Delphi complete works of.., p.287
Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 287
“Hello, Buddy!” was the way she greeted the Jimmy-legs of my barracks after I had introduced her to him with much elaboration. This completely floored the poor lad, and rendered him inarticulate. He thinks now that I come from either a family of thugs or maniacs, probably the latter. I succeeded in shaking the old thing for a while, and when I next found her she was demonstrating the proper method of washing whites to a group of sailors assembled in the wash room of one of our most popular latrines. She was heading in the direction of the shower baths when I finally rounded her up. She was a game old lady. I’ll have to hand her that. Her wildest escapade was reserved for the end of her visit, when I took her over to the K. of C. hut, and she challenged any sailor present to a game of pool for a quarter a ball. When we told her that the sailors in the Navy never gambled she said that she was completely off the service, and that she thought it was high time that we learned to do something useful instead of singing sentimental songs and weaving ourselves into intricate figures. This remark forced us to it, and much against our wills we proceeded to show the old lady up at pool. She had been bluffing all along, and when it came to a showdown we found that she couldn’t shoot for shucks. When the news spread around the hut the sailors crowded about her thick as thieves, challenging her to play. She was a wild, unregenerated old lady, but she was by no means an easy mark, as it later developed when she matched them for the winnings, got it all back, and I am told by some sailors that she even left the hut a little ahead of the game. I don’t object to notoriety, but there are numerous ways of winning it that are objectionable, and this old lady was one. Mother must have been giddier in her youth than I ever imagined.
July 3d. Yesterday I lost my dog Fogerty and didn’t find him until late in the afternoon. He was up in front of the First Regiment, mustered in with the liberty party. When he discovered my presence he looked coldly at me, as if he had never seen me before, so I knew that he had a date. He just sat there and shook his bangs over his eyes and tried to appear as if he were somewhere else. When the order come to shove off he joined the party and trotted off without even looking back, and that was the last I saw of him until this morning, when he came drifting in, rather unsteadily, and regarded me with a shifty but insulting eye. I am rapidly discovering hitherto unsuspected depths of depravity in Mr. Fogerty, which leads me to believe that he is almost human.
July 4th. This has been the doggonest Fourth of July I ever spent, and as a result I am in much trouble. All day long I have been grooming myself to look spic and span at the review held in honor of the Secretary when he opened the new wing to the camp. I missed it. I lost completely something in the neighborhood of ten thousand men. It seems hard to do, but the fact, the ghastly fact, remains that I did it. When I dashed out of the barracks with my newly washed, splendidly seagoing, still damp white hat in my hand my company was gone, and the whole camp seemed deserted. Far in the distance I heard the music of the band. Fogerty looked inquiringly at me and I fled. He fled after me.
“I lost completely something in the neighborhood of 10,000 men”
“Fogerty,” I gasped, “this is a trick I have to pull off alone. You’re not in on this review, and for God’s sake act reasonable.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of chasing across the parade ground with that simple-looking dog bounding along at my heels. My remark had no effect. Fogerty merely threw himself into high, and together we sped in the direction of the music. It was too late. Thousands of men were swinging past in review, and in all that mass of humanity there was one small vacant place that I was supposed to fill. I crouched down behind a tree and observed the scene through stricken eyes. How could I possibly have managed to lose nearly ten thousand men? It seemed incredible, and I realized then that I alone could have accomplished such a feat. And I had been so nice and clean, too, and I had worked so hard to be all of those things. I bowed my head in misery, and Mr. Fogerty, God bless his dissolute soul, crept up to me and tried to tell me it was all right, and didn’t matter much anyway. I looked down, and discovered that my snow white hat was all muddy. Fogerty sat on it.
July 8th. As a result of my being scratched out of the Independence day review I have been tried out as punishment in all sorts of disagreeable positions, all of which I have filled with an inefficiency only equaled by the bad temper of my over-lords. Some of these tasks, one in particular was of such a ridiculous nature that I refuse to enter it into my diary for an unfeeling posterity to jeer at. I am willing to state, however, that the accomplishments of Hercules, that redoubtable handy man of mythology, were trifling in comparison with mine.
To begin with, the coal pile is altogether too large and my back is altogether too refined. There should be individual coal piles provided for temperamental sailors. Small, colorful, appetizingly shaped mounds of nice, clean, glistening chunks of coal they should be, and the coal itself could easily be made much lighter, approaching if possible the weight of feathers. This would be a task any reasonably inclined sailor would attack with relish, particularly if his efforts were attended by the strains of some good, snappy jazz. However, reality wears a graver face and a sootier one. Long did I labor and valiantly but to little effect. More coal fell off of my shovel than remained on it. This was due to the unfortunate fact that coal dust seems to affect me most unpleasantly, much in the same manner as daisies or golden rod affect hay fever sufferers. The result was that every time I had my shovel poised in readiness to hurl its burden into space a monolithic sneeze overpowered me, shook me to the keel, and all the coal that I had trapped with so much patience and cunning fell miserably around my feet, from whence it had lately risen. Little things like this become most discouraging when strung out for a great period of time. In this manner I sneezed and sweated throughout the course of a sweltering afternoon, and just as I was about to call it a day along comes an evilly inclined coal wagon and dumps practically in my lap one hundred times more coal than I had disturbed in the entire course of my labors. On top of this Fogerty, who had been loafing around all day with his tongue out disporting himself on the coal pile like a dog in the first snow, started a landslide somewhere above and came bearing down on me in a cloud of dust. I found myself buried beneath the delighted Fogerty and a couple of tons of coal, from which I emerged unbeamingly, but not before Mr. Fogerty had addressed his tongue to my blackened face as an expression of high good humor.
“Fogerty came bearing down on me in a cloud of dust”
“Take me to the brig,” I said, walking over to the P.O., “I’m through. You can put a service flag on that coal pile for me.”
“What’s consuming you, buddy?” asked the P.O. in not an unkindly voice.
“Take me to the brig,” I repeated, “it’s too much. Here I’ve been working diligently all day to reduce the size of this huge mass, when up comes that old wagon and humps its back and belches forth its horrid contents all over the place. It’s ridiculous. I surrender my shovel.”
“Gord,” breathed the P.O., looking at me pityingly, “we don’t want to go and reduce that coal pile, we want to enlarge it.”
“Oh!” I replied, stunned, “I didn’t quite understand. I thought you wanted to make it smaller, so I’ve been trying to shovel it away all afternoon.”
“You shouldn’t oughter have done that,” replied the P.O. as if he were talking to an idiot, “I suppose you’ve been shoveling her down hill all day?”
I admitted that I had.
“You see,” I added engagingly, “I began with trying to shovel her up hill, but the old stuff kept on rolling down on me, so I drew the natural conclusion that I’d better shovel her down hill. It seemed more reasonable and—”
“Easier,” suggested the P.O.
“Yes,” I agreed.
There was a faraway expression in his eyes when he next spoke. “I’d recommend you for an ineptitude discharge,” he said, “if it wasn’t for the fact that I have more consideration for the civilian population. I’d gladly put you in the brig for life if I could feel sure you wouldn’t injure it in some way. The only thing left for me to do is to make you promise that you’ll keep away from our coal pile and swear never to lay violent hands on it again. You’ll spoil it.”
I gazed up at the monumental mass of coal rearing itself like a dark-town Matterhorn above my head and swore fervently never to molest it again.
“Go back to your outfit and get washed and tell your P.O. for me that you can’t come here no more, and,” he added, as I was about to depart, “take that unusual looking bit of animal life with you — it’s all wrong. Police his body or he’ll ruin some of your pals’ white pants and they wouldn’t like that at all.”
I feared they wouldn’t.
“Yes, sir,” I replied in a crumpled voice, “Much obliged, sir.”
“Please go away now,” he said quietly, “or I think I might do you an injury.” He was fingering the shovel nervously as he spoke. Thus Fogerty and I departed, banished even from our dusky St. Helena.
July 9th. Working on the theory of opposites, I was next placed as a waiter in the Chief Petty Officer’s Mess over in the First Regiment. I wasn’t so good here, it seems. There was something wrong with my technique. The coal pile had ruined me for delicate work. I continually kept mistaking the plate in my hand for a shovel, a mistake which led to disastrous results. I will say this for the chiefs, however — they were as clean-cut, hard-eating a body of men as I have ever met. It was a pleasure to feed them, particularly so in the case of one chief, a venerable gentleman, who seemed both by his bearing and the number of stripes on his sleeve to be the dean of the mess. He ate quietly, composedly and to the point, and after I had spilled a couple of plates of rations on several of the other chiefs’ laps he suggested that I call it a day and be withdrawn in favor of one whose services to his country were not so invaluable as mine. Appreciating his delicacy I withdrew, but only to be sent out on another job that defies description. Even here I quickly demonstrated my unfitness and have consequently been incorporated once more into the body of my regiment.
July 10th. I had the most terrible experience in mess to-day when a guy having eaten more rapidly than I attempted to take my ration. When I told him he shouldn’t do it he merely laughed brutally and kicked me an awful whack on the shin. This injury, together with the sight of witnessing my food about to be crammed down his predatory maw, succeeded in bringing all my latent patriotism to the fore and I fell upon him with a desperation bred of hunger. We proceeded to mill it up in a rather futile, childish manner until the Master-at-arms suggested in a certain way he has that we go away to somewhere else. Hereafter if any one asks if I did any actual fighting in this war I am going to say, “Yes, I fought like hell many hard and long battles in camp for my ration,” which will be true.
“Say, buddy,” said my opponent, after we had landed quite violently on the exterior of the Mess Hall, “you didn’t git no food at all, did yer?”
“No,” I replied bitterly; “at all is right.”
He looked at me for a moment in a strange, studying manner, then began laughing softly to himself.
“I don’t know what made me do it,” he said more to himself than to me. “I wasn’t hungry no more. I didn’t really want it. I wonder what makes a guy brutal? Guess he sort of has a feelin’ to experiment with himself and other folks.”
“I wish you’d tried that experiment on some one else,” I replied, thinking tenderly of my shin.
“Sometimes I feel so doggon strong and mean,” he continued, “I just can’t keep from doing things I don’t naturally feel like doing. I guess I’m sort of an animal.”
“Say,” I asked him in surprise, “if you keep talking about yourself that way I won’t be able to call you all the names I am carefully preparing at this moment.”
He peered earnestly down on me for a space.
“Does my face make you talk that way?” I asked, feeling dimly and uncomfortably that it did.
“Yes,” he replied, “it’s your face, your foolish looking face. I can’t help feeling sorry for it and your funny empty little belly.”
“You’re breaking me down,” I answered; “I can’t stand kindness.”
“I ain’t no bully,” he said fiercely, as if he was about to strike me. “I ain’t no bully,” he repeated, “I’ll tell you that.”
“No, sir,” I replied soothingly, keeping on the alert, “you ain’t no bully.”
Here he took me by the arm and dragged me along with him.
“Come on, buddy,” he said, “I’m going to take you to the canteen and feed you. I’m going to do it, I swear to God.”
So he fed me. Stacks and stacks of stuff he forced on me until the flesh rebelled, after which he put things in my pockets, repeating every little while, “I ain’t no bully, I’ll tell you that, I ain’t no bully.” He spent most of his money, I reckon, but I did not try to stop him. He wanted to do it and I guess it made him feel better. After the orgy I took him around and let him pat Mr. Fogerty. He seemed to like this. Fogerty took it in good part.
July 11th. There’s something about Wednesday afternoons that doesn’t appeal to me. First they make you go away and dress yourself up nice and clean and then they look you over and make you feel nearly as childish as you look. Then they put a gun into your hand that is much too heavy for comfort and make you do all sorts of ridiculous things with this gun, after which you fall in with numerous thousands of other men who have been subjected to the same treatment, and together we all go trotting past any number of officers, who look you over with uncanny earnestness through eyes that seem to perceive the remotest defect with fiendish accuracy. Then we all trot home again and call it a review.
This is all very well for some people, but not for me. I’m a little too self-conscious. I have always the feeling that I am the review, that it has been staged particularly for my discomforture, and that every officer in camp is on the lookout for any slight irregularity in my clothes or conduct. In this they have little difficulty. I assist them greatly myself. To-day, for instance:
Item one: Dropped my gun.
Item two: Talked in ranks. I asked the guy next to me how he would like to go to a place and he said that he’d see me there first.
Item three: Failed to follow the guide.
Item four: Didn’t mark time correctly.
Item five: Was in step once.
Now all of these things are trifling in themselves, but taken en mass, as it were, it leads up to a sizable display; at least, so I was told in words that denied any other interpretation by my P.O. and several pals of his. After the review our regimental commander lined us up and addressed us as follows:
“About that review to-day,” he began, “it was terrible” (long, dramatic pause). “It was probably the worst review I have ever seen (several P.O.’s glanced at me reproachfully), not only that,” he continued, “but it was the worst review that anybody has ever seen. Anybody! (shouted) without exception! (shouted) awful review! (pause) Terrible!”
We steadied in the ranks and waited for our doom.
“It will never be so again,” he continued, “I’ll see to that. I’ll drill ye myself. If you have to get up at four o’clock in the morning to drill in order to meet your classes, I’ll see that ye do it. Dropping guns! (pause). Talking in ranks! (pause). Out-o-step (terrible pause). Marking time wrong. Everything wrong! Company commanders, take ’em away.”
We were took.
“All of those things,” said my P.O. in a trembling voice, “you did. All of ’em. Now the old man’s sore on us and he’s going to give us hell, and I’m going to do the same by you.”
“Shoot, dearie,” says I, with the desperate indifference of a man who has nothing left to lose, “I wouldn’t feel natural if you didn’t.”
And in my hammock that night I thought of another thing I might have said if it had occurred to me in time. I might have said, “Hell is the only thing you know how to give and you’re generous with that because it’s free.”
But I guess after all it’s just as well I didn’t.
August 1st. Mr. Fogerty has returned aboard. My worst fears are realized. For a long time he has been irritable and uncommunicative with me and has indulged in sly, furtive little tricks unbecoming to a dog of the service. I have suspected that he was concealing a love affair from me. This it appears he has been doing and his guilt is heavy upon him. I realize now for the first time and not without a sharp maternal pang that he has reached an age at which he must make decisions for himself. I can no longer follow him out into the world upon his nocturnal exploits. His entire confidence is not mine. I must be content to share a part of his heart instead of the whole of it. Like father like son, I suppose. However, I see no reason for him to put on such airs. On his return from City Island this time he had somehow contrived to get himself completely shaved up to the shoulders. The result is startling. Fogerty looks extremely aristocratic but a trifle foppish. However, he seems to consider himself the only real four-footed dog in camp. This is a trifle boring from a dog who has never hesitated to steal from the galley anything that wasn’t a permanent fixture. I can’t help but feel sorry for him though when I see that far-away look in his eyes. Sad days I fear are in store for him. Ah, well, we’re only young once.
August 3d. “Well, now, son,” he was saying, “mind me when I tell yer that I’m not claiming as to ever have seen a mermaid, but what I am saying is this and that is if anybody has ever seen one of them things I’m that man. I’m not making no false claims, however, none whatsoever.”
