Tales of the South Pacific

by James A. Michener

  But there was no sleep for us! Around our tent metal stripping had been laid to drain away excess water. Two days before a pig had died somewhere in the bush. All that night huge land crabs crawled back and forth across the tin.

  "What the hell is that noise?" Tony shouted when he first heard the unholy rasping of crab claws dragging across corrugations.

  "Sounds like land crabs!" Bus said with a slight shiver in his voice.

  "Oh, my God!" Tony cried and put his pillow over his ears.

  But the slow, grisly sound of land crabs cannot be erased in that manner. They are gruesome creatures, with ugly purple and red bodies as big as small dinner plates. Two bluish eyes protrude on sticks and pop in angular directions. Eight or nine feet carry the monstrous creatures sideways at either a slow crawl or a surprising gallop. A big, forbidding claw dangles in front below the eyes. This they sometimes drag, making a clacking noise. Upon tin their hollow, deathly clatter is unbearable.

  Finally it became so for Tony. With loud curses he grabbed a flashlight and a broom. Thus armed he dashed out and started killing crabs wherever he could see them. A sound wallop from a broom crushed the ungainly creatures. Before long the tin was strewn with dead crabs.

  "What the hell goes on?" a Marine pilot yelled from another hut.

  "Killing these damned crabs!" Tony replied.

  "You'll be sorry!" the Marine cried mournfully.

  But we weren't. We all went to sleep and had a good night's rest. It was not until nine o'clock next morning that we were sorry.

  "My God!" Tony groaned. "What's that smell?"

  "Do you smell it, too?" I asked.

  "Smell it?" Tony shouted. "I thought I was lying in it!"

  "You'll be sorry!" Bus whined, mimicking the Marine.

  "It's the crabs," Tony cried. "Holy cow! Smell those crabs!"

  How could we help smelling them! All around us, on hot tin strips, they were toasting in the tropical sun. And as they toasted, they gained terrific revenge on their tormentor. We suffered as well as Tony. Our clothes would reek of dead crab for days. As soon as we could dress, we left the stinking hut. Outside, a group of Marines who had learned the hard way were waiting for us.

  "You'll be sorry!" they chanted. The garbage detail, waiting with shovels, creosote, and quicklime, grinned and grinned at Tony as he tiptoed over the mess he had made.

  Next morning we shoved off for home. We were disappointed. Christmas was only five days away, and we had no whiskey. In disgust Tony gave one of the ice machines to the Marines for a hot-water heater. "You can never tell what might be just the thing to get some whiskey," he explained. Dismally we flew our disappointing cargo south along the jagged shoreline of New Georgia. We were about to head into Segi Channel when Bus zoomed the Belch high into the air and lit out for Guadal.

  "I'm ashamed to go back!" he shouted into the interphone.

  "Where we going?" Tony asked languidly.

  "Anywhere there's some whiskey."

  "There's some in New Zealand," Tony drawled.

  "If we have to go there, that's where we'll go!" Bus roared.

  At the Hotel De Gink on Guadal we heard there were ample stores on Espiritu Santo. That was five hundred miles south. And we had no satisfactory compass on the Belch. "We'll trail a C-47 down," Bus said. "And we'll pray there's no clouds!"

  I arranged a deal with a New Zealand pilot. He would wait aloft for us next morning and let us follow his navigation. It would be a clear day, he was sure.

  Since we had to leave at 0430 there was not much reason to sleep so we killed that night playing Baseball, a poker game invented by six idiots. You get three cards down. Then you bet on three cards, face up. Lucky sevens are wild. Fours are a base on balls, so you get an extra card. On threes, of course, you strike out and have to leave the game. Unless you want to stay in, whereupon you bribe the umpire by matching all the money in the kitty. You get your last card face down.

  Then one card is flipped in the middle. If it's a one-eyed jack, a blind umpire calls the game and you start over with a new deal and the old kitty! If a nine appears, it's a tie game, and you all get an extra card, face up. By this time it's pretty risky to bet on anything less than five nines. So the pot is split between the best hand and the poorest. Trouble is, you can't tell what the man next you is bidding on, the three queens that show or the complete bust that doesn't. It's a man's game.

  At 0345 we trailed out into the tropic night. Orion was in the west. Far to the south Canopus and the Southern Cross appeared. It was a lonely and beautiful night.

  Guadalcanal was silent as we left the De Gink. But as we approached Henderson Field the strip was alive with activity. Liberators were going out to photograph Kuralei at dawn. Medium bombers were getting ready for a strike. And two C-47's were warming up. The Bouncing Belch was out of place among those nobler craft. We wheeled the tired old lady into position and waited for the New Zealand C-47 to take the air. We followed, and before the transport had cleared Guadal, we were on its tail. There we stayed, grimly, during the tedious over-water flight. It was daylight long before we reached Espiritu. Eventually we saw the long northwestern finger of that strange island.

  As soon as Bus was satisfied that it was Espiritu we dipped twice to the C-47. Its pilots waved to us. We zoomed off through the bitter cold morning air. We were on our own. Bus gunned the engine, which had been idling to stay back with the C-47. Now the Belch tore along, and at the same time we lost altitude. The old girl became liveable once more. The intense cold was gone.

  We hurried past the great bay at the northern end of Santo, down the eastern side of the island, well clear of its gaunt, still unexplored mountains. The morning sun was low when we passed the central part of Santo, and I can still recall the eerie effect of horizontal shadows upon the thickest jungle in the South Pacific. A hard, forbidding green mat hid every feature of the island, but from time to time solitary trees, burdened with parasites, thrust their tops high above the mat. It was these trees, catching the early sunlight, that made the island grotesque, crawling, and infinitely lonely. Planes had crashed into this green sea of Espiritu and had never been seen again. Ten minutes after the smoke cleared, a burnt plane was invisible.

  As if in contrast, the southern part of the island was a bustling military concentration. The Bouncing Belch sidled along the channel and sought out Luganville strip. Bus eased his adventuresome plane down, and before we were fairly stopped, Tony had wangled a jeep. How he did it one never knew. He came back much excited. He had not found any whiskey, that was true. But he was certain that, at Noumea the Army had more than a thousand cases. All we had to do was get there.

  It was over six hundred miles, due south, and Bus had never flown the route before. He studied the map a minute and said, "We'll hop down to Efate. That's easy. Then we'll pick up some big plane flying the rest of the way. OK?" Who could object? At five that afternoon we were in Noumea!

  This time Tony was right! There was whiskey in Noumea. Barrels of it. Using our official permit, we bought $350 worth and then tossed in all the spare cash we had. We traded our dynamotors, ice machine, electric iron, and hot-water heater for more. If we could have traded the rear end of the Belch we would have done so. We wound up with twenty-two cases of Christmas cheer. We locked it in a warehouse, gave the mechanics at Magenta two bottles for checking the engine, and set out to find some fun in Noumea.

  Next morning Bus and Tony looked at one another, each waiting for the other to make the suggestion. Finally Bus gave in. "Tony," he drawled, "what do you say we fly up to Luana Pori and look around?" Fry, as if his heart were not thumping for such a trip, yawned and said casually, "Why don't we?" And I, who had never seen either Luana Pori or the Frenchman's daughter, made patterns with my toe and wondered, "Why don't they get started? They're both dying to go."

  We flew north over the hundred islands of New Caledonia, down the valleys between massive mountains, and over to Luana Pori. Bus lowered the Belch for a wild b
uzzing of the plantation. The Frenchman's daughter ran out into the garden and waved. I could see her standing on tiptoe, a handsome, black-haired Javanese girl. She turned gracefully with her arms up and watched us.

  "Hey?" Bus cried through the interphone. "Does that look like home?"

  "You get the plane down," Tony replied. At the airfield he gave the mechanics a quart of whiskey for a jeep. As we drew near the plantation, I could see that he was excited. Then I saw why. At the white fence the Frenchman's daughter was waiting for us. She was like an ancient statuette, carved of gold.

  "This is Madame Latouche De Becque Barzan," Bus began. But she ignored me. She rushed to Tony, caught him in her arms, and pulled his face down for a shower of kisses. Every gesture she made was like the exquisite posing of a jeweled statue.

  "Tony!" she whispered. "I dream you coming back. I see you so plain." She led him to a small white house near the edge of her garden. Bus watched them go and shrugged his shoulders.

  "To hell with it," he said. "Let's go into the bar. Hey, Noé!" he shouted. "Get some ice!"

  Bus led me to the salon at Luana Pori. I had heard much of this place, of the way in which American officers used it as a kind of club. But I was unprepared for the shock I got that afternoon. On the edge of jungle Latouche had a grand salon, soft lights, a long bar, pictures in bamboo frames, magazines from New York, and a piano. Bus laughed when he saw the latter. He sat down and picked out "The last time I saw Paris" with two fingers. He tried a few chords.

  "The ice, Monsieur Bus!" a tinkling voice behind me announced. I whirled around. A young Javanese girl more delicate even than her sister, stood in the doorway. Bus leaped from the piano and caught her by the waist, kissing her across the bowl of ice. "This is Laurencin De Becque," he cried delightedly. "And your sisters?"

  "They coming," Laurencin said softly. In a moment they, too, appeared.

  "Marthe," Bus said gravely, "and Josephine." He kissed each one lightly.

  "Not so many Americans here now," Laurencin said to me. "They all up north. I think they try to take Kuralei next." I gasped at the easy way she discussed what to me was a top secret.

  "Of course," Josephine said, fixing Bus a drink. "If there are many wounded, we get a lot of them back here later on. Rest cure."

  "What goes on here?" I asked Bus in a whisper.

  "Sssh! Don't ask questions," he replied. Before he had finished his drink two Army majors drove up with a case of frozen chicken.

  "Noé!" they called.

  "He not here today, major," Josephine cried.

  "Show me where to put this frozen chicken. We'll have it for dinner tomorrow." The major disappeared with Josephine.

  "Boy," the other major said. "This Major Kenderdine is a caution. He just went up to the commissary and said, 'Calling for that case of frozen fowl.' He got it, too. I don't know whose name he signed."

  When Kenderdine reappeared he smiled at Bus. "Goin' to fly in the big push?" he asked.

  "You know how it is," Adams replied.

  The major nodded toward the white house on the edge of the garden. "Fry come along?" he asked.

  "Yep," Bus said.

  "You ever hear about Fry and Adams down here, commander?" the major asked.

  "Not exactly," I replied.

  "Ask them to tell you sometime. Quite a tale." He poured himself a drink and held his hands out to Marthe, the smallest of the three wonderful girls. She dropped her head sideways and smiled at him, making no move. I noticed that she wore a ring.

  "Is that child married?" I whispered to Bus.

  "Sssh!" Bus said, but Laurencin heard my question.

  "Oui, commander," she said. "We all married." Josephine blushed. "All 'cept Josephine. She be married pretty soon. You watch!" Laurencin patted her sister on the arm. Marthe disappeared and soon returned with some sandwiches. As I ate mine I studied this fabulous place. Two more Army officers arrived at the entrance to the garden. "Hello, Bus!" they cried. "Tony here?" They nodded toward the house.

  At that moment Tony and Latouche appeared. The lovely girl was sad. She walked toward us, leaning slightly on Fry. He was grinning at the Army officers. "Looks as if the Navy is goin' to make the next push, too," he said.

  "Like Guadal!" a captain joked. "You guys get a toehold. Then yell for us to take the island."

  We looked up. A two-engined plane came in for a landing. It would be our pilot to Espiritu.

  "We better be shoving!" Bus said. "It's a long hop to Santo. That C-47 won't wait for us."

  Bus kissed the three younger girls but did not even shake hands with Latouche. She was lost in a world of her own, telling Tony to take care of himself, giving him a handkerchief she had lately bought from an Australian trader. She stayed behind in the salon when we went to the jeep escorted by the Army men and the three sisters. We buzzed the garden while waiting for the C-47 to take to the air. The younger girls ran out and threw kisses to us. But not Latouche. Goodbyes for her were terrible, whether one said them to human beings or to airplanes.

  The C-47 landed right behind us at Luganville. "We'll be going north at 0400," the pilot said. "You can tag along if you want." We felt so good, what with our cargo of liquor, that we decided to hold a premature holiday. Tony had friends everywhere. That night we decided to visit some on the other side of the island. In driving over to Pallikulo we came upon a weird phenomenon of the islands. The crabs of Espiritu were going to the sea! We met them by the coral pits, more than eight hundred in a slimy, crackling trek across the road. Nothing could stop them. At uncertain times land crabs are drawn to the sea. In endless waves they cross whatever comes between them and the water. We stopped the jeep, aghast at their relentless, sideways heaving bodies.

  "You mean we drive right through them?" Tony asked.

  "That's right," I answered. Reluctantly, Tony put the car in second and forged ahead. As our tires struck the frantic crabs, we could hear crunching sounds in the night. It was sickening. Crabs increased in number as we bore through them. From the opposite direction a large truck came upon them. The driver, accustomed to the experience, ignored them, and killed thirty or forty as he speeded through their grisly ranks.

  Tony swallowed, jammed the car into high, and hurried on. After about two hundred yards, the avalanche ended. We were through the crabs! Those that lived pushed on toward the ocean.

  At 0400 we were in the air again, climbing to 12,000 feet, where the temperature felt like Christmas. From the bomb bay Tony whistled "Jingle Bells" into the mike. Bus had told us he didn't like the performance of the Belch and hoped she would make it all right. I had broken out new life jackets at the time, and Tony, thinking of his cargo, had shuddered.

  But we made it into Guadal! As we landed a ground crewman hurried up and told us we were spitting oil. It was hydraulic fluid. So that was it! Bus laughed and said all the old girl needed was another drink. But even as he spoke the port wheel slowly folded up until the knuckle touched coral. Then even Bus' eyes grew big.

  "Can you fix it by 1400?" he asked.

  "Can't do it, sir!" the mechanic replied.

  "If you knew what we had in there, you'd be able to," Bus said.

  "What's in her?" the mech asked.

  "Tomorrow's Christmas, ain't it?" Bus countered.

  "You ain't foolin' there, sir!" the mech grinned.

  "Well, maybe you fix that hydraulic system, maybe tomorrow really will be Christmas!"

  The mech hunched his shoulders up and tried not to appear too happy. "You can take her up at 1400. But I ain't sayin' you can get her down later."

  "You see to it that she gets up, pal," Bus said. "I'll get her down!"

  When Bus and I looked around, Tony was gone. We didn't see him for several hours, and then at 1400 an ambulance clanged furiously across the field.

  "Where's the Bouncing Belch?" the driver cried in some agitation.

  "My God!" I shouted. "What's up! What's happened?"

  "Nothin'," the ambulance driver repl
ied. "I just want to get rid of this damned washing machine and get back to the hospital." He jumped out of the ambulance and threw the doors open. There was Tony Fry, riding in comfort, with the prettiest white washing machine you ever saw!

  "Don't ask me where I got it!" he yelled. "Give the driver two cases of whiskey!" We broke out the whiskey and turned it over to the sweating driver. He shook Tony's hand warmly and drove off as we loaded the washing machine, priceless above opals, in the Belch.

  "I better warn you fellows," Bus said, "that we may have some trouble getting back to Segi. OK by you?"

  We nodded. Any thought that Bouncing Belch might conceivably give trouble was so difficult to accept that we would have flown her to Yokohama. Especially if Bus were pilot.

  We knew that take-off time was critical. Would the wheels hold up? We held our breath as the old girl wheezed into position. The propeller whirred coral into the bushes. Slowly Bus released the brake. With terrifying momentum, for we must get up fast, we roared down the strip. We were airborne. "Oh boy!" I sighed.

  "Are the wheels up?" Bus asked.

  There was a long silence and then Tony's languid voice: "All but the starboard!" he said. "And the port is dragging, too!"

  "Well, anyway, we're up!" Bus said. "Even if the wheels aren't."

  "Now all we got to do is get down!" Tony replied.

  We were over Iron Bottom Bay, off Guadal, where many Jap ships lay rotting, and where American ships, too, had found their grave. Along the shore several Jap cargo vessels, gutted and half-sunk, stuck their blunt snouts into the sandy beach. We were on our way. Home for Christmas!

  Somewhere north of the Russells Bus said to us, "It's a tough decision, fellows. If we try to snap those damned wheels into position, we'll probably spring the bomb-bay doors and lose our whiskey. If we belly land, we'll break every damned bottle anyway."

  There was a grim silence. I had no suggestions, but slowly, from the bottom of the plane, Tony's voice came over the interphone. "I thought of that," he said. "All the whiskey's out of the bomb bays. Moved inside. I'm sitting on it!"