Читать книгу A Basket of Gems - Robert J and Jean V. Stock - Страница 8

I was sitting on the ground hunched over my steaming mess kit, which contained my Thanksgiving dinner. This was the best food I had seen since I’d left the States: mashed potatoes that looked almost edible for a change (I had heard they were not dehydrated), cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, succotash, a huge crisp brown turkey leg, fruit cocktail, and chocolate cake. Of course, everything was mixed together, but it sure did make my mouth water. I was just about to dig my anxious teeth into that big “drumstick” when I saw two brown, spindly legs in front of me, so thin, the knees and ankles looked almost arthritic. The knees and feet were engrained with dirt. Slowly I raised my head and saw a ragged pair of G.I. khakis cut off two or three inches above the bony knees and drawn tight around the waist with a piece of tent rope, knotted in the front. For the next foot or so twenty-four ribs made their imprint on tanned skin … a neck … the most abject expression I had ever seen on a human face … He had sunken cheeks that were congruous with the rest of him, thick lips that he kept running a pink tongue over, an unkempt head of black hair that stood straight up, which made his head look too large for his body, and two big brown eyes that were dull and lifeless. He didn’t say a word – he begged with those eyes … I couldn’t escape them … and as I stared into them, I thought of this scrawny Filipino waif as exemplifying all the millions of helpless, hungry kinds in the world – the towhead in bombed German towns, trotting alongside G.I. trucks to get even a lump of sugar out of a K-Ration; a little Chinese lad, not more than two years old, sobbing on a dead mother’s breast; and a wide-eyed pick-a-ninny in a southern slum district eating from a garbage can. I was a tough combat engineer, a man who was taught to kill, to enjoy killing, who had killed and laughed in a dying man’s face – I never thought I’d be sympathetic toward anyone again the rest of my life. Those two big brown eyes defeated me … I felt the hot tears streaming down my cheeks – It was the only time in my life I remember having cried. He sat there on my lap and ate out of my mess gear. For just an instant I thought I saw his eyes sparkle … I enjoyed my Thanksgiving dinner.