“So I’m giving you both the opportunity to know as much as the lieutenant colonel,” the Cutthroat said. “I told him the legend I told you. And once, he asked me about taking power from animals. I said I couldn’t really explain that, since I didn’t understand it myself. But if he were to take a spirit journey or have a vision, like some shamans do, he might have a chance to know all the secrets he wanted. He might die and be reborn. He might be torn apart and remade. He might meet his totem animal and be given its strength. He might gain whatever he desired. He might even see his entire life from his birth to his death.” The Cutthroat shrugged. “Or he might go crazy. Or he might just pass out and sleep it off. It all depends on the individual.”
The Cutthroat stood up from the cot, and he split into five men before me. “Here,” they all five said in harmony. They reached for Pop and grasped his forearms. “You take the cot. My mother got this recipe from the same people who told her the eagle story, and she always said that the most important part was to lie the fuck down. There’s some mushrooms and other shit in it, and you don’t want to know what I have to do to mix it right. But it hardly ever kills anyone.”
The five Cutthroats put Pop on the bunk, and Pop curled up on his side. He looked like a toy made out of olive-drab pipe cleaners with a cotton-swab head. I could see his eyes behind his glasses, and they were like hard-boiled eggs.
Now the Cutthroat condensed into one man again, and he reached for me.
“You’ll have to take the floor,” he said. “But you’re younger. It’s fair.”
As he grasped my wrist, I watched my tin coffee cup tumble from my numb fingers. It turned over and over, and brown droplets spun out and circled it. The cup turned into the sun.
The bright light was high above my eyes. I could see it between Pop’s fingers.
“That’s the best I can do for you,” the Cutthroat’s voice said. I couldn’t see him anymore. He was far away. “Your enemy took this journey before you. But maybe you’re better suited for it. I don’t say that this means you’ll beat him, or that you’ll understand what he’s done. But at least now you have the same magic. So it’s a fair fight. You’re welcome.”
The earth shook with a deafening rumble, and the back of Pop’s hand fell against my forehead.
Then, in brilliant flashes, in a cacophony of voices and noise and music, I began to see everything.
Everything.
I began to see both the past and present of every place I had ever been, every object I had ever touched, every thing I had ever done. It was as if I were a movie camera in the sky, looking down and watching it all.
Then, even as the past and present were flashing and roaring around me, I saw the future as well. And not just mine.
Pop’s, too.
My advice: Never see the future.
Not anyone’s.
I’m in my foxhole when the Japanese make their charge. I have to struggle for my helmet, for my weapon. When I make it out of the hole I run backward, firing as they come toward me. Some keep coming even after I hit them. One gets very close and sets off a hand grenade, trying to kill us both. But he trips and falls, his body covers it, and I’m all right. Then, to my left , I see my sergeant bayoneted. I shoot the one who did it. But it’s too late.
A younger Pop, his hair not yet all white, is at a typewriter. It clacks and clatters, and the bell rings over and over again. He puts in page after page. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and drinks two bottles of whiskey dry, but he doesn’t stop typing. He does this for thirty hours without a break. When he finally stops I can see his eyes. And I know he has emptied himself. There is nothing left.
The colonel points at the little man on the ground and shouts at me. I look at the little man and know he’s a Jap who just tried to kill me. But now he’s lying facedown, his hands behind his back. He hardly looks like a Jap now.
The colonel points and shouts again and again, louder and louder. I put the muzzle of the M1 at the base of the little man’s skull and pull the trigger.
Pop, much, much younger, is wearing a uniform and walking into a hospital. He doubles over coughing as he climbs the steps. A pretty nurse rushes over and puts her arm around his shoulders.
I am much, much older, sitting in a tangle of metal and plastic. A young man is using huge steel jaws to push the metal apart and make a hole for me. You’ll be okay, sir, he says. I’ll get you out. I manage to take a small plastic rectangle from my pocket. It has little square buttons. I punch the buttons and call my daughter. You’re right, I tell her. I shouldn’t drive anymore.
The colonel is standing over the dead eagle. He is holding a knife. The sailor who fought me appears at the hillock beside the lodge, and the colonel goes to him. You’ll have to trust me for an IOU, he says. It’ll be a while before I can collect my winnings. But you did good. And thanks for the bird.
Pop, looking only a bit older, but wearing a nice suit, is being escorted from a bus by armed guards. They take him into prison and put him into a cell by himself. He stays in the prison for six months. He writes a lot of letters. But all his books go out of print. The radio money stops. When they let him out, he is sicker than ever and looks twenty years older. He is broke and goes to live in a tiny cottage owned by friends.
Guess I don’t have any choice, the sailor says. But I know you’re good for it, sir. Do I still get the date with the nurse? The blonde who swabbed my face and said I was handsome for a Navy man?
I am standing at the altar with my younger brother beside me, looking down at the far end of the aisle, when the pipe organ blares and all of the people on either side of the aisle stand up. A gorgeous woman in white appears on the arm of an older man, and they walk toward me, smiling. I can’t wait for them to get here so I can find out what her name is.
You still get the date, the colonel says, holding out a bent eagle feather. Show this to her when she comes. It’s dark down there, and she has to know it’s you. She’ll be here in a little while. Go on down and wait.
The heavy, sweating man with greasy, wormlike hair leans forward and looks down from his high, long podium. I would like to ask, he says in a thick voice. Is Mr. Budenz being truthful when he told us that you were a Communist? So now Pop leans forward too, toward the microphones on the table where they’ve made him sit, and he says, I decline to answer on the grounds that an answer might tend to incriminate me. He is out of prison, and he is poor. But they won’t leave him alone. They won’t let him at least try to write.
The sailor goes down into the lodge, and the colonel walks away, past the eagle. Another sailor approaches. He’s in there, the colonel says, pointing back toward the lodge. Down where you boys have your fun. He threw the fight. He lost your money.
I am holding a baby. Her eyes look like mine. How the hell did this happen, I wonder. How did we finally have a girl after all these years? After all the bad things I’ve done, how did my life turn out to be this good?
The second sailor stops and stares down at the eagle. Never mind that, the colonel says. It’s just a dead bird. It’s none of your business. Go talk to your friend. He threw the fight.
In the hospital bed, Pop opens his eyes and he sees the woman. There have been dozens of women. Even a wife. But this is the one. The only one, really. She’s there leaning over him.
In the lodge, the two sailors argue. You sold us out, the second sailor says. The first says, no, I’m going to share the winnings with you guys. I don’t have any of it yet. But I will. Joe, calm down. Joe, no.
My daughter claps her hands the first time I walk to the mailbox and back without the crutches. You are one tough old bird, she says. Yes, I say. Yes I am. Guess what kind of tough old bird. I have its feather in my room. Have I ever shown you?
The woman leaning over Pop is at once plain and beautiful. That paradox was the first thing that drew him to her. And then her frighteningly sharp mind kept him there. More than thirty years now. She is his best friend, was several times his lover, ha
s always been his savior. But he’s been hers too, so that’s only fair. She looks so frightened. Why? Pop wonders, and then he knows. That makes him frightened too. And angry. He’s sixty-six. That’s not old enough for this, is it?
The two sailors fight. The first catches the second with a punch to the jaw, but then the second shoves him back into the little room behind the jumble of sod and bone. He knocks him down, then slams his head back. He does it again.
Pop is frightened and angry for only a moment. Then he sinks away, down into warm black cotton, and can only hear the woman’s sobs from far, far away. It’s okay, Lilishka, he tries to say. It’s okay.
My little grandson and granddaughter run out and throw their arms around my legs, and I drop all the mail. So I look up at my daughter on the porch and ask her to go get her mother to help me. But she frowns and says, Dad, don’t you remember?
I don’t. So she begins to tell me.
XII
Then Pop was slapping my face, hard, back and forth on both cheeks.
“That’s enough,” he said. “That’s more than enough, goddamn it. Get up. Get your ass up right now, soldier.”
He grabbed my collar and tried to pull me to my feet, but he wasn’t strong enough. So he let me drop back down. My head thumped on the plywood floor, and then he started slapping me again. The light hanging above us shone around his wild white hair like a halo.
I almost slipped back into the visions, but Pop wouldn’t stop slapping me. Finally, I came up from limbo enough to grab his right wrist with my left hand. My right fist clenched.
“Hit me again, old man,” I said, my words slurring. “Hit me again, and I’ll lay you out.”
Pop sat down on the edge of the cot and ran his hand back through his hair. “All right,” he said. “I’d like to see that. You tried to slug me once before, and all I got was a cool breeze. I’m beginning to think you aren’t actually capable of hitting anyone who hasn’t been paid to take a dive.”
I struggled up to my knees, tried to make it all the way to my feet, and fell back onto one of the stools. It tipped, but Pop reached out and grabbed my sleeve to keep me from going over.
I didn’t say thanks. I was mad at him for smacking me around. My cheeks were burning.
Pop let go of my sleeve and then shook his head as if trying to clear it.
“That may have been the worst coffee I’ve ever had,” he said.
My head was muzzy, and Pop was going in and out of focus. But I was in the hospital’s supply hut again. I was in the here and now. I looked around the room for the Cutthroat and didn’t see him anywhere.
“He was gone when I came out of it,” Pop said, anticipating my question. “Then I heard you talking to people who obviously haven’t been born yet. So I decided that whatever you were experiencing, you’d better not experience any more of it. You’re too young for family responsibilities.”
I began to feel less angry toward Pop as I looked at him and remembered what I’d just seen. His hand had been touching my forehead, and I had seen everything about him.
Including his death.
“Did you . . . hallucinate?” I asked.
Pop looked at his wristwatch and stood. “We both know those were more than hallucinations. And I believe you and I saw and heard the same things, up to the point where I snapped out of it. But now it’s eighteen thirty, and I have to piss like a thoroughbred. Then I have to go into Navytown and ask around for a certain commander. I understand he’s an admirer of mine. Are you all right to take yourself to your bunk, or to mess, or wherever you need to go?” I stood too, but I was feeling considerably wobblier than Pop looked.
“Why aren’t you shook up?” I asked. “If you’d seen anything like what I saw, you’d be shook up.”
Pop smiled that thin smile. “I’ve seen a lot of things, Private. And they’ve all shook me up, even when they didn’t involve Aleutian magic. But the key is to realize that it’s all like that. It’s all magic, it’s all insane. So you make sense of what little you can, and you rely on alcohol for the rest.” He gestured toward the door. “And now I really must be going.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you, Pop?” I asked. “I don’t like the thought of you dealing with those Navy goons all by yourself. And I don’t have to be at the colonel’s office until twenty-one hundred.”
I really wanted to stick with him so I could keep my mind off that meeting. I still had no idea what I was going to say to the colonel. What could I tell him? That I’d had a vision of what he’d done? I doubted that would go over too well with him. Or with a court-martial, either.
Pop shook his head. “No, Private, I don’t want you with me this time. Frankly, you don’t get along as well with those Navy people as I do. But while I’m gone, I would like you to do two things for me.”
“Whatever you want,” I said. “Shoot.”
Pop held up an index finger. “One. Do not go to the lieutenant colonel’s office at twenty-one hundred. I know he ordered you to be there. But again, ask yourself how well his orders have worked out for you so far. Stay in your barracks or hide somewhere. With luck, I’ll be back before twenty-one hundred anyway. And I’ll take care of all of this.”
He stepped past me and headed for the door.
“How, Pop?” I asked. “How are you going to do that? We don’t have proof of anything. All we have are hallucinations.”
Pop paused at the door and looked back at me.
“No offense, Private,” he said, “but that’s all you’ve got. I plan to return with considerably more.” He turned away and opened the door.
“Wait,” I said. “You said you wanted me to do two things. What’s the second?”
He held up two fingers and answered without looking back.
“Don’t call me ‘Pop,’ ” he said. Then the door swung closed behind him. I stepped out just a moment later and found that a thick Aleutian fog had fallen. The wind, for a change, had died. I looked down past the third storage hut. But between the fog and the dim light, I only caught a glimpse of Pop’s thin, shadowy form before he disappeared.
XIII
My squad was back at our Quonset by the time I returned, and I went with them to mess. A couple of them tried to rib me by asking about what kind of soft duty I’d pulled that day, but I wouldn’t even look at them. Pretty soon they got the idea and left me alone.
I made myself eat. I don’t remember what it was. Some kind of gray Adak food that matched the gray Adak fog outside. I didn’t want it. But I knew I had to put something in my stomach if I didn’t want to collapse. I hadn’t had anything to eat since the Spam sandwich more than twelve hours earlier. Besides, I wanted something to soak up whatever remained of the Cutthroat’s black sludge. Whatever it had been.
The whole platoon had the evening off, which meant that my hut would be full of talking and card games. I didn’t want to have to put up with any of that, so I took off after chow and slogged northward up Main Street, toward the airfield, in the opposite direction from Navytown. Pop had made it clear that he didn’t want me around. So I didn’t want to be tempted to go look for him.
I hadn’t even met him before that morning, but now he seemed like the only friend I had on the whole island. I had considered my old sergeant to be my friend, but he had died on Attu. The closest I had gotten to anyone since then had been to the poor Navy guy at the Fourth of July boxing match. But apparently that hadn’t been an honest relationship.
Somehow, I wandered my way eastward to the rocky shore of Kuluk Bay. The iron-colored, choppy water stretched out beyond the fog, and a frigid wind blew in and numbed my face. There weren’t even any ships visible, since they were all anchored to the south in Sweeper Cove. So I had the feeling that I was alone at the edge of the world, and that all I had to do was step off into the cold dark water to be swallowed up, frozen and safe.
Then I glanced at my wristwatch, which my old man had given me as I’d left for basic. It was a lousy watch and lost
almost fifteen minutes a day. Right now it said that it was 8:36, which meant that the actual time was about nine minutes before twenty-one hundred hours. Which was when the colonel had ordered me to be at his office. An order Pop had said I should disobey.
I thought about it.
Then I started back the way I had come, trudging through the muck as fast as I could. Maybe Pop was right, and I was an obstacle to the colonel’s promotion. Maybe he was going to blame me for the sailor’s death. Maybe he was going to have me court-martialed. Or maybe he was just trying to scare me into keeping my mouth shut no matter what anyone else might ask me.
It didn’t matter. Whatever was going to happen to me now, I wasn’t going to count on Pop to get me out of it. I had seen that he was going to have his own problems soon enough.
And I knew my life was going to be all right. I had seen that, too. I hadn’t seen every day or every detail. And I knew there would be some tough times, too. But overall, it was going to be better than what most people got. Better than I deserved.
It was going to be better than what Pop had coming, anyway.
When I reached the small frame building that housed the colonel’s office and living quarters, I had to stop and stare at it from across the road. The edge of the peaked roof was lined with ravens, stock-still except for a few ominous wing flaps. Normally, they would be swooping and squawking over my head. But now they were sitting on the colonel’s roof in silence. There must have been fifty of them.
A few GI’s walking by looked up, and one of them made a comment about “those weird birds.” But otherwise, Main Street was almost empty. And that was weird, too.
I crossed the slop, went up the wooden steps, and wiped my feet on the burlap mat at the top. The real time was almost exactly twenty-one hundred. I knocked on the door and waited for the colonel’s aide to let me in.
Instead, as if from a great distance, I heard the colonel’s voice say, in a rough monotone, “Enter.”
I opened the door and went in. The first small room was the colonel’s aide’s vestibule. The lamp on the desk was on, but the aide wasn’t there. Beyond the desk, the door to the colonel’s office was ajar. I crossed to it and hesitated.
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