The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  One of the funniest, as well as the most fun, was the Crouch Bout, wherein we formed a circle and each of us hunkered down with our hands on our hips. The object was to push each other to the ground without rising up from the hunkered squat. Whoever touches the ground with his hands or gets pushed outside the circle is eliminated, one by one until only one is left. We looked like a bunch of ducks fighting, and the girls laughed constantly. Sergeant Harris usually was the last one left hunkered.

  Then there was Climb the Trees. We divided into two groups of eight each, arbitrarily called Allies and Axis: Willard and Sammy were Allies while Joe Don and I were Axis. (Lieutenant McPherson himself joined the Axis, but Lieutenant Bosco, disabled, had to sit with Gypsy and Ella Jean and watch, so he served as referee, giving the command climb the tree and blowing his whistle after ten minutes). Each team tried to prevent the other team from getting up in the tree. When the whistle blew, the team with the most men up in a tree was the winner.

  For other games the “Allies” and “Axis” turned themselves into “horses” and “riders” with we younger or smaller guys riding on the shoulders of the larger ones, and I had the privilege of having Mac himself as my horse. One game was called “Pickaback,” which was the way Mac pronounced piggyback, and involved starting twenty feet apart, and when Bosco gave the signal, the horse-and-rider teams would try to get to the opposite side without being knocked over by the other horse-and-riders. It hurt like hell to get knocked off my “horse” (his shoulders were just as high as a horse’s back) but the more we played this game the better I became at jousting and the better Mac became as my trusty steed, so that eventually we were unbeatable.

  Saturday there was no school, so we could look forward to a whole day at the bivouac. Unfortunately, the other Axis (of the town, not of the rough-and-tumble soldier’s games) wanted to go with us. Or, rather, since they didn’t know where we were going, they wanted to know why we were abandoning them on Saturday, the best of all play-days. How could we tell them that we’d discovered a new kind of play that was far more fun than anything we’d ever done before but that we couldn’t allow any more Axis to join us there? How could we get away from them? The littluns, especially, were pathetic, and a problem. And those who had defected from the Allies, like Rosa Faye Duckworth and Betty June Alan, had assumed that their defection would allow them to become members in good standing of the Axis and to participate in all our activities.

  “I got to make hay while the sun shines,” Willard gave as an excuse, but later some of the other Axis had gone to visit the Dinsmore hay field to volunteer to help him with haying, and he wasn’t there! Where was he?

  “Maw’s feeling porely, and I got to stay home and keer fer her,” Gypsy gave as her excuse, and Betty June Alan took a casserole of food to the Dingletoon house as a get-well gift, and found that Gypsy wasn’t there! Where was she?

  “I got to work real hard on next Monday’s Star,” I gave as my excuse, and later Latha reported that several of the Axis had brought in news items for me, but I wasn’t there! Where was I?

  “Aw, I’ve just been out tracking down a news story,” I told her. “Turned out it was a false alarm anyhow.” I hated to lie to Latha, but it wasn’t exactly lying.

  Still, without being able to ask my close Axis colleagues how they felt about it, I felt rather guilty, having such fun to the exclusion of all the Axis except us privileged few. If the situation was dull for the Axis left behind, it was even worse for the Allies, who had no one to play with, no one to fight with, except each other. I heard that Jim John and Larry had actually got into a fistfight with each other. I wished I’d been there to watch it, but I was watching—and participating in—far more interesting spectacles.

  All of that activity in those judo practices and mass combatives was leaving us drenched with sweat and sore all over, but the worst was yet to come. On Saturday Sergeant Harris put us through what he called “calisthenics,” which sounded like some kind of disease, or something taken for a disease. He said we needed it because we “weren’t worth diddly squat” in the rough-and-tumble exercises. I think “diddly squat” was a euphemism for something nastier. Sergeant Harris often chewed us out. Ella Jean cried. Both she and Gypsy eventually dropped out of the calisthenics, but, as I discovered, not because the exercises were too strenuous for them, nor because Sergeant Harris chewed us out, nor even because the sergeant called his men, and us, “ladies” when we didn’t do something right. The reason Gypsy and Ella Jean had to drop out was that all of us were becoming too gamy for them to tolerate. I mean, all of us smelled really awful. For that matter, Gypsy and Ella Jean didn’t exactly smell like roses, but at least they could run down to their secret swimming hole on Banty Creek and smear that wonderful Palmolive all over themselves. These soldiers hadn’t had a bath and needed one in the worst way. Well, they were each given a daily ration of one helmetful of well water for cleaning, but they had to shave, and brush their teeth, and if there was any left over they just sort of dabbed at their armpits.

  “Could we rent a washtub from anybody?” McPherson asked us. I told him that I could get ahold of one rent-free, and I volunteered to go get it. That was characteristic of my desire to leave a constant good impression on the lieutenant. There was a good galvanized tin washtub on the back porch at Aunt Murrison’s that had somehow escaped the War Effort Scrap Drive because, after all, my aunt and uncle needed it for a monthly bath and they made me use it for a weekly bath. It was time for my weekly bath, which I usually had on Saturday afternoons anyhow, before getting ready to—. I suddenly realized that tonight, as usual, Doc Swain was going to take some kids to Jasper to see the picture show. I’d forgotten all about that, but I guess it wasn’t going to hurt me to miss one of them, even though I wouldn’t be able to use the newsreel as source material for my—. I suddenly realized that I had done nothing to get Monday’s issue of the Star ready for press. Oh well, I could work extra hard on Sunday, couldn’t I? Then I realized Doc Swain wouldn’t be going to Jasper anyway, because his car was still in the shop at Every’s.

  I had no trouble sneaking around the back way to my aunt’s house and stealing that washtub off the back porch. I had no trouble carrying it, one hand at a time until that hand got tired, for most of the way back to the bivouac. But for the last stretch of the trail, uphill and rough, I had to try carrying the washtub upside down on top of my head, staring at the ground and oblivious to whatever was around me.

  Thus I didn’t see the sentry until he stopped me. The soldiers usually posted a sentry, hiding in the brush, near the place where the trail arrives at the bivouac. This one rapped me on top of the tub, and I quickly took the tub off my head and looked up at him. His name was Private Crowder.

  “You know me,” I said. “I’m just taking this tub so everybody can have a bath.”

  “Yeah, I know you,” he said. “But I don’t know her.”

  He pointed. There, close behind me, was Rosa Faye Duckworth.

  Chapter seventeen

  When McPherson finished with her and came out of the house, he summoned me into the house. He did not send Rosa Faye back to town. He sent her off to join the others.

  “Is there another girl you’d like to invite?” he asked me, with clear exasperation, as we sat down in the director’s chairs. “One more girl, and then you’d have an equal number of boys and girls, four of each.”

  “I didn’t invite her, sir,” I said. “She must’ve just been following me.”

  “Yes, I know what she was doing. She had been sitting on the front porch of your aunt’s house, waiting for you in hopes of being able to tell you in her own way, I suppose, that she’d like to become better friends, that she’d like to work for the Star, that she’d like to do anything if only you and the other Axis did not exclude her from whatever you’ve been doing lately. When she saw you come and make off with the washtub, she followed you, trying to find out where you were going. And sure enough, you led her right into our lair.�
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  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. I had learned from the other men that you always put “sir” into whatever you say to him.

  He sighed. “Are you interested in her?”

  “Oh no!” I said. “No, sir. She has to sit with me in school because she’s now on the Axis side instead of the Allied side. Heck, she’s at least a year older’n me, sir. And besides, sir, the only girl I’m interested in is Ella Jean. But she’s just not interested in me, sir.”

  He smiled. “You want to bet?” And then he dropped the smile. “You needn’t call me ‘sir,’ Donny. Rosa Faye’s brother remains a chief of the enemy, the Allies.”

  “But she’s on our side. When the Allies killed Old Jarhead, you see, she switched over. I’m sure she wouldn’t tell Larry anything. Not if you talked to her the same way you talked to the rest of us. You could talk a kid out of a piece of cake. Heck, you could even talk Willard out of wanting a piece of cake.”

  He laughed at the compliment. “I’m not sure I was totally successful in my little talk with Rosa Faye. But there’s no way I can keep her from joining us—unless I banish the whole lot of you.”

  “She’d probably be real good at learning judo,” I suggested.

  “You’ve all had a lot of fun with judo, haven’t you?” he asked. “But it isn’t a game. As Sergeant Harris tried to tell you, it’s meant to kill. These men are all killers. I am a killer.” He said these last words almost threateningly, as if I were going to be his next victim. I couldn’t help trembling. “Sometimes I think that I’ve been incredibly derelict in my duty, letting a bunch of kids hang around with a pack of coldhearted killers, and even showing you how to kill with judo,” he went on, as if he were talking to himself, severely criticizing himself. I wondered if being licked by a deer was some kind of folksy talk where he came from, wherever that was. “You don’t need to learn judo. But we’ve enjoyed your company, and you’ve helped our morale: you’ve been a nice diversion for my men while we sit out this stupid wait, but—”

  “What are you waiting for?” I interrupted his conversation with himself, in my newspaper-reporter voice.

  “There’s a war game about to begin,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you. I don’t know when. I wish I did. That’s one little thing they forgot to tell me.”

  “Do you mean the ‘enemy’ could show up any minute?” I asked, continuing my reportorial questioning.

  “Or next month,” he said. “But yes, maybe any minute. Maybe they’re on their damn way right now. Who knows?”

  “Could we help you watch out for ’em?” I offered.

  He thought about that, and smiled. “That could be very helpful, but probably it wouldn’t be kosher, because in a real situation we wouldn’t be getting any such cooperation from the natives.”

  After I got his definition of kosher and in the process learned that he wasn’t a Jew himself, I asked, “How do you know you wouldn’t get any help from the natives? When you land in Japan, you might discover that all the country people are sick and tired of the war and they want to help you beat the Jap army.”

  McPherson really cut loose with a laugh that must have carried out to all the others, who probably thought we were sitting around telling our favorite jokes. Then he said, “What a dream, Donny! But you might even be right. We’re not counting on it, though. Not one of us expects to come out of that mission alive.”

  “There!” I said. “You just admitted that you are going to Japan.”

  “Apparently all of you kids have already guessed that,” he said, “and it’s one more of our secrets you’ll have to keep to yourselves.”

  “Are they just going to drop you there in a big glider the same way they did here?”

  “Don’t pester me for troop movements, Donny,” he cautioned.

  “Okay, but there’s just one thing I don’t understand. When they drop you there, you’ll be out to kill the Japs with judo and guns and whatever, right? But here, for this war game, you’ve got to pretend you’re the Japs? That don’t make sense.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t. But the ‘enemy’ that’s coming to get us is a crack battalion of armored troops whose ultimate mission will be to drive their tanks into the mountain country of Kyushu. That’s mainland Japan, or the southernmost of four main islands of the country. Supposedly the terrain of their objective is very similar to your mountains, which is why these maneuvers are being inflicted upon you people.”

  “So you-all have to play like you’re their target, and in reward you get to go and help ’em do the real job and get yourself killed doing it.”

  His smile was wan. “That’s about it. My men have been trained in senjutsu, a Japanese tactical doctrine that will allow us to expose the tank battalion to the same tactics they’ll expect in their invasion of Kyushu. I like to think of my men as samurai, the ancient warrior class, who possess the seven virtues of Bushido—but I’ll bore you with those some other time.”

  “These guys of the ‘enemy’ are coming to Stay More in tanks?”

  “All kinds of tanks. There will be really big M-10s, and M-4 Shermans, and a thing called the M-7, open at the top but mounted with a 105 mm howitzer,” he said. “It has anti-aircraft defense in the form of what they call the ‘pulpit,’ a mount with a .50 caliber machine gun in it, but they won’t be able to try that out against actual air assault during the war games. All of the assault will come from my men on the ground, each of those different tanks will require a different method of destroying it.”

  “And you’re supposed to lose?” I needed his confirmation of my suspicion.

  “Ultimately, yes. We’re Japs, remember? But there will be an umpire, and my men are the pick of the lot, crack troops chosen from the Army’s best, selected for their wits and their strength as well as the seven virtues of Bushido, and also for their willingness to give up their lives for the cause, and I haven’t given them any instructions to lie down and surrender.”

  “So you’re really going to fight?”

  “Not to kill, this time,” he said. “But it will be a fight. And you’ll have a ringside seat. You should get a press card to stick in your hat.”

  “I don’t have a hat.”

  “Behind your ear, then,” he said, and reached out and gave me a little swat on my ear. “Now let’s go join the others. Sergeant Harris has chosen an activity that will allow the girls to remain out of nose-shot of our stinky bodies, until we have the privacy to use your washtub.” He put his hand on my shoulder and led me to where the others were. Sergeant Harris was in the process of explaining to the kids the General Alertness Drill, which involved developing instantaneous responses to spoken commands, for example, everybody freezes when he says stop! He was explaining that this is what’d you do if an enemy flare caught you on a patrol in no man’s land: if you tried to duck or make any movement at all you’d get shot, but if you just froze completely you’d either not get noticed or be mistaken for a tree.

  McPherson and I both joined in the alertness drill. I learned how to respond properly: not just to stop but also to SIT DOWN, STAND UP, GET OUT OF MY SIGHT, JUMP IN THE BUSHES, ROLL ON YOUR BACK, and SCATTER. Some of these were almost like playing hide-and-go-seek, and Rosa Faye participated in all of these, and she didn’t even seem to have to keep her distance from the men the way the other girls were doing. None of the movements in this drill required a lot of exertion, so we weren’t getting any more stinky than we were to begin with. After we’d practiced the alertness drill for an hour, and had come back from the SCATTER command, the lieutenant made a motion to the sergeant and then gave a command of his own—FALL IN—and we all lined up in front of him. Rosa Faye was just a little late because she hadn’t heard FALL IN before and her first reaction to it was to fall down. But she quickly got up, blushing, and stood at attention in a line with the rest of us.

  “Now it’s time we rehearsed a few situations,” Lieutenant McPherson said. “Supposing we’re down behind enemy lines, and taking assessment of our cond
ition. Straighten up there, Coe!” Sammy had lazily allowed himself to get into the at-ease position instead of attention. Then, when the lieutenant snapped “Bosco!” poor Sammy thought at first that we were being told to “boss” or something.

  “Sir?” Sammy said.

  But “Sir?” said the other lieutenant, stepping forward smartly and clicking his heels as he came to stop at rigid attention. I still didn’t quite understand this rank business, why Bosco would be subordinate to McPherson and why silver was more important than gold. But then as I stared at Bosco standing there with his arm in a cast suspended from a cloth triangle around his neck, I realized that the bar on Bosco’s collar was not gold but brass. Also I got a good look at the wings over his shirt pocket: a pair of brass wings on either side of a large letter “G.” That wasn’t his initial. What did it stand for?

  “Eyes front, Donny!” McPherson said to me, and I aped the other men, who were rigidly at attention, staring straight ahead. Then McPherson addressed the brass lieutenant. “Bosco, you are useless to this mission,” McPherson declared. “With your broken arm, you’re just holding us back.”

  “Sorry, sir!” Bosco said, even if he wasn’t required to say ‘sir’ to a fellow lieutenant.

  “Since we are behind enemy lines, your job of piloting the craft to a landing is successfully completed, but you are incapacitated and therefore a liability to the mission. Do you understand what we have to do to you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bosco said. “They shoot horses, don’t they?” He said this matter-of-factly without any intended humor.