Read Ebook: Forward Children! by Bartlett Paul Alexander

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Ebook has 2516 lines and 61967 words, and 51 pages

Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would be everywhere.

"Raub's here," he called, noticing Dennison and his cigarette. "We're ready to eat!" He coughed again.

Dennison wet his lips with his tongue and swallowed.

"I'm right behind you," he said. "Wait a second ... I've got my flashlight. Here, Millard!"

He pulled his flash from his jacket pocket and walked behind his crewmate--the sand deep, their boots scuffing, the flashlight wobbling as if asleep.

"Gonna get hot today," Millard hollered.

"Can't hear you," Dennison hollered.

"Any news on the radio?"

"What was it you said?"

Raub had his kitchen under lopsided leafless trees and a scabby fire of branches burned close to it, kitchen and blaze hidden behind a dune, an enormous crested thing with skeletal brush and camel grass growing on its side. Gaunt, set off by stars, it threatened the kitchen and men, hung, swollen, a thing of unbelievable weight. Yellow light crept up the slope and bounced off the scarred steel of the field kitchen. Steam gushed from pots at the rear of the stove; the air smelled of coffee and hash.

His flashlight in his pocket, Dennison worked his way through sixty or eighty men, brushing sand out of a mess kit with a dirty handkerchief and the palm of his hand. It seemed to him that he had done this many times.

"Hi," he greeted one of the Corps.

"Hi, Dennison ... Hi. Goddamn desert, cold. Freeze off your ass." The man drained his coffee and then blew into the bottom of his cup. "Coffee's good," he said.

"Give me a cup of coffee," Dennison said to Raub, at the kitchen: Raub had his coffee pot raised for pouring, his face smudged, his eyes puttied with sleep; cups were scattered along the kitchen counter in front of him, some of them clean.

"Howdy, any news from you guys?" Raub asked, tilting the pot, arm extended across the counter, the pot steaming. He smiled at Dennison, liking him: Dennison reminded him of a fellow back home, in Atlanta, a boy he'd grown up with.

"You ought to know the news," Dennison said, "you just came in with your outfit, so what's the news? What's up?"

"Not a damn thing! Here, hold still, have some hash. Hungry? It's not bad stuff."

"Sure," Dennison said.

"Fill'er up," Millard said, behind Dennison. "I could eat anything!"

The Corpsmen wore regulation uniforms or the coveralls of the mechanic; there were a number in fatigues; some men wore helmets; they were an unshaven lot. Their khaki did not count for much: they were all of a piece: their greasy, oily, gasoline messed clothes stuck to their greasy, oily bodies; they had not washed in days. No water, no inclination.

They appeared strangely alike in the firelight, each with a bush on his face, each with a crew cut or helmet, each with his mess kit or cup of coffee.

A shell thudded behind the great dune.

"Hell, I hope they don't lay a line on this fire," Millard said, moving a few yards away from the kitchen to allow others to queue up.

His pan filled, Dennison stepped out of line and pushed his way through the crewmen.

"Captain Meyers had guys pull some of the wood out of the blaze," a fat sergeant told Dennison.

"They're not near enough for a hit," Dennison belched cheerfully, spooning some hash.

"Christ, there's a village burning up over there, beyond that dune," somebody yelled. "What's a piddling campfire alongside a village! We'll be out of here in an hour. It'll be our turn to let them have it!"

Dennison found a hollow and sat down on a dead tree, a palm, a frondless bole; shoes sliding into the sand, he resumed eating, spooning and chewing slowly, listening to the men talk, noticing the stars now and then. The pan burned pleasantly in his hand and he shifted it about and spooned another spoonful of hash, his mouth sticking out, his nose in the steam.

On one side of him, Millard was shouting:

" ... Why, you know the drag of those cylinders, the lousy combustion; why, man alive, the Panzer tanks withstand the desert heat a hell of a lot better than our machines. Why..."

Somebody was yelling for more hash.

Somebody beefed:

"We've got fifteen Sherman tanks in reserve ... I'll bet we never use them!"

Dennison was familiar with some of the voices and the familiarity helped: the fire was encouraging: the hash was really hot: there was more at the chuck wagon. Coffee too.

Yesterday ... he tried to shut off the memory as he would a tap, but memory trickled through: Jesus, the vast terrain they had covered, that whamming through the sand, screwing round to avoid rocks, ducking behind a dune, climbing to fall into the direct fire of a Panther, her guns blazing ...

Luck, nothing but luck had pulled them out of that jam.

You never could tell, maybe they would have a lucky break today ... maybe it wouldn't get too hot inside the bus; maybe there might be enough water, stuff that was fit to drink ... they could travel across some comparatively level ground, none of the loose sand to baulk the treads. And food? Maybe they'd have something to eat, a chance to eat outside the tank.

It was a wretched kind of hope, the same hope that everyone got up with every morning--but it was hope. Gazing at the smoke from the fire, he followed it upward where the sky was a thousand stars, no New York sky; even through the smoke the points blinked brightly. Coldly. He held a mouthful of coffee on his tongue before he tackled his food once more. The bread was fresh. Good crust. He felt his body lose a little of its weariness; one leg sank into the sand; probably the desert was not too bad in the winter time, at some oasis, town or city.

He signalled to Isaac Jacobs who was wandering through the crowd of crewmen, walking sleepily, balancing his heaped up mess kit, coffee cup in the midst of the hash. Zinc's beard shone weirdly, crazily red in the light. He pushed his way past a couple of gesturing men and stepped on a smoldering log someone had dragged from the campfire.

"Goddammit," he exclaimed, wobbling, balancing. "Almost got myself badly singed. Gotta watch where we step in this desert." His teeth flashed in a grin intended for Dennison. Dennison grunted and nodded, his mouth full, his eyes narrowed to friendly slits.

"Sit down on the tree."

"How goes it?" Zinc asked, sitting, his mess kit on the trunk alongside.

"Not bad. Any news?"

"Sure, Raub shorted me on hash and bread--that's news!" Zinc said, spooning food.

"I heard Chuck say that a unit of the 604th is trailing us; somebody picked up their radio."

"I wouldn't mind seein' ole Sutter and Reynolds again," Zink said, sopping hash onto a lump of bread, bowing his legs around his kit.

The fire was sparking and sending out low flames: for several minutes the dune came nearer, seemed taller, more ominous. When the flames flared the dune retreated.

Zinc's face, because of his beard, appeared round and oriental; a hint of satire, of his good humor, was apparent as he chewed and watched the fire, the coming and going men. His hair, badly cut, trimmed by a madman, was greasy, in contrast to his scrubbed whiskers. He was built like a jockey--small boned, and lightly muscled. Staring at Dennison, he rolled his chocolate eyes expressively.

"This stuff, this hacked up meat, is easier to eat than the gunk they fed us yesterday," he said. "A pan of salmon's not my idea of chow in the desert."

"Yeah, it was lousy," Dennison agreed.

"I'm gettin' me more of this hash, when I'm done."

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