“Don’t call me ‘Pop,’ ” he said. Then the door swung closed behind him.
I stepped out just a moment later and found that a thick Aleutian fog had fallen. The wind, for a change, had died.
I looked down past the third storage hut. But between the fog and the dim light, I only caught a glimpse of Pop’s thin, shadowy form before he disappeared.
XIII
MY SQUAD WAS BACK AT OUR QUONSET BY THE TIME I RETURNED, AND I went with them to mess. A couple of them tried to rib me by asking about what kind of soft duty I’d pulled that day, but I wouldn’t even look at them. Pretty soon they got the idea and left me alone.
I made myself eat. I don’t remember what it was. Some kind of gray Adak food that matched the gray Adak fog outside. I didn’t want it. But I knew I had to put something in my stomach if I didn’t want to collapse. I hadn’t had anything to eat since the Spam sandwich more than twelve hours earlier. Besides, I wanted something to soak up whatever remained of the Cutthroat’s black sludge. Whatever it had been.
The whole platoon had the evening off, which meant that my hut would be full of talking and card games. I didn’t want to have to put up with any of that, so I took off after chow and slogged northward up Main Street, toward the airfield, in the opposite direction from Navytown. Pop had made it clear that he didn’t want me around. So I didn’t want to be tempted to go look for him.
I hadn’t even met him before that morning, but now he seemed like the only friend I had on the whole island. I had considered my old sergeant to be my friend, but he had died on Attu. The closest I had gotten to anyone since then had been to the poor Navy guy at the Fourth of July boxing match. But apparently that hadn’t been an honest relationship.
Somehow, I wandered my way eastward to the rocky shore of Kuluk Bay. The iron-colored, choppy water stretched out beyond the fog, and a frigid wind blew in and numbed my face. There weren’t even any ships visible, since they were all anchored to the south in Sweeper Cove. So I had the feeling that I was alone at the edge of the world, and that all I had to do was step off into the cold dark water to be swallowed up, frozen and safe.
Then I glanced at my wristwatch, which my old man had given me as I’d left for basic. It was a lousy watch and lost almost fifteen minutes a day. Right now it said that it was 8:36, which meant that the actual time was about nine minutes before twenty-one hundred hours. Which was when the colonel had ordered me to be at his office. An order Pop had said I should disobey.
I thought about it.
Then I started back the way I had come, trudging through the muck as fast as I could. Maybe Pop was right, and I was an obstacle to the colonel’s promotion. Maybe he was going to blame me for the sailor’s death. Maybe he was going to have me court-martialed. Or maybe he was just trying to scare me into keeping my mouth shut no matter what anyone else might ask me.
It didn’t matter. Whatever was going to happen to me now, I wasn’t going to count on Pop to get me out of it. I had seen that he was going to have his own problems soon enough.
And I knew my life was going to be all right. I had seen that, too. I hadn’t seen every day or every detail. And I knew there would be some tough times, too. But overall, it was going to be better than what most people got. Better than I deserved.
It was going to be better than what Pop had coming, anyway.
When I reached the small frame building that housed the colonel’s office and living quarters, I had to stop and stare at it from across the road. The edge of the peaked roof was lined with ravens, stock-still except for a few ominous wing flaps. Normally, they would be swooping and squawking over my head. But now they were sitting on the colonel’s roof in silence. There must have been fifty of them.
A few G.I.’s walking by looked up, and one of them made a comment about “those weird birds.” But otherwise, Main Street was almost empty. And that was weird, too.
I crossed the slop, went up the wooden steps, and wiped my feet on the burlap mat at the top. The real time was almost exactly twenty-one hundred. I knocked on the door and waited for the colonel’s aide to let me in.
Instead, as if from a great distance, I heard the colonel’s voice say, in a rough monotone, “Enter.”
I opened the door and went in. The first small room was the colonel’s aide’s vestibule. The lamp on the desk was on, but the aide wasn’t there. Beyond the desk, the door to the colonel’s office was ajar. I crossed to it and hesitated.
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.”