The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [79]
The candy transaction was watched by the Irish setter with keen interest to the point where his master broke off a square of chocolate and carefully fed it to him. As man and canine chomped in unison, Ben used the chance to ask, "What's the dog about?"
"I say 'Get him' and he gets you." Delivered with a straight face, this was either what passed for a joke with Prokosch or the stolid actuality. Another shrug. "Give you my guess, I think he's supposed to be company for us." The dog's back was stroked with a beefy hand. "Naw, though, Rex here is trained to sniff out Japs, aren't you, boy."
Catching Ben's skeptical glance at the untrodden shore, Sig laid it out tersely: "Fresh water. Their submarine crews sneak in on rubber rafts to fill up." His listener envisioned the possibility. Constant creeks with water the color of tea had intersected the beach all during Ben's hike to here, some he'd been able to scramble across on logs, others he had needed to ford up to his thighs. As he unsheathed his notepad, the thought that he could have stumbled onto Japanese submariners replenishing their drinking supply from this seeping shore made the whole place more creepy than ever.
What Prokosch was saying furthered the feeling. "Raft rats, I call them. If I ever catch them at it and they give me any trouble, I'll put Tom to working on them." He patted the stock of his Thompson submachine gun.
Ben took due reportorial care over if. "These rafts, Sig—ever laid eyes on them yourself?"
Prokosch indicated Not yet. "Just signs. The buggers can't resist taking a crap on dry land, for sure. Find piles around the creek mouths." His expression registering offense at that, he petted the dog again. "Rex here smells out that stuff and any drag marks that look like where a raft came in and so on. If the signs look fresh enough, we call in the depth-charge boys from the air base at Port Angeles. Done it a couple of times already."
"Have you." Ben groped for any certainty in this. If ever there was a coastline that would breed phantoms, it was this murky Pacific Northwest one. But Prokosch must be able to tell human crap from bear shit, mustn't he? Or was all this just classic jumpy nerves of an isolated sentinel? By any sum it was more than a notepad-carrying visitor bargained for. How would Tepee Weepy react to the story of a Supreme Team member in hide-and-seek with Japanese naval forces, genuine or imagined, in America's own backyard? There was one way to find out. "Any luck?" Ben inquired as he scribbled away.
"Never know," the sentry blunt as the coast he walked. "The flyboys think they spotted an oil slick after they bombed like hell one of those times. Could have been a decoy or from a sunk tanker." He kicked some sand as if his next thought might be hidden under it. "Those tin fish are out there, though. We got a report a while back that a Jap sub came up in broad daylight down in Oregon. Fired a few shells onto some beach. Just to prove they could, I guess." The contemplative Coast Guardsman scanned out past the curling white sets of breakers to the vaster ocean as if mildly daring the enemy to try that on his patrol route, then turned unblinking eyes to Ben. "About time to head for the hut. Ready for a hike, Lefty?"
It was work every step of the way, trying to fathom Sig Prokosch those next days on the challenging coast. Trudging the hours of patrol with him, Ben would catch himself yearning for Jake Eisman's wisecracks or even Dex Cariston's high-flown sparring. Somewhere between shy and offhandedly mum, Sig went his route like a man who had left his conversation at home. Questions to him had to be doled out, circled back to, followed to conclusions somewhere down the road, and there were times Ben felt he would have better luck talking to the dog.
Gradually, though, the thickset guard gave out glimpses of himself unsuspected in four years on the football field and in the locker room. Sig liked to cook; at the hut it invariably fell to him