It was still so early in the day, and so much had already happened.
The air was cooler in the forest.
His throat was parched and sore.
He walked slowly and asked himself ruefully what new misfortune could possibly befall him a moment before the mad hermit in the woods leaped out at him without warning from behind a mulberry bush.
The chaplain screamed at the top of his voice.
The tall, cadaverous stranger fell back in fright at the chaplain’s cry and shrieked,
‘Don’t hurt me!’
‘Who are you?’ the chaplain shouted.
‘Please don’t hurt me!’ the man shouted back.
‘I’m the chaplain!’
‘Then why do you want to hurt me?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you!’ the chaplain insisted with a rising hint of exasperation, even though he was still rooted to the spot.
‘Just tell me who you are and what you want from me.’
‘I just want to find out if Chief White Halfoat died of pneumonia yet,’ the man shouted back.
‘That’s all I want.
I live here. My name is Flume. I belong to the squadron, but I live here in the woods.
You can ask anyone.’
The chaplain’s composure began trickling back as he studied the queer, cringing figure intently.
A pair of captain’s bars ulcerated with rust hung on the man’s ragged shirt collar.
He had a hairy, tar-black mole on the underside of one nostril and a heavy rough mustache the color of poplar bark.
‘Why do you live in the woods if you belong to the squadron?’ the chaplain inquired curiously.
‘I have to live in the woods,’ the captain replied crabbily, as though the chaplain ought to know.
He straightened slowly, still watching the chaplain guardedly although he towered above him by more than a full head.
‘Don’t you hear everybody talking about me?
Chief White Halfoat swore he was going to cut my throat some night when I was fast asleep, and I don’t dare lie down in the squadron while he’s still alive.’
The chaplain listened to the implausible explanation distrustfully.
‘But that’s incredible,’ he replied.
‘That would be premeditated murder.
Why didn’t you report the incident to Major Major?’
‘I did report the incident to Major Major,’ said the captain sadly, ‘and Major Major said he would cut my throat if I ever spoke to him again.’
The man studied the chaplain fearfully.
‘Are you going to cut my throat, too?’
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ the chaplain assured him.
‘Of course not.
Do you really live in the forest?’
The captain nodded, and the chaplain gazed at his porous gray pallor of fatigue and malnutrition with a mixture of pity and esteem.
The man’s body was a bony shell inside rumpled clothing that hung on him like a disorderly collection of sacks.
Wisps of dried grass were glued all over him; he needed a haircut badly.
There were great, dark circles under his eyes.
The chaplain was moved almost to tears by the harassed, bedraggled picture the captain presented, and he filled with deference and compassion at the thought of the many severe rigors the poor man had to endure daily.
In a voice hushed with humility, he said,
‘Who does your laundry?’
The captain pursed his lips in a businesslike manner.
‘I have it done by a washerwoman in one of the farmhouses down the road.
I keep my things in my trailer and sneak inside once or twice a day for a clean handkerchief or a change of underwear.’
‘What will you do when winter comes?’
‘Oh, I expect to be back in the squadron by then,’ the captain answered with a kind of martyred confidence.
‘Chief White Halfoat kept promising everyone that he was going to die of pneumonia, and I guess I’ll have to be patient until the weather turns a little colder and damper.’
He scrutinized the chaplain perplexedly. ‘Don’t you know all this?
Don’t you hear all the fellows talking about me?’