Leon Uris (37 page)

Johnny Tarbox was an upscale artful dodger whose reputation for daring was as large as he could make it. He was a sometime independent drover, hired on for big sheep drives. If the station was moving a flock of several thousand, Tarbox would often be contracted to run a crew.

Likewise, he showed up at the Agricultural and Pastoral shows and was often the man to beat in the challenge horse races. For years he had been counted a Gun Shearer, one of the men who could shear a hundred sheep in an eight-hour stretch.

He boxed a little as well, at the A&P shows, demonstrating his dodger skills. In fact, Johnny Tarbox had droved at the Ballyutogue Station and did the A&P contests in their shows. That is, until Squire Larkin’s punk kid Rory whipped him in the big race on RumRunner when the kid was only thirteen. When Rory was sixteen, he took Tarbox in a shearer contest, which he protested because the kid was using a new shear invented by his uncle.

Johnny made the final mistake of getting into the ring with eighteen-year-old Rory and never got past the first half of the first round.

Otherwise they were friends.

To hear Johnny Tarbox tell it, and he was never at a loss, he had done a lot of things: did a four-year hitch in the Royal Marines when he was a kid, ran rum and other articles in the China Seas, prospected, and other endeavors that would come to mind at the moment.

Above all, Johnny Tarbox considered himself a sort of consummate lover and authority on female flesh. Marriage was something to be beaten off like the plague.

This was made even more so as Johnny Tarbox found the perfect niche in life. New Zealand was pretty far away from anything. It was not even on a way from place to place—you had to go out of your way to get there. Nonetheless, there were the half-dozen to dozen times a year some royalty or governmental mainstay or other notables landed at Wellington or Auckland.

They were greeted by a New Zealand Mounted Honor Guard led by none other than Serjeant Johnny Tarbox. Though the post was ceremonial, Johnny made the most of it with the ladies.

When the war broke out Johnny was a living recruiting poster, what with his smashing figure in uniform aboard his mount with the gorgeous broom moustache and a merry twinkle in his eye.

So, when a wee country gets involved as a wee participant in a very great war whose meaning is vague and whose battlefields are beyond the horizon and the equator, Tarbox was put to work enticing young men yearning for travel and adventure.

Johnny went from honorary serjeant to actual serjeant and was given the sweet job of going around the country giving tests and grading men for cavalry units. The war in France quickly settled into static lines and, by the time Johnny reached Camp Hobson outside Auckland, the cavalry was being put on hold in favor of infantry and artillery.

A last cavalry battalion, the Seventh Light Horse, was being put together up north. Five lads would be riding for each opening. When the complement was formed, Johnny
Tarbox himself would become the battalion Serjeant Major.

Rory wasn’t overly concerned, knowing he’d win himself a place, but he’d picked up this kid on the train from Auckland to Camp Hobson and seemed unable to disconnect himself.

It was like this. He’d boarded a trainload of recruits in Auckland heading for Camp Hobson and found himself in a window seat.

“Seat open?” someone asked.

“Help yourself,” Rory said to the kid, who eased down next to him and appeared to be a scared schoolboy. More like a drummer boy in Kyber Pass than a decapitating horseman.

“Chester Goodwood,” the kid said.

“Rory Landers,” Rory answered, laying his head against the window to indicate he’d prefer sleep to conversation.

“I’m trying for the Light Horse,” the kid said.

“Yeah, good luck.”

The recruiting serjeant was barking as the train filled up. A big roughneck goon looked about, saw no empty seats on the car, and informed Chester Goodwood, “You’re in my seat.”

“I don’t think so,” Chester answered with a verve that caused Rory to crack open one eye and have a look.

“Out!” the goon explained, grabbing Chester by the lapels and lifting him up. Chester responded by stomping hard on the foot of the bully, who angrily released him.

“I’m going to make you into a mutton chop, you little son of a bitch!”

As he reached for Chester once again, Rory’s hands shot out and grabbed the goon’s wrists. “No, no,” Rory said, “this is my nephew, Chester Goodwood, and I promised his ma, me favorite auntie, that we’d sit together.”

“Bullshit,” the goon responded, freeing his wrists, balling his fists. “You got the seat I want,” he said to Rory.

“Look, we’re all in the old war together, right?” Rory
said. “If I do get up, there’s going to be one less Kiwi when we arrive at Camp Hobson. Is my meaning clear? Now, think again. Do you want me to stand up or not?”

The goon’s cobber saved the moment. “Come on, Jed, there’s seats up in the next car.”

The altercation averted, the train soon oozed from the station for the three-hour jaunt to Camp Hobson, and Rory attempted to resume his nap.

“Thanks, awfully,” Chester said.

Rory found himself longing to return to the misery of thinking of Georgia. In all the hustle of enlistment and going here and going there for physical examinations and uniforms and inoculations and questionnaires, he longed for a few moments alone so he could think of Georgia, and each time he did he lived another moment of their voyage on the
Taranaki,
realizing that this had now become the most powerful memory of his entire life.

Chester Goodwood wouldn’t keep quiet. Rory was about to tell him to shut up, but the kid seemed very lost and particularly grateful for Rory’s intervention…so Rory let him talk.

Chester Goodwood, like himself, was underage, but much more so. He was sixteen. As his story unfolded, Rory became engaged, then taken by it…

Chester came from an aristocratic background. His father was a banker-businessman in Hong Kong. Everyone knew Sir Stanford Goodwood. He had connections in China that made him a power. Unfortunately, he also had four sons and Chester was the youngest. Following tradition, Chester grew up in English boarding schools, seeing his father perhaps a month each year.

Chester didn’t tell Rory in so many words, but it was easy to get the drift from his own experience, that the lad was unwanted and his family let him know it in a most cavalier manner.

So, Chester managed to do one thing after another at the likes of Eton and Harrow to get himself expelled,
which was one sure way of getting his father’s attention.

Sir Stanford had brought the boy to Hong Kong a year earlier, as the boy’s mother lay dying. It was then that Chester learned that his mother had been a nuisance, like himself. Father’s keen interest centered on several nests of Chinese concubines…thus, all the trips into China.

At his mother’s death, Chester was faced with a return to England. When war was declared, he made a dash for freedom. Chester stowed on a New Zealand-bound freighter, where the captain and crew favored him and slipped him ashore.

Chester had befriended some of the clerks in his father’s bank, one of whom forged sufficient papers for him to enlist, although his age of twenty-one seemed to be stretching things.

“Can you ride?” Rory asked.

“I jumped at Harrow and I’ve actually played a spot of polo for a club in Hong Kong.”

Impressive, Rory thought. The kid had spunk and there was a likable manner to him. Surely, if anyone in the world was lonelier than he, it had to be Chester.

When they pulled into Camp Hobson and Rory looked from the windows to see the goon squads of serjeants barking all at once, he thought Chester was never going to make it, and the confused look on Chester’s face confirmed it.

“All right, you stick with me,” Rory said.

“Thank you, I’m sure.”

“But don’t get on my nerves. You know what I mean. Don’t get on my nerves, Chester.”

Chester did get on his nerves. However, Rory was the only recruit at Camp Hobson who had his own batsman, shoe shiner, placeholder in the mess hall line, and roll call answerer so he could get an extra hour’s sleep.

Within the week, while the army was trying to untie all the bureaucratic knots they had tied themselves into, Rory began to see further virtue in Chester Goodwood.
The relationship was more than the satisfaction of a son of an aristocrat serving a sheepman’s son. Chester had his own gall.

Although, according to Chester, three schools had dumped him, he apparently had picked up some education at each of them. The kid was a bloody wizard with figures and calculations. He must have inherited it from his daddy, the banker, Rory figured. On a practical basis, nobody could beat Chester Goodwood in any game of chance or skill. He was hands down the best in chess, checkers, dominos, cards, or whatever bored men pass their time with in the barracks.

On considering the rest of the lads in his unit, Rory decided Chester was a good one to hook up with and, as happens in times of war, an odd friendship was born.

Rory’s stomach was in delicate condition and his head not much better. The Camp Hobson pub featured some god-awful rum and underaged ale, a combination potent enough to remove the varnish from the deck of a ship. Chester Goodwood came running into the tent, elated.

“Rory! They just posted it! Our group has its trials in an hour!”

“Jesus! Jesus! This bloody army’s got some sense of humor. We’ve been lying around for a week and they pick this bloody minute.” Rory came off the cot slowly. “I’m dying, Chester.”

“I wish I could ride for you,” Chester said.

Rory grabbed him. “Maybe you can! No, it would never work. Oh Jesus.” He sat down then started to lie back.

“Get up!” Chester demanded. “We’ve been waiting for this!”

Rory turned his back on him. Chester dumped the cot. Rory crawled to his feet and looked for someone to punch.

“Now, you’re on your feet,” Chester said, “start walking and keep taking deep breaths.”

Daylight erupted in Rory’s face as he left the tent. “Gawd!…it’s ugly!”

“What’s ugly?”

“Life.”

“It won’t be so ugly once you relieve yourself. Now, we’re heading for the latrine. Get on your knees over the hole, place your finger down your throat, and eject.”

“Chester, get out of my life! And take your fucking hands off me. I can walk.”

“Easy does it, cobber, easy does it.”

Rory longed to fall to the ground where Georgia would be waiting with her sweet, gorgeous, warm bosom.…Chester held him upright and guided him toward the latrine.

Rory entered the assembly area of the barn with a plan formulated in his fuzzy mind. A hundred candidates were in line biting their fingernails. Good! Excellent! He elbowed Chester in up close to the front of the line so he could ride early. After Chester rode he could return and brief Rory on the layout of the course and possibly the best horse, if there was a choice. The line was moving fairly slowly…excellent…it would afford him another hour to recover.

Rory sat on a bench, his back to the wall, then slid to a sitting position.

He thought he had barely closed his eyes, when…

“You!” a voice boomed over his head.

Rory lifted his head off his chest. It was like a rock being pounded by an angry sea.

“You!” the ugly bass voice repeated. “Are you Rory Landers?”

“Aye,” he moaned.

“Where the fuck you been! Get your ass up. You’re last man to ride. I think it’s a waste of time but the regulations say you can ride. Come on, prawn, I’ve had a long day and I’m in an unpleasant mood.”

“Hey, Sarj,” Rory moaned, “give us an old hand.”

The serjeant snarled and jerked Rory to his feet and they stood eyeball to eyeball.

“Johnny Tarbox!”

“Aw, for Christ’s sake, Rory Larkin!”

“Shhh,” Rory said, putting his finger to his lips. “My name is not Larkin.”

Tarbox looked at his clipboard. “What’s this Landers shit? Getting away from the Squire, are you?”

“I’ll be of age by Christmas,” Rory said. “It’s the bloody essential agricultural industry. The old man can freeze me.”

“I don’t know about this,” Tarbox said with a sly grin. “You’ve shown me up in one too many A&P shows. See this. Stitches from our encounter.” The grin opened to a smile as Tarbox threw his arms about Rory. “Oh Jaysus, you’ve been drinking that rotten canteen rum and green beer,” he noted. “Not to worry. Half the kids here are underage.”

“You know, I heard you were doing some kind of recruiting,” Rory said. “Well, let’s get on with it. Give me an old horse, will you?”

“You don’t have to ride. I’m putting you right into headquarters company with myself. Want to hear the best? I’m Serjeant Major of the Seventh.”

“No!”

“Indeed, and the ladies better watch their knickers. Hey, Rory, you all right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t look all right.”

“I’m not all right. I never had this set of feelings before. I don’t understand what they are. I don’t know how to manage them. I…ugh…got myself a little more involved than I figured on.”

“You’re not on the run, are you? You didn’t knock her up?”

“No, just…”

“Love?”

“Maybe.”

“Good. Keep it at ‘maybe.’ Listen, happens to the best of us what those little girls can shake at you, but just don’t let them get the collar around your neck. Anyhow, in the
direction we’re heading there’s going to be a lot of ass out there to ease your pain…French ass.”

Johnny called over to a squad and told them the trials were done for the day and to get the horses settled.

“Johnny,” Rory said on impulse, “I’m going to need a big favor. You know how the old wheel spins around. I’ll owe you one soon enough.”

“What do you need?”

“Being as you’re helping judge these lads, there’s a kid I’d like to see get assigned to our company.”

“Our company, is it? I’m not a colonel. The officers make the final decision.”

“Well, you can jiggle the grades a little and kind of let the Colonel or whoever he is know you’ve a special wish or two…like with me.”