The priest standing next to Nautaung had his mouth half-opened as if about to speak, his face a dumbfounded mask in the now half-light. And the old man had to actually press his cheeks with thumb and forefinger to suppress his laughter.
“There’s the ground to air radio,” Niven pointed to the ground. “It’s all set on the correct frequency.”
“Pick it up, La Bung,” Danforth commanded. “Give it to the Du Ringa. You stick with me,” he commanded to Ringa. “Like a shadow.”
“Be careful of an ambush before approaching the village,” Niven suggested. “Good luck. Move out.”
“Ya had to get that in, didn’t ya,” Danforth said disgustedly. “Be careful. Shit, I know enough to be careful.”
“And I command this outfit,” Niven said acidly. “I’ll say what I goddamn please.”
“O.K. Pullmotor say whatcha please. But leave me alone. I’ll win you a goddamn medal. That’s what you’re buckin’ for, ain’t it? Something to brag to your snobby-ass society friends about.”
In the half-light Nautaung caught Ringa taking it in, grinning. The old eyes shifted as Niven’s fist clenched.
“Look Geronimo, if you think you can take your goddamn edginess off with your son-of-a-bitching mouth you’re nuts,” Niven moved forward one step. “I’ve had enough of this crap,” he forced greyly, taking another step toward the half-Indian. “If you don’t want the patrol say so,” he challenged holding his breath then feeling one of Nautaung’s wrinkled old hands slide roughly over his fist.
Danforth had one hand on his knife: “You little shit,” he sneered. “There’ll come a day when you don’t pull no rank over my head.” He turned and stormed mumbling out of the area, Ringa on his tail. For a moment the Subadar Major stood gaping, then clutching his binoculars clambered after them.
“I’ll see you guys tonight,” Niven said cockily to the Priest and Nautaung. “Be careful of the radio.” And he was gone.
“Why the cocky little upstart,” the priest stomped the ground. “Why he’s still wet.… He’s, he’s.…” the priest stuttered.
He couldn’t find the words. And Nautaung was laughing so hard he didn’t try to hold back the tears.
“Turn on the radio low,” Danforth whispered to Ringa. “See what you get.”
The radio clicked on; a distant mumbling voice and static.
“Give me the binoculars,” Danforth whispered to La Bung.
They lay low on the flat of their bellies in the deep grass of a small clearing on the high ground over-looking the village.
Danforth focused the specks in slowly, drawing the village to him in the now heavy hot of the almost noon sun. He saw them big and fat and yellow sitting, sunning in groups. He counted them and they were twenty-six visible, so close that he could distinguish them plainly.
They were drunk or high or both he could tell. He moved the glasses slowly, scrutinizing the area, dividing it into sections in his mind. He focused in on the center area again and saw Island. He wondered why he hadn’t seen him before. He was so plain. He was tied to a post and even through the glasses he could see the black maze of flies about him. A shadow cut across him and a vulture swooped low. He followed the bird with his glasses and it perched, wings flopping, with four or five other birds on top of a stilted thatched basha. He moved the glasses around. There were birds on every basha top; maybe thirty or forty in all. He swallowed heavily and took the glasses away.
“How many yards to the village, La Bung?”
“I would say two hundred and fifty yards, Dua,” he said softly his chin resting on his hands.
“Ringa?” he whispered.
“I would say two hundred. Maybe two hundred ten.” Two football fields, he was thinking, and one end zone.
The Subadar Major pointed to the glasses. Danforth nodded and handed them. La Bung looked it over, grinning.
Danforth took the glasses and looked it over again. “I would say it was closer to two hundred, too,” he whispered to Ringa. “Here,” he handed Ringa the glasses. “You might as well see your first picture. It ain’t purty.”
Ringa got his focus. He went over it carefully. Danforth was waiting for his expression to change. It didn’t. So we got an actor, he thought. No, he hasn’t seen it. Maybe he don’t know what to look for.
“Well?” he asked Ringa when he was finished.
“That’s exactly the way I thought it would look. Exactly,” he said evenly, not even glancing at Danforth, staring at the village with his naked eye.
Jesus, Danforth thought. He’s scared shitless. He can’t even take his eye off it. He’s afraid to look at me. Something reflected. It was the silver emblem of a British Lion on the Subadar Major’s black beret.
“Take that goddamn hat off quick. Ya want to get us killed.”
“Yes, Du.” He unpinned the emblem and put the beret back on.
“What time do you have?” Danforth asked.
“Two minutes before the hour, Du,” La Bung said.
“What time do you have?” Danforth repeated in a grinding whisper.
“Eleven hundred fiftyeight hours.”
“That’s better. An hour and two minutes before the planes. We made it quicker than I expected.”
“We will be lucky today,” the Subadar Major grinned.
“Go back and get the mortar set up. Make the range two twentyfive for the first one. No smoke shells till we get zeroed in.”
“Right away, Du.”
“Keep low and quiet,” Danforth whispered.
The Subadar Major snaked away on his elbows. Danforth glanced at Ringa still staring at the village and took up the glasses again. Two Japs were standing by the body now lunging at it with fixed bayonets. One set the bayonet too deep and had to put his foot against the carcass to pry it out.
Danforth wanted to put the glasses down but he couldn’t take his eyes off the body. It could have been him, he knew. He had asked to take the patrol but Island had asked first. He inched the binoculars to the right but they came right back as if magnetized. He wondered what was wrong with him that he couldn’t stop looking at it. It was giving him some kind of terrible satisfaction.
He was sweating like hell in the sun and there was a horsefly going like a son-of-a-bitch around his ear; but he was enjoying it. That body tied to that post had given him life. It was like looking at his own life over and over.
He had to recover that body no matter what the conditions, he knew. He was indebted to it. A grinding hatred like teeth rubbing against stone welled through him as if the yellow forms below mocked his own naked figure. His stomach twisted. Sweat from his face dripped on his hands and he had a sudden almost unbearable thirst.
A young girl ran suddenly nudely in the glasses, past the body. Then a Jap tackled her from behind. So they had taken some of the natives after all. The girl was kicking and clawing, throwing up dust. Two other Japs pinioned her.
For a moment Danforth thought he could hear her screams all the way up here. Then he knew he only imagined it.
The shadow of Island’s body cut across the bare ass of the raper. She broke loose with one arm and snaked backward. The one she broke loose from came down hard on her young face with his boot. She lay still for a moment, then started to struggle again. There were four or five Japs standing around the raper, the two that pinioned her, and the girl. They were gesturing and laughing. She struggled half-free again and one of them standing kicked her hard in the ribs.
She lay still. The raper got up slowly, spent. He traded places with the one that had her arms. She couldn’t have been over thirteen or fourteen, Danforth thought. He put the glasses down. His mouth felt like dry sand. He knew the water in the canteen would be hot. He visualized never having anything cold to drink again. He drank half his water. It was rotten.
“They got somebody down there,” Ringa said.
“They’re working a girl over,” Danforth handed him the glasses. “Take a look and then I want you to go back to the mortars a
nd tell La Bung to stay with them. We can’t let any of the Kachins see that girl. They might want us to call it off.”
“What have they got to do with it?” Ringa asked.
“Beats my ass, come to think of it.”
Ringa took a look: “I think they knocked her off. She ain’t moving.”
“She ain’t dead. She’s dummying up. She shoulda’ done that in the first place. Woulda saved herself a couple of good kicks in the ass,” Danforth said toughly.
“She moved,” Ringa said in that overly awed tone.
“Maybe she’s beginning to enjoy it,” Danforth snickered. “You better get to La Bung. And see if they got any cold water down there. Tell La Bung to send a couple of guys to see if there’s a stream around there. Christ, am I thirsty.”
Ringa was thinking that Island tied to that post looked pretty much the way Father Zenowaski back in Hamtramck used to tell about Christ on the Cross. The Father had said they were shooting craps right in the shadow of it. There wasn’t much difference. For a second he wondered if it meant anything; Island being so religious the guys had said.
“I got water,” Ringa offered.
“Cold water, man,” Danforth twisted up his face. “Tell him real cold.”
“I’ll tell him. Say what’s them big poles on the edge of the village? Looks like totem poles?”
“They put em up for celebrations. They dance round them,” he eyed the three poles, fixing his eyes finally on the tall center one. “I guess you could call em totems,” he said absently, and Ringa took off.
Totems, Danforth thought. He would never get away from them. He could not escape them completely no matter where he went.
He had been born a misfit. He was a man without a real category ever since he was a kid on the reservation, born almost white among his dark brothers. The kids said he was a mistake. His grandfather said that no matter what they told him his heritage was Klamath, that he would always be Klamath. He didn’t know what to believe; he didn’t know where to make his stand. His older brother was his only friend. He taught him how to fight and once he learned he seemed to be always fighting. Pound for pound he could lick anyone on the reservation; it gave him satisfaction and a kind of place he couldn’t put his finger on. He was clobbered plenty fighting the older boys; but that gave him satisfaction too. He knew they wouldn’t gang him with his brother around, and just getting in a lick or two seemed to give him a sense of evenness for things he knew they were saying about him.
They came and took his brother away. They sent him up for murdering a guy in town. He couldn’t have done it, Johnny knew. His brother was drunk but he hadn’t left the grounds, but when he was drunk he couldn’t remember anything so the rap stuck.
Johnny began to have horrible dreams that they was coming for him next. He was sixteen and took to drinking because it seemed the only thing to stop them dreams. He began to get licked regular. He had to get off the reservation but everyone knew that wasn’t easy.
Finally he got beat bad and he took off. He found it was easy for him. He didn’t even look Indian. He could have gone away before.
He got his first fight up in Salem. He won easy. He packed a hell of a punch and didn’t mind getting hit. He was taken on by a stable that very first fight when the stable boss heard all the broads screaming for him.
He was one handsome son-of-a-bitch; a good middleweight prospect winning regular in semi-main-go’s. He was seventeen then and not fully developed, maybe the light-heavyweight champ someday, his manager had conned him.
He took his first beating in Portland one night. It was terrible; eight stitches over the right eye. Three weeks after that seeing a washed up bum in the gym made him feel a little uneasy.
But he was free and equal and treated white in that gym with its smelly sweat caked walls and the staccato rhythm of the small bag and the grunts of the men on the big bag, the sound of twisting leather and skin. And being recognized by the classy gamblers in their pointed suede shoes, feeling that knotty exuberance when he knew the painted broads had come to admire him.
The beating hadn’t really disillusioned him. The disillusionment came when an umpire from the Pacific Coast League offered him five hundred to lay down against his boy. For three days he was wild mad not knowing what to do. Finally, he took it up with the stable-boss.
“Five hundred! the cheap son-of-a-bitch,” he had said. “We’ll take fifteen hundred. You get seven-fifty.”
“But I.…”
“Now let’s not have any lip, Indian,” he said. “For seven-fifty you ought to crawl down.”
He took a couple more beatings. He was cutting easier and the scar tissue was getting thick over his right eye and a Doc told him it couldn’t take much more.
He heard the reservation authorities were looking for him in Portland and took off for Seattle. He was dreaming and drinking every time he got his hands on some scratch. He signed a contract to fight for two years and was sold after he blew an easy one for not training.
He didn’t know that was his big break then. In fact the name of his new boss, Jim Dalle, meant nothing to him. He fought and won his first fight for him without ever knowing what he looked like, getting a message in his dressing room to meet him the next day at the Magic Inn.
How plainly Danforth remembered that afternoon. It was late and raining and beginning to get dark. The club was empty dreary dark with only the porter’s light as he swept up and a light behind the bar where someone was counting bottles, and real easy music being piped in from somewhere in the dark.
From the first Dalle never let him up for air. He was blonde, small and thin and was nuts about shoes. He paid a hundred dollars for shoes. He showed him the shoes, and got to the point quick after that.
“Look,” he had finally said. “You won’t last in this fight racket another two years. Get out. We work together on this thing. I rub your back you rub mine.”
“You mean a whore will give you all her dough and you don’t have to do nothing?” Danforth had asked.
“With your looks,” Dalle conned. “You’ll have more than one. That dark hair, your dark skin. But here’s how we work it.
“When I’m pitchin at a broad you’re around. You pitch my story whatever it is. We’re at a table see, in some smart club. We tip good, spend high, fight for the tab. That impresses the doll. She takes all this in, wants to get in on this free spending, naturally. I gets up and goes to the phone or somewhere. That’s where you come in. You build me. Tell her what a guy I am and how lucky she is to be with me. I play silent, never build myself. Dumb, nonchalant. The ass.
“But we got a whole story laid out beforehand. Our big plans and all. You tell her how I’m on the upswing and that kind of shit. She’d be smart to get on the band-wagon. She wonders what the hell the bandwagon is and when she asks you shy away from the answers, purposely.
“This intrigues her naturally. She thinks. That’s the beginning when she starts to think. She asks me what I do. I say, an iron here an iron there. I say I got things to attend to; you will take her home. You take her and build me. I make a date with her for the next week. I call her right before I am to pick her up, which is very late so she will have no chance for another date, and tell her I can’t make it. Important matters come up and a buck’s a buck and I know she will understand.
“This hits her. She is flattered that anyone thinks she understands anything especially a big man like me. But she ain’t use to having dates broken anymore than she is use to going out with a big spender like me. She is intrigued as to what is so important to me. She is thinking. The hook is out,” Dalle grinned. He had hollered over to the guy behind the bar to bring them drinks then. And Danforth would never forget the casual way he had handed him a five and told him to keep the change.
“Now when the hook is out the end is merely a matter of formula,” Dalle said scientifically. “And the hook is out because she is thinking. I take her out again to some plush spot. Naturally, she’s going to
think that because I spend so much money on her and all that when I take her home I am going to try and give her a jump.
“That’s where I cross her again. I drive her around in my wheel for a while, then I pull up to her pad, open the door and say it’s been a wonderful evening. This gets her.
“I ain’t like other men. I’m different or maybe something’s wrong with her, she begins to wonder. Then later I drop it in about whorehouses. Just little things. Not directly to her but between you and me. Like some classy babe walks across the floor of a club. And you say to me that’s Josie. And I say that’s some mink. And you say what a wonderful life she lives. And then our doll wants to know all about her. Then we look around suspiciously and whisper: ‘Don’t repeat it but she’s a hustler. Play like you don’t notice her, doll.’
“We just pick any babe in any joint that looks like a race-horse. You know. Finally our doll is asking questions on how a girl gets into this and we tell her that it is not for her. You kind of make her think that the racket is a secret, secluded sisterhood for a superior brand of woman. Keep saying how solid a woman has to be; that it takes a hell of a woman to make a good one. Keep using the word solid over and over.
“That makes her feel inferior. As if she ain’t good enough. That makes her mad. She begins to fight to get in the door. Now the clincher; and let’s say that in this case the girl is yours.
“You take her to your pad. If you ain’t got a knocked out pad you take her to a motel. Take her inside secretly. She’ll just stand there because you’ve never tried to lay her and she’ll think this is it, and like any broad she’ll want you to make the pass. You walk over to her and cuff her hard. You knock her flat on her ass. She ain’t expecting this, naturally. She looks up at you and she can’t believe it. She’s bewildered. She cries. She says: ‘Now what did you do that for?’ You pick her up real nice and tender. When you get her on her feet you cuff her again. She hits the floor sobbing. She thinks she musta done something terrible to upset such a nice guy as you. That’s when you deliver.
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