The Toynbee Convector

Tromp, tromp.

“Company, halt!”

Tromp, rattle, clump.

“Eyes right.”

Whisper.

“Eyes left.”

Rustle.

“About face!”

Tromp, scrape, tromp.

In the sunlight, a long time ago, the man shouted and the company obeyed. By a hotel pool under a Los Angeles sky in the summer of ‘52, there was the drill sergeant and there stood his team.

“Eyes front! Head up! Chin in! Chest out! Stomach sucked! Shoulders back, dammit, back!”

Rustle, whisper, murmur, scratch, silence.

And the drill sergeant walking forward, dressed in bathing trunks by the edge of that pool to fix his cold bluewater gaze on his company, his squad, his team, his—

Son.

A boy of nine or ten, standing stiffly upright, staring arrow-straight ahead at military nothings, shoulders starched, as his father paced, circling him, barking commands, leaning in at him, mouth crisply enunciating the words. Both father and son were dressed in bathing togs and, a moment before, had been cleaning the pool area, arranging towels, sweeping with brooms. But now, just before noon:

“Company! By the numbers! One, two!”

‘Three, four!” cried the boy.

“One, two!” shouted the father.

“Three, four!”

“Company halt, shoulder arms, present arms, tuck that chin, square those toes, hup!”

The memory came and went like a badly projected film in an old rerun cinema. Where had it come from, and why?

I was on a train heading north from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I was in the bar-car, alone, late at night, save for the bar man and a young-old stranger who sat directly across from me, drinking his second martini.

The old memory had come from him.

Nine feet away, his hair, his face, his startled blue and wounded eyes had suddenly cut the time stream and sent me back.

In and out of focus, I was on the train, then beside that pool, watching the hurt bright gaze of this man across the aisle, hearing his father thirty years lost, and watching the son, five thousand afternoons ago, wheeling and pivoting, turning and freezing, presenting imaginary arms, shouldering imaginary rifles.

“Tenshun!!” barked the father.

“Shun!” echoed the son.

“My God,” whispered Sid, my best friend, lying beside me in the hot noon light, staring.

“My God, indeed,” I muttered.

“How long has this been going on?”