The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [127]
"'Stars Fell on Alamogordo.' Tallulah." Ben put aside the week-old news magazine—news magazines were always a week old—he had been flipping through. "To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure of your company, Ice?"
"I thought it was sticking out all over me. Au revoir and all that."
Ben shifted in his chair as if caught. "They're keeping me in the dark about when I leave. I was going to look you up when I find out, honest."
"Yeah, with your seabag over your shoulder and ten minutes before you'd have to catch a gooney bird out of here—I'm onto you. Besides, I'm kissing East Base good-bye a while myself. A month on the Fairbanks-to-Nome run. The Russkies are getting short of pilots, so some of us are detailed to fill in on that last leg. Some detail, huh? You can about see Siberia from there. Anyway, I brought a proper farewell. Got a church key?"
"Bottom drawer."
Jake pawed out the opener, did the honors on the bottles of beer, and handed Ben one before settling onto the groaning springs of the bed. "This place makes me feel better about the barracks. How come they stick you here?"
"Where commanding officers are concerned, I'm a marked man."
Jake snorted. "Aren't we all, one way or another." They drank a couple of pulls of beer, looking at one another with the awkward affection of men who have become oldest friends in not that long a time.
"Ben? Where they sending you this time?"
"I'm not allowed to tell you, or I would suffer the death of a thousand paper cuts from a manila folder."
"Backtrack Mac country, no crap?" It drew a whistle from Jake. "He's going to take back everything Filipino from the Japs or know the reason why, ain't he." The big man drank deep, then pointed his bottle toward Ben. "I don't want you getting the shit shot out of you out there, hear?"
Ben took a sip of his own before finding the voice to parry. "Look who's talking—the guy who wants to deliver bombs to Hitler on his chamber pot."
"Notice I want to do it from several miles away, up above the flak," Jake said as if setting him straight on the rules of the game. "I think that's the way the Nazi pricks ought to get what's coming to them," he mused. "Just blam, something comes out of the sky and wipes them out of the human race."
"That'd be convenient," Ben found to say.
Jake leaned forward, adding gravity in all senses of the word. "Serious, Ben. Don't get fancy out in those islands. Things tend to happen around where you are. The time the Japs jumped you and Carlo," he took to reciting. "Then Animal getting it, damn near in your lap." Listening, Ben had to hear over the pounding of blood in the confines of his head. "That walk in the northern woods you took with me." Jake stopped, then said the rest as though it was the most natural of advice. "Bravery is just another way to die, my friend. Keep in the rear echelon for a change—who knows, it might be kind of nice there. The team is getting thin enough on the ground, without you crossed out."
"Ice, I intend to do everything I know how to stay on the living list."
"Good. We'll drink to that." Heaving himself off the bed, Jake fetched another pair of beers. In passing, he noticed the page of script in the typewriter. "You still tinkering with that? I thought you said it was done after you got the goods about Purcell."
"It is. I'm getting going on another one, I seem to be in the habit." Ben gazed at the waiting paper. "Vic and his grandfather, this is. You never met Toussaint. He's one they don't make anymore."
"Busy hands keep a guy out of trouble," Jake proclaimed piously. "Sometimes." They clinked bottles. "That's one more reason you've got to keep yourself in one piece, you know—I've got a date with that movie of yours." The big man grinned crookedly. "I want to see you fry Bruno's nuts for him."
The autumn