Tales From The South

 

My Short Life of Crime

By Jimmie von Tungeln

 My father decided, the year I turned fifteen, that a summer job would provide just the catalyst through which to redirect me from a life of idle languor to one of resolute achievement. He was, he assured me, there to help. Little did he know that his efforts would nearly veer me into a life of crime.

It happened this way. Daddy procured for me a job at a “filling station” in downtown Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was during the late 1950s and life was slow and predictable, particularly in the summer months. The station employed two full-time attendants plus me and a college student, the son of a multi-millionaire cotton farmer, a father who also saw work as curative. The college kid arrived at work each morning in a brand new Corvette Stingray that probably cost more than the annual salary of one of the regular workers. My sister dropped me off on her way to work at a bank in the family car, an old purple Pontiac my classmates dubbed “The Purple People-eater.” Life can be sorrowful for a high school kid with a color-blind father.

Social disparity aside, we were a happy crew. When we weren’t serving customers, we washed cars, the college kid and I. When there were no cars to wash, we greased vehicles that were hoisted on racks like kings on their thrones. When there were no cars to grease, we learned things that would, the older guys assured us, stand us in good stead in later life—like shooting craps, doing card tricks, and learning how to spot girls who lived “on the spicy side of life.” What, one might ask, could go wrong?

It had to do with the FBI.

Two Special Agents, both bachelors (I think maybe all the agents were then) roomed in a boarding house two blocks from the station. It was our privilege to maintain their vehicle, a powerful Ford, in peak condition from which to fight crime, ferret out the Communists lurking in Pine Bluff, and keep the region safe.

The agents left that car in one of our vehicle bays at night and that is where the trouble started.

During the day, the car sat on the street, ready for action in the event of a Communist uprising or a chase after known criminals. It came to pass that it was my lot one hot summer afternoon to move the vehicle from the daytime spot to the vehicle bay. Like a good scout, I drove the car into the bay, left the key in the ignition as I had been taught to do and, having been told not to forget to close the bay door, followed that instruction. Then I was careful to lock the bay from the inside.

By exhibiting such a high level of professionalism, I could already visualize being accepted as a Special Agent myself, with all the glory that such a life promised. Certainly I would achieve a grander post than a sleepy Southern town, maybe New York. Just wait.

What no one had told me was that, due to a lack of criminal activity and the sleepy nature of our city, the station owner had agreed that the vehicle bay door wouldn’t be locked at night, just closed. This presupposed that nobody would be stupid enough to prowl around where an FBI vehicle was parked.

Wouldn’t you know it? That night, the only bank robbery that I remember occurring during my entire time of growing up occurred. It was in a little farming town with a branch bank some thirty or so miles away.

I knew nothing about this until I slammed the door on “Old Purple” next morning, ending some argument with my sister, and walked into the station.

Somber can’t describe it. All three of my comrades were leaning against a counter looking at me as if I were carrying a violin case and a copy of Das Kapital. I nodded but not a single one of them nodded back. They just stared. Finally the one we called Boss spoke.

“Where were you last night?”

“Me? At home.”

“Can anyone prove that?”

I knitted my brow. What business was that of his? “Sure, the family. Why?”

“What time did they go to bed?”

He knew what time my parents went to bed. “With the chickens,” as they say down South.

“Your sister there?”

“No, she was on a date.”

“Hmm,” he said. “You better get your story straight.”

“My story?”

“Your story.”

“What,” I said, “on earth are you talking about?”

“Somebody robbed the bank at Sherrill last night, just as they were closing.”

“Really?”

“Really. Guess what else happened?”

“What?”

“Somebody locked the FBI car in the bay here and the FBI guys had to walk all the way back home and get the key or they might have gotten over there in time to catch the robbers.”

The weight of the world began to lower on me like one of our fully loaded vehicle hoists. I said nothing.

“Don’t leave,” Boss said.

“What do you mean, don’t leave?”

“The agents want to take you in for questioning when they get back.”

“Questioning? Why?”

He looked at me as if I had just asked where sunlight originated. “Because you are the one who locked the FBI car in the bay.”

I couldn’t speak. I tried but my vocal chords just made a little squeaking sound like a screen door being opened on a hot summer day.

“They are pretty sure,” Boss said, “that you were in on it.”

Robinson Crusoe, on first reaching shore, could not have felt more abandoned and alone than I did at that moment.

“Don’t worry,” the college kid said. “We won’t get to listen to them.”

I finally found my voice. “Listen to them what?” I said, a half tone below “High-C.”

“Interrogate you,” he said in a grave voice honed by years of hazing fraternity pledges. “They are going to take you to the Police Station. That way they can just go ahead and lock you up if they decide to.”

“Lock me up for what?”

Boss said, “Aiding in a bank job is a pretty serious offense.” He told me that he had assured the agents that all his employees knew not to lock the bay at night. Mine was clearly a renegade action. With that, they all found something to do that didn’t include me. I moseyed around, bumping into things, until I finally found a quiet place to sit and await my doom.

Maybe prison wasn’t so bad, I thought. Maybe I could learn to sing there. Elvis did in some movie. Or maybe I could escape. As the minutes evaporated, so did my options, until only dark despair remained. Then I heard the sound.

It was the dark rumble of the FBI car’s powerful engine. The car came into view, lumbered alongside a gas pump, and stopped. It didn’t occur to me to attend it until I looked around and saw nobody else in sight. I was alone. The agent driving honked and it evoked the sound of a large creaking door closing on my life. I wandered out.

The driver rolled down the window and smiled. “Hey sport,” he said. “We drove this old gal a piece today so fill her up.”

“Fill her up?”

“Fill her up, and check the oil.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Anything else?” I would get this thing over with, once and for all.

“Windshield’s dusty,” he said. “Oh…” Here it came. I froze. “They forgot to tell you but you don’t lock that bay door at night. Saves us some time and trouble.” With that, he turned to the other agent and began to compare notes. I moved to the gas pump.

As the pump hummed to life, my life hummed afresh. I even whistled. Then I saw three heads peer from the back of the station, laughing like they might never have another chance. I squeezed the pump handle like it was the hand of a lover, took in the smell of gasoline as if were the scent of roses, smiled at the three guys, and nodded. That was a good one, all right.

 

MEMORIES

 

THE QUIET WOMAN

A True Story of the Vietnam Era

By Jimmie von Tungeln

             If the old woman hadn’t come on after the stripper, things might have started a little smoother. After all, who would want to follow a tall, dark Eurasian woman who took off nearly everything she had on in front of a thousand horny service men? And I do mean all she had on, except for a tiny strip of gauze across her bosom and a triangular patch covering her “Forbidden Garden.” Tony Grant would claim the next day, “I swear I could almost see nipples from where I was sitting.” The USO waltzed out some weird acts back in those days, some deliberately designed, it seemed, to drive men crazy. The generals allowed it and then wondered why men were so hard to control out in the jungle.

            Anyway, the stripper was finished. She wasn’t coming back out. It would have been dangerous, too much heat and too much beer. This was an enlisted men’s club in the I-Corp and not a gentleman’s joint in Manhattan. The next act better damned sure be a good one though. Feelings were running high. A half-decent rock and roll band would have been nice, anyone who could do a passable version of the Vietnam Vets’ National Anthem: “We’ve Got To Get Out of This Place.”

            But no. Out walks this tiny woman of indeterminate age, at least fifty. She wore a long sequined black dress that fell from her tiny shoulders almost to the floor. Her hair was short and showed some signs of gray. Cheap-looking earrings hung nearly to her shoulders. Her makeup looked as if it had been applied by a first-week beauty school student. Christ almighty!

Tiny and aged as she was, though, she had spunk. She walked up to the mike like she was at Carnegie Hall and waited for her piano player to get seated. The place was quiet for a moment, from sheer disbelief I suspect.

            Then the rumbling started and you could here someone yelling for the stripper to come back out. I heard a Grunt scream, “Get that old bag out of here.”

            The shouts of disapproval were so loud that only those in the first couple of rows could hear her when she said, “I know I can’t compete with that last act. I only know a few old songs, some Irish and some not. Maybe you’ll enjoy one or two of them.”

            With that, the piano hit a strong, commanding chord, and from that frail tiny body soared a sound so linear and pure that one could imagine it piercing the back wall of the club and flying straight into the jungle and beyond.”

“Over in Killarney
Many years ago,
My Mother sang a song to me
In tones so sweet and low.”

The sounds emerging from that ancient (to us at least, young fools that we were) face were so strange and haunting that those nearest the stage hushed immediately and this allowed the full force of her voice to carry further.

“Just a simple little ditty,
In her good old Irish way,
And l'd give the world if she could sing
That song to me this day.”

A wave of silence undulated across the room as the voice filled it with an assurance formed, no doubt, by many years of knocking about places with forgettable names and long-forgotten faces.

"Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don't you cry!
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that's an Irish lullaby."

            By this time her voice was challenged only by the soft movement of hands moving cans of beer and heads turning to watch. She finished the song and, in perfect timing, the piano player led her into “My Wild Irish Rose.” A few in the crowd began to move with the music. Some even hummed along with the song. She finished it and looked at the crowd and smiled. It was sort of an impish smile if you can imagine. Then she dropped a shoulder, thrust a bony hip toward us, and pointed a blue-veined foot directly at those in the front row.

“I hate to see, that evening sun go down.”

            The piano player supported her with a sweeping blues chord and she was off. Somehow she didn’t seem as old as she had when she started. The crowd just watched in disbelieving approval. She finished this number and than stopped and looked us over as if to say, “What do you think now, boys?”

Now these weren’t college boys or Irish rovers. Twenty-four hours earlier some of them had been killing Viet Cong, unsuspecting villagers, or water buffaloes, anything that got in their way. But their minds sure weren’t on killing now. The applause started in the front and moved over us like a rolling artillery barrage. The building shook like it might fall at any moment. She just kept singing.

            Who can remember what all she performed that night? It seemed over before it started. Each time she finished a song, the room erupted and hundreds of beer cans pounded on tables. As she came out for her third encore, she thanked us and we knew we would never hear her sing again. Those USO shows moved around quickly and we were only there for “365 and a wake-up.”

            “I’ll leave you with this, for that special one back home,” she said and looked at the floor as if it had some secret message written on it. Raising her head, she looked at each one of us and smiled.

            “I’ll be seeing you,” she sang.

            “In all those old familiar places.”

            You didn’t dare look around at a goddam soul for you knew you were about to start bawling and then they would too. We couldn’t cry, though. Hell, we were supposed to be killers. And tomorrow we might be. Not tonight, though. Tonight we were just a bunch of homesick boys enjoying a moment of peace in a world that seemed to have forgotten about us.

“In that small cafe …that park across the way…”

Life does have its moments. I’ve never forgotten that one.

 

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CRIME

A short recounting of the time I almost went to prison, or thought so. To may friends in my home town, this happened at the old Lion Oil Station at Fifth and Pine and is true best I remember.

My father decided, the year I turned fifteen, that a summer job would provide just the catalyst through which to redirect me from a life of idle languor to one of resolute achievement. He was, he assured me, there to help. Little did he know that his efforts would nearly veer me into a life of crime.

It happened this way. Daddy procured for me a job at a “filling station” in downtown Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was during the late 1950s and life was slow and predictable, particularly in the summer months. The station employed two full-time attendants plus me and a college student, the son of a multi-millionaire cotton farmer, a father who also saw work as curative. The college kid arrived at work each morning in a brand new Corvette Stingray that probably cost more than the annual salary of one of the regular workers. My sister dropped me off on her way to work at a bank in the family car, an old purple Pontiac my classmates dubbed “The Purple People-eater.” Life can be sorrowful for a high school kid with a color-blind father.

Social disparity aside, we were a happy crew. When we weren’t serving customers, we washed cars, the college kid and I. When there were no cars to wash, we greased vehicles that were hoisted on racks like kings on their thrones. When there were no cars to grease, we learned things that would, the older guys assured us, stand us in good stead in later life—like shooting craps, doing card tricks, and learning how to spot girls who lived “on the spicy side of life.” What, one might ask, could go wrong?

It had to do with the FBI.

Two Special Agents, both bachelors (I think maybe all the agents were then) roomed in a boarding house two blocks from the station. It was our privilege to maintain their vehicle, a powerful Ford, in peak condition from which to fight crime, ferret out the Communists lurking in Pine Bluff, and keep the region safe.

The agents left that car in one of our vehicle bays at night and that is where the trouble started.

During the day, the car sat on the street, ready for action in the event of a Communist uprising or a chase after known criminals. It came to pass that it was my lot one hot summer afternoon to move the vehicle from the daytime spot to the vehicle bay. Like a good scout, I drove the car into the bay, left the key in the ignition as I had been taught to do and, having been told not to forget to close the bay door, followed that instruction. Then I was careful to lock the bay from the inside.

By exhibiting such a high level of professionalism, I could already visualize being accepted as a Special Agent myself, with all the glory that such a life promised. Certainly I would achieve a grander post than a sleepy Southern town, maybe New York. Just wait.

What no one had told me was that, due to a lack of criminal activity and the sleepy nature of our city, the station owner had agreed that the vehicle bay door wouldn’t be locked at night, just closed. This presupposed that nobody would be stupid enough to prowl around where an FBI vehicle was parked.

Wouldn’t you know it? That night, the only bank robbery that I remember occurring during my entire time of growing up occurred. It was in a little farming town with a branch bank some thirty or so miles away.

I knew nothing about this until I slammed the door on “Old Purple” next morning, ending some argument with my sister, and walked into the station.

Somber can’t describe it. All three of my comrades were leaning against a counter looking at me as if I were carrying a violin case and a copy of Das Kapital. I nodded but not a single one of them nodded back. They just stared. Finally the one we called Boss spoke.

“Where were you last night?”

“Me? At home.”

“Can anyone prove that?”

I knitted my brow. What business was that of his? “Sure, the family. Why?”

“What time did they go to bed?”

He knew what time my parents went to bed. “With the chickens,” as they say down South.

“Your sister there?”

“No, she was on a date.”

“Hmm,” he said. “You better get your story straight.”

“My story?”

“Your story.”

“What,” I said, “on earth are you talking about?”

“Somebody robbed the bank at Sherrill last night, just as they were closing.”

“Really?”

“Really. Guess what else happened?”

“What?”

“Somebody locked the FBI car in the bay here and the FBI guys had to walk all the way back home and get the key or they might have gotten over there in time to catch the robbers.”

The weight of the world began to lower on me like one of our fully loaded vehicle hoists. I said nothing.

“Don’t leave,” Boss said.

“What do you mean, don’t leave?”

“The agents want to take you in for questioning when they get back.”

“Questioning? Why?”

He looked at me as if I had just asked where sunlight originated. “Because you are the one who locked the FBI car in the bay.”

I couldn’t speak. I tried but my vocal chords just made a little squeaking sound like a screen door being opened on a hot summer day.

“They are pretty sure,” Boss said, “that you were in on it.”

Robinson Crusoe, on first reaching shore, could not have felt more abandoned and alone than I did at that moment.

“Don’t worry,” the college kid said. “We won’t get to listen to them.”

I finally found my voice. “Listen to them what?” I said, a half tone below “High-C.”

“Interrogate you,” he said in a grave voice honed by years of hazing fraternity pledges. “They are going to take you to the Police Station. That way they can just go ahead and lock you up if they decide to.”

“Lock me up for what?”

Boss said, “Aiding in a bank job is a pretty serious offense.” He told me that he had assured the agents that all his employees knew not to lock the bay at night. Mine was clearly a renegade action. With that, they all found something to do that didn’t include me. I moseyed around, bumping into things, until I finally found a quiet place to sit and await my doom.

Maybe prison wasn’t so bad, I thought. Maybe I could learn to sing there. Elvis did in some movie. Or maybe I could escape. As the minutes evaporated, so did my options, until only dark despair remained. Then I heard the sound.

It was the dark rumble of the FBI car’s powerful engine. The car came into view, lumbered alongside a gas pump, and stopped. It didn’t occur to me to attend it until I looked around and saw nobody else in sight. I was alone. The agent driving honked and it evoked the sound of a large creaking door closing on my life. I wandered out.

The driver rolled down the window and smiled. “Hey sport,” he said. “We drove this old gal a piece today so fill her up.”

“Fill her up?”

“Fill her up, and check the oil.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Anything else?” I would get this thing over with, once and for all.

“Windshield’s dusty,” he said. “Oh…” Here it came. I froze. “They forgot to tell you but you don’t lock that bay door at night. Saves us some time and trouble.” With that, he turned to the other agent and began to compare notes. I moved to the gas pump.

As the pump hummed to life, my life hummed afresh. I even whistled. Then I saw three heads peer from the back of the station, laughing like they might never have another chance. I squeezed the pump handle like it was the hand of a lover, took in the smell of gasoline as if were the scent of roses, smiled at the three guys, and nodded. That was a good one, all right.

STORIES FOR FRIDAY

    As a young boy, I loved marshmallows like a missionary loves a sinner. I thought those little white lumps of confection absolutely represented the highest order of human achievement. Because of them, I

-       Despised kids who could afford a ten cent bag while I was stuck with nickel one,

-       Ate more than my share at any opportunity,

-       Boasted that I could eat more of them than any kid at Lakeside Elementary,

-       Dreamed of resting in a soft, yielding, embracing pile of them,

-       Stole them at ever opportunity, and

-       Once shoved my little brother because he wouldn’t give me one of his.

This gave rise to the great plot and subsequent adventure. It was 1951 and I was eight years old, in school all day without the attendant good sense to control my impulses. These were more innocent and peaceful times, so when a kid reached the third grade and was sentenced to schooling for an entire day, the taking of lunch presented a veritable range of choices

One could bring lunch in a brown paper bag and enjoy it in a designated lunchroom, a choice generally reserved for the poor and the untrustworthy. One could take a quarter and walk four blocks north to the Pine Bluff High School cafeteria. One could walk the same distance due west on 15^th Street until one reached a diner called “The Little Chef” and have a hamburger or chili dog with drink. One could walk one block farther and dine at a corner drug store lunch bar, expensive but classy. The rich kids, most of whom lived within walking distance dined at home.

            When not on probation and sentenced to the lunchroom, I opted for the western sites. This way, if I skipped a drink with a meal, I could purchase a five-cent bag of marshmallows at the corner drug store.

            Neither drugs for the dope fiend nor solitude for the poet had a greater pull than the thought of a bag of marshmallows on me.

            Therein sprang the plot.

            You see, they didn’t just sell nickel bags at the drug store. They sold ten-cent bags as well. Theses were tempting, but the piece de resistance, the Holy of Holies, was a 25-cent bag of marshmallows the size of a small pillow. They hung from clips on tall display stand like talismans. As I concocted my plan, the image of those bags grew until I thought of little else except the day I would buy one and devour its entire contents—at one sitting.

            But how? I only received a quarter a day for lunch, knotted in a lady’s handkerchief and placed in my left pocket each morning by my mother, who knew too well that to advance a boy of my age funds for more than a day’s food  was to telegraph an open invitation to Satan to make room for another soul.

            No, I would have to operate within the perimeters set for me. I had to skip the normal meal. It was that simple. Besides, a meal of marshmallows had to be at least as healthy, probably more so, than a chili dog. Tastier too.

            So one late autumn day found me walking west along 15^th Street with a jaunty air, clutching a a quarter. Passing the diner, I concentrated on a repair shop across the street to avoid prying eyes from lunchtime clients of The Little Chef. I turned casually south on Cherry and slid into the drug store. Phase One was successful.

Once inside, I assumed a practiced nonchalance. I eased to the candy area and took what seemed like an hour, but could only have been a few seconds, to peruse the candy offerings as if I had the prerogatives of a Rockefeller.

Without warning, synapses tuned by billions of years of evolution registered danger. An adult stared down at me. “May I help you?” it said.

“Just want some marshmallows,” I said. “I have money.” I showed it, then retrieved the largest prize on the rack. I stood without moving, feeling its weight against my chest, and waiting for the intruder to disappear.

“Having a party at school?” it said.

Now I was in a jam. Lying, my mother had warned me, was a terrible sin, one of the worst. She petrified me telling about its deadly consequences and those of similar vile habits. A liar who allowed the allurements of sin to rule his actions was destined for a cruel fate, even blindness, or a partial state thereof. I felt sweat forming on my brow. The potential consequences of my actions swirled about me like debris around a funnel cloud. My heart pumped harder at the thought of continuing this sinful escapade: regrets, nightmares, pimples, full or partial blindness…

The spectacles upon the bridge of my nose bear mute testimony to my next act.

“Yessir,” I said. “I’m supposed to bring the marshmallows.”

Surprised that I could still see, I stood patiently while it patted my head before moving to help another customer. I paid my quarter like a gambler paying his debt, executed an “about face” and left the drug store, Phase Two completed.

            A young dandy walking down Cherry Street snacking on a knee-high bag of marshmallows must have been a remarkable sight, even in a city as large as Pine Bluff. I swaggered as I tasted the first fat victim from the bag, allowing the flavor to roam my mouth like a pony circling a corral. The entire process lasted a block.

            On the next block, I crammed pair after pair into my mouth at once, just for the fun of it. As I chewed, I turned back to the east, deciding to flaunt my wealth by returning through one of the richest neighborhoods in town.

            Four more victims went down. Like the Cyclops tasting the crew of Ulysses, I let out a soft roar and devoured another pair. I continued east, passing the homes of any number of pretty girls who must have been watching from their kitchens with amazement. I ate a few in rhythm, grinning all the while.

            Then I released my inner gymnast and began pitching the soft white balls into the air and catching them in my mouth. Another block passed in this manner. I missed the fifth and it rolled into the gutter by the sidewalk. I didn’t pick it up, for I had plenty.

Besides, I was beginning to feel a little odd.

            Lest what follows strike the reader only as burlesque, allow me to produce empirical statistics that should be recorded to serve as an object lesson to the logic-challenged of future generations.

            Statistic One: The difference between wanting another marshmallow and beginning to think you have had all you want is approximately five marshmallows.

            Statistic Two: The difference between thinking you have had all the marshmallows you want and not really wishing to eat anymore is approximately four marshmallows.

            Statistic Three: The difference between not really wishing to eat any more marshmallows and vomiting a white stream of projectile foam onto a fence in an alley behind a house is three marshmallows.

            Statistic Four: The length of time an eight-year old boy must sit with his head in his hand lurching with drive heaves from too many marshmallows is somewhere between ten and 15 minutes.

            No cars passed through the alley as I suffered, only my life, and my regrets. I hadn’t apologized to my sister for stealing her scrapbook. I hadn’t looked after my little brother properly. I hadn’t asked Nell Phillips to be my girlfriend. Heck, I hadn’t even made out a will.

            When I quit retching, I folded top of the bag of marshmallows—it still appeared to be full—and gained my feet. I used alleys to escape attention from the fancy homes and found my way back to 15^th street where I placed the remainder of the bag of marshmallows in the hollow of a tree, although I knew I wouldn’t return for them. Back at school, I avoided classmates as I eased into the classroom and began the worst afternoon of my life.

            This was 60 years ago and I have never willingly eaten a marshmallow since. In fact, I become nauseated at the very thought of one, and I think of this incident often. Recently, I happened to be in my hometown to participate in more adult matters. With my business in the city completed, I drove the route of the described affair. Lakeside School stood closed and boarded. It had yielded to a mega-campus wherein they incarcerate students all day to prevent episodes such as mine.

            The neighborhood is no longer affluent. Some homes have disappeared, all that remains are slabs that look too small to have belonged to real homes. I slowed when I came to the corner where the tree stood in which I had stored the remnants of my unholy plot. All that remained was a withered stump, the rest having fallen, as have so many of my dreams, to age and reality.

MEMORIES

 VACATION BIBLE SCOOL

No Vacation for a Pirate

By Jimmie von Tungeln

             The following happened in different times. Not ancient times, just different times. Most mothers were home all day then. Most fathers were away working. Children followed their own instincts and must have been particularly annoying. Mothers missed no opportunity to be shed of them for a few hours, or even all day. As I was to learn, it was also a time set aside for my religious instruction, specifically for a consolidation of my vague images of Hell, in form of a particularly nasty institution known as—one can still almost hear thunder and the neighing of horses at the mere mention of the word—Vacation Bible School.

            Perhaps the ill-timing of it all fueled my extreme reaction. They seem always to plan these things in summertime and this was a particularly bad bit of scheduling. It seemed to be set out purposely to interfere with the duties of a group of ten-year-olds who had no other mission than protecting both the physical and reputational well-being of their community. We had, over the last few months, coalesced into the sort of group about which folk songs were written during the Dark Ages. We were heroic. We were virtuous. We were protective of our lands and people. In short, we had responsibilities, and they didn’t include religion.

            A group of invaders from north of Bayou Bartholomew, for example, was in the process of building a raft with which to ravage the settlements to the south. This was the established territory of our little band of privateers. Who would stand between the invading hordes and our men and women folk if we were to be called away? There were forts to be built, traps to be laid, and counter-offensive craft to be built.

            The alternative spelled utter disaster. Ben Shannon explained it to us as we gathered around a hastily built campfire near the bayou’s edge. He was not our leader, per se, just older and more educated. “They’ll come rapping and pillaging our women,” he said. “At tar’s pure histry.”

            We shuddered at the thought as our blood ran hot and fired our anger like an open circuit suddenly lighting a darkened room. Rapping and pillaging indeed! (As adults, when we absorbed the difference between rapping and raping, many of us would come to think we would prefer the latter, but that’s a story for another day.)

            Pirates were only a part of our problem. At the same time, a group of rustlers from the Union Community had begun to range perilously close to our hideout on Ferdinand Thompson’s land. We had to settle affairs with them once and for all and it wasn’t going to be a sight that innocent folks should witness.

            On top of that, a group of semi-professional baseball players from the Hog-eye Bend area was threatening to descend upon the field on the edge of Ridgway’s dairy land and issue a challenge to any locals brave, or dumb, enough to meet it. We weren’t the type of fellows to back away from anyone, even from a team that reportedly fielded a player who could re-wrap a baseball with electrical tape so tight that it hit almost like a new one. We’d knock his fancy ball right back in his face.

            In the midst of all this, the two Hester boys, O.G. Stanford, Bobby Joe Benson, his brother Robert, and I all heard the sentence pronounced.

            “Unity Baptist Church is having a two-week Vacation Bible School and I have signed you and your sister up,” my mother said. She said it so softly and matter-of-factly that she might have only been stating we were having leftovers for supper. It failed to even register in a mind that was filled with sword-fights, running gun battles and strikeouts.

            “That’s nice,” I heard myself say, not realizing the doom to which I had just sentenced myself.

            I forgot it all until the next Sunday evening. I had lived through another Sabbath and was preparing to assume my duties as the gang’s quartermaster the next day. In my kit, I had packed a penny-box of matches and a book of cigarette papers filched from my father’s grocery store. Eddie Holland had been swiping pinches of Bull Durham from his daddy for weeks now and we had the goods to provide a swell smoke for the entire gang. I also packed away a five-cent package of firecrackers left over from Christmas and a picture of a Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit that I had torn from a Parade Magazine. I had my Uncle Jack’s survival knife from the Korean War and a magnifying glass that was useful for starting fires, and also for frying ants. It was going to be a good Monday.

            Then I heard my mother yell from the living room, “Jimmie get in there and lay out some clothes for Bible School in the morning. Misses Cochran’s coming at 8:30 and you better not make her wait.”

            My blood froze. Bible School? Was she kidding? I answered back immediately in my best pirate voice. “Huh?”

            “You heard me.”

            “Did you say something?”

            “Now don’t even think about opening that little smart mouth of yours to me. You get ready.”

            “Aw momma.” Did she want to be rapped and pillaged?

            “Don’t you ‘aw momma’ me. I gave them a love offerin’ and you’re goin’.”

            “But Sonny Averitt has a new snake and he said we could come over and look at it in the …”

            “Don’t make me have to come in there.”

            So, the gang of prisoners dutifully reported outside the church next morning. There were five of us—Bobby Joe had rubbed some mustard in his eyes and convinced his mama that he might have the “chicken pops.” True pirates are born to embrace suffering.

            Anyway, we lined up as if we were awaiting the boat to Devil’s Island outside the church door. They let all the girls in first, including my sister who was older than the rest of us and ended up being a sort of guard for the duration, in addition to her normal job of reporting my every movement and utterance to the authorities at home. There were about 10 of us boys in the group, and not a happy face among them.

            Finally, our teacher, a Misses Krebbs, appeared at the door and bade us enter the foyer. Once that far inside, she stopped us and, as we huddled in a tight bunch near the coat racks and tables piled with offering plates, taught us the daily prayer we were to utter before we entered the church each morning.

I am a sinner, let me pray,

God has given me this day.

At every step, I’ll stop and say,

He will guide me all the way. Amen

            I think she made it up herself because she seemed mighty pleased with it. After a dozen or so tries, we got to where we could say it together and she allowed us in the church.

            Miss Krebbs was a stout little woman with reddish hair pulled into a bun. She had obviously been through this before, for the first thing she did after she sat all the boys down in the back of the room—the girls were already up front singing songs—was to single out the baddest looking boy in the room. He was a big boy, older than the rest of us, named Terry Clayton and was from the east side of town where they raised the tough ones. We learned later that he was in Vacation Bible School as an alternative to reform school, so he was prepared to endure a good deal of unpleasantness. It started immediately. Miss Krebbs brought him to the front of our little group. He turned and faced us with magnificent defiance, and we all envied his “look.” She then presented him as the type that would reap great benefits from the coming experience. She patted his back. He turned a crimson red, and those of us who were experienced in the ways of the truly fearsome saw dead bodies and raw bloody veins swirling in his head.

            Next, she looked at him and asked, “What do you expect to get from coming to vacation bible school,” she asked.

            Well, she might have just as well asked him what he thought of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Here was a boy who had never planned even a half-step beyond his immediate existence in his life. He turned even redder and finally looked at the floor.

            Miss Krebbs made him suffer for what seemed like minutes before she sat him down, broken and humiliated. Then she asked, “Who in here loves Jesus?”

            Every hand shot into the air.

            I won’t go into great detail about the ordeal that followed. As the remnants of our little band proceeded, without us, to build a raft capable of transporting the band all the way across the bayou to intercept the interlopers, we were cutting out pictures of the prophets to paste on large poster boards. The only part of our day that offered any chance of relief for our tortured mind was singing. It didn’t take long before we discovered that we could change the words of songs ever so slightly without drawing the attention of Misses Krebbs or one of the other guards. Of course my sister was a little more worldly-wise than the adults so we had to be extra careful. She knew the easy ones such as Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear. We did manage, though, to slip by her such gems as Flour in the Mud.

            But our pleasures were few, all in all. Once, we had to study the Book of Job, which consisted pretty much of a story about how God and the Devil took bets on how this poor guy named Job would act if they played tricks on him. I guess they thought it pretty funny. Actually, we had done the same thing a few times with our gang’s favorite jester, Buddy Austin. We would, for example, twist him up in a bag swing and let it twirl him around a bunch of times and then take bets on how far he could walk before he fell. It was a kid’s game, at best, but I still think we showed more decency than the other two I mentioned.

            The study of poor Job did provide one bit of drama. Toward the end, when the unfortunate man had endured almost more than humanly possible, Misses Krebbs stopped the discussion and asked who could provide an explanation for it all. Well, old Terry Clayton just sat there for a few minutes. We were ten days or so into the sentence by then, and I suppose the imagined peace and manly freedom of reform school were beckoning him like the Sirens of Phorcus.

            He all of a sudden blurted out, it was the first time he had spoken since his opening day humiliation, “I guess it means that when you have nothing to lose, it’s better to be the shooter than the dice.”

            It was the last I saw of him until a number of years later when he stopped me for speeding. He was five years in the police force by then and let me go, a favor from one victim to another.

            On another occasion, they brought in this carpenter who was going to show us how to work with wood. We thought this was going to be really neat until we found that the project would consist of building crosses and not anything useful.

            I immediately got crossways with our instructor because he didn’t like my choice of wood. I was, and still am, partial to the darker woods like walnut. He claimed we should use lighter wood to symbolize the purity of Christ. Jesus!

            After a few days of sawing and bending a number of nails, our crosses began to take a number of shapes, few of them recognizable as the stated intent. On top of it all, the man refused to answer any questions of a practical nature, such as tips on building rafts or stockades for a hideout.

            As the end of our cross-building approached, O.G. Stanford finally asked Misses Krebbs what the finished products would be used for. She didn’t hesitate a second. “You are building them to be donated to the poor nigra churches in town.”

            We just looked at one another. Hadn’t these people suffered enough already?

            The absolute most idiotic thing about the experience was that Misses Krebbs never even learned my name. She knew my sister’s name, and she knew our relationship. But for some reason, she insisted on calling me Jimmie Valentine, for the pure sadistic pleasure of it I suppose. I still have, among my clippings about the Tet Offensive, my photos of a storm at sea, and the results of a tornado which I survived, a small folded certificate stating that Jimmie Valentine had, indeed, survived (it actually says “graduated from”) Unity Baptist Church Vacation Bible School.

            Ten week days passed like turtles doing the shuffle and the worst ten years of my life neared its end. In this case with “Boo-Hoo Day.” That’s the day they wrap it up with a children’s sermon from the church’s preacher and, traditionally, all the girls get “saved,” some of them for the fourth or fifth time, boo-hooing louder each time. All the boys declined the honor except for Johnny Staples and that is a complete story in itself. Let’s just mention he later went to California to become an actor and salvation probably held him in good stead.

            For the rest, we returned to our gang to learn that, in our absence, the remnant members had discovered that rafts made from green pine trees don’t float well enough to support the weight of a pirate gang. To make matters worse, Ferdinand had discovered our cowboy hideout on his land, torn it up, and reported the discovery to my father to whom he handed over the bottle containing a half-inch of bourbon that someone, we denied any knowledge, had been carefully collecting from throwaways for months. Of course the baseball game had to be forfeited and our team was forever known and “The No-shows.”

             A pretty sad experience? Yes, in many ways. The gang never reorganized. The next summer my father secured me a job working on a milk truck and a succession of summer, then part-time, and finally full-time employments followed until one day I awoke to be staring at the face of a grown man in the mirror. Sadly, it was not the face of a pirate. It was a face, however, honed to some degree from raging along the banks of Bayou Bartholomew, once, with a ragtag gang of fierce warriors, protecting an imaginary group of innocent women from the prospect of rapping and pillaging. So I am glad of my youth, even with that summer’s terrifying experience. Outdoor freedoms such as we enjoyed back then seem to have disappeared along with pirate gangs and second-hand baseballs.

Were there lessons learned? There was one, After enduring Misses Krebbs, and vacation bible school, there was never any doubt in our minds about the true horrors of Hell. That has always provided a little touch of religion in the night.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

 HOLDEN CAUFIELD

“I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.” - Holden Caufield

It's good to re-read books from the past. Perspectives change. Situations change. Even memories change. We realize that the two motorcycle riders we thought were so cool back when financed their journey by selling dope that destroyed individuals, families, and even entire neighborhoods. Here are some present-day thoughts on a seminal book from the 1960s, The Catcher In The Rye.

Maybe one reason for the book’s continuing population is that it nails the pains of adolescence so well. The fact that Holden didn’t handle it well doesn’t make the act of growing up any less real, or as John Steinbeck put it: “Just because something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” We have, each of us maybe, wished on more than one occasion that our lives could have been frozen like a museum tableau at some less painful stage in our life.

But then we reach our "golden years."

We find, and "give with brief thanksgiving" a blessing for the fact, that we have come through it all, and most of it we wouldn’t have missed for the world. That a brief dream about a face from 40 years ago can break our heart one more time simply reminds us that once upon a time we loved that hard and hopelessly, not a bad thing. And though the deck may heave beneath us, we’ll always find a welcome port.

 As a lesson, the perspective of years says to me that the tough part of life is the living part. The things of value for me have always come hard: education, patience, empathy, perspective, and on and on. One can’t become an adult simply by being able to purchase cocktails in a bar. One doesn’t truly set one’s self apart from his peers by wearing an oddball hat. One doesn’t become a protector of the innocent by daydreaming. It all comes hard, some of it damned hard.

But hard as it was, it has been worthwhile. I treasure the acquaintance and I will see you later Holden, my old friend. You’ve been instructive through it all, even through the war and all the other dark times. Thanks for teaching me, way back then, that bemusement was okay. I’m not sure I could have made it through some of the times without that. Making it through has always been important to me. Oddly enough, making it through was the one thing you seemed never to get a handle on yourself. Maybe you did eventually

I hope so. I really do.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 FATHER'S DAY

Each year on this day I get the feeling that I must be the only person on Facebook that didn’t have a perfect father. Oh, mine wasn’t imperfect, his personal radar simply picked up a few blips from time to time. Those made him more interesting than sinister, except when it came to punishment for my myriad transgressions.

Perhaps his most salient characteristic was that he worked. My Sainted Mother emphasized it once when I mentioned a girl with whom I thought for sure I was in love. “Love,” she said. “Let me tell you about love. When I married your daddy, I wasn’t in love. I married him because we all knew the von Tungelns worked. And I knew I would never have to go hungry again. His family didn’t even go hungry during the depression. Then we sharecropped together, butchered hogs together, and bought this store together. After a while, I woke up one morning and realized I worshipped the ground he walked on.”

That thought echoed back to me not long ago when I asked my bride of over 50 years why she married me. “Good looks? Nice personality? Intelligence? Wit?”

“You had a J-O-B,” she said. “That’s important around here.”

It was important in our house. That little country grocery store was open six days a week from before daylight until late evening. In the slow part of the day, my daddy would butcher meat for the store, or cut wood to be sold to folks for heating their homes. During one long period he spent after hours adding two rooms to our house which, incidentally, was attached to the store.

A fond memory involves the annual four-day vacation the family took to the beaches at Florida or Texas. It was on one of those that I learned to read a map. Daddy showed me how. I considered it a minor miracle that one could follow those little lines and know what city was coming up next. I don’t guess the kids today will ever experience that miracle. Too bad.

I guess it was the reputation he and Sainted Mother bestowed on the family that I remember best. On a couple of occasions I managed to find myself under the questioning eye of a police officer who would have been delighted to arrest a careless teenager. Each time I was scolded and ordered home when I told them my name.

Things like that bring back memories as does a yellowed newspaper article I keep in a safe deposit box. It contains a piece written in our hometown newspaper after a deadly tornado tore through our area south of Pine Bluff in 1947. It tells how my father gave away things in our store to anyone who needed them after the damage, the righteousness bankrupting the little business. Another piece, a smaller one, reports how the little town of Lonsdale, Arkansas collected $45 and sent it to us after reading the first article. That would be almost $1,500 today.

So I don’t mind that he kept a cow for most of his life that he fed every night after the store closed or that he did so not for love of cattle but for love of the nightly nip of the Old Yellowstone he kept hidden in the hay.

Life’s radar needs a blip each day like Daddy needed that nip.

 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.

 

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