Blood, Dreams, and Olive Drab (Pride & Promise) Read online

  BLOOD, DREAMS,

  and

  OLIVE DRAB

  by

  Michael A. Meissner

  Henry

  1

  A gloomy gray sky hovered over the cobble streets and pockmarked buildings. The waters of a narrow brook spread across the tumbled rocks, gathering and then trickling on a little further. Overhead, the rumbling sound of planes boomed like thunderheads off the dismal cluster of high clouds. They hovered like large ships across the horizon, slow and nearly motionless, gliding as if they were pulled on tiny strings across the rough tumultuous sky.

  A young man slopped through the muddy streets. His new government-issued brown leather boots were getting splattered with clumps of mud and a light spray of mud was climbing up the back of his pants as he tried hard to avoid the puddles. He checked the crinkled bit of paper that was stuffed into his hand as he trudged along the streets. After each building he passed, he checked the paper again, shaking his head at the absence of sequential house numbers, or any numbers, and he muttered to himself as he struggled on.

  Finally, he came upon a squat white building. Over the doorway were the smudged words, MORGUE. He had the right building. A strong pungent odor drifted on the winds, invasive enough he could almost taste the coarse rancidness on his tongue. It made him feel heavy in the pit of his weak stomach.

  Knock, knock, knock. He gently rapped on the large wooden door. The door nudged open slightly, tilting a bit on its rusted metal hinges. He pushed the door open and peered inside. Through a partial knothole in the door he saw a dim light shining down from the ceiling. He poked his head through the crack in the door and saw dozens of sheets draped over small cots, gurneys, and any other semi-horizontal surface. He stepped inside with apprehension.

  "Hello?" he tried to call out, but his voice broke and nothing but a cracking whisper came out. He cleared his throat and sucked in a gulp of air. It was like putrid seawater that made him gag and spit. "Hell.....o . . .?" he cried out as the rotten smell of flesh caused his eyes to water. He clasped his hand over his mouth and felt a churning deep in his stomach. He lurched forward and could feel a push from his throat as he tasted the acidic juices of his stomach in his mouth.

  "What the hell do you want?" a mean voice boomed off the stale dark walls.

  The young man jumped, turning around quickly as if he had been tapped on the shoulder in a fun house.

  "What do you want?" A short stubby man emerged from the shadows. The meager light caught the tip of his bald head.

  "I’m reporting for duty," the young man uttered, his voice still caught in his throat. He took a few steps back and bumped into a full gurney. A slimy yellow arm dropped out from under the blood-stained sheet and hung lifeless off the side of the conveyance. He jumped and stumbled away.

  "Better get used to that, boy," the man grumbled. The ash of his cigar fell to the floor and the dull orange ember glowed in the darkness. He rolled the butt of the cigar to the other side of his wide mouth. He ground his hard rugged jaw from one side to the other and then he stepped further into the timid light.

  "Can you get used to that?" the boy stammered.

  "There’s two ways to do that. You either drink a lot, or just forget about it," the man said roughly. He seemed to say everything roughly.

  "What did you do?"

  "Both." The man coughed with a callous tongue. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a long silver flask. He twisted off the top and took a long drink, then pushed the flask towards the boy and raised his head suggestively.

  "No, I don’t drink," the young man stammered.

  "You will. You will," the man lamented bitterly. He turned and glared at the boy with deep resentment--resentment for the values the boy still had and for the trust in his young will, something the sergeant had lost a long time ago. He walked out of the light with his mean sneer clinging to his low angular jawline. The sweep of the sergeant’s wide back and chunky sides pushed violently back into the darkness. The young man looked around and felt very small.

  "C’mon. Whatcha waiting for? Let’s get started," the boy heard from the darkness. He scurried out of the light and towards the voice. The boy stood in front of another large door. Waiting patiently, the young man held his bag, hat, and belongings in front of himself like a good little boy. "If you’re waiting for an invitation, you’ll wait a lifetime out there. Doesn’t matter, though, you’ll realize life ain’t worth much around here," the sergeant muttered.

  The young man slid open the door and he stepped inside. The sergeant sat in an old wooden chair behind a card table. He tilted from side to side on the uneven legs. Buckets were strewn all across the floor as water dropped from the ceiling. All the buckets were almost full and a few of them spilled over onto the cracked marble floor. A thin coating of water spread across the floor and looked like wax in the scant light.

  "What’s your name, son?" the man growled. The young boy could hear the metal top of the flask being twisted off, again.

  "Henry, Sir!" the boy said with an innocent bravado.

  "I didn’t ask about your first name. First names are for friends and lovers and we will never, never be either, boy," he shouted.

  Henry jumped and stood tall as he stretched out his long slender neck. "Yes, Sir!" Henry yapped.

  "And don’t call me Sir! My name is Sergeant Welky. Got it?" the sergeant bellowed vehemently.

  "Yes, Sir," Henry started and then stopped, ". . . I mean Sergeant!"

  "Let me guess . . ! You’re one of those nicey nice Midwest farm boys, aren’t you?" the sergeant mocked.

  "Why, yes," Henry yelped. He was happy the sergeant had noticed. A genuine youthful smile crowned his smooth face.

  "Don’t get all warm and fuzzy on me, boy! I hate you Midwesterns--with all your farming and smiling. I never met one of you that weren’t just as dumb and dull as all get out. With your stories about tractors, hay stocks . . . ," the sergeant stumbled through his rant, ". . . and corn bales."

  "Hay bales and corn stocks," Henry corrected, realizing that the sergeant was glaring at him.

  "What?"

  "Ah, nothing, Sir."

  "Come on," Sergeant Welky said. He slid his jaw to the right, moving his stubby cigar to the side. He took another big swallow from his flask and then rolled the cigar back. He walked around the card table and bumped several buckets, stumbling through the dim room. Water sloshed around the buckets and spilled onto the floor. The sergeant walked back into the corner of the other room. "This here . . . ," Sergeant Welky stood beside a huge white metal box which stood on stubby little silver legs, ". . . this is the most important piece of equipment we have." Henry looked around the stale drafty room and noticed that it was also the only piece of equipment they had. "This here is the ice machine."

  "Ice. Why ice?"

  "Shuddup," Sergeant Welky sighed, "and listen first, knucklehead. We need ice to pack the bodies into the bags." Sergeant Welky nodded his head at a stack of black bags which were piled in the corner.

  "Oh," Henry said. He felt a heaviness start to ache in his stomach.

  "It keeps the bodies fresh," Sergeant Welky said. The sergeant kicked the machine near its base. It rumbled to a start and a low heavy hum reverberated from the machine. He started to walk across the floor, and for the first time, Henry noticed that the sergeant wasn’t wearing shoes. His feet made a squeaky plastic sound as he sloshed through the shallow water.

  "You take these bags . . . ," Sergeant Welky picked up one of the rubber bags and proceeded to walk towards the pile of white blankets, ". . . and these bodies." He lifted a sheet and several body parts fell out
from under the pile. Sergeant Welky picked up an arm and nonchalantly placed it into the black bag. "And you place the bodies or pieces into the bags." He started shoveling the pieces into the bag like groceries into a sack: another tattered arm, segments of blood-soaked discarded entrails, and a few pieces of what Henry surmised was brain matter that looked more like red scrambled eggs.

  Sergeant Welky reached up to itch his brow and inadvertently smeared blood all over his forehead. Just then a thin ray of light peaked through the slits in the shutters and it fell faintly across his face. He smiled, and for the first time Henry saw his monstrous evil face. He grinned widely and his brown bean-like little teeth filled his round face. His right eye, lazy they would call it, wandered wildly and it was hard for Henry to tell if the sergeant was actually looking at him or not.

  Suddenly the smell of rotting flesh was too much for Henry. A cold icy sweat dripped down his spine. Clamminess chilled his body. He felt a churning in his stomach and he could taste the bitterness of bile rising in his throat. He ran for the door. In the midst of the purple darkness Henry heard cackling laughter echoing off the brittle walls. As he turned to run, he caught a glimpse of Sergeant Welky’s lazy eye, and it seemed to be burrowing through him. He reached the door and burst out onto the street as a wave of fresh sea air smacked him in the face.

  He could smell the salty freshness off in the distance, but it was too late. Henry hunched over a small plaster wall and vomited. His body lurched as he felt another rush come up his throat. He arched his back, and the mere taste in his mouth and the smell of his stomach fluid caused him to hurl, again. His vision was partially blurred by the swell of tears in the slits of his eyes. His heart was racing and he gasped for breath.

  Finally, Henry stood up and looked down the long row of buildings. A few puffy clouds were floating overhead. Their bellies were as gray as snow after three days in the gutter but the edges of the drifting clouds were sheer and dainty-white like the curls of a little girl’s hair. The sun shined through the fine delicate edges of the fluffy clouds and beamed warmly over Henry’s downtrodden face. He basked in the heat. The rays felt good on his face. It took him back to simpler days, days he wished were still part of his life.

  .....

  He drifted and reveled as he started to remember those days. It felt as if they were eons ago. He could see the way the far Ohio sky graciously parted in the morning to let the sun crawl over the hill and the treetops. Like a hermit crab over the dunes, the gold clawed and pulled itself over the line that divided the sky from the earth, spreading sunlight like apple seeds across the land. He could almost feel the cool soil in his calloused hands and smell the sweet morning dew--and hear the sound of his little brother running to the field in Henry’s old shoes. The sloppy tongue of the worn and moldy leather boots clapped off his little brother’s tiny ankles. "He’ll grow nicely into those shoes" was the common phrase, but he never quite got to.

  .....

  "Get in here, boy!" Sergeant Welky commanded. Welky ducked his head out the door and then shrunk quickly back inside, not letting the sun hit his sickly pale skin. He was like a fish in water and the darkness was his home. He practically dragged Henry along with him, using his meaty claw to pull him back inside. "You got rid of your lunch. Time to work, boy!" His heavy gut jiggled as he laughed. Henry took another gulp of the salty air and felt the tenderness of the sunlight on his face for one more second before he let himself be tugged back into the abyss of the darkness.

  2

  It took several hours for him to be able to pick up the severed body parts as he tried to deaden his senses. The slipperiness of the graying skin against his own crisp hands was something that made him shake. He tried to concentrate but his hands still shuddered. When Sergeant Welky wasn’t looking, Henry held his hands down to his side and tried to talk to his trembling mitts. You’re okay, he said to calm his nerves, but it was like trying to soothe a leaf in a tornado. He couldn’t stop shaking.

  "You can talk to yourself all you want. It doesn’t help!" Sergeant Welky was belligerent, making Henry feel small. "I tried it for months. Trust me, nothing helps but this stuff." He took another swig of his flask. With the hardened stomach of a drunk, his face didn’t pucker in the slightest as the harsh liquor stung his mouth. A sliver of light hit the flask as he offered Henry a belt.

  "No, that’s okay," Henry said bashfully as he looked down at the ground. Henry tried to watch a thin trickle of blood breaking across the floor and wiggling to the wall. It formed a shallow puddle where the sunlight breached the darkness.

  "Hell, you’re a farmer, aren’t ya?" Sergeant Welky charged as he stuffed a few more body pieces into a bag: a clawed hand and the piece of a shattered shoulder.

  "Yeah." Henry held his breath as he delicately started to lay a few tattered pieces into a bag. The parts slid around on the ice and the dark crimson-brown blood slithered across the ice like oil across water.

  "You had to see blood on the farm. You stupid farmers are forever getting hurt.

  "Dumb. . ." was the last thing Henry heard Sergeant Welky uttering as he tuned him out for a moment. He harkened back. His mind was starting to let go of reality, shutting down and desensitizing. A far-away look glazed over his brooding face as his mouth dropped slightly open and he could almost taste the tangy rancid flesh.

  "It wasn’t that bad, was it?" Sergeant Welky said plainly.

  "What?" Henry snapped back into reality.

  "The blood on the farm, it wasn’t that bad." Sergeant actually seemed almost human for a split second. "Probably when one of you hicks was screwing around. You idiots. That’s all there are in the Midwest, I swear. Wasn’t that bad, was it?" Welky hissed, feeling rather smug with his observation.

  "No . . . no, I guess not." Henry’s mind started to move slowly. He slipped back in time and he could see the day.

  .....

  The hay had been cut and laid in circular rows around the field. They were going around on the new tractor, baling and then collecting the bales of hay. The metal wheels were churning up the ground. They were great in size and massive in their monstrosity and they looked like huge metal teeth chomping through the soil. The tractor dragged a cart behind it and did the work of a dozen horses.

  The boys' pitchforks worked like blades through a tender steak, and as the late afternoon sun shown down on their tired and sweaty backs, they hoisted more hay into the cart. Henry and his many brothers were like machines.

  The family had grown and prospered in numbers since it was cheaper to have plenty of children than hire on help to work the fields. Henry’s father jumped down from the perch of the mighty tractor and asked if Henry wanted to drive it back into the house. In Henry’s mind, he glimpsed that distant memory with pride and exasperation.

  "Of course, I do!" he bellowed through the sweat. His brothers smiled with adulation and happiness for him as he climbed into the steel harness of the ridged beast. His father tromped on ahead, running back to the house for a drink, but Henry’s brothers strolled alongside the tractor. Their faces beamed in the setting sun. Playfully, they romped over the old sheared corn stalks which jutted from the field like sharpened daggers.

  "Be careful!" His father stopped and turned around, yelling fatefully back to him.

  "Okay. Sure, Pa!" Henry yelped. His head was spinning and he barely heard anything.

  "Can I ride, Henry? Can I ride up there?" his little brother called. His voice was high with excitement as he clopped along with his Henry’s old shoes flopping across his small ankles.

  "Sure, sure, Elmer," Henry said. He reached down and grabbed Elmer’s little arm and pulled him up. Perched on the top of the wheel well, he proudly rode alongside Henry.

  "Let me steer, Henry," Elmer pleaded. His eyes were sparkling like drops of water in a bright sunlight.

  "No, no, you sit tight. Let me steer," Henry said. He saw a slight bit of hurt in Elmer’s eyes. Dramatically, Elmer folded his arms across his chest and pouted, stic
king out his fat lower lip. "Stop it," Henry joshed, playfully pulling Elmer onto his lap. Then Elmer sat up, untucking his shirt. He wiped the sweat from his brow. His round portly little belly showed bright white in the falling glow of dusk. Always the big brother, Henry smiled.

  Suddenly, the tractor hit a bump and then violently careened off into a deep rut in the field. The back of the tractor jumped and the teeth of the metal wheel caught Elmer’s shirt. They didn’t notice at first--until Elmer was swept from Henry’s lap. He fell back over the wheel like he was being sucked from Henry’s grasp.

  "Henry!" Elmer cried. "Help me!" His little voice was lost in his scared throat. Frantically, Henry reached for his hands, but it was too late. The power of the giant wheel dragged him back over and he was pulled like water over a wheel as the tractor jumped only slightly, like they had hit a tiny bump. The wheel came around, but all that was there was a tattered shred of Elmer’s small shirt smeared deep red--and a scant piece of a brown leather shoe. Henry brought the tractor to a sharp halt. He looked into the shoe--and gruesomely staring back like a white eye of bone was the stump of Elmer’s bloody foot.

  .....

  "Hick! Hick!" Henry vaguely heard in the furthest reaches of his mind. "Hick!" was shouted once more and he was brought back to the realm of reality.

  "What!" Henry blasted.

  "Whoa there, Country! No need to get huffy with me," Sergeant Welky snapped. "The blood from the farm, it wasn’t that bad, was it?" Welky chided with an evil laugh.

  "No. I guess not," Henry relinquished mournfully. He turned his feelings back inwards as he poured a couple scoops of ice into a bag. The nameless face of the young boy within the bag tilted as Henry pulled the zipper closed. The young boy’s set of lifeless dull black marbles stared up at him and Henry felt a shiver run over his soul as the zipper ripped past the dark lifeless stare.

  "That’s enough for today. Trust me, they will all still be dead tomorrow," Sergeant Welky blurted with an indifferent grumble. He turned and wobbled towards the open front door. The heavy light of day was gone and a meager pale shadow of twilight was cresting the door.