Pacific Interlude

by Sloan Wilson

  “I should go back, all kinds of trouble …”

  “Like I said, we’ll make that decision when you get out of the hospital. Good luck, skipper.”

  CHAPTER 31

  THE YEOMAN WHO drove the jeep wore a spotless white uniform and looked about sixteen years old. As they passed through the wharf section of Manila Syl suddenly realized that, despite his genuine protests, an enormous load had been lifted from his shoulders. It didn’t do any good to worry about Simpson, Wydanski, Buller or Willis—he’d done the best he could for the Y-18, and now he had to try to forget her at least for a few days. As they turned into a crowded street some of the broken storefronts looked vaguely familiar …

  “There’s a little busted-up restaurant around here somewhere,” he said to the driver. “Before I turn myself in to the medics, do you suppose I could stop for one more drink?”

  He was surprised by how much he wanted to see Mary before he collapsed, which was what he felt he was about to do. He wanted to see what she really looked like, to find how much she was the product of his imagination …

  The driver shrugged, circled around several blocks before Syl recognized her restaurant. It had been cleaned up and partially repaired. A red neon sign in the window blinked, “O’Brian’s Restaurant and Bar.”

  He saw her immediately, a slender Eurasian girl in a black short-sleeved dress filling a glass with beer from a green bottle. Her arm had healed and so had the bruises on her face. She looked even younger than he remembered and pretty in that special, fragile way. She was concentrating on the brimming glass and did not see him enter.

  “Hello, Mary … remember me?”

  She put the bottle down, glanced up and gave him that flashing smile.

  “My good luck!” she said. “You have come back!”

  “I couldn’t forget you,” he said, thinking how stupid the old phrase sounded, and yet how true it really was.

  “None of us will ever forget you, Mary,” a heavy-set sergeant said.

  “Go along with you!” She sounded more old-fashioned Irish than Oriental. “Syl, can I get you a drink? It’s on the house!”

  “I’m surprised that you remember my name.”

  “Your friend Paul talked a lot about you. I have some good Scotch.”

  He noticed again how beautiful her hands were as she picked up a shot glass and a bottle. At least his memory had been right about that.

  “Here’s to you,” he said, and his own hand trembled as he picked up the drink. Before he could get it down, he again started to cough.

  “You’re not well!” she said, her smile changing to concern.

  “I’ve got some crazy bug …” He leaned against the bar.

  “Come sit down,” she said, and led the way to a booth in the back corner of the restaurant.

  He sat with his head bowed, coughing again.

  “I’ll get you cold water.” She darted away.

  He was wiping his face with a paper napkin when she returned.

  “You should see a doctor,” she said. “I can’t have my good luck get sick!”

  “I’m on my way now. I just wanted to stop in and see if you remember me.”

  “How could I forget? You gave Paul the money. I never could have opened up this place without it.”

  “It was his money.”

  “He told me about it and he helped me get my license. He went to the colonel himself …”

  “Paul’s a good man.”

  “You are both my good luck.”

  He felt dizzy. In that dim light her face seemed to glow. She could not possibly be as beautiful as she looked to him right now … “I guess I better go to the hospital,” he said. “I have a driver waiting outside.”

  “What hospital?”

  “The army, I think …”

  “I’ll find it, I’ll come to see you. I have to take care of my good luck!”

  “You have the most beautiful hands I ever saw—” He was overcome by another fit of coughing. “Goddamn it, I wish the hell I weren’t sick …”

  “You’ll get better, you’ll see …” She helped him as he stood shakily and walked toward the door, keeping her hand on his arm as he left the restaurant and awkwardly climbed into the jeep.

  “I’ll come to see you,” she said as he drove away and blew him a kiss with that incredible hand he’d been too dizzy to see.

  “That’s some chick,” the young driver said. “I got to look her up.”

  Syl was coughing too much to tell him that he’d better not or he’d kill him. Famous last unspoken words …

  There was a bed in a ward with astonishingly clean sheets and a stout nurse with pills and a glass of tepid water. There was a doctor who tapped his chest as though trying to find rotten wood in a boat, a cold stethoscope and a thermometer he had to take out of his mouth everytime he coughed. When an orderly came with a wheelchair to take him to the X-ray machine, he realized how sick he must really be.

  “Bronchial pneumonia and malaria,” the doctor said finally. “A lousy combination.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ll bet you’ve had the malaria a long time. Sometimes the atabrine just hides it.”

  “How long will I have to stay here?”

  “Two weeks, maybe a month. We’ll have to see how it goes.”

  They wheeled him into a ward with beds in rows close to his own, but he was too tired to notice more than sleeping forms. There were more pills to be swallowed and then an injection that hurt enough to make him wince.

  “Sailors are supposed to be brave,” the stout nurse said, and that stupid sentence kept echoing in his mind as he drifted off to sleep.

  When he woke up it was dark and he had no idea how much time had gone by. Well, it didn’t matter. He would be here two weeks, maybe a month, and, God help her, the Y-18 would probably be in Okinawa by the time he got out, if she made it … think positive, for Christ’s sake … Simpson had the experience. Even Buller could probably run the ship while she was at sea—he’d get into trouble only in port.

  If all went well, he could go back to the ship when he got out of the hospital. A plane could fly him to Okinawa in a few hours. He pictured himself walking back aboard, returning to that musty cabin, that rusty bridge. Sure as hell, Simpson would not be glad to see him show up. Neither would Buller. Wydanski might but the old engineer had always lived in a world of his own, an especially miserable one right now. After all the boring talk about safety he’d given the enlisted men they’d probably greet his return with something less than unrestrained joy. Maybe the commander was willing to get him another assignment, he shouldn’t force himself to go back … But, damn it, and maybe it was mostly his ego talking, he still felt that the ship would have a better chance of surviving if he went back to her, kept Simpson and Buller from each other’s throats, tried to keep the men from blowing themselves up … Why in hell did he care so much about a bunch of men who didn’t seem to care themselves if they lived or died? He was puzzled but also pleased to find that these people he didn’t even like most of the time, and who didn’t much like him, remained so important to him. Buller used to accuse him of not caring about the men—as opposed to Buller, the man of the people, especially if they had votes. Well, he sure as hell didn’t love them, but he cared enough to want to see them get through the war alive. The battle of Okinawa would be long and tough, everyone said, and after that would come the long road to Tokyo …

  His thoughts would not let him alone, and the sleeping pills they gave him did not stop them for long. His dreams were hard to remember when he opened his eyes, but they had him carrying on about smoking loud enough to have the nurses come running to give a shot …

  He lay in a twilight sleep, thinking he felt strong until he tried to move his arms or legs. One night after he had been in the hospital about a week, he got to thinking about Willis. He could almost see the man come out of this hospital with his orders to return to the ship, see him hesitate at the train and decide to
run. He had gone over the hill before learning that the ship was soon scheduled for Okinawa. Probably he was more afraid of Cramer and the others than of explosions or Jap suicide planes. Maybe he had decided to steal just a few days in Manila before heading back to the Y-18 and was picked up by the military police before he could get up the courage to return. Now he was probably in some jail along with a lot of other deserters. He’d bet Simpson had not done a damn thing about him before sailing and certainly would not want to take him back. What would happen to Willis now?

  Suddenly he had an urge to talk to Willis, to try to figure something out, but when he attempted to get out of the bed he could not even sit up.

  “I’ve got to do something,” he said aloud, and once again the nurse came running, needle at the ready.

  One day when he lay in his usual twilight sleep, a nurse touched him on the shoulder. “You have a visitor.”

  Blinking, he saw Mary walking down the aisle of the ward toward him. She was wearing a dark blue dress and carrying a straw bag that she hugged against her breasts, maybe, he hoped, as a defense against the men who stared at her from the long rows of beds. There were a few whistles as she approached him, but most of the men in the ward were too weak to care. Her ivory face, framed by her long dark hair, had, in his imagination, a Madonna-like expression as she glanced from one sick face to another, but her smile lit up when she saw Syl.

  “There you are,” she said. “You look much better …”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “I tried to before but they wouldn’t let me.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Almost two weeks.”

  The Y-18 must just about be getting into Okinawa … if she made, it … he thought. But now was not the time to worry about the ship. Enjoy this …

  She perched on the edge of his bed. “I brought you a present,” she said, taking a pint of Scotch from her bag and slipping it under his covers. “Maybe you shouldn’t have it, I don’t want to make you more sick.”

  “Just the opposite. Cutty Sark! This stuff is worth its weight in gold out here.”

  She took two paper cups from her bag, and after glancing around to make sure that no nurse was watching she quickly picked up the bottle, unscrewed the cap and began to pour. The delicacy of her hands still fascinated him. He’d read about people having a foot fetish but he’d never heard of a man getting obsessed with a woman’s hands. When she handed him his cup he put it on the bedside table, caught her wrist, and kissed the palm of her hand.

  “I’ve wanted to do that,”—and more—”ever since I met you,” he said. “When you’re sick you can get away with crazy things—”

  “That’s not such a bad kind of crazy,” she said, putting her cup on the bedside table and stroking his hair back from his sweaty forehead. Her fingers felt cool and delicate as they looked.

  “I can’t believe you,” he said, studying her face, her large slightly slanted brown eyes and full lips. “You’re perfect—”

  “I’m glad you don’t know me better.”

  “I know what I need to know. You’re beautiful, you’re kind and you’re here.” Hardly originial, but heartfelt.

  There was a scent of gardenias about her, sandalwood, a whole tropical bouquet, it seemed to him. Good thing that the blanket covered his groin, where he felt a stirring, the first in weeks. He must be getting better …

  “When you get better, how long will you stay in Manila?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You go home or you go back to your ship?”

  “That’s the question. I expect I’ll go back to my ship.”

  “Where is she? Or is that a military secret?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I know there is bad fighting in Okinawa. A lot of the ships have gone to Okinawa …”

  She made the name of that island sound forlorn.

  “I guess I’ll be going to Okinawa …”

  “What will you do after the war? Let’s talk about that.”

  He was grateful for the change and before he knew it was babbling on about his plan to buy a boat and follow in the wake of the Vikings. “A man named Samuel Eliot Morison actually has done things like that.”

  “And you will too,” she said gravely. “I think you are a man who will do what he wants.”

  “One night I dreamt you came with me,” he said. “You were sitting at the wheel of my boat in sort of a red sarong and we had red sails.”

  “Did they match?”

  “Exactly. They were both the color of your lips right now.”

  “You get the sails and I will get the sarong.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “I never give promises,” she said, leaning over to kiss his forehead, “but I like to dream too.”

  The nurse soon signaled the end to this visit. Mary gave him one more kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. He watched her walk down the aisle, graceful as a dancer. The gentle sway of her hips caused more whistles and she gave a little wave as she disappeared through the door. A military hospital, he thought, couldn’t be an easy place for a girl to visit, any girl … what kind of a girl was she …? One no questions should be asked of—he was sure only of that. If she wanted to tell him her history, maybe someday she would.…

  She came almost every day after that. He looked forward to her visits but in a way wished they would stop, that they had never happened, because they made his decision to go back to the Y-18 harder to handle. Mary was not a girl who made promises, but she let him prattle on about buying a boat and sailing the world with her. She seemed so interested that he almost began to believe that they were making a real plan.

  “You do the sailing and I’ll do the cooking,” she said. “I’m a very good cook …”

  “Do you get seasick?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with her special smile. “We will have to find out.”

  That night he had a dream of two ships, the Y-18, her hull red with rust, and a trim black-hulled ketch with red sails. They were on a collision course, sailing across a calm, azure sea. He seemed to be suspended above them, looking down from the sky like God himself, but he was not all-powerful, because in spite of his shouted warnings the ships kept on sailing toward each other, and as they came close the tanker loomed above the smaller ship like it was going to devour it … He woke up just before the crash, his whole body bathed in sweat.

  He did not have to study Freud to interpret that one. Any chance he had of sailing the seas with Mary or any other kind of future would be wiped out by that tanker if he went back to her …

  “When am I going to get out of here?” he asked the doctor after another week went by.

  “You’re coming along but it’s slow.”

  “You said two weeks or a month. It’s almost a month.”

  “That will teach me not to make predictions. It’s going to take you time to get your strength back.”

  At least he was strong enough to feel restless, and by the first of May the doctor let him walk to a common room in his bathrobe. It was often empty except for a few patients who wanted to listen to news reports on the radio.

  Mary met him there late one afternoon. “Soon you’ll be leaving,” she said. “Is there a chance your ship will come back here?”

  “Not much …” He had a mental picture of the Y-18 sailing on another shuttle run in Okinawa. There were few cities in Okinawa as far as he knew, and maybe Buller wouldn’t find a way to sell black market gas there. Maybe the ship was running more smoothly than she ever had. If she’d survived so far, she was probably in some harbor relatively safe from typhoons, and it was still true, he assumed, that the suicide planes usually chose larger targets. Maybe there was so much fighting ashore that the natives hadn’t yet gotten around to peddling booze alongside the ships … It was wrong, Freud or no Freud, to let himself think that going back to the Y-18 would somehow mean certain death …

  “Do you thin
k you’ll get any leave before you get orders?” she asked.

  “I suppose I might get a few days, if I had somewhere to go.”

  “There’s a wonderful place named Baguio not so far from here. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “It’s some sort of a mountain resort, isn’t it? The radio said the Japs are still fighting up there.”

  “They’ve just surrendered. I have an aunt in Baguio. I should drive up to see her.” She paused, then added, “I would love to show you Baguio. It is always cool up there. It was our summer capital before the war.”

  “How long would it take to get there?”

  “It is only about a half day’s drive. We could stay at my aunt’s and come back the next day. She has a kind of inn, an old villa.”

  “I’ll make it if I have to take French leave,” he said, and stood up from his chair, towering above her as she rose from hers. For the first time he put his arms around her and kissed her. It was not much of an embrace, not with three men turning from the radio to stare and laugh at them.

  “You’ve got a date in Baguio,” he said.

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  “I know it.”

  The thought of a leave, however brief, with Mary helped to stop him from brooding about going back to the Y-18. For one night at least they could presumably arrange to be together. Think of that. One way or another, the rest of the future would take care of itself.

  CHAPTER 32

  EVEN WHEN SYL began to feel his strength returning, the doctors refused to let him leave the hospital. Some of his tests were not yet right, they said. If they let him go too soon his illnesses could quickly recur.

  On May 7, when the news of Germany’s surrender was broadcast, Syl was still sitting in the hospital common room. There was surprisingly little excitement in the wards and the surrounding city remained quiet that night. Germany was a long way away. More immediate by far was the fighting on Okinawa, which the announcer said was continuing more fiercely than ever, with hand-to-hand combat on steep ridges in the interior and intensified attacks by waves of suicide planes and ships offshore.

  Syl could almost see Buller pacing the deck of the Y-18 and thinking that now that the war in Europe was over, why did American ships have to sail within reach of suicide attacks; that Japan could be starved to death from a safe distance even if it took a year or more; and that if the generals were in a big rush they could just continue the fire-bomb attacks that had already leveled most of Tokyo. Why did more Americans have to die trying to take Okinawan hills when Japan was nothing but a cornered criminal, no longer a powerful enemy? Why did the United States government in an hour of triumph have to continue to operate old ships like the Y-18 as though the army was still straining its last resources in a desperate battle? Buller would be pounding his fist into his palm as he strode around asking these questions, and right now Syl wasn’t so sure that he knew any good answers. If she had to go on shuttling gas for months while the battle to take the rest of Okinawa continued, the men would listen to Buller and would get crazier than ever. Who would care about breaking petty regulations? Why not have a drink and light up? “If she’s going to blow, she’s going to blow,” a lot of the men in the forecastle had often said, shrugging their shoulders. “It’s all a matter of luck anyhow …”