“But, Dad, I shouldn’t be expected to pull freighter duty. I’m a graduate of the United States Naval Academy.” He turned to Captain Stoepel and said, “You are a senior officer, sir. Certainly you understand military traditions. I respectfully request that I be put off on the next island with a Marine Unit, sir. I want to get out there and kill Japs.”
“We were short-handed when we left San Francisco, Lieutenant. I need you as part of my officer staff. You can start pulling watches with the rest of the officers starting tomorrow.”
Captain Stoepel looked at him admiringly. He stood up, saluted and said, “I’m glad there are men like you, Lieutenant. Men, who are willing to risk their lives in combat. But I think it is only fair to tell you that the name of my last ship was the ‘Utica.’”
“Wasn’t that one of the destroyers that went down in the Battle of the Coral Sea?” he asked, preparing to be proud of his comrade-in-arms.
“No, Lieutenant, the Utica was one of the New York Central System ferry boats that ran between Weehawken, New Jersey, and 42nd Street in New York. I’m one of the 90-Day Wonders I mentioned before.”
***
Yani picked his way through the rubble-strewn part of the trail up the mountain slowly, but moved more quickly as he reached the part that had not been submerged. By the time he was within earshot of the camp, he was almost at a dead run. “John Frum, he come. John Frum, he come,” he began calling.
McDuff heard him and was annoyed. His first reaction was How can I disabuse him of this ridiculous notion that some miraculous being is going to bring him all the fruits of Western Civilization? He stopped working on the ash-clogged generator disassembled before him, ready to reprimand the young man when he came into the camp.
Nor was McDuff the only one growing tired of this constant talk of John Frum. The Elders were not receptive to everything that appeared on the horizon being construed as the arrival of some marvelous Witman. Some of them felt that Yani was responsible for the recent invasion. The Japanese were mistaken for the arrival of John Frum, too. In the end, they were a problem and the cause of Ooma’s death. In fact, they were an outright disaster. Two of the elders agreed that the introduction of this new idea Yani and Negeb brought with them had somehow strengthened the Hevehe to the point where they could build their mountain of water.
As Yani came into the camp area, he encountered the council of elders. They had been waiting for him to bring the news that the Hevehe had been dispersed, and the people could come down the mountain. Instead, he came yelling his familiar “wolf cry” about John Frum.
“We do not want to know about your Witman stories,” one of the older men said angrily.
“We want to know if the Hevehe are back out to sea,” said a second. “Is there anything left of the village?”
A third said, “What are we going to do about food? Has the lake been filled with seawater? What will we drink?”
He told them, “The giant wave left an iron ship full of cargo for everyone. When I reached the bottom of the mountain, there it was — waiting. John Frum was on the deck wearing strange clothes. The boat is full from one end to the other with boxes of tinkens. There was nothing to worry about.”
A serious debate ensued. They seriously doubted his story. Believing in miraculous explanations of things that happened beyond the memories of living men was acceptable. Even wonderful things happening on far away islands were believable. But this was a different matter. The cold practicality of survival colored their willingness to accept the story.
Unfortunately, the lagoon was not visible from the cliff at the edge of the camp. They could not just look down and see the ship full of cargo.
“If there is anything down there,” Aboo, one of the leaders said, “how do we know it is not just a trap set by the Hevehe to capture our bodies and our spirits?”
“I agree,” said another. “It doesn’t seem to me that you were down there long enough to get rid of all the Hevehe. If Ooma were still alive, I think he would have spent all day there making sure they were driven off the land.”
Yani was shocked and hurt. This was his first big test as Ooma’s replacement, and he was not doing very well. Bewildered, he walked away from the elders. Immediately, he saw Moses McDuff watching the proceedings. He smiled and walked across the clearing to him.
“Big Man Duff!” he said. “John Frum, he come. He is in the lagoon with his ship full of tinkens and the elders will not believe me.”
Since the discussion had been in the island dialect, McDuff had no idea of the nature of the controversy. But he could tell that they were unhappy with Yani. “Did you tell them that John Frum was here?”
“Yes.”
“Yani, you have to stop this nonsense. Your people are in a serious situation right now. What are you going to do about food? It’s going to be a few days before you can even get things together enough to catch any fish. The pigs that didn’t drown are running wild. I’m sure all the gardens have been washed out. You might be able to dig up some taro or yams, but hardly enough to feed all these people.”
“John Frum have plenty food. He have a whole boat full of tinkens. We never have to raise gardens again. No need to catch pigs. Plenty cargo for everyone.”
McDuff reached forward and took Yani by the shoulders, as he had on other occasions, and shook him slightly. “Yani,” he said sternly, raising his voice, “listen to me. There is no John Frum. He is just a story made up by natives on other islands looking for free handouts.”
Yani scowled. He reached into the pocket of his shorts and felt the second, smaller can he had taken from the C-Ration box. It was about the size of a tuna fish can. He smiled a triumphant smile, and handed the can to the American.
“You read words?” he asked.
McDuff stared in disbelief for a long minute. Then he took it in his right hand and read the label. “U.S. ARMY C-RATIONS.
HAMBURGERS IN GRAVY. CANNED 1/5/41.”
***
On the way down the hill, McDuff said, “Tell me again. Where did he say this ship came from?”
“He say it belong U.S. Navy. John Frum say he come from Boston island, just like you.”
“Are you sure? He said he was from Boston? That’s too good to be true,” McDuff said almost stumbling in his haste to get down the mountain. He was giddy with excitement, and asked Yani the same questions a half dozen times, not allowing himself to fully believe the answers. If it were not for the C-Ration can, he would not have believed a word the Chase Islander told him.
Finally, they came in sight of the grounded landing craft and McDuff started laughing like an idiot as he ran across the flat beach toward the LSM.
They ran to the edge of the water, and McDuff yelled, “Hello, on board the Navy ship! Hello, on board the Navy ship!”
Bartlett had taken off his work clothes and was lying on the bunk in his skivvies. He was reading the pamphlet on Pidgin English again, trying to memorize some of the words. He heard a voice calling in English and raced to the deck. Mounting the drop-door, he looked to see where his visitors were.
McDuff saw him climb to the top of the forward structure and said, “It looks like someone has beaten us to it. One of your people is here already.”
“No. That is John Frum.”
McDuff could taste the disappointment. “You told me he was an American ... from Boston. He’s a Blackfella.”
“John Frum is Blackfella,” Yani said, not seeing any contradiction.
Bartlett scrambled down the ladder on the outside of the bow, and dropped the last five feet to the shallow water in his haste to meet them. McDuff stood at the edge of the water, as the other man approached with his hand extended. “Hi,” he said, “I’m John Bartlett. You must be Mr. Duff.”
For a minute, McDuff did not say anything. “You are an American,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t know you were a Negro. Yani said you were from Boston, and I assumed ...”
“All Negroes don’t come from Alabama,
you know,” Bartlett said, and dropped his hand.
McDuff was flustered, and his right hand darted out. “I’m sorry. That was very rude of me. I’m Dr. Moses McDuff of Cambridge, Mass.” Bartlett shook hands with him. “What part of Boston are you from?”
“Actually, I’m from Marblehead,” John smiled.
“Marblehead?” McDuff said, with a note of surprise, remembering only expensive homes.
“Don’t worry, doctor, my family are all servants. They’ve lived there since the Civil War ... Underground Railroad, and all that ... if you’re familiar with that sort of thing.”
“Why, yes. I’m quite familiar with it.”
They stood on the beach seeming to have run out of conversation. Bartlett broke the tension by gesturing toward the LCM. “Would you care to come aboard my yacht for lunch?”
The two Americans laughed and Yani did, too. He did not get the joke, but he was happy, even overjoyed. His dreams were all coming true.
They climbed up the ladder and McDuff looked in awe at the numberless boxes of food crammed onto the vessel. “Where did you get all this?” he asked.
“I didn’t get it anyplace. I was just on this boat, loading it. We were going to take this stuff ashore when that monster wave came out of nowhere. The fact that I’m still alive is only a matter of luck.”
John told the tsunami story in detail as they hopped from stack to stack. While he was talking, he reached into the case of C-Rations Yani had opened, and each man carried as much as he could back inside the crew’s quarters.
“Can you tell me what all this talk is about somebody named John Frum?” Bartlett asked. “Like I say, my name is John Bartlett.”
“It’s rather hard to believe, but you are the fulfillment of a prophecy.”
“A prophecy? Me?”
“It doesn’t do much for Christianity, but I’m a witness to it,” McDuff said.
John Bartlett looked confused, to say the least.
“For months Yani, here, has been telling everyone that John Frum is coming and he will bring a shipload of cargo for the natives. It’s all part of what they call a Cargo Cult, very complicated...”
“So here I am with a load of canned food and stuff ... and my name happens to be John.”
“... from America. Don’t forget that,” McDuff said.
They took boyish delight in deciding what their menu would include. There was a 20-gallon thermal water cooler Yani and McDuff tapped to slake their growing thirst.
This indulgence caused the minister to say, “Here we are having a picnic, when there are hundreds of people who need this food worse than we do.”
Bartlett stopped him from making a dash for the outside. His apparent reaction was that he would grab a case of canned food and carry it on his back up the mountain. “I attended some medical corpsman sessions on the Snitkin on the way here. They emphasized the importance of corpsmen staying healthy and free from injuries themselves if they’re going to do their job. If you’re going to help anybody, Dr. McDuff, you’re not going to do it on an empty stomach.
“The other thing is that we can’t go running off in all directions. Even in the movies, the good guys make plans how they can beat the guys in the black hats. Which reminds me — what’s the Jap situation?” John asked.
Yani described what happened to him during the past couple days, and McDuff told all he knew, including his great guilt feelings about shooting the Japanese officer.
“It’s a war, Dr. McDuff. If you didn’t kill him, he would have killed Yani, and probably you, too, if he got the chance. How did you wind up here, Reverend,” he asked.
He told John a little about Christ’s Despair, and how he came to meet Yani. While putting away two cans of “ham and lima beans” McDuff explained the role of the Coast Watchers. He stopped in the middle of his description and said, “Oh gosh, I left the generator in pieces up at the camp. I hope no one has taken any of the parts. They love little machined things. They make jewelry out of them and wear it in their noses.”
“I guess we had better get our act together,” John Bartlett said, “and figure out how we are going to distribute this stuff where it will do the most good.”
“One more question, John,” McDuff said, “What do you know about how the war is going?”
“They played radio broadcasts over the bitch box — er — excuse me, the P.A. system on the ship. What comes to mind is that the Japs took the Philippines and we lost a lot of guys ... maybe 36,000 ... on Bataan.”
“Thirty-six thousand?” McDuff said, not being able to visualize that many people.”
“And you worry about shooting one lousy Jap officer? On the plus side, some of our planes got to drop some bombs on Tokyo.”
“What about this part of the Pacific?”
John told about his being the Admiral’s valet and hearing things that not everyone else knew. “I know that a couple months ago they had what they’re calling the Battle of Coral Sea. That stopped Japs from landing at Port Moresby.”
“Our communications with our friends in Port Moresby have been kind of scarce,” McDuff said. “I’ve been worried about them.”
“It looks like the Japs are massing for a big show at Guadalcanal — some coconut farm near New Guinea. That’s where most of our task force was heading. We were going to set up a communications station on an island, but all that crap is in some of these big boxes.”
Chapter 37
John went to the control bridge of the LSM where he found some of the latest examples of modern military technology. The boat was built only months before, and was transported to the South Pacific aboard an LST. It was loaded with the newest U.S. Navy equipment.
However, he gave up on the idea of making the engines run even before trying. Where would he go if they worked? John readily admitted to himself that he had not the slightest idea how a diesel engine ran. All he knew was that they burned oil instead of gasoline. The engine compartment was “aslosh” in greasy bilge water, so he just kept the door to that area closed.
But there was one set-up he did manage to figure out — the public address system. The boat had a massive bitch-box meant to urge G.I.s to run out the open end of the craft into direct enemy fire or neck-deep surf. It had a waterproof electric circuit, powered by a battery, and charged by an emergency generator. The generator was shorted out by seawater, but the battery light still flashed green when he flipped the toggle switch. The same circuit also controlled the power-rewind winch for the drop-doors.
Hey, he thought, Dr. McDuff said he was repairing the generator for his radio, maybe he could fix this one, too.
He switched it on and hit the button for the Public Address system. Green lights again. He spoke into the microphone in front of him and said, “Attention on deck. Attention on deck, this is the Captain speaking.”
The loudspeakers boomed so loudly that McDuff was startled and lost his footing. He and Yani, fell off the pile of boxes they stood on. Bartlett was amused, but ran outside to help them up off the deck.
“I’m sorry I took you by such surprise. I didn’t think they worked that well.”
McDuff brushed himself off and said, “Now there’s a little toy that’ll impress the natives.”
“It sounds like the voice of God — if you’ll forgive the expression, Reverend,” John said.
Yani, who had seen loudspeakers on the Wombat and in Australia, agreed. “We tell them John Frum speak. They pay attention.”
John told them about the generator and the three men went to look. The power plant, which was little more than a two-stroke outboard motor engine, was hooked up to a truck-sized automotive generator by a fan belt.
“It doesn’t look much different than the Bartlett’s 1939 Packard,” John commented. “I was just getting used to it back home. They wanted me to become the family chauffeur, so they thought I should know how the car ran.”
“I think it just needs to be dried off,” McDuff said, and he found some rags for Yani to do
the job.
As they returned to the deck, McDuff said, “You know, talking about generators, I think I better run up the hill and get mine and the radio. I’ll bring the pieces back here and assemble it. Maybe we can get off some kind of message.”
“Gee, I haven’t even been ashore on your tropical paradise, and you are trying to get rid of me already,” John said, only half joking. “I’m not that anxious to get back to the Navy. It wasn’t very friendly ... but that’s a long story for another time.” God only knows what the Admiral and Lieutenant Frankie have planned for me next, he thought.
McDuff was all apologies. “Don’t get me wrong. I find it’s great to have another American to talk to...”
“...Even if he is colored,” Bartlett finished the sentence.
McDuff told Yani he was going back to the camp for the radio and generator, but Yani chose to remain and finish his work. Without realizing it, he was really worried that John Frum would disappear if he let him out of his sight. He would feel more secure waiting on the LSM.
***
When he reached the camp clearing, Dr. McDuff felt that there was something in the air. He sensed that there was tension, and even the children, who usually greeted him with pleasant smiles, did not come up to him in their usual manner. Everyone hung back as he picked up his equipment. Fortunately, it was all there and he stuffed the pieces into a canvas bag.
He looked up and prepared to go back down the mountain, but saw that there was a group of men blocking the path. They were behind Aboo, Yani’s chief antagonist in the Council of Elders.
He raised his hand to the Witman and said in his own language, “You stay here. Yani is making a big problem. He is angering the Hevehe. We see the boat, but we do not see any John Frum. We do not see any tinkens. I think Yani will keep the boat for himself.”
While McDuff recognized that he was being upbraided, he did not understand what was being said. In all the time he had been in the islands, he really made no attempt to learn Booga-booga. He felt it was the obligation of the natives to learn English, or at least Pidgin.
He went forward as if to walk through the group blocking the way. To his amazement, one of them struck him on the forehead with his shield, knocking him to the ground.
When John Frum Came Page 30