“Oh,” McCoy said. “That.”
She put the hat press back where it had been.
“Very clever,” she said.
“Okay to go?” McCoy asked.
“Get the show on the road, McCoy,” Sessions said.
Mrs. Feller waved to the Christians, and blew several of them a kiss.
For somebody who got screwed as much as she probably got screwed last night, having been away from the Reverend all that time, McCoy thought, she don’t look all that worn out.
Then he realized he was wrong about that. The reason she was going around without any underpants was that she and the Reverend had screwed it sore.
She half turned on the seat, pulling her dress above her knees in the process, and started talking to Sessions. “Where are you from?” And “Where is your wife from?” And “How much do you like the Marine Corps?” That sort of thing.
McCoy kept his eyes off her knees as much as he could.
He had it made now, he told himself. It would be real dumb fucking that up by doing something dumb with this missionary woman. He had probably the best duty of any corporal in the Corps. For all practical purposes, he didn’t have anybody telling him what to do. And the Corps was paying all his expenses, even what he spent getting laid. And it was even better than that:
When he filled out the “report of expenses” Captain Banning made him do about once a month, he put down on it usually twice (sometimes three times) what it really cost him. He wasn’t greedy, and Captain Banning probably thought he was getting a bargain. But the prices McCoy listed on the report were what Marines would be expected to pay for a room, a meal, a whore, or whatever. Marines who spoke Chinese didn’t pay half what Marines who didn’t speak Chinese did. Not a month had passed since he’d gone to work for Banning that he hadn’t been able to add a hundred dollars to his retirement-fund account at Barclays Bank. And that didn’t include his gambling money.
They always spent two days in the Marine Compound at Tientsin on the way to Peking, then two days in Peking, and then another day at Tientsin on the way back to Shanghai. As regular as clockwork, he’d been taking ten, fifteen dollars a night from the Tientsin and Peking Marines. He hadn’t been greedy, which wasn’t easy, because there were Tientsin and Peking Marines who played poker so bad it was sometimes hard not to clean them out.
It was hard to believe how much money he had in Barclays Bank.
And he could fuck the whole thing up by doing something stupid with this missionary who went around without her underpants.
When they were out of Nanking, the humidity started to close in so bad that the outside of the windshield kept clouding over and he had to run the wipers every once in a while. It would be better whenever it started to rain. He wished it would start soon.
Mrs. Feller glanced at McCoy to make sure he had his eyes on the road. Then she took a little bottle of perfume or cologne from her purse and shook a tiny dab of it on a handkerchief. She touched her temples with it, and her ears, and her forehead, and then quickly opened a couple of buttons on her dress and rubbed a little in the crack between her breasts.
McCoy’s erection was painful.
He was sure, to make it worse, that she had seen him looking.
Goddamn these missionaries anyway! If the Corps had wanted to find out if the 11th Jap Division had German artillery pieces, I could have found out, without dragging a bunch of fucking missionaries around with me.
It finally started to rain, a steady, soft rain that meant it would probably go on forever.
And now the inside of the windshield started to steam up. Mrs. Feller, trying to be helpful, kept wiping it with a handkerchief. Sometimes when she leaned over to wipe his window, her hand rested on his knee. And every time he could see her boobs straining against her brassiere and the thin cotton of her dress.
It was still raining when they reached the Yangtze ferry at Chiangyin. McCoy was not pleased with what he found. Not only was one of the two ferries that normally worked the crossing tied up at a wharf and out of service, but none of the other vehicles in the convoy had crossed over.
Several hundred Chinese were milling around. A few drove trucks, and half a dozen had oxcarts. But mostly there were hand-pulled carts, and people carrying huge bundles on their backs. That meant that they would have to post a guard on every truck. Otherwise, if they blinked, they would have an empty truck.
Zimmerman told McCoy that when he tried to load the vehicles the night before, Lieutenant Macklin wouldn’t let him. Macklin thought it would be better to wait on this side of the Yangtze for the car and truck from Nanking.
Officer-type thinking, McCoy decided. You had to keep your eyes on the bastards all the time, or they would think of something smart like this.
The remaining ferry was going to require three trips to transport all of the vehicles, so it was going to be at least an hour, probably closer to an hour and a half, before they were all across the river, which was at least four miles across at that point.
McCoy went to Lieutenant Macklin and told him he thought it would probably be a good idea if he took one of the cars, two Marine trucks, and one missionary truck on the first trip. Two of the three remaining trucks could cross on the second trip. And the remaining truck, the pickup/wrecker, and the other car could cross on the third…if that was all right with Lieutenant Macklin.
There was a nice little restaurant in Chen-chiang on the far shore, and McCoy could see no reason to remain on the near shore hungry, while there was a commissioned officer and gentleman (two, if you counted Sessions) available to supervise the loading of the rear echelon.
And if he was just a little lucky, he’d be able to overhear a conversation (or perhaps even join in one) in the restaurant that might tell him something about Japanese activity farther up the road.
Lieutenant Macklin thought that was as good a way to do it as any.
“Sergeant Zimmerman can handle it by himself, sir,” McCoy said, “if you’d rather cross with the first load.”
“I’ll bring up the rear, McCoy,” Lieutenant Macklin said, as McCoy had been eighty percent sure he would. “You and Sergeant Zimmerman go over and see what you can do to get the men something to eat.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Might as well let Zimmerman feed his face first, too. McCoy liked Zimmerman. He was a placid, quiet German who had found a home in the Corps, started a family with a Chinese girl, and did not resent McCoy’s unofficial—if unmistakable—authority on the convoys the way some other senior noncoms did.
Ernie had some kind of rice bowl going on the Peking trips, McCoy was sure, but whatever it was, he did it quietly. And he didn’t get fall-down drunk in a whorehouse as soon as there was the chance. Ernie understood Chinese, too, although for some strange reason, he pretended he didn’t.
He was also faster on the pickup than you’d expect. For instance, he caught on right away to what McCoy wanted when McCoy suggested that he eat at a different restaurant from the big one McCoy was going to. Ernie would pick up whatever he could learn about any Japanese activity farther up the road while he sipped slowly on a beer. Too bad Lieutenant Macklin wasn’t as sharp, McCoy thought.
The other two drivers McCoy took on the first ferry were PFCs, and they were on their best behavior because making the trips got them out from under the harassment of the motor pool. McCoy gave them his ritual “one beer, no more, or I’ll have your ass” speech, confident that he’d be obeyed.
When Ernie came into the big restaurant (six tables, plus a low counter), McCoy was gnawing on a nearly crystallized piece of duck skin. Ernie took off his wide-brimmed campaign hat, gave it several violent shakes to knock the water loose from the rain cover, and then looked for and found McCoy.
Ernie was a man of few words: “The other Studebaker car’s on the ferry.”
McCoy nodded, and Ernie left. McCoy shoved the rest of the crisp duck skin in his mouth, daintily dipped his fingers into a bowl of warm water, dried th
em, and reached for his hat. He put it on at the prescribed angle, twisted his head around to seat the leather strap against the back of his head, and started out of the restaurant.
Then he changed his mind.
Fuck him. So Macklin and/or Sessions sees me eating and having a beer, so what?
He gave the proprietor a large bill and told him he would be back for his change after he’d returned the empty beer bottle and the napkin he was taking with him.
Then he walked quickly to the ferry, keeping himself (more importantly, the campaign hat) out of the rain as much as possible.
He didn’t know why Lieutenant Macklin had decided to come in the second car rather than the third ferry trip, but it didn’t matter: It was a to-be-expected thing for an officer—any officer—to do. No matter what an enlisted man decided, it could be improved upon by any officer. That’s why they were officers.
McCoy paid little attention to the Studebaker until it was off the ferry and, with its wheels slipping and skidding, had made it up the road from the ferry slip. Then he stepped out from beneath the overhang of a building where he had been sheltered from the rain, went into the middle of the road, and made more or the less official Corps hand signals to tell Lieutenant Macklin where the car should be parked.
But Macklin wasn’t driving the Studebaker. The lady missionary, Ol’ No Underpants, Perfume on the Teats herself, was at the wheel. And she was alone.
What the hell’s going on?
McCoy reclaimed the beer bottle he had been prepared to discard for either of the officers and walked nimbly—avoiding puddles where possible—to where Ol’ No Underpants had parked.
She saw him coming and opened the door for him as he approached. The way she leaned over the seat to reach the door, he could see down her dress, down where she’d wiped perfume between her teats.
“I hope I’m not interfering with anything, Corporal McCoy,” she said. “Lieutenant Macklin said it would be all right if I came now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” McCoy said.
“I also thought,” she said, “that since there was no restaurant on that side, maybe there would be one on this one. I’m hungry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” McCoy said. “There’s a restaurant here.”
“Could you take me there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve got an umbrella,” she said, and reached into the backseat for it. He noticed that her breasts got in the way.
When she had it, she handed it to him.
“No, ma’am,” McCoy said. “Thank you just the same.”
“You mean you’d get wet?”
“I mean that Marines don’t use umbrellas,” McCoy said.
“It’s against the rules, you mean?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t you ever break the rules, Corporal?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said.
“Everybody breaks them sometime,” she said. “And this seems to be a good time for you to break this one.”
He thought that sounded a little strange coming from a missionary, but decided to share the umbrella with her. There was no one here to see him who counted, and it was raining steadily.
Accepting the umbrella from her, McCoy got out of the car, opened the umbrella, and walked around to the driver’s side. She slid out of the Studebaker, stepped under the umbrella, closed the door, and then took his arm. Her arm pressed against his, and he could feel the heaviness of her breast.
He marched with her back to the restaurant, shifting course to avoid the larger puddles.
The eyes of the proprietor widened without embarrassment when he saw the woman. Blond hair simply fascinated Orientals.
He came to the table for their order.
“What do you recommend?” she asked.
“I had the duck,” McCoy said, almost blurted, “the way they fix it in Peking. I don’t like the duck much, but the skin’s first rate.”
“Then I’ll have that,” she said. “Are you going to have anything?”
“I’ve had mine, thank you,” McCoy said.
“Not even another beer?”
“I told the men they could have one beer,” McCoy said. “It wouldn’t be right if I had two.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“Why?” he asked, surprised.
“Because I would like a beer,” she said. “But I can’t have one. My husband doesn’t like me to drink.”
“What you mean is, you could have had a sip of mine?”
She nodded her head conspiratorially.
There was something perversely pleasant in frustrating the morality of a missionary, McCoy thought. He told the proprietor to put a bottle of beer in a tea pot and to bring the lady a cup to go with it.
When it was delivered she said, “I thought that you were telling him something like this.”
“You did?” he asked.
“Your eyes lit up like a naughty boy’s,” she said.
He didn’t know what to make of this missionary lady. She was being much too friendly. And he was well aware of the kind of relationship possible between American women and Marines in China: none. American women, probably because there were so few of them, were on a sort of pedestal. They were presumed to be ladies. They wore gloves and hats and did no work. And they did not speak to enlisted Marines, who were at the opposite end of the American social structure—only a half step above the Chinese. Most American women in China pretended that Marines were invisible. They did not walk arm in arm with them under umbrellas, or sit at tables with them in restaurants, or look directly—almost provocatively—into their eyes.
He could only come up with two explanations for Mrs. Reverend Feller’s behavior. She could simply be acting according to her private idea of what it meant to be Christian; in other words, treating him as a social equal out of some strange notion that everybody was really equal in the sight of God. Or else maybe she was in fact flirting with him, or at least pretending to.
There were a couple of reasons that she might be doing just that. One was that she had caught him looking at her when she was putting perfume on her teats and thought it was funny. If that was the way it was, then she knew she could tease him and have her fun in perfect safety, because she knew that only a goddamned fool of a Marine would make a pass at an American lady missionary. And might even be hoping that he would say or do something out of line, so that she could run and tell the Reverend about it.
He’d heard about that happening. Not with a missionary lady, but with the wives of American businessmen. They’d catch their husband with a Chinese girl and decide to make it look like they were paying him back by getting some Marine to start hanging around and panting with his tongue hanging out. They had no intention of giving the poor fucker any; they just wanted to let their old man know there was a Marine with the hots for them. And then if the old man went to the colonel and the Marine wound up on the shit list, that was his problem.
Whatever Mrs. Reverend Feller was up to—even if she was just being Christian—it made him uncomfortable, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He changed the subject.
“There’s one good thing about the bad road,” McCoy said. “We can stay at Chiehshom tonight. It’s going to be too dark to go any farther today.”
“What’s at Chiehshom?” she asked, looking at him over the edge of her teacup of beer.
“A nice hotel,” he said, “built by a German. The plumbing works, in other words, and the kitchen’s clean. It’s on a hill over the lake.”
“You always stay there?” she asked.
“Normally we get a lot farther than this,” he said.
“When you don’t have to carry missionaries with you, you mean?”
“I didn’t say that,” McCoy said.
“No, but that’s what you meant,” she said.
McCoy stood up and put his campaign hat on. “I’ll go down to the ferry and see what’s up,” he said. “You can stay here. You’ll be all rig
ht.”
IV
(One)
Chen-chiang, China
1500 Hours 15 May 1941
While the Reverend Feller, Lieutenant Macklin, and “Mr.” Sessions ate in the “big” restaurant, and the Marine drivers at one of the tiny stalls, Ernie Zimmerman took the opportunity once again to carefully check the vehicles, paying particular attention to the tires. Changing a tire on a muddy road was bad enough, but changing one in the rain, at night, was a royal fucking pain in the ass.
Zimmerman found a couple of tires that looked as if they might blow, one on a truck, the other on one of the Studebaker sedans, and ordered them changed. McCoy and Zimmerman were watching a PFC remove the wheel of the car when Lieutenant Macklin and Sessions walked up to them.
“We about ready to roll, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Macklin asked.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Zimmerman said.
“Well, get everyone loaded up, please,” Macklin said. “We’d like a word with Corporal McCoy.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Zimmerman said, and walked off toward the food stalls where the drivers were eating. Macklin and Sessions walked out of earshot of the driver changing the tire, and McCoy followed them.
“Under the circumstances, McCoy,” Sessions said, “I decided that it was necessary to make Lieutenant Macklin aware of my real purpose in being here.”
“Yes, sir,” McCoy said.
He was not annoyed, but neither was he surprised. Sessions was more than a little pissed about their conversation in Nanking; and it was clear that Sessions was about to put him in his place. As missionaries have no authority to order Marine corporals around, it was necessary to let Macklin know who he actually was. He had thus told Macklin that he was an officer on a secret mission, and now they were both thrilled about their importance in the scheme of things—and prepared to deal with a lowly corporal who was standing in the way of their doing their duty. Captain Banning had warned him this was likely to happen.
“And we’ve been looking at the map,” Sessions said. “Lieutenant Macklin thinks we can make it to Chiehshom before it gets dark. Do you agree with that?”
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