The Pistol (11 page)

It was the first time since Mast’s company had moved out for the beaches, and Mast himself had come into possession of the pistol, that Mast had been happy. And the reason, had Mast looked for it, which he did not, was easy to find. It was because up here he felt he no longer had to think about protecting the pistol.

The awareness of the state of war in which they lived, and which gave the pistol its meaning, had not left Mast. It had not left any of them—although in actual fact there were moments up here, especially when he was exploring, that Mast forgot about it. But most of the time this cloud (with which they all were to become so familiar over the next several years, until it became almost second nature to them) was there, fully sensed, in the back of his mind and looming over everything. So Mast’s particular, personal enemy, his devil, the Japanese major with the saber, had not left Mast. He was still there. But he had been abstracted by this free mountain living from an actual flesh-and-blood picture in Mast’s mind to a mere idea. And as with so many people, mere abstract ideas were not nearly as disturbing to Mast as immediate actualities.

Probably a great deal of Mast’s relief from the tension caused by the need to protect his salvation, the pistol, came from the fact that up here on top of the mountains the constant, omnipresent, omnipotent authority of the Army over every tiniest facet of their lives was removed from them, pushed back to the middle distance. Up here that Authority was represented only by the unforceful, amiable command of Corporal Fondriere.

And apparently Fondriere felt something of this same thing because after the first few days Fondriere did not even insist that one man stay on post at the guns at all times. After all, as he said, from here they could see the beaches where the Japs would land. Time enough, when they landed, to have a full-time sentry. All he asked was that there be one man in the camp at all times. After that the whole thing became one big vacation.

Mast had been under tremendous strain at Makapoo, trying to protect the pistol, and knowing all the time that all around him were numbers of men just waiting for a chance to grab it. He hadn’t been able to enjoy anything, even life itself, because of the pistol. And so now, when he let down and relaxed, he let down all the way. He stopped the uncomfortable business of wearing the pistol inside his waist belt under his shirt at night, stopped wearing to bed the rifle belt with the holster on it. He wrapped it all up in itself and left the whole thing to lie at his head in the closed end of the tent, and began to get his first good sleep in weeks. He even stopped wearing the rifle belt in the daytime, as the others had theirs, and left it in the tent. Who could be an efficient rock-climber with that thing dragging at your waist?

After all, as he reasoned, there were only the four of them up here. And they were living in such close proximity in their little camp that there was no possibility of hiding a theft. Then too, being up here as they were, with the world, the war, the Army, everything so remote, it seemed somehow as if some sort of truce existed, not only about the pistol but about everything, between the four of them. And they were all enjoying it. It would be a ghastly immorality for any one of them to violate this feeling, and apparently they all felt it. This was evidenced by O’Brien.

Mast’s relationship with O’Brien had remained the same as at Makapoo: they spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary in some line of duty. But up here, whether it was this sense of having been removed from under the thumb of Army authority, or whether it was because of having shared the now unbelievable job of bringing up the supplies, or whether it was just simply the being thrown together so much on the patrol, the two of them had started speaking when it was
not
in line of duty. It started first with a few stiff, brusque “Helios,” each man looking at the other tentatively, ready to draw back if rebuffed. Later a few other stiff words were added, finally a grin or two. And then one day O’Brien came up to Mast where he was sitting alone in the pass looking out over the valley that none of them ever tired of viewing, and made a pronouncement:

“Look. I know you’re leavin’ your pistol in your tent. I just wanted to tell you you don’t have to worry about me snitching it. Not while we’re up here anyway.”

Mast had already sensed this attitude, not only in O’Brien but in everyone, or so he thought; otherwise he would never have dared leave the pistol. But now that O’Brien spoke it aloud, he was somehow embarrassed and at a loss for anything to say. “Well, thanks, O’Brien.”

O’Brien sat down stiffly and looked out over the valley floor for himself. It was dappled by moving cloud shadows today, and far off miles away one cloud, one single cloud, was raining. “It’s different up here somehow. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because the war seems so far away maybe.”

“I guess that’s it,” Mast said embarrassedly. Far below at Bellows Field a plane took off in the sunshine and began to circle upward, still far below them.

“It don’t really seem like the Army up here,” O’Brien said stiffly.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“But don’t get me wrong, Mast. I still want that pistol. I think I got a better right to it than you do. And once we get back down below I’ll get it off you hook or crook any way I can, see? You don’t need it. I need it. Now if you want it that way and be friends up here, okay and if you don’t, okay.”

“All right, let’s leave it like that then,” Mast said stiffly.

“Okay,” O’Brien said just as stiffly, and stuck out his big hamlike hand. “Our valley looks pretty today, don’t it?” he said after a moment, after they had shaken.

“Yes, it sure does,” Mast said. They had all four of them started calling it that: ‘our valley,’ as a joke about the feeling of possession that looking down from up here gave them.

Suddenly, from nowhere and for no reason, at least for no reason that he himself could ascertain, a fit of some unnamable emotion seized Mast so strongly that he was afraid for a moment he might weep. Because of this he got up and abruptly walked away, filled with astonishment at himself.

Well, at least his pistol was safe for the rest of the time they were up here anyway, and he could rest. Or so he thought. The only trouble was that it wasn’t, wasn’t safe. On the tenth day of the sojourn in Marconi Pass the fourth man, the tall thin quiet southerner Grace, tried to steal it—or rather just simply take it.

A
CTUALLY, IF IT WAS
the withdrawal of Army authority which had been in large part responsible for Mast’s newfound happiness, it was also this same absence of authority which was eventually responsible for endangering the pistol again.

Apparently the tall, thin, quiet, amiable southerner Grace, who had been Mast’s bunkmate since they arrived, had stood as long as he could the prospect, and the temptation, of seeing Mast’s unregistered pistol lying there unprotected at the head of their tent day in and day out. Finally he had succumbed. At any rate on the tenth day of their stay Mast came back to the camp from exploring a new rock pinnacle to catch Grace alone in camp and in the act of attaching the pistol to his own rifle belt, after having detached it from Mast’s.

“Hey!” Mast cried in alarm. “Hey! What are you doing!”

The southerner looked up and grinned, a tough, evil grin not at all like the quiet amiable man with whom Mast had shared a tent the past ten days. “What does it look like, Mast?” he said.

Mast, still standing at the bend of the little trail that they had gradually trampled in where it rounded the corner of rock from the saddle, could hardly believe what his eyes were offering him. “But you can’t!” he cried, disjointed words and bits and pieces of thoughts running through his head without coherence, not only about the pistol but about the meaning of the Pass itself and what O’Brien had said. “You can’t! Not up here! Not at the Pass!”

Grace, who had already had one hook of the holster through its eyelet, stopped working with it and looked up with that tough, mean grin which Mast could not recognize as belonging to him. “What’s to stop me?”

“We will!” Mast said. “All of us!”

“No you won’t,” Grace said, still holding the half-fastened holster and belt in his hands. Mast had started to walk toward him, but he did not move. “What have them two guys got to do with you and this pistol? You think they’ll help you? They will not. And you ain’t big enough, nor tough enough, to stop me.

“Look, Mast,” he said as Mast continued to advance along the trail. “You say you bought this pistol. But how do I know you bought it? Maybe you stole it. Even if you did buy it, somebody else stole it, didn’t they? All right, I’m stealing it. Or rather, just taking it.”

Mast had continued to come on, and now stopped a few feet away from him. “But you can’t. Don’t you understand? Not up here at the Pass, anyway. Are you a human being? Don’t you have any honor? Don’t you have any honesty? or integrity?”

“Did you have any integrity when you bought a pistol you knew was stolen property? I guess I got as much as the next man,” Grace said with his tough, mean grin. “Look, Mast. This is our last day up here. The Company Commander said we’d be relieved in ten days, didn’t he? All right. I waited till the last day to do it. I’ve liked it up here too. I didn’t want to spoil it. So I waited. Because I didn’t want to spoil it. But I’d be a damn fool to wait any longer. Our relief might show up any minute now. And when that happens, it’s done.

“When we get down from here, everything starts right over where it left off. We’re back in the Army again then and God knows where we’ll be a week from now. As soon as you get down off this mountain, you’ll start sleeping with this pistol inside your shirt again. And what chance’ll I ever have to get hold of it then?”

“But that’s cheating!” Mast said. “You knew I trusted everybody.”

“What’s cheating,” Grace said indifferently. “It all depends on how you look at it. I don’t look at it that it’s cheating. Way I look at it, you’ve been cheating me. Because I need this pistol worse than you do.

“Look, Mast,” he said, still holding it in his hands, it still only half-fastened, his tone sober and serious and intent. “You know what my spec number is on the T. O., don’t you? I’m a runner. I’m one of three company runners. Message carrier. Who stands to get it worse than a company runner? I’ll be off on my own all the time, alone, maybe even traveling through the Jap lines, for all I know. What if I run into a patrol, out there all by myself? with some wacky officer with one of them damn Samurai sabers in charge of it? What if I lost my rifle and got captured? At least this way I’ll be able to maybe get me a couple of officers and have a bullet left for myself. You know how they torture their prisoners and cut them all up with those sabers.”

Grace’s voice was very intent now. “While look at you, on the other hand. You’re a born clerk, Mast. With your education. You’ll wind up working for the Rear Echelon as company clerk, sure as hell, before you’re done. What good will this pistol do you there?”

“I have no intention of ever becoming a clerk,” Mast said in a voice which it seemed to him had become ancient, merely from repeating so many times the same words.

“Maybe not, but you will,” Grace said with conviction. “And I see no reason why you should have this pistol back there, when I need it so bad up front.”

“Say what you wish,” Mast said. “You’re a thief. And a cheat and a sneak.”

“I don’t think so,” Grace said. “In fact, I know so.”

As they stood staring at each other, separated by this difference of opinion, Mast heard footfalls behind him on the trail and turned to see Fondriere and O’Brien coming in from some exploration. “Well, you won’t get away with it!” he cried over his shoulder at Grace, and turning back and spreading out his arms in appeal, poured out to them the story of Grace’s defection and of just what had happened.

Grace continued to stand behind him listening stolidly, still holding the half-fastened holster and belt in his hands.

Not only did Grace, who was his own bunkmate, Mast pointed out, abuse his trust. Not only did Grace conduct himself like a thief and throw away his own honor and integrity. He had done what was much worse: he had destroyed the trip, and the Pass, and the Valley, and all that these had meant to all of them, the peacefulness and serenity and rest and memories they had all of them had up here. Mast made quite an interesting little speech, in a very few seconds. “Are we going to let him get away with it?” he summed up, spreading his hands again.

Corporal Fondriere coughed embarrassedly and dropped his eyes, and O’Brien, his face setting itself into a sheepish mask of studied disinterest, looked away.

“Your pistol doesn’t have anything to do with my command,” Fondriere said, “or with my mission up here. I don’t see what it has to do with me and O’Brien. Whoever has your pistol it’s not going to do me a damn bit of good.”

“That’s true,” O’Brien said. “I think it’s between you and Grace. Your pistol don’t do me any good. I don’t think you even got any right to ask us.”

Mast stared at them, his arms still outspread, unable to believe that they would not help him, just on moral grounds alone. Not even considering what he meant to them as a person. Flashes and smatterings of all kinds of thoughts and feelings tore through him, the ruined peacefulness of the Pass here, his own violated trustfulness, the precious rest he had had for ten days but which was now lost, the cheap reaction of the two men before him to what was clearly a deep moral issue, the unconscionable lack of integrity of the man behind him. Mast could not even have separated them one from the other, so vague were they and so fast through his mind did they fly, but the sum total of all of them was outraged righteousness.

Armed with this, he turned abruptly and ran full force at Grace, butting him in the chest with his head and making a grab for the half-fastened pistol holster at the same time. Grace was standing on the path just in front of the tents where the lesser slope of the camp dropped away to the steeper slope down to the rock chimney. The force of Mast’s head striking him in the chest threw him off balance. Instinctively, he stepped back—and off the slope. The drop under his foot wasn’t much, a foot or two. But it was enough to make him fall, and when he fell he let go of the belt and pistol. Mast stood on the path, breathing heavily and once again in possession of the pistol, and watched Grace rolling down the steep slope toward the cup of the rock chimney into which everything on three sides, up here, would roll and fall.