The Big Witness (A Dragnet Fan Fiction Story) -- Chapter Seven

 The Big Witness

(A Dragnet Fan Fiction Story)

By: Kristi N. Zanker

Disclaimer: All publicly recognized characters, settings, etc. are the property of Mark VII Limited and Universal. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. I, in no way am associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Dragnet. No copyright infringement is intended.

Warning: This chapter contains some strong language and violence.

Chapter Seven

Joe drifted in and out of sleep. This time, in his dream, he was a little boy, not more than nine years old. For his birthday, Ma Friday had bought him a brand new, crisp, clean white button-down shirt to wear to school that day, along with a beautiful wooden box to put all of his pencils and crayons into. The lid had an inlaid tile pattern that bordered around the case. All of the buttons on the shirt were accounted for—unlike the ones he wore where his mother had to constantly reattach them. In fact, she didn't even have to remind him to tuck it in that morning because he wanted to look his absolute best in this unfamiliarity of newness. He felt so proud of his shirt and pencil box for once, instead of feeling ashamed of being on Relief. Before leaving for school, he told his mother he'd take good care of his pencil box and not get his new shirt dirty at recess.

On the way to school, he bounced with enjoyment, looking forward to showing his friends his precious birthday gifts. But before he knew it, three older boys cornered him on the street and tore the box out of his hands, throwing it to the ground, and trampled on it until it resembled a heap of wood shavings. They began to punch his face, arms, stomach, yank at his shirt causing the buttons to fly everywhere and the pure, unworn, unlaundered whiteness turn to a deep red. Being an asthmatic child, he wasn't very strong, but the rush of adrenaline inside gave him the chance to return the blows as hard as he could.

He heard a whistle sound and then a booming voice as Joe now sat on the sidewalk, up against a brick wall with his lip bleeding, a black eye, and tears staining his face. A policeman had sent those bad boys away. Through Joe's tears and hiccups, he saw the man pick up as many pencil remnants as he could. After handing him the broken pencils, the man in the blue serge suit lifted him up and gave him his handkerchief to wipe his eyes and face. With a clean part of the cloth, Joe held it to his fat lip.

"You'll be all right, son," the policeman said in a calm voice. "Come on, I'll take you home and your mother can clean you up."

On the way, he held the officer's hand, feeling safe. No one could hurt him now, not with the giant, tough, tall policeman at his side! His mother wasn't going to like how he looked with the new shirt torn and ruined, not to mention the pencil box destroyed, the crayons that had rolled into the storm drain, and with only two broken pencils left of his birthday presents. Joe guessed he wasn't meant to have new things. The policeman talked to him, in a reassuring, yet firm voice much like his father might have done had he lived.

Someone put a damp, cool wash cloth on his forehead and then gently patted it over the rest of his face. The dream dissolved, but Joe's mind was still muddled. He heard muted voices around him. His hands throbbed as someone gently massaged a liquid over the cuts. The sting of the anti-septic hitting the open sores caused him to wince at the intensity of the sharp pain. The sound of scraping glass along with the sweep of a broom was nearby too. The hushed voices became clearer.

"Should we call his mother?" he heard Dorothy ask.

"No, she'll just worry. Joe…come on, now…wake up," he heard Ben say.

"What happened?" he croaked and cleared his throat. "Why am I on the floor?"

Before either Dorothy or Ben could utter a word, Joe glanced over at the pile of glass and food. His father's lunch pail, crushed and flattened, mingled within the large mound of ruins. His partner stood there in front of the closed refrigerator door now, holding the broom handle, with the looming heap, while Dorothy applied more iodine to his hands. He again flinched at the stinging sensation.

"It looks worse than it actually is," said Dorothy.

Joe wasn't sure if she was referring to his lacerated hands, the kitchen itself, or his own appearance sitting up against the cabinet. Food and blood stains peppered his pajamas. He was sweating profusely and sniffling as if he'd been crying. As much as he wanted to deny it, Joe knew he had been crying during this episode because his eyes were puffy. Like a kid, he wiped his nose with a somewhat clean part of his sleeve and felt relieved that his mother hadn't been here to see him like this or scold him about not using a handkerchief. All he wanted to do then was run and hide, but he couldn't. First his mother, Ben, and now Dorothy had observed what the war had done to him. He couldn't seek refuge in his bedroom with the hidden whiskey bottle. He couldn't continue to push those away who had the unfortunate circumstance of viewing his behavior.

They helped Joe stand up and had him sit down at the kitchen table. Ben sat across from him as Dorothy picked up the broom and began to sweep up the accretion of food and glass. It was everywhere. She'd empty a dustpan full of the night's remains into the metal garbage can that had been brought in from outside. Joe stared as she picked up the trodden lunch pail, the one his mother kept all these years, a link to his father and watched as it was added to the rubble.

While Joe struggled to draw up an ounce of confidence in disclosing to Ben about the war, his partner tried to lighten the mood by telling him about his son.

"We took the boy the see a Hopalong Cassidy picture a couple of months ago. For his birthday, we got him a Hoppy outfit," said Ben, pulling two Fatimas from the pack as well as a match from the book that sat on the table next to an ashtray. Lighting both of them, he passed one over to Joe.

"Did you?" he said, after taking a drag.

"Yeah, he even wanted to go to school in his Hoppy suit but Amy wouldn't let him. He threw a fit, but settled down when I told him about me growing up on the ranch in Texas."

"I'm sure he loved hearing that," he said, with a slight grin.

"I told him I learned to ride horses, rope and brand cattle before I was 13. You should've seen his eyes light up. We lived on a 140 acre ranch. My parents, three sisters, and I."

"You were their only son?"

"Yeah. I was the second oldest in the family," Ben replied, taking another puff of his cigarette. "In high school, I used to read the pulp magazines and scoff at the western serials."

"I take it you didn't study much."

"Sure I did, Joe! I knew what was going on. We would read the Saturday Evening Post about the happenings in Europe. I'd hear my parents talking at night—"

"While reading your pulp magazines."

"While reading my—No! We didn't have electricity! Now, stop interrupting."

"Okay," chuckled Joe.

"Anyway, I remember the Lusitania and then the Zimmerman Note. I was 17 when we finally got into the war that April. My parents wanted me to finish high school, but I'd try to tell them I wanted to enlist in the Army. It got to the point where I'd holler and cuss at them, telling them I was man enough to go… If only I knew then what I know now…." Ben's voice trailed off and he dropped the cigarette butt in the ashtray.

While Ben had been talking, Dorothy began to brew some coffee and went back to sweeping. The pile shrank considerably as the recollections continued.

"Ma and I didn't have any discussions until after I enlisted," explained Joe, now tapping the last of his cigarette out.

"After?"

"Being an only child living with my mother, I was classified 3A, which meant I had a choice in whether or not to go to war. For months we went back and forth about it. I brooded and she worried. Finally, I went to basic in the early spring of 1942."

"My parents finally signed those documents that allowed me to enlist. It was a blazing hot day that June when I said goodbye to them and my three sisters at the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway station. I went east to Waco, Texas where I was inducted into the Army."

They watched as Dorothy poured and brought the two coffee mugs to the table setting one in front of each of them.

"Thank you, Dot," said Joe, giving her hand a squeeze.

"This coffee's tops compared to what they have in the cafeteria at City Hall some days," replied Ben, after taking a sip. "Now where was I?"

"You were just inducted into the Army."

"Let me get that," said Ben, as he leapt out of his chair.

"I got it, Ben," said Dorothy, giving him a look. "You just sit there and have a talk with Joe."

"Just trying to help."

"You're doing enough already," she said, lowering her voice.

"Well!" he said, rubbing his hands together as he came back to the table, as Dorothy maneuvered the can onto the service porch and out the back door. "Where were we?"

"The same place you left off before. You had just been inducted into the Army."

Through the open window above the kitchen sink, they could hear her dragging the garbage can toward the garage, the sound of the padlock, and one of the doors swinging open and closing shortly thereafter. There was no need to put the cans at the curb just yet for animals to get at as garbage pick-up wasn't until this coming Wednesday morning. For nearly an hour, Ben regaled Joe about being bivouacked with 100 other young men from all over the central part of Texas for three weeks before loading up onto another train that took them to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

"This is where I had my basic training. Working on the ranch all those years, I was in tip-top shape. You couldn't say that for some of them though. We were taught hand-to-hand combat, bayonet drills—"

"Yeah, I had that too."

"Of course, but you didn't have to carry a 1903 Springfield rifle while scaling the walls, or crawling on your belly under barbed wire with live ammunition being fired above you.

"And the marches! You never forget those… The heat was unbearable," Ben paused for a brief second. "Now that I think about it, I'm going to stop complaining about the heat when we're in the office or out in the field."

"You sure do complain a lot about that."

"I'll just remember those marches and think to myself, "This is better."

Joe listened as Ben went on to reminisce about how he was a Distinguished Expert with the rifle as well as with the newest addition—the 1911 semi-automatic handgun in .45 caliber. More sardine-packed train rides in the searing heat, along with marches up the Atlantic coast. It was at that moment Ben said he'd think of those times instead when he groused about the heat while on duty. Finally, in Portland, Maine, Ben along with 28,000 other troops boarded the SS Great Northern that would take them to France. Death had preceded the trenches and battlefields for these men by way of illness, contagion, accidents, not to mention rampant seasickness.

"You couldn't always get to the railing," remarked Ben. "Luckily, I didn't have that problem."

"It was like that going to Normandy," said Joe, quietly.

"You and I were both in France, under circumstances beyond our control, over twenty-five years apart. Isn't that something?"

"Yeah, it sure is."

The room grew silent where only the ticking of the kitchen clock and hum of the refrigerator could be heard. It was 11 p.m. Dorothy had swept up the floor one more time and was now wiping off the cabinets where the beer bottle had smashed.

"You want some more coffee, Joe?" asked Ben.

"Yeah."

Ben took both of their cups and strode over to the stove and refilled them. His partner, being over six feet tall, towered over Joe. In that instant, he understood why he'd had that dream about his ninth birthday. He couldn't recall the real officer's face, but the man had been tall and robust—much like Ben. That police officer had come to the rescue and now, Ben arrived when he needed help the most. His longtime, original, and only partner was there. He'll understand; certainly Ben wouldn't derision him.

"They wouldn't let me bury Zan," said Joe, as Ben set one of the cups in front of him. "His name was Alexander, but everyone called him Zan."

"Was he the one you were searching for in your dream?" Ben set his coffee down onto the table and then eased into the chair.

"Yes."

"Why wouldn't they let you bury him?"

"About a week or so after arriving at Omaha Beach on D-Day, we went on a daytime patrol. Zan was ahead of me quite a ways. Before that, we had some down time, so he wrote his girl a letter. He always said it was her who kept him going. Each step he took upon making it to the beach would bring him closer to home, his parents and siblings, his sweetheart whom he wanted to marry when the war ended.

"Well, on that patrol, the Krauts spotted us and the shelling began. The 88s from the Tiger tanks…you never forget those. They were so powerful. It was said that by the time you heard the explosion of the shell, you were already gone. Zan didn't know. But I saw it happen. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was like the ground was coming up to meet you. That concussion was so strong. It began to rain weapons, body parts, you name it. I was frantic. Like everyone else, I dove into the ground. When the ground finally stopped shaking, the worst is afterward, hearing your buddies around you cry for their mothers, screaming in agony for a Medic. That was also deafening. Some guys just couldn't handle being in the thick of battle even though we had just gotten to France a few days before. Some didn't even make it onto the beach…

"Anyway, after that blast, I began to crawl, searching for any part of Zan I could find. I came across a rusty, old children's pail and began to put bone fragments that I thought were his inside. It might've been him, I don't know. It could've been anybody. I found one of his dog tags and put that in, too. But nothing was really there. It was like he disappeared, never existed. Then, the shelling began again.

"Sergeant Miegs…that bastard! He ripped the pail right out of my hand, and lobbed it like a grenade." Joe recalled, with a shiver, how, in the middle of that charnel house of death he was able to trace the arc of the pail as it vanished into the smoke, flying debris, and men's primal screams.

"He slapped me and said, '"Friday, he's dead! Move your ass now, or we'll both join him!'"

"From then on, I was angry. I despised that Sergeant for what he did. I know we were in the middle of a battle, but…" Joe's voice trailed off at the horrendous and shattering memory before continuing. "Zan was a police officer, too. Only he was from a small town in northern Illinois. Where he lived, they only had one officer working part-time. Can you believe that? One officer and he only worked part-time! We compared notes about our jobs and cases. After the war, we were going to visit one another. He'd introduce me to small town life and I'd show him the city. Zan must've been thinking of his girl for a split second. That's why he got it."

"That's war," said Ben. "When I came home, my nights were haunted by it. I thought, "I'm home now! Why did the war have to follow me back?" I couldn't tell anyone, of course. Just as you felt, Joe. I kept it inside, just as you have. Like I told you in the car on the way to Vegas, over time, those dreams will fade. One dream always stuck out for me though. Every soldier hates it when they're ordered to "fix bayonets." Well, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, this German soldier and I were face-to-face. It was him or me. I didn't stop to think that he was the same age as I was. A kid, really, thinking he was man enough to go to war, as I had thought. It didn't matter that he most likely had parents and siblings waiting at home for him, as I certainly did. It didn't matter to me that he once had a life before all of this fighting, as I did. At that particular moment, he was the enemy and if I didn't move fast, my war would've ended right there and I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now. My bayonet was fixed and I charged at him. Your entire life changes after you've gouged a boy in the throat with your bayonet. It was my first kill—up close with the enemy. Years after, I'd still see his face, my bayonet fixed, inching forward. That's when I'd always wake up."

This time it was Joe who lit the cigarettes and passed one along to Ben. There was that unnerving stillness again. The older war veteran and the younger one, lost for a second in their remembrances of horror. In their midst of story-telling, Dorothy had left the room. They could hear her moving about in Joe's room, closing drawers and then the taps of the bathtub run.

Joe sighed as wisps of smoke encircled the air. "They told me I was lucky that I came home intact," he said.

"Who told you that?"

"Everybody told me when I came home."

"If you ask me, no one comes back from war unscathed. It will shadow you till your dying day. People called it shell-shock when I came home and now it is called battle fatigue. Whatever it is, they just want you to go on as usual and live life as normal as possible. It can be maddening sometimes. You have your moments, but in a way, you and I are very lucky. We're not like some of them who can't lead a regular life."

"Yeah. I guess we are lucky there."

"I think our experiences shaped us into who we've become and prepared us for the worst our jobs can throw at us. We can handle a lot and not let emotion get in the way. War had done that to us."

You're right, Ben," he said, stubbing out his cigarette.

No other words were spoken. After Ben finished his cigarette, he stood up. Joe looked up at him and that's when he noticed the blood stains on his shirt.

"I didn't hurt you, Ben, did I?" He asked, now standing.

"You just punched me in the shoulder, the arm, the ribs, that's all."

As they gradually neared the front door, both knew the sacred agreement that what was said inside these four walls would stay within them.

"Thanks, Ben," said Joe, quietly.

"Yeah, okay," he replied and closed the screen door behind him before heading to his car.

Joe felt a little better now as he locked the front door and roamed down the hall toward the sound of running bath water.

Copyright © 2017 by Kristi N. Zanker