BAUMHOLDER
1961
A novella
Charles Deemer
Copyright © 2011 by Charles Deemer
Smashwords Editions, License Notes
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Contact Charles Deemer at: cdeemer at yahoo dot com.
Originally published by the Sextant Press in 2009
ISBN 978-0-9788610-8-7
http://www.sextantbooks.com
Dedicated to Monterey Marys everywhere
1/
Sgt. Malinowski took several steps into the Enlisted Men’s Club and stopped. He had never seen the linguists of Processing Company this drunk, this loud or this disorderly. Everyone was yelling at once, small groups trying to make their conversations heard over their loud neighbors. Someone stood on a table, his pants dropped, mooning the universe (the sergeant didn’t recognize the buttocks) while other linguists clapped and yelled catcalls. My God, thought Malinowski. May their mothers never learn about this, or recruiting into this man’s Army would crash to a standstill. What mother would send her son to a school of drunken debauchery?
The E. M. Club was located in a Quonset hut no larger than a basketball court, and Malinowski scanned the small room for Sullivan. This was Sullivan’s short-timer’s party, he realized, and the linguist would be devastated by the news the sergeant had for him. This was why Malinowski had two M.P.s waiting right outside, just in case Sullivan took a swing at him. A short-timer’s emotions were unpredictable on any occasion, and an Irish short-timer’s provided twice the uncertainty, certainly more considering the unfortunate news the sergeant brought. Malinowski had considered waiting until breakfast before breaking the news but by then Sullivan would be packed, waiting for the bus to take him to the airport. Better to tell him tonight, let him blow up, and if he caused sufficient trouble, tuck him away for the night in the small cell in Headquarters Company built just for such an occasion.
Seventy-odd men sat along the row of double-tables the men had pushed together across the center of the room. Over half the company of Russian linguists were there, almost all of them wearing civvies – Malinowski had never been in an outfit where there was such a rush to change out of uniform. Beer bottles and cans cluttered every table, four or five times as many containers as drinkers, bottles of German beer and cans of American beer, some full, some empty, each obscenely inexpensive on a Nickel Night like this, beer so cheap that most linguists bought them five at a time, slapping an American quarter or a Deutsch mark at Jake, the German national who ran the club. Sullivan had made sure his going-home party took place on a Nickel Night.
Bass, whom everyone called Bear, held his guitar and was entertaining troops at the far end of the long table. Malinowski couldn’t hear what he was singing but the sergeant had heard rumors that sometimes Bear sang anti-military songs of his own composition. Malinowski wouldn’t put it past any of them to harbor such feelings. They were college boys who had joined the Army Security Agency a step ahead of being drafted. Not a career soldier among them. Foot soldiers called the linguists “Monterey Marys” after the Language School in Monterey, California, where they’d learned Russian. In Baumholder, 30,000 infantry, paratroopers and special forces were stationed across town at Smith Barracks. The “Animals” spent most of their time training for war in the surrounding farmland but this weekend were in town on pass, which is why the Marys stayed up on their hilltop base. The Animals frightened them, and the sergeant didn’t blame them.
Closer in, Malinowski saw the overweight linguist nicknamed Buddy-pooh holding court, gesturing wildly as he talked, or yelled, over the din of everyone speaking at once. A major trouble-maker, Buddy-pooh. Malinowski had heard that he’d put Hitler speeches to memory to recite for free drinks to the farmers in the local gasthaus.
Buckley, one of the few Negroes in the company, sat next to Buddy but looked dazed, even frightened. Buckley was a newk and not yet seasoned to the wild party habits of college boys turned soldiers – if translating Russian could be called soldiering. Malinowski, who had fought in Korea, had mixed feelings about this.
Finally the sergeant found Sullivan in the crowd, his ruddy complexion redder than normal from so much drinking, laughing and carrying on.
“Hey, Sarge!” somebody yelled. Only a few people heard this and turned his way. Malinowski nodded and stepped toward the troops. He stopped when he stood behind Sullivan.
“Sullivan,” he said, bending forward so his lips were close to an ear.
Sullivan straightened up and turned.
“Hey, Sarge,” Sullivan said.
“Come with me a minute.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s important. Follow me.”
Malinowski started toward the exit. Halfway there, he saw Sullivan saying something to the group he was sitting with. When the linguist finally moved forward, Malinowski continued on.
Onside the sergeant told the M.P.s to move off but stay alert. He didn’t want to freak out Sullivan by their presence but he wanted them close in case there was trouble.
In a moment Sullivan exited the Quonset hut.
“What’s going on?”
“President Kennedy gave a speech tonight,” Malinowski began.
“Yeah, I read something about that.”
“Then you know the shit Khrushchev’s been pulling in Berlin.”
“A little. What’s this got to do with me? You know I ship out tomorrow, right?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Kennedy said Berlin is in a crisis. He extended everybody with less than a year left of his tour.”
There, he’d said it. Malinowski watched Sullivan carefully, tense, ready to duck if the linguist started swinging. Sullivan was short and slight and Malinowski large but the linguist had an Irishman’s temper.
Sullivan grinned and shook his head.
“This is a very sick joke you’re pulling, Sarge. Come on in, and I’ll buy you five beers.”
Before Sullivan could turn away, Malinowski had a large hand on his shoulder.
“No joke,” he said. “You don’t go home tomorrow.”
Sullivan’s mouth dropped open but no words came. Then the mouth contorted into a grimace, and Sullivan appeared to be in great pain. Finally he yelled an excruciating declaration of agony.
Malinowski saw the punch coming and ducked aside. The two M.P.s appeared quickly from out of the shadows. When Sullivan saw them, he stepped back, palms held forward as a shield against their approach.
“What am I, under arrest for getting screwed?” Sullivan asked.
“You’re not under arrest unless there’s a reason to be,” said Malinowski.
“This is really fucked, Sarge.”
“Welcome to the Army.”
“Why me? I mean, what the fuck does it matter to the safety of America if I’m here or home?”
Malinowski didn’t think such an unpatriotic question deserved a response.
Sullivan shook his head again.
“Okay,” he said.
After a silence, the sergeant asked, “You going to be okay?”
Sullivan nodded.
“Do you know how long I’m extended for?”
“I think three months. Not that long.”
“Fuck no. What’s three months? I’ve been two years in this shit hole. What’s three months?”
He started nodding again.
“Well,” said Sullivan, “if I’m not under arrest, I think I could use a beer. Offer’s still open, Sarge.”
“I’ll take a rain check. You take it easy tonight, Sullivan. Don’t do anything stupid after the club closes.”
Sullivan nodded and reentered the club.
“You are totally shitting me,” said Bass when Sullivan told him the news.
Bass and Sullivan were tight enough that Bass recognized as soon as his friend returned that something was terribly wrong. Displeasure was in Sullivan’s body language, in the way he stormed back to the table and chugalugged a beer with the ferocity of a man wanting to disable his senses. Bass quickly finished the song he was singing (a Weavers’ tune called “Lonesome Traveler”), put the guitar in its case, slid the case under the table and hurried to Sullivan’s side to see what was up. Sullivan leaned close and told him the news in a broken voice.
“Three months,” Sullivan added. “It might as well be for eternity.”
“Damn,” said Bass. He couldn’t think of anything to add, so gave a quick squeeze of Sullivan’s shoulder.
“I want to go to town,” said Sullivan.
“The Animals are in town,” Bass reminded him.
“Maybe I’ll pick a fight with a paratrooper.”
“Yeah, right.”
“The president thinks I’m a soldier, thinks I’m worth extending. Maybe it’s time to prove myself by punching out a paratrooper.”
Across the room, somebody yelled, “Fuck Kennedy!”
“I think the word’s spreading,” said Bass.
Buddy-pooh appeared and said, “Sullivan, you hear the news?
Sullivan nodded.
“I think some songs are in order,” Buddy-pooh told Bear.
Bass said, “I don’t think I’m in the mood.”
“He’s right,” Sullivan said. “I want to sing every anti-Army song you ever wrote.” Then he started singing at the top of his lungs, words Bass had written to the tune of “Ragmop”:
“I say F … I say F, U … F, U, C … F, U, C, K … F-U-C-K A-R-M-Y, fuck the Army, beetle-leet bop-be-da-ba … fuck the Army, beetle-leet bop-be-da-ba …”
As soon as other linguists heard Sullivan, they joined in, many standing and moving to gather around Sullivan and Bass, faces straining to sing louder than a neighbor, everyone spelling out the Fuck the Army Ragmop song. Someone fetched Bass’ guitar and brought it to him. Buddy-pooh suggested the next song, and Bass started it alone, to the tune of an old labor song, strumming along as he sang:
“I don’t want your spit shine, mister. I don’t want your shiny brass. As far as I am concerned, mister. You can shove them up your ass.”
By the time Bass reached the last verse, dedicated especially to the Russian linguists with their top secret codeword clearances, everyone was singing in a loud chorus, defiant and solemn, as if the song were an anthem:
“I don’t want your secret clearance. I don’t want your world-wide badge. All I want is a pair of my civvies. And the freedom I once had.”
No one wanted to stop when Jake decided to close at midnight. Buddy-pooh led a delegation to buy beer to go, filling up paper cups, which was the only way Jake would let beer out of the club. Box tops were gathered to serve as trays for the cups of beer, and volunteers recruited to carry them to the baseball field at one end of the kaserne, which was enclosed by a security fence. Across the fence were the officer billets, and in the past their post-club excursions to the ballpark had gotten several of the linguists in trouble, especially Buddy and Sullivan as ringleaders. But this didn’t seem to matter on a night when short-timers found themselves extended. If ever there was a night to lament being a soldier, it was this one.
Bass wasn’t sure when he lost track of Sullivan. He had meant to keep an eye on him. About half the crowd in the club made the march to the ballpark to keep drinking. They sat in the bleachers and passed around the cups of beer. Bass was persuaded to sing another song. He chose a traditional folk ballad, hoping to keep the crowd quieter than they’d been in the club. He thought it was time to settle into a more subdued state of mourning. When he finished the song, Bass realized that Sullivan wasn’t in the bleachers any more.
“Where’s Jim?” he asked the crowd.
“That way,” a linguist said, pointing toward the billets.
“Maybe he crashed,” suggested another.
Buddy-pooh laughed.
“Not Sullivan, no way. I think he’s up to no good.”
Bass and Buddy left the others to finish the beer and headed for the billets. They found Buckley in the Day Room, shooting pool by himself.
“You seen Sullivan?” Bass asked.
“I saw him walk by outside a moment ago.”
Back outside, Bass and Buddy-pooh looked in a direction opposite from the ballpark. If Sullivan were headed for the Operations Building, he’d have gone across the central parkway before reaching the billets. Either he was going to Headquarters Company, where the kaserne’s maintenance, transportation and other support personnel were housed in their own billets, or continuing on to the Command Building.
Buddy said, “He’s going to piss on the captain’s avocado plant.”
Bass shot him a confused look.
“I’m serious. When we saw Mr. Roberts a few weeks ago, Sullivan said somebody should piss on the captain’s plant.”
Bass had skipped the weekly movie because he’d already seen it and was in the middle of reading “Grapes of Wrath.” He remembered how in an act of defiance in the film, Henry Fonda had thrown the captain’s potted tree overboard. Would Sullivan take this as inspiration to do something similar?
“Better check it out,” said Bass.
If Sullivan had pissed on the avocado plant in the hallway outside the commanding officer’s door, he’d finished by the time Bass and Buddy-pooh found him. Now Sullivan was carefully burning all the notices and rosters on the duty board, carefully blowing on each sheet of paper so it would hang off its thumbtack as a delicate ash.
“Come on, Jim,” Bass said. “This isn’t going to get you home any earlier.”
“Look at this,” said Sullivan. Half a dozen shapes of ash hung off the corkboard like skeletal flowers. “This is art, is what it is.”
“Beautiful. Let’s go home.”
Bass put an arm around Sullivan and gently started leading him away. A few steps later he noticed that Buddy-pooh was finishing up the job, blowing on a duty roster he’d just set on fire.
“Damn it,” said Bass. “Let’s get out of here.”
Sullivan wanted to go back to the ballpark. Bass didn’t think it was a good idea.
“I’m going back,” said Buddy-pooh. “You can come with me,” he told Sullivan.
“I don’t need a fucking chaperone.”
Bass said, “You don’t need to get in trouble either. If you got company punishment, or court-martialed, God forbid, they could extend you even more. I heard guys as short as you only got extended three months. Three months is nothing.”
“I’m still going back to the ballpark,” said Sullivan.
Bass went along, too. He didn’t trust Sullivan to be left on his own or in anybody’s care but his. But as much as Bass tried to keep Sullivan out of trouble, once again the short-timer slipped away.
This time it happened when Bass went under the bleachers to take a leak. When he climbed back into the bleachers, Sullivan was gone.
“Where’s Jim?” he asked again.
Buddy-pooh looked around.
“He was right here a second ago.”
“He went to town,” said Bass, thinking aloud.
“The Animals are in town.”
“He said he wants to fight a paratrooper.”
“He’s that fucked up?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Honey,” said Buddy-pooh, “I’d never be so fucked up that I wanted to fight a paratrooper.”
“I’d better go get him.”
“Are you crazy? The Animals are out there. Probably pissed, too, if they got extended.”
“They always re-up. That wouldn’t bother them.”
“You’re right. But it’s still dangerous in town. What is it Sgt. Davis is always saying? I’d rather fight than eat.”
Sgt. Davis, like Sgt. Malinowski, was a soldier of the old school, somehow assigned to a company of Russian linguists for whom military duty had nothing to do with physical exertion or violence. The linguists translated and analyzed military communications of the Russian army in East Germany. No fighting, thank you very much. Monterey Marys. Period, end of story.
Bass said, “I’ll find him before he finds a fight.”
“There’s wishful thinking if I ever heard it.”
“Fuck you.”
Bass started away.
“Do you have a pass?” Buddy-pooh asked after him.
Bass turned.
“I’m officially on leave. I just hung around for Sullivan’s party. I go to Denmark tomorrow.”
“You have a ticket to Denmark and hung around for a party in the club?”
“A special party,” said Bass. He headed off again.
Although he had leave papers, Bass decided to skip the hassle of showing them to the guards at the front gate and instead ducked out through a hole in the fence behind the billets. It was the standard way linguists came and went if they had had too much to drink or wanted to avoid the guards for some other reason. Every now and again Support wired up the hole but the repair never lasted more than a few days. Support soldiers from Headquarters Company used the hole themselves.
The walk to town was about a mile down a twisting two-lane road. The moon overhead dropped a pale light to mark his way. Walking along, Bass realized it was unusually quiet, no sound of artillery coming from across the fields. The Animals were off maneuvers and in town to drink, screw and fight.
At the bottom of the hill the road veered left for another hundred yards, passing Gasthaus Konrad, the local establishment most favored by the farmers who remained in the area, living off their land leases to the American army or the bars some had invested in. Now and again the linguists stopped at the gasthaus for local color, an experience that typically went from shocking to puzzling to darkly comic. Most of the farmers in the area were unreformed Nazis, some of whom viewed the recent World War the way Americans view the World Series, a best-of-seven conflict which had the Americans ahead of the Germans two wars to none – but with considerable future battle left to do. Around ten p.m., after the last routine visit of the German police, Konrad, the owner, sometimes went to the jukebox, opened it, and put on several banned Nazis marching songs for the delight of the farmers. On more rare occasions, especially near the end of the month when they were broke, Buddy-pooh led a contingent of thirsty linguists to the gasthaus, where he recited Hitler speeches he had memorized in German. For this entertainment the farmers kept the beer flowing for as long as Buddy tickled their nostalgia for the glorious days of Aryan superiority.
On the walk to town, Bass decided to rent a room for the night in the gasthaus. He’d made plans to catch the late morning train but this might have to be delayed, depending on whether or not he found Sullivan tonight. Bass didn’t look forward to entering a bar filled with Animals but this couldn’t be helped. Sullivan was his good buddy. Buddies looked out for one another, and Sullivan clearly was too upset to behave in his own best interests.
Bass was over halfway down the hill when it occurred to him that Sullivan might be going to town for a reason other than picking a fight with a paratrooper. He might be looking for Heidi. The more Bass considered this, the more likely the possibility seemed.
Heidi was a Russian spy, most of the linguists agreed to this now. All the same, Sullivan had fallen in love with her. Whether it was love or lust, Bass never could decide, but Sullivan, more than the other linguists Heidi had gone out with, took the plunge into emotional turmoil and personal obsession with more energy than anyone else. Sullivan had tried to convince Bass that the attraction was mutual.
“She loves me,” Sullivan had told Bass on a night almost a month ago when they were drinking alone in the bleachers after the club had closed.
“She’s using you,” said Bass.
“I know she’s a spy. Jesus, Bear, give me a break. I’m a spy, too. So fucking what? We love one another. We want to get out of the spy business.”
“She’s using you, Jim.”
“After I get out and touch bases with my family, I’m coming back. I’m meeting her in Spain.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Fuck you.”
“She asked you to defect. She wanted you to walk into the sunset in East Germany.”
“And I told her I wouldn’t do that. But I would start a new life in Spain with her.”
“And she said yes?”
“Actually she said she’d think about it. Change is harder for her. I get discharged soon. She’d have to defect, so to speak. She loves me, Bear. I think she’s going to do it. She’s going to meet me in Spain.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“She’ll break my heart. But I have to try. I have to be there like I promised I would.”
Extended, Sullivan wouldn’t be able to keep his appointment. Maybe he was looking for Heidi to tell her. Sullivan, as far as Bass knew, hadn’t seen her in over a week.
Bass remembered the first day he and Sullivan had seen Heidi in the gasthaus. They’d never seen anyone like her in Baumholder before. It wasn’t only that she was pretty in a fresh girl-next-door kind of way, with white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, though a tad plump for Bass’ tastes. She was reading The Portable Faulkner in English. Heidi, looking like a college student, was definitely out of place in a German village so transformed that the city newspapers had begun calling it Sin City.
New young women appeared in Baumholder all the time but they usually brought a pallor of tragedy in their expressions, a vacant longing in their eyes. Most had escaped from East Germany and thought they were going to work as waitresses, not barmaids for G.I.s at wages so low prostitution was not only encouraged but became necessary for survival. Bass had heard the rumor that a German syndicate orchestrated the sex trade serving American soldiers. For several days before the Animals charged into town with weekend passes and lustful appetites, Baumholder’s thrice-weekly train schedule exploded to several trains a day to haul in all the girls (“Veronikas,” the Germans called them) who would be needed for the weekend ahead. Sipping a beer in the bahnhoff, watching all the prostitutes parade in, was the most surreal experience Bass had ever had.
In this context, to find a beautiful young woman sitting alone in the gasthaus on a Wednesday afternoon was a significant break in the local pattern of introductions. And she was reading Faulkner!
Bear and Sullivan were working mids, which gave them a free day as long as they kept sober enough to go to work at midnight. They’d slept through the morning. They entered the gasthaus for a beer and bockwurst, a German lunch, before continuing on to town. And there she was.
“She’s reading Faulkner,” Sullivan noticed first after they’d taken a table with their bottles of German beer. “In English.”
“Fishy,” said Bass. They spoke in low tones, as if discussing a secret.
“Not necessarily.”
“Yeah, Jim, she’s a graduate student in American Studies who happened to drop by Sin City for a quiet week of working on her Ph.D.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Think about it. Look what she’s reading. Not just any Faulkner. The Portable Faulkner, with his name shouted in block print on the cover so you can read it across the room. Has any bait ever been more obvious?”
“Bait? Interesting. As in fishing for …?”
“One of us, is my guess.”
“One of us.”
“A linguist. A spy.”
Sullivan laughed. The young woman, only a few tables away, looked up and smiled. Then she went back to reading.
Sullivan said, “So what you’re saying is, you think she’s a spy planted here to pick our brains?”
“It’s been done before.”
True enough. Not quite a year ago, a spy working as a barmaid had appeared at the Family Club, the linguist’s favorite bar in town. She’d appeared out of nowhere, was fluent in English, bright and attractive. She’d taken an immediate liking to Lt. Baker in the company, who reported her abnormal interest in what happened in Processing Company on the hill. Before sex and after, all she wanted to hear about what was what the linguists did on the hill. Baker reporter her but before security had time to look into the matter, the woman was gone as suddenly as she had arrived.
“Spies hustle officers,” Sullivan said.