A Fistful of Fig Newtons (18 page)

It was at that moment that I became a lifelong apple worshiper. I have often thought since of becoming the founder of the First Church of the Revealed Apple.

We milled a bit, chomping on the McIntoshes.

“You guys can go back to your company any time you want now. If you’d like to hang around here and cool off, be my guests. And remember, you ain’t gonna pull KP for at least sixty days. How does that grab ya?”

The three of us, dressed only in our brown GI shorts, heavy GI shoes, and salt-encrusted dog tags, were flooded, each of us, with a sense of release. We had done a rotten, miserable, mountainous, incredibly rugged job and battled on until it was actually finished. “Hey, one of you guys help me with this goddamn door. The bastard sticks.”

The sergeant was struggling with a vast sliding panel that formed part of the wall of the car. Gasser grabbed the handle and the two of them slid the door back. A torrent of fresh air poured into the car, flushing out the old cauliflower smells and the aroma of countless mess kits and gamy socks.

“Would you look at that!” Gasser cheered. “The world is still there.”

Ernie hitched up his sweaty underwear shorts higher on his bony hips and the three of us surged to the door to watch the countryside roll by. The air was crisp and cool, yet tinged with a faint balminess. Hazy purple hills rolled on the horizon. Short scrub pines raced past the open door. The four of us, including the sergeant, were the only people on this sealed train–with the exception of the engineer and maybe his fireman–who were looking out at the beautiful world. The sergeant chain-lit another Camel.

“Any of you guys want a cigarette?” He waved his pack in the air. None of us smoked.

“Look, I ain’t supposed to open this door except to air out the car, so if anyone asks you, that’s what I was doin’.”

I bit into my third apple and gazed up at the fleecy white clouds and the deep blue sky. The train was riding on a high raised track. The rough gravel walls of the embankment slanted steeply down to the fields below. A two-lane concrete road paralleled the track as it ran through farm fields and patches of pines. We were moving at a fair clip.

“Hey, Sergeant,” Ernie asked, “where the hell are we? What state is this?”

We had been on the road for what seemed an eternity. The sergeant peered out at the landscape.

“Well”–he paused and took a deep drag—“if you was to ask me, I’d guess that we was someplace in Arkansas. Now that’s just an educated guess.”

“Arkansas!” Gasser said, and edged toward the door to get a closer look. “That’s the last place I’d a’guessed.”

The three of us watched a battered old pickup truck loaded with bushel baskets roll along for a while below us. The pale face of a girl peered up at us. A man in faded overalls and a railroad engineer’s cap sat next to her, driving and puffing on a short fat cigar. We rode side by side for many seconds. She gazed at us; we gazed back. I waved. She glanced quickly at the mean-looking
driver and then back at us. She waved timidly, as though she were afraid he might see her.

“Gee, that’s a real Arkansas girl.” Ernie sat down on the floor of the car with his legs hanging over the edge in the breeze.

“That’s the first Arkansas person I have ever seen.” Gasser and I sat beside him. Now all three of us had our legs hanging out over the racing roadbed. The girl in the truck glanced uneasily at the driver. She looked maybe thirteen or fourteen.

“Hey, do you think they are real hillbillies?” Gasser asked with great wonder and curiosity in his voice. He was from the West Coast, where hillbillies were something seen only in Ma and Pa Kettle films.

She continued to stare up at us. The old truck trailed blue smoke as it roared along. The three of us, who had not seen a female human being for many months, found her incredibly magnetic. Her long black hair trailed in the wind and billowed around her pale sharp features.

“You think that guy drivin’ the Dodge is her father?” Gasser asked rhetorically. The sergeant, a man of the world, one who had seen all of life stream past the open doors of his mess car, said in his flat voice:

“Ten to one that’s her husband.”

“Ah, come on, you’re kidding.” Ernie found it hard to believe.

“Listen, you guys, in these hills it ain’t nothin’ for a fifty-year-old man to marry a twelve-year-old chick. What they say is, around here, ‘If she’s big enough she’s old enough.’ A virgin in these parts is any girl that can outrun her brothers.” He flipped the butt end of his Camel neatly over our heads and out into the wind.

Silently the three of us watched the truck as it suddenly turned left into a gravel road lined with scraggly pines. It disappeared behind us in a cloud of dust. Ernie craned his neck out further into the slipstream to catch a last glimpse of the disappearing Dodge.

“Y’know, she was kind of cute,” he said to no one in particular.

“Yep. She sure was, son.” The sergeant was in a thoughtful expansive mood. “They all are in these hills. Eatin’ all that fatback and grits must do som-pin to ’em. Lemme tell you one thing, and you listen. Don’t you ever say nothin’ like that ‘she’s cute’ business around any of the men in these hills.”

Gasser looked up from his rapt contemplation of the speeding gravel.

“What do you mean?”

“Every one of these shitkickers carries a double-barrel twelve-gauge Sears Roebuck shotgun in his pickup, for just that purpose alone. I’ll bet that bastard would have blasted you quicker’n a skunk. He wouldn’t think twice about it. Any sheriff around here’d probably give him a medal for doin’ it.”

“Hey, you guys, we’re slowing up.” I had noticed that gradually the train had been losing speed. The embankment was even higher here than it had been further back. The concrete road looked miles below us. I looked forward. Ahead, the long sealed train curved gently to the left like a great metal snake. Big green hills, vast vacant fields, and a few scraggly shacks trickled away to the horizon. There was some sort of trestle with lights and tanks a half-mile or so ahead of the train.

The sergeant looked over my shoulder to see what was going on. “We’re probably stoppin’ to take on another crew, or some water or som-pin.”

Gradually, the train eased to a stop. For the first time in hours we did not sway. There was no rumble of trucks on the roadbed. We all sat in silence. The three of us sitting on the door sill, our legs hanging out over the gravel, enjoyed the bucolic scene. Birds twittered; a distant frog croaked. In the bright blue sky high above, a couple of chicken buzzards slowly circled.

At that precise instant events were set in motion that none of us would ever forget. It was Gasser who lit the fuse. Leaning forward so that his head extended far out into the soft, winy Arkansas air, he said:

“Do you guys see what I see?”

Ernie and I craned forward and looked in the direction Gasser had indicated. Down below us, far below us, was a dilapidated beaten-up old shack by the side of the concrete road. It looked like one of those countless roadside hovels that you see throughout the land on the back roads of America which appear to be made entirely of rusting Coca-Cola signs. It was deep in weeds and oil drums, but above it, swinging from a sagging iron crossbar, was a sign that bore one magic word:

There are few words that mean more under certain circumstances. All the thirst, the hungering insatiable throat-parching thirst earned during our sweaty backbreaking twenty-four hours of KP engulfed the three of us like a tidal wave of desire. Gasser, his tongue hanging out, dramatically gasped:

“Beer! Oh, God Almighty, what I wouldn’t give for just one ice-cold, foamy, lip-smacking beer!”

Through the window of the shack we could see, dimly, a couple of red-necked natives happily hoisting away.

“Listen, you guys, I’m goin’ forward to the can. You can leave for your company any time you care to. I’ll see you guys around.”

The sergeant disappeared from our lives forever. We were alone. Authority had gone to the can. The devil took over. I leaped to my feet.

“Listen, I got a couple of bucks in my fatigue jacket hanging right over there back of the table. I am prepared to buy if one of you is prepared to go and get it.”

I scurried over to my fatigues and quickly brought back the two bucks. Already I could taste that heavenly elixir: ice cold and brimming with life. Beer! Real, non-GI, genuine beer!

Ernie looked at Gasser; Gasser looked at Ernie. We were one in our insane desire for a brew.

“Okay, you guys,” I hissed, “guess how many fingers I’m holding up.”

Gasser barked: “Two.”

Ernie, his voice trembling with emotion, said: “Uh … one.” He had sealed his fate. It was the last word we ever heard him utter.

“You’re it, baby,” I cheered, and handed him the two bucks. “Get as much as you can for this,” I added.

Ernie grabbed the money and leaped lightly over the edge and down the steep gravel slope, his feet churning. He half-slid, half-ran down the long incline. We could hear the disappearing sounds of tiny gravel avalanches as he headed toward the shack. Ernie, like the two of us, was wearing only his sweat-stained brown GI underwear shorts, his GI shoes, and dog tags.

“Oh, man, I can taste that Schlitz already!” Gasser thumped on the floor in excitement with his right fist. “Yay, beer!” he cheered.

Below us, Ernie had entered the shack. We caught glimpses of his naked back through the window as the transaction was under way. Heads bobbed. Ernie glanced up at us and smiled broadly.

Seconds ticked by and then, without warning, the faint voices of shouting trainmen drifted back to us from far forward. At first I did not grasp their significance.

It has been wisely said many times that all of us are given clear warnings of disaster, but few of us bother to read the signs. Gasser peered toward the rear of the train.

“Jesus,” he mumbled, “I never realized how long this bastard was.”

The train stretched behind us almost to infinity, all the windows sealed against prying eyes, lurking enemies.

Time hung suspended amid the faint chirpings of crickets and the distant cawing of crows. Ernie’s head reappeared briefly in the window. He held up a large paper sack in triumph. And then it happened.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …

Like the distant wail of an avenging banshee, our sealed troop train shuddered a long menacing evil creak as it slowly began to move. I grabbed Gasser’s arm.

“Gasser! We’re moving!”

Gasser wordlessly leaned out to see if Ernie was on his way. The gravel inched slowly past our hanging feet. We were barely moving. Gasser soundlessly waved his arms, hoping that Ernie would get the message. We couldn’t yell because at least fifty officers would have heard and known that we had done the one thing beyond all law, namely illegally leaving a top-security sealed troop movement. That’s firing squad stuff.

Suddenly Ernie appeared at the side of the shack. He looked smaller, shorter, as he struggled through the weeds, carrying his precious sack of beer. At first he didn’t seem to notice that the train was moving. Gasser and I both waved frantically. Already the train was gathering momentum.

“Oh, my God,” Gasser gasped. “Oh, my God! Ernie!”

Ernie broke into a frantic run. Through the quiet air we could hear the distant clank of beer bottles and the thud-thud-thud of his GI shoes. He angled upward along the steep incline, slipping and sliding as he ran.

“Ah, he’s got it made,” Gasser said with relief as Ernie drew nearer and nearer.

At first it really did look like there was no problem. Ernie pounded toward us, his right arm cradling the bag of beer like a halfback lugging a football. The train moved faster and faster, but Ernie was closing the gap. Then he hit a patch of loose shale. He slid down the side of the bank, his legs churning.

Gasser, clinging to the back edge of the car, extended his hand far out into the breeze.

“Ernie! Grab my hand! ERNIE!”

Ernie’s eyes rolled wildly as he struggled on. His left hand reached high, his fingers within inches of Gasser’s grasping mitt.

The engine of our train let go a long, moaning blast. I sometimes hear this in my sleep, ringing hollow and lost, like a death knell.

I grabbed Gasser’s knees to hold him in the car. “I’ll hold your legs, Gasser,” I grunted. “Grab him!”

Gasser leaned even further out over the racing gravel. I braced my feet on the floor, fear clutching my gut like an octopus. Gasser kept saying over and over again: “Oh, Jesus Christ, oh, Jesus Christ, Christ Almighty …”

Peering between Gasser’s straining legs I saw Ernie’s contorted exhausted face, his legs pounding weaker and weaker.

clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink …

The sound of his dog tags jingled with each painful stride.

 … clink-clink-clink.

And then all three of us knew it. He was not going to make it.

Ernie was gone. But he pounded on, dropping further and further behind. He had become a tiny distant stick-man, naked and alone. He still clung to the beer.

The mess car was now swaying and rocking along at almost full speed. We both gazed outward at Ernie’s tiny figure, still hopelessly striding along down on the sad two-lane country road. The sun was going down over the distant hills. The sky had purpled.

As the faint clink-clink-clink-clink of Ernie’s dog tags receded forever into limbo, both Gasser and I knew without exchanging a word that we had been part of a historic moment. At the time, naturally, we didn’t realize that the Legend of Ernie would grow and grow until every enlisted man in the Signal Corps knew his name and would tell the story of the GI who was lost from the sealed troop train. Some, naturally, don’t believe he ever existed. After all, as a people we Americans prefer to believe that all heroic figures were frauds and shams. But I was there. I knew Ernie.

The train rounded a great bend. We entered the gloom of a high Arkansas valley. Gasser got to his feet. I followed. Without a word we donned our fatigues and headed back to Company K, men bearing a fear and a grief that few know in their lifetime.

As we inched our way through car after car, amid seas of alien troops, we held our own counsel. Back in
The Georgia Peach
, Company K lay sprawled, travel-stained by the long trip. Listless eyes gazed at us as we went back to our seats. I eased myself
down into the scratchy mohair. Gasser glanced up and down the car before taking his seat. He whispered: