Today Guadalcanal is a quiet, sleeping place of great beauty. It was not always so.
The Story
To me—and to many like me—Guadalcanal has a significance that is hard to explain.
Everyone who writes is besieged by people who report breathlessly, “I know the most wonderful story! But unfortunately I can’t write. So I’ll tell you the plot. Then you can dress it up and we’ll both become rich!”
Writers learn to avoid such enthusiasts. The amateur’s ready-made plot is invariably a pathetic chaos. To infuse meaning into its jumbled accidents would require not a writer but a magician.
One hot, sticky evening on Guadalcanal a stranger sidled up to me and said, “I been lookin’ for you. Got a wonderful story to tell you. Write it down proper and we’ll both be famous.” And he revealed such a story as haunts me still.
At first I was disposed to flee this man. He was tall, cadaverous, completely bald and possessed of deep-set eyes. He was, I judged, about sixty and he bore the marks of having lived in the tropics for many years. His toque sat on the back of his head. He wore no socks, and his pants were soiled where he had wiped much sweat from his palms.
As I started to leave he grabbed my arm and said, “Wait! You haven’t heard the story.”
He led me, protesting, to the island bar, from whose verandah I could see The Slot and distant Savo and the dusty huts of Honiara. My guide leaned forward until his face was close to mine and said, “M’name’s Larcom. Been in these islands forty years. And, Mister, I have a story to tell you …”
“Drink?” I asked.
“Say! I’d like that!” But he frowned and leaned closer, confiding, “The Governor put me on rations. I can’t have any more today. But if you …”
“I’ll have a whiskey,” I called to the Malaita boy behind the bar. He brought it and set it down impartially between Larcom and me. Then he smiled, showing his immense white teeth.
Larcom tossed the whiskey down, shivered, and looked about him surreptitiously. Then he whispered, “There’s a valley on this island. Haunted.” He paused dramatically to study the effect of this cataclysmic news. I stared at him as if waiting for him to continue.
This unnerved him. He had expected a more violent reaction, so he began again: “There’s a valley on Guadalcanal and during the war there were some queer stories told about it. But, Mister, nobody ever told the real story.” Again he paused theatrically, watching me carefully. This time I had to show some reaction.
“What’s it about?”
“Gold.”
“I’ve heard a dozen stories about lost gold mines.”
Larcom grabbed my arm again and cried, “Yes! But this one isn’t lost!”
“You know where it is?” I asked.
“No,” he said triumphantly, leaning back to enjoy my confusion. After a moment he pushed his lean face into mine and said, “It’s not lost and I don’t know where it is because, like I said, this is a made-up story.”
I had to admit that Larcom had produced at least a striking approach and I ordered him another whiskey. Knowing that he had me on the hook, he sipped his drink slowly and leered at me. Then he leaned back expansively and stared out across the purple sea lanes that led to Tulagi. I was prepared for some astonishing yarn, but what Larcom told me was merely another of the dreadful romances cooked up by people who never read much when they were young. It was a complete waste of time.
It seems an American Marine was shot down in 1942 and after wandering through the Guadalcanal jungle stumbled upon a haunted valley whose mountains gleamed with gold. Back at his base he organized a searching party, but he was never again able to find that golden valley.
There was a lot more to the yarn, but it got worse. Finally Larcom reached the part where the frenzied Marine flew his plane into a mountainside, and as he burned to death the valley shone like gold. Larcom’s face glowed in ecstasy and his whole body was in a palpitation of excitement as he waited my verdict.
“That’s quite a story,” I said, and he leaned far forward, gripping my arm again.
“You’ll write it all down?” he asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid not.” The electric tension in the old planter vanished, and I was both sorry and ashamed. “It’s not in my line,” I explained.
“What do you mean?” he cried. “You’re an American. That flier was one, too.”
“But that doesn’t mean I could write the story.”
“Look, Mister!” he whispered in bitter forcefulness. “This is the greatest story ever happened on Guadalcanal. And you’re goin’ to write it.”
“You don’t understand,” I laughed. “To write a book a man has got to feel the story himself.”
Larcom leaned back astonished. “You mean you don’t feel this story? I must of left part of it out!” And he leaned forward breathlessly to repeat the whole painful yarn.
Much as I hated to, I interrupted him and rose to leave the bar. This so startled him that he moved with me, as if he were a mechanical doll attached to my shoulders. “Mister!” he pleaded. “You don’t understand. I’m givin’ you the entire plot. Complete. All you have to do,” he said deprecatingly, “is write it down.”
I now realized that I had to get rid of this monomaniac and actually left the pleasant bar. He paddled along behind me and said hurriedly, “I understand. I know you artist blokes. You’re not in the mood yet. So I’m goin’ to help you.”
“Mr. Larcom,” I protested.
He shook his long hand in my nose. “No mister with me! Plain Larcom, because we’re goin’ to see a great deal of each other. While I’m helpin’ you with the book, that is.”
Firmly I said, “I’m not going to write it.”
With equal firmness Larcom insisted, “But you are! Tomorrow morning I’ll call for you and I’ll take you in to that valley. And when you see how mysterious …”
Again I protested, but he would not listen. He said I was to look for him next morning at the Chinese restaurant. As he left me in the roadway he looked deeply confident. “When you see this valley,” he called back, “the story will come to you in a flash.”
I returned to the bar, pondering the common belief that stories are born “in a flash.” A good story is the result of painstaking artistry, as Rachel Field knew when she said that a writer is precisely like a master cook. He has many kettles simmering at the back of the stove, when for some unaccountable reason one of them begins to boil. That’s the kettle he works on. But the others are still back there simmering with their precious complement of herbs and vegetables and sturdy meat. For no cook should ever rush into a kitchen and expect, unprepared, to make a tasty dish.
But as I sat there thinking of the many pots simmering on the back of my stove—and never one near to a decent boil—an elderly man in a black alpaca coat came and sat with me. He was a government man, long in service, and he had the warm face of a person who has never had enough power to hurt others.
“My apologies,” he said. “Dennison. I’m the Colony’s financial agent.” He started to buy drinks, but I replied that since I was the intruder here he must let me catch this round, to which he readily assented, for salaries on Guadalcanal are dismally low and the cost of beer is high.
“I wouldn’t intrude, you know,” he said, licking the beer off his moustache, one of those shaggy English affairs that make one think irresistibly of scissors, “but I must explain that frightful bore Larcom.”
“He’s rather insistent,” I agreed.
“Jolly good! Insistent! Yes, that’s the word for Larcom.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Everything. A recluse. Lives inland on some godforsaken stretch of copra land. Eternally feuding with the government. Hates the government.”
“Why?”
“Always something. Right now he’s feuding about his native boy Vata. We know damned well Vata killed two men on Florida, but Larcom substantiates a ridiculous alibi. So what can we do?”
&nb
sp; “Is he harmful?” I asked.
“Not exactly. Just a bloody nuisance. Was he pestering you with his novel? I thought so!”
“He wants to show me the valley. Tomorrow.”
Dennison laughed and I felt a real sense of brotherhood with this elderly servant of the Empire. “If you want to win our gratitude,” he began.
“Who’s ours?”
“The government’s. I think the Governor would give you a rather handsome reward if you’d take Larcom into his haunted valley and jolly well lose him.”
“I’ve no intention of going anywhere with that Ancient Mariner.”
“Ancient Mariner! That’s very good. The Governor will enjoy that,” and Dennison insisted upon ordering another round. “I know you’ll pardon the intrusion,” he said gently, “but Americans often have such strange ideas of we Britons. I didn’t want you to think that Larcom …” He started to chuckle and sipped the beer off his moustache. “Ancient Mariner!”
I had forgotten Larcom by next morning and was well into an essay I was writing on island governments when there was a sharp knock at my door. It was the planter, his toque leaning back on his head, his dirty white pants insolently drooping and his shirt barely buttoned.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
“When?”
“At breakfast. We made a deal.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The valley. Look.”
He pointed down a dusty road that led from my shack to the waterfront, and there, some forty yards offshore, rode a small schooner. “We’re waiting for you,” he said.
I was about to protest that I could not disappear on a silly business about a haunted island when he pointed again, and for the first time I saw, in a single gaze, as it were, gaunt Larcom, his schooner riding in The Slot, and the dark jungle. In that moment I had a flash of premonition that here was a story, some immense yarn of tropical life that would illuminate Guadalcanal for all the thousands of Americans who had served on that bitter island; for I knew that although stories are never born in a flash, the cord of meaning which ties a story together may be so discovered.
“I’ll be right with you,” I said.
The fiery planter—you could sense that he would have to be at war with any government—led me down to Honiara’s wharf and into a filthy dinghy manned by a huge native in khaki shorts.
“This is Vata,” Larcom said. “Good man.”
All that day we sailed eastward, keeping in sight the brooding mountains where so many battles had been fought. Dark, ominous Vata conned the boat and at dusk we hove to at the edge of a jungle that crept down to the sea. As night fell we could hear forest noises and the distant splash of flying fish as they dipped back into the sea.
Then it came. Larcom pulled a chair close to mine and said, “I’ve been thinkin’ about our story all day. I see why it didn’t command your interest. No sex.”
I must have groaned aloud, for he snapped his fingers and cried, “There’s a way we can handle that! Because in the jungle this Marine meets a white princess.”
“How did she get there?” I asked.
“That’s what you’ve got to figure out,” he said.
I changed the subject. “How did you start your feud with the government?” I asked.
“All governments are composed of idiots,” he snapped impatiently, eager to be back on the trail of his jungle princess, white.
“Then why do you stay here?” I pressed.
“It’s my home,” he said with some dignity. “I’ve been away from here only three times since I arrived. Once to Noumea; that’s French, you know. Once to Sydney. Once to Bougainville, for you Johnnies. Why should I leave my home because the Colonial Office sends out one broken-down hack after another to torment me?”
He started to disclose further elaborations of his plot but I begged weariness and said, “I want to be fresh in the morning. To see your haunted valley.”
He failed to catch the irony of my comment and cried, “And when you see it, Mister, our story will write itself!”
In the morning Larcom, giant Vata and I plunged into the jungle and pushed our sticky way inland for several miles. Larcom was much older than I, but he had twice the energy. Sometimes he would run back to keep me posted as to our progress, and finally we reached a most ordinary jungle clearing lined by tall trees, framed to the south by hills which might conceivably be termed mountains, and noticeable for a complete lack of moving air. Could this be the breathless valley that had so captivated Larcom?
I looked at him and it was apparent that he was as inspired as Byron had been by the valleys of Greece. In real agitation he called, “The big scene comes when your American stumbles into this mysterious valley!”
He continued to babble instructions as to how I must write the book and I concluded reluctantly that I had wasted two days on a complete bore. The flash I had experienced the morning before had been misleading. There was no story in Larcom.
Then I saw Vata at some distance preparing lunch and I said, “You stay here, Larcom. I’ll study the valley from over there.”
“I’ll come along and show you where he meets the princess!”
“No!” I shouted. Then I added, “I want to see if I could spot you at this distance.”
Like an obedient bird dog he froze, the gaunt figure of a tropical planter, and I sat down near Vata wondering how I could speed my return to Honiara when the black murderer said something calculated to send me, like a bloodhound, back to the trail of Larcom’s story.
The huge native was trying to knock the top off a can of bully beef and I handed him my knife. As he gave it back we both happened to look at an odd clearing where the valley seemed to penetrate into the jungle. It looked like the nave of an immense cathedral and I was about to remark on this when Vata said, “That where Master Larcom he meet the Jew.”
Now this last word was so unusual for a savage like Vata to use that I dropped the knife. “What did you say?” I asked.
“The Jew,” he explained, recovering the knife.
“What Jew?”
“The American Jew,” Vata said.
Then try as I might, I could get no more from the sullen man. I looked across the valley and there stood Larcom, erect and motionless as I had left him. I started back to question him about this astonishing news of Vata’s, but the native leaped in front of me and whispered, “Please, Master. You not tell Master Larcom I say anything.”
“But …”
“Please!” Vata repeated, and he stood above me like a dark giant, my knife in his hands. I agreed and he summoned Larcom.
“Could you see me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s important, because the Marine has got to see the Princess.”
Back on the schooner I had to use all my ingenuity to parry Larcom’s demand that I make a decision about his novel. It was obvious that I could do nothing with the trash he offered, yet it was equally obvious that in his ascetic frame he carried a story of immense proportions.
So I said, “What’s this about a trip to Bougainville?”
“Most of us old hands served up there during the war.”
“What did you do?”
“Only what dozens of others did.”
“What?”
He became acutely embarrassed and bit by bit I developed the truth. He had been a coastwatcher. “Were you ever in tight spots?” I asked.
“Me? It was my job to avoid tight spots.”
At this point I was startled by the sudden appearance of Vata, who thrust his hand into my face. I saw a small blue box, its edges frayed, but as I reached for it Larcom leaped up and knocked it onto the deck.
A medal rolled out. An American medal awarded for great bravery. It lay there in the dying sunlight, its bright ribbons shimmering like the sound of trumpets. When I picked it up I saw that the box contained a letter, signed by Admiral Chester Nimitz.
“Bougainville?” I asked.
“About fifteen of us got them, I guess,” Larcom said diffidently. He started to stuff the medal back into the box when he suddenly caught his breath and cried, “Hell!” He reached out and poked black Vata a tremendous blow in the ribs, then slapped him on the shoulder. “This medal is his!” he explained, kicking it along the deck toward the native. “The Americans handed medals out like cigarettes.”
He made me move far forward, away from Vata, and elaborated his plot. “The Marine will be from Brooklyn,” he said.
“Why Brooklyn?” I asked.
“I saw lots of movies durin’ the war. Your men enjoyed it when the actors were from Brooklyn. But you’ll have to help me with the dialogue. I’ve never been to Brooklyn.”
“Neither have I.”
In the growing dusk I could see Larcom’s jaw drop. “You haven’t been to Brooklyn?” he asked in a whisper.
“No.”
There was a long silence, but the man’s ingenuity could not be dampened. “Tell you what! We’ll make him from Chicago. Son of an important gangster.”
“I’ve never been to Chicago, either.”
This stopped him for a moment, after which he rasped, “You ever been to Texas?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he snorted. “I noticed they always laughed at Texas, too.”
Abruptly I asked, “What were you doing in Noumea?”
The answer was spontaneous, “Business.”
I told him that I had to have some time to think about this story, and he understood that, leaving me completely alone the rest of the night; but when I wakened on deck next morning before sunrise, there was Larcom, staring down at me, his face angular and contorted in the weird light.
“What do you think?” he inquired.
I had to tell him the truth. “I don’t think I can do it,” I said.
“You think some more,” he said soothingly. “I’ll see you at the bar tonight.”
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