The Pistol (6 page)

It had been decided, by whom and with what logic no one seemed to know, that four men were the most that could be spared from Makapoo at any one time. Other positions with complements of only ten men could spare three, but whyever the decision, arbitrary or not, four was the rule for Makapoo. And when it came Mast’s turn to go, Corporal Winstock’s little wire-repair detail was sent in together under the command of Winstock.

They rode in, the four of them, in the big two-and-a-half-ton personnel truck, which on its way picked up also the quota of shavers and bathers from the company’s other isolated and waterless positions between Makapoo and the CP. This was the first time any of these men had seen each other since the war began, and they talked to each other eagerly like old long-lost friends, although in actual fact back before the war none of them had been much more than casual acquaintances. Red-eyed, dirty and unshaven, they huddled together in the back of the open truck as if for mutual protection and stared out hungrily at the scattered civilian homes they passed. As the truck drew closer to the city, the thinly scattered homes became a little thicker, and whenever they passed a spot where they knew one of the company’s positions to be, they speculated enviously on the civilian homes nearby, if there were any, wondering if there were daughters in them and whether or not the occupants drank liquor. If there weren’t any civilian homes nearby, the truck would stop and pick up another quota of bathers.

The company’s command post was located at the foot of another headland which was shaped like a humpbacked whale and was known as Koko Head. To the eyes of tourists on a cruise ship at sea, when such things had still existed, it did indeed look like a whale. Just across its low saddle which separated it from the mountains behind, and through which the highway ran, the outskirts of the city began a few hundred yards beyond. Here were girls and whiskey both, and here was the other half of the company’s sector, the ‘gravy train’ half, with most of its positions located on rich beach estates.

But long before the truck even reached the top of this saddle, where these riches at least would have become visible to them, it turned off to the left down a curving side road. Here, nestled at the foot of Koko Head, was a park area which formerly had been a sort of public state park. At the foot of a crumbling fifty-foot cliff into which steps had been cut was a beautiful little palm-studded beach for swimming in a sheltered little inlet known as Hanauma Bay, complete with even a dancehall-bar and little restaurant, now closed and silent and sad. At the top of the cliff in the park area, set back in a sparsely planted grove of thorn trees which provided perfect camouflage as well as sheltering shade, were the tents of the company’s command post. Not far away in the same grove were the two public bath houses, for men and for women, but both of them now used by the troops at hand. It was toward these that the truck with Mast and the others on its headed.

Mast, who had almost forgotten a shower and shave could feel so luxurious, was careful to hang his cartridge belt with the holstered pistol on it in full view of the open shower stall, and after he finished his ablutions and dressed he went down the cliff and sat by himself on the steps of the deserted dancehall, so hollowly empty now, luxuriating in the strange, warm, sunny quiet which the absence of the Makapoo wind made to sound so loud in his ears, while the shuttered-up silence of the dancehall-bar and restaurant behind him, where civilians were no longer allowed to come, afflicted him with a hungry melancholy. Mast had not realized how used to that wind he had become.

It was here that little Corporal Winstock, his perpetually sly look still upon his thin rodent-like face, sought him out and sat down beside him. Even then, Mast had wondered why.

“Sure is nice, ain’t it?” Winstock said, smiling craftily and looking out under the palms at the peaceful, sunny bay whose quiet water rippled and glinted in the sunshine. “Hell, I thought I was deef, by God, when I first got here outta that wind.” He rubbed his hand lingeringly over his freshly shaved, sharp chin. “Sure wish they hadn’t of closed the jookjoint, don’t you?” he added sorrowfully.

“Yeah,” Mast said. “It’s hell to think of having to go back out there again, ain’t it?” he added absently. He was emotionally blanked out too, like the rest of them, here in this quiet sheltered place.

“Whyn’t you get yourself a job in the orderly room?” Winstock said craftily. “With your education. Then y’could stay here all the time.” He got up lazily and went down the dancehall steps and out onto the closely clipped grass that led down to the sand beach under the palms, and walked around to Mast’s right side.

“I don’t want a job in the orderly room,” Mast said.

Winstock had stopped and was standing looking at Mast. “Hey, Mast! I never knew you had a pistol. How come? When you’re a rifleman. You ain’t supposed to have a pistol.”

That Winstock could stand there and barefacedly say such a thing was immediately suspicious to Mast. Winstock could not have failed to notice the pistol during the past three weeks. Everyone on the position knew about it, excepting only the young lieutenant and the two platoon sergeants who were in charge. Certainly Winstock would have heard about it from O’Brien. Mast turned to look at the crafty face carefully.

“I bought it off a guy from the 8th Field who had it and wanted to sell it, back before the war,” he said.

“No kiddin’!” Winstock exclaimed with great surprise. “You’re lucky!” Then he rubbed his newly shaved chin again, thoughtfully. “But that’s buyin’ and receiving stolen property, ain’t it? That guy, or somebody, ‘course it might not of been him, had to steal that pistol.” Again he paused, then wrinkled up his crafty face into a rueful look. “Gee, I don’t know what I ought to do about that, Mast.” It was the first time Mast could remember hearing Winstock use the word ‘Gee.’ Usually Winstock swore explosively.

“What do you mean: ‘Do’?” Mast said, his suspicions rising further.

“Well,
you
know.” Winstock shrugged apologetically. “That’s an Army pistol, you know. ‘Course you yourself are innocent,
I
know that. But however
you
got it, and however that guy who
sold
it to you got it, in the beginning
some
body had to
steal
it—and from the
Army.
Now what kind of a position does that put
me
in?”

“It doesn’t put you in any kind of a position, as far as I can see,” Mast said narrowly.

“It don’t? Oh, but it does, Mast; it does. Don’t you see? You’re in my detail and I’m in charge of you. That makes it my responsibility. Not only to myself but to the Army too. Don’t you see that?”

“What the hell?” Mast growled. “You’re not in command of me. I’m not even in the same platoon you are. My squad leader’s the guy that’s in command of me. I’m only under you temporarily, on a little temporary detail, to do a definite, temporary job.”

“That’s just my point,” Winstock said. “’Course it’s only temporary, and as long as you’re there, long as you’re in my detail, you’re my responsibility, and so: so is that pistol.” He paused again and stared off thoughtfully, and rubbed again that freshly shaven chin that he, like Mast, was obviously still unused to. “I’m just going to have to figure out what to do, I guess. That’s all.”

“Do?” Mast growled nervously. “Do! What the hell do you mean:
Do
?”

“Well, whether to make you turn it over to me,” Winstock shrugged apologetically, “and turn it in. It puts me in a hell of a position. Mast. I don’t mind telling you.” He looked sad.

“Why, you’re crazy!” Mast exploded, and jumped up convulsively. He stood staring at Winstock a moment and then sat back down again. “You’re not in command of me in the first place! And in the second, it’s none of your damned business anyway, this pistol! It has nothing to do with
our
company! I told you: I bought it off a guy in the 8th Field!”

“Well, that’s not the way I see it,” Winstock said sadly. “I see it like it’s a sort of a responsibility of ethics—like, Mast, you know? I just got to decide what I ought to do.

“Well, I’ll let you know. Soon’s I figure it out. Got to think about it.” He slapped Mast on the arm, warmly and apologetically. “I’m sorry, kid. Well, maybe I’ll feel like I won’t have to do it maybe.

“Well, come on. We better get back upstairs. The truck’ll be ready to leave soon.”

“So you’ll let me know?” Mast growled sourly.

“Sure,” Winstock said cheerfully, “sure. Soon’s I figure out what I oughta do.” He turned and started off across the grass toward the steps up the cliff.

Mast continued to sit, staring out at the water framed by the softly rustling palms, but the beautiful scene had lost a great deal of its appeal for him. He could not remember Winstock being that kind of a chicken noncom; usually it was just the reverse, and Winstock was always in trouble from trying to work angles. Nervously Mast cracked his knuckles, one by one methodically, and at the same time convulsively, then bit a hangnail off his right index finger and spat it out angrily. He should never have come down here where Winstock could accost him openly. He should have stayed where there were other people. Winstock wouldn’t have dared do such a thing in front of other people. The pistol was becoming an almost unbearable responsibility. Everything he did or thought had to be governed by it. He could hardly keep up with it all.

From the top of the stairs in the cliff, Winstock hollered down at him to come on, that the truck was loading, and as he got up wearily to go, he looked at the lovely tropic scene before him, the like of which he had seen in so many movies and had so often dreamed of seeing in the reality; it left him feeling only an intense, gloomy sense of tragedy and sorrow, and a sad, resigned melancholy. This was not for him, any more than were the ‘gravy train’ positions of the other half of the company’s sector. For him in life there were only the Makapoos and the Winstocks. There was an almost enjoyable luxury in accepting and admitting it.

The ride back out to Makapoo was even worse. Everyone hated leaving the comforts and shelter of the CP, meager as they were, compared to the beach positions in the city. When the truck left the cover of the Koko Head saddle and came back out to the beach, the unceasing wind began to buffet them again. Up in front, right behind the cab where the most shelter was, Winstock and O’Brien sat opposite each other with their heads together talking and grinning at each other. Far off across the open sea here, its surf whipped up by the wind, Molokai where Stevenson had lived and where the leper colony still was, was visible as a low storm cloud on the horizon.

There was no real doubt in Mast’s mind as to what Winstock would decide to do. Nonetheless, after the truck had deposited them back within their isolated barbed-wire island at Makapoo and the little four-man detail had gone right back to work straightening and strengthening pickets and trying to dress up the hopelessly uneven lines of wire, Mast spent the rest of the day in an absolute agony of suspense, before Winstock finally came around to him after chow that evening.

“I’ve thought it over, Mast,” Winstock said, his thin, sharp little face twisted up with apology. “Thought it over carefully. And I’m gonna have to take your pistol and turn it in to Sergeant Pender to be turned in to the supply room.

“I hate to have to do it, Mast,” he said, “and I know you’ll think it’s chicken. But my conscience just won’t let me do anything else. It’s my responsibility as a noncom. Maybe this way someday it’ll get back to its rightful owner,” he said piously.

Mast stared at him in silence with narrowed eyes, his mind casting frantically about this way and that to try and find some escape. There wasn’t any. Whatever else, Winstock was a corporal with authority. All he had to do if Mast refused was go to Sergeant Pender anyway. Whatever old Sergeant Pender thought, he would always back up a corporal against a private. Slowly he took off his rifle cartridge belt and unhooked the pistol from it and passed it over.

“I’ll take the extra clips, too,” Winstock said.

Mast passed them over.

“I’m sure sorry. Mast,” Winstock said, squinting his face up apologetically.

“’Sall right,” Mast said.

He stood and stared after the wiry little corporal as he made his way down toward the number one CP hole with the stuff. The man, all unwitting, because of some impractical, obscure, personal moral point, was carrying off Mast’s hope, more than his hope: his faith; and Mast could have, and would have, easily killed him, had there been any way at all of getting by with it.

Mast had passed one day of horrible anxiety, and was to pass a number more of almost suicidal depression. When you take away a man’s chance of being saved, Mast asked himself over and over as the little movie of the Jap major splitting him in twain like a melon returned to plague him day after day, when you do that to a man, what is there left?

But the one day of horrible anxiety, and the number more of near suicidal depression, were as nothing to what Mast felt just one week later when, going out on another detail after Winstock’s wire-repair detail had been disbanded, Mast saw Corporal Winstock wearing on his own rifle belt Mast’s pistol.

W
HAT HAD CAUSED WINSTOCK
to do it, to come parading out in the open with the pistol so soon after he had won it, was something that would probably never be known. Certainly at the time Mast was in no state to speculate on it.

In any case Winstock, after forcing himself (with who knew what monumental efforts of will power) to wait a whole week, apparently could stand it no longer and finally had had to begin wearing it. And who knew what anguished arguments with himself he may have gone through in making his decision?

Mast of course was thinking, and indeed was concerned with, none of these things. Such spasms of outrage, fury and hate flamed and exploded and smouldered all through him that his psyche, had it been visible, might have resembled an artillery barrage seen at night, and Mast himself swore he could smell the odor of ozone in his nostrils. He had not been put today on the same detail with Winstock, who had been given charge of a smaller detail to police the edge of the highway outside the wire, so all Mast really got was a glimpse as his own detail was marched out through the gate of wire which the sentry closed after them. But the glimpse was enough. There wasn’t, of course, anything he could do about it then. Mast was not all sure there was anything he could do about it ever.