Pages of Promise (8 page)
“Well, that’s the kind of smile you got, Sis. Atomic power! Be careful. You don’t want to maim too many poor devils chasing around after you.”
“No danger of that. I’ve got a lot of plans.” She ran the comb through her wet curls and said, “I’m going to be a war correspondent and travel all over the world. Then I’m going to write articles for
National Geographic
. You’re going to be proud of me, Streak.”
“I’m proud of you now, Steph.”
Stephanie turned to him and reached out her free hand. “I’m proud of you, too, Richard. I’m scared about you going to Korea, but there’s no point in telling you to be careful.”
“I don’t remember the sergeant giving us any instructions on that,” Richard joked.
“Well, you’ve got Mom and Dad’s prayers, and they’re pretty potent. You’ve got mine, too,” she said softly.
“Thanks, Sis.”
The two sat talking for a long time. He asked, “How do Dad and Bobby seem to be getting along? Have there been any flare-ups lately?”
“I haven’t heard anything. I think you joining up has made Dad go easier on Bobby. Like he’s thinking he could lose you, so somehow Bobby’s behavior doesn’t seem so serious a problem.”
“What do you think Bobby’s going to do? He’ll be eligible for the draft if he’s not in college in another year.”
“Oh, he talks some about going to college, but he’s just treading water. He really wants to be a musician, a singer. He travels all over on weekends doing what he calls ‘gigs.’ Plays the piano like Paderewski.”
“Or Leo Durocher?”
“No, you idiot!” She laughed.
“Wouldn’t it be something if he got to be famous like Snooky Lanson?”
“He’ll have to change his name. Bobby Stuart is not dramatic enough.”
Richard pretended to think and said, “What about Hoagie Decarmo?”
This struck Stephanie as being very funny, and she continued to giggle as they threw their clothes on over their wet bathing suits and made their way home.
As they walked up the driveway Stephanie said, “Whose car is that?”
“Don’t know. Let’s find out.”
They entered the house and were delighted to find their great-uncle Owen sitting in the living room talking with their father. Owen rose at once. He was sixty-eight but still athletic and strong. He had been a prizefighter in his youth and had lost his right hand in World War I. He put his left hand forward and turned it over to squeeze Richard’s and nearly crushed it. “How’s the marine?” he asked with a smile.
“Fine, Uncle Owen. I’m glad to see you.”
“I had a meeting over in San Diego, so I thought I’d come over and say good-bye.” Owen Stuart had been an evangelist for years, crossing the country and speaking in large auditoriums and in brush arbors all the way from Georgia to California, from Louisiana to Maine.
“I won’t be here long. I’m shipping out day after tomorrow,” Richard said.
“Well, we’ll have some time to talk.”
After supper Owen asked Richard to show him the ocean, so they drove to a beach a few miles away.
“I stopped in and stayed a day with Lylah,” Owen said, speaking of his older sister. “You know, it’s a marvel. Out of our whole family, we’re all still living. Not many families have lived through two wars and have all the brothers and sisters still alive.”
They were walking along the beach, and the water wrinkled and flashed at their feet catching the glints of the late sun. Seagulls followed them, circling, crying harshly. A majestic great blue heron crossed their path with precise steps. It turned one eye toward them, considered their approach, then made a few steps and took to the air, sailing away to light on top of a scraggly tree above the beach.
Owen stopped walking and turned to face Richard. “How do you feel about going out to kill people, Richard?”
The question was so abrupt that Richard could not answer for a moment. He picked up a starfish, sent it sailing into the water, then turned to face Owen. “They gave us a lot of lectures about that in training. How did you feel about it when you went to war, Uncle Owen?”
“I didn’t like it. None of us did. Well, there were a few that seemed to. I always thought it was abnormal.”
“We had some of those. They don’t seem to think of the enemy as human beings.”
“Men never do in war. We called our enemy ‘Krauts’ and to us they were all devils wearing spiked helmets. They had bayoneted babies in Belgium and had neither honor nor decency. At least that’s what we were told, and I guess some of it came through.”
“Well, that’s what they’ve tried to tell us, but I’ve got a feeling that when I see one I’ll see him as a man just like me.”
“That reminds me of a poem I heard. I don’t memorize much poetry, but I memorized this one.”
He began to speak softly. Owen had a loud, powerful voice when he needed it, filling whole auditoriums, but it was quiet and almost gentle as he spoke the words:
“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
“I shot him dead because—
Because he was my foe,
Just so! my foe of course he was:
That’s clear enough; although
“He thought he’d enlist, perhaps,
Off-hand like—just as I—
Was out of work—had sold his traps—
No other reason why.
“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.
“I guess that’s about the way it is,” Owen said. “When you take the uniforms off, we’re all just men. Creatures of God.” He turned and said, “Do you have faith, Richard?”
“Why, yes. I was baptized when I was thirteen years old.”
“That’s good, but there’s got to be more than that, especially where you’re going. Being put under the water doesn’t give you what you need in your heart.” Owen continued to speak for some time of the soldier’s need of God. He said, “You’ve heard all this before from your parents. They’ve given you a good foundation, but when you get out there in Korea and face the blood and the filth and the awfulness of it, don’t lose it, Richard. Hang on to your faith in Jesus.”
“I’ll do my best, Uncle Owen.”
Two days later, Richard stood on the dock, his bag at his feet. His family had come, and he said good-bye to each one, and it was hard. He could tell his mother was keeping tears back only by an effort, and he whispered, “Don’t worry, Mom.”
He embraced Stephanie, and she whispered, “I love you, Richard,” then turned away quickly.
Bobby also had a paleness in his face that was not usual. He lost all of his cockiness with the stark reality upon him of Richard’s going to war. He cleared his throat twice and said, “I wish you didn’t have to go. Take care of yourself, buddy.”
“You watch yourself, Bobby. You’re too good a man to do anything except what’s right.”
Bobby looked at his twin with surprise and shock in his eyes; nodding, he said huskily, “Okay.”
He and his dad hugged, and Jerry held him a long time, unable to speak. Then Richard picked up his bag, shouldered it, and joined the group of marines walking up the gangplank. On board the ship, he paused at the rail and saw them still standing huddled close together. He smiled and waved, and they waved back; then he made his way down the rail. He found his quarters, came back, and saw that they were still there. As he waved again, sailors cast off the lines, the ship shuddered and began to move, gathering speed slowly. Richard stood at the rail waving and smiling, and when the ship swung, cutting them off from view, he turned and, feeling slightly sick, walked to the prow where he watched the water as it curled around the sharp, cutting edge of the transport. It bubbled, green and white and gray, and he looked up and strained his eyes as if he could see all the way across the sea to Korea.
C
orporal Richard Stuart and Lance Corporal Keller were on their way to pick up supplies from a truck a mile behind the line. Keller was following Richard at a little distance. Richard’s rifle was in the sling over his shoulder, and he smiled to himself.
It’s been so quiet nobody would even
know there’s a war on,
he thought. Information was that the enemy units had pulled back, and for several days there had been no fighting. As he descended a slight slope, he was momentarily out of Keller’s sight.
Suddenly he was face-to-face with a North Korean soldier, barely twenty feet away, who obviously was expecting trouble no more than Richard was. The enemy, too, had his rifle slung over his shoulder. It was too late to run, there was no place to hide, and both of them grasped at their rifle straps frantically, knowing that the first man to get off a shot would live—and the other would die. Richard’s rifle fell into his hands in the familiar position, but he did not raise it, only fired from the hip. The shot took the North Korean in the chest and knocked him backwards, his rifle flying in the air and landing in the dirt. Looking first to see if the man was alone, Richard went to him. Keller was running up by now, rifle at the ready. Kneeling over the fallen soldier, Richard saw that he was only a boy, probably not over fifteen. His eyes were fluttering and his chest was a bloody blossom. Then he looked up at Richard and smiled.
Richard woke with a start.
Why did he smile?
He had no idea what day of the week it was. It was September 1952, he knew that, but for a long time he lay half awake, tugging his filthy blanket around him for warmth, thinking about that soldier, who had died without saying a word. In the boy’s pocket had been pictures of two older people, probably his parents. There were letters written in the language that Richard could not understand, and he had kept them for a while and then wondered,
What would I do with them? Write and say “I killed your
son”?
He had thrown them away, but the incident was engraved on his mind. He’d relived it frequently in his dreams.
The sun struck him in the face, and with a groan he rolled out of his sodden blanket and poked through his pack for dry socks. Dry socks were almost all the religion he had left. He found a pair of gray socks worn thin by many washings, stripped off his old ones, and pulled the dry ones on over his dirty feet, noting he had no infection or trench foot. As soon as he pulled his boots on and laced them up, he began thinking immediately of a way to wash his extra socks. He would wait until noon, find a muddy stream somewhere, and use the sliver of soap that he hoarded as if it were gold; then he would dry the socks on a rock in the midday sun and have them ready for the next morning.
Standing to his feet, he saw men stirring, groaning, but too weary to do more than that. He shrugged into his overcoat, and the dried mud cracked and fell to the frozen ground. Buttoning it up, he picked up his rifle and automatically searched the low-lying hills to the north. He saw campfires still there that, a couple of hours before first light, had looked like the eyes of some terrible, evil monster as they flickered and glowed. He pulled out his canteen and drank some of the cold water—it tasted bitter from the chemicals he added to it every day—and then put the top back on and hooked it on his belt. The rifle and the canteen, these were always at his side, and the dry socks. That was what the war was about. The newspapers might say other things, and the politicians might make glowing speeches, but here in the mud of Korea, it was the rifle, the canteen, and the dry socks that a man thought about.
“What time is it, Streak?”
Richard looked over to see Smith coming out of his bedroll. He reminded Richard, in his gyrations, of some sort of insect emerging from a cocoon. Smith had obtained a sleeping bag with a zipper on it, and once he was inside each night, he managed to zip it almost all the way up. He stuffed his clothes into the remaining crevice so that he was sealed off from the world. Despite Richard’s misery, a smile creased his lips, and as he watched the marine struggle out he said, “Some of these days you’re going to come out of that cocoon and find yourself facing a Chinese or a North Korean.”
Not answering, Smith pulled himself free and lit a cigarette and began puffing at it, shivering in the cold morning wind. “Well,” he muttered, staring across to the north with half-shut eyes, “any business today?”
“Not so far.”
“That’s a miracle.”
“Come on. Let’s go back and see if we can negotiate some breakfast.”
“All right.”
Smith picked up his rifle and shook his canteen; the two men then started toward the rear, their feet breaking through the crust of frozen mud. “I wish it’d either freeze hard enough to hold us up or it would get warm enough to thaw everything out.” It was a frequent wish on Smith’s part, and he crunched along beside Richard, limping slightly. He had taken a minor wound in the leg, and the medic had offered to report it, telling him he’d get a purple heart. Smith had simply grinned at him toughly, saying, “Give me a Baby Ruth, and pass the medal on to somebody else.”
Richard thought Smith was a great marine. He complained and griped, as they all did, but when the fighting started, he was the one you wanted at your back, the best shot in Baker company, Richard figured. In the eleven months they’d served in combat together, he had seen Smith’s deadly fire.
They approached the trucks and saw the smoke of cook fires rising into the air like wisps of gray ghosts. The two marines joined the line, and each was issued reconstituted powdered eggs, a hunk of cheese, and a canteen cup full of hot soup. They each got a brimming cup of black, scalding coffee and sat down on the log of a blasted tree. They ate mechanically at first, then hungrily, then went back for seconds on the eggs.
“So these things are eggs?” Jack grinned at his companion. “The eggs of
what,
I wonder?”
“Crocodiles,” Richard grunted. “Don’t ask questions.”
“When I get home and marry Molly,” Smith said, “I’m never going to eat an egg again. Nothing but pancakes. That girl makes the best pancakes in Michigan.” He went on extolling Molly’s virtues, sipping the scalding coffee between speeches. He carried a picture of her, folded carefully in soft leather. Using one hand, he managed to pull it out and remove the cover. Staring at it fondly, he said, “Well, Molly, old girl, here’s another day I’ve got to spend away from you. Wait until I get back, sweetheart,” he said, kissing the picture. “You won’t get rid of me then.”