Months later, Red Thompson was sent back to the States early, without completing his tour and with a recommendation of "Unsatisfactory" character on his discharge. I doubt if Red was able to re-enlist. But the other old guys, who were no trouble to anyone, all they had to do was hang around until they got in their thirty years. Then they could retire at three quarters of their private's salary. Three fourths of twenty-one dollars a month was not a hell of a lot of pension money to live on. How the Air Corps expected them to survive on the outside, I don't know. Most of them, however, went to,the Soldiers' Home, in Arlington, Virginia, after they retired. There they had custodial care, free room and board, and hospital privileges. Every month a quarter was deducted from my salary for the Soldiers' Home, a forced donation, and I resented the deduction. I had no intention of ever ending up in a place where my associates would all be men like Patty, the radio jockey, and the Man in the Black Robe.
The Man in the Black Robe, as we called him, was another old drunk in his late forties. He got this nickname because he had a habit of waking people up in the middle of the night and telling them that the Man in the Black Robe was after him. What he really wanted was for you to give him a drink, or reassure him-—I don't know. One night he woke me. I hadn't heard about him at the time, and when he offered to show me the Man in the Black Robe, I got out of bed. I slept in my underwear, so all I did was slip into my skivvy slippers and follow him downstairs. We went down to the end of the barracks, and he pointed out the big mahogany tree behind the kitchen. The moon was out and the wind was blowing. I could see
the shadow of the tree waver a little, but I sure as hell didn't see any Man in a Black Robe.
"See?" he whispered, pointing to the tree. "There he is, and he's after me!"
"There's no one there now, Pop," I whispered back. "Why don't you go on up to bed. I'll stay down here, and if he comes toward the barracks I'll scare him off so you can sleep."
"Will you?"
"Sure."
He went upstairs. I smoked a cigarette, waiting to see if the old man would come back, but he didn't so I went back to bed myself.
Later that year the old drunk hanged himself in the barracks boiler room, one of three suicides we had during my tour. When we discussed the suicide in the barracks later, some superstitious assholes in the squadron actually believed that there was a Man in the Black Robe, and that he finally got to the old rummy.
"It's just a metaphor," I tried to tell them. "Every man's got a Man in a Black Robe after him."
But very few soldiers will accept a metaphor of any kind. These guys were realists, if nothing else, and I had already learned on my first night at Clark Field not to tell anyone else I was a poet.
SIX
I WAS NOT A DISCIPLINED POET, HOWEVER, AND I DIDN'T write poems on a regular basis. Instead of sitting down writing a poem or two every day, I waited for inspiration to hit me. But there was little to inspire poetry at Clark Field. Not only did I have problems in finding a subject to write about, but when I did I had even more difficulty discovering rhymes. There was a rhyming dictionary at the Stotsenburg library, but I thought to use rhyming dictionary would be cheating. Coming from another source, the words wouldn't be mine. It was fair enough to use a regular dictionary to get the correct spelling of a word, but it would be dishonest to use a dictionary to find a rhyme.
An officer's wife who had returned to the States sent a boxful of old Saturday Review of Literature magazines over to the day-room before she left. I read them all, keeping them in order, to see what the critics had to say about poetry. At first I couldn't fully appreciate the reviews of the new books of poetry, either what the reviewer was saying or what the poet himself was saying, because only a few truncated lines of each poem were quoted in the review—not the entire poem. There were also complete, original poems printed in the magazine, and in most instances I could follow these fairly well. Some of the poems, however, made no sense whatsoever.
What opened my eyes to the possibilities of writing poetry was a review of e. e. cummings' book entitled 1+1. From this review I learned that rhymes were not essential and that assonance was close enough.
The only subject a poet actually needed was the way he happened to see things. Nothing was excluded from poetry.
If I wanted to I could even write about the praying mantis that had taken up residence on my mosquito bar. This insect was about six inches long, a brilliant emerald green, and he stayed on my mosquito bar, praying, for more than a month. When I first noticed him I was going to kill him, but my bunkie, Elmer Thomas Canavin (not Owens), told me to leave him alone. Mantises, Canavin told me, eat mosquitoes, and the fact that this particular mantis had sought me out was a blessing.
Canavin was an infantryman, and not a member of the squadron. The colonel who commanded the 26th Filipino Scouts at Fort Stotsenburg couldn't find a Filipino trooper who could take dictation and type. Canavin had been transferred up from headquarters, 31st Infantry Regiment, to be the colonel's secretary. Since Canavin was a white man and couldn't be placed in barracks with Filipino Scouts, he was assigned to a bunk at Clark Field. Because I was lucky, his bunk was next to mine, and in Canavin I had a constant source of infomiation about almost every subject.
Canavin was a private first class, third class specialist, and made almost as much money as a buck sergeant. He had three years of college at the University of Pennsylvania, and he had joined the Army when he realized that when he graduated he would have to support his mother and three older sisters for the rest of his life. He didn't want to take some dead-end job he would detest. His mother and sisters had worked at menial jobs to keep him in college, and Canavin knew he would owe them his life when he got his degree. He. had left college without a degree and enlisted in the infantry. All Canavin wanted from life was to carry a rifle, remain a buck private, and have no responsibilities at all. But the Army doesn't work that way.
When the Army discovers a rare man like Canavin who is capable of doing many things, it makes him do them, regardless of his desires. Canavin was clean-cut, didn't drink or smoke, and had such a strong sense of honor one had to be careful not to insult him, either on purpose or inadvertently. He was sensitive to nuances, and it didn't help that he was the only infantryman in a barracks full of Air Corps men. Most of these men, in Canavin's opinion, were unprincipled louts. He was always trying to teach one or more of them a lesson. Several incidents come to mind, but I can give one typical example.
Canavin and another man, an assistant crew chief named Luchessi, got into an argument one morning about who had reached the latrine sink first. Losing his temper, Luchessi had pushed Canavin. Canavin immediately challenged him to a duel.
Canavin asked me to be his second, and that afternoon during quiet hours I went to see Luchessi and asked him who his second was so we could make arrangements for the duel. Canavin was the challenger, and he told me that Luchessi could choose the weapons.
"You crazy?" Luchessi said to me. "I ain't fighting no duel. If he wants to fight, I'll fight him behind the barracks anytime, but not with no weapons."
I was prepared for this; Canavin had warned me that Luchessi would try to weasel out of the duel.
"Look, ,Luchessi," I said, "I really don't want to talk to you about the arrangements. I'm not a participant, I'm just Canavin's second. I want to talk to your second, to someone who isn't emotional, so we can make the arrangements in a fair and businesslike manner."
"I don't have no second."
"No friends at all?"
"Sure, I've got friends. I've got lots of friends."
"Then pick one so I can get on with it."
"I'm not picking no one, and I'm not fighting no duel!"
"In that case I'll get a second for you."
Corporal Canfield had been sitting on his bunk, next to Luchessi's, and he had listened to the conversation. Canfield had been in the Army for a good many years and had stayed with the Army of Occupation in Germany until I922. He liked t
o say that he was the "last American soldier out of Germany."
"What about you, Corporal Canfield?" I said. "You're Luchessi's bunkie."
"Not me," he said. "Duels are against the Articles of War, as you should know, Willeford. The squadron commander read them to us just two weeks ago."
This was true. Every six months an officer had to read and explain the Articles of War to us, and we had to sign a sheet of paper stating that we understood them. This semiannual reading reinforced our knowledge about how few rights we had, including the right to fight a duel. It was a court-martial offense, for example, to curse a senator or a congressman, let alone fight a duel. Enlisted men are not allowed by law to have their feelings hurt or their honor impugned—at least they're not allowed to avenge it.
"In Germany they fought duels all the time, didn't they?"
"German students, yes, and some French soldiers, but not Americans."
"We'll keep it quiet, Corporal. There'll just be you and me, Luchespi and Canavin."
"And a medic," Canfield said, rubbing his chin. "You gotta have a medic, and then when one of them's killed or- hurt bad—it'1l all come out. No thanks, Willeford. I'd like to keep my two stripes. Find someone else."
"Okay," I said, "but you know something about duels. So even if you won't be Luchessi's second, maybe you can suggest the kinds of weapons they should use. I don't think Canavin wants to kill Luchessi. A flesh wound would probably satisfy him."
"Pocketknives are all right," Corporal Canfield said.
"You got a pocketknife, Luchessi‘?"
"Yeah."
"How long's the blade'?"
"Two and a half inches. But I'm not going to use it. You guys are crazy if you think I'm gonna fight Canavin or anyone else with a knife!"
"Okay, Luchessi," I said, "pocketknives it is, with two-and-a-half-inch blades. I'll get back to you later about the time and place."
"Wait a minute," he said, and his dark skin faded at least two tints."
Of course there was no duel.
The more Luchessi thought about it, the more frightened he became. He went to see the first sergeant about the matter, and the solution was that Luchessi, at roll call in the morning, had to make a public apology to Canavin in front of the entire squadron.
Canavin accepted the reluctant, public apology, and the duel was averted.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't write a decent poem about the praying mantis. Eventually he left my mosquito bar, and I never saw him (her?) again. I did write a fairly good poem about the army ants, but I was unable to write about the birth of a Baluga baby,
although the latter should have been the better subject of the two.
Balugas are unique. We had the one old Baluga as a grounds-keeper for our nine—hole golf course, but he was the only Baluga who had a government job. He was paid ten pesos a month out of squadron funds. The first sergeant would give him his check on payday, and then the charge of quarters would take him over to Charlie Corn's to cash it. After the Baluga made an X on the check and the C.Q. witnessed it, the Chinaman would give the old man ten one-peso bills. By Baluga standards he was a wealthy man. I doubt if all the other Balugas in the Pampanga province or those who lived on Mount Pinatuba had ten pesos among them. No one knew what he did with his ten pesos each month. With his dirty loincloth, no shoes, and his bow and two arrows clutched in his hand, he certainly didn't spend any money on soap. None of the Balugas bathed in the river. The only time they got wet was when they got caught in the rain. Their black bodies were often covered with grayish scales of dried mud.
There was a Baluga village on the plain between Clark Field and the barrio of Sapang Bato., and when I went over to the Enlisted Men's Club I always took the shortcut through the Baluga village. There was a single row of huts on stilts, and a huge black pot in the middle of the village trail. Old Baluga men and women foraged for sticks of wood and kept a fire going under the pot at all times. The younger men ranged far afield, snaring lizards, snakes, or rabbits, and they would skin and put these animals into the pot when they returned to the village. The younger women grew some scraggly rows of corn, planted yams, and dug up other roots and wild vegetables they found along the river. The river was a narrow stream; if it had a name I never found out what it was, and most of the year it was a trickle. But during the rainy season it became a wide, if shallow, stream, meandering down from Mount Pinatuba and across the Pampanga plains. There were mango trees on the plain as well, so the Balugas always had something to eat. Baluga men were quite small, about three and a half feet tall at most, but their women were incredibly tiny. Their bodies were not distorted, like dwarfs; they were just tiny black people with well-proportioned bodies.
One afternoon, when I was on my way to Sloppy Bottom, I stopped in the village and watched one of these little women deliver a baby. The baby wasn't much bigger than a Norway rat. The mother was alone. She just sat on the edge of her porch, with its bamboo floor, grunted a few times, and delivered the baby. She cut the umbilical cord with a piece of coconut shell, and then tied it with some coconut fiber, She didn't wash the baby, but put it to her breast immediately (all of these women ran around with exposed dugs) and let it feed. What made this interesting to me is that none of the other members of the tribe, men or women, stopped to help this woman. The old crones still gathered sticks for the fire, a young man continued to peel a snake, and a few kids chased one another around in a circle, squealing and giggling. I was the only one who took an interest. I had wondered whether to stop and watch, feeling that I was intruding on her privacy, but if she had wanted privacy she could have stayed inside her hut. And inasmuch as I had never seen a baby born before, I didn't want to deny myself the experience.
I walked over to the club afterwards, and tried later to write about it, but I couldn't. Nothing could have been more joyless or depressing than this unassisted birth. The mother was resigned, but responsible, I supposed, yet I didn't see any future for the kid, whether it was a boy or , a girl. I don't know what the sex was; the kid was so wet and slimy I couldn't tell from where I was standing, maybe fifteen feet away from the hut. I knew it didn't make any difference. The chances were not all that great that it would ever become an adult Baluga anyway. I should have been able to write something about the birth, and yet I could not.
These Balugas were not a happy tribe, with one notable exception. When a cavalry horse died up at Fort Stotsenburg, the Army gave the dead horse to the Balugas. With concentrated team effort the Balugas would haul the dead horse on a wooden sled the three or four miles from Stotsenburg to their village. Then they would cook and eat it.
That was the only time they ever laughed or appeared to be happy—when they were full of roasted horse meat. A lot of horses died of tuberculosis in the Philippines, and I didn't think it was a good idea to let these Balugas eat tubercular horses, but it solved a problem for the 26th Cavalry. By giving the Balugas the dead horse, they didn't have to dig a deep square hole and bury the animal. In ninety- and ninety-five-degree weather, a dead horse ripens very quickly.
If you have ever watched twenty or more scrambling, meat-crazed little black men hack up a dead horse with bolo knives, while their gibbering women pile brush and twigs and palm fronds under a pot for a raging fire, you will not want to see the ceremony repeated. It was an ugly scene. They would pause from time to time to drink a long draft of horse blood from a coconut shell, and then back they would go, hacking and grinning and jabbering. The smell was overpowering, not only from the dead horse that had been out in the sun for a day or two but from the escaping gases.
I knew nothing about horses then, and I wondered what they fed the horse to make the gas from his hacked—open belly smell so rotten. Of course, as I know now, it was merely partially digested hay and oats, with perhaps a few forkfuls of alfalfa.
I stored my impressions away, thinking that I would be able to write about them eventually. What I learned from the Balugas was that no matter what happened to
me, I would be better off than they would ever be. Once a man has witnessed life in a Baluga village, and I used to walk through there two or three times a week, he will never be able to feel sorry for himself again. He knows how awful life can truly become. I continue to gripe about things, and I probably always will, but I also know, deep inside of me, that my life is good. .
The Filipinos in the barrio were several cuts above the Balugas, but their poverty was almost as bad. They were taller than the Balugas by six inches or so, and they were very clean. If they wore rags, the rags were spotless. Filipino women spent their days washing clothes down by the river, or carrying five-gallon Standard Oil tins full of water to their huts in Sloppy Bottom. Their rows of corn and yams were planted in straight lines. They ate a lot of rice, but it came from somewhere else in the islands, not from the Pampanga plains. They raised goats, pigs, and chickens, including gamecocks. They swept the hard ground clean beneath their huts. And unlike the Balugas, Filipino children had to stay in school until they had finished the sixth grade. Their textbooks were all in English, and we could converse with them.
They spoke Tagalog and English, but no Spanish. Canavin was amazed that no one spoke Spanish, and he had no one to practice his Spanish with. Canavin was fluent in Spanish, but except for one old man he met in Angeles, who claimed to remember "Spanish Time," the language had virtually disappeared. Street and town names were still in Spanish, but the spoken language was gone, even though Spaniards had ruled the islands for three hundred years or more. Because there were at least six thousand islands in the Philippines, there were hundreds of dialects, but Tagalog seemed to be the universal one. Although Canavin studied Tagalog I considered it a waste of time, even though I had plenty of time to waste. All I needed was one sentence, and I asked Canavin to write that one out for me phonetically. Then I memorized it, using the proper inflections: "Ahko mall-ah-guy-ah eenie eebig gee tah"—I'm happy because I love you.
Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford Page 6
