Les longed for a cigarette. That would have to wait till daylight. The flash of a match and the glow of a coal just asked a sniper to draw a bead on you. He longed for a cigarette, but he wasn’t dying for one.
The stars wheeled across the sky. Nothing happened, but something always could. Waiting for it, wondering when it would come and how bad it would be, wore away your stomach lining.
Out ahead, something rattled. Les’ rifle was against his shoulder before he knew how it had got there. The noise might not have come from a Jap. The other night, somebody’d used up a stray cat’s nine lives all at once. But you never could tell.
Was that a moving shape, there on this side of the wire? It might have been too small and low for a man, but it might not have, too. The Japs could crawl on their bellies as well as snakes. Finger tight on the trigger, Les hissed out a challenge: “Password!”
No answer. No movement. Silence. He wondered if his nerves were getting the best of him. He called the challenge again. Still nothing. But the shape of the shadows ahead looked different from the way it had before he heard that rattle. It might have been his imagination. He didn’t think so. He thought it was a Jap, maybe two. The rifle bucked against his shoulder.
Japs had fine discipline-better discipline, probably, than the Marines. But holding still and not making a sound despite a wound from a high-powered.30-caliber round proved beyond this one. He groaned. Les fired again. The Jap screamed, the cry slowly subsiding into an agonized gurgle.
But sure as hell, more than one enemy soldier lurked out there in the darkness. With a bloodcurdling shriek, the Jap Les hadn’t hit dashed at him. He fired once more-and missed. Night shooting was as much a matter of luck as anything else. Still shrieking, the Jap jumped down into the foxhole with him.
If Les hadn’t got his M-1 up in a hurry, the Jap would have gutted him like a tuna. The knife in the enemy soldier’s hand rebounded from the stock. Les had told Randy Casteel about the virtues of firing as opposed to the bayonet. He had no time to aim and shoot. He didn’t even have time or room for a bayonet thrust. He used a buttstroke instead, and felt the big end of his piece slam the side of the Jap’s head.
He thought-he hoped-the blow would fracture the enemy’s skull. But either the Jap had a devil of a hard head or Les hadn’t hit so hard as he thought he had. The Jap kept fighting, if a little dazedly. He slashed out with his knife. Les felt his tunic tear and the hot pain of a blade cutting his arm. He hissed a curse.
Then the Jap grunted, more in surprise than anything else, and went limp. The hot-iron smell of blood filled the foxhole, as well as an earthier stink-the soldier’s bowels had let go. He was dead as shoe leather before he finished crumpling.
“Hell of a way to wake somebody up,” Randy Casteel said peevishly.
“Thanks, kid,” Les panted. “Got a wound dressing handy? Can you stick it on my arm? He nicked me a little.” He worked his hand. The fingers all opened and closed and gripped the way they were supposed to. He nodded to himself. “Doesn’t seem too bad.”
“Lemme see.” Casteel bent to get a close look in the darkness. “Yeah, I can patch you up. You just got a star to go with your Purple Heart.” He fumbled in his belt pouch for the dressing.
“All things considered, I’d rather have a blowjob,” Les said, which jerked a startled laugh from the other Marine.
“What the fuck’s going on?” somebody called from not far away. If he didn’t like the answer, a grenade would follow the question.
“That you, Dutch?” Les said. “Two Japs, looks like. I scragged one. Other one tried to keep us company. He cut me a little, but Casteel gave him a Kabar where it did the most good.”
Somebody else out there in the darkness asked a low-voiced question. Dutch Wenzel’s reply was loud enough to let Les hear it: “Oh, hell, yes, sir, that’s him. Ain’t a Jap in the world talks English like that.”
“I dusted some sulfa powder on the wound, too, Sarge,” Randy Casteel said.
“Good. That’s good. You did everything just right,” Dillon answered. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Uh, half past ten.”
“Think you can sleep another hour and a half? I’ll go back on watch. I won’t be able to get any shuteye for a while anyway-not till the arm quiets down a little.” He said nothing about the pounding of his heart, which also needed to ease. Nothing like damn near getting killed to keep you up at night.
Casteel said, “I’ll give it a try.” He needed almost ten minutes to start snoring this time. Les envied him his youth and resilience. I’m supposed to be the smart one, he thought. So how come I’m the one who got cut?
THE JAPANESE OFFICER ON TOP OF JANE ARMITAGE squeezed her breasts one last time, grunted, and came. She lay there unmoving, as she had while he pumped away inside her. He didn’t care, damn him. He patted her head, as if she were a dog that had done a clever trick. Then he dressed and walked out of the room.
Dully, she waited for the next violation. She knew she ought to douche, but what was the point? With so many Japs every day, douching seemed a pitiful stick in the wind against pregnancy and disease.
How long did the average comfort woman last? How long before the sheer physical endurance you needed to take on man after man after man-none of whom gave a damn about you except as one convenient hole or another-combined with mind-numbing self-loathing to make you decide you couldn’t stand to go on for one more cock, let alone one more day? Jane was stubborn. The end hadn’t come for her, because she still wanted to see the Japs dead more than she wanted to die herself. But new girls had replaced several from the original contingent by now, and the ones who’d left hadn’t gone on rest cures. They’d died, died by their own hands.
Jane flinched when the door opened. But it wasn’t another horny Jap wanting a few minutes of fun before he went back to killing American soldiers. It was one of the Chinese women who ran the soldiers’ brothel for the occupiers. She fluttered her fingers, a gesture that meant Jane had taken on her last man for the day.
Wearily, she nodded. The Chinese woman closed the door and went on to the next room. Occupiers. The word echoed in Jane’s head. In Shakespeare’s day, she remembered from a lit course at Ohio State, to occupy a woman meant to screw her. Jane had never thought to see the connection so vividly illustrated in the twentieth century.
Not far away, Japanese field guns boomed, shooting at the Americans pushing down from the north. She wished the guns would blow up in the Japs’ faces. She hadn’t really understood the futility of wishing till she got here.
Before long, American shells screamed in. Counterbattery fire, they called it. That was what she got for being an artilleryman’s wife. Ex-wife. Almost ex-wife. She shook her head in sour disbelief. She’d thought Fletch wasn’t the lover she deserved. Maybe he wasn’t. But a million years of Fletch would have been paradise next to what she’d gone through the past few weeks.
A white woman poked her head into the room. Beulah stayed-was stuck in-the room next door.
“Come on,” she said. “We might as well get something to eat.”
“Okay.” Jane made herself climb to her feet. More shells burst within a few hundred yards of the apartment building-turned-brothel. “I wish a couple of those would land on this place and blow it straight to hell.” Even though she knew wishing was useless, she couldn’t stop. What else did she have left?
Beulah only shrugged. She was broad-shouldered and stolid and, Jane suspected, not very bright. If anything, that helped her here; not thinking was an asset. “Gotta keep going,” she said. “What else can we do?”
Hang ourselves. But Jane didn’t say it. She’d been taught as a girl that saying something made you more likely to do it. She wasn’t sure she believed that any more, not after a couple of psychology classes, but any English major would have said words had power. If they didn’t, why pay attention to them in the first place?