TEETH - The Epic Novel With Bite (The South Pacific Trilogy)

by Timothy James Dean

  The Colonel hollered and an aide came running.

  “Take my jeep to the hospital,” the Commander ordered. “Find old Doc Mac. Tell him I got the message about our young American. Have him send the Private to see me at once.”

  “Yes Sir!” The 2nd Lieutenant was already on his way.

  – Three Hours Earlier

  Johnny had thought that this time, his wound would not heal. Now, while he knew he was going to make it, it was the throb in his chest that woke him. He lay on his canvas cot, already sweating, while the feathered orchestra tuned up over the tent. His fingers massaged the welt on his chest. It aches something fierce this morning.

  It was an important day. He had a meeting with the man who controlled his future. If Johnny had anything to do with it, that future lay north, across the Pacific Ocean. He was going to be there for the invasion of Japan. It was already mid-July, 1945, and he figured the Army would be on the move from the Philippines to Okinawa any day. For sure, the fighting would be hand-to-hand, between the houses of the enemy cities, before the year was out.

  Johnny had sworn by things he held sacred to help bring down the enemy Empire. His hatred of “the Japs” ran deep, and his reasons were personal, held close to his chest.

  The challenge was, he had to get himself back across the ocean to the Philippines. And here he was, languishing in hospital. He would not forgive himself if, after everything he’d been through in these three years of ferocious war, he missed the Big One.

  The light gradually intensified behind the canvas wall of the shelter he shared with five other injured men. He sat up and ran his fingers through his longish dark hair, then stretched without thinking. The stab pierced him and he stifled a groan and dropped his arms.

  Fight to live, he encouraged himself fiercely. Live to fight!

  The words had echoed through his mind during the long dogdays of suffering back in the Philippines and here in New Guinea. Those were the lost months when even the doctors didn’t seem to expect him to live.

  Live to fight, fight to live! He didn’t know where he’d come up with the chant, but he’d repeated it as if his life depended on it, and maybe it had.

  During his years under General MacArthur, Johnny had been shot three times and bayoneted once. He’d taken a bullet through the thigh, one in the forearm, and there’d been the stabbing. He had a nifty scar that zigzagged down his ribcage, but at least the knife had not killed him. It was this last bullet that had almost done the trick. It had gone through his chest and out his back. That had been four months ago.

  Last night, Johnny had stretched out as usual under the mosquito netting, wearing only his boxer shorts in the heat. But every time he shifted, the pain woke him up. At last he must have slept, because when next he came to, someone was whimpering. Gradually, he realized he was the source of the pitiful sounds, and he choked them off. He hoped he hadn’t bothered the other guys.

  Just one of my nightmares. Like most soldiers who’d fought in New Guinea, Johnny had malaria. It lived in his bloodstream and there was no cure. Every once in a while it came knocking so hard, his teeth rattled. This time the night terror had been so bad, he worried a bout of the fever was coming on, and that was the last thing he needed today.

  Johnny’s nightmare had been about the dead men again—the ones who died at his side, and the others he had killed. In life, they had been on opposite sides, but in death they came together.

  The nightmare that woke him up this time was one of the worst. Walt, the buddy he’d arrived with in New Guinea, was bayoneted again. It had happened in the opening minutes of Johnny’s first firefight, in the stinking swamps of Buna on the north coast.

  The Jap runs. The scream, the scowl, the crooked tooth. The rifle and knife.

  Johnny and Walt had been seventeen. Like tens of thousands of American teenagers, they’d lied about their age and joined the Army. That particular morning, after a terrible trek across the New Guinea mountains that took more than forty days, they’d arrived at Buna. At once, their column had been ordered into the swamp towards an enemy machine gun. Walt was already sick, out of his mind with fever. He’d fallen facedown in the murk and lost his glasses.

  The bayonet went deep into Walt’s chest. In his dream Johnny saw Walt’s mouth form the “oh!” of his death. Again, he swung his own rifle with the big knife on it and saw it pop through the enemy’s neck. Both skewered men fell to the mud.

  But that was where reality and the nightmare diverged. Walt and the enemy soldier had died right there, but in the nightmare they lived on. They writhed and choked and sliced their hands on the piercing steel.

  “Why?” Walt asked Johnny, staring with his mild blue eyes while the blood bubbled on his lips. “Why? Why?” The sheer misery of it woke Johnny up. He lay still and waited for the images to fade. He reached under the cot for his Springfield rifle and laid it beside him. He’d acquired it the day Walt had died, all that eternity ago, back in the fall of ’42. Johnny’s carbine had taken a bath in the swamp that day and was useless. He saw the Springfield .30-06 in the hands of a dead GI and the shape called to the game hunter in him. It was the ideal firearm for the sniper he became.

  Walt was long gone in the New Guinea mud, but Johnny still had the Springfield M1903. It had saved his life countless times, and the touch of it always brought him comfort.

  The light was bright enough for him to get up. The others could sleep, but he had plans. In order to convince the brass to send him back to battle, he had to flog himself into shape. For the last two weeks, ever since he could get about well enough, he’d taken ever-longer walks through the town. And for five days, he’d even managed a little running. If you could call it that. More of a shuffle, gasping like some broken down geezer. Maybe, the forlorn thought entered his mind, this time I won’t bounce back.

  At once, Johnny heard from the tough-as-nails soldier in his head. This was the part of him that had done most of his thinking during the war years. No whining! Today, you’ll run the whole way!

  “Now let’s hear those feet hit the deck!” as his father used to say. Johnny sighed and sat up. He pulled a thin-strapped undershirt over his head and tugged it down over his dog tags. He pulled on camo trousers, socks, and grabbed the worn canvas sneakers from under his bed. He’d scrounged these at the hospital. A dead man’s shoes. He knocked them out to make sure no spiders or centipedes had taken up residence overnight, and slid in his feet. He stuffed his Zippo and a box of smokes in a pocket and went out through the screen door on its spring, catching it so it wouldn’t bang and wake the others.

  Just as he stepped out, the sun sailed up over the trees and drenched in gold the canvas edifices and Quonset huts that made up the Port Moresby Military Hospital. In the big tree over the tent, the birds burst into their full-throated paean to the new day. Johnny glanced around and saw only a few other people this early, medics and native orderlies coming off shift. His tent was out on the fringe. Which is good—means I’m about done with the place.

  All his life, Johnny had been athletic. In San Diego, he’d been a pass receiver on the football team, and his track-and-field events were sprints and the long jump. He’d been fast! But then in the Territory of Hawaii, he thought the football team was lame, and he’d transferred all his considerable enthusiasm to ocean sports. He’d been sixteen when he got there, and right away, he’d admired the beachboys and their long boards. Honolulu was a growing town that attracted more and more mainland vacationers, especially since the advent of service by Pan Am, with their huge Flying Boats, the Clippers. Johnny saw that the surfers attracted the prettiest girls. During his year on Oahu, Johnny had joined their ranks. Egged on by his new friends, he’d even become an adept rider of the water mountains that thundered onto the island’s north shore.

  But after months in hospital, his strength had been stolen away. Somehow, he had to get it back. As he stretched out his hamstrings against the tree, he thought for the umpteenth time, I shouldn’t even be in
New Guinea! What bad break brought me back here? He figured he’d left the steaming jungles and swamps behind him for good.

  And then there’s Gwyndolyn. The lovely nurse bothered him! She gave him the hope there was a better, softer world. But the hard soldier was quick to bust up that illusion. A fellow whose job is killing other men has no business feeling hope, or much of anything.

  Forget about Gwyn, the voice told him. Remember your promise! Get back to the fight.

  Johnny headed along the muddy road towards the harbor, mustering the will to run. But on that sultry Saturday in July, Johnny had no way of knowing that in a handful of days, he’d think back on this and wonder how his plans had gone so wrong. By then, he was lost in the unexplored heart of the island, running from a great predator directly for the most bloodthirsty cannibal nation on the island.

  But Johnny was sheltered from that knowledge by an ineluctable fact of the human condition. In the present, our sight is a marvelous thing, showing even the far horizon. And hindsight, as they say, is “twenty-twenty.” But in the crucial direction, the one from which both destiny and destruction rush at us, we are as blind as newborns.

  When it comes to peering into the future, even lofty intellects that can describe the births and deaths of galaxies at the far edge of the Universe are as nearsighted as anyone. Take Albert Einstein, one of the greatest of geniuses. Back in 1905 when he published his famous equation, E=mc2 (energy = mass, multiplied by the speed of light, squared), he did not even glimpse that the Nazis would soon rise up and win Germany. Nor did he get the faintest glimmer that Hitler’s henchmen would seize upon his work as their best hope for world dominion. He did not have an inkling that it would be his new home, America, that would win the desperate race to create atomic weapons of mass destruction.

  On this particular Saturday morning (which, in time’s relativity, was Friday night in New Jersey where Albert stood in his moose-head pajamas, brushing his teeth for bed), the physicist could not part the veil of days to the time when the practical application of his theory would alter Planet Earth forever.

  “If only I had known,” the physicist would one day sigh, “I should have become a watchmaker.”

  So, as Johnny broke into a jog, dodging the groups of natives, he did not know that the future he desperately wanted had already cut him adrift, left him behind.

  Fight to live, he chanted as he quickened his pace. Live to fight!

  CHAPTER 2

  It was going to be another blistering day in Port Moresby, capital of the Territory of Papua, and the largest urban center on the island of New Guinea. “Capital,” however, was a rather grandiose description for what was in truth a rough town on the edge of a savage frontier. The reason for its existence was its fine harbor, just across the gulf from the north-pointing beak of Australia.

  The Equatorial sun winked on the waves and glared from the metal roofs of the buildings clustered along the shore. It glanced blindingly off the thousand puddles that pocked the roads, the legacy of the downpour of the previous afternoon. The rays burnished the dusky skin of hundreds of natives who strolled the streets, flowing among the military vehicles and vintage cars from the prewar period.

  A jeep splashed by, honking at the pedestrians. The Australian officer in the passenger seat shouted to get out of the way! Grudgingly, they obliged. Why is the white man always in a rush? The fenders brushed by. The Major had urgent business with the Commander of all US forces in the New Guinea Territories.

  The natives’ dark skin and kinky hair attested to their distant African heritage. They were thickly muscled, outfitted in tribal regalia and the brilliant trade store cloth they favored. Men and most women were bare-chested. The warriors carried homemade weapons—bamboo longbows, arrows, axes of stone and steel, and wooden clubs. Even though World War Two had brought millions of guns to New Guinea, the natives did not possess them—at least not overtly, and never in town, for these were strictly forbidden by the Australian authorities. The men carried their traditional weapons this day, not because they spoiled for a fight, but simply because they never left home without them. In fact, they were in a festive mood. Saturday was market day!

  The jeep braked at an office compound. Buildings of white weatherboard were separated by plots of trimmed grass and crushed coral walkways. Beneath the Stars and Stripes, the sign indicated that this was American Army Headquarters.

  The jeep’s passenger, Major D. Hawsey, climbed out, grabbed his worn crocodile-skin briefcase, and headed for the entrance. The “D” stood for “Dwayne,” a name the Major had loathed since he’d had to defend it with his fists in school. As far as even his closest mates knew, the “D” stood for “Dingo.” The Major gave a passing glance to the Stuart tank among the canna lilies. The cannon was impressive, but the broken track betrayed another story. Tanks had been of little use in the New Guinea mud. Steel coffins.

  Sentries flanked the front doors. They recognized the Aussie and he passed without challenge. Dingo felt sorry for them—overly dressed, in his opinion, in steel helmets, long shirts and trousers. He, by contrast, wore shorts and a light shirt. On his head was the famous “Digger” hat, a wide-brimmed affair with one side hooked up. His nod to etiquette was the white dress socks neatly folded over just under the knee, and leather shoes. Dingo had lived in New Guinea for decades, and like the natives, he was more comfortable in bare feet.

  He entered the building, greeted the Sergeant at the desk by name, and strode down a hallway. He knocked on a door, heard a muffled invitation, and came into a corner office with a view of the harbor. A ceiling fan churned the humidity and beneath it, the Commander of the US Garrison, Colonel Henry Chambers, Jr., rose from his desk. He closed the journal in which he’d been writing and came towards the Australian with a crisp “good morning.” Wooden sofas faced one another across a coffee table, and Henry waved Dingo to one, while he sat at the other.

  “Henry, something unusual came into my possession this morning,” Dingo said as he rummaged in his briefcase, “It’s been carried by hand a very long way, and it’s addressed to you.”

  “To me?” the Colonel asked in surprise. He saw what the Australian drew into the light and his nose came up like a Carolina bloodhound on the scent.

  The office door banged open, interrupting the men. A young native woman backed into the room, carrying a tray with a pitcher and two glasses. She was barefoot, and bare-chested, her breasts with their chocolate tips proudly on display. Her only clothing was a red and yellow grass skirt hung low on her hips. The Colonel looked up abstractedly and sighed. Now, what was her name? Ah yes.

  “Hala, how many times have I told you to keep your shirt on at work? Now go and put it on.”

  Dingo barely glanced at her. Every day both men saw native women with exposed breasts. The sight of one more—even though this one was admittedly more attractive than most—was barely cause for a raised eyebrow. Still, the Colonel insisted that the indigenous staff follow rules of decorum. The young Trobriand Islander was a newcomer to the capital. Her ethnicity was evident in the lighter skin of the offshore people. Hala spoke only a little mission-English, but she understood well enough what the boss-man said. Her experience of life, however, was that men appreciated a girl displaying the evidence she would make a good mate, one worthy of a high bride price.

  Why have good tits, she thought in her home tongue, if you do not show them off? Her response, therefore, was merely to offer the boss-man a fetching smile as she poured, bending so that her breasts bumped together. The men, she saw slyly, could not help noticing. Ice chips rattled into the glasses, followed by the passion fruit juice. Hala departed, hips swinging.

  These days, Dingo was meeting with Henry nearly every day. Soon he’d have a new Yank to break in. When Chambers had first arrived, he’d suggested to his Australian liaison that, in private, they forgo formalities. Now Dingo brandished the soiled letter.

  “As I say, Henry, it’s addressed to you.”

  “In person
?”

  “To your rank.” He read: “To the Commander of the American Forces in New Guinea.”

  He offered the item and Chambers turned it over in his hands. It was heavily stained, almost worn through at the creases. The Colonel glanced around for the ornate Japanese dagger that served as his letter opener.

  Johnny ran along the harbor-side road. There was a crowd of native people of all ages going in one direction, and he remembered it was market day. That would give some an opportunity to earn, and the others, an even greater one to spend. Many carried the shillings minted by Australia for people without pockets. The coins had holes punched through their centers. Some wore the white man’s wealth on thongs around neck or wrist.

  Johnny heard a babble of languages as he dodged the huddles greeting their one-talks—those who shared their tribal tongue. He noticed highlanders with their rugged features, coastal people with narrower ones, and the offshore Melanesians, some of whom reminded Johnny of the Hawaiians. The market was an opportunity to visit friends and kin, and to admire members of the opposite sex. Clutches of young warriors stood together, ogling the girls and making comments. Some females looked away and passed quickly by. Others, Johnny saw, met a man’s gaze and smiled boldly back. Saturday was an exuberant mixture of commerce, reunions and romance, rolled into one.

  Johnny heard the growl of a jeep, traveling fast. He saw natives jump out of the way. Just then, two boys came running from the crowd, chasing one another across the road. Johnny grabbed them by the necks, ignoring the twinge in his own shoulder.

  “Slow down!” he told them as the vehicle barreled by.

  “Yes Masta,” one smiled. “Thank you, Masta,” the other one said.

  “Don’t call me ‘master!’” Johnny said. “You want some gum?” He pulled the sticks out of his pocket and handed them over.