Black Bear Blues

by Stephen Wishnevsky

  “It is slang for ‘amateur’. Homemade radio stations, built by hobbyists. A popular hobby in the States. The government tries to keep a lid on it, but stations keep popping up.”

  “These stations? They are difficult to make, to construct?”

  “No. Not really. The receivers are very simple, the broadcasters are not much more complex, especially the Morse Code ones. You understand Morse Code?”

  “Like the telegraph. Dots and dashes.”

  “Correct.”

  “I have this knowledge. I will make you a bargain. You find or make me a station, a book will do, and I will provide you with a person, a liaison between us. Quietly. You understand.”

  “I do. Two conditions.”

  “Name them.” She looked sharply at me, into my eyes.

  “No more crazy women, and they need to be fluent in Japanese and English both. We are weak on our Japanese, ever since Isis left for greener pastures.”

  “You say crazy women and you say Isis. Yelena is not crazy.”

  “She might as well be, for my purposes. If I can’t trust somebody, then it does not matter how sane they might or might not be. Understand?”

  “Perfectly. You suppose I will send you someone who is not loyal to me first?” She might have almost smiled then.

  I did smile. “Of course not. But I do not expect you to send me a… self-employed pirate like Yelena.”

  “Or like the one you call Cookie. We can agree on this. Done.”

  “Thank you. In the States, we say an honest politician is one who stays bought.”

  “I grasp your idiom. Good day.”

  I did not quite bow my way out of her office.

  >>>>>>>

  Which left the rest of the day to get into trouble in. Peaches had located the dark room truck, I found Conductor Earl Watson in the crummy, had him find us yet another car to add to the train. He suggested two, a flatcar, and a combine car. The combine car had a passenger compartment on one end of a box car, they used them for rail crews, other construction type works. “We can just load the truck on the flat car, and let the dark room crew sort it out.”

  I said “good, do it.” The dark room crew had a tiny still for water, it says here, so that was all under control. Of course, I had forgotten that steam engines need clean water for their boilers, if not distilled, but you run steam through a coil, and voila, distilled water.

  Sometimes I think I have a lot on the ball, but talking to people who actually know what they are talking about soon fixes that illusion. Academic history books have no real idea of the sheer raw detail work it takes to let a modern army function. General Hodges did, of course, which was why I was glad to work for him. Swashbucklers get you killed, detail men make sure you have food, water, ammo, and the thousand other things you need to stay alive when you are in the shit. Hero tales never notice that shoe polish can save soldiers’ lives. Foot powder. Dry socks. All desperately important when you are slogging through the shit. We were soon to be continentally ass-deep in the shit, by all accounts.

  >>>>>>>>

  That accomplished, I had a thought for lunch, dinner, or both, made it all the way to the Dining Car before the next complication came up. A telegram. “I STOP UNDERSTAND STOP DO YOU WANT ME THERE QUESTION MARK STOP BABS ENDS”

  I sent back, “SITUATION UNCLEAR STOP AWAIT WORD STOP LOVE STOP MILES ENDS” Brevity is supposed to be the soul of wit, but I felt more like an idiot than ever. Then I remembered my deal with Aneko, sent another telegram requesting a book on Amateur Radio, construction of, and sent copies to Babs, Eppi, the Bulletin, and Bradley’s HQ. Somebody must know something.

  I did manage soup and a rice dish and a couple cups of coffee before word came that Maggie and Stan were back. They didn’t need me, but I needed to know how deep the shit was, so I wiped my face, grabbed my coat and hat, and took a flivver to the airstrip. I was amazed that the Trimotor had made it back; it was pretty much peppered with bullet holes. The medics and a few mechanics were there, they must have run from the pagoda that passed for a control tower. The medics had Bob Oblenski on a stretcher outside the door, he was covered in blood, but aware enough to recognize me and try to wave. Let’s call it a wave. I was going to speak, but just then the medic finished cutting away his sleeve, found a vein, and slipped Bob a syringe of night-night into his bloodstream. See ya, Oblenski, hope you feel better.

  I poked my head in the door, the co-pilot was slumped on the floor. Face down. The various pools of blood had escaped their dams of coagulation and flowed towards the tail of the plane once it had gone tail-down for landing. It was gross; little rivulets of blood in the corrugations of the metal below the floor walkway. Maggie and Stan were loading the exposed plates into holders, you have to do that inside black cloth bags, of course. It seemed callous, but I knew; first things first. If people die to complete your mission, you are all the more obligated to finish the job. And finish it correctly. I ventured a question to Maggie; “You all right?”

  “Fuck.” She said, clearly and distinctly; “Who knows?”

  “We have the darkroom back at the train. My flivver is running.”

  “Good. Five minutes.”

  “On you.”

  I turned away. I wished I smoked. A cigarette would not help, but it might be a tiny distraction. Mechanics were running up, gathering around, one pointed, said, “Gas leaking. Stand back.”

  “They have to get the film.” He nodded, got a shovel, scraped up sand and grit, threw it into the puddle. “Stan,” I called, “If you can hurry, please do so. You have a fuel leak.”

  “Okay. Hear you.” I heard a siren, looked to see an obviously improvised fire truck roll up, not too close to the Trimotor, mechanics piled off, fire extinguishers at the ready. Others opened hatches, fiddled with things inside. I hoped they were disconnecting batteries and such, but I didn’t know enough to even ask questions. Shut up and let the experts do their jobs. That’s what they are there for. After a minute, maybe two, Stan waved me over, handed me a couple of black metal boxes with tight-clamped covers. “Here’s half the plates. Put them in the truck. Almost out of here.”

  Such happy words. I walked away, glad to have an excuse to go away. Any excuse would do. By the time I stashed the plates, turned around to look, Stan was helping Maggie down from the doorway. From the way he was holding her, I could see that they were about to get a lot closer. Nearly getting killed does that to you. Or for you. Whatever it takes. They lugged the last two boxes to the flivver, crawled in. I saw Maggie limping, asked her if she was hurt. She had to look, her jodhpurs were drenched in somebody’s blood, but she was not wounded, the heel of her boot had been shot off. She examined the damage, winced, bit her lip, but did not speak, except to say, “That calls for a drink. Or two.”

  “Hop in. I’ll buy. You earned it. Was it rough?”

  “It was less than fun. We got pounced by a Fokker. Bob got him, but he riddled us pretty well. And we were past Karamay, we thought we were home free.”

  “Shit-sticks. This is going to be as rough as a rat’s ass.” I said. They both just shook their heads, climbed aboard, said no more. Yeah. Rough.

  >>>>>>

  We got the plates to the darkroom crew, had a few snorts, until they stopped shaking, then Stan and Maggie headed to the showers and bed. One way or another. Warts or not, Stan looked like he had earned a little high class female solace. Or vice versa. Whatever it takes. Tempus fugit. Something like that. That left me feeling a bit lonely, also a bit relieved that I didn’t have to be nice to anybody tonight. I wandered on down to the Radio Car, not much happening, got into a penny ante poker game with Peaches, Frankie, and the two Mexicans, Felipe and Pablo. Just a normal night in the army, as normal is it gets. A lesbian, a transvestite, two enemy exiles, and whatever the fuck I am. That fucking Frankie is a sharp card player, if not a card sharp. She is real good at bluffing, keeping a poker face, and remembering who was holding what. I suppose it figures. She had been through more hard
schools than the rest of us put together, and we were no babes in the woods, ourselves.

  Turned out that all five of us had been in France in the AEF at different times, Peaches had been an Army Nurse Corps, Frances and I had been doughboys, as had Pablo, five or six years later. Felipe had been Service Corps, digging trenches and repairing roads, clearing mines; we all had seen a whole lot of shit we didn’t want to talk about. So, we just told stories about getting drunk in Paris and outsmarting MPs, the usual bullshit. Good times.

  Frankie let slip that she had been an infantry scout, one of those guys who crept between the lines looking for krauts to kidnap, bodies with insignia, all that nasty shit. Figured, she was as small as a soldier could be, just over five feet tall, and slender. I knew she had a dick, when we rescued them from the exile ship, all the unnaturals had been more or less naked, we had to rustle up clothes for them back at the shop I was running. But fuck it. She had earned the right to be the fucking Sugar Plum Fairy if she wanted to be, and in any case, we were all Americans over here, strangers in a very strange land. If she wanted to be a woman, she could be three women for all of me. She could follow orders, she could shoot, and she could think. I wished I had a battalion of people like her.

  I was mildly afraid she had some sort of crush on me, which was flattering, but life was complicated enough already. Homosexuals never bothered me, I didn’t feel threatened like some men do. I already had hemorrhoids and a bad attitude, there was not much else they could give me. They were like left-handed people or people that liked butterscotch. Okay for them, but not what I’m interested in. Everybody is an idiot; we are all just fucked up about different things.

  Thinking those thoughts, I realized I had had a few more drinks than I needed, and was up way past my bed time. In any case, I would have to deal with Alde tomorrow or the next day, so I best get my beauty rest. I need a lot more than other people, it’s a fact. There is a lot more of me, for one thing.

  >>>>>>>

  The morning started with a bang. A good one. A Gotha bomber came over at dawn to harass us, but one of our Curtiss pursuits had been loitering in the rising sun for just such an eventuality, and nailed the bastard before he could get properly lined up on his bomb run; tough luck, buddy. The Gotha smashed into the wreckage dump outside the Wall, the one we had shot up the other day, and the explosions and fire went on for quite a while. Entertainment. Better than a Tom Mix movie. By the time all that calmed down, we had the first of Maggie’s photos developed and on our desks for evaluation. Duplicates, of course, the professionals at HQ were on the job with a hell of a lot more experience than we ever had, However, it was easy to see that we were deep in the shit soup again. “Tanks, this time,” I noted. “Not many of them, dozens, but any is too many.” The Germans liked the big Land Fortresses, the K-Wagen super-heavy tanks, the Grosskampfwagen. Those big bastards weighed in at a hundred and twenty tons, were forty feet long, ten feet high, had a crew of twenty-seven, and four 77mm guns, a bunch of machine guns, depending on sub-type. They had been pretty useless in the churned-up fields of France, so they had gone with a lighter A7V, which was about half the size. All those had been of very limited use; Germany just didn’t have the materials to build enough to be of much good. And after Patton’s much vaunted tank thrust in ’20 had been rained into oblivion, all that had gone by the wayside. Anti-tank mines were a lot cheaper and more effective, especially in static warfare where everybody knew where and when the attacks had to be made.

  Out here in the desert, the steppes, it could well be a different matter. But they were not going to hide something that size from aerial cameras. There were perhaps a hundred of the thirty ton A7Vs, and it looked like every tank required ten lorries of equipment and troops to be effective. A whole lot of crap headed right down our throats. Such jolly fun.

  And what was I prepared to do about it, I wondered? The main force had veered east to that Karaganda salt mine and oil field place, five hundred miles from Karamay, ten days if everything went perfectly. I was our job to make sure that nothing went according to their plan. Okay, now that was settled, what can I do?

  Listen to the radio, and take notes, that’s what I was paid to do. The first big news was that both sides, the Anglo-Germans and the Americans had both declared victory in the Battle of Sherbrooke, which was all well and good, but the Canadien Libéré Radio soon announced the opening of the Battle of Newport, which was thirty-odd miles south, and in the state of Vermont. Which meant that the United States had been invaded for the first time since the War of 1812. Newport, I happened to know, was the top end of US Rt. 5, the major north-south route up the Connecticut River Valley. Bad news, and getting worse. There were Spanish reports of U-Boat attacks on our new Naval Base at Vera Cruz, Mexico, and in the Mississippi River as far up as Baton Rouge. I didn’t know how the hell they got a submarine up the Big Muddy, but whatever they had, somebody put a few torpedoes into flood control levees and the port facilities in New Orleans, and all hell was breaking loose. The US stations were reporting winter flooding in the Lower Mississippi, so there seemed to be some truth to the Spanish reports.

  I scribbled a note to Hodges, saying we could not count on many more troops from home, we would have to win this war with what we had on hand, and what the Co-prosperity Sphere could spare us. On second thought, I rewrote and had it sent as a telegram. Although, it did look like the South Asia War had settled down to a dull roar, consolidation, no more naval probes by the Anglo-Germans. The North Atlantic and the Mediterranean were far more profitable theaters of operations, no doubt about it. I was not getting solid info, but from peripheral mentions, the Med and the Black Sea, the northern part of the Arabian Sea, were Anglo-German lakes, and they were looting with all their might.

  The Persians seemed to be holding tight, the Japanese were consolidating India and East Africa. How benign their rule was, was anybody’s guess, the Indians and Ceylonese, the Burmese, did not have any voices we could find on the shortwave.

  The Aussies and the Filipinos were supposed to be on Patton’s side, but what they could do for him was another question. A long damn way from Vermont. Just as I was thinking those gloomy thoughts, a private from the Signal Corps car brought me a telegram. “LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW STOP RAY ENDS”

  Say, what? When in doubt, follow orders. I looked, nothing. The distant airfield, the Trimotor had been pulled off the landing strip, to be repaired or junked. The other way. Just the Yards and the main line to Urum-chi, the Wall behind, the clutter of the city between the yards and the Wall. More nothing. Looked like more snow coming in. Big deal. Then I heard a whistle, a steam whistle far back the main line east. One and one makes two.

  Grab a jacket, and go look. Soon, a very long train, three locomotives in front, chugged past the Yards, it didn’t seem to have slowed much, if any, and kept on full speed to the west. The switches had all been thrown, the gates in the Wall opened, off it went. I should have counted the cars, but I didn’t think of that until it was too late. I did see that every car was full of men, some large and white, some smaller and darker, all in uniform. Our color khaki uniforms. Oh, really? Boxcars and passenger cars, all crammed with soldiers. There were flags here and there, no particular order. Two kinds, solid blue ones spattered with stars and red and blue ones with triangular white fields at the staff, the white had big golden stars centered. I like flags, a childhood passion, I thought I had seen the three-color ones before, but the all blue ones were new to me.

  Once the cars were out of sight past the Wall, I went to the Britannica, and flipped to Flags. Yeah. The three-color ones were from the Philippines, but were upside down from the picture, with the red on top. I knew it meant something, but I didn’t know what, and it bothered me. The blue ones were sort of like the Australian ensign, but no Union Jack in the upper left corner… Oh. I get it. No Union Jack. Our two newest states or territories or what the fuck every they were. They were here. Troops. They could not get to the States fast enough, so they were
here. I was willing to bet they had Japanese rifles, or at least the Filipinos did. Arisakas. Smaller caliber for smaller people. There were probably enough Lee Enfields kicking around China to equip a dozen armies, much less the Diggers, god knows we had enough of them pointed at us already. Warlords bought up Brit surplus when they were not equipped with Mausers by the ever-helpful krauts. A plague on both their houses.

  On second thought, Patton would not want brown Flips in his pure white country, he might want the Aussies, but who can tell what a mad man thinks? I did know that the Japs could give a shit. They were not noted for giving a crap about the Chinese, so the color of the cannon fodder was irrelevant. And it was better, if you thought coldly enough about it, it was better to fight with troops that wanted to go home someplace, then to arm, equip, and train native Chinese, who might just get uppity ideas about taking their country back, once the Germans were gone.

  Was it possible to think as coldly as the Imperial General Staff? Probably not, but survival indicated that giving it a good try was strongly suggested. Just think of Aneko. A cold bitch who would not let herself know what she was thinking while she was thinking it. I kept those particular thoughts to myself. Anybody who could not figure that line of shit out was too dumb to have it explained to them, in the first place. I wished I had a dog, so I could kick it. That wouldn’t help either, but better than trying to drown this shit out with booze. Poor doggie.

  >>>>>>

  I telegraphed Ray Reynolds, “I SEE STOP THANKS STOP MILES ENDS” Always be polite. Then I got another odd idea. How about building a little morale here. What did soldiers want? Well, booze and whores and going home. Outside of that? They wanted to know that they were not forgotten, that somebody gave a drizzly fuck about them. That was not going to work either, not with a bunch of exiles, not when your official country officially hated you. But still. How about some music. A band. Girls. Even the lesbians liked girls, right? And the homos? Who knows. Ask one.