The Lonely War (16 page)

Andrew glanced at Stokes, who shrugged his shoulders. Andrew began to apologize, but Stokes touched his shoulder, shaking his head, and nodded at the exit hatch.

They gathered the empty dishes and returned topside. Out on the rolling deck, there was no sign of the corporal. They checked the mess hall and carefully searched the fantail, with no result. They fought through the howling wind to the aft-crew’s quarters, where the marines were berthed, and found Lieutenant Hurlburt lounging on his bunk. Andrew asked the officer if the corporal was down there. Hurlburt replied negative, so Andrew was forced to tell him about the smoke break and the possibility of the corporal being washed overboard.

Hurlburt leaped to his feet and ran up the ladder. The crew made a full search of the ship before they reversed course and spent four hours hunting the dark water for the missing marine, without success.

A
NDREW
marched into the wardroom and snapped to attention before Bitton, Mitchell, and Hurlburt, who were seated at the green felt table.

“Seaman Waters,” Bitton said. “You’re here because our mission is now in jeopardy. You see, the marine we lost was the only one in Lieutenant Hurlburt’s squad who could speak and read Japanese. The lieutenant feels that, to do an adequate job, he needs someone with enough command of the Japanese language that they can read any document that might fall into their hands. You are the only other person aboard who may have that knowledge. Can you give us an idea of how well you speak the language?”

“Sir, I read Japanese better than I speak it, because they use many of the same characters as the Chinese. I should be able to make out what a document says, although it won’t be easy.”

“Excellent,” Bitton said. “The other consideration is your lack of training in jungle warfare. I’ll let Lieutenant Hurlburt be the judge of whether you would be an asset or a hindrance to his mission.” Bitton glanced at Hurlburt, passing the conversation to him while Mitchell chain-lit a Lucky Strike.

“While you were in Indochina,” Hurlburt said, “did you spend time in the wild country?”

“I had a number of experiences in the forest.”

“How much time did you spend there?” Hurlburt asked.

Andrew struggled with the question. “Time is a measurement that doesn’t apply in the wild country, as you call it. Time only applies to civilized things, sir.”

Hurlburt nodded.

“I don’t understand,” Bitton said.

“Sir, I once stood on a ridge looking into a ravine where a springbuck was feeding. As I watched the buck, I noticed a tiger stalking it. I couldn’t actually see the cat, it blended with the foliage and it crept so slowly, but I could feel its presence. Believe me, it was terrifying and beautiful at the same time. After an eternity, the tiger crouched into position, ready to pounce. The buck lifted its head and cocked its ears. At that moment, when the springbuck recognized the tiger, the entire universe stopped. I mean, it literally halted. No wind, no sound, no movement, no me, and certainly no time. In that place, that still universe, I didn’t exist. I was reduced to simply witnessing the interplay between the cat and the buck. I have no idea how long that lasted. It could have been a century for all I know. It certainly felt like it.”

Andrew paused for a moment, looking from one face to another. “The cat and the buck both sprang. In the instant that it took my mind to comprehend that the cat had lunged, it was over. Before my mind could engage, the buck had already gotten away and I was left trying to understand what had happened in that eternity that lasted a thousandth of a second. What I’m trying to explain is that, in the wild, simple things can span ages and complex relationships begin and end in the blink of an eye. Time has no relevance. It is a measurement that exists only in the human mind.” Andrew took a deep breath, exhaled, and added, “So how much experience have I had in the forest? Enough. In daylight and at night, enough.”

Bitton cleared his throat and said, “Waters, because of the danger involved in this mission coupled with your lack of training, I won’t order you to go. If we decide that you would be an asset to this mission, you will have to volunteer. Are you willing?”

Andrew stared at Mitchell, pausing to consider. “Confucius said: To shirk your duty when you see it before you shows want of moral courage. I was the cause of the corporal’s death. It seems it’s my karma to replace him.”

Mitchell closed his eyes, his chin dropped.

Bitton nodded. “That is all, Waters. We’ll inform you of our decision as soon as we make it.”

As Andrew exited the room, Hurlburt said, “I’ll take a chance on this kid. He knows what he’s talking about and he doesn’t try to bullshit you into believing he knows more than he does.”

“No.” Mitchell’s voice rang raw. “As exec, I’m responsible for the crew, and I won’t go along with this. Andy’s had no training in jungle warfare.”

“Andy? You’re on a first-name basis with this boy?” Bitton asked. “Let’s not forget we are at war, and when the need arises, we are asked to do the impossible. Waters could mean the difference between success and failure, and that translates into lives saved at invasion time.”

“But sir—”

“I’m overruling you this time, Nathan. Much as I hate losing the best damned cook in the Navy.”

“Sounds to me,” Hurlburt said to Mitchell, “like you’re letting personal feelings cloud your sense of duty. If that’s true, you need to sort out your priorities.”

Mitchell leaned close to Hurlburt. His eyes narrowed. “You bring him back with so much as a stubbed toe, Lieutenant, and I’ll track you down and crawl right up your ass with personal. You read me, mister?”

Chapter Fourteen

April 27, 1942—2000 hours

T
HE
Pilgrim
took a brutal thrashing as it drove through a cross-swelling sea, rolling over the top of white-ridged waves and plunging into cavernous troughs. Anything not tied down vaulted across the deck. Two inches of water streamed through the passageways, and pumps worked at full capacity to keep the old lady afloat. Men staggered about like drunkards, ate cold food, and couldn’t sleep in bunks that galloped like elevators gone haywire.

The crew’s consciousness acclimated to the pounding in the same way people acclimatized to the heat of the desert. But even so, the men stayed on edge. They didn’t like their situation. Within the cramped quarters of the forecastle, they were jumpy and easily moved to quarreling, which led to open fighting.

Secured to his bunk with makeshift straps that he had fashioned from ropes, Andrew closed his eyes and tried to force his mind into sleep. Exhaustion finally lulled him into unconsciousness.

When the dream came, he saw himself alongside Clifford at the Bai Hur Sze Temple, exploring the compound. This revered historical and religious shrine had been constructed in the Ming Dynasty, sometime before the fifteenth century. Andrew had never seen anything that rivaled the temple’s beauty. The carved stone buildings were surrounded by immaculate gardens, which were equally magnificent in design and simplicity. Beyond the gardens and amidst the golden sun rays in the morning sky soared the famous cranes.

“Le-Le-Le-Let’s catch one,” Clifford whispered, gazing at the birds wheeling above. Clifford’s beauty was only marred by one flaw: he stuttered. He had difficulty uttering the first sound of any sentence. Once the threshold of the sentence was breached, the rest of the words flowed smoothly through his lips. But that first syllable became embroiled in his mouth, caught in a precarious struggle, like a delicate bird trying to extricate itself from a net.

Andrew nodded, and the boys ran into the rushes skirting the water. Only a few yards from the shoreline, a majestic crane waded beyond a stand of willows, lifting and placing its feet with precision. They dropped to their hands and knees. Andrew took the lead, snaking through stalks of willows. The bird froze, intent on a fish below the surface. They slowly rose to a crouched position, Andrew nodded, and they sprang forward with arms outstretched and fingers grasping.

The crane flashed its slender wings and disappeared, while the boys splashed into the lake empty-handed.

The shock of frigid water felt exhilarating, and laughter spilled from their lips. They hauled themselves to their feet and realized their robes were now soaked and befouled with mud. They sloshed to shore and removed their robes, spread them along the bank to dry. They lay side by side on the bank to let the sun warm their bodies.

“Will you become a monk?” Andrew asked.

“Na-na-na-no. I-I-I-I’m going to fly airplanes across the sky. Ha-ha-how about you?”

Andrew thought for a moment. “If I were a monk, I could study the scriptures and play my flute all day long. But I want to be a mountain climber. I’m going to scale Everest.”

“Lingtse and White Crane, up to no good it seems. How did your robes become soiled?” Master Jung-Wei had walked up without a sound and now stood above them, his shadow falling over their pale bodies.

Andrew dropped his eyes. “Master, we fell into the lake trying to catch a crane.”

“It is not desirable to possess a crane,” Master Jung-Wei said with a sagacious nod. “That brings unhappiness to the bird and unnecessary responsibility to the boy. If you wish to have a crane, be a crane.”

Clifford’s laughter sparkled. “Ha-ha-ha-how can a boy be a crane?”

“The essence of the bird is within you. You carry the same fundamental nature of every living creature. Within you are the saint and the murderer, the crane and the swine, the butterfly and the serpent. All these possibilities lie within your being.” He paused, as if to let silence underscore his words. “You must choose which you will be and walk that path one step at a time.”

Andrew sat up, crossed his legs, and arched his back. His eyes narrowed in fierce concentration as he spread his arms like wings and imagined himself floating on currents of air high above the lake. Silence engulfed him. His only sensation was the cool morning breeze on his skin. There on the ground by the lake, for Andrew Waters, the universe seemed to fold in on itself. It came to him in a flash of knowing, all the master’s lessons. He truly was a perfect, unlimited life force, bound only by his own thoughts. A shock of joy shivered through him as he felt the weightlessness of flight, lifting… lifting… and for an instant, he was a glorious crane.

Andrew was shaken out of his dream.

“Look alive, sailor, you’ve got the watch.”

It was his last midnight-to-four watch before reaching the island, and his last chance for reconciliation with Mitchell. He untied his restraining ropes and immediately became airborne. He hit the steel deck with a thud and tumbled into the line of lockers. Dressing was a wild affair, like pulling on clothes while riding a rodeo bull, but Andrew crawled into his uniform, life vest, and watch cap in only a few jarring minutes. He sloshed through the corridors to the galley, where he made an urn of coffee. When the coffee was brewed, he poured a mug, placed a saucer over the top, and stumbled through the ship to Mitchell’s cabin.

Andrew scratched on Mitchell’s curtain door, but there was no answer. He drew the curtain aside and stepped into the cabin. The room was as orderly as always. Books were jammed on the shelf. A wooden hanger held a uniform to a wall hook, neat, pressed, and ready to cover the lieutenant’s body. It swayed out from the wall with each roll of the ship and swung back flush, like a clock’s pendulum measuring time.

Ropes held Mitchell to his mattress. Andrew took a moment to admire the sleeping form before shaking the officer’s shoulder.

Mitchell was slow to wake because he taken phenobarbital in order to sleep. He finally opened his eyes and stared up. He lifted his left arm and glanced at his wristwatch.

“I brought some coffee, sir. Do you need help getting those ropes off?”

“I can do it,” Mitchell said with a drug-blurred voice.

Mitchell unstrapped himself. He wore only his skivvies, and two angry red welts lashed across his skin where the ropes had held him, one across his chest, the other across his legs. Mitchell rolled out of bed and took the coffee. He gazed into Andrew’s bruised face, as if searching for something to say, but there was only the awkward hush that towered between them like a stone wall.

Mitchell sipped his coffee. “Thanks, Andy. I’ll be with you in a minute,” he croaked. He opened his mouth to say more, but before he could, Andrew ducked behind the curtain door.

Andrew heard a muffled, “Shit,” on the other side of the curtain.

Five minutes later, Andrew followed the lieutenant onto the red-lit bridge.

“Barometer’s holding steady at 29.32,” Fisher said. “The wind is at force seven.” He stood with his elbow hooked through the side of the captain’s chair. “Storm’s one hundred and twenty-five miles due west. We’re riding her ass pretty tight.”

Andrew relieved the watch at the port side of the wheelhouse. A northeasterly wind whined through the guy wires and heeled the
Pilgrim
over each time she rolled to starboard. Horizontal lines of rain blew across the bow and drummed into the pilothouse windows. Andrew peered into the blackness, but it was impossible to see anything but the white spray flying over the bow.

Mitchell relieved Fisher, made a log entry, and checked the latest movement of the storm on the charts. After verifying that everything was as it should be, he staggered to the window and stood two feet from Andrew, staring out to sea.

Andrew’s mind groped for words of reconciliation, but he couldn’t think of how to restore the rapport they had once shared. The one relationship they still had was the rigid naval code. It was a fine thread binding them.

They stood for thirty silent minutes. Mitchell checked the barometer, made a log entry, returned to Andrew’s side, all perfectly quiescent.

Ogden’s eyebrows rose as he clasped the engine room telegraph with both hands. He leaned toward Stokes. “Hell’s bells, what’s up with those two?”

Stokes had his legs spread wide for balance. His hands gripped the wheel and his eyes were glued to the gyrocompass. “Beats me. They haven’t said a word since Papeete. The lieutenant is probably still sore about the fight.”