“Yes, sir,” Dillon said stolidly. “They’re going to throw the old breed at the Japs in Hawaii. If I’m up there at that Camp Pendleton place, I won’t get to go. If I stay where I’m at, I will.” He threw away the promotion without the least regret. He wanted some things more than that second stripe on the rocker after all.
It was Captain Bradford’s turn to say, “Oh.” He did his best to hold on to his glower, but his best wasn’t good enough. “Goddammit, I can’t even get angry at an answer like that.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Dillon, who wasn’t sorry one bit.
Bradford’s sour smile showed a gold front tooth. “Now tell me one I haven’t heard. You think of anybody who’d take a promotion to go on up to this new place, or maybe to Parris Island or Quantico?”
“Nobody I know, sir,” Dillon answered. “You can always ask, though.”
“Officers all over Camp Elliott are asking-other places, too, for all I know,” Bradford said. “Lots of good people turning ’em down. You aren’t the only one. In a way, that’s good. We want our first team on the field against the Japs. But we want first-raters showing the boots the ropes, too. If mediocre people show ’em what being a Marine’s all about, they’re liable to make mediocre Marines.”
“Yes, sir.” Dillon said no more. With officers, the less you said, the better off you were. He didn’t disagree with Captain Bradford. He knew what was important to him, though-knew very plainly, if he’d turned down a promotion to keep it. And he had.
Bradford studied him. “Nothing I can do to make you change your mind, Sergeant?”
“No, sir.” Les almost added another, Sorry, sir. But that would have been laying it on too thick.
The company commander made a disgruntled noise down deep in his throat. “All right. Go on. Get the hell out of here.”
Dillon thought about asking Bradford if he felt like going to Camp Pendleton. He didn’t do that, either, though. He just saluted with machinelike precision, did an about-face, and left the captain’s office.
As usual, the sun was shining. As usual, it wasn’t all that warm even so. It would get up into the low seventies today, and that was it. San Diego had a milder climate than Los Angeles did, even if it was more than a hundred miles down the coast from the bigger city. Mission Bay and the ocean currents and the prevailing winds all had something to do with it. Les didn’t know the wherefores, or worry about them. He just knew it stayed mild almost the whole year around.
He was stripping a BAR that afternoon when Dutch Wenzel came up to him. “So,” Wenzel said, “you a gunny?”
“Fuck, no,” Les answered. “You?”
“Nah.” Wenzel shook his head. “Somebody else is gonna have to whip them boots into shape.”
“That’s what I told Bradford, too.” Les set down the oily rag he was using and wiped his hands on a cleaner one. “We’re the ones who’re gonna have to take those islands away from the Nips. This is what I signed up for, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna miss it.”
“I’m with you.” Wenzel turned and looked southwest. “Matter of fact, I figure I will be with you. You hit the beach, I’ll either be in the same landing craft or the next one over.”
“Gluttons for punishment, that’s us,” Dillon said. The other platoon sergeant laughed, for all the world as if he’d been joking. Dillon went on, “Hell, you haven’t even got shot up. You really want a Purple Heart that bad?”
“Look who’s talking,” Wenzel retorted. “You got it once, and you’re dumb enough to come back for more?”
“Damn straight I am,” Dillon told him. Wenzel nodded in perfect understanding. They were both Marines.
XIII
JANE ARMITAGE WAS beginning to think Oahu would make it. There had been times when she wondered if everybody on the island would starve to death. She’d lost at least twenty pounds herself, and she hadn’t carried any extra weight to begin with. Everybody she knew had lost at least that much-except Major Hirabayashi and the rest of the Jap soldiers in and around Wahiawa. They hadn’t changed a bit. That didn’t surprise her, but it did infuriate her.
She knew better than to let the occupiers see what she thought. Almost everybody in Wahiawa knew better than that. Not being noticed was the best thing you could hope for these days.
A lot of what had been pineapple fields before the invasion were rice paddies now. The Japs seemed convinced the islands could grow enough rice to feed themselves. They talked about two crops a year. Yosh Nakayama didn’t sound too dubious. Jane put more faith in that. What the Big Five had to say… What the Big Five had to say, for the first time since before Hawaii belonged to the United States, didn’t matter one damn bit. And if the families who’d run the islands for so long had any brains, they didn’t want the Japs noticing them, either.
As for Jane, she had a new crop of turnips and a new crop of potatoes coming in. Eating what she’d raised with her own hands, with her own sweat, gave her pride of a sort she’d never known before. If only there’d been more.
She’d also discovered that zebra doves were as tasty as they looked. Mynahs, on the other hand, were nothing to write home about. She wouldn’t have eaten them by choice. Roast mynah beat the hell out of going hungry, though. Nobody was fussy any more.
One of the kids who’d been in her class before the war started came by on a scooter. The school had stayed closed since the Japanese occupied Wahiawa, and especially since Mr. Murphy’s untimely demise. Mitsuru Kojima was skinnier than he had been, too, but it didn’t seem to matter so much on a little kid-and he hadn’t been fat to begin with.
“Hello, Mitch,” Jane said. That was what she’d always called him. Most of the Japanese kids in her class had had American names that they used alongside the ones their folks had given them.
He stared at her out of black button eyes. When he said, “My name’s Mitsuru,” he sounded more arrogant than an eight-year-old kid had any business doing. He added something in Japanese. Jane didn’t know exactly what it meant, but she’d heard soldiers say it. One thing she had no doubt of: it wasn’t a compliment.
Away Mitch-Mitsuru — Kojima went. He was just a little kid, but he’d put her in her place. He’d put everything that had been going on in Hawaii before December 7 in its place. He didn’t even know it. All he knew was that he wanted to use his Japanese name, not his American one, and that he was entitled to say rude things to a white woman, even if she had been his teacher.
That was plenty, wasn’t it?
Jane used the hoe to get rid of a few weeds. No matter how many she murdered, new ones kept popping up. She wasn’t much of a farmer, and never would be, but she’d already discovered how hard it was to keep crops alive and stay ahead of pests.
She looked down at her blue jeans. The fabric over the knees was getting very, very thin. It would split pretty soon. None of her other pairs was in any better shape. Some already had patches on the knees or at the seat. Had these been normal times, she would have needed to buy more. She did need to buy more, but there were none to buy. Make do or do without was the rule these days.
She suspected she would end up using one pair for fabric to keep the others going as long as she could. Then another pair would have to be cannibalized, then another, until finally she’d have one pair left, made of bits and pieces from all the rest.
And what would happen when that pair bit the dust? Jane used a savage slash to decapitate another weed. She might almost have been Major Hirabayashi, cutting off Mr. Murphy’s… Stop that, she told herself fiercely. Just stop it, right this minute. But the thought wouldn’t go away. Neither would the memory of the meaty thunk the sword had made biting into-biting through-the principal’s neck.