Down These Strange Streets

Pop shook his head. “The man we saw was a native. He may know of shelters on this old volcano that we wouldn’t find if we searched for forty years. Or he may even be so used to a wind like this that he’ll stand facing into it and smile.”

I looked up at the big hole and saw what looked like a twenty-pound rock blow past. “I saw him jump down here. That’s how I knew where to go. And I think I would have seen him climb back out. Unless he can disappear.”

And then, from behind the jumble of sod and whalebone at the far end of the ulax, the Cutthroat emerged. His hood was down, and his dark hair shone. He was in a crouch, holding a hunting knife at his side. A big one.

“Who the fuck are you people?” the Cutthroat asked. His voice was low and rough, but still managed to cut through the howling above us. This was a man used to talking over the wind.

Pop gave a single hacking cough. Then he looked at me and said, “Well, Private, it doesn’t look as if he disappeared.”

Right then I wanted to punch Pop, but it was only because I was scared. I wished the Cutthroat really had disappeared. I didn’t recognize his dark, scraggly-bearded face, but that didn’t mean anything. I didn’t remember many living faces from Attu.

But I did remember the Cutthroats as a group. I remembered how they had appeared and vanished in the frozen landscape like Arctic wolves.

And I remembered their knives.

“I asked you two a question,” the Cutthroat said, pointing at us with his knife. “Are you M.P.’s? And if you’re not, what are you doing here?”

Pop gave another cough. This time it wasn’t a tubercular hack, but a sort of polite throat-clearing. And I realized he didn’t understand what kind of man we were dealing with. But maybe that was a good thing. Because if he had ever seen the Cutthroats in action, he might have stayed stone-silent like me. And one of us needed to answer the question before the Cutthroat got mad.

“We aren’t M.P.’s,” Pop said. “So if you’ve done something you shouldn’t, you needn’t worry about us.”

“I haven’t done a fucking thing,” the Cutthroat said. Even though his voice was gravelly, and even though he was cussing, his voice had a distinctive Aleut rhythm. It was almost musical. “I just came up here because a guy told me there was a dead eagle. And I thought I’d get some feathers. I’m a goddamn native, like you said.”

I managed to take my eyes off the Cutthroat long enough to glance at Pop. Pop had the same expression on his face that he’d had when I’d first seen him, when he’d been whipping the strong, shirtless kid at Ping-Pong. He was calm and confident. There were even slight crinkles of happiness at the corners of his eyes and mouth, as if he were safe and snug in his own briar patch, and anybody coming in after him was gonna get scratched up.

It was the damnedest expression to have while sitting in a pit on the side of a volcano facing a man with a knife while a hundred-mile-an-hour wind screeched over your head.

“I understand completely,” Pop said. “We came up to find the eagle as well, although we didn’t have as good a reason. We’re only here because an idiot lieutenant colonel couldn’t think of another way to make us dance like puppets. It’s a stupid, pointless errand from a stupid, pointless officer.”

The Cutthroat blinked and then straightened from his crouch. He lowered the knife.

“Fucking brass,” he said.

“You’re telling us,” Pop said.

The Cutthroat slipped his knife into a sheath on his hip. “Colonel Castner’s not too bad. He lets us do what we know how to do. But the rest of them. Fuck me, Jesus. They didn’t listen on Attu, and they ain’t listened since.”

I knew what he was talking about. The Cutthroats had scouted Attu ahead of our invasion, so they had told the brass how many Japs were there and what to expect from them. But they had also warned that Attu’s permafrost would make wheeled vehicles almost useless, and that we’d need some serious cold-weather boots and clothing. Plus extra food. Yet we’d gone in with jeeps and trucks, and we’d been wearing standard gear. Food had been C-rations, and not much of that. It had all been a rotten mess, and it would have been a disaster if the Cutthroats hadn’t taken it upon themselves to bring dried fish and extra supplies to platoon after platoon.

Not to mention the dead Jap snipers and machine gunners we regular G.I.’s found as we advanced. The ones whose heads had been almost severed.

“I cowrote the pamphlet on the Battle of the Aleutians,” Pop said. “But of course it had to be approved by the brass, so we had to leave out what we knew about their mistakes. And we also weren’t allowed to mention the Alaska Scouts. The generals apparently felt that specific mention of any one outfit might be taken to suggest that other outfits weren’t vital as well.”

The Cutthroat made a loud spitting noise. “Some of them weren’t.” He sat down with his back against the sod-and-whalebone rubble. “Don’t matter. I was there, and I killed some Japs. Don’t much care what gets said about it now.”

The noise of the williwaw had dropped slightly, so when Pop spoke again his voice was startlingly loud.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Pop said, “why are you on Adak? I was told the Scouts had gone back to Fort Richardson.”

The Cutthroat’s upper lip curled, and he pointed a finger at his right thigh. “I got a leg wound on Attu, and the fucking thing’s been getting reinfected for over a year. It’s better now, but it was leaking pus when the other guys had to leave. Captain said I had to stay here until it healed. But now I got to wait for an authorized ride. And while I wait, they tell me I’m an orderly at the hospital. Which ain’t what I signed up for. So I tried to stow away on a boat to Dutch Harbor a couple weeks ago, and the fucking M.P.’s threw me off.”

“I assume that means you’re now AWOL from the hospital,” Pop said. “Which explains why you thought that the Private and I might be police.”

The Cutthroat shook his head. “Nah. The hospital C.O. don’t really give a shit what I do. He let me put a cot in a supply hut and pretty much ignores me. I’m what you call extraneous personnel.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I just thought you might be M.P.’s because of this dead guy back here. I think it’s the same guy who told me about the eagle, but maybe not. You people all look alike to me.”

It took me a few seconds to realize what the Cutthroat had said. When I did, I looked at Pop. Pop’s eyebrows had risen slightly.

“Would you mind if I have a look?” Pop asked.

The Cutthroat shrugged his shoulders. “What do I care? He ain’t my dead guy.”

Pop stood up stiffly, and I stood up as well. With the williwaw overhead now a somewhat diminished shriek, we walked, hunched over, to where the Cutthroat sat. And now I could see that the ulax had a second, smaller chamber whose entrance had been partially obscured by the fallen sod and bone.

We went around the pile of debris, through the narrow entrance beside the wall, and into the second chamber. It was about ten by eight feet, and its roof was also pocked by holes that let in light. But these holes were smaller, and they changed the pitch of the wind noise. The shriek rose to a high, keening whistle.

On the floor, a stocky man lay on his back, his open eyes staring up at the holes where the wind screamed past. His hair looked dark and wet, and his face was as pale as a block of salt except for a large bruise under his left eye. His mouth was slack. He was wearing a dark Navy pea jacket, dark trousers, and mud-black boots. His bare, empty hands were curled into claws at his sides.

Pop and I stared down at him for a long moment, neither of us speaking.

At first, I didn’t recognize the man because he looked so different from how he had looked the day before. But then I focused on the bruise under his eye, and I knew who he was. My gut lurched.

Right behind me, the Cutthroat said, “Back of his head’s bashed in.”

Startled, I spun around, fists up.

The Cutthroat’s knife shot up from its sheath to within two inches of my nose.

Then Pop’s hand appeared between the blade and my face.

“Easy, boys,” Pop said. “I’m the camp editor. You don’t want your names in the paper.”

I lowered my fists.

“Sorry,” I said. I was breathing hard, but trying to sound like I wasn’t. “It was just a reflex.”

The Cutthroat lowered his knife as well, but more slowly.