by Homer Hickam
The dot rapidly grew into an airplane which, by its raspy muttering, Josh recognized as a Japanese bomber known as a Betty, probably come to bomb either the Raider camp on Melagi or the airfield on Guadalcanal. ‘‘Stobs!’’ he bellowed over his shoulder, and his fat-cheeked, flaxen-haired radioman came running, though he nearly tripped over his untied boots. ‘‘Call Henderson Field, tell them they got a Betty coming their way. Call the Raiders, too, and tell them to get in their dugouts.’’
Stobs went off to comply and Josh took another look at the Betty, satisfied himself that it hadn’t made its move as yet, had another sip of the mixed coffee and rum which he called Barbados Sunrise, then went back to Dosie’s letter, determined to get through it even if the entire Imperial Japanese Navy appeared steaming down the Slot.
The next paragraph was the critical one. In it, Dosie had written she wanted to be useful, that it was only by being useful that she could know who she was. She had therefore decided to become a nurse, as useful a profession as there might be, and was traveling over to Morehead City for her training. Furthermore, she had left the Beach Patrol, except for weekends when she still rode her quarter horse named Genie up and down the Killakeet beaches with Rex Stewart, the old Hollywood stunt man, who had a new gelding he had named Jeubal Early. And then she mentioned a certain young doctor at Morehead City who seemed to have made quite the impression.
He’s a handsome boy, was the way she’d put it, and so gosh-awful smart. I am lucky to be a student nurse under his hand. Josh read the sentence a second time and thought about the young, handsome doctor’s hand, surely with fine, long fingers, capable of plucking out an appendix and stroking a woman’s breast with the same tenderness and care. The heat in his face rose, so much so that his cheeks turned rosy, even through his deeply tanned face.
Josh looked up just as the Betty let two bombs go over the Raider base. He watched them fall until they splashed amongst some tents, throwing up huge clods of brown mud and shreds of canvas. He saw no bodies fly through the air and supposed the Raiders had heeded Stobs’s call and repaired to their coconut palm–roofed dugouts. The bomber then turned toward Guadalcanal, but it didn’t get far before it was surprised by two American P-40s. The big-nosed fighters pounced, guns blazing, and filled the unfortunate Betty full of holes, whereupon it broke apart, crashing into Iron Bottom Bay with one wing left to flutter down like an autumnal leaf. The P-40s did a couple of victory barrel-rolls which made Dave’s neck nearly twist into a knot to watch. Dave loved airplanes, odd for a bird who couldn’t fly.
Ensign Eureka Phimble ambled out of the cave with his morning cup of coffee, idly watched the Betty’s wing crash into the water, then smirked when he noticed that Josh was reading Dosie’s letter again. He and Josh had been together for nearly a decade, beginning their association on the Bering Sea Patrol, and Phimble knew all the man’s foibles. Women was one of them. Josh Thurlow had always been a fool for women, even on the Bering Sea where there were virtually none. Yet, the man had managed to marry an Aleut maiden, then was required to avenge her murder. It had all been a nasty, sad business. Phimble had been an ordinary seaman then and Josh an ensign, both of them assigned to the cutter Comanche, commanded by Captain Phineas Falcon, the legendary Arctic brawler.
Afterwards, they had served at the Coast Guard station on Killakeet and chased U-boats for a living. Since coming to the South Pacific with Josh (who was there by orders of the Secretary of the Navy himself with further orders to report back all that he observed and to make recommendations for improvements in the conduct of the war), Phimble had received a battlefield promotion and was now an officer and the pilot of a PBY seaplane the boys had rebuilt after the Japanese had battered it to pieces and the navy had abandoned it as scrap. Upon first observing Phimble in action, Colonel Montgomery Risling, commander of the 5th Raiders, had said to Josh, ‘‘He’s got potential, that is, for a Negro.’’ It was a comment that had stopped Josh in his tracks and caused him to reply, most tartly, ‘‘That Negro, as you call him, is a better man than either of us, Colonel, and make no mistake.’’ Risling, normally combative about everything, had not seen fit to contradict him.
Josh took note of Phimble taking note of him. ‘‘A letter from Dosie,’’ he said. Then he added, though he instantly regretted it, ‘‘She’s fallen for another man.’’
‘‘If that was true,’’ Phimble replied, tamping down his smirk, ‘‘I’d have heard about it from my Talky. I got a letter from her the same day you got one from Dosie, as you will recall. Nary a word except Dosie’s going to be a nurse.’’
‘‘She says that, too. But she’s still got herself a new fella.’’
‘‘She wrote that?’’
‘‘Not in so many words.’’
‘‘Dosie knows lots of words,’’ Phimble answered, with a smile meant to soothe. ‘‘She’s the kind who’d use them, too, if she had something to say. I think you must be wrong in your assessment.’’
Before Josh could retort, a Marine Raider by the name of Captain Lester Clooney abruptly appeared out of the bush, his helmet askew and his shirt soaked with sweat from the exertion of climbing the volcano and probably a low-grade fever. While Josh and Phimble stared at him in surprise, the Raider officer wiped his face with a scrap of an old gray towel that was draped around his neck, set his helmet aright, took several long breaths, then looked Josh square in the eye. ‘‘Josh Thurlow,’’ he said in an official, though (since he still didn’t quite have his breath) somewhat thin, voice, ‘‘Colonel Montgomery Risling of the 5th United States Marine Corps Raiders told me to come after you. Here, as you may notice, I am.’’
Josh eyed the pistol strapped to the captain’s waist and further eyed the hand that was wrapped around its grip. ‘‘You aim to use that Huk-killer on me if I don’t, Lester?’’
Clooney took several more breaths, then finally seemed to find his wind. ‘‘Monkey said if you didn’t come, I was to,’’ he replied, using the familiar nickname for the Colonel. ‘‘He said he’s been asking you to come see him for two solid weeks. Now, he’s run out of patience. He wants you in his office by oh eight hundred on this very day, and he said dead or alive, it don’t make no difference.’’
‘‘I don’t answer to Colonel Montgomery Risling,’’ Josh replied in a relaxed tone, ‘‘and you can tell him I said so. Anyway, I happen to know he only wants to give me a medal I don’t want.’’
‘‘It might have been about your medal before but now it ain’t,’’ Clooney said with the squinty eyes of a gun fighter and his hand unrelaxed on his pistol. ‘‘There’s something new just come up. Anyway, you live on his island, and I guess he figures that gives him some rights to your time.’’
Josh conceded the point. ‘‘Are you really prepared to shoot me if I don’t go?’’
Clooney’s squint disappeared, and he answered, after a moment of contemplation, ‘‘I don’t know. This place does strange things to a man’s head. I might not think so, but then go ahead and do it, anyway. Good morning, Eureka. Good morning, Dave. I’m sorry I didn’t greet you until now. I was required first to accomplish my official duty.’’
Megapode Dave had fallen asleep, worn out from watching the air combat, and therefore didn’t respond. Phimble, however, replied, ‘‘Good morning, Captain Clooney. You did an excellent job on your duty, I swan. Don’t look like it’ll rain again for another hour. You want some coffee?’’
‘‘Don’t mind if I do,’’ Clooney answered. ‘‘As for the rain, I guess it’ll rain when it rains which will be about ten times today. In between, the sun will shine and the steam will rise and the mosquitoes will bite and the mud on Me-Soggy will get ever deeper. End of prediction.’’
Josh folded Dosie’s letter, his mind made up on what to do about it. ‘‘All right, Lester,’’ he said. ‘‘I have one thing to do and then you and I, we’ll go see the Monkey.’’
Clooney took the mug of coffee brought out by Millie who had been listening from the ca
ve. ‘‘Thank you, Millie. As for you, Josh, you go see Monkey yourself. If I’m standing by, he’s liable to send me with you.’’
‘‘Send me where?’’
‘‘Wherever it is, I don’t want to go. Liable to get killed.’’
‘‘You plan on living forever?’’ Josh asked, sincerely interested.
‘‘Something wrong with that?’’
Josh was an honest man, one of his many faults. ‘‘Nothing except it ain’t likely, considering where you are at the moment and Jap ain’t about to surrender any time soon.’’
Clooney gestured toward Josh with the mug. ‘‘Maybe I ain’t going to live through this war, Josh, but I ain’t no fool. I’ve heard some rumors. Monkey’s after you because he’s got something bad and terrible that he can’t trust a stupid jarhead like me to do. Likely it involves killing with a good chance of getting killed. You’re as bloody-minded as Monkey, I reckon, so you’re a good man for the job. Well, killing might come easy for you and Monkey Risling and old Bull Hawsey, too, with his awful Kill Japs sign, but it still don’t to me. Sure, most likely I’m not gonna make it through this war, but I ain’t gonna go to St. Peter as a volunteer and that’s all I’ve got to say.’’
‘‘Well, I suppose that’s enough, Lester,’’ Josh tenderly allowed and went inside the cave where he sat down at the rude table the boys had built from scrap lumber, took up a thoroughly chewed pencil, and wrote on a blank sheet of paper:
Dear Dosie:
I guess you’ve found somebody what’s good enough for you at last. I never much thought I was, anyway. I hope you and your doctor will be happy. Not much else is happening around here. Eureka and all the boys are fine and I am, too. Say hello to Rex and tell him I’d sure like to get old Thunder and ride the beach with him and his new horse.
Good luck, fair winds, and following seas.
Josh
PS - Thank you for putting flowers on Mama’s grave.
Josh put the note in an envelope, sealed it, then wrote Dosie’s address on it, which was simple:
Miss Dosie Crossan
Killakeet Island
North Carolina
He called for Stobs. ‘‘Put this in the bag going out with my reports.’’ Then he strapped on his pistol and the razor-sharp Aleut ax he’d carried since his service on the Bering Sea, and went over to the crate used for storage of this or that and retrieved a half-full bottle of Mount Gay rum. He walked outside and tipped the bottle into Captain Clooney’s mug, three glugs. ‘‘Have a bit of this, Lester. It’ll soften your day.’’
‘‘It’s too early,’’ Clooney protested, though he tossed it back instantly, then whistled out a breath and put a hand on his pistol. ‘‘Are you going or not?’’
‘‘I am,’’ Josh replied, then handed the bottle to Phimble, and went on down the volcano to see the Monkey where, just as Clooney had predicted, he would be asked to accomplish a terrible thing that even a Marine Raider wouldn’t do.