Pat Frank - Hold Back the Night

“So far as I’m concerned,” said Mackenzie, “better.” He looked out through the door into the larger room, where Couzens warmed his hands over the fire. Somehow he was relieved that Couzens wasn’t listening.

Kato spoke again to the old man, gesturing, and then said to the captain: “I told him I was part Japanese, and part Chinese, and part Polynesian. But he doesn’t believe me. He says that’s impossible.”

Mackenzie said, “We really fouled it up, didn’t we? I mean when people like this old man can believe like that? They don’t know much about us, do they? They meet missionaries, and the Big Time Operators in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and the Standard Oil proconsuls. That’s all they know about us.”

“What’s a proconsul?” Kato asked.

The captain considered Kato’s question, and he realized Kato was only twenty, or at most twenty-one, and hadn’t had much of a chance to absorb ancient history, and so he was careful in his answer. “Well, he’s an official who performs executive duties outside his own country. He rules for his country outside his country. Like MacArthur. MacArthur’s our proconsul in Japan. It’s a Roman word.”

“I see,” said Kato.

The old man reached under the bench and brought out an ancient staff, polished and oiled by years of human touch, and the old man leaned on this staff, and spoke to Kato in Japanese, for a considerable time.

“This old man,” said Kato, “he wants to know… well, sir, he wants to know what cooks. He wants to know what we’re doing here. He wants to know what we want with Korea. He says he has read a lot about the United States, and he knows we are bigger than Korea, so what do we want with Korea?”

“Tell him—” Mackenzie began, and then he realized the futility of explanation, of the enormous and unbridgeable gap that separated their minds, and he said, “Tell him I don’t know.”

Kato spoke to the old man, and the old man replied, and Kato said, “He is tired and he asks your permission to lay down on the floor and sleep.”

“On the floor!” said Mackenzie. “Hell, tell him to get into his own bed. I don’t want his bed. I didn’t even know he was here when I told Couzens I wanted the bed. Take him to the bed, Kato.”

Kato took the old man to the bed, and Mackenzie sat on the floor to complete his day’s duties. He opened his musette bag, and took out his company roster, and then he called Couzens and Ekland, as a precaution. “I’m recording casualties,” he told them. “I’m checking off those I know were killed, up the road, and listing those who are still here. That bunch of wounded we sent back to Koto-Ri I’m marking wounded and missing, because there’s no way of telling whether they’ll make it back or not, and anyway I’m pretty sure some of them are going to hack before they get back. I’m making a special note on the corpsmen, and their escort. I want you guys to know this, because if anything happens to me you’ll have to take care of the records.”

“You give me the creeps,” said Ekland.

“Well, it gives me the creeps to have to do this, but this is a thing a company commander has to do, when he’s lost his gunnery sergeant and his clerk, and so you guys might as well know about it.”

“I’m not an officer,” said Ekland.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Mackenzie. “You never can tell. And both of you might as well know this too. You have to write the letters. You won’t want to write them, and you won’t know what to say, but you’ve got to do it.”

Mackenzie replaced the company roster, and lay down and put the musette bag under his head, and sighed and wriggled until he was comfortable, and slept. Ekland went into the larger room and made a pillow of his parka and lay down beside Ackerman. All the others were asleep, but Ackerman was still awake, looking up through his spectacles at the smoke eddying under the thatch. “What’s the trouble, Milt?” asked Ekland.

“Just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Pris. You remember I wrote that letter to Pris, telling her to buy a car?”

“Sure. Why shouldn’t she buy a car?”

“I’m thinking she won’t be able to afford it.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t think she will,” said Ackerman, and turned on his side and pretended sleep, and Ekland, seeing that Ackerman had no desire to talk, slept.

BEFORE DOG COMPANY pulled out of Sinsong-ni, Mackenzie ordered his vehicles re-loaded so that every inch of space was utilized, and he could squeeze two men, in addition to the driver, into each of the three jeeps. He did not like the way the men hung back when it came time to leave the warm house of the old man. They had slept, and yet they were tired, for on no night had they had sufficient sleep since Ko-Bong, and their bodies were protesting, even while their minds told them they must go on, out into the cold and the unknown. In the process of re-loading Mackenzie examined each carton of rations, and each case of ammunition. He jettisoned the few mortar shells he found, for he had no mortars now. He counted the first-aid kits, and the bundles of socks, and the entrenching tools, and he was disturbed at the shortage of cigarettes. He eliminated whatever he was certain would not be needed. He figured two days to the coast, if they were lucky.

And he decided, in this re-loading, that Dog Company could spare a case of five-in-one rations—food for five men for one day—and he gave this case to the old man, and Kato explained to the old man how it should be opened, and used.

When they took to the road the headlights poked shallow holes in the yellow gloom of the false dawn, and barely illuminated the ice-sheathed ruts. Nine men rode while the others walked, with the six who had stood watch through the night riding first. The vehicles moved very slowly, because of the uncertain light.

A solid brown overcast shrouded the sky, and sowed fresh snow over these hills, and it seemed that the darkness clung tenaciously to the hours. The men grew stronger as they went along, but they were silent, which was not a good sign. Each hill and curve in the road ahead was an ominous and mysterious threat.

After the two hours Mackenzie called a break. The men propped themselves against rocks, and smoked. There was one walkie-talkie saved, and during the break Ekland tried to use it, nursing its batteries and cajoling its frequencies, in an attempt to raise Regiment, or Division, or anybody. The range of a walkie-talkie was too short to reach the other road. Ekland knew this. He knew it absolutely. Yet again and again he pressed the transmitter button and said, “This is Lightning Four. This is Lightning Four calling Lightning. Come in Lightning.” There was never any reply, but Ekland continued to call. It was comforting to speak into a microphone. It gave him the illusion of being in touch with someone. Somehow there was a sense of safety in a microphone.

Mackenzie said, “Cut it out, sergeant.”

“Sir?”

“Let it rest. You’re not doing a damn thing but alerting the enemy.”

“Yes, sir.” Ekland dropped the walkie-talkie back into the lead jeep. Ekland hadn’t been thinking about the enemy. The captain thought of a lot of things he didn’t think of. He looked up at the sky, and listened, and the captain looked up and listened, too. There was no sound from the sky. On this day the sky was not their friend.

When the men had rested, and stretched, Mackenzie ordered them on, and he dropped back to where Raleigh Couzens trudged behind the last jeep, one hand resting on a jerican of gas so that the jeep helped him along. “How you doin’, Raleigh?” Mackenzie said.

“Pretty good, Sam, but—”

“But what?”