by John Farris
It rained all day, off and on, local thundershowers. Sometimes there was just one cloud and a cylinder of gray rain, heat and light all around while the rain bored through. Once they were below Carthage, Missouri, there was something to be said for the scenery. The air was cooler through the mountains. The coaches carried plains heat with them like a Thermos into the cool of an Ozark gorge, green byways. Peaks gave off smoke into the gold of the upper air; smoke was dense where the rivers churned white as paint. Settlements appeared. Wagon roads, a raw and slumping hillside, the screaming flash of a sawmill blade in a dark shed. Men stood on branch-line platforms where even this train wouldn't stop. They wore hats of brown or black felt that looked crafted by munchkins. Many of the men were crippled in some profound way: crutches, pinned-up sleeves, eyes filled with the glare of frost, frozen forever, arctic in their solitude.
The women with baskets, brooms. Bareheaded. Looking up in doorways, baleful with the sun gone red. Stark hollows, the train whistling, a singular hawk before the day goes winking like a coin, and out.
Supper wasn't much either. Jackson ate a warm orange and some Cheezits and then stood between coaches and watched for the fullness of the night. The hills were slowly giving out to farmland, to a richness, alluvial; the air different now, just faintly redolent of the coming delta, of still water and decay and crushing heat. They were passing a narrow bog, splintered trees emerging in the window light from the train. This air was far from tropical, but it was enough to make him uneasy.
For a while the stops had come less often. In the coach Champ Bradwin slept undisturbed. He'd slept most of the way, pumped full of penicillin and aspirin, waking only to take liquid nourishment or go to the bathroom. There were a few servicemen on the train, no one of his rank or better; they'd glanced respectfully at the scar on his throat and the Silver Star which Beggs had decided he should wear for his homecoming. She'd pressed his tailored uniform and taken it in here and there, and the major looked just fine.
Jackson's mood had gradually advanced from plumb-bottom to the point where he could hold his head up and look people in the eye again. He was wearing his best Palm Beach suit and Beggs had given him one of her husband's hats, a Stetson Baku straw, very snappy, to replace the one lost at the railroad station during his Dillinger style getaway from the Easterlins. It was a little too large, but he had to have a hat, he felt unmanned without one, and vulnerable; along the African equator a white man whose head was uncovered to the sun for more than a few minutes was likely to be a dead man, and although he'd been nowhere near the torrid zone for over twenty years, the headgear habit was ingrained, unbeatable as nicotine.
He'd hoped to get better acquainted with Champ during the long trip down, but during his wakeful periods the major was untalkative, tense despite his mediation, and obviously wary of the company he was keeping. Jackson had used an idle hour at Beggs's apartment before their departure to read through the journal the major kept while in the Pacific. The journal did confirm the fact that he had a wife named Nancy, that she was not writing very frequently and had been ill, the nature of the illness undisclosed. A further, clandestine search of the major's possessions turned up a likeness of his lady, a studio portrait so overcolored her complexion was that of a ripe peach, her eyes impossibly blue. She was pretty, but without glamour; a trace of wistfulness in her smile. She looked kind, patient and obedient. The sort who would worship a stalwart chap like the major.
There was no mention in his journal of the mysterious "Bo," or "Beau," who seemed to be a threatening presence, at least in Champ's mind. The journal was almost exclusively about war, or the lack of it, since his regiment, primed for combat, had been underutilized for nearly a full year after clearing Fort Bliss in June of 1943. For a time, early in '44, they'd been employed as labor troops unloading ships in New Guinea. Degrading work (according to the major) for the oldest surviving cavalry regiment, whose first commanding officer was Robert E. Lee and whose troopers always had been in the thick of the Indian wars on the American frontier.
But at last they had all the action they could handle, on a group of mountainous little islands called the Admiralties, situated at the head of the Bismarck Sea and just below the equator. The major's squadron was the first to go ashore at Los Negros, in a seeping rain. The Japanese were well fortified around the cavalry's principal objective, personally selected by General Douglas MacArthur, an airstrip called Momote. They were for the most part Imperial Marines—the very best fighters, picked for size, condition and fanatical courage. Many of them spoke excellent colloquial English, which was to be a problem later on. Apparently Major Bradwin's work in securing the beachhead had been outstanding, for the next day when MacArthur came ashore for the record books, Champ was singled out, promoted on the spot from captain and awarded his DSC.
The fighting, however, had just begun. The worst of it went on at night for weeks—close, tight, bloody combat in dugouts and in the midst of shattered coconut palms with the sky in a continuous rip and blaze of tracers, many thousands of enfilading rounds fired by both sides. Even when an area was thought to be secure there was no way to keep the Japs from filtering through at night. Some of the Imperial Marines tied bandages around their arms at pressure points so they could go on fighting even if an artery was severed. That was real dedication.
For the first three weeks in March the cavalry and their reinforcements slowly mopped up the island. Champ had been in battle off and on during that period, sustaining two small wounds, when, according to the account in his journal, written a couple of months afterward, he experienced the vivid hallucination that nearly cost him his life.
Manus, March 19
At 2200 hours Japs breached our weakened left flank at the edge of the strait, their best counter-offensive since the first days of Hyane Harbor. They must have been resupplied from a cache of arms and ammunition in the jungle highlands west of here. G Troop suffered heavy casualties, and the CP was overrun within minutes, there was little warning and no place to retreat. It was a case of stand and fight and die, to the last man. But nothing we have been through before prepared us for this. Confusion, a rush and tangle of bodies, screams, shots, blood. We went at it hand to hand in the flickering dark, so strangely lit by the jet flashes of rifles, the bright haze of machine-gun fire. In their panic, Americans were mistakenly killing Americans; I only hope the same was true for the enemy. I don't know how long it lasted. After the first assault there could have been a dozen survivors on both sides. The brutal fighting continued elsewhere as our other troops repelled the wave of shrieking Japanese In our little pocket of the jungle, stinking of guns and slaughter, wounded men cried or pleaded for help in the dark while we, the survivors, groped toward each other, firing erratically, lashing out with bayonets at the touch of another's flesh, or at nothing more substantial than a sharp odor of fear clouding the night in front of us.
I may have killed one man, or several. I know I was wounded, and I reached the point where my legs would no longer hold me up. I fell, and a body lurched beneath me; I struck at the groaning thing with the bayonet in my hand until I was soaked all over from his blood.
Then I crawled a few yards and fainted.
Before there was light there was the sound of birds, sporadic firing far away, a crackle of static on a broken radio. A man weeping. That was me. Crying before I was fully awake, shivering in the tropic, predawn coldness. My chest was on fire, and with each breath I heard a raspy snoring sound, as if I was pulling air into my lungs through a skewered ribcage.
Someone, I sensed, was watching me. I could barely make him out against the starless sky, which was only a shade keener than the pitch-black of the fringed trees that stood all around the clearing. There was a faint, corrupt shine where his head would be, but that may have been due to my own faulty vision. His presence was not of great concern, because I believed I was already dying. The stuttering guns sounded closer, heavy machine-gun fire. There was a pitiful, high-pitched scream, then silen
ce. I tried to get up and fainted again, not because of pain, but from the sudden draining of blood from my head.
The birds, piercingly cheerful, woke me a second time. My uniform was stiff with gore, unmalleable. Now it was early morning, a silver mist hovering a foot or so above the ground-lumps of the dead all around. The broken radio was whistling and chatting in the Sioux language; there are six of these Indians in our regiment and we had pressed them into service as radio operators, because too many of the Japanese were sending false messages in English to confuse us.
And he was still watching me from a distance of a few feet, gross with pollution, nastily luminous, one hand on his hip, his weight cocked against the saber he had planted in a decaying log. The blade of the saber was dulled and pitted from neglect, but I recognized it anyway, the functional hilt was of 18-karat gold and could never tarnish. The Blue Ridge uniform in which he had been buried was caked with mold. His face was aged meat, grayed, bristly, giving off that highly poisoned, scaled glister. But this was no ghost, he was as solid as the curse we bear. Curiously, I was not afraid. And I wondered if I had died without realizing it. But then I knew if that was true I wouldn't be sobbing for breath, hurting so much.
"Brother," said Clipper, "you've been lucky at war." He looked across the battleground to emphasize his point. "But I can't wait any longer."
"What do you want?" I asked him.
But my heart was breaking because his eyes, and only his eyes, were just as I remembered them, unaffected by the long night down under, clear, youthful and full of the Old Nick, as Boss used to say. And why not? They were Boss's eyes too. Fear began to seep through me, though I had thought I couldn't care.
"Why, I need you to come with me. I missed you at the chapel, and you can see the consequences for yourself. I'm neither here nor there. So with your cooperation I'll just finish the job now." And he stepped back, pulling the point of the saber from the wood.
I heard voices, American voices I thought, coming along the trail into the clearing. I opened my mouth but I didn't have the breath to scream for help. Clipper's expression, as he measured me for the cutting, was hateful.
"We're all just getting what we deserve, don't you see?"
I turned my head and became aware of the clotted bayonet in my right hand. Somehow I found the strength to stand, and lunge. The blade sliced rottenly through his side. Clipper disdainfully knocked it down with one hand and cut my throat with the other. I felt nothing after the first knock of the blade against my collarbone; then a gloomy choking sensation in my throat. I instinctively clamped my left hand on my throat where it gaped, trying to minimize the damage. Clipper had me by the other hand, and was pulling at me impatiently.
"Let's go," he demanded.
Instead I fought, even as my life gushed away, I tore my hand free of his grasp. And in that instant he lost his power and strength, and changed, before my eyes to a charred, tottering mummy.
"Bonefort's next," the conductor said, passing between coaches. He pronounced it "bony-fart."
"On schedule, are we?"
"No, sir. 'Bout forty minutes late this evenin'. You catching the Texan?"
"Meeting someone," Jackson said. "I think."
"That's good. 'Cause the Texan'Il be long gone time we get to Bonefort."
"Any other trains after the Texan?" Jackson asked.
"All depends on whur you want to go. Now there'll be the Sunshine Special southbound to Houston at twelve-oh-five, then the northbound Sunshine hour after that, arrives Saint Louis eight-thirty tomorrow morning."
"Thank you," Jackson said, and followed the conductor into the coach where he'd left Champ.
Champ was now wide awake, but Jackson was concerned about his appearance, the tart pallor of a just-cut lemon, and his eyes were deep in his head.
"Thought you told me I was going to feel better," he complained.
"You may be having a mild reaction to the penicillin. Or it could be simple nausea." Jackson gave him Dramamine with a sip of water.
Champ licked his lips. "Where've you been?"
"Getting some air."
"Talk to anyone?"
"Just the conductor."
"Well, have you seen anyone, I mean?"
"I still don't get your drift."
Conversation was an effort; Champ swallowed again.
"Seen anyone who looks as if they might be following us."
"You suspect we've been followed? All the way from Kansas City?"
"I don't know. I was just asking."
"Going in circles here, aren't we, major?"
"The hell with you," Champ said bitterly, and closed his eyes.
Before long Jackson felt the train slowing. He gave Champ a cautious shake. "It's Bonefort. We're getting off. Can you walk?"
"I'll make it okay." He didn't seem eager, now that the long ride was ending. He gazed out the window at a thin scatter of lights along the track.
The train crawled now, through a switchyard filled with cattle and tank cars. Jackson, with a porter's help, assembled their luggage. The train crossed the straight and narrow of the main line to the southwest and fetched up on the north side of the one-story brick station. Jackson and the porter piled the luggage on the station platform.
Jackson had a long look around. A pfc, taking leave of his family, stood so small in his oversize uniform that he seemed to be nothing more than fingertips, ears and Adam's apple. The family members leaned against each other and clutched each other desperately and said not a word. A heavy farmer in bib overalls was supervising the unloading of many cardboard cartons of peeps and tiny feathers that floated upward in the mild cones of light along the platform. To help him he'd brought along a Negro, whom he insulted or threatened in a jocular tone whenever the man's pace slackened enough to displease him. Goddam you, Ezzard, 'ffun they was swappin' pussy for sweat down at the whorehouse, you couldn't work up enough to get French-kissed. Haw, Ezzard would laugh, every time, haw-haw, showing the gold in his teeth.
The porter hopped aboard to help Champ get off. But no one, apparently, was going to be there to greet the major; no one had ordered up a brass band for the occasion.
Whut I heard, Ezzard, you was borned five months late 'cause your mammy couldn't wake you up from your nap.
Haw! Thass truf. Mos' likely.
Jackson gave the porter a dollar. The Ozark Scenic went on its way. The sparse activity around the station thinned down to nothing.
Champ stood on the platform looking neither left nor right.
"No one's come, major. What now?"
He seemed, in a complex way, relieved that he had not been met. "Ask inside," he said. "Ask about a private railroad car."
"Yes, sir, major," Jackson replied, suddenly and extravagantly angry. Because what he'd seen thus far of Dixie didn't please him, and he still had a very sick man on his hands, when he'd been half-hoping for an excuse to break away. There was a sweet ripened moon overhead that failed to impart glamour to his surroundings. Bonefort, Arkansas, smelled like pig shit. He kicked open the door to the waiting room and went inside, and when the door didn't close fast enough to suit him, he turned around and kicked it shut.
A ticket agent took in his display of temper with a sidewise look. Then he went back to work in his lighted cubicle, pigeonholing slips of paper. He looked around again when Jackson approached him.
"Haow yew?" he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
The agent looked past Jackson, taking time to study the figure of Champ on the platform outside.
"That the war hero?"
"One of them. Are you acquainted with Major Bradwin?"
The agent consulted a sheaf of notes and telegrams on a clipboard, extracted one.
"Major Charles R. Bradwin, from Chisca Ridge?"
"Yes."
"Family's sorry they couldn't be here to meet him. They did send a private car by way of the Delta, Saint Francis and Dasharoons."
"Where is it now?"
"
Siding over there by the anhydrous-ammonia tanks. You don't know where that is. What you do, you go outside on the platform and look for a nigger named Walter. Don't have to look too hard, you don't see him, just call 'Walter!'—like that. He'll turn up. He's always somewheres around. Walter'll take you and the major to his car. I expect one-two-seven will pick it up around eleven, twelve o'clock tonight."
"Thank you," Jackson said, mollified. He took the telegram from the ticket agent and handed it to Major Bradwin outside. Then he went looking for Walter. He had three Negroes to choose from. He had not noticed them before, getting off the train, but he had a feeling they'd been in their particular spots for hours, if not all day.
Now that he wanted one of them, they were visible.
Walter turned out to be a ricketsy runt with a spry manner once he was in motion. He quickly gathered up the luggage and pushed it on a hand truck across several sets of rails to a far corner of the switchyard, Jackson and Champ trailing slowly behind him. Champ just wasn't capable of much more exertion. And he was wheezing almost inaudibly, which disturbed Jackson.
The private car, which undoubtedly dated from the turn of the century, was mammoth and, dirty. Its blue and gold colors were hard to distinguish beneath a spray of dried mud. The windows looked blacked out from the observation deck forward, but there were small outside lights at the head end of the car. They walked that way, the hand truck rattling along beside the rails, Walter caught up in a nearly wordless song moaning and humming like a man with a toothache.
Jackson felt an almost inescapable sense of gloom. Much as he disliked Bonefort, Arkansas, he didn't want to get aboard this disconnected railroad car that was waiting for the one-two-seven. He didn't believe in ghosts and he wasn't prone to hallucination; nevertheless he felt a sympathetic tremor as the champ hung back, then put a hand on Jackson for support or reassurance. Jackson helped him up the steps and inside.