by Mac Hyman
And everybody was feeling mighty good by that time so when we fell out in front to go down to supper, just as we was getting lined up, I said, “Why dont you march us down, Ben?” and some of the others chimed in on it too.
But Ben turned red in the face and shook his head, and said, “Aw, we cant march yet.”
“Sho we can if you march us,” I said, and then Irvin said, “Go ahead, Ben,” and even though he kept shaking his head sideways, we shoved him out front and got in line there waiting for him.
Lucky said, “Come on and tell us to do something,” and Irvin said, “Yeah, you just call ’em and we’ll follow ’em,” and everybody else started calling out too because they was so full of spark and everything, and wanted to try some real marching this time because all we usually done was just line up and start walking.
So Ben finally give in to them and tried it. He snatched himself up real straight with his back in a curve and yelled out, “All right, Attention!” but it didnt come out so good—it only kind of squeaked out and didnt sound powerful the way it was supposed to, so he got all red in the face again and started to quit. But everybody kept on at him so finally he said, “All right then. Get ready . . . Attention!” and everybody was kind of expecting it this time and got in different kinds of stiff positions with their hands down by their sides, and it looked pretty good. The only one that didnt look much good was this fellow Pete up in the front line—what he done was spread his legs out about two feet apart and put his hands behind him and stand real stiff that way, so he didnt look much like the others, and they had kind of an argument about it. Irvin told him that warnt no way to stand at attention, but Pete said he knowed it was because he had seen it before.
“No, that aint the way,” Lucky said. “You stand real stiff and hold your hands down beside your side. Aint that right, Irvin?”
“Yeah, that’s parade rest you’re doing, Pete.”
But Pete said, “Naw, what you’re doing is parade rest. This is attention like this. You stand with your legs all spraddled out and put your hands behind you. That’s the way to stand at attention.” So then they argued about it a while longer until Pete got right mad about it before it was over. He said, “You remember that picture Wake Island when the Major come up to the fellow and said ‘Attention’ and the fellow looked around and give a jump and spraddled his legs out and put his hands behind him? You remember that?”
“No, I dont remember that, but I still dont see how you are going to march . . .”
“Well, I do,” Pete said. “And if you dont, why dont you just keep quiet about it?”
But except for Peter trying to march spraddle-legged the way he done, everybody marched real good once we got to going. Ben give us a “Left face” and everybody turned to the left, and those that didnt got straightened out soon enough, and then he give us, “Forward march!” And then he begun calling out, “Keep in step. Keep in step,” and everybody tried to do that, only there warnt much agreement on it and there got to be some shoving around until Ben started going, “Left. Right. Left. Right,” and got everybody straightened out again.
Anyhow, Ben was something to watch after a little bit too. We went on up the street with him calling out “Left. Right,” like that, and after a while it seemed that his voice kind of changed somehow so it sounded right powerful, and he didnt even look like himself no more. He was rared back and strutting real big with his knees going way up and his arms swinging and his head throwed back, and his voice getting louder all the time. Before we got down to the end of the barracks, he was going, “Hut, two, three, four. Left foot on one. Hut, two three, four,” just like he was borned doing it.
And then he called out, “You had a good home and you left!” and Irvin come right back at him, yelling, “Right.”
“You had a good wife and you left!”
“Right.”
And then Ben went, “Hut, two, three, four!” and it sounded real snappy too. And then they done this other one that went, “Open the window and close the door!”
“Hut, two, three, four!”
“Hand me some whisky and hand me some more!”
“Hut, two, three, four!”
But then somebody went, “Get out of here and dont you ever again come back any more!” which kind of messed the whole thing up and got everybody on the wrong foot again and mighty near finished us off.
But Ben started calling out, “Left. Right,” again until we got straightened back out and by the time we got to the mess hall, people was watching us from the other barracks with their heads poked out and waving, especially the ones that had just come in. We got to the corner and Ben give us a turn to the right which was the wrong direction, but nobody cared, so we just circled the block one time and come up on the mess hall on the other side. Ben called out, “Detail, halt!” and then, “Fall out!” in just as loud and clear a voice as you ever heered so that you might wonder how somebody so little could yell so loud.
And Ben was right proud of it too. You could see it all over him. I come up to him after we stopped and said, “My goodness, Ben, where on earth did you ever learn to be such a marcher?” and he kind of shuffled around a little bit and turned his face away, and said, “There aint nothing to that. You can learn that anywhere.”
“Not the way you done it,” I said.
“Let’s go and eat,” he said.
So you can figger about how he felt when we finished eating and went back to the barracks and just happened to pass the bulletin board and seen our names on it. We was in the Air Force and was going to be shipped out with the others. Somebody had sneaked out there and put it up while we was eating. It seemed like a mighty low-down way to do, but there warnt a thing we could do about it. We went on back to the barracks and Ben climbed up in his bunk again and I didnt say nothing at all. I got out my harp and played on it a while, and even when I played “Saturday Night in Rocky Bottom,” I didnt make it lively like I usually did, but let it drag real easy and quiet, like it didnt have no more spark to it than some hymn you sing at a funeral.
9
Anyhow, they shipped us out on the train the next morning and rode us all that day, and Ben was about as miserable as a man could get. He set there staring out the window at the fields, not like he was seeing them, but like he was just letting them pass in front of his eyes; and he rode that same way all the next day too, and I got right worried about him. I tried to perk him up by pointing out things, and when we finally stopped at this little depot and filed off, toting our bags with us, and we seen the planes circling over the town, I tried to get him interested in them too. Everybody was watching them and talking about them, calling them babies and all, and saying how this one could really zoom around and how this other one didnt have much speed but was really staunch and stuff like that, so I went over and said, “Look, Ben, that baby really climbs, dont it?” and made on over it a good bit like the others were doing. I throwed in a lot of Rogers and Wilcos and things, and then I seen this other one come over and said, “Look, Ben, that baby sho flies fast, dont it?”
But he only looked kind of disgusted and said, “Fast? That’s a cub and it couldnt go no moren ninety miles an hour if it wanted to!”
And I said, “Ben, how on earth did you ever learn so much about planes?” and took on a good bit about that too, but he just set there on his barracks bag and wouldnt even look at them no more.
Anyhow, we finally got on this truck and headed out for the field, and it was as pretty a town as I ever seen. We rode down along this street next to the water that is called the Gulf and everybody was laying around in bathing suits in the sun, and swimming and everything, and we had a barrel of fun all the way through. We rode along and yelled at all the girls, and everybody whistled and took on and made a lot of funny remarks like: “I’ll take that one for Christmas,” and “Buy that one for me,” and all sorts of things that would tickle you, only it didnt tickle the girls much, only one of them who smiled back kind of sour and said, “Battle
-weary recruits,” which was right funny when you come to think of it as we hadnt been in no battle at all. So I got a big kick out of that one and laughed over it a good bit, but the rest of them didnt; they only kind of mumbled to theirselves and quit yelling at everybody.
Anyhow, when we got inside the field and stopped, there was planes all over the place, coming down low past the buildings, taking off and landing; and you could hear them down on the runway, roaring and blasting, the loudest things you ever heered, so I got to taking on about them again. I said, “Looker yonder, Ben, that baby’s doing a chandell,” which I had heered one of them say, and some stuff like that, and finally got him interested a little bit. And just as he was hopping down off the truck, a plane come roaring over the top of one of the buildings with its wheels down, so low that you could see the pilot’s head sticking up in it, and I yelled out, “How’d you like to fly that thing, Ben? That would really be Roger, wouldnt it?” and he kind of nodded his head, watching it, and said, “Yeah,” so that I took on a good bit longer about it. I said it wouldnt be long before he was zooming all over the sky himself in one of them, saying Roger and Wilco and everything like that, and patted him on the back, and begun to feel right good thinking about it myself. I could just see Ben setting up there in one of them planes with his scrawny little head in one of them helmets, with caps and goggles and all, and I was just on the verge of saying something casual about how you couldnt fly no planes in the Infantry, when I heered this fellow calling out, “Will Stockdale. Which one of you is Will Stockdale?”
We was lined up by then and this fellow was standing out in front of us with a piece of paper in his hand with two or three others looking on. He called it out again and some of them looked at me, and I come back with: “That’s me you calling when you call that name,” which I thought up right off the bat like that.
“You Will Stockdale?”
Then I ripped off one I heered Pa tell one time that went: “That’s what my Ma called me and I never knowed her to lie!” and everybody got a real big kick out of it and laughed and took on, only the fellow with the paper, he didnt; he only looked at me kind of sickly and said, “All right. All right. If you’re Will Stockdale, you go with this fellow here. The rest of you stay lined up there.”
Anyhow, I didnt know quite what was going on for a few seconds after that. I was standing there holding my bag and didnt move out of the line. But then the fellow started yelling at me, “Didnt you hear me? I said for you to go with this fellow here,” and then this other fellow started coming over, motioning to me to come with him.
But Ben and them was ready to march off about that time, so I shook my head at him and stayed in line. But then this fellow come on over to me, saying something I couldnt make out, so I tried to explain to him how I planned to go on with Ben and them. I said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just go on with them, if you dont mind,” and acted real polite about it, but he stood there jabbering at me and then grabbed onto my bag, and then this other one come over jabbering too, and the first thing I knowed, there was Ben and them marching away. So I turned to go with them, only this fellow was still holding my bag, and it looked like I was going to have to knock his head off to make him let go; but about that time I seen Ben waving at me as they was going off and remembered how he felt about things like that, so I didnt hit him or nothing, just give him a little jab in the ribs with my elbow so that he kind of gasped and turned blue in the face and staggered around a little bit. But he still held onto the bag somehow, and when I looked back around, Ben and them had got out of sight around a building somewhere, and I didnt even know which way they went.
So I didnt do nothing then. I just stood there and listened to them jabber for a while until one of them said, “Look, fellow, let’s dont start nothing now. I tell you what you do. You tell the Captain about it. He told me you were to be assigned down there; it warnt my idea . . .”
So I said, “Well, where is he then and I’ll tell him,” and the fellow said, “You just go with Ringo here and he’ll explain the whole thing to you. How about it now? No trouble, huh?” which was foolish as I warnt wanting no trouble with nobody and had been just as polite as I knowed how.
Anyhow, they kept talking about it and we stood around a bit while they kept pounding the fellow who had grabbed my bag on the back, trying to get the breath back into him, and the one called Ringo said, “Comawn,” or something like that, so I finally went along with him. And while we was walking along, he tried to tell me what it was all about and was right nice about it, but I found out soon enough he couldnt explain anything much; and I dont guess he talked more than a minute like that before I figgered out that the trouble with him was that he was a Yankee. He tried right hard, though, and I nodded my head up and down like I understood him, and didnt let on that I knowed what he was or anything, figgering when I got down to the barracks I could find somebody who could talk a little better. Only it warnt long after I got there that I found out the place was full of Yankees. The one called Ringo showed me to a cot I was supposed to use, and they were just coming in from drill at the time with their brogans and fatigues and dust all over them, chattering the way they do. So I set down on the edge of the bunk and rolled a cigarette and waited to ask somebody about the Captain. And they kept coming in, knocking the dust off and trying to talk, but not making much headway at it, so I kept looking for somebody I could make some sense out of. But all of them just seemed to squeak and jabber at one another, waving their arms around and kind of talking through their noses so it hurt your ears somehow, and there was a couple of them trying to cuss which was the most comical sounding thing I ever listened to—it was Holy this, or Holy that, or Jemminy something-or-other, and I dont guess I heered more than one good solid cuss word out of the whole thing. They was even worse than Bart, but they did try mighty hard, and I kind of admired the way they stuck at it, even though you couldnt make no sense out of most of it.
Anyhow, I still wanted to find the Captain so I sidled up next to one or two of them and listened in, thinking it might help if I got closer, only it didnt; it only hurt your ears more; so I set around until I seen one that warnt jabbering so much and I went over to him and said, “Howdy” and he looked around and said, “Howrrr” which was about as close as he could get to “Howdy” but which sounded a lot better than the others anyhow, so I asked him. I said, “You by any chance know where I can find the Captain?”
And he said something like, “Urr besee surgen King furrz,” which I found out meant: “You best see Sergeant King first.”
So then I had to sit around until about three that afternoon to wait for Sergeant King. I laid around and blew on my harp and smoked and slept a while, but I finally got pretty tired of it and started getting anxious to get things straightened out. I started pacing around, feeling right ornery about things, and was going to tell them right out how I felt about things and get it over with and not have no more foolishness about it.
But time I seen Sergeant King, I knowed I couldnt do it that way because he was about the saddest-looking man I ever looked at. He had one of these long, thin faces something like a hound dog’s and eyes something like a hound dog’s too, and I felt kind of sorry for him time I looked at him. He come in and went into this little room up in the front of the barracks that he had by himself and when I come in, he was setting on his bunk with his face all droopy and everything, so that instead of telling him right off, I went at it real gentle and acted as polite as I could. I told him who I was and that I had just come in and so on, and he looked up and asked me what I wanted, and I told him I wanted to see the Captain as I didnt plan to stay in this squadron but go up to the one that Ben and them was in, and felt like I ought to let them know about it.
But it affected him pretty bad just the same. He started mumbling to himself, rubbing his hands over his face, looking sadder than ever. He looked up at me and said, “I figgered it was you. Yessir, I should have knowed it time you walked in. They said
they was sending you down here. And I should have knowed it would be somebody who thinks he can decide not to stay around no more, and will just tell the Captain about it. The fact is, they send every bum and idiot they can round up to my barracks and expect me to make human beings out of them—I never get anything but eight balls in this barracks and now they send me down one who says he’s going to another squadron, and just feels like he ought to come by and tell us about it.”
“Well, I’m mighty sorry to hear about all that,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do about it.”
“I know that helps a lot.”
“Sho,” I said. “Hit must be a mess having nothing but bums around and I would sholy like to help you out, only I figgered to be with Ben and them, you see. It aint nothing against you, you see. It’s just that . . .”
And that’s where I made my mistake too because his face beamed and he began shaking his head sideways like he just couldnt believe it, and then he busted in on me saying how decent it was of me and all like that, and how nice he thought I had acted, and took on that way for quite a while. And before it was over, I was hung for good. He seemed to appreciate it so much and everything; he patted me on the back and said how fine he thought it was I had decided to stay around and all like that, so there warnt a thing I could say then without making him feel pretty bad about everything.
So we chatted a good while that way, saying good things to each other, and I told him how nice it was to meet somebody with good manners, who knowed how to be polite, and he said he felt the same and appreciated all I was doing; and after a little bit of that, he finally said, “Well, I guess you better go make up your bunk being as you decided to stay around a while.”
