Battle Cry (32 page)

L.Q. Jones squared away his field scarf and paced nervously over to Speedy Gray’s sack. They were preparing for a double date in Wellington. The Texan brushed his dress shoes with a slow, almost static motion that only he was capable of.

“They was a riding down the river,

Jest a settin’ on the stern,

She was holding his’n,

And he was holdin her’n…”

“Come on, Speedy, get off the pot. Liberty train goes soon.”

“Now jest take it slow and easy, pard. We’ll meet them hyenas in plenty of time.”

“Hey, Tex—same two beasts as last time?”

“Yep.”

“I hear they call them sisters the witches of Wellington.”

“Now, let’s not go into that mildewed routine about old O. and her sister,” L.Q. said.

“Man,” said Seabags, “I’m getting tired of these foreign women. I had me a broad the other night. Took near an hour to get her damned knee pants off.”

“They sure are scratchy.”

“What I wouldn’t give to run into a nice pair of silk skivvies. Man ain’t got no maneuvering room in them long johns.”

“Shut up, you bastards,” Danny said. “My wife’s picture is on the wall.”

“How come you ain’t going to see old Olga with L.Q., Chief?”

“Last time we stayed after curfew. We hadda sneak all over Wellington trying to get to the railroad yards, then we hadda ride to Paekak in a sheep car. Filled with sheep, yet.”

“Hey, Speedy…you coming or not?”

“Easy, boy, easy.”

“Anyhow,” the Injun continued, “we hit Paekak a half hour before reveille and it’s raining like hell. We hit the parade ground and who did we run into—Sarge Pucchi.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Andy said. “L.Q. is wheezing and dripping wet. ‘Fine morning,’ he says to Pucchi. ‘Thought I’d take a walk in the hills.’”

“Yeah, and Pucchi sniffs L.Q. and says, ‘Sheep. Why, L.Q., I’m surprised at you.’”

“L.Q., where oh where did you meet them women?”

“Well, he can put a flag over Olga’s face and go for old glory.”

“O.K.,” L.Q. said, red-faced. “What if they are the last roses of summer? While you bastards are wilting away in a pub drinking hot ale, L.Q. Jones is working over Scotch and soda, with ice in it, real ice. Olga’s the only broad in New Zealand with an icebox and her old man is loaded. Goddammit, Speedy, you coming or not?”

“Don’t rush me, boy, don’t rush me…I’m an artist.”

Andy unlatched the gate that led to the Salvation Army Hotel for Women.

“Let’s walk up the hill a bit, I don’t feel quite like turning in.”

They walked the steep hill to a point where the paved street ended for vehicles, then took the zigzag stairway to the top. They came to a rest along a concrete rail guarding the drop. Andy looked down on the browned-out and sleepy city. In the distance they could see the dim outline of ships cluttering the harbor.

“Phew,” Andy said, catching his breath. “Pretty up here.”

“Softy.”

They leaned on the rail and gazed at the view below them. Andy lit two cigarettes and handed Pat one, and helped her to a sitting position on the rail. Her back rested against a lightpost.

“I saw a flicker once where the hero always lit two cigarettes that way. I always wanted someone to do that for me.”

“You cold?”

“It is a wee bit chilly.”

He opened his green overcoat, which he had been carrying folded over his arm, and put it about her shoulders. “Thanks, now there’s a dear.”

They puffed contentedly. “Funny,” Andy said, “I used to think that New Zealand was right next to Australia. Sure get a crazy idea in your mind of a place. Just like most of the people here thinking America is a place where you just pick dollar bills off trees and everything runs by a motor.”

“The girls at the hotel…I really shouldn’t say this….”

“Go on.”

“Well, most of them are hoping to hook a Yank. You boys don’t help much either. With our own lads being gone so long, and those uniforms and the way you throw money about.”

“I guess we’re pretty cocky.”

“Too right. We’re not used to so much attention, you know.”

“Sure is crazy the way everything turns upside down in a war, Pat. People don’t realize what has gone on here. We talked about an all-out effort back home. I know what those words mean now. You people have taken an awful beating.”

“It wasn’t nice, Andy…Crete and Greece and now North Africa. The casualty page was full for weeks when they trapped us on Crete.”

“I mean, Pat, everyone here has lost someone. I guess that doesn’t come easy…but what I like is the guts. The way you accept things, quiet and calm-like, and take in your belt another notch. They’re great people here…. Pat, what kind of a guy was your husband?”

“Don? Oh, just a plain boy. A distant cousin…we had the same name, Rogers. We were only married six months when he shipped over….”

“I’m sorry. I’ll change the subject.”

“You do like New Zealand, don’t you, Andy?”

“Yes, I do. I like the way everybody takes it slow and easy and like they know where they’re going and what they’re doing. I like it how there ain’t no real rich or no poor. Everybody the same, even the Maoris.”

“We’re proud of the Maoris. After all, it was their country we took.”

“Let me tell you something, Pat: it’s bad, us being here. A lot of people talk about wanting to be like Americans. That ain’t right, you’ve got the right idea.”

“Andy, that’s no way to talk.”

“Oh hell, I guess I’m proud enough about wearing this uniform. There ain’t no guys in the world like my buddies…but somehow I just feel like it doesn’t owe me nothing and I don’t owe it nothing.”

“What’s the matter, Andy? Sometimes you give me quite a fright, the way you talk…the way you think about women.”

“It’s a long story, and not very interesting.” He took a last drag on his cigarette, snuffed it out and knotted the paper in a tiny ball.

“Pat?”

“Yes.”

“Am I such a bad guy?”

“Well, I must admit the past three weeks were much better than our first date.” She laughed.

“Serious?”

“I’m glad I changed my mind, Andy.”

“Look, I want to ask you something. I don’t want you to get sore. I mean…to ask in a decent way, see?”

“Goodness, what is it?”

“We’re celebrating American Thanksgiving Day and I get a pass till Monday. Couldn’t me and you go away someplace…separate rooms and all that—no funny stuff. I’d just like to get away from camp and Wellington and the Marine Corps, take off a couple days, maybe on South Island.”

She smiled. “It sounds nice, Andy.”

“Would you? I mean, really?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’ve felt awfully homesick lately. Haven’t been home in over a year. My folks have a farm outside Masterton.”

“Honest? You a farm girl?”

“I suppose so, at heart. I left when Don died…just couldn’t seem to get adjusted. Wanted to be off by myself, you know. And when we heard about my brother Timmy…well, I just didn’t feel like ever returning…. Trouble is, Andy, there isn’t much of any place to run to in New Zealand.”

“There ain’t much place in the world to run to from something like that, Pat.”

“I’d like to. Yes, it would be nice, Andy. I do want to see them and maybe it would help to have a little support from you. I wonder if Tony and Ariki are still fit?”

“Who are they?”

“The horses—Timmy’s and mine. Ariki—that’s a Maori name, you know. Papa used to take us to the flickers in Masterton twice a month when we were kiddies. Tom Mix, the American cowboy, was my brother’s hero. He named his horse Tony. But goodness, Andy, that won’t be much of a leave for you, with my folks and the whole Rogers clan. They’re all over the hills down there.”

He lifted her gently to the ground.

“No, honest, Pat, it sounds wonderful…almost like…”

“Like what?”

“Nothing.”

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“I was going to say—almost like going home.”

Andy fidgeted as the train pulled into Masterton. For the fiftieth time he squared himself and ground out a cigarette on the deck, where a pack had already met its end. He stepped from the car and looked nervously down the long shed over the depot’s concrete platform. He broke into a grin as Pat raced toward him. She was dressed in heavy denim slacks, riding boots and a coarse, sloppy man’s sweater, probably her father’s. Her hair was up in pigtails. She looked fresh and wonderful.

“I look a fright,” she said. “Didn’t have time to change. Come on, I’ve been holding up the mail coach. Mr. Adams is in a lather.” She grabbed his hand and rushed through the narrow station to an oversized station wagon parked against the curb. The lettering across the top, along the luggage rack, read: R
OYAL
M
AIL
. Mr. Adams, the aged purveyor of the King’s mails, looked at his saucer-sized pocket watch in disgust. He turned his head and pointed to the official badge on his cap.

“We’re exactly fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds late, Miss Rogers. The bloomin’ valley will be up in arms.”

“Pay no attention to him, Andy. Mister Adams has been pulling out that watch and grumbling since I was four years old.”

Andy flung his haversack on the luggage rack and lashed it down between two large cases.

“Let’s be off. My name’s Adams, head of the postal service…”

“Hookans, Andy Hookans.” They shook hands.

“Humpf.”

Pat and Andy climbed over the quantity of crates and grocery sacks stacked all over the car. Mr. Adams quickly checked his lists to make sure he had completed his shopping for the farmers’ wives of the valley. His two passengers found an empty space in the rear, near two chicken coops.

“I thought this was a mail wagon?”

“Well, what the deuce does it look like?” she ribbed.

Mr. Adams seated himself behind the wheel and made much to-do over the instruments on the dashboard, checking as though he were about to pilot a Constellation through a perilous sky.

“You should have seen him when he still had the old crank-up Ford.”

With a final check of the watch and a sigh of dismay, the Royal Mail coach moved through the streets of Masterton. The town resembled, in many ways, an old Western main street. Shops along either side had built-out upper storeys held up by stout wooden poles, providing a sidewalk underneath. There were few motor vehicles in the streets. Shoppers paced in the quick straight New Zealand stride. There were bicycles all about, the most popular mode of transportation.

Once through the town, they sped along a well-constructed concrete highway into the countryside. There were ever-flowing, soft green hills and gentle knolls with clumps of picturesque trees, sunning themselves lazily in the warm calm day.

They passed miles of farms, herds of sheep. Everything was as tranquil as though posing for a picture, slow and easy. At each farmhouse, Mr. Adams stopped and gave the mail and a shopping bag to the women who awaited him at the gate. Then in his pompous and official manner, he cut short their chatter with a glance at his worthy timepiece. The King’s Mail must go through on time.

At a small, one-room schoolhouse they took aboard a gang of screaming, laughing, freckled children. He fretted and grumbled at the laggards, who only giggled at his anger.

Pat curled up in Andy’s arm to make room for the children. The flapping feathers of the chickens protruded through the cage and beat against them; a sudden turn in the road sent a barrage of children and luggage spilling over them.

They came to a stop. There was a large swinging gate and a dirt road worn in double tracks by the wheels that had passed over it for many years. Up the road about three hundred yards was a strongly built, two-storey shingled house sporting a new coat of gleaming white paint and bright trim. There was a huge chimney of field rock running along one side and the windows were graced with the feminine touch of frilled drapes.

A stray goose wandered across the road. In the distance a bleating of sheep could be heard. The area about the farmhouse showed the signs of the life and activity which it served. There was a clump of trees and a tool shed filled with leather harness, plows, and implements. And all around, the scent of fresh-cut hay.

Beyond, a barn and a corral, where enormous draft horses lazed from their chores. The whole place lay on a gently sloping hill.

On the hilltop was a mass of trees which put the area in gentle shade, with a beam of the sun’s rays slipping through here and there, casting easy swaying shadows in a mild breeze.

At the bottom of the slope lay the fields, plowed and straight and with a large fenced-in meadow for the flock.

Andy toyed with the hitch on the gate. Above it there was an archway and a painted sign which simply read:
Enoch Rogers.
The gate creaked and swung open.

“Like it?” Pat asked.

“Yeah,” he whispered, “yeah.”

They galloped over the meadow, bringing their mounts to a halt near the spot where Enoch Rogers had mended the fence. Andy jumped from his horse and helped Pat dismount. He patted Tony briskly.

“Good fellow, Tony. I knew you wouldn’t let that filly beat us.”

“He must like you, Andy, he usually doesn’t take to strangers,” Enoch said looking up. He was a lean, rawboned man of six feet or more. His face was wrinkled and leathery, but it still had the fairness of the New Zealand people. A big, ragged-edged straw hat hid an ungroomed shock of graying hair. He took a kerchief from his overall and wiped the sweat from his face. His hands were calloused and the veins stood out on his arms. He stretched like rawhide, wiry as a piece of spring steel, earthy as the hobnailed boots he wore.

“Well now, Patty, have you shown Andy all our trails?” He shifted the curved pipe which hung eternally from his mouth.

“She’s been riding my bottom off, sir,” he said. “I never was much on horses.”