Oasis of Night

by J. S. Cook

  “I said, you look like a man who really enjoys his work.” Callan’s Mississippi twang broke into my thoughts, and I started like a man waking from a dream. I had last seen Callan during Jonah Octavian’s stint at the construction site at Fort Pepperell, and I guess some part of me expected to see him again.

  “Sorry, Sergeant, I didn’t hear you come in. What can I get for you?”

  He took his hat off and tossed it on the bar before hoisting himself onto a stool. “How about a cup of genuine down-home coffee? You know, the good stuff?”

  I kept a small stash of Community coffee hidden behind some boxes in the pantry—Chris brought me a few pounds whenever he got home to New Orleans—and I brewed a pot, poured him a cup, and poured one for myself. “Here you go. On the house.”

  He drank it gratefully. “You know, it’s next to impossible to get a decent cup of coffee anywhere in this town. Mostly, all they drink is tea.” He made a face, caught my eye, and grinned, and I realized, not for the first time, that he was a very attractive man: strong and solid, with a becoming touch of gray at his temples, and soft, long-lashed brown eyes. Was Sergeant Callan married? Had he ever been married? Perhaps he had a girl here, some pretty, local woman who’d appreciate the company of a lonely American. “Hot tea. I ask ’em for sweet tea, and they don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

  I laughed. “I thought Private Thomas”―the young army clerk who spent his days in Callan’s office―”made your coffee.”

  His gaze skidded away from mine, and it occurred to me I’d said something I shouldn’t have. Callan was wiping down the bar with his hat, moving it back and forth under his hand in a distracted fashion that spoke of great inner turmoil.

  “I’m sorry.” I refilled his cup. “It’s none of my business.”

  He sipped his coffee in silence for a few moments, then shifted on the stool and gazed out the window. “You ever have a really good friend, Jack?”

  Sam’s face swam before my inner vision. “Sure have.”

  “I mean the kind of friend that, man, you’d lay down your life for. The kind of guy who really understands you, without having to even say a word.”

  “Yeah.” He was coming to something, and I wanted to let him know it was okay by me. “You know, bartenders are kind of like doctors.”

  His head jerked up. “Huh?”

  “I’m not allowed to repeat anything you say to me.” I crossed my heart and held up two fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “Honest Injun.”

  Callan laughed. “You sure are a crazy one, Jack. Yes, sir, that’s for sure.” He sighed. “Private Thomas requested priority reassignment.”

  Something about the way he said it made my stomach lurch. “He did, huh? What happened?”

  He searched my face. “I did something I shouldn’t have done.” Callan pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “He was kind enough not to mention it to the brass. I suppose I should be grateful. He could have… it would have been easy for him to make a lot of trouble for me.”

  I laid my hand on the bar, close enough to touch him. “I’m listening.”

  “I kissed him.”

  A flush of heat bloomed in the center of my chest. I forced my features to stillness. “I see.”

  “That don’t shock you? You mean to tell me the idea of one man kissing another man don’t bother you one bit, Jack?”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t about to incriminate myself. Sergeant Callan seemed okay, but I didn’t know him and for all I knew, he’d only made up the kissing story. People do strange things.

  “Uh-huh.” Callan nodded. “I see. Taking the Fifth, huh? Well, all right.” He pushed the hat away from him. “I came in this morning, and he’d packed up all his stuff. Didn’t even leave me a note. Just didn’t bother to show up. Didn’t bother to tell me, either. Just….” He made a swishing motion with his hand, like shooing flies. “Gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” I turned to put on a fresh pot. “Had you known him long?”

  Callan laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Long enough. Yeah, I’d known him just long enough to—” He shook his head. “Goddammit.”

  “I’m sorry.” Christ, I was repeating myself.

  “Just forget I said anything.” He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Shoulda known better. Anyway, that’s not what I came here for. Listen, Jack, there’s something you ought to know, and I think maybe you can really help out the Allied cause if you put your mind to it. A man like you, in the position you’re in, could be very useful.”

  Not this again. I’d already had this, in Cairo, from MacBride’s buddies. “I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.”

  “You ain’t heard what I got to say.” He reached across the bar and clasped my wrist, held on. His big hand was warm, a welcome touch against my lonely flesh, and I wondered: what would it be like? Sam and I were definitely through—he’d made that abundantly clear—and maybe it was time to move on. Maybe the best thing to do was find someone else, a friend, someone to fill my off-hours and perhaps warm my bed, if I wanted to take it that far. Rick Callan was free, he was available, he was damn good-looking, and he was as lonely as I was. It would be nice to have someone. It would be nice to have that big, solid body in my bed.

  I turned my hand and held on, amused by the sudden flush of surprise in his face. “I’m listening, Rick.”

  His thumb stroked the palm of my hand, and his dark eyes burned into me. “Jack… you sure?” His voice, suddenly husky, warmed me. Christ, he was sexy.

  I gave him a look. “What time do you knock off?”

  “Mmph. Six o’clock. I’ll come pick you up. Say, seven-thirty?”

  “I’d like that.”

  He grinned. “All right.” He straightened, suddenly official again. “Now listen here, boy, what I got to tell you isn’t for foreign ears, you mind me?”

  “Okay.” I was intrigued.

  “We’ve recently received word the Germans had a spy aboard one of their tin fish. They put him ashore at Quebec.”

  I shrugged. “That sounds like it’s Quebec’s problem.” I wished the French well. So far, they’d had a helluva time this war, or were the Quebecois Canadian? I wasn’t really sure. Come to think of it, neither were they.

  “No, it’s our problem, because the word is there’s more of them. All of ’em moving in from Quebec’s north shore, down through Labrador, till they get to St. John’s.”

  The back of my neck prickled. Was this what MacBride’s team had been trying to tell me, back in Cairo? Lieutenant, you can be eminently useful to your country and to this cause. Newfoundland is of primary strategic importance to the Allies, as I’m sure you know. “And when they get here?”

  “There’s something going on. We dunno what, but there’s something. Few of our boys have had their ears to the ground since the start of this whole shindig. Something’s gonna happen between now and Christmas.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “You get to hear a lot of stuff. Guy like you, standing behind the bar all day long. Yeah, I bet you hear a lot of talk.”

  “You want me to eavesdrop?” This was too good: it was Kevin MacBride all over again.

  “You think it’s funny, boy? Just how long you been away from the army, anyhow?” His tone snapped me back.

  “Sorry.”

  Callan huffed out a breath. “Look, Jack. There’s innocent people gonna die in this town, maybe a lot of them. Now, you think that’s some kind of a joke, we don’t got nothing more to say to each other.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at—Jesus, Rick. It sounds serious.” I refilled our cups.

  “It is serious.” He raised the cup to his lips and sipped. “Goddammit, it’s as serious as a heart attack.”

  I reached out and laid my hand over his. “I’ll do what I can. If I hear anything unusual, I’ll let you know.”

  He relaxed. “Honest?”

  I crossed my heart again. “Honest Injun.”<
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  THINGS WERE quiet for about half an hour after Callan left, and then the supper crowd began to arrive. Chris came back from his doctor’s appointment and got busy helping me in the kitchen. With Dave Chan gone to war, we’d hired a succession of temporary cooks, but none of them worked out. One guy left halfway through his shift with no explanation, and I caught another one skimming from the till. You’d think in a town the size of St. John’s, there’d be plenty of guys looking to make a decent dollar, but it seemed most of them were content to hang around in pool halls or on street corners, picking their teeth and testing their wit on the local yokels. Chris had taken over the cooking until we could find somebody but, as good as he was, his culinary efforts tended to be a bit spicy for the locals. Cajun food didn’t exactly go over gangbusters, but I had to give him credit for trying. Still, I worried we were losing trade to the plethora of fish-and-chip shops that dotted the local landscape like pimples on a fat man’s ass.

  I was so busy from five until about six thirty, I hardly lifted my head, and the whole of my view consisted of bottles and glasses. I handed off the latest round of drinks to Anita, one of my waitresses, and turned to dump some ice cubes down the sink. At first all I saw was a white shirt, a dark jacket, and a pair of slender hands, faintly freckled, resting on the bar. “What can I get you, mister?”

  “How about a beer, Jack?”

  That voice… there was something—Texan? “Jesus. Tex?”

  He grinned, the same old grin I’d come to know in Cairo. “How are you, Jack?”

  “Tex! My God!” I came out from behind the bar and grabbed him, hauled him into my arms and hugged him until I felt his ribs creak. “It’s good to see you. What the hell are you doing on this side of the pond?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I don’t rightly know an easy way to say this: I got canned. I knocked around Cairo for a while, but there was nothing, so I figured I’d come over here and look you up.” He was momentarily shamefaced. “I was wondering if maybe you might have some part-time work I could do, enough to tide me over until I can find something more permanent.”

  “Tex, can you cook?” I was already untying my apron.

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “Here.” I handed him the scrap of cloth. “Tie one on. The kitchen’s that way. We serve all the usual stuff. Chris—” I pointed him out at the other end of the bar, “and I will take care of the drinks. Think you can handle it?”

  He double-tied the apron around his slender waist and grinned. “You won’t regret this, Jack.” He disappeared into the kitchen, and I’m not sure, but I think he was whistling “Dixie.”

  “Who’s the redhead?” Chris laid a tray of empty glasses on the bar.

  I told him. “He’s a nice kid from Texas. Go easy on him, huh?”

  “Texas?” Chris made a rude noise. “Yeah, I’ll go easy on him.” He nodded, acknowledging a summons from the far corner of the cafe. “You sure do like to collect strays, Jack.”

  Tex was as good as his word, turning out sandwiches and hamburgers, french fries, and tuna salad, until the supper rush was over. I found him in the kitchen, stacking plates for the dishwasher. “Hey, Tex, you got a roof?”

  “Nothing yet. I’m staying at the Y.”

  “There’s a spare room at the back of the cafe. It’s nothing special, but the bed’s comfortable and there’s a radio. It’s yours if you want it.”

  He stared at me for a moment like he didn’t quite believe me. “Well, jeez, Jack… thanks.”

  “Least I can do.” I grinned. “You never know, I might hit you up for another massage.”

  Around seven, the crowd began to slack off, and I was able to go upstairs to my quarters and get showered and changed. I wasn’t sure what to expect—Rick Callan hadn’t said where we’d be going or what we’d be doing—but the October evenings were cold, so I wore dark flannel trousers and a sweater, and layered my shearling jacket over it.

  At quarter after seven, I went downstairs and saw Rick Callan sitting at a corner table sipping a cup of coffee. He raised a hand when he saw me, stood up, and summoned me over. We shook hands as if this were just an ordinary business meeting instead of what it actually was. For a moment, holding Rick Callan’s warm, strong hand, I wondered if I wasn’t being too hasty. Sam hadn’t actually said it was over between us—I’d only assumed it—and maybe it was too soon to start dating again.

  “Good to see you, Jack.” Callan was wearing dark trousers and a dark, V-neck sweater over a white shirt. His shoes were buffed to a gleaming shine, and he was clean-shaven. I had the feeling Sergeant Callan was just as nervous as I was about this whole date business. “I was starting to think you’d stood me up.”

  I laughed. “Hey, if you want to back out, don’t let me stop you.”

  “Oh, you ain’t getting rid of me that easily.” Callan looked me up and down briefly. “It’s a real nice night out. I figured maybe we could take a drive in the country, maybe head toward Topsail way. Not too cold, if you’re dressed for it.”

  That sounded good to me, so I followed Callan outside. He’d parked his car in front of the Heartache Cafe, a nice, late model Buick. I made to open the door but Callan slipped in ahead of me and tripped the latch. “Never too late to get off to a good start.”

  I made some feeble joke about how Callan was a romantic, but I was starting to get a little bit nervous. I wasn’t afraid of Callan—he seemed like a steady enough guy—but I wondered exactly what he expected out of tonight’s date.

  We chatted amiably as he turned the car north, heading out of the city and into the dark, wooded valleys of Conception Bay. I didn’t do a lot of driving outside the city, and it was weird to see the road in front of us illuminated by the two tiny slits of light emanating from Callan’s blacked out headlights. The city and its environs had been under blackout order almost since the war started; it was thought that even the smallest glimmer of light from any of the coastal communities would draw unwanted attention to the numerous Allied warships patrolling the waters around the island. There weren’t a lot of other cars on the road, but every one had the same kind of blackout shields over the head lamps. Nobody was taking any chances.

  Topsail was only a few miles from the city, and Callan was a good driver, as well as being good company. He kept me entertained and laughing with ridiculous tales of his boyhood spent in rural Mississippi. I gathered his parents’ marriage had been an unhappy one. Callan was an only child, and when the union was finally dissolved in divorce, he went to live with his mother. His father became a shadowy figure, seen once or twice a year at Christmas and on Callan’s birthday. “He died when I was twenty-one.” Callan’s big hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and I sensed that he was struggling with some dark emotion. “Momma didn’t hold with how I felt about Daddy.” The sergeant shook his head. “Hoo boy! Didn’t she carry on when I told her I was going to Daddy’s funeral. You’d a thought I stuck a knife in her back.”

  I told him a little bit about my family, how my father had been killed one day at work, struck down by a runaway locomotive at the Philly rail yard where he’d been employed since he was seventeen years old. “I guess I had to be the man of the family after that. My mother didn’t have much, but she did the best she could, and she raised me right.”

  Callan took a right turn off the main road and for maybe a minute, we bumped and bounced over a narrow, rutted gravel road. The full moon had risen, and I could see a narrow band of gleaming silver on the bay. “There’s a real nice beach down here. Doesn’t have much sand on it, but there’s a trail that goes up over the hill and a place where we can sit down and look out over the water. That okay by you, Jack?”

  “Sure. Yeah, I’d like to take a walk.”

  Callan pulled the car up next to a narrow strip of trees and cut the motor. He rolled the window down and for a moment, we sat in silence, listening to the faraway lap of waves against the shore. “You know, it don’t seem to matter how angry or pissed off my life makes me
. All I gotta do is come out here and sit for a while and somehow it all just”—Callan waved a hand—“washes away.”

  He was quiet, lost in some private reverie, and I wondered what he was thinking about, what he was remembering. Maybe he’d taken Private Thomas out here, hoping to make some sort of a connection and never thinking he would be rebuffed. I wondered about that: Callan seemed to be reasonably astute about things. Had he really misread Thomas’s intentions? Or had Thomas lost his nerve?

  “Come on.” Callan opened the car door and got out. “Let’s head up the trail a ways, see what we can find.”

  We walked for perhaps ten minutes, sometimes in companionable silence and sometimes chatting quietly about nothing much. Callan was interesting and educated and funny; there seemed to be no end to the hilarious stories he remembered or the ones he could make up on the spot. “You know, Jack, there ain’t a lot of people I can talk to round these parts. My job being what it is, I gotta be careful.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” I’d seen the posters: BUTTON YOUR LIP and SOMEONE TALKED in bold type, with illustrations of screaming, dying men—lurid reminders of what loose talk could cost the Allies. “Everybody’s extra careful these days. It’s hard to know who you can trust.”

  “That’s for sure. And me, being the kind of man I am, well.”

  We had been following a narrow path for some distance through the forest. On our right the dark bulk of the mountain hoisted itself head and shoulders over the smooth back of the waiting sea, and I could hear the waves still murmuring in the distance. “But you don’t…. You don’t talk about that, do you?”

  Callan was walking slightly ahead of me, and he stopped, turned back to look at me. “No, Jack, I don’t talk about that.” There was strong emphasis on the word “that,” and I sensed I’d hit a nerve. “How long do you think I’d last in this man’s army if everybody knew I was a—”