Mathis was a pleasant and reserved classmate in my Stenography class at Uncle Ben’s Rest Home.1 Mathis was black, somewhat quiet and an introvert who rarely hung around the rest of us. Everyone left him alone except me. I felt empathy for my classmate simply because no one tried to befriend him. I tried to engage Mathis in conversation a couple of times, and his answers to my questions were brief and very direct. I caught up with Mathis walking back from school one cold, snowy day. “Mathis,” I asked. “I heard you were drafted. How’d that come about?”
“I wasn't drafted. I enlisted. What else you wanna know?” he replied curtly.
“Okay,” I added. “What were you doing when you enlisted?”
“Trying to avoid the draft. What else you wanna know?”
“Okay,” is all I could come back with. We walked the two or three blocks to our barracks without any more conversation.
I was in the barracks one weekend, and it was miserably cold. Some eight or ten guys wrapped in blankets were drinking and playing poker. Our barracks was heated with a furnace which still used coal in those days. Several times a day a contractor would stop by and shovel coal into the furnace. A dump truck would stop by each barracks on some schedule and fill that barracks coal square cement bin of about ten feet by ten feet. It had a cemented wall on three sides by the entrance to the furnace double doors. The fourth side was open to allow the delivery of coal. When the coal bin got empty or when the contractor didn’t show to shovel coal into our furnace, we lived in a cold miserable barracks.
I could not stand the cold barracks, so I decided to go to the school and type some letters home. Our classroom on the second floor of the US Army Adjutant General’s School building was always well heated in winter and kept cool in summer. Mathis' desk was in the middle row of desks to my left right across the aisle from me. Mine was in the right row of desks. I was surprised to find Mathis also typing letters home. He was at a loss. He wanted to impress this one girl with whom he was deeply in love with, but he just could not find the words to express his love for her. “Well, Mathis, if that’s your only problem, perhaps I can help,” I offered.
“Now, just how can you possibly help?” asked Mathis.
“Well, Mathis, you have a girlfriend but not the words. I have the words but not a girlfriend. Tell me more about her. I’ll type a draft for you to work with. Then you can send it to her. And all you have to do for me is buy me beer and pizza.”
Mathis was lukewarm to my idea but proceeded to tell me some things about her that made her particularly adoring to him. After a couple of starts, I handed Mathis my final draft. He made some token changes then typed it final and addressed the envelope. He put a stamp on it and began getting ready to leave planning to drop the letter off in the mailroom on his way back to the barracks.
“Mathis, I wouldn’t do that!” I cautioned. “Mail doesn’t move on weekends, anyway, so just wait till Monday to drop it in the mailbox. That will give you time to make any changes you might think of.”
We left the classroom together without me ever typing my letters home. We stopped by the club, and Mathis bought me my beer and pizza. Mathis’ letter worked like a charm! That girl wasted no time replying to Mathis and relaying her previously unspoken love for him. Mathis now had a problem. She expected the same level of wordsmithing with which he had impressed her; however, Mathis’ artistic writing skills were not yet fully developed. He was dependent on me! It got to the point that Mathis would just hand me her letters and I would draft a reply for him to finalize. Mathis was slowly coming out of his shell, and we became good friends.
Mathis asked me, “So, Tony, how and where do you find girlfriends?”
“Well, Mathis,” I answered. “I don’t look for girlfriends around here. I can’t afford them. The few dollars I have left over after sending money home I will not spend on girlfriends.
“But you have girlfriends back home, don’t you?”
“I did, Mathis,” I replied. “But they are steadily disappearing. The ones I cared enough about are already engaged or married. What about you, Mathis? How and where do you find your girlfriends?”
“I used to go to fancy hotels back home in Ohio and spend time in their restaurants or clubs. Just sit with an empty seat next to you. You’d be surprised how many gals you can pick up there if you dress up with coat and tie. Or grab a newspaper and sit in the lobby by the entrance. Eventually, some lonely traveling lady will strike up a conversation with you.”
I told Mathis that I'm not one to hang out in fancy hotel restaurants or clubs.
When I tired of beer and pizza, we would go to the snack bar where Mathis would pay for burger and fries. Mathis never complained, but it started getting weird when his girlfriend started getting pretty personal about what she was going to do to Mathis on his next leave home. I tried to end my ghost-writing arrangement, but Mathis was truly desperate. It was only a few more weeks of the stenography course left, and I had already gotten orders for Vietnam, so I agreed to continue my ghost-writing to the end.
"You know, Tony, I should be good at putting down the English word as you do. Dad's a litigation lawyer and Mom teaches English literature at the state university. But I was always busy playing around. I only started college to avoid the draft, but when it came right down to it, neither school nor the military were in my cards. Parents were distraught when I quit school and joined up."
"Well at least you had a choice," I offered. "There was no way I could've started college. I had neither the smarts nor the money to go."
"Actually," said Mathis, "I should've stayed in school. I regret that now, but I didn't think this whole thing through. Of course it's too darn late now."
Unknowingly, that girl had fallen in love with the false image I created. Mathis got his orders to Vietnam probably a week before completing the stenography class. I never saw Mathis again after leaving Uncle Ben's Rest Home, but I do hope my ghost-writing provided him more than just a meaningless gratification during his leave.
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