“I have to call you something,” I said. “The colonel sent me to take you on an errand.”
Pop’s scowl shifted from annoyance to disgust. “The colonel?” he said, his voice full of contempt. “If you mean who I think you mean, he’s a living mockery of the term intelligence officer. And he’s still wearing oak leaves. Much to his chagrin, I understand. So I suppose you mean the lieutenant colonel.”
“That’s him,” I said. He was the only colonel I knew. “He wants you and me to take a drive, and he wants us to do it right now. If you haven’t eaten breakfast, I have a couple of Spam sandwiches in the jeep. Stuck ’em under the seat so the ravens wouldn’t get ’em.”
Pop took his hands off the table, went to the chairs along the wall, and took a jacket from one of them. He put it on in abrupt, angry motions.
“You can tell him I don’t have time for his nonsense,” he said. “You can tell him I’m eating a hot meal, and after that, I’m starting on tomorrow’s edition. I’m not interested in his editorial comments, his story ideas, or his journalistic or literary ambitions. And if he doesn’t like that, he can take it up with the brigadier general.”
I shook my head. “The general’s not in camp. He left last night for some big powwow. Word is he might be gone a week or more. So if I tell the colonel what you just said, I’m the one who’ll be eating shit.”
Pop snorted. “You’re in the Army and stationed in the Aleutians. You’re already eating shit.”
He tried to walk past me, but I stepped in front of him.
He didn’t like that. “What are you going to do, son? Thrash an old man?” He was glaring down at me like a judge again, but now the judge was going to throw the book. Which was something I had also seen before, so it didn’t bother me.
“I’d just as soon not,” I said.
Pop glanced back at the poker players. I reckoned he thought they would step up for him. But they were all staring at their cards hard enough to fade the ink, and they didn’t budge.
“Did you see the boxing matches yesterday?” I asked.
Pop looked back at me. His eyes had narrowed again.
“There was a crowd,” he said. “But yes, I watched from a distance. I thought it was a fine way to celebrate the Fourth of July, beating the snot out of our own comrades in arms. I hear the Navy man in the second match was taken to the Station Hospital.”
I shrugged. “He dropped his left. I had to take the opportunity.”
Pop bared those bad false teeth. “Now I recognize you. You K.O.’d him. But he laid a few gloves on you first, didn’t he?”
“Not so’s I noticed.” Thanks to the colonel, I’d had two whole weeks during which my only duty had been to train for the fight. I could take a punch.
“So you’re tough,” Pop said. His voice had an edge of contempt. “It seems to me that a tough fellow should be killing Japs for his country instead of running errands for an idiot. A tough fellow should—” He stopped. Then he adjusted his glasses and gave me a long look. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “But it occurs to me that you may have been on Attu last year. In which case you may have killed some Japs already.”
I didn’t like being reminded of Attu. For one thing, that was where the colonel had decided to make me his special helper. For another, it had been a frostbitten nightmare. And seven guys from my platoon hadn’t made it back.
But I wasn’t going to let Pop know any of that.
“A few,” I said. “And if the brass asked my opinion, I’d tell them I’d be glad to go kill a few more. But the brass ain’t asking my opinion.”
Pop gave a weary sigh. “No. No, they never do.” He dug his fingers into his thick shock of white hair. “So, what is it that the lieutenant colonel wants me to assist you with? I assume it’s connected with some insipid piece of ‘news’ he wants me to run in The Adakian?”
I hesitated. “It’d be better if I could just show you.”
Pop’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, good,” he said. His tone was sarcastic. “A mystery.” He gestured toward the door. “After you, then, Private.”
It felt like he was jabbing at me again. “I thought you said enlisted men shouldn’t call each other by rank.”
“I’m making an exception.”
That was fine with me. “Then I’ll call you ‘Corporal.’”
A williwaw began to blow just as I opened the door, but I heard Pop’s reply anyway.
“I prefer ‘Boss,’” he said.
III
We made our way down the hill on mud-slicked boardwalks. On Adak, the wind almost always blew, but the most violent winds, the williwaws, could whip up in an instant and just about rip the nose off your face. The one that whipped up as Pop and I left the recreation hut wasn’t that bad, but I still thought a skinny old guy like him might fly off into the muck. But he held the rail where there was a rail, and a rope where there was a rope, and he did all right.
As for me, I was short and heavy enough that the milder williwaws didn’t bother me too much. But as I looked down the hill to the sloppy road we called Main Street, I saw a steel barrel bouncing along at about forty miles an hour toward Navytown. And some of the thick poles that held the miles of telephone and electrical wires that crisscrossed the camp were swaying as if they were bamboo. We wouldn’t be able to take our drive until the wind let up.
So I didn’t object when Pop took my elbow and pulled me into the lee of a Quonset hut. I thought he was just getting us out of the wind for a moment, but then he slipped under the lean-to that sheltered the door and went inside. I went in after him, figuring this must be where he bunked. But if my eyes hadn’t been watering, I might have seen the words THE ADAKIAN stenciled on the door.
Inside, I wiped my eyes and saw tables, chairs, typewriters, two big plywood boxes with glass tops, a cylindrical machine with a hand crank, and dozens of reams of paper. The place had the thick smell of mimeograph ink. Two of the tables had men lying on them, dead to the world, their butts up against typewriters shoved to the wall. A third man, a slim, light-skinned Negro, was working at a drawing board. It looked like he was drawing a cartoon.
This man glanced up with a puzzled look. “What’re you doing back already, Pop?” He spoke softly, so I could barely hear him over the shriek of the williwaw ripping across the hut’s corrugated shell.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,” Pop said. “I don’t like ‘Pop.’ I prefer ‘Boss.’”
“Whatever you say, Pop. They run out of scrambled eggs?”
“I wouldn’t know. My breakfast has been delayed.” Pop jerked a thumb at me. “The private here is taking me on an errand for the lieutenant colonel.”
The cartoonist rolled his eyes. “Lucky you. Maybe you’ll get to read one of his novellas.”
“That’s my fear,” Pop said. “And I simply don’t have enough whiskey on hand.” He waved in a never-mind gesture. “But we’ve interrupted your work. Please, carry on.”
The cartoonist turned back to his drawing board. “I always do.”
Pop went to an almost-empty table, shoved a few stacks of paper aside, and stretched out on his back. The stack of paper closest to me had a page on top with some large print that read: HAMMETT HITS HALF-CENTURY—HALF-CENTURY CLAIMS FOUL.
“Have a seat, Private,” Pop said. “Or lie down, if you can find a spot.” He closed his eyes. “God himself has passed gas out there. We may be here a while.”