Biltmore Oswald Read online

she greeted the Jimmy-legs of my barracksafter I had introduced her to him with much elaboration. Thiscompletely floored the poor lad, and rendered him inarticulate. Hethinks 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 ofwashing whites to a group of sailors assembled in the wash room of oneof our most popular latrines. She was heading in the direction of theshower 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 theend of her visit, when I took her over to the K. of C. hut, and shechallenged 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 saidthat she was completely off the service, and that she thought it washigh time that we learned to do something useful instead of singingsentimental songs and weaving ourselves into intricate figures. Thisremark forced us to it, and much against our wills we proceeded toshow the old lady up at pool. She had been bluffing all along, andwhen it came to a showdown we found that she couldn't shoot forshucks. When the news spread around the hut the sailors crowded abouther thick as thieves, challenging her to play. She was a wild,unregenerated old lady, but she was by no means an easy mark, as itlater developed when she matched them for the winnings, got it allback, and I am told by some sailors that she even left the hut alittle ahead of the game. I don't object to notoriety, but there arenumerous ways of winning it that are objectionable, and this old ladywas one. Mother must have been giddier in her youth than I everimagined.

  _July 3d._ Yesterday I lost my dog Fogerty and didn't find him untillate in the afternoon. He was up in front of the First Regiment,mustered in with the liberty party. When he discovered my presence helooked coldly at me, as if he had never seen me before, so I knew thathe had a date. He just sat there and shook his bangs over his eyes andtried to appear as if he were somewhere else. When the order come toshove off he joined the party and trotted off without even lookingback, and that was the last I saw of him until this morning, when hecame drifting in, rather unsteadily, and regarded me with a shiftybut insulting eye. I am rapidly discovering hitherto unsuspecteddepths of depravity in Mr. Fogerty, which leads me to believe that heis 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 beengrooming myself to look spic and span at the review held in honor ofthe Secretary when he opened the new wing to the camp. I missed it. Ilost completely something in the neighborhood of ten thousand men. Itseems hard to do, but the fact, the ghastly fact, remains that I didit. When I dashed out of the barracks with my newly washed, splendidlyseagoing, still damp white hat in my hand my company was gone, and thewhole camp seemed deserted. Far in the distance I heard the music ofthe band. Fogerty looked inquiringly at me and I fled. He fled afterme.

  "I LOST COMPLETELY SOMETHING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF10,000 MEN"]

  "Fogerty," I gasped, "this is a trick I have to pull off alone. You'renot in on this review, and for God's sake act reasonable."

  I couldn't bear the thought of chasing across the parade ground withthat simple-looking dog bounding along at my heels. My remark had noeffect. Fogerty merely threw himself into high, and together we spedin the direction of the music. It was too late. Thousands of men wereswinging past in review, and in all that mass of humanity there wasone small vacant place that I was supposed to fill. I crouched downbehind a tree and observed the scene through stricken eyes. How couldI possibly have managed to lose nearly ten thousand men? It seemedincredible, and I realized then that I alone could have accomplishedsuch a feat. And I had been so nice and clean, too, and I had workedso 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 totell me it was all right, and didn't matter much anyway. I lookeddown, and discovered that my snow white hat was all muddy. Fogerty saton it.

  _July 8th._ As a result of my being scratched out of the Independenceday review I have been tried out as punishment in all sorts ofdisagreeable positions, all of which I have filled with aninefficiency only equaled by the bad temper of my over-lords. Some ofthese tasks, one in particular was of such a ridiculous nature that Irefuse to enter it into my diary for an unfeeling posterity to jeerat. I am willing to state, however, that the accomplishments ofHercules, that redoubtable handy man of mythology, were trifling incomparison with mine.

  To begin with, the coal pile is altogether too large and my back isaltogether too refined. There should be individual coal piles providedfor temperamental sailors. Small, colorful, appetizingly shaped moundsof nice, clean, glistening chunks of coal they should be, and the coalitself could easily be made much lighter, approaching if possible theweight of feathers. This would be a task any reasonably inclinedsailor would attack with relish, particularly if his efforts wereattended by the strains of some good, snappy jazz. However, realitywears a graver face and a sootier one. Long did I labor and valiantlybut to little effect. More coal fell off of my shovel than remained onit. This was due to the unfortunate fact that coal dust seems toaffect me most unpleasantly, much in the same manner as daisies orgolden rod affect hay fever sufferers. The result was that every timeI had my shovel poised in readiness to hurl its burden into space amonolithic sneeze overpowered me, shook me to the keel, and all thecoal that I had trapped with so much patience and cunning fellmiserably around my feet, from whence it had lately risen. Littlethings like this become most discouraging when strung out for a greatperiod of time. In this manner I sneezed and sweated throughout thecourse of a sweltering afternoon, and just as I was about to call it aday along comes an evilly inclined coal wagon and dumps practically inmy lap one hundred times more coal than I had disturbed in the entirecourse of my labors. On top of this Fogerty, who had been loafingaround all day with his tongue out disporting himself on the coal pilelike a dog in the first snow, started a landslide somewhere above andcame bearing down on me in a cloud of dust. I found myself buriedbeneath the delighted Fogerty and a couple of tons of coal, from whichI emerged unbeamingly, but not before Mr. Fogerty had addressed histongue 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 unkindlyvoice.

  "Take me to the brig," I repeated, "it's too much. Here I've beenworking diligently all day to reduce the size of this huge mass, whenup comes that old wagon and humps its back and belches forth itshorrid contents all over the place. It's ridiculous. I surrender myshovel."

  "Gord," breathed the P.O., looking at me pityingly, "we don't want togo and reduce that coal pile, we want to enlarge it."

  "Oh!" I replied, stunned, "I didn't quite understand. I thought youwanted to make it smaller, so I've been trying to shovel it away allafternoon."

  "You shouldn't oughter have done that," replied the P.O. as if he weretalking to an idiot, "I suppose you've been shoveling her down hillall day?"

  I admitted that I had.

  "You see," I added engagingly, "I began with trying to shovel her uphill, but the old stuff kept on rolling down on me, so I drew thenatural conclusion that I'd better shovel her down hill. It seemedmore reasonable and--"

  "Easier," suggested the P.O.

  "Yes," I agreed.

  There was a faraway expression in his eyes when he next spoke. "I'drecommend you for an ineptitude discharge," he said, "if it wasn't forthe 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 youwouldn't injure it in some way. The only thing left for me to do is tomake you promise that you'll keep away from our coal pile and swearnever to lay violent hands on it again. You'll spoil it."

  I gazed up at the monumental mass of coal r
earing itself like adark-town Matterhorn above my head and swore fervently never to molestit again.

  "Go back to your outfit and get washed and tell your P.O. for me thatyou 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 allwrong. Police his body or he'll ruin some of your pals' white pantsand 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 aninjury." He was fingering the shovel nervously as he spoke. ThusFogerty and I