The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (79 page)

“The hell it ain’t.”

One of the boys in the rear of the line yelled up, “Hey, if
we’re not getting in today, I gotta catch the Greyhound back to Chickasha!”

Lt. Keyes thrummed his fingers on the desk while debating
how to get rid of this pest. He was already behind again on the inductions, and
the last thing he needed was to piss off the brass by not meeting the daily quota.
This ornery buzzard seemed just trigger-happy enough to raise a holy ruckus if
he ordered the MPs to haul him out. He decided to let him make an even bigger
fool of himself in the hope that the humiliation would finally drive him off on
his own accord. He ordered the other volunteers into a semi-circle around him
and played along by handing the fellow a form. “All right,
son
, what’s
your name?”

“Waters … Walter Waters. Some f-f-folks call me Dubya-Dubya
for short. But that ain’t quite accurate, because my m-m-middle name is
Warfield. Dubya-Dubya-Dubya would possess more authenticity. But I’ll answer to
any of the three appellations that b-b-begin with Dubya.”

The lieutenant licked his
chapped lips, eager to send the blowhard out the gate with his tail dragging.
“Sergeant Waters here—”

“Commander Waters.”

“So now you’re a commander? We’d better get this roll-call
finished before you become emperor.”

Waters cracked his gnarled knuckles, itching to throw down.
“You’re a regular Will Rogers with all the j-j-jokes.”

The lieutenant shook his
head in amazement at the vast and varied lunacies produced by the human race.
He told the other recruits, “Commander Waters here is gonna tell us how he
fought in the Great War of His Imagination.” Then, he asked the man, “Who’d you
square off against? Hannibal or Napoleon?”

Waters didn’t even blink. “Mac.”

One of the recruits yelled out, “General McClellan?”

Waters spun on the lippy Okie. “There’s only one Mac,
god-da-da-damn it! And you god da-da-da-damn know who he is!”

Motioning the recruits to silence, the lieutenant shammed an
interest. “You
fought
MacArthur. You fight
for
the Germans,
did you, Herr Dubya-Dubya?”

The veteran’s hard eyes filmed over, and he turned a
woebegone gaze toward the railroad tracks the distance. “Nah, I led the best
da-da-damned American army ever took the field. Worst thing about this
c-c-country is it ain’t got no memory for the important things that happen to
it.”

Baffled by this hillbilly prophet’s cryptic lament, the
lieutenant glanced across the field and saw several drill squads looking over
to see what all the commotion was about. He decided he’d better cut this little
charade short before word started spreading downwind that he had lost control
of his station. “Listen, Mr. Waters, or whoever you are. I’m going to have to
order you to run along now. Or I’ll have to call the mental hospital in town
and—”

“I’ll prove it.”

The recruiter set his hands on his hips. “You’re going to
prove to me that you fought General Douglas MacArthur with an American army?
How exactly do you plan to do that?”

Waters puffed out his sunken consumptive chest to display
two threaded military ribbons pinned to his breast pocket. “If I demonstrate my
bona fides
on the matter, will you let me t-t-take the oath?”

His first plan having backfired, the lieutenant reluctantly
decided that letting the man blather his two cents worth was probably the only
way to get rid of him now. “You got five minutes before lunch call. Make it
fast.”

The other recruits moaned,
forced to stay out in the cold even longer now. The sniggering ensign piled
more logs onto the fire in the oil drum.

Before the lieutenant could
intercept him, Waters commandeered the chair from behind the desk and situated
himself in front of the fire. Flicking away the butt of his last Lucky Strike
coffin nail, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a plug of tobacco, and
stuffed it into his cheek. Satisfied at last with his preparations, he waved
the recruits forward. “Come on closer, maggots. I ain’t g-g-gonna strip the
gears in my throat educating your ignorance.”

While the grousing recruits
stepped in around him, he began singing the tune that had always helped calm
the hitch in his words, an old big-band number by that top-hatted medicine man
of jazz, Ted Lewis:

“There’s a new day coming,
As sure as you’re born,
A new day coming,
Start tootin’ your horn,
The cobbler’ll shoe, the baker’ll bake,
When the brewer brews, folks,
We’ll all get a break.
There’s a new day coming,
Coming soon.”

Finishing his jingle, he creaked up to his feet again and
pointed toward the pole that towered over the camp. “In my army, we always
c-c-commenced proceedings by honoring the g-g-glorious Stars and Stripes.”

The lieutenant nodded for the slouching recruits to humor
the pompous veteran, and they twitched off a few shivering, half-hearted
salutes to the flag.

Forced to be satisfied with their lackadaisical effort,
Waters sat back down and scooted his chair closer to the crackling logs to warm
his rheumy knees. When the recruits had finally huddled down on their haunches
around him, he prefaced his story with a condition. “Now listen up, shavetails.
You’re g-g-gonna promise me one thing.”

“What’s that, grandpa?
You need a latrine break already?”

Waters ran a warning finger across the seated ranks. “None
of you’s are gonna b-b-back out of serving after you hear what I got to say.”

Trading confused glances,
the recruits finally nodded their agreement, just to get on with whatever it
was they were about to endure.

Waters wiped a seep of chaw spittle from the corner of his
mouth. “You ever heard those rich b-b-birds on Wall Street say teach a man to
fish and you f-f-feed him forever?”

The recruits didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“That d-d-day in Galilee,
when the Good Lord gave His Sermon on the Mount, how c-c-come He d-d-didn’t
teach the m-m-multitudes to fish and bake bread, instead of just c-c-conjuring
up those loaves and filets of sole for them?”

The lieutenant was worried that the dotty vet was going
start blaspheming on government property. He tapped on his wristwatch,
signaling for him to tighten the reins and get on with it.

But Waters refused to be
prodded off the winding trail of his sermon. “You figure Christ was a
c-c-communist, do you? Not following the c-c-capitalist way? Distributing the
d-d-dole like that to anyone who would listen to him?”

“Hell, no!” shouted a recruit. “The Almighty ain’t some
goddamn Red!”

 Waters picked out a
stick from the kindling pile and began whittling it with a pocketknife. “What
if the Great Shepherd had fed all the Romans in the world, but left his own
d-d-disciples in want? You think the Galileans woulda f-f-followed Him to
Jerusalem
then
?”

The recruits watched the oscillating pocketknife with alarm,
half expecting the shaky veteran to slice off a finger. One of them complained,
“This ain’t Sunday school, pops! You ever gonna get to the point of this
campfire story?”

Waters was sending the
chips flying now. “There once was such a man. A titan of history who f-f-fed a
thousand times more multitudes than Christ did. But he c-c-couldn’t bring
himself to give sustenance to his own hungry folk.”

“Some Bolshevik, was he?” asked one of the recruits.

Overcome by the memories, Waters brushed away the chips on
the ground with his boot in a play to recover his voice. When he had swallowed
the frog in his throat, he stiffened his neck and insisted, “Farthest thing
from it. Turned out he was just an orphan boy with a b-b-big heart. But he came
to be surrounded by a d-d-dozen Judases for apostles.”

“What was his name?”

“Hoover.”

“You talking about the suction sweeper fella?”

Waters aim the point of his pocketknife at the numbskull who
had just asked that boneheaded question. “No, junior. I am referring to the man
who p-p-put all that Okie dirt
in
your momma’s rug, not the one who
took it out.”

“
President
Hoover?”

Waters nodded. “But long
b-b-before the dust twisters b-b-blew ‘ol Herbert into the White House, he
found himself in another shit storm another halfway across the world. That’s
where it all s-s-started. With the great Quaker surrounded by millions of
starving Chinamen.”

The recruits, now even more
mystified, just sat staring up at the veteran.

The lieutenant figured he’d regret it, but he went ahead and
asked, “
What
started?”

Water ballooned his cheeks and shot a black jet of tobacco
juice at the ground, nearly splattering the volunteers in the front row. “The
fight that came within a hare’s breath of sparking off another American
Revolution,
that’s
what.”

More information at
www.glencraney.com
.

BUY NOW

Copyright 2014 by Glen Craney
Cover, maps and book design by Glen Craney.
Bannockburn painting by Mark Churms, licensed from Mark
Churms.
Cover photograph by Michael J. Stead.
This book is a work of fiction. Apart from the historical
figures, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage
and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except
by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of
educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for
classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the
work in an anthology, should send their inquires to Brigid’s Fire Press at
www.brigidsfire.com.
Published in the United States
FIRST EDITION DIGITAL
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Craney, Glen
The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland’s Black
Douglas
ISBN 978-0-9816484-1-5
1. History-Fiction. 2. Historical Fiction. 3. Douglas, James
(1286-1330)-Fiction. 4. Robert I, King of Scots (1274-1329)-Fiction. 5.
Scotland-History-Robert I (1306-1329)-Fiction. 6. Scotland-History-James
Douglas (1286-1330)-Fiction. 7. Scotland- History-War of Independence
(1285-1371)-Fiction.
Brigid’s Fire Press
www.brigidsfire.com