Little Bill

When I was about thirteen or fourteen years old, there was a kid we called Little Bill who lived down the street. He was freckle faced and snaggle toothed. His ears were to big and stuck out so far that I always accused him of looking like a wing nut. I don’t remember ever seeing him when he didn’t have a snotty nose.

Little Bill was the biggest pain in the butt that ever existed. He was about five years younger than the rest of us and he followed us around all the time. You couldn’t get away from him, and he wouldn’t shut up. He always wanted to know what we were doing and why. No matter what answer you gave him, he wanted more details. We did everything to get rid of him. Once I bet him he couldn’t climb to the top of this huge tree down in the woods even though I had seen him do it before. When he got to the top, we took off running and hid from him. He found us, of course, and apparently thought it was great sport. He walked up laughing, "Whutchalldoin?" We started groaning because he found us and we immediately began planning the next dirty trick to play on Little Bill.

Big Bill, Little Bill’s Daddy, had to work a lot of hours to take care of his family of four so he didn’t have as much time to spend with Little Bill as Little Bill needed. I suppose that’s why Little bill followed me around all the time. I still remember his momma hollering out the back door into the woods, "Little Bill, get yourself home before you get hurt, you can’t do everything the big boys do!"

As we got older and got driver’s licenses and cars and developed an interest in (ugh) girls, it became easier to get away from Little Bill. If we went anywhere that he could get to though, he would be there, asking questions, getting in the way and just being a general nuisance.

About the time that I graduated from high school and went in the Marines, Little Bill showed up over at the house with this little girl he wanted me to meet. She was almost as homely as Little Bill. She had red hair and freckles and was as flat chested as an ironing board. Little Bill had a pair of black slacks that was too short for him a white dress shirt a tie and a pair of dress shoes that had to have belonged to his daddy. His hair was slicked down with some kind of grease. He looked like Alfalfa. He was going on a date and wanted all the big boys to know that he was still following along behind I guess.

I went into the Marines, did four years, Vietnam, the whole bit. Got married, got a job, and settled down. Hadn’t seen or heard from Little Bill in years. Then one day I got a call from a friend.

"Didja hear about Little Bill? He asked.

"No, what’s he done now?"

My friend went on to relate the story of how Little Bill, who had followed me everywhere else, joined the Marines the day after he got out of high school, just like I did and had been sent to Vietnam. He was killed near the airbase at Danang.

It don’t matter what little Bill’s real name was. It’s one of almost 58,000 engraved on a black granite wall in Washington D.C. he could have been any one of them. Sometimes at night I can hear the echoes of his mama’s voice calling out to him, "little Bill, get yourself home before you get hurt, you can’t do everything the big boy’s do!"

I wish he had listened.

Have a nice memorial day folks

and if you have a quiet moment, you might

want to say "Thanks" to little Bill.

...Uncle Butch