fun

Phalange Recall
by Bill Phillips

I was at a bus stop next to the main building of the Brooke Army Medical Center. I could not be more at home. I hunched forward with my elbows balanced on my knees, much like a cavalry man at full gallop. The mausoleum-like heft of the concrete bench was designed for much heavier use, but I attempted to find comfort in its convenience. A small overhang cooled my seat, in spite of the August heat. Hopefully, my wait would be brief. “My ass was grass,” as they say. I was already ten minutes late. I shifted nervously, my hand gripping the attaché case with its evocative items. A photographer from the San Antonio paper had indicated to me that he would be on hand to document the results of my mission.

I had just met with a forensic expert at the hospital who had signed over the two finger bones that two Boy Scouts had recently found at Salado Creek, near Fort Sam Houston. The Boy Scouts had first wanted to use them but it turned out that they had historical value. I particularly appreciated the importance of these two small bones because in my high school biology class I had been among the select few to memorize all of the bones in the human body.

We had a human skeleton that hung from a hook. It was like an assembled jigsaw puzzle. I still remembered that there are twenty eight bones in the human hand. Coach Thompson, my tenth grade biology teacher, told us we could learn the names of all the bones better if we think of a puzzle with a piece missing. When we add that missing piece, “we have the élan of the completed form: the human skeleton. One bone makes the difference." He loved to use words like this when he talked to the basketball team about teamwork. It does carry over. We always had a winning team. The biological name for the bones in a hand is phalanges. It is a word that has meanings of strength and cooperation. In military terms, phalange describes a closed formation of men that have interlocked their shields and exposed their lances. It can be applied to any group that unites for a common purpose.

These two bones were a link to a human life and possibly much more. The forensic specialist told me that the boys had found them in an area where eighteen soldiers had been executed by hanging just prior to the First World War. The bodies had been immediately disposed of to prevent controversy. When I say “disposed of,” I mean that all traces of their bones had been hidden. There was a good possibility that these bones belonged to one of these bodies.

What I had learned from the Base Chaplain and the personnel who handled the bones was a fascinating, but very disturbing story, about the history behind the origin of the bones. The men had been part of the Third Battalion of “colored” soldiers from the 24th infantry who were being transferred from their post in New Mexico to train with other units before going overseas to enter the war against Germany. Out west they had been a major defense against marauding Mexicans and renegade Indians. Some were called “Buffalo Soldiers,” possibly because of their wooly hair. Whatever its origin, the nickname had become a term of respect, and the men had become accustomed to being treated as men.

However, when they got to Houston they ran into the customs and laws of Jim Crow segregation. There had been many instances of their being directed to the back of the bus, and of being addressed “boy.” When one of the men came to the defense of an elderly black woman who was being hassled by the Police, a policeman clubbed him over the head. His fellow soldiers came to his defense, and the situation quickly escalated into a violent riot. People were killed, both black and white. The soldiers were eventually subdued and arrested by the police forces and taken to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. They faced a series of military trials held in the sanctuary of the main chapel at Fort Sam. During the trials, defendants were held in the post stockade just a block from the chapel in what is now the library.

Were it not for the cachet of the name “Buffalo Soldiers,” the bones would have created little interest. However, for reasons best known only to them, the military higher-ups felt it was essential to retrieve the bones and quash the story before the news reached the general public and opened the issue of the courts martial once again. The entire matter was wrapped in a small package under my arm, and like countless base personnel I was performing my assignment without question.

I had been born on a military base. This is an atmosphere that I am accustomed to. If I were to describe a “higher power,” it would be someone in military uniform holding me securely under an arm. I am “from” the army. I sometimes dream of being swaddled in an olive drab woolen blanket pinned together with an explanatory note and being deposited at an army hospital, chapel, or Base Exchange.

Although the day had unfolded in a sublime fashion it changed for me in the time of a sneeze. I had just folded my Kleenex, when this woman seemed to materialize next to me out of a cloud of talcum powder. It was as if with the pushing of a button the magnetic fields had been reversed. The woman’s appearance was sudden and unassembled, much like a scavenger bird that been kicked out of an aviary. I could only assume that my paroxysm of sneezing was caused by advance particles from her effluvium. Powder fluffed outward and upward from her many crevices and creases as she puffed and preened like some ancient grackle cleaning its feathers. If I had not reacted to the powder, I would have thought her a projection caused by too much time in the sun. I could not take credit for imagining anything so totally distinct from myself. I had of course heard stories of the many ghosts supposedly inhabiting the old Army post, but if I don’t see the green little guy in Ghost Busters, I refuse to believe.

To my surprise, she spoke to me with the easy familiarity that one finds within the military community, complete with the lingo.

“Those grass creeper things seem to be the only things that stitch all this shit together.”

I looked around, expecting to see some type of mutant insect, but she seemed to be talking about a patch of Bermuda grass clinging desperately to two hard chunks of earth. Bermuda grass is sometimes referred to as Dog’s Tooth or Devil’s Grass and it will survive in the harsh Texas summer when other forms of vegetation turn to grayish-brown dust. We both fixed our gaze upon it as if the piece of the land was indeed our “common ground.” She rolled her eyes toward the hospital and flicked the thought away with the acuity that James Dean would treat a spent cigarette.

“Do we hold on, or do we let go?” It was like she was convening a small group discussion. As she opened her hand to make her point, I noticed that one finger held a ring with a missing gemstone. When one is alert to flicking, you notice these things. I had an instant flashback to my mother’s ring. She had a ring with a beautiful lapis lazuli stone, which she treasured. My father was an extremely indifferent and insensitive man. I remember my mother’s rant when she had reached a particularly high level of frustration with his lack of interest in family affairs: “You act as if someone has turned off the sound but I saw your fingers move.” At this point she threw her ring at him. We never were able to find the stone. Not long after that, my parents broke up and I joined the army.

I felt a bit threatened by this strange woman. My hand tightened its grip on the attaché case. Perhaps I just imagined that she was amused at my rigid reliance on routine and boundaries, but I felt that I was being provoked. Her question was left hanging in the air. What was there to say? On the surface she was a character that people would describe as “a real hoot.” But there was too much here for a 20-year-old soldier to fathom. Her Texas drawl was deep and resonant, my favorite kind. Words rolled out like bowling balls released by an expert. She was not the kind of person that you initially suspect of fudging the truth. When she spoke, there was the moment of delivery, then the moment of inevitability, until the ball finally met the center pin with a conclusive wuck!

“My name is Mary Alice.”

I received this information helplessly, realizing that, as the pin waits for the ball, I was about to know more.

“My son is in there.” Her eyes rolled back to the hospital. “They brought him all the way home from Salerno and then they kept him there.”

She drew the word “Salerno” out in such a way that it sounded like a spread for a pasta entrée, but to her it was a place rooted in sadness.

“He was a corporal in the army.”

“They brought him from Italy?” I asked, startled with the mental calculus required for her facts and dates. My question appeared to be the signal she was waiting for. Her hands moved quickly to her purse to items that seemed already positioned to be displayed. She produced a smudged photo of a 13 year old boy and another of the same boy grown almost to manhood, wearing a uniform. There was a letter in the required V-mail format of wartime, which I wouldn’t read. The last item was a clipping, so badly worn that I could barely make it out.

She began a soft mantra: “Stepped on a mine and they never gave him back. Step on a crack, you break your mother's back."

The article was dated September 9, 1943, and read like the heading of a Lowell Thomas movie newsreel: T’PATCHERS COME ASHORE IN OPERATION AVALANCHE.

“He was in the 36th Infantry Division” she added, in reference to the Texas National Guard unit. I struggled at this unexpected disregard of boundaries by a person I knew only by first name.

“Before we go any further my name is ‘Bill.’ Err; do you visit your son often?”

“I see him every day.” She wept and began to tremble with racking sobs. “In there." She pointed across the street. "He's in there... he never came out.”

“But, that was over sixty years ago,” I responded, coldly. “That would make you over a hundred years old.”

She continued to sob, as I found a particularly long tendril of grass and I patted my foot against it to test its hold. I was discomforted by the terrible silence that had followed the woman's venting and by the strain that she was placing on my credulity, but I could not dismiss the feeling that she was put there for me.

I thought of the text from Jeremiah: “Thus saith the Lord: A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted, because they were not.” I tamped the dirt I had just scraped up. The conversation, the powder, and the items in her purse were all very unsettling moorings which I needed to loosen.

As my bus approached, Mary Alice pressed my hand tightly, as if we had sealed some sort of agreement. “Don’t let them keep you in there,” she warned, looking toward the hospital. “You’ll never come back. Step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” She held a knuckle to her forehead and followed me with her eye.

Seated on the bus, I noticed that another soldier had replaced me on the bench and Mary Alice was setting up her pins for another go.

The bus passengers reflected a mixture of rank, function, gender and race. A few appeared to be in a hurry and sat hunched forward with harried looks, undoubtedly because their “ass was grass.” Still powdered, I gripped my seat as the bus navigated the loops and turns around the vast parade ground and the streets named after heroes of various wars.

It was almost 17:00 and time for flag lowering. On military bases all over the world, this revered event is signaled by bugle calls and is a time when all activity stops. During these few minutes every evening, all are centered on a common purpose.

I took a seat at the very back of the bus because I recognized Hawkins. Though he was a very old man, he preferred to be addressed just by his surname. He had worn the entire variety of labels given African Americans, going all the way back to when the ‘N’ word was a proper name. Just hearing his name without an epithet must seem like a positive affirmation, and he seemed never to get enough. He worked at the base commissary but knew the ins and outs of all of the major buildings, including the large main chapel. His friends often said of him, “He's been around so long he walks through the walls."

I was drawn to him for the same reason that many white people turn to black people when they are seeking solace. When I walked to the back to take the seat next to him, he looked up, a little surprised at the sudden interest. He had a bag of groceries in the seat next to him that he graciously placed on his lap. “I see you working for the man today,” he chided, eyeing my official looking case.

“Yep, they keep me running. It’s way too hot for this today. They got me running errands.”

“Don’t you work over at the Base Chapel?”

“Yeah, I’m a chaplain’s assistant. You know, with Chaplain Murphy. He’s a nice man.”

“Oh, I know who he is. He’s a big Mets fan,” Hawkins added. “Always gives me a hard time about the Cubs.” He than ran his fingers across his lower lip as if he was considering further comment.

“What kind of things they makin’ you do?” He asked, lowering his face and looking over his eyebrows inquisitively.

“Today I’m carrying bones.”

Hawkins widened his eyes, as if he suspected a joke. Then his body began a slow vibration, like early Jell-O.

“No shit. Excuse me if I am being disrespectful, but, you mean for ‘Craps?’”

“No, real bones”

His eyes relaxed, “Oh, like religious relics?”

“Well, sort of. These might belong to a Buffalo Soldier.”

I might as well have driven my Toyota over his foot.

His look put me on notice. His baritone voice reached its lowest register. “You mean those bones that were in that news story about those boys in that trial way back? You have those in that bag? Those men were set up. They were real soldiers. That group went up San Juan Hill in Cuba. They led the way; you hear what I’m saying? They were the best. Hell, man, of course they want them bones. They don’t want anything to get away from them. They will never put those missing bones in the ground; you understand?”

Somehow, in spite of the best efforts of the brass, the press must have already gotten the story. I began unzipping the case to show the bones, my fingers trembling at what I was about to reveal.

Hawkins rolled his bulk over to stay my hands. “Please don’t do that” The abrupt motion caused a head of cabbage to fall from his grocery bag and roll to the front of the bus. A captain in a center aisle seat called out, jokingly, called out “strike.” A black female medic brought the lettuce back and handed it to Hawkins, as if his behavior was her responsibility. He took it and placed it back in the bag without even looking at her.

I did the thanking. As she turned around, I called her attention to a missing stone in her ring. She and Hawkins locked eyes momentarily, and I thought that strange. When she left, Hawkins stared at me in silence, wrinkling his brow as if he were wringing out his own thoughts before having anything more to do with me. He said, in a very worried voice, “What is to become of these bones?”

"They are to have some sort of ceremony. The chaplain, a Jag officer and a troop of Boy Scouts are waiting for me at the steps of the base library. A reporter from the San Antonio paper will be there, if he is not spending all of his time on a phone.”

“No, no, no! Don’t do that. They want to sweep this all under the rug and let bygones be bygones. Hell, man, of course they want the bones. You understand? The ceremony is not for honoring anybody or doing anything, it is for taking them back.” He looked at me and waited for the words to sink in. He shook his head and pressed his hands to his temples. The gem stone in his gold ring was missing.

The coincidences were disquieting. I drew back, with growing fear. “Sir, are you asking me to disobey orders?”

“Son, you have an order from the Buffalo Soldiers.”

I held the case tightly against my chest as if it was the 30 pieces of silver. The old man turned his head in a dismissive manner. “Don’t look to me; I can’t do anything about it.”

People toward the back of the bus were looking at us. They must have heard some of the conversation. One passenger eyed my satchel and said, “Let it go, man.” I backed away, holding the case against my chest, as if I needed protection. The threat of paranoia was real. Faces that would have drawn me toward them now appeared critical. I felt abandoned... an orphan.

I left the bus at the very next stop, two stops short of my destination. Just getting off the bus had gotten me out of the tired arc of the trip around the base and put the matter back in my shoes. I was shaking from anxiety and sweating profusely. My hand was slippery and I had to keep shifting my grip. Mary Alice’s question suddenly flashed into mind, “Do we hold on, or do we let go.” Hawkins’ question remained unanswered: "What about the bones?" So far it had been a bit of deja vu. The dead trooper had gone from the jail to the chapel to the scaffold. Now, I was returning his bones from the hospital to the jail to the chapel-full circle.

I ran my thumb against the back of my forefinger. Would I want my own finger bones to linger in the limbo of a chaplain's desk as some sort of object lesson? The cannon sounded and, with everyone else, I faced the point of the post where the flag pole was located. I snapped to attention at the sound of the cannon and the lowering of the flag. The chaplain and scouts would be standing on the steps, a reception committee with nothing to receive.

I glanced at one of those “creeper things” near my foot and I knew what I must do. I walked off the sidewalk onto the yellow grass of the parade ground. No one walked out there at this time of the year but the ghosts. It was still 99 degrees and there was no remorse from the sun. I had marched in some of the parades near the Alamo in such heat. The only good marching tune I knew was Gary Owen, known as General George Armstrong Custer’s music, the regimental tune of the 7th cavalry. But, that little prick did not own the tune. I decided to co-op it for this trooper’s funeral. I hummed it as I made my way, the dry grass breaking off and collecting in my instep. I imagined the footprints of marching men, the bouncy step of horses in formation, the shouted commands. Men like Wainwright, Eisenhower and MacArthur in their long leather boots.

I walked till I was near the site of the granite of “Patch,” the last active duty horse. Unlike the men of the 3rd Battalion, Patch had been buried with full honors on the parade ground in 1953, at the age of 45. Memory of the “old" army was already old on that day. But it had been a time of separation. It was reported that almost everyone present cried at the loss of the old army icon. Most duty assignments were canceled on that day. Four generals and numerous colonels were in the audience as a chaplain conducted the service.

I carried the bones of this soldier to a point where his comrades could reassemble their formidable phalange. I cupped the bones in both hands. My tears wet them. I found a wide crack that sunk down as far as I could see. I dropped the bones in the ground, tromped the dirt down, snapped to attention and saluted the ghosts. Another bugle call sounded the notes of Recall. For me it was a time of wholeness, of élan, if you will. I left the attaché case and walked away, stepping to the beat of Gary Owen.