GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER 1 Continued

 

1.20. and in near silent Fusaichi every vibration of a cicada, every tremble of a dancing leaf, every lef and every rye and every hada in between reverberates like the ack ack of antiaircraft fire.  The American Flag damn near becomes a storm flag flying when Capt. Shuvee sees it at his arrival to the radiotelegraph room.  A somber room.  Slim and somber and barely furnished.  See it.  A desk upon which is the dit da machine, a chair on which sits the dit da operator and nothing else into which Capt. Shuvee enters.  

    There she is, the pin up doll of the month, pinned on the wall above the dit da artists’s head.  A curvy doll, peroxide blonde with soft indulgent curves and modulations beyond realistic expectations.  She can’t be real,  But there’s her picture, right?  More than real with unreal zeal.  More than ready to be in every trooper’s dream.  A Hollywood wildcat that goes by the unreal name of Sarah Lynx.  Her lips are lush in wildcat red.   For the boys, Sarah Lynx  is written across her chest, the comma smack dab between her cleavage.  So far she’s been on display for four and a half months.  The record is a solid six months long, held by a Northern dancer named Natalma photographed bathing:  girl knew what she was doing.  Only her limbs exposed, one leg and one arm draped over the lip of the tub.  The one who has come closest to taking her title is the “bond bombshell,” Dorothy L’amour, all dolled up in a grass skirt like a Polynesian native dancer.  

    The dit da operator never looks at any of them.  He has eyes only for his “Aly, darling,” whose name Capt. Shuvee knows is Aly Kingston of Johnstown, a coal town with a single high school, Briar High School, and she was crowned “Miss Briar” at the homecoming dance a couple of weeks before the dit da operator left for basic training.  The troopers confide in him, see?  Even the ones who aren’t in his troop.  Very popular, the captain.  They like the way he moves, the way he commands in moderation.  His aptitude for relaxation, everything from him is a relaxed gesture, even a salute:  his right hand raised sharply to his forehead, his forefinger touching the brim of his hat or the area near his right eyebrow; his hand straight, his fingers and thumb joined, his elbow up, wrist and arm straight, forming a slight angle; real casual and perfectly perfect at the same time.  

    “Say, loot, any exciting news?”

    Lieut. Gibson, the dit da operator, is formally First Lieutenant G (for Geoffrey). W (for Wilburn) Johnson (for reasons he keeps to himself) - Gibson or, affectionately “the loot.”  And he is more than a dit da machine operator.  He is an artist when it comes to the operating of the dit da machine.  The artiste Lieut. Gibson operates the brass key of the dit da machine while doing anything else at the same time.  Usually, the anything else is eating.  This second morning of November he is chowing on a nice slice of plum cake made by and delivered to him by his darling Aly.  She’s a plum pretty gal.  Detritus from the slice litters the desk.  The loot is many things:  dependable and efficient, essential and proficient, but a neat eater he is not.  He eats like a monkey in the middle of a free for all pot luck dinner.  Finally the loot swallows and, instead of answering the captain’s question, says, “Mornin’, cap’n, this here’s the last slice of plum cake my Aly, dar —-- ……—----.........--------........--------.....---..--....-------...... brip brip  brip brip brip brip  brip brip goes the dit da machine . . . .  – —--- – …. —- Aly, she ba —--- . . . brip —-brip brip …… brip —-- baked it herself. Want the last bite?”  The captain does not.  He wants a slice of reality.  He wants to know if any of the dispatches received by the loot gives any indication of when they will be American bound, bound for home.  Back to where there are dogs and goats, where grown men aren’t the size of adolescent boys.  Where everything isn’t just another damnable shade of green.

    If he received such an important dispatch it wouldn’t be the first time.  Back in April he received the dispatch informing the squadron that Jackie Robinson, that handsome brown man, broke the line.  What line?  The morning line?  The line in the sand?  Ne guh tiv.  The color line by being selected by the Brooklyn Dodgers to become the first Negro to play major league baseball.  He received this dispatched from the American Forces Radio and Television Service to whom he dit’ed and da’ed back:

 

.-. - - -  - -. ..-. / - . . - - - - . . - - . . . - . / .- -. . . . - . . -. . - .-. - . . .

 

roger dodger a-farts

 

The loot is infamous for his snatches of dispatches:

 

.-. - - -  - -.  . . - . / - . . . . .- -

 

roger that

 

-. -. .- -. / - . . - - - -

 

can do

 

all dispatches peppered with the usual and noncommittal ne guh tiv and un fur muh tiv and then there was the single time he made a mistake.  He dispatched:

 

. - - . . . - . . -.- - - - 

 

wilko

 

instead of:

 

. - - . . .- . . -. -.  - - - 

 

wilco

 

and the discovery was made that his insobriety was the cause.  A teetotaller, he drank that one time.  For that one time he was boonified.  The boonies, it seemed, had finally gotten him.  Because of something terrible?  Something dangerous?  Hell, something royal? - he drank and it was a kind of dynamism, worked like a kind of dynaformer.  

 

1.21.  The boonies gets to every one sooner or later.

 

1.22.  Suddenly the loot stops working the brass key.  No more dit’ing, no more da’ing.  And Capt. Shuvee thinks of Aeschylus:  Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.  

 

1.23.  Again, “Any exciting news?”

 

1.24.  “Well, sir . . . the colonel is dead.  But if that’s exciting news I don’t like to say.”

 

1.25.  Capt. Shuvee does not make the loot say, instead, he takes the dispatch:

 

BE ADVISED THE COLONEL IS DEAD

He understands the dots and dashes.  Does not need the loot to interpret them.  A wind rush.  Something guttural in the coughing air, trying to cough out a storm before choking on itself.  A flash, like the blind blinking in momentary sight.  Capt. Shuvee takes unbridled command of the dispatch and for reasons he can’t explain he thinks of what Papa Clem said to him once when asked how long they must endure the boonies of Fusaichi.  “We must stay until we have defied Sisyphus and rebelled against absurdity”