Authors: Homer Hickam
“You're thinking Jap, sir?” Ready asked, hearing Josh's order and coming forward.
There was something in the bosun's tone that irritated Josh, perhaps because he'd just seanced with the great men of his life. “Well, Bosun,” he growled, “I ain't thinking Germans or Italians.”
Ready was thus rebuked, and it stung. Without comment, he helped the
fella boys lower the sail, then sat down, his mind swamped with righteous indignation. Then he took stock. Ready was an honest man, usually, and recognized that Captain Thurlow was merely being his normal self, that is to say with his common tendency toward arrogance. So why, Ready asked himself, was the captain so bothersome? Ready searched for the source of his annoyance and then confessed to himself that it was surely jealousy Ready was jealous that the nun seemed to be in awe of Josh Thurlow, even with all his dictatorial ways, while she had never expressed the slightest admiration for Ready himself. Ready's anger therefore crept toward the nun, for what was clearly bad judgment on her part. Not only did she have them all on a fool's errand, but she esteemed Captain Thurlow, who was, after all, nothing but a big bully, always had been, not to mention
(though somebody should!)
a lecher with a tendency toward drunkenness. Ready decided his best course was to be through with the both of them. They could admire each other, do anything together they wanted! Henceforth, he would do only what he was told, and the nun, well, she could go to hell! J
wish I was home,
Ready determined at the end of his internal rant.
If I ever make it back to Killakeet, I'll never leave it again.
Then he pulled up his knees and lowered his head onto them and tried to recall his mother's sweet face and forget Sister Mary Kathleen's pretty (but foolish) Irish mug.
Nango's whistles soon had the other outriggers to their bare poles, and the sea, free to exert its will, pushed them slowly down-current, away from the burning smear. With nothing to do, the fella boys sensibly laid themselves down and went to sleep. There was no sound from the nun's hut, so Josh assumed she slept as well. Ready apparently was also dozing, his head on his knees. Josh sat down and soon was fast asleep himself. Some hours later, he was wakened by a flying fish that had flung itself into the outrigger like a silver knife, landing at Ready's bare feet. The bosun awoke, picked up the fish, inspected it, and tossed it over his shoulder into the sea. Then he rose and came forward, yawning and stretching.
“I wonder what was chasing it?” Josh mused.
“Tuna maybe,” Ready answered. “Good water for tuna, this.”
“You were always the best fisherman of any of the boys,” Josh said. “I recall it was almost like you could feel the fish in the water. It's a gift only a few men have.” When Ready made no reply, just stood there, Josh briefly wondered if he had done or said anything to upset the bosun. He quickly concluded it was unlikely, Ready being the most sensible of fellows, and
himself typically so evenhanded. So he asked, “What's your opinion of that fire, Bosun?”
“You want my opinion, sir? Maybe they're cooking copra. Or maybe there's a big celebration and that's their dancing fires.”
“If that's your opinion,” Josh replied, “you're dead wrong.”
Ready shrugged. “Nothing new there, Captain. I can hardly remember when I was right, especially in your opinion.”
Josh noted the bosun's grumpy reply and was moved to explain his position. “Those fires ain't right for copra. They'd be burning lower and more of a yellow coloration. I doubt anybody's dancing around them, neither. Too big. It's the war, and I don't see why you would say it's something else.”
Ready was silent for a long second, then replied, “Maybe it's because this war don't make sense to me no more.”
Josh was astonished at the bosun's declaration. “Have you forgotten Pearl Harbor?”
“No, sir. I haven't forgotten it, but I guess it's been cleaned up by now.” “Three thousand of our boys killed, a lot of them trapped underwater. There's no way that can ever be cleaned up.”
“We just got a thousand more killed on Tarawa, sir, and I guess a couple of thousand bad wounded. Tell me what sense that makes.”
“Don't be simple,” Josh growled, then struggled to find a proper metaphor. “Say a man knocks down your door, shoots your kids, rapes your wife, loots your house. What do you do? Shake his hand? No, you fight and kill him even if you get knocked around doing it. That's what we're doing out here, fighting and killing the men who attacked us without warning. Sure, we're taking our lumps, but war makes as much sense as anything else when it needs to be done. So what's really going through your head, Bosun? Let's hear it.”
“There's nothing in my head,” Ready answered. “Nothing at all.” “Don't play the fool!” Josh snapped. He discovered he was truly angry.
Imagine! The war being questioned!
“Captain, the problem with you isâoh, never mind. It's like talking to that flying fish I threw overboard.”
Josh started to unleash a sharp rebuke, reminding Ready of his manners before a superior officer, but Nango interrupted the arguing Americans with a warning: “Jahtalo! Bo! Look-see!”
Josh and Ready looked and saw. A moving light, now two, appeared from the flaming glimmer, then moved steadily eastward. “Japanese barges heading to Ruka,” Josh said. “I'd stake my life on it.”
“We go Burubu now, Jahtalo?”
“No, Nango. We wait. If those are Japonee, I want to give them time to sail far away.” Josh watched the moving lights a little longer, then turned to Ready to continue the argument, which he intended to turn into instruction and the bosun's return to discipline. He was disappointed when he saw that the bosun had gone to his sleeping place, pulled up his knees, and rested his head on them again. Josh watched him and tried to imagine what might be causing his ill humor.
It's that nun,
Josh concluded.
think he wants her, but he'll never have her, so it's tearing him up inside.
Satisfied that he had identified Ready's problem, Josh sat down to give it all a good think, to see if he could find a solution that would make the bosun happy and keep the peace between them. Six seconds later, he was fast asleep.
The sun bolted from the sea, startling Josh when it bore into his face like a white-hot barb. Shielding his eyes and rising with a deep ache in his right knee while unsuccessfully trying to recall what he'd been thinking about before he went to sleep, he looked at the sea, which stretched out before him, undulating and endless. The glow of the flames on the horizon he re-called now had vanished in the furious glare of the morning sun, replaced by a column of blue-gray smoke that rose crookedly against the clear sky. Josh was pleased to see that all the outriggers were still on their bare poles. Nango, dozing at the masthead, came suddenly awake, raising his big head and calling out, “We go Burubu now, Jahtalo?”
“Not yet,” Josh answered, wishing with all his might for a cup of coffee. His mouth tasted like putty and his mind was befogged, surely a job for a fresh cup of Java. Without hope, he asked Nango if he had any that he'd kept hidden.
“No, Jahtalo,” Nango replied, grieving for the American in obvious need. “But I have tea.”
Josh sighed. “Could you brew me a cup, then? Make it strong.”
The other outrigger captains, hearing the voices, beseechingly began to hail: “Burubu, she burn! We go, Jahtalo!”
“Not yet!” Josh yelled at them as Nango busied himself with the little kerosene stove. Before long, the pot was bubbling, and not too many minutes afterward, Nango handed Josh a tin cup filled with tea, which proved to be hot and bitter but just the ticket.
“Nango!” the outrigger captains cried at random. “Jahtalo wrong! We go! We go!”
Nango turned away from them, his arms crossed, though his eyebrows
were lifted significantly in Josh's direction. Then the captains started to call the nun, who had surreptitiously emptied her bedpan into the sea and then made her way to the bow. “Sister, we go! Sister, we go!”
From his position slumped before her hut, Ready, coming awake, watched Sister Mary Kathleen go by.
Who cares about you?
he thought, even while his heart was crying,
I do! I do!
His heart wailed a little more when he saw her smile at Captain Thurlow. He allowed himself to slide ever deeper into a jealous stew. The two fella boys sitting across from him nodded and smiled, polite young men that they were, and the one named Vanu wished him “a berry good morn.” Ready replied “Good morning,” and since he was a Killakeeter, and it was the custom there, went on to comment on the weather. “A fine day, an easy breeze, a blue sky.”
“Too much good, Bosun,” Vanu replied. His smile broadened into a toothy grin, matching the one owned by the fella boy Kanu beside him. Ready discovered he was pleased to be in their company, though outwardly there could not be more differences between him and them. For he was pale and ugly, and they were brown-skinned, tattooed, uniformly handsome men with long, glistening black hair. Still, they were sailing men, just as he. For a moment, basking in their good natures, he managed to forget all about the nun and the ache in his heart.
On the bow, Sister Mary Kathleen sipped from the cup of tea Nango had handed her and asked, “Why do we wait, Captain?”
Josh explained his reasoning to her, pointed out the smoke that probably marked Burubu island, and said that the Japanese had possibly been sighted leaving and he wanted to give them plenty of time to be miles away. When the outrigger captains began to beg anew to let them put up their sails, she called in a sharp rebuke that it was necessary to wait. In response, they began to chant something ancient and not Christian, though they performed fervent signs of the cross across their tattooed chests. “They're surely worked up,” Josh marveled.
“Everyone in the Far Reaches knows everyone else,” she explained. “Though my fella boys are from Ruka, outriggers constantly go back and forth between the islands. There are also many celebrations throughout the year that cause all the people to gather as one.”
“Yes, I remember,” Josh replied. “There were no hungry people or orphans in the Far Reaches. They shared what they had and took care of one and all.”
She nodded toward the plume of smoke. “What do ye think we'll find on Burubu, Captain?”
“War, Sister.”
“Aye,” she replied sadly. “I fear yer right.”
“This mad Colonel Yoshu you spoke of?”
“Faith, it's likely. You must make him surrender, Captain, I beg ye.”
“You keep saying that. But, Sister, must I tell you again that the Japanese don't surrender? They prefer suicide before such dishonor.”
She was not swayed. “I think Colonel Yoshu is cut from a different bolt of cloth.”
Josh gave the nun's words some thought while he tapped his cup on the heavy breadfruit stem of the bow. “Maybe,” he concluded, “but even if he's a coward, I doubt if he would surrender to a half-naked Coast Guard captain, a heartsick bosun, and three marines, one of them with but one foot. No, Sister. I pray your Colonel Yoshu doesn't catch us before I convince you to gather the people of the Far Reaches and evacuate to the Gilberts.”
“I scarcely know what to pray for these days!” she suddenly confessed. Josh's reply was immediate. “That the Americans beat Jap, and soon, Sister. Then all your problems will be solved.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Not all,” she said after a moment.
Then she started to say something else, and Josh could almost see the wheels turning in her head, but at the end of her internal argument, whatever it was, she chose to stay silent. It seemed to Josh she had just come close to revealing a secret, though it was a secret he chose not to pursue, a greater matter taking precedence. For now he had an island to visit, and perhaps another battle to fight, and men he might yet have to kill. Captain Falcon rose in his mind to speak and chose a battle cry:
Strive into battle, boys! Strive and bludgeon, and heaven be damned.
It was the shout the captain gave his men just before he drove his cutter alongside a pirate whaler. “So be it,” Josh said to his old skipper, who grinned his rough grin down the years.
“What did ye say, Captain?” the nun asked.
“Nothing, Sister,” Josh replied, though he tipped the wink to the captain's spirit. “Nothing at all.”
Past noon and, having failed to see anything further of the Japanese barges if, indeed, that's what the moving lights were, Josh told Nango to raise his sail and head toward the island. As soon as the other outrigger captains saw Nango's sail go up on the poles, they quickly raised their sails, too. The breeze, a spirited one, fluffed out the patched canvas, and soon the outriggers were skimming across a tossing sea.
Sister Mary Kathleen stood beside Nango, her habit filled with the wind like an extra sail. Ready, unable to restrain himself, stepped up beside her. “Good morning, Sister,” he said, nearly simpering. “Are you well this morning?”
“Well enough, Bosun,” she replied, “though I long to put me feet on the sweet sand of the Far Reaches. I do love these islands so. The people here have lovely souls, y'see.”
“It's you who has the lovely soul,” Ready said before he could stop himself.
“ 'Tis kind of ye to think so,” she said in an uncertain tone.
Though he knew he should have left well enough alone, Ready barged on. “Ma'am, what's your opinion of Captain Thurlow?”
She smiled into the wind, and her cheeks flushed pink. “I think he is a rough surgeon.”
“You like him, is that it?” he demanded.
The threatening tone of his voice surprised her. “I like him well enough. So do ye, I presume. When we first met, he was yer only concern. Bosun, are ye angry with your captain, for some reason?”