| george
garrett
1.
"The sidewalks
of New York provide more opportunities for the adventurous
than do all the jungles of South America unless the seeker
after thrills risks his life deliberately and with intent.
By insulting a few Indians or by bathing in a stream infested
with crocodiles, stingrays and cannibal-fish, the explorer
may, if he does not lose his life in the process, provide
himself with sufficient material to become the life of the
party wherever adventurers congregate."
— Herbert Spencer
Dickey
2.
So here they are, maybe a thousand miles upriver, far beyond
any settlements and any known and named tribes of Indians
and, to their surprise and dismay, unable to find and catch
fish in the river or game in the jungle and the wide savannahs
to feed on. They are starving. Where there had been at the
outset nineteen of them, five whites and fourteen Indians
in four boats, there are now fifteen men all crammed into
the one remaining dugout canoe. All but two of them are desperately
sick, weak and feverish, almost helpless from malaria and
a rash of other tropical diseases and troubles. The two, though
in fact sick and weak themselves, are the youngest and strongest
of the group. They are standing, one fore and one aft in the
tipsy, overloaded dugout, polling and paddling as best they
can downriver, carefully going with the inexorable flow of
it, a couple of raggedy men, a pair of fugitive scarecrows,
their bodies crawling with sweat and covered with the stings
and itches from countless insect bites. The river here is
dark and rich with heavy, leafy jungle odors. Beyond the sounds
of the river they can hear nothing except the occasional mad
cries of unseen jungle birds. The two young men study the
tricky currents, the snags and rocks of this river that will
soon join and become the great Orinoco. They scan the huge
green, densely canopied forest on both sides of the river.
They are looking for ... anything.
They are looking for any signs of animal or human life. More
likely to be the former, because they are so far north and
west.
It could have been either one of the two, but I think it was
not Evans, but the other one, whose name I do not know. Nameless,
then, in this story if not in life, he sees, and can't believe
his eyes, at least at first, a tall shimmying, slender, feathery,
gray plume of smoke rising from somewhere in the forest, not
far away, it seems from the river.
If Evans had deserved the credit, he would surely have told
me so. He was never shy about claiming full credit for his
various accomplishments.
Let's say, then, that it is the other young man, Nameless,
who sees the smoke, studies it, then shouts and points, almost
tumping over the canoe. Soon they can smell it, woodsmoke,
in the thick air. Together they manage to beach the dugout
and somehow to rouse their suffering comrades. Leaving them
in and around the dugout to guard each other, if they can,
the two young men take one, maybe two of the shotguns and,
as Evans remembers and tells it, a couple of the big machetes
-- the ones that the locals inaccurately name cutlasses --
to hack their way through the undergrowth.
They set out in the general direction of where they last saw
the smoke from the river. They deliberately make a lot of
noise as they go forward. At the same time they talk to each
other in soft voices so as not to be perceived as a threat
to anyone who may have set that fire. Surprise is out of the
question anyway. If there are Indians, they will know they
are coming and all these precautions may be wishful thinking.
Almost certainly the fire has to be a natural phenomenon.
But before long they find a kind of footpath to follow.
It leads them out of the jungle clump of forest and suddenly
into a wide stretch of savannah and in the field nearby a
scattering of huts. There is a fire. On the fire, propped
in place by stones, rests a large clay pot. And what is in
that pot, cheerfully bubbling and boiling, is a thick, richly
smelling broth that someone must have been stirring with a
large wooden spoon, here dropped close by the fire, only moments
ago.
Not a soul to be seen in this camp or village. They must have
vanished into the safety of the jungle. Feeling an awareness
of mysterious presences nearby, Evans and his companion very
cautiously take a look around. Then with a tree limb and a
piece of rope that Evans brought with him, they rig a way
to carry the clay pot back with them to the river and the
boat. When they are set to go, Evans fires his shotgun in
the air -- a loud blast followed by a frenzy of bird cries.
"That was a judgment call," Evans will tell me years
later. "Mr. Dickey would never have done it or allowed
it. He always said that Indians would do us no harm as long
as we did not threaten them. He may have been right, but he
wasn't there with us and I didn't want to take the chance
that he might be wrong. It was a difficult choice but, anyway,
it worked."
They encounter no one and hear no one during their return
from the little village -- if that is what it really was --
and the dugout. They feed the others the broth. Its restorative
powers prove to be almost instantaneous. They drink it all
to the last drop.
"Well now, men," Mr. Dickey says, once again in
character and once again their leader. "We have stolen
their food to save our own lives. What can we do for them
in return?"
They decide to leave behind a still-unopened crate of machetes,
a dozen of them, for the Indians, who are probably watching
them right now, to find. So they open the crate and leave
it and the empty pot.
Once again they set out paddling downriver, going on as far
as they can get before dark. Next day, they will travel far
enough to reach a small settlement where there is food and
shelter.
Evans would have ended the story right there, coming to closure
with an unanswered and probably unanswerable question. Wondering
what on earth those people, whoever they may be, in that lost
and gone little jungle village, imagined had happened to them.
His best guess was that they were, like some of the other
tribes in that area, a Stone Age people. Suddenly strangers,
aliens in every way, came, took their food and left behind,
like a gift from the gods, a dozen steel machetes. How that
gift must have changed their lives for the better and for
forever. It seemed to give him a sense of satisfaction to
think about it that way.
3.
My father-in-law
(now deceased) was a member of an expeditionary team that
in 1931 sought to locate the headwaters of the Orinoco River,
to determine its source. A story in the New York Times for
Wednesday, 15 April 1931, datelined Port of Spain Trinidad
lists the members of the team: Sargent Child of Dorset, Vermont;
T. Evans Dunn and Carlton Francis Jr. of Philadelphia, and
Walter J. Lane of Lynbrook, Long Island. The expedition was
led by veteran explorer, Herbert Spencer Dickey. It was his
third attempt to find the source of the Orinoco. Dickey's
wife, herself a seasoned explorer, would accompany them as
far upriver as Esmerelda, after which, together with some
fourteen hired Indians, they would begin their journey in
four large dugouts equipped with outboard motors. Evans Dunn
was the youngest of the group, still not twenty-one, and he
served as radio operator and photographer. Of these useful
functions it needs to be said that both the radio and all
of the cameras and photographic equipment were lost or destroyed
well before the expedition was over and done with. Concerning
the radio, Dickey would write this later on, after his safe
return to New York: "Our radio, while it brought us much
information on furs and toothpaste, gangsters and bodies found
in the park, often lightened our evenings with music and kept
us in touch with important happenings in the world outside."
For the record, this record, then, we have the words,
written and spoken, of some of those who survived the experience,
first-hand witnesses who, one way and another, reported what
they had seen, what had happened to them, and what had become
of the expedition.
As indicated, Dickey wrote some pieces for the New York Times
which was one of the sponsors of the expedition. And the truth
is that except for written accounts, which were few enough
to begin with and these days are difficult to come by, all
that we really have left to go on are the spoken words of
the survivors as they are remembered by others. I never met
any members of the expeditionary team except for my father-in-law,
Evans Dunn. In any event they are one and all dead now. Add
to that serious limitation the hard fact that over the years,
I heard Evans tell tales of their adventures many times and
in a variety of versions. Sometimes I encouraged him. Sometimes,
especially when I was newly wed and eager to win his approval
if I could, I made a point of listening very carefully. Other
times, I may as well admit, his accounts, be they ever so
exciting, went in one ear and out the other even as I smiled
and nodded and urged him to continue. It is also a matter
of fact and not easily deniable that for much of the time
in those days, Evans was a drunk, an alcoholic. Myself? I
was just back from a couple of years overseas with the U.S.
Army. Just recently discharged and not exactly a teetotaler
by any means. As I recall it now, we would sit by the fireplace,
firelight dancing, dogs curled up and snoring deeply by our
feet, passing a bottle of cognac back and forth, swapping
stories, too, back and forth, true and false. Even so, though,
I can safely and honestly tell you that there was always an
evident consistency in the stories he told. To be sure, there
were always changes, additions and omissions in the details
and always slightly different degrees of emphasis. Though
I was not always listening with close attention, especially
as we both grew older, nevertheless I believe I would have
noticed (then if not now) any significant alterations in a
given story as it developed and was modified over time.
From the beginning I had always wondered why this particular
story, the Orinoco expedition seemed to haunt him so much.
True, it might well have been the principal epiphanic event
in the lives of most of us, even in our bloody and remorseless
age. And, of course, it could easily have been the death of
him. But it wasn't. He had survived and had gone on to live
a full, active, very interesting life, any number of parts
of which would have satisfied, if not sated, the hunger for
adventure of a young American male of his generation and background.
Would have fulfilled his longing for a career of danger and
daring.
Aside from this Orinoco adventure, a decade later, we had
World War II and Evans was very much a part of it, early and
late. A superb horseman, he had served in the old horse cavalry,
and joined the Army Air Corps as a ground officer before the
end of the year (1941). Served in the celebrated 324th Fighter
Group. Which, maybe you will remember, was composed of three
squadrons of P-40 aircraft and was shipped out, first to India,
then to Egypt where they were attached to the R.A.F. and Monty's
Eighth Army, becoming the first Army Air Corps units to fight
against the Germans. Over the next year they moved all across
North Africa to the dead end of the Afrika Corps in Tunisia.
After that they rejoined the U.S. Army and went on in action
in Sicily, Italy, France, and, finally, Germany in 1945.
You would think there would be a wealth of stories from all
those days -- almost four years overseas -- wouldn't you?
And, indeed, there were some, though often he had to be asked,
invited as it were, to tell them. It's not the stories, fact
or fiction, but the things he brought home from the war that
I remember. For example his old R.A.F. khaki shorts and epauleted
shirts. A pair of British desert boots he had worn in North
Africa. First of those I had ever seen, though soon enough
they became popular over here; and I even owned a pair, myself,
in the 1950s. The newer models were not, of course, as well
made as the originals. Which easily led him to an account
of how, far removed from any other American forces until the
1943 landings in French North Africa, the men of the 324th
inevitably and gradually acquired, bit by bit and piece by
piece, parts of the British uniform, including those desert
boots. So that by the time they rejoined the American Army
in Tunisia, they astonished and annoyed the newly arrived
Americans with their RAF appearance and with their lingo and
attitudes. Their new superiors (he told me) were generally
pissed off, but there wasn't a whole lot they could do about
it, at least overtly, except to frown their disapproval; because
the 324th had long since logged far more combat hours than
any of them. The desert boots were the last things left from
Evans's 324th days. They were still there and in his possession,
though pretty worn out, when he died. I believe somebody in
the family threw them away. Maybe they went to somebody like
the Salvation Army where they ended up comfortably fitting
the tired feet of someone who had never heard of the Battle
of El Alemain.
Supplies ... When their own stuff wore out, they
had to make do, scrounge and use whatever was ready and at
hand. We need to remember that in those years the Mediterranean
was boiling with naval warfare and few supplies could come
by that route to Egypt. For a good while things had to come
the long way around Africa by ship, risking attack by U-Boats
all the way, but safer than the Med.
Some of the P-40s of the 324th came to Egypt by ship. Others
were sent in crates to Dakar in Senegal, where they were unpacked,
reassembled, gassed up and flown across the continent to East
Africa. It was a long way, maximum, between airports if and
when they could find them.
Overheating, mechanical failure, navigational or pilot error
could bring them down in jungle or desert where they would
be, as any number of them were, lost and gone forever. But
most of them made it safely across the continent and finished
up with an easy hop north to Egypt.
I find myself imagining how it must have been for him. He
was a ground officer, after all and already too old to be
flying fighter planes. But that is how I picture him, alone
in the cockpit of a P-40, flying over the vast green canopy
of rain forest and bushland and himself remembering, imagining
the German pilot flying over another vast jungle area and
likely to be lost and gone forever, too.
4.
Once upon a time I
wanted to write a novel based (somewhat) on that Orinoco expedition
of 1931. As I conceived of it, it would be properly told in
first-person narration from the point of view of a character
-- whatever his fictional name turned out to be -- who was
in turn closely based on the model of Evans Dunn. As I imagined
it, then, the first part, the coming together of the group
at a hotel in Port of Spain in Trinidad; then on over the
water to Venezuela on the old Mississippi paddle-wheeler,
the Delta, going as far upriver as was possible, about 700
miles; then the hard and longer journey in the dugouts of
more than a thousand miles, searching for the place where
the great river could be accurately said to begin its life
and journey -- all this part would be straightforward, factual,
logical, rational and as sane as our young and eager protagonist,
young and confident and more or less innocent. Then, as they
began to busy themselves with the making of maps and measurements,
things would begin to change. One by one, and finally including
our own sturdy and intrepid narrator, they would begin to
suffer from a rich variety of strange ailments, especially
the shaking, racking fevers and chills of malaria. In the
novel some of them would die of it. The story-telling would
subtly begin to change, then change abruptly and radically
as we surmise that our narrator is now seriously ill. After
a relatively lighthearted beginning the tone would turn, becoming
dangerous and menacing, sometimes a dreamlike, even hallucinatory.
Boats and equipment would be lost. Supplies would dwindle.
As they continue, slowly and with difficulty, pressing on,
having long since passed far beyond places with names on old
maps and/or any known inhabitants, they will have to make
hard choices, the hardest of which can be covered by a single
urgent question: Should they sensibly give up and turn back
or should they try to go on, now with less manpower, less
viable equipment, and fewer than the minimal supplies that
they had deemed to be absolutely necessary.
They choose to continue the expedition. Later (soon enough)
they will have no choices left.
At the moment (not fully sane or rational) when they calculate
the risks and nevertheless elect to continue, they will be,
in part at least, influenced by and responding to a warning,
one which they took to be more of a challenge than any considered
advice and counsel. It was the German who warned them and
naturally they took his warning as a dare.
The German? ? ? ?
A few years earlier, in the 1920s, a famous German aviator,
a highly decorated ace from the great aerial battles of the
Great War had been flying his plane over the river, the mountains
of the north and the jungle and savannahs of the south, for
some mysterious purpose or it was rumored, among those who
knew and cared, that he was searching for the ideal place
to establish some kind of plantation, a cattle ranch, a rubber
plantation, or maybe a mine. Others argued that the German
was most likely, and secretly, in the service of the leader
of Venezuela -- Juan Vicente Gomez. Others believed he was
working for the French, helping to track down fugitives from
Devil's Island. Some others decided he was carefully mapping
the area from the air, acting perhaps for his German countrymen
of the Weiman Republic. A few, haunting the rum bars of far
flung and primitive riverside settlements, insisted on summoning
up the ancient Indian legends, and concluding he was searching
for the hidden ruins of magical and mystical El Dorado, legendary
golden city and home for a man of gold whose story had spooked
the early Spanish explorers and mesmerized the celebrated
Sir Walter Ralegh.
In any case, never mind specific purpose or motives, one fine
day the German took off from a ragged little airstrip, circled
that field once, dipping the wings of his biplane, then turned
north and east into the blinding morning sun. He and his plane
vanished into a blaze of light. The sound of his engine, well-maintained
and coughing along loud and clear faded and soon died out.
He was never seen or heard of again.
Planes flew over mountains, jungle and savannah looking for
wreckage or any sign of him. Some hapless search parties set
out on foot or by dugout, and one and all they came back empty-handed.
There were some Indians who claimed they had found parts from
a crashed and badly damaged airplane, though they had nothing
to prove it. Others professed to have heard tales of a very
badly broken white man dragging himself slowly and painfully
through dense jungle.
What happens to Evans and the Dickey expedition is this. Going
upriver, working their way and well before the beginning of
the sequence of small disasters that almost was the death
of them, after they had passed beyond the last named and known
settlements, plantations, and Indian camps and villages, they
reasonably believed they were very much alone, on their own.
One evening, camping at the river's bank, gathered around
the small cooking fires, they thought they heard noises in
the jungle nearby, not just any noises, but the familiar sounds
of men's voices and of dogs barking. Moments later a small
group of men -- white, Indian and Negro -- came bursting out
of the bush, waving their hands, smiling, nodding and bowing,
calling out greetings in several languages. These were armed
men, but their pistols were holstered and their rifles were
slung over their shoulders. As they approached they put their
machetes in cloth scabbards. They held their dogs on leashes
and calmed them.
Dickey spoke to them in Spanish. They talked back and then
Dickey translated for those of his group, Evans for one, who
didn't speak much Spanish, if any.
Seems they were from a nearby plantation of some kind, newly
cleared and established up here, whose owner wished to extend
an invitation to them to come and be his guests for dinner.
Leaving a couple of their Indians to guard the dugouts, the
supplies and equipment from . . . whatever, Dickey
led the others of his team as they followed these men along
some muddy, twisty jungle paths until they came upon a large
cleared space that merged with the wide savannah. There were
already buildings -- barracks and warehouses -- and an enormous
columned mansion, something like a parody (a Hollywood
set?) of the ante-bellum South. Standing on the side
porch, a wizened, crippled man on crutches welcomed them and
invited them all inside, even the Indians, to join him in
celebratory rum drinks. He spoke to them in what Dickey took
to be a heavy German accent. So Dickey asked Evans, the only
one among them to speak German (from skiing trips to Switzerland
and Austria), to talk to the little man in that language.
But the German laughed and firmly denied that he was fluent
in German. They continued to speak accented Spanish to each
other. Later that evening, when everyone was thoroughly and
perfectly soused, he lapsed into an idiomatic Germanic dialect
when he either forgot or felt like it.
Neither Dickey nor any of the group asked him if he were,
in fact, the lost pilot. Everyone simply assumed that was
the case.
Very late, as they sat drunkenly around a huge table littered
with the ruins and remains of an excellent dinner, well prepared
and presented, smoking Cuban cigars, drinking brandy and sweet
liquers, the little man warned them not to continue their
journey towards the source of the Orinoco.
"You will all die," he told them in English. "Believe
me, death is waiting for all of you."
Dickey laughed out loud. "Death waits for each of us,
always," he said, puffing on his big cigar.
The German did not bother to repeat or to explain his warning
or to pursue his point.
Later, at dawn's first light, with all the candles guttered
and the explorers, even Dickey, sprawled out, snoring on the
rugs and the floor, the German took Evans on a brisk tour
of his proud house, then outside where he spoke to Evans in
German. He told Evans about the Indian legends of El Dorado.
Told him that he, Evans, was young enough and strong enough
to find El Dorado using the maps and the aid and comfort of
the German. Explained to Evans that he, the German, needed
the services of someone young and strong, handsome and charming
as well, to help him find the golden city. Someone exactly
like Evans. Together they could efficiently and profitably
manage the freebooting gang of plantation workers. (If he
ever said what crop they planned for the plantation, Evans
has forgotten what it was.)
"Pirates!" The German named his men. "Pirates,
convicts and outcasts!" Adding: "That makes me,
by definition, a pirate chief. And you, too, if you agree
to stay here with me."
Young and callow as he may have been at that time, Evans had
nevertheless long since learned how to divert and decline
the seductive advances of other men, mostly his elders and
betters, doing so gracefully and without inflicting serious
injury or arousing serious rancor.
(Did I mention that Evans, in real life as well as in my novel
was an extraordinarily handsome man. Katherine Hepburn is
said to have called him "the second best profile on the
East Coast.")
Simple truth is that Evans was flattered by this kind of attention,
grateful for it. And he was able to communicate, not in words
but in attitude, this sense of pleasure and even, for the
sake of good manners, was able to feign a sense of regret
that was satisfactory to the German's pride. They held hands
as they strolled about the mansion and its flower gardens.
It was much later, during the journey along the river, that
Evans remembered that the German had left his crutches leaning
against the dining room table. He had not limped or stumbled
or tottered at all during that time when they walked, hand
in hand, together.
Of course, all of the above only took/takes place in my novel.
Though there were all kinds of strange characters and odd
birds in the backcountry of the Orinoco, some of them searching
and prospecting for gold, if not trying to find El Dorado,
there was not, as far as I can tell, a German aviator among
them. Or maybe there was one. I seem to remember Evans, at
least once, telling me the story of the flyer who disappeared.
In my imaginary novel, as in fact, Evans would suffer from
severe malaria. His youth and strength and health would save
him. In the novel, Evans would lose his mind in fever and
delirium.
This was long before I had ever heard of the Latin American
literary convention of "magic realism." To be sure,
I had already read a good deal of Joseph Conrad and I admired
his unique art without any reservations. So he would have
been an influence of sorts. Since the novel is still unwritten,
as of this writing, and likely to remain that way, who can
tell one influence from another? About all those celebrated
Latin American writers I knew next to nothing at that time.
Later I would of course discover and rejoice in the work of
Garcia-Marquez, Fuentes, Neruda, Borges, Octavio Paz, and
the whole crew, but not yet. I did know one of them personally—Jose
Donoso. He was a college classmate of mine. He was bilingual.
I couldn't read a word or even say hello in Spanish. His stories
in English that appeared in the college literary magazine
sounded to me like a modem day version of the fiction of Henry
James. Hard to imagine old Henry paddling along on the Orinoco.
That would be something else!
Years later when we were all, finally, grownups, I went to
a reading given by Donoso at Columbia. He gave an excellent
reading and then took questions from his audience.
"Why did you become a writer?" someone asked.
Donoso didn't hesitate a breath or a beat.
"Because I was not invited to the party."
I have thought about that answer a lot. Flippant or not, it
has the ring of truth.
5.
One of the problems
arising from shotgun weddings of fact and fiction has to do
with the necessity of getting the known and pertinent facts
right. Because of the inherent limits and requirements of
factual accuracy, it would never occur to me to try to present
Evans as a literary type, a serious reader or writer. Was
Evans Dunn, in fact, the least bit literary? In pure fiction
he could be, might be, maybe ought to be, if and when it suited
the author. But in a world of unalterable facticity?
Let me offer up a single, simple anecdote to try to deal with
that specific question. One year, many years ago, with Christmas
coming on and coming soon, he asked his good wife, Alice,
if she had any ideas for something he could give me for a
Christmas present.
"I don't know," she said. "Why not give him
a book?"
Evans frowned and pondered this suggestion for a long moment
before he replied-- "But he has already got a book."
In some ways, though, even if he weren't the least bit literary
himself, you can nevertheless think of him as a literary character,
a stereotype if you please, someone cut out of the whole cloth
of the fiction of John O'Hara, for example, though he would
never have read a word by O'Hara, except maybe Butterfield
8; and though O'Hara, even as he picked Evans' pretentions
topieces and made good sport of his fondest lace-curtain Irish
illusions, would still have been wildly jealous of many of
the undeniable facts and details of Evans' life. Here he was,
then, an old-fashioned, archetypal Irishman, as rough and
ready and raw as the young O'Hara, maybe more so, but one
who did also and in fact go to Yale as O'Hara had always wanted
to and dreamed of doing. To be sure, Evans flunked out after
one year, or maybe only one semester. So what? Ever after
Evans belonged to his Yale class and was allowed to be an
alumnus without all the waste of time and energy and trouble
required for earning a degree he never would need anyway.
And somehow or other Evans also found himself listed in the
Social Register. Bear in mind that in those days the Philadelphia
Social Register was arguably numero uno, the top of the glittering
heap. (Factual truth is that he came to social glory on his
wife's coattails and apron strings. She was old Philadelphia
all the way.) Evans belonged to the Racquet Club among others
and likewise was a member of the Philaldelphia City Troop.
Which had been, once and for all, the personal mounted bodyguard
of General Washington during the Revolution; and, for what
it may be worth, the troop was then (who knows about now?)
authorized to take the position of honor—right of the
line and head of the column at any formal parade of United
States armed forces. While Evans was in the Troop they escorted
F.D.R. during a formal visit to Philadelphia. And they went
on active duty every summer.
Evans was a superb horseman and huntsman, a prominent and
aggressive polo player and a dashing downhill skier until
he was well into his seventies. As already indicated, he served
his country with distinction in World War II a war that he
persisted in calling, without any intended irony, "the
late unpleasantness."
Not too bad for an upwardly mobile mick kid in the big middle
of twentieth century Philadelphia.
I have already mentioned, also, that he was, early and late
in life, an extraordinarily handsome man. In fiction Evans
could easily have been a basically comic figure, a figure
of fun, were it not for his good looks. It is hard not to
take good-looking people seriously. They demand that much
of the rest of us, just by being there among us.
Point the camera from another angle, another point of view,
in this case that of his son-in-law, until recently a Sergeant
First Class of the Field Artillery, now honorably discharged
and for the time being taking it easy, idling, clearly unhurried
in his casual search for suitable employment. That knotty
problem, by the way, will be changed if not solved in due
course when this son-in-law (hereafter to be known and named
by his old rank—Sfc.) plugs into the good old G.I. Bill
and enrolls in graduate school. He has no idea, not a clue,
where this may lead or take him. His inspiration when the
time comes will turn out to be a casual remark his mother-in-law
will make, namely "I envy academic people. They go through
life so gently."
Sfc. is, then, a lazy, easygoing Southerner, one who thinks
of himself (in spite of the inconvenient stain of having had
one great grandfather who fought bravely for the Union on
the Yankee side) as Southern to the bitter core. Sees himself
as the child of a ruined society, of an occupied country.
Child, also, of the savage, poverty stricken equality of the
Great Depression. Yankees of all kinds and types are at best
equally unfathomable to him. He does not honor things he perceives
to be Yankee values and goals, guidelines and objectives.
In a deep sense it's an automatic, reflexive assumption--he
has not since early childhood been able to believe or trust
anyone who spoke out loud and for any ostensible purpose,
good or ill, speaking in any of the various available Yankee
accents. He is not, however, he tells him-self, contemptuous
or condescending, merely an indifferent observer.
In one sense he is a perfect listener to Evans' stories since,
as far as he is concerned, it is all fiction anyway.
Another thing, something they share, though with a difference.
Both of these men have served their time in the military.
Evans had been, by act of Congress, an officer and a gentleman.
Was a Major at the war's end. True, there was always in those
days the shadow of class distinction between enlisted men
and commissioned officers. But this condition was mediated
in a number of ways, one of which was the sustained myth,
especially honored by field grade officers that it is the
sergeants who really run the Army. They were to be treated
as partners, brothers-in-arms. Junior officers could come
and go, but the army, guided by its cadre of sergeants and
field grade officers, went on forever and ever.
They have something in common, these two, that they might
not consider or admit since they take it for granted. Because
of the Army, an experience and a way of life they share, they
are a little like Quentin Compson in his mixed feelings about
the South they love the Army and they hate it. They do not
seriously question the ideals—duty, honor, country,
courage and (now with it all behind them) a hearty contempt
for all those who, for good reasons or bad, escaped the experience
and do not love those delicate and difficult ideals.
And so it is that Sfc. listens to the former Major and remembers
as much of it as he wants to. And so it was that, as a newly
born again civilian, mostly unskilled and untested except
in the care and maintenance and use of heavy weapons, the
Sfc., for the sake of general domestic good will and harmony,
listened politely to the older man unlock and share his wordboard.
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