They Dream of Home

by Niven Busch

 

Chapter One

The train was late. Crowded with service men, excursionists and defense workers, it had dallied all night, chuffing and backing on sidings, flagged down for freights, or else proceeding with a cramped, methodical dignity, slowly and cautiously, as if unwilling to take advantage of the cleared track. All night it had traveled through the summery fields of California, and now, at last, the open country lay behind and the city just ahead. Like a runner who, though hopelessly out of the race, nevertheless wishes to finish with some show of style, the train picked up speed; it swayed from side to side, leaping restlessly across trestles, blowing peremptorily for crossings.

From the windows the passengers got their first proof that the journey was almost at an end. Sometimes the track ran parallel to six-lane boulevards closely packed with traffic; sometimes it dashed across industrial acreage where factories and mills shoved raw outlines at the morning sky. Clusters of houses were slowly linked together, their straggle no longer accidental, forged now into the real beginning of the city.

Now the streets were closer together, the clicking of the ties faster, and the pound and roar of the engine and the scream of its whistle ever quickened in rhythm: the city seemed to be reaching out, to be spreading the network of its houses and boulevards to capture the train and throttle its insulting clatter. And as if for protection against this very scheme, the tracks multiplied mysteriously with each second that passed, so that the train was now surrounded on each side by six or seven pairs of glistening steel rails. An overpass, black with coal and Diesel smoke, reared ahead: the train slid under it — and in that second suffered a great loss in energy and stature. It slowed to a crawl; its yelling voice was still, its exuberant gambols now reduced to a decorous trembling hardly strong enough to shake the tiny rainbows of sunshine in the dining-car tumblers. The train was in the station yards; it passed a crossing where a feeble bell was tinkling, and from somewhere a gray concrete ribbon sprang out of the ground and slid along beside the wheels — the station platform. With an elegant little shudder, like a woman sneezing, the train stood still. The trip was over.

Immediately in all the cars a great bustle ensued; in the coaches and chair cars the passengers seized their belongings and crowded into the aisles, shoving and elbowing each other, and stepping on one another's feet — a useless procedure, since the doors were still locked and it was impossible to get off. In the compartment cars the narrow aisles leading from each vestibule were so crowded that the porters had great difficulty in carrying out the luggage. "Lots of time, folks," they begged, their voices smooth with placation and sweat shining on their weary, creased black faces as they flattened themselves, bags and all, against the steel wall.

"Ain't quite in yet, gentlemen," they said. "Be two, three minutes more. Just let me set this bag down hyer."

The bumping of bodies and valises on the door of the drawing-room roused Cliff Harper from his dream of homecoming. He had been away at war; this was his first glimpse of Los Angeles in nearly two years. He turned from the window, a look of wild excitement on his face. He was a gangling, big-jointed young man in the uniform of a private of Marines, first class.

"Hey, you guys," he said. "We're in."

The announcement drew little reaction from his two companions. One, a Marine corporal, was asleep on his drawing-room divan. He was a young Jew with a broken nose and a mop of wiry red hair worn long for a Marine and pulled down partially over his forehead; his mouth was open, and his breathing, though regular, was manifestly alcoholic.

The other occupant of the compartment was a Master Gunnery Sergeant — a pot-bellied, powerful man in the middle fifties. He wore the World War I, China, and Haiti ribbons and nine of more recent origin including five battle stars. The light from the window, falling across his face, cast deep, skeleton-like circles around his eyes, under his heavy brows. Each of his companions wore the Silver Star, but the sergeant had the Navy Cross.

"Take it easy," he said. "They haven't opened up the doors yet. Anyhow, it's women, children, and civilians first. You guys sit tight before you get trampled in the rush."

As he spoke there was a knock on the compartment door and a corpsman put his head in.

"Could you fellows give me a hand with him?" he asked.

He looked anxiously from Cliff to the sergeant. The sleeping corporal, hearing a new voice, opened his eyes, looked at the corpsman, and went back to sleep again.

Neither Cliff nor the sergeant made the least response. They seemed to be awaiting further information.

"We'll have to take him out through the window," the corpsman said. "I hate to ask you fellows, but I'll need some help."

The sergeant cleared his throat. He seemed to push his eyebrows, thick as little snouts, toward the corpsman.

"What do you mean, you hate to ask us?"

"I just figured you'd be getting off the train, Sergeant," the corpsman said. "I figured you'd be in a hurry."

"You figured wrong," the sergeant said.

Out of principle he disliked and was, if possible, rude to all men connected with the medical branch of the Corps — he could not have told why.

"We'll help," he said. "One inside, two outside. That how you want it?"

"That would be fine," the corpsman said. He was an intelligent-looking young fellow with an aquiline face and an indoor pallor. As he started to withdraw, the sergeant said, "How is he, goddam it?"v

"Why, he's fine," the corpsman said. "Just fine and dandy."

"Don't tell me he's fine. He's a sick boy, that's what he is. He's goddam sick and don't make no mistake about it." "I know he's sick," the corpsman snapped, his eyes hardening. "I thought you meant how is he feeling this morning."

Evidently he was getting tired of the sergeant's precise tone.

"Well, how's he feeling?"

"I just told you, he's feeling as well as can be expected. He's had a very comfortable night."

"I'll bet," the sergeant said. He took no further notice of the corpsman, who, after a moment, compressed his lips, withdrew his head, and closed the door.

Matt Klein, the red-headed corporal, was now sitting up. With one grimy hand he pushed his hair back from his forehead. He blinked at the sunlight, hastily turning his eyes from it; swinging his feet to the floor he sat in the position of Rodin's "Thinker." He ran his tongue over his lips, opening and closing them with a loud clacking sound.

"What'd he want, Gunny?" he enquired of the sergeant.

The sergeant, once more staring straight ahead, made no reply; Matt shifted his gaze to Cliff, who said, "Wants us to help get Perry off. Says we got to take him through the window."

The red-headed corporal nodded several times. His large face, on which the freckles stood like blotches, had an air of owlish calculation. He shook his head sharply, then clutched it in pain.

"Christ, how I hate grappa," he said. "Worst drink in the world." Gunny, the sergeant, turned his brooding gaze on him at that. The sergeant's face, weather-beaten to the color of a saddle, was creased in deep, vertical lines.

"Listen who's talking," he remarked with melancholy scorn. "Listen to the Mayor of San Francisco. Brother, if you hate it that bad, whyn't you leave some of it around for other people?"

"Don't kid me," the corporal said. Again he worked to get the sense of taste back into his mouth.

"Maybe some of the folks up in Frisco enjoy it. Maybe they could of had a good time with it."

"Lay off me, Sarge," Corporal Klein said wearily.

"Some other time — okay. But right now, just lay off me. I can't take it." He leaned over and spat into the cuspidor.

The sergeant chuckled. "Oh, you killer-diller," he remarked. "Can't take it, huh? The Mayor of Grappa, he can't take it."

"Think we'll have to take the window out, Gunny?" Cliff asked after a pause.

The sergeant shook his head. "Sash is plenty wide enough to pass a stretcher through. Seen it done lots of times. Matt," he said to the corporal, "think you feel strong enough to help that corpsman? Okay, go in there and tell him so. Cliff and me will be out on the platform, and we'll take him as you ease him out. Here we go . . . ."

Reaching into the rack over his head he pulled down three sea-bags, piled so that by jerking out the under one all three dropped almost simultaneously into his arms. He shoved one at each of his companions, then opened the door. Passengers were streaming from the train now, carrying their luggage or collecting it from the piles which the porters made near the steps of each car: with intent faces they were hurrying along, bound for the tunnels which led to the waiting-room and street.

Cliff and the sergeant, hardly noticed in the throng, moved along outside the car; here, at a window where the corpsman was visible (leaning close against the glass, his pale aquiline face pointed anxiously toward them), they stopped, while the window, not without difficulty, was opened and the screen removed. Now the corpsman leaned out, glancing importantly up and down the platform over the heads of those passengers who, sensing that something unusual was about to be enacted, had collected around Cliff and Gunny. Clearly the corpsman was expecting other arrivals, some reinforcement for the job ahead; he stretched his neck out of the window while the people below him elbowed each other trying to see what had attracted his attention. Far down the platform a lieutenant of the Navy Medical Corps had issued from one of the tunnel entrances of the station and was bearing down on the group — a choleric but competent-looking man, stooped, with rather protuberant eyes and varicose veins in his cheeks from drinking. With him were a corpsman and a couple of civilians, one an immensely tall, saturnine individual in baggy clothes, carrying a camera with a flash-light attachment, the other middle-sized and very dapper, with a hard, waxy Irish face and a tough city manner. Instead of the lieutenant, to whom every one was looking for authority, it was the Irishman who immediately took charge.

"Stand back, please," he snapped in a voice like a race-starter's. "There's a wounded man in that compartment — he'll need air." Turning to his tall associate, he demanded, "What do you think, Pop? Can you get it while they pass him out?"

The tall man shook his head and an argument ensued, the tall man backing out into the now awed spectators and focusing his camera on the window. Meanwhile, after a low-voiced conference between the medical lieutenant and the corpsman, the end of a stretcher appeared in the window and was seized by the upstretched hands of those below. An operation which had begun in fumbling and guesswork had somehow become skillful and even merciful: with hardly a tremor or jar, never touching the windowsash, the stretcher was miraculously freed from the train, was being carried — a corpsman at each end of it — toward an ambulance waiting in the parking lot at the end of the platform. Some of the spectators, feeling that the show was over, turned away, but a few lingered, walking beside the smoothly-carried stretcher and accompanied by the three Marines, the lieutenant, the Irishman with the whiplash voice, and the tall dreamer with the camera.

The Irishman trotted up beside Cliff, who was walking with long strides, his arms hanging straight at his sides and his head bent down.

"You Harper?"

"Yes, sir."

"The old guy is Gunnery Sergeant Earl T. Watrous," the Irishman stated, consulting a slip of paper. "And the wounded boogy is P. Kincheloe. Is he a private too?"

"No, sir," Cliff said, "he's a seaman in the Navy."

"Navy! Wasn't he with you guys in action?"

"Yes, sir. He was with us."

The reporter consulted his list.

"Kincheloe, Tabeshaw, Klein," he read. "Where's Klein, Corporal Klein?"

From slightly behind the stretcher a coarse, grating voice said, "Here! I'm Klein. What do you want?"

"Just checking," the Irishman said. "Say, Lieutenant, could we get a picture as they lift him in?"

"You'll have to make it fast," the lieutenant said. "This boy is going to the hospital."

The tall man, somehow cut loose from his morose speculation, already had the picture. Straightening, he ran a few steps, squatted, faced the other way. Bending savagely above his box he made a few harsh and incredibly fast and decisive motions. Now apparently he had another picture, for he got up dreamily. Speaking to the Irishman, the only person present whom he ever seemed to find worth addressing, he said with sleepy truculence, "How about a group?"

"That's it," the Irishman rasped. "Can we have a group, Lieutenant, right here back of the car?"

Inside the ambulance, where he lay on his stretcher, nothing could be seen of the wounded man but the outline of his head, stiffly held upon the tiny pillow of the stretcher, the eyes open, glistening with a white and secret shine, the face turned to one side.

Once more the tall man backed off with his box, facing the three Marines now lined up at the rear of the ambulance.

"Only four of them," he said bleakly, raising his head. Apparently it was only when looking in the finder of a camera that his mind would function — but, as his present observation bore witness, it then functioned brilliantly.

"Right," snapped his associate. He whipped his list out of his breast pocket. "Tabeshaw — where's Tabeshaw?"

"Private Tabeshaw with you fellows?" the lieutenant asked.

Sergeant Watrous said, "If you want Private Tabeshaw, gentlemen, you got to send five thousand miles for him."

The Irishman's waxy features tightened. He was afraid he had made a faux pas.

"You mean — something happened to him?"

"I mean he's in the service," Sergeant Watrous said. "Private Tabeshaw is on Naru Island, or he was, the last I saw of him."

"We thought he was discharged with you guys," the Irishman said belligerently.

The sergeant's lower lip sagged. He shook his large, graying head.

"He ain't here," he said.

"His name's on the list, a member of the group that got the decorations,'" the Irishman said. Clearly it annoyed him when things did not go the way they had been figured in the City Room.

"Well, what the hell," he said. "Take it anyway. You," he said, addressing Matt Klein, "would you swing around, a little more toward me? That's it — you had that decoration covered up."

While the picture was being taken, reposed and taken again, a newsboy moved close to a man with a briefcase who was standing on the platform — one of those passengers who, lured by the curiosity common to travelers, had stopped to watch.

"What's wrong wit heem?"

The newsboy, of Mexican extraction, had the coarse black hair, bare feet, and tough birdlike voice of his kind.

"With who, sonny?"

"Heem. In there."

He pointed at the harsh dark profile seen so clearly, so terribly, in the sanitary gloom of the ambulance.

"He's sick."

"On the train, he get seek?"

"He's been wounded, sonny," the man with the briefcase said out of the reaches of his mighty knowledge. "He's a veteran, that boy is, home from war. He was wounded in action."

"Holy Cow," the newsboy said, "is that square?"

"Ask him," the man with the briefcase said, pointing to the lieutenant.

"Holy Cow," the newsboy said. "A wounded guy — "

Taking one more jerky glance into the ambulance, he turned away. He ran at a dog-trot down the ridge of smooth blue shadow cast upon the platform by the roof of the express-office.

"I seen a wounded guy," he said, kicking with his bare feet at cigarette butts and papers that lay in his path. "I seen a wounded guy, I seen a wounded guy — I seen a wounded guy, an' he's a nigger."

 

 •  $6.99  •