Black Bear Blues

by Stephen Wishnevsky

  They got slaughtered. They were fighting the Reds back then in 1918 and ‘20, but who cares who kills you? If they know what they are doing, and you don’t, you just have to be fucked. I had been in forty below, up in Vermont, and it was not any part of a joke. Your face freezes after a few steps outside, you spit and it freezes in mid-air with a tiny “crack.”

  The locals tell you that, and it’s true, but they don’t tell you that the spit freezes on your lip, and takes off a bit of skin, hurts for days. And forget about taking a piss outdoors. I guess Eskimo women have to stay in the damn igloo all winter, piss in buckets or something. Who knows? Fuck’m.

  Anyway, we needed help, and had a month or so to get ready. Which led to another happy thought. If the Germans were coming, and they pretty much had to, then they knew they had a month to do it in too. Logic, that’s what that shit is called. Hard to worry about stuff like that when it was going to be over eighty today, but that was my job.

  Also, if the storms came down from the north and west, we would get no warnings, that area was all German controlled. They were not likely to share weather reports with us. More happy thoughts. Write it down, turn it in. Do your job.

  >>>>>>

  There was little news about Mexico from the US stations, but the Argentinians and the Spanish were just full of hyperbole and gloating. No real info, but morale was good, to say the least. They were not quite dancing in the streets, but they had hired a band and hung the lights. Situation Normal, All Fucked Up, to use a new expression I had heard floating around. SNAFU. What we used to call “The Old Army Game.”

  I was headed back to the rack, but the thought of winter coming that soon and that hard, kept nagging at me, so I decided to walk my report, my suspicions, over to HQ in person. Better to get yelled at now for being an alarmist, than to have to apologize later for a bunch of dead soldiers. But by the time I got down the steps and to the end of the platform, I knew that walking idea was a non-starter. I found a Red Cap, had him call me a cab. It turned out to be a rickshaw, a new experience, but good enough.

  “We know winter is coming, but we might have been underestimating the severity. Not an immediate problem,” Ray said. “I’ll get a team on it, we do have a Meteorological Service, of course. I’ll ask Bradley for advice. Under control. They have wool out here, sheep and goats, we can maybe get winter clothes from the Persians. I’ll check into that.”

  “And the Germans? They coming?”

  “Any day now. The railhead is a couple hundred miles past Karamay, they will have to react soon. We have promised Urum-chi back to the Uyghurs, so they are working as our scouts. General Hodak, you remember him, he is liaison to them, gave them all his off-brand bikes, that was love at first sight.”

  “How will they keep them running?”

  “These so-called primitive people can fix anything with nothing. Their smiths are damn near magicians. You should take a close look at their firearms sometime. All repairs, the repairs have repairs and they still shoot. Shoot your eye out at a thousand yards, better believe it.”

  “And they do not love the Russians.”

  “You have no idea. They hate white folks in general, Russians and Germans in particular; Chinese next, but they know we don’t want to be here in the first place, so they are happy to help us leave. It’s their best chance for freedom since the days of Alexander the Great.”

  “Really?” I was dubious.

  “Okay, how about Tamerlane?”

  “Point taken. But get lots of long woolies, it’s going to be cold as a bitch.” Another thought. “I guess Hodak is the perfect man to cope with all these fucking nomads. He has all sorts in his division, they still call them the Iron Wolves?”

  “Of course they do. The 37th. Not really a full division, but they call it one. Zheleza Volki.” His accent was shit, but I didn’t tell him. Close enough for government work.

  >>>>>>>>

  While I was at HQ, I went to the Hospital Wing, got my face looked at again. They checked my stitches, added a few, and taped me back up. I took a look at myself in their mirror before they put the bandages back on, and I was a sight. All bruised and contused, I looked like Frankenstein’s Monster after a hard Saturday night at an Irish bar. I guessed it would not spoil my girlish charm, so I bummed a little more morphine, some salve with camphor in it and went on home. They laid on a staff car ride, so I was merely worn out when I got back to the Recon Train.

  Su-mi whipped me up another mug of soup, I sucked that down and headed for the rack. Convalescence, you know. I wasn’t hurt that bad, but I was willing to baby myself for a few days, the Army teaches you to grab all the rack time you can, when you can. And from what Ray said, we were going to be right back in the soup AS fucking AP.

  I woke up about nine, Alde was next to me in bed, reading that same old Zane Gray. I was about to give her some sort of hell, when Peaches knocked on my door, said, “We have a couple of things you have to deal with.”

  “Shoot.”

  “One, that Bob Weeks guy is back with the weirdest train I have ever seen in my life. It has airplanes stuck all over it.”

  “Give him my best, we will see him in the morning.”

  “Deal. And there are a couple of boxcars of fireworks from Hong Kong on a siding that need to be sent someplace.”

  “Karamay. Tell Ray Reynolds. They are for the tank forces out there. He knows.”

  “And, speaking of Ray, he wants you to invent a car or something that runs on snow. At your leisure, he says.”

  “Ray is becoming quite the smart ass in his old age. Not a problem. I did an article for Popular Mechanics a couple years ago. There are basically two types, cars with the rear wheels replaced with treads of some sort, and sleds with aircraft engines and pusher propellers. Both are easy enough to improvise. Let me put on my shoes, and I will type out an outline.” Alde was paying attention, seemed rather nonplused at this interruption. Later for her.

  Once we were situated at Peaches’ desk, she said, “I’ll just take notes, you can edit in the morning. You still look all fucked up. Shoot.”

  “They used to call these snow-flyers. Wisconsinites experimented with over-snow vehicles before 1900, bicycles with runners and gripping fins; steam-propelled sleighs; and then Model T Fords with rear tractor treads and skis in front.”

  “I seem to remember they had the first races held near Three Lakes four years ago. Like a hundred of these "snow-buggies" started, I forget how many finished. Carl somebody, something with an “E,” developed a prototype snowmobile in the 1920s, with a two-cylinder motorcycle engine on a long sled, skis under the front, running off an endless track in the back. Just one track, made like a chain sort of deal. Throws some serious snow. He was getting orders from Finland, the army, but I don’t know what happened. I’m not even sure there is a Finland now. The Canadians bought a couple hundred, I think.”

  “Igor Sikorsky, the airplane guy, invented the Aerosani, I think they called it, propeller-driven and running on skis. That was back in maybe 1910; before the war, anyway. The Red Army used some of them, before they got so broke and desperate. They are fast as shit, don’t steer really well. Lots of demented farm boys reinvent them every winter in places like Maine and Minnesota. We can build those easy. I had heard that this guy named Bombardier from some place in Quebec had invented a different caterpillar track system suitable for all kinds of snow conditions, made like the tread of a car tire. Rubber and fabric. Bombardier had already made some "metal" tracked vehicles, but this new traction system, the rubber-and-cotton track, is the goods. All the people I talked to were hot about it. He seems to be a pretty hot-shit kind of a guy.”

  “That’s all you got?”

  “You could put in a note that if that Bombardier guy is alive, and fighting with the French Canadiens in Quebec, they might just put a serious hurting on the Krauts and the Limeys up there. I didn’t think about that. Those guys do know all about snow.”

  “Got it. You better go hi
t the hay, your woman is waiting.”

  “Woman? Alde? Mine? News to me.”

  “Men are chumps. Trust me on this. Fucking go for it.”

  >>>>>>>>

  I even knocked on my own door before entering. “Come in,” she said, then, “You don’t have to knock, do you?”

  “I… Shit, who knows what I have to do.” I kicked off my shoes, sat on my side of the bed. “I don’t even know who you are. I… Couldn’t you find a place to stay?”

  “I want to be here. I think it is a good place to be. You are an important man, and even more importantly, you are an interesting person. You get things done. Your brain works sideways. You intrigue me. Is that bad?”

  “So you are willing to sleep with me, to get to know me?”

  “That’s how it’s done, isn’t it?”

  “Usually it’s the other way around.” I quibbled.

  “Modern times. There is a war on. Pick a cliché. I think I like you. I saw you get wounded. You handled it well. Very well. You didn’t panic, you did what you had to do, and we both lived. And here we are.”

  “In bed.”

  “As you say.”

  “You want me to take my clothes off? I’m not much for kissing right now, obviously enough.”

  “I’m not a school girl. I’m twenty-nine years old.”

  “A year older than me. Where are you from?”

  “I’m a… almost a Canadian. From the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Ever been there?”

  “No, I’m an East Coast guy. New England. Except for those three years in France. The train ride to San Francisco was my first trip west of the Mississippi. I was a newspaper guy. Were you an early pilot, like General Earhart?”

  “I wasn’t far behind. She is four or five years older. We learned to fly from the same woman, Neta Snook. I was her last student before she gave up her career to get married. I never knew why.”

  Well, I got her talking, anyway. Keep going. “That was in Michigan? Kansas? Earhart is from Kansas, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, I think so. No, Neta’s school was in Long Beach, California. I was out there because I was stupid. I thought I could break into the movies, but I’m too tall. Most of the leading men are very short, and they would have had to stand on a soapbox to kiss me.” She laughed, sort of. Not a happy laugh. “I kicked around, this and that, being a jazz baby, working odd jobs. Neta needed an office worker, somebody to answer the phone, I saw the ad in the paper, and one thing led to another.”

  “You worked as a pilot?”

  “No, not really. A little. I was a stunt woman in the movies, a stunt double, flew a few times, wrecked cars for MGM, got killed for union scale, fell off a lot of horses, a few crowd scenes, payed my SAG dues, that was about all. My best role was playing the Hollywood party girl for a while. Just for kicks. You know.”

  “Fascinating. A stunt woman? Impressive. So how did you wind up here?”

  “Just slutting around, fell into the wrong crowd of bohemians. They toyed with cocaine and communism, and got busted when they purged the studios a few months ago. When I got here, they asked for people who could fly, and here I am.”

  “Bob Weeks, you will meet him, he was a set designer up in Frisco, pretty much the same story. He saw how the wind was blowing, so he joined the Navy. He wound up here too.”

  “Yeah. This may have been the best thing that ever happened to people like us. You know?”

  “If we live through it. Maybe.”

  “Whatever happens will happen. At least, I am a pilot, I am alive, and I have a worthwhile job.” She reached for the light. “You want me, or do you not want me? I’m tired, morning comes real early around here.”

  “I do. I want you. Do your damnedest.”

  “My pleasure, Miles, my pleasure.”

  >>>>>>>

  That turned out to be one of those educational evenings. Cookie may have been a professional, but Alde was an expert. There is a difference. She knew what she wanted, and was happy to entice me into giving it to her. We could have carried on, but as she said, morning came real early. No pun intended.

  Somewhere in that night, an idea had occurred to me, and there was nothing to do but to grab a coffee and hunt up Bob Weeks. Alde had to go run more tests on the Cannon Ship, and I had a plateful myself.

  I found Bob where he was supposed to be, in his field kitchen car at the end of our trail, stoking up on coffee and doughnuts. I helped myself, I had tissues to restore, I had to explain about my face, then asked him about his catapult car deal. “It was pretty simple. We used the lightest plane they had, those Hong Kong Curtiss copies, and stripped it down to the maximum. No landing wheels, just skids, a .50 on the upper wing, trimmed a foot off each wing, every trick in the book. A done deal. The first few seconds after launch are a little hairy, but we ought to be able to mess with the dive bombers where they least expect it.”

  “I have a Plan B. I ordered a couple tons, quite a few tons, of the biggest skyrockets they make. I was thinking of just building bins on the backs of tanks, and shooting off a few dozen sky rockets into the faces of those dive bomber bastards. But then I got to thinking, what if we just liberated a couple hundred 55-gallon steel drums and used those as launchers? We could mount those anywhere, put an inch of flash powder on the bottom, cover the top with paper, and set them off with electricity. Bound to be a distraction at the very least.”

  He thought for a minute, stirring his empty coffee cup. “Sure. You would never hit anything except by accident, and you would not do a whole lot of damage if you did, but the second time the dive bomber attacked, he would be just that much warier. Good. I can put a crew on it today. I played with pyrotechnics some in the theater. Piece of cake.”

  “I thought that if some of the rockets dragged some baling wire behind them…”

  “Or even silk cord. That stuff is stronger than steel. Lighter.” More thought. “I could design a better rocket too. There was a Congreve rocket? British?”

  “Yeah, I saw that. They stole the idea from some prince or something in Mysore, India. Bound to be easy to make.”

  “And the Chinese can make anything out of nothing…” He mused out loud.

  “You are on the right track. Go for it. I have to get back to my real job, listening to the radio.”

  “You sure have it rough, Miles. I pity you.”

  “Suck it up, Bob, suck it up.”

  >>>>>>>

  The Germans must have thought they were winning the Battle of Sherbrooke, they had reports on the air, more gloating than informative, but a plague on both their houses. And their horse and their ass and the manservant within their gates. Fuck them all, all but nine, six pallbearers, two road guards, and one to count cadence.

  I had my doubts; if it was to be a tank battle, that would be Patton’s meat. The French stations up there, what they were now calling Canadien Libéré, the CL, were broadcasting descriptions of a giant mess, with no clear battle lines, not hard to figure the Canadien Libéré were skulking around, sniping at targets of opportunity of any side. And good for them.

  Lupo and those guys had the big news; the Colombians had taken Panama City, which was no great surprise, they did have some sort of a navy, if not much of one. But a few torpedo boats could cause a lot of damage in restricted waters, and there was not much a deep-water navy could do about it. They claimed to have sunk two American “battleships” but that was liable to be exaggeration, at best. Maybe destroyers, maybe pure bullshit. Most likely they had sent infantry through the jungles and walked over the garrisons who were all focused on the seas, anyway. I remembered stories about huge coastal defense batteries of naval caliber guns, but they all were aimed out to see. A few soldiers with rifles could shoot their way into the back doors and take them over, no problem. Or problemo. The Americans had just gotten the Canal back open after the locks had been damaged by an explosives-laden ship in the locks and some scuttled ships in the Colon side, but this was more serious, if the Colombians had any g
umption what-so-ever. Chances were good that the Panamanian population would support their fellow Spanish against the arrogant gringos anyway. Teddy Roosevelt had pulled a fast one, and hornswoggled Panama from Colombia in the first place. Paybacks are hell.

  All that was probably just a morale victory, we were still getting all our supplies from the West Coast and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which is to say, Japan. We were not lacking for staples, at the very least. Rice and beans and gas and oil and ammo. Everything you needed.

  Speaking of which, the Philippines, under President, now Governor Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, had been ratified as the forty-ninth state, and Hawaii was expected to be next. That left the North Pacific as a Nippo-American lake, covered our supply lines quite nicely.

  Australia was still hanging fire, the GEACPS was waffling, the assorted brown people were no more ecstatic about having a bunch of whites in their Sphere than the Aussies were about being there rubbing shoulders with them. Turns out that everybody is a fucking racist at heart. The Japs were as bad as anybody, worse than some. Except us Polar Bears, who could not afford any of that bullshit.

  Just about then, word came down that henceforth, the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, would be split between the AEF Siberia, headquarters in Irkutsk, and AEF Gobi, HQ in Jiu-quan. AEFS would have its main port in Vladivostok, be commanded by Bradley, of course, and AEFS, under Hodges, would be supplied through Dalny and the surrounding ports. The Japanese army would be working out of Shanghai, and was suspected to be kept busy with pacification and governance. Which meant occupying the heartland of China, suppressing unrest, and too fucking bad for anybody who didn’t like that idea.

  Not my problem. I suspected it was going to be rough as a rat’s ass on anybody who did not join the program, but that’s the war biz. All the Japs had to do was to be slightly less brutal than the Germans, and they were home free.