The Hunters (2 page)

He would sometimes recall, as if it had happened to another person, the compulsion to press close to death, to feel the purity that followed. He had always been respectful of the inner
conquests of men and the rarefied, ascetic world they occurred in. He had traveled that world for a while, accomplishing he was not sure what, unless it was that he had learned a little of silence and perhaps devotion.

Friends on the outside were always asking why he stayed in, or telling him he was wasting himself. He had never been able to give an answer. With the fresh shirt on his shoulders still cold as ice, chilled from an hour in an unheated radar compartment at forty thousand feet between Long Beach and Albuquerque, the marks from the oxygen mask still on his face, and on his hands the microscopic grit of a thousand-mile journey, he had tried to find an answer sitting alone at dinner in the club filled with administrative majors and mothers talking about their children, but he never could. In his mind he carried Saturdays of flying, with the autumnal roar of crowds on the radio compass and the important stadiums thirty minutes apart and button-small, the wingmen like metallic arrows poised in the air above a continent, the last sunlight slanting through the ground haze, and cities of concrete moss; but never any reasonable reply. Or, sick of the stars and bored with speed on those nights in the great black sea, the surf of which was cities bubbling on the wave, listening to the others who were up, two unseen killers perhaps, calling themselves Butcher Red and seeking themselves in the darkness, he had tried to think of one—brief, understandable—but never could. It was all a secret life, lived alone.

One thing he was sure of: this was the end for him. He had known it before he came. He was thirty-one, not too old, certainly; but it would not be long. His eyes weren't good enough any more. With an athlete, the legs failed first. With a fighter pilot, it was the eyes. The hand was still steady and judgment
good long after a man lost the ability to pick out aircraft at the extreme ranges. Other things could help to make up for it, and other eyes could help him look, but in the end it was too much of a handicap. He had reached the point, too, where a sense of lost time weighed on him. There was a constant counting of tomorrows he had once been so prodigal with. And he found himself thinking too much of unfortunate things. He was frequently conscious of not wanting to die. That was not the same as wanting to live. It was a black disease, a fixation that could ultimately corrode the soul.

He walked past some tennis courts with ice shining in patches on them and ivy like old string clinging to the fences, then came to the entrance of the club. It was warm inside. He looked about for a minute, feeling lost in the crowded room. Somebody against the far wall was beckoning to him. It was the lean man, eating dinner at one of the tables. Cleve sat down beside him.

“Have you eaten yet?” the lean man asked.

“No.”

“It's a good meal tonight. Pork chops.”

Cleve glanced at the menu and flipped it aside.

“Don't you like pork chops?”

“This waiting around is getting on my nerves.”

“It can do that. I don't take you to be too high-strung, though.”

“I'll be that way before long.”

“How many days have you been here?”

“Four.”

“I've been here three weeks,” the lean man said. “Three weeks and three days, if you want to count it out.”

“Three weeks?” Cleve was astonished. “My God, I hope you're an exception.”

“There wasn't much I could do about it. I came down with some kind of virus just after I got here, caught it in San Francisco I expect, because I was sick enough on the trip across. They put me right in the hospital. I just got out a few days ago. I'm due to see the doctor again tomorrow morning; and if he thinks I'm all right, he'll clear me to get my orders to go on to Korea.”

While Cleve ate, the lean man talked in his tart, unruffled manner, mostly about his experiences in the hospital. He had been given a fresh pair of pajamas every three days, he said, and after a while he began to develop a real interest in whether or not he would be able to complete his convalescence before he received any with a single button on them.

“How long are most people here?” Cleve asked.

“Oh, usually two or three days. Once in a while they're here longer. One fellow I heard of has been here over a month, but he's in Tokyo somewhere. They're still looking for him.”

“He'd better hurry back or the war will be over.”

“There's not much point in his hurrying now. He might as well take his time. He can't get in any worse trouble.”

“I wouldn't think so.”

“Some fool fighter pilot.”

“Naturally, with that kind of independence.”

The lean captain smiled.

“I guess I know what you fly” he said. “I was sort of hoping not. We might have ended up in the same outfit together.”

“Not this war, I'm afraid,” Cleve said.

“It was the same in the last one. You were in that, weren't you?”

“No.”

“No? Well, wrong again. I'd have thought you were. A war is
a war, anyway. I don't expect that there's much about them ever changes. I didn't really want to come to this one, but you know how it is. All the complaining. All the mothers and their innocent sons. It makes you go in spite of yourself.”

The lean man went on talking. He seemed not so much soldier as wanderer, moving lightly through life with a sharp eye and a subdued sense of time. It was hard to tell about men like that, but Cleve could not help liking him.

They sat and smoked after the table was cleared and then, wordlessly agreeing, went into the bar. The crowd had preceded them. Slot machines rang with a continuous sound, and an uneven level of laughter and conversation supported some music being played at the far end of the floor where an orchestra was situated on a small stage. Japanese waitresses moved past in their neat uniforms, carrying trays of drinks. They were stocky girls, but graceful, with round scrubbed faces. A few were good-looking, and there was one who was exceptional, slender and well-formed. Her face had a rare calm quality. There was no way not to notice her.

“Not bad, is she, but she'd go hungry in Tokyo.”

“What?” Cleve said.

“They have some mean competition there.”

“I suppose so.”

The orchestra was playing a medley of American musical comedy numbers. A few couples moved dutifully about the dance floor, as isolated as sails on a sea. The women were occidentals, all of them plain. One was buttoned in a prim blue uniform with a white patch of some sort on her shoulder and an overseas-type cap on her head. She appeared to be forty or
more and was dancing with a solemn lieutenant. A third person could, with some difficulty, have passed between them.

There was a wave of cold air from the door being opened. Cleve looked up. A group of five officers had come in and were standing near the entrance, surveying the club. They were all second lieutenants, and it was obvious that they had arrived only recently, that night perhaps. The assurance was missing. They stood close together, relying upon each other. After a few moments they chose a table and sat down nearby. Cleve watched with no real interest as they discussed what they wanted to drink and summoned a waitress.

They were all identical, like the staff surrounding the emperor on a grand nineteenth-century canvas. There was just one who was misplaced. He was paler than the rest. He stood out like a strip of lemonwood in cedar and somehow seemed, comfortably, to be conscious of the distinction. The girl who came to serve them was the one Cleve had noticed. She stood obediently waiting. The pale lieutenant watched her coolly as he gave the order. She wrote it down and then slipped off. He whistled admiringly.

“How about that?” he said. “How would you like to get into that?”

“Who wouldn't?”

“I bet she'd do it for a pack of cigarettes, too.”

“And you'd help her smoke them, eh, Doctor?

“Why not?”

Cleve heard the rest when she returned with the tray of drinks. He was not watching any longer, but there was the sound of the glasses being placed softly on the table.

“What's your name?”

“Myoko,” quietly.

“Well, that's a new one anyway.”

She did not answer.

“Don't you have another name, an American one?”

“No.”

“How about Rita? That's a good name.”

She was silent.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Old enough, I'd say. What time do you finish work here, Rita?”

The lean man cleared his throat at this and turned toward the group.

“Say, friend,” he said clearly, “lay off, why don't you?”

The lieutenant stared back through the dimness with bland eyes.

“What did you say?” he asked politely. The girl hurried away.

“I said that she'd lose her job if she went out with you. You wouldn't want that to happen to her, would you?”

“Are you the club officer or something?”

“No.”

“I see. Just being helpful.”

“That's right. She's not allowed to go out with any of the officers. It's a club rule. I thought you might not know about it.”

“Thanks,” the lieutenant said.

There was a brief, unnatural silence at the other table, and then Cleve could hear him talking again.

“How do you like that? If he was the club officer, I could understand it.”

“Come on, Pell, we don't want to get in any trouble.”

“Trouble? How's there going to be any trouble?”

“You'd better leave the girl alone.”

“I'll talk to her if I want to. He's probably making a play for her himself. That's why he's bothered.”

“You may get her in trouble, though.”

“Wouldn't I love to?”

“I don't think you ought to fool around.”

“Wait a while,” Pell said. He settled back, apparently undisturbed, to sip at his drink and observe what was going on in the rest of the room.

Nothing more was said to the waitress by anyone at the table, however. The second lieutenants were loudly discussing flying when Cleve and the lean man left, quite a bit later. Through the cold night they walked back toward the barracks. The drinks after dinner had made Cleve sleepy. He listened to the sound of breathing as he undressed in his room, crawled into the deeply hollowed bedding of his iron cot, and was soon asleep.

Early the next morning, right after breakfast, he received his orders. They were what he had expected, assigning him to the most famed of the fighter wings, which was located close behind the front. It took him only minutes to pack his things. He was on the way at last. He did not catch sight of the lean man before departing.

It was almost noon when they crossed the Korean coast. Cleve stared anxiously at it, drifting past beneath the wing. He knew a moment of acute fulfillment, for here he would make a valedictory befitting his years. He had come a long way for it, and much was still ahead; but already he could feel self-imposed obligations, his burden of pride, diminishing, actually leaving him. He began to experience something of the exhilaration that came with triumph. In this war, he was more certain than ever, he would attain himself, as men do who venture past all that is known.

He looked about the cabin. Everyone was leaning toward the nearest window to see the land below, which lay calm as wreckage in the clear winter air. Not much could be distinguished to show where the war had been. Smooth fields of snow mottled everything, and the rivers were as pronounced as veins, but he did not think of an ancient mother of men. His eye was the flyer's. He saw the hostile mountains, the absence of good landmarks, and the few places flat enough to land in an emergency.

They had fought down there, on foot, taking weeks to move the distance he went in an hour. He was arriving like a tourist, in comfort. He felt the detachment of a specialist, and the importance. His gaze moved for a while to the heavy wing and the
outboard nacelle, which was the only one he could see. A broad slick of oil, black and gleaming, was spread back from the cowling. He went back to staring moodily at the land.

Within an hour they had landed at Seoul. It was a blue, bitter February afternoon. Cleve stepped off the plane onto Korean ground frozen as hard as plaster. A sharp wind was keening across the flats. It stung his cheeks and made the rims of his ears ache. It came with the sharpness of steel into his lungs when he breathed. His eyes watered.

He followed along in the string of debarking passengers. They walked across a bare expanse of earth toward buildings near which were mounds of baggage, barracks bags, and groups of waiting men huddled in their overcoats. He walked past them and into the biggest hut. Inside it was crowded, too, and almost as cold. Men were clustered about the two oil stoves, warming their hands. Cleve hesitated, then began pushing through them with difficulty toward a counter he could see at the far end of the room. There he inquired, as soon as he had an opportunity to, about going on to Kimpo. He had no idea how long an additional trip it might be.

“I'll find out for you, Captain,” the corporal said, turning away. “Hey, how do you get from here to Kimpo?”

“To where?”

“Kimpo.”

“There's a bus that goes there.”

“When does it run?”

“How should I know? Look at the schedule.”

“Where's the schedule?”

“Oh, Christ.” The other man walked over with an expression
of disgust on his face. He was a sergeant. He leafed through a foliage of paper tacked on the wall and quickly located the schedule. He ran a finger down its columns.