Corrigan's Run

by Colin Falconer

  ‘Many's the happy night I've spent here,’ Corrigan said. ‘Enough to cure a man of drink. Now you know why I made Manning's little chocolate soldier give me the key.’

  Father Goode was the only occupant of the gaol. As he threw open the door of his cell a rat scurried away into the darkness, but in the lamplight they could see the open sore on one of the priest's feet where it had been helping itself to a midnight snack. Thankfully, Father Good e was unconscious.

  Rachel's hand shot to her mouth. ‘Oh God.’

  The Japanese had not bothered to tend the bullet wound in his leg. The lower part of his cassock was encrusted with dried blood and the exposed skin of his arms, feet and face were a mass of swollen welts where the mosquitoes had feasted on him.

  Rachel knelt down beside him, cradling his head in her hands. ‘Uncle Matthew,’ she murmured, ‘what have they done to you?’

  Corrigan shone the lamp on the priest's face. ‘Is he still with us?’

  Rachel felt for the pulse at his neck. She nodded. ‘He's lost a lot of blood. He needs medical attention.’

  ‘He's not going to get it here,’ Corrigan said. He handed the lamp to Sanei and hoisted the priest over his shoulder. ‘We'd better get going before the last of the red hot lovers wakes up.’

  ‘Where can we go?’ Rachel said.

  ‘I've already thought about that,’ Corrigan told her. ‘I hope you've got your walking shoes on. We're going to pay a visit to my old pal Heydrich.’

  Chapter 20

  Sanei led the way, navigating by the stars, while Corrigan and Rachel struggled behind with the stretcher, scrambling and slashing their way through the clawing jungle and hanging liana vines. The soft earth crumbled underfoot; they would reach the bottom of a gully and have to pick their way across moss-covered rocks and shallow creek beds in the darkness. Then the long climb up into the hills would begin again.

  They had to stop frequently for Rachel to rest, her uncle's dead weight too much for her. He moaned and tossed on the stretcher. Rachel thought the bullet wound was infected.

  Just before dawn Sanei screamed and fell to the ground. Corrigan dropped the stretcher and ran to help her. She was writhing and thrashing in agony on the ground.

  ‘What is it?’ Rachel said.

  ‘I don't know. She says she's been bitten. Maybe a centipede. I hope to God it wasn't a snake.’ He cradled her helplessly in his arms. Rachel collapsed beside the stretcher, exhausted. I should try and help her, she thought. But what can I do? Even if I was in my uncle’s clinic thre was little she could have done. If it was a centipede, the pain would subside in a while; if it was a bite from one of the island’s many deadly snakes, there was no anti-venom.

  Half an hour later Sanei hobbled back to her feet and Corrigan dragged Rachel roughly upright. ‘We have to put as much distance between us and the Japs as we can,’ he said.

  Sanei was still whimpering with pain but she kept going, hacking a path through the creepers and the vines with Corrigan’s knife. But by dawn none of them could go another step. They stopped in a clearing, the first yellow bolts of sunlight angling through the tall canopy of trees. The black jungle was transformed by the morning into a paradise of orchids and ferns, with green and yellow and purple butterflies. A flock of cockatoos wheeled overhead, their brilliant white plumage contrasted against the misty greens of the trees. Rainbow and Cardinal lorikeets screeched and squabbled in a nearby tree.

  Rachel finally tried to examine Sanei's swollen foot but the girl pushed her away, uttering a stream of curses. Rachel turned away with a shrug and instead bent over her uncle, who was shivering on the stretcher, bathed in his own sweat.

  Corrigan leaned over her shoulder. ‘How is he?’

  ‘I'll have to operate,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Operate?’

  ‘We have to get the bullet out.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, not again. I hope you can manage without me, this time.’

  ‘The fact is, Mister Corrigan, I need you to hold him down.’

  Corrigan shook his head. Father Goode’s eyes had sunk into his head. His face had the waxen quality of a death mask. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said.

  Rachel rolled him onto his belly and ripped away the cassock, leaving his left leg exposed. The bullet wound was tiny, but the flesh around it was swollen and had formed a plum-colored bruise. A scab had formed but pus oozed from beneath it. Corrigan turned up his nose at the stink of it.

  ‘If we can get the bullet out, we can save his leg,’ Rachel said.

  ‘How the hell do you propose to do that? At least out at Marmari you had your little bag of tricks.’

  ‘I'll use your knife,’ Rachel said, indicating the big ivory-handled knife Corrigan had used to knock out the sentry.

  ‘Holy Mary, what kind of a woman are you?’

  ‘I can't let him die.’

  Sanei watched them, squatting on the ground, and chewing noisily on a breadfruit, the purple stained juice dribbling down her chin. Corrigan snatched it away from her and threw it into the undergrowth. ‘For God's sake, go somewhere else and eat the bloody thing!’

  Sanei stared at him, shocked and bewildered. Then she ran off.

  Rachel rolled Father Goode onto his back. ‘The bullet nearly went straight through. I can feel it here just under the skin on the front of his thigh.’

  ‘Is that a fact.’

  ‘I need your help again, Mister Corrigan,’ Rachel said.

  Corrigan sighed. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. I don’t have a choice, do I?’

  *****

  Corrigan knelt on the priest's shoulders, facing his feet. One massive hand was planted on each of the priest's legs. Father Goode lay supine, firmly pinioned beneath him.

  Rachel knelt by the fire, preparing the knife. She had sharpened it with a stone and heated it white-hot over the coals. Beside her was half a coconut shell full of boiled seawater in which she had soaked long strips torn from her own skirt to wrap and bind the wound.

  Corrigan watched her, one eye on the knife, the other on her legs. Jesus, she didn't have a bad set of pins under all that calico. I wonder if I could persuade her to start tearing up her blouse as well? He felt a familiar stirring in his groin.

  ‘Shame on you,’ said a voice between his legs. Corrigan was relieved to discover that it was only Father Goode. ‘Turn away your eyes, man. Have you no shame at all?’

  ‘None to speak of,’ Corrigan said.

  Rachel seemed oblivious. Her mind was on the job at hand; she cleaned Corrigan's knife with coconut fiber and seawater and then came back to the stretcher where her uncle lay, ridiculously pinioned.

  ‘Ready, Mister Corrigan?’

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  Rachel knelt down, holding the edge of the blade over the wound. One swift movement and the flesh split open like a ripe fruit. The thick pus bubbled up, spilling everywhere. Corrigan closed his eyes. Father Goode bellowed and bucked like a wounded bull.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Corrigan shouted. ‘I can't hold him down forever!’

  Rachel slipped the little finger of her right hand into the wound and felt for the bullet. Father Goode screamed again, his whole body twisting like a marionette. Rachel pulled her finger free and a silver-grey object plopped on to the ground, followed by a thick rush of grey-green poison.

  Corrigan howled and rolled on his side in the grass, his knees drawn up to his chest. Father Goode lay quite still. He had passed out.

  Rachel poured brine over the wound and bandaged it as best she could with strips of calico. She wished desperately for some of the sulphonamide drugs they kept in the store at the Mission Hospital. But no point in tormenting herself with that now.

  Corrigan lay groaning a few feet away.

  ‘Mister Corrigan? Are you all right?’

  ‘He bit me,’ Corrigan gasped. ‘He bit me - on the balls!’

  Chapter 21

  They reached Balo Balo around noon.

  There had been no rain for s
everal days and the carpet of leaves in the forest crackled under their feet. On one side of the path someone had killed a big monitor lizard and a cloud of flies rose angrily from the pungent remains as they approached.

  Sanei went ahead, Rachel and Corrigan stumbling behind with the stretcher. There was a clump of breadfruit trees on the outskirts of the village and from there the path widened into a grove of areca palms. Rachel glimpsed the thatched roofs of the village and the deep blue of the sea beyond.

  Corrigan used his boots to drive off a scrawny yellow dog that came out to challenge them.

  A skein of blue-grey wood smoke curled into the trees and the smell of fried fish hung in the still air. Women pounding grain in wooden mortars stopped what they were doing to stare at them. A young man was lashing together a framework of sticks for a canoe; and alongside him an older man with a pipe was repairing a fishing net.

  Children played naked on the sand outside the huts. One of the younger children saw them and ran wailing to its mother.

  They put down the stretcher. Rachel slumped to the ground beside it, spent. Father Goode was still unconscious.

  Corrigan slumped on the edge of a keda in the shade of a canoe house. A fish net hung from the rough-hewn rafters and naked children clustered around, staring at them in wonder and astonishment. Finally Sanei returned with an old man and a young boy. Sanei told them the old man’s name was Ngatu and he was the chief of the village.

  He was an extraordinary sight. He had long pierced earlobes in which he carried his pipe and twist tobacco, and there was a strip of red cloth tied tightly around his lime-blonde hair which made him look a little like a pirate. Apart from his woven penis-wrapper, he wore little else except a long necklace made from the teeth of a flying fox. The corners of his mouth were stained with betel nut juice.

  ‘He wants to know if you’d like a green coconut?’ Sanei asked.

  ‘Yes, that would be kind,’ Rachel said.

  ‘I'd rather have a gin,’ Corrigan said.

  The old man said something to the youth who accompanied him. He disappeared into one of the huts and came out with a small length of creeper worked into a loop. He ran over to one of the palm trees and, gripping the trunk with his hands and feet, and pressing on the trunk with the loop of vine, he scaled the tree with astonishing speed. He threw down two green coconuts and descended.

  The headman slashed off the top of one of the coconuts with a machete and handed it to Rachel. She gulped down the juice. He gave the other to Corrigan.

  Sanei spoke to the old man and then translated what he said to Corrigan. ‘We'll rest here tonight,’ Corrigan said.

  ‘That's very Christian of him.’

  Corrigan laughed. ‘That's got nothing to do with it. He and Sanei are from the same tindadho. They both share the same totem, the shark. He has to help her. It would bring him great shame to turn away one of his own clan, even a total stranger.’

  Rachel She knew about the tribal clans - ‘pagan worship’ her uncle called it - but she had never really benefited from it before. It doesn’t seem quite so pagan now, she thought.

  Corrigan jerked a thumb towards the pale, twitching figure on the bamboo stretcher. ‘Better move him into the shade. Looks like Sleeping Beauty is about to wake up.’

  *****

  ‘I refuse to leave this island. You can run away if you wish, Mister Corrigan, but my place is here with these people. They trust me. I will not skulk away like a coward in the night. It is my duty to stay and face the Barbarian in whatever form he may manifest himself.’

  Corrigan listened to this speech with growing impatience. His hands tightened into fists at his sides. ‘Horseshit,’ he said finally.

  ‘Would you take a care not to use that sort of language in front of gentlewomen?’

  Corrigan gave a guffaw of laughter.

  ‘You consider ill manners and a foul mouth humorous?’

  Corrigan slammed the flat of his hand into one of the bloodwood poles in the centre of the hut. The entire structure shuddered in protest. ‘No, it's you that's funny. What good do you think you're going to do staying here, you pompous bastard? The Japs are combing the jungle for you right now and when they find you they'll string you up by the balls and use the rest of you for bayonet practice. If that's the will of the Lord, I'm Clark Gable. And while we're talking about manners, I don't recall you thanking me for saving your ass back there in that Jap guardhouse.’

  ‘I do not find it necessary to thank a man for doing his bounden duty. Surely you did not think to stand idly by and leaving braver men to their fate?’

  Ngatu had given them an empty hut, reserved for strangers. It had been built of split bamboo and coconut fronds, and was raised a few feet off the ground. Village women had brought them squid and cabbage cooked in coconut cream which she and Corrigan had wolfed down.

  The priest's fever had broken and he had recovered consciousness. He had even allowed Rachel to feed him some mashed banana and coconut milk.

  Now that the food and a little sleep had revitalized his spirits, Corrigan was eager to be on his way. They were still a long way from Heydrich's plantation, at least another day's march, perhaps two, weighed down as they were with the stretcher. But now Father Goode refused to go along with his plan, and Rachel insisted she had no choice but to stay with him.

  Corrigan picked up one of the coconut husks that lay by the side of the charred fire. He threw it out of the doorway into the kraal with all his force; a chicken pecking at the foot of the steps squawked and flapped away. ‘I could be away from here by now,’ Corrigan said. ‘If it wasn't for you and your bloody niece I could be off this stinking island and halfway to Tulagi by now.’

  ‘All we're asking is that you help us find Mister Manning,’ Rachel said. ‘He and his policemen are somewhere on Santa Maria, we know they are.’

  ‘Is that all you want, is it? Well that shouldn’t take long. How long would you like me to look? One year? Two?’

  ‘Perhaps Sanei could find out where he is,’ Father Goode said. ‘She's a native after all.’

  ‘A native, not a clairvoyant.’

  ‘Well, we have made our decision. You must make yours. We cannot go with you. It's as simple as that.’

  ‘I can't just leave you here, can I now?’

  Father Goode forced a rare smile. ‘Surely you wouldn't let a little thing like good conscience bother you, would you?’

  ‘He saved your life!’ Rachel protested. ‘You can't talk to him like that!’

  The priest lowered his head on to the stretcher, and closed his eyes. ‘Very well. 'By their works shall ye know them.' We are in Mister Corrigan's hands now.’

  Corrigan hawked and spat out of the door. Father Goode’s piety had always been hard to stomach, even when he was dressed in full canonicals. Now, lying there like a skeleton, it seemed merely grotesque. He was being lectured by a cadaver.

  Corrigan sat with his back to them for a long time, looking out at the shimmering waters of the lagoon. Sanei watched him, unable to make sense of the dilemma that he was wrestling with. She sat herself down next to him, and put a slim, coffee brown arm on his shoulder.

  Corrigan turned back to Rachel and shook his head. ‘You don't know what you're asking.’

  ‘I'm sorry, Mister Corrigan.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For involving you in all this.’

  ‘Lot of good your sorry does me now.’

  ‘Yes, but I'm sorry all the same. But if I had the time over again I would have done the same thing. I had no choice.’

  ‘Sure and I know that feeling really well.’

  Corrigan got to his feet. He had made up his mind. ‘Do you think this miserable piece of religion and pomposity will make it?’ he said to Rachel, pointing to the priest as if he were a piece of lumber.

  Rachel nodded. ‘I haven't lost a patient yet.’

  ‘How many have you had?’

  ‘The native Kumasi at Marmari Point was my first. Uncl
e Matthew is my second.’

  Corrigan shook his head. He hated them both, this monstrous priest and his cool-eyed, iron-willed niece. But he couldn't help but admire them as well. He only wished he'd never set eyes on either of them.

  ‘What if he died?’ he said, pointing to Father Goode. ‘What would you do? Would you still want to stay then?’

  ‘Are you considering murder as a less painful alternative to abandonment, Mister Corrigan?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Rachel shrugged. ‘I don't know what I'd do,’ she said.

  ‘At this point of time it remains a theoretical question,’ Father Goode said. ‘The more pressing question is - what are you going to do?’

  ‘Manning may be dead, for all we know. The chances of finding him are a hundred to one. We certainly won't find him lugging this stretcher around with us.’

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  He sighed. ‘You're right, Sanei might be able to find him. She can find her way around in this country better than any one of us. We'll stay here in the village and I'll send her off to look for him.’

  ‘You have a reputation as something of a gambler, Mister Corrigan,’ Father Goode said. ‘What are our chances?’

  ‘Of finding Manning? Hundred to one against. But if you're serious about putting a little money down, I'll give you ten to one on the Japs finding us first.’

  Chapter 22

  Sanei had been gone three days. By the third evening Corrigan was fretful, and started pacing the hut. ‘The thing is,’ Father Goode was saying, ‘can we trust her not to go to the Japanese?’

  Corrigan gave him a sour look. ‘For someone who professes to love these people, you don't have a very high opinion of them.’

  ‘I'm a realist, Mister Corrigan.’

  Rachel stood up angrily. ‘She risked her life to save you, Uncle Matthew! If you had seen what she . . .’ She stopped herself. There was no point in elaborating on what Sanei had done to get him free. It would only inspire another speech.