Pop liked to talk about himself a little more than suited me. But if he was going to do the right thing, I didn’t care.
I got out of the jeep. “I’ll go with you to the newspaper. In case you forget to come back.”
Pop got out too. “At this point, Private,” he said, “I assure you that you’ve become unforgettable.”
After a detour to the nearest latrine, we climbed up to the newspaper hut. Pop went in ahead of me, but stopped abruptly just inside the door. I almost ran into him.
“What the hell?” he said.
I looked past Pop and saw nine men standing at attention, including the three I had seen there that morning. They were all like statues, staring at the front wall. Their eyes didn’t even flick toward Pop.
Someone cleared his throat to our left. I recognized the sound.
I looked toward the table where Pop had napped that morning, and I saw the colonel rise from a chair. His aide was standing at parade rest just beyond him, glaring toward The Adakian staff. I had the impression they were being made to stand at attention as a punishment for something.
The colonel adjusted his garrison cap, tapped its silver oak leaf with a fingernail, then hitched up his belt around his slight potbelly and stretched his back. He wasn’t a large man, but the stretch made him seem taller than he was. His sharp, dark eyes seemed to spark as he gave a satisfied nod and scratched his pink, fleshy jaw.
“It’s about damn time,” he said in his harsh Texas accent. Then he looked back at his aide. “Everyone out except for these two. That includes you.”
The aide snapped his fingers and pointed at the door.
Pop and I stepped aside as Pop’s staff headed out. They all gave him quizzical looks, and a few tried to speak with him. But the colonel’s aide barked at them when they did, and they moved on outside.
The aide brought up the rear and closed the door behind him, leaving just the colonel, Pop, and me in the hut. To Pop’s right, on the drawing board, I saw the finished cartoon of two soldiers having beer for breakfast. One soldier was saying to the other:
“Watery barley sure beats watery eggs!”
Pop’s eyebrows were pinched together. He was glaring at the colonel.
“I don’t know how long you made them stand there like that,” Pop said. “But I’ll be taking this up with the general when he returns.”
The colonel gave a smile that was almost a grimace. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment, we’re in the middle of another. I’ve received a call from a Navy commander who tells me a dead sailor has been found on Mount Moffett. He says the body was discovered by you, Corporal. I play cards with the man, and he’s sharp. So I believe him.”
Pop sat down on the cartoonist’s stool, which still kept him several inches taller than me or the colonel.
“That’s right,” Pop said. He was still frowning, but his voice had relaxed into its usual cool, superior tone. “At your request, the private and I were looking for the dead eagle he’d found earlier. But it had apparently blown away. Then a williwaw kicked up, so we found shelter in an old Aleut lodge. That’s where we found the unfortunate sailor.”
The colonel turned toward me. “I understand it was the sailor you fought yesterday.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I had gone to attention automatically.
“What happened?” the colonel asked. “Did he try to take another swing at you?” He was still smiling in what I guessed he thought was a fatherly way. “Was it self-defense, Private?”
It was as if an icicle had been thrust into the back of my skull and all the way down my spine.
“Sir,” I said. I don’t know how I managed to keep my voice from quaking, but I did. “He was dead when we found him, sir.”
The colonel’s fatherly smile faded. “Are you sure about that? Or is that what the corporal said you should tell me?”
Now Pop was staring at the colonel through slitted eyelids. And now he had a slight smile of his own. But it was a grim, knowing smile.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
The colonel turned on Pop with sudden rage. His pink face went scarlet.
“I wasn’t speaking to you, Corporal!” he snapped. “When I need answers from a drunken, diseased has-been who hasn’t written a book in ten years, you’ll be the first to know. At the moment, however, I’ll take my answers from the private.”
Pop nodded. “Of course you will. He’s just a kid, and he doesn’t have a brigadier general in his corner. So you’re going to use him the way you’ve used him since Attu. What happened there, anyway?”
“We won,” the colonel said. “No thanks to the likes of you.”
Pop held up his hands. “I’d never claim otherwise. At that time I was stateside having my rotten teeth pulled, courtesy of Uncle Sam.”
The colonel stepped closer to Pop, and for a second I thought he was going to slap him.
“You’re nothing but a smug, privileged, Communist prick,” the colonel snarled. “The general may not see that, but I do. I’ve read the fawning stories you print about Soviet victories. You might as well be fighting for the Japs.”
Pop’s eyes widened. “Colonel, I realize now that your attitude toward me is entirely my fault. In hindsight, I do wish I could have accepted your dinner invitation. However, in my defense, by that time I had seen a sample of your writing. And it was just atrocious.”
The colonel’s face went purple. He raised his hand.
Then, instead of slapping Pop, he reached over to the drawing board, snatched up the new cartoon, and tore it to shreds. He dropped the pieces on the floor at Pop’s feet.
“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.