The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  “Well, there are some strange creatures out there. Last night we saw some sort of snout-nosed animal that looked like an overgrown rat with a long tail. He had real sharp teeth.”

  “Sounds like a possum,” I said. “They’re harmless. They’re real good to eat, though, if you want to shoot one.”

  “But then this morning we saw the same creature again, and he had put on a suit of armor!”

  I laughed uproariously, but self-consciously wondered when was the last time I had really laughed. “Oh, that wasn’t the same creature. That was an armadillo,” I explained to him. “Come to think of it, they do sort of look like possums with armor.” He joined in my laughter. “There’s no telling what kind of weird creatures you’ll find when you get to Japan.”

  “Oh, they’ve prepared us for that,” he said. “The Japanese wolf was exterminated in 1920, but we’ll see the wild boar with monstrous tusks, and sika deer, and the macaque, most northerly of all monkeys, the same creature who illustrates the Buddhist wisdom, ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” McPherson demonstrated with his two hands. Then he said, “But they just didn’t prepare us for Stay More, for possums and armadillos. My men joked about the armadillo, wondering if that was the best tank the Sixteenth Armored Division could send to attack us.” After he had quit chuckling over that, his expression grew serious and he said, “It’s good they can still joke. Good for morale. But I know they’re bored, and tired, and a little scared. They can’t have leave, and they can’t get mail, and they feel cut off from the world. They’re getting kind of starved for women, if you know what I mean. Hell, so am I. But I think we all understand that we may never have a woman again. Some of the men have developed this horrible red rash they’re scratching all the time, and at first I wondered if it’s some kind of venereal disease, you know, from sexual contact. But I got a little of it myself, and I haven’t had a woman in a very long time.”

  “Is it around your…thing?” I asked.

  “Some. Mostly around my calves and ankles.” He rolled up his trouser leg and showed me.

  “Those are chigger bites,” I said.

  “Chiggers?” he said.

  “They don’t have chiggers in Vermont?” I explained to him just what a chigger was: a fierce little red mite that usually doesn’t start appearing until late May or early June but was early this year because of the heat. In its larval stage it attacks anything that moves—man, mouse, bird, or reptile. They don’t burrow, like ticks, or jab, like mosquitoes, but inject something that makes you scratch like mad and thereby do the digging for them. Then after you’ve scratched a little hole with your fingernails, they crawl in and have a feast.

  “It sounds like the Japanese mite,” he said, “which causes tsu-tsuga-mushi, or Japanese river fever, often fatal.”

  “Nobody has ever died of a chigger bite that I know of,” I said. “But it sure causes a lot of torment.” I explained that, as with mosquitoes, there were only two things you could do about them, but neither one involved smacking ’em or ignoring ’em. One was, you could pick some pennyroyal, a common little mintlike ground cover, and crush it up and smear it on your skin, and that would keep them off; they couldn’t stand the smell of pennyroyal. Or, if you’ve already got ’em, and already scratched ’em, you can kill ’em by dabbing a little bit of Chism’s Dew on the spot. Chism’s Dew was a locally manufactured whiskey; Luther Chism, the proprietor, lived just beyond Butterchurn Holler. No, I couldn’t buy some for McPherson and the soldiers, because I was underage, but Luther would probably be willing to sell a jug to Joe Don, who was his closest neighbor. Joe Don wasn’t of a legal age either but he wasn’t just an innocent kid like me.

  Whatever displeasure McPherson may have felt for Joe Don because of his violating the rules in order to introduce the lieutenant to the old hermit was forgotten by Tuesday, when Joe Don showed up after school at the bivouac with a demijohn of Chism’s Dew, which the men (being the pick of the Army’s brightest) discovered was not only good for treating chigger bites but had another, livelier use. It was V-E Day in Europe, and the soldiers made a kind of celebration/ceremony of converting Joe Don from being a Nazi into becoming a Jap, like all the rest of us. We made a hilarious game out of it. Joe Don was given a Hitlerian mustache with charcoal and sent off to hide as in a game of hide-and-seek, and each of us, armed with a shoju (loaded with blanks of course), went out searching for him. Whoever found him would have the privilege of “shooting” him in the ceremony. It was such fun that I wasn’t too jealous that Sammy was the one who found him. Joe Don was marched into camp, holding his hands up in surrender, while we yelled whatever taunts we could think of—“Kill the Kraut!” “To hell, Heinie!” “Farewell, Führer!” “Futz to Fritz!” “Junk the Jerry!” Sergeant Harris then boomed at him, “ANY LAST WORDS, ADOLF?” and poor Joe Don struggled to say something appropriate, finally coming up with, “Mein only regret is I got just one ball to give for mein country!” Then he was blindfolded and the firing-squad-of-one, Sammy, was allowed actually to fire the burauningu at him. The Japanese BAR made a lot of noise, and I wondered if it carried all the way to the Dills’ house. Joe Don, having watched the convincing death throes of Bosco a few days before, attempted to duplicate them. Then Corporal Rucker took over for the resurrection and transformation, presenting Joe Don with an actual Japanese soldier’s uniform, and the girls were required to turn their backs while Joe Don took off his clothes and put on the uniform. Rucker explained to us that Joe Don was a gunso, sergeant, and he pointed out the erisho on his collar that indicated his rank. He now outranked all of us, including Gunso Harris, but not of course the chui, McPherson. The latter delivered the main speech in Japanese, not bothering to offer a translation for our benefit, but I could assume from some of the grins and smirks on the faces of his men that he was saying something funny. Then Joe Don saluted, but Chui McPherson had to show him how the Japanese salute is different from the American. I really regretted that I would not be able to write a report of the ceremony for the next issue of the Star. At least I would be able to report that henceforward the former Axis would now be called Japs, and the former Allies could call themselves Yanks.

  In the final part of the ceremony, Willard, acting on behalf of Mare Coe as vice mayor of Stay More, presented to Lieutenant McPherson a “key to the city,” made of wood but looking like a big key, with a red ribbon on it, and he explained that Mare had always wanted to present a key to the city to an important visitor, “but we never had none afore.” Who was this Mare Coe? McPherson asked. Willard said to me, “You tell ’em, Dawny,” so I proudly told the story of Mare Coe and Iwo Jima.

  Throughout all this ceremony and celebration, I noticed the demijohn of Chism’s Dew circulating from hand to hand, and the men were pouring more into their cups than they needed to put on their chigger bites. Before the day was over I came as close as I ever had to actually sampling the stuff myself, but I was chicken.

  On Wednesday after school as I was rushing to get to the bivouac, Latha came out on the porch of her store and stopped me. She said she hadn’t had much of a chance to speak with me lately. Not that it was so important, but I hadn’t swept the store in over a week, and that was part of my job. Nor dusted the merchandise. “Every day after school, you rush right home,” she pointed out. “Is your Aunt Rosie punishing you for something?”

  “Aw, I’m not going home!” I said. And realized too late that perhaps I should have used that as an excuse. Why else would I be heading in that direction? “I mean, yeah, I’ve got to go home but not because she’s punishing me. I’ve just got a lot of stuff to do.”

  “Oh?” she said. “I’ve never known you to spend so much time at home.” I felt real bad about lying to Latha, and I tried to think of a more innocent lie to replace it, but I couldn’t. “I couldn’t help but notice,” she went on, “that your Axis friends have also been going that-away pretty often. The older ones, at least. The younger ones just mope around my store or Lola’s, a
nd complain like the Allies do, ‘I aint got nothin to do!’ Well, why is it, I wonder, that they don’t have anything to do and you’ve got so much to do I never see you anymore?”

  I hung my head in remorse, but couldn’t even think of a proper apology. “I’ll go in and sweep the store,” I offered.

  “It can wait,” she said. “You go on and join your friends in whatever mischief you’ve cooked up.”

  “I’ll try to come around more, I promise,” I said. And I escaped from her just in time to catch up with Gypsy and Ella Jean and Rosa Faye, who were on their way.

  There was no way of knowing that I’d see Latha again sooner than I expected. When we got to the bivouac, and the others showed up, Lieutenant McPherson called us all together with his men. He didn’t yell “FALL IN” or anything, he didn’t make us stand at attention, he just got us all together and said he had some things to say. “The party’s over,” he said, and I was afraid he was about to announce that the bivouac was off-limits to us kids. But it was his men he was talking about. They’d consumed that whole demijohn of Chism’s Dew, and even with a little help from the older kids that was a lot of dew. They were happy to be relieved from the itching of their chigger bites but they were suffering the notorious aftereffects of too much alcohol. But that wasn’t what McPherson was concerned about. He announced that their K rations were exhausted. A whole week had gone by since their landing, and they hadn’t anticipated they’d have to wait that long for the damn exercise to begin. Since each package of K rations also included four cigarettes, a stick of chewing gum, and a candy bar, they were also out of those things, and starting to die for a smoke. Their training had included some wilderness survival lessons but they did not really know how to forage for food. “I shot that opossum last night,” McPherson said, “but what do we do with it?” Even though it was just a rhetorical question, Gypsy and Ella Jean each offered conflicting recipes on how to cook a possum. Rosa Faye said that of course she’d be glad to raid the Duckworth fraid-hole and bring up a lot of jars of canned goods. Sammy said he’d raid the Coe fraid-hole too. McPherson had to wait patiently for an explanation of what a fraid-hole is, and then he said he didn’t want any of us robbing our family larders. “You people have a struggle just to feed yourselves, don’t you?” he asked, again just rhetorically, but Willard insisted that it was a struggle that had been going on so constantly for so long that it never bothered him any more; he took it for granted as a way of life. Joe Don, whose experiences moving from place to place and living hand-to-mouth had qualified him as an authority on the subject, said that there was no reason why anybody with any wits or sense should ever have to go hungry. “Friends,” McPherson said, “listen. We can pay for our food. You say there are two stores in town? All right, but how we do shop at those stores? We can’t go down into the village.”

  I spoke up and said that I’d be glad to go get anything they wanted at Latha’s store. “And how do you explain to her where you got the money?” McPherson asked. “Or why you’re buying enough of everything to feed a dozen hungry men? And she’s not going to sell you cigarettes, is she?”

  “She don’t sell cigarettes anyhow,” I said. “Just the makings. Duke’s Mixture and Prince Albert and Bull Durham and papers.”

  “If I did have the makings, I wouldn’t know how to—Harris, what’s the expression?”

  “Twist a dizzy, sir,” Sergeant Harris offered.

  “I wouldn’t know how to twist my own dizzy,” McPherson said. “Even if I did, Latha’s not going to sell tobacco in any form to you, Donny.”

  “She’d sell ’em to me,” Joe Don said, “if I had the money.”

  Gypsy said to her brother, “Joe Don, if you had any money, she’d really get suspicious!”

  “Same here,” Willard admitted. None of us, really, except possibly Rosa Faye, whose dad owned the canning factory even if it wasn’t running anymore, might have had any money of our own to spend in the stores. Then Willard asked of the lieutenant, “Couldn’t you use your radio to reach somebody at your camp and tell ’em to send you some more k rations?”

  McPherson sighed. “Apparently the signal won’t carry that far. We can pick up some distant stations, but we can’t make contact with Camp Chaffee. If we could, you may be sure that I’d give ’em hell for stranding us out here in the middle of nowhere! I asked Bosco to tell headquarters of our situation, but I’m not sure he could tell them how to find us.”

  Although my feelings were a little hurt that he thought of Stay More as “nowhere,” I was about to offer the suggestion that each of us kids could put extra food in our dinner pails for school and bring it afterwards to the soldiers, which would be better than nothing. But before I could say this, the sentry Private Crowder came up and saluted McPherson and said, “Sir, there’s a bunch of ladies out there.”

  “Ladies?” said McPherson. He turned to Harris and snapped, “Sergeant, you didn’t go through with your harebrained scheme to find some prostitutes, did you?”

  “No, sir!” Harris said. “We were just drunk when we said that.”

  “These aren’t whores, sir,” Private Crowder said. “They’re mothers, mostly. These kids’ mothers. And the lady who runs the store.”

  Chapter nineteen

  When the delegation of womenfolk came into the bivouac, my favorite woman addressed my favorite man. “Excuse us if we’re interrupting anything real important,” Latha said. “But we just had to see what all these young’uns have been up to lately.” She looked all around her—the other ladies looked all around them—there was Willard and Ella Jean’s mother, Selena Dinsmore; and Joe Don and Gypsy’s mother, Bliss Dingletoon; and Sammy’s mother, Dulcie Coe; and Rosa Faye’s mother—I was sorry I couldn’t remember what Mrs. Duckworth’s first name was. I guess I was happy my aunt wasn’t there. What they saw looking all around them was only an old abandoned farmstead temporarily populated by soldiers and kids. There was no sign of the bivouac.

  Selena Dinsmore wagged her finger at Willard and Ella Jean. “You’uns told me a big fib the other evenin, when ye said all them greens was for the pore Dingletoons. And Bliss says she wasn’t sick atall!”

  Bliss Dingletoon said, “And these two o’ mine used the same story on me!” She grabbed Joe Don and Gypsy by their ears.

  And Dulcie Coe said, “So this is where all my blackberry cobbler ended up!”

  “It sure was good, ma’am,” said Corporal Rucker.

  “Best dessert I ever had the privilege of sinking my teeth into,” Sergeant Harris said.

  “Those chickens and their dumplings,” said Polacek, “were positively de-lish, believe me.”

  And all the other men made murmurs of “Mmmm-mmmm!” and “Oh, man!” and “Whatta life!” and a few of them began drooling in the memory of the banquet…or the expectation of further dishes.

  The women of Stay More were temporarily charmed out of their anger, but Mrs. Duckworth said, “Aw, Rosa Faye made them chick’n dumplins all by herself!” and each of the other mothers protested that her daughter had done the cooking.

  “But surely,” Lieutenant McPherson said, “they learned how to cook from their mothers, didn’t they?”

  And the women allowed as how they might have learnt the girls a lesson or two in the kitchen.

  Selena Dinsmore, making polite conversation, asked, “Where are you fellers from?”

  The men looked at one another, as if waiting for someone else to name his hometown. “We are all stationed at Camp Chaffee,” McPherson said. And when he got blank looks, he explained, “That’s an army base near Fort Smith, here in Arkansas. Individually we come from all parts of the country. Sergeant Harris here is from Wisconsin. Corporal Rucker, Oregon. Corporal Quigg, Virginia. Private Polacek, New York. Private Crowder, California. Private Keough, Pennsylvania. Private Rogalski, New Jersey. Privates Nilson and Hewes are both from Michigan. Private Macklin, Florida. Private Lambert, South Dakota. And myself, Lieutenant McPherson, from Vermont. At your service,
ladies.” Mac saluted, then bowed from the waist. Then he said, “I forgot someone. Gypsy, get Jarhead.” Gypsy ran to the mule’s shed and returned riding atop the animal. “And this is Corporal Jarhead,” McPherson concluded. “From Tennessee, I believe.” When the ladies had stopped laughing, McPherson looked at them and said, “And you are—?”

  The women of Stay More introduced themselves, and I relearned Mrs. Duckworth’s name. Gladys. I would remember all these names, because they were going into my next big story in the Star.

  Latha said, “It’s not every day we get even one visitor to Stay More, let alone a dozen soldiers. Did you boys somehow miss the main road to Fort Smith?”

  I blurted, “They came on that glider!” Then I looked sheepishly at McPherson, cringing in anticipation of his frown or his reprimand. But he was just smiling.

  “So,” said Latha, “why have you boys been hiding up here in the woods for a week?”

  McPherson sighed. I had known him long enough to know that his sigh meant, “I hate this, but I guess I have to.” Then he took a deep breath and glanced at Sergeant Harris and said, “Our orders are to pretend that we are a hostile force in a training exercise. The training has two purposes: we serve as sparring partners—or as punching bags—for a select armored battalion on maneuvers, and, in the process, we sharpen our skills as an elite corps of commandos, rangers, marauders—we prefer to call ourselves samurai. Collectively and individually, we are a mean bunch of dogfaces. Each man is a sharpshooter with a rifle, and an expert at judo. Some of the men are the Fourth Army champions in the use of certain weapons: Corporal Quigg with the Browning Automatic, Corporal Rucker with the 81 mm mortar, Private Crowder with the 60 mm mortar, Sergeant Harris with antitank grenade, Private Polacek with machine gun. Privates Nilson and Hewes with the bazooka can hit a target a mile away.”

  Latha pointed her finger at him and asked, “And what are you the champion at?”