Tales of the South Pacific

by James A. Michener

  When news of the tragedy reached old Papa Barzan in prison he went wild with sorrow and cursed Latouche far into the night. He screamed that his son had met her in Pink House in Noumea. That she was an evil devil. But the old fellow was deranged. That's clear from what happened a few days later when he heard that Latouche had been released. The old man backed up and dashed himself against the wall four times until he broke his neck.

  Of course, Colonel Haricot had to leave Luana Pori. He had, in a sense, disgraced the Army. Marrying a half-caste. Mixed up in a murder. He kissed Laurencin lovingly before he left, and prayed to God that he left in her womb a daughter as lovely as she.

  Josephine's sailor came up here to Konora. He helped to make our beachhead against the Japs. One night he almost went mad, for he saw among the coconut trees torn and blasted by the shell fire, one that bent toward him like the slim Javanese girl on Luana Pori. They gave him permission later to fly back and marry her.

  Marthe's sergeant was not so lucky. He stopped a bullet in the surf right out there where you're looking. A friend who had raised hell when the sergeant married Marthe saw him bouncing face-down on the coral and thought, "Maybe he wasn't so dumb."

  My own life was disrupted when the colonel left. That same day Lisette received a cablegram from Rome. Her husband had been rescued from a prison camp. He was with the Americans in Rome. An old man brought the cable, and Lisette started to cry. I paid the old man and sent him away.

  "He'll get through all right, now. I know!" Lisette whimpered in French. "Dear God, I prayed so hard for him." Tears flooded her eyes and she could say nothing. She patted my arm. She wiped her face. She took my handkerchief and blew her nose. "I got to leave, Bus. I gonna be a good wife now," she said.

  Of the lovers at the plantation only Latouche and Tony remained Like children lost in a dream of Christmas they wandered about the gardens and the beaches. I came upon them one day, far below on the white coral. Latouche wore nothing, simply that golden body slim and twisting in the shallow water. It was then that I, too, left the plantation and started to pack. I knew we were moving north to Kuralei.

  I had done little more than get the jeeps and bulldozers ready for the ship when Tony came to see me. "You in trouble?" I asked when I saw his grave face.

  "Holy cow, no!" he replied, breaking into a fine smile. "Bus, I want you to be my best man."

  I took a deep breath. Looked at the shadows under the palm trees. Then at Tony. He was dressed in dirty slacks, sneakers, and a sun helmet. He looked like a beachcomber, a very special beachcomber. "Latouche?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "But, Tony! They won't grant you permission. Not after what happened."

  "I'm not asking for any permission."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "The Buddhist priest. Saturday night. Nobody needs to know a thing."

  "But the Navy..."

  "Nobody needs to know."

  My head was a bit dizzy. God knows I knew what a man felt out there on that plantation. The long days, the ocean, the jungle creeping up on you. And that little white house. The laughter of living girls. But marriage? An old fool like Haricot from Terre Haute, or a sailor from Boston, maybe. But Tony Fry...

  "Listen, Tony," I pleaded. "You got hot pants. So have I. So has everybody else. But you don't have to marry the girl!"

  "Bus," Tony said softly. "If you weren't my best friend and you said that. Well, I'd bust you one in the mouth." Smiling, he suddenly whipped his right fist up from his knees. But remembering my tender jaw, he pulled his punch and hit me beside the head. We stumbled into a chair.

  "You got it bad, Tony," I mumbled.

  "I want you for my best man. I'm getting married."

  "It won't stand up in court," I said, rubbing my head. "You're just kidding yourself and the girl."

  "Now look, Bus," Tony said very quietly. "I know what I want. I'm a big boy. See? All my life I've seen guys looking for the girl they wanted. Hungry guys, growing old. Empty inside. Bus, this girl's for me. She fills me up. To overflowing. This is it."

  "If you try to take her back to the States, Tony! Everyone will think she's a Jap."

  "I won't," he replied. "And maybe I won't go back to the States. I like this life. The hot afternoons and cool nights. I like these islands. I've got some cash. Maybe life here is what I've been looking for. This Pacific will be the center of the new world. This is our future. Well, I'm part of it. This is for me."

  "Tony, you're forcing me," I said. "What do you know about the Pink House in Noumea?"

  "You tell me, Bus. What do you think? Honestly?"

  "You asked for it, Tony. Here it is. You don't know Latouche. That Achille Barzan deal! Do you know she dreamed of his death? That she prayed for it? The girl's little better than a murderess! I'm sorry, Fry, but there it is."

  Tony rubbed his nose to hide the fact that he was laughing. "Bus," he chuckled. "You're a lovely guy. That Achille Barzan deal, as you call it. What would you say if I told you that Latouche and I planned every step. For days and days. Natives reported each morning where Barzan was hiding. We paid them to let Barzan overhear that Marthe was being married. When and where. We knew he was coming. We considered six different ways of doing him in. I wanted to shoot him myself. Take a general court. Self-defense. Latouche could join me later. But she figured a better way. She knew he hated her because she went on being a Buddhist. Same time she was a Catholic. We knew Barzan would try to break up the wedding."

  "So it was all an act?"

  "No, it was real. Your arm was almost broken, wasn't it? He tried to kill her with a club, didn't he? Just as we planned it."

  I laughed at myself. "And I was running like a fool to try to save her! >From Achille! Boy, oh boy!"

  Tony grinned at me, in that silly old way of his. "We figured on that, too, Bus. We knew you were sentimental. That you liked to protect women. We knew you would try to catch Achille before he reached the door. Why do you suppose I bumped you when you started to chase him? Did you think you stumbled?"

  We looked at one another across the dusty jeeps and bulldozers there along the shore. Tony dragged out some papers. "How about signing them for me, Bus?" I leafed through them. Statements to his bank that Latouche De Becque Barzan Fry was his lawful wife. A will. A letter to his insurance agent. The usual stuff. I witnessed them for him, sealed them in an envelope, and censored it.

  That Saturday night the moon was full. You know how it rises out of the jungle on such nights. First a glow, then the trees burst into flame, and finally the tallest ones stand like charred stumps against the moon itself. In the moonlight, with the drum beating and the little bell ringing, Tony married the girl.

  I kissed the bride and hurried back to the fighter strip. I couldn't think. To hell with dinners and Luana Pori and crazy men like Tony Fry and women like Latouche. I was sort of tied up inside. You fellows know what to do in a case like that. Even though it was against orders I revved up a plane and took off. Into the darkness. But when I was over the jungle and out across the ocean, the moon made everything bright and wonderful. I flew back very high. Below me was the plantation. Just a sliver chopped out of the dark jungle. I could see the salon, the little house Lisette and I had, Latouche's sleeping house, the white fence. I dived and buzzed the place until my ears rang. I'd give them a wedding present! You know what a plane does for you at a time like that. You can climb and twist. It's like playing God. And when you come down, you can sleep.

  On Sunday the ship came to take us north. I hurried out to the plantation to get Fry. I found him sitting on a bench among the flowers. Latouche in a skimpy brassiere and shorts lay with her head in his lap. He was reading Chinese Lea to her.

  "This book says the future of America is with Asia," Latouche said in French.

  "You know, Bus?" Tony began. "This guy is right. You wait. We'll all be out here again. We'll be fighting China or India or Malaysia. Asia's never going to let Australia stay white. Bus, if you're smart,
you'll move out here somewhere. This is the crossroads of the world from now on."

  "Time's up!" I said. Tony closed the book and looked at me.

  "Bus!" Latouche said softly. "Get me one flower for my hair." I picked her a flamboyant. It was too big. "I take one piece of that green and yellow grass," she said. She wore it at a cocky angle.

  "The ship's in," I said.

  "Well," she replied. "It got to come some time."

  "I'll go pack," Tony said. Latouche shrugged her shoulders and followed him across the garden. In her evanescent clothes she was a dream, not a girl at all. She was the symbol of what men think about in lonely places. Her buttocks did not bounce like those of tramps in Scollay Square, nor heave like those of fat and virtuous dowagers. Her shoulders stayed in a straight line as she walked. Her black hair blew lightly over her shoulder. Her legs were slim and resolute, an anchorage in the ocean of any guy's despair. She disappeared into the tiny house.

  Well, you know what happened. We moved up to Santo and waited there a while. It always makes me laugh when I see a war movie. The hero and his buddy get on a ship in Frisco and right away land on the beachhead, where the buddy gets killed and the hero wipes out four Jap emplacements. You get on the ship at Frisco, all right. But you get off at Luana Pori. You wait there a couple of months. You move up to Santo and wait some more. At Guadal you wait, and in the Russells. But the day finally comes when even a moron can see that the next move...

  THE STRIKE

  IT was now midsummer. The sun blazed directly overhead, and at times it seemed as if we could stand the heat no longer. But we had to work, for a strike was in progress. Upon us depended the success of Alligator, the great Kuralei operation.

  So all through the steaming hell of January and February we worked on. Each day a few men would find their prickly heat unbearable and would have to be hospitalized. Or fungus would break out in their ears. Or athlete's foot would incapacitate them. Incessant glare of sun on coral sent some to the hospital until their eyes recovered, and once or twice men keeled over for no reason. We sluiced them off with cold water and sent them to bed for the day. But mostly we worked on.

  I was in a strange Navy. I saw two major strikes, and yet I never set foot upon what you would call a real warship. I was as true a naval officer as circumstances would permit, and yet I never saw a battleship except from a considerable distance. I never even visited a carrier, or a cruiser, or a destroyer. I never saw a submarine. I was a new type of naval officer. I was the man who messed around with aircraft, PT boats, landing barges, and the vast shore establishment.

  For a long period prior to the actual landing on Kuralei and before the attack on Konora, I served as Admiral Kester's representative at the Naval Supply Depot which was to provision the fleet serving in those operations. I left Noumea with trepidation, for I had never before worked with the men who labor in silence behind the front, hauling, shoving, and bickering among themselves. It now became my duty to help the housekeepers of the Navy.

  The Depot to which I was thus attached was located along the southern edge of an extensive channel. Much of the fleet could have been stationed there, but we got only the supply boats and small craft that provision larger units. At times we would have as many as one hundred and twenty ships in our channel, ships from all over the world. They brought our Depot a massive supply of goods of war. Some of the cargoes they carried were strange, and illustrated better than words the nature of modern war. Three ships came in one week loaded mostly with paper. We built a special warehouse for it, two hundred feet long and sixty-five feet wide! In it we had a wilderness of paper. One man did nothing but take care of brown manila envelopes! That was all he did for twenty-one months! Yet into those envelopes went the plans, the records, the resumes of the world's greatest fleet. We had another man whose sole responsibility was pens, ink, paper clips, and colored pencils. This man came to his tropical job from Minnesota. He had sores in his armpits for almost eighteen months. Then he went back to Minnesota.

  SeaBees had constructed the Depot. It consisted of an area two miles long, a mile deep. Two hundred odd quonset huts were laid out in neat rows along the shoreline of the channel. Three thousand men worked at the Depot. One entire company of SeaBees did nothing but oil the coral to keep dust down. Ten men had no responsibility but to mend watches as they arrived from ship and aircraft navigators. Sixteen men were bakers, and all night long, every night, for two years, they made bread, and sometimes cake.

  We had two docks at the Depot, and a special road paralleling the shoreline up and down which rolled trucks day and night, seven days a week, month upon month. The drivers were all colored men, and their commanding officer permitted them to paint their trucks with fanciful names: The Dixie Flyer, The Mississippi Cannonball, Harlem Hot Spot, and Coconut Express.

  More gear lay on the hot coral than ever we got into the buildings. Twelve men walked among this gear day after day, endlessly, from one pile to another. They checked it to see that rain water was not seeping through the tarpaulins. They also guarded against mosquitoes that might breed in stagnant pools behind the stacks.

  There were no days at the Depot. Sunday was not observed. Nor was there day itself. As many men worked at night as did during daylight hours. In this work strange things happened. Two truckloads of jewelers' gear would be lost! Completely lost! Trucks, invaluable watches, hair springs, all records. Gone! Then, three months later the gear would be found at some place like Noumea or San Diego. It was futile even to guess at what had happened. All you knew was that one night, about 0300, that jewelers' gear was in the Depot. You saw it there! Now it was in San Diego!

  Constantly, in a stream that varied only in size, officers and men from the fleet came to the Depot. They came with chits, signed always by some nebulous authority whom they considered sound but whom the men at the Depot had never heard of. "We got to have two thousand feet of Grade A wire," a seaman would plead urgently. "Give him 1200 feet!" There was no appeal. "We need four more gas stoves."

  "Give him three."

  "Skipper says we got to have two more Aldis lamps."

  "Where you headed?"

  "North."

  "OK. Give him two."

  In two weeks you heard every possible excuse for getting equipment. You became calloused and looked at everyone as if he were a crook. At church, if you went, you wondered, "What's he saying that for? What is it he wants?" Suspicious, charged with heavy responsibility, eager to see the fleet go forth well armed but knowing the men of the fleet were a gang of robbers, you worked yourself dizzy and knocked off twenty-five percent from each request.

  If to the above characteristics you added a capacity to do twice as much work as other naval officers, a willingness to connive and battle endlessly for what you wanted, and an absolute love of red tape, you were a real Supply Officer!

  Captain Samuel Kelley, 54 years old, five feet four, 149 pounds, native of Madison, Wisconsin, graduate of Annapolis, was a Supply Officer. He was a small man of tireless energy and brilliant mind. He would have succeeded in anything he tried. Had he stayed in the regular line of the Navy, he would surely have become an admiral in command of a task force. Slightly defective hearing made such a career impossible. It was a good bet, however, that he would one day be admiral in charge of the Supply Corps.

  It was Captain Kelley that I came north to work with. I was taller than he, so that when I reported, I tended to stoop a bit in his presence. His first words to me were, "Stand at attention. Put your hat under your left arm. And never wear an aviator's cap in this Depot."

  Captain Kelley had a mania against aviators' baseball caps. Men in the air arm of the Navy loved the tight-fitting, comfortable little caps. And when Marc Mitscher started wearing one, it was difficult to keep the entire Navy from following suit. But no men serving under Captain Kelley wore baseball caps. He issued the order on the day he arrived to take charge of the Depot. Next day he put two enlisted men in the brig. The day following he co
nfined an officer to quarters for four days. After that, we learned our lesson.

  Captain Kelley instituted other innovations, as well. The Depot was a supply activity. Quickly officers of the regular line found themselves ousted from good jobs and relegated to minor routine posts. Several of the line officers thus demoted were civilians at heart and had no concern with their naval future. They protested the captain's decision. Within three days they received orders elsewhere and took with them unsatisfactory recommendations that would forever prevent them from being promoted in the Navy.

  The captain's principal innovations, however, concerned free time, entertainment, and recreation. Each morning we would see him outside his quarters doing ten pushups, twenty stomach bends. He was in much better physical condition than his junior officers, a fact which gave point to his subsequent actions. First he lengthened the working day. Daytime hands reported to work at 0700. They worked till 1200. After one hour off, they worked until 1700. One night in eight they worked all night and had the next day to sleep. This meant a sixty-three hour week, with the thermometer at 95 or more. Two officers made formal protests. Unfortunately, they were line officers and were transferred.

  Shortly after this protest the captain made another announcement. All games were canceled. "The men can rise an hour earlier, if they wish. They can do setting-up exercises. All this time off for games is unnecessary. The devil finds work for idle hands." So all games, except crap and poker, were abandoned.

  On the night of the day athletic schedules were discarded, some toughies cheered the captain as he entered the moving-picture area. He promptly turned, ordered the lights extinguished and the movie operators to their quarters. We had no shows for a week, and in that time all seats in the movie area were torn out. Coconut logs were strung along the ground for men to sit upon. When the movies were reopened, the same toughies cheered again. The entire Depot was restricted to quarters, and for a month we had no shows. By that time sager counsels prevailed among the men, and when movies were resumed, there were no cheers. From then on, officers and men alike met the captain with stony silence. If he came into the club, all present stood at attention until he was seated. No one spoke above a whisper until he left.