The Ambassador's Son Read online

  Phimble and Kennedy climbed out on the wing of the Catalina and peered into the endless military city. “How will I find my PT boat?” Kennedy asked.

  “That’s not my particular problem, Mister Kennedy,” Phimble replied. “It’s yours. What I’m going to do now is find some avgas, then go back to New Georgia for the skipper.”

  Kennedy was startled. “You mean you’re just going to abandon me?”

  Although Phimble had developed an unreasonable dislike for the skinny yellow lieutenant, he was not so thick that he couldn’t gin up at least a little sympathy, especially considering the man had just recently been run over by a Japanese destroyer. “Here’s Ready,” he said, snagging the bosun as he was trying to sneak past. “He’ll go with you, help you find your boat. Won’t you, Ready?”

  “Uh, sure, Mister Phimble. If you say so.”

  “I do say so. And take Millie, Once, and Again to act as crew. Be in Melagi by tomorrow afternoon, no later.”

  Kennedy considered Phimble’s plan, or lack of it, then put out his hand. He managed a twisted smile. “Don’t worry, Ensign. I’ll be there.”

  Phimble glanced at the hand but didn’t reach for it. “If you’re not at Melagi on time,” Phimble said, “you’ll answer to Captain Thurlow, not me.”

  Kennedy slowly lowered his hand. “Why do you dislike me so much?”

  “I don’t know,” Phimble replied. “Sometimes I find I simply don’t like a man and it doesn’t go any farther than that. There’s something about you that rankles me, that’s all I can say.”

  “Is it because I’m rich? Other men have disliked me for that reason, especially since I did nothing to earn my money except being born a rich man’s son.”

  “I told you I don’t know why!” Phimble snapped. “Maybe sometimes a man don’t like another man and there’s no good reason.”

  “I want you to know,” Kennedy said, in a somber tone, “that I’m proud to know you. You have made something of yourself. You are a credit to your race.”

  Phimble’s eyes brimmed with anger. “Mister Kennedy, I know you don’t mean nothing by your remark beyond a compliment. But I must tell you I’m an American, and that’s all I am. Now, sir, it’s time for an end to talk. Go find your boat. I’ll see you in Melagi tomorrow.”

  Kennedy shrugged, then walked down the wing, sat on its tip, and eased down onto the pontoon and thence to the beach. There, he stood unsteadily while pushing his fist into the small of his back. Phimble watched him and felt moved to apologize, but he didn’t. Ready had meanwhile accomplished a quick calculation, finishing it by counting on his fingers. “I think it ain’t possible for us to get up to Melagi by tomorrow afternoon, Mister Phimble,” he griped, “given what time it is right now and the miles we’d have to cover even if we was sitting on that boat this minute.”

  “Stop thinking,” Phimble growled. “You know thinking is bad for you out here. That’s the problem with Mister Kennedy. He thinks too much. Now go find his damn PT boat for him and run on up to Melagi quick as you can.”

  “How about Marvin? Can he go with us?”

  “If he wants to.”

  “How about Dave?”

  “He stays with me. I’m afraid one of these Santa Cruz boys would try to kidnap him.”

  “How about Pogo?”

  “For God’s sake, Ready! Do I have to do all the thinking around here? All right. Take Pogo if you want him! But if you do, put him in some utilities. Otherwise, you’ll never get anywhere. All these rear area commandos would be stopping you to take pictures.”

  Ready eyed Kennedy, who was still forlornly pushing his fist into his back. “Poor man. He looks like he’s about to keel over.”

  Phimble looked at Kennedy, then allowed a little charity. “Don’t forget it was just last week he got his butt run over by a Jap tin can. That can tend to make a man unsteady. Now listen, Ready, I’m counting on you to take care of him and the other boys. You understand?”

  Ready guessed he understood, although he didn’t like it. He said “Aye, aye, sir,” and sought out Pogo inside the Catalina and told him what it would take for him to go on this particular adventure. The bushman agreed and climbed into a pair of utilities but couldn’t get his big, flat feet into boots. He also refused to take Dave’s feathers out of his hair. “Dave, him magic,” the diminutive bushman said.

  “It ain’t GI, Pogo,” Ready said.

  “Magic belong Pogo, him happy too much. GI belong Pogo, him no care.”

  Ready gave up and sneaked Pogo past Phimble, who was in the cockpit yelling over the radio at someone about avgas. Once, Again, Marvin, and Millie met him on the wing. “All right, boys,” Ready said. “Here we go.”

  Ready shepherded the boys down onto the sand. Kennedy seemed genuinely delighted to see them. “Well, let’s find ourselves a PT boat,” he said. “Does anybody know the way?”

  When Thurlow’s boys just stared at him, Ready came alongside and whispered, “Never admit you don’t know something even if you don’t, sir. You’re an officer, after all.”

  Kennedy looked at the boys, who were all looking back at him with dubious expressions, except Pogo, who for no apparent reason had his back turned. “I have no idea where to find this PT boat,” he confessed, to Ready’s obvious chagrin. “But I will do my best to figure it out with your help. Now, first, I’d like to know if anyone has an opinion as to which direction you think we should go.”

  Each boy, without so much as a glance at the others, pointed in a different direction, except for Pogo, who had now lain down in the sand with his hands behind his head, apparently to take a nap. “You see, Mister Kennedy?” Ready said in a low voice that could be heard by anyone who cared, “You’ve got them all confused. Just pick a direction.”

  Kennedy picked a direction, Pogo was roused, and an hour later they were a sad little retinue deep inside the endless camp. Led by the limping Kennedy, they’d traveled across a myriad of roads and crossroads, all crowded with soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen dressed in a variety of uniforms going this way and that. They’d even encountered some honest-to-God female nurses, dressed in their crisp, starched whites, who giggled at the dirty boys and the thin, jaundiced, but not entirely unhandsome lieutenant. They were also not fooled by Pogo’s utilities and thought he was “just the cutest thing”; they made him stop and get his picture made with them, since one of the nurses was carrying around a Kodak 35 mm camera. Kennedy tried to strike up small talk with the nurses, none of whom was a knockout but who were all pleasant to look at, and was astonished when he couldn’t do it. He supposed he’d lost the knack, another price of his war in the South Pacific. Instead, he served as photographer, clicked off several shots of the nurses posing with Pogo, then handed the camera back, and the nurses went on their way, their glances over their shoulders reserved entirely for the little bushman.

  Kennedy’s morale kept dropping. The pain in his feet and knees joined the pain in his back. His entire body was a walking torment. A marine passed, carrying a Thompson submachine gun with a cylindrical ammunition magazine. It was a tommy gun worthy of Al Capone. At the sight of it, Kennedy reflected on his father’s reputation of being a bootlegger during Prohibition. Kennedy also remembered that his classmates at Choate were forever giving him the business about his father making his fortune from the illegal sale of alcohol, as if their fathers and ancestors were any better, those descendents of the Mayflower who’d made their fortunes in rum, molasses, and slaves. But Kennedy also recalled one of the boys who’d taken up for him: David Roosevelt Armistead.

  With the pain coursing through his legs and back so intense he could scarcely stand it, Kennedy stopped and peered at a signpost with a dozen arrow-shaped boards aiming in different directions, each with numbers written on it. “There’s a code to these signs,” he said, “but damned if I know what they mean.”

  “Oh, sir,” Ready said in a low, confidential voice. “Don’t say that.”

  “Dammit, Ready!” Ken
nedy railed. “I did what you said. I picked a direction, and we’ve walked for miles. Now we’re lost, and it does no good not to admit it.”

  Once, Millie, and Again came up alongside. Pogo sat down in the middle of the road and patted Marvin on the head. The little dog grinned and thumped his tail in the dust. “We asked a sailor about five miles back where we could find your PT boat,” Once said.

  Kennedy’s astonishment registered on his face. “You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask,” Once replied while Again and Millie vaguely looked off in the distance.

  Kennedy pressed his eyes closed, then said, “You’re right. I didn’t ask. But what did he say?”

  “He said to go down to a place called Tugu Beach. Supposed to be some docks down there and boats anchored all over the place, big and small. He said you can’t miss it if you go the right way. Of course, this ain’t the right way.”

  Ready strolled by, humming. In the middle of the hum, he said, “Don’t let on you didn’t know that, sir.”

  “Are you going to yell at us, sir?” Once asked.

  “I have no intention of yelling at anyone,” Kennedy said, even though he felt like it. “Now, which one are you, Once or Again?”

  “I’m Once, sir. You can tell me by this here little dimple in my right cheek. I got it when I fell on an end table when I was but three.”

  “Thank you, Once. That’s good to know. Now, which is the correct way?”

  Once perused the signpost. “That number right there, 4125. That’s the number for Tugu Beach.”

  Kennedy looked at the number and wondered why it didn’t just say “Tugu Beach.” Oh, the navy had its ways! He just wanted to sit down for a while and take off his shoes and rub his feet and let his knees rest and brace his back up against something so maybe it would stop hurting. Instead, he said, “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute, sir,” Ready said.

  Kennedy had taken but a single, limping step. He stopped and dropped his chin on his chest. “What is it?”

  “This asking questions seems like a good idea, sir.”

  “Yes,” Kennedy agreed. “Yes, it does. Thank you, Ready. You are a great help to me.”

  “Mister Phimble said I was supposed to be, sir.” He snagged a passing navy chief. “Chief, if one was to go down to Tugu Beach to get oneself a boat, who should one see?”

  The chief, an ancient character with a mop of longish white hair that spilled out beneath his hat, replied, “You’re kidding, right? Nick, of course.” He eyed Pogo. “Say, where’s that man’s boots, and why does he have feathers in his hair?”

  “He lost his boots, and his feathers are camouflage,” Kennedy explained. “Now, Chief. Help me out here. Who is this Nick?”

  The chief was clearly puzzled. “Why, sir, everybody knows Nick.”

  “Well, pretend we don’t,” Kennedy replied in a voice as tired and frustrated as he felt. “How do we find him?”

  The chief looked at Kennedy as if waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, he said, “When you get to Tugu Beach, ask anybody. They’ll tell you where to find Nick.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” Kennedy said, giving up on extracting any other information from the man. “Ready, let the chief’s arm go. That’s good. Thank you, Chief. Good-bye, good-bye. All right, men, you heard what the chief said. Tugu Beach, just ask for Nick. We’ll be there in no time and soon acquire our PT boat. Follow me.”

  Kennedy stepped off smartly, only to start limping again on the very next step. Ready fell in beside him, and they soldiered on. The other boys, including Marvin, watched until the lieutenant and the bosun disappeared around a turn, then slipped off on their own.

  13

  Josh Thurlow was somewhat forlorn, generally irritated, and not a little gloomy, which all added up to an unusual unhappiness besotting his mind. He sat with his arms around his knees on the narrow brown beach and decided he would not see Phimble return before the next morning. The Japanese Rufes out of Kolombangara especially liked to hunt at night, and catching a big fat American float plane lumbering around looking for a place to land in the dark would suit them just fine.

  Seaward, the South Pacific was busily presenting Josh one of its patented mighty sunsets, the descending crimson orb obliterating fleets of clouds that looked as if they consisted of mercury rimmed with blood. Josh admired the heavenly glory, though he thought it a bit gaudy, and reflected that he missed the blander sunsets on Killakeet Island that somehow brought a proper calm to the end of what might have been a tumultuous day.

  Not a breath of air was moving and it was still very hot, causing the sweat to run down Josh’s back and soak his shirt and the waist of his utilities trousers. It was out of the question to take off his shirt. On every inch of exposed skin, there was already a squadron of bloodsucking insects competing to see who got to bite him next. He swatted at a mosquito that landed on his face and then crushed another on the back of his neck that had already bitten him, leaving behind a bloody, swollen wound, and then he initiated the Solomon Islands salute by waving a hand across his eyes to keep the no-see-ums from climbing into them.

  Josh was having trouble getting the recollection of the charred, meaty hunk of human being in the ashes out of his mind. He had seen many dead men, and killed more than a few of them, some so near he could smell their breath, and the peculiar coppery odor of their sweat when they knew they were about to die. He had heard them cry for their mothers or their wives or their emperor or just themselves as their lives leaked inexorably away. These moments were horrible, but he never lost sleep over them. They were part of war. But seeing proof that a human would eat another human had so repulsed him, struck him as so savage, so inhuman, it was nearly beyond his ability to absorb it.

  When he stopped to think about it, though, wasn’t this the place for it, after all? The natives of these islands had for centuries practiced cannibalism and headhunting. It was only the arrival of the European missionaries that had stopped the barbarous custom of eating one’s enemy or carrying off his head. But was it still in the air, like a disease, waiting to enter a man too weak to resist?

  Josh was not a particularly religious man, but, like most sailors, he was prone to being more than a little superstitious. He wondered now if it was possible that angry, evil little gods inhabited some places and awaited the soft and impressionable man. Were the Solomon Islands themselves responsible for the horror he’d seen? It had been documented that starving Japanese troops on Guadalcanal had eaten their own dead. And, in at least one instance, there was evidence that a downed American pilot had been cut open and his liver cooked by a Japanese colonel on Kolombangara who’d shared the bounty with his staff. Was it possible, as Whitman had conjectured, that Armistead had gone insane, whether because of a perverted kind of obsessive love or simply the rigors of life and war in the Solomon Islands? Was any man immune to insanity, given the right balance of circumstances?

  Josh recalled the long battle for Wilton’s Ridge when a thousand fresh, eager troops of the Imperial Japanese Army slammed into a hundred Raiders commanded by Armistead. The result was that every one of the Japanese troops was either gunned down, bayoneted, clubbed, stomped, or strangled to death. It was a slaughter, pure and simple. The lust for blood had been high on both sides, but it had been greater on the American side. When Josh had taken off his boots after that battle, he had found them filled with a black, sticky goo. Only later did he realize it was blood. He had been literally wading in it.

  Now he recalled Armistead during the battle. Josh had noticed almost immediately a reticence to do what had to be done, which was to slaughter the enemy without remorse. During the first phase of the battle, Armistead had been quick to cease fire, allowing the Japanese time to withdraw. He seemed to be surprised when Jap had come back at him. “You’re going to have to kill every one of them, David,” Josh had patiently explained. “They ain’t going to quit.”

  Armistead understood. After t
hat, he’d kept up the fire until the last Japanese had fallen. Josh had further illustrated what needed to be done by crawling out with his Aleut ax and killing the Japanese soldiers who were wounded or simply playing dead, waiting to snipe at any marine who raised his head. The next time, he’d taken Armistead out with him and taught him how to cut a throat. The lieutenant had vomited the first time he’d done it. But he’d kept cutting throats.

  Yet even though Armistead had learned the hard lessons of war with an intractable enemy, it had seemed to Josh that he’d never allowed himself to do more than what needed to be done. To stay sane in a situation like that, Josh had learned, you had to allow yourself a certain temporary insanity, to detach yourself from reality so that it did not become real but was more like a dream. After the battle for Wilton’s Ridge was over, and the last Imperial Japanese troop killed, the other Raiders were jubilant in their victory, but Josh recalled that Armistead was not jubilant. He seemed self-absorbed—that was the word for it. When Major Wilton came up to visit the line and saw all that had been done, he pumped Josh’s hand, then Armistead’s. “By God, boy, somebody deserves a Medal of Honor for this,” Wilton told Armistead, then looked at Josh. “Captain Thurlow, if you’ll co-sign my recommendation, I know Colonel Burr and Admiral Halsey will approve this fine young man his rightful due.” Then he went on down the line, slapping backs and generally celebrating.

  Armistead watched Wilton go, and Josh had never seen such misery on a man’s face. “Me with the Medal of Honor,” he said in a dull voice. “Father would be pleased.” He turned to Josh. “But don’t agree to it, Josh. I don’t deserve it and I don’t want it. Most of all, I want to forget everything that’s happened here.” He looked out over the battlefield where the bodies still lay. “Why wouldn’t they quit? I kept giving them the opportunity.”

  “Jap doesn’t have it in him to quit, David,” Josh explained.

  Armistead sat heavily on a stack of sandbags. “When I was sixteen, I visited Japan with my father. He was interested in a partnership with a small factory there. I found the Japanese to be a lovely people. When I visited their homes, I was treated with the utmost courtesy and respect.”