The Preserve

by Steve Anderson

  Tears had run down Lett’s cheeks. He only now noticed them, already cooling. He leaned forward, his hands hanging off the insides of his knees.

  Selfer had scooted closer, also leaning forward, elbows on his knees, speaking low. “I couldn’t believe it when they told me, I truly couldn’t. You wanted me to keep you out of a stockade. Me. I was the one you called for.”

  More tears came, splashing hot on Lett’s wrists, blurring his view of the floorboards. All he could do was shake his head.

  “You’ve had certain troubles. The war returns inside your head. You are not well. Then I read reports that you have voiced threats to people. Very important people. I’m told there are reports of you claiming you wanted to kill Ike Eisenhower, even President Truman. Good Lord, Lett.”

  Had he done that? Was it on the boat, or sooner? In Belgium? He did have blackouts. Blackouts were always worse than benders. Blackouts brought out matters a man could never take back.

  “But, you know something?” Selfer continued. “I know better. I know plenty better. Because I know you. I know what I saw in you and still do.”

  Lett had stopped shaking his head.

  Selfer whispered now. “You’re not just any man, despite your afflictions, your demons. You have special skills. They can take you places. Better places.” He patted Lett on his right knee, held it there a moment. “We’ll keep you out of a hospital. You’ll be undergoing certain treatments here.”

  “I see,” Lett muttered but had no clue what he was supposed to be seeing.

  “Now, I have to admit—I have a stake in this, too. Your failure could reflect on me. Understand? I brought you onboard, touting you as a prime candidate for our duty roster. My hero from the European Theater. So, your success . . . well, it will happen.”

  “What is this place exactly?” Lett said.

  “It’s a training camp. For a new intelligence agency. It’s all hush-hush. I don’t know that much myself.”

  “What’s your role?”

  “Well, I’m like the camp manager, for now. More administrative than tactical. Expecting to move up soon, so we’ll see. Not the snazziest post but it was a way in the door. But never mind that. What matters for you is you. Now, their training for you, it goes far beyond anything you’ve had before. What anyone has.”

  “I just want to be cured of this. Goddamn it . . .”

  “I can cure you. We can. Do you have to make me confess it? I don’t like what the war made you do—what I made you do. There, I said it.”

  Lett stared. He wiped at his face.

  “The first step of treatment is therapy. I’m told there will be a method of talking things out. There will come medication. You’ll feel cured. After that comes another step. We will retrain you. And then you will help us. You’ll be fulfilling your end of your bargain—the one you yourself asked for.”

  Part of Lett wanted a blackout now, but one wouldn’t come. “I’m not reenlisting,” he said. “Not a chance. Not as a regular Joe.”

  Selfer smiled. “Come now. Do you think that’s what this is? We are far above a regular post. This is a duty, surely, but it’s not serving those same old forces who put you in a hole in Northern Europe.”

  “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what any of this means.”

  “You will. And you’ll know soon.”

  They sat there a long while. Lett wasn’t sure how long. What he experienced wasn’t a blackout. It was more like a meditation. They were two monastics. The next thing Lett knew, Selfer was walking him to the door with one arm around him, his fingers splayed across his back to cradle his ribs. Selfer opened the door all the way with the other hand, and the light streamed in, and more breeze along with it, drying any tracks of his tears left. This helped Lett take a long, deep breath to compose himself. He was glad that Kanani didn’t have to see him like this. They stepped out onto the porch.

  “How would you like to get a letter to your wife?” Selfer said.

  Lett whipped around. “You can do that?”

  “Sure. And no one else needs to know.” Selfer patted his shoulder. “Just me and you.”

  “Okay. All right. Thank you.”

  Selfer rocked on his heels like a family man in gray flannel waiting for his train home to the suburbs. Lett strode to the other end of the porch, stepped down onto the barren clearing and looked both ways, then peered into the greenery surrounding them. He spotted a trail leading off into the forest. He looked back up to the porch.

  Selfer was looking down on him, sizing him up in a way that Lett had never seen before. Lett almost thought he saw worry in Selfer’s softening eyes.

  “Why don’t you go and take a stroll into camp?” Selfer said. “Take that trail there.”

  “Really?” Lett tried to make it sound casual, but his eyes had widened and his joints firmed up again. “I . . . I haven’t been anywhere near a real military post in a very long time—except as a prisoner, that is.”

  “It’s all right. Besides, this is more of an intelligence operation, less military. You can’t stray. There’s a perimeter fence, and the sentries. The trail is clearly marked. Look for the sign reading Quarters. Take your time. Someone will find you, check you in, get you to your billet.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do indeed. Consider it your first test. I’ll come find you when you’re done—on the other side, as it were.”

  5.

  Lett followed the trail. Dense foliage on both sides kept him walled in, and it was nearly a tunnel with the branches stretching overhead. Insects hummed; a strong wind swished between branches, leaves, fronds. He heard other sounds coming his way, but they were muffled. At a fork in the path, he saw the sign that read QUARTERS. Another sign read TRAINING GROUND. That trail led to the left. Despite Selfer’s instructions, he started to follow it out of curiosity, but then he spotted, through the bushes, the whole works—an obstacle course, dummies for bayoneting, a platform for something, perhaps parachuting, or for sniping? Farther away, in a distant clearing, he heard the muffled pops and ripples of weapons firing.

  Despite Selfer assurances, he realized that this was the first time he’d been on a training base since the war. His pulse raced. He was sweating again, despite the cooler air this high up, and it coated his neck and he wiped at it. He backtracked; took the trail he should’ve taken.

  The stronger wind brought a sudden rain that washed out all sound. He stopped and stood under a large frond a moment until the rain faded to a blanket mist. Less than ten minutes had gone by, but it seemed like an age by the time he reached the end of the trail.

  He crouched behind a large fern at the trailhead and looked out. The clearing resembled the one he and Kanani first entered in the disguised pickup, but it was larger—about one football field wide and long. It held six newly built bungalows, three on each side, separated by a wide lane down the middle. At the opposite end, the clearing made a hard right and continued like an L, and down that way Lett saw some olive drab tents blending in with the tree line.

  His chest had tightened. His leg quivered but he squeezed his thigh till it stopped. His senses amplified from his old caution. Every sparkle, color, edge, and curve etched in his mind. This kind of caution shouldn’t have been necessary here, but he welcomed it as the finest quirk there ever was. It had saved his ass so many times. On the front lines in France and Belgium, he didn’t see quaint junctions and lush forests—using his etching eyes, he had carved out enemy snipers focusing, machine guns targeting, the artillery aiming. Caution was his rabbit’s foot. Caution was God.

  He peered farther. Just above the horizon of treetops he spied the tip of a water tower, and a guard tower, maybe two, which likely meant more. That meant barbed-wire fences somewhere, a sentry hut. He focused now on the people passing between the bungalows, coming back out after the rain, bearing folders, gathered in small groups chatting—not that many, maybe ten. But there were probably double that, unseen in the bungalows. A few were wom
en. The people wore a mix of fatigues and khaki summer dresses, but some had on casual civvies, modest aloha shirts and pallid flower dresses. Still no one carried insignia and no one had any weapons, to his relief.

  He straightened up, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the clearing, keeping it casual, even sinking his hands in his pockets, though caution was telling him to keep crouching with his arms cocked and hands clenched at the ready. Caution was steel cables pulling on him. Caution wanted a gun in his clawed fingers, even though he’d sworn off weapons. A man and woman passed—the man smoking a pipe, the woman wearing a WAC garrison cap. Lett smiled at them and the steel cables gave him some slack and he strolled onward, right down the midway. At the far end of the clearing stood a cluster of signs on a pole.

  Keep going. Gotta keep moving, always. Lett walked on. Inside the foliage on the trail, under the large fern, the dripping and rustling had dampened outside sound. But here out in the open, all sounds came roaring back.

  He heard something new, growing stronger, faster. It was a hammering-ripping sound like some gargantuan zipper, and it wouldn’t let up. What if it came closer?

  Machine gun, MG 42. Coming right for him.

  Lett crouched.

  A thunking sound boxed his ears.

  Enemy artillery. Their 88 guns wrecked whole ridges, a valley.

  He shot off, moved on. A trash barrel stood a few yards away, his only cover. He hugged it, burying his shoulder into it. He smelled something; his nostrils snorted like a pig’s. It was bitter. It might be something burning, rubber maybe.

  This was France. He was up on the line, a town called Mettcourt. Buildings loomed on either side, about to spit fire.

  “Mettcourt, fug it,” he muttered. “Only one way outta this town.”

  The smell turned sour, then fetid in a way that burned the nostrils, so Lett clamped a hand over them. Dead enemy left out in the open. They gave off a different rot because of what they wore, decomposing along with their skin and meat and insides.

  Then they weren’t so dead. Figures passed, rushing along just out of eyeshot.

  The Krauts, they had a flank on him.

  Lett had no weapon. Nothing. Not even a trench knife. “Goddamn,” he muttered and rose onto his haunches. He made for the closest edge of the clearing. Cover.

  A shape rose out of the dense foliage as if formed from it. Arms flailing, knees high. The man was sopping, his loose wet uniform hanging off him like animal pelts, his balding head slick and his white eyes wild.

  He was coming right for Lett. Lett saw he had a gun—a Kraut luger.

  Lett froze. The man kept coming.

  “Run! Run for your fugging lives!” the man screamed. “They’re everywhere, see, in the trees, the caves—those deep dark caves, everywhere we go!”

  Lett crouched. “Hands up,” he ordered.

  But the man still kept coming. Saliva squirted from between his front teeth. “You gotta help me, Mac, you gotta. They’re coming and we gotta run, me and you!”

  The gears inside Lett launched and found their cogs and meshed, the torque steeling him. Mechanically he stood, becoming twice as large as he was, his muscles like stones. He lunged, kicked at a knee and chopped at the man’s neck and kept coming. The man slipped, landing on his back. Lett grabbed the Luger. The man held up his hands. Lett brought the Luger down on the man’s forehead, clunking on bone.

  The man wheezed underneath him, blood leaking out his nostrils, streaming over his face.

  “Do it,” he muttered to Lett, “just go and do it, why don’t you? Do me the goddamn favor.”

  Lett eased off.

  The people came outside, rushing from doorways, turning his way.

  “Get inside! Find cover!” Lett shouted at them. The man below him was crying now. Lett shot up, pressed onward. He felt the people stopping to watch him, many lining up like it was a gauntlet he had to run in a witch-burning medieval hamlet at the height of the Inquisition, but these people wore khaki and prints instead of rags and vestments, had clipboards instead of scrolls, all the judgers that ever were now. All of time was combining, the cruelest centuries blending, piling on him to halt him right here. But he kept moving. Gotta keep moving.

  As he ran, he saw the white helmets of MPs and their black armbands. They had batons, pistols, rifles. “Hey! There he is.”

  He looked like a deserter. He was a deserter.

  He saw more of the tree line ahead and kept sprinting, he was going to make it.

  “Ow . . .”

  He felt a twinge in his back, then a prick, then it was red hot and spreading, flowing through him like lava itself, hotter, heavier. He kept running but his legs were concrete, and his lungs wouldn’t pump, and he was staggering, stomping his feet like some drunken bandleader, the world spinning and he spinning in the other direction. The double spinning locked the world in place, two gears synchronizing, a brake slamming. A trap door opened. Lett was falling, plummeting, deep into the earth and more hot lava found him, submerging him, scorching and suffocating him at once.

  All went black.

  6.

  Kanani tapped the jade cigarette holder against the shiny rim of the gold ashtray. They had left her Camels, as many packs as she wanted, along with more of those Filipino cigars. She was reclining on a chaise, in her living room. That high makamaka of a colonel by the name of Charlie Selfer had released her into The Preserve, which left that poor cracked-up GI Wendell Lett all on his own. A friendly haole lady in a WAC outfit with no insignia had appeared from nowhere and walked her along the trails to the nice DeSoto convertible waiting for her, the driver just as handsome. That had been the first surprise. She took the backseat, why not? Then the handsome haole was driving her down a paved road lined with pruned shrubs and clipped grass and palm trees planted in patterns—like one upscale country club. A fancy house loomed, what driver called the Main House. They passed that. Instead they ensconced her in this bungalow nearby.

  This was another kind of surprise. Her new place had red felt wallpaper and plush rugs and beaded lamps and upholstered chairs, fringe and all. The separate bedroom had a four-poster bed as fluffy as a bunny.

  She couldn’t get too comfortable. She needed to stay wary. She’d come here for one thing only: to find their treasure and take it from them. There was almost certainly gold somewhere here or would be soon. Miss Mae had told her about it. Miss Mae had given her the gold lighter. Miss Mae knew everything. She wasn’t just a mama-san. She’d been the mistress of at least one bigshot American who passed through Honolulu.

  The ashtray was yet another strong confirmation that she was getting closer, somehow. It had dragons on it, hand-painted in gold over a red background, and turquoise inside. Did they even know it was a tea bowl, not an ashtray, and probably worth a pretty penny? She lifted it, looked underneath. The calligraphy looked like ancient Chinese to her. So, it had to be worth a mint. This is quite promising, she reminded herself. It all fit the situation unfolding. Her instincts told her to pocket the thing, but she couldn’t.

  She had to learn more. She had to bide her time.

  If she only knew where Miss Mae had gone. Miss Mae had disappeared. Kanani hoped Mae had taken a deal from the Americans, for working with them. Maybe she’d end up on the mainland. Maybe they’d give her a Chinese restaurant in some cold, gray city. That made her laugh. But that also wasn’t Mae’s style. She knew too much. What she revealed to Kanani was only the tip of the volcano. And Mae had seemed scared, and hurried, and that wasn’t like someone who had probably been a double if not triple agent and always seemed to know how to choose a winner.

  On their way up mountain, that poor Wendell Lett had started to figure out her true angle. He was smart, that one, and a cutie-pie, too. “You’re going to show them,” he’d said. “Make them all pay if you can help it.” But he didn’t know the half of it.

  Wendell had helped save her from Frankie’s questions if not the strong arm, and she would never forget that.
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  She had asked around and heard he’d had an episode, a setback. That hurt her heart. She hoped that Wendell was already getting the treatment he so dearly needed and wasn’t just speeding up his own demise instead. She should’ve warned him better. Everything here served the pursuit of gaining intelligence and exploiting it. She’d never meant to string along that unhappy haole and certainly didn’t want to make him think they were going to have sex. But then what did he do? He went and turned adorable enough to offer her a bicycle ride. She wasn’t one kola—some oversexed tita—despite what a man might imagine on account of her previous profession. In the end, flirting with Wendell had seemed the only gesture that could calm the man. She was glad she didn’t go any further. She had to admit that she might’ve liked it—maybe a bit too much.

  She was liking too many things for her own good. Take this little place—it was finer than any she’d lived in and smelled nice too, seemingly smoked through with the potpourri of island flowers. This was surely one of the nicest places she might ever have sex in. She thought about that sometimes, all the boys she’d been with in that one Hotel Street boogie house alone. How many now dead local boys and haoles alike had she given herself to? Their bodies decomposing or buried all over Asia, on this or that island. So many thousands left to rot by that so-called military genius and kahuna number one, Douglas MacArthur. Their soul spirits visiting one another and plaguing the survivors like Wendell Lett, men wracked with guilt and nightmares and a desperate need to break free.

  She needed to stay wary. She had so much to stay on top of. Miss Mae might’ve told her about the gold, but she never told her how it was coming in or how she could get at it.