The Far Reaches (10 page)

“I don't need comfort,” Josh mumbled and backed away from her. “I need to get the blood off my K-bar.” It was an odd thing for him to say, and he knew it, but he had said it, so he jabbed the awful knife into the sand, once, twice, and again, then inspected it. “It won't come off,” he explained, his voice a croak, and then he noticed that his hand holding the knife was shaking so hard he couldn't control it. He threw the K-bar down and stared at it. Its blade shimmered back at him in the awful, torturous sun.

“Please, rest yourself,” the girl said in velvet tones.

“I don't need to rest,” Josh said and then, as he always did when he was confused or uncertain or frightened, abruptly made for the sea, walking hurriedly away from the girl or angel or whatever it was and the dead young man who had died for him.

The sweat kept pouring off Josh as he struggled across the sand. He felt as if he were walking through a blast furnace. To his considerable surprise, he came upon Sergeant Pinkerton, the gunny who'd led the charge off the Higgins boat. Pinkerton was sitting on a sand dune, his face white as cream, his lips gray and shriveled, and there was seaweed draped around his shoulders. “I thought you drowned,” Josh told him, and Pinkerton grinned and a speckled eel climbed out of his shirt, waving its toothy head. Pinkerton said, “I did, Captain.”

Josh blinked the drops of perspiration from his eyes and then saw that the
brash lieutenant who'd jumped up on the seawall with a rallying cry was sitting under a shattered palm tree. His helmet was still on backward. With an anguished expression around the terrible holes in his face, he looked at Josh. “I'm sorry you were killed so quick,” Josh told him. “Surely you would have won a medal otherwise.”

The lieutenant shrugged and said, “Remember me.”

“I will,” Josh promised and went on, encountering the little Japanese soldier he'd killed when he first arrived on the beach. “You died honorably,” Josh said to him, but after bowing politely, the Imperial marine turned away.

Then Josh saw the Seabee Bill Bordelon and the supply officer Sandy Bonnyman. They were sitting together on a palm log, engaged in a deep conversation. At his approach, they both turned to look at him. “How do, Josh?” Bill greeted, as Sandy smiled even though there was a bullet hole in his head.

“I'm sorry,” Josh told them.

“What about?” Sandy asked.

“Your getting killed and all.”

“It was our time,” Bill replied.

“When is mine?” Josh was moved to ask.

“God knows,” Sandy answered, which Josh took as either an answer or a question.

Josh walked on, past hundreds of sprawled bodies and piles of battlefield debris and smoking craters. He tripped over a dead marine and fell down. He felt as if he were suffocating and tore off his soggy shirt and then kicked off his boots and threw them away in sailing arcs and then also his socks. He stripped off his bloody pants and even his underwear and tossed them all into a crater filled with brown water and three goggle-eyed Japanese corpses who at least had the decency not to say anything.

Naked, Josh kept walking, leaving a pattern of sweat mixed with blood drops behind. He kept mumbling, reminding himself where he was going and why, to immerse himself in the good, clean ocean and rinse away the awful reek of combat and the blood of the young man who'd died for him and the vision of the odd little Irish girl who wore raiments of white. Josh now suspected she was a devil, for it was well known that sometimes devils sneaked onto battlefields. “I should have killed her,” he said aloud. He looked over his shoulder, fearful that she might be following, but saw he was alone, not counting the dead men, all of whom were watching him.

When he reached the beach, Josh saw a Higgins boat coming through a shattered section of the reef. Then an amtrac shoved past it and rushed ashore, grinding up on the sand. It stopped, and out hopped none other than
Colonel Montague Singleton Burr and his staff of two majors, their pistols drawn as if they were the first men ashore. They ran past Josh, then stopped and turned around to gape at him. “My God, Thurlow,” Burr bellowed. “Where are your clothes? Are you drunk? Pull yourself together, man!”

Josh looked at Burr and decided to do the world a favor and kill the bastard right then and there. It wasn't personal. Not at all. It was just that Burr needed killing, he really did, and now was as good a time to do it as ever there was. Josh felt at his waist for his K-bar, but all he felt was his own bare skin covered with cracked, dried blood. Burr pushed his face close and Josh got a whiff of Brown Mule chewing tobacco, sweet and disgusting. “You're a disgrace, Thurlow. Get off this beach before I clap you in irons!”

Josh's throat was dry as dust, but after swallowing several times he managed to strangle out a few tortured words. “Don't move, Colonel. Stay right there.” He looked around, spied the nearby body of a dead marine, and crouched alongside, searching for a K-bar. When he didn't find one, he instead took the man's entrenching tool. Stripping off its canvas cover, he opened the small folding shovel and walked back to Burr, who, no surprise, defensively raised his pistol and aimed it at Josh's stomach.

It was a shot Burr could not possibly miss with a bullet that would leave a wide tunnel straight through and out Josh's back. “Don't make me do this, Thurlow,” Burr warned, while his staff officers watched complacently, apparently not caring what happened next.

Josh raised the shovel and rasped, “Just remember, Montague. Through privation comes triumph and glory! Your words, sir, and the last you'll ever hear, God damn your soul!”

Then Josh swung his blow while Burr cheerfully pulled the trigger on his forty-five.

The Island of
Dead Men

Welcome, happy morning!
Age to age shall say:
Hell today is vanquished,
Heaven is won today!

Lo! the dead is living,
God for evermore!
Him their true Creator,
All his works adore!

—V
ENANTIUS
F
ORTUNATUS, A HYMN

Bosun Ready O'Neal, wilting beneath a flat, scalding sun, sat on a little hill of sand and watched men moving as if in a dream across the smoky, littered battleground. Their haunted eyes seemed to be seeing past one another, perhaps even into another world. The island of Betio had turned into a graveyard, and though the battle was essentially over, the dying was not.

Ready flinched at the familiar sharp crack of a Japanese rifle, but no bullet whipped past his head, and no marine fell or even paid attention. The
rikusentai
were committing suicide in holes and ditches all over the island. Ready had come across a Japanese soldier lying on his back in a ditch that ran through a grove of shattered palms. The Japanese had removed his boots, placed the muzzle of his rifle beneath his chin, and put one of his big toes on the trigger. For a moment, Ready and the young man had looked at one another, and somehow Ready knew he was in the company of a fellow fisherman. In that moment, an entire scenario developed in Ready's mind: The youth would remove his toe from the trigger and put his rifle down and rise up out of the ditch. Then he and Ready would commandeer a boat and go out past the reef, and there, in the rich, deep water, they would fish and talk about boats and bait and women and all the really important things of this world. But the man, even while he looked into Ready's eyes in a friendly and almost beseeching manner, jammed his toe against the trigger and the rifle bucked and the top of the man's head exploded, splattering Ready with blood and brains and skull fragments. After wiping himself off as best he could, Ready walked on through the grove of splintered trees before coming across another remarkable sight. A young woman, dressed all in white, was kneeling, and around her were marines who were
also kneeling, their heads down in evident prayer. “Who is she?” he asked a marine who looked like he might know something.

The marine had his arms loaded with Japanese helmets. “She's a nun. What did you think she was? I heard somebody say the Japs had her prisoner. You want a Jap helmet? Five bucks.”

Ready didn't want a helmet. He was too busy staring at the nun. When she lifted her head from her prayers, he noticed that she had a very sweet face, and he wondered why a woman with such a sweet face would be on this terrible island of dead men. He wanted to watch her for a little longer and maybe ask her that question and many others, but he needed to find his captain. He had last seen Josh Thurlow at the big sand fort in the swirl of battle, but afterward he had disappeared. Ready feared for him, afraid that he might be lying in a hole somewhere, dying or dead.

“Here, take one of these things anyway,” the marine said, handing Ready a helmet. “You can owe me.”

Ready took the helmet and then wandered on toward the beach, passing marines loaded with Japanese flags, swords, rifles, pistols, helmets, knives, and even boots. Then, to his joy, he chanced upon his captain. His joy was tempered, however, because Josh Thurlow was naked from head to toe and looked a bit deranged. He was also lifting a shovel as if to strike his old nemesis Colonel Burr, who, somewhat naturally, had drawn his pistol in self-defense. Instinctively, Ready heaved the Japanese helmet and struck Burr in the head. This had the result of knocking Burr to his knees and also deflecting the marine officer's aim just a tick, a tick that saved Josh Thurlow's life as the bullet slapped into the sand behind him. Seeing Ready, Josh checked the swing of his shovel. “A man died for me,” he announced, “and he was the only innocent man on this island.”

“Who would that be, Skipper?” Ready asked as he took the shovel from Josh's hands.

“An island man covered with tattoos,” Josh answered distantly, then blinked, as if looking at something very far away. “Then a creature came, a terrible creature who spoke of the love of God, who, by the way, is a rank bastard or else the last three days on this atoll would never have occurred. The creature was dressed all in white and had a pretty face and talked Irish. Devils do that, you know, look like angels and talk Irish. It's supposed to throw you off.”

Ready thought about all that for a moment, then perceived who Josh was talking about. “Oh, sir, you just talked to a nun, that's all. She's up in a grove of palm trees with some fellows, all praying to beat the band.”

Streams of sweat carved through the dirt and grime and blood caked on Josh's body. His legs were trembling and it didn't look like he would stay upright for much longer. “I'm telling you she's Old Scratch!” he insisted. “It would be best if somebody killed the thing.”

Ready smiled what he hoped was a comforting smile. “Aw, she ain't no devil, sir. Somebody said she was a prisoner of the Japanese.”

“That's what I mean, Ready,” Josh said eagerly. “She's a devil for sartain!”

While Ready puzzled over his captain's pronouncements, he noticed that even though Colonel Burr had been knocked to his knees, he still held his pistol. He also had rediscovered his voice. “You're going to the brig, Thurlow!” he growled, and then his terribly mean and coal-black eyes sought out Ready. “And you're going with him, Bosun. You assaulted me!”

Ready ignored the colonel and took Josh by the arm. “Let's have a corpsman look at you, Captain.”

“You're a good man, Ready,” Josh said. “As good as I am evil.”

“You've just got the fever, sir,” Ready answered. “You ain't much evil at all.”

Burr struggled to his feet. “Somebody arrest those men!” he demanded.

“There, there, Colonel,” one of the two majors said consolingly. “There, there.”

Burr spat a brown stream of tobacco juice into the sand, then wiped his mouth while giving the major the evil eye. “You ‘there, there' me one more time, Major Smith, and I'm going to kick your fucking ‘there, there' butt across this miserable ‘there, there' atoll!”

While Burr was preoccupied with instilling discipline into his staff, Ready led Josh, still naked, off the beach and across the battlefield until they reached a shell crater near the big sand bunker where medical corpsmen were at work on a dozen wounded marines. Without comment, the corpsmen took Josh in, disinfected and bandaged his wounds, forced aspirin down him for the fever, and then, because they had done all they could do, laid him on his back on the hot sand. Stretcher-bearers came and took the wounded marines away, and then the corpsmen left, too, though they promised Ready that other stretcher-bearers would be along to take care of his captain. Ready sat down, took off his shirt to fan Josh, and waited.

While he fanned and waited, Ready observed the situation around him, which was growing ever more chaotic. There were no officers in sight, and most of the marines seemed to be doing whatever came into their heads. Many of them were looting the Japanese dead; others were simply standing
around, looking vacantly at nothing. A few were drinking from jerry cans, which had finally arrived with supposedly oil-free water. It didn't appear to be an improvement, however, because as soon as they'd drunk their fill, most of the marines fell to their hands and knees and puked it up. Still others squatted over shallow depressions they'd kicked in the sand, trying to get their bowels to move after three days of fear and dehydration. Occasionally, to punctuate the chaos, there was the crack of a Japanese rifle announcing another suicide.

Thousands of corpses on the tiny atoll were also putting up a powerful stink. Ready pressed a helmet camouflage cover to his mouth and nose, but it did little to filter the awful odor. There was not a breath of a breeze, and Ready thought he might suffocate from the stench. He was grateful when a Seabee bulldozer appeared and began shoving sand over a row of Japanese bodies lying in a ditch. Some marines were also digging graves for their dead buddies, the smell forcing them to get the bodies under the sand. Ready thought it was going to be one hell of a job to find out who had been put where. Then he heard an aircraft engine and observed a navy Corsair lazily descending toward the coral airstrip. It flew over another bulldozer busily pushing bodies and battle debris off the runway, then bumped down. A few marines cheered, but most ignored the fighter plane as it coasted along. It stopped at the end of the runway, sat for a moment, then turned around, fired up its engine, and took off again. The Betio airfield, for which so many had died, was open for business.