incongruous way to talk about one’s self.”
“I’ll explain. You’ve become a friend, and you should know even if you face death by firing squad,” the warrant officer said as he halted before the entrance to the infirmary. “Let’s sit on the waiting bench there before we go in.”
As the two sat quietly, Peter barely breathed, thinking it best to remain silent lest he spoil the opportunity to learn about the Navajos, specifically one of their unofficial leaders. Finally, Campbell said,
“Because Six-bits is a half-breed, he has no right to lead. He is half white. His father was white, the mother of the northern Navajos. If there’s a ‘leader’, or ‘spokesman’, of the 30 or so Code Talkers, it’s Mr. Johnson, whose idea formed the program. Willie ‘Silver Eagle’ Notah is supposedly head of the group. Some of the staff know him as Tkal-kain-o’-nei, ‘run-on-water’. Another leader is Red Soil. I don’t know his name, or how the Code Talkers.”
“I don’t’ get it,” Peter said, frustrated. “What’s wrong with being a half-breed?”
“He says being a red-skinned white, or red-skinned black, makes no difference. You’re neither nor. People, society, culture, even history has no use for you. I think that since his father was white, he wanted to be accepted as white, treated as a white, loved as a white. But whites see him as all Indian. He may be lean and tough, fearless, and living for something to die for, like his fellow Navajos, but in his heart his great need is to be better than the whites, and therefore finally be recognized. The Navajos see all this. They see, as the whites see, a strange, friendless.”
The two men sat side by side in silence, their heads bowed. After a few minutes, they both stood and upon entering the infirmary, immediately resumed their responsibilities. Since both were physiologically drained from the day’s activities, each was quietly relived not one patient was in need. Furthermore, the rain had ceased and a late afternoon sun had broken through, engulfing the isolated stockade in golden slightly.
As long as Peter could remember, he had heard from family relatives and friends that there was no calm as peaceful, no peace so idyllic as that which was to be found on a Southern California landscape when neither windy nor raining. Watching a sunset in such an environment is as beautiful as it can get, especially when fused with good companionship and neighborliness.
As prized corpsmen privileged to sit and relax on a recreation yard bench at sundown, weather permitting, Peter and Campbell felt and saw nature at her gentlest. The shocking day was over, the two sitting idly, and their appetites healthily assuaged, the contented men and their untroubled minds were suddenly recalled to their sleeping quarters. The entire stockade population, prisoners and staff, were in the process of being notified that inmate “Six-bits” had within the hour been found in his isolation hanged to death.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
-
“…the sorriest sorry son-of-a-bitch in the universe”
That night, neither corpsman slept much. Each was so deeply troubled he couldn’t speak a word to the other. Both knew Six-bits hadn’t hung himself. He was lynched. A perusal of his body would have revealed welts, lesions, bruised areas, and assorted painful raised ridges on and around discolored skin tissues resulting from powerful pummeling.
Adding to their mental torment was a howling wind reverberating throughout the stockade that had replaced the day’s downpour. And, despite the smell of Pacific Ocean salt mingling with the aftershower humidity, a stench of death seemed to pervade the infirmary staff sleeping quarters. Peter, sick at heart, occasionally napped, dreaming spasmodically of the same scene: the same three who had been at the cell of Six-bits standing
beneath a gallows, whose thick spiral-threaded rope had just extinguished a man’s life in the name of human justice.
As vivid and with the clarity of a high-resolution photograph, he saw himself from different angles dropping to a kneeling position at the side of a uniformed man whose face he did not recognize. Although he appeared still-calm as the other two remained standing over the body, he saw his face flooded with tears. the face of the deceased man had been brutalized. Then Peter watched himself pray in the midst of tears streaming down his own face. Then, Peter turned to the two men beside him bowed in respect and reverence and said,
“We must take him with us.”
Where to?” asked one of the men who appeared, upon closer examination, to be Warrant Office Campbell.
“To the San Joaquin Catholic Cemetery on Harding Way in Stockton, California, the city where I was born.”
Handling the unknown corpse with infinite gentleness, the three then carried him off in silence across an endless sea of grass. And, throughout their journey an endless silent procession three-astride followed them. Upon reaching the entrance to the cemetery, one of the oldest in the state dating back to 1849, the height of the California Gold Rush, Campbell turned to Peter and said, “It’s in your nature to love all suffering humanity.”
Peter saw himself smile, and respond, “I’ve never had anything but kindness for the oppressed.”
Then, still carefully, kindly clutching the body, they turned past the first row of graves, the oldest section of one of the oldest graveyards in the state’s nearly century old history and approached a large open pit next to his grandfather’s grave. Standing at the edge of the massive bottomless pit, the three men still holding the dead man nodded to each other, and with wonderingly glances down into what otherwise appeared to be an infinity, placed the body on the edge of the abyss and stepped back. Peter saw himself remain at the edge gazing silently down. Then glancing across to the next grave where six to eight feet below the surface, he saw the side of an 1880’s coffin in which his grandfather on his father’s side rested. Peter knelt, brushed the waxen face of the hanged man, took hold of the body, and leaped in.