"How much you want for that, buddy?" Joe asked.
"Fifteen dollars," the seaman replied.
"That's a lot of money," Joe answered.
"That's right," the seaman replied. "You can get 'em cheaper in Noumea, but you ain't in Noumea."
Still, the skirt seemed such a wonderful present for a girl that Joe bought it. He wrapped it carefully, addressed the package to Essie Schultz, Perkasie, Pennsylvania, and had it censored. After the officer had finished looking at the skirt, Joe slipped in the little piece of paper: "All happiness, Joe."
It wasn't that he didn't see girls on the rock. Every three or four months some plane would come in with a USO vaudeville troupe aboard. If they had time, the girls always danced or sang in the Red Cross hut. But that wasn't like having a girl... Well, a special girl.
Some time later Joe received a letter direct from Billis. It was brief. "A girl named Alice Baker from Corvallis is going to write to you pretty soon. I know her big sister and her brother. He is a dogface. (Ha!) She is a fine girl. Her sister thinks I am an officer dont tell her different. Your best buddy, L. Billis."
Joe was delighted with news from Luther. He wondered if Luther had worn an officer's uniform when he was in Corvallis. That was dangerous stuff. They really threw the book at you if they caught you.
While Joe waited for news from Alice Baker, a strange thing happened. One night at eleven-thirty he was routed out of bed by the guard. "You're wanted at the Skipper's shack!" he was told. In the darkness he went along coral paths to where the Skipper had had a mansion built for himself. It cost, men figured, about $9,000. The Skipper said that by God, if he was going to live on this rock, he'd live like a gentleman. He had quarters that many an admiral would envy.
"Joe!" he said, "when I was walking across the floor tonight, I felt a splinter over there. There's a sander in the closet. Rub the thing down, will you?"
Joe broke out the sander and went to work. As he did so, the Skipper slid his bare feet from one board to another. "Give this a touch, will you?"
"Sand that joint down a little." Joe worked till one-thirty. "Better take the day off tomorrow," the Skipper said.
Joe told nobody of what had happened. A few nights later he was called out again. This time the linoleum in the bathroom was loose. Joe fixed it. In the middle of his work the Skipper interrupted. "Joe," he said, "in that cabinet there's a bottle of very fine whiskey. I'm going to walk along the beach for twenty minutes. If I catch you drinking it when I get back, I'll raise hell with you. What time have you?" The two men synchronized their watches at exactly 0119. "Mind you," the Skipper said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes."
Joe worked on, keeping his mind off the cabinet. He liked whiskey, but he didn't want no trouble with nobody. At 0139 the Skipper returned singing gently. He went archly to the cabinet and peeked in. Then he snorted and pulled out the whiskey bottle. "I didn't touch it, sir!" Joe protested.
"Goddamned squarehead!" the Skipper shouted. "I told you I was going to be gone twenty minutes."
"I didn't touch it!" Joe insisted.
"I know you didn't, Joe," the Skipper said in a tired voice. "But I meant you to. You're a good boy. You work hard. I'll go out again. If you want a nip, help yourself. But if I ever see you doing it, I'll throw you in the clink!" He went out again, singing. After that Joe spent a good deal of his time fixing up the Skipper's shack. But he never told a soul. He wanted no trouble.
At mail call one day Joe got a letter from Corvallis. It was from Alice Baker. She was eighteen and a senior in Corvallis High School. She had no boy friend, and her brother was a soldier in England. Ensign Billis had told her sister about Joe and her sister had asked her to write. She felt silly, but she guessed it was all right. She concluded, "Ensign Billis said you were slow, but I like slow boys. Some of the boys in Corvallis are so fast they think if they look at a girl, why she falls in love with them. This picture of me is pretty much the way I look. Sincerely, Alice Baker."
Joe could not believe that any girl as lovely as Alice Baker's picture would write to him. He looked at the picture eight or ten times a day, but would show it to no one. He was afraid they wouldn't. believe him. After two days he decided that he must reply to her sweet letter. He labored over his answer a long time. It came out like this: Dear Alice, I nearly fell out of my chair when they gave me that letter from you. It was the nicest letter I have ever got from anyone. I have read it twenty four times so far and I will keep right on reading till another comes. I don't believe you when you say you have no boy friends. A girl as pretty as you could have a hundred. I am afraid to show your picture to the men in my hut. They would all want to write to you. It is your picture, isn't it, Alice? I suppose Ensign Billis told you all about me. I am a shoemaker in Columbus Ohio and right now I am riding nineteen months on this rock. I am not good looking and I like whiskey but I never get drunk. I hope you will write to me. I would like to send you a picture, Alice, but we can't get none made on this rock. It is no good trying. My uncle has a picture of me took a long time ago. I will ask him to send it to you. I am fatter now. Please anser this letter, Alice, as I think you are one fine girl.
Yours truly,
Joe.
The correspondence went on from there. Finally Alice was writing to Joe three times a week. And finally Joe got up nerve enough to show his friends her picture. In Navy fashion they went mad about her. Half of them called her "that bag" and the other half wanted to know who the movie star was. Joe stood by in rapt pleasure. They kidded him a lot, and that evening an older man who knew a thing or two about sailors came by and asked if he could see the picture again. Joe practically fell over himself to think that anyone had remembered her. They sat on the quonset steps and studied Alice Baker's picture. "A fine girl," the older man said.
One day a letter from Alice arrived soaked with salt water. Joe could barely read the writing. He took it down to the post office to find what had happened. "A plane went into the drink somewhere up the line."
"Anybody hurt?" Joe inquired.
"Ten dead. They got the mail bags, though. A diver went down for them."
Joe handled the letter gingerly. It was a terrible thing. A letter from the girl you loved, passed on by the hands of dead men. Joe had seen little of death, but it frightened him vastly. It was like getting into trouble. It ruined everything. One of the officers had said, when the lieutenant's court-martial was read for selling government property to the bootleggers, "I'd commit suicide!" But the lieutenant, who was sentenced to jail for three years, didn't commit suicide. He lived on, and so did the bootleggers. They went to jail and lived. Joe was also one of the men who live on, no matter what happens.
He assured himself of that the night they found the yeoman hanging in the palm grove. Nobody ever understood exactly why he did it just then. His wife had a baby after he was overseas sixteen months, but he agreed to the divorce and she married the other man. The yeoman took it OK. Joe knew him well, and then seven months after it was all over he strung himself up.
Two other incidents reminded Joe of death on his hot, lonely, barren, sticky rock. One was a letter from Luther Billis. It made Joe shudder with apprehension for his buddy. "The Navy took this pitcher of me," he wrote. "You'd a thought it would of busted the camera. You see I aint got the ring in my ear. They made me take it out but now I got it back in. The pitcher is for the Navy when they give me my medal. What I did they should of had a hero do. Anyway I got two Jap swords out of it and they are beauties. I am sending one to my mom and the other I give to my skipper, Commander Hoag, who was the best guy that ever lived, even if he was an officer. I hope you have heard from Alice Baker. She is a fine girl I tried to kiss her once and she slapped my face. Your best buddy, L. Billis."
The second incident occurred on June 7. They had a ball game that afternoon, and as they came in from the game they heard a lot of shouting. "We invaded France!" everybody was yelling. There was some shooting to celebrate, and the Skipper ordered a
whistle to blow. "Any goddamned whistle, but blow it!" They used the fire truck's, and it sounded fine. Then the chaplain suggested they have a prayer meeting. The Skipper stood beside him on the platform. "Our prayers go out tonight," the chaplain intoned, "for all the brave men who are fighting the enemy. Wherever brave men are fighting and dying, O Lord, protect them." They sang two hymns and the Skipper asked if anyone could sing the Marseillaise. A former schoolteacher could, and the rest hummed.
These events deepened Joe's perceptions. If a fine man like Luther Billis could risk his life, why was he, Joe, sitting the war out on this rock? If Alice Baker's brother could land in France what was Joe doing on a coral reef? Up to this time Joe had never thought about the men back home. But on the evening of June 7, 1944, he thought about them a great deal. Some men died in France. Some men like Luther Billis fought against the Japs. Some men like the yeoman lost everything they had and committed suicide. Some men like the bootleggers got heebie-jeebies on the rock. Some men worked in airplane factories or helped keep the country running. And some men did nothing.
But before his thoughts ran away with him, Joe stopped. "It's the same on this rock," he mused. "Look how little some guys have! And look what I got! Alice Baker, an electric fan, a shot of the Skipper's whiskey now and then, and a best buddy who is already a hero!"
Thoughts of death, however, persisted. One night he sat bolt upright in bed. He was sweating all over. Phantasms of horror assailed him! Luther Billis was dead! On an island teeming with Japs Luther lay beside a coconut log. Joe wiped the sweat from his face and tried to go back to sleep. But all night, in the hot quonset, he could see Luther Billis and the coconut log. It was not until he received a short letter from Billis that his mind gained rest. The SeaBee was fine and was teaching Professor Weinstein Beche-le-Mer so he would be able to speak six languages!
His worry about Luther decided him upon one thing, however. He wanted Alice and Luther to have pictures of him. just in case. He would have his picture taken after all! That was a solemn decision on the rock. First of all you had to find somebody who had stolen film and photographic paper. Then you had to arrange the sitting surreptitiously. And finally you had to get the photograph through the mail. So Joe, who never wanted any trouble with anybody, set out in search of a bootlegging photographer. He found one on the other end of the island. He was a thin, round-shouldered man. Where he got his equipment no one knew. He had a big deal of some kind on the fire. They all knew that.
"It'll be ten dollars," the photographer growled. "You get two prints and the negative."
Joe whistled. The photographer snapped at him. "You ain't bein' forced into this, buddy. I'm the guy that's takin' the chances. You saw what them bootleggers got. The price is ten bucks."
Joe took out his wallet and gave the man two fives. It was a lot to pay, but if your girl was in Corvallis, had never seen you, had no picture of you but that skinny one your uncle sent, well... what better you got to spend ten bucks on?
The photographer made ready with a cheap box camera. "Don't look so stiff!" he told Joe, but Joe was no dummy. If he was paying ten bucks for one photograph, it would be the best. So, like a ramrod, his hair smoothed back, he glanced stonily at the expensive birdie. The photographer shrugged his pale shoulders and went ahead. "Come hack in three days. Remember, you get two prints and the negative. I don't want no beefing. I'm the guy that takes the risks." Three days later Joe got his two pictures. They were pretty good. Mostly you saw his uniform and pronounced jaw. But he looked like a clean, quiet sailor. Just like eight hundred other guys on the rock. Only the others didn't look quite so sure of themselves when they'd been on the rock as long as Joe. He grinned at the pictures and all the way back to camp kept stealing furtive glances at himself.
When he arrived at the camp the chaplain was waiting for him. The padre was a Catholic and Joe a Methodist, but they were friends. The chaplain's business was brief. Alice Baker had been killed. An auto accident. Her sister sent the news.
The padre had never heard of Alice Baker. All he knew was that a human being of greater or less importance to some other human being was dead. No message could transcend that. He cast about for words, which never seemed to be available for such emergencies. The day was hot. Sweat ran down Joe's face until it looked like tears. "Brave people are dying throughout the world," the chaplain said. "And brave people live after them." There was nothing more to say. Joe sat looking at the priest for a few minutes and then left.
He went into the brilliant sunlight. Glare from the airstrip was intense. Even the ocean was hot. Joe looked at the waves whose beauty Luther Billis had discovered. They came rippling toward the rock in overwhelming monotony. Joe counted them. One, two, three! They were the months he had been on the rock. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. That was when he met Luther Billis. Seventeen, eighteen. The yeoman had committed suicide. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. Alice Baker had become his girl. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. They were all the same, one after the other, like the dreary months.
Joe dropped his head in his hands. A girl he had never seen. A funny town he had never visited. "I want to get out of here," he muttered to himself. "I got to get out of here!"
FO' DOLLA'
ATABRINE BENNY had the best job in the islands. Field man for the Malaria Control Unit. He traveled from plantation to plantation with large bottles of atabrine pills. Wherever there might be malaria to infect mosquitoes to infect our men, Benny was on guard. All day long, on one island or another, he gave little yellow pills to little yellow men. His freedom of movement, lack of a boss, and opportunity for spending long hours with plantation owners made his job an enviable one.
Benny was a fat little man with no bottom at all. He went straight down in back and way out in front. He walked with his toes at ten minutes of two and consequently moved with a tireless waddle. He was a druggist from Waco, Texas, a man nearly fifty. He had enlisted in the Navy out of patriotism, boredom, the fact that his two sons were in the Marines, and because his wife was a mean old son-of-a-bitch. "Ornriest goddam woman in Waco, Texas," he confided one day as we climbed a hill to a small French plantation.
"But I should worry about her now!" he added. "What I got to moan about? This job's romantic. I want to see the South Pacific ever since I am a little guy. Now here I am! Right in the heart of it!"
Benny grinned, adjusting his heavy bottles. As we reached a grubby clearing, with a few coconut trees, bananas, pineapples and cacao bushes, he gave a long, mournful cry, "Yaaaaaoooooo!"
From a hut near the jungle a native Mary shuffled out. She carried a mammoth conch shell, an ancient thing dating back a century or more, encrusted by the lips and hands of numerous villagers. On this shell she blew a long, sad blast. Slowly, from cacao, coconut, and jungle, men and women shuffled. Tonks, natives, and nondescript workers appeared, shy, reticent, nudging one another, and giggling.
Benny and I took our places beneath an open bamboo lean-to. We lined up bottles of atabrine, large tins of candy, and a carton of cigarettes. Little Tonkinese workers approached first, men in the lead, then women. Patiently they leaned their heads back, closed their eyes, and opened their mouths. Deftly Atabrine Benny popped three tablets between each one's jet black betel-stained teeth. Waiting Tonks would laugh and joke while the unfortunate one taking the medicine made a horrible face and gulped a drink from the water jug. Benny and I stood by, our shirts, our pants, our entire bodies dripping with jungle sweat. Benny watched each performer carefully. Usually he would pat the Tonk on the head, give him a couple of cigarettes or a bar of candy, and shove him off.
But occasionally he would become furious. "Goddam pig!" he would shout, cuffing the unfortunate Tonk about a bit. "Open your mouth!" And he would ram a curved index finger into the man's mouth behind the black teeth, twisting the tongue up. With a deft flick he would pop out one or two unswallowed atabrine tablets and catch them in his other hand. "Eat 'em up!" he would shout. And the Tonk would grin sheepishly, lic
k his beteled teeth, take another drink of water, and swallow the tablets. "Wait a minute!" Benny would bellow. Into the man's mouth once more would go the searching finger. "Good fellow!" Benny would beam, giving the recalcitrant Tonk a pat on the head and a couple of cigarettes. "You got to watch 'em," he whispered.
"Don't they like the taste?" I inquired, smiling back at a grinning Tonkinese woman who stood waiting.
"Taste ain't nothin' to a guy that chews betel," Benny said. "Everything tastes the same."
"Then why the act with the atabrine?"
"Clever bastards," Benny grinned. "Took 'em about two weeks to discover that them pills is a wonderful yellow dye. They keep 'em back of their tongues and then use 'em to dye grass skirts with."
"Grass skirts?" I inquired.
"Yeah," he replied. "They make 'em."
When the session was ended, Benny grabbed a handful of his precious yellow pills and threw them on the table. "For your skirts!" he shouted, wiggling his hips as if he were wearing one of the grass skirts the Tonks sold to American soldiers.
As Tonkinese women battled for the valuable dyestuff the French plantation owner, a man of forty-eight or more, stopped us. He was a short, sloppy fellow, round-faced, bleary-eyed, stoop-shouldered. His pants hung in a sagging line below his belly. He had a nervous manner and a slight cough as he spoke.
"It's Monsieur Jacques Benoit!" Atabrine Benny cried in a loud, pleasant voice. The plantation owner nodded slightly and extended a wet, pudgy hand.
"Mr. Benny," he said forcefully. "Again, once more I asking you. Not give the women pills!" His voice was harsh.
"It don't do any harm!" Benny argued.
"But the gouvernment! Our gouvernment! And yours, too. They say, 'Tonkinese! No more grass skirts!' What I can do?" He shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
Tales of the South Pacific Page 18