The Preserve

by Steve Anderson

  ***

  He passed Kanani in camp the next morning. They didn’t stop long to talk. Her eyes were puffy again and she kept her head down. Their mannerisms reminded Lett of two inmates in a stockade yard passing a secret, and the shapeless twill fatigues he was wearing for training certainly fit the notion.

  “I should warn you,” he began.

  Kanani formed fists and her face screwed up.

  “You already know,” he added. “Frankie.”

  She nodded.

  “He gave me a ride up in a jeep. Seems to have some pull. Have you seen him?”

  “Once, briefly. Two days ago. He was coming up from underground. I haven’t seen him since.” Kanani was peering around as if just mentioning the big man’s name would make him pop up from some hatch in the earth. “Please, stay clear of him.”

  “I’m trying.”

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her about Miss Mae, not yet, not here.

  “What does Selfer know about him?” he added.

  “Not much more than us, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh.” Lett took a look around, if only to make her feel safer. “You doing okay?”

  “I am. I don’t know why, but I am.”

  “Maybe it’s the calm after the storm,” he said, thinking of his own ordeal.

  “That or the calm before.” She took another look around. “Let’s keep it moving. I’ll be in touch,” she whispered, and she headed off down a trail, marching along with her head still down.

  ***

  On paper—if there was any—Lett seemed to be responding to his treatment with flying colors. He seemed the model recruit incapable of anything deceitful, and certainly of anything unsound. In training, his new weapons instructor Jock Quinn seemed to want to confirm Lett’s elevated status—as well as his own. They had likely given Jock the duty because they considered him close to cured. So Lett did his pal Jock a favor and played it straight, ever the good recruit. Jock was playing his own role to the hilt, with his flagpole posture and staccato snare drum delivery and ball bearings for eyes. He even had a crew cut now despite his balding head, like a bird’s nest pared down by a windstorm. At the same time, Lett never stood at attention because Jock had never called on him to. He certainly didn’t call Jock “sir.”

  Jock had his instructions. He was training Lett individually, to ascertain (Jock’s new word) what sort of sharpshooter Lett was. Lett could choose between an M1 Garand, an M1 carbine, or a Springfield rife. Lett chose his trusty light and compact M1 carbine. He checked the cartridge in the chamber, five in the magazine. He harnessed his weapon, using his strap as a sling to steady his upper arm, tightened just so, all the loops and hooks and buckles in harmony. He lost himself in it and forgot Jock was there standing over him until he commented on the ease in which Lett used the rifle sling like it was second nature to him.

  On the third day of their one-on-one training, Jock brought Lett something new—a huge grin. Jock’s gapped teeth were like polished dominoes before the spots went on.

  “Excellent work,” Jock said. “You get a reward.”

  Jock handed him a sniper version of the M1 carbine, with a telescopic sight.

  “You should be proud,” Jock said. “Used one of these myself.”

  Lett felt its weight using both hands. “I didn’t know you were a sniper.”

  “I was a lot of things, Lett, and so were you.”

  Jock had him shoot round after round, into the hundreds. As sniper instructor, Jock didn’t instruct much. He made sure Lett squeezed the trigger with the ball of his finger so he didn’t jolt the weapon firing. He reminded Lett that the most accurate position was prone, with something supporting the stock, with the side of the stock against his cheek. Lett kept using his sling, but Jock also introduced a bipod. Using such a crutch didn’t feel natural to Lett any more than did using a bridge to a pool shark, and there was a certain pride factor, but his accuracy did improve. Lett of course knew about breathing deeply before firing, about firing between heartbeats for utmost stillness. He let Jock tell him anyway. Jock nodded a lot, checking off boxes in his head.

  Jock told Lett what their superiors needed from him. They could find expert sharpshooters and cold-blooded killers anywhere. Instead they wanted a man who could always make the right decision, who could keep a cool and level head. They wanted someone who could work alone, on his own.

  “You are independent,” Jock reminded him. “You make sound decisions without relying on orders.”

  I sure am, Lett thought. He had shown it in spades by deserting a suicidal if not criminal mission during the war and then by making a go of it on the lam despite his terrors, and then by deciding to come here for a cure, where he’d just recently defied their clear orders to kill, and for good reason. He was sound as hell, just not in the ways they knew.

  Lett spat out a bitter laugh. He hadn’t meant to. It was out there before he got his lips back around it.

  “Look,” Jock added. “I know you were a deserter. And I don’t care. Plenty good men were. This is your chance to make up for that, too.”

  During a break, Lett asked Jock, “Why are you training me? What for?”

  Jock started, his head rearing back. It was such a simple question, but Jock eyed Lett as if he’d just landed in a rocket ship. “For any situation we put you in, we will assure that you have a clean head shot,” he sputtered, as if reciting a manual he couldn’t quite recall.

  “What’s the situation?”

  Jock looked around as if someone had sidled up to listen. “Well, any situation involving security, or surveillance.”

  “So, nothing aggressive. Nothing where I was making the first move.”

  Jock stared a moment. “A capable sniper,” he recited, “must possess the ability to control varying factors involving trajectory, point of impact, accuracy estimation. You have distance to the target to consider, wind direction and speed, altitude and elevation of both sniper and target and—”

  “Stop. You’re saying that I have a lot to worry about?”

  Jock nodded. “I guess I am, yes.”

  “I noticed you never trained me much on camouflage, or concealment. If I’m going to provide security, surveillance.”

  “I can’t speak to that. It’s not my orders.” Jock added, in a whisper, “don’t push me, Lett, all right? I’m just getting my points in.”

  “Okay, Jock. Fine. You don’t have to worry about your end.”

  Jock hung his head after that, just went through the motions. At the end of that session, Jock told him he was to wait in the camp briefing room.

  “What for?” Lett said.

  “How should I know?” Jock said, “I’m just—”

  “You’re just getting your points in. I know, I know.”

  26.

  Lett sat alone in the camp briefing room, waiting. He was brought lunch. It was a nice pork chop with a macaroni salad and a side of fresh pineapple. He got coffee and a slice of apple pie. And he waited. The briefing room was just a hut of its own, just bare plywood like a giant chicken coop. He heard something booming outside. He told himself it was just thunder, another afternoon rain front. But soon the room seemed to shrink around him. Then it was massive, the ceiling taller than the sky. Then the metal roof pinged, then pitter-patter, then . . . He wanted to keep moving but he couldn’t leave. His head spun, he squeezed his eyes shut. Now it was rat-a-tat and it turned into the staccato metal punch press of machine guns. He grabbed at the desk. His leg started bouncing. He pushed it down.

  He needed his dose. He didn’t have his dose. His bag was in his bungalow.

  The door opened. Lansdale strode inside. He was wet on the shoulders and he shook the water out of his thick hair.

  Lett sat up straight, refocused, made himself look shipshape. Hell, he even smiled.

  “It’s been too long, Doc,” he said.

  “Indeed it has.” Lansdale wasn’t wearing a white doctor’s coat of course, just khakis as always but w
ithout the holster. He tossed the wet stub of his cigar in the trash can. “How you faring, hero?”

  “Fine. Say, could I pop out a minute?”

  “No. You have a briefing coming. There’s the latrine.” Lansdale wagged a thumb at the door to the toilet, the only other room attached to the briefing hut.

  “No, it’s . . .” His leg started bouncing, he leaned on it. “I need my dose,” he blurted.

  Lansdale stared a moment. “You know what I think? I think it’s finally time you go without. I mean, you’ve been performing so well—you’re further along than you think. You’re well into the third stage.”

  “I don’t know . . . not unless, maybe you got something else to replace it?”

  Lansdale held up a finger, and his giant class ring flashed. “See now. Such a thing is exactly what I do have.” He spun on his long feet and picked up a piece of chalk from the empty chalkboard on the bare plywood wall.

  Lansdale, his hands dusted pale with chalk and his face streaked with it like some cuckoo witch doctor, lectured Lett on the marching legions of Communists taking over Eastern Europe, now poised to overrun Asia and the Pacific and soon America itself. They had to be faced. They must be stopped. Defeating Hitler was only the first step. Millions might be enslaved. Standing up to Joe Stalin and his Chinese henchman Mao Tse-tung was the true end goal. Bold deeds were required, but steely men like Lett were the very men for the great task at hand! The lecture reminded Lett of those films they were shown in boot camp, Why We Fight, but this was more cheerful, oddly, accompanied by positive yet hollow slogans that Lansdale kept writing on the board and erasing.

  To succeed, we must first believe that we can!

  Nothing tames the old worries quicker than pure action!

  And on and on it went, for an hour, for the rest of the afternoon.

  It submerged Lett in a grinding, thrashing blur of panic. He tried to keep it together, but his cruel old monkey was creeping back on top of him, clawing at his temples and the top of his skull.

  Lansdale finished scribbling another silly homily, turned around to Lett, and started. “What is it? You’re sweating something awful.”

  Lett unbolted a smile like a hatch falling open. He couldn’t appear too weakened, not now. Maybe the point of this was to see if he could forgo his dose? “I’m trying, I really am,” he said.

  Lansdale, eyes narrowing, turned to the board and drew more figures on the matte blackness, the chalk tapping, dragging, screaking.

  Lett tensed up. He felt others at his shoulders. The whole crew sat here with him, now, finally, every dead GI he’d known in their bloody rags with their grimy grim mugs, an auditorium full and a line out the door. Then Lieutenant Tom Godfrey pulled up a seat next to him. Tom was Lett’s favorite old ghost. Tom’s face was scorched, and he was covered in steaming blood and entrails from the bullets in his back that exploded his chest. Tom Godfrey was the best looie Lett ever had. Tom was killed in action on December 18, 1945, at the height of the Battle of the Bulge. Lett had tried to save Tom but couldn’t.

  Be careful out there, Wendell, Tom said now. It’s all I’ve ever asked of you.

  Lett nodded along, and to all his other dead buddies going way back, all the way to his first, Sheridan, right after D-Day, Sheridan with a hole where his nose had been and the pink and gray insides of his head still decorating his collar like the truest insignia ever known to an army.

  Every time Lansdale turned around, Lett showed a happy open face. It shut down as soon as Lansdale’s back turned, Lansdale drawing crude maps of Asia and Eastern Europe with arrows depicting armies swooping onto cities, nations, peoples. He broke chalk, picked up another, kept scribbling, screeching. Hammer and Sickle. Red Stars. Red White and Blues. The Cross!

  Lett was like a wrathful boy sticking his tongue out at a violent father behind his back. He rapped at the table to make the monologue of a lesson stop, but he disguised it as a happy drumbeat to Lansdale’s paean to the American Way when the man whipped around again. But the folds in Lansdale’s brow were stacking up. Lett pressed his hands to his ears. If he didn’t do something soon he wasn’t going to be able to follow Lansdale’s epic razzle-dazzle at all.

  Lett started rambling and couldn’t stop. “I’m just an ant and I’m done for, see. We are all ants and done for. All out of change. Back against the wall! Under the heel of the iron boot!”

  He’d interrupted Lansdale midsentence. Lansdale pivoted as if on a revolving pedestal, his face looking as if someone had squirted water on it or something worse.

  “You cannot let down your guard,” Lett went on, “even when you think you are dreaming. Because you’re dreaming. Then you’re dead. Dead!”

  He shot up and paced around the table, rambling on, all his dead buddies following like in some ghastly conga, Lett slapping at the table and then he was pounding on it.

  “Stop! Sit the hell down,” Lansdale shouted.

  Listen to the man, Wendell. Just sit and can it for a second. This is not what we meant.

  Lett stopped, took a deep breath, sat back down on his chair.

  Lansdale took a deep breath, too. He set down the chalk.

  “You usually give me an injection when I do this,” Lett said. “Just do it. Please.”

  “All right, just, hold tight.”

  Lett planted his elbows on the table, folded his arms, and set his face into the dark little cabin of his arms. He felt his buddies there, but only as a presence, watching over. He didn’t know how long this went on. He might have slept a moment, a minute, more.

  He hadn’t expected a relapse such as this. He told himself it had just been the weather.

  Lansdale came striding back in. He had a case that looked like a house call bag.

  “Sit up, please.”

  Lansdale delivered Lett the good old shot. It stung a little at first. Then Lett leaned back, let it flow through him.

  He believed that it was helping immediately. His face felt like it was opening like a flower, like he was yawning wide yet not moving his face. He blinked any remaining tenseness away. His limbs unlocked and his muscles loosened and he let his arms hang off his sides.

  His friends were gone. The room was normal size.

  “All right? Fine? You happy now?” Lansdale said.

  “Sure am. Thanks, Doc.”

  “Good. So don’t screw this up. Not now.”

  ***

  Lansdale left him there, told him to wait. Lett had his dose, but the fire inside him still wouldn’t douse. The heat found his head again, boiling his blood, and it filled his fists. To hell with Lansdale and his positive sayings. Fuck them all. War and death and tortures and all that came with them were never something to be enjoyed, savored, promoted like some newfangled toothpaste. He hated Lansdale. He hated himself for hating. Then he started speculating, anticipating, preparing. What were they going to throw at him next?

  About thirty minutes later, Selfer came striding in. He wore his fatigues, but they were uncharacteristically wrinkled and his shirt barely tucked. His eyes darted around. He carried a slim map case on one shoulder.

  “Just what are you trying to pull?” Selfer said.

  “I needed my dose. Weather can cause it. Or maybe it was the Worldwide Red Scare routine?”

  Selfer ignored the comment. He pulled out what Lett first thought was a map, but once Selfer rolled it out flat Lett saw that it was a blueprint-style sketch of a series of buildings. They were simple and squared in their arrangement with a gap in the center like locations around an airfield or a city square. No locations were marked. Selfer spread his hands across the paper, smoothing it, eyes searching for something he could show Lett, apparently.

  Lett stopped looking at the paper. “Why isn’t Lansdale briefing me?”

  Selfer didn’t answer.

  “Because Lansdale told you to,” Lett added.

  “Lansdale’s higher level now,” Selfer snapped. “That’s the word.”

  “So there really ar
e changes being made around here. I’ve noticed it.”

  Again Selfer didn’t answer. His eyes kept searching the paper diagram. As soon as he opened his mouth again, Lett interrupted him.

  “Where are they sending me?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Selfer said to the paper.

  “Why not?”

  Selfer banged on the table. He shoved the paper off the table. He stepped over it and stomped around the room. “Because it’s not for you to know,” he barked.

  “Says you.”

  “Don’t get smart.”

  “Then, show me on a map.”

  Selfer glared at him. “Whatever you’re doing? You do not want to do it, believe me.”

  “Don’t just dump me on a seaplane again without a clue. Please. I might as well have blindfolds on. I’m not a prisoner.”

  “Does this look like a prison? Maybe you should be in a stockade, like you should’ve been in the first place.”

  Lett let the comment ride. Selfer sighed at his own words. He turned away a moment, deep in thought. He bounded over to the chalkboard. It slid on a track. He pushed it aside to reveal a map of the Pacific Theater on another track. He pointed at spots in the Pacific Ocean.

  “Territory of Hawaii,” Selfer said.

  “That’s us, yes,” Lett said. “What is this, a guessing game?”

  Selfer glared again.

  “Okay, okay.” It was a guessing game.

  Lett expected Selfer’s finger to move to Oahu again, or across the ocean to Wake Island or Guam or even the Philippines or, conceivably, Japan. Australia maybe. But Selfer’s finger moved rightward, to the eastern edge of the map, where the coastline of the western United States would have begun if the map didn’t end there. His finger stopped just off the map, pressing into the plywood, and he gazed over his shoulder at Lett with wide eyes as if to say, If it’s not on the map, I’m not actually showing you.