Overland

by Graham Rawle

  The prospect of returning to the world below, even to fetch rations, filled him with dread. His thoughts quickly strayed to the disastrous marriage from which Overland had become such a blessed escape—especially once he’d figured out what was going on. Back then, even with the evidence right under his nose, he had failed to see that Muriel and Gus’s roller-skating partnership had strayed beyond the parameters of the rink.

  One night in early February, George had come home late after a long day at the studio. Muriel was asleep so he undressed in the dark and slipped between the bedcovers without switching on the light so as not to wake her.

  When he turned to put his wristwatch on the nightstand, he noticed a tie clip that did not belong to him lying in the ashtray. He picked it up and studied it in the dim light. It was gold and had an antique-car motif with fake rubies as headlamps. At the time, he assumed that Muriel had bought it for him as a gift and forgotten to hide it. George had regarded the clip as rather vulgar—more Muriel’s taste than his own—but he didn’t want to spoil her little surprise so the next morning when he got up for work he left it there in the ashtray, pretending not to have noticed it. When he came back from the bathroom five minutes later, Muriel was lying in the same position as when he left her, apparently not having stirred, yet the clip had mysteriously vanished.

  He said nothing.

  A week later, he happened to spot Gus at the local Texaco station buying a can of Servalube motor oil (for his hair possibly?) and saw that he was wearing an identical tie clip. But instead of putting two and two together, as even the most unsuspecting husband would already have done, George imagined that Muriel had so admired Gus’s handsome clip that she had decided to buy him one just like it as a Valentine gift. And all he could think about was how he was going to avoid wearing such a dreadfully tasteless item—further tainted as it now was by Gus’s endorsement of it—without hurting her feelings.

  He needn’t have worried; the gift, of course, never materialized.

  Outside the Sheet Metal and Routing building, a crane and a scrap-metal hauler had been brought in to deal with the wrecked tractor carcass discovered earlier that morning. A handful of men stood and watched as the crane’s extended arm reached across, its grab claws widening in anticipation of the lift. Lurching to a halt over the desecrated remains, the grab suddenly pounced on the tractor as though afraid it might try to escape, determinedly tightening its grip around the vehicle’s chassis before dragging it into the air. Part of the crumpled muffler broke loose and clattered to the ground. Swiveling on its base, the crane arm swung the tractor over the open top of the waiting hauler truck, then released its grip to dump it unceremoniously onto the tangle of scrap already on board.

  Pasted onto the vehicle’s side were posters urging the American public to donate their salvaged metal for the war effort. One showed a saucepan in mid flight. Underneath, the caption read Send your pans flying. 5,000 make a fighter. 25,000 make a bomber.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS KAY’S fifth day as an internee. She sat on an upturned pail in the shade of one of the huts, observing, as she had on previous days, the movement of traffic in and out of the camp’s main entrance. There seemed to be hundreds of new arrivals each day. Buses transported them to the far side of the camp for processing, grading, inoculation and allocation of living quarters. Though there was no gate as such—each vehicle, each person entering and, more specifically, exiting, was carefully checked by the gate guard on duty, overseen by flanking watchtower guards.

  She had noticed a workman wearing blue denim coveralls and heavy mud-caked boots who for some time had been crouched over something lying flat on the ground just inside the perimeter fence. It wasn’t until he put on a full helmet mask that she guessed what he was doing. A concentrated crackle of white light confirmed it; he was welding.

  She watched him for more than an hour, studying his movements, which seemed languid and lazy. At one point he wandered outside the camp to fetch something from the back of his pick-up truck parked a short distance away on the other side of the fence. Neither of the two nearest tower guards seemed to even notice him. He stood there measuring various bits of metal before returning to the job with one of them in his hand.

  Sometime around noon, there was a distant sound of clanging from the lunch bell. The welding guy must have heard it because he downed tools, flipped off the current, removed his helmet and set it on the ground. When he turned round, Kay could see that though he had the slight frame and stature of a juvenile, he was probably in his forties. There was something of the Mickey Rooney look about him: a tall tuft of red hair and a face like a bulldog’s behind. He headed into the camp along the main drag between the rows of buildings, presumably in search of whatever victuals were on offer. The gatehouse guard, busy with something inside his hut, had seen none of this so was unaware that the welder had left his post. As Kay saw it, a vacancy had opened up. She pushed her hair up into her baseball cap, which she turned back to front so that the peak pointed down her back like the girls in the factory sometimes did. She stood up, lingering in the shadows of the barrack room nearest the gate. It was the perfect opportunity, if she had the courage, but she had to act quickly—take the welder’s place before the gate guard spotted that he was missing.

  Hardly thinking what she was doing, she sauntered over to the welder’s gear and dropped to her knees, quickly donning the helmet and gloves he’d left behind. So impetuously had she acted, it only now occurred to her that she had not checked first to see if the tower guards were watching. What was she thinking? But after a minute or so when she remained unchallenged, she assumed that no one had noticed the switch. She was similar in stature, same baggy blue denim coveralls, near as damn it—and after all, who looks that closely at a welder? All anyone sees is the big domed head of the helmet and that sizzling splash of light. Besides, she was still inside the perimeter fence; she had not yet overstepped any official boundaries. Why would their suspicions be roused?

  She imagined that Mickey Rooney would by now be safely sucking up soup in the staff canteen, but it didn’t give her long. She looked down at the job he had been working on, a metal sign for the camp entrance: Manzanar, the individual letters fixed within a rectangular steel framework. He’d got as far as the Z.

  Fixing the ground return to the frame, she switched on the current. She couldn’t get the electrode to spark; it stuck to the work piece and she was forced to tug it free. She adjusted the amperage and tried again. Stroking the tip a few times, the electrode popped to life and continued to sizzle and fizz along the puddle of the welded seam. After a couple of minutes’ pointless welding she paused, pretending to inspect one of the letters, turning her body to see what she could make out through her darkened visor window. The gate guard was just a stone’s throw away. At first she thought he was looking straight at her until she realized his attention was fixed on an approaching flatbed truck behind her. It entered the camp and pulled up beside the gatehouse. It was laden with an assortment of suitcases, parcels and wrapped bundles. The guard looked in the back, laughing convivially about something with the driver. They exchanged a few more words, and the guard scribbled a few notes on a clipboard before waving him on into the camp. He watched the truck for a few seconds and then went back inside the gatehouse. He appeared in no way suspicious, but could she be so sure of the tower guards? For all she knew, they may have been watching her every move. Glancing up, she saw that the tower to her left was not manned or the guard was sitting out of sight. The soldier in the tower on the right stood at the far end of his platform looking in the other direction. But what if it was a trap; what if he was only pretending not to have noticed her? Maybe he had watched her change places, knew exactly what she was up to, and was deliberately turning his back to inveigle her into making her escape. The moment she set foot outside the camp he might whip round and raise his rifle. Bang! Shot while attempting to escape. No one would question that. She suspected that all of the guard
s were just itching to take a potshot and, given a legitimate excuse, would enjoy nothing more than to spend the afternoon picking off Japs one by one like clay ducks in a shooting gallery.

  Kay continued welding for a while and then set the electrode grip down on the ground, getting up off her knees. She stood with her hands on her hips looking down at the sign, hoping to appear both nonchalant and masculine. Her heart was racing. She dared not look up at the watchtowers. She somehow felt that if she didn’t look at them, then they wouldn’t look at her. After a moment, she picked up a tape measure and strolled out of the camp towards the welder’s pick-up.

  Resting her elbows on the side of the truck, she flipped up her visor, but made sure to face away from the guards. Not knowing if they were watching her, she pretended to sort through some equipment in the back. She dug out a few offcuts of scrap metal and tossed them to the ground behind the truck, making a conspicuous show of measuring various pieces before sending them clattering onto the pile. Sidling round to the driver door, she saw through the open window that the key was in the ignition. She sneaked a glance up at the tower guard; his back was still to her. In the truck’s side mirror, she could see the gate guard checking some paperwork, with no interest in what she was doing, but then beyond him she spotted the approaching figure of the little Mickey Rooney guy on his way back from lunch. The gate guard hadn’t seen him yet, but Kay figured she had better make her move before he did. She opened the driver’s door of the truck and jumped in behind the wheel.

  She cranked up the engine and headed off down the road. Little Mickey slowly realized what was happening and started running after his stolen vehicle. Seeing his reaction, the gate guard put two and two together and turned to see the truck disappearing behind a thick rolling cloud of dust being kicked up from the surface of the road. Panicked, he darted back into the gatehouse and reached for the phone, but then thought better of it and ran out to the foot of one of the towers. He shouted up to the guard, jabbing his finger sharply at the disappearing pick-up, his outstretched arm quivering to emphasize the urgency of the crisis.

  Spurred to action, the tower guard raised his rifle and took aim.

  A shot rang out.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  AT FORT BENNING, the staff sergeant was in the middle of roll call. Jimmy stood among a group of twenty rookie soldiers wearing all-in-one flight suits with their pants tucked into high-laced boots. As the sergeant fired off their names from his list, the men responded with a sharp and attentive “Here!” When Jimmy answered, he instinctively raised his hand like he was at school. Some of the others sniggered.

  In a darkened barrack room, Jimmy sat among the new recruits watching a movie projected onto a screen. Cigarette smoke picked out the sharp beam of flickering light from the whirring projector behind them.

  The film showed a black and white aerial shot of the countryside, a hazy patchwork of contrasting gray fields and roads. The figure of a falling man entered the frame and continued to tumble towards the ground below, growing gradually smaller in the picture. The film had no sound, which lent the sequence an eerie, dreamlike quality. When the man was almost out of sight, a straggly ribbon of white spilled from him, quickly taking the full billowing shape of an open parachute. Jimmy sighed with nervous relief. He tried to catch the eye of the soldier sitting next to him with a view to exchanging genial nods, but he turned away to talk to someone else.

  Before he’d had chance to settle in, Jimmy’s Overland jump practice was being put to the test. In one of the training hangars, a series of platforms stood at different heights, all of them far higher than the front porch of Shangri-La Cottage. Jimmy watched from the ground as in choreographed succession men jumped confidently down onto coir matting below, immediately rolling forward into a tidy somersault and springing back to attention like performing gymnasts. Later, when it was Jimmy’s turn to jump, he lost his nerve, hesitating at the critical moment. He might have remained there on the platform edge for longer had he not felt a firm hand on the small of his back, pushing him over the edge.

  Later that day, Jimmy and the other soldiers were gathered round the staff sergeant who was delivering a lesson. A kitted-out soldier, Garcia, stood beside him for demonstration purposes. The sergeant pointed to various parts of Garcia’s equipment as he spoke.

  “Your kit consists of a main chute and a reserve chute for emergency use only.” He unhooked a length of webbing attached to the guy’s backpack and passed it to one of the men whilst pointing to where it gathered into a series of bunched folds.

  “This is known as your static line. This end attaches to a cable in the aircraft; the other end attaches to the cover of your main chute. When you clear the aircraft, your weight on the line pulls the threads loose holding the cover of your chute, releasing it into the air. Like this. Brace yourself, Garcia. OK, Eisner.”

  Garcia turned and hunched forward in readiness like a downhill skier while Eisner obliged the sergeant by taking the static line for a run in the opposite direction. The chute cover was quickly released and, as Eisner continued on, the folded white silk inside tumbled out, stretching longer and longer on the ground behind him until the folded zigzag of lines whipped out and came taut, tugging Garcia over on his rear. The men laughed.

  “Right. Fall out to the packing room where we’ll show you the most important thing of all: how to pack your chute. A poorly packed chute is the quickest way to suicide.”

  The soldiers began to head off to another building. Jimmy caught up with Garcia.

  “What about the reserve chute?” said Jimmy.

  “Huh?”

  “The reserve parachute. He didn’t tell us how to use it.”

  “I guess he forgot.”

  “Forgot? Well, don’t you think he should—”

  “There’s like a handle on the side. You just pull it. Nothing to it.”

  “Yes, but what if you can’t get your hand to it? You panic or you black out? Someone said a lot of the guys get so scared they faint as they jump out the plane.”

  “Relax. Your main chute will get you down.”

  “Sure. In theory. But they don’t give you a reserve chute for nothing.”

  “What’s up, Shepherd? You chicken?”

  Jimmy was indignant. “No, I’m not chicken. I just think we should have proper instruction. I’m thinking of the other guys as much as myself.”

  Garcia nodded knowingly. “Sure you are.”

  Later that day, Jimmy was heading back to the barracks from the mess hall. Garcia caught up, falling in step with him.

  “A word of advice.”

  Jimmy turned.

  “Whatever you do, do not surrender.”

  “Surrender? Who to?”

  “Who d’you think? The Japs, you dummy. Once we get to the front line and those yellow bastards start coming at you, you’d better pray they shoot you stone dead ’cos if you get taken prisoner then boy, are you in trouble. Especially a pantywaist bed-wetter like you. My advice is to shoot yourself before they get to you. I’m serious.”

  “Why? What do they do?”

  “You don’t want to know—but I’ll tell you. First off, you gotta understand the Japs are not like us. They’re a bunch of sick, sadistic animals, see? They’ll torture you just for kicks. You must have heard about the bamboo torture.”

  “No.” Jimmy was not sure he wanted to.

  “They tie you in place over the sharpened point of a fast-growing bamboo shoot. That stuff can grow two or three feet in a day. The point punctures and then penetrates your body till it eventually comes out the other side. Most times they shove it up your ass. Man, that’s gotta be a painful death, having that thing growing inside you. Then there’s the ‘water cure’ where they make you drink gallons of water. They pour it down your throat until your stomach is—”

  “Stop! I don’t want to hear any more.”

  They entered the barracks; Garcia stayed with him. “I’m just telling you what they do. I’m trying to help
you.” He continued. “When you’re nearly bursting, they kick you round the floor until your stomach splits open like a water balloon.”

  Jimmy tried to walk away, but Garcia attached himself like a limpet.

  “Didn’t you know about the Japs? They’re inhuman, the goddamn lot of them.”

  “I can’t believe anyone would do such a thing.”

  To his dismay, Jimmy found one of his squad sitting on his bed. It was Swain, a loud-mouthed jackass who liked to push people around—someone he had taken an instant dislike to on day one. Having overheard the tail end of the conversation, and seeing Jimmy’s reaction, Swain seemed keen to crank it up a notch.

  “Well, you’d better believe it, buddy boy. And remember to save the last bullet for yourself.” Swain pointed under his chin. “Right here. Straight up through the top of your head. That way, you’re guaranteed to blow your brains out; even you can’t miss. But if you find yourself out of ammo, you’re going to need your bayonet. Same point of entry. Right under the chin. Get your rifle pointing upwards, hands on top of your head and drop to your knees. Instantaneous death.”

  Jimmy undid the top button of his tunic. “I need to lie down. I don’t feel too good.”

  “Aw. What’s up? Feeling a little dizzy?” Swain’s sympathetic tone was mocking. He got up to make way for him. “That’s too bad. Now you just sit yourself down. And Garcia here will go fetch you a glass of water. A nice big glass.” He laughed raucously and made a series of exaggerated cartoon gulping sounds deep in his throat: “Gurnk, gurnk, gurnk.”