THE AIRPORT TERMINAL at Bethel today is a sturdy, modern building, where the signs are all bilingual-“EXIT/ANYARAO”-and the atmosphere is informal. The male and female restrooms (“ANARVIK”) share the same bank of sinks, and those sinks are located in an alcove that's wide open to the waiting room. Look in the mirror, and you can see everyone in the waiting room looking back.
Back at Elmendorf, back in the war, the airfield terminal was even more intimate, if that's the right word. The building had but one window, and that was almost always covered with a giant chalkboard listing the day's flights.
I remember searching the chalkboard the morning after Gurley had ordered me to the post on Little Diomede. To attract as little attention as possible to my supposedly top secret mission, I was to travel as far as I could on regularly scheduled flights. That meant I had to make my way first to Nome, and then determine the most efficient and least attention-getting means-sea or air-of continuing on to Little Diomede.
I'd already missed the 0600 flight to Nome. I'd not made it out of the forest until about eight-thirty. I'd spent some time looking for Lily time I should have spent lowering the balloon to the ground and rendering its payload safe. Instead, when I found my way back to the mysterious crash site she'd led me to, I found it ablaze. The incendiary bombs had fallen to the forest floor and ignited. The balloon itself, still trapped in the tree, had caught fire as well, and as I stood watching, the tree sloughed it off to the ground, a fiery scab. I thought the incendiaries meant it was unlikely germ weapons had been aboard-and if they had, they'd likely been incinerated.
Even so, I held my breath as much as I could as I ran for the river, expecting the fire or a belated blast to take me down before I'd made twenty yards. But twenty, fifty, one hundred yards went by, and I was still upright and running, ricocheting through the spruce down to the river. If anything exploded, the noise was lost to the rapids, which I followed back down to the trail, and then the trail into Anchorage. Instead of dissipating, the smell of smoke had only grown stronger the farther I had run. And once I was running along the city streets, I could see why-a great column of smoke now rose from the forest.
I didn't stop running until a hungover soldier, sprawled on the sidewalk, called out to me, “Didn't have enough money to pay 'er?” Then I realized I'd attract less attention on the nearly empty streets if I walked, and so I did, straight to the Starhope. Lily had to have escaped the forest before me. But the front door was locked. Lily's window was dark, and no one came to it when I called, not even Gurley
EVEN THOUGH IT WAS almost 10 A.M. when I got to base, I had decided to follow through on Gurley's orders. To be honest, part of me wanted to escape Gurley and the growing mess-which now included a balloon crashing in our backyard, not to mention a forest fire-and part of me thought I might be better positioned to help Lily. Little Diomede might be a barren rock in the Bering Sea, but it was well out of Gurley's sight. I'd discover a way to sneak off and find Lily-and Gurley would never know.
But Father Pabich would.
“My favorite sergeant!” he said when I walked into the terminal.
“Father,” I said, quietly.
Either Father Pabich didn't detect my anxiety or didn't care. He got up from the crate he was sitting on and came over to crush my hand.
“You look like twice-baked dogshit, Sergeant,” he said. “I'll take that as evidence you've been working hard.” I thought he might take silence as evidence I agreed, but when I didn't answer, he said, “Sergeant? Haven't seen you around, haven't seen you at Mass. Only one good excuse, and you better have it.”
I took a deep breath, trying to reacclimate myself to the real world: the war, Elmendorf, Father Pabich. I tried to smile. “I've been saying the rosary?” I said.
“Goddammit, son. Learn that joke from your little Protestant friends? Just for that, let's have you say the rosary, three times, each day this week.”
“Sir,” I said.
“I warned you,” said Father Pabich.
“Father?”
“And pray a special devotion to our Blessed Mother,” he said. “Now then-”
Two other soldiers walked in, and Father Pabich smiled and shouted at them as well. I was relieved to be out of the spotlight, and maybe sad that I no longer warranted it. He brought the two men over, introduced me-two Polish boys from Chicago. Good boys. They were shipping out to the Aleutians, and he was going with them. They'd be there for six months; Father Pabich, two weeks. Laughter. Some of the soldiers out there hadn't seen a priest for a year, he said. Any longer and we might lose them to a wandering Russian Orthodox missionary. Laughter. The two Polish guys looked younger than I, and even more embarrassed. We all smiled, though, and sincerely, because this was our priest. One of us. For us. And here he was, in Alaska, the abrupt edge of the world, tending to the likes of us-when we all knew none of us had souls worth tending. We were boys, after all, about to leave our teens, and we were being sent out to kill people.
Though Father Pabich had been out to the Aleutian Chain just last month, he was going again-all the other chaplains, of every faith, had been called elsewhere. Not that anyone begged for the duty. The conditions were too harsh, the men beyond saving: those who didn't kill themselves or each other were often done in by the weather. Father Pabich had almost been stranded on Kiska during his last trip.
“I was supposed to be on Kiska for only an hour,” he said, settling back. “I was spending my time on Attu, but they flew me out to Kiska, said the men would like a visit-said they had more than twelve Catholics there, and that's my rule: when you outnumber the apostles, you get a priest. So I went.” He patted his pockets for a cigarette, but one of the Chicago boys leapt in with his own pack. Father Pabich removed one, winked, and pocketed the pack. “Williwaws? You know what I'm talking about? Those Aleutian storms when the rain falls up as much as it does down? I'm in a PBY-Navy's flying me-goddamn pilot is flying like he's an atheist. Like he's not going to have God to deal with if he crashes that goddamn bird into the side of goddamn Kiska. Excuse me.” Puff. The other Chicago boy wanted a cigarette. He pointed to the pack in Father Pabich's pocket, but Father Pabich waved him off. “So we land. I almost drown getting to shore, but I get ashore. The pilot's said I've got an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes. Storm coming in and then nobody's taking off. So I get inside. First of all, there aren't twelve Catholics. There's six guys, tops. And one of them's a Jew. Tells me he is.Tells me he is. But he says they're all going to die. The island's haunted with ghosts from the Battle of Kiska, storms a-coming, wild dogs-and I don't know what. Scared. Wants to go to Mass. What am I supposed to do?” Shrug. “Like the Holy Father's gonna know.” Puff. “But I've been using up precious time talking to this one. So it's on to Mass. ‘Oh, no, Father,’ this other one, red hair, now says to me. ‘I got to go to confession. I can't receive communion if I'm not in a state of grace.’ Jesus Christ, is what I tell him. We're all going to be in a state of death, son. But-right, what does the Bible say? This might be Jesus Himself talking to me. So I sit down, send the other boys out, start with the confession. In the name of the Father. Now-of course you don't reveal what's said under the seal of confession, but mind you, he's not saying anything of interest. He's been on Kiska, for Christ's sake. The world has been sinning against him. But he's going on and on. Talks about his Friday fast. Says he's been eating things on Friday. Like what? I say. ‘Like meat, Father,’ this one says. Meat! When he'd been lucky to get a goddamn ration of meat out there. No time now. It's going to be a twenty-minute Mass at this point. No Litany of the Saints-like I can afford to piss them off. Hurry up, lad, I tell him. What other sins you got? Let's go. You ate meat, now what else, what else?”
Father Pabich leaned back, took a long drag, grinned ear to ear. I remember thinking, here's a man about to risk his life flying into the world's worst weather, and he couldn't be happier if he were the pope himself.
“You know what he says?” Father Pabich leaned forward, and then bel
lowed, “ ‘PEAS’! Oh, sweet Jesus, ‘What else, son?’ ‘Peas, Father.’ Oh my Lord.” We laughed. Everyone in the terminal laughed, but no one laughed harder than Father Pabich, who roared until he coughed and teared up and accidentally lit a small fire when his cigarette fell from his fingers into a nearby wastebasket.
I suppose that's how Gurley was able to enter without anyone noticing.
I was helping the Polish guys put out the fire when I heard my name. I straightened up, but didn't turn around-I wasn't nearly ready. They called Father Pabich's plane. He picked up his bags, smiled, and punched me the best he could with his elbow. “Be a good boy, now,” he said. “Fight us a good war.” I'd like to say that I ran after him, told him an elbow wasn't good enough, that I wanted to shake his hand before we parted, receive his blessing, but I didn't. Gurley was already coming toward me then, so I blame him, not the Japanese soldier who, a month or so later, overran Father Pabich's position as he was giving last rites to a Marine on Okinawa. The Japanese soldier bayonetted them both.
“Sergeant,” Gurley said, grinning for some reason. “I greet you with the very best of news.” I studied the exits, decided which would be easier to reach. But I didn't move.
First, Gurley said, he was not going to charge me for disobeying orders-though I had clearly done so since I was still in the terminal instead of on a flight to Little Diomede. But the better news was that he no longer wanted me to go. He had found a far more important and interesting task, much closer at hand. He couldn't tell me this in the terminal, however, and so ushered me outside, hand at my elbow.
“Sir,” I said, “I thought we agreed. I thought it was clear that I should go. That this would be best.”
“Would have been best, Sergeant,” Gurley said. “But things have changed. This is what happens in war. We must let bygones be bygones, we must put our differences aside, and we must-”
“Sir,” I said. “Last night, the office-the paper?”
Gurley's theatrical glee momentarily waned. “Yes, Sergeant?” he said. “And who have you told about that?” I looked away. “No one, I take it?” He waited until I met his gaze. He looked around to see if anyone was close to us, and then threw an arm around my shoulders, hissing into my ear as we walked. “You may think your captain mad, but what have you done about it? Nothing at all, it would seem.”
“Maybe I will do something,” I said. “Sir.”
He hustled me farther from the building before he spoke again. “Maybe you will, Sergeant. But you haven't yet, and I daresay you won't. Because your case is thin, because as scared as you are, you're even more curious, and because…” He let the word hang there while he looked at me, as though waiting for me to finish the sentence. But I couldn't, so he did, speaking slowly and evenly: “…you know that lives, the lives of certain people, depend on the actions you take.” Did I know whom he was referring to? This is what his gaze now asked. I lowered my own eyes; this was my answer.
“Good,” he said, smiling once more. We started to walk. “I admit, we have had our difficulties. But I promise, dear Sergeant, that all that will be forgotten in the excitement of the days ahead.” He darted a quick look behind us, and then replaced his arm around my shoulders. “What did those fools say up at Ladd? Five days? We'd wait five days before searching the tundra for signs of sabotage, or saboteurs?”
I nodded. “Three now, I suppose.”
“Three days,” Gurley said. “Seventy-two hours to beat that major, that galoot Swift, and the rest of the Army to the waning war's greatest prize.”
“Sir,” I started.
“Belk,” Gurley said, but I persisted.
“Sir, the major was right. They probably never got to launch their balloon. And even if they did, they probably did nothing more than make some moose sick. Maybe some mice, or ravens. And that's assuming the infected fleas were able to fight their way through the tundra winds long enough to-”
Gurley put one hand to his lips, another lightly to my chest, and shut his eyes. “Sergeant Belk,” he said, and then opened his eyes. “We are no longer chasing fleas. Your captain's snare may have finally caught a spy.”
GURLEY CONTINUED speaking, with very few interruptions, for the next two hours. At least, I remember it that way. I remember him meeting me at the terminal late that morning, and I remember him dismissing me from the Quonset hut that afternoon, and I remember him talking the entire time.
I don't remember much of what he said, however. Because I learned one important piece of information early on, and after that, found it hard to focus on much of anything else he said.
Lily had told him about Saburo.
Not much, not everything, but enough. Enough to convince Gurley to venture out into the tundra in search of Saburo, and enough to insist Lily accompany him as a guide. I would come along, too, of course- one could never imagine what sort of menial or distasteful tasks might arise. In fact, Gurley wanted me to precede him and Lily to Bethel. He needed a bit of extra time to finagle Lily's passage, but I could make the most of the delay by securing supplies in Bethel and “doing a bit of sleuthing” around town to see if I could come up with any information about Saburo on my own. Gurley and Lily would follow in a day or two. Depending on the weather-and Lily-we would disappear into the bush shortly thereafter.
Replaying these memories, it seems unmistakable now to me how completely mad he was. And I don't mean madness like the kind that doctors like to cure nowadays with dollops of prettily colored pills. I mean old-fashioned, Edgar Allan Poe-type madness, incurable but for a gun placed at the temple. The words fast and steady, the volume rising and falling, the eyes darting this way and that.
Yes, that's precisely how it looks now-insanity-but to have seen it through my eyes then, you would never have thought him so sane. Missing were the theatrics, the powder-keg rage-that way he had of flushing red and trembling like he was his own private earthquake, every extremity poised to fly off in pursuit of the leg that was already gone. In its place was this calm, constant, reasoned stream of language, punctuated every so often with words that almost set me to trembling: Lily, Saburo, Lily.
She had told Gurley about Saburo. She had told him his name. She had told him that he was Japanese, a soldier, a spy. She had told him almost everything that she had told me, except-and I listened carefully-that they were lovers.
The longer he went without mentioning this most important (only to me?) fact, the more rattled I became. How could she not have told him? Saburo: her first love, that golden summer, those perfect hands? As Gurley rambled on, however, I had time to think about it, and came to realize that she had every reason to lie to him. Her one desire was to make it out into the bush in search of-well, I'd never let her spell it out that night, but I knew she was searching for Saburo's body. But she couldn't get to Bethel without a military escort-that's why she had wanted me to come. I'd failed her, so she'd gone to Gurley. Riskier, but also better-he would have access to better resources. He could operate with more autonomy. He was an officer, after all, unlike me. He was her lover.
But I got to Lily first that afternoon. I'm sure Gurley expected me to go directly to the airfield without even stopping at my barracks, but instead, I went directly downtown, where I found Lily, peering out her window, as if she was expecting me, or someone. She smiled and gave me a little wave. I ran up to the second floor, a new question popping up on each stair- Did we really see the northern lights? Did I really see a balloon? Did we really run into the forest, the two of us, together, last night?-but when I reached her, what came out first was Gurley's decision to go to Bethel.
She looked both delighted and scared. “We're going to go?” she asked. “You're sure? Me, too? He said all of us?”
“He didn't tell you? It seemed like things were pretty well decided.”
“Last night-” Lily began, “or I guess it was this morning, after I made it back into town, I came back down here, I found him wandering the street.”
“Was he angry?”
I asked. “He must have asked why you ran. Did he see me? I was sure he saw me.”
“What did he tell you?” Lily asked carefully.
“About last night?” I said. “Nothing. Just that you'd had this conversation.” I waited for her to augment this, but she didn't, so I went on. “About a ‘spy.’” I paused again. “Lily, what were you thinking? Look what's happened-he's carting us all off to the bush, and God knows what he'll do there, where he won't have to worry about anyone other than us witnessing him completely cracking up. He's dangerous, Lily. He's ready to kill. Starting with me.”
Lily went to the window and checked the street. “That's why I told him,” she said, and then turned to me. “To spare you.”
LILY'S ACCOUNT OF the early morning hours differed from Gurley's. Gurley hadn't mentioned to me that he'd seen Lily or anyone else on the misty streets; and he'd heavily edited his conversation with Lily. He left out, for example, what Lily said was the first thing he'd asked her- Was that you and Louis I saw in the street?-and he'd left out her reply.
“Yes, it was me,” she told him. “But not Louis. You've scared him half to death. I'll be lucky if I ever see him again.”
“I'll be luckier if you don't,” Gurley had said. I wondered how he'd looked when he'd said that. With me, it would have been behind a sneer, or preceding a fist. But it had to be different with her.
“He's just a boy,” she told him, and didn't even smile at me as she repeated the line now.
“Well,” Gurley said. Lily said he kept looking around, like I might still be lurking in the shadows. “Who was it, then? It was someone. It was someone. I know I saw someone with you. A man. Not a ‘customer’? I thought we had an agreement. I thought I'd taken care of that for you. You should have enough now, enough to get by without-God, Lily, we've talked about this. You know what I've said, what I'm planning for you, for us-”
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