"Cletus Miller's comin'," Ma Cromwell said. "He ain't been up here
since the week afore your Pa died. I don't know what it is but it's
bound to be trouble."
A few minutes later Miller hallooed from the bottom of the garden
patch, then trudged up to the cabin.
"Set and rest, Cletus," Ma said. "Sonny, fetch Cletus a coolin' dip."
Jed ambled down to the spring sluice and dippered out a pint of clear,
mountain water.
"Got mail fer you," Cletus said, waving an envelope. "Guvermint mail.
Fer Sonny."
Two weeks later, Jediah swung down the mountain to Owl Creek, carrying
a small sack with his good clothes and shoes in it. The draft notice
was stuffed into his overall pockets along with biscuits and meat Ma
had insisted he take.
"Go along now, Sonny," she had directed him, "and don't you fret none
about me. The corn's 'most ready. You got a good supply of firewood
in, more'n enought to last me all winter. If your guvermint need us
Cromwells to fight, then I reckon its our bounden duty. Your grandsire
and greatgrandsire both wuz soldiers and if'n your Pa hadn't gone and
gotten his leg busted and twisted afore the guvermint called him I
reckon he'd have been one, too. I've learned you all I can and you can
read 'n write 'n do sums. Just mind your manners and come on home when
they don't need you no more."
In Owl Creek the first real part of the excitement hit Jed. He had
been as far as Paulsburg, twenty miles farther and that was almost as
big as the county seat at Madison. Now he was going to go even beyond
Madison--right to the city. And then maybe the Army would send him
more places.
The Army did.
Everything had been wonderful, almost overwhelming, from the moment he
boarded a bus for the first time in his life until he arrived at Fort
McGruder. He could hardly believe the wealth of the government in
issuing him so many clothes and giving him so much personal gear. And
while the food wasn't what Ma would have cooked, there was lots of it.
He liked the other recruits who had ridden down to McGruder with him,
even though a couple of the city fellows had been kind of teasing.
He liked the barracks although his bunk mattress wasn't as soft as
Ma's eiderdown comforts. He liked everything--until the sergeant had
cussed at him this afternoon.
Now Jed lay on his bunk and counted the springs on the upper bunk
occupied by Private Harry Fisher. It was close to eight o'clock and
the barracks were full of scores of young soldiers. A crap game was
going on three bunks away and across the aisle; another country boy
was picking at a guitar. The bunk above sagged with the weight of
Harry Fisher, who was reading a book.
Jed's mind kept coming back to the cussin' out he had gotten, just for
not knowing the Army insisted on a body wearing shoes no matter what
he was doing. Jed had never been cussed at before in his entire life.
True, Ma never hesitated about taking a willow switch to him when he
was a young 'un, or a stob of kindling when he got older. But she
always whupped him in a gentle fashion, never losing her temper and
always explaining with each whistling swing of switch or club, just
what he'd done wrong and why this was for the good of his immortal
soul.
Thinking about Ma, Jed got homesick. He closed his eyes and looked
around for Ma. She was stirring a pot of lye ashes over the fireplace
and when she felt Jed in the cabin she closed her eyes. "Sonny," she
said, "you in trouble?"
Lying on his bunk at Fort McGruder, Jed smiled happily and thought
back an answer. "Nope, Ma. Jest got to wonderin' what you wuz doing."
Whatever Ma was going to say was lost amid the yells and growls of the
men in the barracks as the electricity went off. "Who turned the
lights off?" Fisher cried from the top bunk. "It's not 'lights out'
time yet."
* * * * *
The noise jerked Jed back to the present and his eyes opened. The
lights came on.
"Where are the dice," one of the crapshooters barked. "I rolled a
seven just when the lights went out."
The noise died down and the game resumed. Fisher lay back on his bunk
and went back to his book. Jed's mind reached out for home again.
"Ma," he called out, "you say something?"
The lights went out and the yells went up throughout the two-story
barracks.
Jed opened his eyes and the lights came on.
At the end of the barracks, Corporal Weisbaum came out of his sacredly
private room and surveyed the recruits. "Awright," he roared, "so
which one of you is the wise guy making with the lights?"
"So nobody, corporal," a recruit sitting on the end bunk answered. "So
the lights went out. Then they come back on. So who knows? Maybe the
Army ain't paying its light bills. I had a landlady back in Brooklyn
who usta do the same thing anytime I got late with her rent mon...."
"Shaddup," Weisbaum snarled. "Maybe it was power trouble. But if it
happens again and I find out one of you monkeys is bein' smart, the
whole platoon falls out and we'll get a little night air exercising."
He stalked back into his room and slammed the door.
The barracks buzzed angrily for a few moments. Jed sat up and peered
up at Fisher.
"That there officer shorely don't talk very nice, you know that
Harry," Jed said.
Fisher laid down the book and peered under his thick-rimmed glasses at
the lanky mountain boy.
"How old are you, Jed," he asked.
"Nineteen."
"Lived up in the hills all those years?" Fisher inquired.
"Yup," Jed replied. "This is the furthinest I've ever been." His
normally cheerful face fell slightly. "Kinda makes me lonesome in a
way, though. Folks back home jest plain don't talk thataway one to the
other."
Fisher leaned over the edge of his bunk. "Let me tell you something,
Jed. Don't let talk like that worry you. First of all, he's no
officer. And second, he doesn't really mean it and it's just a way the
Army has of making men of us. You'll hear lots more and lots worse
before you get back to those West Virginia hills of yours."
Jed lay back down on the bunk. "Mebbe so," he admitted. "Don't mean I
gotta like it much, though. Ma never talked thataway to me, no matter
how bad a thing I done."
Jed closed his eyes and thought of home. Ought to say goodnight to Ma.
He let his mind reach out to the cabin almost two states distant.
The lights went out in the barracks, two of the crapshooters started
swinging at each other in the dark and the commotion drifted upwind to
the platoon sergeant's room in another barracks two buildings away.
In the confused yells and the shouting of Corporal Weisbaum, Jed gave
up trying to say goodnight to Ma and opened his eyes again.
The lights in the barracks came back on just as Platoon Sergeant
Mitchell walked in the front door.
The two crapshooters were tangled in a heap in the center aisle of the
barracks, still swinging. Corporal Weisbaum had the Brooklyn recruit
by the front of his T-shirt, waving a massive fist under the boy's
nose.
"AT EASE!" Mitchell boomed. The barracks shook and suddenly there was
quiet. "Now just what is going on here?" he demanded.
Weisbaum released his grip on the recruit and the two brawlers
scrambled to their feet. The corporal glared at the forty-odd recruits
in the barracks. "I warned you mush heads what would happen the next
time one of you fiddled with them lights. Now I'm gonna give you just
five minutes to fall out in front in fatigues and combat boots. MOVE!"
"Lay off," one of the recruits muttered, "nobody touched the lights.
They just went off."
Weisbaum turned a cold stare on the youngster. "Just went out, eh?
O.K. Let's see. Sergeant Mitchell, did the lights go out in your
building?"
The sergeant shook his head.
"Did you notice if the lights were out in any other buildings when you
came up?" Again Mitchell shook his head.
"Just this barracks, huh?"
Mitchell nodded.
There was a moment of silence. "Five minutes, you jugheads," Weisbaum
roared. "Five minutes or I'll have your flabby hides hung like
wallpaper in my room."
By the time the platoon got back in the barracks after a five-mile
walk around the perimeter of the post, Taps were sounding and the
lights went out as soon as the men hit their bunks. The talking was
over. Jed felt better after the pleasant walk in the night air. He
decided Ma would be asleep anyway by this time. He turned his head
into his pillow and was snoring in ten seconds.
* * * * *
Once Jed began getting the feel of what was wanted of him, his
training improved and the wrath of the platoon sergeants and corporals
was directed elsewhere. The recruits moved rapidly through the
hardening period and with each day, Jed found the going easier. By the
time the platoon was ready for the rifle range, Jed hadn't had time to
give more than a brief occasional thought about home.
When the supply sergeant issued him his M-14 rifle, Jed carried it
back to the barracks like a young bridegroom carrying his beloved
across their first threshold.
"Harry," he said in an awed voice to his bunkmate, "ain't that jest
about the most bee-ootiful thing you ever did see?"
Fisher was sitting on the lower bunk beside Jed, working the action on
his own rifle. "It's a lovely weapon, allright. I just hope I can hit
the side of a barn with it."
"Hit a barn with it," Jed said in amazement, "why, Harry, with this
here gun I could hit a squirrel in the eye two ridges away and let you
pick which eye."
Fisher grinned. "I've heard you mountain boys are pretty good with a
rifle. We'll see just how good you are next week when we go out on the
range."
The following Monday morning on the range, the platoon gathered around
Corporal Weisbaum.
"Awright, you bums," the corporal sneered, "here's where we separate
the men from the boys. Don't let the noise shake you too bad and if it
kicks you in the shoulder a little, don't flinch. Remember what you
learned in dry fire practice--hold 'em and squeeze 'em off. This is
just familiarization fire, so don't worry if you don't hit the first
few shots."