Martin Limon - The Wandering Ghost

Ok-hi still clung to Ernie’s arm and I was still watching him. We’d passed two dozen nightclubs when, suddenly, Ernie turned and charged back through the crowd.

Ten yards behind us, a black GI came to a sudden halt and pretended to be interested in the statuettes displayed in the front window of a brassware emporium. Ernie ran right at him. As he closed, the GI glanced at Ernie nervously, flexed his knees as if to flee, but before he could move, Ernie plowed into him with such force that the man reeled backwards, slamming into a cement-block wall.

I let go of Jeannie and ran.

Stunned, the GI staggered to his feet, cursing, and as he started to raise his hands to counterattack, Ernie punched him with a hard right cross. The man’s nose burst. He reached for his face but blood squirted through his splayed fingers.

Somehow, the man launched a low kick to Ernie’s groin. Ernie dodged it but at the same time the man’s right hand snaked out and grabbed the lapel of Ernie’s dragon-embroidered jacket. Using the leverage of his crouching position, the injured man managed to jerk Ernie off balance and pull him closer in until they both crashed to the ground. Even in the split second I had to think about it, I admired the move. Whoever this guy was, he was trained in hand-to-hand combat.

Ernie and the other man rolled and punched and grunted. Blood kept pumping from the man’s nose and now it was spread across Ernie’s hands and face and shirt. Shoving my way through the crowd, I reached Ernie and pulled him away. The black man sprang to his feet, waving his fists in the air. I stepped in front of him.

“Keep your damn hands off me,” he said, the voice muffled.

That’s when I realized who he was. Weatherwax. Staff Sergeant Rufus Q. The same MP we’d questioned last night while he worked on the ville patrol. He was not in uniform now; he was wearing civilian clothes: slacks, a sports shirt, and a waist-length leather jacket. All of it glistening with blood.

Ernie pushed past me. “You’ve been following us,” he said. “Picked us up after we left the Silver Dragon.”

“Bull,” Weatherwax said.

“Just enjoying the weather then?”

Weatherwax launched himself at Ernie. The left jab was ineffectual. Ernie dodged it easily and I grabbed Weatherwax and held him.

“Calm down, Sarge,” I said.

“You calm the hell down,” he replied. Then he grabbed his nose again, trying to stanch the bleeding.

I let go of him but kept myself between the two men. A crowd of jerks had gathered. I knew the type. When a fight erupts they’re always there. It happened when I was a kid in school. They’d gather around like a pack of baboons, hopping and hooting. This type of behavior knows no ethnic boundaries. I’d seen it in blacks, in Anglos and, I’m not proud to say, in Chicanos. But this type of man, when challenged personally, finds a way to deflect the insult or, better yet, pretend it didn’t happen. Now, gathered safely around the glow of a fight, their faces gleamed. A few of them even hopped on the balls of their feet, pretending that they wanted to fight, too, searching for approval from their fellow gawkers.

How I despised them. If I could’ve, I would’ve pulled my. 45 and shot as many of them as I could until the rest scattered like the cowards they were. Instead, I kept my mind on business.

With his left hand, Weatherwax fumbled in his jacket for a handkerchief and held it across his nose. Gradually, the flow of blood subsided.

“MPs don’t run the bars,” I told him. “Too dangerous. GIs you’ve busted get juiced up and want to come after you. And I don’t really believe you’re interested in any of this brassware.”

Inside the display window, a brass index finger pointed toward the sky.

“So what?” Weatherwax said. “I’m off duty. I can go where I please.”

“Where you please,” Ernie said, “is where Warrant Office Bufford tells you to go.”

“He got nothing to do with it.”

“Then why are you following us?” I asked.

Weatherwax looked away, as if he were very tired, still holding the handkerchief to his nose. I could see it coming. I believed Ernie saw it, too. Weatherwax was still enraged and he was about to try something.

Men in the crowd hooted. One of them bounced too close and Ernie shoved him so hard the skinny guy reeled backwards, slammed into his buddies, and fell backward on his butt. More angry voices erupted.

Ok-hi and Jeannie stood behind the growing crowd, huddled beneath a plastic awning, looking worried.

That’s when Weatherwax tried it. I’m not sure where it came from. There must have been a stone or a brick lying on the ground and suddenly it was in his hand, then winging through the air, heading straight for Ernie’s head. Ernie flinched. The missile sliced his ear, barely making contact, veered to the right, and hit one of the GIs in the crowd.

It was as if a hyena had been thrown into a gaggle of chimps. The howling started. Ernie was trying to punch Weatherwax and Weatherwax was trying to punch Ernie and, as I strained to hold them apart, the same guy who’d been knocked backward onto his ass sneaked out of the pack of gawkers and slammed his puny fist into Ernie’s kidney. I lunged for him but he retreated into the crowd and then Ernie and Weatherwax were going at one another again. Brutally.

“MPs!” someone shouted and over their heads I could see, heading our way, bobbing black helmets.

I grabbed Ernie, ripped him away from Weatherwax. The front of his jacket was slathered in blood. Weatherwax wheeled drunkenly, unable to follow. I shoved through the gawking crowd. It wasn’t difficult because most of them were starting to back off now that the MPs were on the way. Ok-hi and Jeannie stood at the mouth of an alley about half a block farther down the narrow road. They waved us on. Together, the four of us-me supporting Ernie, Ok-hi and Jeannie leading-entered the darkness, Ernie still howling about how he was going to kick some MP ass.

The alley narrowed, the darkness grew, and the hooting voices behind us faded.

We spent the night with Ok-hi and Jeannie in a yoguan, a Korean inn. Sitting on the warm ondol floor Ok-hi did her best to nurse Ernie’s wounds, but Jeannie had to do most of the practical work: bringing in a pan of hot water; washing out the scratches and bruises; asking the middle-aged woman who owned the yoguan to loan her some antiseptic ointment. Ok-hi mainly cooed and rubbed Ernie’s shoulders and nibbled on the edge of his damaged ear.

“He was clumsy,” Ernie told me. “I spotted him before we entered the Silver Dragon Club and then, when we came out, he was standing down the street, staring our way. Don’t they teach MPs up here how to conduct a proper tail?”

“I don’t think Division needs to tail people too often.”

I’d bought four cold liters of OB at a local shop and while the girls ministered to Ernie, I popped the bottles open and poured the frothing beer into porcelain drinking glasses, the type usually used for serving barley tea. Ok-hi downed hers almost as fast as Ernie. Jeannie left her beer for me.

“Bufford and Colonel Alcott put him up to it,” Ernie said. “You can bet on it.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

“Sure they did. They want to keep tabs on what we’re up to. The Division chief of staff is probably breathing down their necks.”

I’d heard stories about the Division chief of staff: Brigadier General H. K. Pacquet, a decorated veteran of combat in Vietnam. “Hong Kong” Packet is what they called him. Had something to do with a special type of antipersonnel explosive he’d devised while working with the Special Forces. Pacquet had been wounded in Vietnam. Wounded so badly that his face was hideously deformed but he was otherwise healthy, which is why the army decided to keep him on active duty. He’s a hard charger and a bad ass and everyone in Division is terrified of him. Even the honchos at 8th Army back off when “Hong Kong” Packet catches a case of the ass.