Next thing I knew I woke up all groggy in a field hospital and another nurse was taking my clothes off. I opened my eyes for a few seconds and saw her take off my paratrooper boots. When she got to my pants, she jumped back and let out a great big squeal. I had bloused them with condoms like we always did. That’s all I remember before I went back under.
I guess they took me to the operating room and worked me over and put me in the hospital tent. That’s when I woke up again. I was beat up, black and blue all over. My arm was broke, my pelvis was broke, my head was all busted up, and I just laid on that bed and felt sorry for myself. I’d been away from home for so long, and now this. It didn’t seem fair, you know. It just didn’t seem fair.
Well, I looked over cross the aisle, and there was another soldier lying there wrapped from head to toe in a plaster of Paris cast. All you could see was his one little hole for his mouth, another hole for his nose, another for his eyes, and the tips of his toes. Right then I quit feeling sorry for myself. That poor fellow laying there couldn’t move at all. I considered how fortunate I was.
I was in a hospital bed for some time, and one of the fellas who’d been in the accident wheeled a chair around to where I could see him and told me that he’d lost everything, but he’d checked on my stuff and it was still there. I was happy about that and described to him all I had in my bag. But about a week later, he came round again and said, “Shifty, I was mistaken, your stuff ’s all gone.” Well, I couldn’t move to go check myself. I’d taken those two fine guns off and put them in my musette bag because I didn’t want to go into headquarters wearing pistols. So I lost everything I had in that accident. All my guns, all my equipment. I was pretty sure where it went.
That’s about all I did day after day. I lay around, healing up. Months went by, the Japs finally surrendered, and then the fighting was over for everybody. At the end of November 1945 I heard the news that the 101st had been officially inactivated. Easy Company and all the rest of the outfits in the division were no more. I guess all the rest of the guys in the outfit came home before I did. Finally I came home on a hospital ship, landed in New Jersey or New York or somewhere up in that area, and got put in a hospital there a week or two, then they shipped me down to another hospital in Nashville. I was in Nashville a couple, three weeks, but at least I was back in America. I was still in the Army, mind you, but a fella in that condition, particularly at the end of the war, can get a lot of furloughs and passes, so I hunted up a good long pass for myself, and that meant I could finally head home to Virginia.
The morning was sunny and I hobbled up onto the bus, and my heart started racing at the thought of heading back to Clinchco. I wondered who I’d talk to first. I wondered how things might look different around town. I wondered what my mother would serve up for supper that first day I got back. I was still wearing a uniform, and I found a seat and sat down. On my face was the biggest grin I’d had in three years.
14
THE DIFFERENCE AT HOME
When the bus door swung open at my stop near Clinchco, I limped down the steps and looked around. Hills, you know. Trees. Woods. The air smelled like fir boughs and soil, a good kind of Christmassy smell, and there was water burbling down in the river nearby. Far away came the screechy hoot of a train approaching. A lone car passed in front of me on the road, shifted gears, and wound its way up the hill. I was the only passenger to get off at this bus stop, but I didn’t feel alone.
Nobody in my family knew exactly when I was coming home. I hadn’t told them because I hadn’t known myself. When I got my extended pass, I didn’t want to take time even to place a telephone call. I grabbed my gear and went.
I tucked in my chin and started limping down the road. I buttoned up the top button of my uniform against the cold. It wasn’t far to walk anyway. Stowed away carefully in my duffel bag were presents. For my sister, Gaynell, I’d brought a silver bracelet and a watch. Mama had written me earlier. Gaynell was getting all A’s in high school, and they told her they’d get her this watch if she kept up all her grades. Mama figured it would really tickle her if the watch came from me. Well, Gaynell skipped one class in shorthand and got one B, but there was no way in heck I wasn’t going to get my sister that watch.
Our old house stood in front of me, quiet. It was almost suppertime. Lights shone from the front windows. I took off my hat and stared a moment. The whole placed glowed warm and bright. Daddy would be reading the paper, I guessed, sitting in his favorite chair. My brothers Barney and Jimmy wouldn’t be home from the service yet, but my little brother Frankie would be a whole lot bigger than when I saw him last. The porch stairs creaked as I walked up to the front door. I didn’t know whether to knock or go right in. They were all home from work and school. I decided to go right in.
Sure enough, Daddy was sitting reading the paper, and when he looked up and saw me he gave a little start. Mama gasped from the kitchen and came running, her eyes shiny with tears. Sis sprinted right over with a squeal and gave me a long hug. Frankie was right behind her. Everybody piled around, and we all held tight for a long time. We let go and took a step back and looked each other up and down. Everybody started chuckling, like someone had told a funny story with bits of punch line that ebbed out every so often. There was more hugging, more backslapping. Sis squealed when she saw the watch I brought her, then everyone noticed the time, and Mom and Sis grabbed my arm and pulled me to the table. I sat, and they all sat around, and Mom fussed about and cut me two thick slices of bread and slathered on real butter. She loaded up a plate of ham and beans with a scoop of her famous potato salad on the side. Along came a big ladle of home-canned corn, steaming and buttery. A tall glass of fresh milk slid down the table. A hot cup of fresh brewed coffee followed. “If only I knew you were coming,” Mama kept saying, “All I’ve got are these corn muffins, but I could have whipped up some banana pudding.” But she was smiling. We were all smiling.
More plates were piled on the table and we all ate supper together. The cloth on the table was red checked, same as I remembered, and we talked and laughed around that old table. The clock struck nine o’clock and ten and eleven, and near around midnight, Daddy was the first to stretch and say he hated to end things, but there was work tomorrow and he needed to head for bed. One by one they gave me hugs and followed. Soon enough it was just me and Gaynell, and she poured me another glass of milk, but I was so full I couldn’t put anything more in me. Finally we said good night. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, padded down the hall to my bedroom, hung up my uniform, and crawled under the sheets of my very own bed. My room looked just like I’d left it. A basketball in the corner. A couple of old math notebooks from high school. Two pairs of jeans and a bunch of T-shirts in the bureau drawer. My Sunday shirt and slacks still hanging up in the closet. Outside my window, I could hear the chattering of a chipmunk high on the hill. I let out a deep sigh. It was so good to be home.
That night I slept a dreamless sleep. No nightmares. No tossing and turning. When I got up the next morning, I smelled bacon frying. Everybody was out the door already except Mama. She piled a big bowl of oatmeal in front of me as soon as I got to the table, and poured me a fresh cup of coffee. The Army would serve up oatmeal once in a blue while, but it always tasted like the inside of a cook pot. This was thick oatmeal, not a lump in it, with cream and brown sugar. Alongside of it came a big plate of fluffy biscuits with home cooked gravy. Then there was the bacon. It was sizzling crispy, and Mama knew I loved bacon, because there was more bacon that morning than any man could hold in his belly even if all he ate was bacon three meals a day every day for a week. I ate and ate, then licked my lips and let out my belt and ate some more.
After a long while, breakfast was over. I didn’t know quite what to do then. Mama was watching me real closely whenever I got up and walked. She was fussing over my limp. For once, I was listening to her. It pained me to walk very far and I knew I was still healing and couldn’t do much yet. That morning I walked around the
yard a bit. That afternoon I studied my fishing poles in the garage. I did a push-up or two and almost laughed at the thought of Captain Sobel making us do push-ups by the hundreds. It seemed like Camp Toccoa was a lifetime ago. My good friend Pete was home from the service, and he screeched up on the road in front of the house a while later and we sat on the hood of his car and jawed about times before the war.
That’s how it went for those first few glorious days back home. A lot of eating. A lot of lazing around. I wished things could be exactly the same as they’d always been, but I started to see that they weren’t. It was maybe two, three days after coming back, Mama was out and I told my sister I was going over to Clintwood to go see friends. I hopped in Dad’s car and started driving. The town is only fifteen miles down the road, maybe less, but after about five minutes behind the wheel, my heart started pounding something fierce. My hands grew clammy. My stomach did flip-flops. I swerved the car over onto the road’s shoulder, took it out of gear, and sat, idling, breathing, trying to slow my pulse, trying to take stock of what was happening in my head. I remembered once as a little kid I’d gone camping with a buddy. We were real young. Maybe seven, eight. The two of us were within hiking distance of home. We had flashlights and our sleeping bags and two sandwiches each in case we grew hungry during the night. I’d never been afraid of the woods, and I wasn’t afraid then, but it was a similar feeling out alone in the tent to what I was feeling now by the side of the road. If a fella isn’t any braver, he thinks about packing up his gear and heading inside for the night. Well, I looked down the road toward Clintwood. Then I put Dad’s car into gear, pulled a U-turn, and headed back home.
Gaynell saw me pulling up in front of the house. She walked outside. “I thought you were going to Clintwood,” she said.
I nodded.
“So, why are you back?”
I shrugged. “Too far away, I guess.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Nah, I got up to Fremont but figured that was about as far away as I wanted to go.”
“Darrell, you can’t be serious.”
“Yeah, I’m serious, Sis. I just wanted to be home again.”
Sis was real understanding about things, but I doubted even she’d grasp what I was getting at. All those years of me being away in the war, I never had such a feeling of security like I did when I was back home. Even when I became a paratrooper. A fella feels confident when he’s in uniform and surrounded by his friends. He feels like he can do most anything he sets his mind to do. But when I got home, well, it’s hard to fully put those other feelings into words, the not-so-good feelings, how I felt in Europe so many times. So cold. So hungry. So scared. There wasn’t enough distance yet between me and those awful feelings, and I didn’t want to give up the good feeling of security I was soaking in at home, even for a drive down the road.
That was how it went. One week stretched into two. Two weeks stretched into three. As long as I stayed home, I didn’t feel aggravated at all. Now, you would think that after being overseas in the war for such a long time that a fella would crave eating a certain thing that he wasn’t able to get while away—maybe cheeseburgers or milkshakes or steak. Well, it struck me funny, but the main thing I started craving was dill pickles. A nearby store stocked barrels full of them, and it was close enough that I could drive on over and help myself. I ate them out of barrels and bought them in jars, too, and sometimes I sat in my car in the parking lot and ate a whole jar full. Even drank the juice. That went on for some time, and I didn’t know where that strange craving came from or why it was so powerful. The store owner started seeing me so often that he joked I was pregnant.
Well, I wasn’t, that was for sure, but strictly speaking, I was still married to the Army, so before long I managed to get myself over to Fort Pickett, this little camp near Blackstone, Virginia, and got discharged for once and good. It wasn’t like I was doing anything for the Army then anyway. I drew a small disability, but that was about the only real connection we were having. There was still a lot I couldn’t do. One month stretched into two, and two months stretched into three. I still visited the hospital now and again. All told I was in the hospital about a year. When the weather warmed up in early spring, I tried to paint the house for Mama and Daddy, but because of my arm and wrist still being messed up, I couldn’t do that. So I just lay around mostly, going on little walks in the woods, fishing some. Eating lots.
By mid-summer 1946, my body felt mostly better, so I figured I’d get a job. My machinist’s credentials were still good, but nobody in Clinchco was hiring machinists right then, so I got hired on picking slate for the coal company. I hated the gritty work, and it felt like a step backwards, you know, so I quit before long and figured I’d think of something else to do. I didn’t know what, but I was confident I’d sort things out sooner or later.
In the meantime, I figured I’d look up some old girlfriends to see what might be what. Mary was real sweet and I’d known her since elementary school. Well, I looked her up, but shoot, she’d gone and gotten married while I was in the service. So that wasn’t going to do. Another pretty girl, her name was also Mary, lived over in Newport News. We’d corresponded a bit when I was overseas. She came out to visit us in Clinchco but acted all scared of the mountains, so that wasn’t going to do either. She became more a friend of the family. Well, Pauline was a friend of my sister’s and a lot of fun. We went on a few walks, saw a few movies, but, I don’t know. A man knows for sure when he knows. And I didn’t know for sure with Pauline. So that’s how things were, and after a while we stopped going on walks and going to the movies together.
Seemed like everybody was growing up, growing older. A lot of my buddies from high school who had gone into the service were married now, starting families, the ones who came home anyway. Most of the girls I knew back in high school were married with kids. Depending on the day, I leaned between feeling real old and real young. My father encouraged me to use the G.I. Bill to go to college, but on the days when he suggested that, I always seemed to be leaning toward feeling old. College was for kids, and I wasn’t a kid anymore. At least in my mind. I probably should have listened to Dad.
It felt different being around my parents. You’ve been through something that you can’t describe even to the people closest to you. My parents were the same people they’d always been, always kind, always loving. But things with me—their kid—weren’t the same anymore. I loved my home. I loved my family. But I wasn’t much sure how I felt about anything else. Before I went into the service, Dad used to tell stories of when he was in World War I. He’d tell funny stories mostly, never the gory ones. Once, when he was going overseas on a ship, he got real sick, and the only thing that saved his life was grapefruit. He always ended that story the same way. “And I’ve liked grapefruit ever since.” Well, I guessed I had my own war stories now to tell. But I didn’t tell any of them. Not even the funny ones.
I was still talking to God, you know. Heading that direction in my own private way, I guess. Mom belonged to a church, like everybody does in the South, but she seldom went except back when we were kids. Dad belonged to a different church over in the country where he grew up. His church didn’t hold services every Sunday, but they had what they called quarterly meetings. They’d gather everybody together and preach all day, three or four different preachers all belting out a message, strong and sweaty. You’d sit outside in the shade and fan your face, and kids would be running in and out and around. Everybody sang songs. We’d have a big potluck supper later. Fried chicken and fresh baked rolls and JellO salad with fruit in the mix. Dad’s extended family belonged to that church, cousins and whatnot, so he always considered that his church. It was as much a family reunion as a church service, and I usually didn’t mind going when I was a kid. It was good to see all those folks and to eat real well, but after the war I found I didn’t want to go to that church as much. Couldn’t rightly say what it was. I loved being around all the folks I knew so well. B
ut things were different—when it came to church, as well as much near everything else. That’s as much sense as I could make out of things.
I got to thinking maybe a fella my age should move out on his own. I didn’t know what to do about it, though, and money was always tight. One day I figured it would be good to go see a buddy on the other side of the state. I didn’t tell anyone what I wanted to do, but I got talking to my dad and he was saying how there was a coal show in Cincinnati, an event where they display all the new machines and equipment for mining and such. Dad was real eager to go, but he needed a new suitcase and didn’t have money for one. So I took the money I was going to spend on my trip and gave him the money for his trip instead. Dad never knew about that, or else he wouldn’t have put up with it. Well, my sister caught wind of this and pulled me aside and pushed some bills into my hand. She’d been saving a bit, and she wanted me to go on my trip, too. Figured it would do me good to get out, she said. So I got to go on my trip, too. I guessed some things never change, and I was real happy that the closeness our family felt for each other was one of those things. I loved my dad and would do anything for him.
Both my living-arrangement and career problems seemed to be solved one day when Bob, one of my buddies who’d also been in the service, came by and said he was thinking of buying a restaurant over in Clintwood. He asked if I’d like to be business partners with him. I had a little bit of savings from the service that I wasn’t touching for nothing except the future, so I said yes. The place was called “The Grill,” and it was popular with everybody, especially the high school kids. We didn’t know much about hiring cooks or running a restaurant, but we learned quick and started serving up short order foods: burgers and hot dogs, ham and beans, fried pork chops and whatever. In back of the restaurant was a room where kids could dance, and the joint would really get hopping on Saturday nights. Upstairs of the restaurant were rooms to live in, so I moved out of my parents’ home and moved in there. Bob moved in, too, and it was good to have company. We were good friends and talked about a lot of things together, but I don’t know that we ever talked about our time in the war. A man didn’t talk about that.
Shifty's War Page 18
