The Commodore (25 page)

Ought to get up, he thought. What for, his brain asked. Let's caulk off for a while, give everything a much-needed rest. Then he drifted off, still trying to come up with an answer.

Sometime later he felt something biting him again, only this time it was a real bite, clamping down, tugging even. He opened his eyes and saw a small, multicolored fish nibbling on his exposed ankle. He sat up and swatted at the water. As he did, he heard two loud yells from behind him. He looked around to see two sets of dark brown elbows and heels disappearing into the bushes at the top of the beach. His head still hurt and now he was really thirsty. Water, water everywhere, he remembered. Now: What's my name?

Time to get out of the water, he thought. He rolled onto his hands and knees and moved up the surprisingly steep edge to dry sand. He sat for a moment and then began to try to get the soggy life jacket off. It was much harder than it should have been, he thought, as his rubbery fingers struggled with those strings. Finally he succeeded, and pushed the waterlogged lump of fabric to one side. There was black lettering stenciled on the back: CMDRE, whatever that meant. He was still wearing a long-sleeved khaki shirt, khaki trousers, black socks, and the top portion of one seaboot. There were large, dark stains on his right sleeve and shoulder. His back hurt, as if he'd done a reverse belly flop at some time. He raised his hand to the right side of his head. It felt a bit pulpy, like the shell of a turtle he'd once broken as a juvenile delinquent.

When was that? Where had that happened?

He thought he heard rustling in the bushes and looked over to see two sets of black eyes staring at him from the undergrowth.

“Hey,” he called. “You got water?”

The eyes disappeared, but then, a moment later, two almost naked Melanesians stepped out of the bushes and approached, carefully. They seemed to be fascinated with his face. Or was it his head? Was it
that
bad? Brains leaking out?

He lay back onto the sand. He remembered—what? Something. An image, but it was gone. He realized he'd closed his eyes again. He opened them to find the two men kneeling next to him now, their faces close enough for him to smell them. They gave off an odor of greenery, tobacco, and what—seaweed? Smoked fish? Interesting. He made a drinking motion with his hand.

“Water?” he croaked.

They looked at each other, stood up, and backed away. As one turned to go back into the jungle, the other, the older of the two, based on his gray hair, nodded at him.

“
By'm by,
” he said in a singsong voice. “
Come along watah
.”

Then they were gone. He dozed.

When he woke up again, the sun had shifted and it was probably early afternoon. He looked out to sea and saw some distant green mountains on the horizon. They seemed to float above the sea, bright green on top, then changing to a purplish hue lower down before disappearing into a gray mist at the bottom. Beautiful, he thought. This looked like the South Seas pictures he'd seen—where? He forced himself to relax on the sand, resting his right cheek on a small mound. His arms and legs seemed to work. He could wiggle both his toes and fingers. Something was moving toward him about two feet away from his face. He tried to focus but for some reason it was really hard to do that. Then he got it: another crab, a little bigger one this time.

He wiggled his fingers again, just a little, and the crab stopped. He lifted his fingers like a tarantula leaning back on its hind legs and the crab backed up, then rose into its own very similar defensive position, claws aloft, moist little mandibles working to determine whether this was dinner or danger. He slowly cupped a small handful of sand in his right hand and then threw it at the crab, saying: Boo! The crab fled. He repositioned his head. Big mistake. A lightning bolt went down the right side of his neck and out into the sand through his right shoulder. He gasped as he passed out again. Stay away, crab, he thought, as one of those distant green mountains blossomed into a large cloud that came across the sea and covered him right up.

“He's a Yank,” a woman's voice said, just as clear as a bell. He tried to open his eyes but they were stuck shut, as if his eyelashes had been glued. He tried to sit up but she made a shushing sound, pressing on his chest to make him lie back. Then he felt a metal cup pressing to his lips, fresh water slopping onto his jaw, and he drank greedily.

“Slow down, now, mate, slow down,” she said. He did not slow down. She withdrew the cup long enough for him to clear his throat. “Take your time, Buck-o. You've had a nasty whack, for sure. Who are you, and where'd you come from?”

“No idea,” he croaked. She had an accent—Brit? Aussie? The effort to figure out which one was just too painful. He tried to open his eyes again, but there was a crust of salt on them. She poured a little of the water on his eyelids and then he was able to see her.

“I believe that,” she said, gazing at his head wound.

He felt a wet cloth pressing up against his battered head. It felt good as long as she didn't actually move the cloth. He tried to tell her that, but then heard her saying something like, Ah, damn, there he goes again. Poor fella. Altogether,
bring'im house b'long me.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Lever Brothers Plantation, Kalai Island

He awoke to the sound of rain pounding on a metal roof with a roar that sounded like a load of gravel being dumped. He was able to open his eyes and look around. He was in a bedroom, which had one large window aperture but no glass. The bed was enveloped in a mosquito net and was very comfortable. He guessed by the pallor of the light outside that it was either dawn or dusk. There were a pitcher and a glass next to the bed on a nightstand. He blinked his eyes a couple of times, took a deep breath, and tried to sit up. A familiar lance of pain shot from the right side of his head down his right shoulder and arm, severe enough to make him cry out.

He lay back and closed his eyes for a moment until the pain subsided into a dull ache. Where am I? Who am I? What am I doing here? He realized he was naked in the bed. His body felt clean, which was to say no longer covered in salt and the stink of marine life. Coral. Crabs.

Marine life: he'd been in the sea, and then wedged up on a reef covered in teeth. And then on a black-sand beach, where strange-looking natives peering out of the jungle had been frightened out of their wits when he sat up and looked at them. Didn't they know he was the commodore?

Then it came rushing back. All of it.

The sudden appearance of heavy cruisers. His flagship,
Barrett,
toe-to-toe with eight-inch guns and torpedoes slashing past each other,
Barrett
's banging off the sides of the bigger Jap ships, theirs … well, theirs tearing his flagship into two pieces with such power that the back half of the ship had driven right past the capsizing front half. A melee, for damn sure. He took a deep breath. He'd laid the same ambush one too many times. The Japs had figured it out and laid one for him. Oh, God, where are my ships? Did they get away?

There was a sudden blaze of yellow candlelight as the woman who'd ministered to him down on the beach came into the room, a glass-chimney candle in her hand. She was in her fifties, long dark hair tinged with gray coiled in a tight bun, a handsome, tanned, and lined face that bespoke many years out in the tropical sun. She was wearing a white, sleeveless blouse and khaki trousers. There was a large pistol strapped to her right hip in a holster. She smiled at him.

“Back from the dead, then,” she said. “How's the head?”

“Fractured and willing to let me know that anytime I move,” he said. He looked over at the pitcher. “Is that water?”

“Yes it is,” she said, and poured him a glass. She held it to his lips while he drank the entire thing. When he'd finished she sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling the netting aside so that she could talk to him. “Remember anything?”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I'm an American naval officer; my name is Harmon Wolf. I need to get back to…” He hesitated.

“Yes,” she said. “That
is
the question, isn't it? Get back to what? There was a great deal of shooting the previous evening. Gunfire and other explosions. We never know who's shooting whom, but ever since you lot went into Guadalcanal, there have been many unpleasant—
things
—washed ashore here.”

“I can just imagine,” he said.

“My name is Jennifer Matheson,” she continued. “This is a Lever Brothers rubber plantation on Kalai Island. The Japs haven't been here yet, but the word around the district is that they soon will be. My husband, Jack, is the plantation manager, but he's gone
long-bush
into the hills with one of the coast watchers. I'm staying here, trying to hold things together until the Japs actually show up. Me and my boys. They're the ones who found you on the beach.”

“Those natives?”

She smiled. “Melanesian is the proper term. Many of the workers here were from Malaita Island, across from Guadalcanal, but they've gone home. Those two are local Kalai men, loyal to me and the plantation, for now, anyway. If the Japs come here, that could all change. We grow rubber, here. The Japs will want all of it. Hungry?”

“No,” he said, but then changed his mind. “Yes, I mean, as long as I can eat without moving my head, that is.”

She got up from the bed. “I'll get you some soup,” she said. “And we need to change that dressing on your head. Then I'll want your name and rank, so we can get a message off to Sydney.” She paused, examining his face. “I must say, you don't look like an American,” she said.

“I'm an Indian,” he said. “From the Chippewa tribe.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” she said. “You Yanks never fail to surprise.”

She left the room, calling for someone in the house in that strange pidgin dialect he'd heard her use. He dozed until she came back with a mug of broth and one of the natives—excuse me, he mentally corrected himself, Melanesians—who was dressed in a tropical uniform of some kind.

“Try sipping this,” she said. “Then the district NMP here will look at that wound. His name is David.”

David, it turned out, was one of the Kalai locals who'd been trained in first aid and basic medicine by the British colonial authorities who governed the Solomon Islands. Whenever the district officer made his rounds to hold court, collect taxes, and settle administrative disputes, David went along to bring medical care and supplies, especially to the more remote tribes and villages living back in the hinterlands, known in pidgin as the
long bush
. He gently removed the bloody dressing, taking enough hair with it to make Sluff wince. He went into the adjoining bathroom and filled a bowl with water, to which he added a tincture of Mercurochrome. He gently washed the wound site. Sluff thought he could feel his skull buckling, like the plates on the side of a ship. David produced a new bandage from his kit bag, dusted it with sulfa powder, and pressed it gently against Sluff's head, holding it in place for a minute. He removed it, smelled the bandage carefully, and then put it back, this time with some tape. He looked over at Mrs. Matheson.

“
Altogether sua 'e look'm aurait,
” he pronounced in the singsong voice.
“Mobeta 'e stayim quait insait house bilong youme, slip tumas altogether
.
”

David nodded politely and then withdrew, carrying the bloody bandage out with him. “Okay, what'd he say?” Sluff asked. David had never once moved his head, God bless him.

“He said the wound didn't look infected, and that it was best if you stayed right here and slept too much.”

“Wow.”

She smiled. She had a pretty smile, which made her look younger. “If you live here you get used to it,” she said. “There's a pretty big vocabulary, actually. Now: Give me your particulars and we'll get a report off via the coast watchers' net,
quiktaim.
”

Sluff recited his full name, rank, and serial number, and then added his title of ComDesRon 21. He asked if the radio station was here on the plantation. She said no, that it was inland, but did not provide any further details. He wondered if she didn't quite believe that he was who he said he was. She told him to finish the broth and then pointed out the bedpan resting beneath the bedside table. He frowned. There was no way he could reach down to get it. He started to say something, but she was gone.

After he finished the broth, which tasted mostly of salt and possibly a fowl of some kind, he lay back on the pillows. His head hurt. He realized that his whole body hurt from being thrown through the air and into the sea, but the head wound dominated his pain while keeping good pulsing time with his heartbeat. He wondered how the naval headquarters at Nouméa would react to the news that he was alive. He could almost visualize Halsey's choleric chief of staff, Captain Browning, rubbing his hands together and saying, Oh, good, now we can hold a proper court of inquiry about the disaster he led his squadron into. His right ear began to buzz. Why not, he thought. Masks the sound of my heartbeat. The broth was warm in his stomach. Pretty soon he'd have to deal with getting to the bedpan. Then he fell asleep again.

He dreamed. The north woods. His family. The summers logging. His father's disappearance. The academy. Coming up the line in the Navy, always aware that he was, with his Indian features,
different.
The prewar naval officers corps was pretty much a white proposition. The only dark skin one saw on a warship inevitably belonged to stewards, and Sluff's mahogany features always provoked a double take in the wardroom when another officer saw him for the first time. The gold academy ring added to the confusion: Is that guy one of
us?
Or did he steal it? When it became clear that he was at least as good as most of them, professionally, the knowing looks became more discreet. The Navy, God bless it. Advancing some of the fringes of American society for the better good of the country. You know. Roosevelt, for God's sake.