THE SCRAPBOOK

By Charles Deemer

 

From Northwest Review, Spring 1968

 

 

I was drafted in the fall of 1965, shortly after the Draft Board found out I had not re-entered school. Had I enrolled I would have been a senior, an engineering major, but the prospect of ending up alongside a computer or behind a slide rule had become increasingly dismal the nearer I came to my degree. I had dropped out just for the semester to think things over and was not at all happy when the Army picked me off. With almost no effort I grew a grudge in Basic Training; my Platoon Sergeant often told me I was the most insolent soldier in the Company. 

Reading my orders assigning me to "C" Company, Fort Joshua, California, I almost forgave the Army for kidnapping me. I reported in January, a few weeks after Christmas. Fort Joshua is in California's southeastern desert, a dead brown landscape that even the winter rains could not rouse to life. I was assigned to work in the Supply Room, a soft job, I hoped. I had no ambition. I wanted to fall into a deep sleep and wake up free and get back into school, even if I wasn't sure of where I was going. When I reported to the Supply Room, though, a Corporal O'Hara immediately put me to refolding blankets for most of my first afternoon. O'Hara often checked up on me. From the first he called me "dodger," and very soon I was wishing I had a legitimate claim to the label. 

It was actually Sergeant Davis who was in charge of the Supply Room. He entered just before five on my first afternoon but buzzed out within minutes without noticing me. He was a short redhead, a hard-looking man with a prize-fighter's great square jaw that looked out of place in a Quonset hut stuffed full of bedding. Perhaps that was why he avoided the place. After Sergeant Davis had gone, O'Hara warned me about the scrapbook. 

"He'll be cornering you with his scrapbook before the week is up," O'Hara predicted. He had come to the rear of the Supply Room to where he had me on the floor counting bayonets. With arms akimbo, he menacingly placed his spherical body over me, standing with the comfortable power of one conscious of his extra chevrons. While he talked I kept tossing bayonets into a footlocker, but I had lost my count of them with O'Hara's first words. 

"He'll be asking you up to his room," O'Hara went on. "If you have a taste for whiskey, take him up on it, but don't say I didn't warn you about the memories he'll throw at you. There's hardly no GI on post who hasn't seen that scrapbook." He looked down at me with his small, round eyes, waiting for a response. 

"Well, I'll be expecting to, then," I finally said. I was skeptical that the Sergeant would be interested in showing me anything, but I wanted my reply to end matters so O'Hara would leave me to the privacy of my bayonets. 

"You do that, dodger," said O'Hara, stepping back. "Just remember I warned you." He turned and walked to the Sergeant's desk behind the front counter. I watched him drop his round body into the Sergeant's chair and fling his fat legs onto the desk. Relieved to be alone, I picked a number at random from which to continue my count of the bayonets. 

I heard no more about the scrapbook until Friday night. Nor did I see much of Sergeant Davis. Though Davis was the Supply Sergeant, O'Hara alone kept the few routines of the Supply Room going. Once each morning and again each afternoon, Davis would be in and out, never staying for more than an hour or so and always looking groggy and listless, like a GI just roused out of the sack for a shakedown inspection. That he drank was obvious: it was in the great weariness on his face, in the deep lines that worked above his red jaw and around his red eyes, lines drawn from more than age. When I entered the Post Club on Friday night, I fully expected to find Sergeant Davis warming an habitual stool. The expectation briefly brought O'Hara's words about the scrapbook to mind, but when I found no Davis, the recollection vanished. I bought a beer and sat alone at a table in the back of the room. 

Soon I had visitors. I was facing the rear of the Club, rather wishing to avoid the sight of the Parade Field through the side windows. The company had had its weekly inspection before chow, and I had dared attend with enough dust on my brass and watermarks on my shoes to receive a Saturday's kitchen duty. Alone in the corner, I wanted to close my mind to the whole stinking ritual. I had finally relaxed myself into a thoughtless high when the two of them arrived. 

"Can we join you?" 

They introduced themselves as Yancy and Hillsmith. Both were PFC's and neither, from the informality of the open collar and loose tie of his uniform, was particularly aiming at being Corporal. 

"You were drafted, weren't you?" asked Yancy. 

"So were we," Hillsmith said after I had nodded agreement. “I was drafted my senior year of college for taking too few credits." 

"I got it after dropping out a semester," Yancy added. 

So here were two fellow victims. Both worked in the Orderly Room and had seen my orders, happy to discover the "U.S." before my serial number that distinguished me as a draftee. From Yancy I learned that we were the only draftees in the Company. I admitted a warm feeling of solidarity with them, the three of us against the Army. Yancy and Hillsmith were both from L.A. and had gone through Basic together. "First two ever to be drafted on the buddy system," Yancy joked. He was lean, with a way of slouching at the table that made him appear taller than he was. Hillsmith was stout but not round like O'Hara, a bull rather than a pig. We traded biographies and rounds of beer. Yancy and Hillsmith made up the Company rosters and promised to keep me off whenever I wanted a weekend pass. 

"Has Davis shown his memoirs to you yet?" Yancy asked after a silence. 

"No," I said. "But I heard about the scrapbook. What's the story?" 

"You'll find out soon enough," Hillsmith assured me. 

"You won't believe it," said Yancy, shaking his head. 

"Like he won the war all by himself," Hillsmith added. “He's got the clippings, pictures and medals to show you." 

"I think he saved everything from the war but his toilet paper," said Yancy. 

"I won't be saving any of this," I said, pointing to my uniform. 

"Exactly," Yancy agreed. "We have to stick together against heroes like Davis." 

Hillsmith glanced around the Club with exaggerated ceremony. The room had filled during our conversation, and Hillsmith responded to the crowd by dropping into a Yancy slouch and lowering his voice to a near whisper. 

"Man, we have a beautiful plan," he said. 

They explained the plan together, in alternating but equally excited pieces, each filling in what the other had missed before pushing the plan further on to its final execution. They had pulled their chairs closer to the table and I, as if already accepted into the plot, had done the same. For the moment it was no time to drink beer. We were a conspiracy. 

Yancy knew where there was a press in Los Angeles that for a few dollars would print any front page headline you wanted onto an otherwise standard newspaper. He also knew how to get hold of obscene photographs, made to order. The plan, in brief, was to plant an appropriate headline and photograph in Davis' scrapbook and then let him take us (for as a draftee I was already a full-fledged member of the conspiracy) to his room to see the memoirs. The reaction to the plants would be worth our effort. "It would be the mockery," as Yancy explained, "that this goddamn system deserves." 

We traded headlines and exchanged our most creative obscene notions for the photograph. As our excitement grew, our voices rose and with the rising voices the aura of conspiracy began to disappear until, without being aware of the transition, we were on topics that bore no relation to the Plan. And the Plan remained forgotten until we returned to the billets, where I drunkenly reminded my new friends that they could "count me in." 

 

With a hangover, I found Saturday's KP intolerable and kept thinking of the weekend pass that, with my new friends' help, I might have been on. There would be other opportunities, since they worked in the Orderly Room and knew the administrative ropes, but thinking of them did little to get me through the day. When a fat cook from Georgia finally let me go at nine that night, I headed straight for the Post Club. 

Yancy and Hillsmith were on pass, and so I kept to myself, conscious of the fact that I was the only one in the Club who had not volunteered to spend his time in the Army. I drank alone until midnight and left with a good high on. I wanted a drink badly, but I was broke. When I ran into Sergeant Davis in front of the billets, I came right to the point and asked him if he had any whiskey. To my surprise he led me up to his cadre-room. Very soon, as predicted, the scrapbook appeared. I was sitting on the Sergeant’s bunk, a glass of whiskey in my hand and the bottle at my feet. Davis, sitting beside me, suddenly went to his wall-locker and returned with the scrapbook. 

"Where were you in 1944?" he asked, as though accusing me of being a baby in a crib somewhere. "I was crawling on my belly across France!" 

He opened the scrapbook. It was black, a dime-store scrapbook, with all imitation of leather lost and its cardboard edges ragged and torn. Yet the Sergeant cradled it in his lap as if it were made of the finest crystal. 

"Listen, Belmont," he said, too loud to be for me alone. "I was in the 101st Airborne under McAuliffe!" He pointed to a newspaper headline noting the landing of the legendary 101st into France. The newsprint was not as faded as I expected it to be, as though Davis had never taken the scrapbook out into the sun. He turned the page to a photograph of three GI's standing in front of a tank. 

I easily picked out Davis. He was in the middle, his prizefighter's jaw prominent even then, though not yet the terminal for a network of deeply drawn lines. He was handsome, as John Wayne is handsome, in that way both tough and tender. Below the photograph was written, in red ink, "Give 'em hell!" 

"That's Duke Evans and Johnny Leary, with me in the middle," Davis pointed out. He elbowed me in the ribs and began to laugh to himself. "We raised one mountain of hell! But the old man let us. Nobody got after the Krauts like we did." 

Davis and companions were young, not much older than I, and I tried to picture myself beside them, striking a casual pose more appropriate to college sweaters than to full combat gear, grinning as though at a circus instead of war, and with the tank so awesome in the background. It was an impossible vision. I was thankful to be missing Vietnam. 

"I'd rather fight than eat!" Davis exclaimed. He handed me the scrapbook and stood up, almost kicking over the whiskey bottle. I slid the bottle and his glass under the bed just as Davis began a prize-fighter's dance before me, bobbing and jabbing at the air, uncomfortably near. "Take it easy, Sarge," I said, trying to sound relaxed but still pushing myself and the bed farther from his fists. 

"You want to fight?" Davis jabbed. "I'd rather fight than eat!" 

He was bobbing ever more unsteadily, occasionally losing his balance and starting almost to fall before regaining it. He steadied himself again, and I took advantage of his inattention to turn hurriedly through the scrapbook. I stopped at a photograph of a girl in a bathing-suit. 

"Who's the girl?" I asked. "She's really nice." 

The distraction worked. Davis dropped his fists and, panting, rejoined me on the bed. I retrieved his glass and filled it, then my own. 

"That’s Maryvonne," Davis said out of breath. He took a slow drink. "She's the best woman you'll ever meet, Belmont." 

"She's nice," I agreed. 

"I beat the hell out of Duke Evans for asking her out." He gestured with one fist. "You don't mess with her," he warned me, as though I had intentions to. 

"Where is she now?" 

The question stopped him for a minute. 

"She's coming to the States," he finally said. "We'll be marrying, Belmont. You can come to the wedding." 

"That's great, Sarge." 

"Belmont, you're a good Joe," Davis said. He jabbed me on the arm. "You like to fight? You want to fight? I'd rather fight than eat." 

"How about a rain check?" I tried to kid. Davis put his fists up again, and I stood up. The Sergeant's jaw dropped and twisted, contorting his face into the grotesque masks of a ritual preliminary to the battle. 

"Put 'em up, Belmont," Davis stood up and began his dance. 

"I have to make it, Sarge," I said. I was backing toward the door. 

Davis stopped and dropped his fists. "You're a good Joe," he said. 

I grinned and started out. 

"Belmont!" Davis yelled. I turned to find him grinning back. And then his jaw dropped to renew the ritual. "I'd rather fight than eat!" he wailed. I left him jabbing at the air. 

 

On Monday morning Yancy and Hillsmith joined me at breakfast. They scurried up beside me like two old women full of new gossip, and I suspected what was on their minds. 

"We got the plants!" Yancy said. 

"Man," said Hillsmith. "You should see the photograph! It's perfect!" 

They wouldn't tell me more, insisting that I’d have to see the headline and photograph myself to believe them. We rushed through breakfast and then went to the billets. Yancy took the headline and photograph from his wall-locker and set them onto his bunk for approval. 

"Look at her!" Yancy laughed. 

"It cost an extra ten for that pose," Hillsmith added. 

The photograph could only have been ordered for its occasion. In it a girl was nude but for an ammunition belt and a helmet, and on the helmet the name MARYVONNE was painted. The girl was charging the camera, her expression suggesting military assault. On one bare shoulder she carried a bazooka. 

"DAVIS LEAVES REIMS FOR BASTOGNE--ON BELLY!" Yancy read the headline. 

"It's a perfect pair," Hillsmith insisted. 

The headline and photograph left nothing in the way of the Plan but the right opportunity. Yancy impatiently suggested that we manufacture the opportunity ourselves on Friday night. Davis would be sure to stop by the Club during the evening, and two of us would be waiting for him. The third could plant the headline and photograph. Hillsmith, as impatient as Yancy, agreed on Friday night. I voiced no objections, though the sight of the headline and photograph on the bed made the Plan seem to be something quite different from what it had appeared to be over beer. But I reminded myself that Davis was a career soldier, a lifer, a hero. Since we were draftees, he must be the enemy. 

"By the way, six bucks will cover your share of the stuff," Hillsmith told me. 

"Payday soon enough?" 

"Sure," he agreed. 

For the remainder of the work-week the Plan weaved its way through my thoughts, coming and going like distant recollections of an event that could not quite be put into focus. I had lots of time to think: O'Hara's imagination could manufacture no more projects for me to do, and the routine work of the Supply Room was piddling. Much of the day I spent on a great pile of blankets in back, with no more energy or concentration to do something constructive than I had to order my thoughts. The boredom ahead seemed endless. At any rate, I could not bring myself to do anything about it. If doing something meant doing it as a soldier, for the moment I preferred inaction. Only avoiding O'Hara mattered to me. 

During the week Davis made his usual token appearances, as weary as ever and showing no recognition of our hour together. He ignored me and talked in monosyllables to O'Hara. Often, too often, when we were alone, O'Hara would come back to the pile of blankets to tell me about the Sergeant. He spoke with the impatience of someone waiting for the boss's job. 

"He's a lush and should be retired," O'Hara commented on Friday afternoon. It was not the first time that week I had heard the remark. "He's no damn good except to shoot a rifle or leap from a plane. Not even that, now." 

"I wonder why he's not in Vietnam?" I thought aloud. 

"What good's a lush in a war?" O'Hara asked. "He even missed Korea, dodger. He's been useless since the second big one. They should have given him a retirement medal then and put him to pasture." 

"What medals does he have?" Davis had not shown me any. 

O'Hara shrugged.

"I don't know what they're called," he said, with the indifference of a desk soldier. "He has four or five of the damn things. He bought them in a hock shop for all I know. Haven't you seen them yet?" 

"We only got as far as his fiancé," I said, immediately sorry that I had let O'Hara know this. 

"Fiancé! Is that what he told you?" 

I ignored the question, but my silence was too late. O'Hara continued. 

"That broad's just a bar-girl, if you ask me. He's been saying he's going to marry her since he came to this Post. Since the war ended, I bet. Don't believe any of it, dodger." 

O'Hara went on, but I turned him off. No matter how much of a lifer Davis was, I decided that O'Hara was worse. He was a vulture, circling and waiting for Davis to die so he could have the Supply Room all to himself. I wanted to clip his fat wings, and this plan began to excite me more than any others. 

O'Hara didn't leave me alone until quitting time. I rushed outside, finding the dry chilly air cleansing and purifying. I had little stomach for food and so went to the Club. 

By the time Yancy and Hillsmith came by I was pretty high. Catching my eye, Yancy patted the breast of his sport coat to indicate that he had the headline and photograph in his pocket. He also had taken the master key to the billets from the Orderly Room. When Davis came by, Hillsmith and I would keep him occupied while Yancy planted our bombs. 

We waited, soldiers impatient to spring the ambush. I was quiet, letting the others carry the little conversation we needed to sustain us. Periodically Yancy would pat his breast pocket, and Hillsmith would flash him a broad grin in anticipation. But I was distant--the beer had turned my thoughts loose, and often they wrapped around O'Hara and smothered him. 

"Here we go!" Hillsmith whispered. Quickly he was off to the bar to fetch Davis. I brought Yancy into focus in time to catch his wink, and then he, too, left the table and detoured his way out of the Club. I waited for Davis and Hillsmith to arrive. 

"I’d rather fight than eat!" Davis told me as he sat down. He was grinning, and more sober than I was, I judged. His comment had a warmer tone than usual, the gentle warmth of a man who was aware of his faults, if embarrassed that he could not always control them. "You want to fight?" Davis kidded me. 

"He wouldn't have a chance against you, Sarge," Hillsmith said. "You've done more fighting than we'll ever do. And seen more, too." 

"Boy, I've seen some," Davis admitted. 

"France and Belgium must have been something," Hillsmith prodded. 

There was nothing more to it. Davis was off, and one war anecdote followed another. I listened to him explain how Duke Evans got it by clumsily dropping a live grenade at his feet, and I heard more than one amorous adventure following Davis and a buddy out of bivouac to a French cafe miles away, where they felt up the country girls. Hillsmith listened mechanically, his bull's body in a Yancy slouch. He nodded with frequent, feigned enthusiasm. Davis talked on, talked without interruption even as Yancy returned to join us. Yancy grinned success, Davis rambled and we waited, the trap set. 

I could not remember walking to the billets. At one moment I was aware of Davis's voice, captivated by its rare audience, and at the next I heard Yancy ask about the scrapbook. And then I was aware of being in Davis's room, sitting on the bed and clutching a glass of whiskey. There was the appearance of something black, the scrapbook; a soft rustle, the turning of pages; and then the scream of a man in great and sudden anger. 

"Hey, she's some chick!" 

"Let's see the blisters on your belly, Sarge!" 

The voices came from the doorway, and though I could find two shapes there, I could bring nothing into focus. A third shape joined the others and another voice, "Come on, I'll kill you!" 

“I’d rather eat than fight!" 

"Man, I'd rather have that Maryvonne in bed than either!" 

"Aaaa!" the third shape began, and it lunged for the door. 

"See you, hero!" Voices fading, feet running. 

I struggled to my feet just as a shape returned. Slowly I brought Davis into focus. Ignoring me, he staggered against his wall locker, kicked it once, and then began beating his fists against it. Feeling sick, I groped my way for the latrine. 

 

 

|"Hey, Belmont!" 

I felt an arm on my shoulder. 

"How did you make it away last night?" Hillsmith asked. 

They were by my bunk. I sat up, the odor of last night's sickness still on my breath. I could taste the sickness too, and with its taste the recollection of events began. 

"We thought maybe you passed out in the Sarge's room," said Yancy. 

Hillsmith sat down on the edge of my bunk. "You sure were out of it. You missed some fine action." 

"Oh, it was beautiful," Yancy agreed. "God, it was beautiful." 

"Yeah, the Plan," I recalled. 

"He won't be flashing medals soon," said Yancy. 

"So tell me what happened," I asked. 

They related the events, gleefully reliving each moment of the sequence. I was astonished at how little I remembered and at how uncomfortable the few moments that were clear left me this second time around. To Yancy and Hillsmith, though, the Plan had come off better than expected. It was their big finger to the Army. 

"He deserved it," said Hillsmith. "The rest of them deserve the same." 

I nudged him off the bed with a leg and got up and began dressing. 

"Where's the photo of Maryvonne?" I asked. "The real one." 

"I've got it,” said Yancy. "What for?" 

"I want it," I said. 

They exchanged a puzzled glance. 

"What do you mean?" asked Hillsmith. 

"I said I want the Photograph." I was angry, angry at the Army for doing this to us and at the two of them for letting it, angry at O'Hara for waiting around like a vulture and angry even at my own stupidity for dropping out of school and putting myself into the whole mess. I was angry at everyone and everything--except, I realized, at Davis. I was not angry at Davis. 

"What kind of fink-out is this?" Yancy demanded to know. "Have you joined the lifers all of a sudden?" 

"It's the Sergeant's photograph," I said simply. “I’m going to return it." 

"Man, that's loyalty," said Hillsmith. "Yes, real loyalty." 

"Do I get the photograph?" 

"You owe us six bucks," said Yancy. "We'll sell it to you." 

"You'll get your money. I want the real newspaper clipping, too." 

 

The Sergeant's door was closed. I did not know whether he was inside or not, and I could not bring myself to do the only thing there was to do to find out. I waited around the hall for a while, frequently drinking at the fountain in front of the latrine and half-hoping Davis would appear and force my action for me. But soon I feared that he actually would appear, and I'd be forced to speak to him. There was nothing I could say. 

But there was still one thing to do. I took the photograph and clipping and slid them under the Sergeant's door. Immediately I hurried away, like a prisoner in flight, telling myself even as I ran that there would be time enough later to talk and to look through the scrapbook and to admire the medals and to tell the Sergeant that his must have been a great war. I had nothing but time. 

 

/end