With my head down and my elbows in the dirt, I felt like I’d been dropped straight into the middle of the war itself. It made me start thinking about Archie’s poor brother and how helpless it must feel to be lost behind enemy lines—spending days and weeks running and crawling for your life, not knowing who was after you, or where to go, or if you’d live to see the next day or hour. On the Captain Midnight radio show that I listened to each and every week, the Secret Squadron would always dive in to rescue stranded soldiers at the last possible minute. The roar of the airplane engine, at first in the distance … then stronger as it sounds in a dive … this was Captain Midnight!
I knew the lines by heart.
But in the real war, maybe there was no Captain Midnight or his Secret Squadron coming to your rescue. In the real war, soldiers not much older than me were probably lying facedown in fields all over Europe. Lying there as hopeless as I was, with the smell of their own vomit and fear all around them, with no help ever coming. Maybe Archie’s lost brother was one of them.
Uncle Otis had tried to warn me, hadn’t he? He’d called me a lamb going to the slaughter. But who woulda imagined you could become an enemy in your own country? Never thought I’d come south and feel afraid of my own skin. I’d never been in this kind of trouble before, and I’m ashamed to admit the tears started flowing and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
An hour passed, maybe more.
Wiping off my face with the edge of my shirt, I finally sat up and decided it was time to stop bawling and figure out what to do next. Our brave soldiers didn’t lay down and die, so I wasn’t gonna wave the white flag either. Levi Battle wasn’t surrendering without a fight. The afternoon sun was sinking fast, and it seemed to me I had only two good choices left.
I could try getting back to the train station in Fayetteville and buy myself a ticket out of town. Use up all the money from Uncle Otis and Aunt Odella to ride as far north as I could go.
Or I could stay where I was and figure out how to get to my daddy and Camp Mackall—although I had no earthly idea where I’d ended up after all my running.
While I sat there, making up my mind, a glare of sunlight suddenly bounced off the windshield of a truck turning down the road and coming toward me. Sinking lower into the weeds, I started praying hard to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Moses, Aunt Odella, and all the other righteous people I could name that the truck wasn’t chasing after me. Finally it got near enough for me to see the color of the arm poking out of the open driver’s window. Brown. Not white.
Heck, I just about melted into the ground with relief.
Standing up cautiously from where I’d been hidden, I waved one hand trying to flag down that rattletrap truck. I must’ve scared the driver pretty bad because he whipped his head around to stare wide-eyed at me as he passed. Wheels skidded to a sudden stop, dust and gravel spraying everywhere. “Sweet mother of Pete, you been shot?” he yelled, still staring.
I’m sure I must’ve looked like a terrible apparition rising up from that weedy field with my purple-stained shirt and ruined trousers. No doubt about it, Aunt Odella woulda been furious at the spectacle I made. The shirt had been one of my good Sunday ones, and it still had all its store buttons.
Taking a step or two toward the truck, I tried explaining how I was from Chicago and how I’d got lost while trying to reach my daddy at Camp Mackall. Didn’t breathe a word about stumbling into that store in Fayetteville.
“You come all the way from Chicago?” The driver whistled through his teeth. He was wearing a straw hat with a raggedy white goose feather stuck in the brim. Looked like somebody who worked in the dirt all day. Soil still clung to his fingernails, and the truck’s steering wheel was covered with dark palm prints of earth.
“Shoot, I never been outside North Carolina. I never even seen a big city.” The man pointed at my clothes. “See, I could tell by your clothes you wasn’t from around here. When I first spotted you standing by the road, I figured you was a city fellow who got into some bad kind of trouble and got dragged out here and shot. I said to myself, ‘Don’t even stop, Amos Broadway. Don’t you even think twice about stopping and getting stuck in somebody else’s mess that don’t concern you a-tall.’ Good thing I did, right?”
He studied me for a minute. “How old’s you?”
I lied. “Fifteen.”
“Shoot.” His head wagged back and forth. “I thought you looked real young. All the way from Chicago to here and not even being sixteen.”
Not even being fifteen, I thought.
He waved his arm toward the back of the old farm truck, which was filled with a mound of potatoes. “Come around to the other side and I’ll take you to Mackall. I got this load to deliver there anyhow. You’ll wear out your feet trying to walk there from here. It’s a good ways down the road.”
Well, it wasn’t Captain Midnight and his Secret Squadron, but I wasn’t gonna complain.
I climbed onto the passenger seat, being careful to avoid some of the nasty-looking springs that were poking up through its torn cushions. Probably give you lockjaw or something worse if you sat on them. Easing down real gingerly, I slid my suitcase in front of my knees. A large scrap of cardboard covered the floor under my feet, and I could just make out the words HOL-RYE WAFERS printed on it. Right away, I thought of Aunt Odella, who always bought boxes and boxes of those bone-dry crackers, saying they were good for the digestion. Also they were cheap. I wondered if maybe that piece of cardboard was a sign she was worrying about me. Well, she needed to worry a lot harder, in my opinion.
The driver stuck out his hand. “I’m Amos Broadway, but almost everybody around here calls me Show.”
Took my brain a minute to work out the connection: Show and Broadway, that is. To be honest, the driver looked like the last person on earth who’d use a nickname like Show. You’d expect somebody called Show to be strutting around a big city in one of those new baggy suits all the jazz cats were wearing. Not to be some skinny, plain-looking farmer with faded overalls and knots of hair springing out from under his hat.
Show studied me, still trying to figure out what was all over my clothes, I think. “You got a different shirt with you?” he said finally. “If the guards at the post get a glimpse of you riding with me, they gonna think the worst and prob’ly not let me in.”
Opening up the suitcase, I pulled out a clean shirt from the ones Aunt Odella had carefully folded and packed, and stuck the other in a rolled-up ball on the top. Tried not to think about what had happened back at the store.
“All that other shirt needs is a good scrubbing,” Show offered, wanting to be helpful, I guess. When I didn’t answer, he started up the motor, and after a few coughs the truck lurched down the road churning up big clouds of dust behind us. I watched the field where I’d been hiding disappear in those clouds, glad to see it go. Tell you the truth, the farther away we got from Fayetteville, the better I felt. I felt so good I ate half a pork sandwich from Show and drank the whole thermos of lemonade he offered me as we drove.
By the time we finally reached the army post, it was getting close to dusk. The truck was traveling through a shadowy woods and Show was yawning about every five minutes and picking boredly at the dirt under his fingernails when suddenly—outta absolute nowhere—an airplane the size of a city block sailed right above the pine trees. I nearly jumped out of my own skin, it startled me so bad. Just from pure instinct and all our air raid drills back in Chicago, I ducked.
Show glanced over at me and grinned. “That plane’s on our side,” he said, not even flinching. “We’re comin’ up on Mackall now.”
After that, it was like we’d been dropped straight into a newsreel from the front lines. You could hear machine guns rattling louder and louder and the heavy thump of what sounded like artillery firing somewhere in the distance. More airplanes soared over the trees in front of us, heading toward their airstrips. One C-47 after another. Almost could have touched the warm bellies of some of them. It was
something to see.
Next thing you know, Show was pulling up to a chain-link gate with a plain square sign announcing CAMP MACK-ALL in white letters. When I saw those words, my heart started hammering so loudly, I could hardly hear myself think. What was I gonna say to my father now that I was about to see him? Did I even remember what he looked like? Should I take out the snapshot of him and sneak a quick glance just to remind myself?
While Show was checking with the guard, I tried to get myself shaped up. Criminy, I was a mess. My hair stank of cinders and the Vaseline I’d worn on my head back in Chicago hadn’t done any amount of good. Tried smoothing out my shirt so it would look more decent, and then one of the buttons on my sleeves popped off. Heck. Jammed the sleeves back up to my elbows again. My daddy would have to see me like the train wreck I was.
Coming around the truck, Show leaned in my open window and asked me if I recalled what part of the army my daddy was serving in. I knew his unit was called the 555th since I’d written those numbers on a lot of envelopes, let me tell you. Told Show their nickname was the Triple Nickles because of the fives. I probably shouldn’t have added how they jumped outta airplanes because Show’s eyebrows rose up doubtfully. “Never heard of any colored fellows in the paratroops before, but I’ll go back again and check with the guard.”
There was a lot of pointing and shrugging and head shaking before Show returned. I didn’t have a good feeling watching the conversation. He slid back into his seat and started the truck before telling me, “Guard’s new. But he says he don’t know nothing about any Negroes at Mackall training with the airborne. Even if it were true—which he don’t think it is—he says your daddy’d be bunked with the colored service troops just like everybody else. So that’s where I’m gonna drop you off.”
Once the gate swung open, Show pushed the pedal to the floor and headed down the road fast, as if he was anxious to get where he was going. Or maybe he was ready to be rid of me, who knows. You could hear the potatoes in the back tumbling together as we sailed around the curves. All they’d need was a little gravy and butter after he was done.
There were army buildings on both sides of the road. I caught glimpses of long rows of one-story sheds and barracks with large white letters and numbers painted on them. Passed a couple of airstrips stretching across the open fields, and all kinds of military buses and trucks roared past us as we drove, kicking up so much dust we had to stop and wipe off the windshield twice. Finally Show swung onto a narrow road among some trees and came to a halt in front of a group of barracks scattered in a gloomy pine woods.
I stared through the windshield at the collection of dumpy buildings, trying not to seem too shocked. They were nothing but long sheds on concrete blocks. Walls covered in wrinkly black tar paper. Here and there, rusty stovepipes stuck up through the roofs, and there wasn’t a pane of glass in any of the windows, only screens. Don’t know what kinda place I expected to find my daddy living in, but I sure never pictured him being a U.S. Army soldier in a lonely tar-paper shack.
“Here we are,” Show said, nodding at the barracks.
Still feeling kinda stunned, I eased open my door and jumped out. Big pinecones the size of mortar shells covered the ground everywhere you looked. As my feet landed on the soil, a smell like Christmas came drifting up, which made me start missing my good life back in Chicago. Started thinking about how me and Archie and the rest of the neighborhood gang would have snowball fights in the winter that could make your face sting for hours. How Uncle Otis would always bring us gifts on Christmas Day and Aunt Odella would always tell him he’d spent too much.
Swallowing that cold lump of memories right back down, I yanked my suitcase outta the truck. No time for feeling sorry. A bunch of bugs swarmed around my face like they were trying to cheer me up. Gave them a good hard swat.
Keeping the motor running, Show leaned across the seat to give me directions. “These are the colored barracks I was talking about. You just ask and I’m sure you’ll find your daddy in one of them.” He glanced around, probably noticing, like me, how silent everything seemed for a busy army post. “Looks like the fellows ain’t back from chow yet. But they gonna be heading back soon. You just hang around for a few minutes and they’ll be here before you know it.” Giving me a wide, unconcerned smile, Show reached out his grimy hand to shake mine. “All right now, Amos Broadway’s gotta be on his way. People’s waiting. You take care now, y’hear?”
I closed the passenger door reluctantly. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No trouble.” The brown arm gave a friendly goodbye wave as Show’s truck made a beeline down the road, potatoes rolling, and left me standing in the woods by myself.
I wasn’t sure what time it was, but the sun had sunk behind the trees, and it seemed kinda late to be eating chow. Food was one of my father’s favorite letter topics. He enjoyed giving us all the details of how the army could ruin any decent meal on earth. How they’d serve you a beautiful slice of meatloaf—and then dump a load of watery butterscotch pudding on top of it. Or you’d get a big spoonful of cold beets plopped in the middle of your warm applesauce. “Bombs away” on our chow again tonight, he’d write. A few times during field marches, the army even made the fellows eat horsemeat stew, which woulda turned me off the army, and eating, forever.
Another cloud of insects swarmed around my head, and I grabbed my suitcase off the ground, figuring I had to make a decision. Couldn’t stand around waiting for the bugs to turn me into an army meatloaf.
All the barracks nearby had numbers painted on them. One sounded more familiar than the others: 6301. I’d been reading one of my father’s recent letters out loud to Aunt Odella over supper—a funny note where he’d been describing a bad snoring problem in the barracks. The loudest snoring son of a guns sleep in Barracks 6301, he’d written. However, I didn’t get too far past “son of a guns”—which I’ll admit I got a kick out of saying—before Aunt Odella had leaped up, yanked the letter from my hand, and tossed it into the trash in a big huff, saying how her home wasn’t the army and we weren’t a bunch of foul-mouthed men.
Still grinning about the scene with Aunt Odella, I headed toward the tar-paper shack with 6301 painted on the outside of it. Felt more reluctant as I got closer. Put up some barbed wire and a guard tower, and the whole place coulda passed for a prison camp. There was a pile of rusted coffee cans and other rubbish near the steps leading up to the screen door. A small brown lizard skittered under the cement blocks and disappeared. I kept glancing around, hoping the men would start coming back from chow. The silence filling the pine woods was getting more thick.
Easing open the screen door of 6301, I called out hello. At the same time, an angry wasp came shooting outta the shadows like a kamikaze pilot and just about took off the top of my head. That set me back on my heels, I’m telling you. Seeing that deadly aircraft coming at me. Criminy. Once my heart started beating again, I stuck my head carefully back inside the doorway for a quick look around. What I saw inside the barracks made any hope I had fizzle right out and disappear.
There were no blankets on the beds. No uniforms hanging on the hooks. The two rows of bunks in the room were cleared off and empty. Any soldiers who’d been there were long gone.
13. Missing
Feeling real lost, I started down the row of deserted bunks, my footsteps echoing in the emptiness. There weren’t many clues about who’d been there—or where they might have gone to. Looked to me like no human being had been around the place in days. I lifted up the lids of the footlockers at the ends of the bunks, checking inside them, but all I found was a torn picture of the movie star Lena Horne and a couple of cigarette wrappers.
And a whole lot of dead wasps, if you want to count them.
At the back of the room were some chairs and a sorry-looking Ping-Pong table with two warped paddles sitting on the top. I sagged into one of the chairs not having a single idea floating around in my brain about what to do next. From the silence outside, you could
tell all of the barracks nearby were as deserted as this one. Didn’t need to bother looking.
Opening up my suitcase, I dug around until I found the stack of letters I’d brought from Chicago. Hands shaking, I picked at the knot of red string around them and started shuffling through the pile, wondering if there was something I’d missed. Another name or address, maybe.
The one on top said Camp Mackall in the corner of the envelope, no question. The return address was scrawled in my father’s familiar handwriting—so light you had to squint to read it—but it was there. Clumsily I sorted through the rest of the stack. Letters slid onto the floor in a mixed-up jumble of weeks and months that I’d never get straightened out again, most likely. All of the recent ones, at least a dozen of them, said Camp Mackall, North Carolina. Wasn’t that proof enough I was in the right place?
Could the 555th be in a different part of Mackall? Show had said the guard was new, right? Had he sent us to the wrong barracks? The army post was huge. There were hundreds of buildings, from what I’d seen. Even a guard who’d been there awhile could probably get the directions wrong.
Darker thoughts crept in behind those—such as maybe my father had never been stationed at Camp Mackall in the first place, despite what his letters said. Maybe Archie had been right all along about him being a spy. It was hard to know what to believe in the war. You could listen to radio programs so real you’d swear they were being broadcast straight from the front lines. There’d be the ack-ack of machine guns and propellers whirring and all that. When the truth was, the whole show was being made up by actors sitting inside a radio station in Chicago or New York or who knows where. Aunt Odella always said not to put too much faith in what my father wrote, didn’t she?
My eyes drifted toward my daddy’s photograph sitting on top of the suitcase. Seeing him looking up at me from that frame, with his proud soldier smile and sharp uniform, made me feel like I was being a traitor for letting all the crazy doubts run through my head.
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