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

by Fowler, Karen Joy

  “We need three,” Pop said.

  I set the glasses down beside the confessions. “I decline to drink,” I said. My mother had asked me to avoid alcohol, too.

  Pop still didn’t take his eyes off the colonel, but he grinned. His false teeth didn’t look so bad all of a sudden.

  “You’re an amusing young man, Private,” he said.

  The colonel crossed his arms. “Neither of you will be very amusing once my aide returns. You’ll both be damned.”

  Pop shrugged. “We’re damned anyway. Besides, I happen to know that your aide is at the movies with a nurse of my acquaintance. He’ll be there at least another hour. I believe tonight’s film is They Died with Their Boots On. Which isn’t too surprising, since Olivia de Havilland has been popular here lately. Although the story of Custer’s Last Stand might not be the most tasteful selection for an audience of G.I.’s.”

  The colonel glowered. “If you shoot me, it’ll be heard. There’ll be dozens of men converging on this building before you’re out the door.”

  Pop finally looked at me. His eyes were bright, and he laughed out loud.

  “Can you believe this joker?” he asked. “Now he’s worried about a shot being heard.”

  Pop turned back toward the desk, reached out with his left hand, and unscrewed the cap from the whiskey. He dropped the cap, picked up the bottle, and poured a hefty dose into each glass. Some of the booze splashed out onto the confessions.

  “I have no intention of shooting you,” he told the colonel. “I only brought the gun so you wouldn’t shoot us.” He tilted his head toward me. “That’s right, Private. I knew you’d be here. You’ve hardly listened to me all day.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You’re not an officer.”

  Pop put down the bottle and picked up one of the glasses. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, and downed the whole thing in three swallows. Then he set it down and refilled it. “Better have yours, sir.” He said sir with deep sarcasm. “You’re falling behind.”

  The other glass sat where it was, untouched, the amber liquid trembling.

  The colonel bared his teeth. “I don’t drink that stuff.”

  Pop picked up his glass again. “Ah. But I know something you do drink. You had a little belt of something cooked up by one of our Alaska Scouts, didn’t you? But what you didn’t know is that some men can hold their mystical potions, and some men can’t. You see, to take a spiritual journey, you have to have a fucking soul to begin with. Otherwise, you just suffer from delusions of grandeur. Especially if that was your inclination to begin with.” He downed his second glass of Johnnie Walker.

  The colonel leaned forward. “Have another, corporal,” he said. His voice was almost a hiss. “I really wish you would.”

  Pop poured himself another.

  “Uh, Pop . . . ” I said.

  Pop picked up his glass a third time. “Mother’s milk, son,” he said. “And don’t call me ‘Pop.’ ”

  As Pop slammed back the drink, the colonel lunged sideways and down, reaching for the wastebasket. But Pop kicked it away with the side of his foot, simultaneously draining his glass without spilling a drop. He moved as casually and smoothly as if he were swatting a Ping-Pong ball.

  The colonel fell to his hands and knees. Pop leaned down and put the barrel of the .38 against the base of his skull.

  “Feel familiar?” Pop asked.

  The colonel made a whimpering sound.

  “Bang,” Pop said. Then he straightened, set down his glass again, and stepped over to the filing cabinet where the wastebasket had come to a stop. Pop picked up the wastebasket, brought it back, and set it on the corner of the desktop.

  The colonel awkwardly hauled himself into his chair again. His face was florid and sweating.

  “If you aren’t going to shoot me,” he said, “then what do you want?”

  Pop scratched his cheek with the muzzle of the .38 before turning it back toward the colonel.

  “I suppose I just want to see your face as I tell you what I believe I know,” Pop said. “I want to see how close I am to the truth. And then I should return this pistol to the commander. Fine fellow, by the way. He says you stink at poker.”

  The florid color in the colonel’s face began to drain. But the sweat seemed to increase. His wormlike hair hung in wet strands before his eyes.

  “While you were drinking and playing cards,” Pop said, shaking the .38 as if it were an admonishing finger, “you listened to stories told by our friend the Scout, some of which he’d told you before on Attu. And you decided you wanted to try out some of what he said for yourself. Well, that was fine with him. What did he care what a stupid white man might want to do to himself? Besides, you’re a lieutenant colonel. If he crossed you, you might take him out of his hut behind the hospital and put him to work digging latrines.

  “So he gave you the magic, and you drank it. But as I said, you and the magic didn’t mix. So your overall unpleasantness became a more specific, insane nastiness. And you decided you were tired of waiting for that promised promotion. You decided you’d do a few things to make it happen.

  “You’d kill the symbol of the power you desired, thus making its strength your own. And while you were waiting for that chance, you’d befriend a Navy commander with power of a different kind. The power of political connections.

  “Finally, you’d eliminate some obstacles and settle some scores. And you’d use both the dead eagle and a fixed fight to do that. You’d set up the soldier who could testify to your panicked fuckup on Attu. And you’d set up the dirty, unjustly famous Marxist corporal who’d snubbed you and your talent—and who might also cause you trouble because of his habit of talking to every G.I. in camp. Including the occasional sailor.”

  Pop reached down with his free hand, picked up the confessions, and dropped them into the wastebasket on top of the .45. Then he pointed the .38 at the colonel’s chest.

  “Are there any carbons?” Pop asked. “Tell the truth, now. I was a Pinkerton.”

  The colonel, pale and perspiring, shook his head. Pop picked up the colonel’s untouched glass of whiskey and poured it into the wastebasket.

  “The one thing I can’t figure,” he said, “is how you arranged the timing and the murder. I know how you got your fall-guy sailor to show up at the ulax this morning—money and sex. But I don’t know how you managed to have him capture an eagle for you to kill at almost the same time. And I don’t know how you could be sure that the second sailor, even as angry as he was over being cheated, would go so far as to kill the boxer.”

  Now the colonel, still pasty and sweating, smiled. He looked happy. It was the scariest thing I’d seen since Attu.

  “I saw the future,” he said. His voice was as thick and dark as volcanic mud. “That’s how.”

  Pop cocked his head. “Ah. Well, that wouldn’t have made sense to me yesterday. But it’s not yesterday anymore.” He reached into a jacket pocket and brought out his Zippo. “So maybe you already saw this, too.”

  He lit the Zippo and dropped it into the wastebasket. Blue and yellow flames flashed up halfway to the ceiling, then settled to a few inches above the lip of the basket and burned steadily.

  “We’re going to leave now,” Pop told the colonel. He picked up the bottle cap and replaced it on the Johnnie Walker. “You aren’t going to bother us again. The private here isn’t your slave anymore. And I don’t have the time or stomach to read your stories.” He picked up the bottle with his free hand and took a few steps backward toward the vestibule.

  I hesitated, thinking that perhaps I should put out the fire. But neither Pop nor the colonel seemed concerned by it.

  “You can’t prove any of it,” the colonel said. His voice was shaking and wild now. “You don’t have anything you can tell anyone. You can’t do a thing to me.”

  Pop stopped, then stepped forward again. He held out the bottle of whiskey toward me. I took it.

  Then Pop uncocked the .38 and slid it into in
his right jacket pocket. He stepped up to the desk again. I could see the light of the flames dancing in his eyeglasses as he nodded to the colonel.

  “You’re partly right,” Pop said. “No one can go to a court-martial and submit visions as evidence. But I do have a few things I can use in other contexts. I have a new friend in the Navy, a great admirer of my work, who has high connections. And I gave this same friend the name of a possible murderer. A sailor named Joe. I didn’t have to tell him why or how I had the name. My reputation in matters of murder, fictional though those murders may be, seemed good enough for him.

  “Now, the naval investigators might not find the right Joe, and even if they do, they might not be able to prove what Joe did. Especially if he’s smart enough not to confess. But the Joe in question is a bit of a hothead. So, since those Navy boys will be questioning every sailor on Adak named Joe, it’s possible that an angry Joe might reveal that one of yesterday’s boxing matches was fixed. And he might tell them who else knows about that, and who he saw by that dead bird this morning. And then those Navy boys might come talk to some of their colleagues in the Army. Don’t you think?”

  The colonel began to rise from his chair again.

  “Goddamn slimy Red—” he began.

  As quick as a snake striking, Pop reached into his right jacket pocket and came up with the bent eagle feather. He thrust it across the desk and held it less than an inch from the colonel’s nose.

  “You,” Pop said. “Will not. Fuck. With us. Again.”

  Then Pop reached down to the desk with his left and picked up the colonel’s garrison cap. He dropped it into the wastebasket.

  The flames shot higher, and something inside the basket squealed.

  The colonel’s mouth went slack. His eyes opened wide and stared at the fire without blinking. He looked like a wax statue. Or a corpse in rigor mortis.

  Pop turned and put the feather back in his pocket. Then he gave me a glance and jerked his head toward the door. I turned and went out with him.

  But Pop looked back toward the colonel one last time.

  “By the way,” he said. “If you’ve ever thought about asking for a transfer, now would be an excellent time. I understand MacArthur wants to get back to the Philippines in the worst way. And I’m sure he could use the help.”

  Then we went out. The fog was still thick, but we could see where we were going. Even this late in the day, there was a sun shining somewhere beyond the gray veil. It was summer in the Aleutians.

  I looked back and saw that the ravens were gone.

  XV

  The lights were burning bright in the windows at the Adakian hut when Pop and I came up the hill. They were shining down through the fog

  in golden beams. And as we drew closer, I could hear the clatter of typewriters and the steady murmur of voices. Pop’s staff was in there hard at work on the July 6 edition.

  “I’m sorry your cartoonist has to draw his cartoon over again,” I said as we climbed the last dozen yards.

  Pop coughed. “He was upset. But between you and me, it wasn’t his best work. I suspect he’ll do a better one now. Unfair losses can be inspirational.”

  As we reached the entrance lean-to, a figure stepped out from behind it. It was the Cutthroat. Neither Pop nor I was startled.

  “What took you guys so long?” the Cutthroat asked. “The colonel’s shack ain’t that far. I’ve been here five minutes already. Thought you might have died or something.”

  Pop and I exchanged glances.

  “You were listening outside again, weren’t you?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if I were a moron. “What do you think? I wanted to know what you guys were gonna do. Which wasn’t what I expected, but I guess it was okay. Might’ve been better if you’d gone ahead and shot him.” He scratched his jaw. “You sure he’s gonna let you be? More important, is he gonna let me be?”

  “I suspect he’ll have no choice,” Pop said. “You see, I’ve already asked my new Navy comrade to inquire with his high-placed friends regarding a transfer for the lieutenant colonel. So whether he asks for one or not, one will soon be suggested to him. Assuming he doesn’t find himself in Dutch before that happens. Because whenever the general returns, I may be having a conversation with him as well.”

  The Cutthroat gave a snorting laugh. “You are one strange fucking excuse for a corporal.”

  “That I am,” Pop said. “And you brew the goddamnedest cup of coffee I ever drank. Next time, I’ll make my own.”

  But the Cutthroat was already heading down the boardwalk. “Leave my six beers outside my shed,” he called back. He glowed in the golden shafts of light from The Adakian for a few seconds, and then was gone.

  Pop turned to me. “It was kind of you to walk back with me, Private. But unnecessary. I may seem like a frail old man. But despite my white hair and tuberculosis-ravaged lungs, I do manage to get around, don’t I?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Pop said. He pointed at me with his bottle of Johnnie Walker. “What did I tell you about ‘sir’ and enlisted men?”

  I held out my hand. “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to salute you.”

  He gave me a quick handshake. His grip was stronger than he looked.

  “It’s been a long and overly interesting day, Private,” he said. “And I sincerely hope, you dumb Bohunk, that I only encounter you in passing from now on. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  He turned to go inside. “Good night, Private.”

  But I couldn’t let it go at that.

  “That Navy boy is dead,” I blurted. “It was the colonel’s fault, and we’re letting him get away with it.”

  Pop stopped just inside the lean-to. “Maybe so.” He looked back at me. “But sometimes the best you can do is wound your enemy . . . and then let him fly away.”

  “Is that what happened?” I asked. “Is that what it meant when you showed him the feather?”

  Pop rolled his eyes upward and grinned with those bad teeth.

  “That didn’t mean a thing to me,” he said. “But it meant something to him.” He checked his wristwatch. “And now I really do have a newspaper to put out. Any more silly questions?”

  There was one.

  “How can you do that?” I asked.

  Pop frowned. “How can I do what?”

  All the way back from the colonel’s office, I had been struggling with the words in my head. I wasn’t good with words. And Pop already thought I was stupid. So I knew I wouldn’t say it right. But I had to try.

  “How can you go back to what you did before?” I asked. “How can you do anything at all now that—” I closed my fist, as if I could grab what I wanted to say from the fog. “Now that you know what happens.”

  Pop’s shoulders slumped, and his eyes drifted away from mine for a moment.

  But only a moment.

  Then his shoulders snapped up, and his eyes met mine again. They were fierce.

  “Because I’m not dead yet,” he said. He turned away. “And neither are you.”

  He opened the door with the words The Adakian stenciled on it. He raised the whiskey bottle, and a roar of voices greeted him. Then the door closed, and the long day was over.

  I started back down the boardwalk. I thought I might go back to the bay and just watch the water all night. I’d probably get cold as hell without a coat, even in July. But as long as there wasn’t a williwaw, I’d survive.

  In the morning, at chow, I would tell my squad leader that I was all his.

  Epilogue

  There was buzz for the next several days about the Navy murder, and I eventually heard that they arrested a seaman named Joe. But no one ever questioned me, and I never heard what they did with him. And I didn’t try to find out.

  I saw the Cutthroat only once more, at a distance, just a few days after the fifth of July. He was boarding a ship at the dock in Sweeper Cove. It didn’t look like he was sneaking on. So I th
ink he probably made it back to Fort Richardson and finished the war with the Alaska Scouts. But I don’t know.

  The lieutenant colonel left Adak less than two weeks after that. I didn’t hear where he had been sent. But a few years after V-J Day, my curiosity got the better of me, and I made some inquiries. I learned that he had gone to the Philippines and had died at the outset of the Battle of Leyte in October 1944. A kamikaze had hit his ship, and he had burned to death. He never received his promotion.

  I never spoke with Pop again. I saw him around throughout the rest of July and the first part of August, because he was hard to miss. I even passed by him on Main Street a few times. Once he gave me a nod, and I gave him the same in return.

  That was all that passed between us until Pop was transferred to the mainland. We had all heard it was happening, since he was the camp celebrity and there was a lot of debate as to whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was going. But no one seemed to know just when it would occur.

  Then, one evening in August, I came back to my bunk after a long day of working on a new runway at the airfield. And there was a manila envelope on my pillow. Inside I found the bent eagle feather and a typed note:

  CLEARING OUT JUNK. THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT THIS. YOU OWE ME A ZIPPO.

  P.S. WHEN YOU BRAG TO YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT HAVING MET ME, DO NOT CALL ME “POP.”

  D. H.

  I have not honored his request.

  Toward the end of the war, I heard that Pop had made sergeant and been reassigned back to Adak in early 1945. But by then I was gone. I had been sent south to rejoin my old combat unit and train for an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

  Then came the Bomb, and I was in Nebraska by Christmas.

  Now, as an old man, I take the bent eagle feather from its envelope every fifth of July. Just for a minute.

  My life has been good, but not much of it has been a surprise. I saw most of it coming a long time ago.

  But then Pop slapped me awake. He slapped me awake, and he kept me from seeing the end.

  I’ve always been grateful to him for that.

  I don’t know whether he was a Communist. I don’t know whether he subverted the Constitution, supported tyrants, lied to Congress, or did any of the other things they said he did.