Battle Cry - Leon Uris [254]
“I shouldn’t of said that. It wasn’t true.” I took his hand.
“Forget it. Look, lots of luck. Tell Speedy I’m sorry. Tell him ole Andy said not to get too much mud for his duck when he gets back to the States.”
“So long, Andy.”
“So long, Mac, and…and if you happen to be passing Peterson’s tent, maybe you can tell him I’d like him to read them letters to me…and maybe he could write one for me…if it ain’t too much trouble.”
I met Speedy and noticed that he was carrying his guitar. We trudged toward the camp. “Reckon we could stop at the cemetery and say good-by?”
We walked through the white wooden archway where the sign read: SECOND MARINE DIVISION CEMETERY. I supposed it wasn’t much different from any other cemetery in the world—except for Speedy and me. We found the Sixth Marine’s section and slowly wandered between the mounds and crosses. We stopped for a moment at each grave and for that moment remembered something, the kind of thing a guy remembers about another guy. Some crazy little thing that just stuck in the mind. JONES, L.Q., PFC…ROJAS, PEDRO, PHM 1/C…HODGKISS, MARION, CPL…GOMEZ, JOSEPH, PVT…HUXLEY, SAMUEL, LT. COL—MCQUADE, KEVIN, MGY SGT…SHAPIRO, MAX, CAPTAIN…KEATS, JACK, MARINE GUNNER…BROWN, CYRIL, PFC…
Speedy stopped over Seabags’ grave and parted his lips. “I sort of made a promise, Mac.” His fingers strummed a chord but he could not sing.
Beneath us the ground rumbled and the air was filled with a deafening roar of motors. We turned our eyes to the sky. B-29s, flight after flight of the graceful silver birds, winged over us on the way to Tokyo.
“Let’s get out of here, Mac…why should I be crying over a bunch of goddamyankees.”
CHAPTER 5
THEY stood at the rail of the Bloomfontein. They were all quiet. Silent stares, mouths open as we glided through the fogbank. And then the two towers of the bridge poked their heads above the haze.
“The Golden Gate in forty-eight, the breadline in forty-nine.”
The pilot schooner signaled for the submarine nets to be opened to let us enter. It was chilly.
It wasn’t much the way we had thought it was going to be. Just a bunch of tired heartsick guys at the end of a long, long voyage. And the Marines were out there yet. The First Division had landed in the Palau Islands. They were still dying. I remembered how I’d pictured this moment, with my boys alongside me…wars just didn’t turn out that way. Broken and weary in body and mind…and the Marines were still landing out there.
I could still hear my boys singing. They sure sang pretty. I could hear them plain as day, standing outside the Skipper’s tent on Guadalcanal.
“Oh Sixth Marines, Oh Sixth Marines,
Those hardy sons of bitches…”
“Hi, Mac.”
“Oh…hi Speedy.”
“Thinking?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. Ain’t much like coming home, is it?”
“No.”
The big bridge loomed closer and closer and then the fog seemed to drift aside and they could see her. Frisco…the States.
“Funny,” Speedy said. “That bridge ain’t gold at all. It’s orange.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking. You got a lot of stops to make on your furlough. Maybe you could give me Pedro’s stuff and I could see his family. I don’t live very far away.”
“But he was a Mexican and you’re back home now, Speedy.”
“He was my buddy,” Speedy whispered.
He took out his wallet and a piece of paper brown with age.
December 22, 1942. This here is a holy agreement. We are the Dit Happy Armpit Smelling bastards of Huxley’s Whores…. We hereby agree that one year after the end of the war we will meet in the City of Los Angeles….
Speedy tore it up and we watched as the pieces floated slowly down to the water.
Sam Huxley’s lady was wonderful. I spent two days at the Base in Dago with her. Afterwards I felt my heart so heavy that it seemed there wasn’t any more room for sadness in it. I went to the homes of my boys; it was awkward at first but the folks went out of their way to make me feel at home. They wanted so badly to know so many things.
I wanted to get it over with. I wanted to badly. When I got to Marion’s home in Kansas, Rae had left