“GET THIS SLUICE TROUGH MOVING! If you don’t put a gitty-up on, the war’s gonna be over b-b-before we fire a shot!”
Lt. John Keyes shook his head at that pathetic yelp of false courage. He had heard dozens of boasts from the farm boys lining up that week at his induction station, but none sputtered with such an unstrung stammer. The way he figured it, anyone from around these parts trying to join the Navy had to be a little yellow anyway. Most of these dust-grimed crackers in overalls hadn’t seen a body of water larger than a washbasin, and half of them couldn’t swim. He wasn’t fooled. All this bragging about steaming across the Pacific to Tokyo was just a cover to avoid the infantry.
“What’s the d-d-damn hold-up?” demanded the same shuffling recruit at the head of the line.
The officer didn’t bother to look up from the stack of NGCT intelligence tests that he was grading. “Keep your powder dry, cowboy. There’ll be plenty of bullets to go around.”
Ignored, the agitated recruit bit off an incoherent curse.
A few minutes later, the lieutenant leaned back in his metal chair to take a break from the paperwork. Chilled, he pushed his aviator sunglasses up the bridge of his red nose for cover, closed his eyes, and tried to warm his feet with the memory of Norfolk’s sunny beaches. Crackerjack shore duty that had been, until the Japs had to go bomb Pearl Harbor and get him transferred to this Okie Siberia to process enlistments. He yawned and smiled at those Virginia dolls in their skimpy swimsuits, frolicking in the waves—
A frigid blast of prairie air walloped him harder than a Joe Louis left hook.
Roused from his daydream, the lieutenant returned to the test forms, and now his damn pen was frozen. If those pogue geniuses in Washington thought this country was ready to fight a war, they should bunk down a couple of nights at this cattle lick being passed off for a service base. Hell, the whole place was falling apart. Just that morning, wind gusts had collapsed a section of the Naval Training School’s armory roof, forcing him to move this human cattle drive to the parade ground. He took out his frustration by thumping the pen’s congealed tip against his desk. The cheap casing splintered. He tossed the remnants of the pen over his shoulder and wiped his ink-smeared hands on the brown grass around his boots, muttering a prediction that they’d all be eating out of rice bowls soon if those new anti-aircraft guns didn’t last longer than these—
“Those Nips’ll be in Frisco by the t-t-time you get us on the boats!”
The lieutenant shot to his feet to read the riot act to the dribble-mouthed hothead who kept hectoring him. His jaw dropped at what stood before him.
A gaunt codger sported a frayed khaki brownshirt, flared cavalry jodhpurs dappled with mud stains, and scuffed black jackboots that reached to his knees. The tall, lanky fellow seemed to be a nervous sort, constantly brushing his shocks of graying blond hair across his mottled head with fingers stained yellow from a chain of cigarette butts trailing behind him.
An ensign down the line stopped passing out medical forms. He raised his arms in mock surrender. “You’d better sound all-hands-on-deck, sir. I think we’ve been invaded by Mussolini.”
The lieutenant stood grinning at what appeared to be a homespun fascist uniform worn by the grumpy sodbuster. “Nah, he doesn’t have enough flesh on the bone to be El Duce. I’m thinking he’s the Führer in spy disguise. He must have cut off his mustache and painted his hair white.”
The ensign walked up and fingered a rusty trench whistle that hung from a lanyard around the fellow’s gizzard neck. He blew a couple of razzing toots. “You auditioning for the talkies, old-timer? I hear the Signal Corps is looking for a Hitler stand-in to make their movies for the war bonds campaign.”
The craggy-faced volunteer glared damnation at the two officers from his steel-blue eyes. “You jabbering harebrains wouldn’t have lasted a da-da-day in my army.”
“Your army?” The lieutenant motioned up the other recruits. “Take a look, boys. Stonewall Jackson has arisen from the dead.”
The geezer waited for the serenade of rebel yells behind him to fade. Then, he challenged the two chortling recruiters. “You g-g-gonna get on with this? Or you g-g-gonna keep performing your Abbott and Co-co-costello routine till the war’s lost?”
The lieutenant wiped a tear of laughter from his cheek before it could freeze. “How old are you, gramps?”
The man cupped an unsteady hand to his hairy ear. “What’s that?”
“Your age!”
“Forty-three.”
That claim drew puffs of disbelief from the other recruits.
The lieutenant realized the half-deaf yarn spinner was serious about joining up. He put a stop to the taunts and warned the man, “Lying under oath on a recruitment form is a federal offense.”
The jittery volunteer pointed at a blank sheet of paper on the desk. “Write ’er down in duplicate. S-s-send one to Hirohito.”
The lieutenant circled to determine if he looked as gimpy from the rear. “What in God’s name happened to you, partner? Appears you got one step in the grave already.”
“I’ve been th-th-through a few rough patches with my health. But I can still fire an Enfield.”
“What kind of rough patches?”
The volunteer kept staring at the ground. “It d-d-don’t matter none.”
“It matters to the U.S. Navy,” the lieutenant said. “We’re not going let some jag-off slip in just to freeload medical care. A lot of bums are trying to sponge off the government.”
The man clasped his right hand to stifle a spasm. “There’s more bums in the government these days, from what I’ve seen.”
“You got the palsy?”
In a near whisper, the man admitted, “I was gassed.”
“Did you say gassed? You forget to turn off your stove, or what?”
“On the Meuse.”
The lieutenant stole a look of disbelief at his ensign. He scoffed at the volunteer. “You really expect us to believe that you fought in France?”
“Hundred F-f-forty-Sixth Field Artillery.”
“And you were discharged?”
“Honorable.”
The tale was getting so tall, the lieutenant could hardly see over it. “I suppose you had a rank, too.”
“Sergeant.”
The lieutenant knew the half-senile crank was just making it all up. Hell of a mess the Army would have to be in to promote such a clipped-winged cull to anything higher than a mess cook. He decided to let him down gently. “Sorry, doughboy, but you’re just a bit over the age limit.”
“I know my rights. The Navy is t-t-taking men up to age fifty. I ain’t moving from this spot until I put my John Hancock on one of those killing contracts.”
“Now listen here—”
“I’ll go over your head to the stripe in charge of this playground!”
The lieutenant reddened. “You wouldn’t pass the physical anyway. And you know it.”
The veteran leaned in and squinted at the officer. “What if I f-f-fought in another war after France?”
The lieutenant rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time for this nonsense. The country hasn’t been in a war since 1918.”
“The hell it ain’t.”
One of the boys in the rear of the line yelled up, “Hey Lieutenant, if we’re not getting in today, I gotta catch the Greyhound back to Chickasha!”
Lt. Keyes debated how best to get rid of the pest. He was already behind again on the inductions, and the last thing he needed was to piss off the brass by not meeting the daily quota. This ornery buzzard seemed just trigger-happy enough to raise a holy ruckus if the MPs hauled him out. He decided to let the fellow make an even bigger fool of himself in the hope that the humiliation would drive him off. He ordered the other volunteers into a semi-circle, and played along by handing the man a form. “All right, son, what’s your name?”
The fellow didn’t seem to detect the sarcasm. “Walter Waters. Some f-f-folks call me Dubya-Dubya for short. But that ain’t quite accurate, because my m-m-middle name is Warfield. Dubya-Dubya-Dubya would possess more authenticity. I’ll answer to any of the three appellations that b-b-begin with Dubya.”
The lieutenant licked his chapped lips, eager to send the blowhard out the gate with his tail dragging. “Sergeant Waters here—”
“Commander Waters.”
“So now you’re a commander? We’d better get this roll-call finished before you become emperor.”
Waters cracked his knuckles as if itching to throw down. “You’re a regular Will Rogers with all the j-j-jokes.”
The lieutenant sighed at the vast and varied lunacies produced by the human race. He told the other recruits, “Commander Waters here is going tell us how he fought in the Great War of His Imagination.” Then, he asked the man, “Who’d you square off against? Hannibal or Napoleon?”
Waters didn’t wait to blink. “Mac.”
One of the recruits yelled out, “General McClellan?”
Waters spun on the lippy Okie. “There’s only one Mac, god-da-da-damn it! And you know who he is!”
Motioning the recruits to silence, the lieutenant shammed an interest. “You fought MacArthur. You fight for the Germans, did you, Herr Dubya-Dubya?”
The veteran’s eyes filmed over, and he turned a woebegone gaze toward the railroad tracks in the distance. “Nah, I led the best American army that ever took the field. Worst thing about this c-c-country is it ain’t got no memory for the important things that happen to it.”
Baffled by the cryptic lament, the lieutenant glanced across the field and saw several drill squads looking over to see what all the commotion was about. He decided he’d better cut this little charade short before word started spreading downwind that he had lost control of his station. “Listen, Mr. Waters, or whoever you are. I’m going to have to order you to run along now. Or I’ll have to call the mental hospital in town and—”
“I’ll prove it.”
The lieutenant, now really annoyed, set his hands on his hips. “You’re going to prove to me that you fought General Douglas MacArthur with an American army? How exactly do you plan to do that?”
Waters puffed out his sunken consumptive chest to display two threaded military ribbons pinned to his breast pocket. “If I demonstrate my bona fides on the matter, will you let me t-t-take the oath?”
His first plan having backfired, the lieutenant reluctantly decided that letting the man blather his two cents' worth was probably the only way to get rid of him now. “You got five minutes before lunch call. Make it fast.”
The other recruits moaned, forced to stay out in the cold even longer now.
The sniggering ensign piled more logs onto the fire in the oil drum.
Waters commandeered the chair behind the desk and placed it in front of the fire. Flicking away the butt of his last Lucky Strike coffin nail, he sat down and reached into his pocket for a plug of tobacco. He stuffed the chaw into his cheek and, satisfied at last with his preparations, waved the recruits forward. “Come on closer, maggots. I ain’t g-g-gonna strip the gears in my throat educating your ignorance.”
While the grousing recruits stepped in around him, Waters began singing the tune that had always helped calm the hitch in his words, an old big-band number by that top-hatted medicine man of jazz, Ted Lewis:
“There’s a new day coming,
As sure as you’re born,
A new day coming,
Start tootin’ your horn,
The cobbler’ll shoe, the baker’ll bake,
When the brewer brews, folks,
We’ll all get a break.
There’s a new day coming,
Coming soon.”
Finishing his jingle, Waters creaked up to his feet again and pointed toward the pole that towered over the camp. “In my army, we always c-c-commenced proceedings by honoring the g-g-glorious Stars and Stripes.”
The lieutenant was still trying to figure out how Waters had sung the ditty without stuttering. He nodded for the younger recruits to humor the veteran, and they twitched off a few shivering, half-hearted salutes to the flag.
Forced to be satisfied with the lackadaisical effort, Waters sat back down and scooted the chair closer to the crackling logs to warm his rheumy knees. He prefaced his story with a condition. “Now listen up, shavetails. You’re g-g-gonna promise me one thing.”
“What’s that, grandpa?” asked a recruit. “You need a latrine break already?”
Waters ran a warning finger across the seated ranks. “None of you’s are gonna b-b-back outa serving after you hear what I got to say.”
The volunteers traded confused glances. Finally, they nodded just to get on with whatever they were about to endure.
Waters wiped a seep of chaw spittle from the corner of his mouth. “You ever heard those rich b-b-birds on Wall Street say teach a man to fish and you feed him forever?”
The recruits didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
Waters looked toward the sky, as if struck by a vision. “That d-d-day in Galilee, when the Good Lord gave His Sermon on the Mount, how come He d-d-didn’t teach the multitudes to fish and bake bread, instead of just conjuring up those loaves and fillets of sole for them?”
The lieutenant was now worried the dotty veteran would start blaspheming on government property. He tapped on his wristwatch, signaling for Waters to tighten the reins and get on with it.
Yet Waters refused to be prodded off the winding trail of his sermon. “You figure Christ was a c-c-communist, do you? Not following the c-c-capitalist way? Distributing the dole like that to anyone who would listen to Him?”
“Hell, no!” shouted a recruit. “The Almighty ain’t a Red!”
Waters picked up a stick from the kindling pile. After examining it, he pulled out a pocketknife and began whittling away its bark. “What if the Great Shepherd had fed all the Romans in the world, but left His own d-d-disciples in want? You think the Galileans woulda followed Him to Jerusalem then?”
The recruits watched the oscillating pocketknife with alarm, half expecting the shaky veteran to slice off a finger. One of them complained, “This ain’t Sunday school, pops! You ever gonna get to the point of this campfire story?”
Waters was sending the chips flying now. “There once lived such a man. A titan of history who f-f-fed a thousand times more multitudes than did Christ. But he couldn’t bring himself to give sustenance to his own hungry folk.”
“Some Bolshevik, was he?” asked another recruit.
Choked up from the memories, Waters brushed away the chips on the ground with his boot in a play to recover his voice. When he finally swallowed the frog in his throat, he stiffened his neck and insisted, “Farthest thing from it. Turned out he was just an orphan boy with a b-b-big heart. But he came to be surrounded by a dozen Judases for apostles.”
“What was his name?”
Waters ballooned his cheeks and shot a black jet of tobacco juice at the ground, nearly splattering the front row. “Hoover.”
“You talking about the suction sweeper fella?”
Waters pointed the pocketknife at the numbskull who had just asked that question. “No, junior. I am referring to the man who p-p-put all that Okie dirt in your momma’s rug, not the one who took it out.”
“President Hoover?”
Waters nodded. “But long before the d-d-dust twisters blew him into the White House, ol’ Herbert found himself in another shitstorm halfway across the world. That’s where it all started. With the great Quaker surrounded by millions of starving Chinamen.”
Mystified, the recruits just sat staring up at the veteran.
The lieutenant figured he’d regret it, but he asked the question they were all pondering. “What started?”
Water reached the whittled end of his stick into the fire. When it took a flame, he flung the crackling stick like a live grenade over the heads of the ducking recruits. “The fight that came that close to sparkin' another American Revolution.”