Pop turned to me. “It was kind of you to walk back with me, Private. But unnecessary. I may seem like a frail old man. But despite my white hair and tuberculosis-ravaged lungs, I do manage to get around, don’t I?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Jesus Christ,” Pop said. He pointed at me with his bottle of Johnnie Walker. “What did I tell you about ‘sir’ and enlisted men?”
I held out my hand. “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to salute you.”
He gave me a quick handshake. His grip was stronger than he looked.
“It’s been a long and overly interesting day, Private,” he said. “And I sincerely hope, you dumb Bohunk, that I only encounter you in passing from now on. No offense.”
“None taken.”
He turned to go inside. “Good night, Private.”
But I couldn’t let it go at that.
“That Navy boy is dead,” I blurted. “It was the colonel’s fault, and we’re letting him get away with it.”
Pop stopped just inside the lean-to. “Maybe so.” He looked back at me. “But sometimes the best you can do is wound your enemy . . . and then let him fly away.”
“Is that what happened?” I asked. “Is that what it meant when you showed him the feather?”
Pop rolled his eyes upward and grinned with those bad teeth.
“That didn’t mean a thing to me,” he said. “But it meant something to him.” He checked his wristwatch. “And now I really do have a newspaper to put out. Any more silly questions?”
There was one.
“How can you do that?” I asked.
Pop frowned. “How can I do what?”
All the way back from the colonel’s office, I had been struggling with the words in my head. I wasn’t good with words. And Pop already thought I was stupid. So I knew I wouldn’t say it right. But I had to try.
“How can you go back to what you did before?” I asked. “How can you do anything at all now that—” I closed my fist, as if I could grab what I wanted to say from the fog. “Now that you know what happens.”
Pop’s shoulders slumped, and his eyes drifted away from mine for a moment.
But only a moment.
Then his shoulders snapped up, and his eyes met mine again. They were fierce.
“Because I’m not dead yet,” he said. He turned away. “And neither are you.”
He opened the door with the words The Adakian stenciled on it. He raised the whiskey bottle, and a roar of voices greeted him. Then the door closed, and the long day was over.
I started back down the boardwalk. I thought I might go back to the bay and just watch the water all night. I’d probably get cold as hell without a coat, even in July. But as long as there wasn’t a williwaw, I’d survive.
In the morning, at chow, I would tell my squad leader that I was all his.
Epilogue
THERE WAS BUZZ FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS ABOUT THE NAVY MURDER, and I eventually heard that they arrested a seaman named Joe. But no one ever questioned me, and I never heard what they did with him. And I didn’t try to find out.
I saw the Cutthroat only once more, at a distance, just a few days after the fifth of July. He was boarding a ship at the dock in Sweeper Cove. It didn’t look like he was sneaking on. So I think he probably made it back to Fort Richardson and finished the war with the Alaska Scouts. But I don’t know.
The lieutenant colonel left Adak less than two weeks after that. I didn’t hear where he had been sent. But a few years after V-J Day, my curiosity got the better of me, and I made some inquiries. I learned that he had gone to the Philippines and had died at the outset of the Battle of Leyte in October 1944. A kamikaze had hit his ship, and he had burned to death. He never received his promotion.
I never spoke with Pop again. I saw him around throughout the rest of July and the first part of August, because he was hard to miss. I even passed by him on Main Street a few times. Once he gave me a nod, and I gave him the same in return.
That was all that passed between us until Pop was transferred to the mainland. We had all heard it was happening, since he was the camp celebrity and there was a lot of debate as to whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was going. But no one seemed to know just when it would occur.
Then, one evening in August, I came back to my bunk after a long day of working on a new runway at the airfield. And there was a manila envelope on my pillow. Inside I found the bent eagle feather and a typed note:
CLEARING OUT JUNK. THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT THIS. YOU OWE ME A ZIPPO.
P.S. WHEN YOU BRAG TO YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT HAVING MET ME, DO NOT CALL ME “POP.”
D.H.
I have not honored his request.
Toward the end of the war, I heard that Pop had made sergeant and been reassigned back to Adak in early 1945. But by then I was gone. I had been sent south to rejoin my old combat unit and train for an invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Then came the Bomb, and I was in Nebraska by Christmas.
Now, as an old man, I take the bent eagle feather from its envelope every fifth of July. Just for a minute.
My life has been good, but not much of it has been a surprise. I saw most of it coming a long time ago.
But then Pop slapped me awake. He slapped me awake, and he kept me from seeing the end.
I’ve always been grateful to him for that.
I don’t know whether he was a Communist. I don’t know whether he subverted the Constitution, supported tyrants, lied to Congress, or did any of the other things they said he did.
But I know he wore his country’s uniform in two world wars. And I know he’s buried at Arlington.
Plus one more thing.
Just today, decades after I first saw that hardback copy on another guy’s bunk...
I’ve finally finished reading The Maltese Falcon.
And you know what? I wish I could tell Pop:
It’s pretty goddamn good.