Hold Back the Night

  That’s what the flying machine had done for the world. Distance was not measured in miles, any longer, but in time. One day when they solved the problem of fuel supply for jets, Sydney would be a one-night hop from San Fran.

  Mackenzie prowled Kitty’s flat, absorbing it, admiring it. There was a tricky bar built into the wall. When you touched a button it revolved and opened itself up. But all the bottles were empty.

  The bookcases were full of books, and not merely used for knickknack shelves. They were books that a man enjoys in the shadow of the evening, or the insomniac hours just before the dawn. There were Maugham and Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, and a beautifully bound set of C. S. Forester. There was Gunther and Pierre van Paassen, and Negley Farson, and the same edition of Kipling that Mackenzie had read from the time when he was twelve.

  “Like it?” she asked. He realized that she had been following him, unobtrusive as a discreet sales girl.

  “It’s perfect. I don’t want to leave.”

  “Yet tomorrow you must leave.”

  “Yes, tomorrow.”

  Her eyes were desperate. “Well, the bottle.”

  “Sure. The bottle.”

  He unzipped the leather case, and brought it into the open, and she took it in her tapered fingers, and held it up delicately to admire, and revolved it slowly before a soft light. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one like this,” she said. “You Yanks do all right by yourselves, don’t you? All the cigarettes you want, and all the drink, and the fine uniforms and ribbons.”

  “Oh, Scotch doesn’t rain from heaven. This is a very special bottle.” And he told her the story of the bottle of Scotch, but when he finished he found he’d spoken more of Anne Longstreet than of the bottle. He’d talked more of Anne than was proper or politic at the moment. Yet it was good for him. It emptied him. It was a cathartic.

  Kitty listened well. She said nothing until all was ended, and then he saw she was crying, not loudly, but deeply. He took her hands. “What’s the matter, Kitty?”

  “She must be a splendid girl, that Anne.”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Love her?”

  “Yes. I love her.”

  “Going to marry her?”

  “I hope so. Sure I am.”

  Kitty set down the bottle on the mirror top of the bar, and moved against him, and rubbed her perfumed, flaxen hair into his angular chin. “You’re a good type, Sam,” she said. “You’re like my chap. Same size. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same hopes.” She kissed him, delicately. “I don’t think Anne will mind. If my chap was with Anne, I’d be happy for him.”

  He should have known there was another man involved. He said, “Your chap?”

  She disentangled herself from his arms and went into the bedroom and came out with a photograph in a silver frame. “Here he is. Good, isn’t he?”

  The man in the photograph wore the peaked cap of an Australian officer, and his face was lean, and he smiled both with his eyes and his mouth, and there was a suspicion of a mustache, as if he’d just started to grow it. The Australian officer was six or seven years older than Mackenzie. “Looks like a nice guy,” Mackenzie said.

  “That’s my husband. My husband, Tom.”

  Somehow this surprised him. He hadn’t classified Kitty as either a good girl or a bad girl, but simply as a playgirl, a gay feather whirling in the excitement on the periphery of war, and not for the solidity of marriage. “Where is he?” Mackenzie asked, not that he expected her husband to pop out of the closet, or make an unexpected entrance through a rear door, but still it was best to know.

  She sniffed and laughed. “Not here, Yank. Not in Sydney. He was with the Eighth.”

  “The eighth what?”

  “The Eighth Australian Division. They were taken at Singapore—all of them—all who weren’t killed.”

  Mackenzie said, “Ouch!” The thought of capture had always been more frightening to him than death. His worst fear, on Guadalcanal, had been that he would be wounded, and captured, and be slapped around and spat upon, and be afraid to fight back, and lose his dignity as a man. He said, “He’s safe, of course?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Every night I listen.”

  “You listen?”

  “Yes. Every night the Jap wireless gives the names of five prisoners. Australian prisoners. Usually from the Eighth. I tell myself it’s silly for me to listen—that it’s only a trick to get me to take in their propaganda. They’re clever, those Japs. Yet every night I tune them in. I can’t help it.”

  “What time do they broadcast?”

  “There’s a program at two in the morning for us Aussies. That’s the one I always hear. Reception’s best, then, and I’m loneliest. Usually I’m lonely, that is. I don’t ask in every Yank, actually.”

  He found a corkscrew in the bar, and was about to rip the seal on the bottle when she put her hand on his sleeve. “Don’t do it,” she said. “It isn’t necessary.”

  He felt relieved, but he said, as a matter of form, “Sure you don’t want one, Kitty?”

  “Not from that bottle, Yank. You hold that bottle fast.” She turned her face away. “I drink too much anyway. Not that it makes me forget anything.”

  Just before two they went into the bedroom. Alongside the bed was a small, but powerful, Hallicrafter receiver, a present, she said, from someone in the OWI mission. They reclined on the rich, wine-colored satin of the coverlet, leaning back against the pillows propped against the wall, and tuned in JOAK, Tokyo, and listened to the smooth voice of a traitor. She was tense until the time came, at the program’s end, when the names of five live prisoners were announced. Major Turcott was not among them.

  Then she relaxed, and he took her, and it was delightful, in a gentle, casual way. In the morning he caught the SCAT C-47, loaded with companions sated by Sydney, back to Noumea.

  Now that he recalled her last name, he felt that he ought to write to Kitty and find out whether her husband ever did come back. He’d always be thankful to Kitty, for a number of things, and the most important of these was that she had not allowed him to open the bottle of Scotch. If he’d opened the bottle that night he’d have always felt guilty with Anne. A queer thought intruded. What if he had ever opened the bottle—ever, at all?

  There was an alien and violent whoosh, the close crash of a shell like the snarl of an angry dog, and Mackenzie, even as his instinct and reactions forced him to throw himself on his face, knew that he was under mortar fire, and digging in was the wrong thing to do.

  When they had you under mortar fire your only hope was to keep moving, and never give them a chance to zero in. He did not admire the Chinese tank tactics. Tanks shouldn’t be used simply, as mobile artillery, or conveyances for infantry. Tanks had a purpose of their own. And if he ever could bring their Mongol cavalry under the fire of heavy machine guns he’d soon teach them that horses were obsolete. And apparently they were novices at air war. But they knew artillery, and particularly they were adept with mortars, a simple weapon. They could plant a mortar shell in your hip pocket—if you stood still for them.

  So the captain wasn’t standing still. “Come on, you men!” he shouted as he bounced from the ground. He began to run.

  As he ran he swore at himself for allowing the warm luxury of recollection to betray him, and rob him of his normal caution. Here was the point of danger where the road ran alongside the ice-clad stream which he had noted a mile back. Here was the point of danger, and he had approached it with his thoughts in Australia. Somewhere in the hills to the north, a mortar crew had him under direct observation. As they watched him run down the road they would be adjusting their barrels. Another mortar shell crashed in behind him, and he could hear his men pounding and panting and sobbing close at his heels, but his mind was on the exultant Chinese officer who must be laying those guns.

  The Chinese officer would have them pinioned in his glasses, and be figuring out a range to interdict them. The captain searched for cover
. Four hundred yards ahead the road veered from its alliance with the stream, and joined the cliffs again, and disappeared around a jagged shoulder of rock. If he could reach that shoulder, that abrupt turn to the right in the road, he would be protected by the defilade of the hill. So the captain read the Chinese mortarman’s mind. It was necessary for the Americans to reach that point of safety. The Americans would stay on the road. Did not Americans always cling to the roads? So train the mortars to lay a barrage on the road, short of the cliff.

  “This way!” the captain yelled. “Follow me!” He left the road and tore across the cracked alluvial flat, which was like an obstacle course, slick with powdered snow, where you didn’t dare trip, because you would be dead. He swerved directly for the cliff.

  Behind him the mortars laid a neat pattern on the road, where Dog Company should have been, but wasn’t, and in a few minutes they were gathered together, gasping and wavering but there, under the protection of the hill.

  Mackenzie leaned against a rock, his head cradled in his arms, breathing hard and trying not to let the men know that his legs were shaking, and weak, and he was about through. He did not wish to speak until he was more composed. Finally, he took a deep breath and turned and counted them. One was missing. Ackerman wasn’t there.

  Beany Smith said, “Is the bottle okay, captain? You hit the ground real hard.”

  Mackenzie reached into his pocket and brought out the bottle guard. He held it at arm’s length. He was aware that they all watched him, numbly. He turned it upside down and shook it. It didn’t tinkle or leak. “It’s okay,” he said, shoving it back into the parka. “What happened to Ackerman?”

  “He was running right with me, sir,” said Nick Tinker. “He stumbled.”

  “Hit?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  This was disaster. Ackerman was the bazooka man, and the bazooka was all Mackenzie’s artillery. It was his mortars, his 75-millimeter recoilless gun, and his other, lost bazookas all rolled into one thin tube. It was his sole effective weapon against enemy armor, or a road block, and he had no doubt that they would encounter armor, or a block, before they came out of this gorge. He rummaged in his musette bag, found his glasses, and crawled to a place between the rocks from where he could see, and not be seen.

  First he swept the hills opposite, where the enemy was, but the enemy was invisible, as usual. In a way this was encouraging. If the enemy was assembling a force to storm his tiny party, then they had not yet gathered in what they considered sufficient numbers. The enemy was prodigal with men, as the Americans were with shell and bomb. Some thought the Chinese crazy, with their wild, bugle-heralded, chattering charges. He did not agree. America’s arsenal was rich in materiel. Red China’s and Russia’s was crammed with expendable bodies. America considered people important, and munitions expendable, but it was different on the opposite side. It was simply a matter of viewpoint.

  He shortened the focus on his glasses and examined the area where the mortars had come in on them. His glasses picked up what he sought, a lonely figure grotesquely sprawled in a patch of snow beside the road. He focused on it for a full minute, until he was sure he saw the bazooka under Ackerman. In that minute the figure did not stir. He called Ekland. “Sergeant, come up here.”

  Ekland crawled up until he was comfortable in a crevice just below. “We’ve got to have that bazooka,” the captain said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to send out one man. They may not want to waste a round on one man. Who do you think we should send?”

  “Me, sir.”

  Mackenzie thought it through. “No, sergeant, you can’t go. You know how to use cover, and I think you might make it there and back okay. But you might not. And I can’t afford to lose you. You’re too good with the BAR. And besides if anything happens to me I depend on you to take the company out.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, sir.” Now that it seemed they had a chance, Ekland was dismayed by the thought that something might happen to the captain. Ekland was a technician, and had never commanded.

  “Something could happen to me,” Mackenzie said. “It happened to the others.” This was a nasty thought at the moment—that every one of your junior officers, without exception, was dead; or a wounded prisoner perhaps craving death like a merciful drug; or in one case a probable coward and malingerer, skulking back to Tokyo and the warm safety of home. “Well, who do you think, then?” the captain demanded.

  “Ostergaard,” the sergeant suggested. “He has what it takes.”

  “Too big and unwieldy,” Mackenzie said. “Not fast enough.”

  “Well, Beany Smith. He’s a tough little monkey.”

  “I don’t think Beany Smith could make it there and back. He’s got guts, but how good are his legs? And can he hide himself? Do better, sergeant.”

  “Well, then, sir, you’re going to laugh, but I’d say Tinker.”

  “No, I’m not going to laugh,” Mackenzie said. “He’s got more resilience, and stamina, than any of us.” He called for Tinker, and Tinker scrambled up until he was beside Ekland.

  Tinker looked, the captain thought, the way Tom Sawyer must have looked to Mark Twain, full of piss and vinegar, and excited and eager as if this foul and awful business was S.O.P. “Son,” the captain said, “think you can make like a Red Indian?”

  Tinker grinned. “That’s the best thing I do. Out where I live, that’s all us ever did, make like Indians. That’s all there was to do, hunt, and trap.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Oh, it isn’t any place much. It hasn’t got any real name, but people call it Hickory Switch. It’s near Hyannis, and Hyannis isn’t very far from Alliance.”

  “Hyannis and Alliance what?”

  “Nebraska, sir. In the sand hills.”

  The captain grabbed Tinker’s shoulders, and pulled him up to where he could see the terrain through the niche in the rocks. “See Ackerman out there?”

  “I think so. Yes, I see him.”

  “Think you can get out there, and back, without getting shot?”

  “Sure.”

  Mackenzie had no way of knowing, but Tinker would without question do anything his captain suggested. The captain was Nick Tinker’s god. Most of the others thought their skipper a hard guy, but Tinker did not think him hard—not when Tinker compared him with his father and older brothers. To Tinker, the captain was fair, and even on occasion kind.

  “Okay, son, I want you to go out there and get that bazooka that’s under Ackerman, and any rocket shells he may have strapped on his back. Be careful. Use concealment. Make like a Red Indian.”

  “And Ackerman, sir?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do for Ackerman.”

  Chapter Three

  “The United Nations massive compression envelopment in North Korea against the new Red armies operating there is now approaching its decisive phase . . . if successful, this should for all practical purposes end the war, restore peace and unity to Korea, and enable the prompt withdrawal of United Nations military forces.”—General MacArthur’s communiqué of November 24, 1950.

  AS THE COMMUNICATOR for Dog Company, Sergeant Ekland had charge of all the radio equipment. After the regiment settled down at the reservoir, and the company was assigned security patrol at Ko-Bong, guarding a triangular spit of land extending into the frozen waters, he moved a radio receiving unit to his tent, and placed it between his cot and Ackerman’s, so that he and Ackerman could listen to the news, and music, and Stateside shows broadcast by AFN.

  Ekland and Ackerman had a number of things in common. They were older men. They were twenty-five. They each loved one woman. The four others in Ekland’s tent talked continuously of women, but the women of whom they talked weren’t their women. They were remote Hollywood beauties, or pin-up girls freshly clipped from Life, or high school steadies whom they now endowed with unmerited passion and sophistication, or the wise little tramps of San Dieg
o and Norfolk dance halls and juke joints, who in warping memory acquired sincere lips and soft voices, and were no longer predatory. But Ekland and Ackerman really had women, Ackerman a wife and Ekland the girl he was to marry, if he ever got home. Time and distance, compassionate artists, were kind to all these women, painting over their defects, retouching their faces, and molding their bodies anew. So when the men told outrageous lies about their women, and boasted of their own sexual prowess, it was not that they lied, really. That was the way they remembered it.

  After evening chow on November 24, Ackerman, Ekland, and the other four in the tent—Swede Ostergaard, Kato, Heinzerling, and Petrucci—listened to the six o’clock news and caught the MacArthur communique. Then Ekland clicked off the radio, for he knew that next to women, the men liked best to talk of the progress of the war, and their chances of getting home.

  “What in hell does he mean?” asked Heinzerling. “Massive compression envelopment? Who’s compressing who?”

  “Us,” said Ekland. “We’re compressing. Not us personally, but those boys from the Seventh up on the Yalu River, and our other regiments, over on the other side of the reservoir at Yudam-ni.”

  “I bet they’re sitting on their fannies, just like us, trying to keep warm,” said Heinzerling, a dark, wide-shouldered man nurtured in the Youngstown steel mills.

  “What a place to fight a war!” said Petrucci. “You could look all over the world, and not find a place like this. Why can’t we fight a war in a nice, clean country like Germany, with running water, and real houses, and indoor heads?” Petrucci lived in Garden City, Long Island, and his brother had served under Patton, so he knew about these things.

  “It’s because we’re Marines,” said Heinzerling. “Where do they send the Marines? Either a jungle or a rock.”