There was a gasoline station with a paved road going by. There was a barbecue stand with smoke billowing from the chimney.
He stepped off the trail and squatted down behind a giant fern. His stomach was awake now, evidently having been informed that breakfast was a possibility. He peeped through the leaves and scrutinized the clearing. In a few minutes an old man wearing a soiled apron came out of the barbecue stand and looked at the sky, spoke to a dog that lay in the road near the gas pump, and then went back inside the shack, wiping his hands on the apron.
“On your feet, cadet,” said an impersonal voice, and at this Melvin uttered a pitiful little sob, so shocked was he, and pitched forward into the fern as though he had been stabbed in the back.
However, it was not an officer; it was Sam Horne. He had stumbled across the barbecue stand during the night and had camped nearby, waiting for it to open. Roska had also found it. The two of them had built a shelter against the rain and had the floor lined with newspaper, moss, and pine boughs. Roska was lying flat on his back in the shelter with his overcoat for a pillow and was licking his fingers. He had just finished eating barbecued spareribs. Beside him was a portable radio he had rented from the old man and his wife, and empty beer bottles were scattered all around.
“Well,” Melvin said after being informed of the situation, “I think I’m ready for breakfast.”
Horne walked with him to the edge of the clearing. “Listen, there’s a couple of officers cruising around in a station wagon. They went by about half an hour ago, so if you hear anything coming, take out for the woods—and don’t head this way.”
“I won’t get caught,” Melvin said. He studied the road and the buildings. “What about the people who operate this place? Do they know who we are? I mean, do they know we’re on a survival hike?”
“Why, of course they know it,” said Horne. “The old duffer told Roska he’s feeding between fifty and sixty cadets every week. Why, he says some of them camp here two or three days. He says he’s thinking about having a little map printed because some of the guys have got lost trying to find this place.”
“What does the Navy think about it? The officers, I mean.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Horne muttered, clutching his head. “You think any cadet is stupid enough to let the officers know what’s going on? Now look,” he continued a moment later, and opened his wallet, “as long as you’re going, you might as well get me another sandwich.”
“What kind would you like?”
“I think maybe I’d like another barbecued pork on a bun with sesame seeds, and a couple more beers. Tell him that last beer wasn’t very cold; see if he’s got any that’s been on ice longer. Oh, and some pickles. And we need more toothpicks and paper napkins.”
Melvin returned a few minutes later with the food and the beer in a bag and said, “He gave us these old movie magazines, and says if we decide to stay overnight he can let us have a card table and some camp chairs.”
“He’s a nice old man,” said Horne. He sat down cross-legged and began to unfold a paper napkin, but paused, pointed across the clearing, and all at once whistled shrilly through his teeth.
Melvin saw a sudden movement in the shrubbery, fronds waving to and fro as though someone had just dropped out of sight.
A few seconds passed.
Then two cadets jumped over a fallen tree and came walking boldly toward the shelter. Their names were Elmer Free and Nick McCampbell. Elmer Free was a loose-jointed, long-legged Texan with prominent upper teeth that gave him the look of a porcupine or a beaver. Tied to his belt by a string was a small owl which he had killed with a rock and which he had planned to cook and eat, but now, when it became obvious that he could get all the food he wanted at the barbecue stand, he drew his sheath knife and slashed the string and tossed the owl into the brush.
“Adios, old bird, I’m tellin’ you,” he remarked. He balanced the knife on his palm, crouched, and with a swift underhand motion he threw it; the knife glittered across the camp and lodged in the center of a rotten log with a thump.
“We done seen them crooked officers, boys. Done parked theyselves in that station wagon down the road about a mile by that there motel.”
“By the what?” Melvin asked.
“That there motel where Stuart got hisself picked up.”
“He slept in a motel last night?”
“Sho.” Seeing the expression on Melvin’s face, Elmer grinned. “You slep’ on the ground, boy, but Stuart’s going to get washed out the program.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t wash him out for that. They may give him about fifty hours of extra duty, but they won’t wash him out.”
“That’s all you know, Isaacs boy. He done sacked hisself in that there motel with a girl.”
Melvin had been reclining on the pine boughs. Immediately he sat erect. “What did you say?”
“Sho! Old Stuart, he had hisself a night, from what I hear.”
“I imagine he did. Who is she?”
“Don’t rightly know. Less she’s that there motel keeper’s daughter.”
Melvin slowly wiped the grease from his chin. The motel was not far away and he had not planned on doing anything for the rest of the day.
“Do you suppose she might still be there?”
McCampbell spoke for the first time. He had a dour, saturnine face almost concealed by the wool cap pulled down over his ears. “You act like you were on a fraternity picnic,” he muttered.
“That’s right,” Horne agreed, eating a pickle. “What do you think this is? You’re supposed to be learning how to survive under adverse conditions. What are you going to do when you get shot down over New Guinea?”
Melvin ignored them and lay down, belched, loosened his belt, and opened the bag to see what else he could eat. The conversation stopped. He glanced up and noticed that they were all watching the road. A Navy station wagon had come around the bend.
At the barbecue stand it stopped while an officer got out to talk to the old man; they could see the old man shake his head again and again. The officer returned to the station wagon and drove away. The back end was packed with cadets like royalists in a tumbril.
A moment after it disappeared there was a rustling in the underbrush and another cadet stood up and came strolling toward the shelter with a cigarette in his hand. He was quite tall, with broad shoulders and a handsome face. He looked bored, as though through no fault of his own he had been placed in an absurd situation. His name was Pat Cole. He was from the second platoon.
He wandered into the camp and surveyed it critically.
“I understand the Greyhound stops here.”
“Sho,” said Elmer Free, looking at him with respect.
“The what?” cried Melvin, rising up on one elbow. “Do you mean to tell me a bus comes along this road?”
“Didn’t you know?” Cole remarked, glancing down at him with cynical amusement. “No, of course you wouldn’t.”
Elmer nodded. “Goes smack dab to Athens.”
Melvin looked at Cole. “Do you mean you’re going to ride it?”
“Why else would I have asked?”
“But how could you get away with it? Suppose there was an officer at the depot?”
Elmer grinned and wagged his head. “You don’t hardly ride all the way to town. What you do, you ask the driver to let you down long about a mile shy and you hike her home the rest of the way. I aim to circle around the rear and come a-clompin’ through the obstacle course like I’m mighty pooped. Them officers, they ain’t got hardly no brains, I know for a fact.”
“I’ll camp here tonight and catch the bus tomorrow evening,” Cole said. “That is, if no one objects to my company,” he added with an unpleasant smile. He did not look at anyone as he said this, but stared into the distance and seemed to be waiting for someone to tell him either that he was welcome or that he was not.
After a prolonged silence Melvin asked, “Why tomorrow?”
“Oh,” he said, turning
around casually, “if I should arrive by midnight tonight, or early tomorrow, the officers would be too suspicious. Regardless of our friend Elmer’s opinion, officers do have brains. They’re quite aware of our distance from the base and they know, consequently, approximately how long it will take us to return.” He walked a few steps and said over his shoulder while he stared into the forest, “You’re thinking to yourself that they’ll get me, aren’t you? Don’t worry, they won’t. I’m not stupid.”
“But what if they did?”
“He’d be on his way to Great Lakes in twenty-four hours,” Horne said. “Why the hell do you think this area is being patrolled? If you think the only officer around here was the one in that station wagon you better think again. They mean business. This flight program is full of gold-bricks and the Navy knows it. They’re going to clean out guys like Cole and it’s all right with me, because I’m not about to have any deadbeat flying wing off me in the South Pacific.”
“Bravo,” said Cole, and clapped lightly.
Horne pointed a finger at him. “I could make things rough for you, Mister. In more ways than one.”
“Mr. Horne, I’m terrified.”
“You better be,” Horne answered, and Melvin noticed that he had begun to shift his weight from one foot to the other and was nervously toying with his belt buckle. He was ready to fight.
“Elmer,” said Melvin, “how about you? You taking the bus?”
“Most surely am. Come along.”
Melvin looked at Cole. “What about you?”
“Did you think I was sounding off? Walk if you please. I’m not attempting to sell anything.” He turned his back deliberately on Horne. There was a mirror nailed to a tree; he stooped and began to comb his hair.
Horne took a step toward him and half-lifted one hand, but then stopped, shaking with anger, and stepped back. Suddenly he turned to Melvin. “We’ve invested better than six months of hard work in this outfit. Don’t throw it away just to save yourself a couple of days’ walk.” He paused, and seemed to be expecting Cole to say something.
“Sho, Sammy boy, except she’s a mighty long row to hoe,” said Elmer.
“Hell’s bells!” Horne exclaimed, gesturing furiously. “I used to go on Boy Scout hikes rougher than this.”
Melvin glanced from one to the other. Cole and Elmer obviously were intending to ride the bus. Horne wasn’t. McCampbell probably wouldn’t; he was scraping the mud from his shoes with a stick, and somehow it was apparent he meant to follow orders. Roska would probably go along with Horne, if for no other reason than that Horne was a cadet officer. It was, of course, a problem in morality, and of all the problems he could have imagined on a survival hike this was not one. To ride the bus, he knew, would be deceitful; on the other hand, everybody was doing it—not everybody, perhaps only a few, but there were sure to be others besides Cole and Elmer, lurking in the woods until the bus came along and then springing out to flag it.
Melvin began to feel uncomfortable. He could not make up his mind, and he was irritated that such an insignificant matter was giving him such difficulty. He stood up, thrust his hands into his hip pockets, and wandered around the camp, kicked at the stump, lit a cigarette, and tried to make a decision. At last, in an ill temper, he flung down the cigarette, ground it under his heel, and announced that he would hike to the base. He saw that Cole had been watching him.
“All right,” Horne said loudly, “let’s get started, whoever’s walking. It’ll take a long time—three days if we run into more swamp.”
The old man packed a box lunch for each of them, except for Nick McCampbell, who had vanished into the forest while they were talking. In addition to the lunch they took along a wicker basket filled with spareribs, fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs, salami, cheese, pork, and dill pickles. In the middle of the morning they broke camp: Horne, Roska, and Melvin. Roska’s canteen was full of beer.
“Look out for snakes,” said Cole.
At the edge of the clearing Melvin turned around to wave good-by and to wish Cole and Elmer luck on the bus ride, but they were tossing a baseball back and forth and paid no attention.
“They think they’re so smart,” Horne muttered, jumping over a log. “Just wait and see. The officers’ll pick them up. And won’t I be glad!”
That afternoon on the mucky shore of a brackish pond they came across some footprints emerging from the water. The marks in the mud were very small, with the heel scarcely visible, and so pigeon-toed they might have been made by an Indian.
“That’s McCampbell,” Horne said. “What the hell was he doing in the pond?”
They followed his tracks into the brush, by some flowers and a spray of wild ginger growing at the base of a sweetgum tree, around a bog, and then on dry ground they lost his trail.
Several hours later, just before dark, after picking their way through a cypress swamp, they found the tracks again and followed them to the ashes of a fire—surprising a racoon that had been examining the spine of a fish. The ashes were cold. Horne poked around with a stick and turned up the charred corner of a K-ration box.
“How do you suppose he caught that fish?” Melvin asked. “He must have brought a hook and line along with him. I’m going to ask him when he gets back.”
“When we get back, you mean,” said Horne peevishly. “That skinny little Scotchman’s probably checked in at the battalion office by now.”
By evening of the second day they were beginning to regret having thrown away their Navy rations; none of them could stomach the pork or the spareribs, and even the cold fried chicken, which had turned clammy—beads of moisture had formed on the flabby, nodulated skin—even this chicken, which they had devoured so greedily, was becoming difficult to swallow. But the trip was nearly over: they were beginning to encounter more roads and they met other cadets whose course nearly paralleled their own.
On the third morning after leaving the barbecue stand they emerged from the woods within sight of the base, shook hands with each other, and split up, to arrive separately and at intervals. Melvin limped across the exact center of the parade ground with his head down and shoulders bent, his cotton jacket badly torn, stinking of swamp water, his face scratched and swollen, and paused deliberately in the middle, in view of the administration building, to remove his shoes, knowing that under any other circumstances his action would be suicidal and equally certain that on this one occasion he was privileged to insult the sensibilities of everybody from the captain down.
He reported to the battalion office and learned that the first cadet had arrived seventeen hours earlier. He was not surprised to learn it was Nick McCampbell.
At the barracks he inquired about Cole and Elmer and was told they too had checked in, quite a while ago; the cadet who told him this did not know where they were at the moment but thought they might be playing ping-pong in the recreation hall.
“How did it go, Isaacs?” he inquired, after a glance at Melvin’s name tag. “We don’t get ours till next month. I’m in the third battalion.”
“Well, it ain’t no picnic, brother,” said Melvin wearily. “I’m going to hit the sack and stay there at least a week.”
Just then Horne came striding up the corridor, naked except for a towel around his neck, with a bar of soap in his hand. “What the hell is this about a dance?” he demanded.
“That’s right,” said the third-battalion cadet, and pointed to the bulletin board. “They tacked up the notice yesterday.”
Melvin and Horne walked over to the bulletin board and studied the announcement. On April fifteenth, at eight o’clock in the evening, there would be a dance in the gymnasium.
Finally Melvin asked, “Does it mean us?”
“Does it say anywhere it doesn’t mean us?”
“Nobody ever gave a dance for us before. Why would they do it now?”
“I don’t know,” Horne said.
“It’s probably a mistake.”
They studied the announcement a while longer
.
“If it isn’t a mistake, it must be a trick.”
“I think it might be real,” said Horne. “I believe there’s actually going to be a dance.”
“Just for cadets?”
“Cadets and women, I expect. The Navy’s queer enough without giving queer dances.”
“If that’s the case, you can bet they’ll scrape up all the crows in Georgia. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think it’s just some kind of a cheap publicity trick. They’ll take pictures for the newspapers to show everybody at home how well we’re treated. Well, they’re not about to trick me, because I’m not going! It doesn’t say anywhere we have to go.”
They looked at the invitation once more.
“It doesn’t say anywhere you don’t have to go. So that means you do have to go.”
“That’s tough,” Melvin said, yawning. “I won’t go, that’s all there is to it.”
However, when the day finally came, he decided to attend the dance.
They were in the barracks getting ready when the public-address system began to drone and sputter.
“Now hear this. Now hear this,” came the weird metallic voice. “All cadets attending the dance in the gymnasium this evening stand by for a message from Commander Peabody.”
The public-address system fell silent. A minute or so later the rasping hum was heard again; there was a mumble of voices in the background, the crackle of paper, and the commander said, “Good evening, men. It’s a pleasure to speak to you this evening.”
The Patriot Page 6
