Betsy, the blonde from Rochester, kind of sidled up next to me as we studied the sunset; she had a freshly scrubbed soapy smell that reminded me of Margot, B.C. (before Chanel), and her hair was a mop of curls almost as cute as her blue-eyed, apple-cheeked, lightly lipsticked mug.
“Everyone says you’re a mysterious government agent,” she said.
“Everyone’s right,” I said. “Particularly the mysterious part.”
“It’s too bad….”
“That I’m mysterious?”
“That you’re not going to be on the Yankee except just tonight. That isn’t very long.”
“No it isn’t. Isn’t that a shame?”
She licked her lips and they glistened. “Terrible…. Want to sit with me downstairs?”
Her hand locked in mine, and she led me through the deckhouse down the companionway to the main cabin, where I sat with her at the table, getting dirty looks from at least six of the rich sailor boys. We talked a little about my being from Chicago and how she hated Rochester; she also hated the all-girls schools she’d attended. Under the table, she rubbed her leg against mine.
After some guitar playing and folk-song singing, the crew headed for their bunks at eight o’clock. Betsy waved and smiled and went off to her cabin with Dorothy, giggling.
I lay in my bunk for about an hour, sorting through the memorized information Miller had fed me, an actor going over his lines, feeling the same sort of butterflies in my stomach, and it wasn’t seasickness. A little after nine, I swung out of the bunk and padded up to the deck, where the breeze had turned cool with a kiss of ocean mist in it. I knew that kid Hayden was standing watch and this would be my chance for a word alone with him.
The young man was stretched out on his back in a dinghy, ropes for his bed. His hands were locked behind his head, elbows winged out; bare-chested, in shorts, legs long and gangly, he was studying the starry sky with wide-eyed expectation.
“You always stand watch on your back?” I asked him.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, sitting up, his voice a breathy second tenor. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“Naw. Just thought I’d see if you wanted some company. Eight o’clock’s a little early to hit the rack for this Chicago boy.”
He swung out of the dinghy, bare feet landing lightly on the deck; he was aware that every movement up here was conveyed below, where the others slept.
“Would you like some coffee? I have a pot in the skipper’s deckhouse.”
Soon we were sitting on a bench on deck, sipping coffee from tin mugs, contemplating the stars scattered on a cloudless, richly pastel blue sky shared with a sicklelike slice of yellow moon. It was unreal, like an imitation sky in a Hollywood nightclub.
“The skipper says you’re a real sailor,” I said to the lad, “which I take to mean you’re not paying three grand for the fun of sailing around the world.”
“I wouldn’t mind having three grand,” he reflected. “I’d buy my own ship. No, I’m getting paid, one hundred a month. Johnson didn’t want to pay me anything, you know, said the experience of a voyage around the world would be pay enough. But I drove a harder bargain.”
Words tumbled out of this kid’s mouth without modulation, dropping off at the end of the sentence as his breath gave out. It was as if he were issuing the words to float before him for review.
“Yeah, you really held his head under the water on that deal,” I said.
He regarded me with steady eyes, his smile turned a sardonic shade rare in one his age. “The lure of this life isn’t money, Mr. Heller. It’s the utter simplicity.”
“Your skipper’s taking in a pretty penny for sharing this simple life with these spoiled brats.”
“Well-heeled vagabonds, I call them. You see, that’s why I’m probably destined to be a mate, not a master. Johnson doesn’t have to deal with just the ship, but with the land—finance, lectures, photographs for the Geographic. He’s practical. I’m romantic. He’s tolerant. Half the time I want to toss these rich babies overboard.”
“They love you, you know.”
A grin blossomed. “Well, I pride myself on treating them harshly, and they thrive on the punishment. Maybe it’ll make men of them…if the war doesn’t do it first.”
The world, by way of the ocean, stretched endlessly before us, seeming empty, nicely empty. No people.
“It is coming,” I said, “isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s here. It’s everywhere…back home they just won’t admit it.”
The gentle rolling of the ocean beneath the boat was lulling. The lapping of water splashing against the hull made a sweetly percussive music.
I asked him, “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into tomorrow?”
A smile twitched; he was gazing out at the waters. “I know where we’re taking you.”
“It’s a risk that isn’t worth a hundred a month.”
“The skipper asked me to go along, and I’m going.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m tellin’ ya, take a pass. There’s a motor on that dinghy; Johnson can take me by himself.”
“No, I think I’ll go along.”
“I thought you liked the lure of the simple life.”
“I do. But I like things lively, too.” He laughed, but it came out more like another word: Ha. “You know, the skipper seems immune to the finer things…tobacco and booze and these island girls.”
“He has a pretty wife.”
“Exy’s a princess, but me, I’d leave her home.” He sipped his coffee, stared out at the moon’s yellow reflection on the ocean. “This one time…we’d been sailing west and north of Tahiti…we lay to at a quay in a lagoon near Raiatea. This broad-beamed copra schooner draws up alongside—with a cargo of beautiful girls. Twenty of them or more, lining the rail nearest our ship, clinging to the rigging. Ravishing creatures.”
“You run across boatloads of babes out here frequently, do you?”
He shook his head. “Regretfully, no. This was a charter out of Papeete, a planter named Pedro Miller, friend of Nordhoff and Hall’s.”
They were the authors of the bestsellers about the mutiny on the Bounty and its aftermath.
“They invited us aboard…wine, music, laughter, dancing. I met this black-haired girl who did this grass-skirt dance…. I was walking with her into the village when I glanced back and noticed the skipper standing on the Yankee deck, near the wheel, arms crossed, Exy sitting on a skylight. Wonder what he was thinking?”
“Probably that he was going to get laid, too, but not have to worry about South Sea Island crotch rot.”
He bellowed a laugh, then suppressed it, not wanting to wake anyone below. “You’re a cynical one, aren’t you?”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Hayden, you may think you’re a romantic…but right now you’re looking at the biggest romantic sap in the South Pacific.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, I’ll be with you tomorrow…and my pistol will be under a tarp at my feet.”
“Let’s hope you can keep it there.”
His eyebrows lifted as he cocked his head and grinned at me, and nodded in agreement. Then his eyes narrowed in good humor. “Say, uh…I see Betsy took a shine to you.”
“Yeah. Cute kid.”
“You always been this irresistible to women?”
“Just lately.” I stood; stretched. “Think I’ll go below. Wake me if a schooner of native girls stops by.”
“Okay…but I don’t think you have to worry about catching the creepin’ crud from Betsy.”
“Oh?”
“She’s a nice girl, but a tease. She’s got half the crew crazy over her and is the cause of more cases of blue balls than you can shake a stick at.”
“That’s an image I’d rather not linger over, kid. G’night.”
“G’night.”
As I was coming down the companionway, there she was, cute Betsy, waiting on the steps; she wasn’t in her nightclothes—still the shorts and a loose-fitting boy’s sh
irt that she bobbled under.
“Sit with me,” she whispered. “And talk.”
I was tired, but I sat, on the stairs; she snuggled next to me, wanting to be kissed. So I kissed her, all right. I put my tongue in her mouth and one hand on her soft full left breast and another on her rounded rump and she pulled away, wide-eyed, and said, “Well! I never…”
“That was my impression,” I said.
And she jumped to her feet and bolted down the stairs and disappeared into her cabin.
The next morning, after breakfast in the main cabin, I emerged from the bathroom in my dark suit with clerical collar and received bemused looks all around, particularly from Betsy. She sat before her plate of powdered eggs and fried potatoes with her eyes as wide as a pinup girl’s, and I leaned in and kissed her cheek, and whispered, “Bless you, my child.”
There was laughter ’round the table, but good-natured, though Betsy flushed and hunkered over her eggs. I thanked the crew for their hospitality and friendship, and kissed Exy on the cheek, too, and ruffled the hair on the two tykes’ heads.
From the deck of the Yankee, the island that was Saipan was a vague shape in the distance, but rising at its center, like a green peaked hat floating on the sea. Another island could be seen as well, off to the right, smaller, flatter.
“That’s Tinian,” Johnson said. He wore a navy blue, anchored skipper’s cap, white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, loose brown trousers and white deck shoes. He pointed toward Saipan. “That anthill in the center of things is Mount Tapotchau, fifteen hundred feet of her.” Then he traced the horizon with his hand. “The coastline here on the western side is almost completely fringed by reefs, except for the mouth of the bay. Few years ago the Japs dredged a deep-water channel to the shore, to improve the anchorage. You’ll see some good-size ships in that harbor.”
Hayden was on the other side of me, but his eyes searched not the horizon but the sky, which was as gray as cement. “I’ve seen prettier days,” he commented.
Tiny brown shapes were moving away from the island. Boats?
“Sampans,” Johnson said. “Okinawan fishermen. They’ll travel for days, looking for flocks of terns, meaning schools of sardine and herring are nearby. And that means bonito and tuna.”
“That’s a relief. I thought it was the Jap armada.”
“Not yet,” Johnson said with the faintest smile. “Not yet.”
Soon we had set off in the dinghy, Captain Johnson minding the motor, with Hayden on the middle seat and me up at the bow. My nine-millimeter Browning was in the travel bag, under several more changes of clerical wear; other than underwear and socks, my real clothing had been left behind. In my right hand were clutched two envelopes, and in my left a passport.
From where I sat as we putt-putted across choppy water, warm wind whipping our hair, I was watching the Yankee recede, and I felt a pang of regret out of proportion to my brief stay on Captain and Mrs. Johnson’s ship. It seemed to me I was leaving America, perhaps Western civilization itself, behind; and the faintly decadent sweetness of rich boys paying big bucks to play Popeye, and a rich girl who wanted a shipboard romance with a mysterious government agent (strictly above the waist, you understand), lent a bittersweet flavor to this lonely ride under a broodingly gray sky on rough gunmetal waters. Then the Yankee disappeared and I looked over my shoulder.
The shape of the island was no longer vague. A long undulating beast, with the central hump of Mount Tapotchau, crouched on the ocean’s surface, a study in brilliant greens and dull browns, myriad jungle shades. But we were not approaching a primitive world: the tiny boxes of buildings indicated a city, and toy boats that were massive freighters hugged a concrete pier. We were skirting a coral reef now, heading toward a much smaller island, just a glorified sandbar.
“Maniagawa Island,” Johnson said, with a nod. “That marks the entry to the harbor.”
As we drew closer, Saipan was dashing my expectations: the island seemed larger than I’d imagined, as did the surprisingly thriving town of Garapan that spread out upon the flatland beneath the hills. The little city had banished the tropics from its confines; but on either side, coconut palms swayed as per South Sea Island routine, and flame trees, with their dazzling scarlet flowers, dotted the coastline, exotic flourishes of flora.
Garapan, however, might have been a port city in the northeastern U.S.A., with its rectangular concrete wharf embracing freighters and fishing boats alike, the factory sprawl and towering black chimney of a sugar refinery, and row upon row of boxy houses in grid formation. As we neared the formidable jetty, other details filled in: a train pulling in along the pier, warehouses, telephone poles, streetlights. So much for leaving Western civilization behind.
The dinghy chugged into the harbor unnoticed; we pulled alongside the concrete pier, cut the motor, but did not tie up. Over at left, near a smaller, separate jetty, two flying boats floated near the refueling tanks and repair shed and ramps of a modest seaplane base. Down from us, at right, native workers in loose scruffy pants and usually no shirt and no shoes (like the rich boys on the Yankee) were unloading heavy sacks—sugar, Johnson said—from a freight car of the quaint-looking little steam-engine choo-choo that rested on narrow-gauge tracks; other workers were hauling sacks up a gangplank into a freighter. Supervising were pith-helmeted Japanese in white linen jackets over buttoned-to-the-neck, high-collar shirts with white trousers and white shoes; it was not quite a uniform….
Someone in a real uniform had noticed us, however.
Muscular, spade-bearded, perhaps twenty-five, he wore a light-green denim shirt, open at the neck, with matching shorts and cap, and this uniform would not have been impressive at all, might even have seemed silly or childish, had that revolver in a black holster not been on his hip.
“Naval officer,” Johnson whispered.
Our one-man welcoming committee pointed a finger at us: Uncle Samurai Wants You. Well, at least it wasn’t his gun. He seemed unhappy. He told us so, in a spew of Japanese.
Johnson responded in Japanese; it sounded clumsy and halting, but our host considered the skipper’s words carefully, then called out and another denim-dressed officer trotted over, a chubby individual who received some instructions, and trotted off again.
Then our spade-bearded welcoming committee unsnapped his holster, and withdrew and pointed his long-barreled .38 revolver at us. The tarp between Hayden and me covered a similar gun. But there was no need to go for it; our host was just keeping us covered.
Behind him and his gun, beyond the warehouses and the train tracks, sat a typical jumbled waterfront—bars, cheap restaurants, small stores, wooden-frame buildings mostly, a few brick. Very few automobiles were in sight; people walked, or rode bicycles.
“How much of their lingo do you know?” I asked Johnson in a near whisper, as we bobbed in our boat.
“That one sentence,” he said. “It was a request that he bring an English-speaking official to meet an important visitor.”
Our host barked at us in Japanese; my psychic translation was: “Shut up!” I heeded my instinct.
We weren’t kept waiting long. When the chubby officer returned, I thought at first he’d summoned one of the men supervising the unloading of the train. Positioning himself before us, feet planted, hands clasped behind him, was a small, somber, rather skeletal-looking gray-mustached fellow in that white pith helmet, linen jacket and trousers getup.
But on closer look, there were differences: the linen jacket had epaulettes, the pith helmet bore a gold badge, and a revolver in a cavalry-style holster rode his belt—arranged for a fancy right to left cross-draw.
“Mikio Suzuki,” he said in a calm, medium-pitched voice. “Chief of Saipan Police. This is closed port.”
“Captain Irving Johnson of the civilian ship, Yankee,” the skipper said. “I apologize for this unscheduled stop. We are anchored beyond your three-mile zone. I do not ask to come ashore. I’m here to drop off a passenger.”
He apprais
ed me and my black apparel and white collar with placid skepticism. “Chamorro missions need no new missionaries. Two priests already.”
Johnson said, “Please do us the courtesy of looking at Father O’Leary’s papers.”
I blessed him with a smile as I handed my passport and the two envelopes up. He examined the passport, then withdrew and unfolded each letter; he read them with no visible reaction.
Johnson and I traded tiny shrugs; Hayden had his eyes locked onto these men with guns looming on the pier, his hand draped casually between his legs, hovering over the tarp.
Then Chief Suzuki spoke to the spade-bearded officer, a guttural command that might have been my death sentence.
But within seconds, I’d been hoisted up and out of the dinghy, Hayden handing me my travel bag and a tight smile, while the Chief of Saipan Police carefully refolded my letters, inserted them in their envelopes and returned them to me, with a bow.
“Welcome to Garapan, Father O’Leary,” Chief Suzuki said.
I half-bowed to the chief, then nodded to the skipper and his first mate, who were already putt-putting away from the pier.
Father O’Leary was on his own in Saipan.
17
The main street of Garapan bisected the waterfront, whose typical seediness was quickly replaced by a wholesomely bustling downtown thoroughfare that, with minor changes, might have been small-town America. One-and two-story structures, sometimes wood-frame, sometimes brick, occasionally concrete, were shoulder to shoulder along the telephone-pole-flung asphalt street—office buildings, restaurants, a bakery, hairdressing salon, hardware store, fish market, the larger storefronts with awnings, smaller shops with modest wooden overhangs, even a picture show (although a samurai movie was playing). The apparel, too, seemed oddly Western—white shirts, white shorts, black shorts—though there was the occasional parasol-bearing housewife in a white cotton kimono, out grocery shopping.
A major difference—besides signs and hanging flags that bore the graceful hen scratchings of Japanese script—was how bicycles outnumbered automobiles. Another was a pervading, unpleasantly pungent odor of copra and dried fish, a near stench at odds with the neatness and cleanliness of Main Street Garapan, as were the occasional Chamorro men, dusky natives of the island, loitering at alleyways and along the wooden sidewalks, dirty and disheveled in their tattered clothes and unshod feet. It was as if the Japanese were a hurricane or tidal wave that had displaced them, and they hadn’t gotten around to tidying up yet.
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