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By Jimmie von Tungeln
Love Field,
in Dallas, Texas was a lonely place at four o’clock in the morning but the man
didn’t mind. He was home, or at least close to home. The terminal was nearly
deserted when he awoke. The ticket counters had closed and only a few
passengers, stranded as was he, waited for some flight at some time to take
them somewhere to do something. He straightened the white Navy hat on his head
and looked around. Most in the area were dozing. A mother held a baby to her
chest and rocked softly, humming. A young couple leaned against one another and
slept, holding hands. A bearded man studied a paperback book. “Just waiting,” the
man thought, “waiting for something.”
He smiled.
He was the lucky one. He reached down pulled his sea bag closer, and then
leaned back to continue his wait. The terminal gave forth a soft hum that
seemed to sing peace. He was safe and it felt good.
His wait
had begun ten hours sooner. On deplaning from his flight into Dallas, he
learned that service to his home state was sporadic, that the next flight with
available seats wouldn’t leave for 24 hours. “No,” the agent had said, “you
can’t check your bag now.” He’d have to wait, she had told him, until later to
see how full the flight would be with regular passengers before they could
gauge his chances of flying standby. No problem, he would wait and purchase a
ticket later. Waiting was easy. He had made a career of it for the last 12
months. He could wait another day, or more if need be.
Then, from
a pay phone, he had called home with the news. Disappointment sounded in his
mother’s voice but only slightly. Nothing could spoil her joy at hearing his
voice at a place so nearly home. Then she had devised a plan. “Your brother is
off work for a long weekend. What if we drove to Dallas and picked you up? We
could have you home before that flight got here, and that’s if you even got a
seat.”
“That’s a
lot of driving,” he said.
“Son,” she
said, “don’t you remember that morning you left?”
“Yes,” he
said. “I remember it well.”
“Well then
know that ever day since then, any time I heard the telephone ring I just
drawed up in a knot. I thought December of 1968 wouldn’t never get here. It has,
and ridin’ that far in a car to get my boy don’t mean shit to me.”
He laughed.
“You haven’t changed,” he said.
“No,” she
said. I ain’t changed and I hope you ain’t either.”
“I
haven’t,” he said. “Just don’t make me stand in line for a meal when I get home.
Promise?”
“I promise.
Now you call back in 30 minutes and I’ll tell you if we worked it out and when
we might get there. Then all you have to do is wait. Okay?”
“Okay,” he
said, and so he waited. Half an hour later, he made the second call. The deal
was on. They discussed directions and estimated times. Then he returned the
phone to its holder and returned to his seat.
Night came and the terminal
emptied. He read a book had chosen from a bookstore in the California terminal
with the odd-sounding title, The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test, written by a man named Thomas Wolfe. It kept him amused
until sleep intervened. He slept until an unpleasant dream awakened him. “No,”
he said to himself. “you’re back now.” Awake, he began to read it again.
He had seen
the sun rise so many times during the last year that, even with the difference
in time zones, he sensed its arrival. With it, the sounds of the terminal
increased and the temperature rose as mechanical systems awoke and lumbered
into action. He removed his heavy pea coat and laid it lengthwise on his sea
bag. The terminal began to fill with people and the ticket counters opened one
by one. The man creased the edge of a page and placed his book on his lap,
taking a deep breath and exhaling. It had been more than two days now,
including the trans-Pacific flight, but he still wasn’t used to a smell that
wasn’t Vietnam. He was watching the bustle of the terminal when a voice to his
right said, “Mind if I join you?”
A man past
middle age, with graying hair, said, “Name’s Bottoms, Seabees, World War Two.
Always enjoy talking to a fellow swabbie.” He extended a hand.
The other
shook it. “Hinson,” he said. “Tim Hinson. Have a seat.”
Bottoms was
wearing a camelhair overcoat, which, when removed, revealed a well-tailored
blue suit with vest and school tie. He draped the overcoat over a seat, placed
a briefcase on it, and sat beside Hinson. “Trying to get to a meeting in San
Antonio,” he said. “They say someday there will be more than one flight a day
headed there.”
Hinson
nodded. “I’m trying to get home to Arkansas. Maybe they’ll have more than one
flight every two days there by that time.”
Bottoms
laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “I see those ribbons. Guess you’ve been overseas. My
neighbor’s son came back from his tour in Vietnam wearing some of the same ones.
You have an extra one, though.” He pointed at a fourth ribbon.
“It’s a
unit citation,” he said. “For the Naval Support Activity.”
“Did you
support?”
“I guarded
those who supported,” Hinson said. “Naval security.”
“What
rating is that?”
“No rating,
just something they thought up and made me do for a year.”
“The Navy
can think up stuff,” can’t it?”
“They can
indeed,” Hinson said. “You said Seabees. Were you in construction before the
war?”
“Hell no,”
Bottoms said. “I was a newspaper man. But I was too old for the other services.
The Seabees took older men so that’s where a bunch of us ended up.”
“Where did
you serve?”
“In the
South Pacific,” Bottoms said. “So many little islands I can’t remember the name
of them. How about you?”
“Da Nang,”
Hinson said, “in the I-Corps area.”
“We never
made it that far,” Bottoms said. “We were rebuilding at Okinawa when they
dropped the bombs. It wasn’t long after that our outfit started shipping out
for home.”
“Bet those
were happy days.”
“Mostly,”
Bottoms said, “except for one awful thing.”
Hinson
didn’t respond. Bottoms, however, wanted to continue. “They used to drink
something called “torpedo juice,” he said. “The guys off the submarines made it
from stuff they packed torpedoes in. It was the only way to get drunk on those
islands sometimes.”
Hinson
listened. Bottoms stopped, composed himself, and continued. “We had this guy in
our unit named Carl Luchenstein, a husband and father, who never drank nor
smoked, just did his job and sent his pay home to his family. On the night
after Japan signed the surrender papers, he agreed to take one drink to
celebrate the end of the war.” He stopped.
Hinson said
nothing, simply waited for the unfolding. Bottoms continued. “Turns out that
toward the end of the war, they changed the ingredients, and the torpedo juice
came to be poisonous. Some say they did it on purpose, so it would make the
sailors who drank it get sick—so the practice would stop.”
“So this
man got sick?”
“No,”
Bottoms said. “He was a small man and wasn’t used to alcohol in any form. Carl
died, some 12 hours after the war ended.”
Neither man
spoke for a time. Then Bottoms brightened. “Hey,” he said, “I didn’t come over
to bring you down. Let me tell you about one of the good times.”
Hinson
nodded, and Bottoms said, “We came back on a Cruiser and docked in San
Francisco. Know what the folks there did? We all went out on deck coming
through The Golden Gate, and over on the hills in Marin County, they had hauled
big rocks in and painted them white. They spelled out ‘Welcome Home Boys’ in
huge white letters. Sure made us feel good.”
Bottoms
immediately caught himself when Hinson lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“They don’t do that for you guys, do they?”
“No sir,
they don’t,” Hinson said.
“Was there
any welcome home for you?”
‘No sir,”
Hinson said. “There are war protestors that routinely meet the planes coming in
from Vietnam, and they don’t want any ruckuses. They briefed us on how to get
by them without incident.”
Bottoms
didn’t respond for a moment, the said, “Shitty deal, if you ask me.” The two
sat in silence. Finally Bottoms spoke, “It’s a different world now.” He looked
at his watch and said, “Hey, got to go. I think they’ve opened my ticket
window. Godspeed.” He rose, shook Hinson’s hand again, picked up his overcoat
and briefcase, and walked away.
Hinson
stared at his hands for a moment, and picked up his book. He had started to
open it when a loud crash and commotion caught his attention. Across the
terminal from where Hinson sat, a businessman’s briefcase flew across the
terminal floor, scattering pages in all directions. He had collided with a
runner who slammed into another man who then stumbled into a companion. People
began to jump aside to avoid the runner. Hinson stared.
The source
of the disturbance was a small woman no more than five feet tall and weighing probably
less than a hundred pounds. She wore a white blouse with a red scarf flowing
behind it. A blue skirt rode up to reveal thin legs that seemed to churn like pistons.
A loud shriek pierced the air as all eyes in the terminal turned toward her.
Hinson broke into a smile. It was his mother. He stood and faced her.
When she
was three feet away, she leaped. He almost lost his balance as she slammed into
him and draped her arms and legs around his body. “Son, son, son,” she cried.
For nearly a moment, neither moved. Then she slowly slid from him and stood on
solid ground. Tears had smeared makeup and her glasses had fogged. “Oh lord,” was
all she said.
At that moment, a slight young man
in his early twenties walked up. He looked Hinson over. “Hey brother,” he said.
They shook hands.
From far away, in the corner of the
terminal, a person began to clap, a sharp and lonely sound in the huge area. It
was Bottoms. A person not far away joined, then another, and another. The
entire terminal exploded with applause. It lasted several minutes filling the building
and spreading beyond its walls into the morning. His mother turned and acknowledged
the crowd. Hinson smiled and nodded. His brother studied the floor until the
noise subsided and people returned to their own business.
She held his hand with one of hers
and wiped away tears with the other. They looked at one another without
speaking. He raised an arm and wiped each side of her face with a sleeve of his
blouse. “You look great,” he said.
She smiled, raised her eyes to his,
and found her voice. “Let’s go home, son,” she said.
 |
| Not the real scene, but close, very close. |
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