“No more jokes in the newspaper about beer,” he said. “They undermine discipline. Especially if they’re drawn by a nigger.”
Then he looked at me, and his color began draining back to pink.
“Private,” he said, his voice lowering, “you and I need to talk. Unfortunately, I’m about to have lunch, and then I have to meet with several captains and majors. The rest of my afternoon is quite full, as is most of my evening. So you’re to report to my office at twenty-one hundred hours. No sooner, no later. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
The colonel gave a sharp nod. “Good. In the meantime, I’m restricting you to barracks. If you need chow, get it. But then go to your bunk and speak to no one. While you’re there, I suggest that you think hard about what happened today, and what you’re going to tell me about it. If it was self-defense, I can help you. Otherwise, you may be in trouble.” He glanced at Pop, then back at me. “And stay away from the corporal.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
The colonel pointed at the door, so I turned and marched out. I caught a glimpse of the colonel’s aide and the newspaper staff standing up against the wall of the Quonset, and then I headed down the boardwalk toward Main Street. The wind cut through me, and I shivered. I still had to return the jeep to the motor pool. Then get some chow. Then go to my bunk. One thing at a time. Jeep, chow, bunk. Jeep, chow, bunk.
The colonel seemed to think I had killed the Navy man. And that Pop had advised me to lie about it.
Jeep, chow, bunk.
Of course, Pop had advised me to lie, but not about that. Because that hadn’t happened.
Or had it? Could I have done something like that and then forgotten I’d done it? Why not? Hadn’t I already done things just as bad?
Jeep, chow, bunk.
All I knew for sure was that the colonel hated Pop, and that I had been in trouble ever since finding the eagle.
Jeep, chow, bunk. It wasn’t working.
How I wished I had never seen the eagle. Or the ulax.
How I wished I had never met another Cutthroat after Attu.
How I wished I could have stayed in my combat unit.
How I wished I had never met Pop.
How I wished I had never been sent to the Aleutians in the first place.
How I wished I had never punched that rich kid from Omaha, and that I had stayed home long enough to help my old man with the hay.
X
I had my Quonset hut to myself while I waited for the afternoon to creep by. I didn’t know what job the rest of my bunkmates were out doing, but it didn’t matter. I would have liked to find them and do some work so I wouldn’t have to think. But I was under orders to stay put.
Other than the truth, I didn’t know what I would tell the colonel when 2100 finally came. Even if I included every detail, including the ones Pop and I had agreed not to tell, it still wasn’t going to be the story the colonel wanted to hear. And whatever story that was, I knew I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.
I hadn’t gotten any chow. My stomach was a hard, hungry knot, and I knew I should have eaten. But I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to keep it down.
Sure, I had been in trouble before. But back then, I had just been a dumb Bohunk kid who’d gotten in a fight, swiped a Hudson, and insulted a judge. None of that had bothered me. But none of that had been anything like this.
I wasn’t even sure what “this” was. But I did know that another kid, a kid just like me except that he was Navy, had gotten his skull bashed in. And the colonel thought that maybe I was the one who’d done it.
It all went through my head over and over again, and the knot in my stomach got bigger and bigger. I lay in my bunk and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. Outside, the Aleutian wind whistled and moaned, and occasional short rat-a-tats of rain drummed against the Quonset tin. Every so often, I heard planes roaring in and out of the airfield. I tried to guess what they were, since the bombing runs from Adak had pretty much ended once we’d retaken Attu and Kiska. But I had never been good at figuring out a plane from its engine noise. If an engine wasn’t on a tractor or jeep, I was at a loss.
“First impressions can be so deceiving,” a low, smooth voice said.
I opened my eyes. Pop was sitting on a stool beside my bunk. He was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped under his chin, his dark eyes regarding me over the rims of his glasses. I hadn’t heard him come in.
“How’d you know where I bunk?” I asked.
Pop ignored the question. “Why, just this morning, Private,” he continued, “you seemed like such a tough young man. Such a hardened fighter. Yet here we are, scarcely nine hours later, and you’re flopped there like a sack of sand. Defeated. Vanquished.”
“Don’t those mean the same thing?”
Pop gave me that thin smile of his. “My point is, you’re taking this lying down. That doesn’t sound like someone who’d dare to punch a rich kid from Omaha.”
I turned away from him and faced the cold metal of the Quonset wall.
“I’m under orders,” I said. “And I’m not supposed to be talking to you.”
Pop laughed a long, dry laugh that dissolved into his usual hacking cough.
“Under orders?” he asked through the coughing. “Just how do you think you got into this confusing court-martial conundrum in the first place? You followed orders, that’s how. Logically, then, the only possible way out of your current situation is to defy orders, just this once. It’s only sixteen thirty, and the lieutenant colonel won’t be looking for you until twenty-one hundred. You’ve already wasted more than two hours wallowing here, so I suggest you don’t waste any more.”
I turned back to face him.
“Just what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “My only choice is to tell him everything that happened, and the hell with our promise to the Cutthroat. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
Pop shook his head. “You can’t tell him everything,” he said, “because you don’t know everything.”
“And you do?”
“No.” Pop stood and jerked his thumb toward the door. “But I know some of it, and I’m going to find out the rest. You see, unlike you, I’ve spent the past few hours doing something. My job is to get the news, and a large part of that involves getting people to talk. So for the past two hours, people have been talking to me and my boys a lot. But now the boys have to work on the paper. And my cartoonist has to draw a new cartoon, which has put me into a vengeful mood.”
“So go get your revenge,” I said. “What’s it got to do with me?”
Pop leaned down and scowled. “It’s your revenge, too. And I don’t think I can find out the rest of what I need to know if you aren’t with me.”
I rose on my elbows and stared up at him. It was true that following orders hadn’t really worked out for me. But I didn’t see how doing what Pop said would work out any better.
“You say you know some of it already,” I said. “Tell me.”
Pop hesitated. Then he turned, crossed to the other side of the hut, and sat on an empty bunk.
“I know the lieutenant colonel placed a bet on your fight yesterday,” Pop said. “A large one. And I know that your opponent had a reputation as a damn good boxer. He’d won eighteen fights, six by knockout. How many have you won?”
“Two,” I said. “Yesterday was my second match. The first was with the guy whose bunk you’re sitting on. It was a referee’s decision.”
Pop’s eyes narrowed. “So any sane wager yesterday would have been on the Navy man. And I saw the fight, Private. He was winning. Until the third round, when he dropped his left. And as you told me this morning, you took advantage. Who wouldn’t?”