Biltmore Oswald Part 10

"Why, this is Mr. Fogerty," I replied; "this dog here, sitting on my foot."

"Oh, is that so?" jeered the P.O., a man noted for his quick retorts.

"Well, you take your silly looking dog away from here and secure him in some safe place. He ain't no fit a.s.sociate for our camp dogs. And, furthermore," he added, "the next time Mr. Fogerty attempts to bite me I'm going to put you on report--savez?"

Mr. Fogerty is almost as much of a comfort in camp as mother.

Well, that's another something else again and has nothing to do with my swim and approximate drowning at City Island. Swimming has always been one of my strong points, and I have taken in the past no little pride in my appearance, not only in a bathing outfit, but also in the water. However, the suit they provided me with on this occasion did not show me up in a very alluring light. It was quite large and evidently built according to a model of the early Victorian Era. I was swathed in yards of cloth much in the same manner as is a very young child. It delighted Mr. Fogerty, who expressed his admiration by attaching himself to the lower half of my attire and remaining there until I had waded through several colonies of barnacles far out into the bay. Bidding farewell to Mr. Fogerty at this point, I gave myself over to the joy of the moment and went wallowing along, giving a surprising imitation of the famous Australian crawl. Far in the distance I sighted an island, to which I decided to swim. This was a very poor decision, indeed, because long before I had reached the spot I was in a sinking condition owing to the great heaviness of my suit and a tremendous slacking down of lung power. It was too late to retreat to the sh.o.r.e; the island was the nearest point, and that wasn't near. On I gasped, my mind teeming with cheerless thoughts of the ocean's bed waiting to receive me. Just as I was about to shake hands with myself for the last time I cleared the water from my eyes and discovered that the island though still distant was not altogether impossible. Therewith I discarded the top part of my suit and struck out once more. The island was now almost within my grasp. Life seemed to be not such a lost cause after all. Then suddenly, quite clearly, just as I was about to pull myself up on the sh.o.r.e, I saw a woman standing on the bank and heard her shouting in a very conventional voice:

"Private property! Private property!"

I sank. This was too much. As I came up for the first count, and just before I sank back beneath the blue, I had time to hear her repeat:

"Private property! Please keep off!"

I went down very quickly this time and very far. When I arose I saw as though in a dream another woman standing by the first one and seemingly arguing with her.

"He's drowning!" she said.

"I'm sure I can't help that!" the other one answered. And then in a loud, imperious voice:

"Private property! No visitors allowed!"

The water closed over my head and stilled her hateful voice.

"No," she was saying as I came up for the third time; "I can't do it.

If I make an exception of one I must make an exception of all."

Although I hated to be rude about it, having always disliked forcing myself upon people, I decided on my fourth trip down that unless I wanted to be a dead sailor I had better be taking steps. It was almost too late. There wasn't enough wind left in me to fatten a small sized bubble.

"There he is again!" she cried in a petulant voice as I once more appeared. "Why doesn't he go away?"

"He's just about to--for good!" said the other lady. With a pitiful yap I struck out feebly in the general direction of the sh.o.r.e. It wouldn't work. My arms refused to move. Then quite suddenly and deliriously I felt two soft, cool arms enfold me, and my head sank back on a delicately unholstered shoulder. Somehow it reminded me of the old days.

"Home, James," I murmured, as I was slowly towed to sh.o.r.e. Just before closing my eyes I caught a fleeting glimpse of a young lady clad in one of the one-piecest one-piece bathing suits I had ever seen. She was bending over me sympathetically.

"Private property!" cried my tormentor, shaking a finger at me. "What a pity!" I thought as I closed my eyes and drifted off into sweet dreams in which Mr. Fogerty, my beautiful rescuer, and myself were dancing hand-and-hand on the parade ground to the music of the ma.s.sed band, much to the edification of the entire station a.s.sembled in review formation.

Presently I awoke to the hateful strains of this old hard-sh.e.l.l's voice:

"See what you've done!" she was saying to the young girl. "You've brought in a half naked man, and now that he has seen you in a much worse condition than he is, we'll have ten thousand sailors swimming out to this island in one continuous swarm."

"Oh, won't that be fun!" cried the girl. And from that time on, in spite of the objections of her mother, we were fast friends.

When I returned to sh.o.r.e it was in a rowboat with this fair young creature. The faithful Fogerty was waiting on the beach for me, where, it later developed, he had been sleeping quite comfortably on an unknown woman's high powered sport hat, as is only reasonable.

_July 2nd._ Mother got in again. There seems to be no practical way of keeping her out. This time she came breezing in with a friend from East Aurora, a large, elderly woman of about one hundred and ten summers and an equal number of very hard winters. The first thing mother said was to the effect that she was going to see what she could do about getting me a rating. She did. The very first officer she saw she sailed up to and b.u.t.tonholed much to my horror.

"Why can't my boy Oswald have a pretty little eagle on his arm, such as I see so many of the young men up here wearing about the camp?"

The abruptness of this question left the officer momentarily stunned, but I will say for him that he rallied quickly and returned a remarkably diplomatic reply to the effect that the pretty little eagle, although pleasing to gaze upon, was not primarily intended to be so much of a decoration as means of identification, and that certain small qualifications were required, as a rule, before one was permitted to wear one of the emblems in question; qualifications, he hastened to add, which he had not the slightest doubt that I failed to possess if I was the true son of my mother, but which, owing to fate and circ.u.mstances, I had probably been unable to exercise. Whereupon he bid her a very courteous good-day, returned my salute, and pa.s.sed on, but not before the very old lady accompanying my mother saluted also, raising her hand to her funny bit of a bonnet with unnecessary snappiness and snickering in a senile manner. This last episode upset me completely, but the old lady was irrepressible. From that time on she punctuated her progress through the camp with exaggerated salutes to all the officers she encountered on the way. This, of course, was quite a startling and undignified performance for one of her years, very embarra.s.sing to me, as well as mystifying to the officers, who hardly knew whether to hurl me into the brig as vicarious atonement or to rebuke the flighty old creature, on the grounds of undue levity.

Most of them pa.s.sed by, however, with averted eyes and a discountenanced expression, feeling, I am sure, that I had put her up to it. Mother thought it quite amusing, and enjoyed my discomfiture hugely. Then for no particular reason she began to garnish her conversation with inappropriate seagoing expressions, such as "Pipe down," "Hit the deck," "Avast," and "h.e.l.lo, Buddy!" Where she ever picked up all this nonsense I am at a loss to discover, but she continued to pull it to the bitter end.

"h.e.l.lo, Buddy!" was the way she greeted the Jimmy-legs of my barracks after I had introduced her to him with much elaboration. This completely floored the poor lad, and rendered him inarticulate. He thinks now that I come from either a family of thugs or maniacs, probably the latter. I succeeded in shaking the old thing for a while, and when I next found her she was demonstrating the proper method of was.h.i.+ng whites to a group of sailors a.s.sembled in the wash room of one of our most popular latrines. She was heading in the direction of the shower baths when I finally rounded her up. She was a game old lady.

I'll have to hand her that. Her wildest escapade was reserved for the end of her visit, when I took her over to the K. of C. hut, and she challenged any sailor present to a game of pool for a quarter a ball.

When we told her that the sailors in the Navy never gambled she said that she was completely off the service, and that she thought it was high time that we learned to do something useful instead of singing sentimental songs and weaving ourselves into intricate figures. This remark forced us to it, and much against our wills we proceeded to show the old lady up at pool. She had been bluffing all along, and when it came to a showdown we found that she couldn't shoot for shucks. When the news spread around the hut the sailors crowded about her thick as thieves, challenging her to play. She was a wild, unregenerated old lady, but she was by no means an easy mark, as it later developed when she matched them for the winnings, got it all back, and I am told by some sailors that she even left the hut a little ahead of the game. I don't object to notoriety, but there are numerous ways of winning it that are objectionable, and this old lady was one. Mother must have been giddier in her youth than I ever imagined.

_July 3d._ Yesterday I lost my dog Fogerty and didn't find him until late in the afternoon. He was up in front of the First Regiment, mustered in with the liberty party. When he discovered my presence he looked coldly at me, as if he had never seen me before, so I knew that he had a date. He just sat there and shook his bangs over his eyes and tried to appear as if he were somewhere else. When the order come to shove off he joined the party and trotted off without even looking back, and that was the last I saw of him until this morning, when he came drifting in, rather unsteadily, and regarded me with a s.h.i.+fty but insulting eye. I am rapidly discovering hitherto unsuspected depths of depravity in Mr. Fogerty, which leads me to believe that he is almost human.

_July 4th._ This has been the doggonest Fourth of July I ever spent, and as a result I am in much trouble. All day long I have been grooming myself to look spic and span at the review held in honor of the Secretary when he opened the new wing to the camp. I missed it. I lost completely something in the neighborhood of ten thousand men. It seems hard to do, but the fact, the ghastly fact, remains that I did it. When I dashed out of the barracks with my newly washed, splendidly seagoing, still damp white hat in my hand my company was gone, and the whole camp seemed deserted. Far in the distance I heard the music of the band. Fogerty looked inquiringly at me and I fled. He fled after me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I LOST COMPLETELY SOMETHING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF 10,000 MEN"]

"Fogerty," I gasped, "this is a trick I have to pull off alone. You're not in on this review, and for G.o.d's sake act reasonable."

I couldn't bear the thought of chasing across the parade ground with that simple-looking dog bounding along at my heels. My remark had no effect. Fogerty merely threw himself into high, and together we sped in the direction of the music. It was too late. Thousands of men were swinging past in review, and in all that ma.s.s of humanity there was one small vacant place that I was supposed to fill. I crouched down behind a tree and observed the scene through stricken eyes. How could I possibly have managed to lose nearly ten thousand men? It seemed incredible, and I realized then that I alone could have accomplished such a feat. And I had been so nice and clean, too, and I had worked so hard to be all of those things. I bowed my head in misery, and Mr.

Fogerty, G.o.d bless his dissolute soul, crept up to me and tried to tell me it was all right, and didn't matter much anyway. I looked down, and discovered that my snow white hat was all muddy. Fogerty sat on it.

_July 8th._ As a result of my being scratched out of the Independence day review I have been tried out as punishment in all sorts of disagreeable positions, all of which I have filled with an inefficiency only equaled by the bad temper of my over-lords. Some of these tasks, one in particular was of such a ridiculous nature that I refuse to enter it into my diary for an unfeeling posterity to jeer at. I am willing to state, however, that the accomplishments of Hercules, that redoubtable handy man of mythology, were trifling in comparison with mine.

To begin with, the coal pile is altogether too large and my back is altogether too refined. There should be individual coal piles provided for temperamental sailors. Small, colorful, appetizingly shaped mounds of nice, clean, glistening chunks of coal they should be, and the coal itself could easily be made much lighter, approaching if possible the weight of feathers. This would be a task any reasonably inclined sailor would attack with relish, particularly if his efforts were attended by the strains of some good, snappy jazz. However, reality wears a graver face and a sootier one. Long did I labor and valiantly but to little effect. More coal fell off of my shovel than remained on it. This was due to the unfortunate fact that coal dust seems to affect me most unpleasantly, much in the same manner as daisies or golden rod affect hay fever sufferers. The result was that every time I had my shovel poised in readiness to hurl its burden into s.p.a.ce a monolithic sneeze overpowered me, shook me to the keel, and all the coal that I had trapped with so much patience and cunning fell miserably around my feet, from whence it had lately risen. Little things like this become most discouraging when strung out for a great period of time. In this manner I sneezed and sweated throughout the course of a sweltering afternoon, and just as I was about to call it a day along comes an evilly inclined coal wagon and dumps practically in my lap one hundred times more coal than I had disturbed in the entire course of my labors. On top of this Fogerty, who had been loafing around all day with his tongue out disporting himself on the coal pile like a dog in the first snow, started a landslide somewhere above and came bearing down on me in a cloud of dust. I found myself buried beneath the delighted Fogerty and a couple of tons of coal, from which I emerged unbeamingly, but not before Mr. Fogerty had addressed his tongue to my blackened face as an expression of high good humor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FOGERTY CAME BEARING DOWN ON ME IN A CLOUD OF DUST"]

"Take me to the brig," I said, walking over to the P.O., "I'm through.

You can put a service flag on that coal pile for me."

"What's consuming you, buddy?" asked the P.O. in not an unkindly voice.

"Take me to the brig," I repeated, "it's too much. Here I've been working diligently all day to reduce the size of this huge ma.s.s, when up comes that old wagon and humps its back and belches forth its horrid contents all over the place. It's ridiculous. I surrender my shovel."

"Gord," breathed the P.O., looking at me pityingly, "we don't want to go and reduce that coal pile, we want to enlarge it."

"Oh!" I replied, stunned, "I didn't quite understand. I thought you wanted to make it smaller, so I've been trying to shovel it away all afternoon."

"You shouldn't oughter have done that," replied the P.O. as if he were talking to an idiot, "I suppose you've been shoveling her down hill all day?"

I admitted that I had.

"You see," I added engagingly, "I began with trying to shovel her up hill, but the old stuff kept on rolling down on me, so I drew the natural conclusion that I'd better shovel her down hill. It seemed more reasonable and--"

"Easier," suggested the P.O.

"Yes," I agreed.