by Brian Payton
NIGHTFALL BRINGS A LIGHT but steady wind. Sparking stars hold out hope of a few hours without rain. Easley pulls on the pack, slips the picture in his breast pocket, then marches out to meet his fate.
On the rise overlooking their camp, Easley counts three discernible sources of light coming from the tents below. It is astounding how so many men can remain so quiet. He can identify where the barracks are, as well as the big guns, a hospital, and, at the water’s edge, what appears to be pens for submarines. Haphazard rows of tents, mounds, and the mouths of tunnels where they must hide from the reoccurring hail of bombs. All connected by muddy tracks and wooden planks. From hours of close observation, he can guess where they keep the food.
One of the lights blinks out and now there are two.
His night vision is well developed. He takes careful steps, keeping to the short grass to avoid the swish of boots through taller blades. As he walks toward the tents, the first blush of aurora borealis appears in the sky. He takes only a moment to look up at the gathering pink, then moves toward the outer perimeter of tents.
Each step demands a decision. Each new sound calls for rapid reassessment: the murmur of voices, peal of sudden laughter, the scrape of a file against metal. When Easley rounds the corner, he sees the calf and boot of a man disappear behind a tent. Shuffling steps melt into the distance. The snap of a tent flap opening. Easley cocks an ear next to the canvas of what he imagines is a mess tent, listens to the rustle of wind. He hears no movement inside. Silently, he lies down and rolls under the hem.
Inside, it is impossible to see. He bends his knees, holds his hands out in front, moves cautiously across the gravel floor. He runs fingers along the outline of a low table. After losing his way, he decides it is best to skirt the edges of the tent where there are fewer obstructions and, if need be, he can quickly lie down and roll outside again.
He breathes in meals that have been here before. The odor of cooked meat is overwhelming. Beef. Pork. Fish. Meals forgotten come roaring back as if he’s tasting them again. The power of old smells. He searches with fingertips, discovering pots and pans. Next to the stove is a large metal trough, like those found in barnyards. Next, a crate with dozens of tin bowls nestled one inside the next. Despite this careful search, he finds nothing to eat.
The stove is large and low. It catches his pant leg above the knee. When he reaches down to free himself, he cuts the heel of his hand on a flange. His blood tastes of coins.
Men walk past, boots heavy on the path, in the throes of an argument. One man, trying to convince the other of something, speaks in a beseeching tone. The second man interrupts angrily. This puts the conversation to rest.
If they find him, they will thrown him to the ground, boot him in the ribs. Once they see that he is unarmed and starving, they will put their weapons away and beat him. This will soften him up for the interrogation sure to follow. They’ll want details about where he’s from and what the Allies are doing; how many planes they have, their plans in general and specific. He will tell them all he knows, transposing the crucial details. Then they’ll beat him for lying.
Down in the gravel, on hands and knees. Maybe one of them dropped a dinner roll. Do Japs eat rolls?
Back at the stove, bits of charred fat are stuck to the grill. Picking them off, licking fingers clean, triggers memories of summer barbecues, of his father laying steaks over leveled coals. Potato salad. Corn on the cob. Butter and salt. Salt. He’d kill for a lick of salt. His mother wanting to know if he can eat another dish of ice cream.
“Yes, please,” Easley whispers.
He holds the grill in his hands, listening. The murmur and laughter are gone; only the rustle of wind remains. He closes his eyes for a moment, then attempts to fit the grill back in place. It won’t go willingly. When he tries an adjustment, it clanks against the frame.
The conversation flares up again. The men shout over one another, trying to make a point. Easley winces, as if the words were meant for him. Someone else walks past at a fast clip. Easley lies down on his belly, slowly lifts the hem of the tent, peers across the gravel. A few more men can be heard rushing past, but he sees no boots. Then the sound seems to die away. He crawls free of the tent, hears bootsteps closing in. Easley stands, brushes dirt from his jacket, shoves his hands into his pockets in the hopes of blending in with the random silhouettes in the dark. He can think of nothing better to do. A man walks past, gazing up at the sky, oohing and ahhing in equivalent Japanese. Perhaps five foot six—they all seem undersized. Surely this man’s aware of the looming presence, but he never looks into Easley’s face. Easley turns and walks away.
Men emerge from tents, mouths agape, heads tilted back like chicks in a nest. Following their line of sight, Easley looks up and sees a neon curtain of green and red rippling across the sky. An astonishing display of Northern Lights. As it passes overhead, individual blades of light stab down toward the earth before pulling back again.
This is the moment, the distraction that will allow him to pass undetected. Allow him to avoid capture and beating in exchange for dying in the cold alone. Could this be Tatiana’s doing?
Someone steps out of a tent and lights a cigarette. The lighter’s flash reveals dark eyes and a young Japanese face. Now in silhouette, the man takes a steady pull on the cigarette and appears to look directly at Easley. Then, like having caught the eye of an acquaintance he’d rather avoid, Easley turns and walks away from the man without haste, pretending he never saw him.
Easley listens for the shout that fails to come. He travels fifty yards before allowing himself a quick shoulder check. The sky ablaze like Dominion Day, or the Fourth of July. The soldier stands in silhouette by the tent. Easley puts his head down and carries on.
* * *
TWO DAYS ON, Easley is picking mussels in the midday fog when he hears their approach. Fingers stiff and numb, and yet he’s managed a sizable batch. When he realizes what’s happening, he quickly slides the pack over his shoulder and wades around a boulder. Waves rush into his boots and up his thighs—water so cold it feels as if his feet are aflame.
There are four of them. They appear on the ridge, one following the next, less than half a mile from the cave. This is the closest they’ve ever come. They move like men lost, stopping with hands on hips, turning their heads every which way. They pass the beach where Easley is hiding and continue up into the hills.
He eventually dries off, changes into the Japanese socks and the boy’s drier boots, but it will take the balance of the day for the ache in his feet to subside. Following another quick check for intruders, he cracks and eats the mussels before returning to the cave and falling fast asleep.
A PLANE BUZZES THE BEACH in the late afternoon the following day. The fog has lifted, the temperature has dropped. Steel wool clouds press down toward the land. The pilot makes the most of the space in between. When the plane passes overhead a third time, Easley thinks about running out with his hands up in the air. Instead, he peeks around the lip of the cave and sees twin blood suns underneath the wings as the plane banks out over the sea.
When the drone of the engine fades away, Easley is left with firm conclusions. Hope and fear are worn out from overuse, only facts remain. Fact One: everything dies eventually. Fact Two: dying is preferable to living alone with the silence and cold and a mind that betrays. Fact Three: he is too much of a coward to die. Fact Four: the smallest victories can rush like a drug through the veins.
Easley reaches for the tea tin high up on its shelf. He pries open the lid and unfolds the note. He reads it again, and again, and again—reveling in the fact that he still remembers how to read.
The wind is not a river.
He puts everything else back inside the can and sits down at the fire pit. He tears bits of paper from around the edges of the still dry note, leaving the words intact. When he finishes, he holds the marginless note in one hand and a pile of small white petals in the other. He puts the note back in the can, returns the can to it
s shelf. He takes out Tatiana and props her up on a rock so she can see.
He flips open the empty lighter, pulls the wick away from the casing, presses it against his cheek. Still damp. To beat evaporation, he quickly places it in the bits of paper. With his thumb, he flicks the wheel until he gets a spark, but it is too far from the wick. He tries again, but the spark won’t come. The flint is worn to a nub.
“Help me.”
Easley quickly takes the guard off the striker and uses his thumbnail to bend the flint closer to the wheel. There’s almost nothing left. He kneels down over the drying wick and turns the wheel again. The spark jumps from his hands, to wick, to paper. The flame spreads from paper to grass. It isn’t long until the coal is aglow.
Easley holds his palms out over the fire, reminding himself of the pope in newsreels, blessing the multitudes at Saint Peter’s Square. When it is clear the fire will survive, he presses his hands together.
His shadow on the back of the cave is sharply defined. It expands his frame into something large and threatening. But this fire is no illusion. The heat reflecting off the newly constructed wall allows him to dry his clothes and boots. It is so warm that he removes his jacket. He looks up at the little picture of Tatiana, reflected firelight flickering at her feet. When he holds it just so, the glass becomes a mirror. Staring back, he sees a pair of deep-set eyes he does not trust. Mangy beard on sunken cheeks.
He removes all of his clothes. He stands dangerously close to the flames.
THE LIGHT OF DAWN reveals a fresh delivery of snow. Although wet, and a mere two inches deep near the beach, more significant accumulation can be seen at higher elevations. And this is the month of May. Having just stepped back inside after surveying the scene, Easley pauses when he hears the crack and rumble of an avalanche in the mountains above. He hustles back out into the open to see if danger is headed his way.
He looks up to see the small avalanche expend itself below a man skiing across the slope. The skier makes elegant arcs, pausing on the lip of one bowl before sliding down the next. This isn’t about moving efficiently across newly fallen snow, it appears as if the man skis for pleasure. Easley watches from the beach for a few moments before hustling up the hill and out of the line of sight. The snow comes alive with floaters.
The shallow creek is a black scar in the fresh white face of the land. To avoid leaving tracks in the snow, Easley sacrifices his boots and feet to the cold water, tracing the creek upslope. Half an hour later, when he reaches the top of the hill, he crouches down and scans for more intruders. Seeing no one else, he keeps low, stalking through the snow on all fours, until he sees the Japanese soldier standing some two hundred yards away. The man holds binoculars to his eyes, focusing down on the beach.
Easley’s stomach twists as he backs away from the edge. He takes a few deep breaths. To ensure his mind is not playing tricks, he risks a second look. But he finds himself alone. Easley makes his way over to where the clean tracks came to a halt, where the soldier’s skis and poles made a mess of the snow, then he bounds down into the bowl. With flagging energy, he trudges up the other side and peers out over the edge in time to see the graceful, swaying turns as the skier closes in on the cave.
RAGE AND POSSESSIVENESS clamber up over Easley’s fear. In the face of recent ambivalence about his own fate, the force of it startles him. Of this godforsaken island, that hiding place—its memories and treasures—are his to preserve and keep.
By the time Easley descends to the top of the ravine, the sun’s burned through and the air is warming up. On south-facing patches down near the beach, he notices the snow is as thin as lace. There is snow enough, however, to show the parallel tracks that stop near the low edge of the ravine. There, the intruder abandoned skis and poles, and continued on foot. He is inside the cave.
The click of stone on stone issues from within. The thought of the enemy reaching the back of the cave, handling Tatiana’s photo, her clean white embroidery, causes Easley to buckle at the knees. He pulls back from the edge and searches the snow for a rock of suitable proportions. From the dike Karl made, he removes one the size of a cantaloupe. He carries it to the edge and holds it in unsteady hands.
A pate of black hair emerges some three stories below. The target stops, turns round, glances back inside. Easley makes swift calculations, lines up, then lets the boulder fall. Dull thud on impact. The man collapses like a marionette. What a surprise, how easy this is.
Easley scrambles down the slope, to where blood now bubbles from the intruder’s mouth in bright red foam. From his throat comes a clicking noise that doesn’t sound human. Easley stands over him, watching him die, wondering how long it will take. Suddenly, the man lets go of the fur hat clenched in his hand. His elbows push back in an attempt to sit up again. It is the deep, reptilian part of the brain telling the body to jump up and run. It too has been irreparably damaged. The man’s arms flail at his sides, unable to make sense of gravity.
Easley crouches in the snow beside the intruder and puts his arm around the man’s neck. The body still tries to mount some kind of escape. Easley grabs the back of his head with one hand, the forehead with the other—black hair oily to the touch. One swift snap and the struggle comes to an end.
The hat is still warm when Easley pulls it over his ears.
He steps through his new stone wall, waits for his eyes to adjust. First, he looks up to the tea tin, which is still snug in its place on the shelf beside the book with the memories of Karl. The nest is undisturbed. And there is Tatiana in her frame. Although her eyes have witnessed the enemy intrusion, she seems unmoved by the crime or Easley’s response. Finally, he sees a box in front of the fire pit.
Easley missed it at first because it is nearly the color of stone. Shallow and square, like a box of chocolates. Japanese characters on top. He removes the cardboard lid and finds the box packed with sardines, a ball of rice, hard yellow candies wrapped in clear cellophane. A note, in English, written on the back of the lid:
Brave Yanqui
I see you on night of lights
Come to give yourself in and you will be OK
With honor
Sgt. Major Uben Kubota
Easley stands over the body, perhaps twenty-five years old. He notes a pistol holstered on the belt. He takes it up in his hands. Even their guns seem smaller.
He studies the face of Uben Kubota, the same face he believes he saw reflected in the lighter’s flame. What is beyond doubt is that whoever saw Easley that night could have easily shot him then and there. Why allow the escape? Treachery, pure and simple. Why else show up on a ski holiday with a box of sardines and candy? What is this, the Welcome Wagon? An attempt to soften him up, make him feel like the Japanese aren’t so bad after all. Perhaps a little warm rice wine when he turns himself in. Just a few details of what the Allies have in store and everyone can part friends. Pen pals, even.
“Fuck you, neighbor.”
An officer won’t return to barracks tonight. A search party will leave at dawn’s first light. Perhaps it is better to save everyone the trouble. A swift slug through Easley’s own temple would solve problems that now seem entirely beyond his control.
He watches the wind tease the thick black hair, then looks to the horizon.
Some men have the great misfortune to stand at life’s continental divide and see that the land beyond is barren. There is no hope of turning back. What does one do with this view?
It takes the rest of the day, but then the answer descends on him like a revelation. Easley’s eyes open wide, he stands to greet its arrival. It is the phrase, the riddle he has been repeating like a prayer. It is, of course, Tatiana.
The wind is not a river.
Her chain of islands that dares to separate the North Pacific from the Bering Sea. A chain through which the wind whips into some of the world’s most fearsome storms. One minute it’s a hurricane, the next a breeze. But rivers! Rivers flow throughout the seasons—under bright summer sun, plates of w
inter ice—morning, noon, and night. Wind rises up and fades away, but a river flows endlessly.
And our suffering? This too shall pass. The wind is not a river.
FOURTEEN
IT IS KNOWN AS THE “ALEUTIAN STARE,” THE WAY THEY gaze into the distance unfocused, unspeaking. To Helen, it appears like a kind of dread. Three men afflicted with the condition wait at the side of the runway as Stephen and the girls step down off the plane on Adak, at last. The men wear canvas straitjackets and stand alongside the military police. When it comes time to board their plane, the MPs help each man navigate the steps, gently pushing his body up through the hatch. These men are being removed to a stateside mental asylum.
“Sorry that’s the first thing you have to see.” Sergeant Cooper combs his black hair with his fingers, but it’s so short this effort makes no perceptible difference. He’s beaming. The idea of escorting women around the base clearly gives him a charge. Above his broad smile is a pencil thin mustache, which has gone out of fashion due to its popularity among the fascists.
Helen takes a moment to recover some shred of the soaring hope she felt on first sighting the island through the clouds, her palpable sense of proximity to John. Despite the chaplain’s note, she remains convinced that this is where he’s most likely to be.
Adak is six hundred miles west of the mainland, two hundred and fifty miles east of the Japanese on Kiska. Attu is farther still. It’s not nearly as cold as it was in Fairbanks, and this comes as a surprise. Four empty jeeps are idling, each covered with a canvas top to protect occupants from the driving wind and rain. The troupe and its luggage are divided among the vehicles. Helen slides in back next to Gladys, who reapplies makeup as their bags are loaded.