Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [87]
Standing erect and smiling at her teachers, she thrust her face into that of the young lieutenant and screamed, "So and so you, major!"
The officer jumped back, appalled! The Marines bit their lips and twisted their stomach muscles into hard knots. Mary just grinned, the reddish betel juice filling the ravines near her mouth. When she saw that the lieutenant was shocked and stunned, she moved closer, until she was touching him. He shrank away from the peach-basket brim, the sateen pantaloons, but he could not writhe away from the hoarse, betel-sprayed shout: "Bullshit, major!"
All he could say was, "Well!" And with that austere comment on Marine-coached Tonkinese women, he walked stiffly away and drove back to the commander, who laughed down in his belly the way the enlisted men had.
The upshot was one of those grand Navy touches! By heavens, Bloody Mary was on Marine property now. She was their problem! She wasn't a Navy problem at all! And the curt, very proper note that went to the Marine Commandant made no bones about it: "Get the Tonkinese woman known as Bloody Mary to hell off your property and keep her off." Only the Navy has a much better way of saying something like that to the Marines. The latter, of course, aren't fooled a bit by the formality.
Next morning First Lieutenant Joe Cable, USMCR, from Philadelphia, was given the job of riding herd on one Bloody Mary. Before he saw her for the first time he wrote home to his girl in Germantown, a lovely fair-haired Bryn Mawr junior, "If you knew my next assignment, you would not believe it. I imagine the fellows at Princeton will vote me their favorite war hero when the news is out. I have been ordered to stop an old Tonkinese woman from selling grass skirts. I understand the entire Navy tried to stop her and failed. I shall send you daily communiques on my progress." Joe signed the letter and then thought of the disparity between the unknown Tonk and the lovely girl in Germantown. The unreality of the comparison overwhelmed him, and like many fighting men stationed in the South Pacific the terrible question assailed him once more: "What am I, Joe Cable, doing here?"
Cable brushed the gnawing, unanswerable question from his mind, jumped into his jeep, and drove out to where Bloody Mary had set up her new kiosk. It was a strip of canvas, supplied by admirers and tacked by them onto a large banyan tree. In the amazing recesses of the remarkable roots she hid her wares, bringing out only those items which she thought she might sell at any one time.
"Haloo, major!" she said, grinning her best betel juice smile. Lt. Cable winced. What could men see amusing in such an old beast?
He did not return her smile. Instead, he kicked at the grass skirts. "No!" he remonstrated, shaking his forefinger back and forth across her face. "No!"
He spoke so firmly that Bloody Mary withheld her storm of profanity. The men were disappointed.
"You men," Lt. Cable said sharply. "Take down the canvas."
Reluctantly, Mary's tutors stepped forward and grabbed the canvas, gingerly at first. But they had no need to be afraid. Bloody Mary had nothing to say. Slowly, sorrowfully, the Marines pulled down her kiosk, bundled her souvenirs together in a box the lieutenant provided. They just didn't understand. After the way Mary had handled that damned naval lieutenant, too! They would have given a lot to have seen Mary take a fall out of stuck-up Lt. Cable, who claimed he was from Princeton.
But Mary saw something. Just what it was, neither she nor anyone