TRANSITION

Ellen's breath formed a thin white cloud, blown quickly away in the gusting January wind. Rain splattered on the tin shed at the back of the Greyhound bus station. Out beyond the lines of buses and parked cars a horn wailed on a tugboat, invisible in the river mist, churning against the current toward the Esso docks up near the Earl K. Long bridge.

Staring at Ken and Dan, wearing jeans and heavy jackets, she thought of them as boys, bursting in through her kitchen door after playing army in the backyard. Summer tanned and sweating, they downed tall glasses of strawberry Kool-Aid, jabbering excitedly about taking a beachhead or blowing up a pillbox, words learned listening to Land and Coley reminiscing about their experiences in the South Pacific.

"You don't have to stay out here in the cold, Mama." Ken stood near several other young men, knapsacks slung across shoulders, cigarettes glowing in the tin-colored light seeping through the clouds as they tried to look casual and nonchalant about facing the vast unknown of military life.

"Yes Ma'am," Dan agreed, his grin as easy and natural as the flow of the river. "it's bad enough to have Mr. Temple down with the flu without you catching it too. He slapped Ken on the back. "Hey, listen to me, I'm a poet."

"Housman's turning over in his grave right now."

"Who's that?"

Ken glanced out toward the river. "Just some guy I had to read for English class." He turned toward Ellen. "You're not cold, Mama?"

"Not much. It'll just be a few more minutes." She pointed toward the door of the terminal. "I believe this is your driver coming now."

Ken watched the driver in billed cap and raincoat trudge across the wet, glistening cement to the bus and climb the steps. In a few seconds he had the big diesel rumbling, dark gray smoke billowing out into the rain.

Ellen handed each boy a brown paper bag, neatly folded at the top. "Here's your lunches. Now, don't lose them. It's a long way to Fort Polk."

"No ma'am. We won't." Dan took the bag, unable to resist a peek inside.

"You boys be careful." Ellen found herself unable to think clearly, unable to transform the deep and desperate feelings of a mother's heart into words. She felt a sense of loss as though her youngest child was being ripped forever out of her life. Clearing her throat, she fought the tears against the fragile surface of her self-control.

Ken grinned at his somber-faced mother. "Don't worry, Mama. I'm sure the drill sergeant's gonna tuck us in and read us a bedtime story every night."

Ellen forced a thin laugh. "If I know you, Ken Temple, you'll have him wishing he had never heard of the army in two weeks' time."

"Not me. I'm gonna be a model soldier." Ken clicked his heels together and snapped a salute. "Good conduct medals hanging all over my uniform."

"That'll be the day." Dan pulled a sandwich wrapped in wax paper out of the brown bag and chewed it with obvious and noisy approval.

"Don't be shy, Dan." Ken grinned at his mother. "Go ahead and have a bite to eat."

Ellen smiled in earnest as she watched her son's big, agreeable friend devour the first of four sandwiches she had fixed for his lunch. "Don't let him bother you, Dan. If you're still hungry, just eat his, too." She remembered the countless times she cooked for the two boys after school. At Dan's house it was always hit or miss as to whether there would be anything on the table, but the Temple kitchen quickly became a haven where he could fill his stomach as well as his heart.

"Fort Polk Special." The driver stood in the door of his bus. "All you Audie Murphy's climb aboard."

Ellen gave Ken a big hug, then went up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. "You take care of my little boy, Dan. Keep him out of trouble."

His rough cheeks coloring slightly, Dan grinned at Ellen, then looked down at the bag clutched in his big paw. "He looks out for me most of the time."

Turning toward her son, Ellen felt a tear spill over and slide down her cheek. She embraced Ken, holding him tightly, feeling the inexorable tug of the world pulling him out of her life. She wanted to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. Holding his face in her hands, she stared into his cornflower blue eyes, so like her own, then kissed him on the cheek.

Ken glanced around uneasily. "We gotta go now, Mama. I'll write real soon."

"Bye, Mrs. Temple." Dan's broad face glowed with affection for the woman who had been the closest thing to a mother he had ever known. "Thanks for the lunch."

Ellen smiled and nodded. She watched the two young men walk across the wet pavement and disappear with other soon-to-be soldiers into the waiting bus. Pulling the collar of her coat up, Ellen hurried over to her Chevy and climbed in.

Staring through the rain-streaked windshield, Ellen watched the Greyhound back out of its space, then straighten and rumble past her, its big tires sibilant on rain-peppered, grease-stained pavement. With a rumbling of its big engine, the bus climbed the ramp up to street level and turned right. Through the darkened glass of the bus window, Ellen recognized her son by the pale gleam of his hair, then he was gone.

"Fifteen hours to make a five-hour drive!" Ken rubbed his eyes lazily, standing up and stretching as he stepped into the aisle and followed the other scuffling, muttering passengers toward the bus door.

"I'm sleepy, Dan offered, apparently feeling the need to explain his yawn.

"Yeah, I can't wait to get out to the base and get to bed." This said by a tall gangly man who had gotten on the bus in Alexandria. His dark brown hair was a mass of curls. He stuck his bony hand toward Ken as he stood up. "Abe Jastram."

"Ken Temple. This is Dan Sams." Ken glanced at the man's wild hair and wild dark eyes, trying to decide if he was eighteen or twenty-eight or somewhere in between. "Where you from?"

"New York City. Queens to be specific," he said in his flat nasal accent. "And you?"

"Baton Rouge."

"That means 'red stick.' " Dan smiled, nodding slowly at his new friend.

"Interesting."

As they filed off the Greyhound at the makeshift terminal in Leesville, Ken saw a green bus parked at the curb beneath a streetlight. "I think our chauffeur's here."

A man in army uniform, his shoulder blazoned with three chevrons and forearm with hash marks, stood next to the door. His resemblance to Warren Barbay, Baton Rouge's premier streetfighter, was uncanny, except for his age and the prematurely iron gray bristles on his head that passed for hair. The rumbling silence of his unspoken words split the midnight hush of the little town. Ken could feel the almost palpable gaze of the gunmetal eyes.

"I believe we're being summoned," Jastram said, apparently feeling the same thing Ken had. His small travel bag tucked beneath one arm, he strolled leisurely across the gravel toward the sergeant.

One by one the young men, averting their eyes, walked past the sergeant, climbed aboard the green bus, passed a pie-faced one-striper sitting behind the steering wheel and found a seat. The sergeant sized up each of them with a professional grimace on his face as though it caused him considerable pain to be in their undisciplined and un-uniformed presence.

When the men were seated the sergeant, after a scripted pause of thirty seconds, followed them aboard, closed the door and stood as relaxed as a statue can get at the front of the bus. "I'm Sergeant Wilcutt. I'm army property. This bus is army property." He said it in a voice with a slight rasp but with the promise of abundant volume behind it. "And everything in this army green bus is army property."

"Not my nose." Jastram whispered the words out of the corner of his mouth.

Sitting across the aisle from him, Ken turned his head toward the sound. "What?"

"Everybody says I have my father's nose. So it can't belong to the army."

Supressing a chuckle, Ken looked forward right into Wilcutt's belt buckle. He hadn't heard a sound in the two seconds his head had been turned.

"You wanna give this lecture, maggot?" The big man stared down directly at the nose in question.

Jastram turned his placid expression back on the sergeant. "Maggot? That's a bit extreme, isn't it?" He spoke as though practicing for the debate team. "I've been called 'Jew-boy' and 'beanpole,' but ---

"Give me twenty!" The sergeant's voice sounded like a blast from a tuba.

Jastram began fumbling for his wallet inside the pocket of his brown tweed jacket.
"Okay, but I'm not sure I have twenty." He took it out and opened it, thumbing through the bills. "I remember a couple of fives and a few ones . . . ."

Speechless for the moment, Wilcutt's eyes bulged as he stared in disbelief. When he regained his voice, it thundered off the walls of the us. "Push-ups, you idiot!"

"Oh . . . why didn't you say so?" Jastram stood up, took his jacket off, folded it carefully and placed it over the back of the seat. He began loosening his tie.

"Now!" Wilcutt grabbed Jastram by the back of the neck thrusting his body down in the aisle. As the sergeant stood above him, hands on his hips, Jastram struggled through the twenty push-ups and started to get up. The beefy hand clamped on to the boy's neck again, shoving him flat on his belly. "Anybody tell you to stand up?"

"I guess n---"

"Sir!" Wilcutt lifted Jastram's head at an awkward angle, screaming into his face. "The first word out of your maggot mouth is always 'sir.' " Then he pressed his face into the floor of the bus, holding it there.

"Sir," Jastram mumbled into the floor.

"Sir, what?" Wilcutt's booming voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper.

"Sir, no one told me to stand up."

"Excellent." Wilcutt straightened up, placing the sole of one gleaming combat boot on the back of Jastram's head. "Did the rest of you maggots learn something from this?"

Silence reigned in the dim and shadowy bus. A pickup rattled by outside the windows. Inside, heads turned, eyes wide, but not a word was spoken in reply to the question.

"Looks like all of your buddies went deaf." Wilcutt pressed down on Jastram's head. He uttered a muffled cry of pain. "Maybe if we wait here long enough somebody will have a vision, since they can't hear nothing." He glared at Ken. "You learn anything?"

"Sir, yes, sir." Ken's voice broke slightly as he answered the question.

"You must be prayin' down there, maggot." Wilcutt lifted his boot and turned on Ken. "Yes, sir, what?"

"I learned something."

Wilcutt gave Ken a cold stare, then looked around the bus. "Did anyone hear me say that 'I' was the first word I wanted to hear out of your maggot mouths?"

"Sir, no sir." Immediately seven mouths chanted the words in unison.

"That's what I thought." He pointed to the floor, then turned his eyes on Ken. "Assume the position."

Ken remembered from ROTC that the "position" was the leaning rest position, hands and toes on the floor, back straight ready for push-ups. As he held himself off the floor with his arms extended, he stared straight at the back of Jastram's head, his eyes eighteen inches away. He wondered how the boy could keep his face pressed into the floor.

No order came for push-ups. The bus's engine roaring to life, it lurched forward with a grinding of gears, then settled down into a steady roar, its tires thrumming along the blacktop. Ken continued to stare at the wiry brown hair on the back of Jastram's head, his back and shoulders and arms burned with the effort to maintain the leaning rest position. No sound from Jastram, his face pressed against the floor, bouncing occasionally as the tires hit a pothole.

Ten minutes later, Ken's whole body ached and cried for relief. He felt as though hot wires had been inserted along his arms and down the length of his back. I won't let him beat me. I'll stay like this all night.

"Jastram. Temple. As you were."

Ken collapsed on the floor, then climbed back into his seat next to Dan. How did he know our names? Looking over Jastram in the dim light, he could see dark blothes on his nose and forehead.

As they road through the darkness toward an improbable future, each of the young men was an island on his way to finding a common sea. The army would endeavor to make them all one big island whose very survival in the common and storm-tossed sea of basic training depended on functioning as a whole. All little islands would soon be taken by the sea.

Now they thought of a whole army of Wilcutts waiting for them at the base, planning an endless assortment of unspeakable tortures. In the rumbling bus they felt that the seminal creature with sergeant stripes was taking them off to a place of unending punishment for crimes they would never commit.

"Out! Out! Out!" Wilcutt bellowed the words as the bus squealed to a stop next to a huge warehouse looming in the semidarkness.

Eighteen pairs of shoes scuffled their way out of the bus and onto the macadam. The men milled about uneasily, taking in the vast, murky expanse of the base with its countless buildings and maze of streets.

"All right, girls," Wilcutt said conversationally, his hands clasped behind his back. "Let's see if you can form a straight line right here."

The nine young men, glancing at one another, shuffling their feet to get into position and readjusting their alignment several times, formed a modified S curve.

Wilcutt shook his head slowly back and forth as he approached them. "I thought I said a straight line, not an imitation of a snake with a crooked spine."

More shuffling around and muttering until the line resembles a flattened L.

"Splendid. Just splendid." Wilcutt paced back and forth in front of the line. "You little girls managed to get off the bus without falling down. It looks to me like that's going to be the high point of your army careers." He stopped abruptly, stepping in front of a short stocky, baby-faced boy wearing a mail-order suit and an expression of unbridled fear.

"What's your name, Stumpy?"

Ken felt certain that Wilcutt already knew all of their names. The question then had to do with some purpose other than information.

"My name's ---"

Wilcutt clamped his hand over the boy's mouth, then smiled benighly. The fear slowly faded under the smile. "Idiot!" The booming voice instantly restored the fear. "Now"--- Wilcutt's soothing voice now bothered the men more than the screaming--- "what's the first word out of your mouth?"

"Zrrr . . . " the boy mumbled beneath the hard pressure of Wilcutt's hand.

"Zrrr . . . " Wilcutt repeated. "I'm not familiar with that particular expression. Would you repeat it?"

Taking a deep breath and shutting his eyes tightly, the boy tried again. "Sssshhh . . . "

Wilcutt took his hand away. "Don't know that one, either. Wanna try again?"

"S--sir, James Kennedy."

Wilcutt rubbed his chin between his thick knotty thumb and forefinger. "You kin to the President?"

"Sir, no, sir."

"Well, don't think you're gonna get any special privileges just because you're kin to the President." He glanced at both sides of the ragged line. "You girls think Stumpy here should be treated different just 'cause he's kin to the President?"

"Sir, no, sir." They were beginning to get it right, the hallowed words spoken almost in unison.

Wilcutt stepped back and continued his pacing, making a precise about-face when he reached each end of the line. The sound of a freight train wailed off in the distance like an anthem for the sense of loneliness and separation aching inside each man in the crooked line.

Finally stopping in front of Dan, Wilcutt stepped forward and leaned until their faces were six inches apart. "Did your mama and daddy bother to give you a name when you were born?"

"Sir, yes, sir"

Ken let out an inward sigh of relief that Dan had merely answered the sergeant's question without giving his name. He was beginning to catch on to the game.

Wilcutt realized it, too, then quickly spat out his next words. "Where you from?"

"Sir, Dan Sams." Dan had been too confident in anticipating the question. A pained expression flickered across his face as he realized it.

"Dan Sams?" Wilcutt rubbed his chin again, shaking his head slowly back and forth "Never heard of it. Is it close to Rhode Island?"

"Sir, no, sir"

"Where is it, then?"

"Sir . . . " Hemmed into a corner of his own making Dan's face went slack with the knowledge that the more he spoke the worse things would become.

"Don't know, huh?" Wilcutt's tone grew somber. "That's a shame when a sweet little girl like you don't know where she's from." He stepped backward and resumed his pacing. "Dan Sams . . . " Stopping, he pointed at Dan and said, "You sure it's not next to Rhode Island?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"This is a real puzzler, this is." He ran his level gaze down the line. "Maybe your buddies can help you. I've found that the best thing for memory problems is push-ups. All you girls get down and give me twenty-five." He grinned at Dan. "Except for you, of course."

A few groans and muttered curses in Dan's direction ran down the line. As the men started kneeling down to assume the position, Wilcutt stopped them.

"As you were. Now the army way, which i the only way there is, for assuming the position is to throw your feet out behind you and land on your chest and toes and hands." Wilcutt demonstrated the movement, then snapped to attention. "The commands are 'get down' and 'get up.' Simple enough for most of you to understand. Let's try it."

Dan stood at attention as the men around him prepared to batter themselves at Wilcutt's command.

"Get down."

They hit the pavement with cries of pain, skinned hands and knees, and torn clothes.

"Get up."

All struggled up, standing at attention. Most glowered at Dan.

"Get down . . . get up." Wilcutt walked the line, making sure everyone was in the proper at ease position. "Get down, get up, get down."

As the men breathed heavily , holding themselves on toes and hands, Wilcutt stepped again in front of Dan. "You remember where Dan Sams is now?"

"No, sir."

"Okay, ladies, give me twenty-five."

Two hours later Ken collapsed on the top bunk of an open bay barracks he shared with thirty-nine other men. Three A.M. he listened to coughs, some muted conversations, and Dan snoring loudly in the bunk beneath him. Wilcutt had shut himself in his room at the front of the barracks, light seeping beneath his door.

Ken thought of breakfast at home on Saturday morning with his family and the mounds of fried eggs and grits, bacon and sausage and homemade biscuits dripping with fresh butter and cups of steaming coffee . . . and the smiles and laughter and talk of the week past. Love . . . he seldom thought of the word except in an academic sense when he read poems or novels about it. Now he could see clearly what had been so important about those breakfasts . . . and so many other things he had taken for granted.

His mind turned to Friday nights at Hopper's after high school football games. Jerry Lee or Elvis would be blaring from the outdoor loudspeakers as the endless line of cars slowly cruised the U-shaped drive around the building and past the packed parking spots. He could taste the hamburgers and cherry Cokes and thick rich chocolate malts in tall heavy glasses and kisses in the back seat, lips cold and sweet.

A toilet flushed, sounding like a miniature Niagara Falls; someone padded down the aisle to his bunk. More coughing, beds creaking as men turned in their sleep or their search for sleep. Ken remembered how it felt breaking the tape with no one in sight on either side of him; felt again the warm sunshine as he lay on the grassy infield sweating, a pleasant ache running through his body. No turning back now.

Robert Funderburk was born by coal oil lamplight in his home near Liberty, Mississippi, graduated from Louisiana State University in 1965, served as SSgt in USAFR from 1965 - 1971. Writing experience includes seventeen published novels, one a national bestseller; one hundered poems and five short stories accepted by various literary journals; one Chapbook; 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee. Along with his wife Barbara, Robert lives and writes from the peace of their home on fifty acres of wilderness in Olive Branch, Louisiana.