Battle Cry - Leon Uris [214]
“Yes, produces quite a bit of wheat.” The man, still squatting, laid down his fish, wiped his hands on his shorts and extended one to Marion. “My name is Calvin Macintosh,” he announced, knocking the tobacco from his pipe and placing it in his breast pocket.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Macintosh,” Marion said.
“Mac’s my name too,” I said. “Care to try a hardtack and ham spread?”
“No, thank you,” the man said aloofly.
I decided to ignore him. Mary, however, was intrigued with his discovery and anxious to keep a conversation going. “I suppose,” he said, “you people are glad to see us?”
The frail man did not answer.
“I mean,” Marion continued, “the Japs must have treated you badly.”
“On the contrary,” Macintosh answered, picking up a fish and resuming his cleaning. “Admiral Shibu’s troops were quite well controlled and disciplined. Oh, they took the pigs and chickens and my books and the white men, but aside from an incident or two we have been treated sternly but fairly. The women they took were more than willing to go.”
“I think you’ll find that old-time regulars, no matter what army they are in, are pretty decent. These were the best the Emperor had. Damned fine soldiers,” I said.
“And not given to committing the atrocities that our good governor warned would befall us,” Macintosh said.
“Very interesting,” Marion mused.
“Ethics,” I said. “These Japs weren’t like those on the Canal. Like the difference between you and a boot or a replacement.”
“It certainly is puzzling,” Marion said. “I expected to find the atoll raped clean.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” I said. Once more I tried to loosen up the dour Macintosh by offering a cigarette. He raised his eyebrows and looked out of the corner of his eye. He was a tempted but proud man. I shoved the pack under his nose and his pride was outweighed by his obvious hunger for tobacco. He lit up and seemed to relax a bit. He sat on the deck drawing his knees to his chest and placed his arms about them and puffed long and hard on the cigarette and gazed over the lagoon. I shoved the other two cigarettes in the packet into his pocket over a feeble protest.
“American cigarettes are superior,” he said. “I’ve tasted them once or twice before.”
“Mr. Macintosh, I hope you won’t think I’m too curious, but you mentioned something about your books.”
“Marion is a writer. He’s had four stories published.”
Macintosh looked at his sallow, frail arm and spoke softly. “As you see, I am a half-breed. My mother lives over in the village. I have a wife and four children. The children look like me.”
“Your father?”
“A Scotsman. A sailor. Before the war the ships visited us every few months for a load of copra. Exchanged it for fishing tools and cloth and the like. We need little here, we give little. There would be quite a celebration when the ships came. It was quite common for a sailor to jump and remain here and marry a native.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I do not know. They took the white men when they came. I do not know.”
“Perhaps it will turn out all right.”
“My father was an intelligent man, a university man. The world frightened him. Being a writer, Mr. Hodgkiss, I suppose you are familiar with the type. I understand there are many books about such men who run off to find a Pacific paradise. A place to escape the strife of civilization.”
“Your father picked a beautiful place,” I said. “I’ve seen most of the world and you couldn’t have done better.”
“My father told me that we were the only civilized people in the world. The past two weeks have proved him right, I believe.”
I had to smile at his reasoning. Maybe he wasn’t so wrong. After all, we were on his atoll with guns, hunting other men while he just sat back and scaled his fish.
“Have you ever had a yen to travel? To Scotland, perhaps?”
The little bearded man lowered his head and bit his lip. “My father told me never to leave Tarawa. But I have often traveled to his homeland through him and the books.” His hand dropped to the sand