Never So Few

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  “They’re all in. And in first class shape.”

  “Good. Care to have dinner here tonight?”

  “No thanks. There’s some reading I’d like to do. I should get along.”

  “You did a good job with that outpost last night. I’ll see that it’s known,” Con said conclusively as he looked into Island’s light blue eyes, thinking that they were as soft and compassionate as a woman’s eyes. It was difficult, Con knew, for a man with that kind of eyes to change them easily. A woman could flutter her eyelashes and that look would be gone and he did not like to think of the look that would replace it.

  Island left and Con began to go over the evening message as he watched the gold and red of the trees above him and felt the cool of the night coming, enveloping his tired sweaty body. Pearson from Con. No. Con to Pearson, his mind said. What was the date? What were the co-ordinates? The hell with the message. He would dictate that to Niven later.

  Con opened the Dewars. He began to swing the hammock gently, his mind revolving. The priest was back at base. At this very moment if they didn’t have plane trouble the priest was talking it over with the Colonel. Con drank feeling the whiskey run through him satisfyingly warm. It must be damn important to have pulled the priest out. There were but few possibilities. Why did the Colonel have to keep everything so goddamn secret.

  CHAPTER VI

  Colonel Raymond Pearson waited in the jeep on the edge of the Ledo airstrip, his driver at his side, feeling the wet bone-penetrating cold. He studied the thick underbelly of the low grey ceiling which seemed to be getting tighter and lower, then glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. Already the priest’s plane was over two hours late.

  Between the roar of the arriving and departing DC-3s, Chungking bound, Kunming bound, Calcutta bound, he heard the grinding noise of the trucks fighting the quagmire that was Mile One of the Burma Road a half mile away. The twentyfour hour a day grind of vehicles and tractors and jeeps that was a noise no longer to the men of the area but a sound like the wind or the rain, natural and unceasing.

  The Colonel rubbed his enormous hand against his chest on the leather of his furlined jacket, feeling the sting of the windblown drizzle on his ruddy face. He had a slightly flattened nose, a souvenir from a Stanford thigh pad. Colonel Pearson had graduated from U.S.C. in 1933.

  “That plane is awful late, isn’t it, Bill?” he turned to the smooth skinned young driver.

  “Planes are always late, or early, sir,” Bill Ringa replied. “Never on time.” He was wondering who was on the plane that came from down behind the enemy lines. “Cigarette, sir,” he offered a pack of Chesterfields.

  “No. Thanks, Bill. I’ll use one of my own.” The Colonel looked at the vigorously built young Pollock. “Better save your cigarettes. They might tighten the ration with all the troops that are coming in.”

  Across the field, beyond the runways, the Colonel saw the foliage of the jungle move, and then the paper and small accumulated debris on the field splashed. “Father Barrett must be having himself a bumpy ride.” There was one long tropical streak of lightning, the thunder rolling afterwards.

  “Is the priest on that plane, sir?” Ringa said. He was glad to know the missionary they called the “Burma Bum” was on the plane coming in from Kachin country. The fellows at base expected the Colonel’s driver to know those things.

  “I never met no priest like him before.” Ringa put his gloved hands in his jacket pockets. Father Barrett was some priest. Back in Hamtramck they had no priest like him. But there was a place for a real missionary in the Polish section of Detroit. Suddenly he felt sour in his stomach just thinking back. He looked at the mudsplattered field and wiped out the vision of the tall steepled Hamtramck church and Father Zenowaski. “I’ve heard lots of stories about Father Barrett, sir.” Ringa looked at the Colonel. “He’s sure been out here a long time.”

  “Some people believe he’s been out here forever.” The Colonel ran his huge hand over the three day stubble of his beard. “The Great White Father has Christianized over forty percent of the Kachin Hills,” he threw his cigarette.

  Seeing the finality of the familiar gesture, Ringa turned and stared at the cigarette in the mud. That was it. He would get nothing more about the priest. That was one thing about the Colonel that was different from most regular officers, or any officers for that matter. You always knew where you stood with Colonel Pearson.

  Ringa looked at the barren wet field and the rotten muddy jungle surrounding it. Why would they send a good officer like the Colonel out here to this forgotten land when they needed good officers in Europe so badly. “Colonel, sir, why is Burma so important?” he asked innocently.

  “Lots of reasons, Bill,” the Colonel said taken slightly unaware. “The Burma Road especially.”

  “How come the Road, sir?” Ringa asked toying with the steering wheel.

  “It’s China’s lifeline to the outside world. The Road and these planes flying the Hump,” the Colonel adjusted his bullish frame to the small jeep seat. “The Japanese have occupied the main Chinese ports for some time now. If we can get that Road through and supply the Chinese armies that are still fighting, we can take a lot of pressure off our boys in the Pacific.”

  “I see, sir,” Ringa said skeptically. Then: “Sir, is that what they call the Big Picture?” Ringa asked. “What you explained just now.”

  “That’s right, Bill,” the Colonel smiled. But that wasn’t all of it. Commodore Perry had made a treaty with China guaranteeing that the Five Treaty Ports would always be open to free trade. And China expected us to stand by our agreement; that America would defend against any threat of being closed. But you couldn’t explain that.

  And Burma itself was important. India, discontented over British rule, would welcome Japan. And with the Germans and Italians knocking on the door of Egypt and the Suez, it was very feasible that Japan and Germany could join forces in Bombay. Burma was the buffer. It was easy for the Colonel to realize this. He had studied it, had lived with it; but now he could not state it, lest his own fear take possession of others in the endless chain of fear. In the Western world the dread of death, the Colonel knew, was ever greater than the hope of life. And that was the big difference in the East and West. The Colonel had learned that in China years ago when he had been sent out to train troops now led by the Red rebel Mao Tu Seng.

  In the distance now he saw the outline of the small Liason plane as it came over the jungle foliage, dead straight for the runways, flying low under the pattern of circling DC-3s waiting to land.

  Larger and larger it came, lower and lower, making no attempt to circle the field, it tipped its tiny wings, dropping lower until its wheels touched the wet wire mesh of the runway, and then suddenly it slid precariously off to the right. The Colonel gripped his fists tightly and Ringa bent forward as the plane straightened, slowed, turned, and began to taxi toward the jeep.

  The priest sat in the back of the jeep, jungle filthy, his bush hat on the back of his head, his silver scabbered jeweled Dah laid across his knees. “What held you up, Father?” the Colonel half turned and began talking as Ringa started the jeep toward the road and the Ledo base two miles away.

  He was feeling genuinely glad to see the old missionary again.

  “Some kind of engin’ trouble, lad,” the priest looked around. “I never knew there to be so many planes in the wide world as I see here today.”

  “There are a lot of changes around here, Father. How long has it been since you were here last?”

  “At least two years, I venture,” the priest said leaning forward slightly. “I came to the main base not long ago but we didn’t stop here, we didn’t.” He put one hand on Ringa’s shoulder. “Yer name’s Bill, isn’t it? Weren’t ye driving for the Colonel when I was at the base before?”

  “Yes, sir … I mean Father. Yes, Father,” he said boyishly, keeping his eyes on the road, feeling a sudden swelling pride, never believing the priest would remember.

&nbs
p; The thick underbelly of the clouds split open as if slashed by a saber and the rain began to pour down hard and the wind whipped faster. The Colonel cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted to the priest: “Get a good look around. You’ll see what it takes to win a war and build a road at the same time,” then he turned forward and pulled up his collar.

  They stopped and waited at a junction while the traffic poured by. Finally Ringa found an opening and turned right and they were on the road, the priest staring wide-eyed as they moved north toward the headquarters. Saints and the Virgin Mother. The priest crossed himself staring in the rain. His mouth was a small hole in the dirty grey of his thick beard as he saw for the first time the ancient Assam village of Ledo transformed into a teeming, sprawling city, yet not a city but a bulky irregular military installation of a magnitude which he never could have conceived.

  Every few yards a new junction had been cut into the road. He saw printed signs of engineering companies, air force units, base hospitals, supply units, signal units. Back off the Road where the impenetrable jungle had once been, the same jungle where Frank Buck had come to hunt, he now saw barracks and messhalls, supplyrooms and sawmills, hospitals and motorpools; palmthatched, bamboo, and lumber buildings growing like jungle weed out of great concrete slabs.

  The road itself was jammed with jeeps and tractors and bulldozers and carriers of every make and kind.

  Rain. What rain. Cold. What cold. These were America’s machines. The priest shook his head. They do not get wet and they do not get cold. Jea’sus Merry and Joe’asep. Everywhere. On the Road, off the Road, in the air, there was a vivid, animated, zealous stirring that said Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Like a Charlie Chaplin flicker he had once seen in Mandalay where everything had speeded up into abnormal jerks and people raced in mad bouncing clips of disorder and confusion, while the little moustached man passively, sadly, had watched the world go by.

  East is east and west is west. Big black men cursing whitely at the brown skinned coolies knee deep in the mud. Drivers spinning their wheels hatingly into the primeval earth. The young old swearing what-are-we-doing-here faces of the men.

  “Hey, pass me that butt,” a white man hollered.

  “What’s wrong with your own?” the Negro asked.

  “I got leeches to burn off. I don’t wanna waste no butt on no leeches,” the white man said.

  “Whyn’t ya say so,” the Negro said.

  Hail Mary Mother of God, have.…

  Two Chinese soldiers, rifles in hand, prodding four Hindus up the ditch, their neck muscles tautened with the strain of the rice packs balanced on their heads.

  The man who builds this Road is General Pick. Colonel Pearson had spoken proudly of his countryman. He built Grand Coulee Dam, the largest monument yet constructed by man.

  Up the road. Through the mud and rain and cold. Stop. Spin those wheels. Ya can’t drive through. Slide through. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Yer holin’ up the war dogface.

  Dominus Vobiscummm.

  Machinery piled high in a jungle clearing: strewn, rotting, rusting.

  Two Nagas, turbaned, headhunters still, crossbows slung, leaning on a smashed bulldozer. Three Sikhs, big, dainty, cutting hair in their barbershop under a makeshift lean-to. Sanctum Sanctorum. Night. Damn the Night. Generators begin to whrrr. We brought our own daylight. These machines will have no rest.

  Three hundred yards away a tiger stretched in it’s lair. Grunted. You should have brought him back alive Frank Buck.

  Up the Road. The agile, the plodding, the eager, the intent, the endless voice of America: Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. I am late. Damn the waste. Damn it all. There is more where this came from. But Hurry. The Lord and Saint Patrick, the Father crossed himself.

  “Hey Sarg, it’s rainin’ harder. When we goin’ in.”

  “When the Navy gets here, dogface.”

  Up the Road. A bulldozer growls: One slap of my iron hand and a thousand years of growth goes down. Ten thousand.

  East is east and west is west. Two Kachins and two GIs struggling to lift a jeep hood deep in the slime of a ditch. Perched evilly, hopefully, a vulture watched from a tree.

  Jolly. What. A squad of Limey’s on a side road brewing tea.

  “Turn on yer lights. Can’t ya see it’s dark.”

  Jungle muffled, rain muffled, sirens in the dark.

  Condition Red.… Condition Red.… Condition Red.…

  Black as the darkest cave becomes the night. The canned daylight returns to its container. The machines do not move. “They’re bombing the airfield,” the Colonel whispers in the dark and the rain to the priest. The voice of the Hurry is quiet. The big men with their little machines become small souls carrying large corpses. Art Fa’ther who a’rt in Heaven hallow be.…

  “They bombed it all last week,” Ringa said. “And every day bout this time. A guy at the airforce told me.”

  “Ay,” the priest reached for his canteen and drank. “A little nip to pass the time, Ray, lad.”

  “Later, Father,” the Colonel spoke softly now. “Listen. They’re strafing, now.”

  “Hey, you,” a booming voice rang out. “Kill that butt. Ya wanna get us bombed.”

  “Up mine, Kaicheck,” came the reply as the butt went out.

  Now the rain began to let up. Tracer bullets filled the sky with orange red streaks.

  “Jus like the fourth of Jew-ly,” a voice hollers.

  “Tojo eats shit,” a squeaky voice exclaims.

  “Eleanor eats C rations,” a voice answered.

  Condition Green.… Condition Green.… Condition Green.…

  It had taken them two hours in the mud and raid and rain to reach the Colonel’s quarters from the airfield, Ringa noted. That’s averaging one mile an hour.

  “Be a good lad,” the priest told Ringa, stepping from the jeep.

  “The evening’s yours, Bill,” the Colonel said. “Be here at eight-thirty in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ringa saluted standing by the jeep. “Can I help the Father in with his pack, sir?” he motioned toward the priest.

  “Thanks, Bill,” the Colonel patted him on the shoulder. “The Father has carried it for fifteen years. He can make it all right,” the Colonel walked away as the rain slowed to a drizzle.

  Ringa got into the jeep feeling good. He felt a funny kind of good because the priest had remembered him, and he felt good because he had the evening off. Now he could go to Dibrugarh and pick up a few cases of that bootleg gin. And besides there was a new whorehouse in Dibrugarh. He had even heard that there was a white whore in this new whorehouse. This he doubted, pushing down harder on the accelerator, sliding a corner. But if there was a white whore up there he had better hurry.

  He pulled up in front of the airforce where he was billeted and went in and took a warm shower and shaved the peach fuzz from his smooth skin. Then he got out his duffle bag and opened it on his cot. He took out five hundred rupees, a book of trip tickets, and a rolled up duffle bag that had Colonel Raymond Pearson, USA, stenciled on it.

  He wrote a trip ticket to Dibrugarh, forging the Colonel’s name neatly, expertly. He had planned it all out before and could even tell you the mileage between the MP check points. He sat on his cot for a few moments mulling it over.

  He dressed warmly and drove to the motor pool, pulling up in front of the gas pump: “Where’s the Sergeant?” he asked the GI on duty.

  “Where do you think, dogface,” the GI said sarcastically. “Where all Sergeants are when it’s wet and cold. Inside.”

  “Get him,” Ringa said commandingly, staring at the GI.

  Ringa watched him go inside the small shack and watched the sloppy-fat Sergeant ramble out: “Hello, Bill. Back pretty soon,” the Sergeant said in a high voice.

  Ringa reached under the jeep seat and felt the bottle of gin. He rubbed his hand over it, then lifted it up and handed it to the Sergeant: “Here’s a bottle of gin. Fill it.”

  The Sergeant looked around quickly then put the g
in under his jacket tucking it in his trouser belt. He filled the tank and came round by the side of the jeep. “Dibrugarh?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ringa lied. “I got to pick up a buddy.”

  “How about picking me up a case of gin, Bill?” the Sergeant asked falsely.

  “How will I get it through the check points?”

  “What’s wrong with that bag? No MP is going to inspect the Colonel’s bag,” he pointed to the rolled up duffle bag on the jeep seat next to Ringa.

  “That’s for the boys in my outfit. Hell we’re fifty miles in the jungle where the main base is. They ain’t got nothing there. Be human, Sarge,” Ringa said pulling his gloves on tight.

  “I’ll bet,” the Sergeant sneered. “I’ll bet it cost them plenty.”

  “They pay a fair price. I take the chance.”

  “Well,” the Sergeant said in a new voice, “I thought because we were doing business.…”

  “You ain’t threatin’ me, Sarge,” Ringa cut in. “You’re in this as deep as me. What’ll ya pay?”

  “Ten a bottle.”

  “Hell, I pay more than that.”

  “How much?” the Sergeant asked biting his lip.

  Ringa considered a moment. “To you. Fifty rupees.”

  “You’re crazy. I’ll give you twenty.”

  “Sorry, Sarge,” Ringa gunned the motor. “I gotta go.”

  He got on the main road to Dibrugarh, driving carefully on the mud-spattered slippery asphalt, driving north through the check points, driving, finally, into the vapor mist that drifted up from the Bhramaputra river where the town of Dibrugarh was. The mist getting thicker, stretching out and covering the road in balls of white oozy fog, driving very slowly until he hit the town limits.