Early afternoon that Christmas, I went up to the Enlisted Men’s Club. It was already pretty crowded with the troops who hadn’t been rounded up to make an audience for the Bob Hope show down at the main post.
There was a spot at the bar, though, and I sat down next to Smitty, the black dude who was the clerk at one of the rifle companies. Smitty basically ran that company; he was a master fixer who knew everything there was to know about the workings of Camp Hovey, which was about 30 miles from the DMZ that divided North and South Korea.
We drank slow beers and bullshitted. I played a lot of cards with Smitty and the Hawaiian guys in his company and we were pretty tight.
“What are you going to do the rest of the day?” Smitty said.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Come on out to the Texas Club with me,” he said. “We’re going to have a real Christmas dinner out there – not that jive shit in the mess hall.”
“Jeez, will that be all right?”
“You’re with me,” was all he said.
There were six clubs in the village on the other side of the battle group gate. And then, way off about a mile over the rice paddies, all by itself, was the Texas Club. An old mama-san everybody called Agnes ran it; by use over time it had become exclusively for black guys and everybody in the battle group knew it. Smitty was the ex officio mayor of the Texas Club, and he had used his endless connections to extravagantly furnish it. It was a small legend. The MPs never went out there.
There had been a light snow Christmas Eve and our boots crunched pleasantly as we humped over the paddies. The morning calm had remained and there was a friendly stillness punctuated by distant birdsong. Smoke curled evenly from the Texas Club.
“Dang, it even feels like Christmas,” Smitty said.
There were about fifteen troops inside and they looked me over skeptically until Smitty put his arm around me and bellowed, “At ease, brothers! When do we eat? Me and my man are starving here.”
We didn’t eat for a couple hours. Agnes bustled in the kitchen while we drank and grooved to the brimming juke box.At dusk, we sat at a long table. One after another, Agnes brought out three bursting turkeys and seemingly endless side dishes. All the trimmings.
“Hit the lights,” Smitty said. In the gathering darkness, only the giant Christmas tree in one corner glowed.
“Tyrone, sing the grace,” Smitty said softly.
At the end of the table, a buck sergeant rose and in a pure falsetto intoned the Ave Maria into the silence.
When he was finished, Smitty said, “Shake-a-hand now.”
We shook hands with the guy on either side.
“Merry Christmas, brother,” Smitty said to me.