by Brian Payton
Easley lets the boy take the lead across the barren slopes, through a cold, shallow river, then toward the far ridge—a frontier they’ve yet to cross. It leads past where they touched down and, they believe, to the village perhaps twelve miles on. Because the fog strictly confines the field of vision, Easley fine-tunes his hearing. After filtering out the familiar sounds—the swish of their own boots through dead rye, birdcall along the shore—he convinces himself that they are utterly alone.
Their plan is to take advantage of the covering fog to approach the village and camp. Since the Japanese occupied the tiny village, they have been busy constructing a system of tunnels and a pier. The boy explains that this had been confirmed from aerial reconnaissance photos several months before. It is anyone’s guess what the enemy has done with the villagers. If the fog lifts, they will observe and wait for the cover of darkness. If not, they will return to the safety of the cave.
It isn’t long before they encounter patches of snow. Because their footprints will linger for days, they avoid these areas carefully.
After an hour’s walk, they come across a rotting post stuck deep in a grove of old wild celery. Weathered gray and spotted with orange lichen, it sticks out four feet from the earth where it has been placed for some unknown purpose. They search in vain through the brightening mist for similar signs. They return to and study the lone marker.
“Think it’s some Indian thing?” the boy says, finally.
“Don’t know.”
“Maybe we should bring it back and burn it. I don’t think the Aleutians will care.”
“Aleuts,” Easley corrects. “They also call themselves Unangan. Not Eskimos, not Indians. These islands you’re fighting for belong to them. You should at least know their name.”
“I’m fightin’ for the U.S. of A,” the boy snaps.
They continue on, leaving the post undisturbed.
By midday, the fog shows no sign of abating. They have traveled perhaps three hours around islands of snow, shaky with hunger. The indistinguishable terrain makes them feel as if little progress is being made. Suddenly the boy stops, pulls Easley alongside, whispers into his ear.
“For all we know, this place could be crawlin’ with Japs. A whole herd of ’em could be standing over there.” The boy raises his finger to point, but the gesture is meaningless. Visibility is less than a hundred yards.
“I say we head down for mussels,” Easley replies. “If it doesn’t lift in an hour, we’ll comb the shore for wood.”
The boy shrugs.
On their way down the slope, Easley is again amazed at the seeming proximity of winter and spring. Within a few feet of patchy snow, there is a tinge of eager green. The boy bends down, pulls off a nub of wild celery, and sticks it into his mouth. Easley moves to do the same, but steps into a mossy pit that drenches him to the knee. He has not set foot on a land mine, or booby trap. But as both sides learned in the last Great War, cold wet feet that never dry can pull a man down eventually.
Through thinning mist they spy a colony of mussels clinging to rocks at the edge of the tide. Wanting to leave the fewest tracks possible across the open beach, Easley volunteers to go and get them. He pulls off his boots, then pads across the sand. When a cold wave rolls in, the sting penetrates his bones. Pale and slightly blue, his feet appear to him more naked and pathetic than ever before. He yanks the mussels from the rock and shoves them into his pockets. Just when he thinks he can no longer stand the pain, he hears a deep gasp—then a splash offshore. Beyond the break, the brown head of a Steller’s sea lion bobbing in the swell.
Above the beach, they eat without speaking. It is perhaps a trick of the light, or light-headedness, but today the sight of cold, wet flesh on shiny shells takes Easley back to a hotel on San Francisco Bay. He and Helen had a window seat in the restaurant with a view of the setting sun. Between them, a sharp and constant candle flame reflected in her eyes. She had come away with him, clandestinely, soon after they’d met. It was the first of several unofficial honeymoons. She ordered clams and oysters, musing about their reported “amorous” effects. Each mouthful followed by a gulp of wine. Stepping out of the shower the following morning, finding her dancing solo around the room, Easley knew he beheld his wife. He should have asked her then and there, but found neither the courage nor the words—only the fear of chasing her away.
Visibility increases in the falling rain. Easley and the boy rise and continue on.
Soaked and shivering, they approach a ridge overlooking the harbor. In the distance, they see the Aleut village with its white, onion-domed church and simple wooden houses clustered along the shore. Two dozen buildings at best. Smoke trickling from chimneys. Beyond the village, fields of Japanese tents, trucks, gun emplacements. A ship is anchored in the harbor, but no men can be seen. They crouch for a time, scanning the distance, watching for signs of movement. It strikes Easley that, in ten months of occupation, no one else has come so close to the enemy.
“Smart bastards,” the boy observes, his breath turned to vapor. “Tucked in next to the fire.”
“Let’s go. They won’t be out in this mess. We should jog back and cut the time in half. Make a fire and . . .” There is no finishing this thought because there is no food to cook, nothing else to do.
The rain turns to mist and a cold, wet wind. Corporal heat is their only defense against exposure. As they shuffle along, Easley can no longer ignore the pain in his mouth. For the third day in a row he has awoken to an aching molar. Today, however, it has graduated to a new intensity.
Easley watches the boy’s legs trudging forward, belabored. Like someone struggling upstream.
WITH STIFF, TREMBLING FINGERS, Easley assembles the remaining stock of fuel. Nine pieces of wood remain inside their darkened cave, plus the butt end of the big log they found the week before. With any luck, the fire will be enough to save them. The boy wipes pale hands on wet trousers, then piles up a handful of precious dry grass. Easley snaps the lighter and lets free the flame for a nervous second until the kindling catches. The boy stands and observes, arms and legs quivering like he hears the tune to Saint Vitus’s dance. Easley presents his own wrinkled palms to the fire.
In twenty minutes, there is heat from the pit. Within the hour, they have their shirts off, waving them like bullfighters through the smoke and flame. Later still, they dangle trousers directly over the fire, coaxing warm air up the legs and out the waist. Socks and underpants hang on skewers used for cooking. Boots turn white with salt. They expose themselves to the heat until the gooseflesh subsides, then dress again in clothes still damp but steaming.
They push the last of the wood into the coals, pull down their hammocks, then climb up to the nest the boy made the day they arrived. To preserve body heat, they wrap themselves in the silk until they resemble a mummy of Siamese twins. Hungry and spent, the boy is atwitch with dreams as the pain in Easley’s mouth grows wilder.
All that remains of heat and hope fade with the coals. Easley turns, settles, then turns again. He wishes for a speedy deliverance—one way or another.
THE BOY AWAKENS in the middle of the night, dysentery bubbling in his bowels. He apologizes in his polite, southern way, untangles himself, crawls off the nest. Darkness is complete. Easley hears him stumble as he picks his way out into the open. He doesn’t make it far before he is forced to drop his drawers and squat.
Easley reaches up and touches his face, swollen significantly in the night. The ache bulges out from the right side of his jaw and is advancing up to his eye.
The boy slides back in, apologizes some more, pulls the silk around them.
Easley makes his last thoughts of Helen. He tries to map out her body, every mole and curve. The details already beginning to fade. She has become a series of sensations, the scent at the crown of her head, the taste of sweat on her skin, her thigh stretched over his waist. But the ache in his jaw bullies all memory. Still, he feels her kissing his cheek, the healing conveyed through lips.
She props the pillow behind his head, lifts a fork full of pumpkin pie to his mouth, ensures that each bite has a dollop of cream. When crumbs fall on his belly, she bends over and licks it clean . . .
She reaches for his shoulder, halfway across the lake. The forced smile cannot veil her fear. He repeats gentle, encouraging words to calm her breathing. Soon enough, toes touch bottom and he bounds ashore, sunburned and dripping, stretches the towel wide open as she emerges, glistening. Even now, there is the coolness of her skin as he closes the towel around her . . .
She leans against him on the park bench, outside the arc of the lone streetlight. The dizziness has been building all day, the news delivered this morning by a distraught comrade who had been especially close to his brother. He twists the myriad emotions into a thick coil of anger. Helen takes up his hand, cradles it in her lap. Away from his mother, his father, the room he and Warren once shared, grief takes hold of his gut, the tightness forcing him to bend at the waist. She rubs his back and waits but the tears fail to come . . .
SLEET BLOWS INTO THE CAVE through weak morning light. Easley watches it cling to the side of their dim fire pit then turn to slush on stone. The boy sits there with knees pulled up under his chin, staring out into the gray. When he sees that Easley is awake, he offers a broad grin.
“You’re the ugliest son of a bitch I ever did see.” The boy squints. “Hurt much?”
When Easley sits up, the blood pounds as it leaves his head. The pain in his mouth causes his eyes to water. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Better have a look. Come out where we got some light.”
Easley sits down on a rock and opens his mouth less than an inch. The boy looks down, brow wrinkled, eyes sharp and bright. He puts cold hands on Easley’s jaw, pries open his mouth, tilts it toward the sky.
“Swollen and red. Teeth all look the same to me.”
“Near the back,” Easley says.
The boy sticks his fingers inside. He wiggles several teeth before reaching the culprit. When he does, Easley moans.
“Rotten, most likely.” The boy sits down, wiping Easley’s drool on the front of his own jacket.
There is no use spelling it out. They have no drugs. No medical equipment—save pocketknife and Zippo. Not even a lousy toothbrush.
“We have to get that looked at,” the boy says finally.
“Looked at? What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know!” The boy folds his arms defensively. “We gotta get that thing pulled. People die from shit like that.”
“And how do you plan to pull it?”
The boy doesn’t answer.
“We need to get a fire in here or we’ll have bigger problems than a goddamn tooth. We need to eat,” Easley says. Then, upon reflection, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time we discuss our options.”
“Options?”
“We don’t have to die in here.”
The boy bends down and thrusts his face toward Easley’s. “We’re not gonna surrender, if that’s what you mean. You have any idea what Japs do with prisoners? They’ll shoot us after torturing us for secrets. Nobody’d know the difference. Everyone already thinks we’re dead.” The boy steps back and boots a stone. “Trouble with you is you’re in over your head. You came to get your story and get the hell out. You’re . . . uncommitted.”
“Uncommitted?” Easley’s indignation is undermined by his ridiculous, ballooning face. “Canadians, Australians—New Zealanders fought while you fuckers sat on your hands.”
“Maybe so. But what does any of that have to do with you? You’re not here to fight. You take notes.”
Easley considers enlightening this child about world events prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. He thinks of telling him about the blood already spilled and that continues to flow in Europe. He considers telling him something he never told another living soul. How, in 1939, he himself presented at the recruiting office of the British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) only to be turned away because of an undiagnosed ulcer and what they judged to be an irregular heartbeat. Perhaps he should tell him how, despite Easley’s protestations, his own brother was quickly accepted into the Royal Canadian Air Force, only to be swallowed up by the sea. Instead, Easley laughs out loud at the absurdity of it all.
Argument is invigorating. It stirs up something vital. It makes him forget, for a moment, about the dark slide down. Let him rage. Let the boy have his say and let his anger spend itself in words.
“You know what? I’m trained to fight,” the boy declares. “Don’t go actin’ like you make all the decisions and know what’s best from the get-go. Leave the war to the warriors.”
Airman First Class Karl Bitburg looks like a child dressed up in his father’s clothes. A costume hung off a thin frame. A dirty sack of angles: elbows, shoulders, knees.
“Let’s just say I’m watching out for you,” Easley says. “I’ve gotten used to the company.”
“Is that so.” The boy shoves his fists deep into his pockets. “I’ve told you everything about me. What I want to know is, who the hell are you?”
How long does it take to starve to death or die of exposure? Easley figures the two work hand in hand to hasten the end. Sixteen days in and Easley wonders if half as many remain. And that is if they can continue to avoid detection. If they can stick together.
Easley struggles to his feet, then feels the ground pitch and roll beneath him. He crouches down until he regains equilibrium. The boy watches with interest but is unmoved to offer assistance.
Easley returns to the nest. He crawls into the parachute and listens as the sleet turns to rain.
THE PAIN WAKES EASLEY several hours later. The day is past its prime and the wind sends gravel skittering across the mouth of the cave. He rolls over. The boy, seated below, slowly comes into focus. Karl looks back over his shoulder at Easley in a detached and distant manner, then returns his gaze to the ashes and memory of fire. Easley closes his eyes again.
IT IS THE BOY poking his arm that finally brings him to. The night is well advanced and reflected flame shimmers off the ceiling of the cave.
“C’mon,” he says, silhouette in copper light. “Giddy up.”
Easley swings his legs over the edge of the nest and looks down at the blaze. It feels as if someone has hammered a spike through his jaw. His stomach, clenched in hunger. Then he blinks in disbelief: scraps of lumber, a small pile of coal, a book lying open on a rock? Easley stares at the little miracle, and then at the boy—who moves back down to the fire.
“Follow the trucks and you find the tools . . . It’s all I could get before they started millin’ around.” The boy removes his jacket and makes a pad on the floor. “Kneel.”
Easley kneels down and looks up at coal-smudged cheeks. The boy’s beard is coming in properly now. He’ll yet make a man. Karl steps closer, takes ahold of Easley’s swollen face, pries open the jaw.
“Turn toward the fire.”
Easley shifts as directed. The boy’s face follows his, staring into his mouth, until the two kneel together. When the boy has Easley facing the firelight, he reaches into his back pocket and produces a greasy pair of pliers. Easley closes his eyes and opens his mouth as far as he can manage. The boy holds the tool in blackened hands and reaches toward the molar. He pins Easley’s tongue out of the way with a dirty finger and finally locks on the problem.
“Hold still,” he says, rising to his feet. “I don’t want to hear no whinin’.”
Held like a fish on a hook, Easley’s arms go limp at his sides for want of something to do. The boy grips the tooth with the pliers in one hand, presses down on Easley’s chin with the other. “On the count of three,” he says. “One—” Then he pulls with careful strength.
Easley cries out as the root gives way and moves north a hair’s breadth. Tears rolls down his cheeks. The boy widens his stance for better leverage. He tightens the pliers around the tooth, grips Easley’s chin, and sta
rts singing.
“So long, it’s been good to know you
So long, it’s been good to know you
So long, it’s been good to know you
There’s a mighty big war that’s got to be won
And we’ll get back together again.”
Then he pulls, twists, and sings—all at the same time. The tooth lets go, the boy’s grip slackens, and Easley crumples on the ground like he’s taken a slug. Karl holds the bloody tooth up to the fire for a better look. Easley lies still, tonguing the gap, blood drooling down the side of his face and onto glistening stones.
When he finally sits up, the pain is such that he can’t open his eyes completely. The boy’s grin carves dimples as he presents the bloody prize. Easley reaches out and holds the tooth in the palm of his hand. He gazes around at the pliers, the coal, the lumber, the book with Japanese characters, a bright yellow pencil, the carcass of an unplucked gull. Overcome with awe and gratitude, he tries to speak but chokes on blood and spit—then coughs in the boy’s smiling face.
Karl pauses. He slowly wipes his cheek, looks at his fingers, then falls on his backside, laughing. Easley isn’t far behind.
The relief of laughter is overwhelming. Easley can’t look at him without starting all over again. After they mine this particular comedic vein for all that it’s worth, the boy sits up, picks up the bird, plays it like a toy—stretching its wing into a salute, making it do a little can-can routine with its cold, webbed feet. He finishes with a ventriloquist act, opening and closing its beak to the lyrics of Woody Guthrie.
“I got to the camp and I learnt how to fight
Fascists in daytime, mosquitoes at night
I got my orders to cross the blue sea
So I waved ‘goodbye’ to the girls I could see . . .”
Out in the veiled moonlight, they rinse blood, saliva, and coal from their hands and cheeks. Easley lies down and immerses his jaw in the little stream, swirling frigid water through the empty socket. Then the boy helps him up and they stumble back into the glowing cave, arms around each other’s shoulders—like drunken sailors back from a night on the tear.
