Down These Strange Streets

incriminate me.”

I had heard words similar to those just a few hours before. But they wouldn’t be spoken for a few years yet.

The colonel gave a growl. He picked up the pen, pushed across the next piece of paper, and put the pen down on top of it.

“Very well,” he said. “This next statement is to the effect that you weren’t intoxicated at all, but had an altercation with the sailor and committed manslaughter. And the corporal witnessed it.”

“Sir,” I heard myself saying again. “I decline to sign on the grounds that signing may tend to incriminate me.”

The colonel stood, put his hands on the desk, and leaned forward into the light like a Nebraska judge. Now my eyes were focused on the top of his head. He had the same greasy, wormlike hair as the man at the high, long podium in my vision.

“Son, you’d best listen up and listen good,” the colonel snarled. He pushed the remaining three pages onto the first two. “I have five confessions here, each with a slightly different version of what you and the corporal have done. You can sign any one of them. The consequences vary depending upon which one you choose. But if you don’t choose one, then I’ll choose one for you. And you won’t like that. Nor will you like the way things go for you when both my aide and I swear that we witnessed the aftermath of your crimes as well as your signature.”

I heard every word he said, and I knew what each one meant.

But what I said in reply was, “Sir, I decline to sign on the grounds—”

Then I heard the telltale sound of a hammer clicking back, and my eyes broke focus from the top of the colonel’s head. I looked down and saw his .45 service automatic in his hand. It was pointing at my gut.

“Let me put this another way, Private,” he said. His Texas accent slid into a self-satisfied drawl. “You can sign one of these pieces of paper, or I can tell the judge advocate that you went berserk when I confronted you with the evidence. I can tell him that you attacked a much superior officer, namely myself, and that the officer was therefore compelled to defend himself.”

I stared at the muzzle of the .45 for what seemed like a long, long moment. Then I snapped my eyes back up to a point above and behind the colonel’s head.

Maybe I hadn’t seen the future after all. Maybe this was the future, right here. And maybe that was fair.

Maybe this would make me even again.

“Sir,” I said. “I decline to sign. You already know why.”

The colonel gave a disgusted groan. “That’s a damn poor choice, son. But if that’s the way you want it . . .”

Another hammer clicked.

This one was behind me. It was followed by a thick, hacking, tubercular cough. But that only lasted a second.

Then I heard that smooth, sophisticated voice.

“Speaking of damn poor choices,” Pop said.

I looked down at the colonel again. His eyes were wide, and his face was twitching with mingled fury and fear.

But the fear won. He put his left thumb in front of the .45’s hammer, let it down slowly, and then set the pistol on the stack of confessions.

“Lovely,” Pop said, coming up on my right. He held up a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red with his free hand. God knows where he’d gotten it. “Now, let’s have a drink.”

XIV

POP DIDN’T EVEN GLANCE AT ME. HE KEPT HIS EYES ON THE COLONEL, GIVING him the same thin smile I had been seeing all day. He had a .38 revolver in his right hand and the fifth of Johnnie Walker in his left.

“You can sit back down,” he told the colonel. “But we’ll stand.”

The colonel sat down. He looked up at Pop with a mockery of Pop’s thin smile. It was a repellent sneer.

“A Communist corporal holding a pistol on a lieutenant colonel,” he said. “This is not going to end well for you.”

Pop set the bottle of whiskey beside the stack of confessions. “Nothing ends well for anyone,” he said. He picked up the .45 and dropped it into a small metal wastebasket on the floor beside the desk. “Do you have any glasses? I’d rather not pass the bottle.”

The colonel nodded past my shoulder. “In the bottom drawer of the file cabinet beside the door. But don’t touch my brandy.”

Pop’s eyes didn’t move from him. “Private, would you mind?”

I took a few steps backward, bumped into the filing cabinet, and squatted down to open the drawer. There were two short glasses and a cut-glass bottle of liquor. I took out the glasses, closed the drawer, and brought the glasses to the desk.

“We need three,” Pop said.

I set the glasses down beside the confessions. “I decline to drink,” I said. My mother had asked me to avoid alcohol, too.

Pop still didn’t take his eyes off the colonel, but he grinned. His false teeth didn’t look so bad all of a sudden.

“You’re an amusing young man, Private,” he said.

The colonel crossed his arms. “Neither of you will be very amusing once my aide returns. You’ll both be damned.”

Pop shrugged. “We’re damned anyway. Besides, I happen to know that your aide is at the movies with a nurse of my acquaintance. He’ll be there at least another hour. I believe tonight’s film is They Died with Their Boots On. Which isn’t too surprising, since Olivia de Havilland has been popular here lately. Although the story of Custer’s Last Stand might not be the most tasteful selection for an audience of G.I.’s.”

The colonel glowered. “If you shoot me, it’ll be heard. There’ll be dozens of men converging on this building before you’re out the door.”

Pop finally looked at me. His eyes were bright, and he laughed out loud.

“Can you believe this joker?” he asked. “Now he’s worried about a shot being heard.”

Pop turned back toward the desk, reached out with his left hand, and unscrewed the cap from the whiskey. He dropped the cap, picked up the bottle, and poured a hefty dose into each glass. Some of the booze splashed out onto the confessions.

“I have no intention of shooting you,” he told the colonel. “I only brought the gun so you wouldn’t shoot us.” He tilted his head toward me. “That’s right, Private. I knew you’d be here. You’ve hardly listened to me all day.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You’re not an officer.”

Pop put down the bottle and picked up one of the glasses. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, and downed the whole thing in three swallows. Then he set it down and refilled it. “Better have yours, sir.” He said sir with deep sarcasm. “You’re falling behind.”

The other glass sat where it was, untouched, the amber liquid trembling.

The colonel bared his teeth. “I don’t drink that stuff.”

Pop picked up his glass again. “Ah. But I know something you do drink. You had a little belt of something cooked up by one of our Alaska Scouts, didn’t you? But what you didn’t know is that some men can hold their mystical potions, and some men can’t. You see, to take a spiritual journey, you have to have a fucking soul to begin with. Otherwise, you just suffer from delusions of grandeur. Especially if that was your inclination to begin with.” He downed his second glass of Johnnie Walker.

The colonel leaned forward. “Have another, corporal,” he said. His voice was almost a hiss. “I really wish you would.”

Pop poured himself another.

“Uh, Pop . . .” I said.

Pop picked up his glass a third time. “Mother’s milk, son,” he said. “And don’t call me ‘Pop.’”