“I still don’t see how they had us figured,” Ringa said.
“We’ve been lucky,” Nautaung said. “Look at the score. No one has a better score than we.”
“I’d have bet my life that prisoner was telling the truth,” Ringa said.
“I think he was,” Con said. “I think we intercepted a different outfit that’s all. When they cut for the hills I thought they were making a run for it.”
“Hail Holy Queen Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To Thee do we cry poor banished children of Eve, to Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning …” Lau’rel was saying piously.
Con looked over at him: “I think I’d rather see a man dead.”
It began to rain again.
“I’d rather be dead,” Ringa said. “I wonder what it feels like to be like that.”
“Who knows? Who knows even after they have been there?” Nautaung said. “The doctors think they know. But how, when the man who has come back does not really know, can the doctors who themselves have not been there know? It is hard to say.”
“It’s like a punishment,” Con said.
“Maybe,” the old man said. “Maybe not.”
Lau’rel’s blank, glazed eyes were staring widely at the ceiling, entranced. The eyes had been fixed motionless for over an hour now.
“Give him some water,” Con said to Ringa.
Ringa went over and lifted the Filipino’s head. Gently he poured some water from the canteen into his parched, half-open mouth. Then Ringa left to check with the Subadar Major.
“St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil,” Lau’rel started again, drooling now as he spoke. “We humbly beseech thee.…”
“I feared it would come to this for him,” Nautaung said compassionately. “Once when he was young he took the pledge to become a priest.”
“Oh Jesus,” Con said. “He told you?”
“Yes. It was never truly his desire but that of his family, I believe. But he believed it was the sin of sins not to keep the pledge,” Nautaung said. “And then there was a woman. It was not business he worried for.”
“I knew of a woman but I thought it was over,” Con said. “I didn’t think it was serious.”
“More than serious. When a man confuses his God with his love, no matter what his God, he is confused beyond all confusion.”
There was a lightning flash outside the basha, and thunder.
Con’s forehead furrowed perplexedly. “He got his religion mixed up with his sex?”
“That is a way to put it.”
“A half-ass effort to imitate his Jesus to his woman,” Con thought out loud. Hell, every man did that, he thought. In a way, anyhow.
“When a man tries to hide the one behind the other he is like a man that is caught forever between two fists that flay at his head,” Nautaung said. “He forgets there is anywhere else for his head to go but right and left.”
Con thought about Margaret for a moment. It had been a long time since he had thought about her. Or it seemed a long time. “The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said emptily looking over at Lau’rel.
“It is better to be nothing than to lie to yourself that you are something you are not,” Nautaung said. “Being nothing is not half as bad as a man believes. I am nothing. I find many things in it. I enjoy it.”
“That’s the first lie you ever told me,” Con said. “You’re something. Light me a cigarette.”
“Yes. I am air, and earth. And if I do not go soon I will not even make good fertilizer.”
“Pour me a drink.”
“Our bodies are the same as scotch,” he grinned his ancient grin. “An instrument.”
“Up on your mountain? Is there scotch?”
“The bar of all bars is there.”
They had a drink together and Nautaung left.
Con’s side hurt now and once when he spit there was blood in the phlegm. There was a leak in the grass roof of the basha and the water dripped down onto his leg. With considerable effort he shuffled his body around away from the waterfall. He looked up. There was a large rat perched on the rafter that ran across the room sideways about two feet under the ceiling. The rat was staring at him. There was a loud thunder, then another louder thunder and a heavier outburst of rain. The rat did not move. Con picked up his carbine and got the rat in his sights, then looked over at the man on the floor. He unshouldered the carbine and studied the angle between the man on the floor, the rat, and himself. There was the possibility that the rat would fall directly on Lau’rel, and if not shot properly, bite him in a dying effort. There was even the possibility that the rat would get inside Lau’rel’s blanket, he thought putting the carbine down.
Now isn’t this a hell of a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon, he thought a little drunkenly. Two thousand miles from your woman and fifteen thousand miles from your home on a rainy afternoon. You have a nice fire, and scotch, and plenty of maps to read if you consider maps good reading, and nice companions. For companions you have a crazy man and a rat that has an evil eye. Now if you could only all get together. But the crazy man wants to pray. And the rat wants to eat. You’re not hungry. And you and the praying crazy man have different religions.
“What would you like to do?” he asked the rat. The rat was still staring at him. “Would you like me to take you back to America, rat. You’d be king of rats back there. You must be two feet long. That would certainly make you king of rats in America.”
Well, the rat won’t talk. And I know the crazy man won’t talk. Do you suppose the rat would talk to the crazy man. That’s a tough one. You don’t know exactly how a rat talks. But right now I think you know a little of how a crazy man talks.
The rat slithered along the rail and vanished into the grass roof. “Good-bye, rat,” he said.
Now there are only two of us. Just me and the crazy man. Crazy man will you miss the rat? Rat, I’ll miss you. By God I will, he thought taking another drink.
Niven came in soaking wet and now the rain came harder than Con had ever heard it.
“I have Lau’rel’s things,” Niven said. “This letter is the only thing beside his wallet. I opened the letter because I thought it might be a letter he didn’t want his next of kin to see.”
“Does he want them to see it?”
“No,” Niven said. “I don’t think he would,” he handed the letter to Con.
Con opened the letter and read the first paragraph and skipped and read the end.
“Was the halfcaste he talked about the same one you knew in Mossorrie?” Niven asked.
“The same one,” Con said. “The very same. Carla said she was very much in love with him.”
“He had never read the letter. It was unopened,” Niven said, his eyes traveling to the idiot on the floor.
“He never knew she wanted him back,” Con said. “Not if he didn’t read the letter. Even then he might not have known.”
“She was a whore, wasn’t she?” Niven asked seriously adjusting his gold rimmed glasses.
“I don’t know what a whore is anymore,” Con said struggling to figure it out. Then he began to realize it. “I don’t think he would have gone crazy if he knew what I knew. I’m almost sure of it from what Nautaung said.”
“What did Nautaung say?”
“I’ll tell you sometime,” Con folded the letter and put it in his pocket. “I’ll keep this.”
“I wonder why he took off all his clothes before he charged that position?” Niven asked. “You need some wood on that fire.”
“I don’t know,” Con said staring at Lau’rel. Con’s hand was pressed to the letter in his breast pocket. “Maybe this was the way it was supposed to be. How the hell should I know?”
Niven went over and put a log on the fire. The fire burned in a wooden box full of dirt near the window. You couldn’t see twenty feet out the window through the rain. Niven paused by Lau’rel and wiped his brow with a filt
hy khaki handkerchief, then wiped around his mouth where the drool was. “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy.…”
When Niven got away from the fire he began to shiver. “He never prayed much. But he always clutched the St. Christopher medal around his neck. He never took that off when he stripped. Where is it?”
“The Doc put it in his hand. He’s clutching it in his hand under the blanket. But no man knows how much another man prays, Jim. I prayed during that ambush. Did you know that?”
“I did too,” Niven said teeth chattering.
Con pointed to the bottle and Niven poured them both one.
“I’ll have to ask you to stay on here until after I get out of the hospital,” Con said.
“Don’t worry,” Niven said sincerely. “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll get my leave soon enough.”
“I don’t have anything to worry about,” Con said. “Not with you guys.”
“You’re pretty sentimental today,” Niven said. “You drunk?”
“A little drunk. And the rain.”
“I’ve never seen it rain like this,” Niven said. “Well, don’t worry.”
“You grew up.”
He smiled. “I know when. When they told me you were dead yesterday morning. I had to grow up.”
“Wake me at five.”
“All right.”
“Are you going to hang around?”
“Yes.”
“If you see a rat up there,” he pointed. “Shoot the son-of-a-bitch. But shoot him so he doesn’t fall on Lau’rel.”
“A big one?”
“Fat.”
“Oh my God, I offer thee all my thoughts, words and actions of this day in union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus for Thy Glory.…”
Niven looked at his watch. It was a little after three. At three-thirty the rain began to let up. Then a little after that he heard shouting out by the village circle and went out to investigate.
Niven, the Subadar Major, and Nautaung came in a little after four and woke Con. The rain had stopped altogether. Con poured some water from a canteen onto the top of his head, lit a cigarette, and took a drink.
“Cigarettes taste horrible with a wound,” he said to Niven. “The movies have got it all wrong.”
They were standing in a semi-circle around him and now Con noticed that whatever they had come for was serious.
“We need not attack for retribution,” the Subadar Major said.
“It will not be necessary,” Nautaung said.
“We have found that one of our people sold us to the enemy, Dua,” the Subadar Major said. “We come in disgrace to stand before you.”
“You will never be in disgrace,” Con said.
“Don’t be foolish,” Niven said.
“It was Billingsly, Dua,” Nautaung said.
It hit Con with a rush spilling out forcibly like a delayed case of dysentary. Then quickly he thought, why not? “You’re positive?”
“We are sure,” the Subadar Major said. “He was selling the Japanese back their money. In addition they have been paying him extra for information. He had assistants. One was a Shan. He told us first.”
“Where is the Shan?”
“Dead,” the Subadar Major said.
“Billingsly confessed,” Niven said. “I was there. Nautaung got the confession without any force.”
“He fears Nautaung,” the Subadar Major said.
Con’s eyes shifted to Nautaung. The old man nodded slowly.
“Billingsly found out about the plan the day before we left. The same afternoon he left on the money spending exhibition,” the Subadar Major said. “The Japs were lost exactly as the information of the Du Ringa stated. But when Billingsly got to the road he informed the enemy he was working with. They paid him ten thousand rupees silver. We got that back, too, Dua,” the Subadar Major said, but not proudly. “The Japs didn’t know anything about the lost force. And the lost force was truly lost. So the Japs of the road sent a patrol and located the lost force and brought them to safety. And in the place of the lost force they substituted the fully equipped force that knew of our plan. It was only coincidence and the Gods that you chose that place to rest. They had another ambush set up at the next hill. When you halted they thought they had been discovered and opened up. Had you not halted to rest they would have cut you in two between the two ambushes.”
“Clever,” Con said. “Damn clever for on-the-spot Jap thinking.”
Ringa came bursting into the room. “Did you hear .… you heard.”
“Where’s Billingsly now?” Con asked suddenly, meanly.
“In the circle,” Niven said. “Tied to a post.”
“The soldiers guard him,” the Subadar Major said.
“But the soldiers throw rocks and other things,” Nautaung said.
“See that he isn’t touched, Nautaung,” Con said. “Right away.”
“Let me have him,” Ringa said.
“I’ll do it if you can’t, boss,” Niven said.
Con looked at Nautaung, then to the Subadar Major, then back to Nautaung. Nautaung’s eyes said he would have to make his own decision. He took a big drink and passed the bottle around.
“It’s my responsibility,” he said.
Nautaung walked away slowly.
The Subadar Major nodded and came to attention, saluting.
“Get all the wounded that wish to be there down the trail from the hospital.”
“They all wish to be there.”
“And the soldiers.”
“They all wish to be there,” the Subadar Major said.
“I suppose,” Con said. “But bring only the wounded ones the Doctor permits.”
“Yes, Dua.”
“Nautaung will watch the patient Lau’rel. You may leave, Subadar Major. Help me up.”
Niven and Ringa helped him up. “Did you shoot the rat?”
“He didn’t come around.”
Con was on his feet. “Well, watch me shoot one.”
“Let me do this one,” Niven said. “I’ve only done one. I’d like to do this one.”
“You’re a liar,” Con said.
“So I’m a liar. Let’s have a drink for the road.”
“Let’s.”
They had one while Con leaned up against the post.
“Let’s go by the hospital first,” Con said.
They opened the door. It had stopped raining but the mud was deep. Con felt weak and nauseous and every time Ringa would lift up on his left side the pain would go knifing through. They took about ten steps and Niven slipped and as Con laid his weight suddenly on Ringa he slipped, and they were all down in the mud. Sitting in the mud they began to laugh. Con took a handful of mud and threw it in Ringa’s face, then they were all throwing mud around and laughing. Several soldiers passed nearby and as suddenly as it started it stopped. Finally they made the hospital area. Two of the wounded were near death.
“I heard about it,” the Doc said.
“What do you advise?” Con said half-sarcastically.
“I can’t think of anything bad enough,” he said. “I want to see it.”
Con grinned. “Then come along.” he said gayly, exaggerating.
They walked down the slippery trail, Niven and Ringa half carrying Con. About a hundred yards down the trail, where it curved and where the village outpost had been, was a large clearing. There were over three hundred men in the clearing in a circle, with the wounded on the ground at the front of the circle, and Billingsly in the center staked to a post.
When the Kachins saw the Dus and the Dua they opened a space to let them pass and cheered lustily. Con walked over to Billingsly, then turned to the wounded, then back to Billingsly. Con’s eyes bored redly, hatefully into his trusted servant. It was now past five and the sun was low but not visible with the heavy rain clouds but there was still two full hours before the darkness.
Con spit on the prisoner. Ringa and Niven, holding Con, spit also.
The Kachins c
heered.
They walked over to the high part of the curve on the edge of the crowd and sat Con down.
“Strip him,” Con ordered.
They cheered. Four soldiers ran out and stripped him. Billingsly’s eyeballs were pure white with fright. “Save me, Dua,” he pleaded. “Oh Dua, my God, save me,” he hollered.
“Cut him loose,” Con said to the Subadar Major.
They cut him loose. He began to run around the circle looking for an opening like a cornered animal. There was no opening. The soldiers had rifles and bayonets on the rifles and were reaching out to jab him. He came before the Dua and got down on his knees covering his penis and testicles with his hands.
“Save me, Dua,” he cried. “Have mercy. Mercy, Dua.”
There was a sudden quiet.
“As there are Gods you will be my God. I will serve you. Your slave. Save me. Save me.”
“I’m sorry, Billingsly,” Con said. “Give him the shovel,” he said to the Subadar Major.
They gave him the shovel. He began to dig his grave whimpering and pleading. He would extend his arms to Con, pleadingly. Con would point to the wounded expressionlessly.
Billingsly tried to shovel slowly, stalling for the precious minutes, but the Kachins prodded him with the bayonets and threatened to shoot him instantly. It was not hard to dig in the mud and soft earth and in a half-hour there was a suitable grave. They took the shovel away from him. He got down on his knees and began to cry.
Con took out the .38. “You have deceived your people. This is their judgment,” he said.
Quickly he shot him in the right leg.
There was a great cheer.
Billingsly was twisting convulsively in the mud holding the wound his eyes fear-crazed but still pleading. “No die. I no want to die,” he screamed.
Con gave it to him in the left leg.
They cheered. It began to rain again.
God forgive me, he said to himself. He gave it to him in the stomach.
He was lying on his stomach, with his hands clutched to his stomach and his chin in the mud, his naked body covered with mud and blood, and the muddy ground around him streaked with blood, and a black maze of flies attracted by the fresh smelling blood.
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