Little Girl Lost 6: The Return of Johnnie Wise (8 page)

He was about to enter Fort Jackson at about five in the morning, oblivious to the fact that the fire in Ashland Estates was just starting to burn itself out. He wasn’t required to go on active duty for another two weeks, and his original plan was to spend fourteen days with his sweetheart. But after hearing Meredith Shamus testify that Johnnie had been having a relationship with her former stockbroker, Martin Winters, he knew his relationship with her was over. On the ten-hour drive, he thought mostly about Johnnie, but he also thought about Marla Bentley.

The conversation he’d had with Marla kept replaying as he was powerless to stop it. She didn’t deserve what she’d gotten, he knew, but it was too late. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t raise her from the dead. He had loved Johnnie with all of his heart, and he couldn’t believe how wrong he had been about her. He told himself he would never ever put that much faith and trust in any woman again. It was just too painful when the ugly truth surfaced. And in Johnnie’s case, the ugly truth had surfaced three times with three different white men. The thing that bothered him most was that Marla had been right all along. He told himself that if he had listened to Marla the first time, or at the very least the second time she’d told him what kind of girl Johnnie was, maybe he wouldn’t have accidentally killed her.

But he didn’t listen, and now a woman who had been honest with him, a woman who wanted to join him in Columbia, South Carolina, and then in Germany, was dead and gone. And the memory of both women would be forever seared into his conscience. He promised himself that he would make it up to Marla by finishing what she started in him. He was going to educate himself. He was going to take her pearls of wisdom and make her proud of him. In his heart, he knew she had forgiven him because she, too, knew that he didn’t mean to do it.

During the thirty days he spent at Angola Prison, he read the books Marla sent every day. It was a struggle at first, but he worked hard to overcome his dyslexia by reading daily and markedly improved his reading speed and skill. He even improved his vocabulary and penmanship. Clancy “One Punch” Brown, an unschooled, but wise fellow prisoner, had taught him that prison was for fools. He promised himself that he would never be a fool again and that decision would keep him out of cement cages for the rest of his life. He was going to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.

He stopped at the guard shack where a couple of uniformed guards were on duty. He pulled up to the black-and-white striped gate and said, “I’m Lucas Matthews. I was told to come here for basic combat training.”

The guard grabbed a clipboard and looked it over. He looked at Lucas and said, “You must be in some kinda hurry, boy.”

With a New York accent, the other guard said, “You’re not supposed to be here for another two weeks.”

He didn’t like being called boy, and he certainly didn’t like being talked down to, especially by a white man with a Yankee accent, but he didn’t have anywhere to go. He was new in town, and he certainly had enough money for a hotel, but there was no guarantee the Columbia, South Carolina crackers were any different than Louisiana crackers. He was supposed to be at Fort Jackson. They had to let him in if he kept his cool and let the guards get away with calling him boy. He said, “I know, sir, but I was told I could come early if I wanted.”

“They can’t process you in yet,” the New Yorker said. “Nothing’s open until 7:30, boy. But I suppose you could go on over to the Mess Hall and put some SOS in ya belly.”

Lucas frowned. “SOS? What’s that?”

“Shit on a shingle, boy. Don’t you know nuthin’?” the New Yorker said.

Lucas frowned again, wondering if part of the training meant that’s what he had to eat. “Is that what I have to eat for initiation or what?”

The guards looked at each other and laughed themselves silly. “Yeah, boy. We eat it every mornin’. It’ll put hair on ya chest.”

Chapter 15

“
What’s your name, son?”

F
ollowing the directions he had been given by the guards, Lucas drove over to the Mess Hall. He dreaded eating SOS, but he figured that if everybody had to do it, particularly those two white boys he’d just met, he would, too, thinking it must make soldiers strong or something. Otherwise why would they eat it? He parked his car and went into the Mess Hall. The place was packed with uniformed soldiers. The Mess Hall reminded him of a much larger version of Walter Brickman’s restaurant in Baroque Parish. It, too, was probably full of people, he thought. As far as he could tell, he was the only person wearing civilian clothes. It seemed as if every soldier in the place had to eyeball him before they continued their meals or conversations.

He didn’t know what to do, so he watched to see how things worked. He saw four soldiers come in, all of them with stripes on their sleeves. He followed them at a distance, having decided to do whatever they did. He watched them grab a tray and silverware. Then, they disappeared around a corner. He did the same thing. He kept hearing all the soldiers ordering shit on a shingle. That’s when he realized that it was all true. The guards had told him they ate SOS every day. He didn’t know why, but he figured all the soldiers must love it. The strange thing was that the SOS didn’t smell the way he thought it would, like a stable or something. Another thing he didn’t get was that there seemed to be plenty of bacon, eggs, potatoes, sausage, pancakes, toast, and oatmeal in addition to the SOS. Yet four soldiers in a row, when asked what they wanted, said, “Shit on a shingle.”

Lucas looked at the other soldiers, exhaled deliberately, and said, “Shit on a shingle, I guess.” Then, he eyed the cook and said, “And if you talk to me like that again, I’m gonna come over there and turn you into whatcha servin’. I’m from
New Orleans
.”

The cook stared at him for a long few seconds, trying to ascertain the seriousness of the threat. He looked at the other soldiers in line. They were waiting to see what the cook was going to say. The cook figured the best thing to do was to defuse the situation and give the kid what he ordered. The kid obviously didn’t know he couldn’t threaten soldiers at Fort Jackson, but he would soon find out.

“What’s your name, soldier?” the cook asked.

“I’m not a soldier yet. I just got here a little while ago, but I can see right now that I’ma have tuh kick some ass before the day is finished tuh get some respect around here.”

The cook stared at him again and said, “What’s your name, son?”

“My name is Lucas Matthews, and don’t call me son. I kick ass, and I take names, especially when a man calls me son and he’s not my father. Now . . . do we understand each other, or do I hav’ta explain it to ya on the other side of this counter?”

The cook looked at the soldiers standing there, watching it all, listening to the civilian threaten a fellow soldier, waiting for him to make a move on the cook so they could stomp his ears together. He hoped that one of them would put the kid in his place, but they didn’t. When he realized that none of the sergeants were going to say or do anything about the upstart, he grabbed a couple pieces of toast with tongs, placed them on a plate, and then poured a couple helpings of a grayish mixture over the toast and handed it to Lucas.

The cook then looked at the soldier who had come in behind Lucas and said, “What’ll it be?”

Chapter 16 “First Lieutenant”

L
ucas followed a couple soldiers to the milk and orange juice stand and did what they did, grabbing one of each. Then, he looked around for a place to sit, while the buzz of numerous conversations filled his ears. There were only two open tables left, and the four soldiers with stripes on their sleeves who had just come in had taken one of those. He saw a woman sitting at a table alone. She acknowledged him with a warm smile. She was wearing an all-white nurse’s uniform with thin silver bars on her shoulders. He didn’t think there would be women at the post. And he certainly didn’t think there would be a good-looking Negro woman with a perfect smile sitting in the Mess Hall.

He figured she must be married to one of the soldiers or something. He looked at her left hand. No ring. He smiled and sat at the table near her, thinking she must have a boyfriend or something. She was far too beautiful not to be with someone. Then, he noticed that she, too, was eating SOS, and she seemed to love it. He looked around the room and nearly all the soldiers were eating the SOS heartily, but most of them also had the other food the cook served, too.

He looked at his plate, swallowed hard, and then looked at the soldiers and the woman again. He smelled the SOS. There was no foul odor, no stink of any kind. He figured the cook must have put some kind of seasoning in it to get rid of the smell. That was a good thing, he thought. He picked up his fork, determined to dig in like all the other brave soldiers in the room, but he couldn’t do it. It was shit on a shingle no matter how it smelled. That wasn’t something he thought he should eat no matter what. He figured he’d get back in line and get the bacon and eggs. Just as he was about to get up, he saw the woman looking at him, staring actually. She smiled and nodded slightly, offering him a friendly greeting. He returned her salutation in like manner and was about to get up again when she said, “Is there something wrong with your food, newbie?”

He was thinking,
newbie?
He locked eyes with her. “My name is Lucas Matthews, not newbie. And I’m from New Orleans.”

The woman picked up her tray and moved over to his table. “Mind if I join you, newbie?”

“I don’t mind. But again . . . my name is still Lucas Matthews, not newbie. You need to get that straight before you say anything else and definitely before you sit down.”

The woman put her tray on the table, sat down, smiled and said. “So you’re a tough guy, huh?”

“Tough as nails. You gotta be when you collect money for the mafia. I had to kick a lotta ass and I take names back home.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, smiling, figuring he was making it up to impress her. “Well, I like tough-as-nails guys. I like to soften ’em up.”

Lucas locked eyes with her, full of glee, glad she had opened the door for him to use one of his fancy new words on her like he’d heard Johnnie do many times. “Is that a sexual overture?” He had more fancy words for her if the conversation lasted long enough.

Lucas had no idea what she was asking, but he was determined not to let her know that. He decided to hide the fact that he didn’t understand by answering the first question only. “No, you couldn’t soften me up. So don’t waste your time.”

“It’s my time to waste, is it not?”

“You talk real fancy. Where you from, girl?”

“I’ll be glad to tell you where I’m from,
boy
. But, first tell me what’s wrong with your food.”

Lucas was about to say, “It’s shit on a shingle,” but he was in the presence of a very pretty lady who apparently had high moral standards, so instead he said, “It’s SOS. That’s why, and I don’t see how you can eat it, especially being a woman and all. But I guess everybody in the Army has to eat it, huh? It’s like a rite of passage or something, right?”

The woman laughed from her belly and said, “That’s why I called you newbie. You’re green. You’re wet behind the ears. You don’t know the ropes yet.”

“So they were just kidding with me then, huh?”

“Yes and no. It
is
called SOS, but it’s just an acronym, silly. This must be your first day, huh?”