|
Mark Schweickart
This is an excerpt from a memoir I wrote (in the third person) a few years back recounting some of my Big Bear memories.
During senior year, Mark continued working at the BIg Bear Supermarket. Saturdays were always the busiest. When not cashiering, he was bagging groceries. It was the store’s policy not to allow the customers to wheel their shopping carts out of the store unattended. They could either let one of the baggers take the cart out to their car for them, or they could be given a plastic card with a number on it that corresponded to a number on their cart. They could then pull their car up to the front of the store where they would hand their numbered card to an employee who would meet them and then fetch their cart and deposit their groceries into their car. Many customers preferred this option, especially when the weather was bad. And in Ohio, the weather was often bad. On these days, the numbered carts would get backed up waiting their turn to be shot through the tiny door at the front of the store, just big enough for a cart to pass through, and out onto the sidewalk in front of the store. Once outside, it would be taken by a store employee whose job was to caretake the loaded carts. He would place them against the front of the store’s wall, with their rear wheels set over an aluminum strip that had been added to the sidewalk to prevent the carts from inadvertently rolling away. Then he would run out to retrieve the number from an approaching car, and back to find their cart, and then load the groceries into the waiting car. This was an especially dreaded assignment when it was raining or snowing. Mark was grateful that he had moved up to cashiering, which saved him from these duties most of the time.
On one particularly busy Saturday, in the midst of carts flying this way and that, there suddenly appeared a young Marine, in his full dress uniform who stepped smartly through the carts as if he were used to their sporadic disarray. Someone yelled out, “Oh my God, it’s Bill,” and all eyes turned to greet the handsome young man with a small V-shaped scar on his left cheek that only added to his rugged good looks. It was Bill Finkle, who had been a fellow employee at the store until he left to join the Marines a few months earlier. He was now back from boot camp, and on a short leave before he had to ship out to Viet-Nam. Everyone crowded around, saying hello, and wishing him well. In the distance, one of the cashiers turned from his station and shouted, “Give ’em hell, Bill! Those goddam gooks won’t know what hit ‘em, once you get there!” Upon hearing this, the twinkle that had been present in Bill’s eyes as he had been basking in the good wishes of his former co-workers suddenly faded to a dark solemnity that suggested that he knew it was going to be far more complicated than that. What he did not know, nor would any of his friends standing there that day know, was that at this time next year, he would be lying face down, dead in a rice paddy.
But for the moment it was all good cheer. Mark did not know Bill all that well. They went to different high schools, and Bill was a year older. But in addition to knowing him as a co-worker they also played basketball together. Several of the Big Bear employees formed a team, Mark and Bill among them, to play in an independent league once a week during basketball season. What he knew of Bill was that he was soft-spoken, and for such a good-looking guy, he had a quiet disposition that did not embrace the kind of rowdy egotism that such looks often encourage. Even now, while surrounded by well-wishers and being the absolute center of attention, he had a Robert Kennedy kind of sheepish smile that was all self-effacement rather than macho posturing.
Mark could not get over how sharp Bill looked in his dress blues--the gleam of his highly polished black shoes, the light blue pants with the red stripe running vertically down the outside of each leg, the darker blue jacket with the wide white belt, all topped off with the white hat with the dark brim. He looked very impressive. Mark too had been thinking of joining the military after high school. Maybe he should see if he could cut it as a Marine. Was he tough enough to survive Marine boot camp, an ordeal that was reputed to break many a recruit and send them home? But if truth be told, it was not really about proving himself, or aspiring to a sense of Marine-style manhood, but rather it all came down to the simple conclusion that he had reached--that he did not really care if he got killed in combat. For over two years, he had been plagued by waxing and waning bouts of depression, or as he labeled it, his “sadness,” that often involved suicidal thoughts. So he figured if a certain amount of soldiers had to die over there, he might as well be one of them. Perhaps offering himself up would save some other poor deluded schmo who thought he had something to live for. It turned out that that “certain amount” became a huge number of soldiers who would die over there--over 58,000. Mark, however, was not to be one of them. Years later Mark was in Washington D.C. searching for Bill’s name on the Viet-Nam War Memorial wall. He had his 14 year-old son along, and for whom all these marbleized names must have seemed as distant as names from Gettysburg or Valley Forge. But finally there it was. As he stared at it, all he could see was Bill in his dress uniform making his way through the Big Bear shopping carts.
|
