James Salter: The Hunters

“How long are most people here?” Cleve asked.

“Oh, usually two or three days. Once in a while they’re here longer. One fellow I heard of has been here over a month, but he’s in Tokyo somewhere. They’re still looking for him.”

“He’d better hurry back or the war will be over.”

“There’s not much point in his hurrying now. He might as well take his time. He can’t get in any worse trouble.”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Some fool fighter pilot.”

“Naturally, with that kind of independence.”

The lean captain smiled.

“I guess I know what you fly” he said. “I was sort of hoping not. We might have ended up in the same outfit together.”

“Not this war, I’m afraid,” Cleve said.

“It was the same in the last one. You were in that, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“No? Well, wrong again. I’d have thought you were. A war is a war, anyway. I don’t expect that there’s much about them ever changes. I didn’t really want to come to this one, but you know how it is. All the complaining. All the mothers and their innocent sons. It makes you go in spite of yourself.”

The lean man went on talking. He seemed not so much soldier as wanderer, moving lightly through life with a sharp eye and a subdued sense of time. It was hard to tell about men like that, but Cleve could not help liking him.

They sat and smoked after the table was cleared and then, wordlessly agreeing, went into the bar. The crowd had preceded them. Slot machines rang with a continuous sound, and an uneven level of laughter and conversation supported some music being played at the far end of the floor where an orchestra was situated on a small stage. Japanese waitresses moved past in their neat uniforms, carrying trays of drinks. They were stocky girls, but graceful, with round scrubbed faces. A few were good-looking, and there was one who was exceptional, slender and well-formed. Her face had a rare calm quality. There was no way not to notice her.

“Not bad, is she, but she’d go hungry in Tokyo.”

“What?” Cleve said.

“They have some mean competition there.”

“I suppose so.”

The orchestra was playing a medley of American musical comedy numbers. A few couples moved dutifully about the dance floor, as isolated as sails on a sea. The women were occidentals, all of them plain. One was buttoned in a prim blue uniform with a white patch of some sort on her shoulder and an overseas-type cap on her head. She appeared to be forty or more and was dancing with a solemn lieutenant. A third person could, with some difficulty, have passed between them.

There was a wave of cold air from the door being opened. Cleve looked up. A group of five officers had come in and were standing near the entrance, surveying the club. They were all second lieutenants, and it was obvious that they had arrived only recently, that night perhaps. The assurance was missing. They stood close together, relying upon each other. After a few moments they chose a table and sat down nearby. Cleve watched with no real interest as they discussed what they wanted to drink and summoned a waitress.

They were all identical, like the staff surrounding the emperor on a grand nineteenth-century canvas. There was just one who was misplaced. He was paler than the rest. He stood out like a strip of lemonwood in cedar and somehow seemed, comfortably, to be conscious of the distinction. The girl who came to serve them was the one Cleve had noticed. She stood obediently waiting. The pale lieutenant watched her coolly as he gave the order. She wrote it down and then slipped off. He whistled admiringly.

“How about that?” he said. “How would you like to get into that?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“I bet she’d do it for a pack of cigarettes, too.”

“And you’d help her smoke them, eh, Doctor?

“Why not?”

Cleve heard the rest when she returned with the tray of drinks. He was not watching any longer, but there was the sound of the glasses being placed softly on the table.

“What’s your name?”

“Myoko,” quietly.

“Well, that’s a new one anyway.”

She did not answer.

“Don’t you have another name, an American one?”

“No.”

“How about Rita? That’s a good name.”

She was silent.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Old enough, I’d say. What time do you finish work here, Rita?”

The lean man cleared his throat at this and turned toward the group.

“Say, friend,” he said clearly, “lay off, why don’t you?”

The lieutenant stared back through the dimness with bland eyes.

“What did you say?” he asked politely. The girl hurried away.

“I said that she’d lose her job if she went out with you. You wouldn’t want that to happen to her, would you?”

“Are you the club officer or something?”

“No.”

“I see. Just being helpful.”

“That’s right. She’s not allowed to go out with any of the officers. It’s a club rule. I thought you might not know about it.”

“Thanks,” the lieutenant said.

There was a brief, unnatural silence at the other table, and then Cleve could hear him talking again.

“How do you like that? If he was the club officer, I could understand it.”

“Come on, Pell, we don’t want to get in any trouble.”

“Trouble? How’s there going to be any trouble?”

“You’d better leave the girl alone.”

“I’ll talk to her if I want to. He’s probably making a play for her himself. That’s why he’s bothered.”

“You may get her in trouble, though.”

“Wouldn’t I love to?”

“I don’t think you ought to fool around.”

“Wait a while,” Pell said. He settled back, apparently undisturbed, to sip at his drink and observe what was going on in the rest of the room.

Nothing more was said to the waitress by anyone at the table, however. The second lieutenants were loudly discussing flying when Cleve and the lean man left, quite a bit later. Through the cold night they walked back toward the barracks. The drinks after dinner had made Cleve sleepy. He listened to the sound of breathing as he undressed in his room, crawled into the deeply hollowed bedding of his iron cot, and was soon asleep.

Early the next morning, right after breakfast, he received his orders. They were what he had expected, assigning him to the most famed of the fighter wings, which was located close behind the front. It took him only minutes to pack his things. He was on the way at last. He did not catch sight of the lean man before departing.

It was almost noon when they crossed the Korean coast. Cleve stared anxiously at it, drifting past beneath the wing. He knew a moment of acute fulfillment, for here he would make a valedictory befitting his years. He had come a long way for it, and much was still ahead; but already he could feel self-imposed obligations, his burden of pride, diminishing, actually leaving him. He began to experience something of the exhilaration that came with triumph. In this war, he was more certain than ever, he would attain himself, as men do who venture past all that is known.

He looked about the cabin. Everyone was leaning toward the nearest window to see the land below, which lay calm as wreckage in the clear winter air. Not much could be distinguished to show where the war had been. Smooth fields of snow mottled everything, and the rivers were as pronounced as veins, but he did not think of an ancient mother of men. His eye was the flyer’s. He saw the hostile mountains, the absence of good landmarks, and the few places flat enough to land in an emergency.

They had fought down there, on foot, taking weeks to move the distance he went in an hour. He was arriving like a tourist, in comfort. He felt the detachment of a specialist, and the importance. His gaze moved for a while to the heavy wing and the outboard nacelle, which was the only one he could see. A broad slick of oil, black and gleaming, was spread back from the cowling. He went back to staring moodily at the land.