AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re telling us,” Pop said.
The Cutthroat slipped his knife into a sheath on his hip. “Colonel Castner’s not too bad. He lets us do what we know how to do. But the rest of them. Fuck me, Jesus. They didn’t listen on Attu, and they ain’t listened since.”
I knew what he was talking about. The Cutthroats had scouted Attu ahead of our invasion, so they had told the brass how many Japs were there and what to expect from them. But they had also warned that Attu’s permafrost would make wheeled vehicles almost useless, and that we’d need some serious cold-weather boots and clothing. Plus extra food. Yet we’d gone in with jeeps and trucks, and we’d been wearing standard gear. Food had been C-rations, and not much of that. It had all been a rotten mess, and it would have been a disaster if the Cutthroats hadn’t taken it upon themselves to bring dried fish and extra supplies to platoon after platoon.
Not to mention the dead Jap snipers and machine gunners we regular G.I.’s found as we advanced. The ones whose heads had been almost severed.
“I cowrote the pamphlet on the Battle of the Aleutians,” Pop said. “But of course it had to be approved by the brass, so we had to leave out what we knew about their mistakes. And we also weren’t allowed to mention the Alaska Scouts. The generals apparently felt that specific mention of any one outfit might be taken to suggest that other outfits weren’t vital as well.”
The Cutthroat made a loud spitting noise. “Some of them weren’t.” He sat down with his back against the sod-and-whalebone rubble. “Don’t matter. I was there, and I killed some Japs. Don’t much care what gets said about it now.”
The noise of the williwaw had dropped slightly, so when Pop spoke again his voice was startlingly loud.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Pop said, “why are you on Adak? I was told the Scouts had gone back to Fort Richardson.”
The Cutthroat’s upper lip curled, and he pointed a finger at his right thigh. “I got a leg wound on Attu, and the fucking thing’s been getting reinfected for over a year. It’s better now, but it was leaking pus when the other guys had to leave. Captain said I had to stay here until it healed. But now I got to wait for an authorized ride. And while I wait, they tell me I’m an orderly at the hospital. Which ain’t what I signed up for. So I tried to stow away on a boat to Dutch Harbor a couple weeks ago, and the fucking M.P.’s threw me off.”
“I assume that means you’re now AWOL from the hospital,” Pop said. “Which explains why you thought that the Private and I might be police.”
The Cutthroat shook his head. “Nah. The hospital C.O. don’t really give a shit what I do. He let me put a cot in a supply hut and pretty much ignores me. I’m what you call extraneous personnel.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I just thought you might be M.P.’s because of this dead guy back here. I think it’s the same guy who told me about the eagle, but maybe not. You people all look alike to me.”
It took me a few seconds to realize what the Cutthroat had said. When I did, I looked at Pop. Pop’s eyebrows had risen slightly.
“Would you mind if I have a look?” Pop asked.
The Cutthroat shrugged his shoulders. “What do I care? He ain’t my dead guy.”
Pop stood up stiffly, and I stood up as well. With the williwaw overhead now a somewhat diminished shriek, we walked, hunched over, to where the Cutthroat sat. And now I could see that the ulax had a second, smaller chamber whose entrance had been partially obscured by the fallen sod and bone.
We went around the pile of debris, through the narrow entrance beside the wall, and into the second chamber. It was about ten by eight feet, and its roof was also pocked by holes that let in light. But these holes were smaller, and they changed the pitch of the wind noise. The shriek rose to a high, keening whistle.
On the floor, a stocky man lay on his back, his open eyes staring up at the holes where the wind screamed past. His hair looked dark and wet, and his face was as pale as a block of salt except for a large bruise under his left eye. His mouth was slack. He was wearing a dark Navy pea jacket, dark trousers, and mud-black boots. His bare, empty hands were curled into claws at his sides.
Pop and I stared down at him for a long moment, neither of us speaking.
At first, I didn’t recognize the man because he looked so different from how he had looked the day before. But then I focused on the bruise under his eye, and I knew who he was. My gut lurched.
Right behind me, the Cutthroat said, “Back of his head’s bashed in.”
Startled, I spun around, fists up.
The Cutthroat’s knife shot up from its sheath to within two inches of my nose.
Then Pop’s hand appeared between the blade and my face.
“Easy, boys,” Pop said. “I’m the camp editor. You don’t want your names in the paper.”
I lowered my fists.
“Sorry,” I said. I was breathing hard, but trying to sound like I wasn’t. “It was just a reflex.”
The Cutthroat lowered his knife as well, but more slowly.
“Now I recognize you,” he said, peering at me intently. “You boxed yesterday. And you were on Attu. Okay, mine was just a reflex, too.”
I still didn’t know him, but that still didn’t mean anything. The Cutthroats hadn’t stayed in any one place very long when I had seen them at all. And some of them had worn their fur-lined hoods all the time.
Pop took his hand away, and then all three of us looked down at the body. I opened my mouth to speak, but suddenly had no voice. Neither Pop nor the Cutthroat seemed to notice.
