The Wild Boys (15 page)

“You would have liked Joe” I am telling the Mayor.

Joe Garavelli and the Mayor sit at a kitchen table. Joe’s fat smiling wife brings up a bottle of red wine from the cellar.

“Those tommy guns in the corridor aren’t the only thing
makes me uneasy. It’s Joe himself. I’ve seen him before.”

Rome, Berlin, Naples, Saigon, Benghazi … “Here come the Germans the Americans the English. Change the welcome signs.” Willkommen Deutschen is hastily taken down and Hello! Johnny put up. “Sell your sister your daughter your grandmother.” Cigarettes chocolate and K rations change hands.

“I have the uneasy feeling of being in someone else’s old film set. Yes I’ve seen Joe before. The smiling mouth the cold treacherous eyes.”

“We’re going to win this war” I said quietly to a French
comte
… (But loud enough so the CIA man can hear me.) …
Le Comte
lifted his glass.

“I drink to the glorious victory of our brave American allies over little boys armed with slingshots and scout knives.”

“I thought this was pretty nasty and told him America was just doing a job we all knew had to be done and we knew we were right and we knew we were going to win, it was just as simple as that.
Le Comte
emitted a sharp cold bray of laughter. Information as to the number and disposition of enemy forces is vague and contradictory.”

The officers walk around passing out chocolate and cigarettes. Boys point in various directions. These boys appear later in wild-boy parts.

“They are somewhere to the south. All agree we have only to show ourselves and the boys will surrender in cheering crowds to escape their Russian and Chinese slave drivers. This seems logical enough. None the less we make careful plans for a military operation.”

General Greenfield studying maps and pointing. “Just here is an old Foreign Legion fort. That should do for a base camp. Three days march from here.”

“We set out Friday, April 23, 1976 the soldiers marching along singing ‘Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous’ and ‘The Caissons Go Rolling Along.’ The singing gets less and less lusty and finally stops altogether. It is evident the men are badly out of condition. It takes us six days to reach the fort. Three hundred yards from the fort the general holds up his hand and stops the column. All the officers whip out field glasses. The door is open three sand foxes sniffing around in the courtyard. They look up and see us and scamper off over a sand dune.” Fort from
Beau Geste
. Dry well thistles in the courtyard. The officers walk through empty rooms their footsteps muted by sand. The walls give off a spectral smell of stale sweat. “This will do for the wardroom.”

KILROY JACKED OFF HERE    B. J. MARTIN   D & D

     
BUEN LUGAR PARA FOLLAR    QUIÉN ES?     A.D. KID

Phallic drawings … (Two Arab boys. One shoves a finger in and out his fist. The other nods. They pull off their jellabas.) Three American boy scouts look at the drawings … “Let’s play, huh?”

“How you mean play?” says the third who is younger.

“We’ll show you.” Younger boy blushes and wets his lips as he sees what they are doing. Phallic shadows on a distant wall. Camera shifts hastily like embarrassed eyes. General Greenfield clears his throat and pulls at his mustache. “Sergeant!”

“Yes sir”

“Get a detail to clean this place out … and uh whitewash these walls.”

“Yes sir.”

“It is the General’s plan to leave half our force in the fort select the youngest and fittest, proceed south and engage the enemy. He has named the fort Portland Place after a block in St Louis.”

Two hours out of base camp several hundred boys waving white flags burst over a sand dune and rush toward us screaming.

“Hello! Johnny.”

“You very good man.”

“Thank you very much one cigarette.”

“Chocolate.”

“Corned bif.”

“Americans very good peoples.”

“Russians Chinese very bad.” They snarl and spit.

“We show you where water is where make camp.”

“Kif anything what you like.”

“My sister she live near here.”

Things seem to be working out. The boys will lead us to the Communist guerrillas who organize them and that will be that. The boys are vague as to the location of the guerrillas. “That way.” They point south.

They find no water but demand extra rations for looking. Camping places they pick always seem to feature some particular inconvenience a nest of scorpions a cave full of snakes.

The boys rush around with sticks beating at the snakes knocking down tents upsetting pots of food stampeding the mules.

“The boys are under foot day and night and more of them keep surrendering. Must be a thousand of them now. Rations are becoming a problem. There is something about these boys that doesn’t add up. I have a feeling that they are not young at all.”

General Greenfield, the CIA man and Major Bradshinkle walk through the camp. Boys jump up in front of them. “Hello! Johnny.” The boys point and make machine-gun noises. The CIA man looks at them with cold disfavor. “Little bastards” he mutters.

“Just kids” says the General.

The CIA man grunts. “Something wrong here General. They’re not all that young.”

As the officers turn away young eyes go cool and alert looking after them with alien calculation.

“As a professional soldier I have the gravest reservations about the entire expedition. I keep these thoughts to myself. A blacklisting from that CIA bastard could mean the loss of my job. I think too much. Always have. The security checks at West Point used to give me headaches and I got the habit of taking codeine pills. I have a good supply of pills I bought in Casa for the chronic headache of this expedition. Not the first time a bad habit saved a man’s life.”

A lunar photograph of shallow craters. “This Place of Sand Fox. Good place to camp.”

The CIA man looks around sourly. “I don’t see any sand foxes.”

“Sand fox very shy. When you see sand fox nobody live near.”

As soon as camp is made the officers are summoned to the General’s tent.

Something has to be done about the boys.

The CIA man says they are obvious saboteurs smartest thing would be to machine-gun the lot of them.

The Press Officer objects that such precipitate action would jeopardize our public image.

“What public image? While you jokers were lapping up
booze and feeding your face Joe and Henry and me had a look around. They don’t any of them like us one bit. That Mayor in Marrakech would cut your throat if you were down quick as he’d sell you his mother if you were on top. I tell you those brats are leading us straight into an ambush.”

The General raises his hand for silence. “We will send the main body of boys back to base camp under guard retaining a few as guides. At the first hint of treachery we will radio base camp and the prisoners will be shot. This condition of course to be clearly impressed on the guides.”

The CIA man grunted. “Well the sooner we get them under guard the better.”

As we left the tent after receiving the General’s decision about fifty boys came to meet us. “We got very important informations where base camp.
Muchos Chinos
there.” The boys pull their eyes up at the corners yacking in false Chinese. The effect was irresistibly comic. Then the boys laughed. They laughed and laughed laughing
inside
us all the officers were laughing doubled over holding their guts in. The boys sneezed and coughed. They posted themselves in front of the CIA man and began to hiccup. He glared at them then hiccuped loudly again and again. It was happening all over the camp, a chorus of hiccups laughing, sneezing, coughing. The CIA man grabbed a megaphone and hiccuped out like a great frog: “Machine/hick/gun/hick/the little/hick/bastards!” And he reached for his forty-five. The boys dodged away. Wracked by hiccups his shots went wild killing two of our own men. The General grabbed the megaphone: “Men … ACHOO, ACHOO, ACHOO …”

“God bless you General ha! ha! ha!” said Rover Jones one of his old yard nigras. Soldiers were rolling on the ground pissing in their pants and then the boys were on them with sticks knees feet and elbows. They snatched up guns dodged behind some well-spaced rocks and opened up at point-blank range. It was a shambles. In a few seconds hundreds lay dead under a withering fire from the boys. And the contagion was spreading rapidly. One look at someone taken with the fits and you have it. And the sneezes blow down wind like tear gas. It is not just a ventriloquist act. It is a trained killer virus. At least half the men were already affected and those who weren’t have been goofing off somewhere survivors are all the goldbricks in this stumblebum outfit. The CIA man caught a splash of forty-five slugs right across his fat gut. He hiccuped a rope of blood and went down like a sack of concrete. The General was still on his feet trying to massa the sneezes when a rifle bullet drilled him between the eyes. He flopped on his face and bounced. In the immortal words of Hemingway “the hole in the back of his head where the bullet came out was big enough to put your fist in if it was a small fist and you wanted to put it there.” I am in command. I begin to breathe “heavy duty vast army ripped to shreds.” I grab the megaphone: “Keep your heads men. All who can walk move out. Move out and take cover. If your buddies have the laugh sneeze cough fits don’t look at them, don’t go near them. Move out and take cover.” The wild boys stay hidden and pour it on. I lose a lot of men before we get clear of the camp and take cover. Suddenly the boys stop shooting. I figure they are in the camp grabbing all the guns and ammo they can carry. After that they will move back and arm their confederates.
Knowing how fast they can move over these rocks no use following with N.G. soldiers still blazing away at nothing. I give a cease fire. I doubt if the kids have lost a boy. Laughing, coughing, sneezing in the distance sounds like a congress of hyenas. Fifteen minutes and everything is quiet. The hiccups were the last to go. When we get back to camp not a man is left alive. Those who hadn’t been shot had died from the fits, died spitting blood. It is a murderous biological weapon and I owe my immunity to God’s Own Medicine. I turn the General over on his back and I will say one last thing for him he makes a fine-looking corpse. Burial is out of the question, too many stiffs. So I read the burial of the dead for morale and the bugler plays taps. We make camp a mile away. I am on the radio to base camp for reinforcements and medical supplies and
water
… “Art Hill calling Portland Place … Art Hill calling Portland Place … Come in please … Come in please …” I try for half an hour. Radio silence on Portland Place. From that point on I was looking out for Billy B., St Louis Encephalitis by birth and nickname.

“Save the water for those with a chance of making it.” The young lieutenant gulps “Yes sir.”

Quicker we get these stretcher cases off our back the better. They don’t live long without water. Then we are hit by an epidemic of hepatitis the yellow sickness lives in straw the Arabs say and I remember the boys were always bringing us straw to sleep on. Hepatitis cases need bed rest and fruit juice. We are not in a condition to supply either one. When they got too weak to follow we left them there. It was the only thing to do worthless bastards and I hoped to make full colonel out of these slobs. The boys escort us with sniper fire
deadly accurate keeping about three hundred yards behind us well spaced out. So we are pretty well thinned out by the time we sight base camp. There it is in the distance an old film set. We advance cautiously. Three hundred yards. I scan the fort through my field glasses. Nobody in sight. No flag. The door is open and I see three sand foxes sniffing around in the courtyard. We move slowly forward ready to take cover. Two hundred yards. One hundred yards. Fifty yards. We are standing in front of the fort now. It looks exactly as it looked when we arrived from Marrakech. Guns at the ready we move into the courtyard. Thistles the dry well. Nothing nobody. I take the young lieutenant and start a tour of the rooms. Sand on the floor silence, emptiness. It occurs to me I don’t want a witness when I reach the wardroom in case any legal tender is lying about unliberated among other considerations. I turn to the lieutenant: “I’m going on alone, lieutenant. You go back and stay with the men. In case anything happens to me there must be a surviving officer.” He looks at me with deep admiration and says “Yes sir.” God is he dumb. The wardroom is empty.

KILROY JACKED OFF HERE      B. J. MARTIN    D & D

      
BUEN LUGAR PARA FOLLAR    QUIÉN ES?     A.D. KID

I remember the man left in charge of the fort one Colonel Macintosh a druggist in civilian life. He was a huge heavy-boned man of a sluggish malignant disposition. And the horrible religious constipated captain who had been a prison psychologist in Texas. Captain Knowland if my memory serves.

KILROY JACKED OFF HERE      B. J. MARTIN     D & D

     
BUEN LUGAR PARA FOLLAR       QUIÉN ES?      A.D. KID

No colonel no captain no desk no maps … nothing. Empty room justlikethat. I feel a shiver in the back of my neck as if a small animal with a cold nose has just nuzzled me there. Even my memory picture of those two jokers is dimming out. I can hardly see their faces. Two people I disliked very much a long time ago, so long I forget what they looked like. The colonel is dissolving in front of my eyes to dust and shredded memories where the old Macintosh Drug Store used to be. What force could have moved that heavy-boned lump of congealed hate? Perhaps something as simple as a hiccup of time. Empty room justlikethat. Now I know what the crusades are about. The young are an alien species. They won’t replace us by revolution. They will forget and ignore us out of existence. Place of the Sand Foxes was simply a casual entertainment with just the right shade of show you. Leave us alone.

Leaning on the wall I scrawled a note. “Have been ordered back to the flagship”

Colonel Macintosh

I walk back to the courtyard and show it to the lieutenant thanking God for his dumbness. He says “Well at least they might have left us some water and provisions.” “Are you questioning the actions of a superior officer lieutenant?” His Adam’s apple bobs up and down “Uh! no sir.” “Good. Get the men on their feet. We’re moving out.”