Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [197]
Gideon grunted.
“What is it, man!”
“At least,” he cried with a sudden sound that was not his voice, “I didn’t disgrace myself! At least I didn’t let Shlomo down!”
“So, that’s it. Just let it happen. Natasha is here!”
“I can’t,” he said shivering.
“Who was Pedro?”
Gideon reacted as though he had been shot. He spun from his chair, jammed his hands in his pockets, and shook. “It’s ... c ... c ... cold out here. I’m going inside.” She came after him. “Don’t turn on the lights,” he ordered.
Natasha found a match and lit the candle on the dresser. The breeze caught the flame and hurled a wild shadow off the white walls and ceiling. Gideon was silhouetted, sitting on the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumped in grief, his hair falling into his eyes, a Hamlet of Cyprus.
“Pedro was my buddy-buddy,” he moaned like a ghost. “I loved him like a brother. We were in it together from the start, boot camp, radio school, and then the 6th Marines ... I was so proud to go into the 6th ... that was my Uncle Lazar’s regiment in the First World War ... Belleau Wood ... I got to wear a fourragère around my left shoulder ... but he was the one who won it. Pedro and I ... we were something else ... he was just a Mexican kid from San Antonio, but he had one of those voices only Mexicans have ... it was like a nightingale ... La Paloma ... Cookoo Rookoo Coo ... he could melt the heart of an iron maiden when he sang ... hell, we’d have broads waiting for us at the Wellington train station, and they’d just grab us by the stacking swivels and march us off to bed. I was seventeen, Pedro was nineteen. Can you imagine our chutzpah? Pedro and I and two other guys rented the God-damned Wellington Opera House and then conned the commanding general of the division into letting us put on a review ... I wrote a good part of it ... funnier than hell... but the moment of the night was when Pedro came out in front of the curtain with just a spotlight on his face ... and his guitar ... and he sang. ...”
Gideon sang the song to the tune of “Road to Mandalay” in not much more than a whisper... .
“on the road to Gizo Bay, ... where the Jap flotillas lay, ...
and the dawn comes up like thunder, ...
out of Burma cross the way... .
“ship me somewhere east of Lunga, ...
where the best ain’t like the worst, ...
where there ain’t no Doug MacArthur, ...
a gyrene can drown his thirst, ...
oh, the Army takes the medals, ...
and the Navy takes the queens, ...
but the guys that take the fucking, ...
are United States Marines. ...”
“He’d made buck sergeant by the time we hit Tarawa. Me? I was a PFC, one rank lower than Hitler. Oh, I got to corporal twice and got busted back to PFC twice. I was always in some kind of mischief. Nothing big ... AWOL a few hours here and there, ducking mess duty, that kind of stuff.”
The silence was awful as he tried to force more words up. His chin dropped to his chest.
“... he was in a clearing. He had to expose himself because the fucking radios were some kind of asshole models unfit for combat ... the Marines always got shit gear. So he had to find a clearing to the water, and he was transmitting a message, a very important one. A landing boat bringing us ammo was heading into Jap lines. Pedro was steering them into us. I was on the generator. The Japs opened fire. He kept on transmitting. I kept on winding the generator. Not until he got the message to them did he quit. I started to break down the generator to shag ass, when Pedro toppled over ... maybe twenty yards from me ... I stood there and gaped ... gaped ... I was frozen. Before I could move Captain Farney and Corporal Burns dashed