A Fistful of Fig Newtons (33 page)

“Price wars,” I muttered. “It’s hard to believe they really had them.”

The Shell station passed out NFL shot glasses, Mobil featured steak knives
.

“Holy Moley.”

Those feckless undergraduates ahead in that smoking heap probably never heard of a price war, and would laugh if you told them that the Amoco station gave away free tea trays, for God’s sake
. Tea trays!

Another thought hit me. They charge you a buck fifty for going through this Tunnel of Love. The least they could do is put in a few trap doors that opened up, with skeletons rattling or spooky skulls or something to give you a little extra fun for the ride. Turn the job over to the Disney Company and people would line up for hours just to go through the tunnel. They do anyway. But at least they wouldn’t hurl obscenities at the lady collecting the toll
.

Ah, you mad impetuous dreamer with a rose in your teeth. I
was getting sullen and moody, as I often did at the end of a bad day, with the car reading 200 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. I sang a few snatches of my old high school fight song. It didn’t help. I tried my favorite Chevy commercial:

The poor Pilgrim behind me was being held prisoner in a tired Impala that had what looked like cold sores around its grille. I hummed tunelessly. The light had changed subtly. The end of the tunnel was not far away
.

In a low, cracking voice I sang:

There was nothing to do now but just sit and wait for the whistles to blow, signaling the end of our army careers. The last minutes of a whole era in my life were slowly ticking away. A short, fat Pfc sat on a bunk across the aisle from us. He plucked continuously and nervously at imaginary lint on the GI blanket.

“You guys gonna re-up?”

His high, quavering voice didn’t fit his solid, potlike body. He wore the pale blue braid of the Infantry and the look in the eye of a man who had seen a lot of things that he wished he hadn’t.

“Nah,” I answered. It hadn’t even occurred to me to re-enlist. The question surprised me.

“I think I’m gonna,” the Pfc said to no one in particular, and went back to plucking at the lint.

Whistles blew. We stampeded through the door and out into the cold for the last formation many of us would ever stand, a formation I had pictured in my mind a thousand times, through countless boring, mosquito-ridden, heat-rashed nights of the endless past. This was it! Already I could feel civilian life seeping into my being, a rising note of excitement. My God, I was getting out! From now on life was going to be so unbelievably great that already I could hardly stand it.

We formed a neat column of twos, with the professional cool of veteran soldiers. A captain wearing the insignia of the Quartermaster Corps stood next to the master sergeant, who now cradled in his arms a stack of large, pale yellow folders. Every last one of us riveted our eyes on that treasure trove of precious papers. The captain calmly began reading names: last name, comma, first name, comma–initial, comma, rank, comma, army serial number. As each name was called the man stepped forward through the frigid air, and the sergeant handed him his papers.

At last my name was called. I lurched forward, feeling as though I were floating over the ground. I felt the cold surface of the yellow folder in my hand, floated back into formation. Then everything seemed to happen fast, in a jerky way, like the shutter of a camera.

The captain spoke: “Misters, I am pleased to be the first to call you ‘Mister.’ As of now, you are no longer under obligation to the United States Army.”

He said this in a kind of official voice. He then went on, and his voice changed somehow:

“Well, that’s it, you guys. There’s bus tickets and stuff to get you
home in those envelopes. Have a ball. I wish I was getting out with you.”

A ragged cheer broke out in the platoon.

“Well, that’s it, as the captain said.” Gasser lit a cigarette. “Now for the Brave New World. We are reborn. We shall walk forever in shining glory and beauty.” He laughed sardonically and headed down the company street. I never saw Gasser again.

Company K was now part of history. We had no proud, tattered regimental banner, no unit citations. All I had left to remind me of Company K, 3162nd Signal Air Warning Battalion was a pair of wire cutters I had stolen and which were now weighing down my back pocket and digging me sharply in the rump.

I squatted on my bunk and loosened my scratchy GI tie. My B-bag was packed and ready to go, stuffed with worn suntans, an old pair of trusty PX shower clogs, an extra pair of GI shoes, a couple of sad souvenirs; a moldering compost heap of stained letters, petrified cookie crumbs, buttons, broken combs, extra stripes, a faded field jacket, and all the rest of the effluvia that sinks to the bottom of every soldier’s barracks bag, no matter what the war or army.

Zynzmeister was carefully folding a shirt on the next bunk.

“Do you realize, gentlemen, that a whole new life has begun?”

Zynzmeister, Company K’s resident philosopher, was still getting in his licks.

“Yes, it is an awesome thought.”

He neatly folded a tie and tucked it inside the shirt.

“I hope you are absorbing everything about you, since this is a historical occasion.”

He paused dramatically. Faintly, in my mind, I could hear the sardonic voice of Gasser, who right about now would be saying, “Road apples!”

“You know, Zynzmeister, I miss Gasser,” I said, scraping some snow off my shoes with a tent peg.

“Never fear for Gasser,” Zynzmeister laughed, beginning to pack away his library, which had mystified Company K for many
years. The reading material, by and large, in our late company ran heavily to tattered magazines composed largely of photographs of poorly clad young ladies, all extraordinarily developed in the mammary regions. Gasser once said you could tell a lot about a man by whether he called them “boobs,” “tits,” or “bosoms.”

“Zynzmeister, do you remember the night Lieutenant Cherry blew his stack over Elkins and all those guys from the Motor Pool fighting it out over Ava Gardner’s boobs?”

“Yes, I certainly do recall that deplorable incident. In fact, it will remain one of my fondest memories of Company K. Truly typical of the festive times that we all will cherish in years to come. Yes, I would certainly classify that night as a Golden Memory. Had I been Gasser, I would have vulgarly referred to it as a ‘Golden Mammary.’ But I’m glad I do not have that kind of mind. No, indeed.”

“Why do you think Cherry got so mad?”

“I have often wondered about that myself,” Zynzmeister answered, briskly tightening the drawstrings on his barracks bag. “I believe it stemmed from one important fact.” He paused to straighten his tie.

“Yeah? What was that?” I asked.

“It is my belief that Lieutenant Cherry was a desperate man, and on the night of the Bazoom Caper, became a bit overheated.”

I had never thought of Lieutenant Cherry as particularly desperate. Chicken, yes. Desperate?

“How do you mean, ‘desperate’?” I asked, as the wind rattled the eaves of the barracks and the unfamiliar, alien GIs with their strange patches and foreign braid nervously paced and twitched all around us.

“It is obvious,” Zynzmeister continued as he carefully sat on the edge of his bunk so as not to blunt the crease of his ODs. “Consider, he was a company commander. Usually an exalted position. But Lieutenant Cherry commanded Company K.”

“Yeah. I never thought of it that way.”

We both sat for a while staring reflectively into our mutual past. Zynzmeister had opened up new vistas again. I mulled it over. It had been bad enough being in Company K, but commanding Company K must have been a special hell.

“Yes, there were times when I felt profoundly moved by the plight of our brave lieutenant. The night of the Tumult Over the Tits was certainly one of them.”

He carefully straightened his garrison cap, hoisted his barracks bag with the practiced ease of an old soldier, and stuck out his free hand.

“Well, old friend, my comrade in arms, this is truly it.”

“Yeah, Zynzmeister.”

We shook hands.

“We have survived, which is a lot more than many have done.” He shifted his B-bag to his other hand. “Have a good life. May your soldering iron always be hot,” he laughed. “My transport awaits.”

“Good luck, Zynzmeister.”

“Be careful,” he laughed again, and disappeared out the door. I knew I would never see him again, either. We had been through a lot together. Now it had all disappeared like smoke.

Fifteen minutes later I was in the Greyhound station, with a one-way ticket, waiting for the bus to take me up north through the frozen cornfields and the icy used-car lots of midwinter Indiana. To kill time before my bus left, I hoisted up my bags and drifted in to the coffee shop. A waitress in a yellow apron came over and slid a menu to me, a sheet of faded blue mimeographed goodies featuring salmon loaf, a veal cutlet with tomato sauce, and pig-in-the-blanket, Indiana-style. The menu was encased in cracked and scratched celluloid.

“What’ll you have, sol’jer?” she asked, staring vacantly over my head at a plastic Santa Claus that hung from a Pabst Blue Ribbon clock on the wall behind me.

“Cheeseburger and coffee.”

“You want cream inna coffee, sol’jer?”

“Black. And I’m not in the Army.”

“You’re what?” she asked, sticking her pencil into her shellacked blond hair.

“I’m not in the Army.”

“Howcome you’re wearin’ that uniform?”

“I’ve been discharged.”

“You honest ain’t in the Army?” She peered at me suspiciously.

“Nope. I’ve been sprung.”

“Tough luck, buddy,” she said, smiling evilly, showing a faint glint of a gold tooth. “That means you ain’t entitled to our serviceman’s free cuppa coffee. You gotta pay like everybody else, mister.”

“Oh.”

It was all I could think of to say. Civilian life was starting off great.

Eventually the bus roared into the station, trailing clouds of blue diesel smoke. I got a seat near the back, over one of the wheels, naturally. The bus was packed with people going wherever people keep going on Greyhounds. A blue-jowled customer in a stiff black suit, wearing a white shirt with dirt on the collar, sat next to me, taking up both armrests. I squeezed next to the window, thinking, Dammit, it’s always my luck.

Every time I ride on a bus some old lady or a guy who sells bird cages by mail gets the seat next to me. No matter what I do. I concentrate every time some girl comes down the aisle, trying to lure her to sit next to me, but it never works.

“Care for a smoke, soldier?” Blue Jowls snapped out a pack of Camels. They always smoke Camels.

“No, thanks,” I answered, staring out at the gray, frozen Indiana skies as we barreled north along Route 41 toward my new golden life, the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City.

As we pulled out of town, a bullet-riddled sign flapped in the icy wind–COME BACK SOON–LION’S CLUB. I settled deep into my seat and felt a slow, rising wave of excitement banging and crashing around in my guts. Home! A new life! I’m out!

I dozed off in the sweaty half-sleep that you sometimes have in buses and planes. We droned on and on and on. Twilight came and went. The villages became towns, then cities. I slept fitfully.

“Let’s go, buddy. End of the line.”

I woke in a daze. The bus driver rousted a drunken sailor out of a front seat, his blue pea coat covered with a verminous green, lumpy substance. We were the last passengers. The swabbie carried a yellow envelope, too.

Out on the street I pulled my collar up against my old enemy, the Indiana wind, and set out for home. I sniffed the air, the familiar, fragrant, sickening aromatic air of home, redolent of blast furnace fumes, the noxious gases of innumerable refineries, the pungent yet titillating overtones of the Grasselli Chemical Works, subtly blended with the exhalations of Lake Michigan, its frozen, clammy, detergent-laden waters.

Ah, how familiar. How warm. Home is more than just a place, a geographical location, a house. It is light, it is sound, it is smell. I breathed in deeply the rich compost of life-giving poisonous vapor and trudged on into the night. For three years I had not walked this ground. I had grown from callow, feckless youth to hard-jawed, flat-bellied, iron-muscled man. With Company K I had roamed the earth. Now, like all returning warriors throughout history, I had come back to claim my own. The wind screamed through the ropes of my barracks bag, down my spine, around my bent form as I carried it on my back for the last time.

In the darkness I passed a familiar house, half-hidden behind luxurious shrubs. My God, yes! Daphne Bigelow! Beautiful Daphne. Daphne, the Daphne of my dreams. A sick feeling hit me deep in the gut as I remembered the night I had disastrously struck out with Daphne. I straightened up, walking proudly in the darkness, my campaign ribbons digging deep into my chest. She should see me now. By God, she should see me now, my skin bronzed by endless tropical days, pockmarked by endless tropical nights fighting endless tropical mosquitoes and heat rash. I was no longer the sweaty yap who had made such a
horse’s ass of himself in the long-ago. It’s a whole new ball game, I exulted.