ILT Arm.
Act. Adj.
DA FORM 12014 Z 11 Apr 2003
Comp: 147TOE: 148
Pres for duty
81
KIA
23
KLD
6
MIA
21 For: S. Spaulding
MLDCol, Inf.
1 Commanding
Wounded, hosp.by: Atwater, Willey
21 ILT, Arm.
Total 147Act. Adj.
Bessie IX
WAR DEPARTMENT
20 July 1929
RE: Serial Nos Possible US
Army Personnel
Dr. Kincaid
Salvage Survey
c/o Dixie Hotel
Suckatoncha Louisiana
via Baton Rouge
Dr. Kincaid:
In re: list of 75 possible US Army personnel your communication 18 July 1929. Two (2) names match current active duty US Army personnel, one duty Philippine Islands, one assigned Ft. Meade Maryland, officer rank not NCO. DOBs do not match.
Check underway US Navy & Marine Corps. Message relayed DOTreasury for Coast Guard personnel. DOInterior Veteran’s Bureau checking, answer expected NLT COB this date. Will forward Daughters Confederacy, S-A War Veterans.
Expect arrival your area ASAP Cpt Thompson, Graves Registration Officer this command to assist, act as liaison govt. agencies this problem.
Jilliam, T. V.
Cpt, Art.
Acting Asst AGC
Leake XI
“But remembering the early civilitie they brought upon these countreys, and forgetting long passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones and pisse not upon their ashes.”
We had to quit eating late in the afternoon. We waddled back to our huts and lay down and went to sleep.
Just at dark we were wakened by the whistle of the ship.
Took and I, Sun Man, some of the nobles, several warriors, and a couple of the artisans had been invited to the boat. The only Buzzard Cult person there was Moe, who was also head of one of the kinship systems.
We all met at the landing. The ship was dark. Then, all at once, it lit up with a cool blue light like giant glowworms were inside the decks and passageways.
El Hama and his men came down to greet us and led us aboard. They seated us around the largest room, maybe a third the length of the ship, on the second deck.
We ate again, while three of the merchants played on a guitar, drum, and flute. Several of the Northerners did acrobatics for us, like great bears inside their shaggy skins. I was seated on the opposite side of the circle from Took, Sun Man, and el Hama. I followed the conversation as best I could. It was mostly of inconsequentialities, trade, hunting, weather, crops, the surplus of skins and the shortage of bear’s teeth, and (el Hama begged pardon) woodpecker scalps. It was a lot like my idea of what a Rotary Club lunch in Des Plaines on a slow Tuesday would be like.
Then they brought coffee.
I thought I was going to die. I knew what it was before I saw it; I smelled it first. I had not had any since my last pack of instant went into the canteen cup two weeks after I got here, months ago.
Took’s people drink several teas and herb drinks, mostly when it’s cold or they’re under the weather. Some of them, like sassafras and cedar bark, are good. But they’re not coffee.
I stared at the elaborate double urn like it was a metal god.
El Hama said something to Took, watching me all the while.
They served the coffee in a way as elaborate as any Japanese tea ceremony. The water in the lower part of the urn was boiling hot. One of the merchants poured a kilo of dark coffee grounds into the top urn, then put what looked like powdered milk and a half kilo of fructose in with it. Putting another urn under that, he dashed the boiling water into the upper pot.
The smell took me to heaven and back again. A minute later he pulled out the lower pot. It was filled to overflowing with a brown cloudlike froth.
‘Now quickly,’ said el Hama to all present, ‘we must drink while the face is still on the coffee.’ Tiny cups filled with a small amount of liquid were handed, with the right hand, to the right. The cups foamed with a head of cream, sugar and puffed coffee. It was all I could do to keep handing the cups around the circle, instead of drinking them all up as they got to me.
At last, everybody had one, Sun Man being the last. Then the circle filled back to me. My cup, they handed me my cup!
When everyone had one, they all looked at el Hama. He took a tiny sip of the coffee head, rolled his eyes, put the cup back in his saucer. Disappointed, they took tiny sips also.
I wanted to gulp mine down, start a fight, take everybody’s cup away from them. I sipped mine instead.
It was wonderful, but it was only semisweet, and filled with cream. What I wanted was about two liters of coffee with a half kilo of sugar in it. I wanted a caffeine rush that would bring Dwight Eisenhower back to life.
I could hear coffee dripping into the pot, now ignored.
Sometime during the low talk which followed, Took came around the circle to me.
‘El Hama wants to see you afterwards. In the general milling around, go through the passageway to the right, and out onto the aft deck and wait for him there. I’ll see you in the morning.’
I nodded.
Soon there was a giving around of presents, at which I got a bird whistle necklace. The bird was made of something like a cross between hard rubber and anthracite coal. It made a sound like one of those tweeting Christmas tree ornaments when I tried it. I put it on around my neck.
There was general milling around. I went out the right doorway, up a blue-lit passage. There was a guard at the far doorway, a Northerner, who only nodded as I neared him, and I went by.
The blue lights had a faint buzz, like neon. Electricity. In one room off the passage I saw a clerk writing in a big ledger by the light of an oil lamp. He paid no attention to me, and I went out up onto the deck.
The night was dark; there was no moon yet. The next was the planting moon, time of the Black Drink ceremony Took had mentioned, after the crops were put down. It was supposedly only March here, by my reckoning, but it was already warm.
The upper deck of the boat loomed above me, the light in the pilot house a blue box against the starry sky. There were a few crewmen on deck, a few Northerners or Arabs. One was fishing off the lower deck with a long pole.
The first bullfrogs of spring were croaking. I heard an alligator grunt. The aplisade of the village was a darker blot on the sky, with a few firelights showing through the mud chinking.
I had forgotten how big the River was, how full of sounds it was at night, how many mammals, birds, fish, and insects made noises. It all came back to me on the deck of the ship.
Even with the blue lights around me, the Milky Way was a slather of white across the sky, and the stars shone with round flickering brilliance on the darkness.
‘Ah,’ said el Hama as he came on deck, ‘let’s sit near the stern.’ Pillows were brought out and we sat ourselves down. ‘More coffee?’ he asked.
I could have kissed him.
‘I have already sent for it,’ he said, smiling. ‘I noticed how much you enjoyed it. And now, we have many questions of each other?’