Beyond the door, the colonel spoke again. “I said enter.”
I pushed the door open just far enough and stepped into the colonel’s office. The room was small and plain and lined with filing cabinets. The colonel’s desk was dead center, with the overhead light shining down onto a small stack of papers between the colonel’s hands. His garrison cap, its silver oak leaf shining, was flattened neatly beside the papers. The colonel’s face was mostly shadowed, with just the tip of his nose glowing in the light.
I stepped smartly to within a foot of the desk, front and center, then saluted and stood at attention. It was the same thing I had done every time I had ever been summoned here.
“Thank you for coming, Private,” the colonel said.
I almost laughed. He had never thanked me for coming before. But now he had thanked me as if we were equals and I had done him a favor. He had thanked me as if I weren’t there because of a direct order that had been wrapped around a threat.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “My pleasure, sir.” I kept my eyes focused on an invisible point just over his head. But I could still see everything he did.
The colonel touched the top of the small stack of papers with his fingertips and pushed the top sheet across the desk toward me.
“I won’t waste your time or mine, soldier,” the colonel said. “This is a statement to the effect that this morning, 5 July 1944, you assisted your friend the corporal in a drunken escapade in which you killed an American bald eagle and then recklessly contributed to the accidental death of a Navy seaman. You are to sign at the bottom. I personally guarantee that you yourself will serve no more than one year in a stateside stockade, after which you’ll receive a dishonorable discharge.”
He placed a fountain pen atop the piece of paper.
I didn’t even try to think. I just stayed at attention with my arms stiff at my sides and my eyes staring at that invisible spot above his head.
“Sir,” I heard myself saying. “I decline to sign that statement on the grounds that signing it may tend to incriminate me.”
I had heard words similar to those just a few hours before. But they wouldn’t be spoken for a few years yet.
The colonel gave a growl. He picked up the pen, pushed across the next piece of paper, and put the pen down on top of it.
“Very well,” he said. “This next statement is to the effect that you weren’t intoxicated at all, but had an altercation with the sailor and committed manslaughter. And the corporal witnessed it.”
“Sir,” I heard myself saying again. “I decline to sign on the grounds that signing may tend to incriminate me.”
The colonel stood, put his hands on the desk, and leaned forward into the light like a Nebraska judge. Now my eyes were focused on the top of his head. He had the same greasy, wormlike hair as the man at the high, long podium in my vision.
“Son, you’d best listen up and listen good,” the colonel snarled. He pushed the remaining three pages onto the first two. “I have five confessions here, each with a slightly different version of what you and the corporal have done. You can sign any one of them. The consequences vary depending upon which one you choose. But if you don’t choose one, then I’ll choose one for you. And you won’t like that. Nor will you like the way things go for you when both my aide and I swear that we witnessed the aftermath of your crimes as well as your signature.”
I heard every word he said, and I knew what each one meant.
But what I said in reply was, “Sir, I decline to sign on the grounds—”
Then I heard the telltale sound of a hammer clicking back, and my eyes broke focus from the top of the colonel’s head. I looked down and saw his .45 service automatic in his hand. It was pointing at my gut.
“Let me put this another way, Private,” he said. His Texas accent slid into a self-satisfied drawl. “You can sign one of these pieces of paper, or I can tell the judge advocate that you went berserk when I confronted you with the evidence. I can tell him that you attacked a much superior officer, namely myself, and that the officer was therefore compelled to defend himself.”
I stared at the muzzle of the .45 for what seemed like a long, long moment. Then I snapped my eyes back up to a point above and behind the colonel’s head.
Maybe I hadn’t seen the future after all. Maybe this was the future, right here. And maybe that was fair.
Maybe this would make me even again.
“Sir,” I said. “I decline to sign. You already know why.”
The colonel gave a disgusted groan. “That’s a damn poor choice, son. But if that’s the way you want it . . . ”
Another hammer clicked.
This one was behind me. It was followed by a thick, hacking, tubercular cough. But that only lasted a second.
Then I heard that smooth, sophisticated voice.
“Speaking of damn poor choices,” Pop said.
I looked down at the colonel again. His eyes were wide, and his face was twitching with mingled fury and fear.
But the fear won. He put his left thumb in front of the .45’s hammer, let it down slowly, and then set the pistol on the stack of confessions.
“Lovely,” Pop said, coming up on my right. He held up a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red with his free hand. God knows where he’d gotten it. “Now, let’s have a drink.”
XIV
Pop didn’t even glance at me. He kept his eyes on the colonel, giving him the same thin smile I had been seeing all day. He had a .38 revolver in his right hand and the fifth of Johnnie Walker in his left.
“You can sit back down,” he told the colonel. “But we’ll stand.”
The colonel sat down. He looked up at Pop with a mockery of Pop’s thin smile. It was a repellent sneer.
“A Communist corporal holding a pistol on a lieutenant colonel,” he said. “This is not going to end well for you.”
Pop set the bottle of whiskey beside the stack of confessions. “Nothing ends well for anyone,” he said. He picked up the .45 and dropped it into a small metal wastebasket on the floor beside the desk. “Do you have any glasses? I’d rather not pass the bottle.”
The colonel nodded past my shoulder. “In the bottom drawer of the file cabinet beside the door. But don’t touch my brandy.”
Pop’s eyes didn’t move from him. “Private, would you mind?”
I took a few steps backward, bumped into the filing cabinet, and squatted down to open the drawer. There were two short glasses and a cut-glass bottle of liquor. I took out the glasses, closed the drawer, and brought the glasses to the desk.
“We need three,” Pop said.
I set the glasses down beside the confessions. “I decline to drink,” I said. My mother had asked me to avoid alcohol, too.
Pop still didn’t take his eyes off the colonel, but he grinned. His false teeth didn’t look so bad all of a sudden.
“You’re an amusing young man, Private,” he said.
The colonel crossed his arms. “Neither of you will be very amusing once my aide returns. You’ll both be damned.”
Pop shrugged. “We’re damned anyway. Besides, I happen to know that your aide is at the movies with a nurse of my acquaintance. He’ll be there at least another hour. I believe tonight’s film is They Died with Their Boots On. Which isn’t too surprising, since Olivia de Havilland has been popular here lately. Although the story of Custer’s Last Stand might not be the most tasteful selection for an audience of GI’s.”
The colonel glowered. “If you shoot me, it’ll be heard. There’ll be dozens of men converging on this building before you’re out the door.”
Pop finally looked at me. His eyes were bright, and he laughed out loud.
“Can you believe this joker?” he asked. “Now he’s worried about a shot being heard.”
Pop turned back toward the desk, reached out with his left hand, and unscrewed the cap from the whiskey. He dropped the cap, picked up the bottle, and poured a hefty dose into each glass. Some of the booze splashed out onto the
confessions.
“I have no intention of shooting you,” he told the colonel. “I only brought the gun so you wouldn’t shoot us.” He tilted his head toward me. “That’s right, Private. I knew you’d be here. You’ve hardly listened to me all day.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re not an officer.”
Pop put down the bottle and picked up one of the glasses. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, and downed the whole thing in three swallows. Then he set it down and refilled it. “Better have yours, sir.” He said sir with deep sarcasm. “You’re falling behind.”
The other glass sat where it was, untouched, the amber liquid trembling.
The colonel bared his teeth. “I don’t drink that stuff.”
Pop picked up his glass again. “Ah. But I know something you do drink. You had a little belt of something cooked up by one of our Alaska Scouts, didn’t you? But what you didn’t know is that some men can hold their mystical potions, and some men can’t. You see, to take a spiritual journey, you have to have a fucking soul to begin with. Otherwise, you just suffer from delusions of grandeur. Especially if that was your inclination to begin with.” He downed his second glass of Johnnie Walker.
The colonel leaned forward. “Have another, corporal,” he said. His voice was almost a hiss. “I really wish you would.”
Pop poured himself another.
“Uh, Pop . . . ” I said.
Pop picked up his glass a third time. “Mother’s milk, son,” he said. “And don’t call me ‘Pop.’ ”
As Pop slammed back the drink, the colonel lunged sideways and down, reaching for the wastebasket. But Pop kicked it away with the side of his foot, simultaneously draining his glass without spilling a drop. He moved as casually and smoothly as if he were swatting a Ping-Pong ball.
The colonel fell to his hands and knees. Pop leaned down and put the barrel of the .38 against the base of his skull.
“Feel familiar?” Pop asked.
The colonel made a whimpering sound.
“Bang,” Pop said. Then he straightened, set down his glass again, and stepped over to the filing cabinet where the wastebasket had come to a stop. Pop picked up the wastebasket, brought it back, and set it on the corner of the desktop.
The colonel awkwardly hauled himself into his chair again. His face was florid and sweating.
“If you aren’t going to shoot me,” he said, “then what do you want?”
Pop scratched his cheek with the muzzle of the .38 before turning it back toward the colonel.
“I suppose I just want to see your face as I tell you what I believe I know,” Pop said. “I want to see how close I am to the truth. And then I should return this pistol to the commander. Fine fellow, by the way. He says you stink at poker.”
The florid color in the colonel’s face began to drain. But the sweat seemed to increase. His wormlike hair hung in wet strands before his eyes.
“While you were drinking and playing cards,” Pop said, shaking the .38 as if it were an admonishing finger, “you listened to stories told by our friend the Scout, some of which he’d told you before on Attu. And you decided you wanted to try out some of what he said for yourself. Well, that was fine with him. What did he care what a stupid white man might want to do to himself? Besides, you’re a lieutenant colonel. If he crossed you, you might take him out of his hut behind the hospital and put him to work digging latrines.
“So he gave you the magic, and you drank it. But as I said, you and the magic didn’t mix. So your overall unpleasantness became a more specific, insane nastiness. And you decided you were tired of waiting for that promised promotion. You decided you’d do a few things to make it happen.
“You’d kill the symbol of the power you desired, thus making its strength your own. And while you were waiting for that chance, you’d befriend a Navy commander with power of a different kind. The power of political connections.
“Finally, you’d eliminate some obstacles and settle some scores. And you’d use both the dead eagle and a fixed fight to do that. You’d set up the soldier who could testify to your panicked fuckup on Attu. And you’d set up the dirty, unjustly famous Marxist corporal who’d snubbed you and your talent—and who might also cause you trouble because of his habit of talking to every GI in camp. Including the occasional sailor.”
Pop reached down with his free hand, picked up the confessions, and dropped them into the wastebasket on top of the .45. Then he pointed the .38 at the colonel’s chest.
“Are there any carbons?” Pop asked. “Tell the truth, now. I was a Pinkerton.”
The colonel, pale and perspiring, shook his head. Pop picked up the colonel’s untouched glass of whiskey and poured it into the wastebasket.
“The one thing I can’t figure,” he said, “is how you arranged the timing and the murder. I know how you got your fall-guy sailor to show up at the ulax this morning—money and sex. But I don’t know how you managed to have him capture an eagle for you to kill at almost the same time. And I don’t know how you could be sure that the second sailor, even as angry as he was over being cheated, would go so far as to kill the boxer.”
Now the colonel, still pasty and sweating, smiled. He looked happy. It was the scariest thing I’d seen since Attu.
“I saw the future,” he said. His voice was as thick and dark as volcanic mud. “That’s how.”
Pop cocked his head. “Ah. Well, that wouldn’t have made sense to me yesterday. But it’s not yesterday anymore.” He reached into a jacket pocket and brought out his Zippo. “So maybe you already saw this, too.”
He lit the Zippo and dropped it into the wastebasket. Blue and yellow flames flashed up halfway to the ceiling, then settled to a few inches above the lip of the basket and burned steadily.
“We’re going to leave now,” Pop told the colonel. He picked up the bottle cap and replaced it on the Johnnie Walker. “You aren’t going to bother us again. The private here isn’t your slave anymore. And I don’t have the time or stomach to read your stories.” He picked up the bottle with his free hand and took a few steps backward toward the vestibule.
I hesitated, thinking that perhaps I should put out the fire. But neither Pop nor the colonel seemed concerned by it.
“You can’t prove any of it,” the colonel said. His voice was shaking and wild now. “You don’t have anything you can tell anyone. You can’t do a thing to me.”
Pop stopped, then stepped forward again. He held out the bottle of whiskey toward me. I took it.
Then Pop uncocked the .38 and slid it into in his right jacket pocket. He stepped up to the desk again. I could see the light of the flames dancing in his eyeglasses as he nodded to the colonel.
“You’re partly right,” Pop said. “No one can go to a court-martial and submit visions as evidence. But I do have a few things I can use in other contexts. I have a new friend in the Navy, a great admirer of my work, who has high connections. And I gave this same friend the name of a possible murderer. A sailor named Joe. I didn’t have to tell him why or how I had the name. My reputation in matters of murder, fictional though those murders may be, seemed good enough for him.
“Now, the naval investigators might not find the right Joe, and even if they do, they might not be able to prove what Joe did. Especially if he’s smart enough not to confess. But the Joe in question is a bit of a hothead. So, since those Navy boys will be questioning every sailor on Adak named Joe, it’s possible that an angry Joe might reveal that one of yesterday’s boxing matches was fixed. And he might tell them who else knows about that, and who he saw by that dead bird this morning. And then those Navy boys might come talk to some of their colleagues in the Army. Don’t you think?”
The colonel began to rise from his chair again.
“Goddamn slimy Red—” he began.
As quick as a snake striking, Pop reached into his right jacket pocket and came up with the bent eagle feather. He thrust it across the desk and held it less than an inch from the colonel’s nose.
>
“You,” Pop said. “Will not. Fuck. With us. Again.”
Then Pop reached down to the desk with his left and picked up the colonel’s garrison cap. He dropped it into the wastebasket.
The flames shot higher, and something inside the basket squealed.
The colonel’s mouth went slack. His eyes opened wide and stared at the fire without blinking. He looked like a wax statue. Or a corpse in rigor mortis.
Pop turned and put the feather back in his pocket. Then he gave me a glance and jerked his head toward the door. I turned and went out with him.
But Pop looked back toward the colonel one last time.
“By the way,” he said. “If you’ve ever thought about asking for a transfer, now would be an excellent time. I understand MacArthur wants to get back to the Philippines in the worst way. And I’m sure he could use the help.”
Then we went out. The fog was still thick, but we could see where we were going. Even this late in the day, there was a sun shining somewhere beyond the gray veil. It was summer in the Aleutians.
I looked back and saw that the ravens were gone.
XV
The lights were burning bright in the windows at the Adakian hut when Pop and I came up the hill. They were shining down through the fog in golden beams. And as we drew closer, I could hear the clatter of typewriters and the steady murmur of voices. Pop’s staff was in there hard at work on the July 6 edition.
“I’m sorry your cartoonist has to draw his cartoon over again,” I said as we climbed the last dozen yards.
Pop coughed. “He was upset. But between you and me, it wasn’t his best work. I suspect he’ll do a better one now. Unfair losses can be inspirational.”
As we reached the entrance lean-to, a figure stepped out from behind it. It was the Cutthroat. Neither Pop nor I was startled.
“What took you guys so long?” the Cutthroat asked. “The colonel’s shack ain’t that far. I’ve been here five minutes already. Thought you might have died or something.”
Pop and I exchanged glances.
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