Down These Strange Streets

own.

Because then there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to change it.

II

I FOUND POP IN A RECREATION HUT. I HAD SEEN HIM AROUND, BUT HAD never had a reason to speak with him until the colonel ordered me to. When I found him, he was engrossed in playing Ping-Pong with a sweaty, barechested opponent who was about thirty years his junior. A kid about my age.

Pop had the kid’s number. He was wearing fatigues buttoned all the way up, but there wasn’t a drop of perspiration on his face. He was white-haired, brown-mustached, tall, and skinny as a stick, and he didn’t look athletic. In fact, he looked a little pale and sickly. But he swatted the ball with cool, dismissive flicks of his wrist, and it shot across the table like a bullet.

This was early on a Wednesday morning, and they had the hut to themselves except for three sad sacks playing poker against the back wall. Pop was facing the door, so when I came in he looked right at me. His eyes met mine for a second, and he must have known I was there for him. But he kept on playing.

I waited until his opponent missed a shot so badly that he cussed and threw down his paddle. Then I stepped closer and said, “Excuse me, Corporal?”

Pop’s eyes narrowed behind his eyeglasses. “You’ll have to be more specific,” he said. He had a voice that made him sound as if he’d been born with a scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“He means you, Pop,” the sweaty guy said, grabbing his shirt from a chair by the curving Quonset wall. “Ain’t nobody looking for me.”

Pop gave him the briefest of grins. I caught a glimpse of ill-fitting false teeth below the mustache. They made Pop look even older. And he had already looked pretty old.

“Cherish the moments when no one’s looking for you,” Pop said. “And don’t call me ‘Pop.’ ‘Boss’ will do fine.”

“Aw, I like ‘Pop,’ ” the sweaty guy said. “Makes you sound like a nice old man.”

“I’m neither,” Pop said.

“You’re half right.” The sweaty guy threw on a fatigue jacket and walked past me. “I’m gettin’ breakfast. See you at the salt mines.”

Pop put down his paddle. “Wait. I’ll come along.”

The sweaty guy looked at me, then back at Pop. “I think I’ll see you later,” he said, and went out into the gray Adak morning. Which, in July, wasn’t much different from the slightly darker gray, four-hour Adak night.

Pop turned away from me and took a step toward the three joes playing poker.

“Corporal,” I said.

He turned back and put his palms on the Ping-Pong table, looking across at me like a judge looking down from the bench. Which was something I’d seen before, so it didn’t bother me.

“You’re a private,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, sir.”

He scowled, his eyebrows pinching together in a sharp V. “Then you should know better than to call another enlisted man ‘sir.’ You generally shouldn’t even call him by rank, unless it’s ‘Sarge.’ We’re all G.I.’s pissing into the same barrels here, son. When the wind doesn’t blow it back in our faces.”

“So what should I call you?” I asked.

He was still scowling. “Why should you call me anything?”

I had the feeling that he was jabbing at me with words, as if I were a thug in one of his books and he were the combative hero. But at that time I had only read a little bit of one of those books, the one about the bird statuette. And I had only read that little bit because I was bored after evening chow one day, and one of the guys in my hut happened to have a hardback copy lying on his bunk. I wasn’t much for books back then. So I didn’t much care how good Pop was at jabbing with words.

“I have to call you something,” I said. “The colonel sent me to take you on an errand.”

Pop’s scowl shifted from annoyance to disgust. “The colonel?” he said, his voice full of contempt. “If you mean who I think you mean, he’s a living mockery of the term intelligence officer. And he’s still wearing oak leaves. Much to his chagrin, I understand. So I suppose you mean the lieutenant colonel.”

“That’s him,” I said. He was the only colonel I knew. “He wants you and me to take a drive, and he wants us to do it right now. If you haven’t eaten breakfast, I have a couple of Spam sandwiches in the jeep. Stuck ’em under the seat so the ravens wouldn’t get ’em.”

Pop took his hands off the table, went to the chairs along the wall, and took a jacket from one of them. He put it on in abrupt, angry motions.

“You can tell him I don’t have time for his nonsense,” he said. “You can tell him I’m eating a hot meal, and after that, I’m starting on tomorrow’s edition. I’m not interested in his editorial comments, his story ideas, or his journalistic or literary ambitions. And if he doesn’t like that, he can take it up with the brigadier general.”

I shook my head. “The general’s not in camp. He left last night for some big powwow. Word is he might be gone a week or more. So if I tell the colonel what you just said, I’m the one who’ll be eating shit.”

Pop snorted. “You’re in the Army and stationed in the Aleutians. You’re already eating shit.”

He tried to walk past me, but I stepped in front of him.

He didn’t like that. “What are you going to do, son? Thrash an old man?” He was glaring down at me like a judge again, but now the judge was going to throw the book. Which was something I had also seen before, so it didn’t bother me.

“I’d just as soon not,” I said.

Pop glanced back at the poker players. I reckoned he thought they would step up for him. But they were all staring at their cards hard enough to fade the ink, and they didn’t budge.

“Did you see the boxing matches yesterday?” I asked.

Pop looked back at me. His eyes had narrowed again.

“There was a crowd,” he said. “But yes, I watched from a distance. I thought it was a fine way to celebrate the Fourth of July, beating the snot out of our own comrades in arms. I hear the Navy man in the second match was taken to the Station Hospital.”

I shrugged. “He dropped his left. I had to take the opportunity.”

Pop bared those bad false teeth. “Now I recognize you. You K.O.’d him. But he laid a few gloves on you first, didn’t he?”

“Not so’s I noticed.” Thanks to the colonel, I’d had two whole weeks during which my only duty had been to train for the fight. I could take a punch.

“So you’re tough,” Pop said. His voice had an edge of contempt. “It seems to me that a tough fellow should be killing Japs for his country instead of running errands for an idiot. A tough fellow should—” He stopped. Then he adjusted his glasses and gave me a long look. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “But it occurs to me that you may have been on Attu last year. In which case you may have killed some Japs already.”

I didn’t like being reminded of Attu. For one thing, that was where the colonel had decided to make me his special helper. For another, it had been a frostbitten nightmare. And seven guys from my platoon hadn’t made it back.

But I wasn’t going to let Pop know any of that.

“A few,” I said. “And if the brass asked my opinion, I’d tell them I’d be glad to go kill a few more. But the brass ain’t asking my opinion.”

Pop gave a weary sigh. “No. No, they never do.” He dug his fingers into his thick shock of white hair. “So, what is it that the lieutenant colonel wants me to assist you with? I assume it’s connected with some insipid piece of ‘news’ he wants me to run in The Adakian?”

I hesitated. “It’d be better if I could just show you.”

Pop’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, good,” he said. His tone was sarcastic. “A mystery.” He gestured toward the door. “After you, then, Private.”

It felt like he was jabbing at me again. “I thought you said enlisted men shouldn’t call each other by rank.”

“I’m making an exception.”