Side Trail
Bootless in Arizona
Tom Sheehan
The troop train stopped for a fifteen minute layover in Winslow, Arizona. It was March of 1952 and they were returning from Korea, riding the train the right way … back across the mountains and fields of America. The train commander said they could hang around outside but not to wander off and everybody had to be shod going to the dining car for the next five or six days. All of them wore brogans, weighing about three pounds a piece, buckles included, the best boot in the world, but too heavy for after-combat aboard a lazy troop train heading home.
His GI brogans he loved but he was over-shod for a train ride. Running to a cab stand at the station, he asked if there was a shoe store handy. “I only have 15 minutes,” he said, “before it pulls out.” He pointed at the train. “And I’m heading home.” Half a dozen cab drivers were lounging about, drinking, smoking cigars, reading the paper, checking the numbers, watching early gains on the market, no rush to prosper.
One cabbie grabbed his arm, “C’mon, kid, just down the street.” The cab driver ran two red lights, asked questions about his outfit in Korea, swung a tight corner, jumped the curb in front of a store. The sign said, “Shoe Cob.” The cabbie ran him inside, yelled at a clerk waiting on two women. “Harry, kid here’s just back from Korea. From Sonny’s outfit. He needs a pair of eight and half moccasins, in a hurry.”
Right then the train whistle sounded, larruped down the street, slammed through the front door. The cabbie pointed back over his shoulder. Time was the biggest enemy of all. Again came a long, low melancholy whistle full of new messages he did not want to hear. Late. AWOL. The stockade.
The clerk, the owner and Sonny’s father he suspected, reached over his head and flung a shoe box at him. He reached for his wallet. “It’s on me, kid. Promise you’ll say one for Sonny tonight when you’re thanking Him for getting you back home.” The whistle sounded again. They rushed, cab horn blaring, through the same two red lights. For the next six days, he went to the chow line in moccasins, and every other body aboard that reverse troop train wore the heavy boots of the trade.
Long after he was home from Korea he could talk about Slack and Leuter and Breda and Kujawski and other comrades for hours on end. In his blood they lived, at the back of his head, in heavy dreams. Every now and then, a place came back, a place like Winslow, Arizona.
For 58 years he’s carried that warmth with him, that unforgettable scene; the traffic, the train whistles, those Winslow men, that cabbie, that clerk or owner, a comrade’s father, that place. His memories flood him and will not disperse, not even now.
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