At the Midway (26 page)

"'Twas unfortunate you had to lean for the scalawag, Mr. Garrett," said one of his men.  "But unavoidable."

"Ah...."  Garrett did a drum roll on his gut.  "I could use some sack time.  What's the hour?  Our relief should be coming up any minute."

"I don't see what you boys are fussing about.  Your turn will come, and soon."  Lieutenant Grissom cocked his hat and leveled a smile at the mess men.  "We've only been here two days.  Once the other parties start coming back, you'll get your shore leave."

The black faces before him did not register disgruntlement--only bemused pain, strictly for the executive officer's benefit.  They had anticipated his answer.  They wanted their grievance noted, but not necessarily acted upon.  If the white officers felt the Negro crewmen were trying to force them into a decision, life would become all the harder for them on the
Florida
.  No, they only wanted to make certain their silence was loud enough to be heard.

Amos Macklin mastered his rage.  When Grissom dismissed them, he turned to the cook and told him he was going out for air.  The cook, who was his superior, nodded.  He appreciated Amos' stoic silence.  Allowing him to go was his way of thanking him.

Three hours since sundown--but you would never have guessed it in the vicinity of the Fleet.  Along with the cruisers of the Pacific Squadron, they swayed at anchorages reaching from Oakland to San Francisco.  Each ship was decked with huge lights that spelled out its name.  From mainmast to fighting mast,
Florida
,
Connecticut
,
Ohio
and all the others challenged and overpowered the stars.

"Seaman First Class..." Amos whispered to himself.

Smaller lights glided by in the distance, seemingly unconnected to the water, and Amos recognized the deep chuff of the tugboats--undoubtedly a part of the omnipresent Red Stack fleet, which had a monopolistic hold on the bay.  He'd once piloted a tug--spent a summer towing ships in and out of Jacksonville.  Not a bad job, but all those peeks at the sea had lured him out of the harbor and into the Navy.

The Red Stacks drew his attention east, to the thunder of rolling stock along Oakland's outstretched piers.  He could swim that distance without difficulty.  He could light out west.  Land surrounded him.  Practically any direction would do the trick.

"Jump ship while you can," Methuselah had urged him in Norfolk.  Right this moment, that was a mighty temptation.  To get free.  To get clear.  Go up to Alaska, perhaps.  Stake a claim.  Even a black could speak his mind if he had enough gold.

An auxiliary engine aft of the stokehold hatch vented steam from its safety valve--a piercing note, like a prison whistle.  Grasping the main deck weather rail, Amos was caught between using it as a handhold or a vault.

"C'mon, Jack Johnson... c'mon, Jack Johnson...."

A chant Amos had heard on numerous occasions as details of heavyweight matches were read out from the wire.  It had become his personal mantra, a way of urging himself forward when things got tough.

"C'mon, Jack Johnson... c'mon, Jack Johnson...."

He chanted for fifteen minutes.

The Red Stacks floated out of sight.

But Amos Macklin held.

May, 1908

28°20'N, 177°22'W

1640 Hours

"Hey, listen up: 'Can you draw this simple stick figure?  If so, the
DAYTON
ART
ACADEMY
can help you Develop Your Talent.  Professor Andre DeFlaunce, noted ARTIST and former Professor of ART at the SORBONNE--as well as CURATOR OF THE LOUVRE--can reveal to you the Secrets of turning Idle Doodles into ART AND CASH!!!'"

Private Kitrell held a pencil tightly in his good hand and carefully followed the illustration in the
Harper Monthly
's thick advertising section.  When done, he proudly displayed his artwork.  "Well?"

"I didn't know shit had a face," observed Private Depoy.

"After I've made my first million--"

"Tell it to the marines," Depoy snapped.

"But... that's
us
."

"The boy's quick," Depoy granted.

A faint series of gunshots interrupted them.

"Top Cut's swanking on A-range again."

The men seated in the shade of the relay station looked out across the lagoon towards Eastern Island.  Because of the dwarf magnolia and beach grass that flourished there, it was also called Green Island by the men of the tiny garrison.  Its vegetation was positively luxuriant compared to that of the aptly dubbed island where they now sat: Sand.

They could just make out Sergeant Ziolkowski waving his arms as he emphasized something to the marksmen prone in front of him.  A cluster of smoke puffs burst from their Springfields.  This time, a gust off the Pacific carried the sound away.

"Those boys couldn't shoot holes in a camel if it was sitting on their face," said Depoy, easily dovetailing his insults.

"Go sit on them and see," shot Kitrell, scratching the bandage on his right hand. He was considered the detachment's resident intellectual.  Right now, his left arm was in a sling as a result of his reading.  A couple of months before departing San Diego he'd happened upon an oddly punctuated ad in
McClurel's
:

A JAPANESE VICTORY: Japanese Strategy
-
-
The Flank Attack (against the individual or an army
-
-
and the ever successful) Application of the Unexpected reveals ALL THE SECRETS OF JIU-JITSU the wonderful Japanese Method * * *

Printed by the Japan Publishing Company, it declared Captain Skinner, the author, would show
how BRAINS AND SKILL could overcome mere brute force.  The advertisement even quoted President Roosevelt:
The art of Jiu-Jitsu is worth more in every way than all our athletics combined. 
To top it all, it was stated that 'A Japanese Victory' would soon be adopted by the U.S. Navy for instruction of its crews on war vessels.

This was enough to convince Kittrell, who promptly put his dollar in the mail.  He received his copy of the manual one day before leaving for Midway.  Once on the island, he'd studied the book and its illustrations for several months.  Deciding he was ready, he concluded an appropriate test subject would be, naturally enough, a Japanese.  He attacked one of the smaller fishermen.

And now his arm was in a sling.

It had been a bad break. His arm was still tender.

This did not deter other marines from borrowing the book and following in Kittrell's footsteps.  The idea of tossing Ziolkowski around like a meal sack had strong appeal.  They had to be careful.  The sergeant had let it be known he would personally set the arm of the next man who broke it in this manner.  They could just imagine what that meant.

Adjusting his sling, Kitrell returned to his copy of
Harper's.

"Anything in there about us?" Private Hoffman asked him.

"Marines occupy Midway!" Depoy intruded.  "Enemy flees!  Citizens cower!  Sand spit safe for democracy!"

His headline was late.  The island pair had been discovered in 1859 and claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act.  It was garrisoned by marines in 1903.

"If Lieutenant Anthony hears you, he'll sic the Top on you."

Depoy shrugged and lay back on a scrawny patch of grass.  Shading his eyes, he kept a wary eye on a frigate bird hovering nearby.  The most perilous thing on the island was bird crap.

"We're the most isolated marine outpost on earth," Kitrell said importantly.  "You know that?"

"Well, run up the flag and piss on my grave."

Depoy was always cranky around Kittrell.  This was due as much to envy as anything else--because Skinny Kittrell, inept, a fumbler, impractical, dreamy, goofy, with a silly woman's laugh, was one of the detachment's most prized members.  Kittrell was a demon of the squares, a chess master who played as though he'd invented the game.  Which made him invaluable, because Lieutenant Anthony, commander of the garrison, was a chess fanatic.

The lieutenant owned an illustrated pamphlet of some of the key tournaments of recent years.  It was never far from hand.  Hunching next to a cheap wooden set, he would follow the moves of the masters with deep, glowing envy.  Before arriving at Midway he'd sustained his imagination with fantasies of defeating Chodera or Shipley.  He dreamed of taking Grassi's place in Como and beating Perlasca into tears.  When Kittrell landed on the atoll and Anthony discovered his talent for chess, he rubbed his hands in glee.  What luck!  He could pass the rest of his stint on this hideously dull plot of coral sand in the throes of chess ecstasy.  His enthusiasm was multiplied when two of the other replacements, as well as the new civilian, also turned out to be players.  This was swell society, compared to the blank year preceding it.  A year in which his grandest accomplishments had been the planting of marram grass and some dabbling with a proposed golf course.

Against Sergeant Ziolkowski and Hamilton Hart, the civilian, Anthony played on a par, winning and losing a near equal number of matches.  He usually won when he played Depoy, but he could never be sure if the private was losing on purpose, thinking Anthony would make life miserable for him if he didn't.

When he first sat across from Kittrell, however, the private demolished him with such effortless ease the lieutenant was left numb and perplexed.  Consequent games were not much different.  It took some time for Anthony to catch a glimmer of what was happening.  Kittrell was a master of the sleight of hand, drawing one's attention away from the real action.  Anthony had spent too many years studying the master strokes of chess geniuses.  Now he was compelled to view the entire board.  What he finally comprehended was that it was not simply a square of squares, but an integrated active process.  With a shudder, he realized how illusory the physical dimensions of the board were.  It was small, yet vast, with all the complexity of the microcosm scientists were beginning to speculate upon.  And Kittrell, at a glance, comprehended things which Anthony only vaguely imagined.

The private's hearty good cheer was infuriating.

With equal alacrity, Kittrell defeated Ziolkowski, Hamilton and Depoy.  Depoy would sit before the barrel on which the game sat, play ten moves at most, then kick the barrel over with a curse and stomp away.  Hamilton Hart, on the other hand, approached the board as if he was about to be defeated, played as if he would be defeated, and rose... defeated.  The dullest of Midway's players in character if not in style.

A fair
-
sized audience always gathered when he played Ziolkowski.  It was a treat to watch the Top lose.  He would gear himself up as though entering battle, eyes keen, jaw determined, his powerful hands clutching his knees.  When determining colors he would select one black pawn and one white pawn and hide them behind his back as he mixed them between his fingers.  It was well
-
known that Ziolkowski preferred to make the first move.  Occasionally, a daring soul would make idiotic gestures at Kittrell, as if trying to tell him which of the sergeant's hands held the white pawn.  With a roar, Ziolkowski would chase him off.  Then he would hold out his fists and let Kittrell choose.  The private never took more than a second to make his selection.

Once the game was under way, Ziolkowski was all silence and intensity.  There was no time limit.  Midway was timeless.  Why bother with a clock?  The Top might spend forty
-
five minutes, even an hour, determining a single move.  Meanwhile, Kittrell would read, saunter down the beach, or harry the gooney birds.  When he heard the sergeant shout, he would trot back, glance briefly at the board, then make his move and wander off again.  As the game progressed, Ziolkowski's face would grow redder and redder, his neck muscles would swell, his bare toes would bunch into stones.  No matter how far behind he got, he never gave up.  He might have only a king left against Kittrell's small army.  No matter
-
-
he would struggle for a stalemate.  Once defeated, he would stand, plop his campaign hat on his head, nod, and walk silently away.  Kittrell once ventured pointing out the Top Cut's problem: "You're trying to inflict casualties.  That's not the same as strategy.  You're aiming for the wrong thing."

Ziolkowski was unresponsive.

The awesome fact was that no one on the island had ever beaten Kittrell at chess.  Anthony, Ziolkowski and Depoy often seemed to be racing each other to be the first to do so
-
-
Hart was the only one who did not seem to care.  That this uncoordinated, bookish, undersized, entirely nondescript marine could beat them every time was too much to bear.  It was almost too much to comprehend.  Kittrell was a force of nature that had to be overcome.

In the shade of the telegraph building Depoy could only glower at his fellow Leatherneck. He was tempted to challenge him to a game, but he didn't feel quite up to being humiliated.

Sand Island was not entirely bare.  A few ironwood trees had been imported from Australia.  Also from Australia--via Golden State Park--was marram grass.  Several times a week Lieutenant Anthony put his men to work planting grass in the dunes.  By placing it deep and cutting it off at the surface, the marram stooled out as it grew, making new cuttings possible.  Once the dunes were anchored, more exotic plants could be imported.  But they had only begun planting grass in 1906.  As of yet, nothing on Sand could be described as lush.  The clumps of grass crouched like dying beavers, while the trees were no more than sick saplings.