I clenched my fists. Maybe I would hit the old man after all. Maybe I wouldn’t stop hitting him for a while.
“I won’t say it aloud if you don’t want me to,” Pop said.
I turned and started for the door. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I was getting away from Pop.
He followed and stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, so I whirled with a roundhouse right. He leaned back just in time, and my knuckles brushed his mustache.
“Jesus Christ, son,” Pop exclaimed.
I grabbed his scrawny arms and pushed him away. He staggered back, but didn’t fall.
“He was a Jap,” I said. I was trembling. “He was trying to kill me not five minutes before. And it was an order. It was an order from a goddamn colonel.”
Pop took a deep, quaking breath and adjusted his glasses.
“It was an order,” I said.
Pop nodded. “I know. And now I need you to listen to me again. Are you listening, Private?”
I glared at him.
“Here it is, then,” Pop said. “No one, and I mean no one—not your chaplain, not the general, not anyone back home, and sure as hell not me—no one would condemn what you did. If the circumstances had been reversed, that Jap would have done the same to you, and he wouldn’t have waited for an order.”
I could still see him lying there, his blood staining the thin crust of snow a sudden crimson. He had been as small as a child. His uniform had looked like dirty play clothes.
He was a Jap. But he was on the ground. With his hands tied behind his back. His sword was gone.
Pop wasn’t finished. “The problem isn’t that you followed the order. The problem is that out of the three thousand Japs you boys fought on Attu, we took only twenty-eight prisoners. I’m not saying that killing the rest was a bad thing. But prisoners can be valuable. Especially if they’re officers. And a man with a sword might have been an officer. So someone would have wanted to ask him things like, what’s your rank, who are your immediate superiors, where are your maps, what were your orders, what’s your troop strength on Kiska, and where does Yamamoto go to take his morning shit. That sort of thing.”
Pop was talking a lot, again. It wore on my brain. And Yamamoto’s plane had been shot down a month before we’d hit Attu. But at least now I had something else to think about.
“You mean we need a supply of Japs?” I said.
Now Pop smiled his thin smile. “I mean that a lieutenant colonel in the Intelligence Section did a stupid thing. He wasn’t even supposed to be near the fighting. But that banzai charge came awfully close. So in rage or fear, he forgot his job and ordered you to destroy a military intelligence asset. That’s an act that could negatively affect his chances for promotion.” Pop pointed at me again. “If anyone happened to testify to it.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to make the pain at the base of my skull go away.
“I don’t understand how anything you just said adds up to anything we saw today,” I told him.
Now Pop pointed past me, toward the door. “That’s why there’s more to find out, and that’s why I need you to help me with it. There was one other man on the mountain with us this morning. And since you and he were freezing and fighting on Attu while I was elsewhere, I think he might be more willing to part with any answers if you’re present.”
That made some sense. The Cutthroat hadn’t liked me, but he might respect me more than Pop.
Still, there was one thing that I knew Pop had left out in all his talk.
“What about the eagle?” I asked.
Pop bared his false teeth.
“That’s the key,” he said. “That’s why we have to talk with the Scout again. Remember what he said about magic and power? Well, he also said that he told those same stories to officers on Attu.” He went past me to the door. “Now, will you come along?”
I turned to go with him, then hesitated.
“Wait a minute.” I was still trying to clear my head. “Are you saying the colonel believes in Eskimo magic?”
Pop held up his hands. “I have no idea. But magic and religion are based on symbols, which can be powerful as hell. And I know the lieutenant colonel does believe in that. After all, there’s one symbol that he very much wants for his own.”
I was still confused by most of what Pop had said. But this one part, I suddenly understood.
A full colonel was called a “bird colonel.”
Because a full colonel’s insignia was an eagle.
I went with Pop.
XI
The 179th Station Hospital wasn’t just one building. It was a complex of Quonset huts and frame buildings, and it even had an underground bunker. When Olivia de Havilland had come to Adak in March, she had spent an entire day there, visiting the sick and wounded. There were a few hundred patients on any given day.
But all we needed to do was find the Cutthroat. So I waited outside the main building while Pop went in and charmed whomever he needed to charm to find out what he wanted to know. I was beginning to realize that there were some things, even in the Army, that superseded rank.
When Pop came out again, his hands in his jacket pockets, he tilted his head and started walking around back. I followed him to three Quonset huts behind the main building. He stopped at the lean-to of the first hut and looked one way and then the other as I joined him. There were a few G.I.’s trudging along nearby with no apparent purpose. Maybe, I thought, they were just trying to look busy so they wouldn’t be sent to the South Pacific.
“Do you see anyone you know?” Pop asked. “Anyone who might tell the lieutenant colonel we’re here?” I tried to take a good look. But the usual gray light was dimming as evening came on, making all the soldiers appear gray as well.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But everyone’s starting to look alike to me.”
Pop gave me an annoyed glance. “You sound like the Scout,” he said. He stepped away, moved quickly to the center Quonset, and slipped into its lean-to. I followed. Then he barged into the hut without knocking.
The Cutthroat was in a small open space in the center of the hut, surrounded by shelves packed with boxes and cans. He was sitting on the edge of a cot under a single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling, leaning over a battered coffeepot on a G.I. pocket stove. The smell was not only of coffee, but of old beef stew, seaweed, and mud. My still-knotted stomach lurched.
The Cutthroat looked up, and his slick dark hair gleamed. “You guys.” He didn’t sound surprised. “Did you bring my beers?”
Pop and I stepped farther inside, and I closed the door behind us. There were two folding stools set up on our side of the pocket stove.
“I’ll bring your beers tomorrow.” Pop went to the right-hand stool and sat down. “In the meantime, I want you to know that both the private and I are doing our best to live up to this morning’s agreements. For one thing, we haven’t mentioned your presence on Mount Moffett to anyone else.”
“I believe you,” the Cutthroat said.
“But we have a problem,” Pop continued. “So we may not be able to keep that confidence much longer. There’s a lieutenant colonel who’s trying to use that Navy man’s death to make our lives hell.”
The Cutthroat looked back down at his brew. “Yeah, I know.” He rubbed his right thigh. “Goddamn, my leg is hurting tonight. I better not climb any more mountains for a while.”
I sat down on the left-hand stool. The fumes from the stuff bubbling in the coffeepot were intense.
“What do you mean, you know?” I asked. “How could you know that?”
The Cutthroat glanced up at me. “Because I wasn’t sure I trusted you guys. So I followed you. You didn’t drive fast. I was outside the back wall of the newspaper hut when you got your asses chewed. I couldn’t hear it all, but I got most of it. He’s got it in for both of you. And I recognized his voice.”
Pop’s eyebrows rose. “That was quite stealthy of you.”
The Cutthroat
snorted. “I’ve snuck up on Japs in machine gun nests, and they knew I was coming. Buncha desk soldiers who don’t expect me ain’t a challenge.”
“Nevertheless,” Pop said. “I respect a man who can shadow that well. Especially if I’m the one he’s shadowing.”
The Cutthroat reached to a shelf behind him and brought down three tin cups. “You guys want coffee before you start bothering me with more questions?”
“Is that what that is?” I asked.
The Cutthroat gave me a look almost as dark as he’d given me in the ulax. “You need to work on your fucking manners.”
Pop and I both accepted cups, and the Cutthroat poured thick, black liquid into both of them. It was something else that reminded me of what Pop had coughed up that morning.
Then the Cutthroat poured a cup for himself and set the pot back down on the pocket stove. He took a swig and smiled.
“That’s good,” he said. “This stuff will help you think better.”
Pop took a swig as well, and I took a tentative sip of mine. It didn’t taste as bad as it smelled, so I drank a little more. There was a hint of rotted undergrowth. But at least it was hot.
“Thank you,” Pop said. He took a long belt. “But now I’m going to bother you, as you suspected. How did you recognize the lieutenant colonel’s voice?”
The Cutthroat blew into his cup, and steam rose up around his face. “Because I’ve heard it before. On Attu, he was one of the shitheads who wouldn’t listen to our scouting reports. But he loved our colorful stories. Here on Adak, I’ve been bringing him and his officer pals booze and coffee while they play poker right here in this hut. And when they get good and drunk, they want me to tell more stories. Like I said, you people can’t get enough of that noble-savage crap.”
“Do those poker pals include a Navy commander?” Pop asked.
“I guess that’s what he is,” the Cutthroat said. “He and the lieutenant colonel set up yesterday’s boxing matches. They made a bet on the Army-Navy one.” He pointed at me. “The lieutenant colonel bet on this guy.”
“I know,” Pop said. “For a lot of money, correct?”
The Cutthroat scowled and took a long drink. “Maybe there were side bets for money. But the bet between the lieutenant colonel and the Navy officer was for something else. See, the Navy guy has friends and family in high places. Like fucking Congress. So if the Army boxer won, the commander promised to have these friends pull strings and help with a promotion.”
“What if the Navy man won?” Pop asked.
The Cutthroat grinned and shook his head. “Then the commander was going to have dinner with you, Corporal. That’s what the lieutenant colonel promised. You must be famous or rich or something. Gotta say, it seemed like a lopsided bet to me.”
Pop drained his cup and set it on the floor. He seemed to wobble on his stool as he did.
“Very lopsided indeed,” he said, “since I wouldn’t do a favor for the lieutenant colonel if my life depended on it.”
I had been sipping the hot coffee and listening, but now I spoke up. “What about the eagle?”
The Cutthroat fixed me with an even gaze. “I still don’t know about that. Not for sure. But nobody ever knows anything for sure. No matter who you ask, or what you find out, you’ll never know all of anything that’s already past.”
The single lightbulb began to flicker. My stomach knot had relaxed, but now I found myself feeling lightheaded. I knew I should have had some chow.
“So I’m giving you both the opportunity to know as much as the lieutenant colonel,” the Cutthroat said. “I told him the legend I told you. And once, he asked me about taking power from animals. I said I couldn’t really explain that, since I didn’t understand it myself. But if he were to take a spirit journey or have a vision, like some shamans do, he might have a chance to know all the secrets he wanted. He might die and be reborn. He might be torn apart and remade. He might meet his totem animal and be given its strength. He might gain whatever he desired. He might even see his entire life from his birth to his death.” The Cutthroat shrugged. “Or he might go crazy. Or he might just pass out and sleep it off. It all depends on the individual.”
The Cutthroat stood up from the cot, and he split into five men before me. “Here,” they all five said in harmony. They reached for Pop and grasped his forearms. “You take the cot. My mother got this recipe from the same people who told her the eagle story, and she always said that the most important part was to lie the fuck down. There’s some mushrooms and other shit in it, and you don’t want to know what I have to do to mix it right. But it hardly ever kills anyone.”
The five Cutthroats put Pop on the bunk, and Pop curled up on his side. He looked like a toy made out of olive-drab pipe cleaners with a cotton-swab head. I could see his eyes behind his glasses, and they were like hard-boiled eggs.
Now the Cutthroat condensed into one man again, and he reached for me.
“You’ll have to take the floor,” he said. “But you’re younger. It’s fair.”
As he grasped my wrist, I watched my tin coffee cup tumble from my numb fingers. It turned over and over, and brown droplets spun out and circled it. The cup turned into the sun.
The bright light was high above my eyes. I could see it between Pop’s fingers.
“That’s the best I can do for you,” the Cutthroat’s voice said. I couldn’t see him anymore. He was far away. “Your enemy took this journey before you. But maybe you’re better suited for it. I don’t say that this means you’ll beat him, or that you’ll understand what he’s done. But at least now you have the same magic. So it’s a fair fight. You’re welcome.”
The earth shook with a deafening rumble, and the back of Pop’s hand fell against my forehead.
Then, in brilliant flashes, in a cacophony of voices and noise and music, I began to see everything.
Everything.
I began to see both the past and present of every place I had ever been, every object I had ever touched, every thing I had ever done. It was as if I were a movie camera in the sky, looking down and watching it all.
Then, even as the past and present were flashing and roaring around me, I saw the future as well. And not just mine.
Pop’s, too.
My advice: Never see the future.
Not anyone’s.
I’m in my foxhole when the Japanese make their charge. I have to struggle for my helmet, for my weapon. When I make it out of the hole I run backward, firing as they come toward me. Some keep coming even after I hit them. One gets very close and sets off a hand grenade, trying to kill us both. But he trips and falls, his body covers it, and I’m all right. Then, to my left , I see my sergeant bayoneted. I shoot the one who did it. But it’s too late.
A younger Pop, his hair not yet all white, is at a typewriter. It clacks and clatters, and the bell rings over and over again. He puts in page after page. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and drinks two bottles of whiskey dry, but he doesn’t stop typing. He does this for thirty hours without a break. When he finally stops I can see his eyes. And I know he has emptied himself. There is nothing left.
The colonel points at the little man on the ground and shouts at me. I look at the little man and know he’s a Jap who just tried to kill me. But now he’s lying facedown, his hands behind his back. He hardly looks like a Jap now.
The colonel points and shouts again and again, louder and louder. I put the muzzle of the M1 at the base of the little man’s skull and pull the trigger.
Pop, much, much younger, is wearing a uniform and walking into a hospital. He doubles over coughing as he climbs the steps. A pretty nurse rushes over and puts her arm around his shoulders.
I am much, much older, sitting in a tangle of metal and plastic. A young man is using huge steel jaws to push the metal apart and make a hole for me. You’ll be okay, sir, he says. I’ll get you out. I manage to take a small plastic rectangle from my pocket. It has little square buttons. I punch the buttons and call my
daughter. You’re right, I tell her. I shouldn’t drive anymore.
The colonel is standing over the dead eagle. He is holding a knife. The sailor who fought me appears at the hillock beside the lodge, and the colonel goes to him. You’ll have to trust me for an IOU, he says. It’ll be a while before I can collect my winnings. But you did good. And thanks for the bird.
Pop, looking only a bit older, but wearing a nice suit, is being escorted from a bus by armed guards. They take him into prison and put him into a cell by himself. He stays in the prison for six months. He writes a lot of letters. But all his books go out of print. The radio money stops. When they let him out, he is sicker than ever and looks twenty years older. He is broke and goes to live in a tiny cottage owned by friends.
Guess I don’t have any choice, the sailor says. But I know you’re good for it, sir. Do I still get the date with the nurse? The blonde who swabbed my face and said I was handsome for a Navy man?
I am standing at the altar with my younger brother beside me, looking down at the far end of the aisle, when the pipe organ blares and all of the people on either side of the aisle stand up. A gorgeous woman in white appears on the arm of an older man, and they walk toward me, smiling. I can’t wait for them to get here so I can find out what her name is.
You still get the date, the colonel says, holding out a bent eagle feather. Show this to her when she comes. It’s dark down there, and she has to know it’s you. She’ll be here in a little while. Go on down and wait.
The heavy, sweating man with greasy, wormlike hair leans forward and looks down from his high, long podium. I would like to ask, he says in a thick voice. Is Mr. Budenz being truthful when he told us that you were a Communist? So now Pop leans forward too, toward the microphones on the table where they’ve made him sit, and he says, I decline to answer on the grounds that an answer might tend to incriminate me. He is out of prison, and he is poor. But they won’t leave him alone. They won’t let him at least try to write.
The sailor goes down into the lodge, and the colonel walks away, past the eagle. Another sailor approaches. He’s in there, the colonel says, pointing back toward the lodge. Down where you boys have your fun. He threw the fight. He lost your money.
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition Page 10