FOUR
We cried when You slipped away,
that morn’ early.
When finally I think you yearned
for the journey.
Mike and Shane walk out of Mom’s Café picking their teeth and rubbing bellies that are tight from breakfast. Biscuits and sausage gravy topped with two fried eggs and a handful of smoky bacon had been ordered, admired and ate. They wobbled over to the baby blue Ford groaning at the pressure that their belts put on their gut as they sat in the car. Shane tries to continue their discussion of the future as he gets the car headed back north and home. “So, when are you going to see the draft board?”
Mike avoids the subject, “Shane, look another Burma Shave sign...”
“C’mon Mike, no more Burma Shave signs. Come clean, what are you going to do?”
“Well, I guess I’ll take an afternoon this week and go see them. God, I hate to. I really am scared, if I go over there, I don’t think I’ll come back.” The last is said in a quiet voice. Mike finally cuts the clowning around, but it puts him in a low mood.
“Enough of that shit, you’re tough, the Cong are just little skinny bastards...remember when you took that running back down at the homecoming game? You ate his lunch, rolled his ass like a bowling pin. You’ll make it through ‘Nam.” Shane is positive that nothing bad will happen to his pal.
Quietly Mike thinks on Shane’s reply, then says, “I did kick his butt on that one didn’t I?”
“Damn straight! You did, he heard footsteps the rest of that game.”
Mike is quiet once again, he is thinking and says what he is thinking out loud, “It’s a bit different with hand grenades and AK47’s. I hate it when I hear bullets flyin’ by my head.”
“I just had a thought. Remember that one scout trip out to Fish Springs? The one that we put the firecracker in the firewood? Shane was excited, he evidently had a thought that would bring Mike around.
Mike chuckles, “Doc Willis put it in the fire and when it blew up, he said ‘Who put the firecracker in the fire?’”
Together, they answer Doc’s question, “You did Doc!!”
Mike laughs but is puzzled, “Yea I remember, what about it?”
Well, that night we sat in the tent and it was raining outside, Don telling us not to touch his old man’s tent with our fingers and making it leak…remember? It leaked any way, haha, fell down on us too. Later.”
“Yep, I remember that trip, almost broke my toe in the hot springs. Memories of that trip come flooding back into Mike’s mind. There were memories of many trips like that one. They had camped all over the state.
Shane continues, “We decided we’d be blood brothers, remember?”
Mike’s eyes fly open, “And Don too!”
“Sure! You couldn’t bear to cut your wrist so we pricked our thumbs with that dull old scout knife of yours. The tremendous trio. Through thick and thin. I think Don got a deferrment for being married....I mean....I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“That’s ok, lucky him. I remember the blood brother thing. I always thought we were brothers anyway. Even a little fighting.” Mike said.
Shane said jokingly, hoping to break the mood, “Thank God, not too much fightin’...I’m a lover not a fighter.”
Mike snorted, “Braggart!”
“You wish! Gettin’ back to the subject. If you get drafted, I’ll sign up and we’ll go together. That way, you won’t be alone.”
Mike was startled at this, “No! You can’t! Your number is too high, you don’t have to go!”
“Mike! Ease up buddy, It’s up to me. If you have to go, I’m going too.” Shane is adamant.
Mike turns away, facing out the side window. He was resigned to the fact that he was being drafted, and when he was called up, well, Viet Nam was the next stop. It was all so dark. He had a premonition that something bad was going to happen to him. He couldn’t stand the thought of his buddy facing the same fate.
“Then I hope they won’t take me. I would die if you followed me and something happened.”
Shane continued with his cocky confidence, “They won’t know what hit ‘em if we both go over there. Besides, I’m a better shot.”
“You are not!”
“Am too.”
The guys have a long standing argument about this. They shoot every chance they get. Ever since they were allowed to hunt together without adult supervision they had burned up cases of .22 cartridges and shotgun ammo. It probably was a tie, but Mike conceded a half victory.
“Well maybe, with a shotgun, I’ll kick your butt with a rifle any day. You don’t have to go. It would be better if just one of us has to do this.”
Shane smiles at the easy half-win, but then, “Better for who? I ain’t doing anything, now that I got my money back from Dixie College.”
“Anything would be better than going to that hellhole.”
Shane says, “It’s settled then”
“It is not!”
They pause, both look away, wishing they could change the subject.
Mike breaks the silence, “Look at that sign! “Welcome to Rooster Valley” cockle-doodle-de dooo! Hahahahahahaha”. He laughs wildly.
Shane looks across the car at his buddy, wondering if everything they have talked about has caused Mike to lose his marbles. Maybe the pressure of the draft notice has gotten to him. He asks, “What’s so funny about that?”
Mike started crowing like a rooster, over and over, then laughing like a madman. “Er-er-er-errrrrr! Rooster Valley!”
Shane chuckles in sympathy, then asks again, “What’s so funny?”
Mike can hardly stop laughing, but finally he gets out, “What’d the hen say to the new rooster? I don’t know what you’re crowing about, you ain’t nothin’ special- - -any cock’ll do! Hahahahahaha.”
Shane laughed along with Mike and they chanted in unison,
“Cockle-doodle-de-dooooo! Rooster Valley! Hahahahahaha” They laugh long and hard, barely keeping the car on the road. It was like they needed the emotional release of a good laugh, since crying was out of the question. Their generation wasn’t the first to be drawn into a war that was unpopular. They weren’t the first to be inducted involuntarily into the Army. But, the subject of Viet Nam had dominated their young lives. And the guys they knew who wanted to go into the service were either nuts or it would be their best chance at getting an education. The rest of the group would go if they had to, but wouldn’t join otherwise.
Mike fell silent first; the laughter had worn him out. He said, “Let’s go see Wanda at B Y Woo, where the girls are girls and the boys are too!” He remembered that Shane didn’t believe that a beautiful girl like Wanda would have anything to do with him.
Shane thought about it for a second then, “Yeah I guess, we don’t have to be home ‘til tomorrow anyway. What day are you going to the draft board, maybe I’ll go with you?”
“You really don’t have to go. Maybe I’ll be 4-f, I could take a purse, you know. I got flat feet, and I piss enough protein to feed a third world family for hell’s sake, almost didn’t get hired at that copper mine last year.
Any way, I been thinking...if I have to go, why not join first and get my choice of what to do? My old man says he can get me into Annapolis, I will have to do prep school first though, I flunked Algebra.” Mike was trying hard to convince his pal to stay out of the war. He just didn’t have a good feeling about it at all.
Shane kept on, “Maybe you will. Be 4-F, I mean. I wish we could know the future, know what to do. It’s so fucked up, with the draft and all, how can you plan for anything until you know? I’m going if you are, so that’s that.”
Michael D. LeFevre (Adapted from a Short Play of the same title) Copyright 5 June 2001
No comments:
Post a Comment