The Times Are Never So Bad (18 page)

The jeep descended into colder air; fog hid the low earth, so that Harry could not judge the distance from the road to the dark bulk of hills on both sides. He stopped looking, and at once felt exposed and alert; he smiled and shook his head and leaned toward the dashboard to light a cigarette. He could see no stars; the wet moon was pallid, distant. He watched the road, grey fog paled and swathed yellow by the headlights, and said: ‘There was a battalion cut off, when the Chinese came in.'

‘
What?
'

He turned to Phil and spoke away from the rushing air, loudly over the vibrating moan of the jeep: the Chosin Reservoir, the whole Goddamned division was surrounded and a battalion cut off, and they had to go through Chinese to get there and break the battalion out and bring it to the main body. So they could retreat through all those Chinese to the sea. The battalion was pinned down about five miles away, so they started on foot, with a company on each flank playing leapfrog over the hills: two battalions, one of them Royal Marines, and their colonel was in command. A feisty little bastard. ‘I've never
liked
Limeys, but the Royal
Marines
are
good
.' He guessed he liked Limey troops, it was just the country that pissed him off. The reason Alarines had such good liberty in Australia in World War II was the Aussies were off in Africa fighting for England. Even the chaplain probably got laid. ‘They loved
Marines
and still
do
, and if you ever get a chance to go to
Australia, take it
.' Their boys were fighting the Goddamn Germans, so it was the Marines keeping Australia safe, and they'd go there for R and R and get all the thanks too. The Limeys were good at that, getting other people to go off and fight in somebody else's yard. ‘Do you read
history?
'

‘Not since
college
.'

‘You've
got
to.' He shivered and caught his hat before it blew off, and the jeep climbed into lighter fog. ‘If you're going to be a
career
man, you've got to start
studying
this stuff
now
. Not just tactics and
strategy;
but how these wars get
started
, and
why
, and who
starts
them.'

‘I
will
. What about that battalion?'

The flank companies kept making contact in the hills, and the troops in the road would assault and clear that hill, then start moving again; but they were moving too slowly, it was one firefight after another, so the colonel called back for trucks and brought the people down from the hills, and they all mounted up in the trucks and hauled ass down the road till they got hit; then they'd pile out and attack, and when they'd knocked out whatever it was or it had run off to some other hill, they'd hi-diddle-diddle up the road again—

‘
Holy shit
.'

‘I never felt so
much
like a moving target.' He rode shotgun in a six-by; the driver was a corporal and he pissed all over himself; he was good, though; he just kept cussing and shifting gears; probably he was praying too; maybe it was all praying: Jesus Christ God-
damn
—pissssss—shit
Jesus
—From the front of the six-by he watched the hills, but what good was it to watch where it's going to come from, when you're moving so fast that you know you can't see anything till you draw fire? He felt like he was searching the air for a bullet. He told the corporal he wished he were up there and the Chinese were down here. Probably that was a prayer too—Harry grabbed his hat as the brim slapped the crown; he put it in his lap, and the air was cool on his bald spot. ‘De-fense is
best
, you know. Or don't they
tell
you
that
.' 'Course they don't, Marines always attack; but with helicopters you can go behind them and cut off their line of supply and defend that. ‘Read
Liddel Hart
. And learn
Spanish
. That's where it's going to
be
.'

‘
Where?
'

‘
Mexico
to
Tierra
del
Fuego
. We got the battalion out.'

He twisted and reached behind his left hip for his canteen.

‘So the
colonel
was
right
.'

‘
Sure
he was.' He gargled, then swallowed, and drank again and offered the canteen to Phil, who shook his head. ‘We
lost
people we might
not
have, if we'd
done
it the
right
way. But we had to
do
it the
fast
way.'

The jeep climbed, and above him the fog was thinning; to his right he could see a ridge outlined clearly against the sky.

‘Have you
seen
your
mother
yet?'

‘Last
night
. She and the
girls
. We had
dinner. Catherine's
screwed up.'

‘Not
dope?
'

‘
No
. She doesn't
think
I should
go
. At the same
time
she—' He shrugged, glanced at Harry, then watched the road.

‘Loves her
brother
,' Harry said.

‘Yes.'

‘Just the
women?
No
boy
friends?'

‘I
don't
think they
like
Marines
.'

‘
Fuck
'em.'

‘I'll leave
that to Catherine and Joyce
.'

‘
Easy
now. My
daughters
are virgins.'

‘
Right
.'

‘I wish your
skipper
had left the
top
on the
jeep
': ‘

—
soon
.'

‘
What?
'

‘
Today
will be
hot
.'

Harry nodded and put on his hat, pressing it down, and watched the suspended motion of fog above the road.

The deer camp duty officer's table was near the fire. He wore hunting clothes and was rankless, as all the hunters were, but was in charge of the camp, logging hunters in and out, and recording their kills, because he had drawn the duty from a hat. A hissing gas Ian-tern was on the table near his log book, and above him shadows cast by the fire danced in trees. Harry and Phil gave him their names and hunting area; he was in his midthirties, looked to Harry like a gunnery sergeant or major; they spoke to him about fog and the cold drive, and he wished them luck as they moved away, to the fire where two men squatted with skillets of eggs and others stood drinking coffee from canteen cups. The fire was in a hole; a large coffeepot rested on two stones at the edge of the flames. Harry poured for both of them, shook the pot, and a lance corporal emerged from the darkness; he wore faded green utilities and was eating a doughnut. He took the pot from Harry and shook it, then placed it beside the hole and returned to the darkness. The two men cooking eggs rose and brought the crackling skillets to the edge of the fire's light, where three men sat drinking coffee. The lance corporal came back with a kettle and put it on the stones, then sat cross-legged and smoked. His boots shone in the fire's light. From above, Harry watched him: he liked his build, lean and supple, and the cocky press of his lips, and his wearing his cap visor so low over his eyes that he had to jut out his chin to see in front of him. Phil crouched and held a skillet of bacon over the fire, and Harry stepped closer to the lance corporal; he wanted to ask him why he was in special services, in charge of a hobby shop or gym or swimming pool, drawing duty as a fire-builder and coffee-maker. Looking down at his starched cap and polished boots and large, strong-looking hands, he wished he could train him, teach him and care for him, and his wish became a yearning: looking at Phil wrapping a handkerchief around the skillet handle, he wished he could train him too. He circled the lance corporal and sat heavily on the earth beside Phil.

‘I
used
to be graceful.'

‘Civilians are entitled to a beer gut. We forgot a spatula.'

‘Civilian my ass. Here.'

He drew his hunting knife and handed it to Phil; behind him, and beyond the line of trees, a car left the road and stopped. Bacon curled over the knife blade; Phil lifted strips free of the skillet, lowered the pale sides into the grease, and said: The eggs will break.'

‘I'll cook them.'

‘Fried?'

‘Lieutenant, I've spent more time in chow lines than you've spent in the Marine Corps.'

Three hunters came out of the trees and stood at the table to his left. The lance corporal flipped his cigarette into the flames and crossed his arms on his knees and watched the kettle.

‘They use spatulas,' Phil said.

‘True enough. But I will turn the eggs. How they come out is in the hands of the Lord.'

‘Bless us o Lord in this thy omelet.'

‘Over easy. Do you go to Mass?'

‘Sometimes. Do you?'

‘On Sundays.'

Across the fire the three men rubbed their hands in the heat. A car left the road, then another, and doors opened and slammed, and voices and rustling, cracking footsteps came through the trees. The lance corporal rose without using his hands and took the coffeepot into the darkness.

‘Where does he go?' Harry said.

‘He's like an Indian.'

‘He's like an Oriental.'

Then he heard the water boiling and, as he looked, steam came from the spout. From the pack he took bread, eggs, and paper plates. Phil spread bacon on a plate, then Harry dug a small hole with the knife and poured in some of the bacon grease and covered it. Kneeling, he fried four slices of bread, then broke six eggs, one-handed, into the skillet and was watching the bubbling whites and browning edges when he heard cars on the road; he glanced up at the dimmed stars and lemon moon; the fog was thinner, and smoke rose darkly through its eddying grey. In the skillet the eggs joined, and he was poised to separate them with his knife, then said: ‘Look what we have.'

‘Your basic sunnyside pie.'

‘It's beautiful.'

He slanted the skillet till grease moved to one side, and with the blade he slapped it over the eggs. He held the skillet higher and watched the yellows, and the milky white circling them; he slid his knife under the right edge, gently moved it toward the center, and stopped under the first yolk. Phil held a paper plate, and Harry tilted the skillet over it, working the knife upward as connected eggs slid over the blade and rim, onto the plate.

‘I hate to break it,' Phil said. ‘Should we freeze it?'

‘In our minds.'

Phil took their cups to the coffeepot; Harry watched him pouring, and waited for him to sit at the plate resting on loose dirt. They did not separate the eggs. On the road, cars approached like a convoy that had lost its intervals, and Harry and Phil ate quietly, slowly, watching the disc become oval, then oblong, then a yellow smear for the last of their bread. Men circled them and the fire. Phil reached for the skillet, and Harry said: ‘I'll do it.'

He tossed dirt into it and rubbed the hot metal, then wiped it with a paper towel; he stabbed the knife into the earth and worked it back and forth and deeper, and wiped it clean on his trousers. He held his cigarettes toward Phil, but he was shaking one from his own pack. They sat facing the fire, smoking with their coffee. The lance corporal put on a fresh log, and Harry watched flames licking around its bottom and up its sides; above and around him the voices were incoherent, peaceful as the creaking of windblown trees.

Under a near-fogless sky, a half-hour before dawn, he reached the northern and highest peak of the narrow ridge, and walked with light steps, back and forth and in small circles, until his breathing slowed and his legs stopped quivering. Then he sat facing the bare spine of dirt and rock that dipped and rose and finally descended southward, through diaphanous fog, to the jeep. He heard nothing in the sky or on the earth save his own breathing. He rested his rifle on his thighs and watched both sides of the ridge: flat ground to the east until a mass of iron-grey hills; the valley, broken by a dark stand of trees, was to the west; beyond that was the ridge where Phil hunted.

The air and earth were the grey of twilight; then, as he looked down the western slope, at shapes of rocks and low thickets, the valley and Phil's ridge became colors, muted under vanishing mist: pale green patches of grass and brown earth and a beige stream bed. The trees were pines, growing inside an eastward bend of the stream. Brown and green brush spread up the russet slope of Phil's ridge, and beyond it was the light blue of the sea. Harry stood, was on his feet before he remembered to be quiet and still, and watched the blue spreading farther as fog rose from it like steam. He turned to the scarlet slice of sun crowning a hill. From the strip of rose and golden sky, the horizon rolled toward him: peaks and ridges, gorges and low country, and scattered green of trees among the arid yellow and brown. He faced the ocean, saw whitecaps now, and took off his hat and waved it. On the peak of Phil's ridge he could see only rocks. The sea and sky were pale still; he stood watching as fog dissolved into their deepening blue, the sky brightened, and he could see the horizon. He sat facing it.

At eight o'clock he started walking down the ridge: one soft step, then waiting, looking down both slopes; another step; after three he saw Phil: a flash of light, a movement on the skyline. Then Phil became a tiny figure, and Harry stayed abreast of him. Soon the breeze shifted, came from the sea, and he could smell it. Near midmorning he flushed a doe: froze at the sudden crack of brush, as her bounding rump and darting body angled down the side of the ridge; in the valley she ran south, and was gone.

He sat and smoked and watched a ship gliding past Phil, its stacks at his shoulders. Then he stood and took off his jacket and sweat shirt and hung them from his belt. He caught up with Phil, and stalked again. When the sun was high and sparkling the sea, the ridge dropped more sharply, and he unloaded his rifle and slung it from his shoulder, and went down to the jeep. Phil sat on the hood. Behind him was open country and a distant range of tall hills. Harry sat on the hood and drank from his canteen.