Down These Strange Streets

That was fine with me. “Then I’ll call you ‘Corporal.’ ”

A williwaw began to blow just as I opened the door, but I heard Pop’s reply anyway.

“I prefer ‘Boss,’” he said.

III

WE MADE OUR WAY DOWN THE HILL ON MUD-SLICKED BOARDWALKS. ON Adak, the wind almost always blew, but the most violent winds, the williwaws, could whip up in an instant and just about rip the nose off your face. The one that whipped up as Pop and I left the recreation hut wasn’t that bad, but I still thought a skinny old guy like him might fly off into the muck. But he held the rail where there was a rail, and a rope where there was a rope, and he did all right.

As for me, I was short and heavy enough that the milder williwaws didn’t bother me too much. But as I looked down the hill to the sloppy road we called Main Street, I saw a steel barrel bouncing along at about forty miles an hour toward Navytown. And some of the thick poles that held the miles of telephone and electrical wires that crisscrossed the camp were swaying as if they were bamboo. We wouldn’t be able to take our drive until the wind let up.

So I didn’t object when Pop took my elbow and pulled me into the lee of a Quonset hut. I thought he was just getting us out of the wind for a moment, but then he slipped under the lean-to that sheltered the door and went inside. I went in after him, figuring this must be where he bunked. But if my eyes hadn’t been watering, I might have seen the words THE ADAKIAN stenciled on the door.

Inside, I wiped my eyes and saw tables, chairs, typewriters, two big plywood boxes with glass tops, a cylindrical machine with a hand crank, and dozens of reams of paper. The place had the thick smell of mimeograph ink. Two of the tables had men lying on them, dead to the world, their butts up against typewriters shoved to the wall. A third man, a slim, light-skinned Negro, was working at a drawing board. It looked like he was drawing a cartoon.

This man glanced up with a puzzled look. “What’re you doing back already, Pop?” He spoke softly, so I could barely hear him over the shriek of the williwaw ripping across the hut’s corrugated shell.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,” Pop said. “I don’t like ‘Pop.’ I prefer ‘Boss.’”

“Whatever you say, Pop. They run out of scrambled eggs?”

“I wouldn’t know. My breakfast has been delayed.” Pop jerked a thumb at me. “The private here is taking me on an errand for the lieutenant colonel.”

The cartoonist rolled his eyes. “Lucky you. Maybe you’ll get to read one of his novellas.”

“That’s my fear,” Pop said. “And I simply don’t have enough whiskey on hand.” He waved in a never-mind gesture. “But we’ve interrupted your work. Please, carry on.”

The cartoonist turned back to his drawing board. “I always do.”

Pop went to an almost-empty table, shoved a few stacks of paper aside, and stretched out on his back. The stack of paper closest to me had a page on top with some large print that read: HAMMETT HITS HALF-CENTURY —HALF-CENTURY CLAIMS FOUL.

“Have a seat, Private,” Pop said. “Or lie down, if you can find a spot.” He closed his eyes. “God himself has passed gas out there. We may be here awhile.”

I looked around at the hut’s dim interior. The bulb hanging over the drawing board was lit, but the only other illumination was the gray light from the small front windows. Wind noise aside, all was quiet. It was the most peaceful place I had been since joining the Army.

“This is where you make the newspaper?” I asked.

“You should be a detective,” Pop said.

I looked at the two sleeping men. “It sure looks like an easy job.”

Pop managed to scowl without opening his eyes. “Private, have you actually seen The Adakian? I suppose it’s possible you haven’t, since there are over twenty thousand men in camp at the moment, and we can only produce six thousand copies a day.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said. “I saw the one about the European invasion, and maybe a few others.”

Pop made a noise in his throat. “All right, then. When have you seen it?”

“Guys have it at morning chow, mostly.”

Now Pop opened his eyes. “That’s because my staff works all night to put it out before morning chow. Starting at about lunchtime yesterday, they were typing up shortwave reports from our man at the radio station, writing articles and reviews, cutting and pasting, and doing everything else that was necessary to produce and mimeograph six thousand six-page newspapers before sunup. So right now most of them have collapsed into their bunks for a few hours before starting on tomorrow’s edition. I don’t know what these three are still doing here.”

At the drawing board, the Negro cartoonist spoke without looking up. “Those two brought in beer for breakfast, so they didn’t make it back out the door. As for me, I had an idea for tomorrow’s cartoon and decided to draw it before I forgot.”

“What’s the idea?” Pop asked.

“It’s about two guys who have beer for breakfast.”

Pop grunted. “Very topical.”

Then no one spoke. I assumed parade rest and waited. But as soon as I heard the pitch of the wind drop, I opened the door a few inches. The williwaw had diminished to a stiff breeze, no worse than a cow-tipping gust back home in Nebraska.

“We have to go, Boss,” I said.

Pop didn’t budge, but the cartoonist gave a whistle. “Hey, Pop! Wake up, you old Red.”

Pop sat up and blinked. With his now-wild white hair, round eyeglasses, and sharp nose, he looked like an aggravated owl.

“Stop calling me ‘Pop,’ ” he said.

Outside, as Pop and I headed down the hill again, I said, “That’s something I’ve never seen before.”

“What’s that?” Pop asked, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.

“A Negro working an office detail with white soldiers.”

Pop looked at me sidelong. “Does that bother you, Private? It certainly bothers the lieutenant colonel.”

I thought about it. “No, it doesn’t bother me. I just wonder how it happened.”

“It happened,” Pop said, “because I needed a damn good cartoonist, and he’s a damn good cartoonist.”

I understood that. “I do like the cartoons,” I said.

Pop made a noise in his throat again.

“Would it be all right, Private,” he said, “if we don’t speak again until we absolutely have to?”

That was fine with me. We were almost to the jeep, and once I fired that up, neither of us would be able to hear the other anyway. The muffler had a hole in it, so it was almost as loud as a williwaw.

IV

HALFWAY UP THE DORMANT VOLCANO CALLED MOUNT MOFFETT, ABOUT a mile after dealing with the two jerks in the shack at the Navy checkpoint, I stopped the jeep. The road was barely a muddy track here.

“Now we have to walk,” I told Pop.

Pop looked around. “Walk where? There’s nothing but rocks and tundra.”

It was true. Even the ravens, ubiquitous in camp and around the airfield, were absent up here. The mountainside was desolate, and I happened to like that. Or at least I’d liked it before finding the eagle. But I could see that to a man who thrived on being with people, this might be the worst place on earth.

“The Navy guys say it looks better when there’s snow,” I said. “They go skiing up here.”

“I wondered what you were discussing with them,” Pop said. “I couldn’t hear a word after you stepped away from the jeep.”

I decided not to repeat the Navy boys’ comments about the old coot I was chauffeuring. “Well, they said they were concerned we might leave ruts that would ruin the skiing when it snows. After that, we exchanged compliments about our mothers. Then they got on the horn and talked to some ensign or petty officer or something who said he didn’t care if they let the whole damn Army through.”

Hunching my shoulders against the wind, I got out of the jeep and started cutting across the slope. The