“O.K. by me,” Niven said. “But I’ll go anywhere you need me,” he said.
And for the first time Con discerned Niven’s new drive as an effort to stay ahead of Ringa’s greater, more natural talent for warring.
“It’s your patrol, Lau’rel. I’ll make this Niven rest whether he wants to or not,” Con flattered. You had to flatter your boy didn’t you, he said to himself. What is this? A good fellowship society?
“Let’s play cards,” Ringa said. “Whether we like it or not let’s play cards.”
“Good idea,” Niven said.
“I will take these monkeys out of here and see if I can separate them,” Nautaung said. “And feed the little one.”
“Tell Billingsly to bring one of those sacks of Jap occupation money. About a million,” Con said. “We’ll play with that.”
“He can’t,” Lau’rel said. “I’ve got it locked up. I’ll get it, old man.”
“I got cards,” Niven said. “Can Billingsly play?”
“His work should be done,” Lau’rel said. “I’ll bring him on if he’s free.”
Nautaung finally got the two monkeys in his arms but Scheherezade was biting at him and shrieking.
They built up the fire as it grew darker. The blasting of the strip had stopped with the sunset. The Doc finished with his patient and after doping him heavily joined the game.
“Now that the Doc’s here how about a side bet,” Niven asked Billingsly.
“Vaat you vant to bet?” Billingsly said. He was wearing a visored sunshade hat that Niven had picked up at the P.X. in Calcutta and brought him.
“I don’t care,” Niven said. “I’ll play you for four pieces of ass when we get to Mandalay.”
“I’m not playing in any cheap game,” Con said.
“Me either,” Doc Travis said picking it up. “I’ll bet my surgical instruments along with my practice for something comparable.”
“I’ll bet my coffee plantations against that,” Lau’rel said.
“You guys are out of my league,” Ringa said. “But I’ll bet my four condrum machines and my dirty-picture business against that whorehouse you’re gonna open in Bahmo, Billingsly.”
“Thas a bet,” Billingsly said. “A niiiice bet.”
A little later they finally got the game going; drinking scotch and unwinding, forgetting very hard. As usual Billingsly was winning.
“You guys really piss-poor pokah players,” he said raking in another pot.
“How’s the atabrine, Doc,” Lau’rel asked. “I feel one coming on.”
“Damn it, Lau’rel, you shouldn’t wait until it comes on to take your atabrine.”
“It’s bad for his complexion,” Niven said.
“The patrol will stop it,” Doc Travis said throwing the Filipino a small bottle of atabrine he had taken from his breast pocket. “Keep those. It’s the damn inactivity that starts all this sickness,” he said to Con.
“You’ve sent that report in to base haven’t you?” Con asked.
“All the sickness?” Lau’rel asked.
“Yes. The minute the marching stops sickness breaks out. Yes, I reported my figures to base,” the Doctor said.
“By the time the War Department gets done analyzing your figures they’ll be ready for World War III,” Niven said. “About nineteen-sixty-five.”
“What time is it?” Laurel asked.
“Nineteen-hundred,” Ringa said.
“Jesus, the radio,” Niven said dropping his cards and tearing into the brush. He came back a half-hour later. He handed the message to Con. “Wingate was killed,” he said suddenly.
“General Wingate!” Lau’rel said.
“Of the Chindits,” Ringa said.
Con read the message.
“Yes,” he said.
No one had captured the imagination of the common soldier or guerrilla fighter as had Wingate. His defiance of military principle and authority had endeared him to every dog and underdog soldier that knew anything of him. To them all he was invincible; the kind of man they would all like to be. But a man whom, like themselves, it would never happen to.
“Flying through a storm,” Con said. “In a plane crash.”
There was mumbling. “A plane crash.” “A lousy plane crash,” Con heard voices say in awed tones. Then a dry, grey silence.
“Your deal,” Con said to Billingsly.
“Fife card stud,” Con’s number one boy said.
“Jacks to open?” Ringa asked.
“Jacks or better,” Billingsly said.
At the beginning of the game they had talked about playing all night. By 2300 hours, eleven o’clock, they were exhausted and broke it up. Con lay in his sleeping bag near the headquarters fire unable to sleep. Wingate’s death had had a sudden delayed action impact on him. In a way Wingate was responsible for them being there as he was responsible for Merrill’s force. The original long range penetration known as the Wingate Circus had convinced the high command of the value of renegade activities even though the high command had authorized the activities, ironically, as more of a prestige sort of warfare.
To Con it was reasonable that almost anyone could be killed but not The Man, as Wingate was called. And now that he was able to conceive that death he saw the possibility of his own. He lit a cigarette sliding deeper down into his sleeping bag, then checked the position of his .38 by his thigh outside the bag. One by one he thought of his family back in America, and of Carla, and of all the things that he would have to live for when the war was over. He remembered eating freshly baked hot bread and bacon sandwiches in the early morning with the farm boys up in Wisconsin during the haying season, and the sound of the beautiful records that Carla had played for him, and of seeing the sun rise on the golden dome of the Shwe Dago Pagoda in Rangoon, and of the time that he lay on the sand dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan outside Kenilworth in the summer, he was very young then, and there was a full moon and he saw the image of the Virgin Mary in the face of the moon, and had come back night after night but never saw it again, and how he thought because he had seen the vision that it was his destiny to become a priest; and the fear that came with that, the little boy guilt, because he knew he really didn’t want to become a priest at all, wondering for months if it was sacrilegious avoiding his call, wondering, too, later, if he had really seen a vision because at the Art Institute he had seen a replica of the Da Vinci Madonna, and though he had thought he had never seen it before, it was exactly the same face as that in the moon.
Then he began to think of the past few weeks, sweating coldly now in the armpits and crotch and the back of his knees, thinking that if it had been one yard to the left or two to the right that he would not be here this minute. Finding himself, now, running his hand over his goatee and thinking how finely silky it was and wondering exactly how it grew from under the skin, then seeing the intestines of a young Kachin he had once performed a belly operation on, remembering it vividly, remembering too that it was the first time he had realized the beautiful sensitive mechanism that is man and had later thought what a crime capital punishment was; that no man had the right ever to destroy that mechanism of another man. Did you know, he said to himself, that every hair on your head is hollow as a pipe is hollow. And that is the way the hair breathes.
Then there was an outburst of firing from the northern outpost and several shots of return fire. Con hollered to Billingsly to douse the fire, then, without getting out of the sleeping bag, he grabbed the walkie-talkie and got Subadar Major Winston Smythe-Churchill. The Subadar Major said he was heading out there and would report at once. Then the firing subsided to an occasional shot, then swelled again, then a grenade went off. A few minutes later the Subadar Major called in that it was only a small patrol feeling out the position. Ten minutes later the firing stopped altogether and Con slid deeper into the sleeping bag.
Who would take Wingate’s command? he asked himself. Then he knew he couldn’t avoid his own decision any longer. He had avoided
appointing a second in command and if something should happen to him, even if he were just hit bad, the outfit would be in a state of confusion searching for a leader.
Besides that, whoever it was, should attune his thinking to what the command entails and it was unfair of him not to give his successor the opportunity while it existed, and it was unfair to the men too.
It’s your weakness, he said to himself, that you haven’t done this before. It was your weakness because you were afraid, yes afraid, Con Reynolds, to admit to yourself that you might be wounded or maimed or killed. It was your weakness, too, that in making your choice your sentiment has become involved.
There is in sentiment nothing but weakness. There is in sentiment a desire to do good but also a desire to protect or give pleasure. A man goes out of himself and is carried away when involved in such an emotion. He begins to live an illusion, then, soon, a man prefers illusion to reality. Doesn’t he, boy? So why not admit that Niven isn’t ready. Deserving, you might say from his point of view, but nevertheless not ready. But there was a man that was ready, whose respect you did not have to worry about losing, so in your desire to gluttonously grab all the favor you could you failed to make a decision because you knew you would lose what you had with Niven if you made a righteous decision with yourself.
There were two quick shots from the west on the perimeter. Con flipped on the walkie-talkie and then silence.
Which only goes to show, Con Reynolds, that no matter how good you think you may be, you’re still basically a shit. Jesus, did you make up the excuses. Ringa was only a private. He was only nineteen. He could never act like an officer. He wasn’t educated. It might ruin him giving him all that authority.
Well, take another look at Mr. Ringa, Mr. Reynolds. Take a look at the only man that’s come down here and done a first rate job and hasn’t played politics, who has made no enemies, who never has sucked ass with the intention of furthering himself but only to gain knowledge to protect himself. He may have no humility at all, Con said to himself, but whether he’s got it or not he practices it and that’s more than you can say for any other son-of-a-bitch around here, and include yourself.
Con reached over and turned on his flashlight and scribbled a long note to the Colonel. Ringa was to be an officer and there would be no compromise.
CHAPTER XXVII
The next morning right after the sunrise Con walked out to the airstrip to see how it was coming along. Lau’rel went along to receive instructions for his patrol.
“I’d stay off the trails as much as I could,” Con said. They were standing on the edge of the field. “But I wouldn’t do any river marching. I think they know we’ve been using creek-beds and streams on our patrols. At least they should.”
“I’ll do my best to get that prisoner,” Lau’rel said.
“Do it if you can but a prisoner isn’t as important now as he was a few weeks ago. Don’t take too big a risk for one,” Con said. He was looking out at the work parties that were clearing the brush and stumps.
“That’s awfully short for a landing field,” Lau’rel said. “It hardly looks regulation.”
Then from down at the end of the field they heard Ringa call: “Fire in the hole.” Then the Kachins taking up the dynamite call that Niven had taught them: “Explosion up the a-hole.”
Con and Lau’rel lay belly down in the grass. There was an explosion, then a loud scream and moaning.
“Someone got it,” Lau’rel said.
“Let’s go,” Con said.
They hurried down to the end of the field where the detail had been blowing stumps. The moaning became louder as they approached the circle of curious men familiar to all tragedy.
They pushed their way through the circle and there on the ground was one of the four Hindus that had wandered into the camp. A dynamited stump had unleashed a cone shaped splinter three feet long. The splinter had a diameter of about nine inches at the base tapering to a sharp point. The splinter, point first, had gone through the Hindu’s buttocks and come out his stomach.
The man lay on his side and Con whipped out his trench knife and cut off the front of his clothing. His three companions were kneeling about him, wailing and chanting. Con got the clothing cut loose and the point of the splinter was sticking out about four inches and there was a solitary strand of gut wrapped around it. The old man’s face was a yellowish, purple against the white of his frightened eyes and his sleek dark beard. Lau’rel bent over the kneeling Con and looked at the wound. A fly lit on the gut that was wrapped around the point of the splinter. Con brushed his hand near it and it flew away. Lau’rel swallowed hard trying not to vomit, then swallowed hard again to stop from gagging.
Con stood up and took the .38 from his holster and checked the chamber as the men watched. He pointed the revolver at the head of the old man and was about to pull the trigger when one of the other Hindus jumped in front of his poised pistol.
“No, sahib. No. No. No. Don’t shoot,” he pleaded, arms outstretched, his belly pressed tight to the barrel of the pistol.
“He’ll die sure,” Con said. “You can’t let him suffer.”
“Please, sahib, don’t shoot him. We will care for him.”
“He can’t possibly live. You’ve no right to let him suffer.”
“I beg you not to shoot him,” the Hindu fell to his knees.
Con turned to Lau’rel. The Filipino was pale and his eyes offered no help.
“Shoot him, Dua,” one of the Kachins said.
“He’s finished,” another said in Kachin.
Con looked at the pleading Hindu, then to the wounded one. He put the pistol slowly back in his holster: “He will be dead in half-hour,” he said to the pleading Hindu. “If you want him to suffer? He’s your friend.”
On the way back to field headquarters they ran into Doc Travis. The Doctor said he would get some sedation and get right over there.
Lau’rel left on his patrol. About ten in the morning the Doctor ran into Con near the supply dump:
“They wouldn’t let me give him a sedative,” the Doctor said. “That’s about the ugliest stomach wound I’ve ever seen. That splinter is laying right up against the base of his spine. It’s a wonder he wasn’t dead when I got there.”
“Not very pretty,” Con agreed. “Was he still moaning?”
“It’s good to moan,” the Doc said. “I’ve always believed it relaxes a patient. They urge it in childbirth.”
“I should have shot him,” Con said. “Moaning may be good for childbirth but it makes the men edgy.”
“That’s a point,” the Doctor said. “By the way there was a mail sack in yesterday’s drop. Niven gave yours to Billingsly.”
“Were the new maps in it?”
“No maps,” Doc Travis said. “I told the Subadar Major to save all the loose paper. We’re short of toilet paper and the other day I used a leaf and found a leech trying to work its way up my rectum.”
Con had to grin.
“Now I know what a soldier means by tough shit,” the Doctor said.
“See you later,” Con said and went to get his mail.
He picked up the mail, gave some instructions, then in the forest near the command post sat down to read his mail. There was a note and several cards from his mother, and a letter from his sister, and two letters from Carla. He had one letter from Carla before but had not opened it, saving it for the time when he would have time to savor it. This morning, he decided, he would read one of the letters from her and tomorrow another, then the day after the third. He opened the one letter from his father:
Dear Connie:
I know you will be glad to know that business is good. We had our biggest month last month. We have eighteen (18) stores so there is a lot of work for you to do when you get home. I suppose you are surprised about the eighteen (18) stores. Well, I made quite a deal for four stores in one deal. You would have been proud at the way the old man pulled it off.
I am getting old too son. I
don’t care about myself no more. You know that. I got to have someone I can trust with the stores. Goehren is a fine fellow son but it’s the same old story. He’s not my blood. That makes a lot of difference. You got to worry about all the outsiders and God knows I got my troubles with your mother and your older sister’s husband in the service and she about to have a baby. I worry about my son-in-law. He’s slow. He doesn’t have any get-up and go. I asked him into the business, under you of course, but he didn’t want to go into the business. There’s something wrong with him. He wants to be a politician.
I give the priest a fifty to say a prayer for you now and then. That won’t hurt you any son, believe your father. It never hurt anyone to pray and it don’t cost a dime.
I worry about you. Your mother worries all the time. We miss you. We are waiting for the day you come home,
Love,
Dad.
Con thought about it for a moment, then smiled. He started to tear up the letter according to policy, then remembered what the Doc said about the paper shortage. He folded the letter and put it in his seat pocket.
He opened Carla’s letter. He was glad it wasn’t scented.
Dearest:
I will stick to our bargain to make our letters short, though I find many things I wish to write about.
I found a place, finally, up the beach from the Grande Hotel. It is small, like a beachcomber’s shack, and among the palm trees. From the front steps to the water there is over one hundred meters of white sand and down endless miles of beach and palm I can see native outriggers putting to sea in search of a day’s catch. Fruit vendors squat along the beach selling fresh pineapples and coconuts and they do not care whether you buy or not. We will have happiness here, together, I know, though I wonder if it will be as beautiful to you as your Burma and your beloved Kachins. But I know you will like it for the change. One Ceylonese selling plantains (I have a weakness for them) had never heard of Austria or America and only knew that the war was something that prevented the fishing fleet from going too far to sea.
As I told you in my first letter I was very restless when I arrived. I knew then that I would need some activity and talked it over with Gus. He has given me a job in his office and I am quite enthusiastic. His chauffeur drives me to and from work every day and the chauffeur’s older brother has taken the position of houseboy. The work is interesting and has a measure of responsibility. Really, I never knew there was so much detail involved in the shipping business.
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