The Ambassador's Son Page 28

  “I had no idea,” Kennedy confessed, as the little houseboy poured cream into his cup and then ladled in sugar with a tarnished spoon. “The cream has a coconut taste to it,” Kennedy said, after giving it a sip.

  “That would be because it is made from coconut milk. The coconut palm is the most magnificent and beneficent of plants, Jack. Its fruit can feed and clothe and clean us. Its trunks are nearly indestructible, perfect construction materials, as I observed the marine Raiders had discovered on Melagi for their air raid dugouts. Its bark can be woven into baskets, the hulls of its nuts fashioned into bowls and cups and further carved into eating utensils. Without the coconut, life here in these islands would be untenable, not only for the planter but the natives as well. It is a wonder the palm is not worshipped as a god.”

  Kennedy sampled the margarine-slathered toasted breadfruit and discovered the spread made all the difference. The coconut-cream-diluted tea was also nearly palatable, especially saturated as it was with raw sugar. “Very good,” he pronounced. He studied her over the rim of his cup. “I must say you look happy. You are obviously filled with energy.”

  “Yes. This place has that effect on me. There has been tragedy here, and much hardship. That is part and parcel of the planter’s life. But it is also a good life, a life where a man and a woman can make their way within the folds of raw, unforgiving nature, owing nothing to anyone, save the usual mortgage.”

  They were joined by an old black man with an intelligent face and worried eyes who stood patiently on the packed brown earth below the veranda until Felicity acknowledged his presence with an imperious nod of her head. He wore a battered, floppy-brimmed hat, a lap-lap, and a checkered shirt three times too large for him. Kennedy couldn’t understand the pidgin that rapidly transpired between him and Felicity but he presumed this was Gogoomey, the overseer. Whatever the problem was, it demanded the immediate attention of the missus, and off she went without explanation. Kennedy sat on the veranda and finished the breadfruit, although the tea had turned cold. The houseboy appeared like a puff of smoke. “Mastah, he finish tea?”

  “Yes,” Kennedy said. “Thank you, Mumba.”

  The houseboy took up the tray and retreated to the kitchen. Soon there was an explosion of pidgin from that quarter, apparently Mumba and the cook disagreeing about something. It was followed by the sound of breaking crockery, then a long period of silence, before the argument began anew. Kennedy felt at loose ends. He wanted to go into the kitchen and see what the problem was but knew his presence would be most unwelcome. And he wanted to follow Felicity and Gogoomey (to whom she had pointedly not introduced him) but wasn’t exactly certain where they had gone. He was saved by the return of John-Bull, fresh from cooling down the horses and seeing to their feed. The boy sat on the steps. “I should ever so much like to go to America,” he said without so much as a greeting. “Are there really still cowboys and wild Indians there?”

  “Not as many as they show in the movies,” Kennedy replied with a smile. “But certainly, here and there. The western states, Texas, Arizona, Montana, and the like, have their share of cowboys. The Indians live on reservations.”

  “I would love to see them!” John-Bull cried. “I believe I would make a very good cowboy, and to live with the Indians would be fun!”

  “You seem to have the same spark of adventure as your mother,” Kennedy said.

  John-Bull nodded. “That is very nice of you to say, sir. My mother is a most remarkable woman. My father used to say that he was glad I took after her and not him.”

  “Why would he say that?” Kennedy asked.

  “I do not know exactly, sir,” the boy answered. “Unless it is the manner in which she runs the plantation. Father also said that he had no need of an overseer as long as he had his wife. He was terribly proud of her. He used to read to me at night while Mother was still in the fields, and he would often remark how hard she worked for us. He taught me my books, too, you know. Every day, I was required to learn something new. Do you miss your father, sir?”

  Kennedy managed a smile. “I miss my sister Kick more than anyone else in my family. She and I are alike.”

  “How so?”

  “We see ourselves as individuals, I suppose. That may sound strange, but in my family, we are supposed to be part of a structure, a great ambitious enterprise. Everything we do must lend itself to the family fortune, in one way or another. It is difficult to explain.”

  “Yet I understand it fully,” John-Bull replied, with a maturity Kennedy found surprising. “All the hopes and dreams of my mother rest in me. I doubt that I will ever make her fully happy, no matter what I accomplish.”

  “I think she will be happy just to see you grow up into a responsible young man.”

  John-Bull nodded, though doubtfully, then lowered his face into his hands.

  “What’s this?”

  John-Bull rose and threw himself into Kennedy’s arms. His little body shook with sobs. Kennedy stroked the boy’s hair. “What is it, John?”

  “I didn’t want to come back here,” John-Bull said in a quaking voice. “It reminds me of my father. I miss him so.”

  Kennedy held the boy, patting and rubbing him gently on his back. “It is a good thing to miss your father,” he said. “It is a very good thing.” And to his surprise, a tear leaked down Kennedy’s cheek, though for what purpose, or for whom, he could not say.

  42

  Pogo was dressed in his best lap-lap, the bright blue one with the Raider patch stitched to it, and he wore his lucky shark’s tooth necklace. Penelope knelt beside him, her head bowed, and sang a song of farewell. Though it was in her native language and not understood by anyone else on board, its words seemed to be filled with remorse and a longing for better times. Then the boys wrapped short lengths of fifty-caliber machine-gun bullets to his ankles and draped him in an American flag and laid him out on deck. It was sunrise, and they were over a deep trench in the sea. The head of Grant, the PT officer, was buried first. Tied up in a cloth sack, appropriately weighted with ammunition, his remains were eased overboard with all the ceremony that could be mustered, considering the circumstances. Millie played taps on his harmonica, and Josh commended the man’s soul to the deep and said the Lord’s Prayer. Then Ready got out his fiddle and played while they all sang the old song of home, and going home:

  Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you

  Look away, you rollin’ river. . .

  As Josh intoned his maritime version of the Twenty-third Psalm, Once and Again solemnly folded the flag, lifted Pogo over the stern, and gently lowered him into the sea. Salutes were rendered; then the Rosemary’s great engines thrummed with their power and energy, and the gunboat moved off.

  Josh was taking the long way around to get to Vella Lavella, which was the island, according to Penelope, where Joe Gimmee and his followers lived. He didn’t want to get caught out in the open by a Rufe, and anything near Kolombangara was definitely prime Rufe country. It would take him an extra day by heading southwest from Noa-Noa, turning north around Pomaria Point on the island of Ranongga, and coming up the west side of that island, but he was fairly certain to avoid both Japanese and American eyes. Needing to conserve fuel, he also kept the throttles pulled back. There was nowhere north of Rendova he could get avgas.

  All night Josh, spelled by Ready, piloted the Rosemary along the chosen course. The clouds were thick in the morning, obscuring the sunrise, and Vella Lavella, still well to the north, was shrouded in a gray mist. Josh eased the Rosemary across the limpid water. The rumble of the gunboat’s engines masked all other sounds, but Josh sensed they were not alone. He idled the engines and listened and was not surprised when he heard the noise of a big diesel. Ready was in the cockpit with him. “Sailor Jap is on the move this morning,” Josh said to the bosun. “What do you think? A barge?”

  “No, sir. Something different. What are we gonna do, Skipper?”

  “We’re here to find Armistead, not get in a battle with Ja
p,” Josh answered. He looked over his shoulder at the starboard torpedo. “But I confess to wanting to use our fish.”

  Penelope, who’d been sleeping on the galley hatch, rose and came forward. In deference to the crew, who kept walking into things when she was around, she had taken to wearing a chambray shirt. That had only helped a little, since the shirt was damp much of the time and tended to cling to her perfect breasts. Now she touched Josh’s shoulder with a finger, felt him react, then withdrew, content that he knew she was there. Josh wished Penelope had stayed asleep. He had scarcely spoken to her since they’d left New Georgia.

  The mist dissipated a little, and through it Josh saw the ghostly silhouette of a vessel, very low on the water, momentarily appear, then disappear into the soup. He tickled the throttles forward, creeping up on the vessel, straining to see it through the fog. Then the mist swirled away, and Josh was astonished to behold the narrow stern of a Japanese submarine, an I-boat, not more than fifty yards ahead of the Rosemary’s bow. “What the hell’s an I-boat doing in these shallows?” Josh wondered. “It’s a deep-water sub.”

  “Maybe it needs fuel,” Ready suggested.

  “On Vella? I thought Jap only had a small garrison there.” Josh licked his lips, then made his decision. An I-boat could cause too much trouble in the Solomon Sea. It had to be attacked. “Prepare one torpedo,” he told Ready. “When I tell you, launch it.”

  The torpedoes, as the boys had designed them on the fly at the Seabee base in Tulagi, were jury-rigged things. Arming them consisted of starting their alcohol-driven engines with a touch of an electrical wire leading up from batteries below, then pulling three pins that held them to their rigs to dump them overboard. Josh knew he had to position the Rosemary perfectly to have any chance of success. Penelope squeezed into the cockpit beside him. “What shall I do during the battle?”

  For a reason he couldn’t define, Josh resented her presence. “There’s nothing you can do except go below. There’s likely to be some shrapnel flying soon.”

  “No. I shall stay.” She patted her machete on her hip. “If need be, I will defend you to the death.”

  “Skipper?” Ready called. “I got a torpedo armed and ready.”

  Abruptly the fog lifted, and Josh saw, with a sinking sensation, that there was a destroyer mothering the I-boat to starboard. To hesitate was to invite disaster, so he threw the wheel hard over to port, busting out of the wake away from the destroyer, then cranked the Rosemary hard over again to line up a shot at the plodding I-boat. Neither the submarine nor the destroyer had seen the gunboat yet, or at least they hadn’t reacted. “Let it go, Ready!” Josh yelled. Ready complied, sending the fish splashing into the sea and speeding off, its bright white wake clearly marking its progress. Josh waited a moment to make certain the torpedo was ahead of him before he turned and rammed the throttles of the three Packards to their stops. He looked over his shoulder. The I-boat and her shepherding destroyer sailed placidly along. Amazingly, they still hadn’t seen the Rosemary.

  “Should have hit by now,” Ready called, just seconds before a big spout of white foam rode up the side of the destroyer, followed by a gush of yellow flame. “It missed the I-boat and hit the destroyer!” Ready cried.

  Josh kept the gunboat flying away. The roar of the explosion rolling over the sea was followed by the whooping cries of the alarmed destroyer, brought tumultuously awake. Josh had completely forgotten Penelope and was startled when she cheered and clapped her hands. “Well done!” she exclaimed.

  “I told you to go below,” he growled.

  “How could I leave when my darling man is attacking the whole damn Japoni navy?”

  “You mustn’t call me your darling man,” he said in a low voice.

  Penelope, confused, looked at him. “Why not? I asked you on New Georgia if you still wanted me with you, and you said you did.”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. We can’t be together anymore. Not in that way.”

  Penelope’s lush brown eyes glittered with tears. “You’re ashamed of me.”

  “You’re Whitman’s wife, dammit!”

  “In name only.”

  “Where I come from, that kind of name means a lot.”

  Ready squeezed in beside Penelope. “Excuse me, folks, but I think the Japanese are pretty mad at us.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Josh retorted.

  “Yes, sir. But the I-boat’s chasing us.”

  “I shall go below, mastah,” Penelope said in an icy voice. “So that I will not be a distraction.”

  “Good idea,” Josh said, then instantly regretted it. “Penelope, look—” But it was too late. She had disappeared down the galley hatch. “Dammit,” he swore.

  “Sir, that I-boat—”

  Josh turned on his gunner’s mate. “What do you want me to do, Ready? I’m running from the damned thing as fast as I can.”

  “I was just going to point out that fog bank over there, sir. We might have a chance if you kind of pointed the boat in its direction.”

  Josh looked after Ready’s point and saw a bank of dense gray fog sitting heavily on the sea.

  “Quickly now, sir,” Ready urged. “If you please.”

  It did please, and Josh turned the Rosemary toward the protective mist just as the Japanese I-boat began to toss heavy, vengeful shells from its deck gun after them.

  43

  Kennedy was roused early, Felicity hallooing him from the bottom step of the guest house. Mumba soon delivered a tray of the inevitable breadfruit fritters and crusted, lumpy jelly, but this time with a dish of margarine on the side and a bowl of raw sugar. The bitter tea was also accompanied with a bowl of coconut milk, though it smelled a little sour. Two teaspoons of sugar made the stuff barely drinkable. When he finished the meal, such as it was, the stamping of hooves outside his hut caused him to rise and look through the door. The big stallion Felicity had ridden the day before was being held by Gogoomey. The old man’s face was grim, his lip well out. “Mastah, you go along missus,” he said gruffly to Kennedy, handing over the reins and retreating.

  Felicity appeared, riding John-Bull’s small black horse. “Well, come on,” she said. “I presume you know how to ride.”

  “A little,” Kennedy said, putting a tentative toe in a stirrup, testing his strength. It was then he noticed his head no longer ached. He pulled himself aboard the great stallion, which did not so much as flinch, even though he turned his head to ponder his missus, as if asking her why she had allowed such an outrage.

  Felicity laughed when she saw the stallion’s question in his eyes. “I forgot to tell Delight a stranger would be riding him today.” She reached down and let the stallion sniff her hand, then stroked his nose. “Be gentle, my Delight. You hold a precious cargo.”

  “Of all the things I’ve been called in my life,” Kennedy said, “precious cargo has not been one of them. And how is it I rate such a title?”

  “Because you, Jack, are destined for great things, whether you are aware of it or not.”

  “My brother is the one with the destiny in my family,” he said, then regretted his words since they sounded like a retort. Felicity clicked her tongue and aimed the little black horse toward the beach. Delight obediently followed with Kennedy simply holding the reins, careful not to tug on the bit. There was no use upsetting the animal further.

  “Would you rather be happy or great, Jack?” Felicity asked as Delight chose to come alongside his mistress, nickering to her in a low voice.

  “Happy,” Kennedy replied instantly. “Because I have no illusions about greatness.”

  “I almost believe you,” she said.

  “Why almost?”

  Felicity looked at him with a sudden longing. “Dear Jack, how is it you have found your way to this terrible place of sand, coconuts, disease, and mosquitoes?”

  “For the same reason as Josh Thurlow and his boys. To do some good for my country.”

  “Posh! Thurlow fights this war because his
country fights it, nothing else. He neither understands its larger purpose nor cares. You, however, see all its ins and outs and understand that what happens in this war is the direct result of all that has gone on before and will affect all that will occur afterward.”

  “I think you give Thurlow too little credit,” Kennedy replied, although he was of much the same opinion.

  During their discussion, Delight and John-Bull’s horse, who proved to be named Blackie, had followed a path that paralleled the beach and then wound through some low bush. Cooing birds within were described as fruit doves. “A great nuisance,” Felicity summarized her opinion of them. They next rode onto a great green plain studded with coconut palms that, in contrast to the graceful lean of their wild cousins along the beach, grew as straight as telephone poles. When asked about it, Felicity explained, “For the best bearing, the tree trunks must be exactly straight. It depends on how the nut is placed in the ground. Haphazardly, as nature does it, the tree will grow at an angle. The rows of the trees, as you will notice, are also straight, precisely thirty feet apart, so that each receives the same amount of sun.”

  It seemed to Kennedy that they had entered a great open-air temple, the alignment of the palms creating perfect aisles that led straight ahead, sideways, and at diagonals. The sound of the hooves on the clover that lay between the trees was as soft as the padding of a bishop’s slippers on a cathedral carpet. Kennedy looked up and saw clusters of brown nuts hugging sheltering fronds that swept out to meet their neighbors, crisscrossing into a vast green, undulating ceiling. With the white sky filtering through the interstices, it was as if he were peering vertically into a kaleidoscope of varying shades of translucent green with brilliant whites and dull taupe as contrast. Squadrons of little yellow butterflies wafted between the palms, along with the occasional bright blue interloper, its wings as big as a bird. In some places, spiderwebs, still wet with dew, stretched between the palms. Kennedy stopped and inspected one of them, a vast net. The creature that had constructed it was not in evidence, apparently nocturnal, but the strands she had left behind were amazingly thick. He touched one and found that it stuck to his finger.