The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition

by Fowler, Karen Joy

  “Then I guess I have other uses too,” I said. “Besides, I’m not his aide. He has a lieutenant for that. But when we got back from Attu, he said he was getting me transferred to a maintenance platoon so I’d be available for other things. And now I run his errands. I shine his shoes. I deliver messages. I box. And when he doesn’t need me, I go back to my platoon and try not to listen to the shit the other guys say about me.”

  Pop gave another cough. He didn’t sound good at all, but I guessed he was used to it.

  “You haven’t really answered my question,” he said then. “You’ve explained what you do for him. But you haven’t explained how you were selected to do it. Out of all the enlisted men available, what made him notice you in particular?”

  He was jabbing at me yet again. I thought about dislodging his false teeth permanently.

  Instead, I told him. As much as I could stand to.

  “It was on Attu,” I said. My voice shook in my skull. “Right after the Japs made their banzai charge. By that time some of those little bastards didn’t have nothing but bayonets tied to sticks. But they wouldn’t quit coming. My squad was pushed all the way back to the support lines before we got the last ones we could see. We even captured one. He had a sword, but one of us got him in the hand, and then he didn’t have nothing. So we knocked him down, sat on him, and tied his wrists behind his back with my boot laces.” I glared at Pop. “Our sergeant was gone, and by then it was just me and two other guys. Once we had the Jap tied, those guys left me with him while they went to find the rest of our platoon. Then the colonel showed up. He’d lost his unit, too, and he wanted me to help him find it. But I had a prisoner. So the colonel gave me an order.”

  Pop looked puzzled. “And?”

  “And I obeyed the order.”

  Pop’s eyes shifted away for a second, then back again. I thought he was going to ask me to go ahead and say it.

  But then he rubbed his jaw, raised his eyes skyward, and sighed.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll go with you to speak with the lieutenant colonel. You won’t have to tell him that I didn’t see the corpse. But we’ll still have to leave our friend from the Alaska Scouts out of it. And I’ll have to go up to The Adakian first, to make sure the boys have started work on tomorrow’s edition. There’s nobody there over corporal, and they each refuse to take direction from any of the others unless I say so. I’m a corporal as well, of course, but our beloved brigadier general has given me divine authority in my own little corner of the war. He’s an admirer. As were those Navy boys at Mount Moffett, as it turned out. Although I had the impression that what one of them really likes is the Bogart movie, while the other thinks I might be able to introduce him to Myrna Loy. But they were both impressed that I actually met Olivia de Havilland when she was here.”

  Pop liked to talk about himself a little more than suited me. But if he was going to do the right thing, I didn’t care.

  I got out of the jeep. “I’ll go with you to the newspaper. In case you forget to come back.”

  Pop got out too. “At this point, Private,” he said, “I assure you that you’ve become unforgettable.”

  After a detour to the nearest latrine, we climbed up to the newspaper hut. Pop went in ahead of me, but stopped abruptly just inside the door. I almost ran into him.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  I looked past Pop and saw nine men standing at attention, including the three I had seen there that morning. They were all like statues, staring at the front wall. Their eyes didn’t even flick toward Pop.

  Someone cleared his throat to our left. I recognized the sound.

  I looked toward the table where Pop had napped that morning, and I saw the colonel rise from a chair. His aide was standing at parade rest just beyond him, glaring toward the Adakian staff. I had the impression they were being made to stand at attention as a punishment for something.

  The colonel adjusted his garrison cap, tapped its silver oak leaf with a fingernail, then hitched up his belt around his slight potbelly and stretched his back. He wasn’t a large man, but the stretch made him seem taller than he was. His sharp, dark eyes seemed to spark as he gave a satisfied nod and scratched his pink, fleshy jaw.

  “It’s about damn time,” he said in his harsh Texas accent. Then he looked back at his aide. “Everyone out except for these two. That includes you.”

  The aide snapped his fingers and pointed at the door.

  Pop and I stepped aside as Pop’s staff headed out. They all gave him quizzical looks, and a few tried to speak with him. But the colonel’s aide barked at them when they did, and they moved on outside.

  The aide brought up the rear and closed the door behind him, leaving just the colonel, Pop, and me in the hut. To Pop’s right, on the drawing board, I saw the finished cartoon of two soldiers having beer for breakfast. One soldier was saying to the other:

  “Watery barley sure beats watery eggs!”

  Pop’s eyebrows were pinched together. He was glaring at the colonel.

  “I don’t know how long you made them stand there like that,” Pop said. “But I’ll be taking this up with the general when he returns.”

  The colonel gave a smile that was almost a grimace. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment, we’re in the middle of another. I’ve received a call from a Navy commander who tells me a dead sailor has been found on Mount Moffett. He says the body was discovered by you, Corporal. I play cards with the man, and he’s sharp. So I believe him.”

  Pop sat down on the cartoonist’s stool, which still kept him several inches taller than me or the colonel.

  “That’s right,” Pop said. He was still frowning, but his voice had relaxed into its usual cool, superior tone. “At your request, the private and I were looking for the dead eagle he’d found earlier. But it had apparently blown away. Then a williwaw kicked up, so we found shelter in an old Aleut lodge. That’s where we found the unfortunate sailor.”

  The colonel turned toward me. “I understand it was the sailor you fought yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I had gone to attention automatically.

  “What happened?” the colonel asked. “Did he try to take another swing at you?” He was still smiling in what I guessed he thought was a fatherly way. “Was it self-defense, Private?”

  It was as if an icicle had been thrust into the back of my skull and all the way down my spine.

  “Sir,” I said. I don’t know how I managed to keep my voice from quaking, but I did. “He was dead when we found him, sir.”

  The colonel’s fatherly smile faded. “Are you sure about that? Or is that what the corporal said you should tell me?”

  Now Pop was staring at the colonel through slitted eyelids. And now he had a slight smile of his own. But it was a grim, knowing smile.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  The colonel turned on Pop with sudden rage. His pink face went scarlet.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you, Corporal!” he snapped. “When I need answers from a drunken, diseased has-been who hasn’t written a book in ten years, you’ll be the first to know. At the moment, however, I’ll take my answers from the private.”

  Pop nodded. “Of course you will. He’s just a kid, and he doesn’t have a brigadier general in his corner. So you’re going to use him the way you’ve used him since Attu. What happened there, anyway?”

  “We won,” the colonel said. “No thanks to the likes of you.”

  Pop held up his hands. “I’d never claim otherwise. At that time I was stateside having my rotten teeth pulled, courtesy of Uncle Sam.”

  The colonel stepped closer to Pop, and for a second I thought he was going to slap him.

  “You’re nothing but a smug, privileged, Communist prick,” the colonel snarled. “The general may not see that, but I do. I’ve read the fawning stories you print about Soviet victories. You might as well be fighting for the Japs.”

  Pop’s eyes widened. “Colonel,
I realize now that your attitude toward me is entirely my fault. In hindsight, I do wish I could have accepted your dinner invitation. However, in my defense, by that time I had seen a sample of your writing. And it was just atrocious.”

  The colonel’s face went purple. He raised his hand.

  Then, instead of slapping Pop, he reached over to the drawing board, snatched up the new cartoon, and tore it to shreds. He dropped the pieces on the floor at Pop’s feet.

  “No more jokes in the newspaper about beer,” he said. “They undermine discipline. Especially if they’re drawn by a nigger.”

  Then he looked at me, and his color began draining back to pink.

  “Private,” he said, his voice lowering, “you and I need to talk. Unfortunately, I’m about to have lunch, and then I have to meet with several captains and majors. The rest of my afternoon is quite full, as is most of my evening. So you’re to report to my office at twenty-one hundred hours. No sooner, no later. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  The colonel gave a sharp nod. “Good. In the meantime, I’m restricting you to barracks. If you need chow, get it. But then go to your bunk and speak to no one. While you’re there, I suggest that you think hard about what happened today, and what you’re going to tell me about it. If it was self-defense, I can help you. Otherwise, you may be in trouble.” He glanced at Pop, then back at me. “And stay away from the corporal.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  The colonel pointed at the door, so I turned and marched out. I caught a glimpse of the colonel’s aide and the newspaper staff standing up against the wall of the Quonset, and then I headed down the boardwalk toward Main Street. The wind cut through me, and I shivered. I still had to return the jeep to the motor pool. Then get some chow. Then go to my bunk. One thing at a time. Jeep, chow, bunk. Jeep, chow, bunk.

  The colonel seemed to think I had killed the Navy man. And that Pop had advised me to lie about it.

  Jeep, chow, bunk.

  Of course, Pop had advised me to lie, but not about that. Because that hadn’t happened.

  Or had it? Could I have done something like that and then forgotten I’d done it? Why not? Hadn’t I already done things just as bad?

  Jeep, chow, bunk.

  All I knew for sure was that the colonel hated Pop, and that I had been in trouble ever since finding the eagle.

  Jeep, chow, bunk. It wasn’t working.

  How I wished I had never seen the eagle. Or the ulax.

  How I wished I had never met another Cutthroat after Attu.

  How I wished I could have stayed in my combat unit.

  How I wished I had never met Pop.

  How I wished I had never been sent to the Aleutians in the first place.

  How I wished I had never punched that rich kid from Omaha, and that I had stayed home long enough to help my old man with the hay.

  X

  I had my Quonset hut to myself while I waited for the afternoon to creep by. I didn’t know what job the rest of my bunkmates were out doing, but it didn’t matter. I would have liked to find them and do some work so I wouldn’t have to think. But I was under orders to stay put.

  Other than the truth, I didn’t know what I would tell the colonel when 2100 finally came. Even if I included every detail, including the ones Pop and I had agreed not to tell, it still wasn’t going to be the story the colonel wanted to hear. And whatever story that was, I knew I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.

  I hadn’t gotten any chow. My stomach was a hard, hungry knot, and I knew I should have eaten. But I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to keep it down.

  Sure, I had been in trouble before. But back then, I had just been a dumb Bohunk kid who’d gotten in a fight, swiped a Hudson, and insulted a judge. None of that had bothered me. But none of that had been anything like this.

  I wasn’t even sure what “this” was. But I did know that another kid, a kid just like me except that he was Navy, had gotten his skull bashed in. And the colonel thought that maybe I was the one who’d done it.

  It all went through my head over and over again, and the knot in my stomach got bigger and bigger. I lay in my bunk and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. Outside, the Aleutian wind whistled and moaned, and occasional short rat-a-tats of rain drummed against the Quonset tin. Every so often, I heard planes roaring in and out of the airfield. I tried to guess what they were, since the bombing runs from Adak had pretty much ended once we’d retaken Attu and Kiska. But I had never been good at figuring out a plane from its engine noise. If an engine wasn’t on a tractor or jeep, I was at a loss.

  “First impressions can be so deceiving,” a low, smooth voice said.

  I opened my eyes. Pop was sitting on a stool beside my bunk. He was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped under his chin, his dark eyes regarding me over the rims of his glasses. I hadn’t heard him come in.

  “How’d you know where I bunk?” I asked.

  Pop ignored the question. “Why, just this morning, Private,” he continued, “you seemed like such a tough young man. Such a hardened fighter. Yet here we are, scarcely nine hours later, and you’re flopped there like a sack of sand. Defeated. Vanquished.”

  “Don’t those mean the same thing?”

  Pop gave me that thin smile of his. “My point is, you’re taking this lying down. That doesn’t sound like someone who’d dare to punch a rich kid from Omaha.”

  I turned away from him and faced the cold metal of the Quonset wall.

  “I’m under orders,” I said. “And I’m not supposed to be talking to you.”

  Pop laughed a long, dry laugh that dissolved into his usual hacking cough.

  “Under orders?” he asked through the coughing. “Just how do you think you got into this confusing court-martial conundrum in the first place? You followed orders, that’s how. Logically, then, the only possible way out of your current situation is to defy orders, just this once. It’s only sixteen thirty, and the lieutenant colonel won’t be looking for you until twenty-one hundred. You’ve already wasted more than two hours wallowing here, so I suggest you don’t waste any more.”

  I turned back to face him.

  “Just what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “My only choice is to tell him everything that happened, and the hell with our promise to the Cutthroat. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Pop shook his head. “You can’t tell him everything,” he said, “because you don’t know everything.”

  “And you do?”

  “No.” Pop stood and jerked his thumb toward the door. “But I know some of it, and I’m going to find out the rest. You see, unlike you, I’ve spent the past few hours doing something. My job is to get the news, and a large part of that involves getting people to talk. So for the past two hours, people have been talking to me and my boys a lot. But now the boys have to work on the paper. And my cartoonist has to draw a new cartoon, which has put me into a vengeful mood.”

  “So go get your revenge,” I said. “What’s it got to do with me?”

  Pop leaned down and scowled. “It’s your revenge, too. And I don’t think I can find out the rest of what I need to know if you aren’t with me.”

  I rose on my elbows and stared up at him. It was true that following orders hadn’t really worked out for me. But I didn’t see how doing what Pop said would work out any better.

  “You say you know some of it already,” I said. “Tell me.”

  Pop hesitated. Then he turned, crossed to the other side of the hut, and sat on an empty bunk.

  “I know the lieutenant colonel placed a bet on your fight yesterday,” Pop said. “A large one. And I know that your opponent had a reputation as a damn good boxer. He’d won eighteen fights, six by knockout. How many have you won?”

  “Two,” I said. “Yesterday was my second match. The first was with the guy whose bunk you’re sitting on. It was a referee’s decision.”

  Pop’s eyes narrowed.
“So any sane wager yesterday would have been on the Navy man. And I saw the fight, Private. He was winning. Until the third round, when he dropped his left. And as you told me this morning, you took advantage. Who wouldn’t?”

  I sat up on the edge of my bunk. In addition to the knot in my stomach, I now felt a throbbing at the back of my skull.

  “You’re saying it was fixed,” I said.

  “If I were betting on it, I’d say yes.” Pop waved a hand in a cutting gesture. “But leave that alone for now. Instead, consider a few more things. One, we know that the ulax we found was used by Navy men for unofficial activities. The dead man is Navy. And the Navy boys we talked to said they didn’t know of anyone but sailors having any fun up there. After all, they control access to that part of the island. Yet the lieutenant colonel sent you up because, he claimed, he had reports of Army G.I.’s entertaining nurses there. Which doesn’t quite jibe with the Navy’s version.”

  “That’s odd, I guess,” I said. “But that’s not anything you found out in the past two hours.”

  Pop looked down at the floor and clasped his hands again.

  “No,” he said. Now I could barely hear him over the constant weather noise against the Quonset walls. “I learned two more things this afternoon. One is that the lieutenant colonel will soon be up for promotion to full colonel. Again. After being passed over at least once before. And I know he wants that promotion very badly. Badly enough, perhaps, to do all sorts of things to get it.”

  Pop fell silent then, and kept looking down at the floor.

  I stood. My gut ached and my head hurt. And I thought I knew the answer to my next question. But I had to ask it anyway.

  “You said you learned two more things,” I said. “What’s the second?”

  Pop looked up at me. His expression was softer than it had been all day. He looked kindly. Sympathetic. I had wanted to hit him earlier, but not as much as I did now.

  “It’s not really something new,” Pop said. “It’s what you already told me. Or almost told me. But of course I know the order that the lieutenant colonel gave you on Attu.”