“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize—after strumming a banjo for the entertainment of pimpled youth about to be brave cannon fodder on some foreign field, I welcome theological dissertation, especially with you.” Ebbely patted the footstool by his chair. “Sit, Tall Lady—sit. We sages hate looking up at our interlocutor—kinks the neck muscles.”
Settling herself, Jane wondered where their talk would lead. From above her head the question came.
“Do you believe in God?”
“No,” she whispered—half-afraid for having voiced it.
Bending down, Rumpelstiltskin placed his small hand beneath her chin, lifted her face to look at him. “Aren’t you terribly lonely then?”
And the sobs came. As if contained too long of a childhood warped—loving denied—yearning ridiculed by too strict reality, all was there … yet nothing salvageable to build upon, give ballast to a spirit made vulnerable by too much need.
Enfolding the child he knew her to be, Ebbely wished he were tall and handsome.
“Dear friends, those within the delightful proximity of me, even those long gone and sadly too, too far away” is how Ebbely began the announcement of his planned departure during a rare Sunday supper. “No, no, do not stop partaking of this magical concoction—only Hannah can make a soup out of nothing and triumph. Herbert Hoover should have hired her long ago. Now … where was I? Ah, yes—before the leaves fall, carpet their russet beauty upon newly glacial ground, I and my trusty T must once again sally forth to cheer the fuzz-cheeked youth of this my promised land.”
Zoltan twitched. “Where to this time?”
“I’ve been trying to make up my mind. The camps are mostly all alike, just row upon row of endless makeshift huts, their perimeter clustered by the usual whorehouses and booze joints.”
“I heard that army doctors have been so overwhelmed by the rampant rate of syphilis that the government has given orders to burn the houses down. So at least those will be gone.”
Ebbely smiled, “You want to make a bet on that, John?”
“No—not really.”
“Well, at least here in Michigan all the saloons are gone,” Zoltan observed.
John laughed. “Ebbely will probably want to bet you on that, too!”
“You know the clap and all its happy handmaidens is not, as the traveling salesman said to the farmer’s daughter …”
Seeing Hannah enter the room ready to serve her perfected vegetable stew, Fritz barked, “Ebberhardt, not this talk. Hannah is here now.”
“Sorry, dear Lady.” Noting Jane had followed her in, Ebbely amended it to “Ladies.”
The women served—the men ate in silence. Despite Fritz’s possible objection, John reopened the subject knowing his friend had more to say.
“Ebbely, tell me, regardless of such commodities that have existed since the days of the Caesars as part of any military installation, what are these military cantonment camps really like?”
“Besides the obvious deplorable conditions? The mounds of garbage no one has figured, nor possibly can figure out what to do with? The absence of proper sanitation and often nonexistent viable disposal of the human waste of more than twenty thousand men? The astounding illiteracy of our backcountry recruits? The cruelties of those who are in charge as well as those who receive, who then turn on their own kind in impotent revenge? The indiscriminate use of the Chihuahua Weed supposedly smoked by Mexicans of the lower classes that the army claims produces insanity and homicidal mania. So especially convenient for war, might one agree? Sometimes when the handlers infiltrate the camps—I have seen men line up just as they do for vaccinations … for injections of morphine.”
“For God’s sake, why, Ebbely? Why is it allowed?” If Zoltan hadn’t asked—Jane nearly would have.
“Why, my friend? You may well ask. Lonely? Desperate? Far from home? Uneducated? Scared? Lost or just plain dumb? Youngsters being taught to kill having not the slightest notion what that will entail. The natural euphoria of the young for war needing a reinforcement to keep the excitement of it going until it becomes real? Take your pick. General Pershing has asked for four million men and he will get them. How many of them will be men in our sense of the word, or how many will return alive and sane after their baptism by fire turns them into so-called men—that’s up to whatever god suits you.”
The women stood waiting in the shadows. The men ate their supper in silence. To lighten the mood, Ebbely ventured, “By the way, in Kansas and Missouri so many conscripts go into Kansas City that its notorious Twelfth Avenue has been renamed Woodrow Wilson Avenue, a piece at any price!”
Fritz barked, “Enough! Hannah, Jane—now please leave this room.” John covered a smile behind his napkin.
“Really, Ebberhardt,” Fritz spluttered, “such talk in front of respectable wives!”
“I agree and I am terribly sorry—I don’t know what got into me.” Noticing John’s expression, Ebbely added, “And I was about to tell you of the posters hung everywhere that proclaim in overly large letters …”
“What?”
“Well, if Fritz will allow, now the course is clear … I’ll quote, ‘A German bullet is cleaner than a whore,’ and one I particularly found enchanting, ‘You wouldn’t use another man’s toothbrush. Why use his whore?’”
Putting down his napkin, John looked at his friend. “You are in one of your naughty moods tonight, Ebbely—any special reason why?”
Caught off guard and startled that this should so discomfort him, Ebbely changed the subject. “As to my imminent departure, in all the years you’ve known me I bet none of you have figured out how I find my way around this land.”
Zoltan rose to the bait. “Well now that the first maps of real roads are being printed to be sold I assume your bloodhound senses will no longer be necessary.”
“Regardless, I venture to assume that you dyed-in-the-wool Detroiters don’t even know that the Lincoln Highway—that excellent example of navigational surface—carries the identification of its amazing lengths by painted colors of red, white and blue. Aha! Just as I thought! And for those roads less auspicious, ‘Follow the telephone poles’ is now the motto of the open road. For these and only these will lead you into the heart of civilization, or what passes as such. John, my boy, when will you acquire a T of your own? You of all people—without one—seems practically blasphemous.”
“Soon.”
“Well, don’t tell me your miracle car suddenly can’t maneuver your favorite riverbank. After all the years we have had to listen to you expound on the dependability of your unstoppable heartthrob, I should think you’d be ashamed to have your Lizzie at times see you use a real horse. Shocking, John—really shocking!”
“After the war—time enough.” John rose.