The Far Reaches (15 page)

A gray-haired marine rose from the beach and wandered sleepily across the sand to the amtrac. “You bellowed, Colonel?”

“Private,” Burr croaked, “how'd you like to get your stripes back?” Burr's clerk was famously known for having sergeant's stripes one day and none the next, depending on the whims of his boss. “I'd admire my stripes back, sure, Colonel,” he answered, stifling a yawn.

“Then, my man, get yourself a notebook and a pencil!”

The clerk already had a little notebook in his pocket and also a pencil. He showed them to the colonel, and Burr said, “I want you to write down all that is about to transpire for my daily log. You can type it up later. Savvy?”

“Savvy without doubt, sir.”

Snatching up a flashlight, Burr climbed out of the amtrac and led the way to the blasted pillbox that was Josh Thurlow's prison. To Burr's distinct displeasure, which caused a spate of grumbled curses, he saw neither barbed wire surrounding it nor any guards. Half-expecting Thurlow to have escaped, he went inside and was relieved to see the man lying unconscious on the sand with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around his grimy and sweat-damp face. “Sit him up,” Burr brusquely ordered.

Thurlow groaned as he was raised up, then sagged crookedly against the broken concrete, his chin resting on his dirt-caked chest. He was a sorry sight, which improved the colonel's mood. “Now, Captain Thurlow,” Burr began in a condescending and syrupy tone, “some interesting intelligence has come my way that I think you should hear. Are you writing this down, Private?”

The clerk looked up from his pad. “Writing, aye, aye, sir.”

Burr nodded, withdrew a red bandana from his hip pocket to wipe the sweat from his face, and then continued his one-way conversation. “Some interesting information, as I said, Thurlow, and I knew you were the one to hear it. For despite your denials, I know you are in fact an intelligence officer sent out here by the great power brokers of Washington, DC. Am I not correct?”

Josh said nothing, mainly because he was unconscious, so Burr went on: “Well, says you, Colonel, you're in the right of it, for certain. I am sent out here to find out all I can, for how else, says he, can Secretary of the fucking Navy Frank Knox, and Chief of Staff George C. for Christ Marshall, and maybe even God, otherwise known as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, know what they should do next? Says you, says I. Got that, Sergeant?

Read back our conversation so far.”

The clerk scratched his head with the eraser end of his pencil—and read: “And then Colonel Burr said, ‘Well, says you, Colonel, you're in the right of it for certain. I am sent out here to find out all I can, for how else, says he, can Secretary of the fucking Navy—' ”

“Hold it, Private!” Burr angrily snapped. “Are you an idiot, man? Write it down the way it's being said, not the way you hear it!”

The clerk looked stupidly at Burr for a long second, then licked the point of his pencil and smeared out what he had written. “You're right, Colonel,” he apologized. “I guess I'm going a bit deaf. All these artillery
rounds, I suppose.” He scribbled a bit and then read, “Captain Thurlow replied, “ ‘You're in the right of it, Colonel Burr. I am sent out here to find out all I can, for how else can Secretary of the Navy—' ”

“Very good, Sergeant,” Burr interrupted. With a grim smile, he continued: “Now, Thurlow, this nun, this little snot-nosed Catholic sister, has come to me with a most interesting story. It seems the Japanese have occupied a group of islands known as the Forridges, a.k.a. the Far Reaches. That means we have the enemy placed in our rear, a terrible thing. Well, Colonel Burr, Josh replies, says you, says me, says he, that would be a terrible thing indeed. Perhaps I should go out there and take a look. Why, Captain Thurlow, says I, do you think so? I mean, after all, you are terribly wounded, man! Yet, (I'm shrugging, Sergeant, and most reluctant—take note of it) you know your duty better than I, of course. Says he, I tell you what, Colonel, where is that fucking common little nun? Does she have a boat? If she does, I'll ship along with her, take a run up to those islands, see what's what and be back here in a jiffy Well, all right, Captain, says me, says I, if you think that's best. I'll call the little Irish creature over right away to talk about it. Read me that last line, Private.”

The clerk stopped his scribbling and cleared his throat. Josh fell over on his side, and his breathing became even more labored. Both men ignored him. “ ‘I'll call the nun, God bless her,” the clerk read from his notes, “to brief us on the situation in the Forridges immediately so that you can decide what you should do.' ”

“Very good, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The nun is obviously required at this point,” Burr said. “Go get her.”

“Where is she?”

“How the hell should I know? Find her!”

The clerk tucked his notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket and went off to find the nun, wherever she might be. She wasn't far, as it turned out. A marine trying to sleep on the beach pointed to where she and her savages had made camp, which was close by a shattered Higgins boat. Behind the Higgins, the clerk was surprised to find three large outrigger canoes. The nun was kneeling in the sand in front of them, not at her prayers but with an M-l rifle in her hands. Beside her, in the light produced by a hissing kerosene lantern, was a towheaded and helmetless young marine. The marine was saying, “That's it, Sister. Now, try it again.”

The astonished clerk watched as the nun disassembled the rifle, carefully placing the various parts on a palm frond mat beside her, then reassembling
them all in the same order. She finished with the receiver slapping shut.

“Was that done well enough?” she asked the marine.

“Yes, ma'am. They'd be proud of you on Parris Island.”

“May I keep it?” she asked of the rifle. “And some ammunition?” “Don't see why not. There ain't no shortage of rifles lying about. Here's a couple of clip bandoliers.”

The clerk cleared his throat. “Sister? Colonel Montague Burr would have a word with you. Will you follow me?”

“Will ye follow Christ?” she retorted.

“If Christ will lead me off this atoll, ma'am, I'll follow him or any other damn god you name.”

She looked at him with big, disappointed eyes, and the clerk mumbled, “Don't mean no disrespect, Sister. I'm just a bit tired.” He paused to assess the situation. “What are you doing with that rifle?”

She ignored the question and turned to the marine beside her. “Would you please place my rifle and ammunition on that canoe? Yes, that one there. Thank you.” The young marine carefully wrapped the rifle in the mat and then used the ammunition bandoliers to strap it all together. Sister Mary Kathleen turned to the clerk. “Will ye take me to Colonel Burr, then?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Then someone, for no apparent reason, popped a flare over the atoll, and as it floated down, streaming smoke, the clerk saw in the dancing shadows naked men covered with tattoos crouched about what appeared to be a body. Their hands were busy with flashing knives. “What in God's name are they doing?” the clerk gasped.

The nun looked over her shoulder, then said, most serenely, “They are flaying one of their fella boys so that he might be carried home.”

“Flaying? You mean removing the … the flesh?”

“Aye. Bones they can carry, but not the flesh. They will feed the meat to the fish. It is their way. Do not look if it bothers ye.”

It did indeed bother the clerk, so he took her advice and didn't look anymore. Instead, he quickly led the nun away from the beach to the pillbox, where Burr was still contemplating, with some obvious satisfaction, the fallen, sweat-soaked, and thoroughly filthy Josh Thurlow, whose eyes had rolled back into his head. The nun knelt at Josh's side. “He is worse!” she said in an accusing tone. “Have ye not called a doctor for him as I asked, then?”

“He doesn't need a doctor,” Burr archly replied. “A long sea voyage, that's what would revitalize our Captain Thurlow here, not the ministrations of some pill pusher.”

The nun felt Josh's brow. It was scalding to her touch, and she also observed that his wounds were oozing yellow pus and watery blood. “He's dying!” she announced.

“Oh, now, Sister,” Burr chuckled. “Hardly. Old Josh's asleep, that's all. But before he took his nap, he and I had the most interesting conversation. It seems he would like to accompany you to your Far Reaches, to scout out the situation, and then, at such time he is able to make it back to these waters, which I anticipate to be a very long time, if ever, he may lecture us about all that he has learned. For all I know, he will recommend we send marines in force to defeat the Japanese on your islands. Of course, I debated with him, saying how much he was required for the war effort right here at my side, but Thurlow is a stubborn fellow, you know, and I have reluctantly agreed to let him go. You may take him when you're ready, as long as it's pretty much
toot sweet.”

The nun seemed poised to argue but, after a long second of meditation, subsided. “May I at least have clean dressings and what medicines you might have for him?”

Burr wiped his forehead with his bandana, blew his nose, and then called out to his clerk. “Sergeant-Private? Go round up a corpsman. Tell him to help the good sister here with Captain Thurlow and to give her whatever she requires. Tell him I could use some aspirin and quinine, too. Fever's got me, and this one feels like a doozy”

The clerk charged off, and then Burr staggered a bit, before leaning against the pillbox wall. Fever when it came to him always came on padded feet, like a stealthy cat, but then it dug in its claws and drew blood. “I spoke with the Holy Joe priest you confessed to, Sister,” he said, blinking through the sweat running down into his eyes. He dabbed his brow with his soggy bandana, then wrung it out, the sweat pattering around his boots. “The man seemed a little shaken to me. What did you tell him? Although I ordered him twice to confide in me, couching it in terms of helping the war effort, not to mention any future promotions for him, he still wouldn't do it. I will see him broken, of course, so you might as well tell me what sins you confessed that so stressed the poor padre.”

“Why do ye care, Colonel?” Sister Mary Kathleen calmly inquired. “What are my sins to ye?”

Burr took a deep breath, desperate for oxygen, but there was only the foul air of dead men. “Sister, help me.”

“How can I? Tell me what ye need.”

“I need you.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “In what manner?”

Burr's uniform was soaked with sweat. His knees were unhinged, near collapse. The fever was fully on him, its claws tearing away at his flesh. “I need you to explain to me the ways of heaven and earth,” he croaked. “I sense you know everything.”

Shocked, she snapped, “I know no such thing!”

“Please, Sister! I am in hell, don't you understand? Save me!”

“No!” she yelped. “I am not the one ye seek!”

“Help me, please God!” Burr gasped, then staggered out of the pillbox and disappeared into the darkness.

Trembling from fear and shock at the colonel's outburst, Sister Mary Kathleen waited until she regained her composure, then knelt beside the big, fever-wracked captain and placed her hands together in prayer. She prayed to Saint Monessa for all the dead men of Tarawa, and particularly for Josh Thurlow, and then she prayed for Colonel Burr. Finally and most fervently, she prayed for herself and asked the little saint to please intercede with God, who surely was otherwise too busy to notice her,
and, please, Saint Monessa,
help her complete her mission to recover the precious thing God had given her and, because of the weakness of her flesh and spirit, she had lost.

She expected no immediate reply to her prayers and therefore was all the more surprised when she got one. There was what seemed to be a child's voice in her head, and it said,
Go, and take Captain Thurlow with you.

So she did.

Ready had come to believe that the world was going to stay dark forever and that the sun would never rise. Perhaps, he thought, when he heard the labored breaths and shuffling footsteps that told him the Japanese were coming again, he was already dead and hell was the absence of light. Then the K-bars and bayonets clashed, gunshots popped, there were shouts and cries and gurgles, and he knew he was still alive, though hanging on by the merest chance. The beach fell silent once more except for the whimpering of the sea against the sand and the last breaths of men. Ready called out, “Marines?” The answers came back: “Tucker here.” “Sampson, Whimper Fi.” Garcia hissed, “Still with you, Bosun!”

They had been assaulted three times by teams of four Japanese each, and those twelve men now lay dead in the sand around them. Another assault was surely on its way. Ready looked off to the east, willing the sun to rise, which it did, coincidentally It was a brilliant sunrise, sudden as usual in those latitudes, a molten red ball flashing hot light across a sea that instantly turned from a sullen gray to a most glorious and transparent blue.

“Will you look at that that!” Ready exclaimed, and the three marines looked and saw three snowy white sails skimming with graceful purpose across what seemed the edge of the world. One detached from the others and glided toward the beach. Fearing for its safety, Ready jumped up and down and waved his arms. “Go back!” he yelled, but the little boat kept sailing toward them, and then it seemed the entire island exploded in a wash of fire and brimstone that sucked the very breath from Ready's lungs.

The sails were raised on the outriggers, and Sister Mary Kathleen, for the first time in days, took a deep breath without the accompanying stench of dead men. She silently thanked God for fresh air and freedom while her fella boys thanked the spirits of the sea with a song that rose and fell with the waves. The outriggers were all designed the same, built from the wood of the breadfruit tree and consisting of a hull, a sail, an outrigger float, a lee platform, and a small hut in the stern. Outriggers built in the Far Reaches were known throughout the Pacific as fast and durable. They did not so much sail on the sea as skim above it, their passage marked only by the hiss of spray. Now, to Sister Mary Kathleen's delight, the wind was propelling the outriggers as silently and quickly over the water as if the finger of God were pushing them.