The Legend of Bucket Smith
By Dan Price
August/1965
The envelope was addressed to Theodore “Bucket” Smith.
The letter inside was smudged, wrinkled, and covered in blood.
The soldier had read the letter many times, but this time, he thought it would be his last.
The soldier held on to his right elbow; his arm shook, but he managed to safely tuck the letter into a pocket in his jacket. He closed his eyes.
The medics rushed to his side. His bullet-riddled body was rushed from the edge of a muddy riverbank into the helicopter. He heard the sound of the blades rotating above him as the pilot pulled back on the lever. The aircraft disappeared into the night sky. Bucket remembers the letter and little else.
And it was just as well.
Chapter 1
March/1966
"Bucket, your taxi is out front," the woman said as she stuck her head through the hotel room doorway. "Don't forget to drop off those keys and pay me fifty bucks."
Bucket Smith had spent three days in the rat-infested hotel, and that was the most words the woman, Phyllis, had strung together on his behalf.
He had the fifty bucks. No problem. In fact, he still had enough money to get him home. How he would handle things once he got there was another matter.
Bits and pieces of information about his past would fade in and out of his mind.
The doctors and nurses had done their part, releasing what they had on Theodore “Bucket” Smith. Still, even then, it left him with more questions than answers.
What he did know was his age. He was 25 years old. He had seen his share of duty in Vietnam. He had been in a coma. He had come back from the dead, and he had most of his memory back, even though his thoughts included some nightmarish flashbacks.
But he had the letter, and he was on his way home.
Bucket was three thousand miles from home. His ticket showed a transfer in Memphis and again in Albuquerque, but once he settled in his seat, he figured he’d have some quiet time to gather his thoughts and prepare for what was ahead of him. It would be much more peaceful than the taxi ride he had just taken.
“Call me, Clyde,” the New York cab driver had said to him.
And that was just the beginning of the one-sided, ongoing conversation. A good hour had passed before the cab driver finally pulled into the train station. Clyde had quickly held out his hand and waited anxiously for his money.
Bucket recalled the taxi driver‘s parting words. “Nice talking to you...what did you say your name is?”
The soldier cracked a smile. He had finally joined the conversation.
“Bucket...Bucket Smith...thanks for the ride. Say hello to the family.”
Bucket hustled through the lobby and headed for the boarding area. He had just five minutes to spare. The taxi ride should have taken just under thirty minutes. Bucket figured old Clyde had pocketed an extra twenty bucks.
Once aboard, Bucket threw down his duffel bag and quickly found his aisle seat. He still had Clyde on his mind.
Bucket shook his head. He knew more about Clyde and his family than he did about his own.
Clyde’s last name was Barrow. He was born and raised in New Jersey. He had six children, four of whom were still living at home. He had a wife who was the best cook in the world and a Yankee fan.
The train started to pull out of the station. The seat next to him was empty. No, Clyde. Bucket dosed off. He had already succumbed to the dull, repetitious sound beneath him.
*****
June of 1941
For Maggie Smith, the day began like any other. The sun rose over the mountains and lit up the small town of Cordes Junction.
The sky was blue. The clouds, a fluffy white with a mixture of gray, all moved slowly from north to south, making their way toward Black Canyon City and then onto the northern edge of Phoenix.
When the sun disappeared behind a cloud, the temperature would drop quickly, but as the clouds drifted away from town, the sun would return, allowing the warmer, more comfortable air to return.
Maggie shaded her eyes. She removed a strand of her blond hair from her face. She figured there was just enough of a breeze for the clothes to dry. She kicked the laundry basket forward, took the two wooden pins out of her mouth, and attached her summer dress to the wired clothesline.
She suddenly heard a noise coming from the front of the house.
She heard a thump, the rattling of her wooden porch, a car door slamming shut, followed by the screech of tires and the roar of an engine as the automobile sped away.
Maggie dropped the laundry basket and rushed to the front of the house. She caught only the plate number on the back of the vehicle and nothing else. Why she did that, God only knows, she thought, as she sealed the number AZ64943 in the far corner of her mind.
What she saw next would change her life forever.
She looked down, and on the porch sat a metal bucket. The bucket moved.
Maggie covered her hands over her face and moved closer. A tiny baby squirmed inside.
She picked up the baby and held the infant in her arms. The baby was wrapped in a blanket. A single bottle, half full of milk, was the only item left in the bucket.
No note. Nothing.
She glanced at the child. It was a boy! She checked his head, his arms, and his feet. He was a beautiful boy.
“Why?” She muttered to herself. She yelled out. “Who could do such a thing?” She looked up the dirt road. She saw nothing but dust. Maggie held the baby tight, pushed open the screen door, and rushed into the house. She picked up the phone and began dialing for help. She stopped and slowly put the phone down. Her mind was racing.
“No...no,” she yelled out.
All she ever wanted was a family. A loving husband, a child, a happy home, and a family to love, but those dreams were shattered years ago when Herman walked out the front door and never returned.
Herman, a hard-luck gambler and a sucker for an inside straight draw or, better yet, a “river card” which would change four suited cards into a hand-winning flush, was drawn to the poker tables and to those hidden rooms in the back of a tavern where money was to be made if...and, it was always a big if, with Herman, the cards would fall his way.
Maggie had watched Herman drive away down the same dirt road...the same dusty road she was now looking at.
After years of loneliness, a beautiful baby boy is suddenly left at her doorstep. Maggie decided, right then and there... she would never be alone again.
*****
Bucket squirmed in his seat and opened his eyes. A gray-haired black man was standing over him. The man held out his hand and, in a deep voice, said, “Ticket, please.”
“Sure thing,” Bucket said as he reached inside his coat pocket and handed the man the ticket stub.
“I see you have a transfer in Memphis. Don’t miss it.”
Don’t worry, Sir. I’m heading home. It’s been six years. I don’t plan to miss the train.”
“Looks like you have about eight hours in Memphis. Don’t see how you can miss it. I’ll give you a nudge in a few hours when the dinner car opens up. Until then, get some shut-eye.”
Bucket thanked the man and went back to sleep. Within minutes, Bucket was back in the jungle. It was that God-awful dream again. Instead of hearing the screeching sound of the railroad track below, he heard the blast of gunfire as bullets sizzled past his body.
Joey Henderson dove into the foxhole and crawled quickly to the soldier in charge. “Sergeant Smith, we can’t hold them off anymore!”
“Yes, we can, and we will,” Bucket yelled back. “The air support is on its way. Stay close to me, Joey.” “Where are the others?”
“About 200 yards to the right of us. There are no more than a dozen of us left. The rest are all gone, Sergeant Smith!”
Bucket checked his watch. “One minute to go, and then our boys are going to blast that ridge. Keep your head down.”
Suddenly, the night sky lit up, and the shadowy ridge to the north turned into an inferno. Then they came one after another. Bucket and Joey unleashed every bit of ammo they had left. What seemed like an hour was one minute and forty-five seconds.
Bucket looked down at his shattered watch. Less than two minutes of hell, and it was over.
Bucket felt the pain first in his right leg, then in his left shoulder, and finally, the worst of all, the ringing just above his right ear.
“Joey, hand me the radio.”
“Joey!”
Henderson was gone.
His lifeless body curled up in the far corner of the foxhole. “Medic!” Bucket cried out.
One hour passed...maybe two. Sergeant Theodore “Bucket” Smith slowly closed his eyes as dust blanketed the sky above and the helicopter hovered overhead.
Chapter 2
Maggie would need help. She had only one person she could trust. Mildred Dunworthy lived a mile down the road. She was in her late 60s but a brilliant woman who had spent a lifetime surviving on her own. She was artistic, skilled with her hands, and had a knack for transforming small amounts of clay into beautiful pots. She also had a green thumb, and her gardening skills were the talk of the county.
Mildred made a few bucks selling her goods. Every Sunday, she would drive to nearby Prescott to sell her pottery and produce. It was a hard life. She was a survivor. She had to go against the establishment more than once. She might have even broken the law at one time or another. She was a tough woman and the only person that Maggie could count on.
Maggie had no idea how she would bring up this beautiful child. Money was tight, and she could barely take care of herself. She grabbed the keys to the Dodge. She overturned the basket of flowers on the coffee table and wrapped the baby in a blanket. She gently placed the child in the basket and rushed out the front door.
Mildred was working in her garden. She was very pleased with how her vegetables were doing. The unexpected desert showers of the past few weeks had certainly helped to spruce up her handiwork. The Phoenix Gazette had visited the house recently and taken pictures of her monster tomatoes, which were featured in last Sunday’s edition.
The woman reached for her back. The sharp, pulsating pain that ran down the middle of her spine and her right leg meant it was time to quit. That was enough hoeing for one day, and besides, someone had just pulled up in front of the house. She tightened her straw hat, put down the hoe, and headed for the front of the house to see what all the commotion was about.
“Mildred, I need help,” yelled Maggie as she rushed to the side of the old woman.
“What is it, child? What’s wrong?”
“It’s a baby, Mildred, it’s a baby!”
So it began.
Two women and a baby. Maggie and Mildred put their wants and their own needs aside. The child who came out of nowhere became their priority. They pooled their money. They concocted a story that would fly for a few months...maybe a few years — a story that would keep the grocery store clerk, the gossipy hairdresser, and even the local sheriff from asking too many questions.
Maggie kept her job at Camp Verde. Five days a week, she would drive to the Johnson Ranch. Wealthy rancher Albert “Stoney” Johnson, a widower with four young children at home, owned 100,000 acres of prime grazing land on the outskirts of Camp Verde. It was a forty-mile drive to the entrance of the ranch.
It was a long drive for Maggie, but Stoney paid her well. Maggie was a 9-to-5 nanny. She would come home exhausted but still dig deep within herself and find a way to take care of her son.
Mildred would handle the babysitting chores during the day while Maggie was away. She continued to work on her pottery and her garden when the baby would allow it.
Maggie called the baby Bucket. After a few years, he became known throughout the county as Maggie’s adopted son, Theodore “Bucket” Smith. No one questioned the nickname. The legend of Bucket Smith grew, not because he was left in a bucket on Maggie’s doorstep. Instead, the two women were able to keep the secret of the baby’s arrival to themselves, but the legend grew anyway, thanks to a gift Bucket received from Maggie on his eighth birthday: a basketball.
Bucket took it from there…
He borrowed one of Mildred’s tomato barrels, cut a hole in the bottom of it, and attached it to a metal pole in the backyard. He shot baskets day and night. He practiced and practiced. He became so good that you could hardly hear the leather ball scrape the barrel.
There were times he’d have to replace the barrel, but that was no problem. He’d rush up to Mildred’s and get another one.
He was never without his basketball. On Sundays, Maggie and Mildred would take the young man to church, and after the services, they’d head to Prescott to sell Mildred’s wares. Bucket would always be at their side, following along with that bouncing ball of his. Maggie drew the line: No basketball in the church pew.
Bucket kept his ball in the car. “Enough is enough,” Maggie would say to him.
By the time Bucket entered his middle school years, the basketball had become an extension of his right hand. He was so good that he could dribble around and through the other kids — and some of them on the outdoor courts on the weekends were three, maybe four years older than him. His junior high team never lost a game.
Of course, Bucket stood out. The baby in the bucket had grown. At the age of fourteen, Bucket measured six feet one inch tall and weighed a shade under 200 pounds.
Of course, it wasn’t long before Jules Jones came a calling. Jones was the basketball coach at Cordes Junction High School. He was used to winning titles. His teams had won five state titles in the last six years. Jones had been coaching for 30 years, and he was just about to announce his retirement when he heard about a tall, burly kid named Bucket, who lived at the edge of the county line.
One day, Jones decided to visit Maggie. The coach never forgot that day. “The Smith place was thirteen miles from town. You had to take Clay Road and head north for a few miles. Then, you’d turn on Cherry Farms Road and head east to the last house on the left. The drive was worth it.
The first time I saw Bucket, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” the coach had once said to the Cordes Weekly Examiner. “Bucket was in Maggie’s backyard, shooting baskets, nailing every shot into a wooden basket. He never missed!”
The following September, Bucket enrolled at Cordes Junction High. Jones took a liking to Bucket. Not because of his basketball skills — although that was an advantage, but simply because Maggie had raised a young man who had the makings of a leader. Jones once said, “He was like a drop in a bucket. He came out of nowhere, plopped down in my office, and made an everlasting impression on me.”
Little did Jones know how close he was to the truth.
Four years later, Bucket would leave school with a diploma and offers to a dozen colleges. He ended up averaging thirty points a game at Cordes High and broke every school record imaginable.
Unfortunately, his mother had health problems, and money was very tight. Mildred had passed away last winter, and Bucket needed to take action quickly to help out financially. Going away to college wasn’t the answer. So, he did what he had to do.
He joined the army.
It was a sad day when Bucket left for boot camp. Thank goodness Maggie had Bucket’s high school sweetheart, Julia Childress, by her side at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. Just a few months ago, she had lost her beloved Mildred, and now Bucket would be going away to Vietnam. They had not been apart in 18 years —18 years since she pulled him out of that oversized metal bucket and held him in her arms.
Maggie would have Julia comfort her while Bucket was away. After all, they were almost family. Bucket and Julia were engaged to be married. Maggie hugged him and said her final goodbyes.
Julia put her arms around Bucket and kissed him. “You come back to us. I love you,” she said as Bucket boarded the plane. The two women watched as the airliner took off and headed east over the Superstition Mountains.
*****
Bucket left the dining car and went back to his seat. Memphis was still a few hours away. He dozed off again, and he heard a different sound this time. It was not gunfire or an explosion. It was not the soft voice of Nurse Johansson. Nor was it the sounds of the wheels as they clanged against the steel track below.
It was a whistle. A referee’s whistle.
“Number 23, you’re pushing off...Number 20, blue...you’re on the line,” roared the man in the black and white stripes. “Son, you’re on the line...it’s a one and one.”
The crowd yelled in unison, “Bucket! Bucket! Bucket!”
The tall boy toed the line. He took one look at the basket and calmly sank the first and second free throws. The crowd erupted. The inbounds pass went the length of the court and bounced against the wall as the buzzer sounded, ending the game. The boy they called Bucket was lifted onto the shoulders of his teammates.
The scoreboard read: Cordes Junction 82, Camp Verde 80.
Bucket’s teammates lowered him to the floor, and the hero bolted into the arms of the blond-haired, smiling cheerleader.
.
He waved to the crowd, looked down at his sweetheart, and said, “Julia, we did it!”
Bucket opened his eyes. The train conductor had put his hand on Bucket’s right shoulder. “Hey, soldier. Memphis in twenty minutes.”
Bucket surmised the Memphis train station still looked the same. He threw his duffel bag over his shoulder, looked around the lobby, and eyed a coffee shop just to the left of the newspaper stand.
Six years ago, he had stopped for lunch at the same coffee shop on the way to boot camp. He was a boy then. He was a man now.
Bucket reached into his pocket, pulled out some change, and paid the newsstand attendant for the daily paper. He then found a seat at the coffee shop counter and ordered a cup of coffee, two eggs over medium, bacon, and toast.
He glanced over the front page of the paper. The headline read: U.S. to Send More Troops to Vietnam. He stared at the article. He did not need to read past the first paragraph. He glanced around the coffee shop. Three soldiers sat in the corner. He assumed their orders were tucked away in their duffel bags.
A sadness came over him as he turned the stool around and concentrated on the dish of food the waitress had just slid in front of him. He picked up the inside section of the paper and read the headline on the sports page. It read: Texas Western Miners shock Kentucky in NCAA Final.
He read about an all-black starting five out of El Paso, Texas, a team that shocked the world by beating a heavily favored college basketball team.
He muttered to himself, 'Times have changed. It’s about time.’
Bucket had spent the last six years battling to stay alive alongside his fellow soldiers — black, white...no no matter the color of their skin, as they fought together for survival in a land far from home. A strange land and certainly very different from the Arizona desert, thousands of miles from the beautiful sunrises and the gorgeous evening sunsets that he was used to.
He didn’t understand all the hatred in the world. Why should it matter what color you are? He knew times hadn’t changed that much, especially in the South and especially in places like Memphis, where it was common for segregated bathrooms in airports and train stations.
Bucket shook his head. Hell, it happened in his own state, on the basketball court, before and after a game, at restaurants, and at hotels; the hatred was everywhere.
Bucket eyed the black child at the end of the counter. He was putting away a stack of pancakes. Sitting next to him, his mother made sure her child was getting more in his mouth than on the floor.
He would never forget Freddie Greathouse, his friend and starting guard on his high school team. It was an away game in a small town near the New Mexico border.
Bucket rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t believe he was having breakfast in Memphis, and his thoughts had wandered back seven years to Freddie and a come-from-behind win in Solomonville.
Freddie had scored 20 points that night. Bucket recalls it was an off-night for him, just six points, but he did have 14 offensive boards and kept feeding the ball to Freddie. It should have been a night that Freddie would remember for a long time.
Instead, after the game, the local restaurant forced Freddie to take his burger and fries to the bus. He ate alone. Freddie remembered the night all right, but for all the wrong reasons.
Bucket came out of his trance. He took a drink of water and signaled the waitress for the bill. He needed to let his thoughts subside for a while. He was getting better at absorbing it all...one minute, his thoughts would take him to a foxhole in Vietnam; the next would take him to his teenage days on the basketball court...then to his mother, and then to Julia. The puzzle was almost complete. Little did he know, he would return home just in time for another one to begin.
The train ride through western Arkansas, the Texas panhandle, and the dusty, wind-swept terrain of New Mexico seemed long as he fought off muscle spasms and the aches and pains that accompany a man of his size. His body ached, and the only exercise he could count on was his trips back and forth to the dining car.
By the time Bucket reached the eastern edge of Arizona, he was ready to jump off the train and hitchhike the rest of the way. He knew he was getting closer...the tumbleweeds bouncing across the desert floor in the early morning light were all he needed to see. He was within five hundred miles of home.
Bucket looked at his watch and quickly checked the time. He was no longer in the Eastern time zone. He was out west, and the sun was coming up. Bucket wrestled with his body, trying to find a comfortable position. Quickly, his thoughts focused on his mother and Julia.
.
Julia’s letters had kept him up to date on his mother’s condition.
The real kicker came just two weeks before he entered the foxhole for the final time. The cancer had spread, and Doc Wilber Harrison, Smith’s family doctor for more than three decades, had advised Bucket of the progression of his mother’s illness through a series of unfortunate and very short phone conversations.
Bucket stared out the window. He could make out a mountain range off to the south. He estimated the mountains to be no more than eighty miles away, beyond which lay Mexico.
Thousands of miles south was another land, Vietnam. He had finally separated himself from the past. His memory had returned. His future was ahead of him. He needed to get home.
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