FREEDOM

By Jimmie von Tungeln

 

He was thinking that it wasn’t fair and the thought pricked at him like a bad memory on a restless night. The whole damned thing wasn’t fair. He sniffed. Even the smell wasn’t fair. He slapped at a mosquito and heard a voice behind him. He stiffened and raised his rifle.

“Livingstone,” it said, “curly pubic hair. It’s me, Shaeffer. I’m coming up behind you.”

The rifle came to rest. The man spoke back, without moving his head or taking his eyes off the rice paddy spread before him, a growth-quilted blanket, reminding him of the blankets the old women once sewed, their wrists nipping and drawing, conversing with soft voices, while the men played dominos and spoke of politics. Back home.

“Come ahead,” Livingstone said. He felt, more than heard, a body sliding along the grass behind him. When a head appeared beside him, he asked, low, without looking, “Curly pubic hair? Who the hell thinks up these passwords?” He spoke slightly above a whisper.

“The El Tee,” Shaeffer said. “He thinks they’re cute.”

“And if he thinks they are, who can say they aren’t?” Livingstone said. “What’s up?”

“Just checking on the outposts. How’s everything?”

“How the fuck do you think everything is?”

Shaeffer scanned the view before them. Far away, the rice fields, visible in the full-moon, rose near the base of a mountain some 3,000 feet in height. He listened, then spoke. “Let me take a guess,” he said. “Crappy?”

“It’s not fair.”

“What?”

“All of it.”

“Ain’t you happy with the food? We’ll get all the milk we want to eat when we get back to base.”

Livingston didn’t answer. Instead, he pointed to the bulge where the jungle greens

covered the bandages around his shoulder. “I should have gone out on the last chopper. You know that,” he said.

“Yeah well,” Shaeffer said. “There just wasn’t room.” He touched the hard metal end of Livingston’s rifle. “Besides,” he said, “you can still shoot.”

“Why did we leave there and come down here?” Livingston asked, pointing toward the mountain. “after the shit-storm we went through taking it.”

“I’ll ask General Westmorland next time we have cocktails,” Shaeffer said. “Other than that, may I report back to him that all is well with your soul?”

“It stinks here,” Livingstone said. “Why this spot? Wasn’t there a place to camp upwind?”

“Question is,” Shaeffer said, “Why all the dead bodies that are causing the stink?”

“Ask the godammed Americal Division boys. Way I heard it, they told the gooks in the village to choose sides, and when they came back, lo and behold.”

“Lo and behold what?”

“They were hiding some rice,” Livingstone said, “so rat-a-tat-tat. No more VC sympathizers in the vil’ and the VC are going hungry. The gook kids ain’t though. Mama-sans. Papa-sons. I heard they wasted them all.”

“Tough break,” Shaeffer said. “Why didn’t they didi mau? They know what we do to villages that choose the wrong side.”

“Where would they go? They’ve lived in the same spot forever.”

“Sin Loy,” Shaeffer said. “Too fucking bad.”

“I wasn’t even supposed be drafted,” Livingston said. “I had been accepted into grad school.”

“Sin fucking loy,” Scaeffer said. “The rain falls on the just and the unjust. I was going to be a preacher and make some real fucking money.”

“I have friends who got exempted for grad school.”

“It all depends on your draft board. I can’t imagine that you would have pissed them off or anything like that.”

“Up yours,” Livingston said. “Don’t you have something to do?”

“My job is to bring comfort,” he said. “Here’s something for you.” He reached into a front pocket and retried a piece of paper folded into a packet. He put it to his nose, sniffed, and handed it to Livingstone. “Here,” he said.

“What’s is it?”

“A bit of muscle rub,” he said. Put a dab in each nostril and it will keep out the smell of the dead gooks for a while.”

Livingstone smelled the paper. “Okay,” he said. “Do you know when we pull out from here?”

“When we’ve killed all the gooks.”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh,” Shaeffer said, “I’m supposed to remind you.”

“Remind me of what?”

“The Brass thinks we need to spend some money tonight. Budget talks are stalled.”

“Not my fault.”

“We all must bear the burden of guilt,” Shaeffer said, “but you will may yet be cleansed of your transgressions.”

“How?”

“Shooting gooks, or at least shooting at them.”

“Weren’t you supposed to tell me something?”

“Oh,” Shaeffer said. “Death from on high tonight.”

“Where?”

“Shaeffer pointed at the mountain. “There.”

“Where we just left from?”

“The very place.”

Livingstone thought. “Do you think the NVA has moved back up there?”

“I doubt it. That ain’t it at all. The Air Force just needs to expend some fireworks so their budget won’t get cut. Spend it or lose it. They have no choice. They are caught in this endless cycle of beg and justify. No way they can quit and let the Navy have their money.”

Livingston stared at the mountain, then said. “I think I understand now why we’re here in this stink hole.”

“Why?”

“If the flyboys chase the gooks off the mountain this time—if there are any gooks there —Brass thinks they will flee this way and we can ‘crocodile’ them as they go by.”

“That would send them straight to Jesus,” Shaeffer said.

“Except for the fact that they are probably back across the DMZ by now. If not, what if they don’t flee, but come right at our little piece of paradise? Have you noticed there’s a jungle directly behind us?”

“Details. Details,” Shaeffer said. Privates ain’t supposed to worry about details. That’s for corporals like me and above. You just respond.”

“I responded by walking point for three straight days,” Livingston said. “It’s not fair.”

“The El Tee trusts you.”

Livingstone ignored him. “The air was a lot nicer up there,” he said, pointing at the mountain again. “I thought that’s why we took it, to have some fresh air. This whole damn country smells like rotten fruit when you’re stuck in the bottoms."

"The air show starts at zero-three-three zero,” Shaeffer said.

“Speak English out here,” Livingston said. “What time?”

“Three-thirty in the morning. Don’t panic when it wakes you up. You might start firing and give our position away.”

“As if there is a person in this fuckin’ country that doesn’t know exactly where we are.”

“Be seeing you,” Shaeffer said. “It’s been nice.” Livingston didn’t look, but felt the other turn on side and look behind them. “By god,” he said, “there is a jungle back there. Don’t you dare let them get past here.” With that, he was gone.

Livingston stared at the top of the mountain. When the order came to move out, his company had only been there two days. The men grumbled, but obeyed. They packed with sullen silence and assembled in tactical formation. In strict order of march, they began their descent. With each step downward, the air grew heavier and as the temporary feeling of relief abandoned them. From above, they could survey the countryside. From that position, it was a beautiful place. Shades of green, some of it checkered, some of it smooth, and some of it stippled by the jungle, combined to offer a peaceful view from the top. It was hard, from there, to imagine the dangers and conflicts waiting for them below.

Halfway down, someone spotted some sort of ape nestled in a tree. It nodded in cadence as they passed, like a sentry taking a count. Someone spread the word. The men began to salute the creature as they passed. It made no sign that their efforts made an impact. He continued to nod, and stared as if they were just the most recent of a forever of intruders. When the last man had passed, the ape picked a leaf and began to chew it, still nodding as if he were digesting facts as well as food.

At the bottom of the mountain, they Lieutenant had turned them toward the noxious smell blowing from the east and ordered them into patrol formation. He placed Livingston on point. They marched into the smell, slowing as they came closer to the jungle. Just as the air became unbearable, orders came to stop. An hour later, they waited, having dug in and consumed a supper of C-rations with sullen and silent comradeship. As night fell, they manned outposts. That was earlier. Now, Livingston scanned the area under his responsibility and thought again, “It’s not fair.”

He remembered the packet Shaeffer had given him. Retrieving it, he opened it and spread half the ointment into each nostril. The scent freed him from the smell of death. He smiled and wished, for a mere second, that he had thought to thank Schaeffer.

Thinking of Shaeffer made him think of the time. He moved his hand below the breastwork he had dug and, shielding his wrist, removed the small flap that covered the dial of his watch. The numbers shone faintly in the night … three twenty-seven. He covered the flap and moved his hand to his ammunition belt. He removed two clips and slapped the business edge of each on the palm of his hand. He blew on their tops and placed them in front of him on the edge of his foxhole, just six inches from the barrel of his rifle. He checked the safety and waited.

Seconds passed and Livingston listened for any sound ahead of him. Behind him, the platoon slept, perhaps unaware of the commotion in store. A faint buzzing filled the night. Livingston looked to the east.

A stream of fire streaked across the far horizon … a jet. The stream neared the mountain and then rose quickly. Almost at once, a ball of fire erupted below it and ran along the mountain’s rim. Another stream appeared, and another ball of flame. Then another. Livingston froze, transfixed by the sight and ignoring the firing around him. He watched the mountain erupt in bursts of roiling fire. Flames moved to the west as the planes led them along the length of the mountain. After what seemed like an hour of this, but actually only minutes, the jets disappeared.

As the fires blazed, Livingstone heard a distant roar, a sound like an ancient engine might make while struggling to fulfill its duty. Seconds passed before the far away sky began to lighten. Then he could see the heavy transport aircraft dropping massive parachute flares. They descended slowly striving to prolong their moment of glory, drifting with the wind. Soon, they lit the entire surface of the mountain. Again, the illumination moved from east to west, as if a giant hand was moving along the surface flipping light switches. Then Livingstone looked to the east and saw what looked like red hot rivets from flowing in waves from invisible, but massive, buckets … mini guns.

Livingston laid his rifle on the ground and leaned forward. The sky was buzzing now with the sound of helicopter gunships. Their twin guns were each firing nearly 4,000 rounds per minute, each fifth round a tracer, hence the image of rivets. Livingston couldn’t take his eyes away. It was if someone had arranged the light show for his enjoyment. Bleachers from which to enjoy the entertainment would have been appropriate. He folded his arms on the earth and placed his chin on them.

He felt himself lifted by the sight. He no longer felt trapped the unfairness of war as he heard the explosions of rockets adding a staccato under-theme to the majesty of the mountain’s destruction. The universe was telling him how inconsequential he and his yearning for fairness and freedom were. As the tracers flowed back and forth, he felt in rhythm with the night. He shook his head back and forth in the pure wonderment.

The show ended and the night passed. The ointment in Livingstone’s nose faded and the smell brought back the realities of war. No hordes fled from mountain. No waves of NVA troops drove into the encampment. A private relieved him at zero four-hundred hours and he slept until revile. The time came to move out. The men packed their belongings, attended their weapons, and met in formation. The Lieutenant inspected them, nodded, and shared their new orders. They would move west, away from the noxious odor, and toward a landing zone where they would join fresh units for new search and destroy patrols.

This finished, he ordered them into formation and pointed to Livingstone. “Take point,” he said.

The only thing that moved was the smoke still rising from the mountain. Only the smell from the village of death reminded them that life had once existed in that direction. Now, all was dead. The normal jungle sounds even fell in volume. The silence was broken when Livingston spoke. “Fuck you,” he said.

“What did you say, private?”

“I said fuck you.”

“Beg pardon?”

“If you want someone to take point, take it yourself.”

“Are you disobeying a direct order?”

“Goddamn right.”

The jungle sounds stopped completely. From the mountain, an audible explosion announced that the night’s work had not ended. The slow death of the mountain top would continue for days. The eyes of the entire platoon shifted to the Lieutenant. A battle of wills was in the offing, and soldiers take entertainment whenever and wherever they can find it. The Lieutenant glanced at the troops and then at Livingston. “Want to repeat what you just said?”

Livingstone didn’t flinch. “It’s not my turn,” he said. “Get someone else, or take point yourself.”

The wind increased and the smell was making the men nauseated. They could hear the other units moving.

“Baxter,” the Lieutenant yelled. “Take point.”

As the men assumed formation, the rain began to fall. The drops moved along the length of the platoon and then followed the edge of the jungle. The men started walking to somewhere. The rain increased as if trying to cleanse a small part of the world. Far off, the top of the mountain still smoked.

 

A Daughter of the 313^th

By Jimmie von Tungeln

 

            Ask Brenda von Tungeln why she decided, as a middle-aged woman, to attend a World War Two infantry reunion and she will answer that she did it for her dad. As his only child, she had always intended to take him to one of his regimental reunions, but things like growing up, becoming educated, pursuing a professional career, and getting married—to the author in 1972—forced postponement after postponement. The annual invitations piled up.

            “Finally, one year I just decided to do it,” she says. “They held the reunion in Pittsburg and I had never been there. So I signed up.”

            She never imagined the decision would lead her to new friends, a prolonged study of the history of the 313th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division, and an encounter with a lost moment of family history.

All this happened despite the fact that when she left for the reunion in the summer of 1999, her dad couldn’t even make the trip. He was suffering from the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.

            So what happens when a lone woman shows up at a convention filled with veterans, all of whom are old enough to be her father?

            “I knew it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find someone who actually knew my dad,” she says. “The 79^th Infantry Division had thousands of men at its peak. It contained battalions, regiments, companies, platoons, and squads. An individual soldier usually only knew the men in his squad. If a man was a replacement, the other squad members might not even remember him at all.”

            “I didn’t care though,” she adds. “I just wanted to meet as many people who might have known him as I could.”

            Robert Julius Cole might have lived out his life without ever venturing far from Lonoke County, Arkansas had not it been for the war. His only dream beyond the world of farming was the occasional thought, when nature proved particularly vicious, that he might someday get a more stable job “working at a filling station.” Arkansas summers have caused more than one farmer to dream of a different career.

Then World War Two happened.

He received his call for service in early 1944 and found himself in Texas training for the infantry. Arriving in Europe in August 1944, he joined A Company, of the 313^th Infantry Regiment as it headed across France.

The 79^th Division became known in the lexicon of World War Two History as “a fine attack division,” an honor among the highly honored.  Its members wore the Cross of Lorraine from service in World War I. Dormant for years thereafter, it was re-mobilized it 1942. After landing in Normandy on D-Day plus eight, it fought almost continually across France, Belgium, and Germany until war’s end.

            Afterwards, most units began annual reunions. By the time Brenda had decided to attend one, she could boast of being a minor historian of the 79th, partly from study and partly from the stories her dad told over the course of more than 50 years.

Thus resolved, she left her husband to look after things at home and her mom to look after her dad. She explained to him as best she could what she was doing. That proved difficult. He was no longer the strapping twenty-one year old that had landed in France in 1944, nor was he the lively story teller who graced every table with a tale or two, or three. He wasn’t even the gentle father who, after the war was over, came home, married, doted on his daughter, and refused ever to fire a gun again.

This time he just looked and nodded as she explained where she was going. Whether he understood or not lingers as a mystery of the cruelest type.

            A plane ride and taxi fare later, she checked into the convention hotel. She didn’t stay in her room long. Instead, she headed for the main lobby and began asking questions. She had things to do.

She had just started introducing herself to anyone standing still long enough when a man startled her with the simple statement: “I knew your dad.” To her further amazement, he added, “I have a Nazi flag at home that your dad and a bunch of us captured in 1944 and signed.”           The man was Jim O’Neil, from near Sacramento, California. He waded ashore at Normandy when he was barely 15.

            They have become friends, O’Neil, his wife Dorothy, and Brenda. They exchange news regularly by both regular and e-mail. And they see one another at the reunions.

The next time von Tungeln attended a reunion, she took her mother, Hazel Welch Cole. Jim O’Neil brought the flag that his squad had captured and signed. She has a photograph of her mom with the flag. It occupies a sacred place in her life. It rests beside a heart-wrenching Christmas Card from 1944, pre-printed with the silhouette of a soldier in a fox-hole and the cryptic words: “Somewhere in France.” It is signed in pencil simply: “Julius Cole.”

Each year, in a solemn ceremony, the survivors ring a bell for each of the men of the 313^th who died during the preceding year. The wives of the 313^th watch it through their own dimming eyes. Some men won’t receive the honor, though. Each reunion threatens to be the last, although some of the children and grandchildren are maintaining the tradition. The brave men who crossed the Rhine and stormed the Fatherland are too old to make the trip anymore. Like Brenda von Tungeln’s dad, all that will be left soon are the memories.

            When asked what she remembers most about him, she gives an odd answer.

            “His feet,” she says. “I remember his feet.  They froze in the Ardennes and he had trouble with them all his life.”

            Then she adds, “When I was a little girl I used to rub them on a winter’s evening. They would hurt him so bad.”

The last photograph taken of Julius Cole shows him leaning against a fence at his farm looking out over his pasture. No one will ever know what he was thinking, if anything, through the pitiless fog of Alzheimer’s. In the summer of 2000, they rang the bell for him at the 313^th Infantry reunion. Never a fan for those wearisome end-of-the-year “bragging letters” or overblown obituaries, his daughter simply mentioned, in the local notices, his family, his service with the 79^th, his Purple Heart, and his Combat Infantry Badge—so cherished by those who have earned it. He would have liked that.

During his final days, along with her mother, she hardly left his bedside, often rubbing his hands the way she used to rub his feet. Sometimes they would have to help restrain him when he would choose to “not go gently.” Sometimes they had to help clean up the messy side of advanced dementia. Above all, though, they had to watch this good man waste away. Unpleasant? Maybe, but they feel no regret.

That’s simply what the women of the 313^th do.

Hazel and Jim O'Neil with the flag
Julius signed in 1944.

Postscript: The Army disbanded the 79th Division when Germany surrendered. They transferred Julius to the First Infantry Division, The Big Red One. Had events forced the invasion of Japan, anyone who has studied World War II knows what unit would have constituted the first wave and this story would likely never had been written.

Sometimes visiting places from where your roots grew is like taking a calming dip in a pool of warm memories. It was for my sister, brother, and me yesterday.

 We started out from our home place, a site much altered from our youth. It once contained a small country grocery store with a home attached to it. Our parents bought it and opened for business on January 1, 1940. They reared the three of us there. It disappeared long ago with all the other country stores. To date, no politician is promising to bring them back along with the employment they provided.

 Driving south into what is lovingly referred to as “L.A.,” or Lower Arkansas, we passed a site where, in a small shack in 1918, a frail woman was struggling for her life after giving birth, somewhat prematurely, to her eighth child, a girl. The woman was so near death that the doctor laid the infant aside to die, and concentrated on saving the woman with, among another tools, Vick’s Salve, the WD-40 of the medical world at that time. It worked, lucky for us.

 The woman was our grandmother and the infant was our mother. This, and much of our family history, was provided by her oldest sister, Hallie Harris Harden, the matriarch of our clan, and a character of great enjoyment until her death at near 100 years of age. I thought of her as we passed a small country church, for I remembered the time I was driving her around and she pointed at it and announced, “There’s where Jesus saved me from going to hell, and your Uncle Carl saved me from being an old maid.” I’m not sure about the timing of the first event but the second occurred when she was 15 years old.

 Three years after my mother survived childbirth, her father died. My grandmother was left alone in a harsh rural environment with no means of support, and three young children in hand. Mother never talked much about those awful days except to relate the story of when the local church members acquired new curtains for its windows. My grandmother begged the castoffs from them and made underpants for the girls. My mother never forgot the day she fell on the playground and that embarrassing secret was revealed to a group of cruel schoolchildren. The horrible mask of poverty forms many faces.

 Life goes on. Not long after, the kids' older brother married the daughter of a widower whose wife had given birth to 13 children, and then died. The couple carried messages back and forth, and my grandmother ended up marrying the widower and caring for his children that were still at home. The son of one of those children is now Mayor of Mansfield, Arkansas and I see him from time to time. He never fails to say, almost with tears in his eyes, that my grandmother was the only grandmother he ever knew.

 We visited the gravesites where our grandparents are buried, near their fathers, one a veteran of the Confederacy and the other a veteran of the Union. The unit of the latter saved my hometown, Pine Bluff, from a Rebel assault and the city erected a small monument to it. The obituary of the former stated that he was a “good man who never took part in any of the neighborhood brawls.”

Don’t ask.

 It was a good day. One final surprise caused me to chuckle. Now first understand, my sister started out in her professional life punching data cards for the state’s electrical utility in the basement of a building in Pine Bluff. She ended it in an office near the top of a high-rise office building in Little Rock running a major department for that same company. She is a serious person, and highly respected as a professional by her former colleagues. She is considered a good person by all, and I doubt she would ever take part in a neighborhood brawl, if they have those where she lives. Did I mention that she is a serious person? We lovingly call her “The General.”

 Imagine my amusement when, as we passed over a railroad track near our old neighborhood, she began telling me how she and her girlfriends used to put bags on sticks, walk down those tracks, and pretend they were hoboes. What an image. Times reserved for memories are full of surprises like that.

 Overall, the day ended on a happy note to be filed in the “Ps” under “pleasant.”

 But … my sister a hobo? That still cracks me up. It really does.

 July 12, 2017

The Old Homeplace, gone forever.

 

THE DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT

By Jimmie vonTungeln

 Dedicated to an old friend and to our wives with the assurance that this is all absolutely, one hundred percent fictional except for the parts that really happened.

Part One 

            Having been encouraged by the canonization of the World War Two servicemen, the so-called “Greatest Generation,” I take this opportunity to place in print a few reminisces of my own experiences of a later date and time. I refer, of course, to the Vietnam era.

It doesn’t seem that it would be helpful to make comparisons. That’s best left for future generations. I might point out that it doesn’t much of a hero to be drafted into a popular war. To go voluntarily, on the other hand, into a dirty, embarrassing, sniveling, despised, and much regretted little mud-fight of a freedom mission, when even your old high school English teacher tells you that you are a chump to do so, takes a real man in my book.

            Of course at the time I wouldn’t have called it completely voluntary. Later listeners would invariably say, when I related how I wound up, in the middle of the night, cradling an M-16 rifle and sitting on top of a bunker a hundred yards out in the jungle south of DaNang, Republic of South Viet Nam: “Well after all, you enlisted willingly, didn’t you?”

            Not really. I only call myself a volunteer in these later times when it suits some purpose or other. I simply couldn’t think of any way out at the time that wouldn’t have embarrassed Mother. And a southern boy’s fear of his mother’s disdain is stronger than the fear of any mortal enemy.

            So, in what passed for “analytical-mode” in those days, I reasoned that the two physical places, in a military sense, most remote from either a rice paddy or a jungle were in an airplane or on a ship. They always say that ships are more forgiving of human error than planes, so I opted for the United States Navy. Besides, they offered the sexier uniforms. My main concern was that I would not have to offer the military any benefits from either my education or talents. I was real smart, even in those days.

            They, the Navy, were happy to see me, or at least they said so. It was somewhere around the first of June 1966 when the Draft Board tracked me down in San Francisco, California. I was living on Masonic, between Haight Street and the panhandle of Golden Gate Park a block over from Ashbury and having a hell of a good time. When they, the Navy, offered to sign me up and postpone my actual entry for six months, I jumped at the chance to get the Army off my back and trust that the war might end by the time I had to go. I have always placed a lot of faith in the healing nature of time. Time … anything that can cure a hangover should be embraced and not feared, or so it seems to me.

            No such luck. Six months eased by, like gray horses passing in a morning mist, and I was due. I was living in the company at the time of a young girl of few convictions and even fewer misgivings who had gone along on more than one free ride in her life. For the price of a car title, she agreed to accompany me to Arkansas posing as my wife, and they, the Navy, agreed to let me enter the adventure of my life from my home state.

            Tina was a rather tall person, somewhat flat-chested and big-hipped but oozing a full-lipped sensuality that would make a stranger stop her on Haight Street and ask if they didn’t belong to the same Existentialism Club. She wore her dark hair short because she loved to put on men’s clothes and hit the bars on Saturday night pretending to be gay. I didn’t know at the time if she was or not. Those distinctions were somewhat blurred in those days and in that place. Subsequent events suggested she was simply enjoying one of her many larks. But hell, who knows?

            “Takin’ any dope?” she asked, a few days before our scheduled departure. She tended to plan ahead when it came to recreation, a trait that I’m sure came in handy more than once. I studied on it for a moment and remembered that I had saved up a couple hundred dollars to buy a television set. Reasoning, correctly as I later found out, that they, the Navy, wouldn’t allow it in Boot Camp, I gave her the money and said to see what it would buy.

            It bought a lot, as it turned out, about four shoe boxes full if I remember correctly. We wrapped most of it as Christmas gifts and she hid the rest in a Kotex box and we took off for Arkansas in an old Rambler automobile that now belonged to her. It was years later I learned that those presents would have been first items searched had the car been search. Luckily, it wasn’t. We pressed on.  I was due to report in ten days and we had a couple of stops to make.

            I won’t bore the reader with a detailed account of the circuitous voyage to Arkansas. Well, actually I couldn’t if I wanted to for I simply don’t remember too much of it. I think we arrived in my hometown with two of the shoeboxes still intact. How we escaped prison I will never know except that Tina, that was her name, was the most accomplished and believable liar of the last century. She could have gotten caught in bed with the Police Chief’s son and convinced the world that she was simply a religious missionary going out of her way to give testimony. She was that good. I kid you not.

            To the contrary, I was awful at it, lying that is. I don’t think Mother ever really believed we were married, so naturally she wouldn’t have believed the story I made up later, a good one but amateurish by Tina’s standards, describing the “Dear John” letter and subsequent divorce. When Mothers are simply suspicious, they ask for some proof. When they know you are bullshitting them, they pretend to go along, making you feel even more crappy about it.

            My Dad didn’t talk about it much at all. He was from an old German family, aristocracy back in the old country we are told. After coming to America the family had pretty much minded its own business and had assumed that the federal government would have the common decency to do the same. This extended to the draft board.

            “It ain’t none of our concern,” was all he said. “Why are you going in when it ain’t none of our concern?” He was, of course, referring to the Vietnam War.

He didn’t exactly encourage active avoidance. He simply felt that if you communicated effectively enough, the government would sense your lack of interest and leave you alone. Only one member of the family had ever failed in this approach, an older uncle who, finding no other way out, waited until he got in the Army and then wet the bed every night until the finally gave him a medical discharge. That seemed to me a little drastic.

            Anyway, we hung around the old home for a few days and Tina got ready to take me to the Induction Center. That’s when I heard the news that Michael D, an old friend from college was in town.

            Now Michael D was a man who proved the old adage that everyone is famous for something. In his case, it was a, mythical some say, sexual technique quite infamous in our hometown. Simply called “A Turtle,” it was more whispered about than openly practiced. I only know of it by general description and through the claims of its sexual enslavement of females. I would have doubted Michael D’s reported mastery of it had I not been a first-hand witness, not to the act itself but to its aftereffects, on a girl who, at the time was engaged and hopelessly in love with a good friend of ours, a true madman. I offer no further details except that it caused an almost irreparable rift in the engagement and nearly cost Michael D. his life.

            That was during our earlier days. Now he was a soldier. As he later explained, his first attempt at higher education ended when, “Inertia overtook me.” Thereafter Michael D had taken a mutually agreeable break from our state university. While cruising the college town bars, perhaps looking for potential Turtle victims, he met an army recruiter named Sergeant Goforth. I am not making this part up. With a name like that, it only took a few cold beers to convince Michael D. that he had a new home waiting in the Green Berets. He was a little impulsive like that.

            So he had enlisted and completed Officer’s Training School by the time I was being hauled into the United States Navy. They, the Army, had given him a few days leave prior to his next duty assignment. The convergence of forces that placed us in our hometown on that same night still seems scary. But it happened just that way.

            Tina got excited. At the time I had no idea why. So instead of spending a horrible evening at my parents’ house wilting under their accusing stares, we decided to make a night of it.

            Michael D. was typically eloquent when he heard my voice on the phone and I knew the Army hadn’t changed him. “You gotta be shittin’ me!” This had been his response to most revelations for as long as I had known him. He was, I guess one could say, an ebullient cynic. A brief explanation and he was ready for whatever. As I mentioned, he was a little impulsive.

            I packed the few things they, the Navy, had said to bring to Boot Camp and said goodbye to my family. They were sulking so it wasn’t particularly emotional. They were used to my going away on adventures by now and, besides, had two more children who had never shown the least inclination to leave town. A year later, I would have the real farewell, with Mother standing at the back door, hand to her mouth in a Dorothea Lange pose and I in my sailor suit by then and headed for six weeks weapons training for Naval Security Forces, a real man headed for a real man’s war with a real Mother fighting back tears at the farmhouse door. It was a real suckass moment but months in the future. We still had tonight to go.

Next: The Night Begins

 THE ROOTS THAT CLUTCH

By Jimmie von Tungeln

This day showed promise. Sheila knew it when she saw a pair of turtle doves courting in a tree before she started to school. Their soft cooing caught her attention and she stopped to watch the male nuzzle the female in the morning fog. She watched quietly as their heads bobbed in ancient ritual. In the mist the two appeared as a single gray organism, joined in an almost musical rhythm. Sheila bobbed her own head, smiled once and then sailed a rock into them. It caught one squarely in the chest—the first direct hit of her life.

"Be damned," she said as she watched feathers drift to the ground, following the body in a slow, orbiting motion.

"Why'd you want to do that?" Robert asked. He jumped a ditch bordering a cotton field, swinging a rusty lard bucket that carried a small lunch for him and Sheila. “Doves is in The Bible."

            "Don't care," his sister said. "I'll kill 'em ever by god chanct I get."

"That don't hardly seem right," Robert said. Then his attention was caught by a blur on a far away county road. It was an automobile and he stopped to stare.

"Model A, I'll bet,” He said. “Ford Motor Company."

“Who cares?" was Sheila's answer as she scanned the fencerow for birds, a well balanced rock in hand. Straining, she failed to see the Hinson boys approaching.

           "Ya'll ain't pickin' cotton today?" asked Timmy, the older of the two as they joined the others. He also carried a worn and much dented lard bucket, hanging at his side like a burden of the world thrust upon the young.

           "Mamma said cotton still ain't opened up on account of the rain. So she said we might as well go to school. Papa may hire some hands to help us." Then she said "I kilt a bird."

           "You ain't never," said Roland, the younger. "Girls can't hit no bird, can they Robert?'

           "She oughten not to have done it but she did," Robert said and then asked "Know what makes an automobile run?”

           "Motor, I reckon." said Timmy with caution, looking at Robert sideways. "Ain't that right?"

           "It's internal combustion. That's what does it. They say that someday we'll all have one. Everybody in the world will have one...their own car to go places in. Can you picture that?"

           “Golly snot," said Roland, He was struggling with that image. He had trouble seeing himself even riding in a motor car, much less driving one. He looked to Sheila for validation but, seeing none, turned back to Robert.

           "Could I ride one to your house any time I wanted to?

           "Heck, you could drive it to Little Rock," said Robert.

           "Golly snot," said Roland.

           "I ain't havin'one," said Sheila. The conversation had strayed too far from her, a situation that she began to correct the way a person might direct a stray calf back into a herd. "My husband will have a buggy with a fine red mare to match my hair. He'll take me anywhere I tell him to, even Little Rock." 

           "But them cars will pass you right up," said Timmy absentmindedly, immediately regretting it as Sheila twirled upon him with the fury of one of those storms that descend sharp and wild, from time to time, upon the helpless delta. She was thin, but two inches taller than the boy and she swelled above him.

           "Well I wouldn't by-god worry about it if I was you!"

           "No, no I won't," Timmy said, and he dropped several steps behind the group.

           They walked in silence for awhile, the Hinsons hoping for Sheila's wrath to subside while Robert contemplated the mysteries of the internal combustion engine.

           Finally he looked up. "I'm sure gonna have me one."

           "You're a real dope," said Sheila.

           Robert didn't respond. He felt the cough coming and he needed his energy. He had spotted something on the edge of the ditch and was forcing himself to keep from looking at it directly. He turned to Timmie and asked him to hold the lunch bucket.

           "A dope like you couldn't ever afford a pair of mules, much less an automobile", Sheila said, hoping for continuity.

           "Look what I found", said Robert. He had leaped into the tall grass suddenly and claimed his prize: a long length of chain dropped from a wagon or bounced from a truck and laying unmissed by its owner.

           "I saw it first," cried Sheila. "Give it here."

           "We'll use it for the bridge," said Robert, ignoring Sheila. "This is what we need." Then he began to cough.

           "That's what you get," said Sheila. "You know you ain't supposed to get excited."

           Robert didn't answered and the coughs came deeper from his lungs as he struggled to stand erect.

           "Golly Robert, you sound worse than ever," said Roland.

           "I'm okay," Robert said as he knelt on one knee next to his new belonging and wheezed, fighting the pain. Finally catching his breath, he added, "Let's hurry and get to the bayou. We got time to make some progress today."

            “A brand new chain,” said Roland. “Golly snot.”

           "I'm gonna bust you up if you say that again," said Sheila.

           The four of them started off down the road.

           There were two routes leading to school, each leading through fields that today drooped with unopened bolls of cotton needing to be picked but waiting as the rains persevered day after day. Today a soft grey mist covered the fields and the world seemed mysterious and unchanging as the four moved through it. Soon they would be at the turning off place.

The main road to the school passed the small farms that covered the delta like the squares on a giant quilt. It served as a collector for the minor roads, paths, and finally trails that connected each farm with the world. It, itself, connected to the state road on which, it was said, a person could go all the way to Memphis.

The school was a simple white building sited on a small patch stolen from the corner of a cotton field. It sat just beyond a bridge that crossed a wide bayou in a low spot too wet for farming. The road made a wide arc toward the bridge whose builders had sought the narrowest crossing.

           The other way ran straight on a tangent to the old road led directly to the school across a wide stretch of bayou. It could only serve in the dry months since it crossed a bayou too deep to be forded during wet weather. Created by the impatience of youth, it was hardly more than a path. It was said that the children favored it more for the adventure of the crossing than for the short distance it saved.

           The two paths diverged just past the home of Fate Johnson and as the four came near, Sheila attacked.

           "You ain't speaking to them people today are you?"

           "I might," said Robert.

           "I'll tell; you know what Mama said. Why you want to anyway?"

           "They ain't hurtin' anybody, they just like to wave at us, that's all."

           "They's black and it ain't right. They don't know us."

            “You may not know them but I do.” 

“I told Mama that you ate their food. She said for you not to and for you not to be talkin' to them."

"They ain't hurtin' anybody, they just want to be friendly."

"Somebody told me they just got married," said Timmy.

"That's crazy", said Sheila, "They's colored."

"They get married too", said Timmy, defensively.

"But not like everybody else, do they?" asked Roland.

"No, they do every thing different from us", Sheila said, silencing Roland with a glare so severe that he felt its force hot upon his face. He stumbled to the rear and walked quietly.

Robert stared ahead, thinking of how, with the addition of the chain, they could complete a bridge across the bayou.

"I didn't know they got married like white people do," said Roland. "Do they really, Robert?"

"Shut up," Robert said.

            He walked for some time and then he realized that Timmy Hinson was walking beside him. Sheila and Roland walked a few yards ahead. Tommy kicked a dirt clod into the ditch and looked at Robert. He held the chain in his hand and it dragged behind them in the muddy road.

            “Do you really know them people?” he asked.

            “I reckon I do.”

            “How?”

            “That man’s daddy used to work for mine sometimes. I didn’t know him until one day he yelled at me when I was riding our mare by here.

"Mamma says you keep hangin' out with coloreds, you start actin' like one," Sheila yelled back.

            Robert ignored her and continued. “What he wanted me to do was let him milk our mare. He said that a mare’s milk could cure a baby of the whooping cough and that his little brother was about to die of it. I didn’t see any harm that could come to it and he looked like he was about to cry. So I let him. I can’t see no harm in helpin’ anyone if you can.”

            “Golly snot,” Timmy said. “I never heard of such in my life.”

            “Anyway, he was thankful. He said the baby would be fine now, and that it would be my baby from here on. I just told him not to tell my daddy I let him. You know what?”

            “What?” Timmy asked.

            “It worked. He told me later,” he said and walked a little farther. “A real mystery… knowin’ that could come in handy some day.”

            “Is that why him and his wife do it?”

            “Do what?”

            “Run out on the porch and wave every time you come by?”

            “No, I just think they get lonesome.”

            Robert looked up in time to see Sheila walking back towards them.

            "They're waitin' on you and you better not talk to them today. And don't eat nothin' they offer you. We got food."

"Shut up," Robert said again. "Timmy, when we get to the bayou, we'll tie this chain to that big log and we can all four pull it down to the water. That'll finish the bridge."

"Don't you look at them Robert. If they got a biscuit, you don't eat it. You just keep walkin'."

Robert wanted to stop and speak but as he reached the corner of their fence, his breath failed and he felt the coughing coming again. From the corner of his eye, he saw the young couple sitting on their porch as always, the man waiting for the wagon that would take him to the field if the rains stopped and the woman waiting with him to wave at the children.

Walking without surrendering to the cough took the last measure of Robert's effort. He took each step with a resolution that exacted full payment in effort and he stared ahead. He could think of nothing but the pain and effort of breathing.

Sheila watched from the corner of her eye, her strength and determination ready. When Robert stumbled, she darted but he regained his footing and concentrated his entire consciousness on holding the chain.

The young couple held hands and waited, smiling and eager.

Only this morning there would be no greeting. There would be no chance to offer their gift. The boy stared straight ahead as he walked by, dragging a chain and gasping for breath. He tossed a hand at them but just barely, weakly. The girl walked backward in front, waiting to grab the chain if he faltered or turned to look at the couple. She stared at them victoriously, and the two younger boys followed obediently behind. They were gone quickly.

"I'll be," the husband said. Then he stood up, turned, and walked through the dark door of the house, leaving his wife alone on the porch as the soft rain began falling again over the fields.

"You all right?" Timmy asked.

"I'll be fine, just leave me alone."

"Last one to the bayou's a nigger baby," said Sheila, and she starting running, first along the road and then veering along the path that led to the trees that bordered the water. Roland started after her and then Timmy, who first checked to see if Robert was coming. Robert continued to walk, dragging the chain and struggling to breathe. The rain framed a curtain before him and he walked through it into the woods.

The place was quiet and seemed of another place and time to Robert. Giant oak trees towered above the lesser vegetation. Even in the middle of summer it would be a dark, sunless place and never quite dry. The forest floor was smooth with the tracks of millennia buried beneath its mud. It seemed as if he had entered a large, dark building. It was a mysterious place, suitable only for gathering, communing, and, today, planning.

When he reached the edge of the water, the others were gone. They had followed one on the many paths, some made by animals, and others by people, that followed the edge of the bayou. They were looking for wood - logs, limbs, pieces of broken lumber - that they could use to finish the bridge.

Robert sat on the stump of an ancient cedar and coiled the chain at his feet. He watched the flow of water and knew that it was higher, and faster, than before. He watched eddies as they sucked and whirled in the coffee brown water and he knew the flow was unstoppable.

The spot where he sat, the spot where they had chosen to work, had once been a large grove but the bayou had shifted over the years and now ran in a narrow course between the spreading trees. It was the right place to build a bridge, he was thinking, even though the water was too high today. He began to sing – aloud, but just barely and to himself, as the waters rolled by.

           "On the Jerico road....there's room for just two,

           "No more and no less....just Jesus and you."

           Roland had returned and was standing behind Robert now, waiting and watching as if he didn't quite belong in what was going on. Finally, hearing the others coming, he spoke.

           "How long we got to work today?'

           "Robert finished a verse and then replied, "Prolly half and hour. We'll have time to go back around the other way if we start when we hear the first bell sound."

           "We won’t finish today?"

           "No, not today, water's too high," and he started to sing again.

           "Oh brother to you ... this message I bring

           "Though hope may be gone ... he'll cause you to sing.

           "At Jesus' command ... sin's shackles will fall.

           "On the Jerico road ... will you answer his call?"

           "Shut up that goddam singing," Sheila was shouting as she and Timmy returned from upstream. "Let's get this stupid bridge built so I don't have to walk so far .... how much time we got?"

           "Not much," said Robert. "You find any wood?"

           "You dang sure didn't," she screamed, and then addressing the group "We don't need any more wood."

           "Why?" asked Timmy.

           "I figured out a new way since we found the chain."

           "Robert found the chain," said Roland.

           "It's half mine and I know how to finish the bridge with it," said Sheila. "You piss ants gonna help or not?"

           Robert still sat on the cedar stump with his feet resting on the coiled chain.

           "We'll finish next week," he said. "Water's too high today."

           "We'll wrap the chain around this tree here and tie the other end to that one there", said Sheila. "Then we'll push it over and it'll fall upstream. That'll stop the water 'til we finish," and she leaned against a tall, full, cedar whose roots were so damaged from erosion that it leaned far out over the stream.

           "Golly snot," said Roland, "That might work."

           "Damn right it'll work. Now let's get busy." Sheila turned toward Robert and waited.

           "We'll build it like we planned...water's too high today," Robert said and as he said it, he felt something terrible begin deep in his body and move toward his chest.

           Sheila took a step toward him. "You don't even have to help, just give me the chain and you can watch us."

           "We'll build it like we…," Robert started, but he never finished. The sickness sprang into his lungs and turned his world into a red nightmare. He dropped from the stump onto his knees through the redness saw the chain snake toward Sheila's hand and then knew it was in her hand and following her like an obedient child. Then he could see nothing but the redness and feel nothing but pain.

           When the coughing stopped, he was still weak, but managed to stand, and then to sit on the stump. He watched, wanting to speak but not able. In his mind spun the secret formulas and vectors that defined the danger but when he tried to distill, to coalesce, the thoughts into words they swirled and become part of the mist that rose from the spinning brown waters of the bayou.

           He watched helplessly as Timmy and Roland secured both ends of the chain and he forced damp air into his lungs desperately while Sheila directed the boys.

           "Goddamit hurry up!" she yelled as she began to push against the leaning tree as if her energy would complete in that moment the process that erosion had been working for years. She hurled herself against the tree again and again as Timmy and Roland completed the securing of the chain. "Help me", she screamed and the boys ran over to join the frantic assault.

           "That tree won't fall", Robert started to say but before he had finished, Sheila conceived another plan.

           "Timmy, get your ass up that tree."

           "What?"

           "You get up the tree and we'll push from here. When it starts to give, slide down and we'll catch you."

           "Why me?'

           "You're the heaviest, stupid."

           "I ain't gonna."

           "Yes, by God, you're gonna!" and with this she shoved him backwards into the muddy bank where he sat looking, alternatively, at her and Robert, waiting for the decision that he knew he deserved, knew was waiting, and knew that he feared in the very depths of his heart.

           "Don't", came softly from Robert, not spoken as much as aspirated into the mist where it lay without force or power.

           "You heard me damn it", said Sheila and the words flashed within the grove like the hiss and crackle of lightening.

           Timmy stood slowly and walked toward the tree.

           "You’re one of the saints now, brother," said Sheila proudly. "You just get it started and watch out!"

           "Timmy, don't", said Robert as the other boy inched his way up the tree.

           Sheila twirled upon him. "Shut the hell up!" Then she turned and joined Roland as they began to push against the base of the tree.

           "Roll Jordan roll", she began to yell as she pushed and then Roland joined her.

           "Roll Jordan roll," they yelled.

           "Roll Jordan roll."

           "Roll Jordan roll."

           Robert stood up now and walked toward them. He was only a few feet away when he heard the crack of the roots giving way and the sound of Timmy’s screaming.

           "Hold on Timmy", Robert yelled and as time slowed he formed the arc of the tree in his mind and calculated its destination. As the tree fell, he spun in a half circle and ran obliquely to its base, past the horrified faces of Sheila and Roland and then into the sliding waters of the bayou as the tree, and Timmy, hit the water at once in an brown liquid explosion of water, tree, and boy.

           Timmy sank completely beneath the water as the tree crashed in a wild boil, but then Robert saw him surface as the trunk of the tree sprang back straight. Timmy held to the very end of the branches as if taking some ride. His hair was plastered on his forehead and Robert noticed bubbles forming around his nose. By some miracle, Robert thought, his head stayed just above water.

           "Don't move," Robert yelled and began to slide his way further into the water which was becoming more turbulent as it sped into the tree. Just beyond his reach he could see Timmy and it seemed to Robert that his eyes were bulging so they might pop from his face.

           "Hold on, I'm almost there." To Robert's great relief, the bed of the stream did not fall steeply at this spot, and he was soon able to grab the boy's hand and begin to work him toward the bank.

           "The chain held," said Sheila as Robert and Timmy reached the edge of the bayou. "Roland, help your brother out of the water."

           "Golly snot", said Roland.

           "Just shut up, the both of you," said Robert as he and Timmy walked up the bank. The bank was wet and slippery and the younger boy stumbled several times as Robert helped him forward. Timmy was numb and he stared straight ahead as if led by some light that the others didn't see.

           "I didn't wanna," he said, "She made me," and for the first time his fear found expression and he began to cry, the tears marking a trail on his face through the brown mud of the bayou. "She made me do it Robert. I didn't wanna."

           "It's okay," said Robert, leading him farther away from the other two. "Don't let them see you cry," and he and the other walked out of the darkness of the woods back towards the main road.

           "It's time for school to start," shouted Sheila from behind them. "Where ya'll goin'?"

           Neither Robert nor Timmy answered. He removed his coat, wet nearly to the chest, and covered the younger as they started home.

           Sheila's screaming became fainter and more distant with each step. "By God you tell 'em he fell in. You'll be sorry if you don't." Robert heard Sheila but neither he nor Timmy acknowledged her commands. "Me and Roland are goin' on - you mind what I said." Then they couldn't hear her anymore.

           They walked back slowly, the two of them. The soft rain fell again upon the fields of cotton rotting for lack of sun and the fields lay damp and dying in the dullness of the delta. They passed Fate Johnson's house again but this time there would be neither smile nor wave. Those were gone now and so were the plans for a bridge across the bayou. Soon they would be home and they expected heat and dry clothes there. But for now the cold settled into them like a vapor. The trip seemed endless.

           The younger boy still cried softly. As he walked he looked at Robert through his tears as if a veil had been pierced in the fall and the crash and he mourned that he could not make it never have happened.

           "I didn't wanna, she made me."

           "I know," said Robert. "You go ahead and cry because of it if you want to," and he put his arm around Timmy's shoulder. In the direction of the Hinson home he saw a thin slice of blue sky emerge from the clouds. As they walked, he began to sing:

           "On the Jerico Road,

           "There's room for just two,

           "No more and no less

           "Just Jesus and you."