by Brian Payton
Soon the entire press corps was ordered out of Alaska—even though congressmen were now screaming for news from this far-off stretch of American soil, news other than that broadcast by Tokyo Rose. But news from the Aleutians was now under the intense scrutiny of the War Department, a matter of national security. As the flow of Alaskan information reduced to a trickle, American involvement in North Africa and Guadalcanal served to divert attention. And public information offices were still loudly trumpeting the victory at Midway.
Someone wants this battle fought beyond the view of prying eyes. What were they hiding in the Aleutians? If the Japanese were securing a base for attacks on the mainland, civilians in Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington State had a right to know and prepare. Easley was one of a handful of journalists with any knowledge of this corner of the world. What kind of writer shrinks from such a duty?
A few months later, against the warnings of his editors, friends, and Helen, Easley snuck back in with another journalist as a deckhand with the merchant marine. They never made it to the Aleutians, spending a week on Kodiak Island asking questions before the brass got wind. They were shipped south after a long interrogation and a warning that they could find themselves imprisoned under provisions of the Espionage Act. Next time, Easley would travel alone and hide in plain sight. He flew back in a third time, wearing the uniform of a full lieutenant of the Royal Canadian Air Force—the uniform that had belonged to his brother. He forged documents requesting observer status for future joint operations in the Aleutian Theater. He was meticulous, well rehearsed. He fell into the role with ease.
Easley soon patched together the basic facts as far as the Navy knew them. Upward of two thousand enemy troops are dug in around the tiny village on Attu. Judging by the barracks, vehicles, and roads the Japanese built on the neighboring island of Kiska, there could be as many as ten thousand garrisoned there. The idea that these remote islands could be the breach through which the war floods into North America is something the Navy doesn’t want civilians thinking about. They’re gambling that this problem can be contained. The plan is to soften up the enemy in advance of an amphibious assault. Regular bombardment of their flak batteries, seaplane hangars, submarine pens, and runways keeps the Japanese busy patching holes. Weather permitting, sorties are dispatched up to six times a day from Adak, the forward base of operation against the enemy positions.
On Adak, he met the pilot of an aircrew who agreed to take him along once Easley explained that no one back home knew what he and his men were facing. Lieutenant Sanchez was a sharp and confident man, about Easley’s own age, with a quick and infectious grin. He said the idea that the newspapers were not reporting his war was like a swift kick in the sack. Two days later, Easley was tossed out the hatch of his Catalina flying boat as it sank from the turbulent sky.
Easley crawls out from under the ledge and takes a good long look around. He staggers to his feet, stretches his back, touches tender ribs. The boy joins him, and together they study the Japanese boot tracks in the snow, marveling at the odds of having gone undiscovered.
But the covering snow also mocks Easley’s focus on the immediate need to find food, shelter, a secure hiding place. He is confronted by the Big Picture, the fact that—unlike that enemy patrol—the wet and cold cannot be escaped.
For the moment, at least, they have the sun. The glare forces them to squint. To boost morale, Easley declares that, at the current rate of melt, much of the new snow will be gone by dusk.
The boy demonstrates the proper way to repack a parachute. Easley observes the practiced movements, the muscle memory, and the fact that this gives him some illusion of control. When the task is done, they stand with hands on hips, staring at the tight bundle.
“Let’s see what else we got.” The boy empties his pockets atop the canvas. He produces a pocketknife, the drowned lighter, a key, a stick of chewing gum, and four crushed cigarettes.
“What’s the key for?”
“Front door back home.”
Easley reaches into his own pockets and produces only his Zippo and a buffalo nickel. He then tries each of his pockets again but is unable to add to their provisions. The boy holds up the nickel between thumb and forefinger.
“Old girlfriend gave it to me for luck,” Easley says, saving the part about the girlfriend becoming the wife.
“So. You get lucky?”
The rush of adrenaline takes Easley by surprise. He considers the boy for a moment: eyes alight with the attempt at levity. Recognizing this prevents Easley from hitting him.
“Didn’t think so.” The boy tears the gum in half, pops a piece into his mouth, then offers the other half to Easley. “You don’t look like the lucky type to me.”
“Here—” He flips the nickel back to Easley. “You can buy me a drink when we get off this frozen pile of shit.”
AT THE BOY’S INSISTENCE, they spend the balance of the day in search of other members of the crew. Stinging nose and cheeks, throbbing fingers and toes. They arrive back at their ravine famished, dispirited, and—as far as Easley’s concerned—disabused of the notion that anyone else from their plane survived. They then split up and scour the beach. Easley hunts for firewood, the boy for something to eat.
Although Easley is better prepared this time around, tonight’s fire still gives him trouble. His ribs ache with each breath he draws to blow on the embers. He is pleased, at least, that he has used less lighter fluid.
The boy arrives with a jacket full of fat blue mussels and half-curled mollusks, some bashed beyond recognition and oozing into the fabric. Triumphant, he dumps them on the grass then marches back to the beach. He returns with a flat stone, which he places close to the coals.
“I was wonderin’. How do we know these things are safe to eat?”
Easley looks up and reaches for one of the cracked mussels. He bites the inside of his lower lip to draw a little blood. He then dips a finger in the mussel’s gooey flesh and rubs the juice on the sore in his mouth.
“What’s that supposed to do?”
Easley sweeps his tongue through the spot a few times, forcing the juice into the cut. “I don’t know whether or not they have red tide around here. If your lip goes numb, that means the algae’s gone bad. Toxic. If it doesn’t, you’re safe.” Easley waits a few minutes and even pinches his lip a couple of times to make sure. When at last he nods, the boy rubs his palms with glee.
They place mussels on the hot flat stone, watch them open in the heat. The boy presents the first one to Easley, still steaming in its shell. Together, they each extract a morsel of meat and chew, staring at each other over the flames. The boy makes a face, but quickly grabs another.
They spend the better part of an hour roasting and eating dinner. For Easley, this scene, this feeling summons an old sailing trip among the sheltered Gulf Islands with his brother, Warren, the last such trip of the season, the first they were allowed to take on their own. The boat was too small to sleep two in comfort so they spread blankets on a leeward shore. As the eldest, he was in charge of everything that trip—the charts, the sailing, the food. It was not as if Warren, then thirteen, could not share these tasks. He was already an able sailor. Easley kept him from any real responsibility precisely because he could sense his own primacy fading.
The grass around the fire dries out and their clothes lose some of the dampness that has dogged them the whole day. After they’ve eaten, the boy gets up and goes to the stream for a drink. He returns, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, looking down at Easley.
“Where’d you learn that stuff about mussels?”
“An Indian.”
“Where’d you say you’re from?”
“Don’t think I ever did.”
“Well, now I’m askin’.”
“I’ve been living in Seattle the last few years,” Easley explains. “Before that, Vancouver.”
“Up in Canada.”
“That’s right.”
“Why’s that?”
“That’s where I’m from.”
The boy processes this information silently, like he’s busy running sums. He says, “Never met a Canadian before, I don’t think.”
“Well now you’re bunking with one.”
“You could’ve filed your report from Adak. You weren’t supposed to be on that plane, were you?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t know much about you, either,” Easley says. “Give me the highlights. We can fill out the details as the weeks and months go by.”
“There ain’t gonna be any goddamn weeks.”
Easley sees the failure of his joke and regrets it. The boy stretches out on the opposite side of the fire and props his head in his hand. He studies Easley intently, taking the length and breadth of him.
“How old you say you were?”
“Thirty-eight. What part of Texas you from?”
“That would be a West Texas accent you picked up on. Roan, Texas. Big enough to have two taverns, small enough to know the bra size of every girl in town.”
Clearly, this line has passed his lips before.
The boy describes a land that won’t support a crop and oil wells that show little or no return. A father he never knew, the constant move from shack to rented shack. Friends who sharked at pool, baptisms in an irrigation canal, cold beer smuggled into a summer picture show. Easley envisions a hot, dry waste that leaves your shirt stiff with sweat.
The boy wanted to play football but, lacking size, discovered his heart had to be twice as big as the next guy’s. He figured his wasn’t. He did well enough at high school to go off to a semester of college before joining up for the war. When he left for basic training, his mother wouldn’t even see him to the door. There she stood, he says, framed in the greasy window with a blank expression and arms folded tight across her dress. Before the truck pulled away, he distinctly remembers seeing the lights switch off and the house go dark.
Easley feels himself back at the edge of that familiar empty space, the gap into which he feels compelled to offer up some private portion of his life. He wants to tell the boy about losing his brother to the war. And now, perhaps, his wife. The boy bares himself intuitively. Easley wonders, why can’t I respond in kind?
The boy sits up and pulls out his pile of crushed tobacco. He rests it in the crease of his lap and reaches for a big brown blade of grass at the fire’s edge. The air begins to stir again and stars poke through the clouds. There is no hint of the moon. Easley watches the boy place tobacco in the supple blade, then roll it back and forth. He licks it like cigarette paper and tries to seal it shut. It mostly works. He pinches the tips and ends up with a sad little cigarillo. The boy smiles. He pushes the end of it toward the fire, puffs a few times, then exhales in a deeply satisfied stream. He offers it to Easley, who gladly pulls the warm smoke into his lungs. Easley favors a meerschaum pipe, back in his other life, but now finds this sorry roach a little taste of heaven. The boy rolls another, and they lounge warm and satisfied, listening to the surf. It is the first such contented moment they have had since tumbling from the clouds.
When the wood runs low they bury the coals and return to their hiding place. They roll themselves up in the parachute and try to ignore how the sand leaches heat from their bones. At least they are out of the wind. After much turning and shifting of positions, they settle in and listen to the rhythm of the falling tide. Easley feels himself wandering off toward sleep when he hears an almost imperceptible sound, something faint and reassuring. The boy whispers under his breath. He is giving thanks for having dodged the enemy, for the mussels and sticks of semidry wood, for the gift of another day. He thanks the good Lord for the company of one John Easley.
* * *
RAIN DISPERSES THE FOG, increasing clarity. It reveals a monochrome world of varying shades of smoke. They stash the parachutes and strike out in search of food, shelter, signs of other men, the warmth of locomotion. The only creatures they encounter are glaucous-winged gulls wearily patrolling the beach. Easley observes raindrops roll off their feathers in perfect beads, as from the hood of a well-waxed automobile. The gulls appear to be looking back at him the way people might watch a convicted man on his way to the gallows; curious, but unwilling to make eye contact out of respect for the condemned. Easley thinks of how they might taste roasted over the coals of a driftwood fire.
After covering several miles of shore, it becomes clear that the island does not offer up shelter gladly. Beaches curl round coves and end on rocky headlands. Up from the high tide line are rolling fields of rye slicked tight against the land. Then, after some two hundred feet of elevation gain, snow. Neither tree nor shrub worthy of the term. No bushes laden with summer berries. No grazing cattle or sheep, or even deer, rabbits, or squirrels. The only possible sources of protein are also visitors here—birds of the sky and fish of the sea.
The boy, out in front, works hard to stay ahead, his posture betraying the effort. At any moment, they could be spotted from miles away, find themselves the subject of sniper fire.
At the next beach, they encounter a little rise that graduates into a three-story peak of rock. They scan the horizon for friendly ships and the hills for enemies, then scramble up, crouching, careful not to offer a profile against the backdrop of sea. The boy is seized by a coughing fit and is forced to sit and catch his breath. Easley studies the empty land. Nothing presents itself for comment. Only smug birds skirting the shore. More of nothing, nothing more.
As they scramble down, Easley casts his mind back to the plane, the drone of the engines, his quiet, helpless panic after antiaircraft fire ripped through the cabin and wings. He remembers the pale cheeks and frightened eyes of the copilot. How the man methodically double-checked Easley’s parachute before tossing him out the hatch.
The rhythm of boots through sand underscores the silence between them.
Eventually, the boy asks, “Why do we want these islands?”
“I’m sorry about your friends. Sorry about Sanchez.”
The boy looks back across the sand. “We should walk on the grass as much as possible. We’re leavin’ tracks down here.”
At the end of the beach, they encounter a ravine where a rivulet trickles off the edge and onto a pile of stones. It falls directly past the mouth of a cave, and by the time it has traveled half the twenty-foot drop, it scatters in a steady rain.
The cave is about forty feet deep, maybe half as wide, and opens at an angle to the beach. The rocky floor rises to meet the ceiling in back. Most of the walls are weeping. The back section, at least, is clear of the spray. Like newlyweds inspecting their first bungalow, they exaggerate the positive, ignoring the fact that this is a hole in the side of a ravine.
“It’s far enough up from the beach so the tide won’t be a bother.” Easley sits down on a rock.
The boy wipes his nose on his sleeve. “We could divert the stream.”
Easley looks up and sees a determination that could quickly become infectious.
“We could go up top and build a little dike,” the boy continues. “Some rocks and a little sand. A few hours’ work.”
“We could build a fire, but only at night,” Easley says, gesturing to the mouth of the cave. He looks to the other side of the ravine then up at the sheet of sky. “The way it faces, no one would be able to see the light, except maybe a passing ship. We’re miles from the Japs, they’ll never smell the smoke.”
The boy scratches his head. “I’d say you just bought yourself a cave.”
BY THE TIME EASLEY RETURNS with their parachutes, the light can no longer support colors beyond gray. The boy is nowhere to be seen. The little waterfall that had spilled from the upper lip of the cave has been reduced to a slow drip. Inside, high in the back, a bunk of grass has been constructed. A kind of enormous nest. The boy has done wonders in his absence. Easley had been wary of splitting up, even for a few hours, but now sees the wisdom in it. He makes his way up to the back of the cave, sits on the nest, decides it
will serve them well. His gratitude at having shelter, however crude, is tempered by the fear that they will both soon perish here, cowering in the damp and cold as hunger overtakes them.
Helen found their first home by spotting a small handmade sign in a big bay window. The rental market in Seattle had been tight with Boeing working full tilt, churning out bombers and fighters to fill the skies over Europe and the Pacific. She had been searching for over a week.
It was the main floor of a lean little Victorian on Aden Street. The owner wore a matching dark suit, hat, and demeanor. His elderly mother had recently passed and he was unprepared to part with her possessions. He had moved everything upstairs, leaving the lower rooms for tenants. Said he wanted good, reliable sorts to occupy his childhood home. If things went smoothly, they would have the first opportunity to make an offer after the war. When it came time to hand over the keys, the man hesitated in what seemed a spontaneous, emotional response. Helen touched his shoulder, as she would a troubled friend. She told him not to worry, he had made the right decision. Easley watched the man’s mood transform utterly.
That first night in the house they made love on the living room floor. Easley knew then that he loved Helen above his own life. In that moment, he imagined the joy and pleasure he took in her body was more complete than any man had ever known. He composed and took a mental photograph—of her, in that light, in that space and time. He had the presence of mind to sense the pinnacle. He felt it in his bones. Beyond this night, his life could not hope to be improved. To Easley, it felt as if they had discovered, invented something profound and new. He shakes his head at the ridiculous conceit of it all. He wanted to tell her, but thought better of it. Despite being nearly a dozen years younger, she might laugh out loud at such adolescent delusions.
