Down These Strange Streets

As Pop slammed back the drink, the colonel lunged sideways and down, reaching for the wastebasket. But Pop kicked it away with the side of his foot, simultaneously draining his glass without spilling a drop. He moved as casually and smoothly as if he were swatting a Ping-Pong ball.

The colonel fell to his hands and knees. Pop leaned down and put the barrel of the .38 against the base of his skull.

“Feel familiar?” Pop asked.

The colonel made a whimpering sound.

“Bang,” Pop said. Then he straightened, set down his glass again, and stepped over to the filing cabinet where the wastebasket had come to a stop. Pop picked up the wastebasket, brought it back, and set it on the corner of the desktop.

The colonel awkwardly hauled himself into his chair again. His face was florid and sweating.

“If you aren’t going to shoot me,” he said, “then what do you want?”

Pop scratched his cheek with the muzzle of the .38 before turning it back toward the colonel.

“I suppose I just want to see your face as I tell you what I believe I know,” Pop said. “I want to see how close I am to the truth. And then I should return this pistol to the commander. Fine fellow, by the way. He says you stink at poker.”

The florid color in the colonel’s face began to drain. But the sweat seemed to increase. His wormlike hair hung in wet strands before his eyes.

“While you were drinking and playing cards,” Pop said, shaking the .38 as if it were an admonishing finger, “you listened to stories told by our friend the Scout, some of which he’d told you before on Attu. And you decided you wanted to try out some of what he said for yourself. Well, that was fine with him. What did he care what a stupid white man might want to do to himself? Besides, you’re a lieutenant colonel. If he crossed you, you might take him out of his hut behind the hospital and put him to work digging latrines.

“So he gave you the magic, and you drank it. But as I said, you and the magic didn’t mix. So your overall unpleasantness became a more specific, insane nastiness. And you decided you were tired of waiting for that promised promotion. You decided you’d do a few things to make it happen.

“You’d kill the symbol of the power you desired, thus making its strength your own. And while you were waiting for that chance, you’d befriend a Navy commander with power of a different kind. The power of political connections.

“Finally, you’d eliminate some obstacles and settle some scores. And you’d use both the dead eagle and a fixed fight to do that. You’d set up the soldier who could testify to your panicked fuckup on Attu. And you’d set up the dirty, unjustly famous Marxist corporal who’d snubbed you and your talent—and who might also cause you trouble because of his habit of talking to every G.I. in camp. Including the occasional sailor.”

Pop reached down with his free hand, picked up the confessions, and dropped them into the wastebasket on top of the .45. Then he pointed the .38 at the colonel’s chest.

“Are there any carbons?” Pop asked. “Tell the truth, now. I was a Pinkerton.”

The colonel, pale and perspiring, shook his head.

Pop picked up the colonel’s untouched glass of whiskey and poured it into the wastebasket.

“The one thing I can’t figure,” he said, “is how you arranged the timing and the murder. I know how you got your fall-guy sailor to show up at the ulax this morning—money and sex. But I don’t know how you managed to have him capture an eagle for you to kill at almost the same time. And I don’t know how you could be sure that the second sailor, even as angry as he was over being cheated, would go so far as to kill the boxer.”

Now the colonel, still pasty and sweating, smiled. He looked happy. It was the scariest thing I’d seen since Attu.

“I saw the future,” he said. His voice was as thick and dark as volcanic mud. “That’s how.”

Pop cocked his head. “Ah. Well, that wouldn’t have made sense to me yesterday. But it’s not yesterday anymore.” He reached into a jacket pocket and brought out his Zippo. “So maybe you already saw this, too.”

He lit the Zippo and dropped it into the wastebasket. Blue and yellow flames flashed up halfway to the ceiling, then settled to a few inches above the lip of the basket and burned steadily.

“We’re going to leave now,” Pop told the colonel. He picked up the bottle cap and replaced it on the Johnnie Walker. “You aren’t going to bother us again. The private here isn’t your slave anymore. And I don’t have the time or stomach to read your stories.” He picked up the bottle with his free hand and took a few steps backward toward the vestibule.

I hesitated, thinking that perhaps I should put out the fire. But neither Pop nor the colonel seemed concerned by it.

“You can’t prove any of it,” the colonel said. His voice was shaking and wild now. “You don’t have anything you can tell anyone. You can’t do a thing to me.”

Pop stopped, then stepped forward again. He held out the bottle of whiskey toward me. I took it.

Then Pop uncocked the .38 and slid it into in his right jacket pocket. He stepped up to the desk again. I could see the light of the flames dancing in his eyeglasses as he nodded to the colonel.

“You’re partly right,” Pop said. “No one can go to a court-martial and submit visions as evidence. But I do have a few things I can use in other contexts. I have a new friend in the Navy, a great admirer of my work, who has high connections. And I gave this same friend the name of a possible murderer. A sailor named Joe. I didn’t have to tell him why or how I had the name. My reputation in matters of murder, fictional though those murders may be, seemed good enough for him.

“Now, the naval investigators might not find the right Joe, and even if they do, they might not be able to prove what Joe did. Especially if he’s smart enough not to confess. But the Joe in question is a bit of a hothead. So, since those Navy boys will be questioning every sailor on Adak named Joe, it’s possible that an angry Joe might reveal that one of yesterday’s boxing matches was fixed. And he might tell them who else knows about that, and who he saw by that dead bird this morning. And then those Navy boys might come talk to some of their colleagues in the Army. Don’t you think?”

The colonel began to rise from his chair again.

“Goddamn slimy Red—” he began.

As quick as a snake striking, Pop reached into his right jacket pocket and came up with the bent eagle feather. He thrust it across the desk and held it less than an inch from the colonel’s nose.

“You,” Pop said. “Will not. Fuck. With us. Again.”

Then Pop reached down to the desk with his left and picked up the colonel’s garrison cap. He dropped it into the wastebasket.

The flames shot higher, and something inside the basket squealed.

The colonel’s mouth went slack. His eyes opened wide and stared at the fire without blinking. He looked like a wax statue. Or a corpse in rigor mortis.

Pop turned and put the feather back in his pocket. Then he gave me a glance and jerked his head toward the door. I turned and went out with him.

But Pop looked back toward the colonel one last time.

“By the way,” he said. “If you’ve ever thought about asking for a transfer, now would be an excellent time. I understand MacArthur wants to get back to the Philippines in the worst way. And I’m sure he could use the help.”

Then we went out. The fog was still thick, but we could see where we were going. Even this late in the day, there was a sun shining somewhere beyond the gray veil. It was summer in the Aleutians.

I looked back and saw that the ravens were gone.

XV

THE LIGHTS WERE BURNING BRIGHT IN THE WINDOWS AT THE ADAKIAN HUT when Pop and I came up the hill. They were shining down through the fog in golden beams. And as we drew closer, I could hear the clatter of typewriters and the steady murmur of voices. Pop’s staff was in there hard at work on the July 6 edition.

“I’m sorry your cartoonist has to draw his cartoon over again,” I said as we climbed the last dozen yards.