Con left a little while later. He hadn’t been out of the room thirty seconds when the nurse turned to the Colonel. “What the hell is this thing these European women have that gets all our men?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” he smiled.
“I might.”
“Not tonight, Jeanne Ellen,” he said. Jesus Christ no, not tonight.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” she said plaintively.
Well, he thought, there goes my sport for tonight. “I don’t have time. I have to work.”
“Not again tonight.”
My God, how can they be that way. “Yes, goddamn it, again tonight,” he pounded the table with one huge fist. “Yes,” he said incisively, redly. And got up and stomped out of the room. He paused once in the hall and stole a backward glance. She was sitting there at the dinner table with a bewildered, plaintive expression on her face. He kept moving fast, but not quite fast enough. Right before he opened his office door he heard her begin to cry.
CHAPTER XXXI
In the jungle Bill Ringa was formulating a plan. He had deduced that their force would soon be pulled back for rest and reorganization and wanted to make one effort under his own initiative. Con, he knew, had already recommended him for promotion to 1st Lieutenant and since that recommendation had gone in he had more than ever a desire to do something on his own, something that would give him a mental concreteness to this new position that he valued so highly.
Bill Ringa did not respect the code that was supposedly the officers’ code. Bill Ringa respected Bill Ringa. But having been made an officer in the first place was the first chance that he had ever had and he respected that wholly, fully. He had definitely shaken on it with Niven that right after the war he would return with Niven to the Palm Beach house and if they didn’t go into something together Niven had promised to use his every connection to help get Ringa started.
Ringa’s plan was to block the Myitkyina-Bahmo Road and hold the block for twentyfour hours. It would take a certain amount of help from Danny’s unit which was precisely what he had wanted in the first place. Danny was a powerful influence and if he could convince Danny of the plan, then execute it with small or little loss of life it would be a real feather in his cap, it would show definitely that his initial promotion was no on-the-spot combat requirement and that he was a man to be reckoned with. Bill Ringa never once forgot that he needed other men to help him fulfill his ambitions, and he knew that a man never knows whom he will need next. He always acted accordingly. He found it to be a twentyfour hour a day job.
Now he was alone on the edge of a small clearing off the south trail. He was a mile and a half from the camp, between the camp and the south trail outpost sitting in the shade. He made one final mark with his red pencil on the map, then took his lead pencil and carefully printed two final notes. Early in the morning he would go over and present his plan to Danny, he thought, as he stood up and stretched and began walking down the edge of the clearing.
The sun was falling rapidly now and about mid-way down the field he spotted the old bare limbed tree. There were a dozen or more vultures perched on its branches. Several times in the afternoon while he had been working on his plan he had noticed them. He slowed down now as he approached the tree, then stopped all together. Christ, he would love to shoot one. He had always wanted to shoot one, worse than almost anything he had wanted to see how they would die.
But in the jungle you did not kill vultures. You could kill mules and snakes and monkeys, Ringa knew, and water buffalo and elephants and even dogs, if you were that hungry. You might even kill a man and nobody would say very much about it. But you did not kill vultures. There never had been any special reason for not killing them, Ringa considered now, but it was unheard of, it wasn’t done, and in not killing them you must realize that you, too, have changed, have become a part of the life that was the life of these Hills.
Ringa glared at the vultures wondering whether he could frighten them with his eyes and hate. They hardly noticed him. He picked up a rock and threw it into the tree. Two of them flew bulkily away as he listened to the ugly swish of their forced wing beats. He threw another stone and they all flew away except one. The ones that had flown away were now in a near-by tree but again they didn’t seem to notice him. He looked up at the solitary bird. He moved closer to the dead tree; the third stone hit the lone vulture. It did not fly away but moved up several feet on the branch cackling in a deep, ugly voice. Something must be wrong with it, he thought. Ringa threw another stone and missed, then another and hit the vulture in the leg. It flapped its wings and tried to fly but one wing would not extend fully and it fell heavily to the ground quickly spinning round and getting to its feet.
Ringa grinned. The vultures in the other tree took off and now in the first dark of the afternoon he could hear their wings flapping overhead as they moved across the clearing, then his eyes shifted to the bird on the ground. The crippled vulture was staring at him. He did not like the way it stared. He searched the ground around him and found a big limb about four feet long and two inches in diameter. He picked it up and started for the vulture. The vulture started for him at the same time.
He stopped. The vulture stopped. This wasn’t right, he thought.
He came forward again and the vulture came forward until they were about ten feet apart and he could see, plainly, the filth of its heavy feathers, the dirty wrinkled red of its head and the piercing death’s look in its eyes. Again Ringa stopped. The vulture stopped. Suddenly afraid Ringa lunged forward and struck the vulture hard across the head with the club feeling the sweet thud of the impact through the handle of the club.
The vulture rolled over and cackled and spun on the ground its one wing flapping, then gained its feet and came straight at him. Ringa stared astonished, frozen immobile for a moment. The vulture did not come fast but steadily, its eyes boring. He swung again and hit the vulture flush across the head, harder than the first time and when it went down he struck it twice across the body with all his strength, and all the added strength of his increasing fear; feeling the rough, rounded, hard muscles of the bird’s body through the club head. He stepped back and away as the bird lay momentarily stunned. Then the bird convulsed, flaying the air with its one good wing, and was on its feet coming at him again. For a second he thought he would break and run, but instead he began to swing ferociously with a sick fear, striking the bird again and again until it lay silent. He stood watching it. Still he wasn’t sure that it was dead. He couldn’t make himself go any nearer. Then it began to move. He saw the ugly head rise up and the bird using its right wing and left leg for propulsion and balance, its left leg now broken, came forward.
Ringa began to shake with a wet fear. He struck and struck and struck at the bird. He wondered how any living thing could take these thuds but all at the same time feeling the twisted, hard muscle through the club handle. From the force of the final blow that it took to knock the bird down he thought that it must weigh as much as a man, yet knowing it was much tougher than any man. The bird lay still but he struck it again and again, flaying at it wildly. The bird began to twist again, its eyes bored up at him. He hit it again and again but the eyes still bored up. He sprang back still holding the stick in his hand. He pulled out the .45.
He shot the bird once in the chest tearing a gaping hole. The bird threw up its head eyeing him. He fired four more times and the bird lay dead.
Suspiciously Ringa looked around, then quickly looked back to the bird fearful that maybe somehow it would still get up. Then he saw the other birds flying from one perch to another. He broke running for the trail. The brush tore at his clothes and stung his face, he looking left then right, then overhead, running hard, panicstricken; sure, positive, that there was a bird hovering over his head. Then finding the trail and running hard uphill picturing all the birds waiting to cut him off around each blind corner, holding the .45 tight, and finally making the camp-site.
When he got to headquarters
he had a quick drink and called a meeting. By the time the meeting was over he was himself again. Nautaung thought it was a good plan. The old man said he would go along to Danny’s camp with him in the morning.
Danny, over in his camp four miles away, was preparing to leave on an inspection of his outposts. He was to be away all night and had turned over the command to Danforth.
Danny hadn’t been gone over an hour when the American half-Indian began to drink. It was one of those rare drinking times with him when instead of becoming close-lipped, mean, and wild-eyed, he felt very silly and loveable.
He had wandered the camp talking and kidding with the soldiers, then had stopped and visited with the three civilian Kachin families whose village had burned and who were taking temporary refuge with the group. He had his eye on a young Kachin daughter, very tall for a Kachin woman, and finely proportioned. She was fifteen and two days before when he was bathing she had come down to the stream and not fifteen feet from him stripped and taken her bath. He had talked to her in the water, and she had never known the use of soap. He had with his own hand, showed her how to use it much to her delight. He would have taken her then but Danny and a group from headquarters were bathing downstream and a meeting had been scheduled for right after that. Looking the daughter over carefully Danforth had decided that it was too nice a stuff to do any rush business with. So, tonight, he had visited with her and her family and made arrangements to meet her when the moonlight was at the angle of seeping through the first clearing. The girl’s mother was highly flattered.
Now, he had returned to his own C.P. He was reeling slightly but still giggly. His boy had prepared the dinner and built up the fire but he was in no mood to eat. He brought his mirror over by the fire and combed his hair and squeezed out several black-heads whistling and drinking all the while. He made the young boy take a drink of his scotch and when the boy found it distasteful, gagged, and spit it out Danforth laughed loudly. He dismissed the boy.
He took out his knife and began to whittle on a piece of wood. He found a knot in the wood and working concentratedly by the firelight began to cut around the knot until he had a round piece of wood between the size of a quarter and a half-dollar. He giggled and put the wood over his eye as if it were a monocle. He picked up the mirror and looking into it puckered up his lips. He grinned opening his lips holding his teeth tight together so that the grin was all even white toothy. Quickly he looked around to check if anyone was watching him from the edge around his C.P.
“I say, old boy,” he said aloud to the mirror in a very exaggerated English accent. “How’s the tea, y’know?
“I say,” he answered himself. “Fine tea, y’know.
“It was a bloody battle, it was.
“Indecent. Are you going to the ball, old chap?
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. All my classmates will be there, y’know,” he said to himself in the mirror.
He adjusted the wooden monocle in his eye, held his hand femininely up by his mouth and coughed: “Pardon.”
Then he heard someone coming through the brush. Quickly he dropped the monocle from his eye, set down the mirror, and began making designs with his knife on the ground. A boy came in with a message from message-center. Danforth signed for it and he left. Danforth opened the envelope.
Dear Danny:
I have a plan. I would not try to develop it in Con’s absence without your opinion, and help. I am coming over to talk to you in the morning. Looking forward to seeing you and your whole gang.
Your pal,
Bill Ringa
P.S. Go light on your eating. I’ve got several freshly killed peacocks for you. One of our hunting parties got lucky.
Danforth felt a dirty, hot, tearing redness explode like the red and white glare of a rocket within him. He crumpled the note in his clenched fist and drove the knife hilt deep into the ground between his legs. He felt a sudden white nausea. For a second he thought he was going to vomit. His dark, baleful eyes glared into the fire and he felt the sudden inhuman strength of his drunkenness and jealousy as it sifted together like two evil, black clouds.
The dirty, sneaky-ass little shit, he said to himself. That dirty Polack son-of-a-bitch. Lieutenant Ringa. How do you like that. Lieutenent. He don’t know it but he’s going to get his. He slides me out. He gets my job. Now he thinks he’s one of them. He thinks Danny and Reynolds give a shit for him. Lieutenant Ringa, King of the Suck-Asses. They’re using him. That’s what they’re doing. Using him. They’re playing him for a sucker. A fall guy. What do they care for him? He ain’t no better than me.
Danforth laughed a frenzied laugh. He took a big, raw, scorching drink. It dribbled down his chin. The little snob. He didn’t hardly pay me no attention. Even after we get them out of that ambush. Or the great Con’s ambush. The great sucker’s ambush. Kiss my ass Mr. Con says and you will be a Lieutenant in days. And you sucked it didn’t you Ringa, boy. You sucked it, you little cheat.
Well, you’re the sucker. But Con’s the son-of-a-bitch. He was, too. Yes, he was. He’s held it over your head, John Danforth. With his rank he’s held it over your head since the day your first met him. He give you all the dirty jobs and Niven all the authority. He was sly. He couldn’t give it to you direct. He had to sneak it to you. Lord it over you until he knew that his time had run out. Then he gets you out of his hair. Then he rubs it to you by upping them other guys over you. By trying to make you feel small.
That’s what he did. I see it now. I know that kind. I know. There’s no worse than that. None. None. “None,” he screamed suddenly. He kicked at the dirt again. He spit on the fire. He spit again, frenzied. Like the legendary Hindu god of evil, Kali, Con’s face loomed hugely in front of him, but his body was that of the god. He wanted to flay at the ugly vision but he knew there was nothing there.
If Con were here it would be his last night. But he played with the breaks again. If he was here I would kill him. Kill him real slow. I’d make him pay and pay and pay. With my hands make him pay.
He’s always had it his way. Always. But not with me. Not this time. Not the glory boy this time. I’ll get him. I’ll get them all. Every goddamn one of them. I’ll show them. They won’t ignore me. I’ll make them remember. I’ll make them regret it. You can’t push a man but so far. That’s all. Just so far. That’s all. That’s it. Yes, that’s it. Now you know what you have to do. Con can’t stay away from you forever. The time will come. Soon, he thought wildly. Real soon, he thought starting for the brush. You know now. You have to put a stop to this. Soon. You’ll see, Ringa. You’ll find out like I did, sucker. You’ll find out slow how they’re using us all to get rank and recognition. You’ll find out how they’re using us. And you’ll want to help me, Ringa. But I’m not going to let you, Ringa. No sucker boy, I’m going to have the fun. The real fun. You’re goddamn right I am.
And then he was thinking about something else. He was thinking how he would hurt her, how good it would sound to hear her moan with the pain and pleasure all at once, how good she would look twisting away from underneath him in the dust and the moonlight.
He wished he had some lipstick. If he had some lipstick he could paint her nipples and belly-button with it like that nigger waitress from the Rockin Chair Club did for him. That would look good on her, real good, goddamn if it wouldn’t.
CHAPTER XXXII
When Con’s plane had landed in Ceylon he had still not completed his transition from the jungle. The plane ride had been bumpy and he had found his palms sweaty and his body had tautened rigidly as they had prepared to land. But once the plane door had opened Colombo began to make it’s celebrated effect.
He had taken a cab. And as the cab drove through the lazy, clean, tropical town he knew why Carla had, in one of her letters, called it the paradise of paradise lost. The houses were white and pink, the lawns green and neatly trimmed, the gardens in full bloom, the air tinged with a faint odor of jasmine and oleander. There was none of the activity of war. A
nd twice, enroute to Gus’s office, the policemen from their little umbrella covered circular stands in the middle of the intersections had waved happily and commented to the taxi driver.
At Gus’s office Con picked up Carla. And using the Greek’s limousine they were now, in the late afternoon, driving along the road toward her beach house. He had been talking to her and now he looked out the window at the palm and coconut trees that lined the road, and beyond the trees he could see the blue sea and the white sand, and the different white of the surf.
“It’s like Florida,” he said. “You’ll say it’s like Florida when you’ve seen Florida.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“But Florida lacks something that this place has. I can’t place it but it does.”
“I know,” she said. It had been six months since she had seen him, she thought. He didn’t look well at all. “You look pale, Con.”
He turned to her. “I was wounded. A couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t bad or I wouldn’t be here. Besides, I’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“Where were you wounded?”
He showed her. Then told her about it quickly.
“You were lucky.”
“Niven was wounded, too. But not seriously. Will you take down your hair when we get to the house?”
“I wish I could have met you. I would have had it down. And I would have looked nicer. I would have dressed up.”
“You look nice. You don’t know how nice. You sure as hell don’t look like any business woman.”
“I’m getting to be the business, I think. Gus is never there.”
“How’s Nickie?” he asked. “I want to talk to you about Nickie right away.”
Her arm was through his arm, and they were close, but now she moved back a little as if to study him.
“Do you know that Nickie was in love with a Filipino?” he asked. “Yes, you know. You told me. What do you know about him?”
She couldn’t figure him out. She wondered if he was well. “Nickie told me most of it,” she said. “Of course you have to take Nickie’s statements with reservation. At times she is very honest. As honest as a woman could be. Other times, not so. Other times she seems to take great pleasure in distortions. But this man, not only in hearing from her but from Gus, this man, this Filipino was, well, weak. Maybe not really weak, no. Let’s say mixed up. His values were mixed up.”
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