7/24/2000 Geoff Ashbrook
Clouds were brewing up in a steamy haze of mocha colored weather wetness. John, the Colonel's waiter, stood at the flap of the tent with a tray covered with colored glass flavored liqueur bottles. The silicon based tablecloth network held up the colonel's binoculars, lunchbox, and bundle of scrolled up battle field maps which had been fastened with a nice purple string, as well as four plates of what appeared to be a finished meal of meatloaf, corn with kidney beans, bacon, and mashed potatoes in gravy, along with other odds and ends, all without there being a table underneath the clothe, just three corners dangling on the ground. John waited quietly, occasionally looking around and behind him and switching the foot he was focusing on or the hand he held the try with.
Colonel Fitzgibbon's waxed mustache flashed in the halogen candlelight as he talked into his cell phone and held documents up to his monocled eye. "We can't have lost the entire battalion… [pause], well, because half of them were stationed underneath the west bridge. [pause] No, obviously not the one we dynamited, the other bridge just south of there. [pause] well that's why it was a good place to put them, who would think to look less than a mile from your main encampment to find half a battalion of enemy troops (he chuckled thickly)[pause] well we should send a messenger at least, find out if they're still there. Ok dear, well I'll talk to you when you get back. Love you too. Right." The phone beeped once and he put it down on the table. He massaged his face with his fingers pushing his skin far past where it normally resided and his monocle fell from his eye. He let his hands drop. He looked around drowsily and upon seeing John he said, "Oh, hello there. What can I help you with, young man? Oh, John, I'm sorry I didn't recognize you. Yes, put them over here. Margaret should be here any minute. She said she's been horse shopping all day. Isn't that wonderful?" John smiled. "Now I suppose we'll have some cavalry. Did you want some dinner? Roger has just whipped up a batch of smashing hard boiled eggs." George chuckled as he stood up from the tablecloth and took a few steps, whereupon he took off his medal and colored chord endowed jacket and hung it on a coat hook in the corner. It even had medals all over the back of it. He stood there for a moment, his fingers playing with the back straps of his suspenders around his lower back, looking over a very large map that hung on the wall. John placed the last of the colored bottles onto the tablecloth and stepped back and folded the tray and put it into his shirt pocket.
"Is there anything else I can get you this evening?" he said.
"No. No, I don't think so."
"Very well then. [pause] What did happen to that half Battalion?"
"What? Oh, ambushed or some such thing. Apparently they joined up with a bunch of soldiers from the other side, had the same color uniforms. It took them a while to figure out they were chatting with the enemy, and when they did figure it out they decided to forget it and play baseball. And they did, for hours, out in a field. It drew a good sized audience too. Only the opposing sides in the audience started fighting and all the players were killed. Busted up a good bat too, with a mortar shell. But they say other soldiers are going to play there again, and other places too, try to figure out how to keep it civil." He chuckled. Each time he chuckled it was as though he were trying to bring up a marble or a message in a bottle from his stomach, but nothing ever came out.
"I see, sir. Well, I guess I'll be going."
"Have a good one, eh?"
John waved with a still palm and turned and pulled the heavy and still slightly dripping tent flap out of the way by the door knob and closed it quietly behind him. Stepping away from the tent into the noisier part of the restaurant, he walked up to the bar and sat down by the register. A girl wearing an outfit similar to John's hurried up to the register and rung it open and began counting out change. "Oh, hi John," she said, noticing he was sitting there playing with a green olive.
He turned the olive toward her and squeezed it, firing the red pimento at her head. She ducked just in time. "Hello," he said, "Busy night?"
"Not bad. You been with 'the Colonel'?" she chuckled.
"Yes, as a matter of fact. People are always picking on him, but I think he's a nice guy."
"Tips well?"
"Not exactly. He's always giving me French bank notes that haven't been cashable for two hundred years. Anyway, I'm off."
"Where you going?"
"Sorry, can't say."
"Well, have fun," she said threading a lock of hair behind her ear, "I'll see you tomorrow then?"
"Bright and early," he said getting up. "And you're supposed to catch the pimento, they're not bad," he said, and as he turned to go he shot one at his own mouth, but missed and tried futilely to grab it by moving his mouth and head toward it. It landed on an empty table behind him. "See you, Gale."
He walked down the steps of the platform that the bar sat up on looking out over most of the tables and tents and walled rooms. On the way down he helped an elderly man who was resting at the landing trying to get up the steps with a walker. He helped him to the top and then jogged all the way down. By the bottom of the steps he stopped by a waiter-station and grabbed an empty pitcher of water, filled it, and as he went through the room among the tables he filled the depleted glasses of those dining. On the other side of the floor he stopped by another station and filled the pitcher again, and dropped it off. He walked quickly up the steps that led towards the front door, stopped off and grabbed a woolen cloak from the cloakroom on the way, and waved to the hostess, Jean, as he walked out the front doors. There the first thing he saw was his breath.
Had it not been September, he might not have remembered his galoshes. He smiled as he ran down the steps and walked sloppily down the dirt trail that wound through the hilly terrain. Voices, crackling fires in the distance, squeaky wheeled machinery, harmonicas, horses, and the dull metallic thudy hammerings of tent spikes filled in around the shabby and not so shabby tents and log forts that comprised the encampments that pocked the hills and hillsides. He hugged his arms to him as he went, pulling the thick wool tight around him, pulling up the small of his back, so the wind couldn't blow up into the little barrier that kept him or blow through the weave itself. The sun was going down.
"Roger and Wilber and Larry and Mike, Jim you go over there, no, yeah, there, and Tom and Linda and, what does this say(?), and Sue, you all move over here. Uh. Ronald and Tony and Butler and Trake and Stew, you move to the front. Ok? Now Tracy and Myrtle and Patricia and Lauren, you walk up to the line. Now remember what we talked about." A bunch of women dressed in plain washed-looking green and blue dresses with white lace stepped up to the front of a long shuffleboard deck. The man who appeared to be the coach of the Team was wearing an Army officer's uniform and would have made an excellent kindergarten teacher.
On the other side of the long wooden structure the other team was composed mostly of children, most of them wearing glasses. Most of them were looking around into the stands, or rather folding chairs and planks. Other s were playing, using their shoving poles as swords. Around the court were dozens of fires and venders hawking hot dogs and jellybeans, roasted chestnuts and roasted peanuts, fresh pretzels, and miniature fruit and crème pies, a variety of meads and seasonal vegetable juices. A few of the judges were trading cards by the wall under a torch. A small group of people trickled in between the ladies tearing tickets and handing out brochures. The one directly beneath the parapet handed the last person a folded paper and then bit into a bar of chocolate and nearly fell over laughing.
The people who'd only just come in didn't stay together long. Some walked over to the back of the stands to shake hands with old friends. Some sat alone and opened books lit by candles. Some went right to the front and began looking at the players and the plank field. Some seemed to know the players themselves. Others went to the venders and gathered a small feast. The coach of the younger team was looking through a thick book holding one finger in the air, "Ok," she said, "it looks like we get three points if, no. Sorry. Hold on. If we push the puck and it doesn't go out of bounds or get on any of the point sections at the end, we still get three points. But that isn't what you asked."
"It isn't called a puck, is it?" said a small boy with no glasses and very large knitted gloves on.
"Does it really say that?" said a taller girl who was wrapping cloth tape around the but end of her stick. "I didn't think you got any points if that happened."
"Well, there aren't any set values at the end of the table either. I'm not sure this is shuffle board at all anymore," she said, turning more pages.
Behind her John walked up and blew on his hands and them put them on the railing and leaned over and called, "How's it going?"
The girl with the book and a bunch of other kids ran over to the railing and all started talking over each other. "Hi John," "Hey," "What are you doing here," "Why are you late?" "Did you eat?" "Hello," "Did you bring me anything?"
"I can't even figure out how to play this game," she said closing the book.
"Come over here," said John. And she ducked under the rail and followed him away from the deck and over the grounds and past the two ladies at the entrance. They walked past a few groups of people building small airplanes and gliders and stopped at a stone paved lookout. It was full night now, and colder away from the game fires. "Look down there," he said, pointing to a bunch of flicking lights off in the distance amid the stationary lights of camp fires and moving lights of trucks and carriages and bicycles.
"What is it, are they celebrating? Is it fireworks?"
"No, it's fighting. I just talked to Colonel Fitzgibbon."
"Fitzgibbon? How did you get in there?"
"I know where his other troupes are."
"Well, you need to tell someone before we start the game."
"I don't know though."
"What are you talking about, we could win this so quickly. If you're right, I mean. What are you waiting for?"
"I heard him say something else too." John had a big bag slung over his shoulder. "A story. I want you to abandon your game, Tobena." He slung his bag down and the contents jumbled heavily with little thuds, the shaft of a bat was sticking out of the opening at the top.
"Stop the game, what about the war? Is that a baseball bat?" she asked, looking down at the bag. She looked at him but he was just looking out over all the grounds below. And she noticed what looked like crowds of people with little lights making their way towards the switchbacks that led to their plateau.