The Sand Pebbles (70 page)

They finished the rum, talking about that. Holman thought about the farmers’ market on the riverbank above the city. He proposed they go there and buy baskets of food to take back to their ships. The boycott was only against paper men, scarecrows in uniform, he insisted. He did not believe the Chinese hated real men.

“We’ll leave our hats. We’ll be in dungarees, without insignia,” he explained. “We’ll just be two-legged hungry men with money in our pockets. And see what happens.” He slapped Banger on the shoulder. They were both pretty drunk. “What do you say?”

“I say let’s have a go at it!”

They went up the back channel. It was quite wide. The river was clearly rising. Banger unshipped the motor pan’s flag and they hid it under a thwart, with their hats. They landed at the stone steps and Banger told the stoker to lie off and wait for them.

They went boldly up the stone steps. The Chinese thronging the lanes of booths looked at them curiously. Holman felt drunkenly reckless. In beggar sign language he patted his stomach and darted his fingers at his gaping mouth. “No mama, no papa, no chow chow,” he kept saying. Banger, beside him, grinned and clinked silver Mex dollars from hand to hand. An invisible balance seemed to tip. Suddenly the Chinese were all laughing and nodding and pointing. It was all right.

They could buy anything they wanted. The market was like a little town of bamboo and rush-mat booths loaded with fresh food. Ducks
quacked in wicker cages, fish flopped in wooden tubs, young pigs squealed in tight bamboo baskets. Holman bought green onions and husked them with his thumbnails and ate them several at a time. He felt enormously happy.

All the faces smiled back at him, enjoying his enjoyment. They were men and women, young and old, faces out of green fields, under conical bamboo hats, above ragged blue cotton clothing. They were telling him that he was not paper. He bought a basket of eggs from a farmer’s daughter. She had a chubby, fresh young face and she smiled shyly and dropped her eyes. She was telling him that what the women had been saying that morning on the bund did not apply to Jake Holman. He loved her for it.

Banger was feeling it too. He was eating green onions and grinning all the way across his broad, honest face. They went from stall to stall, filling their baskets. Holman bought pork strips and four live chickens. It was so simple, he kept thinking. All you had to do was do it. When their baskets were filled and it was time to leave, he could not face going back to that ship. He wanted to start right off for China Light. He lagged behind, wondering how to tell Banger. Banger set down his baskets and looked back and called to Holman.

“Jake! Come have a look here!” His voice was angry.

Holman came and looked. It was a black pig lying on his back on a wheelbarrow deck. He was strangely quiet, except for feebly waving legs. Then Holman saw the cords threaded through the pig’s eyelids and tied each way to the barrow deck like guy wires.

“Jesus!” Holman set down his baskets.

The pig was smart enough to know that if he moved he would tear off his eyelids. He did not move. His little red eyes hunted back and forth, back and forth.

“Lord love me, Jake, it ain’t right!”

“Let it go. It’s how they do it here,” Holman said.

Banger took out his jackknife and opened it.

“No, Banger!
Don’t!”
Holman cried.

Before Holman could stop him, Banger slashed the cords. Squealing, in one long, fluid motion, the pig was off the barrow and gone like
a loosed tornado. He tumbled people and knocked over booths. Men ran and shouted. The mood changed instantly. A line of men formed and moved slowly toward the two sailors. Holman felt sick with regret. He had seen faces like that before, one night in a Hankow street.

“My fault. I’ll hold them for a bit,” Banger said tensely. “Run for the boat, Jake.”

“No. We’re together.”

They came slowly, like a moving wall. Victor Shu was in the center. He wore farmer’s clothes and he was thinner, but he still had a belly.

“Run
, Jake!”

Holman shook his head. Banger stepped forward, solid and unafraid. He sank his left to the wrist in Shu’s belly and slammed a right to the jaw with a sound like a maul on teakwood. Shu dropped. The wall stopped moving.

“Now
run for it!”

Banger dragged Holman along. Holman’s legs unlocked and he ran. They just made it clear in the motor sampan. Stones splashed water around them and the stone steps were crowded with people shrieking curses.

When they were safe out in mid-channel, Banger sadly shipped his flag again and they put on their hats. All the glow of the rum was gone. Holman felt sickly sober. They chugged downriver in silence.

“You meant to go right on, to leave from there, didn’t you?” Banger said finally.

Holman nodded.

“I know what you mean now. You’re right about it,” Banger said slowly. “But it’s still no good, what you’ve a mind to do.”

“Yeah.”

“That was a stupid thing I did,” Banger said. “It was a bloody, stupid, paper thing to do. I spoiled it all proper, didn’t I?”

“It’s all right, Banger,” Holman said. “We got what went before. We know we ain’t paper.”

They did not talk any more on the way back to the
San Pablo
.
Holman was remembering the farm girl in the market, and how she had smiled at him. He had left his baskets of food behind, but he had brought away that memory. He began feeling that the memory was a better thing to bring away than six baskets of food. Food you ate once and it was gone. Memories you could keep.

Holman said nothing about his adventure. He still meant to desert. The resolution made it easier to bear the nasty feeling in the ship.

That was worse than ever. The men had a new, edgy restlessness. They would flop down and shift positions and get back up again. They prowled the main deck. They talked incessantly about the parade of naked women and prayed obscenely for another.

They talked about other things also. News and rumors came aboard. The gearwheel was nearing Shanghai and the big showdown. The U.S. Marines were in Shanghai, still aboard the transport
Chaumont
. Missionary influence kept them from coming ashore. The three new cruisers ordered to China were being held at Pearl Harbor by missionary influence. Once things such as that would have sent the Sand Pebbles into a fury of cursing, Holman thought. Now they did not care.

They did not want to fight. They just wanted to get safely down to Shanghai. They talked most about the scare rumors. A Chinese secret society was supposed to be offering a thousand dollars for every white man’s head delivered to them. The gearwheel was supposed to be mounting ten-inch guns at the Chenglin narrows, which the
San
Pablo
would have to pass to get to Hankow. Offsetting those rumors was the slow, steady rise of the river, brownish from early rains. The flood was not far off. The
San Pablo
did not draw as much water as the
Duarte
, and she could probably get out before the full flood stage.

“Why the hell we got to wait for them Die Hards, anyway?” Ellis asked. “Let’s shag ass out of here soon as there’s water enough for just us.”

“Every ship for itself!” Crosley agreed.

The long winter siege was almost over. They could hardly wait the last few days. In their talk, they were practically ashore in Shanghai already.

They all manned the rail for the hate parades. They were afraid they might miss something good. Several days after the market incident the San Pebbles were all on deck and a batch of new signs showed up on the bund.

EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL
! one said. Behind came two more:
MURDERER KNOX TO
PEOPLE’S JUSTICE
! and
GIVE UP MURDERER HOLMAN!

It struck them dumb, at first. It struck Holman dumbest of them all. He knew what it had to be. He felt all their eyes on him. They gathered around him in silence, staring accusingly.

“How come, Jake? What about it?” Farren asked.

Holman told them the bare outline. He said he had been trying to get fresh food for the ship and he had gotten it, before the trouble over the pig came up. All their faces remained hostile.

“Maybe Shu died,” Holman finished. “That’s all I can figure.”

“If it was Banger hit him, then you’re clear,” Farren said.

“Oh no he ain’t!” Perna yelled. “He’s still some kind of excessery!”

“We want the ship clear, you stupid wop!” Harris told Perna.

“Well, then, I guess he’s clear,” Perna said grudgingly.

Lt. Collins and Bordelles had both been called to the consulate. The men assumed it was about the pig fight, as they at once began calling it. They argued furiously about it, as if Holman were not present. They were afraid it would interfere somehow with the ship’s getting down to Shanghai. They would not stand for that.

The full, terrible meaning of it begin to hit Holman. He could not desert now. He would have to go with the ship, down to Shanghai or wherever. It tore him inside to think that. He could not accept it. He went down into the stink of the engine room to get away from the hateful sound of their voices.

He heard Lt. Collins announced on the quarterdeck. Shortly after, Franks called down the skylight.

“Yeah! What do you want?” Holman yelled back.

“Lay up here, on the double!”

Holman went up. “Skipper wants to see you,” Franks said curtly. He took Holman into the cabin. Lt. Collins and Bordelles were seated at the green table with papers in front of them. Holman stood at attention. Franks stood to one side. It was like being at mast. All their faces were stern and angry.

“Holman, did you and a British sailor go ashore at that market upriver a few days ago?” Lt. Collins asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me about it.”

Holman told him the bare facts. He made it clear that going there was his own idea and not Banger’s. They seemed to want him to say more.

“Victor Shu was a gangster and squeeze merchant, the same like they been killing themselves,” he said. “Why can’t they just call it good riddance?”

Lt. Collins’ lip curled. “Shu is not dead. He is their witness to identify you,” he said. “They have invented a farmer whom you killed.”

“We didn’t hurt any farmers!”

“Tomorrow they will hold a funeral procession for the murdered farmer,” Lt. Collins went on. “They are inflaming the people and making this into a major incident. They are demanding that you and Knox be turned over to their People’s Court.”

Holman stood there. He felt sick with dismay.

“Of course they have no jurisdiction over any American. That is the so-called grievance they are trying to dramatize, with this new lie.”
Lt. Collins’ contemptuous anger seemed to include both Holman and the worker-peasants. “You need not worry, of course. We won’t give you over to them,” Lt. Collins said. “Even the Japanese agree on that. If we have to fight our way out of Changsha, it will be as an allied flotilla.”

“I don’t … will it come to a fight, sir?”

“Rather than give you and Knox over, we will die to the last man!”

His voice rang. It was all too fast for Holman to take in. He did not know how to say what he felt.

“I don’t want anybody to die to the last man on my account,” he said. “I don’t think Banger would, either.”

“Neither of you is worth it personally,” Lt. Collins agreed, with clear distaste. “Not even to the Chinese. You are only worth it as symbols of your countries.”

Scarecrows!
Holman wanted to shout. He knew his face was red. He clamped his teeth and kept silent. Bordelles took over the talk.

“This has to be reported to Comyang,” he said. “Tell me your story again, in detail.”

Holman told it. Bordelles made notes. Holman did not know how detailed to be. He told about the Chinese girl smiling at him.

“Was it the demonstration that morning that made you go there?” Bordelles asked. “Were you looking for a woman?”

“I don’t think in the way you mean, sir.”

“It’s a plausible motive. I want your motive.
Why
did you go there?”

Holman knew he could not explain that. It struck him suddenly that a man
could
feel real for a few minutes on top of a woman. That was probably why American sailors in China seemed to need women so much more than the other foreign sailors did. He was tempted to tell Bordelles that he was looking for
duhai
after all and let it go at that. But instead he made up a theory about lack of vitamins affecting the crew’s mind. He stressed that he had bought eggs and onions and would have gotten them back to the ship, except for the trouble about the pig.

All their lips tightened when he mentioned the pig.

“Has your own mind been feeling strange?” Bordelles asked.

“Just how everybody’s been feeling, sir. Banger and me got to talking about it.”

Bordelles pursued with questions. He pinned Holman down. He wanted word-for-word all Holman and Banger had said to each other. In the end, he pried quite a bit of it out of Holman. Lt. Collins listened closely.

“After Hankow fell, it seemed like all the water ran out from under our keels,” Holman said. “I told Banger the
Woodcock
was a paper ship with a paper flag and we were both scarecrows in uniform. So we went to the market to prove we wasn’t paper.”

“Stop that talk!” Lt. Collins slapped the table. “Our flag is
not
paper, as long as we keep our own faith in it!” His eyes glowed and his voice turned low and bitter. “Let the Chinese sneer at our flag. They’ll find out it’s a sleeping tiger, not a paper one. They feared it once and they’ll fear it again.” His voice became a hoarse whisper. “Only
we
can make our flag a paper tiger. And if we do, we do not deserve to live!”

He was pale and trembling. He frightened them all. Bordelles stood up and motioned Franks to take Holman out of there.

“Wait.” Lt. Collins held up his hand. He was struggling to control himself. “Holman, God alone knows what consequences your insane action is going to have. It has already seriously embarrassed the United States Government,” he said coldly. “In my report to Comyang I am going to recommend you for a general court-martial. That is all.”